“With all his troubles,” grinned Ellery, “I fancy he won’t take kindly to this quest for Racing in Five Easy Lessons.”

  “Meeting a full-grown man who knows nothing about racing may give the old gentleman a laugh. Lord knows he needs one.”

  A Mexican cook directed them to Scott’s private track, and they found him leaning his weight upon a sagging rail, his small buried eyes puckered on a cloud of dust eddying along the track at the far turn. His thick fingers clutched a stopwatch.

  A man in high-heeled boots sat on the rail two yards away, a shotgun in his lap pointing carelessly at the head of a too well-dressed gentleman with a foreign air who was talking to the back of Scott’s shaggy head. The well-dressed man sat in a glistening roadster beside a hard-faced chauffeur.

  “You got my proposition, John?” said the well-dressed man, with a toothy smile. “You got it?”

  “Get the hell off my ranch, Santelli,” said John Scott, without turning his head.

  “Sure,” said Santelli, still smiling. “You think my proposition over, hey, or maybe somethin’ happen to your nag, hey?”

  They saw the old man quiver, but he did not turn; and Santelli nodded curtly to his driver. The big roadster roared away.

  The dust cloud on the track rolled towards them and they saw a small, taut figure in sweater and cap perched atop a gigantic stallion, black-coated and lustrous with sweat. The horse was bounding along like a huge cat, his neck arched. He thundered magnificently by.

  “Two-o-two and four-fifths,” they heard Scott mutter to his stopwatch. “Vulcan’s Forge’s ten-furlong time for the Handicap in ’49. Not bad … Whitey!” he bellowed to the jockey, who had pulled the black stallion up. “Rub him down good!”

  The jockey grinned and pranced Danger towards the adjacent stables.

  The man with the shotgun drawled: “You got more company, John.”

  The old man whirled, frowning deeply; his craggy face broke into a thousand wrinkles and he engulfed Paula’s slim hand in his two paws. “Paula! It’s fine to see ye. Who’s this?” he demanded, fastening his cold keen eyes on Ellery.

  “Mr. Ellery Queen. But how is Katie? And Danger?”

  “You saw him.” Scott gazed after the dancing horse. “Fit as a fiddle. He’ll carry the handicap weight of a hundred twenty pounds Saturday an’ never feel it. Did it just now with the leads on him. Paula, did ye see that murderin’ scalawag?”

  “The fashion plate who just drove away?”

  “That was Santelli, and ye heard what he said might happen to Danger.” The old man stared bitterly down the road.

  “Santelli!” Paula’s serene face was shocked.

  “Bill, go look after the stallion.” The man with the shotgun slipped off the rail and waddled towards the stable. “Just made me an offer for my stable. Hell, the dirty thievin’ bookie owns the biggest stable west o’ the Rockies—what’s he want with my picayune outfit?”

  “He owns Broomstick, the Handicap favorite, doesn’t he?” asked Paula quietly. “And Danger is figured strongly in the running, isn’t he?”

  “Quoted five to one now, but track odds’ll shorten his price. Broomstick’s two to five,” growled Scott.

  “It’s very simple, then. By buying your horse, Santelli can control the race, owning the two best horses.”

  “Lassie, lassie,” sighed Scott. “I’m an old mon, an’ I know these thieves. Handicap purse is $100,000. And Santelli just offered me $100,000 for my stable!” Paula whistled. “It don’t wash. My whole shebang ain’t worth it. Danger’s no cinch to win. Is Santelli buyin’ up all the other horses in the race, too?—the big outfits? I tell ye it’s somethin’ else, and it’s rotten.” Then he shook his heavy shoulders straight. “But here I am gabbin’ about my troubles. What brings ye out here, lassie?”

  “Mr. Queen here, who’s a—well, a friend of mine,” said Paula, coloring, “has to think up a horse-racing plot for a movie, and I thought you could help him. He doesn’t know a thing about racing.”

  Scott stared at Mr. Queen, who coughed apologetically. “Well, sir, I don’t know but that ye’re not a lucky mon. Ye’re welcome to the run o’ the place. Go over an’ talk to Whitey; he knows the racket backwards. I’ll be with ye in a few minutes.”

  The old man lumbered off, and Paula and Ellery sauntered towards the stables.

  “Who is this ogre Santelli?” asked Ellery with a frown.

