The Case of the Racehorse Ringer (4 page)

“It’s still stealin’,” Sparrow insisted. “I’ll look out for her when I’m there.”

“Good lad,” said Gertie. “Her name’s Patch. You’ll know her ’cos she’s a skewbald.”

“What, she’s got no hair?”

“No, not bald. Skewbald. Three colours – white, brown and black. You’ll not see many of them in a racin’ stables. All the others will be thoroughbreds.”

Gertie climbed the steps to the caravan door. It was not locked. She opened it and stepped inside. The other two followed.

“It’s very cosy,” said Wiggins.

“And tidy,” added Sparrow.

“You have to be tidy when this is all the space you have,” Gertie told him. “A place for everythin’ and everythin’ in its place. That’s what my ma used to say.” And indeed everything was in its place. There were two narrow beds, one on either side, which served as seats during the day. Between them was a small folding table and under them were cupboards and drawers. Everything was painted in bright colours and decorated with lots of flowers.

“It’s just like that canal boat we went on to Limehouse,” Sparrow said. “’Cept this one ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Wiggins looked around carefully, in case there were any clues to be found. But he could not see anything that looked unusual.

“Is anything missing?” he asked.

Gertie shook her head. “Don’t think so. Wait a minute, though. If they was goin’ to take anythin’…” She opened a cupboard and looked inside. “No. Still there.”

Inside the cupboard were a stopwatch, a pair of powerful binoculars and a notebook and pencil.

“Spyglasses!” Wiggins exclaimed. “And good ones by the look of ’em. Where did your dad get these?”

“This fella give ’em to him.”

“The one who wanted him to time the horses?”

“That’s right. Along with this stopwatch.”

Wiggins picked up the binoculars. “Let’s see if they’re any good.” He stepped outside the caravan and held them up to his eyes. “Can’t tell. Too many trees.”

“Come over here, then,” Gertie said, leading him to the edge of the woods. Here, the ground sloped steeply away, opening up a good view of the heathland below. Gertie pointed. “That’s the gallops, down there.”

Wiggins raised the glasses again and looked through them.

“Phew!” He let out a whistle. “You can’t half see everything. These must’ve cost a packet. Whatever this geezer’s up to, it’s gotta be worth a lot of money.”

“Let’s have a look,” Sparrow begged. Wiggins handed over the binoculars and showed him how to focus the lenses. Sparrow scanned the heathland below them. “Cor!” he exclaimed with delight. “I can see every single blade of grass down there… Hello, what’s this?”

A line of horses approached along the track from the stables, each ridden by a lad wearing riding breeches and a flat cap. Leading them, on a big chestnut horse, was a thin man in a tweed jacket.

“That’s him,” said Gertie. “That’s Major Lee, the trainer.”

“Why is he a major? He ain’t in the army, is he?”

“My da said he used to be. But he broke his leg and had to retire. That’s when he bought the stables.”

“I see,” Wiggins said. “Keep back in the trees, out of sight.”

The three Boys watched as the riders, under the stern eye of the trainer, began to put the horses through their paces. One after another they trotted, cantered, then galloped. The last horse was easily the fastest – and the most beautiful, with a glossy black coat, a white blaze in the middle of his forehead and what looked like white socks on his front legs.

“Ain’t he beautiful?” Gertie said. “Look at him go! That’s Silver Star. He’s the best racehorse in the country.”

“I dare say,” said Wiggins. “Oh, look – they got company.”

While the Boys had been looking at the horses they had not noticed a carriage approaching along the track. It stopped so that whoever was in it could watch the horses exercising. Wiggins stared at it and stiffened. He reached out and took the binoculars from Sparrow, then trained them on the carriage door.

“Well I never…” he murmured. “Now, what’s
he
up to here?”

“Who?” asked Sparrow.

“Take a look.”

Sparrow did. At first everything was blurred, but as he adjusted the powerful lenses a monogram came into sharp focus on the door of the carriage. It was a curly letter “M”.

“Moriarty!” He gasped.

