THE initials “T. A. C.” before young Mr. Anderson’s name stood for Timothy Alfred Cartwright, his pious but practical parent having, by this combination, made a bid for the protection of the saints and the patronage of Cousin Al Cartwright, reputedly a millionaire and a bachelor. It was hoped in this manner that his position on earth and in heaven would be equally secure.
What Timothy’s chances are in the hereafter the reader must decide; but we do know that Cousin Al Cartwright proved both a weak reed and a whited sepulchre. Timothy’s parents had departed this life two years after Alfred Cartwright had disappeared from public view, leaving behind him two years’ work for a committee of Investigating Accounts.
When his surviving parent died, the boy was at school, and if he was not a prodigy of learning he was at least brilliant in parts.
Though it was with no great regret that he left school, he was old enough and shrewd enough to realise that a bowing acquaintance with the differential calculus, and the ability to conjugate the verb “avoir” did not constitute an equipment, sufficiently comprehensive (if you will forgive these long words), to meet and defeat such enemies to human progress as he was likely to meet in this cruel and unsympathetic world.
He had a small income bequeathed by his mother in a will which was almost apologetic because she left so little, and he settled himself down as a boarder in the house of a schoolmaster, and took up those branches of study which interested him, and set himself to forget other branches of education which interested him not at all.
Because of his ineradicable passion for challenging fate it was only natural that “T. A. C.” should bear a new significance, and since some genius had christened him “Take A Chance” Anderson the name stuck. And he took chances. From every throw with fate he learnt something. He had acquired some knowledge of boxing at school, and had learnt enough of the art to enable him to head the school. Such was his faith in himself and his persuasive eloquence that he induced Sam Murphy, ex-middle-weight and proprietor of the Stag’s Head, Dorking, to nominate and support him for a ten-rounds contest with that redoubtable feather-weight, Bill Schenk.
“Take A Chance” Anderson took his chance. He also took the count in the first round, and, returning to consciousness, vowed a vow—not that he would never again enter the ring, but that he would learn something more of the game before he did. Of course, it was very disgraceful that a man of his antecedents should become a professional boxer—for professional he became in the very act of failure—but that worried him not at all.
It is a matter of history that Bill Schenk was knocked out by Kid Muldoon, and that twelve months after his initiation into the prize ring “T. Anderson” fought twenty rounds with the Kid and got the decision on points. Thereafter, the ring knew “Take A Chance” Anderson no more.
He took a chance on race-courses, backing horses that opened at tens and closed at twenties. He backed horses that had never won before on the assumption that they must win some time. He had sufficient money left after this adventure to buy a book of form. He devoted his undoubted talent to the study of other games of chance. He played cards for matches with a broker’s clerk, who harboured secret ambitions of going to Monte Carlo with a system; he purchased on the hire system wonderfully cheap properties on the Isle of Thanet—and he worked.
For all his fooling and experimenting, for all his gambling and his chancing, Timothy never let a job of work get past him, if he could do it, and when he wasn’t working for sordid lucre he was working for the good of his soul. He went to the races with a volume of Molière’s plays under his arm, and between events he read, hereby acquiring the respect of the racing fraternity as an earnest student of form.