I—ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS

A WILD and prolonged roar came from every quarter of the race track. It swelled in volume. It came again and again. Pandemonium itself seemed loosed.

Outside the enclosure, a squat, fat man, the perspiration rolling in streams down his face, tugged at his collar with frantic, nervous jerks, as he leaned in over the side of a high-powered car, and with his other hand gripped at the arm of the young man in the driver’s seat.

“Dave, listen to ‘em! My God, listen to ‘em!” snarled the fat man.

Dave Henderson, with the toe of his boot, moved the little black satchel that the other had dropped on the floor of the car farther to one side; and, by way of excuse for disengaging his arm, reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.

“I can hear ‘em—even a yard away out here!” he said imperturbably. “Sounds like a great day for the bookies—not!”

The fat man secured his grip on Dave Henderson’s arm again.

“I’m wiped out—every last cent—all I’ve made in years,” he said hoarsely. “You get that, don’t you? You know it! I’m cleaned out—and you don’t seem to give a damn!”

“Why should I?” inquired Dave Henderson calmly. “I guess it’s their turn, ain’t it?”

Bookie Skarvan’s red-rimmed little gray eyes narrowed, and he swallowed hard.

“I’ve played square, I have!” he whined. “And I’m wiped out!”

“Yes—square as hell!” amended Dave Henderson.

“You don’t give a damn!” shrilled Bookie Skarvan. “That’s like you! That’s like the lot of you! Where would you have been if I hadn’t taken you up—eh?”

“God knows!” said Dave Henderson dispassionately. “I’m not blaming you for trying to make a crook of me.”

An apoplectic red heightened Bookie Skarvan’s flushed and streaming face.

“Well, that’s one thing I didn’t make a bull of, at any rate!” he retorted viciously.

Dave Henderson shifted his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other with the tip of his tongue. There was a curious smile, half bitter, half whimsical, on his lips, as he leaned suddenly toward the other.

“I guess you’re right, Bookie!” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I’ve only just found it out myself, so if you think there’s any congrats coming to you and you’re sore because you didn’t get ‘em before, you know why now.”

The scowl on Bookie Skarvan’s face deepened, then cleared abruptly, and the man forced a nervous, wheezy chuckle.

“You won’t feel so blamed cool about it to-morrow morning when you come to size this up!” He was whining again, but plaintively now. “I’m wiped out, I tell you, and it’s too hard a crack for Tydeman to give me any more backing after he’s squared this up—so what are you going to do, eh?”

Dave Henderson glanced at the car’s clock. It was already after three.

“I’m going up to ‘Frisco—if I ever get started!” he said brusquely. “I’ve missed the train, as it is, and that means a ninety-mile run—and we’re still wasting time! Get down to cases! You got Tydeman on the long distance—what did he say?”

“I couldn’t help your missing the train!” Bookie Skarvan’s voice had grown almost ingratiating. “There wasn’t any use of you going until I knew Tydeman was at home, and unless I got hold of him before the banks closed, was there? And if I’d been able to get him at once we might have had time to arrange it by wire with a bank here—if they were carrying that much in ready cash—and you wouldn’t have needed to go at all. But I didn’t get him until just a few minutes ago. You know that! I couldn’t help it, could I—and the run won’t hurt you. You can grab the evening train back. I can stave this gang of wolves off until then by telling ‘em Tydeman’s making good.”

“All right!” Dave Henderson was apparently much more intent upon the starting mechanism of the car, than he was upon either his companion or his companion’s words. The engine was already purring softly when he looked up at Bookie Skarvan again. “Well, what’s the arrangement?”

“Tydeman will have the money in cash at his house—one hundred thousand dollars. You go there and get it, and bring it back on the train to-night.”

“Anything else?”

“No; that’s all.” Bookie Skarvan mopped at his face with the back of his sleeve, glanced in the direction of another sudden outburst of delirious cheering, and mopped at his face again. “That’ll be another long shot—everybody’s playing ‘em—damn ‘em! For God’s sake, don’t miss that train back, Dave! It leaves at nine o’clock. Some of these pikers that never turned a red in their lives before ‘ll be laying me out if I don’t flash the long green then. You get me, Dave? I’ll have all I can do to stave ‘em off that long. I wish I could go with you and get out of here, but they’d think I was running away, and——”

“I get you!” said Dave Henderson. “They all love Bookie Skarvan! Well, it’s your car, and you’ve got a right there, but get off the step unless you’re coming!” He threw in the clutch, and the car shot forward. “So-long, Bookie!” he flung out over his shoulder.

An hour passed. Out in the free sweep of country, the car was running at terrific speed. And now, from the road ahead, Dave Henderson’s dark eyes, cool and self-reliant, strayed to the little black handbag at his feet as they had done many times before, while the tight lips parted slightly in a smile; and suddenly, over the rush of the wind and the roar of the speeding car, he spoke aloud.

“One hundred thousand dollars—in cash,” said Dave Henderson meditatively. “Well, it looks like the chance I’ve been waiting for—what? Only I can’t go and let old Tydeman hand it over to me and trust me with it, and then beat it and give him the doublecross, can I? Once he shoves it at me, and says, ‘Dave, my boy, take this back to Skarvan,’ I’m stung, and there’s nothing doing! That’s right, ain’t it? Well then, what’s the answer?”

The broad, muscular shoulders set a little more rigidly over the steering wheel, and the square jaws clamped in a sort of dogged defiance in the face of his self-propounded problem. His mind, as though seeking therefrom the solution he demanded, was reviewing the facts and circumstances that had placed that little black hand-bag, with its suggestive possibilities, at his feet. It had been a bad day for the bookmakers, and a particularly bad day for Bookie Skarvan—for it was the culmination of several extremely bad days for Bookie Skarvan. Shots at odds that were staggering had won again and again. There was absolutely no question but that the man was wiped out—a good many times over. True, Tydeman was coming to the rescue, but that did not put Bookie Skarvan on his feet again; it only paid the bills, and saved Bookie Skarvan from being used as a street cleaning device in the shape of a human mop! The curious thing about it was that Tydeman was in any way connected with Bookie Skarvan! Everybody knew that Skarvan was crooked from his boot soles up—except Martin K. Tydeman. But that was Tydeman’s way! Tydeman must have been told often enough, but Tydeman wouldn’t believe it. That was Tydeman’s way! Once, years ago, Skarvan had tipped Tydeman off that one of his string was being “doctored.” It did not matter that Skarvan had juggled his information, and had tried first to play both ends to the middle by blackmailing and then doublecrossing the man who had done the “doctoring"—Tydeman did not know that—and Tydeman from that moment was unshaken in his belief that there was no squarer man on the circuit than Bookie Skarvan. It had resulted in Tydeman becoming a silent partner of Bookie Skarvan—and the betting fraternity had been not a little pleased, for Tydeman’s millions went up on the board better than even against Bookie Skar-van’s trickiness.

Dave Henderson nodded his head. It was quite true. Martin K. Tydeman was getting to be quite an old man now, but Martin K. Tydeman was still hailed as the squarest, garnest sporting gentleman California had ever known—and it would be a little rough on that king of sports. It was too bad that it wasn’t Bookie Skarvan! Skarvan was crooked from the ground up—and who knew it any better than he, Dave Henderson, who had worked for Skarvan for several years now? But, as it was, Tydeman would simply have to cough up a second hundred thousand out of his millions, that was all. No, it wasn’t all! It depended entirely upon whether he, Dave Henderson, could get his hands on the money without accepting it as a trust from...