THE CHINA'› MAIL,
SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1954.
by MAURICE WILLIAMS
Concluding I AM THE RINGER
HE advertisement in
T
the greyhound paper looked harm- less enough. It read: "Dog for sale, £100-trial Harringay 30.20."
An address in Cardiff was given. The name of the ad- vertiser was also published.
It was a fake name. The Was real owner of the dog Maurice Williams.
What was the object of this carefully worded offer? It was
claborate part of un
provi.le
ان
trail to
existed.
background for
greyhound that
nover
I was preparing my greulesi
operation. The
dog-ringing
greyhound advertised
paper was
Invented
of one of my mosl switches.
in the
A
JA! ingenious
to be What at first appears
Alice-in-Wonderland plot
was in fact a most serious and carefully planned operation.
I
This is how it worked,
The
BOUGHT fa
greyhound.
alibi
well-known
I acquired
him from a trainer
donveniently
who WAS
ill at the time
and never saw the parchumer.
This greyhound then "disap- He did not Tare on peared." any track after 1 bought him.
In the meantime I was care- fully and precisely buthing up a whole dossier on a Belitious dog. The crack greyhound was Intended to race under Chr nare of the dag-that-never- was. No one would know his form and I would rake Jorge cum.
[1
Well, they got me for Francasal but-
I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT SWITCHING HORSES WAS NOT AS
COMPLICATED AS ...
MY LIFE
WITH
The race is run and the Francasal case about to end. Artist Lewis'a impression of the Old Bailey scene shows (from lett) Henry George Hateley. bookmaker (three years), talking to Mr. Athe-Lincoln, Q.C., Victor Colquhoun Dill, clerk (nine months), Williams (two gears), Comer Charles, bookmaker (two years), and William Rook, racehorse owner (acquitted).
END OF THE ROAD.../
THE PHANTOM DOG...
But now, with a new set of papers as the dog advertised in the greyhound paper, he was able to run as an untried new- comer,
す
To seem further authentheily reputable Riso
Tomand
the
Wha
trainer to take on the dog. He. completely of Course Wa
of the fact that ignorant dog was not the one be was registered 10 be This
my ringing typical operations. People who trained my dogs and others who after- wards bought them bad no inkling of what I had been up
Df
tour that the dogs were not
absolutely straight
to race the When 1 devulsed But above all the dog's all fast greyhound us the Cardiff must be cast iron. Firat I must dog I did so under the owner provide evidence of a fictitious ship of Mrs Smythe, Who was sale of this non-existent dog by Mrs Smythe? She was a name
lo an
Mtrs one imaginary owner
I saw
on a shop front, other. Hence the advertisement Smythe. inchiendaity, in the paper.
Ing to the fake records, bought the dog frem a certain equally Clusive Me Water
This was to ensure that any suspicious-ininded stewards the Lo question ever begat greyhound's identity the trail would not lead back to me.
Because I planned to bring famous off a grand coup on a itcensed track Instead of the small and comparatively easy- to-rob Bapping trucks,
In two trials at Park Royal the dog clocked up speeds of 27.24 al 27.78 over 475 yards. This was not surprising you remember he had already won a number of major events on licensed tracks.
when
Record-
He
From Cardiff, of course was the man who advertised in the paper.
Both these people, of course, were entirely fetitious,
צון
at
By this time I did not care. Why should 17 I had won
£1,800 on the dog.
had noticed Already people
this unimial that shortly after had vanished from the tracks whose markings another dog were strikingly similar began to win races.
US
Slowards are,
I knew. supplelous men. They set about comparing The two identity booka. Then the trainer Wax asked to produce his animal.
I moved
in just
time. T collected the dog by ear. Sens-
ing in the yurd at the back of greyhound my home in Kentish Town.
I had decided to become a Ringer, but I found I had last a lot of ground.
NATURES!!
POISONS
PUNCHES
T
THE HARPOONERS
By IVAN T. SANDERSON
craze
to
the
of
shells
HERE are about are fleshy jaws upon which are forty thousand. dif- set lines of Uny, barbed (eth ferent kinds of sea made of a horny substance.
As the animal moves along, shells, and some people the head aways from side become absolutely possess side and the jaws move in and
tho ed with
for out so that, the teeth rasp like a pair of minute files against
aver which collecting as many as pos- the surface sible. Some kinds are, of animal glides. The power course, common, while these rasps in the Jarge others are rare, either be le conches has to be seen to Given time they be belleved. cause they come from
can wear through almost any- limited localities or from
thing. far-off places.
