"Mr. Wilson," he pleaded, "is it true that you're workin' for
Barcelona?"
"Now, you know I can't answer that."
I could read his mind struggling with this concept. It was sort of like
trying to read a deck of Chinese Fortune Cards being shuffled before
they're placed in the machine at the Penny Arcade. As the drunk once
said after reading the Telephone Directory: "Not much plot, but _egad_!
What a cast of characters!" The gist of his mental maundering was a
childlike desire to have everything sewed up tight. He wanted to win, to
be told that he'd win, and to have all the rules altered ad hoc to
assure his winning.
Just where he'd picked up the inside dope that Barcelona favored Flying
Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace in the Derby I could not dig out of him.
Just how Gimpy had made the association between this clambake and
me--good old Wally Wilson--I couldn't dig either. But here he was with
his--by now--sixty-five bucks carefully heisted, lifted, pinched and
fingered, and by the great Harry, Gimpy was not a-goin' to lay it across
the board on those three rejects from a claiming race unless he had a
cast-iron assurance that they'd come in across the board, one, two, and
three.
I said slowly, "_If_ I were even thinking of working for Mr. Barcelona,"
I told him, "I would be very careful never, never to mention it, you
know."
* * * * *
This bundle of The Awful Truth hit him and began to sink in with the
inexorable absorption of water dropping down into a bucket of dry sand.
It took some time for the process to climax. Once it reached Home Base
it took another period of time for the information to be inspected,
sorted out, identified, analyzed, and in a very limited degree,
understood.
[Illustration]