A smile appeared among the whiskers.
‘Poor old Walter? No one here would touch a bet he made. He’s tried, of course, but we’re not charity, Sergeant. Jacobson’s under the hatches and every bookie knows it.’
‘That so? No credit for him, then. A poor man’s best off like me, you know, watching a race for the joy of pure athletics. Ah well. Must leave you to your work. Good to see you.’
With a wink and a wave he moved away towards an exit, leaving the pure athletics to continue without his support for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Harvey had brought IN a plateful of roast duck pre-pared at a restaurant near by. With the help of the gas- ring it was still warm when Chadwick came into the tent at seven. As soon as he had loosened the champion’s boot-laces and cleaned off his face with the sponge, Harvey lifted the plate-cover. He watched for the response to this favourite meal. It was quite five seconds before Chadwick reacted at all, and then it was not the duck that he commented on.
‘I am singularly depressed. Open a bottle of wine.’
Harvey lifted a Graves Superieur from the crate behind the clothes-cupboard, drew the cork and poured a small amount into a glass for Chadwick to taste.
‘Fill it up, man! This isn’t the Cafe Royal.’
‘Sir.’
‘And massage my legs, or I’ll never get back on the track.’ Harvey applied himself to the task. He knew Chadwick well enough to keep silent at these times. The dinner, which might have been Billy Reid’s eel-broth for all the recogni-tion it got, was quickly dispatched. Chadwick sat back in his chair, moaning abstractedly. At length he addressed the attendant.
‘My neck is paining me. See if you can loosen it, will you? I really doubt,’ he went on dismally, ‘whether I can endure this torment for another three days. The rewards seem less and less worth pursuing as one goes on. And the effort’-he shuddered-‘the effort, Harvey, is almost impossible to muster. It was better on the inside track. Now I’m involved in a physical battle if I try to go any faster than these-these lumbering apes. My ribs ache from the battering they’ve received. I tell you, this is no race. It’s a battle for survival.’
‘I’ve seen, sir,’ Harvey agreed. ‘They’ll put you out if they can. It frets me. But I’ve listened to their talk. They won’t dare knock you down and cripple you. It’s the sly nudge and the shin-tap that they use. If they can they’ll break your spirit that way. Like,’ and he cast about for a comparison that the Captain would appreciate, ‘like a siege, sir. Slowly starving you out. Mustn’t let morale get low.’
Chadwick reached for an orange.
‘I suppose so,’ he sighed. ‘Tighten my boots, will you? I must get out there again.’
Harvey obeyed, and, as he kneeled pieces of orange-peel fell about him on the floor.
‘You’ve got to keep on, sir,’ he urged. ‘For the Regiment, too.’
There was an intensity about Harvey’s manner that pen-etrated even Chadwick’s weariness. When he had eaten the orange he swallowed a second glass of wine and stumped back to the track.
Despite the bookmakers’ verdict that the interest had been drawn from the race, the stands filled steadily dur-ing the evening. Perhaps, as Herriott predicted, the prospect of Chadwick struggling to defend his lead on the outer track was the attraction. Possibly it was interest in Darrell’s dramatic death, and the morbid hope of a second collapse. Whatever the reason, the ‘gate’ amounted to over?400 when it was counted at eleven, almost double the tak-ings for each of the first two days. And the influx greatly enriched the atmosphere in the Hall. For the first time spec-tators were in the gallery, as well as the stands and the enclo-sure. The band at its most energetic could not drown the bedlam from around the track, as one favourite or another appeared to gain ground.
The 250-mile landmark-generally reckoned to be the end of the first half of the journey-was reached by several of the entrants during the evening. Chadwick’s achievement in reaching this mark as early as two in the afternoon was politely clapped by the handful then present. But when Billy Reid and the Scythebearer hobbled through shortly after ten the roar of acclamation and the waving of hats set the flags above flapping, and flickered the gaslight. The most support came for O’Flaherty. His height and red hair made him an easy figure to pick out, and it was believed that he was the only man left capable of offering Chadwick a seri-ous challenge. Waves of chanting and cheering lifted the Irishman to extraordinary efforts. For almost two hours he was ‘mixing’-alternately walking and trotting-making the others’ efforts seem puny. Williams, the Half-breed, who had kept pace with O’Flaherty until noon, was forced by blistering to walk on the sides of his boots, and the odds against him doubled between nine and ten. The curiosity of the event, Mostyn-Smith, betrayed no ill-effects from his lack of any sustained sleep since the start. Those who remembered his unenterprising pace on the first day now declared that he had not slowed in the least since then. The dawdler of Monday was going as well as anyone except O’Flaherty and Chadwick.
Herriott stood with Jacobson, basking in the sweet din of several thousand voices. A uniformed attendant touched his arm.
‘Pardon me, Mr Herriott. Lady at the entrance, asking to speak to you, sir.’
Cora Darrell, now in full mourning, was waiting with her maid-servant. Herriott guided them into an office at the entrance.
‘I need hardly say-’ began Herriott.
She cut him short.
‘Yes. The shock has been very hard to bear. I am afraid I said things yesterday that I now regret. You understand I didn’t know the full circumstances. I was not myself.’
‘Of course,’ he conceded. ‘You were exceedingly dis-tressed. I could see that. The incident is quite forgiven, quite forgotten. And now tell me how I can assist you.’
‘I came to collect Charles’s personal things,’ Cora explained. ‘The detective said that I should come late to avoid the newspaper people. I want to go out to the tent without attracting public attention. Would you escort me, Sol?’
‘I shall be most honoured. Is there much to collect? Could I bring the things here for you?’
‘No. I want to go myself. Taylor shall carry the suitcase for me. I have a cab calling again in an hour to convey us back to the house.’ She paused, hesitating over a question. ‘Is Sam Monk still in the building? I cannot face him.’
He touched her forearm reassuringly.
‘You shall not see the man, Cora. He has not been allowed near the tent since… I saw him early this evening, drinking liquor heavily. He is probably quite inebriated by now. Shall we go at once? This is a time when we will not be noticed.’
They were able to pass easily and discreetly through the crowd, who were moving homewards and unlikely to connect a veiled widow with the mirthful entertainment that they had just left. In one respect, however, Herriott had miscalcu-lated. As they turned into the passageway between two stands, leading to the tracks, Sam Monk faced them. He was reaching for support from the side of the stand, and miscal-culating the distance. His other hand gripped a half-empty bottle and the contents slopped each time he moved. Although he stood across the passage a yard or two from them, his eyes were held fish-like, unable to vary their focus. Cora automatically stopped short, and drew back behind Herriott’s ample form.
Fortunately there was no confrontation. Behind Monk, silhouetted in the square of light at the arena entrance, appeared Walter Jacobson. Finding himself alone in the cen-tre, he was making a strategic move to more obscure regions of the Hall. The snap of Herriott’s fingers halted him.
‘Walter! Good fellow. Get this man into his hut, will you? He has to stay here. Police orders. I gave him the end hut, farthest from the others being used. You can manage? Good.’
Cursing himself for choosing that exit at that moment, Jacobson took a firm grip on Monk’s jacket-collar, and led him, unprotesting, towards the Liverpool Road end. Herriott apologised to Cora, and they moved on, into the arena. Cora’s entrance, shrinking between her maid, Taylor, and Herriott, was so unrelated to her arrival in the stadium two days ago that if the band had broken into a fanfare she could have moved on unrecognised. As it was, the little group stepped across the tracks and up to the constable at the tent. After a word of explanation Cora and Taylor were admitted and the lamp inside was ignited for them. Herriott returned to the lap-takers, to settle the next day’s roster.
