“Kempton and the boys. You’ll see. He won’t pay two to one.”

“Then we won’t get three thousand lire,” Catherine said. “I don’t like this crooked racing!”

“We’ll get two hundred lire.”

“That’s nothing. That doesn’t do us any good. I thought we were going to get three thousand.”

“It’s crooked and disgusting,” Ferguson said.

“Of course,” said Catherine, “if it hadn’t been crooked we’d never have backed him at all. But I would have liked the three thousand lire.”

“Let’s go down and get a drink and see what they pay,” Crowell said. We went out to where they posted the numbers and the bell rang to pay off and they put up 18.50 after Japalac to win. That meant he paid less than even money on a ten-lira bet.