"Bully!" excitedly. "The best luck ever! We'll have a try-out in private
and if you're the moose I think you are you can break him in two!"
"Break who in two?"
"The Spanish Bull-dog! Eureka!" he chuckled gleefully. "I'll back you to
the limit!"
"What's the matter with you?" Bruce demanded. "Are you loco?"
"Close to it!" the eccentric capitalist cried gaily,--"with joy! He
bested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club--he dusted the mat
with me--and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did not
lose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I've
got some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran across
this fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to reduce the
swelling in my head, he said, and he did it, for while the chap hasn't
much science he's so powerful I couldn't hold him. But you, by George!
wait till I spring _you_ on him!"
"Say," Bruce answered resentfully, "I came East to raise money for a
hydro-electric power plant, not to go into the ring. It looks as if
you're taking a good deal for granted."
"That's all right," Harrah answered easily. "How much do you want? What
you got? Where is it?"
Bruce told him briefly.
Harrah heard him through attentively and when he was done Harrah said
candidly:
"Perhaps you've been told before that without a qualified engineer's
report it isn't much of a business proposition to appeal to a business
man."
"Once or twice," Bruce answered dryly.
"Nevertheless," Harrah continued, "I'm willing to take a chance on
you--not on the proposition as you've put it up to me but on you
personally, because I like you. I'll head your inscription list with
$5000 and introduce you to some men that will probably take a 'flyer' on
my say-so. If you're still short of what you think you'll need I'll make
up the remainder, all providing"--with a quick grin--"that you go in and
wallop that Greaser!"
Bruce's expression was a mixture of many.
Finally he replied slowly:
"Well, it isn't just the way I'd figured out to interest Capital and I
reckon the method is unique in mine promotion, but as I'm at the end of
my rope and have no choice, one more meal of 'crow' won't kill me." He
went on with a tinge of bitterness, thinking of Sprudell: "Since muscle
is my only asset I'll have to realize on it." Then his dark face lighted
with one of the slow, whimsical smiles that transformed it--"Unchain the
'Spanish Bull-dog,' feller!"
Harrah rang for the office boy and reached for his hat.
"William," he said sternly when the quaking youth stood before him,
"tell those people outside not to wait. I'm called away on
business--urgent, important business and I can't say when I'll be
back."