“I shall be very much pleased,” said Wallingford“I shall be very much pleased,” said Wallingford
Jerrold was the state auditor.
“I shall be very much pleased,” said Wallingford. “I’ll just drop into the office and get my papers laid out for you.”
“All right,” agreed Mr. Clifford carelessly. “I don’t want to spend much time over them.”
Other fatal flaws Mr. Clifford found in the Turner and Company plan of operation, and when he left the office of The People’s Coöperative Bond and Loan Company, the gentlemen present representing that concern felt dismally sure that their doom was sealed.
“We’re up against a pull again,” said Doc Turner despondently. “It’s the building-loan company experience all over again. You can’t do anything any more in this country without a pull.”
“And it won’t do any good for us to go up to Trenton and try to get one,” concluded Mr. Squinch with equal despondency. “We tried that with the building-loan company and failed.”
In the office of The People’s Mutual Bond and Loan Company there was no despondency whatever, for Mr. Wallingford and the dark-haired gentleman who had given his name as Mr. Clifford were shaking hands with much glee.
“They fell for it like kids for a hoky-poky cart, Blackie,” exulted Wallingford. “They’re in there right this minute talking about the cash value of a pull. That was the real ready-money tip of all the information I got from old Colonel Fox.”
They had lit cigars and were still gleeful when a serious thought came to Mr. Clifford, erstwhile Mr. Daw.
“This is a dangerous proposition, though, J. Rufus,” he objected. “Suppose they actually take this matter up with the state department? Suppose they even go there?”
“Well, they can’t prove any connection between you and me, and you will be out of the road,” said Wallingford. “I don’t mind confessing that it’s nearer an infraction of the law than I like, though, and hereafter I don’t intend to come so close. It isn’t necessary. But in this case there’s nothing to fear. These lead-pipe artists are scared so stiff by their fall-down on the building-loan game that they’ll take their medicine right here and now. They’ll come to me before to-morrow night, now that I’ve got them, to collect their money in a wad in the new company. They might even start work to-night.”
He rose from the table in his private office and went to the door.
“Oh, Billy!” he called.
A sharp-looking young fellow with a pen behind his ear came from the other room.
“Billy, here’s a hundred dollars for you,” said Wallingford.
“Thank you,” said Billy. “Who’s to be thugged?”
“Nobody,” replied Wallingford, laughing. “It’s just a good-will gift. By the way, if Doc Turner or any of that crowd back there makes any advances to you to buy your share of stock, sell it to them, and you’re a rank sucker if you take less than two hundred for it. Also tell them that you can get three other shares from the office force at the same price.”
Billy, with great deliberation, took a pin from the lapel of his coat and pinned his hundred-dollar bill inside his inside vest pocket, then he winked prodigiously, and without another word withdrew.
“He’s a smart kid,” said Blackie.
In the old game of “pick or poe” one boy held out a pin, concealed between his fingers, and the other boy guessed whether the head or point was toward him. It was a great study in psychology. The boy who held the pin had to do as much guessing as the other one. Having held forward heads the first time, should he reverse the pin the second time, or repeat heads? In so far as one of the two boys correctly gaged the elaborateness of the other’s mental process he was winner. At the age when he played this game Wallingford usually had all the pins in school. Now he was out-guessing the Doc Turner crowd. He had foreseen every step in their mental process; he had foreseen that they would start an opposition company; he had foreseen their extravagant belief in his “pull,” knowing what he did of their previous experience, and hehad foreseen that now they would offer to buy up the stock held by his office force, so as to secure control, before opening fresh negotiations for the stock he had offered them.
That very night Doc Turner called at the house of Billy Whipple to ask where he could get a good bird-dog, young Whipple being known as a gifted amateur in dogs. Billy, nothing loath, took Doc out to the kennel, where, by a fortunate coincidence, of which Mr. Turner had known nothing, of course, he happened to have a fine set of puppies. These Mr. Turner admired in a more or less perfunctory fashion.
“By the way, Billy,” he by and by inquired, “how do you like your position?”
“Oh, so-so,” replied Billy. “The job looks good to me. Wallingford has started a very successful business.”
“How much does he pay you?”
Billy reflected. It was easy enough to let a lie slip off his tongue, but Turner had access to the books.
“Twenty-five dollars a week,” he said.
“You owe a lot to Wallingford,” observed Mr. Turner. “It’s the best pay you ever drew.”
“Yes, it is pretty good,” admitted Billy; “but I don’t owe Wallingford any more than I owe myself.”
In the dark Mr. Turner slowly placed his palms together.
“You’re a bright boy,” said Mr. Turner. “Billy, I don’t like to see a stranger come in here and gobble up the community’s money. It ought to stay in the hands of home folks. I’d like to get control of that business. If you’ll sell me your share of stock I might be able to handle it, and if I can I’ll advance your wages to thirty-five dollars a week.”
“You’re a far pleasanter man than Wallingford,” said Billy amiably. “You’re a smarter man, a better man, a handsomer man! When do we start on that thirty-five?”
“Very quickly, Billy, if you feel that way about it.” And the friction of Mr. Turner’s palms was perfectly audible. “Then I can have your share of stock?”
“You most certainly can, and I’ll guarantee to buy up three other shares in the office if you want them.”
“Good!” exclaimed Turner, not having expected to accomplish so much of his object so easily. “Theminute you lay me down those four shares I’ll hand you four hundred dollars.”
“Eight,” Billy calmly corrected him. “Those shares are worth a hundred dollars apiece any place now. Mine’s worth more than two hundred to me.”
“Nonsense,” protested the other. “Tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll pay you two hundred dollars for your share and a hundred dollars apiece for the others.”
“Two,” insisted Billy. “We’ve talked it all over in the office, and we’ve agreed to pool our stock and stand out for two hundred apiece, if anybody wants it. As a matter of fact, I have all four shares in my possession at this moment,” and he displayed the certificates, holding up his lantern so that Turner could see them.
The sight of the actual stock, the three other shares which the astute Billy had secured on the promise of a hundred and fifty dollars per share immediately after Wallingford’s pointer, clenched the business.
It was scarcely as much a shock to Wallingford as the Turner crowd had expected it to be when those gentlemen, having purchased four hundred and ninety-nine shares of Wallingford’s stock at hisown price, sat in the new stock-holders’ meeting, at the reorganization upon which they had insisted, with five hundred and three shares, and J. Rufus made but feeble protest when the five of them, voting themselves into the directorate, decided to put the founder of the company on an extremely meager salary as assistant manager, and Mr. Turner on a slightly larger salary as chief manager.
