The big town - Only One - (1)

About a week after this, the Mrs. made the remark that the Decker wasn’t big enough to hold both she and Perkins.
    “She treats us like garbage,” says the Mrs., “and if I stay here much longer I’ll forget myself and do her nose in a braid.”
    But Perk left first and saved us the trouble. Her husband was down in Texas looking after some oil gag and he wired her a telegram one day to come and join him as it looked like he would have to stay there all summer. If I’d of been him I’d of figured that Texas was a sweet enough summer resort without adding your wife to it.
    We was out on the porch when her ladyship and two dogs shoved off.
    “Three of a kind,” said the Mrs.
    And she stuck her tongue out at Perk and felt like that made it all even. A woman won’t stop at nothing to revenge insults. I’ve saw them stagger home in a new pair of 3 double A shoes because some fresh clerk told them the 7 Ds they tried on was too small. So anyway we decided to stay on at the Decker and the two gals prettied themselves up every night for dinner in the hopes that somebody besides the head-waiter would look at them twice, but we attracted about as much attention as a dirty finger nail in the third grade.
    That is, up till Herbert Daley come on the scene.
    Him and Katie spotted each other at the same time. It was the night he come to the Decker. We was pretty near through dinner when the head-waiter showed him to a table a little ways from us. The majority of the guests out there belongs to the silly sex and a new man is always a riot, even with the married ones. But Daley would of knocked them dead anywheres. He looked like he was born and raised in Shubert’s chorus and the minute he danced in all the women folks forgot the feed bag and feasted their eyes on him. As for Daley, after he’d glanced at the bill of fare, he let his peepers roll over towards our table and then they quit rolling. A cold stare from Kate might have scared him off, but if they was ever a gal with “Welcome” embroidered on her pan, she’s it.
    It was all I could do to tear Ella and Sis from the dining room, though they was usually in a hurry to romp out to the summer parlor and enjoy a few snubs. I’d just as soon of set one place as another, only for the waitress, who couldn’t quit till we did and she generally always had a date with the big ski jumper the hotel hires to destroy trunks.
    Well, we went out and listened a wile to the orchestra, which had brought a lot of new jazz from the Prince of Pilsen, and we waited for the new dude to show up, but he didn’t, and finally I went in to the desk to buy a couple of cigars and there he was, talking to Wurz, the manager. Wurz introduced us and after we’d shook hands Daley excused himself and said he was going upstairs to write a letter. Then Wurz told me he was Daley the horseman.
    “He’s just came up from the South,” says Wurz. “He’s going to be with us till the meetings is over at Jamaica and Belmont. He’s got a whale of a stable and he expects to clean up round New York with Only One, which he claims can beat any horse in the world outside of Man o’ War. They’s some other good ones in the bunch, too, and he says he’ll tell me when he’s going to bet on them. I don’t only bet once in a long wile and then never more than $25 at a crack, but I’ll take this baby’s tips as often as he comes through with them. I guess a man won’t make no mistake following a bird that bets five and ten thousand at a clip, though of course it don’t mean much to him if he win or lose. He’s dirty with it.”
    I asked Wurz if Daley was married and he said no.
    “And listen,” he says: “It looks like your little sister-in-law had hit him for a couple of bases. He described where she was setting in the dining room and asked who she was.”
    “Yes,” I said, “I noticed he was admiring somebody at our table, but I thought maybe it was me.”
    “He didn’t mention you,” says Wurz, “only to make sure you wasn’t Miss Kate’s husband.”
    “If he was smart he’d know that without asking,” I said. “If she was my wife I’d be wearing weeds.”
    I went back to the gals and told them I’d met the guy. They was all steamed up.
    “Who is he?” says Kate.
    “His name is Herbert Daley,” I told her. “He’s got a stable over to Jamaica.”
    “A stable!” says Ella, dropping her jaw. “A man couldn’t dress like he and run a livery.”
    So I had to explain that he didn’t run no livery, but owned a string of race horses.
    “How thrilling!” says Katie. “I love races! I went to the Grand Circuit once, the time I was in Columbus.”
    “These is different,” I says. “These is thurlbreds.”
    “So was they thurlbreds!” she says. “You always think a thing can’t be no good if you wasn’t there.”
    I let her win that one.
    “We must find out when the race is and go,” said the Mrs.
