“Hello, none other than the friend of me childhood!” exclaimed Blackie, springing to his feet and extending his hand. “What brings you here?”
“Broke,” replied Wallingford briefly. “They cleaned me. Got any money?”
Mr. Daw opened the top drawer of his desk, and it proved to be nearly full of bills, thrown loosely in, with no attempt at order or sorting. “Money’s the cheapest thing in Boston,” he announced, waving his hand carelessly over the contents of the drawer. “Help yourself, old man. The New York mail will bring in plenty more. They’ve had two winners there this week, and when it does fall for anything, N’Yawk’s the biggest yap town on earth.”
Wallingford, having drawn up a chair with alacrity, was already sorting bills, smoothing them out and counting them off in hundreds.
“And all on pure charity—picking out winning horses for your customers!” laughed Wallingford. “This is a real gold mine you’ve hit at last.”
“Pretty good,” agreed Blackie. “I’d have enough to start a mint of my own if I didn’t lose so much playing the races.”
“You don’t play your own tips, I hope,” expostulated Wallingford, pausing to inspect a tattered bill.
“I should say not,” returned Daw with emphasis. “If I did that I’d have to play every horse in every race. You see, every day I wire the name of one horse to all my subscribers in Philadelphia, another to Baltimore, another to Washington, and so on down the list. One of those horses has to win. Suppose I pick out the horse Roller Skate for Philadelphia. Well, if Roller skates home that day I advertise in the Philadelphia papers the next morning, and, besides that, every fall-easy that got the tip advertises me to some of his friends, and they all spike themselves to send in money for the dope. Oh, it’s a great game, all right.”
“It’s got yegging frazzled to a pulp,” agreed Wallingford. “But I oughtn’t to yell police. I got the lucky word my first time out. I played Razzoo and cleaned up six thousand dollars on the strength of your wire.”