a name or a birth certificate.
“This is our last weekend, Ken,” said Parker. “You’ve only got tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night to get even with me on the season.”
“What do you figure I owe you?”
“This season or altogether?”
“Just this season.”
“I make it $180,000.”
“Well,” said Hart, “you’re $45,000 off. It’s really only $135,000.”
“I think you’re wrong,” said Parker, “but I’ll split the difference with you and call it $157.500.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Marion. “Don’t they keep any record?”
“Just in their heads,” said Mrs. Hart.
“All right,” said Hart. “Make it $157,500, and that’s giving you all the best of it. You must have forgot the $25,000 you laid me on the Harvard crew against Yale. Anyway, making you a present of the $45,000 or $25,000 or $22,500 or whatever it is, you still owe me $240,000.”
“What do you mean, I owe you!”
“I mean since we began betting, in 1911.”
“You know that ain’t right. You owe me, not I owe you. And what you owe me is about $200,000 even. If that ain’t so, when you asked me what I figured you owed me and I asked you if you meant this season or altogether, why didn’t you speak up and say that you naturally meant just this season, because altogether I owed you, not you owed me?”
“I didn’t put it that way.”
“What way?”
“Whatever way you claim I put it.”
“Do you still claim I owe you $240,000?”
“I certainly do!”
“Well, let’s go back and I’ll show you how wrong you are. In 1911, I bet you $100,000 Yale wouldn’t score in the Harvard game, and they didn’t.”
“Neither did Harvard.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. But that was the first bet we made, and that starts me off $100,000 to the good.”
“You don’t have to go back that far. We figured it up in the fall of 1918 and agreed that you then owed me $185,000.”
“And in 1919, I beat you for $225,000 at golf and cards and $65,000 on the World’s Series.”
“Do you mean to say you’re going to hold me to a bet on a crooked series?”
“All right. We’ll throw out the $65,000. That still leaves you $40,000 to the bad going into the year 1920.”
“Yes, and in 1920 I won $150,000 from you in golf and bridge and $40,000 that Lowden wouldn’t be nominated.”
“But you bet me $80,000 that Brooklyn would beat Cleveland and you lost that.”
“That still gives me a margin of $70,000 at the start of 1921.”
“Wait a minute!” said Parker. “If I remember right, we totaled it up two years ago and you owed me just an even $20,000. And that was before I bet you $150,000 on Tooney against Dempsey. So I was $170,000 up on you a year ago last spring, but that summer you cut it down to $42,500 and with the $157,500 I win from you this year, that makes it $200,000, just as I said in the first place.”
“I suppose you don’t count the $300,000 you bet me on the Argentines.”
“When did I bet you that?”
“In August. You were tight, but Jack will bear witness you made the bet and you said next morning that it went. Ain’t I right, Jack?”
“He bet you,” said Jack, “but I thought it was $150,000 instead of $300,000.”
“I’ll concede it,” said Parker, “and if it’s true, that makes us so close to even that we might as well start all over.”
“Even my foot!” objected Hart. “You either owe me $240,000—”
“Or else,” interrupted Parker, “you owe me $200,000. Now which is it?”
“Well, there’s no use discussing it tonight. Let’s get down to business.”
As they rose from the table Walter called Jack Bowen aside.
“Does this mean that they have been making those bets for seventeen years and no money has ever changed hands?”
“I’m afraid it does,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Walter, “before this night is over, I’m going to be even with everybody.”
When he and Marion had reached their home at three o’clock and Marion had reported a loss, on the night’s play, of only two dollars, Walter triumphantly told her how he not only had wiped out the debt the others owed to her and to himself, but had actually finished $8,400 to the good.
“You see,” he explained, “after listening to that argument, I decided to do a little plunging of my own. I announced I was playing for five dollars a point and I lost twenty-eight hundred. Then I said to Parker, ‘If you’ll give me 2 to 1, or $5,600 against $2,800, I’ll bet you I can cut a spade.’ He took me and I cut a diamond.
“Then I bet Hart $5,600 to $2,800 that he couldn’t cut a spade, and he did. The first $2,800, that I lost at bridge, squared their previous indebtedness. And the $8,400 I lost afterwards is clear profit.”
Marion didn’t quite understand. In fact, she was too sleepy to try.
Stop Me—If You’ve Heard This One
On a certain day in the year 1927, Jerry Blades and Luke Garner, young playwrights, entered the Lambs’ Club at the luncheon hour and were beckoned to a corner table by an actor friend, Charley Speed. Charley had a guest, recognized at once by the newcomers as Henry Wild Osborne, famous globetrotter, raconteur and banquet-hall fixture.
“Sit down, boys,” said Charley after he had introduced them to the celebrity. “I’m due at a house committee meeting and you can keep Harry entertained.”
But “Harry” proved perfectly capable of providing his own entertainment and theirs, and he opened up with a barrage of Pats and Mikes, Ikeys and Jakeys, and MacPhersons and MacDonalds that were not only comparatively new but also quite funny, at least so Blades and Garner judged from the wholehearted laughter of the narrator himself.
When he had displayed his mastery of all the different dialects of both hemispheres, he related a few personal adventures, in some of which other big men had played parts and which, to his small audience, were much more interesting than the chronicles concerning fictional Mikes, Sandys and Abes.