In the case of the beautiful teeth are Among the most beauti-
shells, these conc
har like the therefore ful and
most shaped exactly highly prized shells are poons used by the New England the species of a large group whalers of old, having a sharp
large, one known as the Cone Shells, directed barb on one side, and barbs on the Our trial course was o 150-most of which are tropical many smaller yard long rise tuding to
and many of the rarest of ather. What is more, they can
"shoot" these
with teeth out mound of trees. It ended
which live on coral reefs.
and they are 00-yard slow gradient
Wealthy collectors have paid real force, hed to the mums at was just right for putting keen edge on a dog,
thousands of dollars for a the base, they have almost the
effect of tiny arrows. aingle specimen. after tho dog called Frunk Even now specimens of Buck (after the "Bring 'em one, known as "The Glory the Back Alive" man). He was of the Sea," fetch up
white-faced 2%-year-old which US$800, and there are but
the with and
war
to
point,
backward-
They are slender and as long as needles, and they are carried three known specimens in in a special snout or trunk dog existence.
A fourth was which can be extended far in Further, the head.
certain kinds Neither the owner nor trainer recently stolen from the front of
Museum American
of linked to venom glands in the of the animal
Natural History in New head, so that
for on
indifferent
A bought
year
runner.
The
old блуз
gone. and There were new trainers, many dogs failed to show truc had been they form beenuse raced so much less,
were
That was why I paid hotel owner his £600 in Then armed with notes. receipt I travelled to Coventry Stadium 10 collect my
£1 his
cost £110.
new
I had BOOT unother resembling bira in
purchase.
was
Easy
go
ing trouble. I arranged for the How the scales greyhound to make a sudden reappearance in his own
He was sold to and taken to Clapton,
name,
of belling Those fol had changed!
cent
whom a bet of £10 had once now big money represented A MATI
Basted rolls of banknotes. The sky was the limit. I found t Into the get back hard to swim.
had Later I heard the dog been "warned off." no doubt much 10 his new owner's disgust.
There was nothing for it but to climb down the sporting But Mrs Smythe
Indder Wits never
back to the Rapping I returned to the small traced. Neither was Mr Winter. tracks. And neither was I.
unlicensed tracks outside Lon- don.
This was my most eleborate effort as a dog ringer.
soon
I started this corcer after 1 returned to
dog the tracks during the war, it began the day I watched a dog run- ning at Coventry. It was owned by an
who hotel proprietor asked 600 for it.
The dog won three
Linen, South Shields
and Iwice
Wulverhampton. He won his first race by 12 lengths.
I had noticed the dog's mark- This was a little too good to
When he
casual to the be true.
won the ings appeared.
10 began eye anyway,
Be alinust other two races doubts
identical with those of ап- to arize in th: rminds of track
other greyhound officials.
1 was keep
{
prices
of
Paying moderate £40 or £50 a time, I bought
For
Buck at Kentish Town I put the two doga side by side. was right. It was almost im- possible to tell them apart.
I decided to put Little Left, as the fast dog i had bought in Coventry was called, in a race at Plymouth, in place of the other animal. This backyard dog had enjoyed a number of names in ita career-one of them, sardonically, was Flash.
I
money
me.
at only three tracks.
known
race.
10
those of
Bro
the
when they have enemy's body, into the
nows I found that they ran the dog York, three were destroyed punctured
pelson and six the during the war, others disappeared during wound.
The effect of a bile from one the same period.
and of these shells is terrible
According During the war, also, a
most unusual.
the few Gl's who were sent to
records,
Plot failed
Black MY plan was to wait unul 1 know the dog was running at a particular track. Then I would enter Frank Buck in tho name of the other animal.
chose Plymouth because there was good
there. And it was a track at which I was not yet well known.
I took Black Flush to Plymouth three or four times. I raced it there until its grade was lowered from a moderato to a poor one.
small string of greyhounds. Netted £5,000
while I was content with unspectacular returns.
Then one day at Coventry I saw the hotel proprietor's grey- hound.
I had been For a long time thinking how easy it would be to race one dog in the name of the other, to substitute the good
ROBERT YOUNG BEGINS
TO
RUN
New York. ABY-FACED, 5ft 6in.
