One day last week I was beating the ballast up Broadway when Pete,
the Piker, declared himself in and began to chatter about cinches
at the track.
"Get the saw, Pete, and cut it," I said; "it's many a long day
since I've been a Patsy for the ponies. Once they stung me so hard
that for months my bank account looked like a porous plaster, so I
took the chloroform treatment and now you and your tips to the
discards, my boy, to the discards!"
Pete isn't really a native of Dopeville-on-the-Fence, but he likes
to have people think he knows the racing game backwards.
And he does--backwards. In real life he's a theatrical manager and
his name on the three-sheets is Peter J. Badtime, the Human Salary
Spoiler.
In theatrical circles they call him the impresario with the sawdust
koko and the split-second appetite.
Every time Pete poses as an angel for a troupe if you listen hard
you can hear the fuse blow out somewhere between Albany and
Schenectady.
From time to time over 2,197 actors have had to walk home on
account of Pete's cold feet.
Pete can develop a severe case of frosted pave pounders quicker
than any angel that ever had to dig for the oatmeal money.
Pete is an Ace all right--the Ace of Chumps!
His long suit when he isn't dishing out his autobiography is to
stand around a race track and bark at the bookmakers.
Pete is what I would call a plunger with the lid on.
He never bets more than two dollars on a race and even then he
keeps wishing he had it back.
Pete had me nailed to the corner of Broadway and 42d Street for
about ten minutes when fortunately Bunch Jefferson rolled up in his
new kerosene cart and I needed no second invitation to hop aboard
and give Pete the happy day-day!
"Whither away, Bunch?" I asked, as the Bubble began to do a Togo
through the fattest streets in the town.
"I thought I'd run up and get the girls and take 'em for a spin out
to the Belmont Park races," Bunch came back.
"Did you telephone them?" I inquired.
"No, but I told Alice this morning that if I got through at the
office in time I'd take her to the track. We can call for Peaches
on the way across town," was Bunch's program.
"Whisper, Bunch!" I suggested; "let's do the selfish gag for once
and leave the wives at home. I haven't bet a nickle on a skate for
two years, but my little black man has the steering wheel to-day
and I'm going to fall off the sense wagon and break a five dollar
bill."
"I'm with you, John," chuckled Bunch, and half an hour later we
were on our way | to the track, after having sent notes to our
wives that important business kept us chained to the post of duty,
but if they would meet us at the Hotel Astor at 7 p.m. we'd all
dine together.
Bunch had just tied his Bubble to a tree at the track and was in
the act of giving it a long cool drink of gasolene and some cracked
oats, when Flash Harvey bore down on us and made a touch for the
turn-out.
"Say, Bunch!" chirped Flash, "lend me the choo-choo for half an
hour, will you? I have my sister and a dream cousin of ours from
Hartford here this aft. and I'm eager to show them how I can pound
a public road with a rowdy-cart. I'll take good care of the
machine and be back in two hours, honest, Bunch!"
Flash being an old friend of ours Bunch had to fall for the spiel
and loaned him the Bubble forthwith.
Ten minutes later we were so busy listening to the sure-things
falling from the eager tongues of the various friends we met that
we quite forgot all about Flash and the busy barouche.
The first cinch-builder we fell over was Harry McDonough, the
inventor of the stingless mosquito now in use on his Jersey farm.
Harry has the mosquito game down so fine that he's going to take a
double sextette of them into vaudeville next season.
He has trained these twelve skeets to sing "Zobia Grassa," and Al
Holbrook has promised to teach them a Venetian dances.
Harry offered us four winners in the first race and two cigars. He
told us if we lost to smoke the cigars carefully and we'd forget
our troubles and our names; but if we won we could use the cigars
as firecrackers.
Then we ran across Jeff D'Angelis, the composer of the new tune now
played on the automobile horns.
Jeff hadn't picked out a horse to win any race because his loyalty
to sneeze-wagons is so intense that he won't even drink a horse's
neck.
He explained that he only came to the race track to show the horses
his smoke-buggy and make them shiver.
George Yates, the inventor of the machinery for removing sunburn
from pickles, was there and he tried to present us with a sure
winner in the third race.
A little later on we discovered that the horse Yates was doing a
rave over had been dead for four years and that the card from which
he was lifting his dope was the program of the meet at Sheepshead
in 1896.
