WHITE STOCKING
By Edgar Wallace
John Trevor was not a jealous man. He told himself this a dozen times; he told Marjorie Banning only once.
“Jealous!” she flamed, and then gaining control of her anger; “I don’t quite understand you. What do you mean by jealous?”
Jack felt and looked uncomfortable.
“Jealous, of course, is a silly word to use, but,” he blundered, “what I mean is suspi—”
He checked himself again.
They were sitting in the Park under an expansive elm, and though not far from the madding crowd, the crowd was sufficiently removed from its madding qualities to be minimized to a negligible quantity. There were within sight exactly three courting couples, a nurse with a perambulator, a policeman, and a few playing children.
“”What I mean to say is,” said Jack desperately, “I trust you, dear, and—well, I don’t want to know your secrets, but—”
But?” she repeated coldly.
“Well, I merely remark that I have seen you three times driving in a swagger motorcar—”
“A client’s car,” she said quietly.
“But surely the dressing of people’s hair does not occupy all the afternoon and evening,” he persisted. “Really, I’m awfully sorry if I’m bothering you, but it is a fact that whenever I’ve seen you it has been on the days when you have told me you could not come to me in the evening.”
She did not answer immediately.
He was making it very hard for her, and she resented, bitterly resented, not only his doubt and the knowledge that in his eyes her movements were suspicious, but that she could offer no explanation. She resented most of all the justification which her silence gave to him.
“”Who has been putting these ideas in your head?” she asked. “Lennox Mayne?”
“Lennox!” he snorted. “How ridiculous you are, Marjorie! Lennox would not dream of saying anything against you, to me or anybody else. Lennox is very fond of you—why, Lennox introduced me to you.”
She bit her lips thoughtfully. She had excellent reasons for knowing that Lennox was very fond of her, fond in the way that Lennox had been of so many chance-met shop-girls, and that she also was a shop-girl brought that young man’s admiration into a too familiar category.
She was employed at a great West-End hairdresser’s, and hated the work; indeed, hated the work more than the necessity for working. Her father, a small provincial doctor, had died a few years before, leaving her and her mother penniless. A friend of the family had known the proprietor of Fennett’s, and old Fennett was in need of a secretary. She had come to what Lennox Mayne crudely described as the “woman’s barbers” in that capacity. From secretary she had passed to a more practical side of the business, for the old man, a master of his craft, had initiated her into the mysteries of “color culture”—an artless euphonism.
“I’m awfully sorry that I’ve annoyed you,” she said primly as she got up, “but we shop-girls have our duties, Jack.”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t call yourself a shop-girl,” he snapped. “Of course, dear, I quite accept your explanation, only why make a mystery of it?”
Suddenly she slipped her arm in his.
“Because I am paid to make a mystery of it,” she said, with a smile. “Now take me to Fragiana’s, for I’m starving.”
Over the meal they returned to the subject of Lennox.
“I know you don’t like him,” said Jack. “He really is a good fellow, and what is more, he is very useful to me, and I cannot afford to lose useful friends. We were at Ruby together, but, of course, he was always a smarter chap than I. He has made a fortune, while I am struggling to get together the necessary thousand that will enable me to introduce you to the dinkiest little suburban home—”
She put her hand under the table and squeezed his.
“You’re a darling,” she said, “but I hope you will never make your money as Lennox has made his.”
He protested indignantly, but she went on, with a shake of her head:
“We hear queer stories, we dyers of ladies’ faded locks,” she said, * * and Lennox is awfully well known in London as a man who lives by his wits.”
“But his uncle “ he began.
“His uncle is very rich, but hates Lennox. Everybody says so.”
“That is where you’re wrong,” said Jack triumphantly. “They have been bad friends, but now they are reconciled. I was dining with Lennox last night, when you were gadding around in your expensive motor-car—I didn’t mean that unpleasantly, dear—anyway I was dining with him, and he told me that the old man was most friendly now. And what is more,” he lowered his voice confidentially, “he is putting me in the way of making a fortune.”
“Lennox?” said the girl incredulously and shook her head. “I can imagine Lennox making a fortune for himself, or even dazzling unsophisticated maidens with golden prospects, but I cannot imagine him making a fortune for you.”
