Horse racing -- Fiction; Psychic ability -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Telepathy -- Fiction
I shook my head. I didn't have to veil my mind because I knew that Gimpy
was about as talented a telepath as a tallow candle. Frankly between me
and thee, dear reader, I do not put anybody's bet on the cuff. I do a
fair-to-middling brisk trade in booking bets placed and discussed by
telepathy, but the ones I accept and pay off on--if they're lucky--are
those folks who've been sufficiently foresighted to lay it on the line
with a retainer against which their losses can be assessed.
On the other hand I could see in Gimpy's mind the simple logic that told
him that as a bookmaker I'd be disinclined to lend him money which he'd
use to place with me against a sure-thing long shot. If I were to "Lend"
him a century for an on-the-cuff bet on a 100:1 horse, especially one
that I knew was sure to come in, I might better simply hand him one
hundred times one hundred dollars as a gift. It would save a lot of
messy bookkeeping.
So the fact that I wouldn't cuff a bet for Gimpy gave him his own proof
that I was confirming the fix.
Then I buttered the process.
"Gimp, do you know another good bookmaker?"
"Sure. But you're the best."
"Know one that'll take a bet from you--one that you don't like?"
"Sure, Mr. Wilson."
"Then," I said hauling a thousand out of my wallet, "Put this on _our
horses_ for me."
He eyed the grand. "But won't Mr. Barcelona be unhappy? Won't that run
down the track odds?"
I laughed. "The whole world knows them dogs as also-rans," I said.
"Gimpy, they put long shots like those into races just to clip the
suckers who think there is a real hundred-to-one chance that a 100:1
horse will outrun favorites."
"Well, if you say so, Mr. Wilson."
"I say so."
"Thanks. I'll pay it back."
He would. I'd see to that.
Gimpy Gordon scuttled out of my bailiwick almost on a dead run. He was
positively radiating merriment and joy and excitement. The note in his
hand represented a sum greater than he had ever seen in one piece at any
time of his life, and the concept of the riches he would know when they
paid off on the Kentucky Derby was vague simply because Gimpy could not
grasp the magnitude of such magnificence. Oddly, for some unexpected
reason or from some unknown source hidden deep in his past, his mind
pronounced it "Darby."
* * * * *
I returned to my African jungle still bored with the lack of anything
constructive. I returned at about the point where Tarzan and Jane were
going through that silly, "Me Tarzan; You Jane" routine which was even
more irritating because the program director or someone had muffed the
perfume that the Lady Jane wore. Instead of the wholesome freshness of
the free, open air, Jane was wearing a heady, spicy scent engineered to
cut its way through the blocking barrier of stale cigar smoke,
whisky-laden secondhand air, and a waft of cooking aroma from the
kitchen of the standard cosmopolitan bistro.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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