The Great Melbourne Cup Mystery Read online

  ‘Milparinka’s twenty-six miles from here. Mister—what is your name?’

  ‘Masters. Tell your husband I would like to speak to him, please.’

  Presently Mr. Bumpus entered.

  ‘I understand that Pink is ill,’ Roy said abruptly.

  ‘He is so.’

  ‘Well, send for or fetch the nearest doctor. I will pay all expenses.’

  ‘No go. The telegraph is down, Mr. Masters. We can drive a car as far as Red Creek one road and for nine miles on the ’Parinka Road. Hard gibber country. The rain is gone and a car might get through to Bulka one way, ’Parinka the other tomorrow. Anyway, ’tain’t no use worrying. Nurse is as good as any quack, but if Tom is worse tomorrow I could try for the ’Parinka doctor. An’ the telegraph might be fixed tomorrow sometime.’

  ‘Is Fred in bed, too?’

  ‘No. They put ’im to bed and took orl ’is clothes away, but he got up and cum into the bar for a drink with a bed quilt round ’im. So we give ’im his clothes for decency’s sake. But don’t you go wearing no quilts about the place.’

  ‘All right Ask Fred to come and see me, will you?’

  Fred’s debut was delayed, and when he did announce himself it was to enter with a bulging hip pocket His face had lost a little of its mahogany colour and gained a tint of red. Solemnly he withdrew from the hip pocket a bottle of whisky, and from each of his coat pockets a small tumbler.

  ‘I’ve brought you a snifter,’ he said after silently closing the door. ‘They reckoned I was gonner get pew-monia. Just fancy a man getting pew-monia in a pub. ’Ow’re you feelin’?’

  ‘Fine. I want to get up, but they have taken away my clothes. No, thank you—I won’t have a drink just now. Too soon after tea. How did you get on after I left you with Tom?’

  Fred sat down on the bed with the bottle at his side and one of the glasses filled with raw whisky.

  ‘Luck!’ he exploded. ‘After getting that fire alight I’m takin’ a ticket in Tatts. Lemme see! Yes, that’s right. You and me resusticates ole Tom Pink afore you gits away. Well, when I’d got that fire going proper there was flames risin’ twelve feet high. I makes Tom off with ’is clothes, and I offs with mine, and while they’re drying ’im and me are walking up and down in front of the blaze. Tom, ’e’s being sick now and then—musta been the crick he swallowed—says he want to sit down, and we being like niggers at a corroboree. The rain was stoppin’, and though the clothes was singed a bit, I got ’em dry. Ole Tom, ’e buck up presently, so I gits his clothes on ’im and lets ’im sit on a log I rolled near the fire. But ’e’s mighty sick. Looks garstly. We could ’ave both done with a drink of tea.

  ‘Tom begins to shiver, so I at ’im again, and walks ’im round, ’is feet coming about a yard be’ind ’is head. He still shivers, and us so close agin the fire that I got blisters on me arms. Then ’e gits ’ot and wants to tear ’is clothes off.’

  Roy learned later that when their clothes were dry, Jack put his vest, shirt and coat over those garments worn by Pink, and that on the arrival of Bumpus he was naked from the waist up excepting his old felt hat. Continuing the quaint recital, Jack said:

  ‘And then ole Bumpus arrived. ’Is car was one mass of mud, and the chained wheels looked like disc wheels. I says: “Did you bring any grog with you? Ole Tom is all in.” “Too right,” he says, and comes over to the fire with a cuppler bottles, a billy can and a tin of water—not Red Crick water.

  ‘So we gits a full pint of stiff whisky down ole Tom’s neck an’ ’as a good snifter ourselves. Then we wrapped Tom in the blankets Mrs. Bumpus sent and sits ’im in the car like ’es was a stolen mummy, and orf we comes. I ’ope ’e ain’t goona git too crook.’

  ‘So do I. Is he very ill?’

  ‘Seems like it,’ Jack admitted, manipulating the bottle, to add solemnly: ‘But I’m orl right. I took it in time. ’Ere’s ’ow!’

  ‘Who is with him?’ Roy pressed.

  ‘Mrs. Bumpus and Nurse,’ Jack replied.

  ‘Now, don’t you get to worrying, Mister. Ole Tom’s orle right. Nurse ain’t never lost a case yet.’

