“Nothing. I wouldn’t lose anything either, which is what makes it easy. This is just routine.”

Black looked at Shayne intently, to see how much was real, how much bluff. People who played poker with Michael Shayne often wondered the same thing, and usually ended up broke.

“You wouldn’t be doing it for money,” Shayne said. “They couldn’t pay you enough. What else is there but blackmail? Tell me about it, and maybe in the course of other things I can take care of it for you.”

Shayne let him think it out by himself.

Black heaved a deep sigh, which made him seem much younger. “His name’s Vince Donahue. He said today wouldn’t happen again, but I’m not that innocent. I knew he’d call up next year, and the only way I could stop it would be to quit football. That’s why I was going to stick Colfax for the biggest bonus I could get. Do you think it was easy to miss those passes? I had a shot at the Conference record! I got a funny look from one of the guys. I had to say I had a muscle spasm, and not to tell anybody so it wouldn’t queer me with the Warriors.”

Now that it was coming, Shayne didn’t look at him or question him, but went on smoking in silence. A student on a bicycle approached. Black waited till he was past.

“Vince has a tape of a phone conversation. It’s all out of context. I said it, but it sounds worse than it was. He said he’d send it to the sports editor of the Miami News if I didn’t play along. And he would have, too. That was yesterday. If I’d known where he lived I might have-” He stopped, his fists clenched. “Well, it’s just as well, I didn’t, or I might be in an even worse jam.”

“Go back a way,” Shayne suggested. “Where did you meet him?”

“All the way back, in grammar school. We were in the Boy Scouts, we played football, baseball, basketball-you name it. He could have pitched in the majors if he’d stuck to it. He was a natural platform diver, a wonderful swimmer. But he didn’t have the desire. He kept changing from one thing to another. And then he had some bad luck. Do you want to know all this, Mr. Shayne?”