The big chestnut, in a dogged sort of way, seems to stick his body clear of his opponents, and pa.s.ses the post a winner by a length. The Oracle doesn't know what has won, but fumbles with his book. The number on the saddle-cloth catches his eye--No. 7; he looks hurriedly down the page.

No. 7--Royal Scot. Second is No. 24--Bendemeer. Favourite nowhere.

Hardly has he realised it, before his friends are cheering and clapping him on the back. "By George, Charley, it takes you to pick 'em." "Come and 'ave a wet!" "You 'ad a quid in, didn't you, Charley?" The Oracle feels very sick at having missed the winner, but he dies game. "Yes, rather; I had a quid on," he says. "And" (here he nerves himself to smile) "I had a saver on the second, too."

His comrades gasp with astonishment. "D'you hear that, eh? Charley backed first and second. That's pickin' 'em if you like." They have a wet, and pour fulsome adulation on the Oracle when he collects their money.

After the Oracle has collected the winnings for his friends he meets the Whisperer again.

"It didn't win?" he says to the Whisperer in inquiring tones.

"Didn't win," says the Whisperer, who has determined to brazen the matter out. "How could he win? Did you see the way he was ridden? That horse was stiffened just after I seen you, and he never tried a yard.

Did you see the way he was pulled and hauled about at the turn? It'd make a man sick. What was the stipendiary stewards doing, I wonder?"

This fills the Oracle with a new idea. All that he remembers of the race at the turn was a jumble of colours, a kaleidoscope of horses and of riders hanging on to the horses' necks. But it wouldn't do to admit that he didn't see everything, and didn't know everything; so he plunges in boldly.

"O' course I saw it," he says. "And a blind man could see it. They ought to rub him out."

"Course they ought," says the Whisperer. "But, look here, put two quid on Tell-tale; you'll get it all back!"

The Oracle does put on "two quid", and doesn't get it all back. Neither does he see any more of this race than he did of the last one--in fact, he cheers wildly when the wrong horse is coming in. But when the public begin to hoot he hoots as loudly as anybody--louder if anything; and all the way home in the tram he lays down the law about stiff running, and wants to know what the stipendiaries are doing.

If you go into any barber's shop, you can hear him at it, and he flourishes in suburban railway carriages; but he has a tremendous local reputation, having picked first and second in the handicap, and it would be a bold man who would venture to question the Oracle's knowledge of racing and of all matters relating to it.

THE CAST-IRON CANVa.s.sER

The firm of Sloper and Dodge, publishers and printers, was in great distress. These two enterprising individuals had worked up an enormous business in time-payment books, which they sold all over Australia by means of canva.s.sers. They had put all the money they had into the business; and now, just when everything was in thorough working order, the public had revolted against them.

Their canva.s.sers were molested by the country folk in divers strange bush ways. One was made drunk, and then a two-horse harrow was run over him; another was decoyed into the ranges on pretence of being shown a gold-mine, and his guide galloped away and left him to freeze all night in the bush. In mining localities the inhabitants were called together by beating a camp-oven lid with a pick, and the canva.s.ser was given ten minutes in which to get out of the town alive. If he disregarded the hint he would, as likely as not, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.

The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canva.s.sers brought under the "Noxious Animals Act", and demanded that a reward should be offered for their scalps. Reports appeared in the country press about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections and frightened the inhabitants to death--these were Sloper and Dodge's sober and reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits of tar and feathers.

In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canva.s.sers, and they came in from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened, to tender their resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had just got out a large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn't sell it, ruin stared them in the face; and how could they sell it without canva.s.sers?

The members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long, sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald. Dodge was a little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard, and quick, beady eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe, and puffing the smoke through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive on a steep grade. Anybody walking into one of those whiffs was liable to get paralysis.

Just as things were at their very blackest, something had turned up that promised to relieve all their difficulties. An inventor had offered to supply them with a patent cast-iron canva.s.ser--a figure which (he said) when wound up would walk, talk, collect orders, and stand any amount of ill-usage and wear and tear. If this could indeed be done, they were saved. They had made an appointment with the genius; but he was half-an-hour late, and the partners were steeped in gloom.

They had begun to despair of his appearing at all, when a cab rattled up to the door. Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window. A young man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab, holding over his shoulder what looked like the upper half of a man's body. In his disengaged hand he held a pair of human legs with boots and trousers on.

Thus burdened he turned to ask his fare, but the cabman gave a yell of terror, whipped up his horse, and disappeared at a hand-gallop; and a woman who happened to be going by, ran down the street, howling that Jack the Ripper had come to town. The man bolted in at the door, and toiled up the dark stairs tramping heavily, the legs and feet, which he dragged after him, making an unearthly clatter. He came in and put his burden down on the sofa.

"There you are, gents," he said; "there's your canva.s.ser."

