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+Project Gutenberg’s The Man Who Could Not Lose, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Man Who Could Not Lose
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1760]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+Last Updated: September 26, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LOSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LOSE
+
+by Richard Harding Davis
+
+
+
+The Carters had married in haste and refused to repent at leisure. So
+blindly were they in love, that they considered their marriage their
+greatest asset. The rest of the world, as represented by mutual friends,
+considered it the only thing that could be urged against either of them.
+While single, each had been popular. As a bachelor, young “Champ” Carter
+had filled his modest place acceptably. Hostesses sought him for dinners
+and week-end parties, men of his own years, for golf and tennis, and
+young girls liked him because when he talked to one of them he never
+talked of himself, or let his eyes wander toward any other girl. He had
+been brought up by a rich father in an expensive way, and the rich
+father had then died leaving Champneys alone in the world, with no
+money, and with even a few of his father’s debts. These debts of honor
+the son, ever since leaving Yale, had been paying off. It had kept him
+very poor, for Carter had elected to live by his pen, and, though he
+wrote very carefully and slowly, the editors of the magazines had been
+equally careful and slow in accepting what he wrote.
+
+With an income so uncertain that the only thing that could be said of it
+with certainty was that it was too small to support even himself,
+Carter should not have thought of matrimony. Nor, must it be said to his
+credit, did he think of it until the girl came along that he wanted to
+marry.
+
+The trouble with Dolly Ingram was her mother. Her mother was a really
+terrible person. She was quite impossible. She was a social leader, and
+of such importance that visiting princes and society reporters, even
+among themselves, did not laugh at her. Her visiting list was so small
+that she did not keep a social secretary, but, it was said, wrote her
+invitations herself. Stylites on his pillar was less exclusive. Nor did
+he take his exalted but lonely position with less sense of humor. When
+Ingram died and left her many millions to dispose of absolutely as she
+pleased, even to the allowance she should give their daughter, he left
+her with but one ambition unfulfilled. That was to marry her Dolly to
+an English duke. Hungarian princes, French marquises, Italian counts,
+German barons, Mrs. Ingram could not see. Her son-in-law must be a
+duke. She had her eyes on two, one somewhat shopworn, and the other a
+bankrupt; and in training, she had one just coming of age. Already she
+saw her self a sort of a dowager duchess by marriage, discussing with
+real dowager duchesses the way to bring up teething earls and viscounts.
+For three years in Europe Mrs. Ingram had been drilling her daughter for
+the part she intended her to play. But, on returning to her native land,
+Dolly, who possessed all the feelings, thrills, and heart-throbs of
+which her mother was ignorant, ungratefully fell deeply in love
+with Champneys Carter, and he with her. It was always a question of
+controversy between them as to which had first fallen in love with the
+other. As a matter of history, honors were even.
+
+He first saw her during a thunder storm, in the paddock at the races,
+wearing a rain-coat with the collar turned up and a Panama hat with the
+brim turned down. She was talking, in terms of affectionate familiarity,
+with Cuthbert’s two-year-old, The Scout. The Scout had just lost a
+race by a nose, and Dolly was holding the nose against her cheek and
+comforting him. The two made a charming picture, and, as Carter stumbled
+upon it and halted, the race-horse lowered his eyes and seemed to say:
+“Wouldn’t YOU throw a race for this?” And the girl raised her eyes and
+seemed to say: “What a nice-looking, bright-looking young man! Why don’t
+I know who you are?”
+
+So, Carter ran to find Cuthbert, and told him The Scout had gone lame.
+When, on their return, Miss Ingram refused to loosen her hold on The
+Scout’s nose, Cuthbert apologetically mumbled Carter’s name, and in some
+awe Miss Ingram’s name, and then, to his surprise, both young people
+lost interest in The Scout, and wandered away together into the rain.
+
+After an hour, when they parted at the club stand, for which Carter
+could not afford a ticket, he asked wistfully: “Do you often come
+racing?” and Miss Ingram said: “Do you mean, am I coming to-morrow?”
+
+“I do!” said Carter.
+
+“Then, why didn’t you say that?” inquired Miss Ingram. “Otherwise I
+mightn’t have come. I have the Holland House coach for to-morrow, and,
+if you’ll join us, I’ll save a place for you, and you can sit in our
+box.
+
+“I’ve lived so long abroad,” she explained, “that I’m afraid of not
+being simple and direct like other American girls. Do you think I’ll get
+on here at home?”
+
+“If you get on with every one else as well as you’ve got on with me,”
+ said Carter morosely, “I will shoot myself.”
+
+Miss Ingram smiled thoughtfully. “At eleven, then,” she said, “in front
+of the Holland House.”
+
+Carter walked away with a flurried, heated suffocation around his heart
+and a joyous lightness in his feet. Of the first man he met he demanded,
+“Who was the beautiful girl in the rain-coat?” And when the man told
+him, Carter left him without speaking. For she was quite the richest
+girl in America. But the next day that fault seemed to distress her so
+little that Carter, also, refused to allow it to rest on his conscience,
+and they were very happy. And each saw that they were happy because they
+were together.
+
+The ridiculous mother was not present at the races, but after Carter
+began to call at their house and was invited to dinner, Mrs. Ingram
+received him with her habitual rudeness. As an impediment in the
+success of her ambition she never considered him. As a boy friend of her
+daughter’s, she classed him with “her” lawyer and “her” architect and
+a little higher than the “person” who arranged the flowers. Nor, in
+her turn, did Dolly consider her mother; for within two months another
+matter of controversy between Dolly and Carter was as to who had first
+proposed to the other. Carter protested there never had been any formal
+proposal, that from the first they had both taken it for granted that
+married they would be. But Dolly insisted that because he had been
+afraid of her money, or her mother, he had forced her to propose to him.
+
+“You could not have loved me very much,” she complained, “if you’d let a
+little thing like money make you hesitate.”
+
+“It’s not a little thing,” suggested Carter. “They say it’s several
+millions, and it happens to be YOURS. If it were MINE, now!” “Money,”
+ said Dolly sententiously, “is given people to make them happy, not to
+make them miserable.”
+
+“Wait until I sell my stories to the magazines,” said Carter, “and then
+I will be independent and can support you.”
+
+The plan did not strike Dolly as one likely to lead to a hasty marriage.
+But he was sensitive about his stories, and she did not wish to hurt his
+feelings.
+
+“Let’s get married first,” she suggested, “and then I can BUY you a
+magazine. We’ll call it CARTER’S MAGAZINE and we will print nothing in
+it but your stories. Then we can laugh at the editors!”
+
+“Not half as loud as they will,” said Carter.
+
+With three thousand dollars in bank and three stories accepted and
+seventeen still to hear from, and with Dolly daily telling him that it
+was evident he did not love her, Carter decided they were ready, hand
+in hand, to leap into the sea of matrimony. His interview on the subject
+with Mrs. Ingram was most painful. It lasted during the time it took her
+to walk out of her drawing-room to the foot of her staircase. She
+spoke to herself, and the only words of which Carter was sure were
+“preposterous” and “intolerable insolence.” Later in the morning she
+sent a note to his flat, forbidding him not only her daughter, but the
+house in which her daughter lived, and even the use of the United States
+mails and the New York telephone wires. She described his conduct in
+words that, had they come from a man, would have afforded Carter every
+excuse for violent exercise.
+
+Immediately in the wake of the note arrived Dolly, in tears, and
+carrying a dressing-case.
+
+“I have left mother!” she announced. “And I have her car downstairs, and
+a clergyman in it, unless he has run away. He doesn’t want to marry us,
+because he’s afraid mother will stop supporting his flower mission. You
+get your hat and take me where he can marry us. No mother can talk about
+the man I love the way mother talked about you, and think I won’t marry
+him the same day!”
+
+Carter, with her mother’s handwriting still red before his eyes, and his
+self-love shaken with rage flourished the letter.
+
+“And no mother,” he shouted, “can call ME a ‘fortune-hunter’ and a
+‘cradle-robber’ and think I’ll make good by marrying her daughter! Not
+until she BEGS me to!”
