The Great Melbourne Cup Mystery Page 6

  ‘Ain’t I just said I’d finished with the booze?’

  ‘I suppose you have said that a thousand times.’

  ‘I’ve never s-said it afore, ’cos I’ve never made up me mind afore. You gonna put me in charge of Olary Boy?’

  Roy pondered.

  ‘Gimme the chance, Mr. Masters. Me riding papers are O.K. I ain’t a registered trainer and don’t need to be. I can work under Mr. Sparks. Let me stable and work Olary Boy, and ’im and me will get our chance to do somethink.’

  Roy continued to ponder. Memory flooded his brain with pictures of this man sinking into a saddle, when his body lost its ugliness; of words spoken in praise by Darling’s owner; by Jack, the stockman; and just recently by Nat Sparks. He reached to the table for the glass, uncorked the used bottle, filled the glass with spirit. Then, with assumed cheerfulness, he said:

  ‘Well, we’ll have a drink on Olary Boy’s future success,’ and leaned forward with the glass on offer.

  Tom took the glass, held it up that he might look through the golden liquid, and slowly tilted the glass over the floor.

  ‘I said, waste not, want not,’ Roy stated.

  ‘An’ I said, to hell with the drink. Was you deaf, Mr. Masters?’

  ‘I’ve a good mind, Tom, to give you your chance, and I will tell you something to prove how vital my decision is. I think it improbable—but if Olary Boy should win the Melbourne Cup I would receive something of greater value than the Cup and the stake money.’

  ‘Wot’s that?’

  ‘The woman I love, Tom.’

  ‘Well, I’ve b-b-been askin’ for a chance, ain’t I?’

  ‘You may have it, I’ll fix it with Sparks to let you have free rein with Olary Boy. You can ride him in the Williamstown August Handicap on the twenty-third of this month. If he goes well then, you can carry on with him.’

  ‘G-good! Now I know me onions.’

  ‘I hope so, Tom. So long.’

  His mind weighted by grave doubts of Tom Pink on more than one score, Roy drove back to town. The weather was fine and cold, and he ached to be able to go to Mount Kosciusko with Diana and her friends. Alverey would be there, of course. Trust Alverey to allow the grass to sprout under feet.

  The succeeding weeks passed quickly. Nevertheless, business occupied most of his waking hours, and the old man at the top of the building often insisted his son knocking off at a reasonable time and accompanying him to his magnificent home to dine, for Roy kept a separate establishment.

  He went out in the August Handicap, run over eleven furlongs, with Pink on top, wearing Roy’s colours of Cambridge Blue and white hoops and black cap.

  ‘See his legs, Mr. Roy,’ urged Nat Sparks.

  ‘They seem to be not so lumpy,’ Roy said, his binoculars levelled at his horse going with easy freedom to the barrier. ‘You picked a good un in Tom Pink.’

  ‘Think so?’ asked Roy pleasurable.

  ‘Best man ever I’ve had, in spite of his stuttering. He lives with that horse. Sleeps with him, would eat with him if I allowed it. He’s fined down Olary Boy’s legs. He takes the horse out on the roads sometimes, and after them trips Olary Boy eats like an elephant. He knows more about horses than I do—fact.’

  ‘Get out, Nat.’

  ‘All right. You’ll believe it soon. They’re off.’

  Roy watched the blue shirt and white cap amidst the bunched colours. Saw how Olary Boy was squeezed out in what otherwise would have been a fair start Although nearly last at the second furlong, he was recovering at the mile. At the three-quarter mile he had passed Dickinson and Boy Blue, and was overhauling Captain, who had started at six to one.

  ‘What do think of him? What do think of him?’ Nat Sparks kept repeating.

  At the half-mile Olary Boy was well among the leaders. Roy’s heart thumped with pride and excitement. Surely his horse would not win? No—no! There was Captain creeping up! Go on, Tom! Ride him—ride him! They’re in the straight. Come on, Olary Boy! A-oh! Look out! Look out! Look out for the fellow in the green and white check shirt! Look out for him! Come on Olary Boy! ’

  10

  The Stranger

  Olary Boy finished fifth in the August Handicap at Williamstown, giving Roy much happiness, even though at one point in the race the gelding looked much like securing a place. The horse’s effort earned him a paragraph in a newspaper on the following Monday, when the turf expert wrote:—

  ‘Olary Boy, who has never been considered seriously on the metropolitan courses, even by his connections, revealed running qualities not before suspected. On his back was a stranger to Victorian racing, one Tom Pink. Pink rode ably, and it was due to his ability that he lifted Olary Boy out of a jamb shortly after the start into fifth position at the post.’

