There are so-called "gentlemen" on the turf who will bribe a telegraph clerk in order to obtain news of a trial that may have been sent over the wires, or suborn a stableman of a popular stable in order to know what is doing in it; they will even connive with a bookmaker's assistant in order to get an inkling of his employer's commissions. Indeed, there are gentlemen now on the turf who do not scruple, when opportunity offers, to take advantage of their friends and daily companions by laying odds against horses which they know will not win, or have no chance to win even if they run; and there are "gentlemen" who lend themselves to bookmakers to do their commissions, who will either back or lay a horse at their bidding. These toadies of the bookmakers, and they are more numerous than is supposed, never question the morality of what they do, but do as they are bid to do, and ask no questions. These mercenaries have no scruples against being "put in" by the bookmakers to lay as much as they can against the chances of a horse which will not be wanted, or to obtain the longest possible odds against a horse which it is known will ultimately "come" in the market, which long, _id est_, liberal odds, the bookmaker might not obtain if he himself were to ask for them. Bookmakers are somewhat fond of working their commissions by the aid of persons who are known as "mugs," that is, persons who are presumably greenhorns; but the mugs have to be frequently changed, as they are soon spotted by the shrewd persons they try to "have." No kind of dirty work is too bad for the mercenaries of the turf, some of whom if the reward were sufficiently tempting would think nothing of "nobbling" the finest animal that ever ran. So that he can make money out of his stud, the mercenary owner will either run or pull. No man knows better than he does that "losing a race can be made a certainty," and that in many instances larger sums of money can be made by keeping a horse in the stable than by running it on the racecourse.