“There’s no use of saying anything,” he concluded philosophically. “You gentlemen have played a very clever game and I lose; that’s all there is to it.”
He thereupon took up the burden of the work and pushed through the matter of new memberships and of collections with a vigor and ability that could not but commend itself to his employers. The second week’s collections were now coming in, and it was during the following week that a large hollow wheel with a handle and crank, mounted on an axle like a patent churn, was brought into the now vacated room of the defunct People’s Coöperative Bond and Loan Company.
“What’s this thing for?” asked Wallingford, inspecting it curiously.
“The drawing,” whispered Doc Turner.
“What drawing?”
“The loans.”
“You don’t mean to say that you’re going to conduct this as a lottery?” protested Wallingford, shocked and even distressed.
“Sh! Don’t use that word,” cautioned Turner. “Not even among ourselves. You might use it in the wrong place some time.”
“Why not use the word?” Wallingford indignantly wanted to know. “That’s what you’re preparing to do! I told you in the first place that this was not by any means to be considered as a lottery; that it was not to have any of the features of a lottery. Moreover, I shall not permit it to be conducted as a lottery!”
Doc Turner leaned against the side of the big wooden wheel and stared at Wallingford in consternation.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “Have you gone crazy, or what?”
“Sane enough that I don’t intend to be connected with a lottery! I have conscientious scruples about it.”
“May I ask, then, how you propose to decide these so-called loans?” inquired Turner, with palm-rubbing agitation.
“Examine the records of the men who have made application,” explained Wallingford; “find out their respective reputations for honesty, reliability and prompt payment, and place the different loans, according to that information, in as many different towns as possible.”
Doc Turner gazed at him in scorn for a full minute.
“You’re a damned fool!” he declared. “Why, you yourself intended to conduct this as a secret society, and I had intended to have representatives from at least three of the lodges attend each drawing.”
To this Wallingford made no reply, and Turner, to ease his mind, locked the door on the lottery-wheel and went in to open the mail. It always soothed him to take money from envelopes. A great many of the letters pertaining to the business of the company were addressed to Wallingford in person, and Turner slit open all such letters as a matter of course. Half-way down the pile he opened one, addressed to Wallingford, which made him gasp and re-read. The letter read:
Dear Jim:They have found out your new name and where you are, and unless you get out of town on the firsttrain they’ll arrest you sure. I don’t need to remind you that they don’t hold manslaughter as a light offense in Massachusetts.Let me know your new name and address as soon as you have got safely away.Your old pal.
Dear Jim:
They have found out your new name and where you are, and unless you get out of town on the firsttrain they’ll arrest you sure. I don’t need to remind you that they don’t hold manslaughter as a light offense in Massachusetts.
Let me know your new name and address as soon as you have got safely away.
Your old pal.
Doc Turner’s own fingers were trembling as he passed this missive to Wallingford, whose expectant eyes had been furtively fixed upon the pile of letters for some time.
“Too bad, old man,” said Turner, tremulously aghast. “Couldn’t help reading it.”
“My God!” exclaimed Wallingford most dramatically. “It has come at last, just as I had settled down to lead a quiet, decent, respectable life, with every prospect in my favor!” He sprang up and looked at his watch. “I’ll have to move on again!” he dismally declared; “and I suppose they’ll chase me from one cover to another until they finally get me; but I’ll never give up! Please see what’s coming to me, Mr. Turner; you have the cash in the house to pay me, I know; and kindly get my stock certificates from the safe.”
Slowly and thoughtfully Turner took from the safe Wallingford’s four hundred and ninety-seven shares of stock, in four certificates of a hundredshares each, one of fifty and one of forty-seven. Wallingford hurried them into an envelope, sitting down to write the address upon it.
“What are you going to do with those?” asked Turner with a thoughtful frown.
“Send them to my friend in Boston and have him sell them for what he can get,” replied Wallingford with a sigh. “If the purchasers send any one here to find out about the business, you’ll, of course, give them every facility for investigation.”
“To be sure; to be sure,” returned Turner. “But, say—”
He paused a moment, and Wallingford, in the act of writing a hasty note to go with the stock certificates, hesitated, his pen poised just above the paper.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You’ll probably have to sell those shares at a sacrifice, Wallingford.”
“I have no doubt,” he admitted.
Doc Turner’s palms rubbed out a slow decision while Wallingford scratched away at his letter.
“Um-m-m-m-m-m-m—I say!” began Turner gropingly. “Rather than have those shares fall into the hands of strangers we might possibly make youan offer for them ourselves. Wait till I see Squinch.”
He saw Squinch, he saw Tom Fester, he telephoned to Andy Grout, and the four of them gathered in solemn conclave. The consensus of the meeting was that if they could secure Wallingford’s shares at a low enough figure it was a good thing. Not one man among them but had regretted deeply the necessity of sharing any portion of the earnings of the company with Wallingford, or with one another, for that matter. Moreover, new stock-holders might “raise a rumpus” about their methods of conducting the business, as Wallingford had started to do. Gravely they called Wallingford in.
“Wallingford,” said Mr. Squinch, showing in his very tone his disrespect for a criminal, “Mr. Turner has acquainted us with the fact that you are compelled to leave us, and though we already have about as large a burden as we can conveniently carry, we’re willing to allow you five thousand dollars for your stock.”
“For four hundred and ninety-seven shares! Nearly fifty thousand dollars’ worth!” gasped Wallingford, “and worth par!”
“It is a debatable point,” said Mr. Squinch, placinghis finger-tips together, and speaking with cold severity, “as to whether that stock is worth par or not at the present moment. I should say that it is not, particularly the stock thatyouhold.”
“Even at a sacrifice,” insisted Wallingford, “my friend ought to be able to get fifty dollars a share for me.”
“You must remember, Mr. Wallingford,” returned the severe voice, “that you are not so free to negotiate as you seemed to be an hour or so ago. In a word, you are a fugitive from justice, and I don’t know, myself, but what our duty, anyhow, would be to give you up.”
Not one man there but would have done it if it had been to his advantage.
“You wouldn’t do that!” pleaded Wallingford, most piteously indeed. “Why, gentlemen, the mere fact that I am in life-and-death need of every cent I can get ought to make you more liberal with me; particularly in view of the fact that I made this business, that I built it up, and that all its profits that you are to reap are due to me. Why, at twenty thousand the stock would be a fine bargain.”
