“There was somethink under the rose, depend on’t,” said a red-faced man in a green cutaway, and his whiskers cropped in that peculiar fashion which stamps the habitué of the race-course. “Smoucher and Jim were both high-flyers and knew how to make their books as well as any going; but there’s days on which even the knowin’ ones gets taken in, though not so often as the knowing ones would have you believe. Well, it’s a pity as how they were copped. They’d never have gone into the neighbourhood if it had not ha’ bin for the Dandy.”
“Vell, there now, I hope as how he aint a goin’ to blame Alf for it,” said the man with the comforter.
“In course not. Who says I do?”
“Nobody as I knows on.”
“I remember,” said the pale man, “the first night as the Dandy came to this ’ere blessed crib, and sat at this ’ere table and drank Max with Lorrie Stanbridge. She brought him here. I remember it well enough. Why, he was only a boy then, but his eyes were as sharp as needles, and his long white fingers seemed a ’itching for the game even then.”
“Ah,” soliloquised the gentleman with the white comforter, “Vat a pictur that hand vos to be sure!”
“I was made a cadger on that night in the little room upstairs. The ‘Smoucher’ used to have it then, just as Lorrie has it now; but as I was a coming out who should I see but these two—Lorrie and the little bloke? I guessed as how he was to be ’chanted the play’ too, but I didn’t guess as how that smock-faced kid was a goin’ to turn out as he has.”
“I never liked the ‘Smoucher,’” said the sporting man, “though I’ve often been on the ‘flimsy-kiddy’ and the ‘ring dodge’ down at Ascot with him. Still, I’m sorry he was made a target on, which, for sartain I am he has bin.”
“But, Jim,” said the man with the muffled mouth, “he vas a good sort. S’posin there vas any nasty or ticklish vork to be done on the fly, sitch as breaking a bobby’s head, he vas alvays ready and foremost to do it himself, instead of trying to put it on his pals.”
“Breaking a bobby’s head!” exclaimed another of the party; “’taint so easily done. It’s all very well for you chaps to talk, but I say it aint so easy. But, Lord love yer, there aint anybody here as is fit to hold a candle to Charley Peace—he was the man to knock over the bobbies.”