The Phar Lap Mystery

by Sophie Masson

  I really like Auntie May now, I’m so glad I have met her. And she seems glad of it too. She even said after dinner that she might consider taking a trip across to Australia to see us once we’re back from America. Dad looked astonished, he knows how much she hates boats and being away from home, and that this was a really big thing for her to say. But he didn’t say that, of course, because she’d have been too embarrassed. He just said we’d be counting on it so she’d needn’t think she could chicken out of it!

  February 24

  On the ship, Pacific Ocean.

  We have been two days at sea, but I haven’t been sick at all this time!

  It must be like Dad says, I got my sea legs on that first bit and now I’ll be fine. The ship is pretty nice. We have a cabin on a lower deck with bunks, it’s a bit cramped but not too bad, and there’s lots of space on the decks and in the dining-rooms and so on. There are about 250 passengers on the ship. Some of them we don’t see at all cos they’re in first class, but there’s a girl my age on our deck, she’s French and she’s called Marie. She’s the first French person I’ve met! Luckily she speaks some English (I don’t speak French at all) so we managed to talk a bit and we get on well. Marie comes from Tahiti, where her parents work for the French government (it’s French territory there) and they’re coming back from a holiday to Australia and New Zealand. The only thing is I can’t tell her exactly why we’re going to San Francisco, Dad said it was better that way, so I’ve just said we are going to visit someone we know (Miss O’Brien). Well I suppose we are, in a way.

  February 28

  Marie is gone now, we docked at Tahiti a few days ago. It was lovely there, with big tall green mountains rising up into a deep blue sky around a green-blue sea that was like a jewel, and white white sand and little huts made of palms right at the port. The people looked amazing too, the girls with long black hair down to their waists and flowery dresses and flowers in their hair, and the men big and strong with hard faces that Dad said looked like they were made of carved, polished wood. We got out because the ship had stopped for a few hours. We bought coconuts and listened to musicians playing lovely music on tiny little guitar-things that Dad said were called ukuleles and watched some ladies dressed in grass skirts and flowery tops doing dances. Then we had to hop back on the ship and on we went.

  It’s a bit boring now because there’s just sea and sea and sea between Tahiti and San Francisco, we’re not stopping anywhere else. The days go slowly. There are some boys on the deck above, but I don’t think they look nice so I can’t be bothered talking to them. And most of the entertainment they have on board is for grown-ups. I walk on the decks with Dad sometimes and watch the sea—we try to spot as many sea-creatures as we can, like dolphins and whales and flying-fish and sharks. You often see sharks following the boat because the staff throw all the food-scraps overboard, and of course the sharks love it! It’s scary to see their fins cutting through the water alongside us. Imagine if anyone fell overboard! But the sea is very calm and hopefully there will be no storms, so no danger—I hope—of any of us ending up in the water!

  I’ve also been reading a lot—there’s quite a good library on the ship and I’ve been borrowing lots of books. My favourite is a book called Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie. It is a book of short stories about the cases of a private detective called Hercule Poirot who is very, very clever and always solves the crimes using his ‘little grey cells’, which means his brain. He doesn’t go hunting around after criminals or wear out shoe leather like Dad does. I told Dad about it and he laughed and said, ‘That Poirot fellow would have been very useful on the Phar Lap mystery, maybe we should have brought him in, what do you think, Sal?’ Honestly, grown-ups can be so silly sometimes!

  March 7

  Hooray! At last we are in San Francisco. We arrived yesterday morning. Because we’d been on the ship for two weeks and I had got used to the motion, once we were down the gangway on solid ground it felt very strange and I almost tripped and fell over. At first we couldn’t see Miss O’Brien and we thought she wasn’t coming, but then after a while Dad spotted her hurrying through the crowd towards us. She looked pink-cheeked and very pretty in a cream coat with a fur collar (it was quite cold) and she kept saying she was really sorry, she had been delayed in the traffic and thought she wouldn’t make it. She was explaining on and on about it, and all the time her cheeks kept getting pinker and her eyes brighter. Meanwhile Dad was saying nothing at all, just as if the cat had got his tongue and I thought, oh no, this is going to be terrible, it’s not going to work out at all, unless I do something about it right away!

