Chapter V: Part 5

"There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia barns at that time who was in hard luck from a whole lot of different points of view. I'd known him on the metropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in his day of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever one chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, however, six or seven years ago, and he couldn't personally attend to his work--he ran an open training stable--it was all off with him. The strings that he had been handling were taken away from him by the owners and put in other hands, and he went up against the day of adversity with a rattle. He had a few horses of his own, but these proved worthless, and most of them were finally taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia barns, four years ago, he could barely move around. How he contrived to exist I don't know, but I guess the boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in a while for the old man. The only horse that he had left when I reached Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old gelding that was a joke. Well, call him Caspar. The mention of Caspar's name made even the stable-boy grin. Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse that's pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He was all out of shape, with a pair of knees on him each as big as your hat; of all the bunged up, soured, chalky old skates that ever I looked over, this Caspar gelding was the limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old and a more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as a two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was campaigned and drummed a heap, and when the old man shot him as a four-year-old Caspar could just walk, and that's all. He was a cripple from every point of the compass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as vicious and ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never got anywhere near the money as a four and five-year-old, and he hadn't been raced at all as a six-year-old, when I first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. But the old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn't stand the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care of as a baby to some truck driver to be overworked and abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed him, nursed him and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug was making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing gag around the Latonia stables.

"'Wait'll I joggle Caspar under the string by four lengths in the Kentucky Derby!' a monkey-faced apprentice jockey would say solemnly to the other kids, and then they'd all holler.

"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia--it was then getting on toward midsummer--the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest:

"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia that I'll make you a present of. He's worth about one dollar and eighty cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I've never felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled up some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul your buggy around. I wish you'd take him and see that he doesn't get the worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up against it.'

"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to Caspar's stall.

"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?' the priest asked the trainer, who smiled.

"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the first clatter out of the box,' replied the trainer.

"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do with him,' said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried the old trainer.

"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the rail.

"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him. It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down the stretch. If he didn't do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid stopped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he had a mouth on him as hard as nails.

"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and didn't know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up.

"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all there is about it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he needs is some patching. If he'll run like this work he's just done in five-furlong dashes, there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be oiled up.'

"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the priest.

"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your cloth mixed up with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.' Then he told the priest about Caspar's phenomenal work that morning.

"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not be seemly for me to'----

"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the trainer. 'If I find I can do anything with the old rogue I'll shoot him into a dash under my own colors, and you won't be entangled with the thing a little bit. It won't cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find that he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down--er--uh--well. I won't lose anything anyhow.'

"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to see what could be done with old Caspar. "'Let me know how you progress,' the priest had asked him.

"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing--and we all vowed ourselves to secrecy about the matter--went to old Caspar. He was a nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied himself to the reduction of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it came about that early morning's work of Caspar's that had surprised us so was no flash in the pan at all. The old 'possum had somehow or another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so.

"'Well,' inquired the priest.

"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,' said the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch--er-uh--I mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket, too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries, they'll think it's a joke.'

"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses sufficient speed to--er'----

"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he bolted for it.

"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their nickels for the day of Caspar's victory.

"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters--one of them was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers', railbirds', and stable-boys' money that went in forced the old skate's price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of 100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati--wired our commissions over. The old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his pin the night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but stood by to see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn't get the big end of the money.

"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real name of the horse you'd remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed, winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go. They had to cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers, including myself, had ever made, and there wasn't a stable boy on the grounds that didn't have money to cremate for months afterward.

"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the hogslaughtering--he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn't have me skinned any, at that--hustled over to the priest's house.

"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way he announced Caspar's victory.

"'Truly?' said the priest.

"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest's residence. He handed the wallet to the father. 'When I was here, a couple o' days ago,' said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of the parish--used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you see, and so I invested it in--er-uh--a little matter of speculation, to your account, so that it amounts to--er-uh--well, I understood there's a bit of a mortgage on your church, you know."

"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down on Caspar for the priest--without the father's sanction or countenance, of course--at 150 to 1.

"'Well,' went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to save any questions as to the nature of his speculation, 'it certainly would have done your heart good if you could have seen that old nag cantering down the stretch'----

"'It did,' said the father, with a smile. 'It is no sin, I conceive, for even a man of my cloth to watch noble beasts battling for the supremacy, there being, I take it, nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.'

"Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to the paddock as sore as a boil, all of his old infirmities breaking out with renewed strength, and he was turned out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he could have known, it might have cheered his declining days to realize that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice little brick and stone edifice of worship on the outskirts of Cincinnati."

A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES.

_How the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned Into Gasping
Astonishment._

A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for the Bennings meeting, and Washington men about town, had a cafe talk the other night about some things that have happened in former years on running tracks, legitimate and outlaw, in this neighborhood.

"When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island, across the Potomac, was running a few years back," said a New York player, "I came down here from the wind-up meeting in New York one fall to see if there was anything in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was playing, and not laying. So this Alexander Island happening that I'm going to tell you about didn't bother me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books.

"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A couple of days before the game was to be on, while I was in the Pennsylvania avenue refreshment headquarters of the boys who came here from New York and other tracks to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum pipe in the game of life for a long time previously, walked in and edged around to the back room where the bookies were figuring on the amount of fresh money they were about to begin taking out of the national capital. The tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell about him, and as soon as I saw him I knew that he followed 'em in some kind of a hanger-on capacity. He walked over to a table where a number of the bookmakers were seated.

"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and addressing the party in general, 'you people are sports, ain't you?'

"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man were intended to convey to him the idea that they weren't publicly posing as hot tamales, anyhow. The man got no reply.

"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't you?' the up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring look all around.

"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies, just for the good-natured sake of breaking the silence.

"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a couple o' nags that have been running for the past six weeks over at the Maryland outlaw. They haven't been one, two, six in any race over there, and I've gone broke paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to do better over across the way at Alexander. I want to chuck 'em in a couple over there, anyhow, for luck. But I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland outlaw people, and I can't get my plugs away from there until the thirty's paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I want to know is, will you people cough up the thirty for me as a loan, so's I can get that pair o' mine down here?'

"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing smiles, and when he finished they gave him the laugh in chorus.

"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get all the outlaw racehorses I want for $2 a head.'

"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking sport, who appeared to be rather a guileless sort of chap for a man with a short stable of racers.

"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on edge, too,' he persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in 1:21 flat a couple of days ago.'

"The bookies all looked at the man as if he were demented.

"'One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route!' exclaimed one of them. 'Why, look here, my friend, you're not smoking hard enough to suppose you can win down here with a skate that does well when he works six furlongs in that time, are you? Don't you know that there's a whole bunch over there now that can go that route in 1:16 or better?'

"'Well, they've got a chance, anyhow,' said the shabby man. 'Do I get the $30 to get 'em out o' hock?'

"The bookies all turned their faces the other way, then, and when the man with the pair of hocked nags saw that it wasn't any use he dug his hands into his pockets disconsolately and shambled out.

"On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby man in the betting ring. I was behind him when he handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one of the horses entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker had belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the shabby man when he asked for the $30.

"'Playing 'em, eh' said the bookie, smiling at the run-down-looking man. 'Couldn't get your pair away from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.'

"'Yes, I dug up and got 'em out,' said the man. 'They're here now. The one you just gave me a ticket on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.'

"'Oh, is that so?' asked the bookmaker. 'Well, I hope you win. But you've got a couple of 3 to 5 shots to beat, you know.'

"'I got a chance,' was all the man said, walking away.

"I took a look at his horse, the rank outsider in the race, when he went to the post with the others. He was a six-year-old gelding, and he looked rank and broken down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a mile race, and the horse was twelfth in a field of twelve. I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby man in the paddock after the race superintending the rubbing down of his nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps.

"The same horse was entered in the fourth race on the next day's card. It was a field of crack outlaw performers, and his horse was again the extreme outsider at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt sorry for him. The bookies simply smiled commiseratingly at him. The hard-looking man's horse finished ninth in a field of nine.

"'Why don't you cut it out?' asked one of the bookmakers of the man with the tough appearance. 'You're wasting your stake.'

"'I got a chance,' was the reply.

"The man got out his other horse on the following day. He got 50 to 1 on him for the six-furlong race, and his plug, another rank and no-account looker, finished last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs in 1:21. The seedy man's confidence in his pair of skates seemed rather pathetic to me.

"After each of his horses had been in about half a dozen races each, always finishing last, the both of them, and the seedy man putting twos and fives down on them right along until the bookies felt like not taking his money, I thought he'd take a tumble and quit the game. But on the eleventh day of the meeting his 'mile racer,' the six-year-old gelding, was entered again. He went to the post with a field composed of the cracks among the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man when he went around according to his custom, putting down small bets on his horse. He seemed to be rather better fixed than usual that day, for he had quite a bundle of fives with him.

