The Man Who Could Not Lose

Summary

A solitary lamp spills umber light across Champney Carter’s garret while the midnight telegram crackles like a fuse: deliver the novel by dawn or forfeit everything. With blank paper glaring back, he feeds the typewriter a title that will become both lifeline and mirror—The Man Who Could Not Lose—and hurtles into a dusk-to-dawn fever of ink. Inside his spontaneous myth, Jackson Carter, a once-prosperous turf plunger, is stripped to the marrow by Sol Burbank, a shark-toothed bookmaker whose threats stop the old gambler’s heart mid-sentence. The son, young Champney-the-character, abandons lecture halls for the vengeance trail, scribbles a failed debut, marries heiress Dolly Ingram against her banker-father’s ducal ambitions, and—guided by a dream of a camel-named horse—parlays every cent into a Midas streak that bankrupts Burbank and earns the sobriquet “the man who could not lose.” Half a million dollars later, the pen lifts, the roulette ceases, the family reconciles, the curtain falls. Outside the fiction, dawn crawls through the skylight; the real Champney hands the stack to a publisher’s envoy who is the flesh-and-blood double of Dolly. Six months forward, life apes art: wedding bells.

Synopsis

Champney Carter, a writer, late one night receives a telegram from his publishers stating that he must deliver on the following morning the manuscript of the novel he has contracted to write for them. Not one word of the story has been written yet. Putting a piece of paper in his typewriter, he begins his tale, "The Man Who Could Not Lose." Through the long hours of the night he writes with frenzied haste. The Story: Jackson Carter, an elderly man, through gambling on the races, finds himself penniless and in debt to Sol Burbank, a bookmaker, for a large amount. The bookmaker makes repeated demands for the money and at last, after a stormy interview, threatens Carter with exposure. From the shock the unfortunate man is stricken with heart failure and falls dead at Burbank's feet. Champney Carter, the gambler's son, leaves college and makes a vow to sooner or later wreak vengeance upon the man who caused his father's death. Young Carter becomes a writer and earns a precarious livelihood as an author. His first novel, the "Dead Heat," is a failure. At this time he meets Dolly Ingram, the daughter of a wealthy banker, falls in love with her, but his attentions meet with the objection of her father, who wishes her to marry a nobleman. Carter elopes with Dolly and for a while they live near poverty, when, in a dream, he sees a horse named Dromedary win the Suburban handicap. The next day he places all his money upon the horse and wins at 40 to 1. Time and time he picks the winning horse, and finally drives Sol Burbank from the track, a bankrupt. Owing to his marvelous luck he is called "The Man Who Could Not Lose." When his winnings total half a million dollars he stops gambling. A reconciliation is affected between his wife and her father and all ends happily. End of story. The next morning bright and early the girl from the publishers comes for the story. He is amazed to find that she is the exact counterpart of the heroine of the story, which is a great success. Six months later he wins her heart and she becomes Mrs. Champney Carter.