    “They’s six of them every day,” I said, “but it costs about five smackers apiece to get in, to say nothing about what you lose betting.”
    “Betting!” says Katie. “I just love to bet and I never lose. Don’t you remember the bet I made with Sammy Pass on the baseball that time? I took him for a five-pound box of candy. I just felt that Cincinnati was going to win.”
    “So did the White Sox,” I says. “But if you bet with the boys over to Jamaica, the only candy they’ll take you for is an all-day sucker.”
    “What did Mr. Daley have to say?” asked Ella.
    “He had to say he was pleased to meet me,” I told her. “He proved it by chasing upstairs to write a letter.”
    “Probably to his wife,” said Kate.
    “No,” I said. “Wurz tells me he ain’t got no wife. But he’s got plenty of jack, so Wurz says.”
    “Well, Sis,” says the Mrs., “that’s no objection to him, is it?”
    “Don’t be silly!” said Katie. “He wouldn’t look at me.”
    “I guess not!” I says. “He was so busy doing it in the dining room, that half his soup never got past his chin. And listen: I don’t like to get you excited, but Wurz told me he asked who you was.”
    “O Sis!” said the Mrs. “It looks like a Romance.”
    “Wurz didn’t say nothing about a Romance,” said I. “He may be interested like the rubes who stare with their mouth open at Ringling’s ‘Strange People.’”
    “Oh, you can’t tease Sis like that,” said Ella. “She’s as pretty as a picture to-night and nobody could blame a man from admiring her.”
    “Especially when we don’t know nothing about him,” I says. “He may be a snow-eater or his upstairs rooms is unfurnished or something.”
    “Well,” says Ella, “if he shows up again to-night, don’t you forget to introduce us.”
    “Better not be in no hurry,” I said.
    “Why not?” said Ella. “If him and Sis likes each other’s looks, why, the sooner they get acquainted, it won’t hurt nothing.”
    “I don’t know,” I says. “I’ve noticed that most of the birds you chose for a brother-in-law only stayed in the family as long as they was strangers.”
    “Nobody said nothing about Mr. Daley as a brother-in-law,” says Ella.
    “Oh!” I said. “Then I suppose you want Katie to meet him so as she can land a hostler’s job.”
    Well, in about a half hour, the gals got their wish and Daley showed up. I didn’t have to pull no strategy to land him. He headed right to where we was setting like him and I was old pals. I made the introductions and he drawed up a chair and parked. The rest of the guests stared at us goggle-eyed.
    “Some hotel!” says Daley.
    “We like it,” says the Mrs. “They’s so many nice people lives here.”
    “We know by hearsay,” I said, but she stepped on my foot.
    “It’s handy for me,” said Daley. “I have a few horses over to the Jamaica race track and it’s a whole lot easier to come here than go in Town every night.”
    “Do you attend the races every day?” says Katie.
    “Sure,” he says. “It’s my business. And they’s very few afternoons when one of my nags ain’t entered.”
    “My! You must have a lot of them!” said Kate.
    “Not many,” says Daley. “About a hundred. And I only shipped thirty.”
    “Imagine!” said Kate.
    “The army’s got that many,” I said.
    “The army ain’t got none like mine,” says Daley. “I guess they wished they had of had. I’d of been glad to of helped them out, too, if they’d asked me.”
    “That’s why I didn’t enlist,” I said. “Pershing never even suggested it.”
    “Oh, I done my bit all right,” says Daley. “Two hundred thousand in Liberty Bonds is all.”
    “Just like throwing it away!” I says.
    “Two hundred thousand!” says Ella. “And you’ve still got money left?”
    She said this in a joking way, but she kept the receiver to her ear.
    “I ain’t broke yet,” says Daley, “and I don’t expect to be.”
    “You don’t half know this hotel,” I says.
    “The Decker does charge good prices,” said Daley, “but still and all, a person is willing to pay big for the opportunity of meeting young ladies like the present company.”
    “O Mr. Daley!” said Kate. “I’m afraid you’re a flatter.”
    “I bet he makes them pretty speeches to every woman he meets,” says Ella.
    “I haven’t met none before who I felt like making them,” says Daley.
    Wile they was still talking along these lines, the orchestra begin to drool a Perfect Day, so I ducked out on the porch for air. The gals worked fast wile I was gone and when I come back it was arranged that Daley was to take us to the track next afternoon in his small car.
