Chapter 2

There was a knock at the door, and Carter opened it to the elevator boy with the morning mail. The letters, save one, Carter dropped upon the table. That one, with clumsy fingers, he tore open. He exclaimed breathlessly: “It’s from PLYMPTON’S MAGAZINE! Maybe--I’ve sold a story!” He gave a cry almost of alarm. His voice was as solemn as though the letter had announced a death.

“Dolly,” he whispered, “it’s a check--a check for a HUNDRED DOLLARS!”

Guiltily, the two young people looked at each other.

“We’ve GOT to!” breathed Dolly. “GOT to! If we let TWO signs like that pass, we’d be flying in the face of Providence.”

With her hands gripping the arms of her chair, she leaned forward, her eyes staring into space, her lips moving.

“COME ON, you Dromedary!” she whispered.

They changed the check into five and ten dollar bills, and, as Carter was far too excited to work, made an absurdly early start for the race-track.

“We might as well get all the fresh air we can,” said Dolly. “That’s all we will get!”

From their reserve fund of twenty-seven dollars which each had solemnly agreed with the other would not be risked on race-horses, Dolly subtracted a two-dollar bill. This she stuck conspicuously across the face of the clock on the mantel.

“Why?” asked Carter.

“When we get back this evening,” Dolly explained, “that will be the first thing we’ll see. It’s going to look awfully good!”

This day there was no scarlet car to rush them with refreshing swiftness through Brooklyn’s parkways and along the Ocean Avenue. Instead, they hung to a strap in a cross-town car, changed to the ferry, and again to the Long Island Railroad. When Carter halted at the special car of the Turf Club, Dolly took his arm and led him forward to the day coach.

“But,” protested Carter, “when you’re spending a hundred dollars with one hand, why grudge fifty cents for a parlor-car seat? If you’re going to be a sport, be a sport.” “And if you’ve got to be a piker,” said Dolly, “don’t be ashamed to be a piker. We’re not spending a hundred dollars because we can afford it, but because you dreamt a dream. You didn’t dream you were riding in parlor-cars! If you did, it’s time I woke you.”

This day there was for them no box overlooking the finish, no club-house luncheon. With the other pikers, they sat in the free seats, with those who sat coatless and tucked their handkerchiefs inside their collars, and with those who mopped their perspiring countenances with rice-paper and marked their cards with a hat-pin. Their lunch consisted of a massive ham sandwich with a top dressing of mustard.

Dromedary did not run until the fifth race, and the long wait, before they could learn their fate, was intolerable. They knew most of the horses, and, to pass the time, on each of the first races Dolly made imaginary bets. Of these mental wagers, she lost every one.

“If you turn out to be as bad a guesser when you’re asleep as I am when I’m awake,” said Dolly, “we’re going to lose our fortune.”

“I’m weakening!” declared Carter. “A hundred dollars is beginning to look to me like an awful lot of money. Twenty-seven dollars, and there’s only twenty of that left now, is mighty small capital, but twenty dollars plus a hundred could keep us alive for a month!”

“Did you, or did you not, dream that Dromedary would win?” demanded Dolly sternly.

“I certainly did, several times,” said Carter. “But it may be I was thinking of the horse. I’ve lost such a lot on him, my mind may have----”

“Did you,” interrupted Dolly, “say if you had a hundred dollars you’d bet it, and did a hundred dollars walk in through the door instantly?”

Carter, reassured, breathed again. “It certainly did!” he repeated.

Even in his proud days, Carter had never been able to bet heavily, and instead of troubling the club-house commissioners with his small wagers, he had, in the ring, bet ready money. Moreover, he believed in the ring he obtained more favorable odds, and, when he won, it pleased him, instead of waiting until settling day for a check, to stand in a line and feel the real money thrust into his hand. So, when the fourth race started he rose and raised his hat.

“The time has come,” he said.

Without looking at him, Dolly nodded. She was far too tremulous to speak.

For several weeks Dromedary had not been placed, and Carter hoped for odds of at least ten to one. But, when he pushed his way into the arena, he found so little was thought of his choice that as high as twenty to one was being offered, and with few takers. The fact shattered his confidence. Here were two hundred book-makers, trained to their calling, anxious at absurd odds to back their opinion that the horse he liked could not win. In the face of such unanimous contempt, his dream became fantastic, fatuous. He decided he would risk only half of his fortune. Then, should the horse win, he still would be passing rich, and should he lose, he would, at least, have all of fifty dollars.