He laughed.
“Has he ever tried to dazzle you with golden prospects?” he bantered, but she avoided the question.
She and Lennox Mayne had met at the house of a mutual friend, and then they had met again in the Park, as she and Jack were meeting, and Lennox had discovered a future for her which had certain material advantages and definite spiritual drawbacks. And then one Sunday, when he had taken her on the river, they had met Jack Trevor, and she had found it increasingly easy to hold at bay the philanthropist.
They strolled back to the Park as the dusk was falling, and entering the Marble Arch gate they passed an untidy, horsey little man, who touched his hat to Jack and grinned broadly.
“That is Willie Jeans,” said Jack, with a smile. “His father was our groom in the old Royston days. I wonder what he is doing in London?”
“What is he?” she asked curiously.
“He is a tout.”
“A tout?”
“Yes; a tout is a man who watches racehorses. Willie is a very clever watcher. He works for one of the sporting papers, and I believe makes quite a lot of money.”
“How queer!” she said and laughed.
“What amuses you?” he asked in surprise, but she did not tell him.
II
The man who sprawled motionless along the top of the wall had certain strange, chameleonlike characteristics. His mottled green coat and his dingy yellow breeches and gaiters so completely harmonized with the ancient wall and its overhanging trees, that nine passers-by out of ten would have failed to notice him. Happily for his peace of mind, there were no passers-by, the hour being seven o’clock on a sunny May morning. His elbows were propped on a patch of crumbling mortar, a pair of prismatic glasses were glued to his eyes, and on his face was a painful grimace of concentrated attention.
For twenty minutes he had waited in this attitude, and the stout man who sat in the car drawn up some distance along the road sighed patiently. He turned his head as he heard the descent of the watcher.
“Finished?” he asked.
“Huh,” replied the other.
The stout man sighed again and set the rattling machine running toward the village.
Not until they were on the outskirts of Baldock did the dingy watcher regain his speech.
“Yamen’s lame,” he said.
The stout man, in his agitation, nearly drove the car on to the sidewalk.
“Lame?” he repeated incredulously.
Willie nodded.
“He went lame when the gallop was half-way through,” he said. “He’ll win no Derby.”
The fat man breathed heavily.
They were brothers, Willie the younger, and Paul the elder, though there was no greater family resemblance between the pair than there is between a rat and a comfortable hen.
The car jerked to a stop before the Baldock Post Office, and Willie got out thoughtfully. He stood for some time meditating upon the broad pavement, scratching his chin and exhibiting unexpected signs of indecision. Presently he climbed back into the car.
“Let’s go down to the garage and get some juice on board,” he said.
“Why?” asked the astounded brother. “I thought you were going to wire—”
“Never mind what you thought,” said the other impatiently; “go and load up with petrol. You can take me to London. The post office won’t be open for half an hour.”
His stout relation uttered gurgling noises intended to convey his astonishment and annoyance.
As the rattling car came back to the Stevenage Road, Willie condescended to explain.
“If I send a wire from here, it will be all over the town in a few minutes,” he said libellously. “You know what these little places are, and Mr. Mayne would never forgive me.”
Lennox Mayne was the principal source of the tout’s income. Though he had a few other clients, Willie Jeans depended chiefly upon the honorarium which he received from his opulent patron.
Mr. Jeans’ profession was a curious one. He was what is described in the sporting press as a “man of observation,” and he had his headquarters at Newmarket. But there are great racing establishments outside of the headquarters of the turf, and when his chief patron required information which could not be otherwise secured, Mr. Jeans traveled afar to the Wiltshire Downs, to Epsom, and elsewhere, in order to gain at first-hand knowledge of certain horses’ well-being.
“It was a bit of luck,” he mused as he went along. “I don’t suppose there is another man in England who could have touted old Greyman’s horses. He usually has half a dozen men patrolling along the road to see that nobody sneaks over the wall.”
Stuart Greyman owned a large estate on the Royston Road, which was peculiarly adapted for so furtive and secretive a man, for a high wall surrounded the big park wherein his horses were trained, and his staff was loyalty itself.
