The Brooklyn had been run and won; won by Langdon's stable, and lost by John Porter's. That night Allis spent hours trying to put into a letter to her mother their defeat and their hopes in such a way as to save distress to her father. She wound up by simply asking her mother to get Dr. Rathbone to impart as much information as he deemed advisable to his patient.
They were a very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon was never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day was simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk it over? It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work back into her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby. With incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth in the big Boston rocker; while Allis, at a little table in a corner of the room, sought to compose the letter she wished to send home.
With apathetic indifference the girl heard a constrained knock at the cottage door; she barely looked up as Dixon opened to a visitor. It was Crane who entered.
At almost any other time his visit would have been unpleasant. In his presence even the most trivial conversation seemed shrouded in a background of interested intentions; but to-night Dixon's constrained depression weighed heavy on her spirits and irritated her.
“Luck was against you to-day, Dixon,” exclaimed the visitor.
“They were too strong for the little mare,” answered the Trainer, curtly. “Our cast-off won, of course, but there were a half dozen in the race that would have beaten Lucretia, I fancy.”
Allis looked inquiringly at the Trainer; he had not talked that way to her. Then a light dawned upon the girl. She had not associated Dixon with diplomacy in her mind, she knew that he could maintain a golden silence, but here he was, actually throwing out to the caller a disparaging estimate of Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of duplicity was positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her mother so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive to depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of the whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion against these questionings; almost Jesuitical she became at once. What mattered the ways or means, so that she did no wrong? Was not the saving of her father's health and spirit, and his and her mother's welfare above all these trivial questionings; did not the end justify the means; might not her success, if the fates in pity gave her any, save her from—from—she did not even formulate in thought the contingency, for there stood the living embodiment of it-Crane; everything seemed crowding her into the narrow confines of her sacrificial crypt.
Crane had spoken to her on his entry. As she was writing he had continued his discussion of the race with Dixon; perhaps, even—it was a hopeful thought, born of desire—he had come to see the Trainer. Crane's next words dispelled that illusion. It was in answer to an observation from Dixon that he was forced to go to the stables, that Crane said: “If Miss Porter has no objection I'll remain a little longer; I want to discuss a matter concerning her father.”
Allis felt quite like fleeing to the stables with Dixon; she dreaded that Crane was going to bring up again the subject of his affection for her. But the Trainer had passed out before she could muster sufficient moral courage to put in execution her half-formed resolve.
“I wanted to speak about that wager on Diablo,” began Crane. A thrill of relief shot through the girl's heart. Why had be troubled himself to come to her over such a trifling matter—a pair of gloves, perhaps half a dozen pairs even.
“I put the bet on some time ago,” he continued, “when Diablo was at a long price. It was only a trifle, as we agreed upon—” Allis noticed that he laid particular stress upon “agreed.” “But it has netted you quite a nice sum, three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
Crane said this in a quiet voice, without unction; but it startled the girl—she stared in blank amazement. Her companion was evidently waiting for her to say something; seemed to expect an exclamation of joyous approval. She noticed that the gray eyes she so distrusted had taken on that distasteful peeping expression, as though he were watching her walk into a trap.
“I cannot take it,” answered Allis, decisively, after a pause.
Crane raised his hand in mild protest.
“It was good of you, kind; but how could I accept a large sum of money like that when I am not entitled to it?”
“You are—it's yours. The bet was made in your name I entered it at the time in my book, and the bookmaker is ready to pay the money over.”
“I can't take it—I won't. No, no, no!”
“Don't be foolishly sensitive, Miss Allis. Think what your father lost when he parted with Diablo for a trivial thousand dollars; and it was my fault, for I arranged the sale. Your father's needs—pardon me, but I know his position, being his banker—yes, he needs this money badly.”
“My father needs a good many things, Mr. Crane, which he would not accept as a gift; he would be the last man to do so. We must just go on doing the best we can, and if we can't succeed, that's all. We can't accept help, just yet, anyway.”
She was bitter; the reference to her father's troubles, though meant partly in kindness, angered her. It caused her to feel the meshes of the net drawing closer about her, and binding her free will. The fight was indeed on. More than ever she determined to struggle to the bitter end. Almost indefinably she knew that to accept this money, plausible as the offering was, meant an advantage to Crane.
“You can't leave this large sum with the bookmaker,” he objected. “He would like nothing better; he would laugh in his sleeve. I can't take it; it isn't mine.”
“I won't touch it.”
“Perhaps I had better speak to your father about it,” said Crane, tentatively; “he can have no objection to accepting this money that has been won.”
“Father won't take it, either,” answered the girl; “I know his ideas about such matters. He won't take it.”