"'What do I get on my horse?' he asked the first bookie he struck.

"The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or ten good ones in the race, three or four of them quoted around even money.

"'I've got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you want of it,' said the bookie. 'You can write your own ticket, in fact.'

"'Hundred to 1?' asked the seedy man.

"'Why, sure,' replied the bookmaker. And he took $5 of the 'owner's' money at 100 to 1. Just out of curiosity I followed the seedy man in his tour of the books and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was to be something done on the seedy man's horse. But I wasn't capping the bookies' game, and I've got a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and so I kept off the race and went into the stand to watch it. I had a hunch to play the seedy man's horse for a good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and the good thing went through the bookies 'ud be suspicious about such a well-known player as I was being in on it, and in the investigation the seedy man might be cut out, and I didn't want to knock him. But I surely was a whole lot interested in the way that race was to come out.

"I took a good look at the seedy man's horse as they filed past the stand to the post. He looked much better and pretty nippy at that for such a rancid outsider. The same boy that had ridden the horse in his first race at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up. It was a mile race.

"The favorite, a horse called Walcott--4 to 5 on in the betting--got off on the right foot with a jump and started to tiptoe the field. At the quarter he led by three lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw named Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the field of thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man's horse 'way in the ruck. But I kept my glasses on that horse all the way, and I could see that at the half he was under the devil's own pull. The boy had half a dozen wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was still a good four lengths in the lead, and going easily, that there was but one horse in the race, and that horse the seedy man's. It was a watermelon just opening, but I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened to have got next to the game. The judges didn't observe, of course, that the seedy owner's horse was under twenty wraps, for they looked upon him as a dead one and paid no attention to his running.

"At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three or four lengths in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, having fallen back, beaten out. They were all in a bunch behind the leader, and all going mighty well at the head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused on the horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott seemed to be just galloping, as I say, at the head of the stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit down on the shabby man's horse and start to ride a-horseback. It was pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop out after the galloping favorite and chase him down the stretch. The old horse, without a bit of whipping or spurring--the boy had simply given him his head--pumped up like an express engine, and the favorite was taken out of his gallop and extended, under whip and spur, before they were half way down the stretch. Passing the stand, Walcott and the seedy man's horse were nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott was beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a pretty finish.

"The stewards had the seedy man in the stand immediately and then called the boy up. It was an astonishing reversal of form, and action seemed to be called for. The seedy man's story was straight, however. He had given his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and he supposed that was responsible for the win. Doping horses was all right at Alexander, and so the stewards couldn't kick about that. The stewards touched upon the ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple kind of duck, and his story was so connected about past owners of his two horses and their life-long careers on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally declared the race all hunk and the bets stood.

"I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of 100 to 1 tickets. He didn't gloat any over the bookies who had grinned in his teeth before the race--just collected his money quietly, saying: 'Well, I had a chance, didn't I?' The bookies were confident that the seedy man had a mighty valuable pair of ringers on his staff, and that one of them had just won the mile race in the beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they couldn't welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took his string of two away the next day.

"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair Grounds' racing. He was no longer a seedy man. He was covered with gig lamps, and he had it in every pocket. Said I to him:

"'D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled off in Washington a few years ago? There was some quality in that old outlaw of yours that got the money.'

"He looked at me with a broad grin.

"'Outlaw be damned,' said he. 'That horse was one of the cracks out of the West, on licensed tracks. He was a bit of paint. He had done a mile in 1:39-1/2 twice--round miles--and he was as game as a wild turkey egg. Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, running him as a ringer all over the country. I was going to open my six-furlonger in Washington that time, but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack from Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14 was a common canter for him. The Willie Wises back in the East are not so many at that, are they?'"

THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB."

_It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came
Near Wrecking a Happy Home._

When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm of patent attorneys reached the firm's office in West Broadway on Monday morning last his eye caught sight of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the latter's desk. As the junior partner was in Washington and wasn't due back in New York until 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the senior partner opened the telegram. It was a night message from St. Louis, and it read as follows:

"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don't let anything scare you out. He's easy. Bub."

The senior partner scratched his head over this.

