Читать книгу The Calendar - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Peter Hipplewayne spotted Garry as he was crossing the course from the members’ motor enclosure, and intercepted him.

“You runnin’ your horse?” he asked.

Garry Anson had no great love for this lanky ex-subaltern, found it at times a little difficult to be civil to him.

“Yes; why?”

Peter fingered his weak mouth and smiled. He was terribly sure of himself, was self-consciously clever, and therefore was a little objectionable.

“Just asked you,” he said laconically.

He stood for a while, gazing down the wide track.

“I thought of giving Ediphos a run,” he said, “but I can’t beat yours.”

Garry gently released the detaining hand.

“I wonder if I can beat yours?” he asked. “On the book you have an outstanding chance, and I doubt if I shall win.”

The other man looked down at him slyly.

“Then why not row in with me?” he asked. “With your horse out of the way, mine is a certainty—you’ll get three to one to your money, and it will be a case of putting it down and picking it up.”

There was nothing sinister in a suggestion that an owner should not run his horse but should back another—if that was Peter’s suggestion.

“All right—I’ll not run him.”

Mr. Hipplewayne closed his eyes wearily.

“Don’t be silly—of course you’ll run your old hair-trunk. Otherwise I’ll have to take rotten odds about my own.”

Garry’s eyes glittered. If Peter’s skin had been a little thinner he would have sensed the gathering storm of wrath.

“What is the idea—that I should run mine and stop him?” he asked.

Peter nodded coolly.

“Why not? It is done every day of the week, old boy. Are you pretending you don’t know that?”

Garry turned away.

“We won’t discuss it,” he said, and the other man caught his arm.

“What a righteous beast you are, Garry! All right! You can’t get money at this game if you’re too straight.”

“There never was a turf crook who didn’t die broke,” said Garry quietly, and saw the young man frown.

“ ‘Crook’ is not a word I like,” he snapped, and lagged behind.

An hour later Garry was absorbed in one of those minor problems which concern the racing-man, and, momentarily, he was oblivious of the externals of life. He had watched Rataplan being saddled; now he stopped at the public entrance of the paddock to see the claret and white hoops go flying past on the way to the post.

It was not an important race; the value of the plate was less than three hundred pounds; but his commissioner had gone into the ring with instructions to put on a monkey at the best price—and five hundred pounds was a considerable bet for Garry. He assured himself uneasily that he could afford to lose five hundred—if anybody could afford to lose that amount. Yet was he not going beyond the limit and margin of safety?

Here was a line of thought, uncomfortable in itself, and yet a pleasing relief from the more pressing problem of Wenda. Phew! Every time he recalled that interview of the morning he felt a little chill—but a chill which made him hot under the collar.

Garry strolled under the verandah outside the weighing-room, past the unsaddling enclosure, and was turning through the iron gates when Wenda called him, and he turned, with unaccustomed embarrassment, to meet her.

Lady Panniford was lovely, had always been lovely as long as Garry could remember her. About her there were two definite schools of opinion: those who thought she had the perfect face, and those who swore by her more perfect figure. She was almost as tall as Garry, golden-haired, blue-eyed, flawless of skin. She had the trick of giving insignificance to even attractive women who had the misfortune to be near her. The girl who was with her at the moment was both conscious and careless of this inequality. She was doomed by relationship to appear with and to attend her sister-in-law.

“You came, then?”

Garry was conscious of the lameness and futility of the remark.

“I’ve come to back your horse, darling,” Wenda smiled.

But there was a challenge in her smile. It said, as plainly as words:

“There is one subject we will not discuss—to-day!”

“I’ve just seen Peter Hipplewayne; he told me to back Ediphos,” she went on. “So dear of Peter to try to make me some money. But it is favourite, and I hate favourites.”

“Then it should win,” said Garry, “and if you’ve backed mine you are going to be disappointed. Hullo, Molly, darling!”

He became aware of Molly—as one became aware of almost every woman whose lot it was to appear in Wenda Panniford’s company.

“Where’s Willie?” he asked, and might have saved himself the trouble.

Willie Panniford was at the members’ bar. He generally met somebody who wanted to go to the bar, a hunting man or a man of his old regiment, or somebody he had met in Cairo, or anybody else who wanted to go to the bar.

Wenda took his arm and led him down towards the rails. Molly followed obediently. She had a sense of humour and a growing consciousness of advancing age. Twenty-one is more certain of itself than eighteen. Wenda was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with Molly. Men were taking an interest in her. Some people thought she was clever. Almost everybody except Garry realised that she was passing from the stage of girlish prettiness to the maturer beauty of her years.

