After two years at Oxford his putative father died. Joses went down perforce, leaving behind him many debts, a girl behind a bar who was fond of him, and a reputation as a brilliant rogue who might some day prove the poet of the sport of kings.
Equipped with the knowledge acquired at the ancient University, he went to London and there earned his living as a sporting journalist, attending race-meetings, adding to his income by betting, and performing certain unlovely services for the more vicious of his Oxford friends.
Handicapped in many ways, he had at least this advantage over the bulk of his brother-men: that he was not hampered by scruples, principles, or tradition.
At thirty his beauty was already on the wane. He was faded, fat, and tarnished; and already he was visibly going to pieces.
The end, which had been preparing in the deeps for years, came suddenly.
The story was an old one: that of one woman and two men. The three had driven back from Ascot in a hansom together. There was supper, drink, and trouble at the lady's flat. The other man got a knife in him, and Joses got five years.
When he came out, he resumed his old haunts and earned a precarious living by watching. He was almost the only watcher who could write, and his eye for a horse's form was phenomenally good. It was in those days that he came into touch with his future employers.
With an acute sense for those who could serve them, the Three J's realised at once that this man was on a different level to that of other watchers. They financed him liberally, advanced him money, and held a cheque to which in a moment of aberration Joses had signed Ikey Aaronsohnn's name. And he in his turn served them well if not faithfully.
When Chukkers rode the famous International that established him once and for all in a class by himself among cross-country riders, snatching an astounding victory on Hooka-burra from Lady Golightly, his win and the way he rode his race was largely due to Joses's report on the favourite's staying power.
"She'll gallop three and three-quarter miles at top speed," he had said, "and then bust like a bladder. Bustle her all the way, and yours'll beat her from the last fence."
When Joses was put away for incendiarism, the Three J's missed him far more than they would have cared to admit. They had two bad seasons in succession, and a worse followed. At the end of the third Chukkers, for the first time for seven years, no longer headed the list of winning jockeys.
Then Ikey carried off his jockey to the States to break his luck.
It was on this visit, at some old-fashioned meeting in the Southern States, so the story went, Chukkers discovered the mare from Blue Mounds. All the world knows to-day how she re-established her jockey's fame and made her own.
When, after an unforgettable season in Australia, he returned to England with the American mare, the pair had never been beaten. And in the Old Country they repeated the performance of Australia. Together they won the Sefton, the International, and last of all the National. And though Chukkers had been disqualified in the last race, his fame and hers had reached a pinnacle untouched by any horse or man in modern racing history.
The star-spangled jacket led the world.
When Joses came out of prison he journeyed down at once to Dewhurst.
Jaggers and Chukkers met him.
It did not take the tout long to get a hang of the situation.
The National was coming on in a few weeks. The mare had to win at all costs.
Since her victory and defeat at Aintree in the previous March she had never run but once in public, and that time had scattered her field.
Jaggers had been laying her up in lavender all the winter for the great race, and she was now at the top of her form.
They took Joses round to her loose-box.
Just back from work she was stripped and sweating, swishing her tail, savaging her manger with arched neck, tramping to and fro on swift, uneasy feet as her lad laboured at her.
So perfectly compact was she that the tout heard with surprise that she stood little short of sixteen hands. The length of her rein compensated for the shortness of her back, and her hocks and hind-quarters were those of a panther, lengthy and well let-down.
The fat man ran his eye over her fair proportions.
"She's beautiful," he mused.
Indeed, the excellence of her form spoke to the heart of the poet in him. He dwelt almost lovingly upon that astonishing fore-hand and the mouse-head with the wild eye that revealed the spirit burning within. As her lad withdrew from her a moment, she gave that familiar toss of the muzzle familiar to thousands, which made a poet say that she was fretting always to transcend the restraint of the flesh.
"If she's as good as she looks," said Joses, "she's good enough."
"She's better," said the jockey with the high cheek-bones. He passed his hand along the mare's rein. It was said that Chukkers had never cared for a horse in his life, and it was certain that many horses had hated Chukkers. But it was common knowledge that he was fonder of the mare than he had ever been of any living creature.
"She's got nothing up against her as I know of," said Jaggers in his austere way. "There's Moonlighter, the Irishman, of course."
"He can't stay," said Chukkers briefly.
"And Gee-Woa-There, the Doncaster horse."
"He can't gallop."
"And Kingfisher, the West country crack."
"He beats himself jumpin'."
"And that's about the lot—only the Putnam horse," continued the trainer. "They think I know nothing about him. I know some, and I want to know more."
"I'll settle that," said Joses.
The jockey was pulling the mare's ears thoughtfully.
"You'd like to take a little bit of Putnam's, I daresay?" he said.
"I wouldn't mind if I did," replied the tout.
"It was them done you down at the trial," continued the jockey. "Old Mat and his Monkey and Silver Mug. The old gang."
"Regular conspiracy," said Jaggers censoriously. "Ought to be ashamed of themselves. Doin' down a pore man like that."
The three moved out into the yard.
A little later trainer and jockey stood in the gate of the yard and watched Joses shuffle away across the Downs.
"He's all right," said Chukkers, sucking the ivory charm he always carried. "Ain't 'alf bitter."
"Changed," smirked Jaggers, "and for the better. They've done 'emselves no good, Putnam's haven't, this journey."
Joses established his headquarters as of old at Cuckmere, and he made no secret of his presence. Nor would it have been of much avail had he attempted concealment. For the Saturday before the trial gallop had brought Mat Woodburn a letter from Miller, the station-clerk at Arunvale, which was the station for Dewhurst.
The station-clerk had a feud of many years' standing with Jaggers, and had moreover substantial reasons of his own for not wishing Mocassin to win at Aintree. Along the line of the South Downs to be against Dewhurst was to be in with Putnam's, and the telegraph line between Arunvale and Cuckmere could tell many interesting secrets of the relations between Mat Woodburn and the station-clerk.
The letter in question informed Old Mat that Joses had come straight from Portland to Dewhurst; that Chukkers had come down from London by the eleven-twenty-seven; that Ikey had been expected but had not turned up, and that the six-forty-two had taken Joses on to Cuckmere.