    His small car was a toy that only had enough room for the people that finds fault with Wilson. I suppose he had to leave his big car in New York on account of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge being so frail.
    Before we started I asked our host if they was a chance to get anything to drink over to the track and he says no, but pretty near everybody brought something along on the hip, so I said for them to wait a minute wile I went up to the room and filled a flask. When we was all in the car, the Mrs. wanted to know if it wasn’t risky, me taking the hooch along.
    “It’s against the prohibition law,” she says.
    “So am I,” I said.
    “They’s no danger,” says Daley. “They ain’t began to force prohibition yet. I only wished they had. It would save me a little worry about my boy.”
    “Your boy!” said Katie, dropping her jaw a foot.
    “Well, I call him my boy,” says Daley. “I mean little Sid Mercer, that rides for me. He’s the duke of them all when he lays off the liquor. He’s gave me his word that he won’t touch nothing as long as he’s under contract to me, and he’s kept straight so far, but I can’t help from worr’ing about him. He ought to be good, though, when I pay him $20,000 for first call, and leave him make all he can on the side. But he ain’t got much stren’th of character, you might say, and if something upsets him, he’s liable to bust things wide open.
    “I remember once he was stuck on a gal down in Louisville and he was supposed to ride Great Scott for Bradley in the Derby. He was the only one that could handle Scott right, and with him up Scott would of win as far as from here to Dallas. But him and the gal had a brawl the day before the race and that night the kid got stiff. When it come time for the race he couldn’t of kept a seat on a saw horse. Bradley had to hustle round and dig up another boy and Carney was the only one left that could ride at all and him and Great Scott was strangers. So Bradley lose the race and canned Mercer.”
    “Whisky’s a terrible thing,” says Ella. A woman’ll sometimes pretend for a long wile like she’s stupid and all of a sudden pull a wise crack that proves she’s a thinker.
    “Well,” says Daley, “when Bradley give him the air, I took him, and he’s been all right. I guess maybe I know how to handle men.”
    “Men only?” says Katie, smiling.
    “Men and horses,” said Daley. “I ain’t never tried to handle the fair sex and I don’t know if I could or not. But I’ve just met one that I think could handle me.” And he give her a look that you could pour on a waffle.
    Daley had a table saved for him in the clubhouse and we eat our lunch. The gals had clubhouse sandwiches, probably figuring they was caught fresh there. They was just one of Daley’s horses entered that day and he told us he wasn’t going to bet on it, as it hadn’t never showed nothing and this was just a try-out. He said, though, that they was other horses on the card that looked good and maybe he would play them after he’d been round and talked to the boys.
    “Yes,” says Kate, “but the men you’ll talk to knows all about the different horses and they’ll tell you what horses to bet on and how can I win?”
    “Why,” says Daley, “if I decide to make a little bet on So-and-So I’ll tell you about it and you can bet on the same horse.”
    “But if I’m betting with you,” says Kate, “how can we bet on the same horse?”
    “You’re betting with me, but you ain’t betting against me,” said Daley. “This ain’t a bet like you was betting with your sister on a football game or something. We place our bets with the bookmakers, that makes their living taking bets. Whatever horse we want to bet on, they take the bet.”
    “They must be crazy!” says Katie. “Your friends tell you what horse is going to win and you bet on them and the bookbinders is stung.”
    “My friends makes mistakes,” says Daley, “and besides, I ain’t the only guy out here that bets. Pretty near everybody at the track bets and the most of them don’t know a race horse from a corn plaster. A bookmaker that don’t finish ahead on the season’s a cuckoo. Now,” he says, “if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll go down to the paddock and see what’s new.”
    So wile he was gone we had a chance to look round and they was plenty to see. It was a Saturday and a big crowd out. Lots of them was gals that you’d have to have a pick to break through to their regular face. Since they had their last divorce, about the only excitement they could enjoy was playing a long shot. Which reminds me that they’s an old saying that nobody loves a fat man, but you go out to a race track or down to Atlantic City or any place where the former wifes hangs out and if you’ll notice the birds with them, the gents that broke up their home, you’ll find out that the most of them is guys with chins that runs into five and six figures and once round their waist is a sleeper jump.
    Besides the Janes and the fat rascals with them, you seen a flock of ham actors that looked like they’d spent the night in a Chinese snowstorm, and maybe a half a dozen losers’-end boxers that’d used the bridge of their nose to block with and always got up in the morning just after the clock had struck ten, thinking they’d been counted out.