Bet Young (his
nickname was "Rail-Road" from the start) has taken over control of the New York Central, the world's second largest privately- owned railway.
a
Despite his initials, he is not a railroadman born. He WAR never a guard or stoker and he never fulfilled the boyhood dream of being an engine-driver.
When Young declared war on the board of directors of the New York Central early this year, it was the House of Morgan that he assailed.
J. P. Morgan and Co. have
their partners or their men on the boards of most of America's leading banks and
HIS RAILWAY
By Evelyn Irons
ROBERT R. YOUNG
steal companies: of General propaganda. Young, prompt- Motors and duPont: of rail- ly suing him, said it ought ways. Young once said that not to come from the com- the House of Morgan was pany but be shared by the even more powerful than the defending directors. government-so he decided..
to take a crack at its empiro
I asked Young how much in the Central. Last his own side had spent in
his February Young, who con- advertising.
Young anorts that there is plenty of room for the improvements he means to make in his campaign lure the cush customers from the airlines and from the roads. They include:
to
While the other dog safely Somewhere else my "ringer." In reality Frank Buck, passed the track manager's scrutiny. He was wearing orange cont and was led into trap 0.
ап
I felt it was like putting a horse of the calibre of Pinza upl for a selling-plate at Bath. It to take the seemed a shame money.
籍
True to my expectations the of the switch was THE day
fast memorable in more senses disguised Frank Buck,
was first out of the than one. Little Left, allas breaker,
the lead. Black Flash, which ran under traps and away into
Then ho reached the firet the name of Tinven,
corner, known as Suicide Bend. tered for the second race
Because of its sharDNESS the card.
dog was unable to take it racing speed.
was ch- in
From trap 2 the dog won by 10 lengths. To me it was the day I pocketed £2,000. To the rest of the world it was Day.
VJ
Was
Under a variety of names- any but his own-Little Left appeared at flapping tracks as tar apart as_Barry in South Wales and Chester. He "ringed" mostly as Black Flash which now revealed, not gur- 2251- prisingly, a turn of speed
in his former low drinks suspected He does not smoke,
grade. Gf occasional glass cnly an wine. He is a keen bird- watcher, plays golf and billiards, enjoys bridge and hates canasta. "My best work is done in a hour's walk along the shore," he says, "but
if the well, business crdinary salaried executive worked that way would be fired."
I su
After eight months his use- fulness was at an end. By then, I had exhausted all the possible tracks. But he had served me
me
After I had pală all expenses, ho my
Ürst ringing notted £5,000,
out
actual medical
Conus Gloria. Cone abells are highly prized by collectors, thousands of dollars being paid for a single, specimen.. Yet certain of these shells are more deadly than any known Museum of Natural snake. (Photo courtesy American
History),
the the Pacific happened to be initial sting is very slight and at shell collectors, or knew causes only slight numbness and no pain. In fact, there is usually about the fabulous prices complete absence of pain up to
He stuck his toes in and was offered for the cone shells. the time of death, knocked out of his stride and Whenever their duties per-
After a few minutes, numb- of the Face by another mitted, they went wading ness appears in the lips and greyhound.
along the coral reefs off sight becomes blurred; then the That was the first time the Pacific islands looking for limbs become paralysed, and Ringer plot falled.
falls into a coma, from
Too
strict
the Glory-of-the-Sea, Somly within the hour.
tho
of them never came back. which he never emerges, his They either did not know
or
pulse
rate becoming faster and oblivious to the weaker until death results in were fact that certain of these about six hours.
However, this is not the in- beautiful shells are more
variable procedure, for there RADUALLY when the war deadly than any known are reports of the bitten suffer
ended conditions and
snake.
ing excruciating pain, as well as picions became dangerous the dog tracks,
paralysis.
