For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still, over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race. Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.
His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer—there the inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete—he had not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
“How's the mare doing, Andy?” he asked. “What did the race do to her?”
“She never was better in her life,” the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, “She'll win next time out, sir—I'll gamble my shirt on that.”
“Not with another McKay up.”
“I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.”
“What's the use,” said Porter, dejectedly; “where'll we get a boy?”
“Oh, lots of the boys are straight.”
“I know that,” Porter answered, “but all the straight ones are tied hand and foot to the big stables.”
“I've been thinkin' it over,” hazarded Dixon, tentatively—“Boston Bill's got a good lad—there's none of them can put it over him, an' his boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know.”
“That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her off the boards.
“The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would square the little mare with the public.”
“And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar,” said Porter. “Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving up the money.”
The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won. But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the little mare.
Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he might change his mind: “They downed me last trip, Dixon—I guess I'm getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like—arrange with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty of winning races—not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess.”
“Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman—he ran a great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse—if they start him. Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin', too,” continued Dixon, meditatively; “the public soon sour on a beaten horse. You'll have a chance to get even.”
“I don't like that part of it,” muttered Porter; “I'm in the black books now. People have no reason at all—no sense; they've got it into their heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to one, and I win a bit, they'll howl.”
“You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the public—they don't pay the feed bill.”
“Perhaps you're right, Dixon,” answered Porter.
For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to Lucretia—no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood had been called upon as a tangible asset. So that day, following his conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects—his hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively, mention her good trial.
“I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter,” said Crane, sympathetically. “I only race, myself in a small way, just for the outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a judge. The other horse you bought—the winner of the race, I mean, Lauzanne—will also help put you right, I should say.”
Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give the banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's manipulation of the trainer.
With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to the subject, “Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr. Crane?”
“I have,” answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.
“Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries better?”
Crane thought for a moment. “Yes, that's right; coming up wind the leaves hid them.”
“Just so,” commented Porter; “and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly always working up wind with him.”
“The trainer hides things?” queried Crane.
“Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries.”
And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, “Whose garden are the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?”
“Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane,” Porter answered, evasively.
“I see,” said the other, meditatively; “I understand. I'm much obliged. If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him—nothing whatever.”
Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable something.
“Yes,” he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, “if Langdon tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of the strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that line,
'And a hush came over the clamorous mob;Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'
She's cleverer than her father.”
Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping eyes saw nothing else.
From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered his passion for racing with common sense. And it would pass from Porter's hands right enough—Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the inability to make money.
“Made music to me on Crusader.” Yes, that was it. With the Porters it was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory, but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many other things connected with the betting ring.
Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind. Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other there was not much more—just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes, that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great sweetness.
Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty—that very day forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork. When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.
Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden opportunity.
From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare. He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon. Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things, and developed the routine for his chessmen.
“I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself, and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks about The Dutchman,” was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the bank.
That evening he talked with his trainer.
“What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?” he asked.
“Well, I don't know what'll start,” began the Trainer, with diplomatic caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.
“Would Porter's mare have a chance?”
“I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good enough to win—if I could find out her time—Porter don't talk much, an' Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I might pump—”
“Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business.”
The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.
“Has The Dutchman a look in?” continued Crane.
“On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em—I ain't seen no two-year-olds out to beat that pair.”
“If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses, and men, too—that'll take the gaff and try.”
“I don't know as the owner'd sell him.”
“Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?”
“Yes.”
“He was a good horse.”
“The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a song—seven thousand.”
“Less than that, the first time,” corrected Crane.
“Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no good.”
“Just so,” commented Crane; “I've heard that story,” and his smooth, putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.
Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped up in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.
“I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman,” hazarded Langdon; “he's a boozer.”
“I'm glad of that—I mean, that you know Smith,” declared Crane. “I happen to know the owner—his name is Baker. His racing is what might be called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes blunders upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but that if he knew all about the other race—how bad Lauzanne really is; how the mare, Lucretia—well—got shut off, and couldn't get through her horses, say—of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell these things, you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he might take a reasonable offer for The Dutchman.”
Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.
Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. “Naturally Smith would hate to lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to thwart any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss.”
“When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale—”
“I'm not interested in Silver Foot,” interrupted Crane; “and I shouldn't like to have anything—well, I don't want my name associated with anything shady, you understand, Langdon? You are to buy The Dutchman as cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I think Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The Dutchman.”
Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The smooth, complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.
“But,” he gasped, “there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The Dutchman runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him—it's dollars to doughnuts they will—an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't take no chances of bein' had up by the Stewards.”
“Wait a bit,” replied Crane, calmly. “Supposing Porter's mare worked five and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?”
“She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might give her an argument.”
“Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win, if he never carried the saddle again,” declared Crane, almost fiercely. Then he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed it was that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply a motor for carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the executive agents. “It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if Lucretia wins. I fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly stop the mare this time—not twice in succession you know, Langdon,” and he looked meaningly at his jackal. “You buy The Dutchman, and be good to him.”
He laid marked emphasis on the words “be good to him.” The trainer understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey could try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would win, and his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his own benefit. Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do anything but just follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the oblique game he loved so well? Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was a good horse; he also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but with the son of Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come off. Somehow Langdon felt miserably inefficient in the presence of Crane—his self-respect suffered; the other man's mind was so overmastering, even to detail. The Trainer felt a sudden desire to right himself in Crane's estimation, give some evidence of ordinary intelligence, or capability to carry out his mission. “If The Dutchman's owner was made to think that the horse was likely to break down, throw a splint, or—”
But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: “I know nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You will pay for him with a check on my bank.” No man could close out an interview so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he had been thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but admiration of his master—the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy with liberal capital.
In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than Lucretia. A sanguine owner—even Porter was one at times—was so apt to overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of equal length, with John Porter.
Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He knew intuitively—in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested it—that Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult position by backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting to get his money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could whipsaw the situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing Lucretia down to a short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with a full vigor against the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to stake money, and Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the golden links he had forged on the place.
Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love blossom. Strive as he would—though the apathy of his rebellion somewhat startled him—Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the wondrous gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the atmosphere of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of the girl came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of his restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually in love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in marvelous ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else—love at first sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years must still govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win the girl by diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man irrevocably in his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond redemption, if he practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed with Allis? All his life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men, for broken men were beyond doubt but potter's clay.
Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no pains to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to enlarge on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price was the only item that interested Crane—seven thousand dollars; that included everything—even the secret service money.
The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding. When the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the Banker; when Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust acted for him.
“I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,”' Crane said to the bookmaker.
“Lucretia,” ejaculated Faust. “She'll have a rosy time beatin' Dutchy on their last race. They'll put a better boy up on the colt next time, an' he ought to come home all by himself” “Yes, a fairish sort of a jock will have the mount I think-Westley's a good enough boy.”
“Westley?” came wonderingly from Faust.
“Yes; Langdon owns The Dutchman now.”
The Cherub pursed his fat round lips in a soft whistle of enlightenment. It had staggered him at first that Crane, for whose acumen he had a profound respect, should have intended such a hazardous gamble; now he saw light.
“Then my book is full on the Porter mare?” he said, inquiringly. Crane nodded his head.
“An' I lay against the Hanover colt?”
Again Crane nodded.
“It's not bookmaking,” continued Faust.
“I'm not a bookmaker,” retorted Crane. “And see here, Faust,” he continued, “when you've got my money on the Porter mare—when and how I leave to you—I want you to cut her price short—do you understand? Make her go to the post two to one on, if you can; don't forget that.”
“If the mare goes wrong?” objected Faust.
“I don't think she will, but you needn't be in a hurry—there's plenty of time.”
“What's the limit?” asked Faust.
“I want her backed down to even money at least,” Crane answered; “probably ten thousand will do it. At any rate you can go that far.”
Then for a few days Langdon prepared his new horse for the Eclipse according to his idea of Crane's idea; and Dixon rounded Lucretia to in a manner that gladdened John Porter's heart. They knew nothing of anything but that Lucretia was very fit, that they had Boston Bill's jockey to ride straight and honest for them, and that with a good price against the mare they would recoup all their losses.
