“Oh, yes?” I said.
“Oh, yes! Even Rupert Steggles. I must confess that my opinion of Rupert Steggles has materially altered for the better this afternoon.”
Mine hadn’t. But I didn’t say so.
“I have always considered Rupert Steggles, between ourselves, a rather self-centred youth, by no means the kind who would put himself out to further the enjoyment of his fellows. And yet twice within the last half-hour I have observed him escorting Mrs. Penworthy, our worthy tobacconist’s wife, to the refreshment-tent.”
I left him standing. I shook off the clutching hand of the Baxter kid and hared it rapidly to the spot where the Mothers’ Sack Race was just finishing. I had a horrid presentiment that there had been more dirty work at the crossroads. The first person I ran into was young Bingo. I grabbed him by the arm.
“Who won?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice.” There was bitterness in the chappie’s voice. “It wasn’t Mrs. Penworthy, dash her! Bertie, that hound Steggles is nothing more nor less than one of our leading snakes. I don’t know how he heard about her, but he must have got on to it that she was dangerous. Do you know what he did? He lured that miserable woman into the refreshment-tent five minutes before the race, and brought her out so weighed down with cake and tea that she blew up in the first twenty yards. Just rolled over and lay there! Well, thank goodness, we still have Harold!”
I gaped at the poor chump.
“Harold? Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard?” Bingo turned a delicate green. “Heard what? I haven’t heard anything. I only arrived five minutes ago. Came here straight from the station. What has happened? Tell me!”
I slipped him the information. He stared at me for a moment in a ghastly sort of way, then with a hollow groan tottered away and was lost in the crowd. A nasty knock, poor chap. I didn’t blame him for being upset.
They were clearing the decks now for the Egg and Spoon Race, and I thought I might as well stay where I was and watch the finish. Not that I had much hope. Young Prudence was a good conversationalist, but she didn’t seem to me to be the build for a winner.
As far as I could see through the mob, they got off to a good start. A short, red-haired child was making the running with a freckled blonde second, and Sarah Mills lying up an easy third. Our nominee was straggling along with the field, well behind the leaders. It was not hard even as early as this to spot the winner. There was a grace, a practised precision, in the way Sarah Mills held her spoon that told its own story. She was cutting out a good pace, but her egg didn’t even wobble. A natural egg-and-spooner, if ever there was one.
Class will tell. Thirty yards from the tape, the red-haired kid tripped over her feet and shot her egg on to the turf. The freckled blonde fought gamely, but she had run herself out halfway down the straight, and Sarah Mills came past and home on a tight rein by several lengths, a popular winner. The blonde was second. A sniffing female in blue gingham beat a pie-faced kid in pink for the place-money, and Prudence Baxter, Jeeves’s long shot, was either fifth or sixth, I couldn’t see which.
And then I was carried along with the crowd to where old Heppenstall was going to present the prizes. I found myself standing next to the man Steggles.
“Hallo, old chap!” he said, very bright and cheery. “You’ve had a bad day, I’m afraid.”
I looked at him with silent scorn. Lost on the blighter, of course.
“It’s not been a good meeting for any of the big punters,” he went on. “Poor old Bingo Little went down badly over that Egg and Spoon Race.”
I hadn’t been meaning to chat with the fellow, but I was startled.
“How do you mean badly?” I said. “We—he only had a small bet on.”
“I don’t know what you call small. He had thirty quid each way on the Baxter kid.”
The landscape reeled before me.
“What!”
“Thirty quid at ten to one. I thought he must have heard something, but apparently not. The race went by the form-book all right.”
I was trying to do sums in my head. I was just in the middle of working out the syndicate’s losses, when old Heppenstall’s voice came sort of faintly to me out of the distance. He had been pretty fatherly and debonair when ladling out the prizes for the other events, but now he had suddenly grown all pained and grieved. He peered sorrowfully at the multitude.
“With regard to the Girls’ Egg and Spoon Race, which has just concluded,” he said, “I have a painful duty to perform. Circumstances have arisen which it is impossible to ignore. It is not too much to say that I am stunned.”
He gave the populace about five seconds to wonder why he was stunned, then went on.
“Three years ago, as you are aware, I was compelled to expunge from the list of events at this annual festival the Fathers’ Quarter-Mile, owing to reports coming to my ears of wagers taken and given on the result at the village inn and a strong suspicion that on at least one occasion the race had actually been sold by the speediest runner. That unfortunate occurrence shook my faith in human nature, I admit—but still there was one event at least which I confidently expected to remain untainted by the miasma of professionalism. I allude to the Girls’ Egg and Spoon Race. It seems, alas, that I was too sanguine.”
He stopped again, and wrestled with his feelings.
“I will not weary you with the unpleasant details. I will merely say that before the race was run a stranger in our midst, the manservant
