There had been the slight difficulty of being mistaken for a tout by his new trainer, Polman, a stoutish man with the look of one of those large sandy Cornish cats, not precisely furtive because reticence and craft are their nature. But, that once over, his personality swelled slowly. This month of August was one of those interludes, in fact, when nothing happens, but which shape the future by secret ripening.
An error to suppose that men conduct finance, high or low, from greed, or love of gambling; they do it out of self-esteem, out of an itch to prove their judgment superior to their neighbours’, out of a longing for importance. George Pulcher did not despise the turning of a penny, but he valued much more the consciousness that men were saying: “Old George, what ’e says goes—knows a thing or two—George Pulcher!”
To pull the strings of ‘Jimmy’ Shrewin’s horse was a rich and subtle opportunity absorbingly improvable. But first one had to study the animal’s engagements, and, secondly, to gauge that unknown quantity, her ‘form.’ To make anything of her this year they must ‘get about it.’ That young ‘toff,’ her previous owner, had, of course, flown high, entering her for classic races, high-class handicaps, neglecting the rich chances of lesser occasions.
Third to Referee in the three-year-old race at Sandown Spring—two heads—was all that was known of her, and now they had given her seven two in the Cambridgeshire. She might have a chance, and again she might not. He sat two long evenings with ‘Jimmy’ in the little private room off the bar, deliberating this grave question.
‘Jimmy’ inclined to the bold course. He kept saying: “The mare’s a flyer, George—she’s the ’ell of a flyer!”
“Wait till she’s been tried,” said the oracle.
Had Polman anything that would give them a line?
Yes, he had The Shirker (named with that irony which appeals to the English), one of the most honest four-year-olds that ever looked through bridle, who had run up against almost every animal of mark—the one horse that Polman never interfered with, or interrupted in his training lest he should run all the better; who seldom won, but was almost always placed—the sort of horse that handicappers pivot on.
“But,” said Pulcher, “try her with The Shirker, and the first stable money will send her up to tens. That ’orse is so darned regular. We’ve got to throw a bit of dust first, ‘Jimmy.’ I’ll go over and see Polman.”
In ‘Jimmy’s’ withered chest a faint resentment rose—it wasn’t George’s horse; but it sank again beneath his friend’s bulk and reputation.