+
+Dolly swept toward him like a summer storm. Her eyes were wet and
+flashing. “Until WHO begs you to?” she demanded. “WHO are you marrying;
+mother or me?”
+
+“If I marry you,” cried Carter, frightened but also greatly excited,
+“your mother won’t give you a penny!”
+
+“And that,” taunted Dolly, perfectly aware that she was ridiculous, “is
+why you won’t marry me!”
+
+For an instant, long enough to make her blush with shame and happiness,
+Carter grinned at her. “Now, just for that,” he said, “I won’t kiss you,
+and I WILL marry you!” But, as a matter of fact, he DID kiss her. Then
+he gazed happily around his small sitting-room. “Make yourself at home
+here,” he directed, “while I pack my bag.”
+
+“I MEAN to make myself very much at home here,” said Dolly joyfully,
+“for the rest of my life.”
+
+From the recesses of the flat Carter called: “The rent’s paid only till
+September. After that we live in a hall bedroom and cook on a gas-stove.
+And that’s no idle jest, either.”
+
+Fearing the publicity of the City Hall license bureau, they released the
+clergyman, much to the relief of that gentleman, and told the chauffeur
+to drive across the State line into Connecticut.
+
+“It’s the last time we can borrow your mother’s car,” said Carter, “and
+we’d better make it go as far as we can.”
+
+It was one of those days in May. Blue was the sky and sunshine was in
+the air, and in the park little girls from the tenements, in white,
+were playing they were queens. Dolly wanted to kidnap two of them for
+bridesmaids. In Harlem they stopped at a jeweler’s shop, and Carter got
+out and bought a wedding-ring.
+
+In the Bronx were dogwood blossoms and leaves of tender green and beds
+of tulips, and along the Boston Post Road, on their right, the Sound
+flashed in the sunlight; and on their left, gardens, lawns, and orchards
+ran with the road, and the apple trees were masses of pink and white.
+
+Whenever a car approached from the rear, Carter pretended it was Mrs.
+Ingram coming to prevent the elopement, and Dolly clung to him. When the
+car had passed, she forgot to stop clinging to him.
+
+In Greenwich Village they procured a license, and a magistrate married
+them, and they were a little frightened and greatly happy and, they both
+discovered simultaneously, outrageously hungry. So they drove through
+Bedford Village to South Salem, and lunched at the Horse and Hounds Inn,
+on blue and white china, in the same room where Major Andre was once a
+prisoner. And they felt very sorry for Major Andre, and for everybody
+who had not been just married that morning. And after lunch they sat
+outside in the garden and fed lumps of sugar to a charming collie and
+cream to a fat gray cat.
+
+They decided to start housekeeping in Carter’s flat, and so turned back
+to New York, this time following the old coach road through North Castle
+to White Plains, across to Tarrytown, and along the bank of the Hudson
+into Riverside Drive. Millions and millions of friendly folk, chiefly
+nurse-maids and traffic policemen, waved to them, and for some reason
+smiled.
+
+“The joke of it is,” declared Carter, “they don’t know! The most
+wonderful event of the century has just passed into history. We are
+married, and nobody knows!”
+
+But when the car drove away from in front of Carter’s door, they saw on
+top of it two old shoes and a sign reading: “We have just been married.”
+ While they had been at luncheon, the chauffeur had risen to the
+occasion.
+
+“After all,” said Carter soothingly, “he meant no harm. And it’s the
+only thing about our wedding yet that seems legal.”
+
+Three months later two very unhappy young people faced starvation in the
+sitting-room of Carter’s flat. Gloom was written upon the countenance of
+each, and the heat and the care that comes when one desires to live, and
+lacks the wherewithal to fulfill that desire, had made them pallid and
+had drawn black lines under Dolly’s eyes.
+
+Mrs. Ingram had played her part exactly as her dearest friends had
+said she would. She had sent to Carter’s flat, seven trunks filled with
+Dolly’s clothes, eighteen hats, and another most unpleasant letter. In
+this, on the sole condition that Dolly would at once leave her husband,
+she offered to forgive and to support her.
+
+To this Dolly composed eleven scornful answers, but finally decided that
+no answer at all was the most scornful.
+
+She and Carter then proceeded joyfully to waste his three thousand
+dollars with that contempt for money with which on a honey-moon it
+should always be regarded. When there was no more, Dolly called upon her
+mother’s lawyers and inquired if her father had left her anything in
+her own right. The lawyers regretted he had not, but having loved Dolly
+since she was born, offered to advance her any money she wanted. They
+said they felt sure her mother would “relent.”
+
+“SHE may,” said Dolly haughtily. “I WON’T! And my husband can give me
+all I need. I only wanted something of my own, because I’m going to make
+him a surprise present of a new motor-car. The one we are using now does
+not suit us.”
+
+This was quite true, as the one they were then using ran through the
+subway.
+
+As summer approached, Carter had suddenly awakened to the fact that he
+soon would be a pauper, and cut short the honey-moon. They returned to
+the flat, and he set forth to look for a position. Later, while still
+looking for it, he spoke of it as a “job.” He first thought he would
+like to be an assistant editor of a magazine. But he found editors of
+magazines anxious to employ new and untried assistants, especially
+in June, were very few. On the contrary, they explained they were
+retrenching and cutting down expenses--they meant they had discharged
+all office boys who received more than three dollars a week. They
+further “retrenched,” by taking a mean advantage of Carter’s having
+called upon them in person, by handing him three or four of his
+stories--but by this he saved his postage-stamps.
+
+Each day, when he returned to the flat, Dolly, who always expected each
+editor would hastily dust off his chair and offer it to her brilliant
+husband, would smile excitedly and gasp, “Well?” and Carter would throw
+the rejected manuscripts on the table and say: “At least, I have not
+returned empty-handed.” Then they would discover a magazine that neither
+they nor any one else knew existed, and they would hurriedly readdress
+the manuscripts to that periodical, and run to post them at the
+letter-box on the corner.
+
+“Any one of them, if ACCEPTED,” Carter would point out, “might bring us
+in twenty-five dollars. A story of mine once sold for forty; so to-night
+we can afford to dine at a restaurant where wine is NOT ‘included.’”
+
+Fortunately, they never lost their sense of humor. Otherwise the narrow
+confines of the flat, the evil smells that rose from the baked
+streets, the greasy food of Italian and Hungarian restaurants, and the
+ever-haunting need of money might have crushed their youthful spirits.
+But in time even they found that one, still less two, cannot
+exist exclusively on love and the power to see the bright side of
+things--especially when there is no bright side. They had come to the
+point where they must borrow money from their friends, and that, though
+there were many who would have opened their safes to them, they had
+agreed was the one thing they would not do, or they must starve. The
+alternative was equally distasteful.
+
+Carter had struggled earnestly to find a job. But his inexperience and
+the season of the year were against him. No newspaper wanted a dramatic
+critic when the only shows in town had been running three months, and
+on roof gardens; nor did they want a “cub” reporter when veterans were
+being “laid off” by the dozens. Nor were his services desired as a
+private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent to sell real estate
+or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a chance to prove his
+unfitness for any of these callings, the fact that he knew nothing
+of any of them did not greatly matter. At these rebuffs Dolly was
+distinctly pleased. She argued they proved he was intended to pursue his
+natural career as an author.
+
+That their friends might know they were poor did not affect her, but she
+did not want them to think by his taking up any outside “job” that they
+were poor because as a literary genius he was a failure. She believed
+in his stories. She wanted every one else to believe in them. Meanwhile,
+she assisted him in so far as she could by pawning the contents of five
+of the seven trunks, by learning to cook on a “Kitchenette,” and to
+laundry her handkerchiefs and iron them on the looking-glass.
+
+They faced each other across the breakfast-table. It was only nine
+o’clock, but the sun beat into the flat with the breath of a furnace,
+and the air was foul and humid.
+
+“I tell you,” Carter was saying fiercely, “you look ill. You are ill.
