“I always thought there was something back of your absent treatment. What was it?” Drake hitched his chair nearer and focused all his powers of concentration. “What was it, kid? Out with it. And if I can be of any help you know you have only to put it there.” He held out a large hand.
And then slowly, haltingly, but lucidly, dispassionately, events following in sequence, Garrison told everything; concealing nothing. Nor did he try to gloss over or strive to nullify his own dishonorable actions. He told everything, and the turfman, chin in hand, eyes riveted on the narrator, listened absorbed.
“Gee!” Jimmie Drake whispered at last, “it sounds like a fairy-story. It don't sound real.” Then he suddenly crashed a fist into his open palm. “I see, I see,” he snapped, striving to control his excitement. “Then you don't know. You can't know.”
“Know what?” Garrison sat bolt upright in his narrow cot, his heart pounding.
“Why—why about Crimmins, about Waterbury, about Sis—everything,” exclaimed Drake. “It was all in the Eastern papers. You were in Bellevue then. I thought you knew. Don't you know, kid, that it was proven that Crimmins poisoned Sis? Hold on, keep quiet. Yes, it was Crimmins. Now, don't get excited. Yes, I'll tell you all. Give me time. Why, kid, you were as clean as the wind that dried your first shirt. Sure, sure. We all knew it—then. And we thought you did—”
“Tell me, tell me.” Garrison's lip was quivering; his face gray with excitement.
Drake ran on forcefully, succinctly, his hand gripping Garrison's.
“Well, we'll take it up from that day of the Carter Handicap. Remember? When you and Waterbury had it out? Now, I had suspected that Dan Crimmins had been plunging against his stable for some time. I had got on to some bets he had put through with the aid of his dirty commissioners. That's why I stood up for you against Waterbury. I knew he was square. I knew he didn't throw the race, and, as for you—well, I said to myself: 'That ain't like the kid.' I knew the evidence against you, but it was hard to believe, kid. And I believed you when you said you hadn't made a cent on the race, but instead had lost all you had, I believed that. But I knew Crimmins had made a pile. I found that out. And I believed he drugged you, kid.
“Now, when you tell me you were fighting consumption it clears a lot of space for me that has been dark. I knew you were doped half the time, but I thought you were going the pace with the pipe, though I'll admit I couldn't fathom what drug you were taking. But now I know Crimmins fed you dope while pretending to hand you nerve food. I know it. I know he bet against his stable time and ag'in and won every race you were accused of throwing. I tracked things pretty clear that day after I left you.
“Well, I went to Waterbury and laid the charge against the trainer; giving him a chance to square himself before I made trouble higher up. Well, Waterbury was mad. Said he had no hand in it, and I believed him. The upshot of it was that he faced Crimmins. Now, Crimmins had been blowing himself on the pile he had made, and he was nasty. Instead of denying it and putting the proving of the game up to me, he took the bit in his mouth at something Waterbury said.