From other stables it is possible to secure valuable information through the judicious acquaintance of a stable-lad, but Greyman either paid his staff too well to allow of that kind of leakage, or he showed a remarkable discrimination in employing his servants. And in consequence the old man was something of a terror to the ring. He produced unexpected winners, and so well kept was his secret that until the race was over, and the money began to roll back from the starting-price offices, there was not the slightest hint that the victor was “expected.” In consequence, he enjoyed the luxury of long prices, and every attempt that had been made to tout his horses had hitherto been unsuccessful.
Willie’s gratification was, therefore, natural and his success a little short of miraculous.
The dust-stained car came to a stop in a decorous London square, and an outraged butler who answered the door hesitated for some considerable time before he announced the visitors.
Lennox Mayne was at breakfast, a sleek-looking young man, who was less disconcerted than his butler at the spectacle of the untidy Mr. Jeans.
“Sit down,” he said curtly, and when the visitors obeyed and the butler had closed the door—”Well?”
Willie poured forth his story, and Lennox Mayne listened with a thoughtful frown.
“The old devil!” he said softly, and not without admiration; ^ * the wicked old devil!”
Willie agreed on principle that Stuart Grey-man was all and more than his loving nephew had described him, but was puzzled to know why Mr. Greyman was more particularly devilish that morning than any other.
Lennox sat for a moment deep in thought, and then
“Now, Jeans, you understand that this is a secret. Not a whisper of Yamen’s lameness must leak out. I might tell you that ten minutes ago my uncle rang me up from Baldock to say that he had galloped Yamen and he had pulled up fit.”
“What!” said the indignant “Willie. “Why, that horse is as lame—”
“I don’t doubt it,” interrupted his employer, “but Mr. Greyman has a good reason for putting it about that Yamen is sound. He has heavily backed the horse to win the Derby, and he wants time to save his money. What other horses were in the gallop!”
“I don’t know his horses very well,” explained Willie, “but the colt that made all the running was a smasher, if ever there was one. He simply carried the rest of the horses off their feet. I couldn’t put the clock on him, but I know they were going a racing gallop.”
“You’re sure it was Yamen that pulled up lame?”
“Sure, sir,” said the other emphatically. “I saw him run at Ascot and at Newmarket last year, and there is no mistaking his white legs. You don’t often see a brown horse with four white stockings.”
The other meditated.
“What kind of a horse was it that won the gallop?”
“He was brown all over, not a speck of white on him.”
“H’m,” mused Mr. Mayne; “that must be Fairyland. I must remember him. Thank you for coming,” he said, as he dismissed his visitors with a nod, “and remember—”
“Mum’s the word,” said Willie as he folded up the two banknotes which his employer had pushed across the table.
Left alone, Mr. Lennox Mayne did some quick, intensive thinking. He had in his mind no thought of blaming his uncle. Lennox Mayne could not afford to condemn trickery or treachery in others, for he had not amassed a comfortable fortune by paying too strict an attention to the niceties of any known code of conduct. He was a gambler, and a successful gambler. He gambled on stocks, on horses, but in the main his success was due to backing and laying against human beings. In this latter respect he had made two faux pas. He had gambled not only upon the tolerance but upon the inferior intelligence of his maternal uncle, Stuart Grey-man.- He had used information given to him in secret by that reticent man, and to his consternation had been detected, and there had been an estrangement which had lasted five years, and had apparently ended when old Greyman met him one day at lunch at the Carlton Grill and had gruffly notified his forgiveness.
“The old devil!” he murmured admiringly; “he nearly sold me.”
For old Greyman had told him, again in confidence to back Yamen for the Derby.
Lennox Mayne trusted no man, least of all the uncle whom he suspected of harboring a grudge against him. Therefore had he sent his tout to confirm the exalted story of the lame Yamen’s amazing speed. Yamen had only run twice as a two-year-old. He had been carefully nursed for his classic engagements, and at least the story which the old man had told him was plausible.
So the old man was trying to catch him! Luckily, Lennox had not wagered a penny on the information which his uncle had brought him.
