The Dark Star

The racing season at Saratoga drew toward its close, and Brandes had

appeared there only twice in person, both times with a very young

girl.

"If you got to bring her here to the races, can't you get her some

clothes?" whispered Stull in his ear. "That get-up of hers is

something fierce."

Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish

anxiety incident to betting other people's money had told on Stull.

His eyes were like two smears of charcoal on his pasty face; sourly he

went about the business which Brandes should have attended to, nursing

resentment--although he was doing better than Brandes had hoped to

do.

Their joint commission from his winnings began to assume considerable

proportions; at track and club and hotel people were beginning to turn

and stare when the little man with the face of a sick circus clown

appeared, always alone, greeting with pallid indifference his

acquaintances, ignoring overtures, noticing neither sport, nor

fashion, nor political importance, nor yet the fair and frail whose

curiosity and envy he was gradually arousing.

Obsequiousness from club, hotel, and racing officials made no

impression on him; he went about his business alone, sullen,

preoccupied, deathly pale, asking no information, requesting no

favours, conferring with nobody, doing no whispering and enduring

none.

After a little study of that white, sardonic, impossible face, people

who would have been glad to make use of him became discouraged. And

those who first had recognised him in Saratoga found, at the end of

the racing month, nothing to add to their general identification of

him as "Ben Stull, partner of Eddie Brandes--Western sports."

* * * * *

Stull, whispering in Brandes' ear again, where he sat beside him in

the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah's

appearance: "Why don't you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a

country school."

Brandes' slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where

Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily

overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.

"When the time comes for me to fix her up," he said between thin lips

which scarcely moved, "she'll look like Washington Square in May--not

like Fifth Avenue and Broadway."

Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull's eyes resembled two holes burnt

in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the

Sanford favourite.

As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped,

lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.

Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered

subtly: "Some running!" he said.