  Jack explained how Tom Pink, having been discharged by Mr. Smith for riding Darling to win, decided to ride to Bulka to seek racehorse work with Roy or Dick, having learned they owned horses. He set out from Mount Lion at daybreak. Arrived at Red Creek, so great his anxiety to secure employment, he had ridden his horse into the flood water, although unable to swim, with the result described.

  ‘He must want work badly enough, to risk his life like that,’ Roy said quietly.

  ‘Too right, Mister,’ Jack agreed fervently, as though he had not done the same thing—if with slightly more necessity. ‘Ole Tom is a racin’ man. It’s in ’is blood. He’d ’ave been a champeen jockey if it weren’t for the booze. He’d a’ bin a champeen trainer, too, if it ’adn’t bin for that. Know’s more about ’orses than a vet an’ can hardly write ’is name. An’ straight, too. That’s wot I like about ole Tom. It ’urt ’im to have to ride a dead ’un. That’s why ’e trotted past the stand like ’e did. Well, I’ll see you after, Mister. So long.’

  The nurse visited Roy and pronounced him fit to get up in the morning. Pink, she thought, was in for a bout of pneumonia. Yes, they would try to get the doctor as quickly as possible; but he, Roy, was not to worry.

  In the morning Pink was worse and Roy induced one of the storekeepers, who owned a more powerful car than Mr. Bumpus, to send it for the doctor at Milparinka. The driver was accompanied by two other men. They took with them a roll of netting, and several jacks and short lengths of squared timber with which to extract the car, if bogged.

  The doctor arrived at sundown, and for the second time Tom Pink’s life was saved.

  And the following day Dick Cusack arrived in his single seater, the water in Red Creek having subsided as rapidly as it had risen, which is the way of many back country creeks. He brought with him Roy’s luggage.

  ‘We were getting a bit anxious about you,’ he explained. ‘The rider not returning to the Ten-mile night before last, the other man rode to Red Creek yesterday and reported that he found no sign either of you or his mate. The telephone wire was busted in a dozen places. Suppose we’ll be getting down to Broken Hill tomorrow?’

  ‘Better leave the start till the morning,’ Roy agreed. ‘Back in Vic, I’ll have to get busy looking for a likely horse, and there will be precious little time.’

  ‘Oh—I forgot to tell you about that, Roy. After you left I got a horse from Tindale and managed to get across to Moorabbin, where I wired your man, Sparks, not to sell Olary Boy. Waited for a reply, as the line, via Wilcannia, was all right. Sparks wired back O.K.’

  ‘You rode to Moorabbin, Dick?’

  ‘Yes, it was tough going, but I got there all right’ Dick replied casually, and omitted to tell how that terrific ride had cost two horses their lives.

  8

  Silly Little Fool

  Roy parted from his friend, Dick Cusack, at Mildura after a slow and trying trip from Mount Lion, via Broken Hill. Of the two young men, Dick was the more pessimistic of winning the Cup with Pieface, and pessimism with him was an emphatic incongruity. Nevertheless, both had mapped out the races in which their respective horses would run; Pieface working slowly down to the metropolitan courses, where he would meet Roy’s brown gelding at Caulfield early in September.

  It has been said by many eminent divines that modern youth is given too much to worldly pleasures, a statement with a grain of truth, which is but a minute fraction of the whole. Like a great majority of young men, Roy was tremendously keen on his job, and he entered his office precisely one hour after his arrival at Spencer Street.

  ‘Mr. Masters wishes to see you,’ a clerk told him, and, knowing his father’s passion for speed in business, he lost no time in reaching the elevator, which deposited him on the top floor of the huge Masters building in Collins Street.

  The proprietor of one of Melbourne’s big businesses was
engaged when the son entered the plainly furnished office suite which looked out on to the roof garden. And possibly that garden was the explanation of why old Masters had his office on the top and not on the ground floor.

  ‘All right—we’ll buy that stock at fourteen thousand, not a pound more,’ Roy heard his father say to one of the managers whilst he stood before the high French windows overlooking the garden. ‘So you’re back.’

  ‘Yes, got in this morning,’ Roy replied, taking the chair opposite a square nugget of a man, whose bulldog appearance proved that his son took after his long deceased wife. ‘I had quite a good fortnight.’

  ‘Huh-hum! Couldn’t afford a holiday when I was your age,’ growled the old man, whose mental vitality and strength were unimpaired by his seventy years. Then, as though his mouth were a gun, he shot out: ‘What are we paying you?’