  So I clutched at my stomach and groaned and said, ‘Ohh, I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Miss O’Brien stopped gabbling and put an arm around me and said, ‘Oh dear, what’s the matter?’

  Dad stopped acting like a block of wood and said, ‘Let’s get you sitting down, Sal, you’re probably just a bit dizzy.’

  So together they helped me to a bench in the arrivals hall (I was acting as limp as I could).

  Miss O’Brien said gently, ‘How is it now?’

  Dad said, ‘Is that better?’

  I said, ‘Oh, yes, much, I must just have felt dizzy.’

  Dad said, ‘Well, that’s good.’

  Miss O’Brien said, ‘Very good,’ and then she added quietly, ‘It’s so very good to see you.’

  Dad replied, ‘So very good indeed.’ And they looked at each other and smiled, and I knew then that things would be all right between them. And that felt good. Yes, really, actually good. I don’t feel even the least bit jealous of Miss O’Brien any more. Not only is she a really nice woman—and I’d missed her—but Dad is looking so happy, and how can I not feel glad about that?

  We got to Miss O’Brien’s cousin’s house. Miss O’Brien’s cousin is called Mrs Beatrice Riley, she’s around the same age as Miss O’Brien and Australian too, but married to an American. She’s not as pretty as Miss O’Brien, but she’s very nice. Her house is big and elegant and has lots of rooms (Mr Riley is quite rich). And there’re even two maids and a cook! We had a big late breakfast (eggs, bacon, and pancakes) and a bit of a rest. At least I was made to go and have a rest (on account of my supposed tummy-ache!) and Dad and Miss O’Brien and Mrs Riley sat in the sitting-room and talked.

  In the afternoon we went for a long walk. Though it’s on a bay too, with hills all around, San Francisco is very different to Wellington. It’s much bigger for a start (though not, I think, as big as Sydney) and full of all sorts of people from all over the world. The streets are very steep and there are trams (they call them cable cars or streetcars here) running up and down the streets, it feels a bit like a roller-coaster!

  We met Mr Riley (Nat is his name) last night when he came home from the office, he’s really nice too. We got to talking about Phar Lap (Dad has told them about what we’re doing here) and Mr Riley, who’s very interested in racing, was really keen to hear all our stories about Phar Lap. He said that he for one was just itching to see whether the ‘Antipodean Antelope’ was as good as they said. Some of the press reckoned he wouldn’t be. He showed us an article about Phar Lap at Agua Caliente, the Mexican place where he’s going to race, and where he is stabled already. The reporter said in it that Mr Woodcock was training Phar Lap in a very strange sort of way, because he hardly exercised him on the track at all (like the other trainers did with their horses) but made him go for long walks in hills and over sand, as if, the reporter said, ‘he was just a ranch horse and not a racehorse’. It’s not what they’re used to here, and the reporter thinks that will be the undoing of the hopes for Phar Lap. Dad smiled and said that we’d have to wait and see, wouldn’t we?

  March 9

  Yesterday and today we had another look around Frisco, as Mr Riley calls it. We had lunch in Chinatown, in one of the places that was illustrated on that postcard Miss O’Brien had sent me. I had chicken chow mein and it was absolutely delicious!

 
Dad called Mr Davis this evening. He said he got the impression Mr Davis wasn’t as keen on him coming as he had been back in Melbourne. In fact he even tried to put him off (Dad says he’s known to be somewhat tight-fisted and probably wanted to save money), but in the end he agreed to the original plan. So the day after tomorrow we are setting off to Los Angeles and then on to San Diego and Mexico. And the Rileys and Miss O’Brien are coming with us!

  Well, Dad had been saying that he was a bit worried that I’d be bored while he went around asking questions, and I had a big fright when he went on to say that maybe I should stay in Frisco with the others. I was about to protest loudly when Mr Riley drawled that they’d actually rather thought of coming south with us instead. He and Mrs Riley are most keen to see ‘the Antelope’s’ first race on American soil.

