Chapter 4

“Not on your life,” sneered a Tout, wolfishly; “a big owner always gets off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught.”

“Why don't they pay?” whined the fourth. “What's the pulling of the mare got to do with it? The best horse won.” He was a backer of Lauzanne.

“Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed horses an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down, don't you see?” chimed in the Tout.

“I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it,” said a backer of that horse. “There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's kid won ten thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the mare.”

“That's what the Public are up against in this game,” sneered the backer of Lucretia.

“And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes,” asserted the Tout.

“You ought to know,” drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had been taken away for crooked work.

“Hello! here it comes,” cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla: “Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first! The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third! They're al-l-l weighed in!”

A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.

“What about Lucretia?” some one asked.

“They've broke McKay,” the red-faced crier answered; “suspended him.”

“What did I tell you?” sneered the Tout, maliciously; “it's the under dog gets the worst of it every time.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.

The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred a tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had gone up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.

A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges' Stand after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand and the course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith set to flailing him.

“Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr. Carson--did ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?”

Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's actions.

“Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by, Mister Carson?”

The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep pathos of scorn he continued:

“Ye'r Carson the Stharter--Mister Carson! S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!”

Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners of which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.

Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, “Come over into the paddock, Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree.” It was Dixon.

“Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me--I'll ship me plugs to Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind.”

“Never mind, Mike,” interrupted Dixon; “let it drop.”

Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.

“What d' ye think av it, b'ys?” appealed Mike to the others.

“You're wrong, Gaynor,” declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in his shirt sleeves; “my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post; and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't get him away.”

“That's right, Mike,” added Dixon; “Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the Stewards set him down.”

“Is that straight goods?” asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice of his wordy assault.

“Yes, you're wrong, Mike,” they all asserted.

In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full warmth of a penitent Irishman.

V

For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still, over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race. Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.

His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.

“How's the mare doing, Andy?” he asked. “What did the race do to her?”

“She never was better in her life,” the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, “She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my shirt on that.”

“Not with another McKay up.”

“I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.”

“What's the use,” said Porter, dejectedly; “where'll we get a boy?”

“Oh, lots of the boys are straight.”

“I know that,” Porter answered, “but all the straight ones are tied hand and foot to the big stables.”

“I've been thinkin' it over,” hazarded Dixon, tentatively--“Boston Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know.”

“That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her off the boards.

“The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would square the little mare with the public.”

“And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar,” said Porter. “Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving up the money.”

The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won. But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the little mare.

Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he might change his mind: “They downed me last trip, Dixon--I guess I'm getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like--arrange with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty of winning races--not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess.”

“Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman--he ran a great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse--if they start him. Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin', too,” continued Dixon, meditatively; “the public soon sour on a beaten horse. You'll have a chance to get even.”

“I don't like that part of it,” muttered Porter; “I'm in the black books now. People have no reason at all--no sense; they've got it into their heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to one, and I win a bit, they'll howl.”

“You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the public--they don't pay the feed bill.”

“Perhaps you're right, Dixon,” answered Porter.

For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to Lucretia--no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood had been called upon as a tangible asset. So that day, following his conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects--his hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively, mention her good trial.

“I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter,” said Crane, sympathetically. “I only race, myself in a small way, just for the outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a judge. The other horse you bought--the winner of the race, I mean, Lauzanne--will also help put you right, I should say.”

Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give the banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's manipulation of the trainer.

With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to the subject, “Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr. Crane?”

“I have,” answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.

“Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries better?”

Crane thought for a moment. “Yes, that's right; coming up wind the leaves hid them.”

“Just so,” commented Porter; “and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly always working up wind with him.”

“The trainer hides things?” queried Crane.

“Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries.”

And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, “Whose garden are the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?”

“Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane,” Porter answered, evasively.

“I see,” said the other, meditatively; “I understand. I'm much obliged. If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him--nothing whatever.”

Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable something.

“Yes,” he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, “if Langdon tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of the strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that line,

'And a hush came over the clamorous mob; Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'

She's cleverer than her father.”

Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping eyes saw nothing else.

From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered his passion for racing with common sense. And it would pass from Porter's hands right enough--Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the inability to make money.