  ‘You know that you make me an allowance of two thousand a year,’ Roy answered, smilingly.

  ‘No allowance about it—wages. You’ve been worth it. Although doubtful, I accepted your report on those new silk looms and bought. They are turning out a good article. Your wages are raised by five hundred. Now—what did you think of Senor Alverey?’

  ‘Highly polished, a little greasy, mentally, not physically. Why?’

  ‘Greasy any way you like, but he can make money. The man who knows how to make money is a greater hero to me than Nelson, Gladstone or Milton. Must be going to stay in the country for a bit. I’ve just heard he’s offered Kingsley six thousand pounds for King’s Lee.’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed the startled Roy, ‘That’s a lot of money even for such a splendid race getter.’

  ‘It is. It is, too, a bit of a mystery.’

  ‘Dick Cusack and I both proposed to Diana Ross and we were rejected.’

  ‘Hug-hum! Silly little fool. But what’s she got to do with Alverey buying a horse?’

  Old Masters—we will name him as every one of his employees affectionately did—regarded his son with a stony face and with eyes which held a ghost of a twinkle.

  Roy explained how Alverey had proposed to Diana, of the condition Diana had laid down to decide her choice, between Dick and himself, and how Alverey had been caught listening, whilst his friend and he discussed it.

  ‘Hug-hum! You will have to look out for a good galloper. Get hold of the best trainer in Australia. I pay—as usual.’

  ‘You won’t pay in this instance, Dad,’ Roy said with finality. ‘I’ve got a possible; I’ve got a good trainer—and I am getting a good jockey.’

  ‘You seem to be very fortunate,’ Old Masters stated in tones quite free of sarcasm. ‘Anyway, I'll keep my eye on Senor Alverey.’

  He charged a well-worn and blackened pipe, reflected for a moment, and then said as though he discussed business:

  ‘You’re quite sure you love this girl?’

  ‘Quite,’ Roy replied steadily.

  ‘Hug-hum. I didn’t get married until I was past forty. Couldn’t afford to. No credit to me, anyway—being poor at forty. You think Senor Alverey is in the running to win the Melbourne Cup and Diana with young Cusack and you?’

  ‘Looks like it, Dad,’ Roy hesitatingly agreed—to add, when on his feet: ‘Well, I’ll go, I have a lot of arrears of work to get through.’

  ‘Hug-hum. Dine with me tonight, will you?’

  ‘Righto. I’ll see you at seven,’ the smiling son said to the still stony father. But in Old Masters’ eyes love lurked up to the instant he banged his desk for his secretary.

  How like the old Dad, mused Roy, as he dropped down to the ground floor. Old Masters would have frowned at any extra expenditure incurred by Dick and him over this futile effort to win the Melbourne Cup. Such competition would be within their own circle; but with Senor Alverey, an outsider, coming into it, money would be no object when counted in the scales of chance.

  The next week-end Roy paid a flying visit to his racing headquarters owned by Nat Sparks. He watched Olary Boy at work—and became almost as pessimistic as Dick was about Pieface.

  ‘He’s got it in him, Mr. Roy, if only we could unlimber his muscles,’ Nat stated with conviction, whilst they watched the gelding gallop by them with a diminutive jockey on his back. He did the half-mile yesterday in fifty-four seconds, which isn’t as good as I am sure he could do.’

  ‘All right, we’ll try him, Nat. You arranged his nominations for the Cups?’

  ‘I did as soon as I got your blessed telegram from Milparinka. That was a good thought of mine to get you to sign ’em before you went. I’d have took it bad if we had parted with Olary Boy.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be getting back to town, Nat. Oh, by the way, other things being equal, that is if he lives through a bad bout of pneumonia. I want you to take on a jockey named Tom Pink. I’ve had good reports of him and wish to give him a chance.’

  ‘He’ll get it, Mr. Roy.’

  Owner and trainer parted with the warm grip of friendship, and Roy sped back to town, where a newspaper poster informed him that ‘£6000 buys King’s Lee.’

  So Alverey had purchased King’s Lee, a champion galloper! Decidedly, he had paid for him. Still it made the odds no higher against Pieface and Olary Boy, who would have to contend against Australia’s best in any case.

  He wondered if Diana had extended to the Argentinian the same ‘wee chance’ offered to Dick and him, and the possibility of it hurt a little.

