“But there's no winner book on it,” objected Faust.
“That's just where your cleverness will come in,” suavely answered Crane. “There's no hurry, and there are always people looking for foolish money. There's one such in Chicago, O'Leary; and I fancy they could even be found in New York. But you ought to get fifty to one, about it, if you put it on easy.”
“I see you have Diablo entered for the Brooklyn,” Faust put out as a feeler. “Don't you want a commission worked on him?”
“I didn't enter him; that was somebody else's foolishness, and I don't want to back him.”
“He's a hundred to one.”
“A thousand would be short odds, I should say,” answered Crane. “But wait a bit. I bought him just to—well, I took him from some people who were tired of his cannibal ways, and promised to have a small bet on him the first time he ran, for—for the man.” The equivocation was really a touch of delicacy. “You might take the odds to fifty for me; there's not one chance in a million of his starting, but I might forget all about this little matter of the bet, even if I were foolish enough to pay post-money on him.”
“Hadn't I better dribble on more from time to time, if he has a chance?”
“Not of my money, thanks!” The “thanks” clipped like a steel trap, and the business was completed.
Faust went away more than ever suspicious of Crane and Diablo. That fifty dollars being put on for anybody else was bunkum. What was Crane up to anyway? If he really meant to back the horse he would not have started with such a trifle. Perhaps Diablo had been stuck in the Brooklyn simply to see how the handicapper would rate him.
Faust was convinced that Crane had some big coup in view; he would wait a little, and at the first move have a strong play himself.