Was the boy drunk, they demanded, or had his miraculous luck turned
his head? Otherwise, why would he so publicly utter a prophecy that
on the morrow must certainly smother him with ridicule. The
explanations were varied. The men in the clubs held he was driven
by a desire for notoriety, the men in the street that he was more
clever than they guessed, and had made the move to suit his own
book, to alter the odds to his own advantage. Others frowned
mysteriously. With superstitious faith in his luck, they pointed to
his record. "Has he ever lost a bet? How do WE know what HE knows?"
they demanded. "Perhaps it's fixed and he knows it!"

The "wise" ones howled in derision. "A Suburban FIXED!" they
retorted. "You can fix ONE jockey, you can fix TWO; but you can't
fix sixteen jockeys! You can't fix Belmont, you can't fix Keene.
There's nothing in his picking Beldame, but only a crazy man would
pick the horse for the place and to show, and shut out the
favorite! The boy ought to be in Matteawan.

Still undisturbed, still confident to those to whom he had promised
them, Carter sent a wire. Nor did he forget his old enemy, "Sol"
Burbank. " If you want to get some of the money I took," he
telegraphed, "wipe out the Belmont entry and take all they offer on
Delhi. He cannot win."

And that night, when each newspaper called him up at his flat, he
made the same answer. "The three horses Will finish as I said. You
can state that I gave the information as I did as a sort of present
to the people of New York City."