Crane brought all his fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly, saying to Allis as he bade them good night: “I'm sorry you look upon the matter in this light. My object in coming to-night was to give you a little hope for brightness in your gloomy hour of bad luck; but perhaps I had better speak to your father.”
“I'd rather you didn't,” she answered, somewhat pleadingly. “Dr. Rathbone has cautioned us all against worrying father, and this could have no other result than but to distress him.”
Allis's letter had been completed, but she now added a postscript, telling her mother briefly of Crane's insistence over the bet, and beseeching her to devise some plan for keeping this new disturbing element from her father.
Crane was remaining over night in Gravesend, and, going back to his quarters, he reviewed the evening's campaign. He had expected opposition from Allis, but had hoped to overcome the anticipated objections; he had failed in this, but it was only a check, not defeat.
He smiled complacently over his power of self-control in having allowed no hint of his absorbing passion to escape him.
Acceptance of this money by Allis, the money which was the outcome of an isolated generous thought, would have given him a real advantage. To have spoken, though never so briefly of his hopes for proprietary rights, would have accentuated the girl's sensitive alarm. He was too perfect a tactician to indulge in such poor sword play; he had really left the question open. A little thought, influenced by the desperate condition of Porter's fortunes, might make Allis amenable to what was evidently her best interest, should she be approached from a different quarter.
Crane had made the first move, and met checkmate; the second move would be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this girl. Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast into his hands—thrust upon him by the good fortune that so steadily befriended him. He was not in the habit of attributing unlooked-for success to Providence; he rarely went beyond fate for a deity. Unmistakably then it was fate that had cast the horoscope of his and Allis's life together. Never mind what means he might use to carry out this decree; once accomplished, he would more than make amends to the girl.
He drew most delightful pictures of the Utopian existence his wealth would make possible for Allis. For the father he would provide a racing stable that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled somewhat grimly as he thought that under those changed circumstances even Allis's mother might be brought to condone her husband's continuance in the nefarious profession. If for no other reason than the great success he had made in the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo, his spirits were that evening impossible of the reception of even a foreshadowing of failure. A suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every projected scheme. He would win Allis, and he would win the Brooklyn Derby with his good colt, The Dutchman.
He went to sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence upon this totally inadequate receptacle for a horse and rider, for he woke with a gasp after he had traveled with frightful velocity for an age through the air.
Crane was a man not given to superstitious enthrallment; his convictions were usually founded on basic manifestations rather than fanciful visions; but somehow the night's dream fastened upon his mind as he lingered over a breakfast of coffee and rolls. Even three cups of coffee, ferociously strong, failed to drown the rehearsal of his uncomfortable night's gallop. Why had he linked Mortimer and Allis together? Had it been fate again, prompting him in his sleep, giving him warning of a rival that stood closer to the girl than he?
More than once he had thought of Mortimer as a possible rival. Mortimer was not handsome, but he was young, tall, and square-shouldered—even his somewhat plain face seemed to reflect a tall, square-shouldered character.
Subconsciously Crane turned his head and scanned critically the reflection of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that misdecorated a panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was, somewhat bereaved of its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got over its habit of telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception could have been taken to the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no sign-manual of cardinal sin had been placed upon it; it was neither low, nor brutal, nor wolfishly cunning in expression. Its pallor rather loaned an air of distingue, but—and the examination was being conducted for the benefit of a girl of twenty—it was the full-aged visage of a man of forty.
More than ever a conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win her only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of love-making, if it might be so called.
Crane was expecting Langdon at ten o'clock. He heard a step in the breakfast room, and, turning his head, saw that it was the Trainer. Mechanically Crane pulled his watch from his pocket; he had thought it earlier; it was ten. Langdon was on time to a minute. Nominally what there was to discuss, though of large import, required little expression. With matters going so smoothly there was little but assurances and congratulations to be exchanged. Diablo's showing in the big Handicap confirmed Langdon's opinion that both the Black and The Dutchman had given them a great trial; probably they would duplicate their success with The Dutchman in the Brooklyn Derby. It was only a matter of a few days, and the son of Hanover had steadily improved; he was in grand fettle.
Langdon's appreciation of Crane's cleverness had been enhanced by the successful termination of what he still believed was a brilliantly planned coup. He had never for an instant thought that Crane purchased the horse out of kindness to anyone. It was still a matter of mystery to him, however, why his principal should wish to keep dark just how he had learned Diablo's handicap qualities.
Accustomed to reading Langdon's mind, Crane surmised from the Trainer's manner that the latter had something that he had not yet broached. Their talk had been somewhat desultory, much like the conversation of men who have striven and succeeded and are flushed with the full enjoyment of their success. Suddenly the Trainer drew himself together, as if for a plunge, and said: “Did you notice Porter's mare in the Brooklyn, sir?”
