Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Because if it was you, Ikey, I’d like you to give it back to her. She’s a nice girl — you’d never believe how nice until you’d seen her — and taking her money is the cruelest shame I ever heard of; I wouldn’t stand for it a minute; Ikey, I wouldn’t, really! Was it you, Ikey?”

  Ikey said nothing.

  “Of course, Ikey, if you had taken it I should quite understand that you did it not knowing the circumstances; you couldn’t possibly have known. And I’m ever so sure you wouldn’t do a mean thing like that with your eyes open, would you, Ikey? And now that you do know, and supposing you did take the money, you’ll give it back, won’t you, Ikey?”

  Ikey still said nothing, and she laid one hand on each of his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. And Ikey hung his head. He still said nothing.

  “Now, Ikey, you know when we married we both of us promised we’d never tell each other any lies, whatever we might agree to tell other people — didn’t we? You’re not going back on that promise now, Ikey, are you? Was it you that took that five thousand dollars, Ikey?”

  “Yep,” groaned Ikey, “I took it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I got it here.”

  “Well, then, give it back.”

  “You bet your life I’ll give it back!” said Ikey, turning at last, as any worm will turn, and throwing her hands off his shoulders. Then he grasped her shoulders in turn and shook her almost savagely.

  “See here, my gal! I love you good and plenty, and we’ve got on good together. I’ve told you no lies, and you haven’t told me any, an’ that was part o’ the bargain. But there was another part to that bargain, and you seem to be forgettin’ it. How about your promisin’ not to chip in until I gave the word? Now didn’t you promise?”

  “Yes, Ikey,” she answered, “I promised. But this isn’t exactly chipping in. This is different. That girl has got to have her money back! I’d hate to think I was spending so much as a penny of it — it would make me wretched. Think how happy we’ve been, Ikey! You wouldn’t like to take away that girl’s chance of being happy too, would you, Ikey? She’s a good girl, and a nice girl; she never harmed anybody in her life. You couldn’t do it, Ikey! I know you couldn’t! You’re not mean enough!”

  Ikey swore. Never mind what he said; this is a moral story; it is sufficient to say that Ikey felt his determination slipping away from under him, and that he swore.

  “How d’you know it’s the right girl?” he asked. “How d’you know it ain’t one o’ these here wise molls pulling off a ‘con’ game? Did she give you her address by any chance?

  “Yes. I asked her for it. Her name’s Lizzie Wingfield, and she lives in that big apartment house four blocks away from here on the north side of the street - the Harlemia it’s called — and she rents a back bedroom in one of the flats on the second floor. Now, Ikey, does that tally? Wasn’t that the one?”

  Ikey nodded.

  “And you’ll give it back?”

  I’ll see!” said Ikey, getting up and reaching for his hat. “Lemme think it over; I’ll see!”

  “Very well, Ikey; think it over! But if you want me to go on loving you, think twice, Ikey, and let it be yes both times!”

  “Now isn’t that just like a woman?” mumbled Ikey as he started down the stairs.

  When Ikey reached the bottom of the stairs he paused for a moment in the hallway. He was thinking of that gambling notion of his again, and the thought of it was singularly sweet. Horses were his pet fancy.

  He knew nothing about horses themselves, but he knew all about their form on paper, and there had been a time, not so very long ago, when Ikey was known personally to every book-maker on the turf.

  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed suddenly, laying his long index-finger to the side of his extraordinary nose. “That’s a swell idea! A1. Couldn’t beat it! If I win I’ll do what the missus says, give the gal back her money, suit myself and the missus and everybody else, and be five or ten thousand in. And if I lose I’ll be no worse off, anyhow! It’s a bet! I’ll do it!”

  He walked about eight blocks to let the idea soak in, and on the way it occurred to him that there might be some difficulty about placing a big bet on the course unless he made arrangements for it.

