“Such curious names,” Mrs Mutter murmured, and let an eye travel vaguely down her card. “Gay Time and Postman’s Path and Summer Rain. Often witty, of course – one sees that when one looks at the names of the dear creatures’ fathers and mothers – but inadequately equine, if you understand me.”
“Nonsense, m’dear.” Mrs Mutter’s husband had tipped back his chair the better to scan through his binoculars the vast carpet of humanity covering the downs. “You couldn’t call a likely colt Dobbin, or a well-bred filly Dapple or Daisy… But what a tremendous turn-out there is. Biggest crowd, if you ask me, since ’forty-six – Airborne’s race.”
“And the time’s creeping on, and the excitement’s creeping up.” Lady Appleby had glanced at her watch.
“Anxious about your husband – eh?” Mr Mutter shook his head. “Exacting, being high up in the police. Hope he hasn’t been detained by somebody’s pinching the favourite. Or perhaps–”
“Nothing of that sort.” A new voice was heard – that of Sir John Appleby himself as he strolled up to join his party. “But I did not long ago have to do with a Derby horse that went rather badly missing. Have you ever known, Mutter, a strong colt, closely knit and with the quarters of a sprinter, disappear into thin air? Disconcerting experience.”
“But no doubt instructive.” Mutter dropped his binoculars. “And you’ve just got time to tell us about it.”
Appleby sat down. “It began with a frantic telephone call from a certain Major Gunton, who trains near Blandford. Pantomime had vanished.”
Mrs Mutter made one of her well-known charming gestures. “What did I say? Such curious names. Who could take seriously a horse called that?”
“Gunton did, and so did the brute’s owner. They had entered Pantomime for this very Derby.”
“Hasn’t that to be done very young?” Mrs Mutter was eager for knowledge. “Like Eton boys, and that sort of thing?”
Mutter groaned. “As yearlings, m’dear. Appleby, go on.”
“Pantomime was being sent from Blandford to Newbury. The journey, which was to be made by road–”
“It would be in one of those horrid little boxes.” Mrs Mutter was expressive. “Almost like coffins, supposing horses to have coffins. The poor things can’t so much as turn round.”
“It wouldn’t be to their advantage to do so.” Appleby took the point seriously. “Bumpy, you know. But the box was certainly what you describe – a simple, open affair, hitched to the back of an estate-wagon. Gunton had a reliable man called Merry, who saw to getting Pantomime into the thing at about dusk one fine autumn evening. Gunton himself came out and saw that the creature was safely locked in; and then Merry and a stable-lad got into the wagon and drove off. Short of a road accident, Pantomime seemed as safe as houses. And until Salisbury, if Merry could be believed, he was safe. After that, it grew dark. And in the dark – again if Merry could be believed – some mysterious violation of the very laws of nature took place. In other words, when the box arrived in Newbury, Pantomime had disappeared.”
Mutter raised his eyebrows. “Lock tampered with?”
“No. And they hadn’t had to pull up during the whole journey.”
“Then Pantomime must have jumped.” Mrs Mutter was horrified.
Appleby shook his head. “Quite impossible. Those boxes give a horse no room for tricks. There seemed only one conceivable explanation: that some Brobdingnagian bird had descended on poor little Pantomime and carried him off in his beak.
“I was working on a case in Oxford when I got the message asking me to take over this queer affair. There wasn’t much more information forthcoming than what I’ve given you, but of course there was a description of the horse: a chestnut with black spots on the hind quarters – like Eclipse and Pantaloon, I was told by a man at the Yard who specialises in the Stud-Book. With this I set out very early on the morning following the disappearance, intending to drive straight to Blandford, and from there retrace Pantomime’s last journey if it should be necessary.
“I had got to Newbury, and was wondering whether Andover would be a good place to stop for breakfast, when I ran into fog. It seemed best to press on – and I must confess that probably I pressed on pretty fast. Still, policemen do well always to drive with a bit of extra care; and I was doing nothing that any normal contingency could render dangerous. Nevertheless, I had an accident. At one moment I had been staring into empty air – or fog. The next, there was a solid object plumb in front of my bonnet, and this was followed by a slight but ominous impact before I brought the car to a stop. For a second I wondered whether I’d fallen asleep at the wheel. For what I had seen in that moment decidedly suggested a dream. It had been a substantial chestnut mass, diversified with black spots.
“I climbed out and ran back. There, sure enough – and with all the appearance of having been hurled violently into a high hedge – I glimpsed the figure of a chestnut colt. But it was only for a moment; the wretched fog was getting worse, with drifting patches as thick as a horse blanket. Pantomime was obscured for a couple of seconds – and when the place cleared again he had vanished.
“That was all to the good, since it meant he could scarcely have broken any bones. The road was empty, so I concluded he had forced his way through the hedge. I followed suit – it wasn’t a comfortable dive – and there he was. But by there I mean a quarter of a mile off. He seemed to have done that in about twenty seconds.”
Mutter chuckled. “A Derby horse, decidedly. Mahmoud’s record for the twelve furlongs–”
“Quite so. Well, off I went in pursuit – and presently the dream had turned to nightmare. It’s an odd bit of country – open, undulating, and covered with scattered patches of gorse which seem to have been blown into all sorts of fantastic shapes by the wind. What with the fog thrown in, it was easy to feel oneself hunting the hapless Pantomime amid a sort of menagerie of prehistoric monsters. And Pantomime was – well, illusive. For one thing, he had more than flat-racing in him. At one moment I even had a confused notion that he had cleared a hay-stack. And this was the more surprising, since he did now appear to have injured himself. I was getting no more than peeps at him, but his gait was certainly queer. And if horses get concussion – well, Pantomime was badly concussed.
“The end came quickly. Somewhere near by there was a chap out with a shotgun after rabbits – a silly employment in those conditions – and he was coming near enough to worry me. Suddenly I rounded a clump of gorse and came upon Pantomime apparently cornered and at bay. I had just time to feel that there was something pretty weirdly wrong when the creature rose in air like a tiger and came sailing down at me. At the same instant I heard a patter of shot at my feet – it was the silly ass with the gun blazing away at goodness knows what – and Pantomime just faded out. I found myself looking down, not at a horse, but at the punctured and deflated remains of a highly ingenious balloon.”
“Not Pantomime but Pegasus.” Mrs Mutter offered this unexpected piece of classical learning with a brilliant smile.
“Quite so. The thieves’ object, of course, had been to gain time. They managed to substitute their extraordinary contrivance for the real Pantomime just before Gunton came out in the dusk, locked the horse-box, and told Merry to drive off. The thing was tethered by no more than a nicely-calculated fraying cord, so that eventually it freed itself and simply soared up into the night. Probably it was designed that it should blow out to sea. Poor Merry and his lad were going to look very like the guilty parties – and while the trail was thus hopelessly confused at the start, the real Pantomime could be smuggled abroad.”
“And it was?”
“Certainly. The colt was discovered some months later in France. I believe there may be a good deal of litigation.”
Mutter, who had for some minutes been engaged in applying the friction of a silk handkerchief to his top-hat, paused from this important labour. “Haven’t you told us rather a tall story?”
Appleby nodded. “I’m assured the false Pantomime may have gone up to something like twenty thousand feet. So I suppose it is tall.”
“Perhaps you could say something about Pantomime’s pedigree?”
This time it was Lady Appleby who spoke. “By Airborne, without a doubt,” she said. “And from Chimera.”
“Chimera? I don’t believe there was ever any such–”
“No more do I.”