The Man Who Could Not Lose | Page 8

father's will, and make it say if mother shouldn't like the man I want to marry, all of father's fortune must go to my husband!"
"Forgery," exclaimed Champneys, "is going further than I----"
"And another plan," interrupted Dolly," that I have always had in mind, is to issue a cheaper edition of your book, 'The Dead Heat.' The reason the first edition of 'The Dead Heat' didn't sell----"
"Don't tell ME why it didn't sell," said Champneys. "I wrote it!"
"That book," declared Dolly loyally, "was never properly advertised. No one knew about it, so no one bought it!"
"Eleven people bought it!" corrected the author.
"We will put it in a paper cover and sell it for fifty cents," cried Dolly. " It's the best detective story I ever read, and people have got to know it is the best. So we'll advertise it like a breakfast food."
"The idea," interrupted Champneys, "is to make money, not throw it away. Besides, we haven't any to throw away. Dolly sighed bitterly.
"If only," she exclaimed, "we had that three thousand dollars back again! I'd save SO carefully. It was all my fault. The races took it, but it was I took you to the races."
"No one ever had to drag ME to the races," said Carter. " It was the way we went that was extravagant. Automobiles by the hour standing idle, and a box each day, and----"
"And always backing Dromedary," suggested Dolly. Carter was touched on a sensitive spot. "That horse," he protested loudly, "is a mighty good horse. Some day----"
"That's what you always said," remarked Dolly, "but he never seems to have his day."
"It's strange," said Champneys consciously. "I dreamed of Dromedary only last night. Same dream over and over again." Hastily he changed the subject.
"For some reason I don't sleep well. I don't know why."
Dolly looked at him with all the love in her eyes of a mother over her ailing infant.
"It's worrying over me, and the heat,"' she said. "And the garage next door, and the skyscraper going up across the street, might have something to do with it. And YOU," she mocked tenderly, "wanted to send me to the sea-shore."
Carter was frowning. As though about to speak, he opened his lips, and then laughed embarrassedly.
"Out with it," said Dolly, with an encouraging smile. "Did he win?"
Seeing she had read what was in his mind, Carter leaned forward eagerly. The ruling passion and a touch of superstition held him in their grip.
"He 'win' each time," he whispered. "I saw it as plain as I see you. Each time he came up with a rush just at the same place, just as they entered the stretch, and each time he won!" He slapped his hand disdainfully upon the dirty bills before him. "If I had a hundred dollars!"
There was a knock at the door, and Carter opened it to the elevator boy with the morning mail. The letters, save one, Carter dropped upon the table. That one, with clumsy fingers, he tore open. He exclaimed breathlessly: "It's from PLYMPTON'S MAGAZINE! Maybe--I've sold a story!" He gave a cry almost of alarm. His voice was as solemn as though the letter had announced a death.
"Dolly," he whispered, "it's a check--a check for a HUNDRED DOLLARS!"
Guiltily, the two young people looked at each other.
"We've GOT to!" breathed Dolly. "GOT to! If we let TWO signs like that pass, we'd be flying in the face of Providence."
With her hands gripping the arms of her chair, she leaned forward, her eyes staring into space, her lips moving.
"COME ON, you Dromedary!" she whispered.
They changed the check into five and ten dollar bills, and, as Carter was far too excited to work, made an absurdly early start for the race-track.
"We might as well get all the fresh air we can," said Dolly. "That's all we will get!"
From their reserve fund of twenty-seven dollars which each had solemnly agreed with the other would not be risked on race-horses, Dolly subtracted a two-dollar bill. This she stuck conspicuously across the face of the clock on the mantel.
"Why?" asked Carter.
"When we get back this evening," Dolly explained, "that will be the first thing we'll see. It's going to look awfully good!"
This day there was no scarlet car to rush them with refreshing swiftness through Brooklyn's parkways and along the Ocean Avenue. Instead, they hung to a strap in a cross- town car, changed to the ferry, and again to the Long Island Railroad. When Carter halted at the special car of the Turf Club, Dolly took his arm and led him forward to the day coach.
"But," protested Carter, "when you're spending a hundred dollars with one hand, why grudge fifty cents for a parlor- car seat? If you're going to be a sport, be a sport." "And if you've got to be a piker,"