  So he turned into a hotel where there were writing-tables provided in the foyer, and wrote the following letter:

  DEAR ABE: You’ve not seen me for quite a while, but I ain’t dead yet not by a darn sight. I’ve only been a bit broke, that’s all, and you know I always bet big, and never bet at all unless I’ve got the cash. I’m coming down to the course on Saturday next, and if you’re there I’m going to have a try for some of your money; I’m bringing down about five thousand of the real thing with me, and I’m going to make a real big splurge with it. I’ve got some inside dope about a certain horse that’ll act on your bank-roll like a Turkish bath; It’ll thin her out considerable. So bring along plenty of mazuma with you, and get ready to leave it behind you with a good grace, for I shall surely clean you out. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me, A1, believe me, Yours till the last bell rings, IKEY HOLE.

  He sealed the letter and addressed it to Mr. Abraham Maxstein, turf accountant, and he posted it with a grin that savored of pleasant recollections.

  That done, he strolled, home again leisurely, and told his wife that he would take an early opportunity of returning the money. When she pressed him for information as to the exact date on which he would do it, he answered “within a week,” and not another word could she get out of him.

  When she finally left off nagging him about it, he settled down in his shirt- sleeves to the careful study of a Turf Guide, and he got so much interest out of it that he had to he summoned twice to dinner for the first time in history.

  CHAPTER IV. — Enter The Hero! The Plot Gets Thicker Still

  NOW we must see what Lizzie Wingfield is doing all this time. A young lady who has just lost five thousand dollars, to say nothing of her hopes of an early wedding, at one swift, sudden swoop cannot fail to be interesting, even if she is too unhappy to be amusing.

  As we have seen, a strange lady met her in the park and talked to her, and was very sympathetic, and found out her address; but that hadn’t helped her in the least so far as she could see; she was still hopeless, and from time to time she still wept.

  She had written to San Francisco — a long, tearful letter, in which she told Walter Bavin all about it — how the money had disappeared, and how she had informed the police, and how rude the police had been, and how she would never forgive herself even if he forgave her, which she had no right to expect he would do, and oh! reams and reams of that kind of thing; the extra postage on the letter had cost her thirty cents. And all she had to do then was sit down and wait for the answer.

  She could hardly be expected to be happy. Letters take several days to get to San Francisco, and answers take several other days to come back again; she figured it out closely, and saw no prospect whatever of getting an answer before Saturday, and waiting for it was just like sitting in an electric chair and waiting for the warden’s assistant to turn on the current.

  Why shouldn’t she weep? The suspense was partly broken on the Wednesday, for she received a telegram from Walter — Walter Bavin — that evening; but it was so short, and the contents of it were so unexpected and so altogether irrelevant that she extracted very little encouragement from it; in fact the only consolation she drew from it at all was the fact that he had apparently forgotten to cancel his engagement. It ran:

  Your letter received. Say nothing. Inform nobody. Await my letter. WALTER BAVIN.

  Now what the dickens could that mean? What sort of consolation could a poor girl drag out of that? She puzzled over it, and worried about it, and lay awake at night trying to read all sorts of possible and impossible meanings in between the two brief lines, until she became very nearly ill.

  But there was nothing else for it but to wait for the promised letter, and obey orders
in the mean time by holding her tongue; and no woman, young or old, likes to do that.

  She would very likely have gone mad, and spoiled the story in that way, if she hadn’t been a school-teacher; but school-teachers are so used to putting up with diabolically ingenious torment at the hands of other people that the ordinary slings and arrows of outrageous fortune don’t break them down as they would ordinary people. She kept a sort of half-Nelson on her sanity, and wept and waited.

  Then came the letter. It was shorter than usual. There were two whole pages less of love-stuff; she knew that because she read them first. The beginning of the middle part amazed her, because Walter Bavin appeared to care much less about the loss of the five thousand dollars than he did about its loss becoming known.

  There were two whole pages of reiterated commands to her to hold her tongue, though he only used that coarse expression once; all the other times he expressed it quite courteously but firmly none the less.

  By the time that she had skimmed through the first seven pages of the letter she was almost ready to scream for she had been brought up to always know the reason why of things, and her every instinct tended in that direction, and here was a long-drawn-out pen-and-ink mystery that cut off her woman’s one prerogative of talking without a word of explanation. But she read on. And presently she did scream.