After the trial gallop, and the meeting with the fat man on the hill, Old Mat showed the letter to Silver.
"He'll want watching, Mr. Joses will," he said.
"He didn't look very pretty, did he?" said the young man.
"Yes," mused the old man. "A little job o' work for Monkey, that'll be. He don't like Chukkers, Monkey don't." He pursed his lips and lifting an eye-lid looked at the other from beneath it. His blue eye was dreamy, dewy, and twinkling remotely through a mist. "Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Silver!" he said. "Whatebber should we do without um?"
On the Sunday after the trial on the Mare's Back Jerry went solemnly round the assembled lads before Bible Class, his hat in his hand and in the hat a couple of coppers.
"What for?" asked Alf, the cherub.
The lads were used to what they called "levies" in the stable—sometimes for a new football or something for the club, sometimes for a pal who was in a hole.
"Mr. Silver," answered Jerry. "He's done us proud while he could. Now it's our turn to do a bit for him."
"Is it as bad as all that?" asked Alf, wide-eyed.
"It's worse," said Jerry, with dramatic restraint.
The cherub peeped into the hat, fingering a tanner.
He was genuinely concerned for Mr. Silver.
"If I put in a tanner, how'll I know Mr. Silver'll get it?" he asked ingenuously.
Stanley jeered, and Jerry shot his chin forward.
"Say, young Alf," he said. "Am I a genelman?—or ain't I?"
"That ain't 'ardly for me to say, Jerry," answered the cherub with delicate tact.
Then there might have been trouble but for the interference of the lordly Albert.
"Don't you let him pinch nothin' off o' you, Alf," he said. "Mr. Silver's all right."
"What ye mean?" asked the indignant Jerry. "Ain't he broke then?"
"He'll be a rich man again by then I done with him," answered Albert loftily. "That's what I mean."
"When will you be done with him then?" jeered Jerry.
"After the National," answered Albert. "Yes, my boy, you'll get your 'alf-dollar at Christmas same as usual—if so be you deserves it."
Jerry sneered.
"Albert thinkshe'sgoin' to get the ride," he cried. "Likely!—G-r-r-r!"
Albert was unmoved as a mountain and as coldly majestic.
"I don't think. I knows," he said, folding his arms.
"What do you know then?"
"I knows what I knows," answered Albert, in true sacerdotal style. "And I knows more'n them as don't know nothin'."
Albert did really know something, but he did not know more than anybody else. In those days, indeed, two facts were common property at Putnam's. Everybody knew them, and everybody liked to believe that nobody else did. The two facts were that Albert was going to ride Four-Pound-the-Second at Aintree, and that Mr. Silver stood to get his money back upon the race. There was a third fact, too, that everybody knew. It was different from the other two in that not even Albert pretended that he alone was aware of it. The third fact was that Monkey Brand was sulking.
The lads knew it, the horses knew it, Billy Bluff knew it; Maudie, who looked on Monkey as her one true friend in the world, knew it; even the fan-tails in the yard had reason to suspect it.
Jim Silver, who had a genuine regard for the little man, and was most reluctant to think evil of him or anyone, was aware of it, and unhappy accordingly.
The only two who seemed not to know what was obvious to all the rest of the world were, of course, the two most concerned—Old Mat and his daughter.
They were blind—deliberately so, Silver sometimes thought.
The young man became at length so disturbed that he ventured to suggest to the trainer that all was not well.
The old man listened, his head a-cock, and his blue eyes sheathed.
"I dessay," was all he said. "Men is men accordin' to my experience of 'em." He added: "And monkies monkies. Same as the Psalmist said in his knowin' little way."
Beaten back here, the young man, dogged as always, approached Boy in the matter.
He was countered with an ice-cold monosyllable.
"Indeed," was all she said.
The young man persisted in spite of his stutter.
She flashed round on him.
"So you think Monkey's selling us?" she said.
Jim Silver looked sheepish and sullen.
But whether the girl's attitude was due to the fact that he was still in disgrace or to her resentment that he should be telling tales, he did not know.
The young man's affairs in London were almost wound up, and he was making his home at Putnam's.
About the place, early and late, he became aware that Joses was haunting the barns and out-houses. More than once in the lengthening days he saw the fat man vanishing round a corner in the dusk.
Taking the bull by the horns, he spoke to Monkey Brand about it.
"Why not turn Billy Bluff loose after dark?" he suggested.
Monkey was stubborn.
"Can't be done, sir."
"Why not?"
"Can't leave Four-Pound's box, sir," the jockey answered, turning in his lips. "Else the 'orse frets himself into a sweat."
Silver was dissatisfied. He was still more so when two days later after dark he came on two men in close communion in the lane at the back of the Lads' Barn.
They were standing in the shadow of the Barn out of the moon. But that his senses were alert, and his suspicions roused, he would not have detected them, for they hushed into sudden silence as he passed.
He flashed an electric torch on to them.
The two were Joses and Monkey Brand.
He was not surprised, nor, it seemed, were they.
Monkey Brand touched his hat.
"Good-night, sir," he said cordially.
"Good-night," said Silver coldly. "Good-night, Mr. Joses!"
The tout rumbled ironically.
Silver passed on into the yard, and the two were left together in the dark.
"On the bubble," said Joses.
"I don't wonder, eether," answered Monkey. "Four-Pound's got to win it for him."
"Hundred thousand, isn't it?" said the fat man.
"That is it," said Monkey. "Guv'nor won't part for less."
"What's that?" asked Joses, stupefied.
"Silver!" answered Monkey. "He's got to put a hundred thousand down, or he don't get her. Old man's no mug."
"Don't get who?" asked the other.
"Minie," shortly.
The fat man absorbed the news.
"Hundred thousand down," continued Monkey. "That's the contrak—writ out in red ink on parchment. It's a fortune."
Joses was recovering himself.
