Young Wallingford Part 18

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"

of _The 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 of _The Pink Canary_ replied:

"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 role; for Beauty Phillips, being a wise young lady and having no convenient mother of her own, had hired one, and by 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'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, pa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s crowd. They came over to my table one night in Shirley's, after I'd met them only once, and b.u.t.ted 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'hote_ 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 a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sed 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."