With a book-maker he wagered that sum, and then, in unhappy indecision, stood, in one hand clutching his ticket that called for a potential thousand and fifty dollars, and in the other an actual fifty. It was not a place for meditation. From every side men, more or less sane, swept upon him, jostled him, and stamped upon him, and still, struggling for a foothold, he swayed, hesitating. Then he became conscious that the ring was nearly empty, that only a few shrieking individuals still ran down the line. The horses were going to the post. He must decide quickly. In front of him the book-maker cleaned his board, and, as a final appeal, opposite the names of three horses chalked thirty to one. Dromedary was among them. Such odds could not be resisted. Carter shoved his fifty at the man, and to that sum added the twenty dollars still in his pocket. They were the last dollars he owned in the world. And though he knew they were his last, he was fearful lest the book-maker would refuse them. But, mechanically, the man passed them over his shoulder.

“And twenty-one hundred to seventy,” he chanted.

When Carter took his seat beside Dolly, he was quite cold. Still, Dolly did not speak. Out of the corner of her eyes she questioned him.

“I got fifty at twenty to one,” replied Carter, “and seventy at thirty!”

In alarm, Dolly turned upon him.

“SEVENTY!” she gasped.

Carter nodded. “All we have,” he said. “We have sixty cents left, to start life over again!”

As though to encourage him, Dolly placed her finger on her race-card.

“His colors,” she said, “are ‘green cap, green jacket, green and white hoops.’”

Through a maze of heat, a half-mile distant, at the starting-gate, little spots of color moved in impatient circles. The big, good-natured crowd had grown silent, so silent that from the high, sun-warmed grass in the infield one could hear the lazy chirp of the crickets. As though repeating a prayer, or an incantation, Dolly’s lips were moving quickly.

“Green cap,” she whispered, “green jacket, green and white hoops!”

With a sharp sigh the crowd broke the silence. “They’re off!” it cried, and leaned forward expectant.

The horses came so fast. To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous. It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together, shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and gold and scarlet. A jacket of yellow shot out of the dust and showed in front; a jacket of crimson followed. So they were at the half; so they were at the three-quarters.

The good-natured crowd began to sway, to grumble and murmur, then to shout in sharp staccato.

“Can you see him?” begged Dolly.

“No,” said Carter. “You don’t see him until they reach the stretch.”

One could hear their hoofs, could see the crimson jockey draw his whip. At the sight, for he rode the favorite, the crowd gave a great gasp of concern.

“Oh, you Gold Heels!” it implored.

Under the whip, Gold Heels drew even with the yellow jacket; stride by stride, they fought it out alone.

“Gold Heels!” cried the crowd.

Behind them, in a curtain of dust, pounded the field. It charged in a flying wedge, like a troop of cavalry. Dolly, searching for a green jacket, saw, instead, a rainbow wave of color that, as it rose and fell, sprang toward her in great leaps, swallowing the track.

“Gold Heels!” yelled the crowd.

The field swept into the stretch. Without moving his eyes, Carter caught Dolly by the wrist and pointed. As though giving a signal, he shot his free hand into the air.

“Now!” he shouted.

From the curtain of dust, as lightning strikes through a cloud, darted a great, raw-boned, ugly chestnut. Like the Empire Express, he came rocking, thundering, spurning the ground. At his coming, Gold Heels, to the eyes of the crowd, seemed to falter, to slacken, to stand still. The crowd gave a great cry of amazement, a yell of disgust. The chestnut drew even with Gold Heels, passed him, and swept under the wire. Clinging to his neck was a little jockey in a green cap, green jacket, and hoops of green and white.

Dolly’s hand was at her side, clutching the bench. Carter’s hand still clasped it. Neither spoke or looked at the other. For an instant, while the crowd, no longer so good-natured, mocked and jeered at itself, the two young people sat quite still, staring at the green field, at the white clouds rolling from the ocean. Dolly drew a long breath.

“Let’s go!” she gasped. “Let’s thank him first, and then take me home!”