"It's nothing to what the mare'll carry all said," he mused. "American's bankin' on her to the last dollar, let alone the Three J's.... There's more in it than money, too. There's pride and sentiment, the old animosities." He added after a pause—"Half a million's a lot of money though. There'll be pickings, too—for those that deserve them."
Monkey moved restlessly.
"I daresay," he said irritably. "Not as it matters to me. Not as nothin' matters to me now. Work you to the bone while you can work, and scrap you when they've wore you out. It's a bloody world, as I've said afore."
"Come!" cried the fat man. "The game's not up. There's more masters than one in the world!"
The little man was not to be consoled.
"See where it is, Mr. Joses: I'm too old to start afresh."
"Have they sacked you then?"
The other shook his head.
"They'll keep me on till after the National. He's not everybody's 'orse, Four-Pound ain't. If they was to make a change now, he might go back on himself."
The tout's breathing came a little quicker in the darkness.
"D'you see to him?"
"Me and Albert."
"Is Albert goin' to ride him?"
"Don't you believe it?" mocked the little jockey.
The tout drew closer.
"Who is, then?"
Monkey ducked his head and patted the back of it.
"Never!" cried Joses.
The other raised a deprecatory hand and turned away.
"You know best, o' course, Mr. Joses," he said. "You've the run o' Putnam's same as me. And you're an eddicated man from Oxford College, where they knows all there is to know."
He was limping away.
Joses hung on his heels.
"Steady on, old sport," he said. "D'you mean that?"
Monkey swung about.
"See here, Mr. Joses," he whispered. "When a gal's out to win a man she'll dofunnythings."
The fat man breathed heavily.
Then he began to laugh.
"And it's win the National or lose the man!" he said. "Quite a romance!"
Next Sunday found Joses among the earliest and most attentive of the worshippers at church.
Boy Woodburn entered later, walked slowly up the aisle, and took her place in the front pew. As she bowed her head in her hands, the fat man, watching with all his eyes, learned what he had come to learn.
After service he waited outside.
As he stood among the tomb-stones, the girl passed, not seeing him.
"Good morning, Miss Woodburn," he said ironically.
She looked up suddenly, resentfully.
His presence there clearly surprised and even startled the girl.
She passed on without a word and with the faintest nod of acknowledgment.
The fat man, with a chuckle, thought he could diagnose the cause of her annoyance.
Next morning he met Boy in the village.
She was wearing a close-fitting woollen cap, that covered her hair, and the collar of her coat was turned up.
The collar of the girl's coat was always turned up now, he remarked sardonically, though the sun was gaining daily in power and the wind losing its nip.
She sauntered past him, and seemed even ready for a chat.
Never slow to seize a chance, the fat man closed with her at once.
"How goes it, Miss Woodburn?" he said.
"Very well, thank you."
"So you're going to win the National?"
"Are we?"
"He's good enough, isn't he?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Who's going to ride him?"
"Albert, I suppose," replied the girl casually. "There's nobody else."
"Not Monkey Brand?"
She shook her head.
"Too old," she said.
"Will he gallop for Albert?" asked the other.
"Depends on his mood," replied the girl.
The fat man laughed.
"There's only one person he will gallop for—certain," he said.
Boy looked away.
"Who's that?" nonchalantly.
Joses bowed and smirked and became very gallant.
Flattery never moved the girl to anything but resentment.
"Thank you," she said.
"Pity you can't," pursued the other.
"Yes," she said. "I should have liked the ride."
His roaming eye settled on her.
"You'd have won, too," he said with assurance.
"Think so?"
"I'm sure so," he answered. "You've only One against you."
"Perhaps," she admitted. "But the One's a caution."
"A good big un'll always beat a good little un," said the fat man.
"Besides, he's a baby," replied the girl. "Chances his fences too much."
"Sprawls a bit," admitted the other. "But he jumps so big it doesn't make much odds. And he gets away like a deer."
Joses was now very much alert; and he had to be. For, as he reported to Jaggers, Putnam's gave away as little as a dead man in the dark.
One thing, however, became clear as the time slipped away and the National drew ever nearer: that to the girl had been entrusted the winding up of the young horse, and Albert was her henchman in the matter.
Monkey was the fat man's informant on the point. Joses would never have believed the little jockey for a moment, but that his own eyes daily confirmed the report.
The window of his room looked out over the Paddock Close, and every morning, before the world was astir, while the dew was still heavy on the grass, the earth reeking, and the mists thick in the coombes, the great sheeted horse, who marched like a Highland regiment and looked like a mountain ram, was to be seen swinging up the hill on to the Downs.
There were two little figures always with him: one riding, one trotting at his side. Seen across the Close at that hour in the morning, there was no distinguishing between the two. Both were slight, bare-headed, fair; and both were dressed much alike. So much might be seen, and little more at that distance.
One morning, therefore, found Joses established on the hill before the horse and his two attendants had arrived.
He had no desire to be seen.
He squirmed his way with many pants through the gorse to the edge of the gallop, adjusted his glasses, and watched the little group of three ascend the brow half a mile away.
One of the two attendant sprites slung the other up on to the back of the phantom horse tossing against the sky.
Then without a thought of fuss the phantom settled to his stride and came down the slope, butting the mists away from his giant chest, the rhythmical beat of his hoofs rising to a terrifying roar as he gathered way.
Joses dropped on to his hands and huddled against the soaking ground as the pair came thundering by. He need not have feared detection: the rider's head was low over the horse's neck, the rider's face averted. All he saw was the back of a fair head, close-cropped.
Kneeling up, he turned his glasses once again on the little figure waiting now alone upon the brow.
As he stared, he heard the quiet footfall of a horse climbing the hill behind him.
He dropped his glasses and looked round.
Silver on Heart of Oak had come to a halt close by and was looking at him.
"Early bird," said the young man. "Looking for worms, I suppose."
Joses grinned as he closed his glasses, and rising to his feet brushed his sopping knees.
"Yes," he said. "And finding 'em."
Maudie was not the only one who had cause to complain that life at Putnam's was changed now greatly for the worse.
It all centred round that great, calm, munching creature in the loose-box, with the big blue dog curled underneath the manger.
