National Velvet (36 page)

    
“ 'Safety's' a bit strong, Simkin,” said Lord Tunmarsh.

    
“ 'Safely,' m'lord,” said Simkin with obstinate pride. “Weatherby's prides themselves that they make racing safe up to the limits of the usual chances.”

    
Lord Tunmarsh bit a piece of nail off his thumb. Mits Schreiber laughed.

    
“How old are you?” said Lord Tunmarsh suddenly.

    
“Fourteen, sir. Fifteen next month.” This no longer seemed doubtful. Mr. Simkin resumed.

    
“Who has helped you in this?” he said startlingly to Velvet. “We want the names of your friends!”

    
“Mother knew. At the end,” said Velvet.

    
“Your mother knew. That is important. Your mother is Mrs. Brown.”

    
“My mother was Araminty Potter. She swam the Channel once.”

    
“Her mother was Araminty Potter!” said Sir Harry
Hall, whistling. “Swam the Channel breast-stroke twenty years ago. She downstairs?”

    
“No, sir.”

    
“Your father's a . . .”

    
“Butcher, sir. A slaughterer-butcher.”

    
“He knew?”

    
“No, he didn't know. Only afterwards. When I got my fall.”

    
“So Araminty Potter married a butcher and got you?” said Sir Harry Hall. “And you've gone and swindled the almighty Weatherby's and won the Grand National . . .”

    
“Sir Harry,” intervened Mr. Simkin, “I don't think this conduces to her understanding of the situation. Doesn't help. Doesn't help at all. If your father didn't know, Miss Brown (supposing this to be exact), and only your mother knew, then we must look for
other supporters
. I should like to begin with the Esthonian Clearance? How was that got? And who procured it?”

    
Velvet looked at them, halting. Gazed at them. The light filled her face and she seemed to rest and wait. It was not a question of deciding. She and Mi had decided already. Both had known that they would have to pay for The Piebald's fame. In Mi's case he was praying for Velvet's.

    
“Mi's downstairs,” she said at length. “Mi will tell you. We knew he would have to.”

    
“And Mi is . . . ?” said Mr. Simkin, still standing against the windows in silhouette.

    
“Mi is Mi Taylor. He helps my father in the slaughter-house,”
and even to her child's ears it seemed a rummy description of the glory of Mi.

    
“This Mi Taylor . . .” said Mr. Simkin, and stooped to whisper to his neighbour. The neighbour sent a paper round to the Chairman. Lord Tunmarsh nodded.

    
“Will you wait downstairs, Miss Brown?” he said. “We should like to speak to Mr. Taylor.”

    
Velvet disappeared and Mi was before them. His cap in his hand, his hair already rising from the damp comb he had run through it on the stairs (having spat on the comb).

    
“Mi Taylor,” he said, nodding.

    
“Mi . . . ?” said Mr. Simkin, writing.

    
“Michael,” corrected Mi.

    
“And you are Mr. Brown's assistant in the business?”

    
“I landed up there,” said Mi, “to do anything. Clean the slaughter-house, buy sheep, help their ma, and so on. The boy's a handful.”

    
“A boy?”

    
“Just a small one. No account yet.”

    
“Well now, Taylor,” said Mr. Simkin, clearing his throat, “I don't need to tell you that a frivolous and monstrous outrage has been committed. An impertinence and also, I imagine, a legally punishable fraud.”

    
“Yes, sir.”

    
“This fraud has ostensibly been committed by a child, the young lady we have just seen, Miss Velvet Brown. Obviously she could neither have planned it nor carried it through. Without help. Without the direction of another mind. What part did you play in all this,
Taylor? We have got to know and we are going to know and I warn you to make no trouble over speaking the truth.” Mr. Simkin sat down abruptly and gave the table a pencil tap. Everyone looked at Mi.

