Grey Timothy/Chapter 7

Brian Pallard’s room at Knightsbridge was a large one, comfortably but not extravagantly furnished. It was the room of a man who sought the maximum of comfort with the minimum of ostentation. The walls were expensively papered, the carpet on the floor was Persian, woven in strange patterns of a subdued hue. Half a dozen prints hung on the walls, except on one wall, which was occupied from ceiling to floor with well-filled bookshelves. A divan filled the quaint bow-window looking out on to the park, two restful easy-chairs stood to right and left of the fireplace which, on this summer day, was a veritable bower of roses.

Brian was a great lover of flowers—there was evidence of that. He was a great lover of horses—but no print hung on the wall to testify to the fact, and, with the exception of one or two works of reference, his bookshelves were innocent of sporting literature. He sat in his room eating a solitary chop. An evening newspaper was propped up against the cruet before him. A glass of Burgundy, untouched as yet, was at his elbow. A quick step sounded outside, and he looked up as Ernest Crane came in. The young doctor shared Brian’s loneliness. A tall, good-looking man of thirty, clean-shaven, save for a little moustache, was Dr Ernest Crane.

“Hello!” greeted Brian cheerfully; “how’s the butchering business?”

“There are moments when you are monstrously offensive,” said the young doctor. “The butchering business flourisheth like the green bay-tree.”

“I’ve never seen a bay-tree,” reflected Brian. “I suppose it has got something to do with bay rum.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Ernest, seating himself, and taking down a pipe from the mantelpiece.

Brian was silent for a long time, then he took a cigarette from a silver box on the table and laughed.

“The joke?” asked Ernest, looking up.

“It’s on me,” said Brian. “Do you remember a man I pointed out to you at Windsor?”

“Pinlow?”

Brian nodded.

“That’s the bird,” he said. “He’s out for trouble in more ways than one.”

He took a paper from the table and unfolded it.

“You’ve never heard of Grey Timothy, I suppose?” he asked.

“I do not know the gentleman from a crow,” confessed the doctor.

“You wouldn’t—he’s not a gentleman except in manners. He’s a colt by Grey Leg out of Lady Timothy, and I bought him long before I ever thought of coming to England.”

“Now you mention him,” said the doctor, “I’ve a vague idea that somebody told me something about him. What was it?”

“Probably that he’s the favourite for the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood—it’s the only ante-post betting race at Goodwood apparently.”

He rose from the table, walked to the other side of the flower-decked fireplace, and sank into a chair.

“Favourite,” he repeated, “and entitled to be. He’s a three-year-old, and I tried him to beat Flame of Dawn—second in last year’s Derby—giving him seven pounds. And Flame of Dawn was well up with the leaders in the Royal Hunt Cup for six furlongs.”

“What weight does he carry—that makes a bit of difference, doesn’t it?” asked the young doctor.

“A little,” replied Brian dryly. “He’s got six-stone-ten.”

“Oh!” said Ernest; “is that much or little?”

Brian groaned, then he laughed.

“It always seems rum to me that people don’t know all the rules and regulations of the racing game by heart,” he said. “I was born with ’em—six-ten is a very light weight, and if you were a betting man you would put that glossy shirt of yours on.”

“Not being of the genus,” said Ernest, knocking out his pipe, “I shall not go shirtless to consultation.” He looked at his watch.

Brian regarded him with mild curiosity.

“Do people really consult you about things?” he demanded, with unpleasant incredulity; “or do you make all this up, like Sawbones and Company in ‘Pickwick’?”

“You were saying something about Pinlow,” said the doctor, ignoring the insult. “What is he doing?”

“He’s laying my horse,” said Brian. “In other words, he’s behind a bookmaker who is anxious to bet all and sundry that Grey Timothy will not win.”

“Then of course he will lose his money,” said the doctor cheerfully.

Brian shook his head.

“He’s no fool,” he said. “Pinlow does not make sentimental bets. He’s laying against the horse because he’s certain it won’t win, and he can only be certain if he has got some little game on.”

Ernest Crane frowned.

“You don’t suggest that in this enlightened age a fellow would hobble a horse?” he began.

“Nobble is the word you are groping after,” interrupted Brian. “Yes, I do suggest such a thing. I know men who would nobble their grandmothers if they could make something out of it.”

The doctor’s disgust was apparent.

“Racing must be a pretty rotten game if that sort of thing is done,” he said.

“Why? My dear chap, aren’t stocks and shares nobbled? Have you ever heard of a stock called Beitjesfontein? I could tell you a nobbling story about that. Is there any business on the face of the earth that isn’t nobbled at times by a rival? Have you never heard of a doctor who nobbled another doctor—not with drugs or a hypodermic syringe, but with a little meaning smile and the shake of a head which bred distrust in a patient’s mind? Isn’t one half of the world engaged in nobbling, or attempting to nobble, the other half to prevent it winning?”

“I’m sorry I cannot stay any longer, Demosthenes,” said the doctor. “I should like to hear your views on the world’s morality; but there is a patient of mine who is expecting me at eight.”

“Forget him,” said Brian brutally; “don’t go—give the poor devil a chance of getting well.”

The click of the door as it closed behind the other was his answer.

It was half-past seven. Brian pushed the bell and the servant appeared.

“Willis, I shall be going out in an hour; has that man come yet?”

“Just came as you rang, sir; will you see him here?”

Brian nodded, and the servant went out to return with the visitor.

