And she'll get into bad trouble one day, if she keeps on like that, I thought. She was too provocative. Stunningly pretty of course, but that was only the beginning;

and her hurtful little tricks were merely annoying. It was the latent invitation which disturbed and aroused.

I shrugged her out of my mind, fetched Sparking Plug, sprang up on to his back and moved out of the yard and up to the moor for the routine working gallops.

The weather that day got steadily worse until while we were out with the second string it began to rain heavily in fierce slashing gusts, and we struggled miserably back against it with stinging faces and sodden clothes. Perhaps because it went on raining, or possibly because it was, after all, Saturday, Wally for once refrained from making me work all afternoon, and I spent the three hours sitting with about nine other lads in the kitchen of the cottage, listening to the wind shrieking round the corners outside and watching Chepstow races on television, while our damp jerseys, breeches, and socks steamed gently round the fire.

I put the previous season's form book on the kitchen table and sat over it with my head propped on the knuckles of my left hand idly turning the pages with my right.

Depressed by my utter lack of success with the eleven horses' dossiers, by the antipathy I had to arouse in the lads, and also, I think, by the absence of the hot sunshine I usually lived in at that time of the year, I began to feel that the whole masquerade had been from the start a ghastly mistake. And the trouble was that having taken October's money I couldn't back out; not for months. This thought depressed me further still. I sat slumped in unrelieved gloom, wasting my much needed free time.

I think now that it must have been the sense that I was failing in what I had set out to do, more than mere tiredness, which beset me that afternoon, because although later on I encountered worse things it was only for that short while that I ever truly regretted having listened to October, and unreservedly wished myself back in my comfortable Australian cage.

The lads watching the television were making disparaging remarks about the jockeys and striking private bets against each other on the outcome of the races.

"The uphill finish will sort 'em out as usual," Paddy was saying.

"It's a long way from the last… Aladdin's the only one who's got the stamina for the job."

"No," contradicted Grits.

"Lobster Cocktail's a flyer…"

Morosely I riffled the pages of the form book, aimlessly looking through them for the hundredth time, and came by chance on the map of Chepstow race course in the general information section at the beginning of the book. There were diagrammatic maps of all the main courses showing the shape of the tracks and the positioning of fences, stands, starting gates, and winning posts, and I had looked before at those for Ludlow, Stafford, and Haydock, without results. There was no map of Kelso or Sedgefield. Next to the map section were a few pages of information about the courses, the lengths of their circuits, the names and addresses of the officials, the record times for the races, and so on.

For something to do, I turned to Chepstow's paragraph. Paddy's 'long way from the last' was detailed there: two hundred and fifty yards. I looked up Kelso, Sedgefield, Ludlow, Stafford, and Haydock. They had much longer run-ins than Chepstow. I looked up the run-ins of all the courses in the book. The Aintree Grand National run-in was the second longest. The longest of all was Sedgefield, and in third, fourth, fifth, and sixth positions came Ludlow, Haydock, Kelso, and Stafford.

All had run-ins of over four hundred yards.

Geography had nothing to do with it: those five courses had almost certainly been chosen by the dopers because in each case it was about a quarter of a mile from the last fence to the winning post.

It was an advance, even if a small one, to have made at least some pattern out of the chaos. In a slightly less abysmal frame of mind I shut the form book and at four o'clock followed the other lads out into the unwelcome rainswept yard to spend an hour with each of my three charges, grooming them thoroughly to give their coats a clean healthy shine, tossing and tidying their straw beds, fetching their water, holding their heads while Inskip walked round, rugging them up comfortably for the night, and finally fetching their evening feed. As usual it was seven before we had all finished, and eight before we had eaten and changed and were bumping down the hill to Slaw, seven of us sardined into a rickety old Austin.

Bar billiards, darts, dominoes, the endless friendly bragging, the ingredients as before. Patiently, I sat and waited. It was nearly ten, the hour when the lads began to empty their glasses and think about having to get up the next morning, when Soupy strolled across the room towards the door, and, seeing my eyes on him, jerked his head for me to follow him. I got up and went out after him, and found him in the lavatories.

"This is for you. The rest on Tuesday," he said economically; and treating me to a curled lip and stony stare to impress me with his toughness, he handed me a thick brown envelope. I put it in the inside pocket of my black leather jacket, and nodded to him. Still without speaking, without smiling, hard-eyed to match, I turned on my heel and went back into the bar: and after a while, casually, he followed.

So I crammed into the Austin and was driven up the hill, back to bed in the little dormitory, with seventy- five pounds and a packet of white powder sitting snugly over my heart.

CHAPTER SIX

October dipped his finger in the powder and tasted it.

"I don't know what it is either," he said, shaking his head.

"I'll get it analysed."

I bent down and patted his dog, and fondled his ears.

He said "You do realize what a risk you'll be running if you take his money and don't give the dope to the horse?"

I grinned up at him.

"It's no laughing matter," he said seriously.

"They can be pretty free with their boots, these people, and it would be no help to us if you get your ribs kicked in…"

"Actually," I said, straightening up, "I do think it might be best if Sparking Plug didn't win… I could hardly hope to attract custom from the dopers we are really after if they heard I had double-crossed anyone before."

"You're quite right." He sounded relieved.

"Sparking Plug must lose;

but Inskip. how on earth can I tell him that the jockey must pull back? "

"You can't," I said.

"You don't want them getting into trouble. But it won't matter much if I do. The horse won't win if I keep him thirsty tomorrow morning and give him a bucketful of water just before the race."

He looked at me with amusement.

"I see you've learned a thing or two."

"It'd make your hair stand on end, what I've learned."

He smiled back.

"All right then. I suppose it's the only thing to do.

I wonder what the National Hunt Committee would think of a Steward conspiring with one of his own stable lads to stop a favourite? " He laughed.

"I'll tell Roddy Beckett what to expect… though it won't be so funny for Inskip, nor for the lads here, if they back the horse, nor for the general public, who'll lose their money."

"No," I agreed.

He folded the packet of white powder and tucked it back into the envelope with the money. The seventy- five pounds had foolishly been paid in a bundle of new fivers with consecutive numbers: and we had agreed that October would take them and try to discover to whom they had been issued.

I told him about the long run-ins on all of the courses where the eleven horses had won.

"It almost sounds as if they might have been using vitamins after all," he said thoughtfully.