"Conway--Jim Conway," he muttered to himself. "Now, who the dickens can Jim Conway be, I'd like to know? We've got no client named Jim Conway, and we're not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. Conway is the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this is."

The senior partner turned the message upside down and every which way, but the longer he looked at it from various points of view the more puzzled he became.

"Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too," he mused. "Now, what has this Jim Conway done to my partner that he needs to be punched for it? And who's this Bub? Bub! That's a deuce of an undignified name for a man to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my junior partner has gone in for prize fighting at that Jersey athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps he's been matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway, and this Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him encouragement. Nope, that can't be right, either. My junior partner has been taking on fat at an alarming rate lately, so that he can't be training for a boxing contest."

He took a few turns up and down the office, holding the telegram out at arm's length.

"I hope the boy don't get into a serious mix-up with this Jim Conway fellow, whoever he is," he muttered nervously. "I don't believe the lad has done anything that he'd be ashamed to have me know about, and yet it's blamed queer that he should be getting telegraphic despatches from people by the name of Bub, urging him to employ physical force for the subjugation of a chap with such a Boweryesque sort of name as Jim Conway. The question is, what's the boy done to Conway, or Conway to him, that it should be necessary for one or both of them to resort to fisticuffs? Now, if the boy were to get mixed up in a brawl with this Conway there'd be the deuce to pay. It 'ud get into the papers, and it might have a serious effect upon our tidy and growing practice. I wish that junior partner of mine were a bit more level-headed. He's too clever and industrious and promising to have anything whatsoever to do with folks who travel under such names as Conway and Bub, and I'm going to give him a mild little personally conducted talking to when he gets back from Washington this afternoon. Why, I wouldn't have him get into a street fight, or a fight anywhere else for that matter, for big money--not only for the sake of the firm, but for his own sake. He's pretty handy with his maulies, and all that, but this fighting business is not the thing for gentlemen, not by a long shot. I just wish I could find out who this Conway duffer is, anyhow."

The young woman who manipulates the typewriter for the firm came in just then.

"By the way, Miss Bringlunch," the senior partner said to her, "have we any person of the name of Jim Conway on our list of correspondents?"

"No, sir," she promptly replied. "We've got a Conners, Coleman, Coulter, Conneff, Curran--lots and lots of C's--but no Conway."

"So I thought," said the senior partner. "Er--by the way, did you ever happen to hear Mr. Barlock refer to a person by the name of--er--Bub?"

The young woman smiled as she tied her black sateen apron in the back.

"I've heard him call the newsboys who come into the office with papers Bub," she replied.

"Er--yes, yes," murmured the senior partner, "so have I. But this is a St. Louis Bub. Well, no matter."

The senior partner dived into the mass of papers on his desk, but he couldn't get the bloodthirsty telegram to his junior partner out of his mind. He was puzzling over it still radiant when his junior partner's young wife came along toward 11 o'clock in the morning. She wanted to find out the exact hour her husband was due back from Washington.

"He'll be here a little after 4, I guess," said the senior partner. "Er--by the way, Mrs. Barlock, does Jack number among his friends or acquaintances anybody by the name of Jim Conway?"

"Jim Conway?" repeated the junior partner's wife, with a finger at her lip. "Why, no, not that I know of. I never heard him say anything about a Mr. Conway. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," said the senior partner, in a constrained sort of tone, putting away the message from St. Louis for the fiftieth time.

The wife of the junior partner suddenly looked alarmed.

"That telegram!" she gasped, noticing the senior partner's furtive manner of slipping the despatch into his pocket--"is anything wrong with Jack? Has the train been wrecked? Has the"----

And she started to her feet in great agitation.

"Calm yourself, calm yourself," said the senior partner, also rising and smiling reassuringly. "There's nothing the matter. Train wrecked? Why, the idea! How did you ever get such a notion"----

"But that telegram that you handle so mysteriously," said the junior partner's wife, not yet over her alarm.

"What telegram--this?" said the senior partner, taking the night message from St. Louis from his pocket. "Why, this is an ordinary--er--business telegram addressed to Jack from St. Louis, and it's"----

"Let me see it, please, if it's for Jack," said the junior partner's wife, holding out her neatly gloved hand, and the senior partner could do nothing else but pass it over.