SUK
od
It will probably come as a great surprise to the average There are some half a dozen By 1951 conditions in the big person to learn that anything so cone shells that have been league were so strict it was slow and apparently helpless as reported to be polsonous. These
small com almost impossible to get away a sca
be not only are known by the delightful with a ringer,
deadly poisonous but aggressive- rames of Tulip, Toxille
referring to the
cater
In
A dog's every morking, down / so.. Rather, one would sup- Geographic, Noble, and Marbled even to a scratch sustainest in 1960 that they would have to species,
order to do marking of their for boot quite the contrary, these lacks carry needle harpoons its lost race, is logged By this time I knew enough
checking. Al animals about the gambling game
thom the Glory-of-the- to
ate beasts, and almost elons among a10but have not Been known and scrutinised all animale, actually shoot at trust no one. So I decided to weighed
to sting anyone. Even those become a trainer myself. I used minutely. In Ireland they even tattoo their numbers inside
not that do-sting need the backyard. of my house in Kentish Town. as kennels, Hampstead Heath
WEN
their cars.
you.
prove
It is quito impossible intel- deadly to man, for many people my There was little chance of any igibly to describe the anatomy have been pierced
Tittle perienced
Although he inherited 25,000) tollars from his grandfather, Better passenger accom- his 18 million fortune is self- modation, with lower-slung made; he never would work in his father's bank, and his first and lighter railroad cars.
job was
29. an hour A single
reservation "powder-monkey" in a duPont
ammunition factory. bureau enabling passengers to book places by telephone
Ile first million was made, it is bald, by selling short in the and pay for their tickets on
I was a famlilar @gure in all After alt the trains, thus eliminating 1920 market crash
burst into ticket-office queues.
when he and his RESOCIAIOS bought the Alleghany Corpora- on, then in the doldrums, ove 4,000,000 dollars and five years made it pay.
A now air brake "to give less shocking rides, and save millions in maintenance."
Writes Own Ads
to change.
so let us concentrate upon the
and
Worse"*"thủn
paddock had a cruise for trial more dog ringers. It was time of any shellfish in words alone, temporary pain
and pro' SINA
เร่
gallops.
it looked eary front end of the soft part of He first weathers, leading my little enough. I had made £10,000 by
1
the animal which comes out
of
the shell This end,
un-
of
the
Nevertheless, the
creatures,
coral
rallways in 1037, string across the Heath. I had being the Ringer of the grey fock" or bottom end of anyone who is seized by the
Ho starts his job of over- hauling the New York Central with confidence. "A dollar. in- Son of a Texas banker, Bob vested in American railroads,'
"now the most Young is nobody's preconceived he says, idea of a multi-millionaire rull- hazardous, can become the
87, bland, soundest dollar in America.” way tycoon. At white-headed and gentlo-voiced, Lo is a great reader of poetry whose favourites
Sally Arg
muy
· JOHNNY HAZARD Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe and Ho Robert Louis Stevenson.
poetry too. He also
claims. writes trolled the railway's largest "About a quarter of that," writes many atcokholding, WES turned he retorted. "And It will be pungently worded down by the directors when shared by me and the rest ments himself. he asked to be named head of my board.” of the company.
Battle Was On
"Aggressivo "
favoimate watchword of his, and To' one accustomed to the a favourite argument is that gritty, discomfort of so you can go times us far by many British trains and the rail as you cans by, algabatord amelly gloom of the typical being mathepatically cerials of
The battle was on. To win London station the gleaming the
141,000» metal 'conches, (often, air-
FA conditioned) and thevdat,
#išnic spaces of the Grand
entral Terminal in New
plenty of offers of help whiên' hound tracks. people saw me coming into the money. But I preferred to get to do it on the racecoutres,
I decided it was just as easy the hall in the case up early, food and train the dogs myself.
Only when I needed aLKİS- tance for weekly. "gallopa" did I hire help. These were lads, usually from the local billiards saloon. I changed them from quently.
| THE ABRUPT JOLT CAUSES HOWDY PARD*** TRECHAT TO TESTER ISACK// SHORS AM BLAD
gilding routs, can be many records show and
collecting fover, or the profit cffered for tollecting shells in Larliculat-should be extremely paint-Cane shells
,of
I have never been so wrong In my life.
"
the animal' along, it carries 10 ing
shell
backwards. However, at
Up and
this end is a primitive head group
are widely
Jargo
I embarked upon the Fran- often bearing two pairs of ten- tributed. They are some of the casal plot. It was the second tacles that can be extended and most beautiful denizens of the of my ringers to go wrong. moyed aboisk mod which some see and the most valuable. Eut And it landed me whare Lamtimes bear a pair of eyes. Under- we do not yet know how many
neath is a mouth, was in this may be dangerous, now-in prison,
By Frank Robbins
IN FACT
MAH HAND
calls for a
Miguel
1
$2,000,000