She gave me a quick glance. 'He's interesting.'
I slouched into the swivel chair and read through the letters she pushed across to me. All of them in economic, good English, perfectly typed.
'If we win the Lincoln,' I said, 'You can have a raise.'
'Thanks very much.' A touch of irony. 'I hear the Sporting Life doesn't think much of my chances.'
I signed three of the letters and started reading the fourth. 'Does Alessandro often call in?' I asked casually.
'First time he's done it.'
'What did he want?' I asked.
'I don't think he wanted anything, particularly. He said he was going past, and just came in.'
'What did you talk about?'
She looked surprised at the question but answered without comment.
'I asked him if he liked the Forbury Inn and he said he did, it was much more comfortable than a house his father had rented on the outskirts of Cambridge. He said anyway his father had given up that house now and gone back home to do some business.' She paused thinking back, the memory of his company making her eyes smile, and I reflected that the house at Cambridge must have been where the rubber-faces took me, and that there was now no point in speculating more about it.
'I asked him if he had always liked riding horses and he said yes, and I asked him what his ambitions were and he said to win the Derby and be Champion Jockey, and I said that there wasn't an apprentice born who didn't want that.'
I turned my head to glance at her. 'He said he wanted to be Champion Jockey?'
That's right.'
I stared gloomily down at my shoes. The skirmish had been a battle, the battle was in danger of becoming war, and now it looked as if hostilities could crackle on for months. Escalation seemed to be setting in in a big way.
'Did he,' I asked, 'Ask you anything?'
'No. At least- yes, I suppose he did.' She seemed surprised, thinking about it.
'What?'
'He asked if you or your father owned any of the horses- I told him your father had half shares in some of them, and he said did he own any of them outright. I said Buckram was the only one- and he said-' She frowned, concentrating, 'He said he supposed it would be insured like the others, and I said it wasn't, actually, because Mr Griffon had cut back on his premiums this year, so he'd better be extra careful with it on the roads-' She suddenly sounded anxious. 'There wasn't any harm in telling him, was there? I mean, I didn't think there was anything secret about Mr Griffon owning Buckram.'
'There isn't,' I said comfortingly. 'It runs in his name, for a start. It's public knowledge, that he owns it.'
She looked relieved and the lingering smile crept back round her eyes, and I didn't tell her that it was the bit about insurance that I found disturbing.
One of the firms I had advised in their troubles were assemblers of electronic equipment. Since they had in fact reorganised themselves from top to bottom and were now delighting their shareholders, I rang up their chief executive and asked for help for myself.
Urgently, I said. In fact, today. And it was half past three already.
A sharp 'phew' followed by some tongue clicking, and the offer came. If I would drive towards Coventry, their Mr Wallis would meet me at Kettering. He would bring what I wanted with him, and explain how I was to install it, and would that do?
It would do very well indeed, I said: and did the chief executive happen to be in need of half a racehorse?
He laughed. On the salary cut I had persuaded him to take? I must be joking, he said.
Our Mr Wallis, all of nineteen, met me in a business-like truck and blinded me with science. He repeated the instructions clearly and twice, and then obviously doubted whether I could carry them out. To him the vagaries of the photoelectric effect were home ground, but he also realised that to the average fool they were not. He went over it again to make sure I understood.
'What is your position with the firm?' I asked in the end.
'Deputy Sales Manager,' he said happily, 'And they tell me I have you to thank.'
I quite easily, after the lecture, installed the early warning system at Rowley Lodge: basically a photoelectric cell linked to an alarm buzzer. After dark, when everything was quiet, I hid the necessary ultra-violet light source in the flowering plant in a tub which stood against the end wall of the four outside boxes, and the cell itself I camouflaged in a rose bush outside the office window. The cable from this led through the office window, across the lobby and into the owners' room, with a switch box handy to the sofa.
Soon after I had finished rigging it, Etty walked into the yard from her cottage for her usual last look round before going to bed, and the buzzer rasped out loud and clear. Too loud, I thought. A silent intruder might just hear it. I put a cushion over it, and the muffled buzz sounded like a bumble bee caught in a drawer.
I switched the noise off. When Etty left the yard it started again immediately. Hurrah for the Deputy Sales Manager, I thought, and slept in the owners' room with my head on the cushion.
No one came.
Stiffly at six o'clock I got up and rolled up the cable, and collected and stowed all the gear in a cupboard in the owners' room; and when the first of the lads ambled yawning into the yard, I headed directly to the coffee pot.
Tuesday night, no one came.
Wednesday, Margaret mentioned that Susie's friend had reported two Swiss phone calls, one outgoing by Alessandro, one incoming to the chauffeur.
Etty, more anxious than ever with the Lincoln only three days away, was snapping at the lads, and Alessandro stayed behind after second exercise and asked me if I had reconsidered and would put him up on Pease Pudding in place of Tommy Hoylake.
We were outside, in the yard, with the late morning bustle going on all around. Alessandro looked tense and hollow eyed.
'You must know I can't,' I said reasonably.
'My father says I am to tell you that you must.'
I slowly shook my head. 'For your own sake, you shouldn't. If you rode it, you would make a fool of yourself. Is that what your father wants?'
'He says I must insist.' He was adamant.
'O. K.,' I said. 'You've insisted. But Tommy Hoylake is going to ride.'
'But you must do what my father says,' he protested.
I smiled at him faintly, but didn't answer, and he did not seem to know what to say next.
'Next week, though,' I said matter-of-factly, 'You can ride Buckram in a race at Aintree. I entered him there especially for you. He won first time out last year, so he should have a fair chance again this time.'
He just stared; didn't even blink. If there was anything to be given away, he didn't give it.
At three o'clock Thursday morning the buzzer went off with enthusiasm three inches from my ear drum and I nearly fell off the sofa. I switched off the noise and got to my feet, and took a look into the yard through the owners' room window.
Moving quickly through the moonless night went one single small light, very faint, directed at the ground. Then, as I watched, it swung round, paused on some of the boxes in bay four, and settled inexorably on the one which housed Buckram.
Treacherous little bastard, I thought. Finding out which horse he could kill without the owner wailing a complaint; an uninsured horse, in order to kick Rowley Lodge the harder in the financial groin.
Telling him Buckram might win him a race hadn't stopped him. Treacherous, callous little bastard-
I was out through the ready left-ajar doors and down the yard, moving silently on rubber shoes. I heard the bolts drawn quietly back and the doors squeak in their hinges, and homed on the small flicking light with far from charitable intentions.
No point in wasting time. I swept my hand down on the switch and flooded Buckram's box with a hundred watts.
I took in at a glance the syringe held in a stunned second of suspended animation in the gloved hand, and noticed the truncheon lying on the straw just inside the door.
It wasn't Alessandro. Too heavy. Too tall. The figure turning purposefully towards me, dressed in black from neck to foot, was one of the rubber-faces.