Chapter IV — Only One (2)

    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.
    So Ella says: “Maybe you have, but which one of us has got the husband?”
    “You, thank the Lord!” says Katie.
    “Thank him twice,” I said.
    Kate didn’t come home from her New York party till two o’clock and she overslept herself till it was too late to go down again and shop. So we all drove over to the track with Daley and most of the way over he acted like a child. Katie kept talking about what a good show she seen and had a grand time, and so forth, and he pretended he wasn’t listening. Finally she cut it out and give him the old oil and by the time we got to the clubhouse he’d tossed in the sponge.
    That was the last day at Jamaica and a couple of his horses was in. We was all down on them and they both copped, though Mercer had to give one of them a dude ride to pull us through. Daley got maudlin about what a grand rider the kid was and a grand little fella besides, and he had half a notion to bring him along with us back to the hotel and show him a good time. But Kate said what was the use of an extra man, as it would kind of spoil things and she was satisfied with just Daley. So of course that tickled him and everybody was feeling good and after supper him and Kate snuck out alone for the first time. Ella made me set up till they come back, so as she could get the news. Well, Daley had asked her all right, but she told him she wanted a little wile to think.
    “Think!” says Ella. “What does she want to think for?”
    “The novelty, I suppose,” said I.
    Only One was in the big stake race the next day, when we shifted over to Belmont. They was five or six others in with him, all of them pretty good, and the price on him was 3 to 1. He hadn’t started yet since Daley’d brought him here, but they’d been nursing him along and Mercer and the trainer said he was right.
    I suppose of course you’ve been out to Belmont. At that time they run the wrong way of the track, like you deal cards. Daley’s table was in a corner of the clubhouse porch and when you looked up the track, the horses was coming right at you. Even the boys with the trick glasses didn’t dast pretend they could tell who’s ahead.
    The Belmont national hymn is Whispering. The joint’s so big and scattered round that a German could sing without disturbing the party at the next table. But they seems to be a rule that when they’s anything to be said, you got to murmur it with the lips stuck to the opponent’s earlobe. They shush you if you ask out loud for a toothpick. Everywhere you’ll see two or three guys with their heads together in a whispering scene. One of them has generally always just been down to the horses’ dining room and had lunch with Man o’ War or somebody and they told him to play Sea Mint in the next race as Cleopatra had walked the stall all night with her foal. A little ways off they’ll be another pair of shushers and one of them’s had a phone call from Cleopatra’s old dam to put a bet on Cleo as Captain Alcock had got a hold of some wild oats and they couldn’t make him do nothing but shimmy.
    If they’s ten horses in a race you can walk from one end of the clubhouse to the other and get a whisper on all ten of them. I remember the second time Man o’ War run there. They was only one horse that wanted to watch him from the track and the War horse was 1 to 100. So just before the race, if you want to call it that, I seen a wise cracker that I’d got acquainted with, that had always been out last night with Madden or Waterbury, so just kidding I walked up to him and asked him who he liked. So he motioned me to come over against the wall where they wasn’t nobody near us and whispered, “Man o’ War’s unbeatable.” You see if that remark had of been overheard and the news allowed to spread round, it might of forced the price to, say, 1 to a lump of coal, and spoiled the killing.
    Well, wile the Jamaica meeting was on, the gals had spent some of their spare time figuring out how much they’d of been ahead if Daley had of let them bet more than ten to twenty smackers a race. So this day at Belmont, they said that if he liked Only One so much, he should ought to leave them raise the ante just once and play fifty apiece.
    But he says: “No, not this time. I’m pretty sure he’ll win, but he’s in against a sweet field and he ain’t raced for a month. I’ll bet forty on the nose for the two of you, and if he looks good you can gamble some real money the next time he runs.”
    So Ella and Kate had to be satisfied with $20 apiece. Daley himself bet $2,000 and I piked along with $200 that I didn’t tell the gals nothing about. We all got 3 to 1. A horse named Streak of Lightning was favorite at 6 to 5. It was a battle. Only One caught the Streak in the last step and win by a flea’s jaw. Everybody was in hysterics and the gals got all messed up clawing each other.
