She waited for Durkin to speak. He tapped the top of his head, meditatively, with his right forefinger, pursing his lips as his mind played over the problem. “Yes, we might. But how are we to find out what the Duke of Kendall and his mere running means?” “I even took the trouble to look up the Duke of Kendall. He is a MacIntosh horse, the stable companion to Mary J., and ridden by Shirley, a new jockey.” She could see that he had little sympathy for her suggestion, and she herself lost faith in the plan even as she unfolded it. “My idea was, Jim, that this horse was going to run—is _sure_ to run, under heavy odds, for what they call ‘a long shot.’” “But still, how would we be able to make sure?” “I could go and ask Sunset Bryan himself.” Durkin threw up his hand with a gesture of angry disapproval. “That beast! He’s—he’s unspeakable! He’s the worst living animal in America!” “I shouldn’t be afraid of him,” she answered, quietly. “The whole thing comes too late in the game, anyway,” broke in Durkin, with a second gesture of disgust. Then he added, more gently: “Good heavens, Frank, I don’t want to see _you_ mixed up with that kind of cur! It wouldn’t be right and fair! It’s infinitely worse than the thing I’m suggesting!” “After all, we are not so different, he and I,” she responded, with acidulated mildness. Durkin took her hand in his, with real pain written on his face. “Don’t talk that way,” he pleaded; “it hurts!” She smoothed his hair with her free hand, quietly, maternally. “Then you had rather that I—I borrowed this money from the Van Schaick house?” she asked him. “It’s the choice of two evils,” he answered her, out of his unhappiness, all his older enthusiasm now burnt down into the ashes of indifferency. “If only I was sure you could keep your promise,” she said, dreamily, as she studied his face. “It _will_ go back!” he responded determinedly, shrugging off his momentary diffidence. “Even though I have to make it, dollar by dollar, and though it takes me twenty years! But I tell you, Frank, that it will not be needed. Here we have the chance of a life time. If we only had the money to start with, the whole business could be carried on openly and decently—barring, of course,” he added, with his sudden shamefaced smile, “the little bit of cutting-in I’ll have to do down-town on the Curry wires!” “One minute—before we go any farther with this. Supposing we successfully get this glove-box, and successfully watch Curry, and on the strength of our knowledge invest this money, and get our returns, and find ourselves with enough—well, with enough not to starve on—will you promise me this: that it will be the last?” “But why should it be the last?” “You know as well as I do! You know that I want to be honest, to live straight and aboveboard; but a hundred times more, that I want to see you honest and aboveboard!”