  Olary Boy ran twelfth in the Second Division of the Kambrook Trial at Caulfield, although he merely carried eight stone seven. But he had a bad start, being last away at the barrier. Through Roy’s mind a phrase repeated itself. ‘A good little one will always beat a moderate big one.’

  Dash it! Olary Boy was not a good little one.

  On July the first, Nat Sparks wired: ‘Tom Pink arrived. Still sick. Wife makes him wear a mask.’

  Nat Sparks despatched another telegram ten days after the first: ‘COME DOWN AS SOON AS CONVENIENT.’

  Tom Pink

  9

  His Chance

  When Roy reached Nat Sparks’s house—a neat little villa flanked by stables and men’s quarters, and the whole surrounded by a thousand acres of grassland - the trainer wasted no time before coming to the reason behind his second telegram.

  ‘Look here, Mr. Roy, we’ll have to get rid of this Tom Pink. During the first week he was here, when he was still a bit shaky after his illness, he was all right. I must say that he knows his business. He’s a better vet than I am, and suggested alterations to Olary Boy’s diet which already had made a difference. But for three days he’s been blind drunk. He’s upset my wife and he’s upset my other boys.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Over in his bunk,’ Sparks replied angrily. ‘I’ll take you across.’

  They found Tom Pink sitting on his bed playing a mournful tune on a mouth organ. Even the skin of his bald head was flushed, as was his face, with the effects of over-indulgence.

  ‘Well, Tom? You seem to be going the pace,’ Roy said cheerfully.

  ‘I-I-I’se ’ad a break-out. Ooo are you?’

  ‘I am Masters.’

  Tom Pink’s bleary eyes widened. The mouth organ slipped from his fingers to the floor. ‘Oh!’ he drawled slowly. With effort, his face indicating part shame, part mortification, he stood up to face the man who had paid all his expenses from Mount Lion and now was paying him to work. ‘I-I-I ain’t got nothing t-t-to say.’

  ‘But I have,’ Roy said, very much like his father would have done. ‘Sit down, Nat—leave us for a few minutes, there’s a good fellow.’ And then when the trainer had gone: ‘How drunk are you? Are you too drunk to understand what I am saying?’

  ‘N-No, Mr. Masters.’

  For a little space, Roy stared silently at the jockey. Then:

  ‘In ordinary circumstances I would not think of mentioning it, but these are not ordinary circumstances. If it wasn’t that I risked my life for you, you would have choked to death in that flood known as Red
Creek. I rather fancy you owe me something.’

  ‘T-t-too right, Mr. Masters. Gimme another chance. I-I-I’ll go straight.’

  ‘Now listen. When you’re not on a horse, keep your face turned down,’ Roy said brutally. ‘It wasn’t because you are Tom Pink that I saved your life. It made no difference to me if you were Jacky, the abo. I want you to work for me, and for that you won’t owe me anything, because you will be well paid. But I pulled you out of a dickens of a mess by chance, and you now have the chance of assisting me out of a mess. Do you get that or are you too fuddled to understand it?’

  ‘Yes, I-I- g-g-get it all right’ Tom Pink lurched to his feet. He swayed in front of Roy, who was seated on a chair. ‘I-I- Wait a mo,’ he snarled, and, turning about, laid back the bed mattress, and revealed one unopened, and one partly filled, bottles of whisky. These he seized before staggering to the window.

  ‘What are you going to do with the booze?’ Roy asked calmly.

  ‘Ch-ch-chuck it out. I’m through with it.’

  ‘Give it to me. Waste not, want not.’ The bottles changed hands. ‘Now sit down again, and tell me what you think of Olary Boy.’

  Tom attempted a pitiful smile, and clenched his great hands; and, because he spoke of a horse, it may have accounted for the fact that he stuttered seldom.

  ‘He’s orl right, Mr. Masters. ’E’s a stayer. He wants buildin’ up, though. ’E’s got a funny disposition. A bloke he liked he’d do a lot for. H-he’d do a lot for me. Wot do you want ’im to do?’

  ‘Win the Melbourne Cup,’ Roy replied candidly.

  He expected Tom Pink to throw back his head and shout with laughter. Instead, Pink said astoundingly:

  ‘Let me train ’im and let me ride ’im, an’ ’e’s got a better chance than the average horse that’ll start. Wot are you smilin’ at? You don’t seem to ’preciate Olary Boy. I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you a level tenner I sails ’im into a place.’

  ‘You’d lose your tenner. At Flemington you’d get that drunk you wouldn’t—’