"Gold Hat!" echoed the Superintendent, with a chuckle of joy. "Gold Hat! Now you say so, I can"t make it look like anything else. A derby, upside down, with four----"
"Who"s Maury?" insisted the Master.
"He"s the original Man of Mystery," returned the Superintendent, dropping his voice to exclude the constable. "I wanted to get in touch with him about the delayed set of conditions. I looked him up. That is, I tried to. He is advertised in the premium list, as a New Yorker. You"ll remember that, but his name isn"t in the New York City Directory or in the New York City telephone book or in the suburban telephone book. He can afford to give a sixteen hundred dollar-cup for charity, but it seems he isn"t important enough to get his name in any directory. Funny, isn"t it? I asked Glure about him. That"s all the good it did me."
"You don"t mean----?" began the Mistress, excitedly.
"I don"t mean anything," the Superintendent hurried to forestall her. "I"m paid to take charge of this Show. It"s no affair of mine if----"
"If Mr. Glure chooses to invent Hugh Lester Maury and make him give a Gold Hat for a collie prize?" suggested the Mistress. "But----"
"I didn"t say so," denied the superintendent. "And it"s none of my business, anyhow. Here"s----"
"But why should Mr. Glure do such a thing?" asked the Mistress, in wonder. "I never heard of his shrinking coyly behind another name when he wanted to spend money. I don"t understand why he----"
"Here is the conditions-list for the Maury Specialty Cup," interposed the superintendent with extreme irrelevance, as he handed her a pink slip of paper. "Glance over it."
The Mistress took the slip and read aloud for the benefit of the Master who was still glowering at the Gold Hat:
"_Conditions of Contest for Hugh Lester Maury Gold Cup:_
""_First.--No collie shall be eligible that has not already taken at least one blue ribbon at a licensed American or British Kennel Club Show._""
"That single clause has barred out eleven of the sixteen entrants,"
commented the Superintendent. "You see, most of the dogs at these local Shows are pets, and hardly any of them have been to Madison Square Garden or to any of the other A. K. C. shows. The few that have been to them seldom got a Blue."
"Lad did!" exclaimed the Mistress joyfully. "He took two Blues at the Garden last year; and then, you remember, it was so horrible for him there we broke the rules and brought him home without waiting for----"
"I know," said the Superintendent, "but read the rest."
""_Second_,"" read the Mistress. ""_Each contestant must have a certified five-generation pedigree, containing the names of at least ten champions._" Lad had twelve in his pedigree," she added, "and it"s certified."
"Two more entrants were killed out by _that_ clause," remarked the Superintendent, "leaving only three out of the original sixteen. Now go ahead with the clause that puts poor old Lad and one other out of the running. I"m sorry."
""_Third_,"" the Mistress read, her brows crinkling and her voice trailing as she proceeded. ""_Each contestant must go successfully through the preliminary maneuvers prescribed by the Kirkaldie a.s.sociation, Inc., of Great Britain, for its Working Sheepdog Trials._"--But," she protested, "Lad isn"t a "working" sheepdog! Why, this is some kind of a joke! I never heard of such a thing--even in a Specialty Show."
"No," agreed the Superintendent, "nor anybody else. Naturally, Lad isn"t a "working" sheepdog. There probably haven"t been three "working" sheepdogs born within a hundred miles of here, and it"s a mighty safe bet that no "working" sheepdog has ever taken a "Blue" at an A. K. C. Show. A "working" dog is almost never a show dog. I know of only one either here or in England; and he"s a freak--a miracle. So much so, that he"s famous all over the dog-world."
"Do you mean Champion Lochinvar III?" asked the Mistress. "The dog the Duke of Hereford used to own?"
"That"s the dog. The only----"
"We read about him in the _Collie Folio_," said the Mistress. "His picture was there, too. He was sent to Scotland when he was a puppy, the _Folio_ said, and trained to herd sheep before ever he was shown. His owner was trying to induce other collie-fanciers to make their dogs useful and not just Show-exhibits. Lochinvar is an international champion, too, isn"t he?"
The Superintendent nodded.
"If the Duke of Hereford lived in New Jersey," pursued the Mistress, trying to talk down her keen chagrin over Lad"s mishap, "Lochinvar might have a chance to win a nice Gold Hat."
"He has," replied the superintendent. "He has every chance, and the only chance."
"_Who_ has?" queried the puzzled Mistress.
"Champion Lochinvar III," was the answer. "Glure bought him by cable. Paid $7000 for him. That eclipses Untermeyer"s record price of $6500 for old Squire of Tytton. The dog arrived last week. He"s here. A big Blue Merle. You ought to look him over. He"s a wonder.
He----"
"_Oh!_" exploded the Mistress. "You can"t mean it. You _can"t!_ Why, it"s the most--the most hideously unsportsmanlike thing I ever heard of in my life! Do you mean to tell me Mr. Glure put up this sixteen hundred-dollar cup and then sent for the only dog that could fulfill the Trophy"s conditions? It"s unbelievable!"
"It"s Glure," tersely replied the Superintendent. "Which perhaps comes to the same thing."