  ‘And I’d like to come too,’ said Miss O’Brien softly. She and Dad looked at each other and I felt a funny (peculiar but also haha and cheerful) tingle running up my spine.

  Then Mr Riley said heartily, ‘No need to bother with the train,’ (which is what we had originally planned to do). ‘We’ll take my car and drive there together. What do you say, Charlie?’

  Well, what could Dad say? Not that he wanted to refuse anyway, you could see he had not really wanted to leave so soon, just when things were patching up well between him and Miss O’Brien. He just smiled and said that would do very nicely indeed. Then Mr Riley got out the road maps and they began plotting our journey—it will take us two days, because it’s 600 miles away. So that’s that!

  I’m really pleased they’re coming with us—but I’m even more excited at the thought of seeing Phar Lap again and being there at his first big overseas race!

  Dad says I shouldn’t get my hopes up too much, foreign horses have tried to win this race before and haven’t succeeded. And the conditions are very different here, so he may be put off his stride. But I can’t help hoping, with all my heart, that he’ll show them all! He’ll show them he is the greatest horse in the whole wide world!

  March 14

  After a long journey, we’ve arrived at last in Agua Caliente, just outside Tijuana in Mexico. Agua caliente means ‘hot water’ in Spanish, it’s called that because there’s a hot water spring there, and people have come here for their health for ages. But today it’s much grander than just a spa. There’s a big resort hotel, a casino, a golf course, and the famous hippodrome (or racetrack), which has a carpeted grandstand that can hold 5,000 people! There’s racing here six days in every week, famous singers and actors performing in the casino theatre, flash cars parked everywhere, and even light planes (some of these people are very rich!). And the crowds! There are the rich and the famous—including film stars apparently, though I haven’t seen any I recognise yet—and then there are the other sort, the seedy and unsavoury and dangerous-looking, anything from bookies’ touts keeping an eye out for inside information on horses (especially Phar Lap!) to a whole ‘jungle-fauna’, as Dad calls them, of (mostly American) hoods and toughs and crooks and gangsters in soft hats and sharp suits and stony eyes, just like in the movies.

  Dad says that’s because Agua Caliente and Tijuana live mostly on gambling. There’s a law called Prohibition which has made all gambling (and the drinking of alcohol) illegal in the United States, but there’s no such law in Mexico. So thousands of Californians and other Americans flood across the border every day to do both things legally, bringing rivers of money with them. Dad says that there are always at least some crooks and gangsters involved in gambling, that goes without saying, but in the US it is completely controlled by criminals now. And their tentacles reach out into those towns just over the border too, so that the whole place has become a crooks’ paradise.

  In Tijuana, which is rougher than Agua Caliente but which makes its money in the same way, there are lots and lots of gambling places and bars and saloons and cabarets and hotels. It is like something out of the Wild West. I overheard Dad saying to the others that this is very dicey place for Phar Lap to be in. Gambling is big big money for the criminals here, and Mr Davis is taking a big risk putting such a valuable horse in a place where gangsters may feel they’ve got everything sewn up. They might not take kindly to outsiders muscling in. ‘But then,’ he said, ‘Mr Davis is a gambler by nature. And I suppose he knows what he’s doing.’

  We haven’t seen Bobby yet. He’s staying in stables at the racetrack, but we will see him tomorrow (you have to make an appointment, they don’t let people in without vetting them!). Dad saw Mr Davis briefly today, he seemed cheerful and said so far everything was going well, they’d had no problems. Dad also found out why Mr Davis had been reluctant for him to come: the Agua Caliente Jockey Club have really put on a lot of security for Phar Lap. Not only do Mr Woodcock, the jockey Mr Elliott, apprentice Mr Martin and vet Dr Nielsen all watch over him (as well as extra stable staff watching around the clock), but there are also two big burly Mexican guards, bristling with weapons, who follow him wherever he goes. They prevent any strangers from coming close to him and stand guard at night. So Mr Davis thinks Dad’s a bit surplus to requirements, as the Americans say. But Mrs Davis doesn’t agree. So he’s still on the case.