Monkey Brand was moody; Old Mat irritable; his daughter curt; Silver puzzled, and Mrs. Woodburn perturbed.
For once in her life that habitually tranquil lady was restless, and betrayed her trouble.
The young man marked it and was genuinely sorry for her.
She saw it and appealed to him.
"Mr. Silver," she said, taking him suddenly, "is she going to ride?"
The other met her with clearly honest eyes.
"I don't know," he said.
The old lady's distress was obvious.
"Mr. Silver," she said, "please tell me. Doyouwant her to ride?"
"No!" he cried, almost with indignation. "Of course I don't. I've seen too many Nationals."
"Have you asked her not to?"
He grinned a little sheepishly.
"The truth is I've annoyed her," he said. "And she's all spikes when I touch her."
Mrs. Woodburn appealed to her husband, but got nothing out of him.
"It's no good comin' to me, Mar. I don't know nothin' at all about it," he said shortly. "She's trainin' the hoss. If I so much as looks at him I gets my nose bit off."
The old lady's distress was such that at length the young man took his courage in his hands and approached the girl.
"Boy," he said, "are you going to ride him?Pleasetell me."
The girl set her lips.
"You think I'm afraid of Aintree," she said deeply.
"I don't," he pleaded. "I swear to you I don't."
She was not to be appeased.
"You do," she answered mercilessly. "You said you did."
"If I ever did I was only chaffing."
"I know why you don't want me to ride," she laughed hardly.
"Why?"
"Because then you'll be free to win your hundred thousand. That's all you care about. But you won't. If I don't ride him, he won't win. If I do, you can't bet."
The young man was miserable.
"Hang my hundred thousand!" he cried. "As if I care a rap for that." He made a final appeal. "If I've done wrong, I can only say I'm mostawfullysorry, Boy."
"You've doneverywrong," replied the girl ruthlessly. "And when we've done wrong we've got to pay for it," added Preacher Joe.
"Damn him!" muttered the other.
"What!" flashed the girl.
"Sorry," mumbled the young man, and fled with his tail between his legs.
That afternoon a telegram came for Old Mat.
He showed it to Silver.
"That's from Miller, the station-master at Arunvale," he said. "They're goin' to gallop the mare. Would you like to step over and see what you can make of her?"
The young man agreed willingly.
"No good my comin'," said Mat. "But you might take Monkey Brand along—if he'll go."
But the little jockey, when approached, refused.
"Why not?" asked Silver, determined to save the little man's soul if it was to be saved.
"I'm too fond o' Monkey, sir," the other answered, his face inscrutable.
"What d'you mean?"
"Why, sir, if they was to catch Monkey in Chukkers's country they'd flay him."
"Who would?"
"The Ikey's Own."
Silver stared at him.
"Who are the Ikey's Own?"
"They'reThem!" said Monkey with emphasis. "That's what they are—and no mistake about it."
We are coming. Uncle Ikey, coming fifty million strong,For to see the haughty English don't do our Ikey wrong.
"He slipped 'em over special last back-end. Chose 'em for the job. Bowery toughs; scrubs from Colorado; old man o' the mountains; cattle-lifters from Mexico; miners from the west; Arizona sharps. Don't matter who, only so long as they'll draw a gun on you soon as smile. Come across the ocean to see fair play for the mare. They're campin' round her—rigiments of 'em. If a sparrer goes too near her, they lays it out.No blanky hanky-panky this time—that's their motter."
The young man went alone.
At Arunvale the station-master beckoned him into the office.
"It's right, sir," he said keenly. "Chukkers and Ikey come down this morning. Two-thirty's the time accordin' to my information. I've got a trap waitin' for you outside. Ginger Harris'll drive you. He was a lad at Putnam's one time o' day. Now he keeps the Three Cocks by the bridge. He don't like Jaggers any better than me. Only lay low and mind your eye. Arunvale's stiff with 'em."
Silver wished to know more, but he was not to be gratified.
The station-clerk, as full of mystery as Monkey Brand himself, bustled him out of the office, finger to his lips.
"Trap's outside, sir," he whispered. "I won't come with you. There's eyes everywhere—tongues, too."
Outside was a gig, and in it sat a red-faced fly-man in a bottle-green coat and old top-hat, who made room for the young man at his side.
They drove over the bridge through the town, up the steep, into the vast rolling Park with the clumps of brown beech-woods that ran down to the river and the herds of red deer dotting the deep valleys.
As they passed through the north gate of the Park, Ginger slowed down to a walk.
"If I've time it right," he said, "she should be doin' her gallop while we walks along the ridge. Don't show too keen, sir."
A long sallow man sitting on the roadside at the edge of the wood eyed them.
The driver nudged his companion.
"One of 'em," he said. "Ikey's Own. Know by the cut of 'em."
"Many about?" asked Silver.
"Been all over us since Christmas," answered the other. "Cargo of 'em landed at Liverpool Bank 'oliday. All sorts. All chose for the job. Stop at nothin'. If they suspicion you they move you on or put you out. They watch her same as if she was the Queen of England. And I don't wonder. Nobody knows the millions she'll carry."
When they were well past the man at the roadside he whistled. There came an answering call from the wood in front.
As they emerged on to the open Downs, Ginger pulled up short.
"They've done us, sir," he said shortly.
A hundred yards ahead of them a sheeted chestnut was coming toward them on the grass alongside the road.
Jim Silver had only seen the Waler mare once—on the occasion of her famous victory and defeat at Aintree the previous year; but once seen Mocassin was never forgotten.
She came along at that swift, pattering walk of hers, her nose in the air, and ears twitching.
"Always the same," whispered Ginger. "In a terrible hurry to get there."
He had the true Putnam feeling about Jaggers; but that passion of devotion for the mare, which had inspired the English-speaking race for the past year, had not left him untouched. Jim Silver felt the little prosaic man thrilling at his side, and thrilled in his turn. He felt as he had felt when as a Lower Boy at Eton the Captain of the Boats had spoken to him—a swimming in the eyes, a brimming of the heart, a gulping at the throat.
