“Pinkertons who police your track can’t get anything on him?”
“No. Or anyone else. No point tracing his phone calls, of course. The operators at the hotel switchboard have been notified to keep their ears open, but they claim he doesn’t get any tips via long distance. On the face of it, he’s just a lucky larry with a fistful of dough who hits the jackpot once or twice a day. But—” Ottover gestured with his coffee cup — “he always make that big killing against a Claybrook horse. It's beginning to smell, Madden.”
“What’s the trainer say?” Keene noticed Skit Yolock’s impatience with the mount he’d been exercising. The big gelding seemed logy, spiritless.
“Frank Wayne? He has plenty to say. He claims the horses that have beaten Claybrook entries in stake races must have been stimulated.”
“Were they?”
“Our vet, Bill Sutterfield, says positively not. He and his assistants have been extra careful about samples. None of the tests have shown any narcotics.”
Keene finished his coffee. “How’ve the Claybrook horses raced, compared with their time trials?”
Ottover held his napkin to his mouth, coughed into it. “I haven’t the figures here.”
Keene waited.
The secretary fidgeted with salt and pepper shakers. “I don’t want to go on record about it. You understand — my position—”
“I understand I had my face practically beaten off within two hours of hitting this town,” Keene said quietly. “Don't nice-nelly around. What’s the story?”
“The truth is, I believe the actual race times of Wayne's starters have been a second or two slower than the best workouts, in most of the — um — suspected races.”
Keene stood up. “Let’s look at those figures.”
Ottover sighed. “They're in my office.”
They walked across the dew of the paddock to the secretary’s bungalow.
“I’m in an extremely difficult position, Madden.”
“So was I. Last night.”
“More precarious than mine, to be sure. But in my case — it’s a question of my job. The Larmins are immensely powerful. I might say, they’re in a controlling position in racing circles here. They can — uh — make you or break you.”
Keene tried to walk without limping. The sore knee-cap made it difficult. “Maybe it was a Larmin who tried to break me.”
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” Ottover exclaimed quickly. “It's only that we want to be extremely careful to have our facts, before we make any — actual accusations.”
“I’m always careful, especially after I’ve had a bust in the jaw.” Keene followed Ottover into the bungalow, stopped cold as a stenographer marched briskly out of the secretary’s private office. The last time he’d seen that copper hair was against Clay Larmin’s shoulder at the Stirrup & Saddle.
She halted abruptly at sight of Keene.
“Oh, hello, Mister Madden.” She smiled, coolly. “I didn’t imagine you’d be up this early, after seeing you at the Stirrup last night.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he answered. “Up all night. With a toothache.”
She followed him with her luminous green eyes as he went into the inner office and closed the door.
Keene took the chair by the side of the secretary’s desk. The knee hurt worse when he was standing.
“Better fire that stenog, fella.”
Ottover looked up from the file drawer where he was pulling out folders. “What? Jane? Goshsake, why?”
“Talks too much. She heard you long-distancing me and tipped off young Larmin about me, last night.” It wasn’t clear to Keene how she’d recognized him. There wouldn’t be any photos of him in Saratoga. Maybe Ottover would have the answer to that one.
Ottover said, “You mean she recognized you?”
“Yep.” It occurred to Keene that if somebody’d spotted the California license plates on his Buick, in the Stirrup & Saddle parking lot, a shrewd guess could have substituted for actual recognition. “I don’t mind that. But I do mind her blabbing track business all over a night club. That’s nokay.”
Ottover agreed. “She didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. She probably supposed Clay Larmin already knew you were coming. In any case,” the official rubbed his forehead dejectedly, “I can’t let her go.”
“Why not?”
“What kind of a spot would I be in if I gave the bounce to the future Mrs. Clay Larmin now? I ask you!”
“No kidding?” Keene looked at the door, wondered if the girl was listening on the other side. “Has it been announced?”
Ottover wriggled uncomfortably. “Only by Clay.” He spread his palms helplessly. “You see my predicament. Mrs. Kay Larmin is furious about the — affair. She’s inclined to blame me for helping it along. Nonsense, naturally. I didn’t know anything about it until Clay started dropping in here two or three times a day to see Miss Arklett.”
“How long you known her? She a local girl?”
