He got the notepad, and got them all down. Twenty-six racehorses and three stocks and the ball team that was going to win the World Series. Then the phone clicked and the line went dead. Thoroughly dead; he could not even get the dial tone.

There were three horses on his list for the next day. They were all medium-long shots, and they all won. He had started with fifty dollars; he left the track in a kind of cold, glassy-eyed frenzy, with over seven thousand dollars in cash in his pockets. In his shirt pocket, over his heart, was the sheet of notepaper, his greatest gift in the world—a gift from himself.

During the next two months the horses all won at their different tracks and the stocks all split, shot up, declared unexpected dividends. By nosing out the wealthiest bookies at home, in Miami, and in four other cities, and by careful spreading of his bets, George was able to make himself a millionaire after the first five weeks. He won a quarter million on the World Series alone. It was on this last that a bookie who hadn’t hedged his bets adequately against George’s hundred-thousand-dollar lay-out was forced to offer him his own luxury fishing boat, anchored off Key West, as part payment. George, seeing the handwriting on the wall plainly enough, accepted with what was for him considerable graciousness. That is, he merely called the bookie a chiseling bastard, trimmed five thousand off the boat’s evaluation, and took it.

He knew that it was somehow in the nature of things that he must be aboard a boat with a telephone on October ninth. He would be getting a phone call.

The ordaining of it all took no effort on his part. He was called a week later by the telephone company, who wished to know if he planned to continue the ship-to-shore service on the boat. He told them yes, and then, as if it were an afterthought, mentioned that he would like his old Miami number transferred to the boat—important friends would be calling. The number? BE-8-5883. Then, when he had bet the final horse on his list, betting the track odds down to the point of diminishing returns, phoning and nagging the nine remaining New York and Chicago bookies who would still take his bets, he hired a chauffeured limousine to take him to Key West. He did not go alone; with him were two attractive young ladies, a gambling friend, a large box of frozen prime steaks, and two cases of twenty-dollar-a-bottle whiskey. And a pile of newspapers.