    Pretty near everybody wore a pair of field glasses on a strap and when the race was going on they’d look through them and tell the world that the horse they’d bet on was three len’ths in front and just as good as in, but I never heard of a bookie paying off on that dope, and personally when some one would insist on lending me a pair to look through I couldn’t tell if the things out there racing was horses or gnats.
    Daley was back with us in a few minutes and says to Kate: “I guess you’ll have to bet on yourself in the first race.”
    So she asked him what did he mean and he said: “I had a tip on a filly named Sweet and Pretty.”
    “O Mr. Daley!” says Kate.
    “They don’t expect her to win,” says Daley, “but she’s six, two and even, and I’m going to play her place and show.”
    Then he explained what that was and he said he was going to bet a thousand each way and finally the gals decided to go in for $10 apiece to show. It tickled them to death to find out that they didn’t have to put up nothing. We found seats down in front wile Daley went to place the bets. Pretty soon the horses come out and Kate and Ella both screamed when they seen how cute the jockeys was dressed. Sweet and Pretty was No. 10 and had a combination of colors that would knock your eye out. Daley come back and explained that every owner had their own colors and of course the gals wanted to know what his was and he told them Navy blue and orange sleeves with black whoops on them and a blue cap.
    “How beautiful!” says Ella. “I can’t hardly wait to see them!”
    “You must have wonderful taste in colors!” says Kate.
    “Not only in colors,” he says.
    “O Mr. Daley!” she says again.
    Well, the race was ran and No. 10 was a Sweet and Pretty last.
    “Now,” I says, “you O Mr. Daley.”
    The gals had yelped themself hoarse and didn’t have nothing to say, but I could tell from their face that it would take something more than a few pretty speeches to make up for that twenty men.
    “Never mind that!” said Daley. “She got a rotten ride. We’ll get that back on the next one.”
    His hunch in the next one was Sena Day and he was betting a thousand on her to place at 4 to 1. He made the gals go in for $20 apiece, though they didn’t do it with no pep. I went along with him to place the bets and he introduced me to a bookie so as I could bet a few smackers of my own when I felt like it. You know they’s a law against betting unless it’s a little bet between friends and in order to be a bookie’s friend he’s got to know your name. A quick friendship sprung up between I and a guy named Joe Meyer, and he not only give me his card but a whole deck of them. You see the law also says that when you make one of these bets with your pals he can’t give you no writing to show for it, but he’s generally always a man that makes a lot of friends and it seems like they all want to make friendly bets with him, and he can’t remember where all his buddies lives, so he makes them write their name and address on the cards and how much the friendly wager is for and who on, and so forth, and the next day he mails them the bad news and they mail him back a check for same. Once in a wile, of course, you get the bad news and forget to mail him the check and he feels blue over it as they’s nothing as sad as breaking up an old friendship.
    I laid off Sena Day and she win. Daley smiled at the gals.
    “There!” he says. “I’m sorry we didn’t play her on the nose, but I was advised to play safe.”
    “Fine advice!” said Kate. “It’s cost Sis and I $60 so far.”
    “What do you mean?” says Daley.
    “We lose $20 on the first race,” she says, “and you tell us we’ll get it back on the next one and we bet the horse’ll come second and it don’t.”
    So we had to explain that if a horse win, why it placed, too, and her and Ella had grabbed $160 on that race and was $140 ahead. He was $2,000 winners himself.
    “We’ll have a drink on Sena,” he says. “I don’t believe they was six people out here that bet a nickel on her.”
    So Katie told him he was wonderful and him and the gals had a sarsaparilla or something and I poured my own. He’d been touting Cleopatra in the third race, but her and everybody else was scratched out of it except Captain Alcock and On Watch. On Watch was 9 to 10 and Alcock even money and Daley wouldn’t let us bet.
    “On Watch is best,” he says, “but he’s giving away twenty pounds and you can’t tell. Anyway, it ain’t worth it at that price.”
    “Only two horses in the race?” asked Ella.
    “That’s all,” he says.
    “Well, then, listen,” she says, all excited: “Why not bet on one of them for place?”
    Daley laughed and said it was a grand idear only he didn’t think the bookbinders would stand for it.
    “But maybe they don’t know,” she says.
    “I guess they do,” said Daley. “It’s almost impossible to keep a secret like that round a race track.”
