“You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference,” retorted Langdon.
“An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred? Is that dead to rights?”
“If The Dutchan wins you get the money,” replied the Trainer, circumspectly. “You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about takin' the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's mare, 'cause I can't stand for that, see?”
The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent, and proceeded:
“You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The Dutchman, damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an' if they had me up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had nothing to do with it.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's eyes, and said: “What did you write that letter for?”
The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the warning note he had sent to Crane.
“Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see? I wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with you.”
“I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't,” pleaded the boy; “give it back to me, sir.”
“You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare.”