If Greyman had been one of his failures, no less had Marjorie Banning. There were times when Lennox Mayne irritably admitted that she had been the greatest failure of all. She had seemed so easy. She was just so circumstanced that the way seemed simple.
It was a coincidence that, as his mind dwelt upon her, the telephone bell rang shrilly and the voice of John Trevor greeted him.
He heard the name and made a wry face, but his voice was pleasant enough.
“Hullo, Jack! Certainly come round. Aren’t you working today? Good.”
He hung up the receiver and returned to his table. Jack Trevor! His eyes narrowed. He had not forgiven this innocent friend of his, and for ten minutes his mind was very busy.
Jack had a fairly good post in a city office, and just at that time the rubber trade was one of England’s decaying industries, and his time was very much his own.
Lennox received him in his study, and pushed a silver box of cigarettes toward his visitor.
“What brings you west at this hour?” he asked. “You’ll stay to lunch?”
Jack shook his head.
“The fact is,” he blurted, “I’m a bit worried, Lennox. It is about Marjorie.”
Lennox raised his eyebrows.
“What has Marjorie been doing?” he asked. “Does she want to turn your hair a flaming gold?”
Jack smiled.
“Not so bad as that,” he said; “but I know you are very fond of Marjorie. Lennox, you’re a man of the world, whose advice is worth having, and—the fact is, I am worried like the devil about her.” He was silent for a long time, and Lennox watched him curiously. “Either she has a mysterious friend or she has a mysterious job,” said Jack at last. “Four times she has passed me in the street, in a most swagger car.”
“Alone?”
Jack nodded.
“Perhaps she was going to see a client,” suggested the other carelessly. “You know, even women who own luxurious motor-cars need the service of a trained perruquier.”
“Even females who own luxurious motor-cars do not require the services of a perruquier from three in the afternoon until eleven at night,” said Jack grimly; “and that is the time Marjorie has returned to her diggings. I know it was hateful to spy on her, but that is just what I’ve done. She is getting a lot of money. I had a chat with her landlady. I called in on the pretense that I had called in to see Marjorie, and got her to talk about her, and she told me that she changed a hundred-pound check for her.”
“H’m,” said Lennox. He was as puzzled as his friend. His agile brain was busy, and presently he said:
“There is certain to be a simple explanation, my dear chap, so don’t worry. Marjorie is not flighty, whatever else she is. When are you going to get married?”
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
“Heaven knows,” he said. “It is all very well for you to talk about marriage, because you’re a rich man, but for me it means another twelve months of saving.”
“Have you fixed the sum on which you can get married?” asked Lennox, with a smile.
“A thousand pounds,” replied Jack, “and I’ve got about six hundred towards it.”
“Then, my dear chap, I’ll put you in the way of getting not a thousand, but ten thousand.”
Jack stared at him.
“What the dickens are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the dark Yamen,” said Lennox, “my uncle’s horse. I told you the other day that I would make your fortune—I am going to do it.”
He got up, went to a table, and took up the morning paper, turning its pages.
“Here is the betting,” he said. “One hundred to six Yamen—and Yamen is as certain to win the Derby as you are to marry your nice little girl. I can get you ten thousand to six hundred today—tomorrow the price may be shorter.”
“Good lord! I couldn’t lose six hundred pounds,” gasped Jack, and the other laughed.
“If you knew how small a risk it was you wouldn’t yammer like a sheep. I tell you this is money for nothing.”
“Suppose I had sixty pounds on it—”
“Sixty pounds?” sneered the other. “My dear chap, what is the use of making money in pennies? Here is the chance of your lifetime, and, unless you are a lunatic, you will not miss it. Tomorrow the horse will be nearer six to one than sixteen, and you can lay out your money and stand to win a fortune at practically no risk to yourself.”
He spoke for half an hour on horses—of Yamen, its speed, its breeding—and Jack listened fascinated.
“I’ll ring up a bookmaker and put it on for you.”
“Wait, wait,” said Jack hoarsely as the other reached for the telephone; “it is a fearful lot of money to risk, Lennox.”