The day of the race when John Porter went into the betting ring he was confronted with even money about his mare. If he had read on the ring blackboard a notice that she was dead, he would not have been more astonished. He fought his way back to the open of the paddock without making a bet.
“Even money!” ejaculated Dixon when his owner told him of the ring situation, “why, they're crazy. Who's doin' it?”
“Not the public,” declared Porter, “for I was there just after the first betting. It must be your friend Boston Bill that has forestalled us; nobody else knew of the mare's trial.”
“Not on your life, Mr. Porter; Boston plays fair. D'ye think he could live at this game if he threw down his friends?”
“But nobody else even knew that we'd got a good boy for the mare.”
“It don't make no difference,” curtly answered Dixon; “it's a million dollars to a penny whistle that Boston hasn't a dollar on yet. Our agreement was that he'd send in his commission when they were at the post, an' his word's like your own, sir, as solid as a judge's decision. It's some one else. There's somebody behind that damned Langdon—he's not clever enough for all this. D'you know that The Dutchman's runnin' in Langdon's name to-day?”
“He is?'
“Yes; he's supposed to own him.”
“But what's that got to do with Lucretia's price?”
“It means that we're goin' to be allowed to win. The other day they laid against her, an' she got beat; to-day they're holdin' her out, so I suppose she'll win, but somebody else gets the benefit.”
“Gad! that Langdon must be a crook,” muttered Porter. “I'm going to speak to my friend Crane about him again. No honest man should have horses in his stable.”
“That they shouldn't,” asserted Dixon. “But we've got our own troubles to-day. From what I see of this thing, I'd rather back the mare at even money than I would if she was ten to one. If I'm any judge we're being buncoed good and plenty.”
“I think you're right Dixon. I'll go back and have a good bet down on her at evens.”
But in five minutes Lucretia's owner was back in the paddock with the cheerful intelligence that the mare was now three to five.
“I wouldn't back 'Salvator' among a lot of cart horses at that price,” commented Dixon; “leave it alone, an' we'll go for the Stake. We're up against it good and hard; somebody seems to know more about our own horse than we do ourselves.”
“I think myself that the gods are angry with us, Dixon,” said Porter moodily; “and the mortals will be furious, too, whichever way the race goes. They've backed the little mare at this short price no doubt, an' if she's beaten they'll howl; if she wins they'll swear my money was on to-day, and that I pulled her in her last race.”
John Porter sat in the Grand Stand with his usual companion, Allis, beside him, as The Dutchman, Lucretia, and the other Eclipse horses passed down the broad spread of the straight Eclipse course to the five-and-a-half furlong post.
Though Porter had missed his betting, he intuitively felt the joy of an anticipated win. Only a true lover of thoroughbreds can know anything of the mad tumult of exultation that vibrates the heart strings as a loved horse comes bravely, gallantly out from the surging throng of his rivals, peerless and king of them all, stretching his tapered neck with eager striving, and goes onward, past the tribunal, first and alone, the leader, the winner, the one to be cheered of the many thousands wrought to frenzy by his conquest.
“Surely Lucretia will win to-day, father—don't you think so?” asked Allis; “I feel that she will.”
“She's got a big weight up,” he answered. “She's a little bit of a thing, and it may drive her into the ground coming down the Eclipse hill. I expect they'll come at a terrible jog, too; they don't often hang back on that course.”
Now that the betting worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were over—that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time of the very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a meditative mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, with Allis as audience.
“But they'll have to move some to beat the little mare's trial—they'll make it in record time if they head her, I think.”
“Isn't the horse that beat her the other day in, too, father?”
“The Dutchman-yes, but I fancy his owner is backing my mare.”
“Father!”
“It wouldn't make any difference, though; she'd beat him anyway. If I'm any judge, he's short.”