"Yes!" spoke up the Master harshly, entering the talk for the first time, and tearing his disgusted attention from the Gold Hat. "Yes, it"s Glure, and it"s unbelievable! And it"s worse than either of those, if anything can be. Don"t you see the full rottenness of it all? Half the world is starving or sick or wounded. The other half is working its fingers off to help the Red Cross make Europe a little less like h.e.l.l; and, when every cent counts in the work, this--this Wall Street Farmer spends sixteen hundred precious dollars to buy himself a Gold Hat; and he does it under the auspices of the Red Cross, in the holy name of charity. The unsportsmanlikeness of it is nothing to that. It"s--it"s an Unpardonable Sin, and I don"t want to endorse it by staying here. Let"s get Lad and go home."
"I wish to heaven we could!" flamed the Mistress, as angry as he. "I"d do it in a minute if we were able to. I feel we"re insulting loyal old Lad by making him a party to it all. But we can"t go. Don"t you see?
Mr. Glure is unsportsmanlike, but that"s no reason we should be. You"ve told me, again and again, that no true sportsman will back out of a contest just because he finds he has no chance of winning it."
"She"s right," chimed in the Superintendent. "You"ve entered the dog for the contest, and by all the rules he"ll have to stay in it. Lad doesn"t know the first thing about "working." Neither does the only other local entrant that the first two rules have left in the compet.i.tion. And Lochinvar is perfect at every detail of sheep-work. Lad and the other can"t do anything but swell his victory. It"s rank bad luck, but----"
"All right! All right!" growled the Master. "We"ll go through with it. Does anyone know the terms of a "Kirkaldie a.s.sociation"s Preliminaries," for "Working Sheepdog Trials?" My own early education was neglected."
"Glure"s education wasn"t," said the Superintendent. "He has the full set of rules in his brand new Sportsman Library. That"s, no doubt, where he got the idea. I went to him for them this morning, and he let me copy the laws governing the preliminaries. They"re absurdly simple for a "working" dog and absurdly impossible for a non-worker. Here, I"ll read them over to you."
He fished out a folded sheet of paper and read aloud a few lines of pencil-scribblings:
"Four posts shall be set up, at ninety yards apart, at the corners of a square enclosure. A fifth post shall be set in the center. At this fifth post the owner or handler of the contestant shall stand with his dog. Nor shall such owner or handler move more than three feet from the post until his dog shall have completed the trial.
"Guided only by voice and by signs, the dog shall go alone from the center-post to the post numbered "1." He shall go thence, in the order named, to Posts 2, 3 and 4, without returning to within fifteen feet of the central post until he shall have reached Post 4.
"Speed and form shall count as seventy points in these evolutions.
Thirty points shall be added to the score of the dog or dogs which shall make the prescribed tour of the posts directed wholly by signs and without the guidance of voice."
"There," finished the superintendent, "you see it is as simple as a kindergarten game. But a child who had never been taught could not play Puss-in-the-Corner." I was talking to the English trainer that Glure bought along with the dog. The trainer tells me Lochinvar can go through those maneuvers and a hundred harder ones without a word being spoken. He works entirely by gestures. He watches the trainer"s hand. Where the hand points he goes. A snap of the fingers halts him.
Then he looks back for the next gesture. The trainer says it"s a delight to watch him."
"The delight is all his," grumbled the Master. "Poor, poor Lad! He"ll get bewildered and unhappy. He"ll want to do whatever we tell him to, but he can"t understand. It was different the time he rounded up Glure"s flock of sheep--when he"d never seen a sheep before. That was ancestral instinct. A throwback. But ancestral instinct won"t teach him to go to Post 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. He----"
"h.e.l.lo, people!" boomed a jarringly cordial voice. "Welcome to the Towers!"
Bearing down upon the trio was a large person, round and yellow of face and clad elaborately in a morning costume that suggested a stud-groom with ministerial tendencies. He was dressed for the Occasion. Mr. Glure was always dressed for the Occasion.
"h.e.l.lo, people!" repeated the Wall Street Farmer, alternately pump-handling the totally unresponsive Mistress and Master. "I see you"ve been admiring the Maury Trophy. Magnificent, eh? Oh, Maury"s a prince, I tell you! A prince! A bit eccentric, perhaps--as you"ll have guessed by the conditions he"s put up for the cup. But a prince. A prince! We think everything of him on the Street. Have you seen my new dog? Oh, you must go and take a look at Lochinvar! I"m entering him for the Maury Trophy, you know."
"Yes," a.s.sented the Master dully, as Mr. Glure paused to breathe. "I know."
He left his exultant host with some abruptness, and piloted the Mistress back to the Collie Section. There they came upon a scene of dire wrath. Disgruntled owners were loudly denouncing the Maury conditions-list, and they redoubled their plaint at sight of the two new victims of the trick.
Folk who had bathed and brushed and burnished their pets for days, in eager antic.i.p.ation of a neighborhood contest, gargled in positive hatred at the glorious Merle. They read the pink slips over and over with more rage at each perusal.
One pretty girl had sat down on the edge of a bench, gathering her beloved gold-and-white collie"s head in her lap, and was crying unashamed. The Master glanced at her. Then he swore softly, and set to work helping the Mistress in the task of fluffing Lad"s glossy coat to a final soft s.h.a.gginess.
Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say; but Lad realized more keenly than could a human that both his G.o.ds were wretchedly unhappy, and his great heart yearned pathetically to comfort them.