There were twenty-one of them at present on his register, all contentedly receiving his information, all dutifully returning their moderate levies, and none of them knowing of the existence of the others. In an average week, after expenses, he easily added a thousand or more in readies to his bedroom hoard.
In the five years since he had begun in a small way to put his scheme into operation, he had never picked a defaulter. The thinking-it-over time gave the timid and the honest an easy way out; and if Arnold himself had doubts, he simply failed to return on day two.
The rest, added gradually one by one to the fold, lived comfortably with quiet minds and prayed that their benefactor would never be rumbled.
Arnold himself couldn’t see why he ever should be. He put down the binoculars and began in his methodical fashion to get on with his day’s work. There was always a good deal to see to in the way of filling in forms, testing equipment, and checking that the nearby telephone was working. Arnold never left anything to chance.
Down at the starting gate, sixteen two-year-olds bucked and skittered as they were fed by the handlers into the stalls. Two-year-old colts, thought the starter resignedly, looking at his watch, could behave like a pack of prima donnas in a heatwave in Milan. If they didn’t hurry with that chestnut at present squealing and backing away, he would let the other runners off without him.
He was all too aware of the television cameras pointing his way. mercilessly awaiting his smallest error. Starters who got the races off minutes late were unpopular. Starters who got the races off early were asking for official reprimands and universal curses, because of the fiddles that had been worked in the past on premature departures.
The starter ruled the chestnut out of the race and pulled his lever at time plus three minutes twenty seconds, entering the figure meticulously in his records. The gates crashed open, the fifteen remaining colts roared out of the stalls, and along on the stands the serried ranks of race glasses followed their progress over the five furlongs.
Alone in his special box, the judge watched intently. A big pack of two-year-olds over five furlongs was a problem, presenting occasionally even to his practised eyes a multiple dead heat.
He had learned all the horses by name and all the colours by heart, a chore he shared every day with the race-reading commentators, and from long acquaintance he could recognise most of the jockeys by their riding style alone, but still the ignominy of making a mistake flitted uneasily through his dreams.
Up in his eyrie the television commentator looked through his high-magnification binoculars, which were mounted rock-steady like a telescope, and spoke unhurriedly into his microphone.
‘Among the early leaders are Breakaway and Middle Park, followed closely by Pickup, Jetset, Darling Boy and Gumshoe... Coming to the furlong marker the leaders are bunched, with Jetset, Darling Boy, Breakaway all showing... One furlong out, there is nothing to choose between Darling Boy, Jetset, Gumshoe, Pickup... In the last hundred yards... Jetset, Darling Boy...’
The colts stretched their necks, the jockeys swung their whips, the crowd rose on tiptoes and yelled in a roar which drowned the commentary, and in his box the judge’s eyes ached with effort. Darling Boy, Jetset, Gumshoe and Pickup swept past the winning post in line abreast, and an impersonal voice over the widespread loudspeakers announced: ‘Photograph. Photograph.’
Half a mile away in his own room, Jamie Finland listened to the race on television and tried to imagine the pictures on the screen. Racing was misty to him. He knew the shape of horses from handling toys and riding a rocker, but their size and speed were mysterious; he had no conception at all of a broad sweep of a railed racecourse, or of the size or appearance of trees.
As he grew older, Jamie was increasingly aware that he had drawn lucky in the maternal stakes and he had become in his teens protective rather than rebellious, which sometimes touched his hard-pressed mother to tears. It was for her sake that he had welcomed the television-fixer, knowing that, for her, sound without pictures was almost as bad as pictures without sound were for himself.
Despite a lot of trying, he could pick up little from the screen through his ultra-sensitive fingertips. Electronically-produced colours gave him none of the vibrations of natural light.
He sat hunched with tension at his table, the telephone beside his right hand and one of his radios at his left. There was no telling, he thought, whether the bizarre thing would happen again; but if it did, he would be ready.
‘One furlong out, nothing to choose...’ said the television commentator, his voice rising in excitement-inducing crescendo. ‘In the last hundred yards, Jetset, Darling Boy, Pickup and Gumshoe... At the post, all in a line... perhaps Pickup got there in the last stride but we’ll have to wait for the photograph. Meanwhile, let’s see the closing stages of the race again...’
The television went back on its tracks, and Jamie waited intently with his fingers over the quick easy numbers of the push-button telephone.
Down the road at the racecourse the crowds buzzed like agitated bees round the bookmakers, who were transacting deals as fast as they could. Photo-finishes were always popular with serious gamblers, who bet with fervour on the outcome.
Some punters really believed in the evidence of their own quick eyes; others found it a chance to hedge their main bet or even recoup a positive loss. A photo was the second chance, the lifebelt to the drowning, the temporary reprieve from torn-up tickets and anti-climax.
‘Six-to-four on Pickup,’ shouted young Billy Hitchins hoarsely, from his prime bookmaking pitch in the front row facing the stands. ‘Six-to-four on Pickup.’ A rush of customers descending from the crowded steps enveloped him.
‘A tenner, Pickup, right, sir. Five on Gumshoe, right, sir. Twenty, Pickup, you’re on, sir. A hundred? Yeah, if you like. A hundred at evens, Jetset, why not...’ Billy Hitchins, in whose opinion Darling Boy had taken the race by a nostril, was happy to t ike the money.
Greg Simpson accepted Billy Hitchins’ ticket for an even hundred on Jetset and hurried to repeat his bet with as many bookmakers as he could reach. There was never much time between the arrival of the knowledge and the announcement of the winner. Never much, but always enough. Two minutes at least. Sometimes as much as five. A determined punter could strike five or six bets in that time, given a thick skin and a ruthless use of the elbows.
Greg reckoned he could burrow to the front of the closest throng after all those years of rush-hour commuting on the Underground, and he managed, that day at Ascot, to lay out all the cash he had brought with him; all at evens, all on Jetset.
Neither Billy Hitchins, nor any of his colleagues, felt the slightest twinge of suspicion. Sure, there was a lot of support for Jetset; but so there was for the three other horses, and in a multiple finish like this one a good deal of money always changed hands. Billy Hitchins welcomed it himself, because it gave him, too, a chance of making a second profit on the race.
Greg noticed one or two others scurrying with wads to Jetset and wondered, not for the first time, if they, too, were working for Mr Smith. He was sure he’d seen them often at other meetings, but he felt no inclination at all to accost one of them and ask. Safety lay in anonymity — for him, for them and, of course, for Bob Smith himself.
The judge in his box pored earnestly over the black-and-white print, sorting out which nose belonged to Darling Boy, and which to Pickup. He could discern the winner easily enough, and had murmured its number aloud as he wrote it on the pad lying beside him.
The microphone linked to the public announcement system waited mutely at his elbow for him to make his decision on second and third places, a task seemingly increasingly difficult. Number two, or number eight. But which was which? The seconds ticked by.