This they thoroughly believed—but business is business!
“Utterly impossible,” said Mr. Squinch.
The slyly rubbing palms of Mr. Turner, the down-shot lines of Andy Grout’s face, the compressed lips of Tom Fester, all affirmed Mr. Squinch’s decided negative.
“Give me fifteen,” pleaded Wallingford. “Twelve—ten.”
They would not. To each of these proposals they shook emphatic heads.
“Very well,” said Wallingford, and quietly wrote an address on the envelope containing his certificates. He tossed the envelope on the postal scales, sealed it, took stamps from his drawer and pasted them on. “Then, gentlemen, good day.”
“Wait a minute,” hastily protested Mr. Squinch. “Gentlemen, suppose we confer a minute.”
Heads bent together, they conferred.
“We’ll give you eight thousand dollars,” said Squinch as a result of the conference. “We’ll go right down and draw it out of the bank in cash and give it to you.”
There was not a trace of hesitation in Wallingford.
“I’ve made my lowest offer,” he said. “Ten thousand or I’ll drop these in the mail box.”
They were quite certain that Wallingford meant business, as indeed he did. He had addressed the envelope to Blackie Daw and he was quite sure that he could make the shares worth at least ten thousand.
Once more they conferred.
“All right,” agreed Mr. Squinch reluctantly. “We’ll do it—out of charity.”
“I don’t care what it’s out of, so long as I get the money,” said Wallingford.
In New York, where Wallingford met Blackie Daw by appointment, the latter was eager to know the details.
“The letter did the business, I suppose, eh, Wallingford?”
“Fine and dandy,” assented Wallingford. “A great piece of work, and timed to the hour. I saw the envelope in that batch of mail before I made my play.”
“Manslaughter!” shrieked Blackie by and by. “On the level, J. Rufus, did you ever kill anything bigger than a mosquito?”
“I don’t know. I think I made quite a sizable killing down in Doc Turner’s little old town,” he said complacently.
“I don’t think so,” disputed Blackie thoughtfully. “I may be a cheese-head, but I don’t see why you sold your stock, anyhow. Seems to me you had a good graft there. Why didn’t you hold on to it? It was a money-maker.”
“No,” denied Wallingford with decision. “It’s an illegal business, Blackie, and I won’t have anything to do with an illegal business. The first thing you know that lottery will be in trouble with the federal government, and I’m on record as never having conducted any part of it after it became a lottery. Another thing, in less than a year that bunch of crooks will be figuring on how to land the capital prize for themselves under cover. No, Blackie, a quick turn and legal safety for mine, every time. It pays better. Why, I cleaned up thirty thousand dollars net profit on this in three months! Isn’t that good pay?”
“It makes a crook look like a fool,” admitted Blackie Daw.
Of course Blackie got his “bit” out of the spoils and hurried away to pursue certain fortune-making plans of his own, while young Wallingford, stopping in New York, prepared as elaborately to spend one. It was some trouble at first to find the most expensive things in New York, but at last he located them in the race-track and in Beauty Phillips, the latter being the moderately talented but gorgeous “hit” ofThe Pink Canary; and the thoroughbreds and Beauty made a splendid combination, so perfect in their operations that one beautiful day Wallingford awoke to the fact that the time had almost arrived to go to work. At the moment he made this decision, the Beauty, as richly colored and as expressionless as a wax model, was sitting at his side in the grand-stand, with her eyes closed, jabbing a hole at random in the card of the fifth race.
“Bologna!” exclaimed Wallingford, noting where the fateful pin-hole had appeared. “It’s a nice comic-supplement name; but I’ll go down to the ring and burn another hundred or so on him.”
The band broke into a lively air, and the newest sensation of Broadway, all in exquisite violet from nodding plume to silken hose, looked out over the sunlit course in calm rumination. Her companion, older but not too old, less handsome but not too ill-favored, less richly dressed but not too plainly, nudged her.
“There goes your Money and Moonshine song again, dearie,” she observed.
Still calmly, as calmly as a digestive cow in pleasant shade, the star ofThe Pink Canaryreplied:
“Don’t you see I’m trying not to hear it, mother?”
The eyes of “Mrs. Phillips” narrowed a trifle, and sundry tiny but sharp lines, revealing much but concealing more, flashed upon her brow and were gone. J. Rufus glanced in perplexity at her as he had done a score of times, wondering at her self-repression, at her unrevealed depths of wisdom, at her clever acting of a most difficult rôle; for Beauty Phillips, being a wise young lady and having no convenient mother of her own, had hired one, andby this device was enabled to remain as placidly Platonic as a plate of ice-cream. Well, it was worth rich gifts merely to be seen in proprietorship of her at the supper places.
Wallingford rose without enthusiasm.
“Bologna won’t win!” he announced with resigned conviction.
“Sure not!” agreed Beauty Phillips. “Bologna will stop to think at the Barrier, and finish in the road of the next race.”
“Bologna has to win,” Wallingford rejoined, disputing both her and himself. “There’s only a little over a thousand left in your Uncle Jimmy’s bank-roll.”
“And you had over forty thousand when Sammy Harrison introduced us,” said the Beauty with a sigh. “Honest, Pinky, somebody has sure put a poison curse on you. You’re a grand little sport, but on the level, I’m afraid to trail around with you much longer. I’m afraid I’ll lose my voice or break a leg.”
“Old pal,” agreed J. Rufus, “the hex is sure on me, and if I don’t walk around my chair real quick, the only way I’ll get to see you will be to buy a gallery seat.”
“I was just going to talk with you about that, Jimmy,” stated the Beauty seriously. “You’ve been a perfect gentleman in every respect, and I will say I never met a party that was freer with his coin; but I’ve got to look out for my future. I won’t always be a hit, and I’ve got to pick out a good marrying proposition while the big bouquets grow with my name already on ’em. Of course, you know, I couldn’t marry you, because nothing less than a million goes. If you only had the money now—”
She looked up at him with a certain lazy admiration. He was tremendously big; and rather good-looking, too, she gaged, although the blue eyes that were set in his jovial big countenance were entirely too small.
In reply to her unfinished sentence J. Rufus chuckled.
