BOND sat high up in the grandstand and through hired glasses watched Shy Smile's owner eating soft-shell crabs.
The gangster was sitting in the restaurant enclosure four rows below Bond. Opposite him sat Rosy Budd forking down frankfurters and sauerkraut and drinking beer out of a stein. Although most of the other luncheon tables were occupied, there were two waiters hovering round this one and the maitre d'hotel made frequent visits to see that all was going well.
Pissaro looked like a gangster in a horror comic. He had a round bladder-like head in the middle of which the features were crowded together-two pin-point eyes, two black nostrils, a pursed wet pink mouth above the hint of a chin, and a fat body in a brown suit and a white shirt with a long-pointed collar and a figured chocolate bow tie. He paid no attention to the preparations for the first race but concentrated on his food, occasionally glancing across at his companion's plate as if he might reach across and fork something off it for himself.
Rosy Budd was broad and hard-looking, with a square immobile poker player's face in which pale eyes were buried deep under thin fair eyebrows. He was wearing a striped seersucker suit and a dark blue tie. He ate slowly and rarely looked up from his plate. When he had finished, he picked up a race programme and studied it, turning over the pages carefully. Without looking up, he gave a curt shake of the head when the maitre d'hotel offered him the menu.
Pissaro picked his teeth until a mound of ice cream arrived, and then he bent his head again and started spooning the ice cream rapidly up into his small mouth.
Through his glasses, Bond examined the two men and wondered about them. What did these people amount to? Bond remembered cold, dedicated, chess-playing Russians; brilliant, neurotic Germans; silent, deadly, anonymous men from Cen tral Europe; the people in his own Service-the double-firsts, the gay soldiers of fortune, the men who counted life well lost for a thousand a' year. Compared with such men, Bond decided, these people were just teenage pillow-fantasies.
The results went, up for the third race, and now there was only half an hour to go before The Perpetuities. Bond put down his glasses and picked up his programme, waiting for the big board on the other side of the track to start flickering as the money went on the tote and the odds began to move.
He took a final look at the details. 'Second Day. August 4,' said the programme. 'The Perpetuities Stakes. $25,000 added. 52nd Running. For Three-Year-Olds. By subscription of $50 each, to accompany the nomination. Starters to pay $250 additional. With the $25,000 added of which $5000 to second, $2500 to third and $1250 to fourth. A trophy to be presented to the owner of the winner. One Mile and a Quarter.' And then the list of twelve horses with owners, trainers and jockeys and the Morning Line forecast of the odds.
The joint favourites, Noi, Mr C. V. Whitney's Come Again, and No3, Mr William Woodward's Pray Action, were both forecast at six to four on. Mr P. Pissaro's Shy Smile, trainer R. Budd, jockey T. Bell, was forecast at 15 to i, the bottom horse in the betting. His number was 10.
Bond turned his glasses on the restaurant enclosure. The two men had gone. Bond's eyes followed on across the track to where the lights were flashing on the big board. The favourite was now No3, at 2 to i on. Come Again had gone out to evens. Shy Smile was quoted at 20 to i, but he went down to :8s as Bond watched the board.
Another quarter of an hour to go. Bond sat back and lit a cigarette, go:ng over again in his mind what Leiter had told him, wondering if it was going to work.
Leiter had tracked the jockey down to his rooming house and had flashed his private detective's licence at him. And then he had quite calmly blackmailed him into throwing the race. If Shy Smile won, Leiter would go to the Stewards, expose the ringer, and Tingaling Bell would never ride again. But there was one chance for the jockey to save himself. If he took it,
Leiter promised to say nothing about the ringer. Shy Smile must win the race but be disqualified. This could be achieved if, in the final sprint, the jockey interfered with the running of the horse closest to him so that it could be shown that he had prevented this other horse from being the winner. Then there would be an objection, which had to be upheld. It would be easy for Bell, at the last corner before the run in, to do this in such a way that he could argue to his employers that it had just been a bit of over-keen riding, that another horse had crowded him over to the left, that his horse had stumbled. There was no conceivable reason why he should not wish to win (Pissaro had promised him an extra $1000 if he did) and it was just one of those strokes of bad luck that happen in racing. And Leiter would now give Tingaling $1000 and there would be another $200o"for him if he did what he was told.
And Bell had bought it. Without any hesitation. And he had asked for the $2000 to be passed to him after the day's racing in the Acme Mud and Sulphur Baths where he went every evening to take a mud bath to keep his weight down. Six o'clock. And Leiter had promised that this would be done. And Bond now had the $2000 in his pocket and he had reluctantly agreed to help Leiter out by going to the Acme Baths to make the pay-off if Shy Smile failed to win the race.
Would it work?
Bond picked up his glasses and swept them round the course. He noted the four thick posts at the quarter miles that held the automatic cameras that recorded the whole race and whose film was available to the Stewards within minutes of each finish. It was this last one near the winning post whose eye would see and record all that happened at the final bend. Bond felt a tingle of excitement. Five minutes to go and the starting-gate was being pulled into position a hundred yards up to his left. Once round the course, plus an extra furlong, and the winning post was just below him. He put his glasses on the big board. No change in the favourites or in Shy Smile's price. And now here came the horses, cantering easily down to the start. First came Noi, Come Again, t............