    
“I knew a boy,” said Mi very simply, and he paused and sucked the hollow beside his tooth. “This boy knew a boy. . . . It was at Lewes races. Well, it was at Brighton races first and then I saw the other boy at Lewes races . . .”

    
“Their names?” said Mr. Simkin, writing.

    
“No,” said Mi. “I ain't going to give you their names. You kin judge Her yourself when I've done. There was a whole trail o' boys. All talkin'. You know what they are, these races. Ain't got nothing to do. Lean up against each other an' jabber. More an' more kept coming in. No good to give you their names, I don't know 'em all. But the upshot was there was someone knew a fellow coming over that had a Clearance from Esthonia. Going to ride a horse that come by air and dropped dead at Croydon. Then he hadn't any horse, see? So I met him. 'Long of these fellows I'm telling you about. They didn't do anything but jabber, so it's no good giving you the names. All they did was to say they knew a fellow had a Clearance and didn't want his Clearance. I oiled up the fellow an' got his Clearance. Didn't want it so I got it. He didn't think any more about it. He's a half-Russian boy's bin riding out there for some Count. He's gone back now. Never thought no more about it. Then I just posted in the Clearance and got a Licence. See?”

    
“And this boy from Esthonia? Where is he now? He is, I suppose, the boy whose name is on the Licence? Tasky?”

    
“That's him. Where's he now? He's in Russia, s'far as I know. He got orders to cut off the hoof o' the dead horse an' take it back to the Count. Fer an inkstand, I daresay. They make them into stands. Told me he was going straight to Esthonia, and then on to Russia where the Count's got a winter job as a sort of a riding master with the Bolsheviks. Tasky and he, they go together most winters, so he said.”

    
“Not much chance,” whispered the Chairman to Colonel Allbrow, “of getting at Tasky. ('Less he ever comes again.) Looks to me as though the only culprit's here, in the room.”

    
“So it seems to me, Taylor,” said Mr. Simkin, “that the whole of this monstrous affair has been engineered by you and by you alone, if we are to believe you?”

    
Mi chuckled. Or the shade of a chuckle brushed him. He flicked it away and answered, “No.”

    
“No, sir,” he said. “There's Velvet. Velvet thought out the thing. It come to her. It come to her like the horse did, out of the sky.”

    
“How did the horse come to her?” asked Captain Little, leaning forward.

    
“Why, she got it fer a shilling in a raffle in the village! There were yards about it in the
Express!”
said Mits.

    
Mr. Simkin frowned.

    
“Is that so, Taylor?” he said sharply.

    
“Yes, sir. You can go down to the village an' see.
Anybody'd tell you. The horse belonged to Farmer Ede an' it made a filthy nuisance of itself, getting over walls and tearing down the village street. Nearly killed a child and nearly had a pushcart over twice. Ede couldn't do anything with it. He stuck it up for a raffle at the village fair in the summer. Didn't do badly: got nine pounds six shillings. Velvet took a ticket and won it. Then things went on an' on and she got moony about the horse, religious. She's a queer child. An' one day . . . when I see it jump a five foot wall by itself an' make away . . . I said . . . just kind of careless . . . just said . . .” (Mi waved his hand.) “ 'Make a Grand National jumper, that would!' Then Velvet never said anything but she never let up on that. She just went on.”

    
“It seems not possible . . .” said Lord Tunmarsh. “I never heard such a tale!”

    
“It's no tale,” said Mi earnestly. “It's just Velvet. I know What's in her blood because my old father . . .” He paused.

    
“Your father?” said Mr. Simkin drily. He did not like the eager, little-boy interest the Committee was taking in the tale.

    
“My father was old Dan Taylor,” said Mi, “an' he was a Channel trainer. He trained Araminty (Velvet's mother) to swim the Channel.
An'
she swum it. Against the tide in a terrible dirty morning in a storm . . .”

    
“I remember!” said Sir Harry Hall. “It was a bigger thing than anything that's bin done since. It was done breast stroke. It seemed incredible.”