“Don’t you worry about that, little one,” said he. “I only wear you on my arm for the same reason that I wear this Tungsten-light boulder in my necktie: just to show ’em I’m the little boy that can grab off the best there is in the market. Of course it’d be fine and dandy to win you for keeps, but I know where you bought your ticket for, long ago. You’ll end by getting your millionaire. In six months he’llgo dippy over some other woman, and then you’ll get your alimony, which is not only a handy thing to have around the house, but proves that you’re perfectly respectable.”
“You’ve got some good ideas, anyhow,” she complimented him, and then she sighed. “The only trouble is, every time one lines up that I think’ll do, I find he’s got a wife hid away some place.”
“And it isn’t set down in her lines to fix up alimony for some other woman,” commented the pseudo Mrs. Phillips.
A couple of men, one nattily dressed and with curly hair, and the other short and fat and wearing a flaming waistcoat, passed on their way down to the betting-shed and carelessly tipped their hats.
“Do you know those two cheaps?” she inquired, eying their retreating backs with disfavor.
Again Wallingford chuckled.
“Know them!” he replied. “I should say I do! Green-Goods Harry Phelps and Badger Billy Banting? Why, they and their friends, Short-Card Larry Teller and Yap Pickins, framed up a stud poker game on me the first week I hit town, with the lovely idea of working a phoney pinch on me; but I got a real cop to hand them the triple cross, andtook five thousand away from them so easy it was like taking four-o’clock milk from a doorstep.”
“I’m glad of it,” she said, with as much trace of vindictiveness as her beauty specialist would have permitted. “They’re an awful low-class crowd. They came over to my table one night in Shirley’s, after I’d met them only once, and butted in on a rich gentleman friend of mine from Washington. They run up an awful bill on him and never offered even to buy cigars, and then when he was gone for a minute to pick out our wagon, they tried to get fresh with me right in front of mother. I’m glad somebody stung ’em.”
A very thick-set man, with an inordinately broad jaw and an indefinable air of blunt aggressiveness, came past them and nodded to J. Rufus with a grudging motion toward his shapeless slouch hat.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Jake Block,” he replied. “A big owner with so much money he could bed his horses in it, and an ingrowing grouch that has put a crimp in his information works. He’s never been known to give out a tip since he was able to lisp ‘mamma.’ He eats nothing buttable d’hôtedinners so he won’t have to tell the waiters what he likes.”
Jake Block, on some brief errand to the press box, returned just as J. Rufus was starting down to the betting-shed, and he stopped a moment.
“How are you picking them to-day, Wallingford?” he asked perfunctorily, with his eye on Beauty Phillips.
“Same way,” confessed Wallingford. “I haven’t cashed a ticket in the meeting. I have the kind of luck that would scale John D. Rockefeller’s bank-roll down to the size of a dance-program lead pencil.”
“Well,” said Jake philosophically, his eyes still on the Beauty, “sometimes they come bad for a long time, and then they come worse.”
At this bit of wisdom J. Rufus politely laughed, and the silvery voice of Beauty Phillips suddenly joined his own; whereupon J. Rufus, taking the hint, introduced Mr. Block to Miss Phillips and her mother. Mr. Block promptly sat down by them.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he began, “but I’ve not been around to seeThe Pink Canaryyet. I don’t go to the theater much.”
“You must certainly see my second-act turn. I sure have got them going,” the Beauty asserted modestly. “What do you like in this race, Mr. Block?”
“I don’t like anything,” he replied almost gruffly. “I never bet outside of my own stable.”
“We’re taking a small slice of Bologna,” she informed him. “I suppose he’s about the—the wurst of the race. Guess that’s bad, eh? I made that one up all by myself, at that. I think I’ll write a musical comedy next. But how do you like Bologna?” she hastily added, her own laugh freezing as she saw her feeble little joke passed by in perplexity.
“You never can tell,” he replied evasively. “You see, Miss Phillips, I never give out a tip. If you bet on it and it don’t win you get sore against me. If I hand you a winner you’ll tell two or three people that are likely to beat me to it and break the price before I can get my own money down.”
Beauty Phillips’ wide eyes narrowed just a trifle.
“I guess it’s all the same,” remarked J. Rufus resignedly. “If you have a hoodoo over you you’ll lose anyhow. I’ve tried to pick ’em forty ways from the ace. I’ve played with the dope and against it and lost both ways. I’ve played hunches and coppered hunches, and lost both ways. I’ve played hot information straight and reverse, and lost both ways. I’ve nosed into the paddock and made a lifetime hit with stable boys, jockeys, trainers, clockers andeven owners, but every time they handed me a sure one I got burned. Any horse I bet on turns into a crawfish.”
The saddling bell rang.
“You’d better hurry if you want to get a bet on Sausage,” admonished the beautiful one, and J. Rufus, excusing himself, made his way down to the betting-shed, where he was affectionately known as The Big Pink, not only on account of his complexion but on account of the huge carnation Beauty Phillips pinned on him each day.
At the first book he handed up three one-hundred-dollar bills.
“A century each way on Bologna,” he directed.
“Welcome to our city!” greeted the red-haired man on the stool, and then to the ticket writer: “Twelve hundred to a hundred, five hundred to a hundred, and two hundred to a hundred on Bologna for The Big Pink. Johnnie, you will now rub prices on Bologna and make him fifteen, eight and three; then run around and tell the other boys that The Big Pink’s on Bologna, and it’s a pipe for the books at any odds.”
Wallingford chuckled good-naturedly. In other days he would have called that bit of pleasantry bytaking another hundred each way across, at the new odds, but now his funds were too low.
“Some of these days, Sunset,” he threatened the man on the stool, “I’ll win a bet on you and you’ll drop dead.”
“I’ll die rich if your wad only holds out till then,” returned Sunset, laughing.
With but very little hope J. Rufus returned to the grand-stand, where royalty sat like a warm and drowsy garment upon Beauty Phillips; for Beauty was on the stage a queen, and outside of working-hours a princess. Jake Block was still there, and making himself agreeable to a degree that surprised even himself, and he was there yet when Bologna, true to form, came home contentedly following the field. He joined them again at the close of the sixth race, when Carnation, a horse which the Beauty had picked because of his name, was just nosed out of the money, and he walked with them down to the carriage gate. As Block seemed reluctant to leave, he was invited to ride into the city in the automobile J. Rufus had hired by the month, and accepted that invitation with alacrity. He also accepted their invitation to dinner, and during that meal he observed:
“I think, Miss Phillips, I’ll go around and seeThe Pink Canaryto-night, and after the show I’d like to have you and your mother and Wallingford take supper with me, if you have no other engagement.”