“Yes; she ran a pretty good race for a three-year-old.”
“She did, an' I suppose they'll start her in the Derby. Do you happen to know, sir?”
“I fancy they will,” answered Crane, carelessly.
“She stopped bad yesterday; but I've heard somethin'.”
Crane remembered his own suspicion as to Lucretia's rider, but he only said, “Well?”
“After the race yesterday the jockey, Redpath, was talkin'—to the Porter gal—”
Crane started. It jarred him to hear this horseman refer to Allis as “the Porter gal.”
“Redpath told her,” proceeded Langdon, “that when he saw he couldn't quite win he pulled his mount off to keep her dark for the Derby.”
“How do you know this?”
“A boy in my stable happened to be in the stall an' heard 'em.”
“Who's the boy? Can you believe him?”
“It's Shandy. He used to be with the Porters.”
Like a flash it came to Crane that the spy must be the one who had written him the note about Faust and the change of saddles.
“Well, that doesn't affect us, that I can see,” commented Crane. “I'm not backing their mare.”
“It means,” declared Langdon, with great earnestness, “that if Lucretia could have beat all the others but Diablo, she has a rosy chance for the Derby; that's what it means. The Black got away with a flyin' start, and she wore him down, almost beat him; I doubt if The Dutchman could do that much. She was givin' him a little weight, too.”
“Well, we can't help it. I've backed The Dutchman to win a small fortune, and I'm going to stand by it. You're in it to the extent of ten thousand, as you know, and we've just got to try and beat her with our colt; that's all there is to it.”
“I don't like it,” muttered Langdon, surlily. “She's a mighty good three-year-old to put up a race like that.”
“She may go off before Derby day,” suggested Crane; “mares are uncertain at this time of year.”
“That's just it; if she would go off we'd feel pretty sure then. I think the race is between them.”
“Well, we'll know race day; if she goes to the post, judging from what you say, it'll be a pretty tight fit.”
“She didn't cut much figure last year when Lauzanne beat her.” Langdon said this with a drawling significance; it was a direct intimation that if Lucretia's present jockey could be got at, as her last year's rider had been—well, an important rival would be removed.
Crane had not been responsible for the bribing of Lucretia's jockey, though he was well aware what had occurred; had even profited by it.
“There'll be no crooked work this time,” he said; “nobody will interfere with the mare's rider, I hope,” and he looked significantly at Langdon.
“I don't think they will,” and the Trainer gave a disagreeable laugh. “From what Shandy tells me, I fancy it would be a bad game. The truth of the matter is that gosling Redpath is stuck on the gal.”
Crane's pale face flushed hot.
“I believe that Shandy you speak of is a lying little scoundrel. I have an idea that he wrote me a note, a wretched scrawl, once. Wait, I've got it in my pocket; I meant to speak to you about it before.”
Crane drew from the inner pocket of his coat a leather case, and after a search found Shandy's unsigned letter, and passed it over to the Trainer.
“It's dollars to doughnuts Shandy wrote it. Let me keep this, sir.”
“You're welcome to it,” answered Crane; “you can settle with him. But about the Derby, I have reasons for wishing to win that race, reasons other than the money. I want to win it, bad. Do you understand?”
“I think I do. When you say you want to win a race, you generally want to win it.”
“Yes, I do. But see here, Langdon, just leave their jockey to take orders from his own master, see?”
“I wasn't goin' to put up no game with him, sir.”
“Of course not, of course not. It wouldn't do. He's a straight boy, I think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a lot out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I think you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if somebody paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do it. I've got to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business, but shall be back again in a day or so. Just keep an eye on The Dutchman—but I needn't tell you that, of course.”
“That two-year-old I bought at Morris Park is coughin' an' runnin' at the nose; I blistered his throat last night; he's got influenza,” volunteered the Trainer.
“Keep him away from The Dutchman, then.”
“I've got him in another barn; that stuff's as catchin' as measles.”
“If The Dutchman were to get a touch of it, Porter would land the Derby with Lucretia, I fancy.”
“Or if they got it in their stable we'd be on Easy Street.”
“I suppose so. But Dixon's pretty sharp; he'll look out if he hears it's about. However, we've got to watch our own horse and let them do the same.”
That evening Langdon and Jakey Faust were closeted together in a room of the former's cottage. An A1 piece of villainy was on, and they were conversing in low tones.
“It's a cinch for The Dutchman if it wasn't for that damn mare Lucretia,” Langdon observed, in an injured tone, as though somehow the mare's excellence was an unwarranted interference with his rights.
“What about the jock?” asked Faust.
