He was a thick man with a paunch which had defied health farms, and he worried about his weight. His manner had the gentle, deprecating ease of the really tough American; the power was inside, discernible but purring, like the engine in a Rolls. He was dressed in a tropical-weight city suit, and while I was there an efficient girl secretary came to remind him that time and his connection to Miami would wait for no man.
‘A drink?’ he suggested. ‘It’s a hot day already. What would you like?’
‘Lime juice?’ I asked. ‘Or lemon.’
I got lime, squeezed fresh on to crushed ice. My host drank sugar-free tonic water and made a face over it.
‘Just the smell of french fries and I’m a size larger in shirts,’ he complained.
‘Why worry?’ I said.
‘Ever heard of hypertension?’
‘Thin people can have it too.’
Tell that to the birds... or rather, tell it to my wife. She starves me.’ He swirled his glass gloomily, ice and lemon rising perilously to the rim. ‘So, anyway, Mr Hawkins, how can I help you today?’
He pushed a folded newspaper across the table and pointed at it with an appreciative smile.
‘Chrysalis cocooned,’ the headlines said. And underneath, in smaller letters, ‘High price stallion loses liberty, corralled at Perry, reshipped to Midway. And are the mares there glad, or are they? Our tip is syndicators breathe again.’ There was a picture of Chrysalis in his paddock, some mention of Dave’s leg, and a few snide remarks about the police and the local horse folks who hadn’t been able to spot a million dollars at ten paces.
‘Where did you rustle him up from?’ Roots asked. ‘Sam Hengelman wouldn’t say. Most unlike him.’
‘Sam was an accessory to a conjuring trick. A little matter of substitution. We left a horse and took a horse... I guess he didn’t want to talk himself into trouble.’
‘And naturally you paid him.’
‘Er, yes,’ I agreed. ‘So we did.’
‘But I gather from your call that it’s not about Chrysalis that you want to see me now?’
‘No. It’s about Allyx.’
‘Allyx?’
‘Yes, the other stallion which...’
‘I know about all that,’ he interrupted. ‘They turned the whole state upside down looking for him and they found just as much trace as they did of Chrysalis.’
‘Do you by any chance remember, ten years ago, another horse called Showman?’
‘Showman? Showman? He got loose from a groom who was supposed to be exercising him, or something like that, and was killed in the Appalachians.’
‘How certain was the identification?’
He put his tonic water down carefully on the table.
‘Are you suggesting he’s still alive?’
‘I just wondered,’ I said mildly. ‘From what I’ve been told, they found a dead horse two years after Showman vanished. But although he was in a high state of decomposition, he’d only been dead about three months. So it easily might not have been Showman, just somewhat like him in colour and size.’
‘And if it wasn’t?’
‘We might just possibly turn him up with Allyx.’
‘Have you...’ he cleared his throat. ‘Have you any idea where they... er... might be... turned up?’
‘I’m afraid not. Not yet.’
‘They weren’t... wherever you found Chrysalis?’
‘No. That was only a shipping station, so to speak. Chrysalis was intended to go on somewhere else.’
‘And at that somewhere else, one might find...?’
‘There’s a good chance, I think.’
‘They might have been shipped abroad again. Down to Mexico or South America.’
‘It’s possible; but I’m inclined against it, on the whole.’ Uncle Bark, whoever he was, lived somewhere in the States. Yola had not needed to call the overseas operator to get through to him, on the telephone. She hadn’t even made it person to person.
‘The whole thing seems so extraordinary,’ Roots said, shaking his head. ‘Some nut going around stealing stallions whose value at once drops to zero, because he can’t admit he’s got them. Do you think some fanatic somewhere is conducting experiments. Trying to produce a super-horse? Or how about a criminal syndicate all getting their mares covered by bluest blood stallions at donkey prices?... No, that wouldn’t work, they’d never be able to sell the foals for stud, they wouldn’t be able to cash in on the blood lines...’
‘I think it’s a good deal simpler than either of those,’ I said, smiling. ‘Much more down to earth.’
‘Then what?’
I told him.
He chewed it over and I drank my lime juice.
‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d try along those lines, and see if it leads anywhere.’
‘It’s fantastic,’ Roots said. ‘And I hope to God you’re wrong.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘It’ll take you months to plough through all that work yourself... and I don’t suppose you have too close a knowledge of the thoroughbred scene over here... so why don’t I get you some help?’
‘I’d be very grateful.’
There was an outside extension telephone close to his chair. He lifted the receiver and pressed buttons. I listened to him arranging with the publishers of a leading horse journal for me to have the run of their files and the temporary services of two long-memoried assistants.
‘That’s fixed, then,’ he said, standing up. ‘The office is on North Broadway, along in Lexington. I guess you’ll let me know how you make out?’
‘I certainly will.’
‘Dave and Eunice... they’re great guys.’
‘They are.’
‘Give her my best,’ he said, looking at his watch.
‘She’s gone to California...’
‘The new place?’
I nodded.
‘Crazy idea of Dave’s, moving to the coast. The centre of the bloodstock industry is right here in Lexington, and this is the place to be.’
I made the sort of non-critical, non-committal noise in my throat necessary on such occasions, and Jeff Roots thrust out a rounded hand.
‘I have this stockholders’ meeting in Miami,’ he said, apologetically, and he walked with me through the house to where his secretary waited in a Cadillac parked beside Eunice’s Toronado Oldsmobile.
At the newspaper offices, I found, anything Jeff Roots wanted done was done whole-heartedly and at the double. My two temporary assistants proved to be an elderly man who spent most of his time compiling an annual stallion register, and a maiden lady in her fifties whose horse face and crisp masculine voice were easy to take, as she had an unexpectedly sweet smile and a phenomenal memory.
When I explained what I was looking for they both stared at me in dumb-struck silence.
‘Isn’t it possible?’ I asked.
Mr Harris and Miss Britt recovered themselves and said they guessed so.
‘And while we’re at it, we might make a list of anyone whose name or nickname might be Bark. Or Bart, perhaps; though I think it’s Bark.’
Miss Britt promptly reeled off six names, all Barkleys, living in and around Lexington.
‘Maybe that’s not such a good idea,’ I sighed.
‘No harm in it,’ Miss Britt said briskly. ‘We can make all the lists simultaneously.’
She and Mr Harris went into a huddle and from there to the reference room, and were shortly up to their elbows in papers and books. They told me to smoke and wait, which I did all day.