+You must go to the sea-shore. You must visit some of your proud friends
+at East Hampton or Newport. Then I’ll know you’re happy and I won’t
+worry, and I’ll find a job. I don’t mind the heat--and I’ll write you
+love letters”--he was talking very fast and not looking at Dolly--“like
+those I used to write you, before----”
+
+Dolly raised her hand. “Listen!” she said. “Suppose I leave you. What
+will happen? I’ll wake up in a cool, beautiful brass bed, won’t I--with
+cretonne window-curtains, and salt air blowing them about, and a maid
+to bring me coffee. And instead of a bathroom like yours, next to an
+elevator shaft and a fire-escape, I’ll have one as big as a church,
+and the whole blue ocean to swim in. And I’ll sit on the rocks in the
+sunshine and watch the waves and the yachts--”
+
+“And grow well again!” cried Carter. “But you’ll write to me,” he added
+wistfully, “every day, won’t you?”
+
+In her wrath, Dolly rose, and from across the table confronted him.
+
+“And what will I be doing on those rocks?” she cried. “You KNOW what
+I’ll be doing! I’ll be sobbing, and sobbing, and calling out to the
+waves: ‘Why did he send me away? Why doesn’t he want me? Because he
+doesn’t love me. That’s why! He doesn’t LOVE me!’ And you DON’T!” cried
+Dolly. “You DON’T!”
+
+It took him all of three minutes to persuade her she was mistaken.
+
+“Very well, then,” sobbed Dolly, “that’s settled. And there’ll be no
+more talk of sending me away!
+
+“There will NOT!” said Champneys hastily. “We will now,” he announced,
+“go into committee of the whole and decide how we are to face financial
+failure. Our assets consist of two stories, accepted, but not paid for,
+and fifteen stories not accepted.” In cash, he spread upon the table
+a meagre collection of soiled bills and coins. “We have twenty-seven
+dollars and fourteen cents. That is every penny we possess in the
+world.”
+
+Dolly regarded him fixedly and shook her head.
+
+“Is it wicked,” she asked, “to love you so?”
+
+“Haven’t you been listening to me?” demanded Carter.
+
+Again Dolly shook her head.
+
+“I was watching the way you talk. When your lips move fast they do such
+charming things.”
+
+“Do you know,” roared Carter, “that we haven’t a penny in the world,
+that we have nothing in this flat to eat?”
+
+“I still have five hats,” said Dolly.
+
+“We can’t eat hats,” protested Champneys.
+
+“We can sell hats!” returned Dolly. “They cost eighty dollars apiece!”
+
+“When you need money,” explained Carter, “I find it’s just as hard to
+sell a hat as to eat it.”
+
+“Twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents,” repeated Dolly. She exclaimed
+remorsefully: “And you started with three thousand! What did I do with
+it?”
+
+“We both had the time of our lives with it!” said Carter stoutly. “And
+that’s all there is to that. Post-mortems,” he pointed out, “are useful
+only as guides to the future, and as our future will never hold a second
+three thousand dollars, we needn’t worry about how we spent the first
+one. No! What we must consider now is how we can grow rich quick, and
+the quicker and richer, the better. Pawning our clothes, or what’s left
+of them, is bad economics. There’s no use considering how to live from
+meal to meal. We must evolve something big, picturesque, that will bring
+a fortune. You have imagination; I’m supposed to have imagination, we
+must think of a plan to get money, much money. I do not insist on our
+plan being dignified, or even outwardly respectable; so long as it keeps
+you alive, it may be as desperate as--”
+
+“I see!” cried Dolly; “like sending mother Black Hand letters!”
+
+“Blackmail----” began that lady’s son-in-law doubtfully.
+
+“Or!” cried Dolly, “we might kidnap Mr. Carnegie when he’s walking in
+the park alone, and hold him for ransom. Or”--she rushed on--“we might
+forge a codicil to 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,” said
+Dolly, “don’t be ashamed to be a piker. We’re not spending a hundred
+dollars because we can afford it, but because you dreamt a dream. You
+didn’t dream you were riding in parlor-cars! If you did, it’s time I
+woke you.”
+
+This day there was for them no box overlooking the finish, no club-house
+luncheon. With the other pikers, they sat in the free seats, with those
+who sat coatless and tucked their handkerchiefs inside their collars,
+and with those who mopped their perspiring countenances with rice-paper
+and marked their cards with a hat-pin. Their lunch consisted of a
+massive ham sandwich with a top dressing of mustard.
+
+Dromedary did not run until the fifth race, and the long wait, before
+they could learn their fate, was intolerable. They knew most of the
+horses, and, to pass the time, on each of the first races Dolly made
+imaginary bets. Of these mental wagers, she lost every one.
+
+“If you turn out to be as bad a guesser when you’re asleep as I am when
+I’m awake,” said Dolly, “we’re going to lose our fortune.”
+
+“I’m weakening!” declared Carter. “A hundred dollars is beginning to
+look to me like an awful lot of money. Twenty-seven dollars, and there’s
+only twenty of that left now, is mighty small capital, but twenty
+dollars plus a hundred could keep us alive for a month!”
+
+“Did you, or did you not, dream that Dromedary would win?” demanded
+Dolly sternly.
+
+“I certainly did, several times,” said Carter. “But it may be I
+was thinking of the horse. I’ve lost such a lot on him, my mind may
+have----”
+
+“Did you,” interrupted Dolly, “say if you had a hundred dollars you’d
+bet it, and did a hundred dollars walk in through the door instantly?”
+
+Carter, reassured, breathed again. “It certainly did!” he repeated.
+
+Even in his proud days, Carter had never been able to bet heavily, and
+instead of troubling the club-house commissioners with his small wagers,
+he had, in the ring, bet ready money. Moreover, he believed in the
+ring he obtained more favorable odds, and, when he won, it pleased him,
+instead of waiting until settling day for a check, to stand in a line
+and feel the real money thrust into his hand. So, when the fourth race
+started he rose and raised his hat.
+
+“The time has come,” he said.
+
+Without looking at him, Dolly nodded. She was far too tremulous to
+speak.
+
+For several weeks Dromedary had not been placed, and Carter hoped for
+odds of at least ten to one. But, when he pushed his way into the arena,
+he found so little was thought of his choice that as high as twenty
+to one was being offered, and with few takers. The fact shattered his
+confidence. Here were two hundred book-makers, trained to their calling,
+anxious at absurd odds to back their opinion that the horse he liked
+could not win. In the face of such unanimous contempt, his dream became
+fantastic, fatuous. He decided he would risk only half of his fortune.
+Then, should the horse win, he still would be passing rich, and should
+he lose, he would, at least, have all of fifty dollars.
+
+With a book-maker he wagered that sum, and then, in unhappy indecision,
+stood, in one hand clutching his ticket that called for a potential
+thousand and fifty dollars, and in the other an actual fifty. It was not
+a place for meditation. From every side men, more or less sane, swept
+upon him, jostled him, and stamped upon him, and still, struggling for a
+foothold, he swayed, hesitating. Then he became conscious that the ring
+was nearly empty, that only a few shrieking individuals still ran down
+the line. The horses were going to the post. He must decide quickly. In
+front of him the book-maker cleaned his board, and, as a final appeal,
+opposite the names of three horses chalked thirty to one. Dromedary was
+among them. Such odds could not be resisted. Carter shoved his fifty at
+the man, and to that sum added the twenty dollars still in his pocket.
+They were the last dollars he owned in the world. And though he knew
+they were his last, he was fearful lest the book-maker would refuse
+them. But, mechanically, the man passed them over his shoulder.
+
+“And twenty-one hundred to seventy,” he chanted.
+
+When Carter took his seat beside Dolly, he was quite cold. Still, Dolly
+did not speak. Out of the corner of her eyes she questioned him.
+
+“I got fifty at twenty to one,” replied Carter, “and seventy at thirty!”
+
+In alarm, Dolly turned upon him.
+
+“SEVENTY!” she gasped.
+
+Carter nodded. “All we have,” he said. “We have sixty cents left, to
+start life over again!”
+
+As though to encourage him, Dolly placed her finger on her race-card.
+
+“His colors,” she said, “are ‘green cap, green jacket, green and white
+hoops.’”
