High Stakes

by Dick Francis

  All my designs and drawings had been ripped to pieces. All the prototype toys seemed to have been stamped on.

  Tins of oil and grease had been opened, and the contents emptied on to the mess, and the paint I’d used on the census notices was splashed on everything the oil had missed.

  The machines themselves…

  I swallowed. I was never going to make anything else on those machines. Not ever again.

  Not burglars, I thought aridly.

  Spite.

  I felt too stunned to speak and I imagine it was the same with Owen because for an appreciable time we both just stood there, immobile and silent. The mess before us screamed out its message of viciousness and evil, and the intensity of the hate which had committed such havoc made me feel literally sick.

  On feet which seemed disconnected from my legs I took a couple of steps forward.

  There was a flicker of movement on the edge of my vision away behind the half-open door. I spun on my toe with every primeval instinct raising hairs in instant alarm, and what I saw allowed no reassurance whatsoever.

  Ganser Mays stood there, waiting like a hawk. The long nose seemed a sharp beak, and his eyes behind the metal-rimmed spectacles glittered with mania. He was positioning his arms for a scything downward swing, which was the movement I’d seen, and in his hands he held a heavy long-handled axe.

  I leapt sideways a thousandth of a second before the killing edge swept through the place where I’d been standing.

  ‘Get help,’ I shouted breathlessly to Owen. ‘Get out and get help.’

  I had a blurred impression of his strained face, mouth open, eyes huge, dried blood still dark on his cheek. For an instant he didn’t move and I thought he wouldn’t go, but when I next caught a glimpse of the doorway, it was empty.

  Whether or not he’d been actively lying in wait for me, there was no doubt that now that I was there Ganser Mays was trying to do to me what he’d already done to my possessions. I learned a good deal from him in the next few minutes. I learned about mental terror. Learned about extreme physical fear. Learned that it was no fun at all facing unarmed and untrained a man with the will and the weapon for murder.

  What was more, it was my own axe.

  We played an obscene sort of hide and seek round the wrecked machines. It only needed one of the ferocious chops to connect, and I would be without arm or leg if not without life. He slashed whenever he could get near enough, and I hadn’t enough faith in my speed or strength to try to tackle him within slicing range. I dodged always and precariously just out of total disaster, circling the ruined lathe… the milling machine… the hacksaw… back to the lathe… putting the precious bulks of metal between me and death.

  Up and down the room, again and again.

  There was never a rigid line between sense and insanity and maybe by some definitions Ganser Mays was sane. Certainly in all that obsessed destructive fury he was aware enough that I might escape through the door. From the moment I’d first stepped past him into the workshop, he gave me no chance to reach safety that way.

  There were tools scattered on the floor from the torn-down racks, but they were mostly small and in any case not round the machines but on the opposite side of the workshop. I could leave the shelter of the row of machines and cross open space to arm myself… but nothing compared in weight or usefulness with that axe, and chisels and saws and drill bits weren’t worth the danger of exposure.

  If Owen came back with help, maybe I could last out…

  Shortage of breath… I was averagely fit, but no athlete… couldn’t pull in enough oxygen for failing muscles… felt fatal weaknesses slowing my movements… knew I couldn’t afford to slip on the oil or stumble over the bolts mooring the base plates to the floor or leave my hands holding on to anything for more than a second for fear of severed fingers.

  He seemed tireless, both in body and intent. I kept my attention more on the axe than his face, but the fractional views I caught of his fixed, fanatical and curiously rigid expression gave no room for hope that he would stop before he had achieved his object. Trying to reason with him would have been like arguing with an avalanche. I didn’t even try.

  Breath sawed through my throat. Owen… why didn’t he bloody well hurry… if he didn’t hurry he might as well come back tomorrow for all the good it would do me…

  The axe crashed down so close to my shoulder that I shuddered from imagination and began to despair. He was going to kill me. I was going to feel the bite of that heavy steel… to know the agony and see the blood spurt… to be chopped and smashed like everything else.

