John Creasey - Gideon’s Sport

That was June 4th; the day when Lemaitre went on board the Queen Elizabeth II in New York and after a word with the Purser and the Master-at-Arms, went along to the Chief Steward, who had the four smoking-room stewards ready for questioning; two of them resentful, for they were anxious to go ashore.

And it was the day when the tall gangling man who worked for Archibald Smith wormed his way through the shrubbery and built a little ‘blind’ through which he could see the whole of the court. He had brought cold tea, sandwiches, fruit and chocolate and, being an intelligent man although he looked such a fool, he also had a spray of insect repellent. Not least, he had also taken along with him a miniature camera.

It was the day when, at The Towers, Lou Willison spoke to Barnaby. They were in the old kitchen of the house, where showers had been installed and all the gear was stored. The room was high-ceilinged and gloomy, but dry. There was a view of the gardens and the thick shrubbery, and of the path which led to the hidden tennis court.

“Can you restrain yourself, Barnaby?” Willison asked.

“I surely can, Mr. Willison.”

“When you’re out there on the courts it will be a great temptation to blast off with the service, the first chance you get.”

“I know it, but you don’t have to worry.” Barnaby looked at his sponsor with an understanding smile. “I won’t do that, Mr. Willison. I can get through the early rounds without it, sir. I’m sure I can. I’ll use it only if I’m in trouble, but

I don’t expect to be in trouble until we get to the last sixteen.

“Barnaby.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can be over-confident.”

“I know it, sir, but you don’t have any cause to worry. Mr. Willison. If I get myself in trouble that early, I don’t deserve to reach the final this year, sir. I won’t be ready for it.”

Willison’s bright eyes blazed.

“Good God, man! This is your year, it has to be your year! Don’t you realise how much —”

He stopped abruptly, because the puzzled expression in Barnaby’s eyes reminded him of something it was easy to forget. He had never told Barnaby how vital victory had become to him. It was not that he didn’t trust Barnaby, and he had earmarked ten per cent of any winnings for the young negro; but he was far from sure that Barnaby could carry the weight of such a responsibility. It was enough, might even be too much, that he had to carry the weight of his own ambition and the pride of his own race. Until now, Willison had understood these things perfectly and had rationalised himself into acceptance of them. But since so much had come to depend on it, Barnaby’s winning had become an obsession. Thank God he could be objective enough to realise that to place such an additional burden onto Barnaby’s shoulders would have been unforgivable. He wanted to help the lad to restrain himself; that was of vital importance to them both.

Barnaby, finding that Willison simply stopped speaking, spoke very quietly and obviously without the slightest suspicion of the truth.

“I understand the effort needed, sir, and know how much money you have spent on me. I won’t fail you, Mr. Willison — you can be sure of that.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” Willison said huskily. And clapping Barnaby on the shoulder, he went on: “Let’s see how you’re doing today.”

“Jeeze!” gasped Sydney Sidey, from the security of the ‘blind’-

“My gawd!” he gasped.

“Strewth,” he wheezed, realising that he was talking too loudly.

“It ain’t bloody well possible!” he muttered.

He put the camera to his eye, but only a cine-camera could possibly show the impact of Barnaby Rudge’s sensational service, and the whirring would be too noticeable. He clicked, clicked and clicked again, to take different angles of the action, refilled his camera and took yet more. The only sound except the soft clicking was the padding of rubber-soled feet on the court, the curiously menacing whang! each time Barnaby hit the ball, the sharp p’ttz! sound as the ball struck the court, and a metallic rattle as it volleyed against the tall wire fence.

After a while, the practice stopped.

“I never would have believed it,” Sydney Sidey told himself. He was sticky with sweat and his eyes seemed likely to pop from his head. “I never would have believed it!”

At last, the car and the motor-scooter crunched away up the drive to the road.

“I know one thing,” Sydney Sidey told himself aloud, emerging warily from his cover, “I’m going to get a lot of dough on him. Even if I have to hock everything I’ve got! I want a couple’ve hundred quid, at least! No one can stand up to him — they haven’t an earthly.”

Then a peculiar thought struck him; in fact, went through him like an electric shock.

How much was this worth to Archie Smith, the mean old bastard? Smith was paying him only a lousy hundred quid, yet if he didn’t know the truth about this darkie, he could be taken for millions!

“I’ve got to be very careful,” Sidey warned himself, as he walked along. “A man’s got to look after Number One.” A little further on, he was seized by another thought. “I wonder what I could squeeze out of old Arthur Filby? That could be worth a lot of finding out!” Then, as he climbed into a small, well-kept, five-year-old Morris 1100, he gave a choking laugh. “Phew!” he gasped. “Wheel What a bloody walking miracle that darkie is! Now that really is a cannonball!” He started the engine. “If I could put a thousand quid at tens, say — more, maybe, but tens at least -that would be ten thou! Blimey-I could retire!” He gave a different, excited little laugh. “I’ll find a way,” he told himself, and tapped the camera in his pocket. “That’s worth a fortune, that is! Every picture tells a story, and all that. Gorblimey, I’m going home!”

That was about the time, too, when a dark-haired man with a deep cleft in his chin and a deep furrow between his brows, was reading a report about the inquest on Charles Blake, whose body had been taken out of the river. The inquest was to be held on the following Tuesday. Police, said the report, were treating the inquiry as a murder investigation and were hopeful of getting results in the near future.

The man gave a laugh that was not unlike Sydney Sidey’s.

Then he went into the head office of Jackie Spratt’s Limited, Commission Agents and Turf Accountants, in the Mile End Road. It was an old, converted warehouse, the ground floor now a remarkable communications centre which received information constantly, from all over the world, and despatched it as widely. Every kind of sporting result was recorded here — Australian football, American baseball, tennis, golf, swimming, cricket; racing — horse, greyhound, dirt-track, go-kart — every kind of result was gathered in and put through computers to get the finest possible assessment, both of form and of bets placed. And before taking bets, the company checked with all of their information so that, as they said, they could take the lowest possible risk while being scrupulously fair to their customers.

The whole building was equipped with closed-circuit television, so that the latest computerised figures were displayed on every screen at the same time. Telephones buzzed and lights flickered, as a dozen men and girls worked at a giant switchboard which occupied the whole of one wall. Each of the operators had earphones, and each had a simplied form of teleprinter, at which they were constantly tapping.

The big, black-haired man with the heavy brows — Charlie Blake’s murderer — went up to the fourth floor in a newly-converted lift which had once been used for moving crates of toys. Up here, it was very quiet. Even when he opened a door and saw two men standing watching a race on television, there was only a murmur of sound. He closed the door and joined them.