+
+Through a maze of heat, a half-mile distant, at the starting-gate,
+little spots of color moved in impatient circles. The big, good-natured
+crowd had grown silent, so silent that from the high, sun-warmed grass
+in the infield one could hear the lazy chirp of the crickets. As though
+repeating a prayer, or an incantation, Dolly’s lips were moving quickly.
+
+“Green cap,” she whispered, “green jacket, green and white hoops!”
+
+With a sharp sigh the crowd broke the silence. “They’re off!” it cried,
+and leaned forward expectant.
+
+The horses came so fast. To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous.
+It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they
+would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together,
+shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and
+gold and scarlet. A jacket of yellow shot out of the dust and showed in
+front; a jacket of crimson followed. So they were at the half; so they
+were at the three-quarters.
+
+The good-natured crowd began to sway, to grumble and murmur, then to
+shout in sharp staccato.
+
+“Can you see him?” begged Dolly.
+
+“No,” said Carter. “You don’t see him until they reach the stretch.”
+
+One could hear their hoofs, could see the crimson jockey draw his whip.
+At the sight, for he rode the favorite, the crowd gave a great gasp of
+concern.
+
+“Oh, you Gold Heels!” it implored.
+
+Under the whip, Gold Heels drew even with the yellow jacket; stride by
+stride, they fought it out alone.
+
+“Gold Heels!” cried the crowd.
+
+Behind them, in a curtain of dust, pounded the field. It charged in
+a flying wedge, like a troop of cavalry. Dolly, searching for a green
+jacket, saw, instead, a rainbow wave of color that, as it rose and fell,
+sprang toward her in great leaps, swallowing the track.
+
+“Gold Heels!” yelled the crowd.
+
+The field swept into the stretch. Without moving his eyes, Carter caught
+Dolly by the wrist and pointed. As though giving a signal, he shot his
+free hand into the air.
+
+“Now!” he shouted.
+
+From the curtain of dust, as lightning strikes through a cloud, darted
+a great, raw-boned, ugly chestnut. Like the Empire Express, he came
+rocking, thundering, spurning the ground. At his coming, Gold Heels, to
+the eyes of the crowd, seemed to falter, to slacken, to stand still.
+The crowd gave a great cry of amazement, a yell of disgust. The chestnut
+drew even with Gold Heels, passed him, and swept under the wire.
+Clinging to his neck was a little jockey in a green cap, green jacket,
+and hoops of green and white.
+
+Dolly’s hand was at her side, clutching the bench. Carter’s hand still
+clasped it. Neither spoke or looked at the other. For an instant, while
+the crowd, no longer so good-natured, mocked and jeered at itself, the
+two young people sat quite still, staring at the green field, at the
+white clouds rolling from the ocean. Dolly drew a long breath.
+
+“Let’s go!” she gasped. “Let’s thank him first, and then take me home!”
+
+They found Dromedary in the paddock, and thanked him, and Carter left
+Dolly with him, while he ran to collect his winnings. When he returned,
+he showed her a sheaf of yellow bills, and as they ran down the covered
+board walk to the gate, they skipped and danced.
+
+Dolly turned toward the train drawn up at the entrance.
+
+“Not with me!” shouted Carter. “We’re going home in the reddest, most
+expensive, fastest automobile I can hire!”
+
+In the “hack” line of motor-cars was one that answered those
+requirements, and they fell into it as though it were their own.
+
+“To the Night and Day Bank!” commanded Carter.
+
+With the genial democracy of the race-track, the chauffeur lifted his
+head to grin appreciatively. “That listens good to me!” he said.
+
+“I like him!” whispered Dolly. “Let’s buy him and the car.”
+
+On the way home, they bought many cars; every car they saw, that they
+liked, they bought. They bought, also, several houses, and a yacht that
+they saw from the ferry-boat. And as soon as they had deposited the most
+of their money in the bank, they went to a pawnshop in Sixth Avenue and
+bought back many possessions that they had feared they never would see
+again.
+
+When they entered the flat, the thing they first beheld was Dolly’s
+two-dollar bill.
+
+“What,” demanded Carter, with repugnance, “is that strange piece of
+paper?”
+
+Dolly examined it carefully. “I think it is a kind of money,” she said,
+“used by the lower classes.”
+
+They dined on the roof at Delmonico’s. Dolly wore the largest of
+the five hats still unsold, and Carter selected the dishes entirely
+according to which was the most expensive. Every now and again they
+would look anxiously down across the street at the bank that held their
+money. They were nervous lest it should take fire.
+
+“We can be extravagant to-night,” said Dolly, “because we owe it to
+Dromedary to celebrate. But from to-night on we must save. We’ve had an
+awful lesson. What happened to us last month must never happen again. We
+were down to a two-dollar bill. Now we have twenty-five hundred across
+the street, and you have several hundreds in your pocket. On that we can
+live easily for a year. Meanwhile, you can write ‘the’ great American
+novel without having to worry about money, or to look for a steady job.
+And then your book will come out, and you will be famous, and rich,
+and----”
+
+“Passing on from that,” interrupted Carter, “the thing of first
+importance is to get you out of that hot, beastly flat. I propose we
+start to-morrow for Cape Cod. I know a lot of fishing villages there
+where we could board and lodge for twelve dollars a week, and row and
+play tennis and live in our bathing suits.”
+
+Dolly assented with enthusiasm, and during the courses of the dinner
+they happily discussed Cape Cod from Pocasset to Yarmouth, and from
+Sandwich to Provincetown. So eager were they to escape, that Carter
+telephoned the hallman at his club to secure a cabin for the next
+afternoon on the Fall River boat. As they sat over their coffee in the
+cool breeze, with, in the air, the scent of flowers and the swing of
+music, and with, at their feet, the lights of the great city, the world
+seemed very bright.
+
+“It has been a great day,” sighed Carter. “And if I hadn’t had nervous
+prostration I would have enjoyed it. That race-course is always cool,
+and there were some fine finishes. I noticed two horses that would bear
+watching, Her Highness and Glowworm. If we weren’t leaving to-morrow,
+I’d be inclined----” Dolly regarded him with eyes of horror.
+
+“Champneys Carter!” she exclaimed. As she said it, it sounded like
+“Great Jehoshaphat!”
+
+Carter protested indignantly. “I only said,” he explained, “if I were
+following the races, I’d watch those horses. Don’t worry!” he exclaimed.
+“I know when to stop.”
+
+The next morning they took breakfast on the tiny terrace of a restaurant
+overlooking Bryant Park, where, during the first days of their
+honeymoon, they had always breakfasted. For sentimental reasons they
+now revisited it. But Dolly was eager to return at once to the flat and
+pack, and Carter seemed distraught. He explained that he had had a bad
+night.
+
+“I’m so sorry,” sympathized Dolly, “but to-night you will have a fine
+sleep going up the Sound. Any more nightmares?” she asked.
+
+“Nightmares!” exploded Carter fiercely. “Nightmares they certainly were!
+I dreamt two of the nightmares won! I saw them, all night, just as I saw
+Dromedary, Her Highness and Glowworm, winning, winning, winning!”
+
+“Those were the horses you spoke about last night,” said Dolly severely.
+“After so wonderful a day, of course you dreamt of racing, and those two
+horses were in your mind. That’s the explanation.”
+
+They returned to the flat and began, industriously, to pack. About
+twelve o’clock Carter, coming suddenly into the bedroom where Dolly
+was alone, found her reading the MORNING TELEGRAPH. It was open at the
+racing page of “past performances.”
+
+She dropped the paper guiltily. Carter kicked a hat-box out of his way
+and sat down on a trunk.
+
+“I don’t see,” he began, “why we can’t wait one more day. We’d be just
+as near the ocean at Sheepshead Bay race-track as on a Fall River boat,
+and----” He halted and frowned unhappily. “We needn’t bet more than ten
+dollars,” he begged.
+
+“Of course,” declared Dolly, “if they SHOULD win, you’ll always blame
+ME!” Carter’s eyes shone hopefully.
+
+“And,” continued Dolly, “I can’t bear to have you blame me. So----”
+
+“Get your hat!” shouted Carter, “or we’ll miss the first race.”