    “Nobody but Mercer could of did it!” says Daley, as soon as he could talk.
    “He’s some jockey!” yelled Kate. “O you Sid!”
    Pretty soon the time was give out and Only One had broke the track record for the distance, whatever it was.
    “He’s a race horse!” said Daley. “But it’s too bad he had to extend himself. We won’t get no price the next time out.”
    Well, altogether the race meant $14,000 to Daley, and he said we’d all go to Town that night and celebrate. But when we got back to the Decker, they was a telegram for him and he had to pack up and beat it for Kentucky.
    Daley being away didn’t stop us from going to the track. He’d left orders with Ernest, his driver, to take us wherever we wanted to go and the gals had it so bad now that they couldn’t hardly wait till afternoon. They kept on trimming the books, too. Kate got a phone call every morning that she said was from this Goldberg and he was giving her tips. Her and Ella played them and I wished I had. I would of if I’d knew who they was from. They was from Mercer, Daley’s boy. That’s who they was from.
    I and Ella didn’t wise up till about the third night after Daley’d went. That night, Kate took the train to Town right after supper, saying she had a date with Goldberg. It was a swell night and along about eight, I and Ella decided we might as well have a ride. So we got a hold of Ernest and it wound up by us going to New York too. We seen a picture and batted round till midnight and then Ella says why not go down to the Pennsylvania Station and pick Kate up when she come to take the train, and bring her home. So we done it. But when Katie showed up for the train, it was Mercer that was with her, not Goldberg.
    Well, Mercer was pretty near out to the car with us when he happened to think that Daley’s driver mustn’t see him. So he said good night and left us. But he didn’t do it quick enough. Daley’s driver had saw him and I seen that he’d saw him and I knowed that he wasn’t liable to be stuck on another of Daley’s employs that was getting ten times as much money as him and all the cheers, and never had to dirty himself up changing a tire. And I bet it was all Ernest could do was wait till Daley come back so as he could explode the boom.
    Kate and Ella didn’t know Ernest was hep and I didn’t tell them for fear of spoiling the show, so the women done their brawling on the way home in a regular race track whisper. The Mrs. told Kate she was a hick to be monking round with a jockey when Daley was ready and willing to give her a modern home with a platinum stopper in the washbowl. Kate told Ella that she wasn’t going to marry nobody for their money, and besides, Mercer was making more than enough to support a wife, and how that boy can dance!
    “But listen,” she says: “I ain’t married to neither one of them yet and don’t know if I want to be.”
    “Well,” says Ella, “you won’t have no chance to marry Daley if he finds out about you and Mercer.”
    “He won’t find out unless you tell him,” said Kate.
    “Well, I’ll tell him,” says Ella, “unless you cut this monkey business out.”
    “I’ll cut it out when I get good and ready,” says Kate. “You can tell Daley anything you please.”
    She knew they wasn’t no chance of Ella making good.
    “Daley’ll be back in a couple of days,” says the Mrs. “When he comes he’ll want his answer and what are you going to say?”
    “Yes or no, according to which way I make up my mind,” said Kate. “I don’t know yet which one I like best.”
    “That’s ridic’lous!” Ella says. “When a girl says she can’t make up her mind, it shows they’s nothing to make up. Did you ever see me when I couldn’t make up my mind?”
    “No,” said Katie, “but you never had even one whole man to choose between.”
    The last half of the ride neither of them were talking. That’s a world’s record in itself. They kind of made up the next morning after I’d told Ella that the surest way to knock Daley’s chances for a gool was to paste Mercer.
    “Just lay off of it,” I told her. “The best man’ll win in fair competition, which it won’t be if you keep plugging for Daley.”
    We had two more pretty fair days at the track on Kate’s tips that Mercer give her. We also went on a party with him down Town, but we used the train, not Daley’s car.
    Daley showed up on a Wednesday morning and had Ernest take him right over to the track. I suppose it was on this trip that Ernest squealed. Daley didn’t act no different when we joined him on the clubhouse porch, but that night him and Kate took a ride alone and come back engaged.
