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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