+
+Carter telephoned for a cab, and as they were entering it said guiltily:
+“I’ve got to stop at the bank.”
+
+“You have NOT!” announced Dolly. “That money is to keep us alive while
+you write the great American novel. I’m glad to spend another day at the
+races, and I’m willing to back your dreams as far as ten dollars, but
+for no more.”
+
+“If my dreams come true,” warned Carter, “you’ll be awfully sorry.”
+
+“Not I,” said Dolly. “I’ll merely send you to bed, and you can go on
+dreaming.”
+
+When Her Highness romped home, an easy winner, the look Dolly turned
+upon her husband was one both of fear and dismay.
+
+“I don’t like it!” she gasped. “It’s--it’s uncanny. It gives me a creepy
+feeling. It makes you seem sort of supernatural. And oh,” she cried, “if
+only I had let you bet all you had with you!”
+
+“I did,” stammered Carter, in extreme agitation. “I bet four hundred.
+I got five to one, Dolly,” he gasped, in awe; “we’ve won two thousand
+dollars.”
+
+Dolly exclaimed rapturously: “We’ll put it all in bank,” she cried.
+
+“We’ll put it all on Glowworm!” said her husband.
+
+“Champ!” begged Dolly. “Don’t push your luck. Stop while----” Carter
+shook his head.
+
+“It’s NOT luck!” he growled. “It’s a gift, it’s second sight, it’s
+prophecy. I’ve been a full-fledged clairvoyant all my life, and didn’t
+know it. Anyway, I’m a sport, and after two of my dreams breaking right,
+I’ve got to back the third one!”
+
+Glowworm was at ten to one, and at those odds the book-makers to whom he
+first applied did not care to take so large a sum as he offered. Carter
+found a book-maker named “Sol” Burbank who, at those odds, accepted his
+two thousand.
+
+When Carter returned to collect his twenty-two thousand, there was some
+little delay while Burbank borrowed a portion of it. He looked at Carter
+curiously and none too genially.
+
+“Wasn’t it you,” he asked, “that had that thirty-to-one shot yesterday
+on Dromedary?” Carter nodded somewhat guiltily. A man in the crowd
+volunteered: “And he had Her Highness in the second, too, for four
+hundred.”
+
+“You’ve made a good day,” said Burbank. “Give me a chance to get my
+money back to-morrow.
+
+“I’m sorry,” said Carter. “I’m leaving New York to-morrow.”
+
+The same scarlet car bore them back triumphant to the bank.
+
+“Twenty-two thousand dollars?” gasped Carter, “in CASH! How in the
+name of all that’s honest can we celebrate winning twenty-two thousand
+dollars? We can’t eat more than one dinner; we can’t drink more than two
+quarts of champagne--not without serious results.”
+
+“I’ll tell you what we can do!” cried Dolly excitedly. “We can sail
+to-morrow on the CAMPANIA!”
+
+“Hurrah!” shouted Carter. “We’ll have a second honey-moon. We’ll shoot
+up London and Paris. We’ll tear slices out of the map of Europe. You’ll
+ride in one motor-car, I’ll ride in another, we’ll have a maid and a
+valet in a third, and we’ll race each other all the way to Monte Carlo.
+And, there, I’ll dream of the winning numbers, and we’ll break the bank.
+When does the CAMPANIA sail?”
+
+“At noon,” said Dolly.
+
+“At eight we will be on board,” said Carter.
+
+But that night in his dreams he saw King Pepper, Confederate, and Red
+Wing each win a race. And in the morning neither the engines of the
+CAMPANIA nor the entreaties of Dolly could keep him from the race-track.
+
+“I want only six thousand,” he protested. “You can do what you like with
+the rest, but I am going to bet six thousand on the first one of those
+three to start. If he loses, I give you my word I’ll not bet another
+cent, and we’ll sail on Saturday. If he wins Out, I’ll put all I make on
+the two others.”
+
+“Can’t you see,” begged Dolly, “that your dreams are just a rehash of
+what you think during the day? You have been playing in wonderful luck,
+that’s all. Each of those horses is likely to win his race. When he does
+you will have more faith than ever in your silly dreams----”
+
+“My silly dreams,” said Carter grinning, “are carrying you to Europe,
+first class, by the next steamer.”
+
+They had been talking while on their way to the bank. When Dolly saw she
+could not alter his purpose, she made him place the nineteen thousand
+that remained, after he had taken out the six thousand, in her name. She
+then drew out the entire amount.
+
+“You told me,” said Dolly, smiling anxiously, “I could do what I liked
+with it. Maybe I have dreams also. Maybe I mean to back them.”
+
+She drove away, mysteriously refusing to tell him what she intended
+to do. When they met at luncheon, she was still much excited, still
+bristling with a concealed secret.
+
+“Did you back your dream?” asked Carter.
+
+Dolly nodded happily.
+
+“And when am I to know?”
+
+“You will read of it,” said Dolly, “to-morrow, in the morning papers.
+It’s all quite correct. My lawyers arranged it.”
+
+“Lawyers!” gasped her husband. “You’re not arranging to lock me in a
+private madhouse, are you?”
+
+“No,” laughed Dolly; “but when I told them how I intended to invest the
+money they came near putting me there.”
+
+“Didn’t they want to know how you suddenly got so rich?” asked Carter.
+
+“They did. I told them it came from my husband’s ‘books’! It was a very
+‘near’ false-hood.”
+
+“It was worse,” said Carter. “It was a very poor pun.”
+
+As in their honey-moon days they drove proudly to the track, and when
+Carter had placed Dolly in a box large enough for twenty, he pushed his
+way into the crowd around the stand of “Sol” Burbank. That veteran of
+the turf welcomed him gladly.
+
+“Coming to give me my money back?” he called.
+
+“No, to take some away,” said Carter, handing him his six thousand.
+
+Without apparently looking at it, Burbank passed it to his cashier.
+“King Pepper, twelve to six thousand,” he called.
+
+When King Pepper won, and Carter moved around the ring with eighteen
+thousand dollars in thousand and five hundred dollar bills in his fist,
+he found himself beset by a crowd of curious, eager “pikers.” They both
+impeded his operations and acted as a body-guard. Confederate was an
+almost prohibitive favorite at one to three, and in placing eighteen
+thousand that he might win six, Carter found little difficulty. When
+Confederate won, and he started with his twenty-four thousand to back
+Red Wing, the crowd now engulfed him. Men and boys who when they wagered
+five and ten dollars were risking their all, found in the sight of
+a young man offering bets in hundreds and thousands a thrilling and
+fascinating spectacle.
+
+To learn what horse he was playing and at what odds, racing touts and
+runners for other book-makers and individual speculators leaped into
+the mob that surrounded him, and then, squirming their way out, ran
+shrieking down the line. In ten minutes, through the bets of Carter and
+those that backed his luck, the odds against Red Wing were forced
+down from fifteen to one to even money. His approach was hailed by the
+book-makers either with jeers or with shouts of welcome. Those who had
+lost demanded a chance to regain their money. Those with whom he had not
+bet, found in that fact consolation, and chaffed the losers. Some curtly
+refused even the smallest part of his money.
+
+“Not with me!” they laughed. From stand to stand the layers of odds
+taunted him, or each other. “Don’t touch it, it’s tainted!” they
+shouted. “Look out, Joe, he’s the Jonah man?” Or, “Come at me again!”
+ they called. “And, once more!” they challenged as they reached for a
+thousand-dollar bill.
+
+And, when in time, each shook his head and grumbled: “That’s all I
+want,” or looked the other way, the mob around Carter jeered.
+
+“He’s fought ‘em to a stand-still!” they shouted jubilantly. In their
+eyes a man who alone was able and willing to wipe the name of a horse
+off the blackboards was a hero.
+
+To the horror of Dolly, instead of watching the horses parade past, the
+crowd gathered in front of her box and pointed and stared at her. From
+the club-house her men friends and acquaintances invaded it.
+
+“Has Carter gone mad?” they demanded. “He’s dealing out thousand-dollar
+bills like cigarettes. He’s turned the ring into a wheat Pit!”
