BEAUTY PHILLIPS STEPS INTO THE SPOT-LIGHT FOR
HER GRAND SPECIALTY
Of course Blackie got his "bit" out of the spoils and hurried away
to pursue certain fortune-making plans of his own, while young
Wallingford, stopping in New York, prepared as elaborately to spend
one. It was some trouble at first to find the most expensive things in
New York, but at last he located them in the race-track and in Beauty
Phillips, the latter being the moderately talented but gorgeous "hit"
of _The Pink Canary_; and the thoroughbreds and Beauty made a splendid
combination, so perfect in their operations that one beautiful day
Wallingford awoke to the fact that the time had almost arrived to go
to work. At the moment he made this decision, the Beauty, as richly
colored and as expressionless as a wax model, was sitting at his side
in the grand-stand, with her eyes closed, jabbing a hole at random in
the card of the fifth race.
"Bologna!" exclaimed Wallingford, noting where the fateful pin-hole
had appeared. "It's a nice comic-supplement name; but I'll go down to
the ring and burn another hundred or so on him."
The band broke into a lively air, and the newest sensation of
Broadway, all in exquisite violet from nodding plume to silken hose,
looked out over the sunlit course in calm rumination. Her companion,
older but not too old, less handsome but not too ill-favored, less
richly dressed but not too plainly, nudged her.
"There goes your Money and Moonshine song again, dearie," she
observed.
Still calmly, as calmly as a digestive cow in pleasant shade, the star
of _The Pink Canary_ replied:
"Don't you see I'm trying not to hear it, mother?"
The eyes of "Mrs. Phillips" narrowed a trifle, and sundry tiny but
sharp lines, revealing much but concealing more, flashed upon her brow
and were gone. J. Rufus glanced in perplexity at her as he had done a
score of times, wondering at her self-repression, at her unrevealed
depths of wisdom, at her clever acting of a most difficult role; for
Beauty Phillips, being a wise young lady and having no convenient
mother of her own, had hired one, and by this device was enabled to
remain as placidly Platonic as a plate of ice-cream. Well, it was
worth rich gifts merely to be seen in proprietorship of her at the
supper places.
Wallingford rose without enthusiasm.
"Bologna won't win!" he announced with resigned conviction.
"Sure not!" agreed Beauty Phillips. "Bologna will stop to think at the
Barrier, and finish in the road of the next race."
"Bologna has to win," Wallingford rejoined, disputing both her and
himself. "There's only a little over a thousand left in your Uncle
Jimmy's bank-roll."
"And you had over forty thousand when Sammy Harrison introduced us,"
said the Beauty with a sigh. "Honest, Pinky, somebody has sure put a
poison curse on you. You're a grand little sport, but on the level,
I'm afraid to trail around with you much longer. I'm afraid I'll lose
my voice or break a leg."
"Old pal," agreed J. Rufus, "the hex is sure on me, and if I don't
walk around my chair real quick, the only way I'll get to see you will
be to buy a gallery seat."
"I was just going to talk with you about that, Jimmy," stated the
Beauty seriously. "You've been a perfect gentleman in every respect,
and I will say I never met a party that was freer with his coin; but
I've got to look out for my future. I won't always be a hit, and I've
got to pick out a good marrying proposition while the big bouquets
grow with my name already on 'em. Of course, you know, I couldn't
marry you, because nothing less than a million goes. If you only had
the money now--"
She looked up at him with a certain lazy admiration. He was
tremendously big; and rather good-looking, too, she gaged, although
the blue eyes that were set in his jovial big countenance were
entirely too small.
In reply to her unfinished sentence J. Rufus chuckled.
"Don't you worry about that, little one," said he. "I only wear you on
my arm for the same reason that I wear this Tungsten-light boulder in
my necktie: just to show 'em I'm the little boy that can grab off the
best there is in the market. Of course it'd be fine and dandy to win
you for keeps, but I know where you bought your ticket for, long ago.
You'll end by getting your millionaire. In six months he'll go dippy
over some other woman, and then you'll get your alimony, which is not
only a handy thing to have around the house, but proves that you're
perfectly respectable."
"You've got some good ideas, anyhow," she complimented him, and then
she sighed. "The only trouble is, every time one lines up that I
think'll do, I find he's got a wife hid away some place."
"And it isn't set down in her lines to fix up alimony for some other
woman," commented the pseudo Mrs. Phillips.
A couple of men, one nattily dressed and with curly hair, and the
other short and fat and wearing a flaming waistcoat, passed on their
way down to the betting-shed and carelessly tipped their hats.
"Do you know those two cheaps?" she inquired, eying their retreating
backs with disfavor.
Again Wallingford chuckled.