Allis felt a rustle at her elbow as though someone wished to pass between the seats. The faintest whiff of stephanotis came to her on the lazy summer air. Involuntarily she turned her head and looked for the harsh-voiced woman who had been verily steeped in the aggressive odor the day of Lauzanne's triumph. Two burly men sat behind her. They, surely, did not affect perfumery. Higher up the stand her eye searched—four rows back sat the woman Alan had said was Langdon's sister. There was no forgetting the flamboyant brilliancy of her apparel. But the almost fancied zephyr of stephanotis was mingling with the rustle at her elbow; she turned her head inquiringly in that direction, and Crane's eyes peeped at her over the stone wall of their narrow lids. He was standing in the passage just beyond her father, now looking wistfully at the vacant seat on her left.
“Good afternoon, Miss Porter—how are you, Porter? May I sit here with you and see Lucretia win?”
“Come in, come in!” answered Porter, frankly.
“I was sitting with some friends higher up in the stand, when I saw you here, and thought I'd like to make one of the victorious party.”
Allis knew who the friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis. That other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for politic purposes; to-day he had been sitting with “friends.”
Topping the rail in the distance, just where the course kinked a little to the left, Allis could see the blur of many colored silks in the sunlight. Then it seemed to flatten down almost level with the rail, as the horses broadened out to the earth in racing spread and the riders clung low to the galloping colts, for they had started.
“There they come,” said Crane. “What's in the lead, Porter?” Porter did not answer. A man could have counted thirty before he said, “The Dutchman's out in front—a length, and they're coming down the hill like mad.”
Allis felt her heart sink. Was it to be the same old story—was there always to be something in front of Lucretia?
“Where is your mare?” Crane asked.
His own glass lay idly in his lap. Though he spoke of the race, it was curious that his eyes were watching the play of Allis's features, as hope and Despair fought their old human-torturing fight over again in her heart.
“Now she's coming!” Porter's voice made Crane jump; he had almost forgotten the race. To the close-calculating mind it had been settled days before. The Dutchman would not win, and Lucretia was the best of the others—why worry?
They were standing now—everybody was.
“Now, my beauty, they'll have to gallop,” Porter was saying. They were close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead. Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily. What a win Crane had had!
A little smothered gasp distracted his momentary thought of success, and, turning quickly, he saw tears in a pair of gray eyes that were set in a smiling face.
“Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing,” came back to Crane out of the poem Allis had recited.
“I congratulate you, Miss Porter,” he said, raising his hat. Then he turned, and held out his hand to her father, saying: “I'm glad you've won, Porter—I thought you would. The Dutchman quit when he was pinched.”
“It wasn't the colt's fault—he was short,” said Porter. “I shouldn't like to have horses in that man's stable—he's too good a trainer for me.”
There was a marked emphasis on Porter's words; he was trying to give Crane a friendly hint.
“You mean it's a case of strawberries?” questioned Crane.
“Well I know it takes a lot of candles to find a lost quarter,” remarked Porter, somewhat ambiguously. Then he added, “I must go down to thank Dixon; I guess this is his annual day for smiling.”
“I'm coming, too, father,” said Allis; “I want to thank Lucretia, and give her a kiss, brave little sweetheart.”
After Allis and her father had left Crane, he sat for a minute or two waiting for the crowd of people that blocked the passageway after each race to filter down on the lawn. The way seemed clearer presently, and Crane fell in behind a knot of loud-talking men. The two of large proportions who had sat behind Allis, were like huge gate posts jammed there in the narrow way. As he moved along slowly he presently had knowledge of a presence at his side—a familiar presence. Raising his eyes from a contemplation of the heels in front of him, he saw Belle Langdon. She nodded with patronizing freedom.
“I lost you,” she said.
“I was sitting with some friends here,” he explained.
“Yes, I saw her,” she commented pointedly.
At that instant one of the stout men in front said, with a bear's snarl, “Well that's the worst ever; I've seen some jobs in my time, but this puts it over anything yet.”
“Didn't you back the little mare?” a thin voice squealed. It was the 'Pout.
“Back nothin'! The last time out she couldn't untrack herself; an' today she comes, without any pull in the weight, and wins in a walk from The Dutchman; and didn't he beat her just as easy the other day?”
