Malabar

Paul's 'secret of secrets' is his rocking-horse. It is now kept upstairs, in his own room.

Two nights before the Derby, his mother is at a party when she suddenly feels a strange fear for her son. She rushes home.

She finds Paul in his room in the dark, riding his rocking-horse madly. He screams, 'It's Malabar!', and falls to the floor, unconscious, with brain fever.

Malabar wins the Derby, at fourteen to one. Bassett tells the dying boy the news: he now has over eighty thousand pounds.

Paul asks his mother whether he is lucky. That night, he dies. Uncle Oscar sums it up bitterly: the family has gained a fortune, and lost a son.

That is the irony at the heart of the story: the boy wins the money, and loses his life. And still he never won his mother's love, which was what he really wanted.