"Know them!" he replied. "I should say I do! Green-Goods Harry Phelps
and Badger Billy Banting? Why, they and their friends, Short-Card
Larry Teller and Yap Pickins, framed up a stud poker game on me the
first week I hit town, with the lovely idea of working a phoney pinch
on me; but I got a real cop to hand them the triple cross, and took
five thousand away from them so easy it was like taking four-o'clock
milk from a doorstep."
"I'm glad of it," she said, with as much trace of vindictiveness as
her beauty specialist would have permitted. "They're an awful
low-class crowd. They came over to my table one night in Shirley's,
after I'd met them only once, and butted in on a rich gentleman friend
of mine from Washington. They run up an awful bill on him and never
offered even to buy cigars, and then when he was gone for a minute to
pick out our wagon, they tried to get fresh with me right in front of
mother. I'm glad somebody stung 'em."
A very thick-set man, with an inordinately broad jaw and an
indefinable air of blunt aggressiveness, came past them and nodded to
J. Rufus with a grudging motion toward his shapeless slouch hat.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"Jake Block," he replied. "A big owner with so much money he could bed
his horses in it, and an ingrowing grouch that has put a crimp in his
information works. He's never been known to give out a tip since he
was able to lisp 'mamma.' He eats nothing but _table d'hote_ dinners
so he won't have to tell the waiters what he likes."
Jake Block, on some brief errand to the press box, returned just as J.
Rufus was starting down to the betting-shed, and he stopped a moment.
"How are you picking them to-day, Wallingford?" he asked
perfunctorily, with his eye on Beauty Phillips.
"Same way," confessed Wallingford. "I haven't cashed a ticket in
the meeting. I have the kind of luck that would scale John D.
Rockefeller's bank-roll down to the size of a dance-program lead
pencil."
"Well," said Jake philosophically, his eyes still on the Beauty,
"sometimes they come bad for a long time, and then they come worse."
At this bit of wisdom J. Rufus politely laughed, and the silvery voice
of Beauty Phillips suddenly joined his own; whereupon J. Rufus, taking
the hint, introduced Mr. Block to Miss Phillips and her mother. Mr.
Block promptly sat down by them.
"I've heard a lot about you," he began, "but I've not been around to
see _The Pink Canary_ yet. I don't go to the theater much."
"You must certainly see my second-act turn. I sure have got them
going," the Beauty asserted modestly. "What do you like in this race,
Mr. Block?"
"I don't like anything," he replied almost gruffly. "I never bet
outside of my own stable."
"We're taking a small slice of Bologna," she informed him. "I suppose
he's about the--the wurst of the race. Guess that's bad, eh? I made
that one up all by myself, at that. I think I'll write a musical
comedy next. But how do you like Bologna?" she hastily added, her own
laugh freezing as she saw her feeble little joke passed by in
perplexity.
"You never can tell," he replied evasively. "You see, Miss Phillips, I
never give out a tip. If you bet on it and it don't win you get sore
against me. If I hand you a winner you'll tell two or three people
that are likely to beat me to it and break the price before I can get
my own money down."
Beauty Phillips' wide eyes narrowed just a trifle.
"I guess it's all the same," remarked J. Rufus resignedly. "If you
have a hoodoo over you you'll lose anyhow. I've tried to pick 'em
forty ways from the ace. I've played with the dope and against it and
lost both ways. I've played hunches and coppered hunches, and lost
both ways. I've played hot information straight and reverse, and lost
both ways. I've nosed into the paddock and made a lifetime hit with
stable boys, jockeys, trainers, clockers and even owners, but every
time they handed me a sure one I got burned. Any horse I bet on turns
into a crawfish."
The saddling bell rang.
"You'd better hurry if you want to get a bet on Sausage," admonished
the beautiful one, and J. Rufus, excusing himself, made his way down
to the betting-shed, where he was affectionately known as The Big
Pink, not only on account of his complexion but on account of the huge
carnation Beauty Phillips pinned on him each day.
At the first book he handed up three one-hundred-dollar bills.
"A century each way on Bologna," he directed.
"Welcome to our city!" greeted the red-haired man on the stool, and
then to the ticket writer: "Twelve hundred to a hundred, five hundred
to a hundred, and two hundred to a hundred on Bologna for The Big
Pink. Johnnie, you will now rub prices on Bologna and make him
fifteen, eight and three; then run around and tell the other boys that
The Big Pink's on Bologna, and it's a pipe for the books at any odds."
Wallingford chuckled good-naturedly. In other days he would have
called that bit of pleasantry by taking another hundred each way
across, at the new odds, but now his funds were too low.
"Some of these days, Sunset," he threatened the man on the stool,
"I'll win a bet on you and you'll drop dead."
