The Path of the Wicked Read Online Free PDF

word and off they go.’
    By then we’d come to a good level stretch, so off we went ourselves into a mile of easy canter. When we reined in at the end of it, Amos didn’t need any urging to go on with the story. I guessed that one of the grooms at the inn last night must have been among the spectators.
    â€˜The bet was for two circuits of the course. First circuit, they were pretty well up together, neither of them wanting to draw ahead too soon. Halfway round the second circuit, one of them pulls ahead; then the other one comes up beside him, spurring and whipping for all he’s worth, and overtakes. By this time most of the other gentlemen are at the finishing post, cheering them on. The other one makes up ground, so a furlong out they’re pretty well neck and neck and it looks as if it’s going to be a dead heat. No more than three strides out, one of them stumbles. Might have been tiredness, sheer bad luck or maybe the whip once too often. He recovers but not quickly enough, so the other one wins clear enough by a length. Of course, there’s a lot of cheering and to-do, and the gentlemen crowd round, congratulating the one who’s won. For a while, nobody gives much thought to the other gentleman. Then somebody spots him on the far side of the course, still going. They all start laughing and hallooing, pretending he’s got it wrong and thinks its three circuits, not two, only they know he hasn’t. After all, in a couple of strides he’s just doubled the debts he can’t pay anyway, so naturally he has to work off his bad temper on himself and his horse before he comes back and takes it like a sportsman.’
    â€˜Only he doesn’t?’
    â€˜Only he doesn’t. A shout goes up. Out in the country he suddenly veers off the course and jumps a hedge into a field, all the world as if he was out hunting. And that’s the last any of them sees of him.’
    â€˜Didn’t they try to follow him?’
    â€˜No. They decide he was in an even worse temper than they supposed and couldn’t face them, and he’d be back in his own good time with his tail between his legs. So they spend the day drinking and celebrating with the one who won, and it’s not until the next morning, when the man’s groom comes to one of the other gentlemen, looking for his master, that they realize he’s properly gone.’
    â€˜Then they start looking for him?’
    Amos nodded. ‘Fairness to them, they made a thorough job of it, riding round the country, checking with all his friends, even the livery stables. Not hide nor hair of him or the horse.’
    â€˜Nobody saw him after he jumped the hedge?’
    â€˜A couple of reapers about half a mile from the racecourse say they saw a man on a horse galloping across a stubble field not long after they started work, but it was in the distance so they couldn’t describe the man or horse, except it wasn’t a grey.’
    â€˜And the man’s horse wasn’t?’
    â€˜No, a bay.’
    â€˜Then it quite possibly was him.’
    â€˜More than likely.’
    â€˜And that’s the last anyone saw of him?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜How long ago was this?’
    â€˜About ten days before the Cheltenham races. Makes it getting on for three weeks ago.’
    By now Cheltenham was in sight in the distance. It’s a pretty spa town, nestled in the hills, like a smaller version of Bath with its fine terraces and squares. In spite of that, my heart sank. This side of the town was Mr Godwit’s village and the start of a probably hopeless case that I’d taken on for the wrong reasons. Also, Amos’s story had depressed me. He hadn’t meant that it should. To him, it was no more than a tale of the turf, where a gentleman’s ruin was as common as a jockey’s broken bones and to be taken with the same stoicism. But the despair of that lone rider had got into my mind and