"Boy," said Old Man Curry, "Johnson has got a colt named Zanzibar that starts next Saturday. I thought I knew all the hosses in train-in' round here, but I've overlooked this one. Find out all you can 'bout him."
"Yes, suh!" answered Shanghai. "Bes' way to do that would be to bus' into a crap game. Misteh Johnson got a couple cullud swipes whut might know somethin'—crap-shootin' fools, both of 'em—an' whiles I'm rollin' them bones I could jus' let a few questions slip out. Yes, suh, that's good way, but when you ain't shoot-in' yo' money in the game they jus' nachelly don' know you 'mong them present. If you got couple nice, big, moon-face' dollahs to inves', they can't he'p but notice you. They got to do it!"
Old Man Curry smiled and dipped two fingers and a thumb into his vest pocket.
"Thank you, suh!" chuckled Shanghai, trying hard to appear surprised. "Thank you! This sutny goin' combine business with pleasuah!"
"Get away with you!" scolded Old Man Curry.
Now, nearly every one knows that the simon-pure feed-box information, the low-down and the dead-level tip, may be picked up behind any barn where hostlers, exercise boys, and apprentice jockeys congregate. Tongues are loosened at such a gathering, and the carefully guarded secrets of trainers and owners are in danger, for the one absorbing topic of conversation is horse, and then more horse.
Shanghai knew exactly where to go, and departed on his mission whistling jubilantly and chinking two silver dollars in his pocket.
At the end of three hours he returned, his hamlike hands thrust deep into empty pockets, and the look in his eye of one who has watched rosy dreams vanish.
"Where you been all this time?" snapped his employer wrathfully. "'As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to them that send him.' I declare, Solomon must have had some black stable boys! What you been at, you triflin' hound?"