As he spoke, a clerk entered with a bundle of papers in his hand. “For you to sign, Mr. Turner,” he said, and Turner, taking them, departed into his private office. One or two quick lunchers, the vanguard of the returning stream of regular patrons, came in at the outer door; the first, thin, pale and dyspeptic looking, making hastily for the ticker, with no attempt to conceal his anxiety; the other, stout, red-faced, and philosophic, following more calmly, his hat on the back of his head, making leisurely exploration with a toothpick the while, evidently with a certain not unpraiseworthy desire to show that even in the throes of a panic a man could still be game. As they approached, Carleton glanced first at the tape, then at his watch, then at the patch of blue sky. The tape said that Akme Mining was seventeen and a quarter, and that Suburban Electric was sixty-four and a half; the watch said that it was twelve-fifteen, and that the twelve-thirty train would get him to the Country Club in time for lunch; the patch of blue sky said “Come.” With a rather guilty haste he walked quickly toward the door, for a moment paused on the threshold, still listening to the whirring of the ticker; and then passed hurriedly out into the street.
It was Championship Cup day at the Country Club, and the locker room, when Carleton entered it two hours later, was crowded with excited men in various stages of dress and undress; men who had entered the Club five minutes before as respectable doctors, lawyers, bankers and business men, and who, five minutes later, were to emerge in a common indecorous garb of faded flannel shirts, dingy gray trousers and shapeless felt hats, making their way toward the first tee with an eagerness which in fulfilling their professional engagements, they were seldom, if ever, seen to display.
Carleton, entering, with the mechanical dexterity of long habit, almost with one motion stripped off coat and vest, collar and tie, and opening his locker, began pulling out his clubs and his battered golfing clothes. He affected not to see Henderson, thin and spare and brown, seated on a bench with knees drawn up under his chin and clasped by bare, sinewy arms.
Presently his rival rose and sauntered over to him across the room. He stood near Carleton in silence, and the two eyed each other with grins, hostile, yet friendly. Finally Henderson spoke. “Well,” he observed, without enthusiasm, “how’s the boy? Looking a little bit fine, what? A little bit pale for him, hey?” Carleton laughed, with elaborate disdain. “Oh, no, Tommy,” he returned, “can’t catch me that way. That’s too old a gag. Never felt better in my life, thanks. How are they scoring? Barnes finished yet?”
Henderson nodded. “Played this morning,” he said, “was going fine till the eighteenth, and then drove into the quarry, and dropped his nerve. Cost him nine for the hole, and did an eighty-five at that. Said his caddie moved just as he was swinging back for his drive; too bad, wasn’t it?”
His tone belied the grief expressed by his last words, and at his humorous wink Carleton openly smiled. Both could exult in the common enjoyment of seeing a dangerous rival put out of the running. “Yes, too bad,” he rejoined, “his eighty-five the best?”
Henderson shook his head. “No,” he answered, “fellow from Brooklawn did an eighty-three. Nothing much else under ninety, though; one or two eighty-nines, I believe, and an eighty-eight; better get limbered up a bit, Jack; it’s getting near our turn. See you outside.”
Carleton nodded, tightened his belt another hole, and reached for his clubs. Then, for a moment turning his back on the crowded room, he held out his hand, scanning the fingers critically. His ideas of conditioning himself were his own. He frowned slightly, shaking his head in displeasure. “That’s the first time that’s happened again so soon,” he muttered, “I thought I looked out for that this morning. Well, I know the answer, anyway,” and a couple of minutes later, wiping his lips with his handkerchief, he joined Henderson outside the club-house, and began leisurely to limber up.
It was a quarter of an hour later when, in answer to their names, they stepped forward to the first tee. Henderson, having the honor, surveyed his footing with care, and then, absolutely cool and phlegmatic, teed his ball, eyed the direction flag waving on the cop bunker some seventy yards away, and with his provokingly easy swing drove a ball without much “ginger” behind it, a trifle high yet superlatively safe, unerring in direction and with some distance to it as well, for the road was a full hundred and fifty yards from the tee, and the little white sphere stood out plainly against the green of the turf some twenty yards beyond. Still with the utmost deliberation he stepped back off the tee, and Carleton took his place. His style was almost the antithesis of Henderson’s. His tee was scarcely more than a pinch of the damp sand, just enough to insure a good lie for his ball; almost negligently, it seemed, he fell at once into his stance, swinging back with an astonishing freedom, yet with complete mastery of a somewhat dashing style, and coming through into a finish absolutely superb. Low and straight sped his ball, hardly more than twenty feet over the top of the bunker; then, beginning slowly to rise, soaring magnificently onward, finally to come to a stop some fifty or sixty yards beyond the road. Henderson whistled as they walked down the path. “Some one’s feeling fine,” he said. “Glad you got in one good one, anyway, Jack.”
Carleton smiled grimly. “Oh, a few more at home like that I guess,” he retorted, “you’ve got to crack an eighty to-day, Tommy, if you want to be in the game.”