"'Hammer--Jim--Conway. Punch--him--your--limit. Don't--let--anything--scare--you--out. He's easy. _Bub_.'" the junior partner's wife read, slowly and distinctly, her eyes widening at each sentence. "This, then, is the Mr. Conway that you spoke of. Mr. Topknot, what is the meaning of this? What in the world is the"----

"You can search me," said the senior partner desperately. "Er--that is, it's all as mysterious to me as it apparently is to you. I've been bothering my head about it all the morning. I wouldn't have worried you by showing it to you, but as long as you asked to see it, why, of course"----

And the senior partner coughed behind his hand and looked dismal.

The junior partner's wife paced up and down the office with the telegram in her hand.

"Why, it looks as if Jack had an enemy named Jim Conway, and that he intended to fight him, doesn't it?" she exclaimed beseechingly to the senior partner. "I'd just like to know who this horrid, nasty ruffian who signs himself Bub is, that's all. My Jack fighting a man with such an awful, 'longshoremanish name as Jim Conway! Why, that name sounds like the names of the roustabouts we read of in the papers who attack their poor wives with cotton hooks and throw burning lamps at them. And goodness gracious sakes alive! the very idea of Jack Barlock ever dreaming of lowering himself by getting into difficulties with such--oh, I don't know what to think of it all; indeed I don't!"

And she strode up and down the office again in great agitation.

"Now, now, now," put in the senior partner comfortingly. "We don't know anything about the contents of the message, and it may be that this Mr. Conway is--er--why, the fact is, come to think of it, it may be a message in code. Jack's got a code of his own, you know, and maybe he"----

The wife of the junior partner was looking at him so suspiciously, however, that he couldn't go on. An expression just a trifle harder than was exactly becoming gradually stole into her face, and she walked over close to where the senior partner sat in his revolving chair.

"Ah," she said in a hard tone, "I begin to see. You are trying to cover up something--you men always stick together in these affairs. It may be that this Mr. Conway is married, and that Jack--great heavens! if I only thought it! If I even dreamed that such a thing could be--after all the sacrifices I've made for Jack--living away from mama all this time--and"----

Then she reduced her handkerchief to a wad about half an inch in diameter and began to dab at the corners of her eyes.

"My dear girl," said the senior partner, "I give you my solemn word that I know no more about that message, nor about Mr. Conway, than you do. I never heard of Mr. Conway in my life before I opened that telegram. My dear Mrs. Barlock, I am sure you are exaggerating the importance of this despatch. There is no reasonable ground whatsoever upon which you can base any--er--accusation against the boy, and, as I say, it is possible--in fact, it's more than probable--that this message is in Jack's private code, and that"----

"I--don't--believe--any--such--boo-hoo"----And the lovely young matron began to rock herself to and fro and to dab at her eyes unremittingly. "It's just as plain as day that Jack has done some wrong to this poor Mr. Conway, and this friend of Jack's in St. Louis, named Bub, has heard that Mr. Conway is looking for Jack, and he has sent him this telegram to warn him to be on his guard--and--boo-hoo--who would ever dream that my Jack would get himself involved in such an awful"----

Her feelings overcame her again at this point, and she was unable to proceed.

"Mrs. Barlock," said her husband's senior partner, severely, rising and confronting her, "I am surprised at you--I am, indeed. I was certainly of the opinion that in a matter of this sort you would at least give your husband--a most considerate husband--the benefit of the doubt; that you would at any rate give him an opportunity to explain himself. How do we know what he is to Conway or Conway to him?" And the senior partner, growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking of Hecuba instead of the mysterious Conway. "Is it not more than likely that you are doing him a grievous wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that this extraordinary telegraphic communication from--er--this Bub--person has any reference whatsoever to--er--uh--domestic or family affairs? Wait until Jack returns, my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I've not the least doubt that he will explain everything to your entire satisfaction, and"----

"Oh, yes, explanations--explanations!" exclaimed the junior partner's wife, giving her eyes a final dab and rising. "You'll telegraph him on the train to have some sort of an explanation ready, and then he'll come in here with a deeply aggrieved countenance--just as if he had had no part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor Mr. Conway's home and tell me hypocritically that I've wronged him and all that. I know you horrid men and the way you stand by each other through thick and thin, no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall be back here at 4 o'clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Topknot, and notwithstanding the way he is treating me, if there is any possible way I can prevent him from meeting this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful altercation with him, I shall do it. And I promise you that I shall be able to detect very easily whether he is telling me the truth or not when I demand him to explain this terrible business."

Saying which, the junior partner's wife pulled her veil down and swept out of the office with the general air of a deceived wife in a play.