  I was up at one end, where the electric motor which worked all the machines was located. He was four feet away, swinging, looking merciless and savage. I was shaking, panting and still trying frantically to escape, and it was more to distract him for a precious second than from any devious plan that I took the time to kick the main switch from off to on.

  The engine hummed and activated the main belt, which turned the big wheel near the ceiling and rotated the long shaft down the workshop. All the belts to the machines began slapping as usual, except that this time half of them had been cut right through and the free ends flapped in the air like streamers.

  It took his eye off me for only a blink. I circled the electric motor which was much smaller than the machines and not good cover, and he brought his head back towards me with a snap.

  He saw that I was exposed. A flash of triumph crossed his pale sweating face. He whipped the axe back and high and struck at me with all his strength.

  I jumped sideways in desperation and slipped and fell, and thought as I went down that this was it… this was the end… he would be on me before I could get up.

  I half saw the axe go up again. I lunged out with one foot in a desperate kick at his ankles. Connected. Threw him a fraction off balance. Only a matter of a few inches: and it didn’t affect the weight of his downward swing, but only its direction. Instead of burying itself in me, the blade sank into the main belt driving the machines, and for one fatal moment Ganser Mays hung on to the shaft. Whether he thought I had somehow grasped the axe and was trying to tug it away from him, heaven knows. In any case he gripped tight, and the whirling belt swept him off his feet.

  The belt moved at about ten feet a second. It took one second for Ganser Mays to reach the big wheel above. I dare say he let go of the shaft at about that point, but the wheel caught him and crushed him in the small space between itself and the ceiling.

  He screamed… a short loud cry of extremity, chokingly cut off.

  The wheel inexorably whirled him through and out the other side. It would have taken more than a soft human body to stop a motor which drove machine tools.

  He fell from the high point and thumped sickeningly on to the concrete not far from where I was still scrambling to get up. It had happened at such immense speed that he had been up to the ceiling and down again before I could find my feet.

  The axe had been dislodged and had fallen separately beside him. Near his hand, as if all he had to do was stretch out six inches and he would be back in business.

  But Ganser Mays was never going to be back in business. I stood looking down at him while the engine hummed and the big killing wheel rotated impersonally as usual, and the remaining belts to the machines slapped quietly as they always did.

  There was little blood. His face was white. The spectacles had gone and the eyes were half open. The sharp nose was angled grotesquely sideways. The neck was bent at an impossible angle; and whatever else had broken, that was enough.

  I stood there for a while panting for breath and sweating and trembling from fatigue and the screwed tension of past fear. Then whatever strength I had left drained abruptly away and I sat on the floor beside the electric motor and drooped an arm over it for support like a wilted lily. Beyond thought. Beyond feeling. Just dumbly and excruciatingly exhausted.

  It was at that moment that Owen returned. The help he’d brought wore authentic
navy blue uniform and a real black and white checkered band on his cap. He took a long slow look and summoned reinforcements.

  Hours later, when they had all gone, I went back downstairs to the workshop.

  Upstairs nothing, miraculously, had been touched. Either our return had interrupted the programme before it had got that far, or the workshop had been the only intended target. In any case my first sight of the peaceful sitting-room had been a flooding relief.

  Owen and I had flopped weakly around in armchairs while the routine police work ebbed and flowed, and after lengthy question-and-answer sessions and the departure of the late Mr Mays we had found ourselves finally alone.

  It was already Sunday morning. The sun, with no sense of fitness, was brightly shining. Regent’s Park sparkled with frost and the puddles were glazed with ice.

  ‘Go to bed,’ I said to Owen.

  He shook his head. ‘Think I’ll go home.’

  ‘Come back when you’re ready.’

  He smiled. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘For a spot of sweeping up.’