  “A gambler and bookmaker with a national hook-up.” Paula shivered a little. “Poor John. I don’t like it, Ellery.”

  They turned a corner of the big stable and almost bumped into a young man and a young woman in the lee of the wall, clutching each other desperately and kissing as if they were about to be torn apart for eternity.

  “Pardon us,” said Paula, pulling Ellery back.

  The young lady, her eyes crystal with tears, blinked at her. “Is—is that Paula Paris?” she sniffled.

  “The same, Kathryn,” smiled Paula, “Mr. Queen, Miss Scott. What on earth’s the matter?”

  “Everything,” cried Miss Scott tragically. “Oh, Paula, we’re in the most awful trouble!”

  Her amorous companion backed bashfully off. He was a slender young man clad in grimy, odoriferous overalls. He wore spectacles floury with the chaff of oats, and there was a grease smudge on one emotional nostril.

  “Miss Paris—Mr. Queen. This is Hank Halliday, my—boy friend,” sobbed Kathryn.

  “I see the whole plot,” said Paula sympathetically. “Papa doesn’t approve of Katie’s taking up with a stablehand, the snob! and it’s tragedy all around.”

  “Hank isn’t a stablehand,” cried Kathryn, dashing the tears from her cheeks, which were rosy with indignation. “He’s a college graduate who—”

  “Kate,” said the odoriferous young man with dignity, “let me explain, please. Miss Paris, I have a character deficiency. I am a physical coward.”

  “Heavens, so am I!” said Paula.

  “But a man, you see … I am particularly afraid of animals. Horses, specifically.” Mr Halliday shuddered. “I took this—this filthy job to conquer my unreasonable fear.” Mr. Halliday’s sensitive chin hardened. “I have not yet conquered it, but when I do I shall find myself a real job. And then,” he said firmly, embracing Miss Scott’s trembling shoulders, “I shall marry Kathryn, Papa or no Papa.”

  “Oh, I hate him for being so mean!” sobbed Katie.

  “And I—” began Mr. Halliday somberly.

  “Hankus-Pankus!” yelled a voice from the stable. “What the hell you paid for, anyway? Come clean up this mess before I slough you one!”

  “Yes, Mr. Williams,” said Hankus-Pankus hastily, and he hurried away with an apologetic half-bow. His lady love ran sobbing off towards the ranch house.

  Mr. Queen and Miss Paris regarded each other. Then Mr. Queen said: “I’m getting a plot, b’gosh, but it’s the wrong one.”

  “Poor kids,” sighed Paula. “Well, talk to Whitey Williams and see if the divine spark ignites.”

  During the next several days Mr. Queen ambled about the Scott ranch, talking to Jockey Williams, to the bespectacled Mr. Halliday—who, he discovered, knew as little about racing as he and cared even less—to a continuously tearful Kathryn, to the guard named Bill—who slept in the stable near Danger with one hand on his shotgun—and to old John himself. He learned much about jockeys, touts, racing procedure, gear, handicaps, purses, forfeits, stewards, the ways of bookmakers, famous races and horses and owners and tracks; but the divine spark perversely refused to ignite.

  So, on Friday at dusk, when he found himself unaccountably ignored at the Scott ranch, he glumly drove up into the Hollywood hills for a laving in the waters of Gilead.

  He found Paula in her garden soothing two anguished young people. Katie Scott was still weeping and Mr. Halliday, the self-confessed craven, for once dressed in an odorless garment, was awkwardly pawing her golden hair.

  “More tragedy?” said Mr. Queen. “I should have known. I’ve just come from your father’s ranch, and there’s a pall over it.”

  “Well, there should be!” cried Kathryn. “I told my father where he gets off. Treating Hank that way! I’ll never speak to him as long as I live! He’s—he’s unnatural!”

  “Now, Katie,” said Mr. Halliday reprovingly, “that’s no way to speak of your own father.”

  “Hank Halliday, if you had one spark of manhood—!”

  Mr. Halliday stiffened as if his beloved had jabbed him with the end of a live wire.

  “I didn’t mean that, Hankus,” sobbed Kathryn, throwing herself into his arms. “I know you can’t help being a coward. But when he knocked you down and you didn’t even—”

  Mr. Halliday worked the left side of his jaw thoughtfully. “You know, Mr. Queen, something happened to me when Mr. Scott struck me. For an instant I felt a strange—er—lust. I really believe if I’d had a revolver—and if I knew how to handle one—I might easily have committed murder then. I saw—I believe that’s the phrase—red.”

