Читать книгу The Flying Fifty-Five - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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THE sun was hardly up before a thundering knock came on the door of the pretty little room where Willie the Walker was sleeping.

"Time to get up, Bill," said the shaky voice.

Bill sat up in bed and blinked around the apartment. It had been a surprise to him, the comfort and cosiness of it. He did not know that all the previous afternoon a protesting Aunt Eliza and a heated Stella had been dusting and scrubbing and importing furniture from the house.

"For a tramp!" said Aunt Eliza. "You're mad!"

"He is a gentleman—or has been. I can't let him live in a pigsty," said Stella.

Again the rattling of the door. "Time to get up, Bill."

He jumped out of bed and pulled open the door. The aged stable-man, gnarled of face, bent of body, was waiting on the landing.

"All right, ancient, I'll be with you in a jiffy," said Bill

"Missus said if you want a bath you can use the boys' bathroom—but you don't want no bath, do you, Bill? You look clean and hearty and it's only Tuesday."

"I'll take the bath, ancient," said Bill;" it's swank on my part, for, as you say, it is only Tuesday, but I've got to live up to my position."

"And not so much of the 'ancient,'" began old Jacob.

But before he could supply any further information Bill had taken a flying leap past him and was pattering across the yard in his bare feet to the bathroom.

"That's how people catch cold," protested Jacob.

Half an hour later the new head lad was interviewing his employer. In the very early light of morning she should have looked a little pale and a trifle tired about the eyes. Instead, she was more lovely than ever.

"You're rather wonderful," he said; and she looked at him coldly.

"To be able to get up so early without being called," he went on glibly.

"There is a lot to be done, and we're necessarily short-handed," she said; "necessarily, because I can't afford much help. I want you to take Patience up to the gallops and send him and Seven Hills a sharp canter. My last head lad thought I was overdoing the horses. I should like to have your view. You saw them yesterday."

"I thought Patience was carrying too much beef," he said. "That queerly-named horse of yours is as fit as hands can make him, but he is only a baby yet. Can he stay?"

She shook her head. "Father christened him Fifty-Five!—he had a theory that on our training ground a good horse ought to be able to do the easy five furlongs in fifty-five seconds if one wishes to bet with any confidence. The naming of the colt was intended as a perpetual reminder to me of this fact. I think he is a sprinter pure and simple. I have him in the Coventry Stakes at Ascot next Tuesday and Patience is in the Trial Stakes. It is Patience I want you to get to work on, William—what is your other name? I forgot to ask you?"

"Lord," said Bill promptly. "Bill Lord. I'll look after Patience. The Trial Stakes is short of a mile, but it isn't much of a stake to win."

"Merely eight hundred pounds," said the girl drily, "if that is your idea of 'not much' you must think pretty big. But the stake is less important than the betting."

"Betting?" he said incredulously. "Do you bet?"

She pointed to a rustic bench in the garden, the seat of which was wet with dew. "Sit down," she said, inconsiderately he thought, although his legs were arrayed in a pair of riding breeches, a little too large for him.

"I want to explain Fenton Manor and tell you its ghastly secret," she said, with a half-smile that he thought was adorable. "I am not conducting this stable for my amusement. It is the only way I know of making money. Dear daddy died very poor. We have this place, about a dozen horses, nine of which aren't worth the food they eat, poor beasties, two decrepit cows and a Ford motor-car. Those are my possessions. Three of the horses are good. Two of them are entered in next year's Derby, Seven Hills and Fifty-Five. Seven Hills is a stayer and may make a great horse; Fifty-Five is a sprinter and I shall probably pay forfeit for him next March. Patience is a miler—a four-year-old and a good horse when the ground is as he likes it. It must be as hard as a brick or the old fellow won't gallop. When the going is suitable I don't think there is a faster horse over the distance in England. He would win nine Cambridgeshires out of ten—if the Cambridgeshire was run on baked turf."

He listened entranced as she rattled along, unconsciously dropping in the little scraps of racing argot which were so familiar to him and which sounded so strangely from her. And yet she was not "horsey" or mannish. He had never met anybody so exquisitely feminine. The light in her blue eyes, the faint colour in her cheeks, the soft roundness of her chin, the straight little nose which he saw in profile as she spoke, were part of a picture of ideal womanhood.

"I have to bet to keep alive," she said; "a small stable cannot afford to go after the big stakes—racing is a rich man's game, and insensibly its conditions are framed to suit the rich men. All through his illness dear daddy coached me in the art of speculation and so far I have done well. If I take Patience to Ascot I must bet. To my modest investment I can usually get a big price because this is not exactly a fashionable stable. And now I think I've told you all." She looked at him and frowned. "Aren't you going to shave that ridiculous beard?" she asked. "And you really must do something to cure that black eye before you go to Ascot."

"To Ascot?" he gasped. "Have I to go to Ascot?"

"Of course. You will have to take the horses there," she said in surprise.

"Ascot!" he said softly, and laughed. "What a lark! No, Miss Barrington, I think I'll keep my whiskers. I've an idea that whiskers are lucky!"