  Of many thousands of readers of the paragraph, Diana, perhaps, was the most pleased. She clipped the cutting and pasted it into an album in which she intended to record the careers of her friends’ horses up to the Melbourne Cup. And of the paragraph writer’s remarks, Tom Pink was the proudest, and the writer himself should have been proud, too, for Tom kept his cutting in an old race calendar and read it ten or twelve times each day.

  Nat Sparks was quite truthful when he said that Tom Pink slept with the horse, and would have eaten with him if licence had been extended to that length. There occurred slight friction between the new jockey and the head stableman.

  But the matters eased after a two hours’ fight in which neither combatant gained a victory.

  Twice a week Tom Pink took Olary Boy on a long afternoon saunter along the roads. From the moment they left Nat Sparks’s property until the moment they arrived back, when on those excursions, the man kept up an incessant monologue with the horse. Had there been one to observe them he would never have admitted it was a monologue, because the actions of the horse almost proved it to be a dialogue.

  ‘They takes yer out and they turns you round without seein’ if you wants ter run or would sooner ’ave a shuteye,’ Tom said without a stutter. ‘When a ’uman being trains ’isself he can complain if ’e’s got the tummy-ache, or feels tired, or suffers from stiffness. But a ’orse, ’e can’t talk English, and only one ’uman being in one million can understand Horsey, which is your language.

  ‘You’re like my ole man. He ’ad plenty of muscle, plenty of bone. He liked ’is tucker and ’is beer—’specially ’is beer—but ’is long life was governed by the ole word ‘sooner’. ’E would sooner sleep than work. ’E would sooner drink beer than work. In fac’, ’e would sooner do anythink but work.

  ‘An’ that’s ’ow you was, Olary Boy, till I come along fer you to tell me all about it. Now, here’s where we dig up some of the roots you like. Only for ’eaven’s sake don’t go an’ tell anyone our little secret.’

  The ugly biped dismounted, leaving the reins over the ugly horse’s neck. The road was long and straight and empty. By the side of the road, on the border of grass and shrubs and herbage, Tom slowly walked, his eyes searching the ground, an opened clasp-knife in his hand. The horse followed, gently nosing Tom’s coat collar, and when the jockey suddenly fell to his knees, the horse stood with lowered head, his nose very close to the clasp-knife which was digging up a plant much like the salt-bush of the inlands. It was the long, slender root, which bled profusely where the knife had cut it, for which Olary Boy now exhibited intense passion.

  ‘Lemme see! Yes—medium weight. One, ole Snozzler. I must gather a stack of these before September.’

  Olary Boy greatly appreciated the root, for, having chewed and swallowed it, he turned back his upper lip, before begging for more. With the foliage of the plant he would have nothing to do.

  Then on again proceeded man and horse for ten minutes, when a second halt was made to dig up and eat another root similar to the first. Three such roots did Tom give Olary Boy on Sundays and Wednesdays, roots the animal relished much more than the average horse likes sugar. The root supplied exactly what the animal’s body lacked and
craved for.

  On their way home they came to a man seated on a gate. He was, as Tom saw, a member of that peculiar type found lounging around training quarters.

  ‘Day!’ this person said.

  Tom Pink nodded, Olary Boy walked on. Then:

  ‘Want to earn a fiver?’ asked the man on the gate.

  ‘Too right,’ Tom snapped out, and wheeled the horse.

  Having dismounted, and so coming face to face with the gate-sitter, he asked:

  ‘W-wwell - ww-what about it?’

  Possessing no handkerchief, the man wiped his unshaven face with a coat sleeve.

  ‘I’m wantin’ a little information,’ he said without annoyance, as though Tom had spluttered at him every day for six months.

  ‘And you’re g-g-givin’ five quid fer it?’

  The other nodded, preparatory to saying:

  ‘Oo’s this Tom Pink now ridin’ for Sparks?’

  ‘You’re torkin’ to ’im.’

