Take Cup Tip Straight From the Horse’s Mouth

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 545, 24 December 1928, Page 15

Take Cup Tip Straight From the Horse’s Mouth

Buzz-zz-zz. Well, it wasn't really a buzzer, even if it was meant to be. Springing smartly to attention, bringing the heels together with the customary click, The Worm rushed to the chief’s den. ••Worm, get you to Ellerslie pronto. We want a story ol’ what is going to ■win the Cup. No hard-up tout’s tale, but the genuine thing. Go to the horses, they are the only ones that know anything about it. It’s a rush job, so step on it!” In three minutes The Worm was aboard a tram. Great Southward bound. The passengers looked at him askance, while the conductor was openly suspicious. That precious three minutes rramward had been well occupied, for in the capacious pockets were stuffed horse radishes, horse carrots, a few blades of grass, pepper and salt, and an apple—the last-mentioned vegetable The Worm’s lunch —an apple a day, etc., etc. Proceeding a t about 65 miles an hour, as the crow rlies. along Khyber Pass. The Worm was so engrossed in the latest sporting publication, ‘‘Why Horses Eat.” that be was busily . hewing away at a horse carrot, liberally sprinkled with the aforementioned condiments, forgetting all about the tosy-skinned apple. Nearby passengers sighed regretfully, whil the conductor significantly tapped his forehead, saying. “Next stop Avondale,” making The Worm glance mournfully at him and murmur “Poor fellow’” As it happened, the tram was just crossing the railway bridge, with a certain grim and forbidding structure nestling at the foot of Mount Kden on the right. A home away from home. With his store of fodder reduced by half, and suffering from that fullness-after-eating feeling. The Worm, still without an escort, wended his way along Green Lane spying out the lay the land, his store of eats well exposed in the hope of inducing any dark horse to so far forget itself as to come into the open. Ever musical, he was softly humming that ditty so beloved of stable boys and regular jockeys, ‘Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up.” At last The Worm espied a stable. How to approach? A simple matter to a student of Sherlock Holmes. The over-ready moustachios, a bottle of * * * and another bottle of witch hazel, and in a trice the disguised sleuth was in the box of the Cup

favourite, Eh Timi. transported from Avondale under heavy escort and guarded by 13 detectives, still on duty. Sizing up the horse, The Worm produced his easel and paint brush—it was to be an interview on a large scale, never before attempted by racing scribes out of Mars. At first he sat down near the horse’s head, but was really amazed when he glanced at the horse’s feet to discover that they were shod with rubber boots. So The Worm changed ends. Seeking an explanation, the Cup favourite whispered that it was a stable secret, to make the horse a certainty for the race. “The boss says 1 can 'take it easy until we come to the home turn the last time; then I’m to go for the doctor. I’ve been highly tried, and with these rubber boots I can give the leaders a start of a furlong and a-half up the straight. Then, when the kid says ‘Go,’ I goes , and will win easily.” ”B u t how?” asked the spellbound interviewer, who was feeling the strain of being entrusted with such a valuable secret. “That’s easy!” came the answer with a neigh. “You’ve heard of Jack the Giant Killer? Once uon a time ” “Yes, yes,” said The Worm, wriggling. “Please don’t repeat it. I daren’t turn in a fairy tale, not on Christmas Eve.” “Well, well; When the kid speaks the word I

make a bound, a

second bound, and the third bounces me to the winning post. You see, when I win a cheap race I can gallop nearly 18 yards to the second: under the bouncing boy system invented by Dr. Boronoft' I can cover a furlong in a coule of strides. And you ask me if I will win the Cup! Don’t be silly. Get!” And The Worm wriggled off. He had all the others to interview, and it took him the rest of the day to do it. Reporting to the Chief later, he confided that this assignment was the hardest he had had in the whole of his six months’ journalistic career, and, furthermore, that he had run out of vegetables. That night he dreamed realistically of spring-heeled jacks and bouncing gee-gees. Here is the sum total of what the potential Cup winners confided to The Worm, but a warning is issued, that all this must be taken cum grano salis, which, in plain English, means pass the sugar.