“And a fearful lot of money to win,” said the tempter. If he had had more time, he would have arranged the bet so that the six hundred pounds fell into his pocket, but that was impossible. Jack Trevor must be caught immediately or not at all—must be given no time to reflect or to seek advice, and certainly no time to discover that Yamen was a cripple. The secret might leak out at any moment; a disgruntled stable-boy, a chance spy, a too-talkative veterinary surgeon—any of these might talk and the stable’s secret would be revealed. The loss of six hundred might not prevent a contemptuous little hairdressing girl from marrying—it would certainly postpone the event.
“I’ll do it,” said Jack, with a gasp, and listened as in a dream to his placid companion’s voice.
“Put it to the account of Mr. John Trevor, Castlemaine Gardens… Yes, I’ll be responsible. Thank you.”
He hung up the receiver, and looked round at the other with a queer smile.
“I congratulate you,” he said softly, and Jack went back to the city, his head in a whirl, even the mystery of his fiancee’s movements obscured by the tremendous realization of his own recklessness.
Marjorie Banning heard the news and dropped into a twopenny park chair. Happily, the chair was there.
“You’ve put all the money on a horse?” she said hollowly. “Oh, Jack!”
“But, my dear,” said Jack stoutly, “the money is as good as mine, and all that Lennox said is true. The horse was sixteen to one yesterday and it is only eight to one today.”
“Oh, Jack!” was all she could say.
He had to find conviction for himself. He was miserably conscious of his own folly, and had cursed himself that he had ever listened to the voice of temptation.
“It is all right, Marjorie,” he said, with poorly simulated cheerfulness; “the horse belongs to Lennox Mayne’s uncle. He told Lennox that it is certain to win. Think what ten thousand pounds means, Marjorie dear…”
She listened, unconvinced. She who knew with what labor and sacrifice his little nest-egg had been gathered, who understood even more clearly than he what its loss would entail, could only sit with a blank sense of despair at her heart.
At that moment Mr. Lennox Mayne was experiencing something of her dismay, though the cause was a little different. Summoned by telegram, he who had been described as the “Prince of Touts”—though a more untidy, unshaven, and uncomfortable prince had never borne such a title—had come post-haste to Manchester Square, and whilst the grimy Ford, with its stout, hen-like driver, stood at the door, Mr. Willie Jeans fidgeted uneasily and endured -with such patience as he could command the flow of his employer’s abuse.
“You’re a blundering jackass, and I was a fool to hire you,” stormed Lennox Mayne. “What is the use of touting a horse if you’re seen touting? I told you that you were not to let anybody know that you were connected with me, you drivelling fool, and you’ve been talking.”
“No, I ain’t,” said the other indignantly. “I never talk. Do you think I should be able to earn a living if I—”
“You’ve been talking. Listen to this.” Lennox snatched up a letter from the table.
“This is from my uncle. Listen to this, you damned fool:
“You are not satisfied with my information, it seems, but employ your tout to spy on my training. You can tell Mr. Willie Jeans from me that if ever he is again seen in or near my estate, he will get the biggest flogging he has ever had in his life…”
The following paragraph, which gave Stuart Greyman’s opinion of his nephew, Lennox did not read.
“I never knew anybody saw me; there was nobody about when I was on the wall,” grumbled Mr. Jeans. “I’ve earned my fifty, if ever a man has earned it.”
“You’ll get no fifty from me,” said Lennox. “I’ve given you as much money as you’re entitled to, and don’t come near me again.”
When Mr. Willie Jeans joined his brother, he was in no amiable frame of mind.
“Where are we going now?” asked that placid man.
Willie suggested a place which has the easiest and most varied of routes, and his brother, who was not unused to these temperamental outbursts, held on his way, for their original destination had been Epsom. A policeman at Hyde Park raised a warning hand at the sight of the ramshackle machine, but Mr. Willie Jeans’ flivver was a “private car” within the meaning of the Act, and they joined the resplendent procession of machines that were moving slowly through the Park.
It was Fate that made the oil lubrication choke within a dozen paces of where two disconsolate lovers were sitting.
“What a queer car!” said the girl; “and isn’t that the man you saw the other day—the tout, did you call him?”
“Yes,” said Jack gloomily; “that’s the tout,” and then suddenly, “I wonder if he knows?”
