High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,12

stage and blasted out, and it was only when I was walking away that I realised that I’d no money with me. He’d collected me, you see.’ She smiled suddenly, showing straight white teeth. ‘Some girls are dumber than others.’

‘Let Steven go and find you a taxi, then,’ Charlie said.

‘Okay.’

It took me several minutes, but she was still huddled against the outside of Charlie’s car, sheltering as best she could from the worst of the wind, when I got back. I climbed out of the taxi and she climbed in and without more ado drove away.

‘A fool and his money,’ Charlie said.

‘That was no con trick.’

‘It would be a good one,’ he said. ‘How do you know she’s not hopping out of the cab two blocks away and shaking a fiver out of the next Sir Galahad?’

He laughed, wound up the window, waved and pointed his Rover towards home.

Monday morning brought the good news and the bad.

The good was a letter with a five pound note enclosed. Sucks to Charlie, I thought.

Dear Mr Scott,

I was so grateful for your help on Saturday night. I guess I’ll never go out on a date again without the cab fare home.

Yours sincerely,

Alexandra Ward.

The bad news was in public print: comments in both newspapers delivered to my door (one sporting, one ordinary) about the disloyalty of owners who shed their hardworking trainers. One said:

Particularly hard on Jody Leeds that after all he had done for Mr Scott the owner should see fit to announce he would be sending his horses elsewhere. As we headlined in this column a year ago, Jody Leeds took on the extensive Berksdown Court Stables especially to house the expanding Scott string. Now without as much as half an hour’s warning, the twenty-eight-year-old trainer is left flat, with all his new liabilities still outstanding. Treachery may sound a harsh word. Ingratitude is not.

And the other, in more tabloid vein:

Leeds (28) smarting from the sack delivered by ungrateful owner Steven Scott (35) said at Sandown on Saturday, ‘I am right in the cart now. Scott dumped me while still collecting back-slaps for the win on his hurdler Energise, which I trained. I am sick at heart. You sweat your guts out for an owner, and he kicks you in the teeth.’

High time trainers were protected from this sort of thing. Rumour has it Leeds may sue.

All those Press note books, all those extended Press ears, had not been there for nothing. Very probably they did all genuinely believe that Jody had had a raw deal, but not one single one had bothered to ask what the view looked like from where I stood. Not one single one seemed to think that there might have been an overpowering reason for my action.

I disgustedly put down both papers, finished my breakfast and settled down to the day’s work, which as usual consisted mostly of sitting still in an armchair and staring vacantly into space.

Around mid-afternoon, stiff and chilly, I wrote to Miss Ward.

Dear Miss Ward,

Thank you very much for the fiver. Will you have dinner with me? No strings attached. I enclose five pounds for the cab fare home.

Yours sincerely,

Steven Scott.

In the evening I telephoned three different racehorse trainers and offered them three horses each. They all accepted, but with the reservations blowing cool in their voices. None actually asked why I had split with Jody though all had obviously read the papers.

One, a blunt north countryman, said, ‘I’ll want a guarantee you’ll leave them with me for at least six months, so long as they don’t go lame or something.’

‘All right.’

‘In writing.’

‘If you like.’

‘Ay, I do like. You send’ em up with a guarantee and I’ll take’ em.’

For Energise I picked a large yard in Sussex where hurdlers did especially well, and under the guarded tones of the trainer Rupert Ramsey I could hear that he thought almost as much of the horse as I did.

For the last three I chose Newmarket, a middle-sized stable of average achievement. No single basket would ever again contain all the Scott eggs.

Finally with a grimace I picked up the receiver and dialled Jody’s familiar number. It was not he who answered, however, but Felicity, his wife.

Her voice was sharp and bitter. ‘What do you want?’

I pictured her in their luxuriously furnished drawing-room, a thin positive blonde girl, every bit as competent and hard-working as Jody. She would be wearing tight blue jeans and an expensive shirt, there would be six gold bracelets jingling on her