  When he’d gone I wandered aimlessly about, collecting coffee cups and emptying ashtrays and thinking disconnected thoughts. I felt both too tired and too unsettled for sleep, and it was then that I found myself going back to the devastation in the workshop.

  The spirit of the dead man had gone. The place no longer vibrated with violent hate. In the morning light it looked a cold and sordid shambles, squalid debris of a spent orgy.

  I walked slowly down the room, stirring things with my toe. The work of twenty years lay there in little pieces. Designs torn like confetti. Toys crushed flat. Nothing could be mended or saved.

  I supposed I could get duplicates at least of the design drawings if I tried, because copies were lodged in the patents’ office. But the originals, and all the hand-made prototype toys, were gone for good.

  I came across the remains of the merry-go-round which I had made when I was fifteen. The first Rola; the beginning of everything. I squatted down and stirred the pieces, remembering that distant decisive summer when I’d spent day after day in my uncle’s workshop with ideas gushing like newly-drilled oil out of a brain that was half child, half man.

  I picked up one of the little horses. The blue one, with a white mane and tail. The one I’d made last of the six.

  The golden barley-sugar rod which had connected it to the revolving roof was snapped off jaggedly an inch above the horse’s back. One of the front legs was missing, and one of the ears.

  I turned it over regretfully in my hands and looked disconsolately around at the mess. Poor little toys. Poor beautiful little toys, broken and gone.

  It had cost me a good deal, one way and another, to get Energise back.

  Turn the handle, Charlie had said, and all the little toys would revolve on their spindles and do what they should. But people weren’t toys, and Jody and Macrahinish and Ganser Mays had jumped violently off their spindles and stripped the game out of control.

  If I hadn’t decided to take justice into my own hands I wouldn’t have been kicked or convicted of drunkenness. I would have saved myself the price of Black Fire and a host of other expenses. I wouldn’t have put Owen at risk as a guard, and I wouldn’t have felt responsible for the ruin of Jody and Felicity, the probable return to jail of Macrahinish, and the death of Ganser Mays.

  Pointless to say that I hadn’t meant them so much harm, or that their own violence had brought about their own doom. It was I who had given them the first push.

  Should I have done it?

  Did I wish I hadn’t?

  I straightened to my feet and smiled ruefully at the shambles, and knew that the answer to both questions was no.

  Epilogue

  I gave Energise away.

  Six weeks after his safe return to Rupert’s stable he ran in the Champion Hurdle and I took a party to Cheltenham to cheer him on. A sick tycoon having generously lent his private box, we went in comfort, with lunch before and champagne after and a lot of smiling in between.

  The four newly-registered joint-owners were having a ball and slapping each other on the back with glee: Bert, Allie, Owen and Charlie, as high in good spirits as they’d been at the census.

  Charlie had brought the bridge-playing wife and Bert his fat old mum, and Owen had shyly and unexpectedly produced an unspoiled daughter of sixteen. The oddly mixed party proved a smash-hit success, my four conspirators carrying it along easily on the strength of liking each other a lot.

  While they all went off to place bets and look at the horses in the parade ring, I stayed up in the box. I stayed there most of the afternoon. I had found it impossible, as the weeks passed, to regain my old innocent enthusiasm for racing. There was still a massive movement of support and sympathy for Jody, which I supposed would never change. Letters to sporting papers spoke of sympathy for his misfortunes and disgust for the one who had brought them about. Racing columnists, though reluctantly convinced of his villainy, referred to him still as the ‘unfortunate’ Jody. Quintus, implacably resentful, was ferreting away against me in the Jockey Club and telling everyone it was my fault his son had made ‘misjudgements’. I had asked him how it could possibly be my fault that Jody had made the misjudgement of taking Macrahinish and Ganser Mays for buddy-buddies, and had received no answer.

  I had heard unofficially the results of the autopsy on Black Fire. He had been killed by a massive dose of chloroform injected between the ribs straight into the heart. Quick, painless, and positively the work of a practised hand.