He rose and walked across to the man, and Willie touched his cap.
“Good evening, Mr. Trevor.”
“Where are you going!” asked Jack.
“I’m going to Epsom, to watch the Derby gallops. Most of the horses are there now, but,” he grinned unpleasantly, “not Yamen.”
“Why isn’t he there?” asked Jack, with a sickening of heart, for he instinctively recognized the hostility which the little man displayed toward the horse on whose well-being so much depended.
“Because he’ll never see a racecourse—that’s why,” said the other savagely.
“He’ll never see a racecourse? What do you mean?” asked Jack slowly.
“He is lame,” said the little man. “I hope you haven’t backed him?” he asked suddenly.
Jack nodded.
“Come over here,” he said. “This is pretty bad news I’ve heard, Marjorie,” he said. “Jeans says that Yamen is lame.”
“That’s right,” nodded the tout, “as lame as old Junket. That is another one of Mr. Greyman’s. You remember him, sir; he always looked as if he was winning in a canter and then went lame in the last hundred yards.”
“I don’t know much about horses,” said Jack. “I want you to tell me about Yamen. How long has it been lame?”
“Three days,” said the little man. “I have been touting it for a week. It broke down in the winding-up gallop.”
“But does Mr. Greyman know!”
“Mr. Greyman!” said the little man scornfully; “why, of course he knows. He didn’t let on to Lennox Mayne, but I told Lennox Mayne, and a fat lot of thanks I got for it.”
“When did you tell him?” asked Jack, going white.
“The day before yesterday.”
“Then Lennox Mayne knew!”
Jack was bewildered, shocked beyond expression.
“It can’t be true,” he said. “Lennox would never—”
“Lennox Mayne would give away his own aunt,” said Willie Jeans contemptuously.
“Was it Lennox Mayne who persuaded you to back this horse?” asked the girl.
Jack nodded.
“You are sure Yamen is lame!”
“I swear to it. I know Yamen as I know the back of my hand,” said the little man emphatically. “The only horse with four white stockings in the Baldock stables—”
“Baldock!” The girl was on her feet, staring. “Baldock, did you say?”
“That’s right, miss.”
“Who lives there?” she asked quickly. “What is his name?”
“Greyman.”
“What sort of a man is he?”
“He is an old man about sixty, gray-haired, and as hard as a nail. A cunning old devil he is, too; I’ll bet he’s too cunning for Lennox Mayne.”
She was silent a long time after the little man had gone on his shaky way, and then most unexpectedly, most surprisingly, she asked:
“Will you take me to see the Derby, Jack?”
“Good Lord! I didn’t expect you’d be interested,” he said, “and it will be an awful crush.”
“Will you take me? You can hire a car for the day, and we could see the race from the roof. Will you take me?”
He nodded, too dumbfounded to speak. She had never before evinced the slightest interest in a horse race.
Some rumor of the dark Yamen’s infirmity must have crept out, for on the morning of the race the horse was quoted amongst the twenty-five to one brigade, and hints of a mishap appeared in the morning Press.
“We hear,” said the Sporting Post, “that all is not well with Mr. Greyman’s dark candidate, Yamen. Perhaps it is wrong to describe him as ‘dark,’ since he has already run twice in public, but until his name appeared prominently in the betting-list, very few had the slightest idea that the colt by Mandarin-Ettabell had any pretensions to classic events. We hope, for the sake of that good sportsman, Mr. Stuart Greyman, that rumor was exaggerated.”
Marjorie had never been to a race-meeting before, and possibly even the more sedate meetings would have astonished her, but Epsom was a revelation. It was not so much a race-meeting as a great festival and fair. The people frightened her. She tried, as she stood on the roof of the car, to calculate their number. They blackened the hills, they formed a deep phalanx from one end of the course to the other, they packed the stands and crowded the rings, and between races filled the course. The thunderous noise of them, their ceaseless movement, the kaleidoscopic color, the booths and placards even more than the horses held her interest.
“There are all sorts of rumors about,” said Jack, returning from his tour of discovery. “They say that Yamen doesn’t run. The papers prepared us for that. I am horribly afraid, dear, I’ve been a fool.”
