'I'll come back,' I promised helplessly, lending her my handkerchief, 'I'll come back.'
The taxi from the air terminal brought me through a tree-filled square to the Earl of October's London home in a grey drizzle which in no way matched my spirits. Light-hearted, that was me. Springs in my heels.
In answer to my ring the elegant black door was opened by a friendly faced manservant who took my grip from my hand and said that as his lordship was expecting me he would take me up at once.
'Up' turned out to be a crimson-walled drawing-room on the first floor where round an electric heater in an Adam fireplace three men stood with glasses in their hands. Three men standing easily, their heads turned towards the opening door. Three men radiating as one the authority I had been aware of in October. They were the ruling triumvirate of National Hunt racing. Big guns. Established and entrenched behind a hundred years of traditional power. They weren't taking the affair as effervescently as I was.
'Mr. Roke, my lord,' said the manservant, showing me in.
October came across the room to me and shook hands.
'Good trip?'
'Yes, thank you.'
He turned towards the other men.
'My two co-Stewards arranged to be here to welcome you.'
'My name is Macclesfield,' said the taller of them, an elderly stooping man with riotous white hair. He leaned forward and held out a sinewy hand.
'I am most interested to meet you, Mr. Roke.' He had a hawk-eyed piercing stare.
'And this is Colonel Beckett.' He gestured to the third man, a slender ill-looking person who shook hands also, but with a weak limp grasp.
All three of them paused and looked at me as if I had come from outer space.
'I am at your disposal,' I said politely.
'Yes… well, we may as well get straight down to business,' said October, directing me to a hide-covered armchair.
'But a drink first?'
'Thank you.'
He gave me a glass of the smoothest whisky I'd ever tasted, and they all sat down.
'My horses,' October began, speaking easily, conversationally, 'are trained in the stable block adjoining my house in Yorkshire. I do not train them myself, because I am away too often on business. A man named Inskip holds the licence a public licence and apart from my own horses he trains several for my friends. At present there are about thirty-five horses in the yard, of which eleven are my own. We think it would be best if you started work as a lad in my stable, and then you can move on somewhere else when you think it is necessary.
Clear so far? '
I nodded.
He went on, 'Inskip is an honest man, but unfortunately he's also a bit of a talker, and we consider it essential for your success that he should not have any reason to chatter about the way you joined the stable. The hiring of lads is always left to him, so it will have to be he, not I, who hires you.
'In order to make certain that we are short-handed so that your application for work will be immediately accepted Colonel Beckett and Sir Stuart Macclesfield are each sending three young horses to the stables two days from now. The horses are no good, I may say, but they're the best we could do in the time.'
They all smiled. And well they might. I began to admire their staff work.
'In four days, when everyone is beginning to feel overworked, you will arrive in the yard and offer your services. All right?'
'Yes.'
'Here is a reference.' He handed me an envelope.
'It is from a woman cousin of mine in Cornwall who keeps a couple of hunters. I have arranged that if Inskip checks with her she will give you a clean bill. You can't appear too doubtful in character to begin with, you see, or Inskip will not employ you.'
'I understand,' I said.
'Inskip will ask you for your insurance card and an income tax form which you would normally have brought on from your last job. Here they are.' He gave them to me.
'The insurance card is stamped up to date and is no problem as it will not be queried in any way until next May, by which time we hope there will be no more need for it. The income tax situation is more difficult, but we have constructed the form so that the address on the part which Inskip has to send off to the Inland Revenue people when he engages you is illegible. Any amount of natural-looking confusion should arise from that; and the fact that you were not working in Cornwall should be safely concealed.'
'I see,' I said. And I was impressed, as well.
Sir Stuart Macclesfield cleared his throat and Colonel Beckett pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
About this dope,' I said, 'you told me your analysts couldn't identify it, but you didn't give me any details. What is it that makes you positive it is being used?'
October glanced at Macclesfield, who said in his slow, rasping, elderly voice, 'When a horse comes in from a race frothing at the mouth with his eyes popping out and his body drenched in sweat, one naturally suspects that he has been given a stimulant of some kind.
Dopers usually run into trouble with stimulants, since it is difficult to judge the dosage needed to get a horse to win without arousing suspicion. If you had seen any of these particular horses we have tested, you would have sworn that they had been given a big overdose.
But the test results were always negative. '
'What do your pharmacists say?' I asked.
Beckett said sardonically, 'Word for word? It's blasphemous.'
I grinned.
'The gist.'
Beckett said, 'They simply say there isn't a dope they can't identify.'
'How about adrenalin?' I asked.
The Stewards exchanged glances, and Beckett said, 'Most of the horses concerned did have a fairly high adrenalin count, but you can't tell from one analysis whether that is normal for that particular horse or not. Horses vary tremendously in the amount of adrenalin they produce naturally, and you would have to test them before and after several races to establish their normal output, and also at various stages of their training. Only when you know their normal levels could you say whether any extra had been pumped into them. From the practical point of view… adrenalin can't be given by mouth, as I expect you know.
It has to be injected, and it works instantaneously. These horses were all calm and cool when they went to the starting gate. Horses which have been stimulated with adrenalin are pepped up at that point. In addition to that, a horse often shows at once that he has had a subcutaneous adrenalin injection because the hairs for some way round the site of the puncture stand up on end and give the game away. Only an injection straight into the jugular vein is really foolproof; but it is a very tricky process, and we are quite certain that it was not done in these cases. '
'The lab chaps,' said October, 'told us to look out for something mechanical. All sorts of things have been tried in the past, you see.
Electric shocks, for instance.
Jockeys used to have saddles or whips made with batteries concealed in them so that they could run bursts of current into the horses they were riding and galvanize them into winning. The horses' own sweat acted as a splendid conductor. We went into all that sort of thing very thoroughly indeed, and we are firmly of the opinion that none of the jockeys involved carried anything out of the ordinary in any of their equipment. '
'We have collected all our notes, all the lab notes, dozens of press cuttings, and anything else we thought could be of the slightest help,' said Macclesfield, pointing to three boxes of files which lay in a pile on a table by my elbow.
'And you have four days to read them and think about them,' added October, smiling faintly.
'There is a room ready for you here, and my man will look after you. I am sorry I cannot be with you, but I have