“No good—can't be done. He's mooney on the gal.”
“Huh!” commented the Cherub. “Did you talk it over with the Boss? He's not a bad guy gettin' next a good thing.”
“He gave me the straight tip to give Redpath the go-by.”
“What's his little game? Is he going to hedge on the mare?”
“No; he'll stand his bet flat-footed. Say, he's the slickest! If he didn't give me the straight office that the mare might get sick, then I'm a Dutchman.”
“We're both Dutchmen.” The Cherub laughed immoderately at his stupid joke. “See, we're both standin' for The Dutchman, ain't we?”
Langdon frowned at the other's levity. “You'll laugh out the other side your mouth if Lucretia puts up a race in the Derby like she did in the Handicap.”
“But ain't she goin' to get sick? We could whip-saw them both ways then, that's if we knew it first. I could lay against her an' back your horse.”
“I wish the old man wasn't so devilish deep; he makes me tired sometimes; gives it to me straight in one breath that he's got reasons for wantin' to win the race, an' then he pulls that preacher mug of his down a peg an' says, solemn like: 'But don't interfere with their jockey.' Then he talks about The Dutchman or Lucretia gettin' the influenza, an' that Andy Dixon is pretty fly about watchin' the mare. Now what do you make of all that, Jake?”
“Well, you area mug. It don't need no makin' up. That book's all rounded to. He wants the mare stopped, an' don't want no muddlin' about with the jockey, see? Wasn't there a row over stoppin' Lucretia last year? Wasn't the boy set down for the meetin'? You ought to know; you had to pay through the nose for shuttin' his mouth. But what made the old man talk about the mare gettin' sick?”
Langdon searched his memory; just how was that subject started? “Damn it! yes, of course; I told him about the two-year-old havin' the influenza.”
“Well, Dick, my boy, you've guessed it, though you weren't trying. Crane would like to see the Porter mare coughin'.”
“But you can't take a strange horse into their stable, an' him sick,” objected the Trainer.
“Right you are, Dick. But you could take the sickness there, if you had a boy with the sabe.”
“I was thinkin' of that,” said Langdon, reflectively; “I was wonderin' if that's what the Boss meant.”
“Sure thing—that's his way; he never wants to stand in for none of the blame, but he likes to feel sure that he's goin' to win.”
“It looks a bit like it, damn me if it don't; an' I believe he was givin' me a pointer about the proper boy for the job, too. He said Shandy would get at a horse quick enough if he was paid for it.”
“There you are; what more do you want? Would you have Crane get out on the housetop an' shout to you to go an' cruel Porter's mare? He's slick, he is, an' if it can be done you've got a great chance.”
“I'm a poor man,” whined Langdon, “an' I can't take no chances on loosin' ten thousand, if it can be helped.”
“It's got to be done right away, 'cause it'll take a couple of days to get the mare coughin'.”
“I told Shandy to come here,” said the Trainer; “he ought to be turnin' up soon. When you hear him knock, just slip into that other room, an' leave the door open a little so that you can hear what takes place. God knows what that young imp wouldn't swear if a fellow had no witnesses. I think he's comin' here to-night to ask me to pay him to do some dirty job, an' I won't do it, see?” and he winked at Faust. “He's a bad boy,” said the Bookmaker, in a tone of mock condemnation.
“There he is now,” declared Langdon. “I hear a step on the gravel. Quick, slip into the room; he'll be peepin' through the windows; he's like a fox.”
There was a knock at the door. When Langdon opened it Shandy shuffled into the room with a peculiar little rocking-horse sort of gait, just like the trot of a skunk. His whole appearance somehow suggested this despised animal.
“Have you heard anything from the Porter stable?” Langdon asked, when the boy had taken a seat.
“The little mare's well,” the boy answered, laconically.
“That's bad luck for us, Shandy. We'll be poorer by the matter of a few thousand if they win the Derby.”
“Who's we?” questioned Shandy, with saucy directness.
“The whole stable. A man has played The Dutchman to win a hundred thousand, an' he's goin' to give the boys, one or two of them, five hundred if it comes off.”
The small imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look. “What're you givin' us is that straight goods?” he demanded, doubtingly.
Langdon didn't answer the question direct; he said: “My man's afraid somebody'll get at The Dutchman. There's a lot of horse sickness about, an' if anyone was to take some of the poison from a sick horse's nose and put it in The Dutchman's nostrils at night, why he'd never start in the Derby, I reckon.”
A look of deep cunning crept into the boy's thin freckled face; his eyes contracted and blinked nervously.
“What th' 'ell's the difference? If the Porter mare starts Redpath thinks he's got a lead-pipe cinch.”
“You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference,” retorted Langdon.