+
+When he reached the box a sun-burned man in a sombrero blocked his way.
+
+“I’m the owner of Red Wing,” he explained, “bred him and trained him
+myself. I know he’ll be lucky if he gets the place. You’re backing him
+in thousands to WIN. What do you know about him?”
+
+“Know he will win,” said Carter.
+
+The veteran commissioner of the club stand buttonholed him. “Mr.
+Carter,” he begged, “why don’t you bet through me? I’ll give you as good
+odds as they will in that ring. You don’t want your clothes torn off you
+and your money taken from you.”
+
+“They haven’t taken such a lot of it yet,” said Carter.
+
+When Red Wing won, the crowd beneath the box, the men in the box,
+and the people standing around it, most of whom had followed Carter’s
+plunge, cheered and fell over him, to shake hands and pound him on
+the back. From every side excited photographers pointed cameras, and
+Lander’s band played: “Every Little Bit Added to What You’ve Got Makes
+Just a Little Bit More.” As he left the box to collect his money, a big
+man with a brown mustache and two smooth-shaven giants closed in around
+him, as tackles interfere for the man who has the ball. The big man took
+him by the arm. Carter shook himself free.
+
+“What’s the idea?” he demanded.
+
+“I’m Pinkerton,” said the big man genially. “You need a body-guard. If
+you’ve got an empty seat in your car, I’ll drive home with you. From
+Cavanaugh they borrowed a book-maker’s hand-bag and stuffed it with
+thousand-dollar bills. When they stepped into the car the crowd still
+surrounded them.
+
+“He’s taking it home in a trunk!” they yelled.
+
+That night the “sporting extras” of the afternoon papers gave prominence
+to the luck at the races of Champneys Carter. From Cavanaugh and the
+book-makers, the racing reporters had gathered accounts of his winnings.
+They stated that in three successive days, starting with one hundred
+dollars, he had at the end of the third day not lost a single bet, and
+that afternoon, on the last race alone, he had won sixty to seventy
+thousand dollars. With the text, they “ran” pictures of Carter at
+the track, of Dolly in her box, and of Mrs. Ingram in a tiara and
+ball-dress.
+
+Mother-in-law WILL be pleased cried Carter. In some alarm as to what
+the newspapers might say on the morrow, he ordered that in the morning a
+copy of each be sent to his room. That night in his dreams he saw clouds
+of dust-covered jackets and horses with sweating flanks, and one of them
+named Ambitious led all the rest. When he woke, he said to Dolly: “That
+horse Ambitious will win to-day.”
+
+“He can do just as he likes about THAT!” replied Dolly. “I have
+something on my mind much more important than horse-racing. To-day you
+are to learn how I spent your money. It’s to be in the morning papers.”
+
+When he came to breakfast, Dolly was on her knees. For his inspection
+she had spread the newspapers on the floor, opened at an advertisement
+that appeared in each. In the Centre of a half-page of white paper were
+the lines:
+
+     SOLD OUT IN ONE DAY!
+
+     ENTIRE FIRST EDITION
+
+     THE DEAD HEAT
+
+     BY
+
+     CHAMPNEYS CARTER
+
+     SECOND EDITION ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
+
+“In Heaven’s name!” roared Carter. “What does this mean?”
+
+“It means,” cried Dolly tremulously, “I’m backing my dream. I’ve always
+believed in your book. Now, I’m backing it. Our lawyers sent me to an
+advertising agent. His name is Spink, and he is awfully clever. I asked
+him if he could advertise a book so as to make it sell. He said with my
+money and his ideas he could sell last year’s telephone book to people
+who did not own a telephone, and who had never learned to read. He is
+proud of his ideas. One of them was buying out the first edition. Your
+publishers told him your book was ‘waste paper,’ and that he could have
+every copy in stock for the cost of the plates. So he bought the whole
+edition. That’s how it was sold out in one day. Then we ordered a second
+edition of one hundred thousand, and they’re printing it now.
+
+“The presses have been working all night to meet the demand!”
+
+“But,” cried Carter, “there isn’t any demand!”
+
+“There will be,” said Dolly, “when five million people read our
+advertisements.”
+
+She dragged him to the window and pointed triumphantly into the street.
+
+“See that!” she said. “Mr. Spink sent them here for me to inspect.”
+
+Drawn up in a line that stretched from Fifth Avenue to Broadway were an
+army of sandwich men. On the boards they carried were the words: “Read
+‘The Dead Heat.’ Second Edition. One Hundred Thousand!” On the fence
+in front of the building going up across the street, in letters a foot
+high, Carter again read the name of his novel. In letters in size more
+modest, but in colors more defiant, it glared at him from ash-cans and
+barrels.
+
+“How much does this cost?” he gasped.
+
+“It cost every dollar you had in bank,” said Dolly, “and before we are
+through it will cost you twice as much more. Mr. Spink is only waiting
+to hear from me before he starts spending fifty thousand dollars; that’s
+only half of what you won on Red Wing. I’m only waiting for you to make
+me out a check before I tell Spink to start spending it.”
+
+In a dazed state Carter drew a check for fifty thousand dollars and
+meekly handed it to his wife. They carried it themselves to the office
+of Mr. Spink. On their way, on every side they saw evidences of his
+handiwork. On walls, on scaffolding, on bill-boards were advertisements
+of “The Dead Heat.” Over Madison Square a huge kite as large as a
+Zeppelin air-ship painted the name of the book against the sky, on
+“dodgers” it floated in the air, on handbills it stared up from the
+gutters.
+
+Mr. Spink was a nervous young man with a bald head and eye-glasses.
+He grasped the check as a general might welcome fifty thousand fresh
+troops.
+
+“Reinforcements!” he cried. “Now, watch me. Now I can do things that are
+big, national, Napoleonic. We can’t get those books bound inside of a
+week, but meanwhile orders will be pouring in, people will be growing
+crazy for it. Every man, woman, and child in Greater New York will want
+a copy. I’ve sent out fifty boys dressed as jockeys on horseback to ride
+neck and neck up and down every avenue. ‘The Dead Heat’ is printed on
+the saddle-cloth. Half of them have been arrested already. It’s a little
+idea of my own.”
+
+“But,” protested Carter, “it’s not a racing story, it’s a detective
+story!”
+
+“The devil it is!” gasped Spink. “But what’s the difference!” he
+exclaimed. “They’ve got to buy it anyway. They’d buy it if it was a
+cook-book. And, I say,” he cried delightedly, “that’s great press work
+you’re doing for the book at the races! The papers are full of you this
+morning, and every man who reads about your luck at the track will see
+your name as the author of ‘The Dead Heat,’ and will rush to buy the
+book. He’ll think ‘The Dead Heat’ is a guide to the turf!”
+
+When Carter reached the track he found his notoriety had preceded him.
+Ambitious did not run until the fourth race, and until then, as he sat
+in his box, an eager crowd surged below. He had never known such
+popularity. The crowd had read the newspapers, and such head-lines as
+“He Cannot Lose!” “Young Carter Wins $70,000!” “Boy Plunger Wins Again!”
+“Carter Makes Big Killing!” “The Ring Hit Hard!” “The Man Who Cannot
+Lose!” “Carter Beats Book-makers!” had whetted their curiosity and
+filled many with absolute faith in his luck. Men he had not seen in
+years grasped him by the hand and carelessly asked if he could tell of
+something good. Friends old and new begged him to dine with them, to
+immediately have a drink with them, at least to “try” a cigar. Men who
+protested they had lost their all begged for just a hint which would
+help them to come out even, and every one, without exception, assured
+him he was going to buy his latest book.
+
+“I tried to get it last night at a dozen news-stands,” many of them
+said, “but they told me the entire edition was exhausted.”
+
+The crowd of hungry-eyed race-goers waiting below the box, and watching
+Carter’s every movement, distressed Dolly.
+
+“I hate it!” she cried. “They look at you like a lot of starved dogs
+begging for a bone. Let’s go home; we don’t want to make any more money,
+and we may lose what we have. And I want it all to advertise the book.”
