Barnaby, finding that Willison simply stopped speaking, spoke very quietly and obviously without the slightest suspicion of the truth.
“I understand the effort needed, sir, and know how much money you have spent on me. I won’t fail you, Mr. Willison — you can be sure of that.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” Willison said huskily. And clapping Barnaby on the shoulder, he went on: “Let’s see how you’re doing today.”
“Jeeze!” gasped Sydney Sidey, from the security of the ‘blind’-
“My gawd!” he gasped.
“Strewth,” he wheezed, realising that he was talking too loudly.
“It ain’t bloody well possible!” he muttered.
He put the camera to his eye, but only a cine-camera could possibly show the impact of Barnaby Rudge’s sensational service, and the whirring would be too noticeable. He clicked, clicked and clicked again, to take different angles of the action, refilled his camera and took yet more. The only sound except the soft clicking was the padding of rubber-soled feet on the court, the curiously menacing whang! each time Barnaby hit the ball, the sharp p’ttz! sound as the ball struck the court, and a metallic rattle as it volleyed against the tall wire fence.
After a while, the practice stopped.
“I never would have believed it,” Sydney Sidey told himself. He was sticky with sweat and his eyes seemed likely to pop from his head. “I never would have believed it!”
At last, the car and the motor-scooter crunched away up the drive to the road.
“I know one thing,” Sydney Sidey told himself aloud, emerging warily from his cover, “I’m going to get a lot of dough on him. Even if I have to hock everything I’ve got! I want a couple’ve hundred quid, at least! No one can stand up to him — they haven’t an earthly.”
Then a peculiar thought struck him; in fact, went through him like an electric shock.
How much was this worth to Archie Smith, the mean old bastard? Smith was paying him only a lousy hundred quid, yet if he didn’t know the truth about this darkie, he could be taken for millions!
“I’ve got to be very careful,” Sidey warned himself, as he walked along. “A man’s got to look after Number One.” A little further on, he was seized by another thought. “I wonder what I could squeeze out of old Arthur Filby? That could be worth a lot of finding out!” Then, as he climbed into a small, well-kept, five-year-old Morris 1100, he gave a choking laugh. “Phew!” he gasped. “Wheel What a bloody walking miracle that darkie is! Now that really is a cannonball!” He started the engine. “If I could put a thousand quid at tens, say — more, maybe, but tens at least -that would be ten thou! Blimey-I could retire!” He gave a different, excited little laugh. “I’ll find a way,” he told himself, and tapped the camera in his pocket. “That’s worth a fortune, that is! Every picture tells a story, and all that. Gorblimey, I’m going home!”
That was about the time, too, when a dark-haired man with a deep cleft in his chin and a deep furrow between his brows, was reading a report about the inquest on Charles Blake, whose body had been taken out of the river. The inquest was to be held on the following Tuesday. Police, said the report, were treating the inquiry as a murder investigation and were hopeful of getting results in the near future.
The man gave a laugh that was not unlike Sydney Sidey’s.
Then he went into the head office of Jackie Spratt’s Limited, Commission Agents and Turf Accountants, in the Mile End Road. It was an old, converted warehouse, the ground floor now a remarkable communications centre which received information constantly, from all over the world, and despatched it as widely. Every kind of sporting result was recorded here — Australian football, American baseball, tennis, golf, swimming, cricket; racing — horse, greyhound, dirt-track, go-kart — every kind of result was gathered in and put through computers to get the finest possible assessment, both of form and of bets placed. And before taking bets, the company checked with all of their information so that, as they said, they could take the lowest possible risk while being scrupulously fair to their customers.
The whole building was equipped with closed-circuit television, so that the latest computerised figures were displayed on every screen at the same time. Telephones buzzed and lights flickered, as a dozen men and girls worked at a giant switchboard which occupied the whole of one wall. Each of the operators had earphones, and each had a simplied form of teleprinter, at which they were constantly tapping.
The big, black-haired man with the heavy brows — Charlie Blake’s murderer — went up to the fourth floor in a newly-converted lift which had once been used for moving crates of toys. Up here, it was very quiet. Even when he opened a door and saw two men standing watching a race on television, there was only a murmur of sound. He closed the door and joined them.
These three were the Spratt brothers — Mark, Matthew and John.
They were a remarkable trio, in appearance: so different that, but for a certain similarity in the rather high cheekbones and craggy eyebrows of all three, it would have been difficult to believe they were brothers. John, with his aggressive good looks and toughness, was a sharp contrast to Matthew, a man of medium height with rather thin lips and thin features-a mousey-looking man. The youngest and smallest was Mark, only five-feet three, dapper, well-turned out in every way; he had a sharp nose, a pointed chin, and eyes that were very bright. In spite of his near-foppishness, he was much more aggressive and bold in his actions than Matthew; at times, indeed, he was as bold as John. These three were now the only directors of the company, although at one time a prominent London financier, Sir Geoffrey Craven, had been on the board. They much preferred the family control . . .
The race finished, and Matthew switched off the set and turned to greet his brother. There was a hint of real anxiety in his face and voice as he said: “Hallo, John. How are things?”
“Couldn’t be better!” declared John, heartily. “We don’t have a thing to worry about, except feeding our tonic to the horses.”
And he laughed again; not only strikingly handsome but tremendously confident.
Matthew still looked a little troubled, but Mark clapped his hands in something near elation.
All over England and Ireland, and in several places in France, ‘the horses’ were being treated as if they were precious — as indeed they were. The finest bloodstock in the world, horses born and bred by their owners with the dream of a Derby win in their minds and hearts, would soon be heading for Epsom Downs and the race which captured the imagination of the world.
It was a very good year for three-year-olds.
And each owner, even of a horse not very much fancied, had a secret hope: that this year the Derby would be his.
The owners, from the richest in the land to small ‘syndicates’ made up of men risking nearly all the money they possessed, could think or talk of nothing but their horses. The jockeys, each with his own dream, lived, slept, ate and thought their Derby mounts. The trainers, with so much reputation at stake, took extreme precautions to ensure their horse could not be injured or doped; would not catch cold, or be trained beyond its peak. And every owner and trainer, every jockey and even stable boy, said to himself: “This is our year!”