    They’d been pointing Only One for the Merrick Handicap, the fourth race on Saturday. It was worth about $7,000 to the winner. The distance was seven furlongs and Only One had top weight, 126 pounds. But Thursday he done a trial over the distance in 1.22, carrying 130 pounds, so it looked like a set-up.
    Thursday morning I and Ella happened to be in Katie’s room when the telephone rung. It was Mercer on the other end. He asked her something and she says: “I told you why in my note.”
    So he said something else and she says: “Not with no jail-bird.”
    And she hung up.
    Well, Ella wanted to know what all the pleasantries was about, but Kate told her to mind her own business.
    “You got your wish and I’m engaged to Daley,” she says, “and that’s all you need to know.”
    For a gal that was going to marry a dude that was supposed to have all the money in the world, she didn’t act just right, but she wouldn’t been Kate if she had of, so I didn’t think much about it.
    Friday morning I got a wire from one of the South Bend boys, Goat Anderson, sent from Buffalo, saying he’d be in New York that night and would I meet him at the Belmont at seven o’clock. So I went in Town from the track and waited round till pretty near nine, but he didn’t show up. I started to walk across to the Pennsylvania Station and on the way I dropped in at a place where they was still taking a chance. I had one up at the bar and was throwing it into me when a guy in the back part yelled “Hey! Come here!” It was Mercer yelling and it was me he wanted.
    He was setting at a table all alone with a highball. It didn’t take no Craig Kennedy to figure out that it wasn’t his first one.
    “Set down before I bat you down!” he says.
    “Listen,” I says: “I wished you was champion of the world. You’d hold onto the title just long enough for me to reach over and sock you where most guys has a chin.”
    “Set down!” he says. “It’s your wife I’m going to beat up, not you.”
    “You ain’t going to beat up nobody’s wife or nobody’s husband,” I says, “and if you don’t cut out that line of gab you’ll soon be asking the nurse how you got there.”
    “Set down and come clean with me,” he says. “Was your wife the one that told Daley about your sister-in-law and I?”
    “If she did, what of it?” I says.
    “I’m asking you, did she?” he says.
    “No, she didn’t,” I said. “If somebody told him his driver told him. He seen you the other night.”
    “Ernest!” he says. “Frank and Ernest! I’ll Ernest him right in the jaw!”
    “You’re a fine matchmaker!” I says. “He could knock you for a row of flat tires. Why don’t you try and get mad at Dempsey?”
    “Set down and have a drink,” says Mercer.
    “I didn’t mean that about your wife. You and her has treated me all right. And your sister-in-law, too, even if she did give me the air. And called me a jail-bird. But that’s all right. It’s Daley I’m after and it’s Daley I’m going to get.”
    “Sweet chance!” I says. “What could you do to him?”
    “Wait and see!” said Mercer, and smiled kind of silly.
    “Listen,” I says. “Have you forgot that you’re supposed to ride Only One to-morrow?”
    “Supposed to ride is right,” he says, and smiled again.
    “Ain’t you going to ride him?” I said.
    “You bet I am!” he says.
    “Well, then,” I said, “you better call it a day and go home.”
    “I’m over twenty-one,” he says, “and I’m going to set here and enjoy myself. But remember, I ain’t keeping you up.”
    Well, they wasn’t nothing I could do only set there and wait for him to get stiff and then see him to his hotel. We had a drink and we had another and a couple more. Finally he opened up. I wished you could of heard him. It took him two hours to tell his story, and everything he said, he said it over and over and repeated it four and five times. And part of the time he talked so thick that I couldn’t hardly get him.
    “Listen,” he says. “Can you keep a secret? Listen,” he says. “I’m going to take a chance with you on account of your sister-in-law. I loved that little gal. She’s give me the air, but that don’t make no difference; I loved that little gal and I don’t want her to lose no money. So I’m going to tell you a secret and if you don’t keep your clam shut I’ll roll you for a natural. In the first place,” he says, “how do you and Daley stack up?”
    “That ain’t no secret,” I said. “I think he’s all right. He’s been a good friend of mine.”