On the race-tracks Big Jim Long swaggered and continued his rôle as head of the company spending thousands and talking millions. He was a huge man, with a huge laugh, a round, ruddy face pink from much massage. He wore clothing of striking cut and colors, and his diamonds dazzled the eyes of jockeys and touts. He maintained an air of condescending familiarity with some and patronizing good fellowship with others, and he treated money as dross. Judges, stewards, and club officials watched Long closely and with some disappointment. Rumors that he had bribed jockeys, had influenced owners, that he had fixed races and engineered great killings, were whispered around the tracks, yet the officials could not discover any evidences of his guilt. Big Jim made no denials of the whispered accusations, but blatantly defied the officials to “get anything on him.” Moreover, the bookmakers, who watched his movements even more closely than the racing officials did, knew that he never had bet any large sums at the track, and Big Jim had sarcastically inquired if they thought him a fool to make bets for the company at the tracks, where the odds were made, when the company system was to scatter the bets over a score of cities and get better odds. Such bets as he made at the tracks were for his own account, and generally he lost, so that the small bettors who spied upon him, hoping to learn which horses the company were backing, suspected that he bet to blind them to the real identity of the horses the “killings” were made on. They believed that the Long Investment Company was winning vast sums. As a matter of fact, the Long Investment Company did not bet at all. Kirtin did not believe in gambling. Yet, oddly enough, Big Jim Long believed firmly and unshakably that, if he had complete control of the finances of the company, he could beat the races. He was convinced that with the capital of the Long Investment Company he could corrupt enough jockeys and owners to pay dividends legitimately and make a fortune for himself. Long would have been an easy victim of the game which he was helping perpetrate upon the public. Kirtin had no such illusions. Long had once argued the point with Kirtin in the privacy of the back room in New York, and Kirtin had called him a fool, with variations, prefix and addenda. And, as Kirtin sent him five thousand dollars a week with which to keep up the front of the Long Investment Company, Long had not pressed the point. Neither had he been convinced. It was against Big Jim Long that Hardshell Gaines cherished the one hatred of his life. It had started when Long sought to amuse himself and his friends by ridiculing Gaines and his stable. He had joked at the old man’s clothes, at his stable, his colors, and his jockey--and then had made the fatal blunder of ridiculing Sword of Gideon, calling him a “hound.”