He was a man of stoutish build, with a heavy, florid face. His dress was loud, and his jewellery, of which he wore a profusion, shabby.

Brian indicated a chair, and, with an apology, the visitor seated himself.

Brian waited until the man had left the room before he spoke.

“You know me, I think, Mr Caggley?”

“Yes, me lord,” said the man effusively.

“Don’t ‘me lord’ me,” said Brian. “You’re one of the three broad gang?”

“There you’re mistaken, Mr Pallard,” said the visitor, with a pained smile. “It’s a game I know nothing of, I give you me word.”

Brian reached out his hand lazily and took a black book that lay on the table.

He turned the leaves slowly. Pasted on each was a number of newspaper cuttings.

“‘Thomas Caggley, described as a traveller’—that is you, I think?”

Mr Caggley smiled again.

“Bygones are bygones, and should remain so,” he said with emphasis.

“‘Charged’,” read Brian, “‘with obtaining money by a trick’”

“Let it go at that,” said Mr Caggley with good humour; “no good, only ’arm comes from digging forth from what I might term the misty past. ‘Let the dead bury the dead’, as the old song says.”

“So,” said Brian agreeably, “I want us to understand each other; you want to give me some information”

“For a consideration,” interjected the other.

“For a consideration,” agreed Brian. “Now the question is: Can you tell me anything I don’t already know?”

“That,” said Mr Caggley, with elaborate politeness, “would be, in the language of France, ‘tray diffy seal’.” He paused, twisting a heavy watch chain with fingers that flashed expensively. “To get to business,” said Mr Caggley, after waiting for some financial encouragement; “as between men of the world, you know your horse is a favourite for the Stewards’ Cup?”

Brian nodded and the man went on.

“A certain party named P”

“Pinlow,” said Brian.

“Pinlow, it is—well, he’s laying your horse to lose a packet. Does he chuck his money about? He don’t. Whatever wins, Grey Timothy won’t; if they can’t straighten the jockey, they’ll straighten the horse—you look out for that.”

He nodded his head vigorously.

“Pinlow knows a party named Fanks—he’s in the City and gets his money by thievin’—stocks an’ shares an’ things. He’s been in every big game I can remember, but he just manages to keep outside Bridewell. An’ Fanks, bein’ a dear pal of his lordship’s, can do anything, for Fanks knows every nut in London, see?”

“I see,” said Brian. “I have heard of the gentleman.”

“A gentleman he is,” said Caggley with a grin, “an’ if you gets your clock pinched, an’ you’re a pal of Fanks, you can get it back in a day or two. I tell you he knows everybody. Well, that there Fanks can lift his little finger, an’ whatever he wants done is done, see? If he lifted his little finger to me an’ said, ‘Cag, you’ve been puttin’ it on a pal of mine, an’ he’s screamin’, push over the stuff’, I’d have to do it.”

“In other words,” said Brian, “if by your dexterity with the cards you relieved a friend of Mr Fanks’ of his cash, and he made a fuss about it”

“Izzackly,” nodded Caggley. “Well, suppose instead of wantin’ me to do somethin’ he wanted Smith, who done time for doctoring a horse, do you think Smith wouldn’t do it?”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt,” said Brian, “if Smith is Tinker Smith, who had twelve months in Melbourne for getting at a horse.”

Mr Caggley was for a moment nonplussed.

“Seems to me,” he said, “you know as much about the little matter as I do. Tinker Smith it is, an’ he’s the nut you’ve got to watch. Now there’s another point about this Stewards’ Cup. There’s a horse in it that can, in a manner of speakin’, catch pigeons. Mildam, her name is. She’s a French filly. Ran twice as a two-year-old—nowhere. Went through her three-year-old days without runnin’. She’s in the race with a postage stamp, so to speak, in the matter of weight.”

“Who owns her?” Brian was interested.

“Mr Colvert,” said Caggley, with a grin. “You’ve heard of Mr Colvert?”

“That’s Lord Pinlow’s assumed name,” said Brian, nodding.

He paced the apartment deep in thought.

“I don’t mind what they try to do with Grey Timothy,” he said. “I’ll look after them there; but I do not like this Mildam business. Has she been tried?”

Mr Caggley nodded vigorously.

“Tried a racin’ certainty,” he said. “She gave Petit Val a stone an’ slammed him. There’s a lad I know who’s in a stable at Chantilly, he rode in the trial.”

Brian walked to the bookshelf and took down the neat blue ‘Chronique du Turf’, and rapidly turned the pages.

“Um!” he said, and replaced the book; “if she gave Petit Val a stone”

“Six kilos, it was,” corrected the other.

“Near enough,” said Brian. “She’ll win.”

He laughed, and rubbed his hands.

“Well, I don’t mind,” he said. “This French lady has to fly to beat Timothy; I’ll stand my bets, and not hedge a ha’penny.”

He sat down at a little desk in the corner of the room, unlocked a drawer, and took out a chequebook.

He wrote rapidly, signed his name and tore out the cheque.

Mr Caggley took it with hands that shook and glanced at the amount.

“Captain,” he said, in a voice that shook with emotion, “you’re a gentleman if ever there was a gentleman. If ever I can render you a service—you’ll find, sir, that every word I have spoken unto you is gospel truth.”

“I hope so,” said Brian, “for your sake—that cheque is post-dated two days; if your information is unsound—and by the end of two days I shall know all about it—it will be stopped.”

“I tumble,” said the appreciative Caggley. “You’re not only a gentleman, but you’re wide!”