"Is that Mocassin?" he called to the lad riding the mare.
"That's the Queen o' Kentucky, sir," replied the other cockily. "Never was beaten, and never will be—given fair play."
"Done your gallop?"
"Half an hour since."
Ginger drove on discreetly.
On a knoll, three hundred yards away, four men were standing.
"There they are!" said Ginger. "Pretty, ain't they?—specially Chukkers. I don't know who that fat feller is along of 'em."
But Silver knew very well.
The little group on the knoll came off the grass on to the road, close in talk.
Jaggers was tall and attenuated. He had the look of a self-righteous ascetic, and dressed with puritanical austerity. No smile ever irradiated his gaunt face and remorseless eyes. His forehead was unusually high and white; his manners high, too; and if his morals were not white, his cravat, that was like a parson's, more than made up for the defect. It was not surprising then that among the fraternity he was known as His Reverence, because his bearing gave the impression of a Nonconformist Minister about to conduct a teetotal campaign.
Chukkers, who was wearing the familiar jodhpores which he always affected, was quite a different type. A big man for a jockey, he rarely rode under eleven stone, though he carried never an ounce of flesh. Sporting journalists were in the habit of referring to him as a Samson in the saddle, so large of bone and square of build was he. His success, indeed, was largely due to his extraordinary strength. It was said that once in a moment of temper he had crushed a horse's ribs in, while it was an undeniable fact that he could make a horse squeal by the pressure of his legs.
He was clearly a Mongol, some said a Chinaman by origin; and certainly his great bowed shins, his dirty complexion, his high cheek-bones, and that impassive Oriental face of his, gave authority to the legend. When you met him you marked at once that his eyes were reluctant to catch yours; and when they did you saw two little gashes opening on sullen-twinkling muddy waters.
The worst of us have our redeeming features. And Chukkers with all his crude defects possessed at least one outstanding virtue—faithfulness—to the man who had made him. Ikey had brought him as a lad into the country where he had made his name; Ikey had given him his chance; to Ikey for twenty-five years now he had stuck with unswerving devotion, in spite of temptation manifold, often-repeated, and aggravated. The relations between the two men were the subject of much gossip. They never talked of each other; and though often together, very rarely spoke. Chukkers was never known to express admiration or affection or even respect for his master. But the bond between them was intimate and profound. It was notorious that the jockey would throw over the Heir to the Throne himself at the last moment to ride for the little Levantine. And of late years it had been increasingly rare for him to sport any but the star-spangled jacket.
Ikey Aaronsohnn, the third of the famous Three, walked between the other two, as befitted the brain and purse of the concern. He was a typical Levantine, Semitic, even Simian, small-featured, and dark. In his youth he must have been pretty, and there was still a certain charm about him. He had qualities, inherent and super-imposed, entirely lacking to his two colleagues. A man of education and some natural refinement, he had a delicious sense of humour which helped him to an enjoyment of life and such a genial appreciation of his own malpractices and those of others as to make him the best of company and far the most popular of the Three J's.
If Chukkers was little more than an animal-riding animal, and Jaggers an artistic fraud, Ikey was a rascal of a highly differentiated and engaging type. A man of admirable tenacity he had clung for twenty-five years to the ideal which Chukkers's discovery of Mocassin two years since had brought within his grasp.
The disqualification of the mare at Liverpool last year after the great race had served only to whet his appetite and kindle his faith.
A quarter of a century before he had set himself to find the horse that would beat the English thoroughbred at Aintree. And in Mocassin he had at last achieved his aim.
If a cloud of romance hung about the mare, veiling in part her past, some points at least stood out clear.
It was known that her dam was a Virginian mare of the stately kind which of late years has filled the eye in the sale-ring at Newmarket and held its own between the flags. And piquancy was added by the fact, recorded in the Kentucky stud-book, that the dam traced her origin direct to Iroquois who in the Derby of 1881 had lowered the English colours to the dust.
Again there was no doubt that the mare had been born in a yellow-pine shack in the Cumberlands, on an old homestead—made familiar to millions in both continents by the picture papers—known as Blue Mounds, and owned by a Quaker farmer who was himself the great-grandson of a pioneer Friend, who in the last years of the eighteenth century had crossed the mountains with his family and flocks, like Abraham of old, and had won for himself this clearing from the primeval forest, driving farther west its ancient denizens.
So much, not even the arrogant English dared to dispute.
But the rest was mystery. It was said that Jaggers himself did not know who was Mocassin's sire; and that Ikey and Chukkers, the only two who did, were so close that they never let on even to each other. True the English, with characteristic bluff, when they discovered that they had found their mistress in the mare, took it for granted that her sire was an imported English horse and even named him. But Ikey and Chukkers both denied the importation with emphasis.
Then there were those who traced her origin to a horse from the Bombay Arab stables. These swore they could detect the Prophet's Thumb on the mare's auburn neck. The Waler School had many backers; and there were even a few cranks who suggested for the place of honour a curly-eared Kathiawar horse. But the All-American School, dominant in the States and Southern Republic, maintained with truculence that a Spanish stallion from the Pampas was the only sire for God Almighty's Mustang. The wild horse theory, as it was called, appealed to popular sentiment, however remote from the fact, and helped to build the legend of the mare. And in support of the theory, it must be said that Mocassin, in spite of her lovableness, had in her more of the jaguar than of the domestic cat, grown indolent, selfish, and fat through centuries of security and sleep.
"Wild as the wildman and sweet as the briar-rose," was the saying they had about her in the homestead where she was bred.
Ikey got into his car and rolled away through the dust toward Brighton.
The other three men strolled back to the yard.
"Bar accidents, there's only one you've got to fear," said Joses.
"And that's the Putnam horse," put in Jaggers.
"How's he comin' along?" asked the jockey.
"Great guns," the fat man replied.
"Think he's a Berserk?" asked Jaggers.
"I know it," said Joses. "Stolen jump. The stable-lads let him out on that old man for a lark. He's the spit of the old horse, only bigger."