Belle Langdon looked into Crane's face, and her eyes were charged with a look of reciprocal meaning. Crane winched. How aggressively obnoxious this half-tutored girl, mistress of many gay frocks, could make herself! There was an implied crime-partnership in her glance which revolted him. Dick Langdon must have talked in his own home. Crane's conscience—well, he hardly had one perhaps, at least it was always subevident; to put it in another way, the retrospect of his manipulated diplomacy never bothered him; but this gratuitous sharing in his evil triumph was disquieting. The malicious glitter of the girl's small black eyes contrasted strongly with the honest, unaffected look that was forever in the big tranquil eyes of Allis.
They were just at the head of the steps, and the Tout was saying to the fat expostulator: “I could have put you next; I steered a big bettor on—he won a thousand over the mare. I saw Boston's betting man havin' an old-time play, an' I knew it was a lead-pipe cinch. He's a sure thing bettor, he is; odds don't make no difference to him, the shorter the better—that's when his own boy's got the mount.”
“It's all right to be wise after the race,” grunted the fat man.
“G'wan! the stable didn't have a penny on Lucretia last time; an' what do you suppose made her favorite to-day?” queried the Tout, derisively. “It took a bar'l of money,” he continued, full of his own logical deductions, “an' I'll bet Porter cleaned up twenty thousand. He's a pretty slick cove, is old 'Honest John,' if you ask me.”
The girl at Crane's side cackled a laugh. “He's funny, isn't he?” she said, nodding her big plumed hat in the direction of the man-group.
“He's a talkative fool!” muttered the Banker, shortly. “The steps are clear on the other side, Miss Langdon, you can get down there. I've got to go into the paddock; you'll excuse me.”
Being vicious for the fun of the thing had never appealed to Crane; he raced as he did everything else—to win. If other men suffered, that was the play of fate. He never talked about these things himself, almost disliked to think of them. He turned his back on Belle Langdon and went down the right-hand steps. On the grass sward at the bottom he stopped for an instant to look across at the jockey board.
Three men had just came out of the refreshment bar under the stand. They were possessed of many things; gold of the bookmakers in their pockets, and it's ever-attendant exhilaration in their hearts. One of them had cracked a bottle of wine at the bar, as tribute to the exceeding swiftness of Lucretia, for he had won plentifully. At that particular stage there was nothing left but to talk it over, and they talked. Crane, avaricious, unhesitating in his fighting, devoid of sympathy, was not of the eavesdropping class, but as he stood there he was as much a part of the other men's conversation as though he had been a fourth member of the brotherhood.
“I tell you none of these trainers ain't in it with a gentleman owner—when he takes to racin'. When a man of brains takes to runnin' horses as a profesh, he's gen'rally a Jim Dandy.” It was he of the wine-opening who let fall these words of wise value.
“D'you mean Porter, Jim?” asked number two of the trio.
“Maybe that's his name. An' he put it all over Mister Langdon this trip.”
“As how?” queried the other.
“Last time he runs his mare she's got corns in her feet the whole journey, an' all the time he owns the winner, Lauzanne, see?—buys him before they go out. Then Langdon thinks The Dutchman's the goods, an' buys him at a fancy price—gives a bale of long goods for him—I've got it straight that he parted with fifteen thousand. Then the gentleman owner, Honest John, turns the trick with Lucretia, an' makes The Dutchman look like a sellin' plater.”
“I guess Langdon'll feel pretty sick,” hazarded number three.
“I'd been watchin' the game,” continued the wine man, “an' soon's I saw a move to-day from the wise guys in the ring, I plumped for the mare 'toot sweet.”'
What an extraordinary thing manipulation was, Crane mused, as he listened; also how considerable of an ass the public was in its theoretical wisdom.
Then the three men drifted away to follow some new toy balloon of erratic possibilities, and Crane wound through the narrow passage which led to the paddock. There he encountered Langdon.
“He didn't run a very good horse, sir,” began the Trainer.
“I thought otherwise,” replied Crane, measuring the immediate vicinity of listeners.
“I had to draw it a bit fine,” declared Langdon, with apologetic remonstrance.
“Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,” retorted his master.
“I've got to think of myself,” growled Langdon. “If he'd been beat off, there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop a bit yet.”
“I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.”
“What about the horse, sir,” asked the Trainer.