"I'll die rich if your wad only holds out till then," returned Sunset,
laughing.
With but very little hope J. Rufus returned to the grand-stand, where
royalty sat like a warm and drowsy garment upon Beauty Phillips; for
Beauty was on the stage a queen, and outside of working-hours a
princess. Jake Block was still there, and making himself agreeable to
a degree that surprised even himself, and he was there yet when
Bologna, true to form, came home contentedly following the field. He
joined them again at the close of the sixth race, when Carnation, a
horse which the Beauty had picked because of his name, was just nosed
out of the money, and he walked with them down to the carriage gate.
As Block seemed reluctant to leave, he was invited to ride into the
city in the automobile J. Rufus had hired by the month, and accepted
that invitation with alacrity. He also accepted their invitation to
dinner, and during that meal he observed:
"I think, Miss Phillips, I'll go around and see _The Pink Canary_
to-night, and after the show I'd like to have you and your mother and
Wallingford take supper with me, if you have no other engagement."
"Sure," said Beauty Phillips, too eagerly for Wallingford's entire
comfort; and so it was settled.
Wallingford, although he had seen the show until it made him deathly
weary, went along and sat with Block in a stage box. During one of the
dull spots the horseman turned to his companion very suddenly.
"This Beauty Phillips could carry an awful handicap and still take the
Derby purse," he announced. "She beats any filly of her hands and age
I ever saw on a card."
"She certainly does," assented J. Rufus, suave without, but irritated
within.
"I see you training around with her all through the meet. Steady
company, I guess."
"Oh, we're very good friends; that's all," replied Wallingford with
such nonchalance as he could muster.
"Nothing in earnest, then?"
"Not a thing."
"Then I believe I will enter the handicap myself, that is if you don't
think you can haul down the purse."
"Go in and win," laughed J. Rufus, concealing his trace of
self-humiliation. He had no especial interest in Beauty Phillips, but
he did not exactly like to have her taken away from him. It was too
much in evidence that he was a loser. However, he was distinctly "down
and out" just now, for Beauty Phillips quite palpably exerted her
fascinations in the direction of that box, and Jake Block was most
obviously "hooked;" so much so that at supper he revealed his interest
most unmistakably, and parted from them reluctantly at the curb,
feeling silly but quite determined.
Wallingford made no allusion to Miss Phillips' capture of the
horseman, even after they had reached the flat, where he had gained
the rare privilege of calling, and where the Beauty's "mother" always
remained in the parlor with them, awake or asleep.
Rather sheepishly, J. Rufus produced from his pocket a newspaper
clipping of the following seductive advertisement, which he passed
over to the Beauty:
BOSTON.
Yesterday we slipped across, for the benefit of our happy
New York and Brooklyn subscribers, that juicy watermelon,
_Breezy_, a ten to one shot and the play on this section of
hot dog was so strong it put a crimp in the bookies as deep
as the water jump. To-morrow we have another lallapalooza
at long odds that will waft under the wire and have the
blanket on about the time the field is kicking dust at the
barrier. This peacherino has been under cover throughout
the meeting, but to-morrow it will be ripe and you want to
get in on the killing.
Will wire you the name of this pippin for five dollars;
full service twenty dollars a week.
NATIONAL CLOCKERS' ASSOCIATION.
"I fell for this," he explained, after she had read it with a
sarcastic smile; "poked a fi'muth in a letter cold, and let 'em have
it."
The Beautiful One regarded him with pity.
"Honest, Pinky," she commented, "your soft spot's growing. If you
don't watch out the specialists'll get you. Do you suppose that if
these cheap touts had such hot info. as that, they'd peddle it out, in
place of going down to the track and coming back with all the money in
the world in their jeans?"
"Sure not," said he patiently. "They don't know any more about it than
the men who write the form sheets; but we've tried everything from
stable-dope to dreaming numbers and can't get one of them to run for
us. So I'm taking a chance that the National Strong Arm Association
might shut their eyes in the dark and happen to pass me the right name
without meaning it."
"There's some sense to that," admitted the Beauty reflectively.
"You'll get the first wire to-morrow morning, won't you? Just my luck.
It's matinee day and I'd like to see you try it."
"That's all right," said J. Rufus. "I'll have the money to show you as
a surprise at dinner."
The Beauty hesitated.
"I--I'm engaged for dinner to-morrow," she stated, half reluctantly.
He was silent a moment.
"Block? That means supper, too."
"Yes. You see, Jimmy, I've just got to give 'em all a try-out."
"Of course," he admitted. "But he won't do. I'll bet you a box of
gloves against a box of cigars."
"I won't bet you," she replied, laughing. "I've got a hunch that I'd
lose."