"Okay, Watson'll enter you in a claimer without me and we'll see what you can do." She turned toward her owner. "And now, Watson, I trust you have a hot tub prepared. I'm so-o-o-o tired...."
The racing secretary entered Incubus for an allowance with some misgivings. "But if she behaves again this time the way she did last she's out, Watson. Suspended—disqualified! Can't have that sort of thing going on, you know."
"She's actually the most tractable of horses, sir," Watson assured him. "It's merely that Mr. Godlove didn't know how to handle her."
"Oh—ah," the racing secretary said.
"And I'd like to enter Prunella in the five-thousand-dollar claimer."
The racing secretary smiled. "Well, Mr. Watson, you don't have to be afraid that anybody'll claim her. Godlove has spread the word around. Now everybody's afraid to claim a Watson horse."
Prunella won handily in her claimer and Incubus breezed to victory in her allowance. "Bet on Watson horses," the word went round the tracks. Incubus won a Class C, Class B and Class A handicap in swift progression, Prunella came in first in two seven-thousand-dollar claimers and second in a ten-thousand-dollar one.
And then Incubus came in last in a stake race at Aqueduct.
"What's the matter with you, Incubus?" Watson demanded. "You can run ten times around the track before any of these nags could reach the quarter-mile pole."