They found Dromedary in the paddock, and thanked him, and Carter left Dolly with him, while he ran to collect his winnings. When he returned, he showed her a sheaf of yellow bills, and as they ran down the covered board walk to the gate, they skipped and danced.

Dolly turned toward the train drawn up at the entrance.

“Not with me!” shouted Carter. “We’re going home in the reddest, most expensive, fastest automobile I can hire!”

In the “hack” line of motor-cars was one that answered those requirements, and they fell into it as though it were their own.

“To the Night and Day Bank!” commanded Carter.

With the genial democracy of the race-track, the chauffeur lifted his head to grin appreciatively. “That listens good to me!” he said.

“I like him!” whispered Dolly. “Let’s buy him and the car.”

On the way home, they bought many cars; every car they saw, that they liked, they bought. They bought, also, several houses, and a yacht that they saw from the ferry-boat. And as soon as they had deposited the most of their money in the bank, they went to a pawnshop in Sixth Avenue and bought back many possessions that they had feared they never would see again.

When they entered the flat, the thing they first beheld was Dolly’s two-dollar bill.

“What,” demanded Carter, with repugnance, “is that strange piece of paper?”

Dolly examined it carefully. “I think it is a kind of money,” she said, “used by the lower classes.”

They dined on the roof at Delmonico’s. Dolly wore the largest of the five hats still unsold, and Carter selected the dishes entirely according to which was the most expensive. Every now and again they would look anxiously down across the street at the bank that held their money. They were nervous lest it should take fire.

“We can be extravagant to-night,” said Dolly, “because we owe it to Dromedary to celebrate. But from to-night on we must save. We’ve had an awful lesson. What happened to us last month must never happen again. We were down to a two-dollar bill. Now we have twenty-five hundred across the street, and you have several hundreds in your pocket. On that we can live easily for a year. Meanwhile, you can write ‘the’ great American novel without having to worry about money, or to look for a steady job. And then your book will come out, and you will be famous, and rich, and----”

“Passing on from that,” interrupted Carter, “the thing of first importance is to get you out of that hot, beastly flat. I propose we start to-morrow for Cape Cod. I know a lot of fishing villages there where we could board and lodge for twelve dollars a week, and row and play tennis and live in our bathing suits.”

Dolly assented with enthusiasm, and during the courses of the dinner they happily discussed Cape Cod from Pocasset to Yarmouth, and from Sandwich to Provincetown. So eager were they to escape, that Carter telephoned the hallman at his club to secure a cabin for the next afternoon on the Fall River boat. As they sat over their coffee in the cool breeze, with, in the air, the scent of flowers and the swing of music, and with, at their feet, the lights of the great city, the world seemed very bright.

“It has been a great day,” sighed Carter. “And if I hadn’t had nervous prostration I would have enjoyed it. That race-course is always cool, and there were some fine finishes. I noticed two horses that would bear watching, Her Highness and Glowworm. If we weren’t leaving to-morrow, I’d be inclined----” Dolly regarded him with eyes of horror.

“Champneys Carter!” she exclaimed. As she said it, it sounded like “Great Jehoshaphat!”

Carter protested indignantly. “I only said,” he explained, “if I were following the races, I’d watch those horses. Don’t worry!” he exclaimed. “I know when to stop.”

The next morning they took breakfast on the tiny terrace of a restaurant overlooking Bryant Park, where, during the first days of their honeymoon, they had always breakfasted. For sentimental reasons they now revisited it. But Dolly was eager to return at once to the flat and pack, and Carter seemed distraught. He explained that he had had a bad night.

“I’m so sorry,” sympathized Dolly, “but to-night you will have a fine sleep going up the Sound. Any more nightmares?” she asked.

“Nightmares!” exploded Carter fiercely. “Nightmares they certainly were! I dreamt two of the nightmares won! I saw them, all night, just as I saw Dromedary, Her Highness and Glowworm, winning, winning, winning!”

“Those were the horses you spoke about last night,” said Dolly severely. “After so wonderful a day, of course you dreamt of racing, and those two horses were in your mind. That’s the explanation.”

They returned to the flat and began, industriously, to pack. About twelve o’clock Carter, coming suddenly into the bedroom where Dolly was alone, found her reading the MORNING TELEGRAPH. It was open at the racing page of “past performances.”

