"Duggie's" Derby

"Turn your gaze to the East if you want light on this year's Derby."

That Delphic tip by the devout, erudite, horse-loving Marquess of Zetland, was less profound than it sounded. All it meant was that Colombo, Lord Glanely's unbeaten favorite, was named after the capital of Ceylon and that the two second choices were the Maharajah of Rajpipla's Windsor Lad and the Agha Khan's Umidwar. The man who had more real interest in the race than anyone else in the world thought so little of the Marquess's tip that he did exactly the opposite.

Week before the Derby Sidney Freeman boarded the S. S. Washington and sailed west for Manhattan.

The Epsom Derby, as everyone knows, is much more than a horse-race attracting the biggest crowd of the year. It is also a means of deciding one of the three huge lotteries of a Dublin Committee for the benefit of all the hospitals in Ireland. For this year's Derby the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes took in $14,373.000, of which it was ready to pay out $9,137.000 in prize money. Few days before the race, the committee with elaborate ceremonies picks ticket-holders for each horse in the race. The value of each ticket varies with how its horse finishes the race : holders of tickets on the horses finishing first, second and third win $150,000, $75,000 and $50.000 each, respectively; ticket-holders on the remaining 68 horses entered get $2.600 each on a $2.50 investment. A person holding a ticket on Colombo last week could keep it on the chance that Colombo would win the top prize for him or he could sell it. in full or in part, for a sum based on the bookmaker's odds against Colombo's winning.

The biggest firm of racetrack book makers in the world is Douglas Stuart Ltd., which employs 400 clerks in its entirely legal offices at Stuart House, Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Douglas Stuart, whose motto is "Duggie Never Owes" is not a person but a syndicate. Busiest member of the syndicate is breezy, dapper, dark-haired Sidney Freeman, who once worked with Novelist Edgar Wallace on a South African newspaper, and who would "rather trust an English bricklayer than a foreign nobleman," in the matter of bets. For the last three years. Bookmaker Freeman has been coming to the U. S. to buy up Irish Hospital tickets, leaving his associates to handle the domestic business which this year gave ''Duggie" an interest of approximately $2.500.000 in the Derby. By the time the horses lined up at Epsom Downs last week, Sidney Freeman in his Ritz Carlton suite was busy computing what profit the firm stood to make out of his U. S. commitments--over $100,000 for tickets or shares in tickets of timid ticketholders.

At Epsom Downs, a dark, rainy morning cut the crowd to 500,000. Lord Lonsdale's car slithered into a ditch and he arrived late. When he entered the Royal Box, the King, without a single detective to watch him while he watched the race, congratulated him on not being hurt, raised his glasses to follow the parade to the post. At the start. Lord Dewar's Medieval Knight got the lead, held it for a mile. The Maharajah of Rajpipla who bought Windsor Lad as a yearling for -L-1.300 and who had made Derby Day a holiday on his estate at Old Windsor, watched his horse and smiled. At the head of the stretch, the crowd saw three horses-- Windsor Lad, Lord Woolavington's Easton and Colombo--pound out in front of the field. In the stretch Colombo was running splendidly and catching up on the other two. At the finish--in 2:34 to equal last year's track record--Windsor Lad was still ahead with Easton second and Colombo third.

Last week's Derby was followed by the usual stones of sweepstake winners and their doings. In Manhattan a onetime Follies dancer won $150,000 with a ticket on Windsor Lad. A Holland Tunnel policeman who had sold "Duggie" for $6.500 a half interest in his ticket on the winning horse got only $82.000. A 7-year-old Manhattan schoolboy won $75,000 with a ticket on Easton. A Long Island City mailcarrier sold his ticket on Colombo for $51,-ooo, the amount he would have won had he held it. A Manhattan janitor supplied variations in the usual lottery story by discovering, after his name had been given to the Press as winner of $75,000 with a ticket on Easton, that the ticket was not really his but another one taken out in his name "for luck" by his nephew.

In the Ritz Carlton, where he heard the race by radio, Sidney Freeman counted his profits, gayly refused to reveal the result--except that for tickets on the winning horses, worth $225.000 to him. he had paid $100.000.

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