“Sure,” said Beauty Phillips, too eagerly for Wallingford’s entire comfort; and so it was settled.
Wallingford, although he had seen the show until it made him deathly weary, went along and sat with Block in a stage box. During one of the dull spots the horseman turned to his companion very suddenly.
“This Beauty Phillips could carry an awful handicap and still take the Derby purse,” he announced. “She beats any filly of her hands and age I ever saw on a card.”
“She certainly does,” assented J. Rufus, suave without, but irritated within.
“I see you training around with her all through the meet. Steady company, I guess.”
“Oh, we’re very good friends; that’s all,” replied Wallingford with such nonchalance as he could muster.
“Nothing in earnest, then?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then I believe I will enter the handicap myself, that is if you don’t think you can haul down the purse.”
“Go in and win,” laughed J. Rufus, concealing his trace of self-humiliation. He had no especial interest in Beauty Phillips, but he did not exactly like to have her taken away from him. It was too much in evidence that he was a loser. However, he was distinctly “down and out” just now, for Beauty Phillips quite palpably exerted her fascinations in the direction of that box, and Jake Block was most obviously “hooked;” so much so that at supper he revealed his interest most unmistakably, and parted from them reluctantly at the curb, feeling silly but quite determined.
Wallingford made no allusion to Miss Phillips’ capture of the horseman, even after they had reached the flat, where he had gained the rare privilege of calling, and where the Beauty’s “mother” always remained in the parlor with them, awake or asleep.
Rather sheepishly, J. Rufus produced from his pocket a newspaper clipping of the following seductive advertisement, which he passed over to the Beauty:
Yesterday we slipped across, for the benefit of our happy New York and Brooklyn subscribers, that juicy watermelon,Breezy, a ten to one shot and the play on this section of hot dog was so strong it put a crimp in the bookies as deep as the water jump. To-morrow we have another lallapalooza at long odds that will waft under the wire and have the blanket on about the time the field is kicking dust at the barrier. This peacherino has been under cover throughout the meeting, but to-morrow it will be ripe and you want to get in on the killing.Will wire you the name of this pippin for five dollars; full service twenty dollars a week.National Clockers’ Association.
Yesterday we slipped across, for the benefit of our happy New York and Brooklyn subscribers, that juicy watermelon,Breezy, a ten to one shot and the play on this section of hot dog was so strong it put a crimp in the bookies as deep as the water jump. To-morrow we have another lallapalooza at long odds that will waft under the wire and have the blanket on about the time the field is kicking dust at the barrier. This peacherino has been under cover throughout the meeting, but to-morrow it will be ripe and you want to get in on the killing.
Will wire you the name of this pippin for five dollars; full service twenty dollars a week.
National Clockers’ Association.
“I fell for this,” he explained, after she had read it with a sarcastic smile; “poked a fI’muth in a letter cold, and let ’em have it.”
The Beautiful One regarded him with pity.
“Honest, Pinky,” she commented, “your soft spot’s growing. If you don’t watch out the specialists’ll get you. Do you suppose that if these cheap touts had such hot info. as that, they’d peddle it out, in place of going down to the track and coming back with all the money in the world in their jeans?”
“Sure not,” said he patiently. “They don’t know any more about it than the men who write the form sheets; but we’ve tried everything from stable-dopeto dreaming numbers and can’t get one of them to run for us. So I’m taking a chance that the National Strong Arm Association might shut their eyes in the dark and happen to pass me the right name without meaning it.”
“There’s some sense to that,” admitted the Beauty reflectively. “You’ll get the first wire to-morrow morning, won’t you? Just my luck. It’s matinée day and I’d like to see you try it.”
“That’s all right,” said J. Rufus. “I’ll have the money to show you as a surprise at dinner.”
The Beauty hesitated.
“I—I’m engaged for dinner to-morrow,” she stated, half reluctantly.
He was silent a moment.
“Block? That means supper, too.”
“Yes. You see, Jimmy, I’ve just got to give ’em all a try-out.”
“Of course,” he admitted. “But he won’t do. I’ll bet you a box of gloves against a box of cigars.”
“I won’t bet you,” she replied, laughing. “I’ve got a hunch that I’d lose.”
At his hotel the next day, about noon, J. Rufus got the promised wire. It consisted of only one word: “Razzoo.”
Alone, J. Rufus went out to the track, and on the race in which Razzoo was entered at average odds of ten to one, he got down six hundred dollars, reluctantly holding back, for his hotel bill, three hundred dollars—all he had in the world. Then he shut his eyes, and with large self-contempt waited for Razzoo to finish by lamplight. To his immense surprise Razzoo won by two lengths, and with a contented chuckle he went around to the various books and collected his winnings, handing to each bookmaker derogatory remarks calculated to destroy the previousentente cordiale.
On his way out, puffed with huge joy and sitting alone in the big automobile, he was hailed by a familiar voice.
“Well, well, well! Our old friend, J. Rufus!” exclaimed Harry Phelps, he of the natty clothes and the curly hair.
With Mr. Phelps were Larry Teller and Billy Banting and Yap Pickins.
“Jump in,” invited J. Rufus with a commendable spirit, forgiving them cheerfully for having lost money to him, and, despite the growl of protest from lean Short-Card Larry, they invaded the tonneau.
“You must be hitting them up some, Wallingford,” observed Mr. Phelps with a trace of envy. “I know they’re not furnishing automobiles to losers these days.”
“Oh, I’m doing fairly well,” replied Wallingford loftily. “I cleaned ’em up for six thousand to-day.”
The envy on the part of the four was almost audible.
“What did you play?” asked Badger Billy, with the eager post-mortem interest of a loser.
“Only one horse in just one race,” explained Wallingford. “Razzoo.”
“Razzoo!” snorted Short-Card Larry. “Was you in on that assassination? Why, that goat hasn’t won a race since the day before Adam ate the apple,and the jockey he had on to-day couldn’t put up a good ride on a street car. How did you happen to land on it?”
Blandly Wallingford produced the telegram he had received that morning.
“This wire,” he condescendingly explained, “is from the National Clockers’ Association of Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, who are charitable enough to pass out long-shot winners, at the mere bag-o’-shells service-price of five dollars per day or twenty per week.”