    “Besides,” I said, “the bookworms owes you and Kate $70 apiece and if you put something like that over on them and they find it out, they’ll probably get even by making you a check on the West Bank of the Hudson River.”
    So we decided to play fair and lay off the race entirely. On Watch come through and the gals felt pretty bad about it till we showed them that they’d of only grabbed off nine smackers apiece if they’d of plunged on him for $20 straight.
    Along toward time for the next race, Daley steered us down by the paddock and we seen some of the nags close up. Daley and the gals raved over this one and that one, and wasn’t this one a beauty, and so forth. Personally they was all just a horse to me and I never seen one yet that wasn’t homelier than the City Hall. If they left it up to me to name the world’s champion eyesore, I’d award the elegant barb’ wire wash rag to a horse rode by a woman in a derby hat. People goes to the Horse Show to see the Count de Fault; they don’t know a case of withers from an off hind hock. And if the Sport of Kings was patronized by just birds that admires equine charms, you could park the Derby Day crowd in a phone booth.
    A filly named Tamarisk was the favorite in the fourth race and Daley played her for eight hundred smackers at 4 to 5. The gals trailed along with $8 apiece and she win from here to Worcester. The fifth was the one that Daley had an entry in--a dog named Fly-by-Night. It was different in the daytime. Mercer had the mount and done the best he could, which was finish before supper. Nobody bet, so nobody was hurt.
    “He’s just a green colt,” Daley told us. “I wanted to see how he’d behave.”
    “Well,” I said, “I thought he behaved like a born caboose.”
    Daley liked the Waterbury entry in the last and him and the gals played it and win. All told, Daley was $4,000 ahead on the day and Ella and Kate had picked up $160 between them. They wanted to kiss everybody on the way out. Daley sent us to the car to wait for him. He wanted to see Mercer a minute. After a wile he come out and brought Mercer along and introduced him. He’s a good-looking kid only for a couple of blotches on his pan and got an under lip and chin that kind of lags behind. He was about Kate’s height, and take away his Adams apple and you could mail him to Duluth for six cents. Him and Kate got personal right away and she told him how different he looked now than in his riding make-up. He said he had a new outfit that he’d of wore if he’d knew she was looking on. So I said I hoped he didn’t expect to ride Fly-by-Night round the track and keep a suit new, and he laughed, and Daley didn’t seem to enjoy the conversation and said we’d have to be going, but when we started off, Kate and Mercer give each other a smile with a future in it. She’s one of these gals that can’t help from looking open house, even if the guy takes after a pelican.
    Daley moved to our table that night and after that we eat breakfast and supper with him pretty near every day. After breakfast the gals would go down to New York to spend what they had win the day before, and I’ll admit that Daley give us many a winner. I begin betting a little of my own jack, but I stuck the proceeds in the old sock. I ain’t superstitious about living off a woman’s money as long as you’re legally married, but at the clip the two gals was going, it looked like their old man’s war profits was on the way to join their maker, and the more jack I laid by, the less sooner I would have to go to work.
    We’d meet every afternoon at the track and after the races Daley’d bring us back to the hotel. After supper we’d set round and chin or play rummy or once in a wile we’d go in Town to a show or visit one of the road houses near the Decker. The mail service on Long Island’s kind of rotten and they’s a bunch of road houses that hasn’t heard of prohibition.
    During the time we’d lived in Town Katie had got acquainted with three or four birds that liked her well enough to take her places where they wasn’t no cover charge, but since we’d moved to the Decker we hadn’t heard from none of them. That is, till a few days after we’d met Daley, when she told us that one of the New York boys, a guy named Goldberg, had called up and wanted her to come in and see a show with him. He’s a golf champion or something. Well, Daley offered to drive her in, but she said no, she’d rather go on the train and Goldberg was going to meet her. So she went, and Daley tried to play cards with Ella and I, but he was too restless and finally snuck up to his room.
    They wasn’t no question about his feelings toward Kate. He was always trying to fix it to be alone with her, but I guess it was the first time in her life when she didn’t have to do most of the leading and she kept him at arm’s len’th. Her and Ella had many a battle. Ella told her that the first thing she knowed he’d get discouraged and walk out on her; that she’d ought to quit monking and give him to understand that she was ready to yes him when he spoke up. But Katie said she guessed she could run her own love affairs as she’d had a few more of them than Ella.