+
+“If you’re not careful,” said Carter, “some one will buy that book and
+read it, and then you and Spink will have to take shelter in a cyclone
+cellar.”
+
+When he arose to make his bet on Ambitious, his friends from the club
+stand and a half-dozen of Pinkerton’s men closed in around him and in a
+flying wedge pushed into the ring. The news-papers had done their work,
+and he was instantly surrounded by a hungry, howling mob. In comparison
+with the one of the previous day, it was as a foot-ball scrimmage to a
+run on a bank. When he made his first wager and the crowd learned
+the name of the horse, it broke with a yell into hundreds of flying
+missiles which hurled themselves at the book-makers. Under their attack,
+as on the day before, Ambitious receded to even money. There was hardly
+a person at the track who did not back the luck of the man who “could
+not lose.” And when Ambitious won easily, it was not the horse or the
+jockey that was cheered, but the young man in the box.
+
+In New York the extras had already announced that he was again lucky,
+and when Dolly and Carter reached the bank they found the entire staff
+on hand to receive him and his winnings. They amounted to a sum so
+magnificent that Carter found for the rest of their lives the interest
+would furnish Dolly and himself an income upon which they could live
+modestly and well.
+
+A distinguished-looking, white-haired official of the bank congratulated
+Carter warmly. “Should you wish to invest some of this,” he said, “I
+should be glad to advise you. My knowledge in that direction may be
+wider than your own.”
+
+Carter murmured his thanks. The white-haired gentleman lowered his
+voice. “On certain other subjects,” he continued, “you know many things
+of which I am totally ignorant. Could you tell me,” he asked carelessly,
+“who will win the Suburban to-morrow?”
+
+Carter frowned mysteriously. “I can tell you better in the morning,” he
+said. “It looks like Beldame, with Proper and First Mason within call.”
+
+The white-haired man showed his surprise and also that his ignorance was
+not as profound as he suggested.
+
+“I thought the Keene entry----” he ventured.
+
+“I know,” said Carter doubtfully. “If it were for a mile, I would say
+Delhi, but I don’t think he can last the distance. In the morning I’ll
+wire you.”
+
+As they settled back in their car, Carter took both of Dolly’s hands
+in his. “So far as money goes,” he said, “we are independent of your
+mother--independent of my books; and I want to make you a promise. I
+want to promise you that, no matter what I dream in the future, I’ll
+never back another horse.” Dolly gave a gasp of satisfaction.
+
+“And what’s more,” added Carter hastily, “not another dollar can you
+risk in backing my books. After this, they’ve got to stand or fall on
+their legs!”
+
+“Agreed!” cried Dolly. “Our plunging days are over.”
+
+When they reached the flat they found waiting for Carter the junior
+partner of a real publishing house. He had a blank contract, and he
+wanted to secure the right to publish Carter’s next book.
+
+“I have a few short stories----” suggested Carter.
+
+Collections of short stories, protested the visitor truthfully, “do
+not sell. We would prefer another novel on the same lines as ‘The Dead
+Heat.’”
+
+“Have you read ‘The Dead Heat’?” asked Carter.
+
+“I have not,” admitted the publisher, “but the next book by the same
+author is sure to----. We will pay in advance of royalties fifteen
+thousand dollars.”
+
+“Could you put that in writing?” asked Carter. When the publisher was
+leaving he said:
+
+“I see your success in literature is equaled by your success at the
+races. Could you tell me what will win the Suburban?”
+
+“I will send you a wire in the MORNING,” said Carter.
+
+They had arranged to dine with some friends and later to visit a musical
+comedy. Carter had changed his clothes, and, while he was waiting for
+Dolly to dress, was reclining in a huge arm-chair. The heat of the day,
+the excitement, and the wear on his nerves caused his head to sink back,
+his eyes to close, and his limbs to relax.
+
+When, by her entrance, Dolly woke him, he jumped up in some confusion.
+
+“You’ve been asleep,” she mocked.
+
+“Worse!” said Carter. “I’ve been dreaming! Shall I tell you who is going
+to win the Suburban?”
+
+“Champneys!” cried Dolly in alarm.
+
+“My dear Dolly,” protested her husband, “I promised to stop betting. I
+did not promise to stop sleeping.”
+
+“Well,” sighed Dolly, with relief, “as long as it stops at that. Delhi
+will win,” she added. “Delhi will not,” said Carter. “This is how they
+will finish----” He scribbled three names on a piece of paper which Dolly
+read.
+
+“But that,” she said, “is what you told the gentleman at the bank.”
+
+Carter stared at her blankly and in some embarrassment.
+
+“You see!” cried Dolly, “what you think when you’re awake, you dream
+when you’re asleep. And you had a run of luck that never happened before
+and could never happen again.”
+
+Carter received her explanation with reluctance. “I wonder,” he said.
+
+On arriving at the theatre they found their host had reserved a
+stage-box, and as there were but four in their party, and as, when they
+entered, the house lights were up, their arrival drew upon them the
+attention both of those in the audience and of those on the stage. The
+theatre was crowded to its capacity, and in every part were people who
+were habitual race-goers, as well as many racing men who had come to
+town for the Suburban. By these, as well as by many others who for
+three days had seen innumerable pictures of him, Carter was instantly
+recognized. To the audience and to the performers the man who always won
+was of far greater interest than what for the three-hundredth night was
+going forward on the stage. And when the leading woman, Blanche Winter,
+asked the comedian which he would rather be, “The Man Who Broke the
+Bank at Monte Carlo or the Man Who Can Not Lose?” she gained from the
+audience an easy laugh and from the chorus an excited giggle.
+
+When, at the end of the act, Carter went into the lobby to smoke, he was
+so quickly surrounded that he sought refuge on Broadway. From there, the
+crowd still following him, he was driven back into his box. Meanwhile,
+the interest shown in him had not been lost upon the press agent of the
+theatre, and he at once telephoned to the newspaper offices that Plunger
+Carter, the book-maker breaker, was at that theatre, and if that the
+newspapers wanted a chance to interview him on the probable out-come of
+the classic handicap to be run on the morrow, he, the press agent, would
+unselfishly assist them. In answer to these hurry calls, reporters of
+the Ten o’Clock Club assembled in the foyer. How far what later followed
+was due to their presence and to the efforts of the press agent only
+that gentleman can tell. It was in the second act that Miss Blanche
+Winter sang her topical song. In it she advised the audience when
+anxious to settle any question of personal or national interest to “Put
+it up to the Man in the Moon.’” This night she introduced a verse in
+which she told of her desire to know which horse on the morrow would win
+the Suburban, and, in the chorus, expressed her determination to “Put it
+up to the Man in the Moon.”
+
+Instantly from the back of the house a voice called: “Why don’t you put
+it up to the Man in the Box?” Miss Winter laughed--the audience laughed;
+all eyes were turned toward Carter. As though the idea pleased them,
+from different parts of the house people applauded heartily. In
+embarrassment, Carter shoved back his chair and pulled the curtain
+of the box between him and the audience. But he was not so easily to
+escape. Leaving the orchestra to continue unheeded with the prelude to
+the next verse, Miss Winter walked slowly and deliberately toward him,
+smiling mischievously. In burlesque entreaty, she held out her arms.
+She made a most appealing and charming picture, and of that fact she was
+well aware. In a voice loud enough to reach every part of the house, she
+addressed herself to Carter:
+
+“Won’t you tell ME?” she begged.
+
+Carter, blushing unhappily, shrugged his shoulders in apology.
+
+With a wave of her hand Miss Winter designated the audience. “Then,” she
+coaxed, reproachfully, “won’t you tell THEM?”
+
+Again, instantly, with a promptness and unanimity that sounded
+suspiciously as though it came from ushers well rehearsed, several voice
+echoed her petition: “Give us all a chance!” shouted one. “Don’t keep
+the good things to yourself!” reproached another. “I want to get rich,
+TOO!” wailed a third. In his heart, Carter prayed they would choke. But
+the audience, so far from resenting the interruptions, encouraged them,
+and Carter’s obvious discomfort added to its amusement. It proceeded to
+assail him with applause, with appeals, with commands to “speak up.”
