“I’m a Morning Journal reporter,” she found herself rattling on, as she stood there quaking in mysterious fear of him, “and we’re going to run a story about you being the Monte Cristo of modern circuit-followers, and all that sort of thing. Then we want to know if it was true that you copped one hundred and sixty thousands dollars on Africander at Saratoga, and if you would let our photographer get some nice pictures of your rooms here, and a good one of yourself—oh, yes, you would take a splendid picture. And then I wanted to know if it is true that your system is to get two horses that figure up as if they each had a good square chance and then play the longer of the two and put enough on the other for a place to cover your losses if the first one should lose. And our sporting editor has said that you make that a habit, and that often enough you are able to cash on both, and that you—”
“Say, look here, little girl, what in the devil are you driving at, anyway?”
“I’m a reporter on the Morning Journal,” she reiterated, vacuously, foolishly, passing her hand across her forehead with a weak little gesture of bewilderment. She could feel her courage withering away. Alcohol, she was learning, was an ally of untimely retreats.
“Well, it’s a shame for a girl like you to get afraid of me this way! Hold on, now, don’t butt in! It’s not square to use a mouth like that for talking—I’d rather see it laughing, any day. So just cool down and tell me, honest and out-and-out, what it is you’re after.”
She flung herself forward and hung on him, in a quite unlooked for paroxysm of hysteria, apparently reckless of the moment and the menace.
“It’s this,” she sobbed in a sudden mental obsession, the tears of actual anguish running down her face. “It’s this,” she went on shrilly, hurriedly. “I’ve put my money on the Duke of Kendall today—and if he doesn’t come in, I’m going to kill myself!”
Sunset Bryan let his arm drop from her shoulder in astonishment. Then he stepped back a few paces, studying her face as she mopped it with her moistened handkerchief. She would never drink brandy again, was the idle and inconsequential thought that sped through her unstable mind. For it was not she herself that was speaking and acting; it was, she felt, some irresponsible and newly unleashed spirit within her.
“Why’d you do it?” he demanded.
“Because—because Clara—that’s Clara Shirley, his rider’s sister—told me the Duke of Kendall was fixed to win on a long shot this afternoon!”
“Now, look here—are you, or are you not, a newspaper woman?”