"Huh! it'd naturally be thought I'd know enough not to make such an egregious ass of myself as to show her that telegram!" growled the senior partner to himself. "There'll be all kinds of a bobbery around here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be something that Barlock wouldn't want his wife to know about--and I've no doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!--why, he'll be sulky with me, and there'll be little or no work done on those new cases, and--oh, it's a devil of a mess all around, that's what it is!"

For all of which, however, the senior partner had his work to do, and he pitched in and was up to his ears in it until about half-past 3, when the junior partner's wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of ominous calm, arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great mass of white pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding austerity. The junior partner's wife and her mother replied to the senior partner's courteous greetings with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief that he was in league with the absent junior partner in his nefarious doings, or that he was at any rate attempting to shield the young man.

"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior partner politely asked the junior partner's wife's mother.

"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior partner's wife's mother, snappily.

"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the junior partner's wife.

"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty," she replied in a tone which seemed to convey the idea as plainly as words that she feared he might put something in the water that wouldn't do her any good.

The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three sat in unbroken silence for fully fifteen minutes, when the sound of a blustery, cheerful voice was heard in the office boy's anteroom, and a few seconds later a tall, broad-shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the office. When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms extended.

"Why, hello, there, Patsy!" he said. "I didn't know you'd be waiting for me, or I'd have come a-running--why, what's the matter here, anyhow?"

The junior partner's wife had shaken herself loose and averted her face when her husband had attempted to fold her in his arms. He stared at her for a moment, and then he stared at his mother-in-law.

"What's up, mom?" he asked his wife's mother. "What have I been and gone and done now, I'd like to know? Did I leave the water running in the bathroom before starting for Washington, or have you lost my bull-pup again, that you all look so queer--or what the deuce is it all about?"

Neither of the women vouchsafed him any reply, and he turned to his senior partner.

"I say, Topknot, look here; are you in on this?" he said to his senior partner, who was twiddling his thumbs and looking very much confused. "Did I rob a bank in my sleep last week, or have the papers come out and accused me of being a member of the Ice Trust, or"----

"My boy," the senior partner interrupted, judiciously rising and taking the mysterious telegram from the inside pocket of his frock coat, "the telegraphic message which I have in my hand, and which, I regret to say, I opened this morning, knowing that you would not be back in New York until late in the afternoon, has been the occasion, owing to its somewhat mysterious contents, of the seeming"----

"Let's see it, Topknot," said the junior partner, reaching for the telegram.

He spread it out and glanced over its two lines. By the time he got through reading it he was in a frenzy of excitement. He jerked his watch out and looked at it.

"I've just got time," he muttered to himself, hastily. "I'll just about be able to make it. Patsy, you stay here with your mother until I get back. I'll be back in twenty minutes or half an hour. Tell you all about it when I get back," and he was out of the office door and down the steps like a boy breaking out of a little red schoolhouse for recess.

A vacant cab happened to be passing just as he got outside, and he hailed the driver and darted into the vehicle.

"Drive like the devil to ----'s!" he shouted to the driver, and in something under three minutes he had rushed into the upstairs poolroom about four blocks from his office.

The second line of betting was in on the second race at St. Louis, and the horse Jim Conway was the rank outsider at 60 to 1. The junior partner crowded his way up to the counter and laid down a ten-dollar note.

"Gimme Jim Conway," he said to the man behind the counter.

"Conway, $600 to $10," said the money taker, and he had no sooner finished the words than the instrument began to click.

"They're off at St. Loo!" sang out the operator. "Rushfields in the lead, Cathedral second." Pause. "Cathedral at the quarter by two lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the half by three lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the three-quarters by a length, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral in the stretch by a neck, Rushfields second by a neck." Longer pause. "Jim Conway wins, easy, by three lengths!"

"Whoopee-wow!" The yell went up from the long-shot players in the room who had taken a chance on Jim Conway.

The junior partner stood around with a broad grin on his face while he waited for the race to be confirmed. Then he collected, bounded downstairs, hailed another cab, and in exactly seventeen minutes from the time he had left his office he was back there again. He was greeted with the same frigidity as characterized his original welcome. He still wore his broad grin, and he walked over to his desk, raised the lid, and began to dig into his pockets. He produced first one fat roll of bills and then another, and he slammed each roll down on his desk as if it were so much shavings. His wife and his wife's mother and his senior partner watched his performance with open mouths, as did the office boy who stood in the doorway. When the junior partner had made a pyramid of bills on his desk about as big as a fair-sized derby hat, he turned to his wife and asked her, still grinning:

"Did you read this telegram, my dear?" holding the message out in his hand.

