Garrison's Finish Part 3

There was a column of double-leaded type on the first page, run in after the making up of the paper's body, and Garrison's bitter eyes negligently scanned it. But at the first word he straightened up as if an electric shock had pa.s.sed through him.

"Favorite for the Carter Handicap Poisoned," was the great, staring t.i.tle. The details were meager; brutally meager. They were to the effect that some one had gained access to the Waterbury stable and had fed Sis strychnine.

Garrison crumpled up the paper and buried his face in his hands, making no pretense of hiding his misery. She had been more than a horse to him; she had been everything.

"Sis--Sis," he whispered over and over again, the tears burning to his eyes, his throat choking: "I didn't get a chance to square the deal.

Sis--Sis it was good-by--good-by forever."

CHAPTER III.

BEGINNING A NEW LIFE.

On arriving at the Thirty-fourth Street ferry Garrison idly boarded a Forty-second Street car, drifting aimlessly with the main body of Long Island pa.s.sengers going westward to disintegrate, scatter like the fragments of a bursting bomb, at Broadway. A vague sense of proprietorship, the kiss of home, momentarily smoothed out the wrinkles in his soul as the lights of the Great White Way beamed down a welcome upon him. Then it was slowly borne in on him that, though with the crowd, he was not of it. His mother, the great cosmopolitan city, had repudiated him. For Broadway is a place for presents or futures; she has no welcome for pasts. With her, charity begins at home--and stays there.

Garrison drifted hither and thither with every cross eddy of humanity, and finally dropped into the steady pulsating, ever-moving tide on the west curb going south--the ever restless tide that never seems to reach the open sea. As he pa.s.sed one well-known cafe after another his mind carried him back over the waste stretch of "It might have been" to the time when he was their central figure. On every block he met acquaintances who had even toasted him--with his own wine; toasted him as the kingpin. Now they either nodded absently or became suddenly vitally interested in a show-window or the new moon.

All sorts and conditions of men comprised that list of former friends, and not one now stepped out and wrung his hand; wrung it as they had only the other day, when they thought he would retrieve his fortunes by pulling off the Carter Handicap. They did not wring it now, for there was nothing to wring out of it. Now he was not only hopelessly down in the muck of poverty, but hopelessly dishonored. And gentlemanly appearing blackguards, who had left all honesty in the cradle, now wouldn't for the world be seen talking on Broadway to little Billy Garrison, the horribly crooked jockey.

It wouldn't do at all. First, because their own position was so precarious that a breath would send it tottering. Secondly, because Billy might happen to inconveniently remember all the sums of money he had "loaned" them time and again. Actual necessity might tend to waken his memory. For they had modernized the proverb into: "A friend in need is a friend to steer clear of."

A lesson in mankind and the making had been coming to Garrison, and in that short walk down Broadway he appreciated it to the uttermost.

"Think I had the mange or the plague," he mused grimly, as a plethoric ex-alderman pa.s.sed and absent-mindedly forgot to return his bow--an alderman who had been tipped by Garrison in his palmy days to a small fortune. "What if I had thrown the race?" he ran on bitterly. "Many a jockey has, and has lived to tell it. No, there's more behind it all than that. I've pa.s.sed sports who wouldn't turn me down for that. But I suppose Bender" (the plethoric alderman) "staked a pot on Sis, she being the favorite and I up. And when he loses he forgets the times I tipped him to win. Poor old Sis!" he added softly, as the fact of her poisoning swept over him. "The only thing that cared for me--gone! I'm down on my luck--hard. And it's not over yet. I feel it in the air. There's another fall coming to me."

He shivered through sheer nervous exhaustion, though the night was warm for mid-April. He rummaged in his pocket.

"One dollar in bird-seed," he mused grimly, counting the coins under the violet glare of a neighboring arc light. "All that's between me and the morgue. Did I ever think it would come to that? Well, I need a bracer.

Here goes ten for a drink. Can only afford bar whisky."

He was standing on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and unconsciously he turned into the cafe of the Hoffman House. How well he knew its every square inch! It was filled with the usual sporting crowd, and Garrison entered as nonchalantly as if his arrival would merit the same commotion as in the long ago. He no longer cared. His depression had dropped from him. The lights, the atmosphere, the topics of conversation, discussion, caused his blood to flow like lava through his veins. This was home, and all else was forgotten. He was not the discarded jockey, but Billy Garrison, whose name on the turf was one to conjure with.

And then, even as he had awakened from his dream on Broadway, he now awoke to an appreciation of the immensity of his fall from grace. He knew fully two-thirds of those present. Some there were who nodded, some kindly, some pityingly. Some there were who cut him dead, deliberately turning their backs or accurately looking through the top of his hat.

Billy's square chin went up to a point and his under lip came out. He would not be driven out. He would show them. He was as honest as any there; more honest than many; more foolish than all. He ordered a drink and seated himself by a table, indifferently eyeing the shifting crowd through the fluttering curtain of tobacco-smoke.