  “Hank!” cried Katie in horror.

  Hank sighed, the homicidal light dying out of his faded blue eyes.

  “Old John,” explained Paula, winking at Ellery, “found these two cuddling again in the stable, and I suppose he thought it was setting a bad example for Danger, whose mind should be on the race tomorrow; so he fired Hank, and Katie blew up and told John off, and she’s left his home forever.”

  “To discharge me is his privilege,” said Mr. Halliday coldly, “but now I owe him no loyalty whatever. I shall not bet on Danger to win the Handicap!”

  “I hope the big brute loses,” sobbed Katie.

  “Now, Kate,” said Paula firmly, “I’ve heard enough of this nonsense. I’m going to speak to you like a Dutch aunt.”

  Katie sobbed on.

  “Mr. Halliday,” said Mr. Queen formally, “I believe this is our cue to seek a slight libation.”

  “Kathryn!”

  “Hank!”

  Mr. Queen and Miss Paris tore the lovers apart.

  It was a little after ten o’clock when Miss Scott, no longer weeping but facially still tear-ravaged, crept out of Miss Paris’s white frame house and got into her dusty little car.

  As she turned her key in the ignition lock and stepped on the starter, a harsh bass voice from the shadows of the back seat said: “Don’t yell. Don’t make a sound. Turn your car around and keep going till I tell you to stop.”

  “Eek!” screeched Miss Scott.

  A big leathery hand clamped over her trembling mouth.

  After a few moments the car moved away.

  Mr. Queen called for Miss Paris the next day and they settled down to a snail’s pace, heading for Arcadia eastward, near which lay the beautiful Santa Anita race course.

  “What happened to Lachrymose Katie last night?” demanded Mr. Queen.

  “Oh, I got her to go back to the ranch. She left me a little after ten, a very miserable little girl. What did you do with Hankus-Pankus?”

  “I oiled him thoroughly and then took him home. He’d hired a room in a Hollywood boardinghouse. He cried on my shoulder all the way. It seems old John also kicked him in the seat of his pants, and he’s been brooding murderously over it.”

  “Poor Hankus. The only honest male I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m afraid of horses, too,” said Mr. Queen hurriedly.

  “Oh, you! You’re detestable. You haven’t kissed me once today.”

  Only the cooling balm of Miss Paris’s lips, applied at various points along U.S. Route 66, kept Mr. Queen’s temper from boiling over. The roads were sluggish with traffic. At the track it was even worse. It seemed as though every last soul in Southern California had converged upon Santa Anita at once, in every manner of conveyance, from the dusty Model T’s of dirt farmers to the shiny metal monsters of the movie stars. The magnificent stands seethed with noisy thousands, a wriggling mosaic of color and movement. The sky was blue, the sun warm, zephyrs blew, and the track was fast. A race was being run, and the sleek animals were small and fleet and sharply focused in the clear light.

  “What a marvelous day for the Handicap!” cried Paula, dragging Ellery along. “Oh, there’s Bing, and Dean Martin, and Bob Hope!… Hello!… And Joan and Clark and …”

  Despite Miss Paris’s overenthusiastic trail-breaking, Mr. Queen arrived at the track stalls in one piece. They found old John Scott watching with the intentness of a Red Indian as a stablehand kneaded Danger’s velvety forelegs. There was a stony set to Scott’s gnarled face that made Paula cry: “John! Is anything wrong with Danger?”

  “Danger’s all right,” said the old man curtly. “It’s Kate. We had a blow-up over that Halliday boy an’ she ran out on me.”

  “Nonsense, John. I sent her back home last night myself.”

  “She was at your place? She didn’t come home.”

  “She didn’t?” Paula’s little nose wrinkled.

  “I guess,” growled Scott, “she’s run off with that Halliday coward. He’s not a mon, the lily-livered—”

  “We can’t all be heroes, John. He’s a good boy, and he loves Katie.”

  The old man stared stubbornly at his stallion, and after a moment they left and made their way towards their box.

  “Funny,” said Paula in a scared voice. “She couldn’t have run off with Hank; he was with you. And I’d swear she meant to go back to the ranch last night.”

  “Now, Paula,” said Mr. Queen gently. “She’s all right.” But his eyes were thoughtful and a little perturbed.

