"Why not? The young fellow's been acting suspicious for a long time."
"You did very well."
"How about some money—I haven't seen the color of a roll since you put that fool Baskinelli into the game. Ain't you coming across?"
"Certainly; here," said Owen, handing over enough to sate even the predatory greed of Hicks. "Now, what I want you to do is to find me some one among your horse racing friends who is down and out enough to take a little cash job—at certain slight risks?"
"Yes—what?"
"I want a good rider on a wild horse. He could make a thousand dollars in an afternoon if the horse should happen to get wild at the right time and do the right thing."
"Hm'm," mused Hicks. "I wonder if Eddie Kaboff has still got his livery stable down on Tenth avenue. We might go see."
After ten minutes' walk Hicks brought up in front of a bill-plastered door in a fence. He held it open for Owen and they passed across a vacant lot to a large dilapidated-looking stable at the further end.
The short, dark man who sat in a tilted chair against the doorway and puffed lazily at a pipe, seemed to embody the spirit of the building and the business done there.
He was a man who had once—in the days of racing—been called a "sport." He might still be called "horsey" and would consider the term a compliment. But Eddie Kaboff's fame and fortune had both dwindled since the good old betting days when little swindling games larded the solid profits of crooked races. One by one his thoroughbreds had given up their stalls to truck horses, just as Eddie's diamond studs had given place to plain buttons.