The staple subject of conversation was the Carter Handicap, and he sensed rather than noted the glances of the crowd as they shifted curiously to him and back again. At first he pretended not to notice them, but after a certain length of time his oblivion was sincere, for retrospect came and claimed him for its own.

He was aroused by footsteps behind him; they wavered, stopped, and a large hand was laid on his shoulder.

"h.e.l.lo, kid! You here, too?"

He looked up quickly, though he knew the voice. It was Jimmy Drake, and he was looking down at him, a queer gleam in his inscrutable eyes.

Garrison nodded without speaking. He noticed that the book-maker had not offered to shake hands, and the knowledge stung. The crowd was watching them curiously, and Drake waved off, with a late sporting extra he carried, half a dozen invitations to liquidate.

"Kid," he said, lowering his voice, his hand still on Garrison's shoulder, "what did you come here for? Why don't you get away? Waterbury may be here any minute."

"What's that to me?" spat out Billy venomously. "I'm not afraid of him.

No call to be."

Drake considered, the queer look still in his eyes.

"Don't get busty, kid. I don't know how you ever come to do it, but it's a serious game, a dirty game, and I guess it may mean jail for you, all right."

"What do you mean?" Garrison's pinched face had gone slowly white. A vague premonition of impending further disaster possessed him, amounting almost to an obsession. "What do you mean, Jimmy?" he reiterated tensely.

Drake was silent, still scrutinizing him.

"Kid," he said finally, "I don't like to think it of you--but I know what made you do it. You were sore on Waterbury; sore for losing. You wanted to get hunk on something. But I tell you, kid, there's no deal too rotten for a man who poisons a horse--"

"Poisons a horse," echoed Garrison mechanically. "Poisons a horse.

Good Lord, Drake!" he cried fiercely, in a sudden wave of pa.s.sion and understanding, jumping from his chair, "you dare to say that I poisoned Sis! You dare--"

"No, I don't. The paper does."

"The paper lies! Lies, do you hear? Let me see it! Let me see it! Where does it say that? Where, where? Show it to me if you can! Show it to me--"

His eyes slowly widened in horror, and his mouth remained agape, as he hastily scanned the contents of an article in big type on the first page. Then the extra dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he mechanically seated himself at the table, his eyes vacant. To his surprise, he was horribly calm. Simply his nerves had snapped; they could torture him no longer by stretching.

"It's not enough to have--have her die, but I must be her poisoner," he said mechanically.

"It's all circ.u.mstantial evidence, or nearly so," added Drake, shifting from one foot to the other. "You were the only one who would have a cause to get square. And Crimmins says he gave you permission to see her alone. Even the stable-hands say that. It looks bad, kid. Here, don't take it so hard. Get a cinch on yourself," he added, as he watched Garrison's blank eyes and quivering face.

"I'm all right. I'm all right," muttered Billy vaguely, pa.s.sing a hand over his throbbing temples.

Drake was silent, fidgeting uneasily.

"Kid," he blurted out at length, "it looks as if you were all in. Say, let me be your bank-roll, won't you? I know you lost every cent on Sis, no matter what they say. I'll give you a blank check, and you can fill it out--"

"No, thanks, Jimmy."

"Don't be touchy, kid. You'd do the same for me--"

"I mean it, Drake. I don't want a cent. I'm not hard up. Thanks all the same." Garrison's rag of honor was fluttering in the wind of his pride.

"Well," said Drake, finally and uncomfortably, "if you ever want it, Billy, you know where to come for it. I want to go down on the books as your friend, hear? Mind that. So-long."

"So-long, Jimmy. And I won't forget your stand."

Garrison continued staring at the floor. This, then, was the reason why the sporting world had cut him dead; for a horse-poisoner is ranked in the same category as that a.s.signed to the horse-stealer of the Western frontier. There, a man's horse is his life; to the turfman it is his fortune--one and the same. And so Crimmins had testified that he had permitted him, Garrison, to see Sis alone!

Yes, the signals were set dead against him. His opinion of Crimmins had undergone a complete revolution; first engendered by the trainer offering him a dishonorable opportunity of fleecing the New York pool-rooms; now culminated by his indirect charge.

Garrison considered the issue paramount. He was furious, though so seemingly indifferent. Every ounce of resentment in his nature had been focused to the burning-point. Now he would not leave New York. Come what might, he would stand his ground. He would not run away. He would fight the charge; fight Waterbury, Crimmins--the world, if necessary. And mingled with the warp and woof of this resolve was another; one that he determined would comprise the color-scheme of his future existence; he would ferret out the slayer of Sis; not merely for his own vindication, but for hers. He regarded her slayer as a murderer, for to him Sis had been more than human.

Garrison came to himself by hearing his name mentioned. Behind him two young men were seated at a table, evidently unaware of his ident.i.ty, for they were exchanging their separate views on the running of the Carter Handicap and the subsequent poisoning of the favorite.