There Joses had swiftly worked his way into a vicious set of stupid rich men, morally his equals, intellectually his inferiors, but socially and economically vastly his superiors. They were all lads from public schools who desired above all to be thought men of the world. Joses, on the other hand, was a man of the world who desired above all else to be taken for a public-school man. Each of the two parties to the unwritten contract got what was desired from the other. Joses had knocked about the Continent; he knew the Quartier Latin, Berlin night-life, and the darker haunts of Naples. His rich allies kept horses, hunted, and raced. They learned a good deal that Joses was ready to impart; and on his side he acquired from them some knowledge of the racing world and an entree into it. His manners were good--rather too good; and the touch of the artist and the exotic appealed to the coarse and simple minds of his companions. He wore longish hair, softish collars, cultivated eccentricities and a slightly foreign accent; all of which things the _jeunesse doree_ tolerated with a touch of patronage. And Joses was quite content to be patronized so long as his patrons would pay. After two years at Oxford his putative father died. Joses went down perforce, leaving behind him many debts, a girl behind a bar who was fond of him, and a reputation as a brilliant rogue who might some day prove the poet of the sport of kings. Equipped with the knowledge acquired at the ancient University, he went to London and there earned his living as a sporting journalist, attending race-meetings, adding to his income by betting, and performing certain unlovely services for the more vicious of his Oxford friends. Handicapped in many ways, he had at least this advantage over the bulk of his brother-men: that he was not hampered by scruples, principles, or tradition. At thirty his beauty was already on the wane. He was faded, fat, and tarnished; and already he was visibly going to pieces. The end, which had been preparing in the deeps for years, came suddenly. The story was an old one: that of one woman and two men. The three had driven back from Ascot in a hansom together. There was supper, drink, and trouble at the lady's flat. The other man got a knife in him, and Joses got five years. When he came out, he resumed his old haunts and earned a precarious living by watching. He was almost the only watcher who could write, and his eye for a horse's form was phenomenally good. It was in those days that he came into touch with his future employers. With an acute sense for those who could serve them, the Three J's realised at once that this man was on a different level to that of other watchers. They financed him liberally, advanced him money, and held a cheque to which in a moment of aberration Joses had signed Ikey Aaronsohnn's name. And he in his turn served them well if not faithfully.