“Made music to me on Crusader.” Yes, that was it. With the Porters it was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory, but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many other things connected with the betting ring.

Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind. Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes, that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great sweetness.

Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork. When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.

Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden opportunity.

From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare. He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon. Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things, and developed the routine for his chessmen.

“I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself, and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks about The Dutchman,” was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the bank.

That evening he talked with his trainer.

“What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?” he asked.

“Well, I don't know what'll start,” began the Trainer, with diplomatic caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.

“Would Porter's mare have a chance?”

“I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good enough to win--if I could find out her time--Porter don't talk much, an' Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I might pump--”

“Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business.”

The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.

“Has The Dutchman a look in?” continued Crane.

“On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em--I ain't seen no two-year-olds out to beat that pair.”

“If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses, and men, too--that'll take the gaff and try.”

“I don't know as the owner'd sell him.”

“Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?”

“Yes.”

“He was a good horse.”

“The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a song--seven thousand.”

“Less than that, the first time,” corrected Crane.

“Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no good.”

“Just so,” commented Crane; “I've heard that story,” and his smooth, putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.

Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped up in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.

“I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman,” hazarded Langdon; “he's a boozer.”

“I'm glad of that--I mean, that you know Smith,” declared Crane. “I happen to know the owner--his name is Baker. His racing is what might be called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes blunders upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but that if he knew all about the other race--how bad Lauzanne really is; how the mare, Lucretia--well--got shut off, and couldn't get through her horses, say--of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell these things, you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he might take a reasonable offer for The Dutchman.”

Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.

Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. “Naturally Smith would hate to lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to thwart any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss.”

“When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale--”

“I'm not interested in Silver Foot,” interrupted Crane; “and I shouldn't like to have anything--well, I don't want my name associated with anything shady, you understand, Langdon? You are to buy The Dutchman as cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I think Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The Dutchman.”

Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The smooth, complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.

“But,” he gasped, “there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The Dutchman runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him--it's dollars to doughnuts they will--an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't take no chances of bein' had up by the Stewards.”

“Wait a bit,” replied Crane, calmly. “Supposing Porter's mare worked five and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?”

“She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might give her an argument.”

“Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win, if he never carried the saddle again,” declared Crane, almost fiercely. Then he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed it was that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply a motor for carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the executive agents. “It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if Lucretia wins. I fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly stop the mare this time--not twice in succession you know, Langdon,” and he looked meaningly at his jackal. “You buy The Dutchman, and be good to him.”

He laid marked emphasis on the words “be good to him.” The trainer understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey could try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would win, and his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his own benefit. Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do anything but just follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the oblique game he loved so well? Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was a good horse; he also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but with the son of Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come off. Somehow Langdon felt miserably inefficient in the presence of Crane--his self-respect suffered; the other man's mind was so overmastering, even to detail. The Trainer felt a sudden desire to right himself in Crane's estimation, give some evidence of ordinary intelligence, or capability to carry out his mission. “If The Dutchman's owner was made to think that the horse was likely to break down, throw a splint, or--”

But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: “I know nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You will pay for him with a check on my bank.” No man could close out an interview so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he had been thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but admiration of his master--the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy with liberal capital.

In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than Lucretia. A sanguine owner--even Porter was one at times--was so apt to overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of equal length, with John Porter.

Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He knew intuitively--in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested it--that Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult position by backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting to get his money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could whipsaw the situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing Lucretia down to a short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with a full vigor against the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to stake money, and Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the golden links he had forged on the place.

Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love blossom. Strive as he would--though the apathy of his rebellion somewhat startled him--Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the wondrous gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the atmosphere of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of the girl came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of his restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually in love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in marvelous ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else--love at first sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years must still govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win the girl by diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man irrevocably in his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond redemption, if he practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed with Allis? All his life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men, for broken men were beyond doubt but potter's clay.

Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no pains to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to enlarge on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price was the only item that interested Crane--seven thousand dollars; that included everything--even the secret service money.

The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding. When the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the Banker; when Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust acted for him.

“I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,”' Crane said to the bookmaker.