They looked from the magic word “Razzoo” to the smiling face of J. Rufus more in sorrow than in anger.
“And they happened to hand you a winner!” said the cadaverous Mr. Teller, folding the telegram dexterously with the long, lean fingers of one hand, and passing it back as if he hated to see it.
“Winner is right,” agreed J. Rufus. “I couldn’t pick ’em any other way, and I took a chance on this game because it’s just as good a system as going to a clairvoyant or running the cards.”
There was a short laugh from the raw-boned Mr. Pickins.
“I don’t suppose they’ll ever do it again,” he observed,“but I feel almost like taking a chance on it myself.”
“Go to it,” advised J. Rufus heartily. “Go to it, and come home with something substantial in your pocket, like this,” and most brazenly, even in the face of what he knew of them, young Wallingford flaunted before their very eyes an assorted package of orange-colored bank-bills, well calculated to excite discord in this company. “Lovely little package of documents,” he said banteringly; “and I suppose you burglars are already figuring how you can chisel it away from me.”
They smiled wanly, and the smile of Larry Teller showed his teeth.
“No man ever pets a hornet but once,” said Billy, the only one sturdy enough to voice his discomfiture.
Wallingford beamed over this tribute to his prowess.
“Well, you get a split of it, anyhow,” he offered. “I’ll take you all to dinner, then afterward we’ll have a little game of stud poker if you like—with police interference barred.”
They were about to decline this kind invitation when Short-Card Larry turned suddenly to him, with a gleam of the teeth which was almost a snarl.
“We’ll take you,” he said. “Just a little friendly game for small stakes.”
J. Rufus elevated his eyebrows a trifle, but smiled. Inwardly he felt perfectly competent to protect himself.
“Fine business,” he assented. “Suppose we have dinner in my rooms. I’m beginning to get them educated at my hotel.”
At the hotel he stopped for a moment at the curb to give his chauffeur some instructions, while the other four awaited him on the steps.
“How’d you come to fall for this stud game, Larry?” inquired Phelps. “I can’t see poker merely for health, and this Willy Wisdom won’t call any raise of over two dollars when he’s playing with us.”
“I know he won’t,” snapped Larry, setting his jaws savagely, “but we’re going to get his money just the same. Billy, you break away and run down to Joe’s drug-store for the K.O.”
They all grinned, with the light of admiration dawning in their eyes for Larry Teller. “K.O.” was cipher for “knock-out drops,” a pleasant little decoction guaranteed to put a victim into fathomless slumber, but not to kill him if his heart was right.
“How long will it be until dinner’s ready, Wallingford?” asked Billy, looking at his watch as J. Rufus came up.
“Oh, about an hour, I suppose.”
“Good,” said Billy. “I’ll just have time. I have to go get some money that a fellow promised me, and if I don’t see him to-night I may not see him at all. Besides, I’ll probably need it if you play your usual game.”
“Nothing doing,” replied Wallingford. “I only want to yammer you fellows out of a hundred apiece, and the game will be as quiet as a peddler’s pup.”
J. Rufus conducted the others into the sitting-room of his suite and sent for a waiter. There was never any point lacking in Wallingford’s hospitality, and by the time Billy came back he was ready to serve them a dinner that was worth discussing. The dinner despatched, he had the table cleared and brought out cards and chips. It was a quiet, comfortable game for nearly an hour, with very mild betting and plenty to drink. It was during the fifth bottle of wine, dating from the beginning of the dinner, that Short-Card Larry, by a dexterous accident, pitched Wallingford’s stack of chips on thefloor with a toss of the deck. Amid the profuse apologies of Larry, Mr. Phelps, who was at Wallingford’s left, stooped down to help that gentleman pick up his chips, and in that moment Badger Billy quietly emptied the colorless contents of a tiny vial in Wallingford’s glass. J. Rufus never was able to remember what happened after that.
Silk pajama clad, but still wearing portions of his day attire, he awoke next day with a headache, and a tongue that felt like a shredded-wheat biscuit. He held his head very level to keep the leaden weight in the top of it from sliding around and bumping his skull, and opened the swollen slits that did him painful duty for eyelids wide enough to let him find the telephone, through which instrument he ordered a silver-fizz. Of the butler who brought it he asked what time it was.
“One o’clock, sir,” replied the butler with the utmost gravity.
One o’clock! J. Rufus pondered the matter slowly.
“Morning or afternoon,” he huskily asked.
“Afternoon, sir,” and this time the butler permitted himself the slightest trace of a smile as henoted the electric lights, still blazing in sickly defiance of the bright sunshine which crept in around the edges of the double blinds.
“Huh!” grunted J. Rufus, and pondered more.
Half dozing, he stood, glass in hand, for full five minutes, while the butler, with a lively appreciation of tips past and to come, stood patiently holding his little silver tray, with check and pencil waiting for the signature. At the expiration of that time, however, the butler coughed once, gently; once, normally; the third time very loudly. These means failing, he dropped the tray clattering to the floor, and with a cheerful “Beg your pardon, sir,” picked it up. Not knowing that he had been asleep again, Wallingford took a sip of the refreshing drink and walked across to a garment which lay upon the chair, feeling through the pockets one after the other. In one pocket there was a little silver, but in the others nothing. He gave a coin to the butler and signed the check in deep thoughtfulness, then sat down heavily and dozed another fifteen minutes. Awakening, he found the glass at his hand on the serving-bench, and drank about a fourth of the contents very slowly.
“Spiked!” he groaned aloud.
He had good reason to believe that his wine had been “doctored,” for never before had anything he drank affected him like this. Another glance at the garment of barren pockets reminded him to look about for the coat and vest he had worn the night before. They were not visible in his bedroom, and, still carrying the glass of life-saving mixture with him, he made his way into his sitting-room and surveyed the wreck. On the table was a confusion of cards and chips, and around its edge stood five champagne glasses, two of them empty, two half full, one full. Against the wall stood a row of four empty quart bottles. In an ice pail, filled now with but tepid water, there reposed a fifth bottle, neck downward. Five chairs were grouped unevenly about the table, one of them overturned and the others left at random where they had been pushed back. The lights here, also, were still burning. Heaped on a chair in the corner were the coat and vest he sought, and he went through their pockets methodically, reaching first for his wallet. It was perfectly clean inside. In one of the vest-pockets he found a soiled, very much crumpled two-dollar bill, and the first stiff smile of his waking stretched his lips.
