Apart from the desk the office contained a large floor-to-ceiling cupboard in which form books and racing colours were kept; too few of those for the space anailable.

Three dark green filing cabinets, two leather armchairs, and an upright wooden chair with a leather seat stood round the walls.

I opened the unlocked drawers of the filing cabinets one by one and searched quickly through the contents. They contained racing calendars, old accounts, receipts, press cuttings, photographs, papers to do with the horses currently in training, analyses of forms, letters from owners, records of saddlery and fodder transactions;

everything that could be found in the office of nearly every trainer in the country.

I looked at my watch. Cass usually took an hour off for lunch. I had waited five minutes after he had driven out of the yard, and I intended to be out of the office ten minutes before he could be expected back. This had given me a working time of three-quarters of an hour, of which nearly half had already gone.

Borrowing a pencil from the desk and taking a sheet of writing paper from a drawer, I applied myself to the drawer full of current accounts. For each of seventeen racehorses there was a separate hard-covered blue ledger, in which was listed every major and minor expense incurred in its training. I wrote a list of their names, few of which were familiar to me, together with their owners and the dates when they had come into the yard. Some had been there for years, but three had arrived during the past three months, and it was only these, I thought, which were of any real interest. None of the horses who had been doped had stayed at Hum- her's longer than four months.

The names of the three newest horses were Chin- Chin, Kandersteg, and Starlamp. The first was owned by Humber himself and the other two by Adams.

I put the account books back where I had found them and looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes left. Putting the pencil back on the desk I folded the list of horses and stowed it away in my money belt. The webbing pockets were filling up again with fivers, as I had spent little of my pay, but the belt still lay flat and invisible below my waist under my jeans: and I had been careful not to let any of the lads know it was there, so as not to be robbed.

I riffled quickly through the drawers of press cuttings and photographs, but found no reference to the eleven horses or their successes. The racing calendars bore more fruit in the shape of a pencilled cross against the name of Superman in the Boxing Day selling 'chase, but there was no mark against the selling 'chase scheduled for a coming meeting at Sedgefield.

It was at the back of the receipts drawer that I struck most gold.

There was another blue accounts ledger there, with a double page devoted to each of the eleven horses. Among these eleven were interspersed nine others who had in various ways failed in their purpose. One of these was Superman and another Old Etonian.

In the left-hand page of each double spread had been recorded the entire racing career of the horse in question, and on the right-hand pages of my eleven old friends were details of the race they each won with assistance. Beneath were sums of money which I judged must be Humber's winnings on them. His winnings had run into thousands on every successful race. On Superman's page he had written "Lost: three hundred pounds." On Old Etonian's right-hand page there was no race record: only the single word "Destroyed."

A cross-out line had been drawn diagonally across all the pages except those concerning a horse called Six- Ply; and two new double pages had been prepared at the end, one for Kandersteg, and one for Starlamp.

The left-hand pages for these three horses were written up:

the right-hand pages were blank.

I shut the book and put it back. It was high time to go, and with a last look round to make sure that everything was exactly as it had been when I came in, I let myself quietly, unnoticed, out of the door, and went back to the kitchen to see if by some miracle the lads had left me any crumbs of lunch. Naturally, they had not.

The next morning Jerry's horse Mickey disappeared from the yard while we were out at second exercise, but Cass told him Jud had run him down to a friend of Humber's on the coast, for Mickey to paddle in the sea water to strengthen his legs, and that he would be back that evening.

But the evening came, and Mickey did not.

On Wednesday Humber ran another horse, and I

missed my lunch to have a look inside his house while he was away.

Entry was easy through an open ventilator, but I could find nothing whatever to give me any clue as to how the doping was carried out.

All day Thursday I fretted about Mickey being still away at the coast.

It sounded perfectly reasonable. It was what a trainer about twelve miles from the sea could be expected to arrange. Sea water was good for horses' legs. But something happened to horses sometimes at Humber's which made it possible for them to be doped later, and I had a deeply disturbing suspicion that whatever it was was happening to Mickey at this moment, and that I was missing my only chance of finding it out.

According to the accounts books Adams owned four of the racehorses in the yard, in addition to his two hunters. None of his racehorses was known in the yard by its real name: therefore Mickey could be any one of the four. He could in fact be Kandersteg or Stariamp. It was an even chance that he was one or the other, and was due to follow in Superman's footsteps. So I fretted.

On Friday morning a hired box took the stable runner to Haydock races, and Jud and Humber's own box remained in the yard until lunch time.

This was a definite departure from normal; and I took the opportunity of noting the mileage on the speedometer.

Jud drove the box out of the yard while we were still eating the midday sludge, and we didn't see him come back as we were all out on the gallop farthest away from the stables sticking back into place the divots kicked out of the soft earth that week by the various training activities; but when we returned for evening stables at four, Mickey was back in his own quarters.

I climbed up into the cab of the horse box and looked at the mileage indicator. Jud had driven exactly sixteen and a half miles. He had not, in fact, been as far as the coast. I thought some very bitter thoughts.

When I had finished doing my two racehorses I carried the brushes and pitchforks along to see to Adams' black hunter, and found Jerry leaning against the wall outside Mickey's next door box with tears running down his cheeks.

"What's the matter?" I said, putting down my stuff.

"Mickey… bit me," he said. He was shaking with pain and fright.

"Let's see."

I helped him slide his left arm out of his jersey, and took a look at the damage. There was a fierce red and purple circular weal on the fleshy part of his upper arm near the shoulder. It had been a hard, savage bite.

Cass came over.

"What's going on here?"

But he saw Jerry's arm, and didn't need to be told. He looked over the bottom half of the door into Mickey's box, then turned to Jerry and said, "His legs were too far gone for the sea water to cure them. The vet said he would have to put on a blister, and he did it this afternoon when Mickey got back. That's what's the matter with him. Feels a bit off colour, he does, and so would you if someone slapped a flaming plaster on your legs. Now you just stop this stupid blubbing and get right back in there and see to him. And you, Clan, get on with that hunter and mind your own bloody business." He went off along the row.

"I can't," whispered Jerry, more to himself than to me.

"You'll manage it," I said cheerfully.

He turned to me a stricken face.