Explore "An Unvarnished History" by Josephine Tey on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For the next few months Kif was busy. When he remembered the Barclays a dull rage swept him--Tim had not come--but otherwise he was completely happy. He liked Hough and had developed a reluctant respect for the shrewd brain that was Collins. Collins was the most single-minded man he had ever met; nothing but business--his business, of course--existed for him. Hough was a normal man who liked his wife, and theatres, and a drink, and good company, and other pages of the penny press besides the sporting one; but none of these things existed for Collins. And then, towards autumn, business, which had been surprisingly good for the first year of racing after the war, began to stagger. The volume of betting was unchanged, but several of their clients had lucky coups which it took all the firm's resources to pay. Only the coolness and resource of Collins saved them once or twice.
'It's a hell of a nuisance,' grumbled Hough in the train one day. 'Wonder what that chap Fotheringham in Leeds does. Something to do with a stable, I'll be bound. He couldn't know all about these eight-to-ones and ten-to-ones unless he was on the inside. Wish he hadn't picked on us just when we wanted to earn our winter keep.'