"He must be a big un then," said Jaggers.
"He is," Chukkers answered. "And he's in at ten stun. The mare's givin' him a ton o' weight. And weight is weight at Liverpool."
"She'll do it," said Jaggers confidently. "I'll back my Iroquois against their Berserk—if Berserk he is."
"He's Berserk," said Chukkers doggedly. "A blind man at midnight could tell that from his fencing. Goes at 'em like a lion. Such a lift to him, too! Is Monkey Brand goin' to ride him?" he asked Joses.
"No. Turned down. Too old."
"Then the lad as rode him at Lingfield will," said Chukkers. "Sooner him than Monkey anyway. If Monkey couldn't win himself he'd see I didn't. Ride me down and ram me. The lad wouldn't 'ave the nerve. Face like a girl."
"Monkey ain't the only one," muttered Joses. "Silver's in it, too—up to the neck."
When Joses left to catch his train Jaggers accompanied him across the yard.
"Yes," he said, "if she wins there'll be plenty for all."
The tout hovered in the gate.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said, with emphasis. "Veryglad."
Jaggers threw up his head in that free, frank way of his.
"What, Joses?" he said. "You're not short?"
"Things aren't too flush with me, Mr. Jaggers," muttered the fat man.
Jaggers stared out over the Downs.
"If that Putnam horse was not to start it would be worth a monkey to you," he said, cold and casual.
The other shot a swift and surreptitious glance at him.
Jaggers had on his best pulpit air.
"Don't start," mused Joses. "That's a tall order."
The trainer picked his teeth.
"A monkey's money," he said.
The fat man sniggered.
"It's worth money, too," he remarked.
"Give you a new start in a new country," continued Jaggers. "Quite the capitalist."
Joses's eyes wandered.
"I don't say it mightn't fix it," he said at last cautiously. "But it'd mean cash. Could you give me something on account?"
His Reverence was prepared.
He took a leather case out of his pocket and handed over five bank-notes.
"There's a pony," he said. "Now I don't want to see you till after the race. You know me. Me word's me bond. It's all out this time."
With a proud and priestly air he strode back to the house.
Silver and Joses went back to Cuckmere by the same train from Brighton.
The young man was well-established in a first-class smoker, and the train was about to start when the fat man came puffing along the platform. He was very hot; and out of his pocket bulged a brown paper parcel. The paper had burst and the head of a wooden mallet was exposed.
Silver, quiet in his corner, remarked that mallet.
That night he took a round of the stable-buildings before he went to bed, as his custom had been of late. There was nobody stirring but Maudie, meandering around like a ghost who did not feel well.
He went to the back of the Lads' Barn, and looked across the Paddock Close. A light in the window of a cottage shone out solitary in the darkness.
It was the cottage in which Joses lived, and the light came from an upper window.
Silver strolled along the back of the stable-buildings toward it.
Under Boy's window he paused, as was his wont.
A light within showed that the girl was in her eyrie. Then the light went out, and the window opened quietly.
Shyness overcame the young man. He moved away and went back to the corner in the saddle-room he had made his own—partly because he could smoke there undisturbed, and far more because it was directly under the girl's room, and he loved to hear her stirring above him.
He lit his pipe, settled himself, and began to brood.
The girl was still there—he could tell by the sound; and still at the window.
A vague curiosity possessed him as to what attracted her. Then she crossed the floor with that determined step of hers, and went along the loft, the planks betraying her.
He heard her swift feet on the ladder, and coming down the gangway toward the saddle-room.
In another moment she stood before him. A woolly cap was on her head, and a long muffler flung about her throat. It was clear that she was going out. He noticed with surprise that her race-glasses were slung over her shoulders.
"I came for the electric torch," she remarked.
He rose and pocketed it.
"Right," he said. "Whither away?"
"I don't want you," she answered.
"I'm coming along, though."
"You can't," coldly.
"Why not?"
"I'm going spying."
"Good," he answered cheerfully.
She led out into the night. He followed her.
In the yard she paused again.
"And spying's only for people like me," she continued daintily. "It's not work for the gentry."
They were walking across the Paddock Close now under dim heavens toward the light in the cottage across the way.
"I suppose not," he answered imperturbably. "I'm glad I'm not one."
"Oh, but you are," with quiet insistence. "Your father could have been a peer. You've told us about it many a time."
Jim Silver was roused. He surged up alongside the girl in the night, and pinched her arm above the elbow.
"Now look here, little woman!" he said.
She released her arm.
"Not so loud," she ordered. "And don't creak so."
They walked delicately in the darkness, the light guiding them, till they came to the ragged hedge at the foot of a long strip of cottage garden.
The night was very warm, the blinds up, the windows wide.
Joses, in his shirt-sleeves, was busy within working at something.
The girl watched awhile through her glasses and then withdrew quietly.
"He's whittling at wooden pegs," she whispered, keen as a knife.
"Obviously."
"What was that coil on the table?"
"Wire."
"And the thing beside it?"
"Mallet."
She glanced up at him in the dusk.
"You're short," she said.
The stables showed before them, long and black against the sky.
They were nearly off the grass. In another moment their feet would take the cobbles with a noise.
The girl paused and put her hand on her companion's arm.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
The resistance died out of him at once. He stood breathing deeply at her side.
She lifted her face to his.
"Mr. Silver!"
"Sweetheart!"
He loomed above her like a great shadow; and she felt his love beating all about her as with wings.
"Bend your head!"
His face drew down to hers in the dusk.
Then his arms stole about her lithe body; and his laughter was in her ear soft as the cooing of a dove.
"Don't kiss me," she said.
"You deserve it," he replied.
Her hands rested light as birds upon his shoulders; her eyes were steady in his, and very close.
"D'you love me?" she asked, her voice so calm, so pure, somehow so like a singing star.
He choked.
"A bit—sometimes."
"Then I'll whisper you," she said.
Her beautiful little arms, wreathing about his neck, drew his ear to her lips.
She whispered.
He chuckled deeply.
"Good," he said, and added—"Is that all?"
She released him and withdrew.