She dropped the paper guiltily. Carter kicked a hat-box out of his way and sat down on a trunk.

“I don’t see,” he began, “why we can’t wait one more day. We’d be just as near the ocean at Sheepshead Bay race-track as on a Fall River boat, and----” He halted and frowned unhappily. “We needn’t bet more than ten dollars,” he begged.

“Of course,” declared Dolly, “if they SHOULD win, you’ll always blame ME!” Carter’s eyes shone hopefully.

“And,” continued Dolly, “I can’t bear to have you blame me. So----”

“Get your hat!” shouted Carter, “or we’ll miss the first race.”

Carter telephoned for a cab, and as they were entering it said guiltily: “I’ve got to stop at the bank.”

“You have NOT!” announced Dolly. “That money is to keep us alive while you write the great American novel. I’m glad to spend another day at the races, and I’m willing to back your dreams as far as ten dollars, but for no more.”

“If my dreams come true,” warned Carter, “you’ll be awfully sorry.”

“Not I,” said Dolly. “I’ll merely send you to bed, and you can go on dreaming.”

When Her Highness romped home, an easy winner, the look Dolly turned upon her husband was one both of fear and dismay.

“I don’t like it!” she gasped. “It’s--it’s uncanny. It gives me a creepy feeling. It makes you seem sort of supernatural. And oh,” she cried, “if only I had let you bet all you had with you!”

“I did,” stammered Carter, in extreme agitation. “I bet four hundred. I got five to one, Dolly,” he gasped, in awe; “we’ve won two thousand dollars.”

Dolly exclaimed rapturously: “We’ll put it all in bank,” she cried.

“We’ll put it all on Glowworm!” said her husband.

“Champ!” begged Dolly. “Don’t push your luck. Stop while----” Carter shook his head.

“It’s NOT luck!” he growled. “It’s a gift, it’s second sight, it’s prophecy. I’ve been a full-fledged clairvoyant all my life, and didn’t know it. Anyway, I’m a sport, and after two of my dreams breaking right, I’ve got to back the third one!”

Glowworm was at ten to one, and at those odds the book-makers to whom he first applied did not care to take so large a sum as he offered. Carter found a book-maker named “Sol” Burbank who, at those odds, accepted his two thousand.

When Carter returned to collect his twenty-two thousand, there was some little delay while Burbank borrowed a portion of it. He looked at Carter curiously and none too genially.

“Wasn’t it you,” he asked, “that had that thirty-to-one shot yesterday on Dromedary?” Carter nodded somewhat guiltily. A man in the crowd volunteered: “And he had Her Highness in the second, too, for four hundred.”

“You’ve made a good day,” said Burbank. “Give me a chance to get my money back to-morrow.

“I’m sorry,” said Carter. “I’m leaving New York to-morrow.”

The same scarlet car bore them back triumphant to the bank.

“Twenty-two thousand dollars?” gasped Carter, “in CASH! How in the name of all that’s honest can we celebrate winning twenty-two thousand dollars? We can’t eat more than one dinner; we can’t drink more than two quarts of champagne--not without serious results.”

“I’ll tell you what we can do!” cried Dolly excitedly. “We can sail to-morrow on the CAMPANIA!”

“Hurrah!” shouted Carter. “We’ll have a second honey-moon. We’ll shoot up London and Paris. We’ll tear slices out of the map of Europe. You’ll ride in one motor-car, I’ll ride in another, we’ll have a maid and a valet in a third, and we’ll race each other all the way to Monte Carlo. And, there, I’ll dream of the winning numbers, and we’ll break the bank. When does the CAMPANIA sail?”

“At noon,” said Dolly.

“At eight we will be on board,” said Carter.

But that night in his dreams he saw King Pepper, Confederate, and Red Wing each win a race. And in the morning neither the engines of the CAMPANIA nor the entreaties of Dolly could keep him from the race-track.

“I want only six thousand,” he protested. “You can do what you like with the rest, but I am going to bet six thousand on the first one of those three to start. If he loses, I give you my word I’ll not bet another cent, and we’ll sail on Saturday. If he wins Out, I’ll put all I make on the two others.”

“Can’t you see,” begged Dolly, “that your dreams are just a rehash of what you think during the day? You have been playing in wonderful luck, that’s all. Each of those horses is likely to win his race. When he does you will have more faith than ever in your silly dreams----”

“My silly dreams,” said Carter grinning, “are carrying you to Europe, first class, by the next steamer.”