Wenda drew him out of the range of Molly’s hearing.

“I told you we were going to Rome on Tuesday, Garry,” she said, “but I forgot to ask you something this morning. Do you mind if I delay sending you a cheque for another week or two?”

Garry laughed and squeezed her arm.

“Wenda, darling,” he said, with mock seriousness, “if I don’t get my share of it now I will issue a writ. Of course I don’t! I wanted you to keep the whole of the income from that little nest egg; you know that.”

The blue eyes smiled gratefully at him.

“You are a brick,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty pounds doesn’t mean anything to you, but it means an awful lot to me just now.”

She held twenty thousand pounds’ worth of five per cent. stock. Garry’s one provident act, in a moment of financial panic, had been to make her an official trustee for this sum. His betting was a little too heavy; he knew the time would come when racing must play a less important part in his life, and when his betting-book would be locked away in a drawer. He had discussed his plan with Wenda, and she had agreed to hold the bonds against his need, and for her service receive half their revenue.

“Write to me, like an angel,” she said; and then, as a thought occurred to her: “I wasn’t terribly sympathetic about the General, was I?”

This was the second reference she had made to General Anson’s death. He was puzzled to know why. She had known his uncle and had heartily disliked him.

“He really was a fine old soldier, and I admired him like anything. Here’s your boy friend.”

Henry Lascarne was coming across the lawn in search of her. He was making one of his rare visits to a racecourse, and had probably come under protest. Certainly nobody but Wenda would have induced this tall, correctly tailored young man to descend from his Olympian heights to the vulgarities of Hurst Park.

“Are you seeing the racing down here, Wenda?”

She looked back at the crowded stands and made a little grimace. From their position on the sloping lawn they commanded a fairly good view of the course, could see the horses lining up at the gate, and were almost exactly opposite the winning-post.

“Let’s stay here. Do you mind, Harry?”

“I’ll go on the stand,” said Garry, and left them.

“Not exactly polite——” began Harry.

His nose had a queer way of wrinkling up when he was contemptuous—and he was mainly contemptuous.

“Garry’s manners are deplorable,” she said gaily. “We will wait here.”

She was a little tense, more than a little excited, Molly noticed—Molly noticed everything.

“They say he’s betting like smoke,” said Lascarne.

“Who—Garry?”

Wenda put down her glasses and turned an amused face to him.

“Why shouldn’t he? He’s terribly rich.”

“I wonder if he is?”

It was the first doubt she had ever heard expressed concerning Garry’s prosperity, and her eyes opened a little wider.

“Of course he is! He’s probably enormously rich. Why don’t you bet, Henry? It would be very human of you.”

Henry Lascarne smiled.

“Racing is a fool’s game, and only blind idiots engage in it,” he said.

He had all the assurance of twenty-four.

“I’ve seen more fellows ruined on the turf than—than——”

“On the Stock Exchange.”

It was Molly who spoke.

He did not like Molly, being well aware that his dislike was reciprocated; and he was all the more irritated because that reference to the Stock Exchange had struck home. There had been a big Wall Street slump, and Henry Lascarne’s securities had depreciated in value by over a hundred thousand pounds. It was true that he could bear the loss, for old Lascarne had left his son the greater part of two millions, even after the death duties had been paid. But he hated losing money.

“If I may be allowed to say so——”

“Which you are,” said Molly calmly.

“—it is absurd to compare legitimate investment——”

“They’re off!”

Henry Lascarne was annoyed. Things were always happening on a racecourse which interrupted him in his more profound and imposing moments.

He took his glasses from their case and focused them reluctantly upon the field. The horses were moving swiftly along the back stretch, a compact bunch of vari-coloured jackets. He could not distinguish Garry’s colours, and had only the dimmest idea of what they were, although he had had them described to him a dozen times.

“Which is Garry’s horse? I can’t see it.”

Wenda’s voice was impatient, trembled a little; the hands that held the glasses were trembling. Her failure to pick out any horse was understandable.

Molly was not using glasses. Her keen, grey eyes had found the claret and white hoops as soon as the field had settled down.

“He’s on the rails, about third, I think,” she said.

“And he’ll finish first.”

She turned quickly: Garry had come down from the stand and was behind her.

“Will he, Garry—will he?” asked Wenda eagerly.

Again her shaking hands went up, and again she failed to control her race-glasses.

“He’s won it there,” said Garry. “The only danger is Ediphos, but I don’t think——”

He was suddenly silent, nor was his voice raised in the roar which greeted Rataplan as it cantered past the post two lengths ahead of its nearest opponent.