The three Boys stared at each other, aghast. Moriarty was the master criminal who had been the brains behind several of their previous cases. He was the sworn enemy of Sherlock Holmes, who described him as “the Napoleon of crime”.

“If Moriarty’s mixed up in this,” Wiggins said, “it’s gotta be something big.”

“Yeah, like murder,” Gertie added. “And gettin’ my da hanged for somethin’ he didn’t do.”

Sparrow walked nervously towards the entrance to the stable yard. He could not help thinking that if a boy had been murdered here, and Gertie’s dad had not done it, then whoever had must still be around. Taking a deep breath, he lifted the latch and opened the gate.

Before he could take another step, he was stopped in his tracks by an ear-shattering blast of ferocious barking. A dark shape was hurtling across the yard straight towards him. Sparrow froze, his heart pounding. He was done for! He shrank back against the gate, pressing himself into the slats, away from the savage dog. Then, just before it reached him, it was jerked to a sudden halt. It was chained! If its chain had been even a few inches longer, it would have been able to sink its teeth into him. Still snarling and snapping, the dog was on its hind legs, its red eyes level with his own, strings of saliva dripping from its jaws.

Suddenly a shrill voice ordered, “Satan! Leave! Quiet now.”

The dog stopped barking and sank down onto the ground, where it continued to growl, its eyes fixed on Sparrow. Still shaking, Sparrow turned
his
eyes towards the house, where the voice had come from. A girl who was perhaps a couple of years older than himself was standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on her flowery pinafore and smiling at him through sparkling grey eyes.

“He had you going there, didn’t he,” she said.

Sparrow nodded.

“Nearly wet yourself, I’ll bet.”

Sparrow shook his head. “No,” he lied.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“Does he have to be so fierce?” asked Sparrow, his heartbeat slowly returning to normal.

“That’s what he’s here for. He’s a guard dog, see?”

“What’s he guardin’?”

“The stables, of course. Some of our horses are worth hundreds and hundreds.”

“Hundreds?” Sparrow’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “You mean hundreds of
pounds
?”

“That’s right. Now then, who are you and what d’you want?” asked the girl.

Sparrow thought hard, trying to remember everything that Wiggins and Gertie had told him to say.

“My name’s Sparrow,” he said, “and I want to be a jockey.”

“Sparrow? What sort of name’s that?”

“It’s ’cos I’m not very big,” he explained.

“No, you’re not, are you?” She laughed, but it wasn’t mocking or unfriendly. “Come over here.”

Sparrow edged towards her, keeping his back against the gate and his eyes fixed firmly on the dog. It watched his every move intently. When he reached the girl, she looked him up and down, sizing him up.

“Well, you’re little enough, that’s for sure. Know anything about horses?”

“Not much. But I’m keen to learn.”

“Well, we’ll have to see what my pa’s got to say. He owns these stables.”

She was interrupted by a shout from the other side of the yard: “Maisie! What’s going on there? Who’s this?”

Two men approached. Sparrow recognized one of them as Major Lee, the trainer he had seen through the binoculars. The other was a tall man in breeches and a knitted sweater, carrying a heavy whip. Remembering what Gertie had told him, Sparrow guessed that this must be Hogg, Lee’s assistant, the man who had taken her to the orphanage.

“See to the dog,” Lee ordered the man.

“Satan!” Hogg shouted. “Kennel!” He cracked the whip, making a sound like a pistol shot. The dog cowered and slunk back to its home at the other end of its chain.

“Well?” Lee asked his daughter.

“This is Sparrow, Pa,” she explained. “He wants to be a jockey.”

“Does he now?” Lee laughed.

“I heard you might be needin’ a new stable lad,” Sparrow told him.

“That’s more like it. D’you know much about horses, boy?”

“Not a lot. But I can learn – I’m a very quick learner.”

Lee regarded him thoughtfully. His pointy face and cunning eyes reminded Sparrow of the foxes he sometimes saw rifling through the bins back in Baker Street. He turned to Hogg.

“What d’you think, Harry?” he asked.