+
+The hand-clapping became general--insistent. The audience would not
+be denied. Carter turned to Dolly. In the recesses of the box she
+was enjoying his predicament. His friends also were laughing at him.
+Indignant at their desertion, Carter grinned vindictively. “All right,”
+ he muttered over his shoulder. “Since you think it’s funny, I’ll show
+you!” He pulled his pencil from his watch-chain and, spreading his
+programme on the ledge of the box, began to write.
+
+From the audience there rose a murmur of incredulity, of surprise, of
+excited interest. In the rear of the house the press agent, after one
+startled look, doubled up in an ecstasy of joy. “We’ve landed him!” he
+gasped. “We’ve landed him. He’s going to fall for it!”
+
+Dolly frantically clasped her husband by the coat-tail.
+
+“Champ!” she implored, “what are you doing?”
+
+Quite calmly, quite confidently, Carter rose. Leaning forward with a nod
+and a smile, he presented the programme to the beautiful Miss Winter.
+That lady all but snatched at it. The spot-light was full in her eyes.
+Turning her back that she might the more easily read, she stood for a
+moment, her pretty figure trembling with eagerness, her pretty eyes
+bent upon the programme. The house had grown suddenly still, and with
+an excited gesture, the leader of the orchestra commanded the music to
+silence. A man, bursting with impatience, broke the tense quiet. “Read
+it!” he shouted.
+
+In a frightened voice that in the sudden hush held none of its usual
+confidence, Miss Winter read slowly: “The favorite cannot last the
+distance. Will lead for the mile and give way to Beldame. Proper takes
+the place. First Mason will show. Beldame will win by a length.”
+
+Before she had ceased reading, a dozen men had struggled to their
+feet and a hundred voice were roaring at her. “Read that again!” the
+chorused. Once more Miss Winter read the message, but before she had
+finished half of those in the front rows were scrambling from their
+seats and racing up the aisles. Already the reporters were ahead of
+them, and in the neighborhood not one telephone booth was empty. Within
+five minutes, in those hotels along the White Way where sporting men
+are wont to meet, betting commissioners and hand-book men were suddenly
+assaulted by breathless gentlemen, some in evening dress, some without
+collars, and some without hats, but all with money to bet against
+the favorite. And, an hour later, men, bent under stacks of newspaper
+“extras,” were vomited from the subway stations into the heart of
+Broadway, and in raucous tones were shrieking, “Winner of the Suburban,”
+ sixteen hours before that race was run. That night to every big
+newspaper office from Maine to California, was flashed the news that
+Plunger Carter, in a Broadway theatre, had announced that the favorite
+for the Suburban would be beaten, and, in order, had named the three
+horses that would first finish.
+
+Up and down Broadway, from rathskellers to roof-gardens, in cafes
+and lobster palaces, on the corners of the cross-roads, in clubs and
+all-night restaurants, Carter’s tip was as a red rag to a bull.
+
+Was the boy drunk, they demanded, or had his miraculous luck turned his
+head? Otherwise, why would he so publicly utter a prophecy that on the
+morrow must certainly smother him with ridicule. The explanations
+were varied. The men in the clubs held he was driven by a desire for
+notoriety, the men in the street that he was more clever than they
+guessed, and had made the move to suit his own book, to alter the odds
+to his own advantage. Others frowned mysteriously. With superstitious
+faith in his luck, they pointed to his record. “Has he ever lost a bet?
+How do WE know what HE knows?” they demanded. “Perhaps it’s fixed and he
+knows it!”
+
+The “wise” ones howled in derision. “A Suburban FIXED!” they retorted.
+“You can fix ONE jockey, you can fix TWO; but you can’t fix sixteen
+jockeys! You can’t fix Belmont, you can’t fix Keene. There’s nothing in
+his picking Beldame, but only a crazy man would pick the horse for the
+place and to show, and shut out the favorite! The boy ought to be in
+Matteawan.”
+
+Still undisturbed, still confident to those to whom he had promised
+them, Carter sent a wire. Nor did he forget his old enemy, “Sol”
+ Burbank. “If you want to get some of the money I took,” he telegraphed,
+“wipe out the Belmont entry and take all they offer on Delhi. He cannot
+win.”
+
+And that night, when each newspaper called him up at his flat, he made
+the same answer. “The three horses will finish as I said. You can state
+that I gave the information as I did as a sort of present to the people
+of New York City.”
+
+In the papers the next morning “Carter’s Tip” was the front-page
+feature. Even those who never in the racing of horses felt any concern
+could not help but take in the outcome of this one a curious interest.
+The audacity of the prophecy, the very absurdity of it, presupposing, as
+it did, occult power, was in itself amusing. And when the curtain rose
+on the Suburban it was evident that to thousands what the Man Who Could
+Not Lose had foretold was a serious and inspired utterance.
+
+This time his friends gathered around him, not to benefit by his advice,
+but to protect him. “They’ll mob you!” they warned. “They’ll tear the
+clothes off your back. Better make your getaway now.”
+
+Dolly, with tears in her eyes, sat beside him. Every now and again she
+touched his hand. Below his box, as around a newspaper office on the
+night when a president is elected, the people crushed in a turbulent
+mob. Some mocked and jeered, some who on his tip had risked their every
+dollar, hailed him hopefully. On every side policemen, fearful of coming
+trouble, hemmed him in. Carter was bored extremely, heartily sorry
+he had on the night before given way to what he now saw as a perverse
+impulse. But he still was confident, still undismayed.
+
+To all eyes, except those of Dolly, he was of all those at the track the
+least concerned. To her he turned and, in a low tone, spoke swiftly. “I
+am so sorry,” he begged. “But, indeed, indeed, I can’t lose. You must
+have faith in me.”
+
+“In you, yes,” returned Dolly in a whisper, “but in your dreams, no!”
+
+The horses were passing on their way to the post. Carter brought his
+face close to hers.
+
+“I’m going to break my promise,” he said, “and make one more bet, this
+one with you. I bet you a kiss that I’m right.”
+
+Dolly, holding back her tears, smiled mournfully. “Make it a hundred,”
+ she said.
+
+Half of the forty thousand at the track had backed Delhi, the other
+half, following Carter’s luck and his confidence in proclaiming his
+convictions, had backed Beldame. Many hundred had gone so far as to bet
+that the three horses he had named would finish as he had foretold. But,
+in spite of Carter’s tip, Delhi still was the favorite, and when the
+thousands saw the Keene polka-dots leap to the front, and by two lengths
+stay there, for the quarter, the half, and for the three-quarters, the
+air was shattered with jubilant, triumphant yells. And then suddenly,
+with the swiftness of a moving picture, in the very moment of his
+victory, Beldame crept up on the favorite, drew alongside, drew ahead
+passed him, and left him beaten. It was at the mile.
+
+The night before a man had risen in a theatre and said to two thousand
+people: “The favorite will lead for the mile, and give way to Beldame.”
+ Could they have believed him, the men who now cursed themselves might
+for the rest of their lives have lived upon their winnings. Those who
+had followed his prophecy faithfully, superstitiously, now shrieked in
+happy, riotous self-congratulation. “At the MILE!” they yelled. “He TOLD
+you, at the MILE!” They turned toward Carter and shook Panama hats at
+him. “Oh, you Carter!” they shrieked lovingly.
+
+It was more than a race the crowd was watching now, it was the working
+out of a promise. And when Beldame stood off Proper’s rush, and Proper
+fell to second, and First Mason followed three lengths in the rear, and
+in that order they flashed under the wire, the yells were not that a
+race had been won, but that a prophecy had been fulfilled.
+
+Of the thousands that cheered Carter and fell upon him and indeed did
+tear his clothes off his back, one of his friends alone was sufficiently
+unselfish to think of what it might, mean to Carter.
+
+“Champ!” roared his friend, pounding him on both shoulders. “You old
+wizard! I win ten thousand! How much do you win?”
+
+Carter cast a swift glance at Dolly. He said, “I win much more than
+that.”
+
+And Dolly, raising her eyes to his, nodded and smiled contentedly.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Could Not Lose, by
+Richard Harding Davis
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