"Here it is," he said. "I'm keeping the little bit of paper that was in
the pocket."

The other's pupils contracted.

"What paper's that?"

"The prescription of the dope mixture you handed in to Burgess and
Williams, the Brighton chemists, yesterday morning. They put their stamp
on it and the date. I've just come back from a chat with them."

The fat man watched the other as a rabbit watches a weasel.

"Are you going to peach?" he said.

"I'll tell you after the National," replied the other.

Joses dropped his voice into his boots.

"Make it a monkey and I'll quit," he muttered. "She's worth it," he
added cunningly.

Silver looked at him.

The tout came a sudden step closer.

"I _know_," he whispered.

BOOK VI

MOCASSIN

CHAPTER XLV

Aintree

The Grand National is always the great event of the chasing year. This
year it was something more. As the American Ambassador in England,
speaking at the Pilgrim's Club a week before the race, said, it was an
international affair fraught with possibilities for two great peoples,
one in blood and tongue and history, whom an unhappy accident had parted
for a moment in the past.

The mare indeed was a magnet. At the time that England is loud with the
voice of lambs, and the arabis in Sussex gardens begins to attract the
bees, she was drawing men to her from all the ends of the earth.

They came hurrying across the seas in their thousands to see the Hope of
the Young Countries triumphant, and above all to compel fair play for
their champion.

Indeed, there was an undeniable touch of defiance about the attitude of
most of them. Last year the old folks at home--God bless em!--John Bull,
the leariest of frank-spoken rogues!--had done her in.

The mare had won and had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts;
and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers could get away from
them.

On the question of Chukkers and the Bully Boys, as the English cheap
press called them, showed themselves eminently reasonable.

As they said themselves not without grimness, "Gee!--Don't we know
Chukkers?--Didn't we riz him? His father was a Frisco Chink, and his
mother a Mexican half-breed. You can tell us nothing about him we don't
know. We admit it all. Wipe it out. If she'd been ridden by the
straightest feller that ever sat in the pigskin the result'd have been
the same. Are you going to give America best in your big race? Is John
Bull a bleatin'