Young Wallingford

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’ll go 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, and took 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 but table d’hôte dinners 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 see The Pink Canary yet. 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 and even 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 by taking 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 see The Pink Canary to-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.

“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-dope to 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.”

CHAPTER XIV

WHEREIN THE BROADWAY QUARTET EVENS UP AN OLD SCORE

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 previous entente 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 the floor 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 he noted 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 for that 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.

CHAPTER XV

THE BROADWAY QUARTET CONTINUES TO TAKE WALLINGFORD’S MONEY

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. Behind a 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?”