Part 10 (1/2)

She's cleverer than her father.”

Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping eyes saw nothing else.

From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-gra.s.sed fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered his pa.s.sion for racing with common sense. And it would pa.s.s from Porter's hands right enough--Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the inability to make money.

”Made music to me on Crusader.” Yes, that was it. With the Porters it was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory, but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many other things connected with the betting ring.

Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.

Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes, that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great sweetness.

Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork.

When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.

Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden opportunity.

From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare.

He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon.

Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things, and developed the routine for his chessmen.

”I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself, and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks about The Dutchman,” was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and pa.s.sed out of the bank.

That evening he talked with his trainer.

”What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?” he asked.

”Well, I don't know what'll start,” began the Trainer, with diplomatic caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.

”Would Porter's mare have a chance?”

”I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good enough to win--if I could find out her time--Porter don't talk much, an'

Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I might pump--”

”Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business.”

The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.

”Has The Dutchman a look in?” continued Crane.

”On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em--I ain't seen no two-year-olds out to beat that pair.”

”If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses, and men, too--that'll take the gaff and try.”

”I don't know as the owner'd sell him.”

”Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?”

”Yes.”