"I certainly did," she replied, "and you would oblige me greatly if you would"----

"And who do you think this Jim Conway was, Patsy?" he interrupted.

"I hadn't the least idea in life," she replied, without any sign of relenting, "nor have I at the present moment. I intend, however, to find out who Mr. Conway is at the earliest possible mo"----

The junior partner fell into a revolving chair, stuck his legs out in front of him as far as they would reach, and roared so that he must have been heard all over the building. He roared so loud and long that the performance was infectious, and his wife and his wife's mother and his senior partner, notwithstanding the fact had begun to dawn upon them that they were in a foolish position, had to smile in spite of themselves. When the junior partner was able to splutter he managed to gasp his explanation in short sentences. Bub was a friend of his in St. Louis who followed the races out there, and who had promised to tip him off on the first good thing at a long price that was to be put over the plate at the St. Louis meeting. Bub had kept his promise, and the junior partner was $600 to the good. That was all.

"And if you don't go out and corner the foulard dress goods market to-morrow, Patsy," the junior partner concluded, addressing his wife, "on the strength of what our four-footed pal, Jim Conway, has done for us, why"----

When they had gone, the office boy, in sweeping out the office, picked up the telegram, that had slipped to the floor while the junior partner was laughing.

"Now, w'y couldn't I ha' got a piece o' dat!" said the office boy, disgustedly as he read the telegram. "I bin pickin' dat skate ev'ry day f'r de las' two weeks, and I knowed dis mornin' w'en I seen de St. Loo entries dat he'd win in buck-jump."

STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND.

_A Game in New Orleans That Makes Modern "Big" Poker Games Seem Tiny by
Comparison._

"The shrinkage in the value of poker winnings that get talked about nowadays," said the New Orleans turfman at the beach dinner, "is mournful, that's what it is. A few days ago a man told me that So-and-so, a gilded youth from up the State somewhere, had recently swooped down upon a gentleman's poker club in New York, and had removed himself from the scene of play, after a five-hour seance, with $8500 in winnings. The man who told me this leaned back, after he had sprung the $8500 climax, and waited for my eyes to protrude. He looked a bit miffed and sulky when they didn't protrude.

"'Why, durn it all,' said he, 'I believe you affect your cold-blooded way of taking things. To see you twiddle your thumbs a man 'ud suppose that you had no more sense than to imagine that an $8500 winning at a short poker sitting was the most ordinary thing in the'----

"'Easy, easy,' I had to put in, for he was heating himself unduly. Then, to bring him around to good nature again and to convince him that I wasn't attitudinizing, I was compelled to spend a half hour or so in unwinding a bit of a reel of the days when there were poker giants in this country. He wasn't quite willing, at the finish, to acknowledge that the winner at draw of $8500 was a poker pigmy, but when I happened to mention the occasion when Phil Cuthbert of St. James's parish dropped, in a two-handed game at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans, a little bundle of $400,000"----

"He told you, of course, that you were smoking," interrupted the New York man.

"No, he didn't. He asked me if it got into the New Orleans papers. I told him that in 1868 the New Orleans papers were too busy roasting the carpet-baggers to devote any space to such a minor matter as a $400,000 poker game at the St. Charles Hotel, where draw games approximating that in size were generally going on at any old hour of the day or night. There was some rhetoric, I admit, in that 'approximating' statement, but I wanted to set this New York man right. As a matter of fact, a $50,000 game of draw was not at all uncommon in the St. Charles's private poker parlors. After Phil Cuthbert had dropped that mound of $400,000 on one hand, the New Orleans papers did announce that Mr. Philip Cuthbert, the well-known planter of St. James's parish, was about to start on a gold-prospecting tour in the mountains of Honduras; but they were generous enough not to mention, if they knew it, that, with four aces in his hand, he had lost $400,000 to Mr. Joseph Lescolette, shipper, of Havre, Pernambuco, and New Orleans."

"Lost $400,000 on a hand consisting of four aces, am I to understand you said?" asked the New York man.

"The statement was to that general effect," replied the New Orleans turfman.

"Suppose you just lead up to that gradually by telling the story."