“I wonder how they overlooked this?” he questioned.
Again his eyes turned musingly to those five empty bottles, and again the conviction was borne in upon him that the wine had been drugged. Under no circumstances could his share, even an unequal share, of five bottles of champagne among five persons have worked this havoc in him.
“Spiked,” he concluded again in a tone of resignation. “At last they got to me.”
The silver-fizz was flat now, but every sip of it was nevertheless full of reviving grace, and he sat in the big leather rocker to think things over. As he did so his eye caught something that made him start from his chair so suddenly that he had to put both hands to his head. Under the table was a bit of light orange paper. A fifty-dollar bill! In that moment—that is, after he had painfully stooped down to get it and had smoothed it out to assure himself that it was real—this beautifully printed government certificate looked to him about the size of a piano cover. An instant before, disaster had stared him in the face. This was but Thursday morning, and, having paid his hotel bill on Monday, he had the balance of the week to go on; but forthat week he would have been chained to this hotel. Now he was foot-loose, now he was free, and his first thought was of his only possible resource, Blackie Daw, in Boston!
It took two hours of severe labor on the part of a valet, two bell-boys and a barber to turn the Wallingford wreck into his usual well-groomed self, but the hour of sailing saw him somnolently, but safely ensconced on a Boston packet.
Blackie Daw’s most recent Boston address had been: “Yellow Streak Mining Company, Seven Hundred and Ten Marabon Building,” and yet when J. Rufus paused before number seven hundred and ten of that building he found its glass door painted with the sign of the National Clockers’ Association. Worried by the fact that Blackie had moved, yet struck by the peculiar coincidence of his place being occupied by the concern that had given him the tip on Razzoo, he walked into the office to inquire the whereabouts of his friend. He found three girls at a long table, slitting open huge piles of envelopes and removing from them money, postal orders and checks—mostly money, for the sort of people who patronized the National Clockers’ Association were quite willing to “take a chance” on a five- or a twenty-dollar bill in the mails. Behinda newspaper, in a big leather chair near a flat-top mahogany desk, with his feet conveniently elevated on the waste-basket, sat a gentleman who, when he moved the paper aside to see whom his visitor might be, proved to be Blackie Daw himself.
“Hello, none other than the friend of me childhood!” exclaimed Blackie, springing to his feet and extending his hand. “What brings you here?”
“Broke,” replied Wallingford briefly. “They cleaned me. Got any money?”
Mr. Daw opened the top drawer of his desk, and it proved to be nearly full of bills, thrown loosely in, with no attempt at order or sorting. “Money’s the cheapest thing in Boston,” he announced, waving his hand carelessly over the contents of the drawer. “Help yourself, old man. The New York mail will bring in plenty more. They’ve had two winners there this week, and when it does fall for anything, N’Yawk’s the biggest yap town on earth.”
Wallingford, having drawn up a chair with alacrity, was already sorting bills, smoothing them out and counting them off in hundreds.
“And all on pure charity—picking out winning horses for your customers!” laughed Wallingford. “This is a real gold mine you’ve hit at last.”
“Pretty good,” agreed Blackie. “I’d have enough to start a mint of my own if I didn’t lose so much playing the races.”
“You don’t play your own tips, I hope,” expostulated Wallingford, pausing to inspect a tattered bill.
“I should say not,” returned Daw with emphasis. “If I did that I’d have to play every horse in every race. You see, every day I wire the name of one horse to all my subscribers in Philadelphia, another to Baltimore, another to Washington, and so on down the list. One of those horses has to win. Suppose I pick out the horse Roller Skate for Philadelphia. Well, if Roller skates home that day I advertise in the Philadelphia papers the next morning, and, besides that, every fall-easy that got the tip advertises me to some of his friends, and they all spike themselves to send in money for the dope. Oh, it’s a great game, all right.”
“It’s got yegging frazzled to a pulp,” agreed Wallingford. “But I oughtn’t to yell police. I got the lucky word my first time out. I played Razzoo and cleaned up six thousand dollars on the strength of your wire.”
“Go on!” returned Blackie delightedly. “Youdon’t mean to say you’re sorting some of your own money there?”
“I sure am,” laughed Wallingford, picking up a five-dollar bill. “I think this must be it. What’s the New York horse to-day?”
Blackie consulted a list that lay on his desk.
“Whipsaw,” he said.
“Whipsaw! By George, Blackie, if there’s any one thing I’d like to do, it’d be to whipsaw some friends of yours on Broadway.” Whereupon he told Blackie, with much picturesque embellishment, just how Messrs. Phelps, Teller, Banting and Pickins had managed to annex the Razzoo money.
Blackie enjoyed that recital very much.
“The Broadway Syndicate is still on the job,” he commented. “Well, J. Rufus, let this teach you how to take a joke next time.”
“I’m not saying a word,” replied Wallingford. “Any time I let a kindergarten crowd like that work a trick on me that was invented right after Noah discovered spoiled grape juice, I owe myself a month in jail. But watch me. I’ll make moccasins out of their hides, all right.”
“Go right ahead, old man, and see if I care,”consented Blackie. “Slam the harpoon into them and twist it.”
“I will,” asserted Wallingford confidently. “I don’t like them because they’re grouches; I don’t like them because they’re cheap; I don’t like their names, nor their faces, nor the town they live in. Making money in New York’s too much like sixteen hungry bulldogs to one bone. The best dog gets it, but he finishes too weak for an appetite. What kind of a horse is this Whipsaw you’re sending out to-day?”
“I don’t know. Where’s the dope on Whipsaw, Tillie?”
A girl with a freckled face and a keen eye and a saucy air went over to the filing-case and searched out a piece of cardboard a foot square. Blackie glanced over it with an experienced eye.
“Maiden,” said he; “been in four races, and the best he ever did was fourth in a bunch of goats that only ambled all the way around the track because that was the only way they could get back to the stable.”
The mail carrier just then came in with a huge bundle of letters.
“New York mail,” observed Blackie. “After that Razzoo thing it ought to be rich pickings.”
“Pickings!” exclaimed J. Rufus, struck by a sudden idea. “See if Pickins or Teller or any of that crowd have contributed. Pickins said they were going to try it out, just to see if lightning could really strike twice in the same place.”
Blackie wrote a number of names on a slip of paper and handed it to Tillie.
“Look for these names in the mail,” he directed, “and if a subscription comes in from any one of them let me know it.”
