“I tell you, mister, I was just about crazy to go out to the track and see that Whirlwind, Junior, eat ’em up. I could see in my mind about how it would be. The horse would keep pretty well in front for a while, till the jockey seen just what he had to beat, then he’d give Whirlwind his head, and mebbe beat him up, down the stretch. And there’d be a gang of howlin’ maniacs, yellin’ for the fav’rite to make good.
“You bet there’d be excitement enough to satisfy a modust young thing like me, and I wanted to mix up in it. Also, I wanted to set around with a knew-it-all grin all over my face and collect my bit, me havin’ gave Danny fifty to put down for me. Did you ever make a surething bet?” she asked.
“No,” replied the Boarder.
“Then,” Mrs. Sweeny said, “you don’t know the thrillin’ feelin’ you get, waitin’ for things to come across. I can’t describe it to you, but it sure is some feelin’. It begun with me as soon as Danny went out of the house, and kep’ up right along. At noon, I slips over to Mrs. Big Joe’s house for lunch and to stay there with her all afternoon. I couldn’t go to no track, with her feelin’ like she wanted to jump out of the window and spendin’ her time quarrelin’ with her nurse. She wouldn’t row none with me, b’cause she kept too interested in what scandal was goin’ on in our set.
“I guess mebbe I’d been there a’ hour, when the phone, that was set on a stand by her bed, begun to ring.
“‘I wisht,’ she says, all nervous, ‘I wisht, Belle, that some one would kick this thing in the eye for me. It like to drives me bugs,’ she says, puttin’ the receiver to her ear. I was siftin' close b’side her, and when she says ‘Hello!’ I could hear the voice at the other end real plain.
“‘Is Joe there?’ it says. And you can just guess that I set up and took notice. That there voice belonged to Mike the Wop, and I seen, just as clear as anything, that Big Joe was in on the deal, too. Somethin’ told me he was. Mrs. Big Joe said her husban’ wasn’t nowhere around. He was down at his pool room, she was sure.
“‘No,’ says Mike, ‘he ain’t there. I called up. Say, Mrs. Goss,’ he says, ‘I wisht I knew where to find him.’
“‘What you want with him?’ she says.
“‘There’s a bad tip loose,’ he says, ‘on Whirlwind, Junior,’ he says, ‘and I don’t want Joe to fall for it,’ he says. ‘Nobody’s supposed to play it,’ he says, ‘but Sweeny. It’s a plant,’ he says.