ey wouldn't That young fool must drop all he's
got." We were speaking about a youthful madman who was just then being
plucked to the last feather, and I knew that the old turfite was right.
The Ring is a close body, and I have only known about four men who ever
managed to beat the confederacy in the long run. There is one astute,
taciturn, inscrutable organizer whom the bookmakers dread a little,
because he happens to use their own methods; he will scheme for a year
or two if necessary until he succeeds in placing a horse advantageously,
and he usually brings off his _coup_ just at the time when the Ring
least like it. "They don't yell like that when one of mine rolls home,"
he once said, while the bookmakers were clamouring with delight over the
downfall of a favourite; and indeed this wily master of deceptions has
very often made the pencillers draw long faces. But the case of the Turf
Odysseus is not by any means typical; the man stands almost alone, and
his like will not be seen again for many a day. The rule is that the
backer must come to grief in the long run, for every resource of
chicanery, bribery, and resolute keenness is against him. He is there to
be plundered; it is his mission in life to lose, or how could the
bookmakers maintain their mansions and carriages? It matters little what
the backer's capital may be at starting, he will lose it all if he is
idiot enough to go on to the end, for he is fighting against
unscrupulous legions. One well-known bookmaker coolly announced in 1888
that he had written off three hundred thousand pounds of bad debts.
Consider what a man's genuine business must be like when he can jauntily
allude to three hundred thousands as a bagatelle by the way. That same
man has means of obtaining "information" sufficient to discomfit any
poor gambler who steps into the Ring and expects to beat the bookmakers
by downright above-board dealing. As soon as he begins to lay heavily
against a horse the animal is regarded as doomed to lose by all save the
imbeciles who persist in hoping against hope. In 1889 this betting man
made a dead set at the favourite for the Two Thousand Guineas. The colt
was known to be the best of his year; he was trained in a stable which
has the best of reputations; his exercise was uninterrupted, and mere
amateurs fancied they had only to lay heavy odds _on_ him in order to
put down three pounds and pick up four. Yet the inexorable bookmaker
kept on steadily taking t