“What're you givin' me?” demanded Langdon, angrily.
“Just what every blackguard ought to have—the truth.”
“By God!” the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took a step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.
“Oh, if you want to crawl—if you don't want to take Lauzanne—”
But Porter again interrupted Langdon—-“I said I'd take the horse, and I will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few parasites such as you are racing—it's creatures like you that give the sport a black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been done to-day, you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn Lauzanne over to Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where I'll give you a check for him.”
“Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin' to settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other place,” blustered Langdon, threateningly.
Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: “I guess the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep out of my way, I think.”
As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his trainer.
“The Stewards want to speak to you, sir,” said Dixon.
“All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne—I've bought him.”