“Couple of years. Yes. Frank Wayne recommended her. Her family lives out near his summer place. Good solid farm people, but—”
“Not up in the bucks?”
“No. Or in the Social Register, either.”
“Tough. Terrible handicap.” Keene felt like adding that young Larmin hadn’t been in the habit of checking the Blue Book when he picked his female acquaintances.
“Absurd, in this day and age, of course. Trouble was, the Dowager — that’s what everyone calls her, here at the Spa — didn’t mind her son’s taking up with Jane at first. Only objection is to his marrying her.”
“Okay for him to sow his wild oats. But not to raise a hybrid crop. Nice, sweet old lady, hah?”
“A darn fine woman, if you can overlook her — um — aristocratic prejudices, Madden.” Ottover hesitated. “I’ll have to admit I’ve wondered whether Jane will be a good influence on the boy, myself. I don’t think it's any secret that he hasn’t all of his father’s — ah — integrity. All this — this fuss about Claybrook horses not running true to form, that’s just cropped up since Clay took over the reins.”
A buzzer sounded. Ottover picked up the phone.
“Oh!” he said. Then, after another exclamation, “Ask him to step in.”
He racked the receiver, visibly upset. “It’s Wayne. He’s raising the roof. He’s going over Clay’s head—”
The door banged open. A heavy-set man with a face the color of raw steak and china blue eyes that blazed with resentment, filled the doorway.
Chapter IV
More Trouble
The man wore a crumpled seersucker suit and a yellowed straw hat. The stub of a cigar jutted from the corner of his bulldog jaw like the boom of a sailing vessel.
He didn't remove it when he growled, “I’m scratching Callie M., Ruy Bias and Friskaway, Wes.”
Ottover said, “Frank, meet Keene Madden. Frank Wayne, Keene.”
The Claybrook trainer held out his hand disinterestedly. “It’s a pleasure.” He turned to Ottover. “We won’t start any entries today” He turned abruptly back to Keene. “Are you Madden? Of the Bureau?”
“That’s right,” Keene said. “What’s wrong with your horses, Mister Wayne?”
“Don’t know.” Wayne was gruff. “Not certain anything is. But I’m darn well sure something will be, before the day’s over, if we start ’em.”
Ottover looked ready to burst into tears. “Now, Frank! You can’t let us down, like this! We’d be all right in the third, with nine other starters. But there’ll be only four, without yours, in the Adirondack Stakes. Show and place pools will be out. You know how that cuts down the Association’s take!”
“Can’t help it, Wes. I won’t be a party to this rooking racket any longer. You know as well as I do that if the Stakes were to be run on the up and up, Skit would bring Friskaway down in front. But I just learned the word’s been passed around Hubba Dub’s fixed to come in first. I’ve had my name tied in to enough queer-looking races in the last couple of weeks. I — will — not — permit — Frisky — to — start! That’s final.”
Keene stuck a cigarette between his battered lips. “Who passed the word around, Mister Wayne?”
The trainer waggled the cigar stub from one side of his jaw to the other. “You ought to know better than to ask me that.”
“Who else would I ask?” Keene tilted his chair on its hind legs. “You made the crack. Where’d you hear it?”
Wayne spat out a shred of tobacco. He glowered as if he wanted to tell the representative of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau where he could go and what he could do when he got there. But the trainer changed his mind.
“My contract rider, Skit Yolock, told me. He picked it up in the steam room at the jockey house.”
Keene let the chair come down on its front legs. “Where’s Yolock now?”
“At the barns.”
“Before we hop over to see him—” Keene stood up — “you might want to cancel the request for scratching the Claybrook entries.”
“The devil I will!”
“You might. In the first place, the stewards probably wouldn’t find you had sufficient reason—”
“Nobody can make me start a horse I don’t think is in condition!” Wayne spat, without the excuse of a tobacco shred.
“In the second place, you’d expose yourself to suspicion you wanted to balk any investigation of fixing at this track.” Keene opened the door suddenly. At her typewriter desk, Jane Arklett looked up, quizzically. “Let your entries start. We’ll try to see they get a fair break. If they don’t, we’ll nail the party who keeps them from getting it.”
Wayne grunted. “You must be a magician, then.”