s that no one in the Tenderloin would take him
seriously; would believe him wicked, wise, predatory. They might love
him, they might laugh with him, they might clamor for his company, in no
flat that could boast a piano, was he not, on his entrance, greeted with
a shout; but the real Knights of the Highway treated him always as the
questioning, wide-eyed child. In spite of his after-midnight pallor, in
spite of his honorable scars of dissipation, it was his misfortune to be
cursed with a smile that was a perpetual plea of "not guilty."

"What can you expect?" an outspoken friend, who made a living as a
wireless wire tapper, had once pointed out to him. "That smile of yours
could open a safe. It could make a show girl give up money! It's an
alibi for everything from overspeeding to murder."

Mannie, as he listened, flushed with mortification. From that moment
he determined that his life should be devoted to giving the lie to that
smile, to that outward and visible sign of kindness, good will, and
innate innocence. As yet, he had not succeeded.

He interrupted Mabel at the telephone to inquire the whereabouts of
Vera. "There's two girls in there, now," he said, "waiting to have their
fortunes doped."

"Let'em wait!" exclaimed Mabel. "Vera's upstairs dressing." In her eyes
was the baleful glare of the plunger. "What was that you give me in the
third race?"

At the first touch of the ruling passion, what interest Mannie may
have felt for the impatient visitors vanished. "Not in the third," he
corrected briskly. "Keene entry win the third."

Mabel appealed breathlessly to the telephone. "What price the Keene
entry in the third?" She turned to Mannie with reproachful eyes. "Even
money!" she complained.

"That's what I told you," retorted Mannie. He lowered his voice, and
gazed apprehensively toward the front parlor. "If you want a really good
thing," he whispered hoarsely, "ask Joe what Pompadour is in the fifth!"
Mabel laughed scornfully, disappointedly.

"Pompadour!" she mocked.

"That's right!" cried the expert. "That's the one daily hint from Paris
today. Joe will give you thirty to one."

Upon the defenseless woman he turned the full force of his accursed
smile. "Put five on for me, Mabel?" he begged.

With unexpected determination of character Mabel declared sharply that
she would do nothing of the sort.

"Two, then?" entreated the boy.

"Where," demanded Mabel unfeelingly, "is the twenty you owe me now?