"Those
Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine,
"if I had _my_ way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em
---- by ----. The ----'s!"
The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was
Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even
in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South
America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a
corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune
perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any
other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest
of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with
a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be
fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But
he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast
wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket,
Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in
fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers
of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds
of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands,
generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account.
But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock
market he was or had become a bad loser.
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