AT WORK ON THE RACE-TRACKS 



the money to the small hotel I know of, he brought 

 an exquisite bunch of flowers for the wife of his racing 

 friend. The other two thousand was paid with equal 

 promptitude, but after that the South American 

 visitor thought he had experienced quite sufficient of 

 racing in Europe. But never a quarrel, no upbraiding, 

 simply he extended his sympathy to the exploiter of 

 him for his great loss, which he thought in his blindness 

 was of the same amount as he himself had dropped. 



Of course this sum cannot be compared to some of 

 the great exploits over cards or the box or other fancy 

 ways of transferring money from one gentleman's 

 pocket to another, but surely nothing was ever done 

 with such perfect ease. No travelling half way round 

 the world at enormous expense to track a man who 

 was " easy " ; no expensive dinners nor flash suites 

 in swell hotels, no unnecessary flattery nor sitting up 

 in the morning drinking unnecessary wine : simply a 

 quiet business talk that " A " being in the secrets of 

 certain stables, and a close friend of certain American 

 jockeys, it would be a pity if " B " missed the chance 

 of three events to be brought off which should rival 

 the half-million dollars won by Gates and Drake over 

 Royal Flush (I have alluded to this in a previous 

 chapter). 



They were tryers, some of them ; they even came 

 it on me, a pair of new-comers who were thoroughly 

 laughed at, in fact, roasted about it by their pals — I 

 am telling a lot of you what you know already I'm sure, 

 but others are not so wise. I was looking at the 

 numbers which had just been put up and saw a man 

 in front of me copying down the figures at one of the 

 pari-mutuel guichets. I was regarding him rather 

 curiously, as I had not seen him out racing before, when 

 a man at my elbow whispered : " Follow that man ; 



170 