“An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred? Is that dead to rights?”
“If The Dutchan wins you get the money,” replied the Trainer, circumspectly. “You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about takin' the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's mare, 'cause I can't stand for that, see?”
The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent, and proceeded:
“You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The Dutchman, damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an' if they had me up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had nothing to do with it.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's eyes, and said: “What did you write that letter for?”
The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the warning note he had sent to Crane.
“Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see? I wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with you.”
“I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't,” pleaded the boy; “give it back to me, sir.”
“You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare.”
“I didn't say I was goin' to do no bloomin' job; but I could get in right enough.”
“Well, I ain't puttin' you next no dirty work, but if you hear that the mare gets this horse sickness that's goin' about, let me know at once, see? Come here quick. If Faust got a chance to lay against the mare he probably wouldn't say anythin' about that note, if he did know.”
“I'll give you the office, sir, when she's took sick.”
“That's right. You ain't got any too many friends, Shandy, an' you'd better stick to them that'll help you.”
“Do I get that five hundred, sure?”
“If Lucretia don't beat The Dutchman, you get it.”
When the boy had gone Faust came forth from his hiding like a badger.
“That's a bad boy—a wicked boy!” he said, pulling a solemn face. “You're a good man, Langdon, to steer him in the straight an' narrer path. He'll take good care of The Dutchman for that five hundred.”
“Yes, if you don't pay these kids well they'll throw you down; an' I ain't takin' no chances, Faust.”
“The Porter mare might catch the influenza, eh, Dick?”
“If she does, I'll let you know at once, Jake. But I ain't in it. I threatened to kick that kid out when he hinted at something crooked.”
“I heard you, Langdon, I'll take my oath to that. But I must be off now. You know where to find me if there's anything doin'.”
The next day, intent on persuading Porter to accept the money won over Diablo, Crane took a run down to Ringwood farm.
As Allis had foreshadowed, his visit was of no avail, so far as Porter's acceptance of the winnings was concerned.
With natural forethought Crane first talked it over with Mrs. Porter, but that good lady would have felt a sort of moral defilement in handling any betting money, much less this that seemed obscured in uncertainty as to its rightful ownership. She believed very much in Crane's bona fides, and had no doubt whatever but his statement of the case was absolutely truthful. But Allis had refused to accept the money; it would never do for her to go beyond her daughter's judgment. She even thought it unadvisable for Crane to discuss the matter with her husband; it would only worry him, and she was positive that, in his pride of independence, he would refuse to touch a penny that was not actually due him.
“But there's a payment on Ringwood due in a few days,” Crane argued, “and we must arrange for that at all events. If this money, which is rightfully your family's, could be applied on that, it would make a difference, don't you think?”
“I suppose John must settle it,” she said, resignedly; “perhaps you had better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head for business,” she added, apologetically; “I'm not sure that any of us have except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift.”
Crane stated the facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter. Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with this sum as a compensation for having lost Diablo. It wasn't even a loan; it was a gift, pure and simple. His very helplessness, his poverty, made him decline the offer with unnecessary fierceness. If Allis had refused it, if she were strong enough to stand without this charity, surely he, a man, battered though he was, could pass it by. He had received a hopeful message from Allis as to Lucretia's chances in the Derby; they felt confident of winning. That win would relieve them of all obligations.
“I can't take it,” Porter said to Crane. “Allis is more familiar with the circumstances of the bet—if there was one—than I. It must just rest with her; she's the man now, you know,” he added, plaintively; “I'm but a broken wreck, and what she says goes.”
“But there's a payment on Ringwood falling due in a few days,” Crane remonstrated, even as he had to Mrs. Porter.
Porter collapsed, fretfully. He could stand out against prospective financial stringency, but actual obligations for which he had no means quite broke down his weakened energy. He had forgotten about this liability, that is, had thought the time of payment more distant. He would be forced to recall the money he had given Dixon to bet on Lucretia for the Derby, to meet this payment to the bank.
Quite despondently he answered the other man. “I had forgotten all about it; this shake-up has tangled my memory. I can pay the money, though,” he added, half defiantly; “it will hamper me, but I can do it.”
A sudden thought came to Crane, an inspiration. “I've got it!” he exclaimed.
Porter brightened up; there was such a world of confidence in the other's manner.
“We'll just let this Diablo money stand against the payment which is about due on Ringwood; put it in the bank to cover it, so to speak; later we can settle to whom it belongs. At present it seems to be nobody's money; it's seldom one sees a few thousand going abegging for an owner,” he added, jocularly. “You say it isn't yours; I know it isn't mine; and most certainly it doesn't belong to the bookmaker, for he's lost it fair and square. We can't let him keep it; they win enough of the public's money.”
