“You’re going to cover his bet?” queried Roke. “Good! I was afraid maybe you’d feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss, and—”
“Unless I break both wrists, in the next hour,” announced Frayne, “that certified check will start for the Dog News office by noon. It’s the same old wheeze: A dub has picked up a smattering of dog talk; he thinks he knows it all. He buys a bum pup with a thundering pedigree. The pedigree makes him think the pup is a humdinger. He brags about it to his folks. They think anything that costs so much must be the best ever, no matter how it looks. And he gets to believing he’s got a world beater. Then—”
“But, boss,” put in Roke with happy unction, “just shut your eyes and try to remember how that poor mutt looked! And the boob says he’s ‘even better than he gave promise to be.’ Do you get that? Yet you hear a lot about Scotchmen being shrewd! Gee, but I wish you’d let me have a slice of that $600 bet! I’d—”
“No,” said Frayne judicially. “That’s my own meat. It was caught in my trap. But I tell you what you can do: Wait till I send my check and till it’s covered, and then write to Mackellar and ask him if he’s willing to bet another $150, on the side, with you. From the way he sounds, you ought to have it easy in getting him to make the side bet. He needn’t tell his wife. Try it anyhow; if you like.”
Roke tried it. And, after ridiculously small objection on Jamie’s part, the side bet was recorded and its checks were posted with the editor of Dog News. Once more Lucius Frayne and his faithful kennel man shook hands in perfect happiness.
To the topmost steel rafters, where the grey February shadows hung, old Madison Square Garden echoed and reverberated with the multi-keyed barks of some two thousand dogs. The four-day show had been opened at ten o’clock of a slushy Wednesday morning. And as usual the collies were to be judged on the first day.
Promptly at eleven o’clock the clean-cut collie judge followed his steward into the ring. The leather-lunged runner passed down the double ranks of collie benches, bawling the numbers for the Male Puppy Class.
The judge had a reputation for quickness, as well as for accuracy and honesty. The Open classes, for male dogs, were certain to come up for verdict within an hour, at most.
Seven benches had been thrown into one, for the Frayne dogs. At its back ran a strip of red silk, lettered in silver: “LOCHINVAR COLLIE KENNELS.” Seven high-quality dogs lay or sat in this space de luxe. In the centre—his name on a bronze plate above his head—reclined Lochinvar King.
In full majesty of conscious perfection he lay there; magnificent as a Numidian lion, the target for all eyes. Conditioned and groomed to the minute, he stood out from his high-class kennel-mates like a swan among cygnets.