It may be said with truth that Black saw the net closing round him. He knew not what mysterious influences were at work, but day by day, in a hundred different ways, he found himself thwarted, new obstacles put in his way. He was out now for a final kill.
He was recalled to a realization of the present by the strident voices of the bookmakers about him; the ring was in a turmoil. He heard a voice shout, “Seven to one, bar one! Seven to one Nemesis!” and he knew enough of racing to realize what had happened to the favourite. He came to a bookmaker he knew slightly.
“What are you barring?” he asked.
“Timbolino,” was the reply.
He found Sir Isaac near the enclosure. The baronet was looking a muddy white, and was biting his fingernails with an air of perturbation.
“What has made your horse so strong a favourite?”
“I backed it again,” said Sir Isaac.
“Backed it again?”
“I’ve got to do something,” said the other savagely. “If I lose, well, I lose more than I can pay. I might as well add to my liabilities. I tell you I’m down and out if this thing doesn’t win,” he said, “unless you can do something for me. You can, can’t you, Black, old sport?” he asked entreatingly. “There’s no reason why you and I should have any secrets from one another.”
Black looked at him steadily. If the horse lost he might be able to use this man to greater advantage.
Sir Isaac’s next words suggested that in case of necessity help would be forthcoming.
“It’s that beastly Verlond,” he said bitterly. “He put the girl quite against me—she treats me as though I were dirt—and I thought I was all right there. I’ve been backing on the strength of the money coming to me.”
“What has happened recently?” asked Black.
“I got her by myself just now,” said the baronet, “and put it to her plain; but it’s no go. Black, she gave me the frozen face—turned me down proper. It’s perfectly damnable,” he almost wailed.
Black nodded. At that moment there was a sudden stir in the ring. Over the heads of the crowd from where they stood they saw the bright-coloured caps of the jockeys cantering down to the post.
Unlike Sir Isaac, who had carefully avoided the paddock after a casual glance at his candidate, Horace was personally supervising the finishing touches to Nemesis. He saw the girths strapped and gave his last instructions to the jockey. Then, as the filly was led to the course, with one final backward and approving glance at her, he turned towards the ring.
“One moment, Gresham!” Lord Verlond was behind him. “Do you think your horse,” said the old man, with a nod towards Nemesis, “is going to win?”
Horace nodded.
“I do now,” he said; “in fact, I am rather confident.”
“Do you think,” the other asked slowly, “that if your horse doesn’t, Timbolino will?”
Horace looked at him curiously.
“Yes, Lord Verlond, I do,” he said quietly.
Again there was a pause, the old man fingering his shaven chin absently.
“Suppose, Gresham,” he said, without raising his voice, “suppose I asked you to pull your horse?”
The face of the young man went suddenly red.
“You’re joking, Lord Verlond,” he answered stiffly.
“I’m not joking,” said the other. “I’m speaking to you as a man of honour, and I am trusting to your respecting my confidence. Suppose I asked you to pull Nemesis, would you do it?”
“No, frankly, I would not,” said the other, “but I can’t—”
“Never mind what you can’t understand,” said Lord Verlond, with a return of his usual sharpness. “If I asked you and offered you as a reward what you desired most, would you do it?”
“I would not do it for anything in the world,” said Horace gravely.
A bitter little smile came to the old man’s face.
“I see,” he said.
“I can’t understand why you ask me,” said Horace, who was still bewildered. “Surely you—you know—”
“I only know that you think I want you to pull your horse because I have backed the other,” said the old earl, with just a ghost of a smile on his thin lips. “I would advise you not to be too puffed up with pride at your own rectitude,” he said unpleasantly, though the little smile still lingered, “because you may be very sorry one of these days that you did not do as I asked.”
“If you would tell me,” began Horace, and paused. This sudden request from the earl, who was, with all his faults, a sportsman, left him almost speechless.
“I will tell you nothing,” said the earl, “because I have nothing to tell you,” he added suavely.
Horace led the way up the stairs to the county stand. To say that he was troubled by the extraordinary request of the old man would be to put it mildly. He knew the earl as an eccentric man; he knew him by reputation as an evil man, though he had no evidence as to this. But he never in his wildest and most uncharitable moments had imagined that this old rascal—so he called him—would ask him to pull a horse. It was unthinkable. He remembered that Lord Verlond was steward of one or two big meetings, and that he was a member of one of the most august sporting clubs in the world.
He elbowed his way along the top of the stand to where the white osprey on Lady Mary’s hat showed.
“You look troubled,” she said as he reached her side. “Has uncle been bothering you?”
He shook his head. “No,” he replied, with unusual curtness.
“Has your horse developed a headache?” she asked banteringly.
“I was worried about something I remembered,” he said incoherently.
The field was at the starting-post.
“Your horse is drawn in the middle,” she said.
He put up his glasses. He could see the chocolate and green plainly enough. Sir Isaac’s—grey vertical stripes on white,