Reluctantly, Porter gave a half-hearted acquiescence. He would have sacrificed tangible interests to leave the money that was in Dixon's hands with him to bet on Lucretia. It would be like not taking the tide at its flood to let her run unbacked when her chances of winning were so good, and the odds against her great enough to insure a big return.
It was after banking hours, quite toward evening, by the time Crane had obtained this concession. He had brought the winnings for John Porter's acceptance, should the latter prove amenable to reason. Now it occurred to him that he might leave the money with one of the bank staff, who could deposit it the next day.
Crane drove back to the village and went at once to the cashier, Mr. Lane's house. He was not at home; his wife thought perhaps he was still in the bank. Crane went there in search of him. He found only Mortimer, who had remained late over his accounts. From the latter Crane learned that the cashier had driven over to a neighboring town.
“It doesn't matter,” remarked Crane; “I can leave this money with you. It's to meet a payment of three thousand due from John Porter about the middle of June. You can put it in a safe place in the vault till the note falls due, and then transfer it to Porter's credit.”
“I'll attend to it, sir,” replied Mortimer. “I'll attach the money to the note, and put them away together.”
On his way to the station Crane met Alan Porter.
“I suppose you'd like a holiday to see your father's mare run for the Derby, wouldn't you, Alan?” he said.
“I should very much, sir; but Mr. Lane is set against racing.”
“Oh, I think he'll let you off that day. I'll tell him he may. But, like your mother, I don't approve of young men betting—I know what it means.”
He was thinking, with bitterness, of his own youthful indiscretions.
“If you go, don't bet. You might be tempted, naturally, to back your father's mare Lucretia, but you would stand a very good chance of losing.”
“Don't you think she'll win, sir?” Alan asked, emboldened by his employer's freedom of speech.
“I do not. My horse, The Dutchman, is almost certain to win, my trainer tells me.” Then he added, apologetic of his confidential mood, “I tell you this, lest through loyalty to your own people you should lose your money. Racing, I fancy, is very uncertain, even when it seems most certain.”
Again Crane had cause to congratulate himself upon the somewhat clever manipulation of a difficult situation. He had scored again in his diplomatic love endeavor. He knew quite well that Allis's determined stand was only made possible by her expectation of gaining financial relief for her father through Lucretia's winning the Derby. Should she fail, they would be almost forced to turn to him in their difficulties. That was what he wanted. He knew that the money won over Diablo, if accepted, must always be considered as coming from him. The gradual persistent dropping of water would wear away the hardest stone; he would attain to his wishes yet.
He was no bungler to attempt other than the most gently delicate methods.
Encouraged by Jockey Redpath's explanation of his ride on Lucretia, Allis was anxious that Dixon should take the money her father had set aside for that purpose and back their mare for the Brooklyn Derby.
“We had better wait a day or two,” Dixon had advised, “until we see the effect the hard gallop in the Handicap has had on the little mare. She ain't cleanin' up her oats just as well as she might; she's a bit off her feed, but it's only natural, though; a gallop like that takes it out of them a bit.”
It was the day after Crane's visit to Ringwood that Dixon advised Allis that Lucretia seemed none the worse for her exertion.
“Perhaps we'd better put the money on right away,” he said. “She's sure to keep well, and we'll be forced to take a much shorter price race day.”
“Back the stable,” advised Allis, “then if anything happens Lucretia we can start Lauzanne.”
The Trainer laughed in good-natured derision. “That wouldn't do much good; we'd be out of the frying pan into the fire; we'd be just that much more money out for jockey an' startin' fees; he'd oughter been struck out on the first of January to save fifty dollars, but I guess you all had your troubles about that time an' wasn't thinkin' of declarations.”
“It may have been luck; if Lauzanne would only try, something tells me he'd win,” contended the girl.
“And somethin' tells me he wouldn't try a yard,” answered Dixon, in good-humored opposition. “But I don't think it'll make no difference in the odds we get whether we back the stable or Lucretia alone; they won't take no stock in the Chestnut's prospects.”
So Dixon made a little pilgrimage among the pencilers. He was somewhat dismayed and greatly astonished that these gentry also had a somewhat rosy opinion of Lucretia's chances. Her good gallop in the Brooklyn Handicap had been observed by other eyes than Crane's. Ten to one was the best offer he could get.
Dixon was remonstrating with a bookmaker, Ulmer, when the latter answered, “Ten's the best I'll lay—I'd rather take it myself; in fact, I have backed your mare because I think she's got a great chance; she'll be at fours race day. But I'll give you a tip—it's my game to see the owner's money on,” and he winked at the Trainer as much as to say, “I'll feel happier about it if we're both in the same boat.”
