"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him.
"'Last night,' he replied.
"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness. Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at 15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that.
"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money—he had almost $50,000 then—in a string of useful horses, to be put into the hands of a competent trainer—or to have the whole bundle properly invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass.
"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank—all seemed to be right in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit coppering.
"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around $20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights, and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve, and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to inglorious defeat, one after another, for days.
"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death, somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a rush.
"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice to a man who treats her favors wantonly."
[AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.]
Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack.