Читать книгу Thoroughbreds - William Alexander Fraser - Страница 7

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When John Porter left the stand, the horses had just cantered back to weigh in. The jockeys, one after another, with upraised whip, had saluted the Judge, received his nod to dismount, pulled the saddles from their steeds, and, in Indian file, were passing over the scales. As Lucretia was led away, Porter turned into the paddock. He saw that Langdon was waiting for him.

“Well, he won, just as I said he would,” declared the latter; “you've got a good horse cheap. You'd ought to've had a bet down on him, an' won him out.”

“He won,” answered Porter, looking straight into the other's shifty eyes, “but he's a long way from being a good horse—no dope horse is a good horse.”

“What're you givin' me?” demanded Langdon, angrily.

“Just what every blackguard ought to have—the truth.”

“By God!” the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took a step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.

“Oh, if you want to crawl—if you don't want to take Lauzanne—”

But Porter again interrupted Langdon—“I said I'd take the horse, and I will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few parasites such as you are racing—it's creatures like you that give the sport a black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been done to-day, you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn Lauzanne over to Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where I'll give you a check for him.”

“Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin' to settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other place,” blustered Langdon, threateningly.

Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: “I guess the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep out of my way, I think.”

As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his trainer.

“The Stewards want to speak to you, sir,” said Dixon.

“All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne—I've bought him.”

The Trainer stared in amazement.

“I'll give you the check when I come back,” Porter continued, speaking to Langdon.

“There's trouble on, sir,” said Dixon, as they moved toward the Stewards' box.

“There always is,” commented Porter, dryly.

“The Stewards think Lucretia didn't run up to her form. They've had me up, an' her jock, McKay, is there now. Starter Carson swears he couldn't get her away from the post—says McKay fair anchored the mare. He fined the boy fifty dollars at the start.”

“I think they've got the wrong pig by the ear—why don't they yank Langdon? he's at the bottom of it. It a pretty rich, Andy, isn't it? They hit me heavy over the race, and now they'd like to rule me off for that thief's work,” and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Langdon.

“Yes, racin's hell now,” commented Dixon with laconic directness. “It seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who is takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston Bill's game of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go hang, is the proper racket.”

“Yes, a good boy is better than a good horse nowadays; but they're like North Poles—hard to come by.”

“Some mug give the Stewards a yarn that you'd bought Lauzanne, sir, an' sez that's why you didn't win with the mare.”

Porter stopped, and gasped in astonishment. What next?

“You see,” continued Dixon, apologetically, “I didn't know you was meanin' to buy that skate, so I says it was all a damned lie.”

“Things are mixed, Andy, ain't they?”

“I didn't know, sir.”

“Of course not—I didn't mention it to you—it was all a fluke. But I don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards—they're all right; they only want to get at the truth of it.”

As Porter went up the steps of the Stewards' Stand, he felt how like a man mounting a scaffold he was, an innocent man condemned to be hanged for another's crime.

The investigation had been brought about by a note one of the Stewards had received. The sender of the missive stated in it that he had backed Lucretia heavily, but had strong reasons for believing there was a job on. The backer was a reliable man and asked for a fair run for his money. The note had come too late—just as the horses were starting—to be of avail, except as a corroboration of the suspicious features of the race. Starter Carson's evidence as to McKay's handling of the mare coincided with the contents of the note. Then there was the fact of Porter's having bought Lauzanne. The Stewards did not know the actual circumstances of the sale, but had been told that Lucretia's owner had acquired the Chestnut before the race. Where all was suspicion, every trivial happening was laid hold of; and Alan's trifling bet on Lauzanne had been magnified into a heavy plunge—no doubt the father's money had been put up by the boy. A race course is like a household, everything is known, absolutely everything.

Porter was aghast. Were all the Furies in league against him? He was more or less a believer in lucky and unlucky days, but he had never experienced anything quite so bad as this. He, the one innocent man in the transaction, having lost almost his last dollar, and having been saddled with a bad horse, was now accused of being the perpetrator of the villainy; and the insinuation was backed up by such a mass of circumstantial evidence. No wonder he flushed and stood silent, lost for words to express his indignation.

“Speak up, Mr. Porter,” said the Steward, kindly. “Those that lost on Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled.”

“And they're right,” blurted out Porter. “I know what the mare can do; she can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with, and given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was burnt up with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm too old to begin now.”

“I believe that,” declared the Steward, emphatically. “I've known you, John Porter, for forty years, man and boy, and there never was anything crooked. But we've got to clear this up. Racing isn't what it used to be—it's on the square now, and we want the public to understand that.”

“What does the boy say,” asked Porter; “you've had him up?”

“He says the mare was 'helped;' that she ran like a drunken man—swayed all over the course, and he couldn't pull her together at all.”

“Does he mean she was doped?”

“You've guessed it,” answered the Steward, laconically.

