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.