"Do you want to back a horse for the Cambridgeshire or the Cesarewitch? Now's the time; the early bird catches the worm. I'll give you sixty-six to one against any horse you can name. Spot the winner and put a few tenners on. There's an old fellow I know spotted Taraban yesterday for the Northumberland Plate. What do you think he did, the old fool? Backed it for a crown. No pluck. He might have won a heap of money, and now the chance has gone. About this time last year a fellow came in--just as you have done now--asked about a horse for the Cambridgeshire--wanted to know the odds. A hundred to one I offered. 'I'll take it to fifty sovs.,' he said. I gave it to him, five thousand to fifty. Hanged if the horse didn't win, with a stone in hand, and I was nicked. He had pluck, that fellow, and took my cheque for five thou. with a grin on his face. He's one of the leviathans now--had a fifty thousand book on the Derby. Is that your little game? Have you come to take the odds? Well, I'll give them to you, to any amount."
"No," Alfred managed to say, "that isn't the business I've come upon."
"Well, what is it, then?" inquired free-and-easy Con. "Fire away. Do anything I can for a friend of Sheldrake's."
"He told me to make a clean breast of it," said Alfred, playing nervously with his hat; and Con Staveley thought, "What a soft young fool he is!" "The fact is, I've been out of luck lately. I backed the wrong horse yesterday."
"Christopher Sly?"
"Yes; it looked like a moral certainty for him."
"It was a sell," observed Con gravely. "Every one of the prophets went for him. I was bit myself--heavily, too; so you're not alone in the boat."
Alfred derived no consolation from this statement. The reverse, indeed. For the fact that the man he was about to ask to assist him had lost heavily on the same race, rendered his chance of obtaining money a less hopeful one than it had seemed. But he spurred on desperately.
"There wasn't one of the prophets or tipsters that went in for Taraban. They all gave Christopher Sly. And if you can't believe them, whom are you to believe? All the morning papers gave Christopher Sly as the absolute winner--all the sporting papers too. Nothing else had a chance. I sent five shillings to Horace St. John—"
"Who is he?" asked Con innocently.