  The veterinary bag found beside the dead horse had contained a large hypodermic syringe with a sufficient length of needle; traces of chloroform inside the syringe and Macrahinish’s fingerprints outside.

  These interesting facts could not be generally broadcast on account of the forthcoming trial, and my high-up police informant had made me promise not to repeat them.

  Jody and Macrahinish were out on bail, and the racing authorities had postponed their own enquiry until the law’s verdict should be known. Jody still technically held his trainer’s licence.

  The people who to my mind had shown most sense had been Jody’s other owners. One by one they had melted apologetically away, reluctant to be had for mugs. They had judged without waiting around for a jury, and Jody had no horses left to train. And that in itself, in many eyes, was a further crying shame to be laid at my door.

  I went out on the balcony of the kind tycoon’s box and stared vacantly over Cheltenham racecourse. Moral victory over Jody was impossible, because too many people still saw him, despite everything, as the poor hardworking little man who had fallen foul of the rich robber baron.

  Charlie came out on the balcony in my wake.

  ‘Steven? What’s the matter? You’re too damned quiet.’

  ‘What we did,’ I said sighing, ‘has changed nothing.’

  ‘Of course it has,’ he said robustly. ‘You’ll see. Public opinion works awful slowly. People don’t like doing about-turns and admitting they were fooled. But you trust your Uncle Charlie, this time next year, when they’ve got over their red faces, a lot of people will quietly be finding you’re one of their best friends.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Quintus,’ he said positively, ‘is doing himself a lot of personal no good just now with the hierarchy. The on dit round the bazaars is that if Quintus can’t see his son is a full-blown criminal he is even thicker than anyone thought. I tell you, the opinion where it matters is one hundred per cent for you, and our little private enterprise is the toast of the cigar circuit.’

  I smiled. ‘You make me feel better even if you do lie in your teeth.’

  ‘As God’s my judge,’ he said, virtuously, and spoiled it by glancing a shade apprehensively skywards.

  ‘I saw Jody,’ I said. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘In the City,’ I nodded. ‘Him and Felicity, coming out of some law offices.’

  ‘What happened?’

&nb
sp; ‘He spat,’ I said.

  ‘How like him.’

  They had both looked pale and worried and had stared at me in disbelief. Jody’s ball of mucus landed at my feet, punctuation mark of how he felt. If I’d known they were likely to be there I would have avoided the district by ten miles, but since we were accidentally face to face I asked him straight out the question I most wanted answered.

  ‘Did you send Ganser Mays to smash my place up?’

  ‘He told him how to make you suffer,’ Felicity said spitefully. ‘Serves you right.’

  She cured in that one sentence the pangs of conscience I’d had about the final results of the Energise shuttle.

  ‘You’re a bloody fool, Jody,’ I said. ‘If you’d dealt straight with me I’d’ve bought you horses to train for the Classics. With your ability, if you’d been honest, you could have gone to the top. Instead, you’ll be warned off for life. It is you, believe me, who is the mug.’

  They had both stared at me sullenly, eyes full of frustrated rage. If either of them should have a chance in the future to do me further bad turns I had no doubt that they would. There was no one as vindictive as the man who’d done you wrong and been found out.

  Charlie said beside me, ‘Which do you think was the boss? Jody or Macrahinish or Ganser Mays?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How does a triumvirate grab you?’

  ‘Equal power?’ He considered. ‘Might well be, I suppose. Just three birds of a feather drawn to each other by natural evil, stirring it in unholy alliance.’

  ‘Are all criminals so full of hate?’

  ‘I dare say. I don’t know all that many. Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I should think,’ Charlie said, ‘that the hate comes first. Some people are just natural haters. Some bully the weak, some become anarchists, some rape women, some steal with maximum mess… and all of them enjoy the idea of the victim’s pain.’

  ‘Then you can’t cure a hater,’ I said.

  ‘With hardliners, not a chance.’