“We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present.”
“I wonder what he meant by that,” Langdon mused to himself, as Crane moved away. “He don't make nobody a present of a race for love.” Suddenly he stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. “Well, I'm damned if that wasn't slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to him—to let him do the plannin'; I see.”
Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford, because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at longer intervals than was general.
“I'll start the little mare about once more this season,” he told Dixon. “The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing races on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking grass in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young days. The Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out—only won once—but as a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot.”
“What about Lauzanne?” asked the Trainer, “I'm afraid he's a bad horse.”
“How is he doing?”
“He's stale. He's a bad doer—doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes.”
“I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him. That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time.”
“I don't think it was the race, sir,” Dixon replied; “they just pumped the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an' the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd think he'd been stung by bees.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” commented Porter. “A man that would dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure.”
“I think you oughter make a kick, sir,” said Dixon, hesitatingly.
“I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but the voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood. I happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any inspection—didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as he stood. When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much, Andy—he was dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not standing up, but I didn't.”
“Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse; he'll cost more tryin' to win with him.”
“I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit.”
“When he's primed.”
“No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will—I'm too fond of them to poison them.”
“I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?—he cost a bit.”
“He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they can.”
“I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty light. He's about all we've got ready.”
“All right, Dixon,” Porter replied. “It may be that we've broke our bad luck with the little mare.”
They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12, where Dixon had his horses. As they passed over the “Withers Course,” as the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower far turn.
“It's a deuced funny thing,” he said, speaking reminiscently, “but that little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of the finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin' when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right there, he's done it three or four times.”
“He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?”
“They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try.”
“I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet,” mused Porter. “You can't make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally runs like the devil when he takes it into his head.”
“Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one,” growled Dixon.
They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.
“He's a good enough looker, ain't he?” commented Dixon, as he dipped under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about. “He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone,” he continued, looking the horse over critically; “an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule, an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'.”
“How does he work with the others?” queried Porter.
“Runs a bit, an' then cuts it—won't try a yard. Of course he's sick from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better.”
Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a monologue to Lauzanne: “You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if you win p'raps somebody'll buy you.”
Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew—not clearly, but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently. They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.
Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys had called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured temper, a broken belief in his masters—“Lauzanne the Despised.”
Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.
And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace, inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.
Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.
“What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?” Langdon asked, argumentatively.
“About one to ten,” Crane replied. “But the Chestnut's beating them had no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all class him with you as a trainer—he hasn't the same resource.”
Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful compliment.
“I'm not sure,” continued the Banker, “but that having stuck Porter with Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about—well, as to what course of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary diet of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal.”
Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity and deprecation, “There ain't no call for me to give that stable any pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse had been helped.”
“And what did you say?” blandly inquired Crane.
“Told him to go to hell.”
This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: “Porter probably won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And even if he does know that—that—Lauzanne' requires special treatment, he won't indulge him—he's got a lot of old-fashioned ideas about racing. So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition.”
After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had just discussed.
“From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business,” he mused; “but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust.”
“You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne,” Crane said to Jakey Faust, just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.
The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was nearly the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the occasion.
“You don't own him now, do you, sir?” he blurted out, with unthinking candor.
“I do not.”
“He's dropped into a soft spot—he rates best in the percentage card.”
“Figures sometimes lie,” commented Crane.
“Every handicapper tips him to win.”
“They're all broke because of their knowledge.”
“The books'll mark him up first choice.”
“That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him.”
“He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last time out.”
“You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne didn't beat anything.”
“Didn't beat—what the hell—didn't the Chestnut get the verdict?”
“He did; but—” and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of his lack of perception.
The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks. But he might have waited indefinitely—Crane had quite finished. The Cherub raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green and red and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and encountered a pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of a mask—the face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask—as expressionless. Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to do but fill the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would come his way and make much money.
Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for his race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
“They've given him nothing,” the Banker muttered to himself; “the heavy-headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he tries to ride him out.”
The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew back out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as he could. In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his ears back, switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind his field.
In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the dice as he had for many moons—a deuce for John Porter, and a six for Philip Crane.