She bent down over the edge of the roof and took his hand, and to his amazement he discovered she had left a paper in it.
“What’s this—a banknote? Are you going to have a bet?”
She nodded.
“I want you to make a bet for me,” she said.
“What are you backing!”
“Yamen,” she replied.
“Yamen!” he repeated incredulously, and then looked at the note. It was for a hundred pounds. He could only stare helplessly at her.
“But you mustn’t do this, you really mustn’t.”
“Please,” she insisted firmly.
He made his way to Tattersalls’ ring, and after the race preliminary to the Derby had been run, he approached a bookmaker whose name he knew. The numbers were going up when he got back to her.
“I got two thousand to a hundred for you,” he said—”and I nearly didn’t.”
“I should have been very angry with you if you hadn’t,” said Marjorie.
“But why “ he began, and then broke off as the frame of the number board went up. “Yamen is running,” he said.
Nobody knew better than the girl that Yamen was running. She watched the powder-blue jacket in the preliminary parade, and caught a glimpse of the famous white stockings of Mandarin’s son as he cantered down to the post. Her arm was aching with the labor of holding the glasses, but she never took them off the powder-blue jacket until the white tape flew upward and the roar of two hundred thousand voices cried in unison:
“They’re off!”
The blue jacket was third as the horses climbed the hill, fourth on the level by the railway turn, third again as the huge field ran round Tattenham Corner into the straight, and then a strident voice from a near-by bookmaker shouted:
“Yamen wins for a pony!” as the dark Yamen took the lead and won hard- held by three lengths.
* * * * *
“I don’t know how to begin the story,” she said that night. They were dining together, but Marjorie was hostess.
“It really began about a month ago, when an old gentleman came into the shop and saw Mr. Fennett, the proprietor. They were together about ten minutes, and then I was sent for to the private office. Mr. Fennett told me that the gentleman had a special commission, and he wanted an expert to undertake some dyeing work. I thought at first it was for himself, and I was rather sorry that a nice-looking old gentleman should want to interfere with his beautiful white hair. I didn’t actually really know for what purpose I was required until the next week, when his car came for me and I was driven to Baldock. And then he told me. He asked me if I had brought the bleaching and dyeing material with me, and when I told him that I had, he let me into the secret. He said he was very fussy about the color of horses, and he had a wonderful horse with white legs, and that he objected to white legs. He wanted me to dye the legs a beautiful brown. Of course I laughed at first, it was so amusing, but he was very serious, and then I was introduced to this beautiful horse—who was the most docile client I have ever treated,” she smiled.
“And you dyed his legs brown?”
She nodded.
“But that was not all. There was another horse whose legs had to be bleached. Poor dear, they will be bleached permanently, unless he dyes them again. I know now, but I didn’t know then, that it was a horse called Junket. Every few days I had to go to Baldock and renew the dye and the bleach. Mr. Greyman made it a condition with Mr. Fennett that my commission should be kept a secret even from the firm, and of course I never spoke about it, not even to you.”
“Then when I saw you in the car—”
“I was on my way to Baldock to dye and bleach my two beautiful clients,” she laughed. “I know nothing about racehorses, and I hadn’t the slightest idea that the horse I had dyed was Yamen. In fact, until Willie Jeans mentioned the word ‘Baldock’ I had not connected the stable with the Derby.
“The morning after I left you I had an engagement to go to Baldock to remove the dye—Mr. Greyman had told me that he had changed his mind, and that he wanted the horse to have white legs again. And then I determined to speak to him and tell him just how you were situated. He told me the truth, and he swore me to secrecy. He was reconciled to Lennox and told him all about Yamen. And then he discovered that Lennox did not believe him and was having the horses watched. He was so angry that, in order to deceive his nephew’s watcher, he had the horse’s legs dyed, and gave the—the tout a chance of seeing poor Junket with his bleached legs break down—as he knew he would. He told me he had backed Yamen to win him a great fortune.”
“So you, of all people, on Epsom Downs knew that Yamen would win.”
“Didn’t I back him?” asked the dyer of legs.
THE END