Adventure Tales, Volume 6

by John Gregory Betancourt

  “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 so.”

  “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 grandstand 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 cursed him soundly for crowding.

  Ikey did not even look at the horses, but he studied the jockeys’ 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 grandstand 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.

  Seven was —Tiddliwinks!

  Tiddliwinks had won. And Ikey had enjoyed himself.

  Ikey was the calmest man on the course now. Unless you had watched him while the race was on you would never have believed that he had had a cent on the result. He left the grandstand quite leisurely, and strolled toward Abe Maxstein’s stand with his hands in his pockets and an air of almost boredom.

  “Hello, Coley!” shouted Abe. “You made a killing that time, and no mistake! What are you goin’ to bet on in the next?”

  “Nix!” said Ikey. “I’m through! This is where I draw your money, same as I promised!”

  “What? Not goin’ to have another bet!”

  “Not today! Come on, shovel out! It’s about your turn!”

  “All right, Coley, all right. Suit yourself! I’ll have it all back again one o’ these days. You watch! Here y’are —here’s your five thousand back —same bundle you gave me. Looks like good money to me, all right, but you never can tell. Anyhow, you’ve got it back again, whether it’s good or bad; and here’s the rest. That’s a thousand-dollar bill, in case you never seen one before; an’ there’s two o’ five hundred, an’ here y’are two more fives, an’ five, ten, fifteen, twenty centuries. There! Are ye satisfied?”

  “Right y’are!” said Ikey. “Always did get a square deal from you, Abe! S’long! Oh, hi, Abe! Half a minute! Got change for this thou?”

  “Nope. You stick to what you’ve got, and thank your lucky stars you’ve got it! No time to make change! Now, then —runners in the fourth race.” And he started calling out the names. And Ikey pouched his money, and turned his
face homeward with a bulging pocket and a feeling of absolute contentment permeating his whole anatomy.

  CHAPTER VI

  In Which Ikey’s Streak of Luck Begins to Hold Out Symptoms of Getting Thin.

  These rapid changes of scene are growing just a trifle bewildering, aren’t they? But there is worse to come. We’re back again now with Lizzie Wingfield. She hasn’t gone to bed yet. She hasn’t even undressed. She is sitting in the rocker by the window, crying a little from time to time, and much too miserable to notice anything, or care about anything, or even think about anything except the hollowness and mockery and rottenness of all the wide, wide world.

  Very nice people who have very nice ideas always tumble down into the depths of despair when their exquisitely fine-drawn notions fail for once to pan out. It is only crooks and people like ourselves who can view things dispassionately.

  If you had told Lizzie Wingfield at that minute that there was any common honesty or kindness or sense of fair play to be found in the universe, she wouldn’t have believed you. She would have been quite polite, but unconvinced.

  There was a little noise that came from just behind her —ever such a tiny little noise —the sort of noise that a mouse might make. And she didn’t notice it. The noise was repeated two or three times.

  It came from underneath the blind that hid the window behind her chair scratch! scratch! tick! tick! —and then, all at once —snack! quite loud and sudden. But still she didn’t notice it. Then the window began to rise, slowly, gently, ever so gently, inch by inch, Silently, until the bottom half of it was up almost as far as it would go.

  She felt the draft then, for the wind blew the blind out into the room until it nearly hit the back of her chair; and she got up to change her position.

  She started to pull her chair over into another corner of the room, and in doing so she faced the window; and as she faced it the blind went up suddenly with a whir-r-r and a clack! and the black, dark, rainy night outside became visible, with something almost as dark that crouched and moved on the window-sill between her and the murkiness beyond. And she didn’t scream. Like her now, eh?

  “Hush!” said a voice. “Hush, missie! Not a word! I won’t hurt yer! I’m comin’ in, but I won’t do a thing to yer! Not a word, now! Quiet!”

  She didn’t care. What if all the burglars in the world came in! They could take her wedding trousseau if they cared to. Goodness knew she didn’t want it, and there was nothing else to take! And if they killed her? Bah! What did she care for that, either! She would be really and truly glad to die.

  She drew the chair back to make room for the burglar, or whatever he might be, and Keyhole Ikey stepped down into the room —Keyhole Ikey, dressed in his professional costume of almost black serge suit, black gloves and very dark gray cap.

  “Hush!” said Ikey again, turning to close the window after him, and holding one warning finger up to his wicked-looking nose. He closed the window carefully and then pulled down the blind.

  “Darned clumsy of me!” he remarked. “I oughter ha’ got used to them roller-shades by now. Fancy me springin’ that one like a new beginner! Now, missie, is the door locked?”

  “You can see for yourself!” she answered. “Why do you ask? Have you come to kill me?”

  “Kill you! Lord love you, no! The very idee! Look alive, missie, an’ lock that door —that’s a good gal; I gotter be kinder quick. Go on, now; it’s up’ to you. You’re runnin’ this apartment —not me!”

  She walked over to the door and locked it, amazed at her own meekness in obeying him so promptly. Then she leaned her back against the door.

  “Now, what is it?” she demanded.

  Ikey fumbled in his inside pocket. In one pocket he had the fifty hundred-dollar bills that he had stolen, and in the other was the bundle of odd amounts that the bookmaker had paid him.

  Both amounted to the same sum; but whereas it could make no possible difference to the lady which roll she received so long as she got her five thousand dollars back, it might make a lot of difference to him. A hundred-dollar bill is easily negotiable anywhere, and a thousand-dollar bill is not. He found the right pocket at last, and laid the bookie’s money on the dressing-table.