“That's nonsense, sir; and he knows it. Why, the little mare is as sweet as a lamb, and as game a beast as ever looked through a bridle. Somebody got at the boy. I can prove by Dixon that Lucretia never had a grain of cocaine in her life—never even a bracer of whiskey—she doesn't need it; and as for the race, I hadn't a cent on Lauzanne.”

“But your son.”

“He had a small bet; I didn't know that, even, until they were running.”

“Did you tell him not to back Lucretia, for he did Lauzanne?”

“I told him not to bet at all.”

“And you played the mare yourself?”

For answer Porter showed the Steward his race programme, on which was written the wager he had made on Lucretia, and the bookmaker's name.

“Ask Ullmer to bring his betting sheet,” the Steward said to an assistant.

On the sheet, opposite John Porter's badge number, was a bet, $10,000 to $4,000, in the Lucretia column.

“Did this gentleman make that bet with you?” the Steward asked of Ullmer.

“He carries the number; besides I know Mr. Porter, I remember laying it to him.”

“Thank you, that will do. Hit you pretty hard,” he said, turning to Porter. “And you hadn't a saver on Lauzanne?”

“Not a dollar.”

“What about your buying him—is there anything in that story?”

Porter explained the purchase. The Steward nodded his head.

“They seem to have been pretty sure of winning, those other people,” he commented; “but we can't do anything to them for winning; nor about selling you the horse, I fear; and as far as you're concerned, Lucretia was supposed to be trying. Who gave your jockey orders?”

“Dixon. I don't interfere; he trains the horses.”

“We'd like to have Dixon up here again for a minute. I'm sorry we've had to trouble you, Mr. Porter; I can see there is not the slightest suspicion attaches to you.”

In answer to the Steward's query about the order to McKay, Dixon said: “I told McKay the boss had a big bet down, and to make no mistake—no Grand Stand finish for me. I told him to get to the front as soon as he could, and stay there, and win by as far as he liked. I got the office that there'd be somethin' doin' in the race, an' I told him to get out by himself.”

After Dixon was dismissed, the Stewards consulted for a minute, with the result that McKay was suspended for the balance of the meeting, pending a further investigation into his methods.

* * * * * * * * * * *

During the carpeting of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces, furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box. Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept into the minds of the waiting people, tense with excitement.

As the horses had flashed past the post, and, after a brief wait for decision, Lauzanne's number had gone up, his backers had hastened eagerly to the money mart, and lined up in waiting rows behind the bookmakers' stands. There they waited, fighting their impatient souls into submission, for the brief wait would end in the acquiring of gold. Why did not the stentorian-voiced crier send through the ring the joyful cry of “All right!” The minutes went by, and the delay became an age. A whisper vibrated the throng, as a breeze stirs slender branches, that the winner had been disqualified—that there had been an objection. First one dropped out of line; then another; one by one, until all stood, an army of expectant speculators, waiting for the verdict that had its birthplace up in that tiny square building, the Stewards' Stand.

“It's over the pulling of Lucretia,” a man said, simply to relieve his strained feelings.

“It was the most barefaced job I ever saw,” declared another; “it's even betting the stable gets ruled off.” He had backed Porter's mare, and was vindictive.

“Not on your life,” sneered a Tout, wolfishly; “a big owner always gets off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught.”

“Why don't they pay?” whined the fourth. “What's the pulling of the mare got to do with it? The best horse won.” He was a backer of Lauzanne.

“Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed horses an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down, don't you see?” chimed in the Tout.

“I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it,” said a backer of that horse. “There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's kid won ten thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the mare.”

“That's what the Public are up against in this game,” sneered the backer of Lucretia.

“And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes,” asserted the Tout.

“You ought to know,” drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had been taken away for crooked work.

“Hello! here it comes,” cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla: “Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first! The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third! They're al-l-l weighed in!”

A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.

“What about Lucretia?” some one asked.

“They've broke McKay,” the red-faced crier answered; “suspended him.”

“What did I tell you?” sneered the Tout, maliciously; “it's the under dog gets the worst of it every time.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.

The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred a tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had gone up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.

A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges' Stand after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand and the course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith set to flailing him.

“Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr. Carson—did ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?”

Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's actions.

“Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by, Mister Carson?”

The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep pathos of scorn he continued:

“Ye'r Carson the Stharter—Mister Carson! S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!”

Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners of which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.

Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, “Come over into the paddock, Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree.” It was Dixon.

“Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me—I'll ship me plugs to Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind.”

“Never mind, Mike,” interrupted Dixon; “let it drop.”

Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.

“What d' ye think av it, b'ys?” appealed Mike to the others.

“You're wrong, Gaynor,” declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in his shirt sleeves; “my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post; and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare—the Starter couldn't get him away.”

“That's right, Mike,” added Dixon; “Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the Stewards set him down.”

“Is that straight goods?” asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice of his wordy assault.

“Yes, you're wrong, Mike,” they all asserted.

In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full warmth of a penitent Irishman.