  Her whole world, or all that the vanished five thousand dollars had left of it, her faith in humanity, her hopes for the future, and, worst of all, her belief in her lover seemed to be sliding away from under her feet.

  The room rocked and swayed; the electric light above her head seemed to he going round and round and round; and the letter swam before her eyes until she couldn’t read it; and then big tears began to fall on it; and the storm broke. Never mind what she did then.

  It is neither decent nor amusing to intrude on the privacy of a young woman at the moment when the crisis of her life arrives, and she stands stripped suddenly of faith and hope and charity to face the world alone, This is part of what she read:

  Those fifty one-hundred-dollar bills were stolen from the trust company of which I am cashier, although they were not stolen from my department, and as yet the directors do not suspect me. They will, though, if you advertise the loss of them, and then it will be all up.

  So — he had lied to her! He had said they were his savings, and all the time he knew they were stolen money. He had — But let us draw the curtain, and leave her alone. We can?t help her, or at least not yet, and the agony of a fellow creature, especially of a lonely fellow creature, is not a pleasing spectacle.

  CHAPTER V. — In Which Ikey Makes A Killing, And Enjoys Himself

  WATCH Ikey now. He is off to Aqueduct races in a chess- board suit of gray with a red stripe in it; he is wearing a purple tie fastened with his lucky topaz stick-pin, and a broad-brimmed derby hat with a low crown, and purple socks that just show over the edge of his shiny brown shoes.

  He doesn’t look a bit like the same Ikey. His furtive look is gone completely, and he strides along with quite a jaunty air, smoking a twenty-five-cent cigar with a big red and gold band round it. Cigars were not included in his oath of abstinence.

  He has eaten fish for breakfast, because he always has good luck on the days when he eats fish; and he has given half a dollar to a blind man, and has patted a spotty dog; and when he got out of bed he carefully put his left slipper on his right foot; and he has bought a new pack of cards at the nearest stationer’s and cut the ace of diamonds at the first try; in fact he has left no stone unturned and no deed undone that could help to make the day auspicious. And to crown it all, as he walked toward the railway station, he saw a skew-bald horse between the shafts of a grocer’s cart and two milk-white horses immediately afterward.

  “Gee!” said Ikey to himself. “This is my lucky day! I know it!”

  He wasn’t known as Keyhole Ikey on the race-course. Not a bit of it. There they all greeted him as “Old King Cole,” and were uncommonly glad to see him. As Old King Cole, and “Coley” for short, he had accumulated in days gone by a reputation as a “fall guy” and a “good spender” and a “sucker” — just the sort of man they like to see at a race meeting.

  Naturally it was the bookies who liked him the best, and they greeted him most effusively; but on this occasion Ikey had very little to say to any of them. He kept his own counsel, and worked his way gradually to where Abe Maxstein, a Hebrew gentleman of plethoric paunch and purple countenance, was bellowing out the odds on the first race.

  “Hullo!” shouted Abe. “Why, dash my Sam if here ain’t Old King Cole again! Lookin’ like a winner, too! How goes it, Coley??

  “Fine!” answered Ikey. “How’s yourself? Get my letter?”

  “Sure thing. What’s your fancy in the first race?”

  “Nix!” said Ikey. “Ain’t bettin’ on the first race.”

  “Never! You standin’ out while there’s anythin’ on four legs runnin’. I don’t believe it! What’s come over you all of a sudden?”

  “Goin’ to have a plunge on the third,” answered Ikey, his face screwed up knowingly, and that remarkable nose of his twitching thirteen to the dozen; “a feller I know pretty well slipped me the dope.”

  “All right, Coley, name your gee! You can get all you want here. I’ll lay you the odds against any horse you like in the third race — here’s the list — now, then, what’s your fancy?”

  “Guess I’ll wait till the numbers go up,” answered Ikey.

  “No, you don’t! Come on now! I’ll lay you a fair price and give you a run for your money. If the horse don’t run you get your money back. Now then, which is it?”

  “Tiddliwinks,” said Ikey.