    
“Well, then, that's her mother. It's in her blood. If you'd see her mother now you'd never believe it. Great old woman she is, all muscled up an' tight. An' silent. an' plucky's fire still. The father, he's not added nothing. It's the mare that's done it. an' Velvet, fer all she's such a sickly bit, she's like her. She'll sit on a horse like a shadow and breathe her soul into it. An' her hands. . . . She's got little hands like piano wires. I never seen such a creature on a horse.”

    
“What are you by trade, Taylor? A professional rider?”

    
“I can't ride,” said Mi slowly.

    
Sensation in the room.

    
“You can't ride, Taylor?” said the Chairman, after a pause.

    
“Never bin on a horse,” said Mi, and it seemed to come home to him. He looked out of the window at the chimney pots.

    
“What's your history, then?”

    
“I couldn't swim,” said Mi. “An' my old man carried on terrible. I went inland. I couldn't bear the sea. I wouldn't stick the sea down there at the coast now if it wasn't for Velvet. I went up North and I did this an' that. Got in with this lot an' got in with that lot. I was all round the race-courses and the livery stables. Doesn't take me much to live. I walked from here an' there an' landed up at Lewes at the races an' did a job fer Mr. Brown–Velvet's father. He asked me to help fer a day with some sheep in the slaughter-house and
then I saw that Mrs. Brown was my old man's Araminty. So I stayed.”

    
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mr. Simkin, looking more sour than ever, “we've heard the history of how it was done, and on the face of it, and
for the time being
it seems as though this deception
might
have been carried through in this way and by this one man. I say 'might.' We shall have to verify. It remains now of course to decide on our course of action. The man can be proceeded against legally, I should suppose, for attempting to obtain money under false pretences. There is no doubt in my mind that had this fall of the rider's not taken place and had the prize money of
£
7,560 (not to speak of a Cup worth two hundred pounds) been awarded, as it would have been if no objection had been lodged, then this man Taylor stood to gain, either the whole sum (the child being obviously under his influence) or in the case of the family being in the plan then no doubt the money would have been divided. It is not there . . .”

    
“Here!” said Mi. “What are you getting at!”

    
“. . . it is not therefore . . .”

    
“I'm no thief!” said Mi. “The money'd 'a' bin Velvet's. She's the Owner, isn't she? I did no more'n believe in her an' talk to her an' get her the Clearance. She's the little wonder 'at's done it all. It would 'a' bin her money an' I'd 'a' seen that she kep' it. Her mother knew about it. She's no soft chicken. As for the money. . . . Why, we were so busy pulling it off we hadn't begun to think about what Velvet would do with the
money. It was the horse she was thinking of. 'Putting the horse in history' she called it. She'd got that out of somewhere an' she kept thinking it and saying it too, sometimes. She'd think it at her dinner and at her tea. You could see her, with her eyes shining and her stomach heaving too, pretty often. She's got a terrible stomach, and when she gets excited she's an awful vomiter.
Me
the money. What's the use of seven thousand pounds to me?”

    
“Seven thousand pounds, Taylor, is always useful.”

    
“I shouldn't know what to do with it! What'd I do? I don't want to live any better'n I live. It suits me. I don't want to be cluttered up. I wouldn't know the first thing what to do with seven thousand pounds. It would give me the itch. Maybe I'd bury it.”

    
“The whole story,” intervened Lord Tunmarsh, “is so strange that I think we should like to discuss it alone. Will you wait downstairs, Taylor? There seems to be a commotion outside, Allbrow.” The Chairman turned towards the window. “Is it a fire?”

    
Mr. Simkin looked outside into the Square.

    
“Crowds of people,” he said. “Thick on the pavement.”

    
The door was knocked upon and hurriedly opened. A clerk came swiftly in and looked enquiringly at Mr. Simkin. Mr. Simkin pointed to the Chairman. The clerk whispered.