"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious like. 'That's darned good of you to tell me. But you're not telling me that for your health, either. He's going to lose, eh?'
"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now, you're a pretty nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you. Understand?'
"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?'
"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,' said the confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this thousand-dollar William, don't you? Well, I want you to take a thousand-dollars' worth of my horse to win for my account, see, when you make your book on that race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose anyhow. You see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar or so. You take this $1,000 of the suckers' money for me on your book, and your reward 'll be in knowing what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? Is it a go?'
"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman. It looked like taking candy from a child. If that owner's horse wasn't going to lose, it looked like a cinch that he wasn't going to risk any thousand-dollar bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding he was going to give the talent the next day. He chuckled to himself when the other books only laid even money against the sprinter when the betting on the race began the next afternoon.
"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves to lay a long price if they knew, like I do, that the favorite is going to kerflop,' mused the ex-groceryman—he wailed me the whole spiel afterward—and he laid 2 to 1 against the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he only exulted whole lots inside of him.
"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where I get the big end of it.'
"Within three minutes after he had started his slate he had taken in the horse owner's $1,000 worth of his horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just battled to get at his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll just tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses went to the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public money at 2 to 1 on that horse that was going to lose, and he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to the good.
"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got away the skate that the ex-grocer had laid his whole $1,000 against walked in on the bit, fifteen lengths to the good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps all the way from the flag-fall.
"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay pipe and an eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went out of business, and he's been out of business ever since. It took him about a week to get contiguous to the fact that the men who collected his $10,000 were the smooth owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the owner had removed his string from Gloucester, and was taking a little winter cruise in a felucca in the Ægean Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up again, and there's a conflagration, I'll know how it started."