  ‘Oh! Is that Olary Boy?’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘Comin’ on abit, ain’t he? I seen him gallop yesterday against a ’orse I thinks was Linacre. Was it Linacre?’

  ‘Yus, I-i-it was.’

  ‘What was Olary’s time?’

  ‘H-h-hand over your fiver.’

  ‘Tell us first.’

  ‘T-two minutes, f-f-fifteen seconds.’

  ‘Cripes! ’E’s slow.’

  ‘Well—wot jer think ’e is? A r-r-racehorse? Come on—g-g- give us your fiver.’

  A huge hand flashed towards the gate-sitter. Long ugly fingers gripped the man’s coat lapels where they met. No longer was the man sitting on the gate. He was held semi-suspended in the air, his toes only resting on solid earth. ‘F-f-fork out the fiver,’ Tom Pink whispered.

  ‘You lemme go,’ the victim snarled. ‘I was only bluffing. I ain’t got no fiver.’

  Tom Pink’s left hand went on an exploration trip, and all it found was a ten shilling note, a letter, and a wad of newspaper cuttings. The newspaper cuttings he returned.

  ‘Next t-time you speak t-ter m-me, I’ll smack yer u-ug-ugly dial,’ he said, and pushing the man back so violently that he crashed to the ground. Tom mounted Olary Boy and opened him out the remaining half mile to the gate giving entry to Nat’s place.

  The ten shillings he was sure he had earned by telling a fearful lie about Olary Boy’s recent running time. The letter interested him very much. It read:—

  ‘Dear Bill,

  Your job is to watch Olary Boy and report often.

  If you can square the new man, Tom Pink, with the enclosed five pounds, do so. This is a little out of our line, but there’s money in it—big money.

  Yours,

  Number Three of Four.’

  Three of Four! What did that mean? And the gate-sitter had had five pounds with which to buy Tom and had spent it, probably on booze—and so came the double-cross! Tom Pink was very thoughtful all the evening.

  Mr. Tindale

  11

  Will Do Well

  On the afternoon of September 1, Diana Ross gave a tea party, to which a small select few were invited. From the Australian Alps she had gone for three weeks camping on the Barrier Reef. In Melbourne now but a few days, to her guardian’s house in one of those quiet roads off the St. Kilda Beach were invited Senor Alverey, Roy and half-a-dozen others. Mr. Tindale did not wish to be present, having business to attend to, but consented at the last moment.

  ‘Senor Alverey appears to have gone into the racing-game with a big splash,’ the squatter remarked whilst Diana and he awaited the arrival of the first guest. ‘Spends six thousand on what must be admitted is a very fine horse, and now has prevailed on Newton to take charge of him.’

  ‘Newton is a good trainer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Right on the top. He can ask what fees he likes and get them.’

  ‘I wonder why Senor Alverey bought King’s Lee. He once told me he was not at all keen on horses, guardie.’

  ‘He seems to have been bitten hard, anyway. Perhaps, dear, it is because you are so keen on racing.’

  ‘He is a most persistent man,’ Diana sighed.

  ‘You could do much worse than marry him. You could marry him or anyone else, before you are twenty-five or six, which is quite early enough for a woman to bind herself with the chains of matrimony.’

  ‘And yet I might be married within a month of the Melbourne Cup race,’ Diana said with impish eyes, then went on to relate the facts of the almost impossible task she had set Roy Masters and Dick Cusack.

  ‘You don’t want me to marry, though, do you?’

  Mr. Tindale’s slate-blue eyes lost their steeliness when he replied tenderly:

  ‘I have been your foster-father now for nine years. Have I ever given you cause to think that I could have been more paternally affectionate?’

  ‘No, guardie, no, never.’

  ‘As a matter of plain fact, were you to get married—and I suppose you will some day—I shall most certainly experience keen loss. A feeling which would be assured a good deal if I knew you to be married well. I don’t mean by that, marrying money. Many men have huge fortunes and yet are nobodies. The kind of man I would like to see your husband would be he who had a certain big future—in diplomacy, for instance; Senor Alverey, a man of vision, able to transmute his dreams into reality.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I have no wish to be married, guardie, so you may live in peace and content I shall—There is our first visitor.’