  “Ho, ho! So that’s the lay of the land, is it? Evens Tiddliwinks! I’ll lay you even money. That horse’ll start two to one on or I’m a liar! How much d’you want at evens?”

  “Five thousand,” said Ikey quietly, handing up the fifty hundred dollar bills all fastened neatly together with a rubber hand.

  Abe Maxstein’s face froze like an iceberg. But Abe had offered Ikey all he wanted, and the crowd had heard him, so Abe had to make good his boast. He examined the bills very closely, and counted them very carefully, but he did not slip off the rubber band, and he tossed the whole bundle into his bag just as Ikey had given it to him.

  “Ten thousand dollars Old King Cole on Tiddliwinks in the third race!” he said to his clerk, and the clerk wrote it down.

  “You been robbin’ a bank, or what?” he asked Ikey.

  “I’m goin’ to rob you, same as I warned you in my letter,” Ikey answered. “It’s a cinch — almost a shame to take the money!”

  “I seen some o’ your cinches before!” said Abe scornfully, and Ikey sauntered away to the grand stand to watch the running.

  Abe Maxstein’s clerk had been busy chalking up the runners and prices for the third race on a big blackboard, seeing that people seemed already anxious to bet on that race; and against the name of Tiddliwinks he wrote “evens.” Abe Maxstein turned and looked at it; and then he looked at Ikey, fast disappearing in the crowd.

  “I wonder what that guy knows!” he muttered. Then he wetted his fat thumb and rubbed out the word “evens,” and wrote instead the cryptic figures ½; he had laid all he cared to against that horse.

  Every other bookie on the course followed suit promptly, and Ikey had the satisfaction of changing the quotation of a horse by his own unaided effort for the first time in his life.

  Ikey took not the slightest interest in the first two races, for he had no money on. He watched them, but his face wore a cynical smile, and as the first two horses in the second race fought it out neck and neck near the winning- post, he actually turned his head to light a fresh cigar. But the third race was quite another matter.

  He began to grow excited the moment the saddling-bell rang, and he craned his neck so eagerly to see the horses come filing out one by one onto the course that the man standing next to him turned and curs
ed him soundly for crowding.

  Ikey did not even look at the horses, but he studied the jockies’ jackets and the numbers intently, and from the moment that his eyes rested on the red and yellow jacket with green stripes that Tiddliwinks’s jockey wore they never left it again for an instant. He hardly even blinked.

  It was a short race — six furlongs — a mere scamper between two poles; but there were sixteen runners, and more than a little depended on luck at the start.

  Ikey watched the kicking, plunging, fidgeting field that lined up to the barrier with eyes that were almost starting out of his head, and he made a sound that was half squeal and half grunt as the barrier went up, and the horses shot away, with Tiddliwinks well in the lead.

  Down the course they came — a thundering, flogging, panting stampede of men and horses — and Ikey twisted and squirmed and swore, and rubbed his nose, and tugged at his little black mustache, and bit his new cigar in two in an ecstasy of torture.

  Neck and neck went Tiddliwinks with three other horses, all four of them straining every muscle and every nerve that was in them, and not one of them so highly strained as Ikey; his heart was in his mouth and in his shoes alternately as first Tiddliwinks and then some other horse took the lead for half a second.

  The thing was over like a flash. All four horses streaked past the winning- post in a bunch, with the other twelve trailing out at intervals, behind them. The thing was so close that nobody on the grand stand could tell which of them was the winner; it looked like a dead heat of four horses.

  “Tiddliwinks!” roared somebody; “Jonas,” shouted ten other men; “Galahad,” yelled a crowd of people; opinions were pretty evenly divided. Ikey watched the number-board. And Ikey groaned. And Ikey’s fingers were clenched so tightly that they hurt his palms.

  Ikey’s face was as pallid as a sheet, and his knees trembled, and his breath came through his quivering nostrils in short, sharp gasps, as he held it till the last possible second, and released it suddenly, and filled his lungs again th a jerk. And then up went the numbers, and Ikey sighed; 7, 13, 5 in that order.