  “There y’are, missie! There’s your money back! I’m the guy what took it! A little bird told me as how you needed it bad, so I brought it back to yer. It ain’t the same identical money; but it ain’t green goods, I give yer my word, an’ it comes to the same amount. Go on count it! I’m in a hurry!”

  He pushed the bundle of bills a bit farther along the dressing-table and drew back toward the corner, so as not to frighten her.

  Imagine her sensations! Here was the utterly unheard-of happening under her very eyes —apparently the key to half her troubles thrust into her hand by an absolute stranger in her own room at half past eleven at night, a self-confessed burglar handing back the money he had stolen, and without a hint of compulsion!

  It was not a bolt from the blue; it was a bomb from the black. Of course, she didn’t believe it. She stood staring at him, with her eyes wide open, round and wondering. And Ikey laughed, and his laughter broke the spell to some extent.

  “It’s quite true, missie! I ain’t kiddin’ yer! Come on —count your money an’ let me git!”

  She walked over to the dressing-table and counted the bills like a woman in a trance, and still refusing to believe her senses. But there was no blinking the fact that on the table lay five thousand dollars. She counted it twice to make sure.

  “That right, missie?”

  She nodded.

  “But I don’t understand. I —“

  “I know you don’t! O’ course you don’t —don’t try to! Lord love yer! Why, what’s the matter with the woman? I took your money, an’ there it is back again; there y’are! There it is, an’ that’s all about it! All you’ve got to do now is hold your tongue an’ look wise —savvy? Put me down as a white guy that didn’t want to harm yer, an’ there you’ve got it. Now, good night, missie! Take my tip an’ go to bed —hit the hay an’ play you’ve been dreamin’! You’ll find the money all there in the mornin’, so kid yerself you never lost it! An’ shove it in the bank first time you get the chance, missie , so’s folks like me don’t get another chance at it. So-long, missie. Good luck!”

  And Keyhole Ikey opened the window again softly and disappeared by the way he had come. When he had gone, Lizzie Wingfield stood and stared first at the closed window, and then at the money in her hand, and stared, and stared, and pinched herself to see if she were dreaming, or dead, or what; but the bills were there, and they were tough and soft and crinkly; and the pinch hurt her, and made a little red mark come on her white arm, and no, she didn’t believe it. It was altogether too impossible, and too absolutely good to be true.

  Once again Ikey climbed quietly down the fire-escape and dropped ten feet or so into the yard beneath him. Then he crouched in the shadow of the wall for two whole minutes and listened. There was nothing moving that Ikey could hear, so he sneaked out of the yard, following the passage that led to the street in front.

  At the end of the passage was a gate; it was an iron gate that squeaked on its hinges when people opened it; so Ikey placed one hand on the top of it and vaulted. And as he sprang an ominous blue form stepped out-from the darkness, and a voice said gruffly: “What ha’ you been doing in there?”

  Ikey ran. Goodness, how he ran! And he could sprint, could Ikey. He ran like the wind, dodging all the time into the shadows, thinking as he ran, and picking his way where it might be hard to follow him. But Patrolman Baines was on his track; and Patrolman Baines had done a quarter once in fifty-two. He was new to his job; and keen as mustard, fit as the proverbial fiddle, and game as a wagon-load of tigers.

  Ikey panted, and swore beneath his breath. Patrolman Baines panted, and put on a spurt and grabbed him. Ikey ducked. The patrolman stumbled, and Ikey tripped him.

  But Baines was an athlete as well as a sprinter; he grabbed Ikey
more firmly as he fell, and the two went down together, and in less than a second Ikey lay face upward on the pavement in the grip of a hammerlock hold that nearly wrenched his bones apart.

  “Now,” said Patrolman Baines, “you’ll come along o’ me an’ give an account o’ yourself. Are you comin’ quiet?”

  “Yep,” said Ikey. “Go ahead; I know the way.” The patrolman held him by the sleeve, too confident in his own strength to trouble about putting on the handcuffs.

  “What were you doin’ in there? he asked. But Ikey, with the wisdom of the wise, said nothing.

  They welcomed Ikey at the stationhouse —gave him a ringing welcome, for they all knew him.

  “Aw! Can all that chin stuff!” said Ikey. “What am I charged with?”

  “With being a suspected person,” said the lieutenant, writing in the book before him. “Put him in the cooler and search him.” So Ikey was led below.

  It took them just ten seconds to find the five thousand dollars in Ikey’s pocket, and thirty seconds more to tell the news to the lieutenant, who wrote down the numbers of the notes carefully and then rang up police headquarters on the phone. After about five minutes’ conversation over the wire, during which he referred repeatedly to the notes in front of him, he hung up the receiver with a jerk and ordered:

  “Fetch that guy up here again. We may as well alter the charge now as later.” So Ikey was once again stood up before the lieutenant’s desk.

  “You’re charged now,” said the lieutenant, “with being in possession of stolen goods, to wit, book-notes the property of the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento Trust Company, as well as with being a suspected person and being found in possession of burglar’s tools.”

  “Aw!” said Ikey. “That all? Can’t yer think o’ somethin’ else? Ain’t the city hall missin’, or somethin’?”

  “Put him back in the cooler!” ordered the lieutenant; and back Ikey went.

  CHAPTER VII

  Across the Continent

  There is no means of helping Ikey just for the moment; the police have got him, and it takes a bigger pull than we have got to unclutch their fingers. So we must leave him in confinement, and leave Mrs. Ikey —tailormade and tearful —rushing round New York arranging bail bonds.