“It'll be on, sure thing, if I can get a decent price.”
“Well, you go to Cherub Faust; he'll lay you longer odds. I put my bit on with him at twelve, see? If I didn't know that you an' Porter was always on the straight I'd a-thought there was somethin' doin', an' Faust was next it, stretchin' the odds that way. How's the mare doin—is she none the worse?” Ullmer asked, a suspicious thought crossing his mind.
“We're backin' her—an' money talks,” said Dixon, with quiet assurance.
“Well, Faust is wise to somethin'—he stands in with Langdon, an' I suppose they think they've got a cinch in The Dutchman. Yes, that must be it,” he added, reflectively; “they made a killin' over Diablo, an' likely they got a good line on The Dutchman through him in a trial. But a three-year-old mare that runs as prominent in the big Handicap as Lucretia did, will take a lot of beatin. She's good enough for my money.”
Thanking him, Dixon found Faust, and asked of him a quotation against Porter's stable.
“Twelve is the best I can do,” answered the Cherub.
“I'll take fifteen to one,” declared Dixon.
“Can't lay it; some of the talent—men as doesn't make no mistake, is takin' twelve to one in my book fast as I open my mouth.”
“I want fifteen,” replied Dixon, doggedly. “Surely the owner is entitled to a shade the best of it.”
“What's the size of your bet?” queried the Cherub.
“If you lay me fifteen, I'll take it to a thousand.”
“But you want it ag'in' the stable, an' you've two in; with two horses twelve is a long price.”
“I'm takin' it against the stable just because it's the usual thing to couple it in the bettin. It's a million to one against Lauzanne's starting if Lucretia keeps well.”
Faust gave a little start and searched Dixon's face, furtively. The Trainer's stolid look reassured him, and in a most sudden burst of generosity he said: “Well, I'll stretch a point for you, Dixon. Your boss is up ag'in' a frost good and hard. I'll lay you fifteen thousand to one ag'in' the stable, an' if Lauzanne wins you'll buy me a nice tiepin.”
His round, fat sides heaved spasmodically with suppressed merriment at the idea of Lauzanne in the Brooklyn Derby.
“They must have a pretty good opinion of The Dutchman,” Dixon thought, as he moved away after concluding the bet. “I'm naturally suspicious of that gang, when they get frisky with their money. It's a bit like I've heard about the Sultan of Turkey always givin' a present to a man before cutting his head off.”
The Trainer told Allis what he had done. He even spoke of his distrust at finding Faust laying longer odds against their mare than the other bookmakers. “But I don't see what they can do,” he said, reflectively, studying the grass at his feet, his brow quite wrinkled in deep thought. “The mare's well, and we can trust the boy this time, I think.”
“Yes, you can trust Redpath,” affirmed Allis, decisively. “If Faust is in with Langdon, as you say, it just means that they're goin' on their luck, and think their colt, The Dutchman, can't lose.”
“It must be that,” concurred the Trainer, but in a hesitating tone that showed he was not more than half satisfied.
“You backed the stable?” queried Allis, as an afterthought.
“Yes, an' Lauzanne'll have a chance to-day to show whether he's worth the pencil that wrote his name beside Lucretia's.”
“You are starting him to-day? I had almost forgotten that he was entered.”
“Yes, it'll give him a fair trial—it's a mile, an' there ain't no good horses, that is, stake horses, in the race. I'll put Redpath up on him, an' you might have a talk with the boy, if you like. You're onto Lauzanne's notions better'n I am.”
Allis gave Jockey Redpath the benefit of her knowledge of Lauzanne's peculiarities.
“I'm afraid he won't take kindly to you,” she said, regretfully; “he's as notional as most of his sire's line. But if he won't try he won't, and the more you fight him the sulkier he'll get. I wish I could ride him myself,” she added, playfully; then fearing that she had hurt the boy's feelings by discounting his ability, added, hastily: “I'm afraid I've spoiled Lauzanne; he has taken a liking to me, and I've learned how to make him think he's having his own way when he's really doing just what I want him to do.”
Redpath's admiration for Allis Porter was limited to his admiration for her as a young lady. Being young, and a jockey, he naturally had notions; and a very prominent, all-absorbing notion was that he could manage his mount in a race much better than most boys. Constrained to silent acquiescence by respect for Allis, he assured himself, mentally, that, in the race his experience and readiness of judgment would render him far better service than orders—perhaps prompted by a sentimental regard for Lauzanne.
The Chestnut was a slow beginner; that was a trait which even Allis's seductive handling had failed to eradicate.