They had been talking while on their way to the bank. When Dolly saw she could not alter his purpose, she made him place the nineteen thousand that remained, after he had taken out the six thousand, in her name. She then drew out the entire amount.

“You told me,” said Dolly, smiling anxiously, “I could do what I liked with it. Maybe I have dreams also. Maybe I mean to back them.”

She drove away, mysteriously refusing to tell him what she intended to do. When they met at luncheon, she was still much excited, still bristling with a concealed secret.

“Did you back your dream?” asked Carter.

Dolly nodded happily.

“And when am I to know?”

“You will read of it,” said Dolly, “to-morrow, in the morning papers. It’s all quite correct. My lawyers arranged it.”

“Lawyers!” gasped her husband. “You’re not arranging to lock me in a private madhouse, are you?”

“No,” laughed Dolly; “but when I told them how I intended to invest the money they came near putting me there.”

“Didn’t they want to know how you suddenly got so rich?” asked Carter.

“They did. I told them it came from my husband’s ‘books’! It was a very ‘near’ false-hood.”

“It was worse,” said Carter. “It was a very poor pun.”

As in their honey-moon days they drove proudly to the track, and when Carter had placed Dolly in a box large enough for twenty, he pushed his way into the crowd around the stand of “Sol” Burbank. That veteran of the turf welcomed him gladly.

“Coming to give me my money back?” he called.

“No, to take some away,” said Carter, handing him his six thousand.

Without apparently looking at it, Burbank passed it to his cashier. “King Pepper, twelve to six thousand,” he called.

When King Pepper won, and Carter moved around the ring with eighteen thousand dollars in thousand and five hundred dollar bills in his fist, he found himself beset by a crowd of curious, eager “pikers.” They both impeded his operations and acted as a body-guard. Confederate was an almost prohibitive favorite at one to three, and in placing eighteen thousand that he might win six, Carter found little difficulty. When Confederate won, and he started with his twenty-four thousand to back Red Wing, the crowd now engulfed him. Men and boys who when they wagered five and ten dollars were risking their all, found in the sight of a young man offering bets in hundreds and thousands a thrilling and fascinating spectacle.

To learn what horse he was playing and at what odds, racing touts and runners for other book-makers and individual speculators leaped into the mob that surrounded him, and then, squirming their way out, ran shrieking down the line. In ten minutes, through the bets of Carter and those that backed his luck, the odds against Red Wing were forced down from fifteen to one to even money. His approach was hailed by the book-makers either with jeers or with shouts of welcome. Those who had lost demanded a chance to regain their money. Those with whom he had not bet, found in that fact consolation, and chaffed the losers. Some curtly refused even the smallest part of his money.

“Not with me!” they laughed. From stand to stand the layers of odds taunted him, or each other. “Don’t touch it, it’s tainted!” they shouted. “Look out, Joe, he’s the Jonah man?” Or, “Come at me again!” they called. “And, once more!” they challenged as they reached for a thousand-dollar bill.

And, when in time, each shook his head and grumbled: “That’s all I want,” or looked the other way, the mob around Carter jeered.

“He’s fought ‘em to a stand-still!” they shouted jubilantly. In their eyes a man who alone was able and willing to wipe the name of a horse off the blackboards was a hero.

To the horror of Dolly, instead of watching the horses parade past, the crowd gathered in front of her box and pointed and stared at her. From the club-house her men friends and acquaintances invaded it.

“Has Carter gone mad?” they demanded. “He’s dealing out thousand-dollar bills like cigarettes. He’s turned the ring into a wheat Pit!”

When he reached the box a sun-burned man in a sombrero blocked his way.

“I’m the owner of Red Wing,” he explained, “bred him and trained him myself. I know he’ll be lucky if he gets the place. You’re backing him in thousands to WIN. What do you know about him?”

“Know he will win,” said Carter.

The veteran commissioner of the club stand buttonholed him. “Mr. Carter,” he begged, “why don’t you bet through me? I’ll give you as good odds as they will in that ring. You don’t want your clothes torn off you and your money taken from you.”

“They haven’t taken such a lot of it yet,” said Carter.