"For the present," she said.
They entered the yard. The light of the great stable-lantern brought them back from the land of dreams.
They cleared their throats and trod the cobbles aggressively.
She went toward the ladder. He turned off for the house.
"What time d'you take the hill?" he called.
"Six sharp."
"Right."
"Shall you be there?"
She spoke from the door of the loft, at the top of the ladder.
"Might," he said, and was gone.
It was Monkey Brand's cause of complaint against the young man that he was too simple; but if his suspicions were difficult to rouse, once roused they were not easily appeased.
He was up and away next morning before even Boy and Albert were about.
Dressed in a sweater and gray flannel trousers, he swung up the hill. As he reached the summit he looked back and saw the brown horse and his attendant beginning the ascent.
Swiftly he walked along the gallop, his eyes everywhere, suspecting he knew not what. The gorse grew close and dark on either side the naked course. He watched it closely as he went, and the occasional shrill spurt of a bird betrayed movement in the covert—it might be of a weasel, a fox, or a man.
The morning was chill and misty, the turf sodden and shining. At one spot the gorse marched in close-ranked upon the green until only a passage of some thirty yards was left. As he walked down the narrow way something flashed at his feet, and caught him smartly across the shin. He tripped and fell.
A wire was stretched across the gallop some four inches above the ground. It was taut and stout, and shone like a gossamer in the mist. He rose and followed it. It ran right athwart the course and lost itself in the gorse on either side. Silver searched and found the wire was bound about two wooden pegs that had been hammered into the earth.
The pegs were so fast that his fall against the wire had not shifted them.
He looked back along the way he had come.
The horse had not yet made his appearance on the brow.
Bending over a peg, and bowing his back, the young man heaved, twisted, and lurched. It took him all his time to uproot it, but he did so at last.
Then he glanced up.
Four-Pound-the-Second had topped the brow half a mile away.
Silver took the peg and began to roll up the wire leisurely. As he did so he was aware of a man standing in the gorse on the other side of the gallop watching him. Silver did not raise his eyes, but had no doubt as to the man's identity.
It was the other who opened the conversation, coming out of the gorse on to the track.
"That's an ugly bit of wire," he said. "Now how did that get there, I wonder?"
"Spider spun it, I guess," answered the young man laconically.
"What!" laughed the other. "Gossamer is it?"
"Yes," said Silver. "And not bad gossamer at that." He looked up suddenly. "Where did you get it from?—the same place you bought the mallet in Brighton?"
The tout swaggered across the green.
"See here, Silver," he said. "None of that. You're not in the position to come it over me now you've joined the great company of gentlemen-adventurers. There's nothing in it since the Bank broke. We both stand together on the common quicksands of economic insecurity."
Silver wound up the wire.
"Common quicksands of economic insecurity is good," he said deliberately. "Distinctly good."
"Yes," replied the other. "I learned it at Oxford, where I learned a lot besides. Or to put it straight, we're both naked men now—stripped to the world. And I'm as good a man as you are."
Silver dropped the wire and advanced leisurely.
"Are you?" he said. "I doubt it. But we'll soon see."
The fat man produced a mallet from behind his back.
"No —— nonsense," he snarled.
"I thought you said we were both naked men," replied Silver, folding his arms.
"Never mind what I said," the other answered. "Keep your —— distance, or I'll puddle you into a pulp."
Jim regarded the other with admiring eyes.
"You learned more at Oxford than I did," he said. "Learned to express yourself at least. If I'd that command of language I'd be in the pulpit or in Parliament to-morrow."
There was the sound of a horse's feet behind them.
Boy was walking Four-Pound-the-Second toward them.
"Good morning, Miss Woodburn," called Joses cheerily. "Soyou'reup to-day."
"Yes," said the girl.
"Going to take him for a spin?"
Boy did not answer.
"Mr. Joses has been doing the spinning this morning," interposed Silver urbanely, holding up the wire.
"Oh," said the fat man. "I'll leave him to spin his yarn, Miss Woodburn. But don't you believe all he says. You'll hear the truth when I bring the case into court. He'll want all the moneyyoucan win him by the time I've done with him."
He disappeared down the hillside.
The girl came close and leaned down over the shoulder of the great horse.
"What is it?" she asked.
Jim Silver showed her.
"Only this," he said. "Right across the track."
The girl took it as all in the day's work.
"Did you catch him at it?" she asked.
"No; he was lying doggo near by—to watch results."
She examined the wire.
"He means business all right," she said. "We must look a bit lively. I'll have the track patrolled."
"I shall patrol it," said Jim.
In her darker moods Maudie held that the world to-day only possessed one man who could take his place beside the knights of old; and that man, to be sure, was Monkey Brand.
The lads teased or ignored her; the various Four-legs were uncouth to a degree; and the Monster-without-Manners was, of course, just himself.
Therefore Maudie passed all the time she could on the shoulder of Putnam's Only Gentleman. Perched up there, aloof, lofty, and disdainful, she would purr away like a kettle on the simmer.
That evening she was enthroned in Paradise, when Joses shambled by.
Monkey Brand, stroking her back as he stood at the gate of the yard exchanging greetings with the passers-by in the road, shook his head disapprovingly as Joses passed.
"Mug's game, Mr. Joses," he saidsotto voce.
The fat man, who had not seen the jockey in the dusk, drew up short.
"What's that?" he said keenly.
"That wire business," continued the little man in the same monotonous undertone without moving his lips. "Ought to be able to do a little better than that with an edication like yours. Where's the good of Oxford else?"
Joses came closer swiftly.
"See here, Monkey Brand," he said. "Do you mean business, or don't you?"
The jockey's face was inscrutable.
"I never said no togoodbusiness yet," he answered.
"This is good business all right," laughed the tout. "Big money, and safe as houses."
At the moment a voice called from the office.
"Comin,' sir," answered the little jockey. "That's the Gov'nor. Back o' Lads' Barn. Eight o'clock," he whispered, and was gone.
Joses kept the tryst, and went straight to the point.
He had burned his boats now.