Some kind and thoughtful stranger had lifted fifty cent| from
George's surplus and in return had stung him with an ancient echo
of the pittypats.
Our next adventure was with Joe Miron, the famous horse trainer and
inventor of the only blue mare in captivity at Elmhurst.
"Say, why didn't I see you guys before the first race; I had a
plush-covered pipe!" yelled Joe.
"I had that race beat to a stage wait," Joe went on,
enthusiastically. "Why, all you had to do was play 'The Goblin
Man' to win and 'Murderallo' for a place--it was just like getting
money from the patent medicine business."
"How much did you win, Joe?" I inquired.
"Who, me!" Joe came back. "Why I didn't get here in time to place
a bet. I drove over from Elmhurst and the blue mare burst a tire.
But, say, I've got a mother's darling in the third race! Oh, it's
a ladybug for certain! You guys play 'Perhaps' to win and you'll
go home looking like Pierp Morgan after a busy day. It can't lose,
this clam can't! Say, that horse 'Perhaps' wears gold-plated
overshoes and it can kick more track behind it than any ostrich you
ever see! Why,| it's got ball-bearing castors on the feet and it
wears a naphtha engine in the forward turret. Get reckless with
the coin, boys, and go the limit, and if the track happens to cave
in and it does lose, I'll drag you down to Elmhurst behind the blue
mare and make the suction pump in the backyard do an imitation of
Walter Jones singing 'Captain Kidd' with the bum pipes."
Joe was so much in earnest about it that Bunch and I put up fifty
on "Perhaps" and waited.
We are still waiting.
"Perhaps" may have been a good horse but he had a bad memory and
never could recollect which end of the track was the proper place
to finish.
Joe must have left for Elmhurst immediately after the race because
he failed to answer roll call.
Then we ran across Dave Torrence, the famous inventor of the
disappearing trump so much used by pinochle players.
When Dave began to dope 'em out for us Bunch and I hid our
pocketbooks in our shoes.
"Here's a good one," Dave suggested; "listen to this 'Easy Money'
out of 'Life Insurance' by 'Director.' And here's a good one,
'Chauffeur' out of 'Automobile' by 'Policeman!' Do you care for
those?"
There were tears in Bunch's eyes, but I was busy looking for a rock.
"Here are some more peacherinos," Dave went on, relentlessly, "here
is 'Golf Player' out of 'Business' by 'Mosquito,' and here's
another good one, 'Eternal Daylights' out of 'Russia' by
'Japan'--like 'em?"
Bunch and I handed Dave the reproachful face and fled for our lives.
Then we got down to business and began to lose our money with more
system and less noise.
At the end of the fifth race we hadn't the price of a leather
sandwich between us.
Every dog we had mentioned to the Bookies proved to be a false
alarm.
Every turtle we plunged on carried our money to the bonfire and
dumped it in.
"My little black man is whimpering, Bunch," I said. "I'm cured."
"One hundred and sixty bucks to the bad for mine," laughed Bunch.
"I guess that will hold me temporarily. Come on, John; let's hop
in the Bubble and dash back to the Hotel Astor; the girls will be
waiting for us."
We hurried to the spot where Flash Harvey was to leave the
gas-hopper but there was no sign of Flash or the machine.
Seven o'clock came and still no sign of Flash or the Bubble, and
there we sat, two sad boys without a baubee in the jeans, hungry to
the limit and with an ever present vision of our two worried wives
displacing a bunch of expensive space in a restaurant while they
waited for us to show.
It was pitiful.
Eight o'clock came, no Flash, no machine, while there we waited and
watched our hair as it slowly turned gray.
I had gone through my pockets till I wore holes in them without
locating anything in the shape money, but finally on about the
919th lap Bunch discovered dollar bill tucked away in a corner,
whereupon we turned our faces to every point of the compass and
called down maledictions on the head of Flash Harvey, wherever he
might be, and then ducked for the trolley.
When we finally reached the Hotel Astor it was a quarter past ten,
so we decided it was too late for dinner and we didn't go in.
At home--but what's the use?
The war is over now and a treaty of peace has been signed.
We are even with Flash Harvey, though.
He got speed-foolish in the Bubble and tried to give an imitation
of a torpedo destroyer, with the result that a Reub constable
pinched him and the whole outfit and threw him in a rural Bastile
for the night.
That's what delayed him.