“Will the betting men take a hundred dollars from me on this horse, Lauzanne?” he asked, after the minute's pause, during which these thoughts had flashed through his mind.
“Will dey take a hundred? Will dey take a t'ousand! Say, what you givin' me?”
“If Lauzanne won, I'd win a thousand, would I?”
“If you put it down straight; but you might play safe—split de hundred, fifty each way, win an' show; Larcen'll be one, two, tree, sure.”
“I want to win a thousand,” declared Mortimer.
“Den you've got to plump fer a win; he's ten to one.”
Mortimer could hardly understand himself; he was falling in with the betting idea. It was an age since he stood at his desk in that bank, abhorrent of all gambling methods, to the present moment, when he was actually drawing from his pocket a roll of bills with which to bet on a horse.
He took a despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made a living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter. Not three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out the changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor.
Mortimer broke from his friend, and with quick steps reached the trainer's side.
“I want to find Alan Porter,” he said, in answer to Gaynor's surprised salutation.