  March 15

  We went to the stables and saw Phar Lap! He was as beautiful as ever. But he’s recovering from a bad crack in the hoof which has only just been fixed (they had to cut away the cracked bit and make him a special shoe which would fit over the gap). I think he recognised me—he snuffled at me, anyway! Dad says it’s unlikely he remembers me because he’s met so many people, but Miss O’Brien says she’s heard horses have very good memories. I think she’s right. And I think that as Phar Lap is the cleverest of horses, he’s probably got the best memory too!

  The Rileys and Miss O’Brien were very impressed with Phar Lap—it was the first time they’d seen him in the flesh. But poor Mr Woodcock looks nervous and very tired. He told us he’s not getting much more than three hours’ sleep every night, because he’s so jittery about Bobby’s safety. And during the day he works very hard training the horse, away from prying eyes—no-one is supposed to have a clear idea of just how fast he is, in case they decide to do something to stop him taking part in the race.

  As well as seeing Phar Lap and Mr Woodcock again, we met the jockey, Billy Elliott, and the vet, Dr Nielsen. They both seem nice. There was also an Australian reporter there, called Bert Wolfe. Dad says he is a famous sports journalist who writes for the Melbourne Herald. He travelled over with Phar Lap from Australia, and Dad and he had a long chat about things. Mr Wolfe says that he’s seen some dreadful-looking toughs hanging around—not just your ordinary crooks, but killers—and he told Dad that Jimmy Smith, the blacksmith who made Phar Lap’s special shoe, warned Mr Woodcock to make sure he kept an eye on the horse’s feed and water all the time, because he’d heard there was a gang of horse-dopers in town who might try to drug Phar Lap. Even with the armed guards—who look pretty fearsome!—poor Mr Woodcock fears for Bobby and worries what gangsters might do to him if they take it into their heads that he shouldn’t be allowed to race. No wonder he looks like a cat on a hot tin roof!

  Mr Wolfe says that it’s certain some of the racing racketeers here wouldn’t think twice about taking a life, animal or human. Bobby’s only real protection is that people here aren’t sure of him yet. In fact, many of the gamblers here don’t think that an outsider without an American reputation can possibly win this race, so they’ve backed other horses heavily. Mr Wolfe said it was a relief in a way when Phar Lap cracked his hoof, because the toughs saw him limping and probably thought it would mean he’d be unfit to race. So he’d be safe from them while they thought that.

  Poor Mr Woodcock! Dad says that if Mr Woodcock had known what sort of a place this is earlier he would surely have tried to persuade Mr Telford not to let to Phar Lap come here. It was bad enough contending with the crooks of the Australian racetrack, but this is altogether different. He must wish they were safely back home. But then, like Dad s
ays, they weren’t actually safe back there either, were they?

  March 17

  Three days to go till Phar Lap races. Dad’s been keeping an eye out at the racetrack and asking questions, and Mr Riley’s been going around with him. But Mrs Riley and Miss O’Brien and I have been doing a whole lot of other things. We’ve been going on drives, we’ve had picnics in the desert (it’s quite nice sunny weather here in the mornings, though it does cool down in the afternoons), we’ve watched a couple of races, we’ve been writing postcards (I sent one to Lizzie and one to Mrs Bellini), we’ve window-shopped and people-watched. We’ve been playing a game where you get points for spotting famous people. So far we’ve spotted racing-car drivers and tennis players and millionaires and actors and singers and film stars—Miss O’Brien spotted Jean Harlow yesterday! At least we think it was her. She was with a whole lot of other people and went past us very quickly, so we couldn’t be absolutely sure. Today I saw someone who I thought looked just like Jimmy Cagney in Public Enemy, but Miss O’Brien thought he looked more like the real thing than a pretend gangster, and that I shouldn’t stare at him. I overheard Dad saying later (after Miss O’Brien told him) that it sounded rather like a fellow Mr Wolfe had told him about, a gangster known only as ‘The Brazilian’.