Sloper and Dodge recoiled in horror. The upper part of the man had a waxy face, dull, fishy eyes, and dark hair; he lounged on the sofa like a corpse at ease, while his legs and feet stood by, leaning stiffly against the wall. The partners gazed at him for a while in silence.

"Fix him together, for G.o.d's sake," said Dodge. "He looks awful."

The Genius grinned, and fixed the legs on.

"Now he looks better," said Dodge, poking about the figure--"looks as much like life as most--ah, would you, you brute!" he exclaimed, springing back in alarm, for the figure had made a violent La Blanche swing at him.

"That's all right," said the Inventor. "It's no good having his face knocked about, you know--lot of trouble to make that face. His head and body are full of springs, and if anybody hits him in the face, or in the pit of the stomach--favourite places to hit canva.s.sers, the pit of the stomach--it sets a strong spring in motion, and he fetches his right hand round with a swipe that'll knock them into the middle of next week.

It's an awful hit. Griffo couldn't dodge it, and Slavin couldn't stand up against it. No fear of any man hitting _him_ twice.

"And he's dog-proof, too. His legs are padded with tar and oak.u.m, and if a dog bites a bit out of him, it will take that dog weeks to pick his teeth clean. Never bite anybody again, that dog won't. And he'll talk, talk, talk, like a suffragist gone mad; his phonograph can be charged for 100,000 words, and all you've got to do is to speak into it what you want him to say, and he'll say it. He'll go on saying it till he talks his man silly, or gets an order. He has an order-form in his hand, and as soon as anyone signs it and gives it back to him, that sets another spring in motion, and he puts the order in his pocket, turns round, and walks away. Grand idea, isn't he? Lor' bless you, I fairly love him."

He beamed affectionately on his monster.

"What about stairs?" said Dodge.

"No stairs in the bush," said the Inventor, blowing a speck of dust off his apparition; "all ground-floor houses. Anyhow, if there were stairs we could carry him up and let him fall down afterwards, or get flung down like any other canva.s.ser."

"Ha! Let's see him walk," said Dodge.

The figure walked all right, stiff and erect.

"Now let's hear him yabber."

The Genius touched a spring, and instantly, in a queer, tin-whistly voice, he began to sing, "Little Annie Rooney".

"Good!" said Dodge; "he'll do. We'll give you your price. Leave him here to-night, and come in to-morrow. We'll send you off to the back country with him. Ninemile would be a good place to start in. Have a cigar?"

Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose a cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out. They could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.

Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description. When the mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone, they usually go to sleep, and forget to bite him. The climate is so hot that the very gra.s.shoppers crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun, climb up the window curtains, and then go to sleep. The Riot Act never had to be read in Ninemile. The only thing that can arouse the inhabitants out of their lethargy is the prospect of a drink at somebody else's expense.

For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canva.s.ser there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men who knew the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton, and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money, geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at Ninemile were in a cheerful mood, and disposed to take risks.

"Who'll we begin on?" said the Genius.

"Oh, hang it all," said the other, "let's make a start with Macpherson."

Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place. He was a gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks, and freckled all over with freckles as big as half-crowns. His eyebrows would have made decent-sized moustaches for a cavalryman, and his moustaches looked like horns. He was a fighter from the ground up, and had a desperate "down"

on canva.s.sers generally, and on Sloper and Dodge's canva.s.sers in particular.

Sloper and Dodge had published a book called "Remarkable Colonials", and Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was intensely proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative made out that he was descended from the original Fhairshon who swam round Noah's Ark with his t.i.tle-deeds in his teeth. He showed how his people had fought under Alexander the Great and Timour, and had come over to Scotland some centuries before William the Conqueror landed in England.

He proved that he was related in a general way to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five dukes, and earls and lords and viscounts innumerable.

And then, after all, the editor of "Remarkable Colonials" managed to mix him up with some other fellow, some low-bred Irish McPherson, born in Dublin of poor but honest parents.

It was a terrible outrage. Macpherson became president of the Western District Branch of the "Remarkable Colonials" Defence League, a fierce and homicidal a.s.sociation got up to resist, legally and otherwise, paying for the book. He had further sworn by all he held sacred that every canva.s.ser who came to harry him in future should die, and had put up a notice on his office-door, "Canva.s.sers come in at their own risk."

He had a dog of what he called the Hold'em breed, who could tell a canva.s.ser by his walk, and would go for him on sight. The reader will understand, therefore, that, when the Genius and his mate proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract for the Cast-iron Canva.s.ser, and could only have been inspired by a morbid craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.

The Inventor wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub. There were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing would work, but at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off down the street, the figure marching stiffly between them. It had a book tucked under its arm and an order-form in its hand. When they arrived opposite Macpherson's office, the Genius started the phonograph working, pointed the figure straight at Macpherson's door, and set it going. Then the two conspirators waited, like Guy Fawkes in his cellar.

The automaton marched across the road and in at the open door, talking to itself loudly in a hoa.r.s.e, unnatural voice.