"When do they box him to Liverpool?" he asked.
"Monday," answered the other, who seemed very surly. "If you want to do anything, you must move sharp, Mr. Joses. It's here or nowhere, mind. You won't get no chance at Aintree. Too many cops around."
"Who's watching him at night?"
"Monkey."
"Does Monkey ever nod?"
The little man looked at the stars.
"No sayin' but he might—if he was to took a drop o' soothin' syrup."
"What about the dog?"
"He could 'ave some soothin' syrup, too. 'Elp him with his teethin'."
The tout turned his back with a somewhat unnecessary regard for decency, produced a bank-note and flourished it.
"What's that?" asked Monkey.
"Little bit o' crumpled paper."
"Let's see it."
"You may smell it. Only don't touch."
"Will it drop to pieces?"
Joses swept away the other's appropriating hand.
"Might burn your fingers," he said. "That's what I'm thinking of. That's to buy you a bottle of Mother Siegel's soothing syrup. There's only one thing," he went on, brandishing the note in the moon. "Looks a wistful little thing, don't you think? That's because he's lonely. He's left four little brothers and sisters same as himself at home. And he's pining for 'em to join him. And join him they will to-morrow night—if you'll let me in to his loose-box."
Jaggers at his best never looked more self-righteous than Monkey Brand as he made reply:
"I couldn't let you into his loose-box, Mr. Joses," he said quietly. "Wouldn't be right. Only the door'll be on the latch, and if you choose to come in—why, who's to stop you?"
"Right," laughed the other. "I'm an artist, I am, as you may recall. I'd like to paint you in your sleep. Study of Innocence I should call it."
He dropped away into the darkness.
A whistle stopped him.
The little jockey was limping after him.
"Say to-night," he said.
"No," said the fat man. "To-morrow night. Sunday night. That's the night for good deeds."
At ten that night Jim Silver escorted Boy Woodburn across the yard to the foot of the ladder.
For a moment the two stood at the foot of the ladder in talk. Then the girl disappeared into the loft.
As Silver turned away he was whistling.
Monkey Brand, who was standing in the stable-door near by, lantern in hand, preparatory to taking up his watch in the young horse's box, coughed.
Silver turned and saw him.
"Good-night," he said.
"Yes, sir," said the little man, gazing up at the moon. "Thereissome good in him after all.Somegood in us all, I s'poses."
Jim Silver approached him. He knew the little man well enough by now to know that he was always most round-about in his methods when he had something of importance to convey.
"In who?" he asked.
Monkey looked surprised and somewhat resentful.
"Why, Mr. Joses, o' cos."
"What's he done now?" asked the young man.
Monkey withdrew into the shadow of the door.
"That," he said, producing the five-pound note.
Jim handled it.
"What did he give you that for?"
"Why, for lookin' down me nose and sayin A-a men. The rest's to follow to-morrow midnight—five of 'em—if I'm a good boy, as I 'opes to be. Goin' to drop into me lap same as manners from the ceilin' when Moses was around—while I sleeps like a suckin' innocent."
The young man thought.
"Have you told Mr. Woodburn?"
"No, sir. I told no one—only you."
"Shall you tell the police?"
"Never!" cried Monkey, genuinely indignant. "Are I a copper's nark?"
Whether because of childhood memories, or for some other reason, the copper was still for Monkey Brand the enemy of the human race; and the little jockey had his own code of honour, to which he scrupulously adhered.
"What shall you do?" asked Jim.
The jockey jerked his head mysteriously. Then he limped away down the gangway, behind sleeping horses, into the loose-box at the end where stood Four-Pound-the-Second.
Carefully he closed the door behind the young man and put his lantern down.
"See, you thought I was on the crook, didn't you, sir?" he said ironically, pursing his eye-lids.
"So you are," replied the young man.
Monkey wagged his head sententiously.
"Oh, I'm on the crook all right in a manner o' speakin'," he admitted. "Only where it is, there's crooks and crooks. There's crooks that is on the straight—"
"And there's straights that is on the crook," interposed Jim. "As per item, Monkey Brand."
Next morning Silver went to see Old Mat in his office and opened to him a tale; but the trainer, who seemed very sleepy these days, refused to hear him.
"I knows nothin' about nothin'," he said almost querulously, pursing his lips, and sheathing his eyes. "As to rogues and rasqueals, you knows my views by now, Mr. Silver. Same as the Psalmist's, as I've said afore. As for the rest, I'm an old man—older nor I can recollect. All I asks is to lay down and die quiet and peaceable with nothin' on me conscience only last night's cheese."
Next night Boy Woodburn was unusually late to bed.
Sunday nights she always devoted to preparing the Bible-lesson for next week.
Of old she had always retired to her room in the loft after supper on Sunday to wrestle with her labours; but as her mother grew into years, the girl had adopted the habit of working in the parlour.
On this Sunday she worked on long after her father and mother had gone to bed, reading and making notes. Once the door opened, and she was dimly aware of Mr. Silver standing in it. He departed quietly as he had come without a word, but her subconsciousness noted vaguely and with surprise that he was wearing a greatcoat and muffler as if he was going out.
It was eleven o'clock when she closed her book and crossed the yard.
Under the ladder to the loft a door led to a woodshed at the end of the stable.
As she went up the ladder she heard somebody moving in the shed.
"Who's that?" she asked sharply.
There was no answer.
She descended and tried the door.
It was locked.
"That's all right, Boy," called a quiet voice. "It's only me."
"Mr. Silver," she cried. "What on earth are you up to?"
"After a rat."
"A queer time to choose."
"Yes," he said. "He's a big 'un. I'm sitting for him."
"Good-night then," she called, and ran up the ladder, heralded by the swift and ghostly Maudie.
The trap-door over Four-Pound-the-Second's box was open as always. She peeped down on to the back of the horse and Monkey Brand, busy by the light of his lantern, arranging a pile of horse-blankets in the corner on which to sleep.
"Where's Billy Bluff?" she asked.
"Just gone outside a minute, Miss."
Four-Pound-the-Second moved restlessly.