  Two girls floated in, in a quite unconventional manner, kissed Diana, and appeared about to kiss Mr. Tindale, when he hurriedly invited them nearer the fire, which he began to poke into a better blaze. The Argentinian millionaire came next, arriving in a magnificent coupe driven by a magnificent chauffeur. Roy Masters was the last to be announced.

  ‘Hallo, Diana!’ he greeted her, taking her hands. ‘Enjoy your trip to the far north?’

  ‘Splendid. I was so glad to see how well Olary Boy ran in the August Handicap at Williamstown.’

  ‘Thank you. Olary Boy’s running was entirely due to his rider.’

  ‘I think Smith was a fool to sack him,’ the squatter put in.

  ‘Agreed, Mr. Tindale. Pink will do well. Hallo, Alverey! Still on deck?’

  ‘On deck? Ah—yees. You mean, going strong, in good health, eh? Yees I am, what you say, top hole.’

  Alverey was smiling at Roy with his face, but not with his eyes, which retained the hardness that entered them when Roy arrived.

  ‘Good! I am glad to see you Three of Four,’ Roy said casually.

  ‘Oh—you Australians. A new phrase, eh? Three of Four! These phrases, so numberless, are they to apply to the same thing?’

  ‘Yes. Some of them are most expressive, are they not?’

  A girl laughed, saying: ‘How are you, Eve?’

  Another girl answered, laughingly, ‘Oh, Three of Four, thanks.’

  Everyone laughed. Someone said of Roy that he always was most original. Alverey’s face indicated no emotion whatever. It was a mask. Roy became less sure that the Argentinian knew something about the letter Tom Pink had taken from the gate-sitter.

  And yet, as the afternoon wore on, Alverey cleverly eluded conversational contact with Roy. By no outward sign revealing to anyone that which he so subtly conveyed to Roy alone; which was decidedly not brotherly affection.

  Yes, Senor Alverey had decided to run King’s Lee for the two Cups. As everyone knew, King’s Lee was a New Zealand bred horse imported to Australia as a two-year-old. He had come to the front as a three-year-old. Yes, after King’s Lee won the famous Melbourne Cup, he would go to Argentina.

  ‘He has it all mapped out,’ Diana said softly to Roy when they were enjoying their first and only tete a tete that afternoon.

  ‘By the way, did you offer him the wee chance you gave Dick and me?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘No, Roy, of course not. Dick and you did not take me seriously, surely?’

&nb
sp; ‘We did. And if either Pieface or Olary Boy wins that race we shall hold you to your terms.’

  ‘Even if I didn’t love the one who gained the Cup?’ she asked him a little wistfully.

  ‘You made the conditions, old thing. We didn’t.’

  ‘I know. And I shall abide by them.’

  ‘Will you marry Alverey if he wins it?’ was his next question.

  ‘No,’ she replied with conviction. ‘Oh—we must mix in. You’ll be at Caulfield, Saturday?’

  ‘Yes—oh, yes. Olary Boy is running in the Heatherlie Handicap.’

  ‘Is Tom Pink riding him?’

  ‘Yes. You will see the difference Pink has made in the horse.’

  ‘All right!’ She furtively patted his arm and whispered ‘Good luck’, before rising and ‘mixing in’.

  Roy left Mr. Tindale’s house experiencing pleasurable elation brought about by Diana’s little pat on his arm and her whispered ‘Good luck’. Despite everything, hope persisted in his heart, and he spent the days intervening between the tea party and the following Saturday with impatience.

  The weather was brilliant, the race patrons flocking to Caulfield in their thousands. The smooth, velvety greenness of the lawns and the pine trees always reminded Diana of the Royal garden party she attended in England after her presentation at Court. At no other function, in no other circumstances, did she thrill as when she found herself on a splendid modern racecourse. Between the second and third races, Senor Alverey was her escort.

  ‘No. I shall not bring King’s Lee to Melbourne before October to run in the weight-for-age at Fla-Flemington, Meese Ross,’ he informed her. ‘Ah—that horse! A beautiful horse. He run so fine. In the Caulfield Cup will he win. The Melbourne Cup, too, he will bring me. And I—I, Meese Ross, to you will present those Cups.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, calmly regarding his burning eyes. ‘Not owning King’s Lee, they would not be mine.’

  ‘No? Then I have, what you say, copies made of them, of gold and jewels. I will lay these so precious cups at your feet, praying you to accept them, these cocktail shakers, for your side-board.’