“How wonderful! How wonderful, Garry!” Wenda was shaking from head to foot, her eyes shining. “I had a hundred pounds on it. What was the price?”

Garry stared at her. Only a few minutes before she had excused herself paying him two hundred and fifty!

“A hundred pounds? But, darling, you’re not betting in hundreds?”

She shook her head, a little impatiently.

“Don’t be silly, Garry. Of course I hadn’t a hundred to put on, but somebody did it for me. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Very!” Garry’s voice was a little troubled, and she misjudged the reason.

“Don’t be absurd, Garry. You backed this horse yourself; and when some nice man told me he’d put a hundred on for me——”

“I’m not worried about that; I shouldn’t have won that race—I think there’s going to be a devil of a lot of trouble about it.”

“Trouble?” said Wenda quickly. “Do you mean there’s a chance that your horse will be——”

“Disqualified? No. But Ediphos should have won. He wasn’t trying. I didn’t realise it till they were nearly home.”

“Ediphos?” She frowned. “That was the horse Peter said would win. Of course it was trying! Peter wouldn’t tell me——”

Garry nodded.

“Peter would sell his own aunt! He is rather a tricky young gentleman—who has tricked once too often. If the stewards didn’t see what happened in the race they’re blind—and these stewards are never blind.”

He had seen Ediphos nicely placed as the field turned the bend into the straight; and then he had seen the horse drawn back and deliberately put behind the two leaders in such a position that he could not possibly be extricated at the crucial moment of the race.

The knowledgeable racing folk were discussing it openly as they streamed into the paddock. Garry heard one pillar of the turf say:

“I’ve never seen anything more disgraceful ...”

At the entrance of the paddock he met the owner of Ediphos, and, making an excuse to Wenda, he took him aside.

“There is going to be a row over this race.”

“A row—what sort of a row? You won it, didn’t you?” asked Peter truculently.

“You didn’t win it—that’s the trouble,” said Garry grimly. “You’d better prepare yourself for an inquiry.”

“Oh, rot!”

But the pink face had gone white.

“I gave the jockey orders to come away when he could....”

“I’m just telling you that it’s absolutely certain the stewards will send for you.”

“Nonsense!” said the other.

Later in the afternoon Garry met a press friend in the paddock, and learned that the running of Ediphos had been the subject of inquiry, and that the matter had been referred to the Stewards of the Jockey Club.

He did not see Wenda again until the last race had been run, and then he met her on the way to her car. Willie Panniford was leading the little party, a tall, fattish young man, not in the best of tempers.

“Beastly place, this,” he complained loudly. “Why the devil I ever come racing I don’t know. What a brute you are, Garry—to have a winner and tell nobody!”

“I told Wenda——” began Garry, when a warning glance stopped him.

“You told her what? She said you never mentioned the horse.”

“Darling, your understanding is rather dull this afternoon,” she said sweetly. “I told you that Garry thought his horse might win. He wasn’t very definite about it—were you, Garry?”

Garry was never definite about his horses winning. He had lost all his earlier enthusiasm for communicating his good things to the world, as the result of bitter experience. When an owner confides to a friend that his horse will win, and it doesn’t, he is apt to be reminded that the man to whom he imparted the information would have backed the real winner if he hadn’t been “put off.”

Willie was in his noisiest mood.

“Nice business, racing, I must say! Did you hear about that fellow Hipplewayne? Stopped his horse—deliberately stopped him, old boy! A disgraceful thing to happen—Hipplewayne is a cad! By Jove, they ought to warn the beggar off right away!”

“Willie, darling”—it was Wenda’s urgent voice—“you’re talking very loudly—and very stupidly.”

He glared round at her. Willie had found the bar very companionable that afternoon.

“If I’m not allowed to express my views——”

“Not in public!” she smiled.

Willie went, grumbling, to his car, cursed the chauffeur for keeping him waiting, swore at the policeman who held him up to let the other traffic pass, and Garry imagined he could still hear his voice when the car was out of sight.

He found his little Rolls, and the voluble Hillcott discussing something vital with the chauffeur.

“Well, Hillcott, had a good day?” he asked, handing his glasses and raincoat to the man.

“Not so bad,” said Hillcott. His tone was friendly, his manner more so. “I backed yours and had a saver on Ediphos—what a ramp!”

“It was very stupid,” said Garry.

“I saw old Panniford——”

“When you talk of Sir William Panniford I wish you’d give him his title, Hillcott.”

“How did he get it?” asked that irrepressible little man.

Garry did not argue with him. Hillcott climbed in by the side of the chauffeur, and the bonnet of the car headed for Ascot and Daneham Lodge.