  Their box was not far from the paddock. During the preliminary races, Paula kept searching the sea of faces with her binoculars.

  “Well, well,” said Mr. Queen suddenly, and Paula became conscious of a rolling thunder from the stands about them.

  “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  “Broomstick, the favorite, has been scratched,” said Mr. Queen dryly.

  “Broomstick? Santelli’s horse?” Paula stared at him, paling. “But why? Ellery, there’s something in this—”

  “It seems he’s pulled a tendon and can’t run.”

  “Do you think,” whispered Paula, “that Santelli had anything to do with Katie’s … not getting … home?”

  “Possible,” muttered Ellery. “But I can’t seem to fit the blinking thing—”

  “Here they come!”

  The shout shook the stands. A line of regal animals began to emerge from the paddock. Paula and Ellery rose with the other restless thousands, and craned. The Handicap contestants were parading to the post!

  There was High Tor, who had gone lame in the stretch at the Derby two years before and had not run a race since. This was to be his comeback; the insiders held him in a contempt which the public apparently shared, for he was quoted at 50 to 1. There was little Fighting Billy. There was Equator, prancing sedately along with Buzz Hickey up. There was Danger! Glossy black, gigantic, imperial, Danger was nervous. Whitey Williams was having a difficult time controlling him and a stablehand was struggling at his bit.

  Old John Scott, his big shapeless body unmistakable even at this distance, lumbered from the paddock towards his dancing stallion, apparently to soothe him.

  Paula gasped. Ellery said quickly: “What is it?”

  “There’s Hank Halliday in the crowd. Up there! Right above the spot where Danger’s passing. About fifty feet from John Scott. And Kathryn’s not with him!”

  Ellery took the glasses from her and located Halliday.

  Paula sank into her chair. “Ellery, I’ve the queerest feeling. There’s something wrong. See how pale he is.…”

  The powerful glasses brought Halliday to within a few inches of Ellery’s eyes. The boy’s glasses were steamed over; he was shaking, as if he had a chill; and yet Ellery could see the globules of perspiration on his cheeks.

  And then Mr. Queen stiffened very abruptly.

  John Scott had just reached the head of Danger; his thick arm was coming up to pull the stallion’s head down. And in that instant Mr. Hankus-Pankus Halliday fumbled in his clothes; and in the next his hand appeared clasping a snub-nosed automatic. Mr. Queen very nearly cried out. For, the short barrel wavering, the automatic in Mr. Halliday’s trembling hands pointed in the general direction of John Scott, there was an explosion, and a puff of smoke blew out of the muzzle.

  Miss Paris leaped to her feet, and Miss Paris did cry out.

  “Why, the crazy young fool!” said Mr. Queen dazedly.

  Frightened by the shot, which had gone wild, Danger reared. The other horses began to kick and dance. In a moment the place below boiled with panic-stricken thoroughbreds. Scott, clinging to Danger’s head, half-turned in an immense astonishment and looked inquiringly upwards. Whitey struggled desperately to control the frantic stallion.

  And then Mr. Halliday shot again. And again. And a fourth time. And at some instant, in the spaces between those shots, the rearing horse got between John Scott and the automatic in Mr. Halliday’s shaking hand.

  Danger’s four feet left the turf. Then, whinnying in agony, flanks heaving, he toppled over on his side.

  “Oh, gosh; oh, gosh,” said Paula biting her handkerchief.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Mr. Queen, and he plunged for the spot.

  By the time they reached the place where Mr. Halliday had fearfully discharged his automatic, the bespectacled youth had disappeared. The people who had stood about him were still too stunned to move. Elsewhere, the stands were in pandemonium.

  In the confusion, Ellery and Paula managed to slip through the inadequate track-police cordon hastily thrown about the fallen Danger and his milling rivals. They found old John on his knees beside the black stallion, his big hands steadily stroking the glossy, veined neck. Whitey, pale and bewildered-looking, had stripped off the tiny saddle, and the track veterinary was examining a bullet wound in Danger’s side, near the shoulder. A group of track officials conferred excitedly nearby.

  “He saved my life,” said old John in a low voice to no one in particular. “He saved my life.”

  The veterinary looked up. “Sorry, Mr. Scott,” he said grimly. “Danger won’t run this race.”

  “No. I suppose not.” Scott licked his leathery lips. “Is it—mon, is it serious?”