Wallingford had idly picked up the card containing Whipsaw’s record.
It was a most accurate typewritten sheet, giving age, pedigree, description and detailed action in every race; but the point that caught Wallingford’s eye was the name of the owner.
“One of Jake Block’s horses, by George!” he said, and fell into silent musing from which he was interrupted by the girl, who was laughing.
“Here’s your party,” she said to Blackie, handing him an envelope. “This twenty’s in it, and I think it’s bad money.”
Blackie passed the bill to Wallingford, who slipped it through experienced fingers.
“You couldn’t pass this one on an organ-grinder’s monkey,” he said, chuckling. “But that’s all right; just put ’em on the wiring-list, anyhow. Make ’em lose their money. It’s the only way you can get even.”
The girl looked to Blackie for instructions, and he nodded his head.
“Who sent it?” asked Wallingford idly.
“Peters is the name signed here,” replied Blackie. “That means Harry Phelps. I gave Tillie all the aliases this bunch of crimples carry around with them, knowing they’d probably send it in that way.”
Wallingford nodded comprehendingly.
“They’d rather do even the square thing crooked. Well, you know what to do.”
“I’ll send them special picks,” declared Blackie with a grin. “Nothing but a list of crabs that would come in third in a two-horse race. But come on outside; we’re too far from cracked ice,” and grabbing an uncounted handful of bills from the drawer of his desk, Blackie stuffed them in his pocket and led the way out.
It was at luncheon that Blackie made his first protest.
“What’s the matter with you, J. Rufus?” he demanded. “I never saw you insult food and drink before.”
“I’m thinking,” returned Wallingford solemnly. “I hate to do it, for it interferes with my appetite; but here’s a case where I must. I have got to put one over on that Broadway bunch or lose my self-respect.”
That evening, on the way down to the boat, their feet cocked comfortably on the opposite seat of a cab, Wallingford formulated a more or less vague plan.
“Tell you what you do, Blackie,” he directed; “you send to Phelps and to me, until I give you the word, a daily tip on sure losers. In the meantime, bank all your money, and don’t make a bet on any race.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Blackie curiously.
“Land a sure winner for us and a loser for the Broadway Syndicate. Hold yourself ready when I wire you to take a quick train for my hotel, loaded down with all the money you can grab together.”
“Fine!” returned Blackie. “You wire me that it’s all fixed, and when I start for New York there’ll be a financial stringency in Boston.”
Returning to New York, Wallingford caught Beauty Phillips at breakfast about noon, and in a most charming morning gown, for the Beauty was consistent enough to be neat even when there was none but “mother” to see.
“Hello, Mr. Mark, from Easyville,” she hailed him. “I heard all about you.”
“You did!” he demanded, surprised. “Who told you?”
“Phelps and Banting,” she said. “They had the nerve to come up in the grand-stand yesterday and tell Mr. Block and me all about it; told me how much you won and how they got it away from you at poker.”
“Did they tell you they put knock-out drops in my wine?” demanded Wallingford.
“They didn’t do that!” she protested.
“Exactly what they did. Whether we played poker afterward, I don’t know. I’d just as soon as not believe they went through my pockets.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them a bit,” she agreed, and then her indignation began to grow. “Say, ain’tit a shame! Now, if I hadn’t gone out to dinner with Mr. Block, you’d have been with me. I’d have had that lovely diamond brooch you promised me out of your first winnings, and we’d have had all the rest of it to bet with for a few days. Honest, Pinky, I feel as if it were my fault!”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Wallingford cordially reassured her. “It was my own fault; but I wasn’t looking for anything worse than a knife in my back or a piece of lead pipe behind the ear. There’s no use in crying over spilled milk. The thing to do now is to get even, and I want you to help me.”
“Don’t you mix in, Beauty,” admonished the hired mother, but the Beauty was thoughtful for a while. “Mother” was there to give good advice, but the Beauty only took it if she liked it.
“I really can’t afford it,” she said, by and by; “but I’ve got some principles about me, and I don’t like to see a good sport like you take a rough dose from a lot of cheaps like them; so you show me how and I’ll mix in just this once.”
Wallingford hesitated in turn.
“How do you like Block?” he inquired.
Beauty Phillips sniffed her dainty nose in disdain.
“He won’t do,” she announced with decision. “I’ve found out all about him. He’s got enough money to star me in a show of my own for the next ten years, but he’s not furnished with the brand of manners I like. I’ll never marry a man I can’t stand. I’ve got afewprinciples about me! Why, yesterday he tried to treat me real lovely, but do you know, he wouldn’t give me the name of a horse, even when he put a hundred down for me in the third race? There I sat, with a string of ’em just prancing around the track, and not one to pull for. Then after the race is over he comes and tosses me five hundred dollars. ‘I got you four to one on the winner,’ says he. Why, it was just likegiving me money! Jimmy, I’m going out to dinner with him to-night, then I’m going to turn him back into the paddock, and you can pal around with me again until I find a man with plenty of money that I could really love.”
“Don’t spill the beans,” advised Wallingford hastily. “Block thinks you’re about the maple custard, don’t he?”
“He’s crazy about me,” confessed the Beauty complacently.
“Fine work. Well, just you string him along tillhe gives you the name of a sure winner in advance; jolly it out of him.”
“Not on your three-sheet litho!” negatived the Beauty. “I never yet worked one mash against another. I guess you’d expect to play even on that tip, eh?”
“Sure, we’ll play it,” admitted Wallingford; “but better than that, I’ll shred this Harry Phelps crowd so clean they’ll have to borrow car fare.”
She thought on this possibility with sparkling eyes. She was against the “Phelps crowd” on principle. Also—well, Wallingford had always been a perfect gentleman.
“Are you sure you can do it?” she wanted to know.
“It’s all framed up,” he asserted confidently; “all I want is the name of that winner.”
The Beauty considered the matter seriously, and in the end silently shook hands with him. Thepro tem. Mrs. Phillips sniffed.
This was on a Saturday, a matinée day, and Wallingford went out to the track alone, contenting himself with extremely small bets, merely to keep his interest alive. The day’s racing was half over before he ran across the Broadway Syndicate. Theywere heartily glad to see him. They greeted him with even effervescent joy.
“Where have you been, J. Rufus?” asked Phelps. “We were looking for you all over yesterday. We thought sure you’d be out at the track playing that Boston Gouge Company’s tips.”