"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A couple of days before the game was to be on, while I was in the Pennsylvania avenue refreshment headquarters of the boys who came here from New York and other tracks to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum pipe in the game of life for a long time previously, walked in and edged around to the back room where the bookies were figuring on the amount of fresh money they were about to begin taking out of the national capital. The tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell about him, and as soon as I saw him I knew that he followed 'em in some kind of a hanger-on capacity. He walked over to a table where a number of the bookmakers were seated.
"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and addressing the party in general, 'you people are sports, ain't you?'
"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man were intended to convey to him the idea that they weren't publicly posing as hot tamales, anyhow. The man got no reply.
"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't you?' the up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring look all around.
"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies, just for the good-natured sake of breaking the silence.
"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a couple o' nags that have been running for the past six weeks over at the Maryland outlaw. They haven't been one, two, six in any race over there, and I've gone broke paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to do better over across the way at Alexander. I want to chuck 'em in a couple over there, anyhow, for luck. But I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland outlaw people, and I can't get my plugs away from there until the thirty's paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I want to know is, will you people cough up the thirty for me as a loan, so's I can get that pair o' mine down here?'
"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing smiles, and when he finished they gave him the laugh in chorus.
"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get all the outlaw racehorses I want for $2 a head.'
"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking sport, who appeared to be rather a guileless sort of chap for a man with a short stable of racers.
"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on edge, too,' he persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in 1:21 flat a couple of days ago.'