Half an hour later, richer by a few pieces of silver, he stood in a telegraph-office, penning a message to Pert. "Letter received," he wrote. "Am well, but no luck. Will write to-day. Checkers."
Beside him as he wrote, stood a man whom he recognized—one Brown, an owner of a racing-stable. With the tail of his eye Checkers read what he was writing. It was a telegram to some one in St. Louis, and ran: "Stand a tap on the mare to-day. She can't lose." Checkers' heart was in his mouth. Instantly his resolution was taken. Out into the street he followed Brown. With the furtive care of a Hackshaw he shadowed him in and out of hotels and saloons, until about noon they brought up at a restaurant, where Checkers modestly seated himself at a table behind Brown and ordered a light repast. But Brown was hungry, and Checkers had ample time to think the thing over. "I 'm in luck at last," he soliloquized. "Stand a tap on the mare! His friend will play it in the foreign-book at East St. Louis and he 'll play it at the track. It must be a 'hot one'—I wonder what the odds will be. Well, I 'll keep this can 't-shake-me glide on my feet till I see what he plays, and then 'get down' on it myself. I 'll put up the gold-piece, and stand to either lose it or make a stake for myself. Somehow I 'd feel better to have it go in one last effort to make a killin' than to spend it a quarter at a time on sandwiches and cigarettes. To-night I 'll either be able to write to Pert that my luck has turned, or I 'll know the worst, and that 's some comfort. Ah, Brown 's paying his bill at last."
The summer meeting at Washington Park, with large purses and high-class horses, was over and gone. But there were other tracks where racing was carried on all the fall and most of the winter; gambling-hells, pure and simple, or rather, purely and simply gambling-hells, which the Legislature has since effectively closed.
In the betting-ring of one of these, that afternoon, Checkers threaded his way through the crowd after Brown. The programme showed that Brown had an entry in the last race—Remorse, an aged selling-plater. Checkers remembered the horse as one that had shown considerable speed as a three-year-old. He glanced at the programme again: Remorse, by Gambler, dam Sweetheart. Was it an omen? Remorse would certainly follow if he gambled away the keepsake which his sweetheart had given him. But wouldn't an equally poignant regret possess him if after this providential tip he failed to play the horse and she won? He felt that it would.
The fourth race was on, and the last was approaching. Brown stood at the edge of the ring, his hands in his pockets, smoking idly. The official results of the fourth were announced, and the bookmakers tacked up the entries for the last. Still, Brown seemed nonchalant.
Checkers anxiously watched the posting of the odds. "Remorse, four to one," he exclaimed under his breath. Brown also glanced at the blackboards—and lighted a fresh cigar. Every minute some one would buttonhole him, and ask, "How about Remorse?" "O, she's got a chance," he would answer, with a shrug which seemed to indicate that she had no chance.
The favorite, under a heavy play, was rapidly cut to even money, while the odds on the others were correspondingly increased. Remorse went to five and six to one. Brown took fifty dollars out of his pocket, and, going up to a prominent bookmaker, played—the favorite. Checkers was paralyzed. The same performance Brown repeated with another book-maker on the other side of the ring. Gradually Remorse's price went up to eight to one, as it became generally known that her owner was not playing her.
The favorite's odds went to "four to five," and Checkers fingered his gold piece nervously. One book-maker still laid even money. Here was his chance if he wanted to play it. He started forward, and stopped. As he hesitated, Brown sauntered out of the ring. Checkers followed mechanically.
From a distance he saw Brown meet two horsemen and, after a brief conversation, give them each a roll of bills. He saw these two enter the betting-ring and, taking opposite sides, "start down the line" on Remorse; then the scheme was revealed to him.
From stand to stand they went, betting Remorse in each book, ten and twenty dollars at a time; not enough to cause remark, but amounting to hundreds in the aggregate. Gradually the odds began to recede. Checkers rushed to the other end of the ring. "Gimme Remorse!" he exclaimed, excitedly, handing his gold-piece to a convenient blockman.