“What money? What is this?”
“Before we go into that, you’ve got to understand fully the nature of the insanity which afflicts compulsive gamblers.” Wynter straightened out his legs and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, becoming expansive as he reached a well-rehearsed part of his spiel. They actually suffer from two delusions, two fantasies which complement and reinforce each other. The first one we’ve already covered; the second follows on logically from the first – namely that within the horse-racing fraternity there is a select group whose members are kept informed of all the hidden variables which affect horses’ performances, and who therefore know the result of every race in advance.
“The members of this group are supposed to be a kind of Ouspenskian élite, and the idea that they exist comforts the gambler and prevents him from crashing into the stone wall of reality when the horse he expected to win comes in fourth and costs him a lot of money. His calculations were based on the form book and were correct as far as they went, you see, but the Big Boys knew better because they had access to inside information. It’s like a religion – but in place of a Messiah the gambler dreams of a benign Big Boy who will take a special liking to him and pass on crumbs of his esoteric knowledge.
“There’s no denying the power of the dream. I’ve seen a crowded bar emptied in thirty seconds because somebody came in and gave a tip straight from the quote horse’s mouth unquote. It doesn’t matter how shabby and unlikely the tipster may be, it doesn’t even matter for the moment that the whole principle of exclusiveness is being violated – every punter there gets the feeling that he has at last been let in on something and he scuttles off to bet his rent money. Even when the horse loses, as it always does, his faith in the omniscience of the Big Boys isn’t shaken – he realizes he has allowed himself to be deceived by a false prophet and is being punished accordingly.”
“It really is pathetic,” I said, ‘but I still don’t …” I broke off as Wynter leaned forward, eyes flaring whitely, and aimed his index finger at the bridge of my nose.
“You and I are going to make that dream come true for a large group of compulsive gamblers.” Wynter’s voice was vibrant with evangelistic fervour. “And we’re going to charge them an appropriate fee for our services.”
I sneered. “A third of a million!”
“For each of us, after we clear our expenses.”
The mention of expenses set off subliminal alarms in my mind, but by then I was pretty well hooked, the more so because I had guessed the general nature of Wynter’s plan. I’d say that most people have at some stage in their mental development been intrigued by the story about the man who invents chess for the amusement of an ancient king. He refuses the bags of gold offered as payment, and instead asks for one grain of wheat for the first square on the board, two for the second, four for the third and so on, doubling up every time, and the punchline is that by the time they reach the sixty-fourth square all the granaries in the land are unable to cope with the amount of wheat involved. It’s a short step from there to putting that kind of mathematics into reverse and playing around with a dwindling series of numbers, and almost the first notion people come to is that of the seemingly infallible prediction.
I nodded at Wynter’s attaché case and said, “How many names are on your list?”
“Very good, Mr Cluny,” he replied. “I knew we’d hit it off together. I’ve got a total of 400,000 names and addresses.”
“How do you know they’re the right sort of prospects?”
“The United States, Canadian and Quebec governments have been collaborating on a coast-to-coast study of the social consequences of chronic gambling. I was involved with the data storage and retrieval system, and I managed to get a print-out of the master list. It cost me a lot of money to grease the right palms, but I got what I needed.” Wynter picked up his case and opened it, revealing a massive block of closely printed sheets.
I nodded. “What sort of breakdown were you thinking of?”
“Well, I plan to use only four-horse and five-horse races.” He was speaking quickly now, giving the impression of a man who was as much obsessed as any of his prospective victims. “There was a temptation to include a couple of three-horse races to boost the size of the final tiers, but with three horses it would look too easy. There wouldn’t be the same build-up of credibility.”
“I’m with you. Go on.”
“We start with a four-horse race and send letters to everybody on the list, introducing them to an exclusive new tipster service which is so confident of its results that it won’t introduce any charges for the service until it has given four consecutive winners. That should convince them of our honesty and integrity. Naturally, we divide the list into four blocks of 100,000 and tip a different horse to each. When the race is over, regardless of the result, we’ll have 100,000 punters on whom we have created an initial good impression, and we forget about the others.
“We take a five-horse race next and do the same kind of thing, leaving us with 20,000 hopefuls to whom we’ve given two winners. Another four-horse job boils it down to 5,000, and another one gives us 1,250 clients who have had four straight winners and by this time are convinced they’ve got a hot line to the Secret Masters of the Turf – and that’s when we start introducing a modest fee. I’d say two hundred bucks each for the next tip, giving us a first rake-off of 250,000 dollars.”
“Two hundred each,” I said, slightly taken aback. “That’s stinging them a bit, isn’t it?”
“Nonsense! The way these people bet they’ll have picked up a bundle on their four winners. That’s the beauty of the scheme – nobody really gets hurt.” Wynter paused to dab flecks of froth from the corners of his mouth. “A five-horse race will reduce them to 250 clients who have had five straight winners, and that’s where we advise them that we’re being pressured by various powerful organizations who resent our helping ordinary gamblers and want us to suspend our operation.”
“Huh?”
“That is vital to the whole plan. It’s psychology, you see. We build up their hopes and dreams, then make as though we’re going to dash the cup from their lips. They’ll see the pearly gates swinging shut in their faces and they’ll do anything to squeeze through the gap. So we tell them that, in view of the great personal risk to ourselves, it’s no longer worth carrying on with the service unless we can interest really dedicated gamblers who are prepared to pay 2,000 dollars a time for guaranteed winners.”
“Two grand!” I began to get a cold feeling in my stomach.
Think big, man. The people on my list are reasonably well heeled and they have compulsions. The higher the threshold figure we name the more determined they’ll be to get in on it. That’s the way they think. For a brief golden hour in their lives they’ll have known what it is like to be on the same side as the all-powerful Big Boys, and that’s a feeling they won’t want to relinquish. I guarantee they’ll come through with the money – and that will give us a second rake-off of 500,000 dollars. If it’s a five-horse race they’ll be reduced to fifty people who have had six straight winners and who will be putty in our hands. I wouldn’t want to take undue advantage, of course, so if we stick to the agreed two grand per tip we’ll pick off a third haul of 100,000. By then we’ll be down to about ten people and well into a diminishing returns situation, but it means that sending out a mere ten letters will net us a useful 20,000 dollars. Add that lot up.”
“I already did – it comes to 870,000.” I swallowed to ease the dryness in my mouth. “But these figures are too good, aren’t they? It can’t work out as perfect as that.”