When the starter sent Lauzanne off trailing behind the other seven runners in the race that afternoon, Redpath made a faint essay, experimentally, to hold to Allis's orders, by patiently nestling over the Chestnut's strong withers in a vain hope that his mount would speedily seek to overtake the leaders. But evidently Lauzanne had no such intention; he seemed quite satisfied with things as they were. That the horses galloping so frantically in front interested him slightly was evidenced by his cocked ears; but beyond that he might as well have been the starter's hack bringing that gentleman along placidly in the rear.
“Just as I thought,” muttered the boy; “this skate's kiddin' me just as he does the gal. He's a lazy brute—it's the bud he wants.”
Convinced that he was right, and that his orders were all wrong, the jockey asserted himself. He proceeded to ride Lauzanne most energetically.
In the horse's mind this sort of thing was associated with unlimited punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days; first, the general hustle—small legs and arms working with concentric swing; then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and finally the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most; figuratively, he humped his back against the anticipated onslaught.
Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.
Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's whip-hand go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the others had not bothered her in the slightest—it was his true method; his work would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at all.
“If the boy will only sit still—only have patience,” she had been saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the sunlight; and then she just moaned. “It's all over; we are beaten again. Everything is against us—everybody is against us,” she cried, bitterly; “will good fortune never come father's way?”
By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not in the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had cost the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself, Lauzanne undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much ground had been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came up the straight in gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he finished close up among the unplaced horses.
Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good—it would be like crying over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on good terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne would but destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.
“I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor,” Dixon said to Allis, after the race. “We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot he's not worth his feed bill.”
“He would have won had I been on his back,” declared the girl, loyally.
“That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one peg to hang our hat on—that's Lucretia.”
Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically he had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down. In fact, his whole condition was perfect.
She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake her confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting any jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to? They might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would be driven back into his old bad habits.
The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before was as nothing compared with this new development in their run of thwarted endeavor.
Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he suddenly bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils; another stride and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's throat and ears; he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious dismay on his usually stolid face.
“She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up,” volunteered Carter, seeing Dixon's investigation.
“I'm afraid she's took cold,” muttered Dixon. “Have you had her near any horses that's got the influenza?” he asked, looking inquiringly at Carter.
“She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear she'd get a kick, or get run into.”
“I hope to God it's nothin',” said the Trainer; and his voice was quite different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The mare couldn't have taken a cold—they had been so careful of her; there had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it was the dreaded influenza.
That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.
The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he asked Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy declared most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering an incident he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said: “Two mornin's ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I noticed a little scum in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped it out, and there was nuthin' more come that I could see.”
“What's the row?” asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.
When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: “It's that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould man; an' he done this job, too.”
“But how could he get at her?” queried the Trainer. “The stable's been locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room.”
“That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut th' bridle rein—t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done that, as I know.”
“Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss Porter about, Mike?”
“I did a minute ago; I'll pass the word ye want to see her—here she comes now. I'll skip. Damn if I want to see them gray eyes when ye tell about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what it'll do. An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up this dirty job. It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the blackguard that worked him.”
Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news to Allis, and finished up by blurting out: “The mare's coughin' this mornin', Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a sick spell.”
Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father, relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck. She had come to have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, “The mare's coughin',” struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak—the misery was too great—but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke of his suspicions of foul play.
What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned, was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
“I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it,” declared Dixon, regretfully; “but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand.”
“We'll have to start Lauzanne,” said Allis, taking a brave pull at herself, and speaking with decision.
“We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm feared.”
“I've seen him do a great gallop,” contended Allis.
“He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount.”
Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
“Don't engage him just yet, Dixon,” she said, looking up suddenly, the shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; “I'll talk it over with you when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't want to speak of it just now—let me think it over a little.”
Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. “We haven't got a million to one chance,” he was muttering; “the money's burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're concerned.”
That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to ride Lauzanne in the Derby herself.
“My God, Miss!” the Trainer exclaimed, “you can't do it. What would people say—what would your mother say?”
“People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was hitched to a buggy in the Derby or not.”
“But the Judge would never allow a girl—”
“There'll be no girl in it;”. and Allis explained, in minute detail the result of her deep cogitation.
“It won't work; you never could do it,” objected Dixon, with despondent conviction. “That big head of hair would give you dead away.”
“The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk, waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won.”
“No, no; it won't do,” the Trainer reiterated; “everybody'd know you, an' there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right enough, an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But give up the idea, everybody'd know you.”
The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,—only in a race with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial gallop,—but his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed the discussion by saying that she was going home to encourage her father a little over the mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise not to engage Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.
“He can't take another mount,” she said, “because he's retained for Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet.”
“I'm hopin' we may not have to,” remarked Dixon. “Anyway, there's no hurry about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when you come back.”