“Well, I suppose he’s the right size, guv’nor,” his assistant replied grudgingly.

“You could try him out, Pa,” Maisie suggested. “We do need another lad.”

“Taken a shine to him, have you, my dear?” Her father smiled.

“I like the look of him, yes. I think he’ll do.”

“All right. Find him some kit. Those togs are no use here. I reckon young Tommie’s stuff should fit him – and
he
won’t be needing it any more. Harry, you can sort him out. Show him the ropes. I’ve got things to do.”

And with that, Major Lee limped off, his stick clacking on the cobblestones.

“Well, my little cock Sparrow,” Maisie said brightly. “Looks like you’re in luck. Come with me.”

“Bring him back soon as he’s ready,” Hogg told her. “We’ve got no time to waste messing about.”

As he turned away, Maisie pulled a face and poked her tongue out at his back. Then she led Sparrow off towards a black timber-clad barn. This took them past the dog, and Sparrow held back nervously.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “You’re with me. Anyway, you’re one of us now.”

She reached out and patted the dog’s head. “Satan, this is Sparrow,” she announced. “He’s going to live with us.”

The dog glared at Sparrow and let out a low grumble.

“Now, now!” Maisie admonished. “That’s not very nice. Sparrow’s a friend.
Friend
. Understand?”

She took Sparrow’s hand and moved it towards the dog.

“Let him smell you,” she instructed. “The back of your hand. That’s it.”

Satan sniffed, but still looked at the new boy suspiciously. Maisie reached into the pocket of her pinafore and produced a dog biscuit.

“Here,” she said. “Give him this.”

Swallowing hard, Sparrow held out the biscuit and the dog took it from him greedily, chomping it between its great teeth. Then, to Sparrow’s surprise, Satan’s tail twitched and briefly wagged.

“There. He likes you,” declared Maisie approvingly. “You must be all right – he’s a good judge of character is Satan.”

Gertie returned to the caravan in the woods carrying an enamel can.

“Here you are,” she said to Wiggins. “Straight from the spring. You won’t never find water purer than that.”

She fetched a mug from the caravan, poured some of the water into it and handed it over. Wiggins had been sitting on the caravan steps, thinking hard, ever since they had sent Sparrow off to the stables. But he had not come up with any answers yet. Without his special chair and hat and pipe, he found it harder to think and make plans.

“We gotta find out two things,” he said finally, taking a swig of water. “Who and why. Who killed the lad, and why they did it. If we can find out why, then we can work out who.”

“How do we do that, then?” asked Gertie.

“We’ll have to see what Sparrow comes up with.”

“I’m worried about Sparrow. Don’t you think he might be in deadly danger?”

“He knows that. But it’s the only way. I’ve warned him to be on his guard.”

“He better be.”

Maisie took Sparrow into the barn at the end of the yard, and led him past bales of hay and up a set of stone steps to the upper floor. Half a dozen narrow wooden beds were lined up along one wall, each with a small cupboard beside it. In the middle of the room stood a large table, with a long bench on either side and a pile of tin plates stacked on top.

“That was poor Tommie’s,” Maisie said, pointing to the bed at the end of the row. “So now it’ll be yours. And you can keep your stuff in here.”

She opened the cupboard alongside the bed. It held some clothes and a few odds and ends – a riding crop, a couple of dog-eared books, a writing pad and a stub of pencil, a used paintbrush with bristles clogged with white paint, a pocket knife and a photograph that Sparrow guessed was probably of Tommie’s mother.

“You’ll have to keep this tidy,” Maisie told him. “Harry Hogg used to be a sergeant in the army and he likes everything to be spick and span.”

She took out a pair of riding breeches, a sweater and a flat cap and threw them on the bed.

“Put these on. Go on,” she said, turning her back, “I won’t look.”

Sparrow took off his trousers and pulled on the breeches. “It’s OK,” he said as he fastened the buttons. “You can turn round now.”

“Let’s have a look. Yes, they’ll do. Hello, what’s that?”

Sparrow looked down and saw a white splodge on one leg, among the stains of mud and old horse manure.