at the same time, dash him!”
“What do you mean by ‘got at’ the trainer, Major? Did the man take a bribe and ‘sell’ you that way?”
“What, Tom Farrow? Never in God’s world! Not that kind of a chap, by George! The man that offered Tom Farrow a bribe would spend the rest of the week in bed—gad, yes! A more faithful chap never drew the breath of life. God only knows when or how the thing happened, but Farrow was found on the moor yesterday morning—quite unconscious and at death’s door. He had been bludgeoned in the most brutal manner imaginable. Not only was his right arm broken, but his skull was all but crushed in. There was concussion of the brain, of course. Poor fellow, he can’t speak a word, and the chances are that he never will be able to do so again.”
“Bad business, that,” declared Cleek, looking grave. “Any idea of who may possibly have been the assailant? Local police picked up anything in the nature of a clue?”
“The local police know nothing whatsoever about it. I have not reported the case to them.”
“Not reported——H’m! rather unusual course, that, to pursue, isn’t it? When a man has his place broken into, a valuable horse stolen, and his trainer all but murdered, one would naturally suppose that his first act would be to set the machinery of the law in motion without an instant’s delay. That is, unless——H’m! Yes! Just so.”
“What is ‘just so’?” inquired the major eagerly. “You seem to have hit upon some sort of an idea right at the start. Mind telling me what it is?”
“Certainly not. I could imagine that when a man keeps silent about such a thing at such a time there is a possibility that he has a faint idea of who the criminal may be and that he has excellent reasons for not wishing the world at large to share that idea. In other words, that he would sooner lose the value of the animal fifty times over than have the crime brought home to the person he suspects.”
CHAPTER XII
Lady Mary made a faint moaning sound. The major’s face was a study.
“I don’t know whether you are a wizard or not, Mr. Cleek,” he said, after a moment; “but you have certainly hit upon the facts of the matter. It is for that very reason that I have refrained from making the affair public. It is bad enough that Lady Mary and I should have our suspicions regarding the identity of the—er—person implicated without letting others share them. There’s Dawson-Blake for one. If he knew, he’d move heaven and earth to ruin him.”
“Dawson-Blake?” repeated Cleek. “Pardon, but will that be the particular Sir Gregory Dawson-Blake the millionaire brewer who achieved a knighthood in the last ‘Honours List’ and whose horse, Tarantula, is second favourite for the coming Derby?”
“Yes, the very man. He is almost what you might call a neighbour of ours, Mr. Cleek. His place, Castle Claverdale, is just over the border line of Northumberland and about five miles distant from Morcan Abbey. His stables are, if anything, superior to my own; and we both use the intervening moorland as a training ground. Also, it was Dawson-Blake’s daughter that Lieutenant Chadwick played fast and loose with. Jilted her, you know—threw her over at the eleventh hour and married a chorus girl who had nothing to bless herself with but a pretty face and a long line of lodging-house ancestry. Not that Miss Dawson-Blake lost anything by getting rid of such a man before she committed the folly of tying herself to him for life, but her father never forgave Lieutenant Chadwick and would spend a million for the satisfaction of putting him behind bars.”
“I see. And this Lieutenant Chadwick is—whom may I ask?”
“The only son of my elder and only sister, Mr. Cleek,” supplied Lady Mary with a faint blush. “She committed the folly of marrying her music master when I was but a little girl, and my father died without ever looking at her again. Subsequently, her husband deserted her and went—she never learnt where, to the day of her death. While she lived, however, both my brother, Lord Chevelmere, and I saw that she never wanted for anything. We also supplied the means to put her son through Sandhurst after we had put him through college, and hoped that he would repay us by achieving honour and distinction. It was a vain hope. He achieved nothing but disgrace. Shortly after his deplorable marriage with the theatrical person for whom he threw over Miss Dawson-Blake—and who in turn threw him over when she discovered what a useless encumbrance he was—he was cashiered from the army, and has ever since been a hanger-on at race meetings—the consort of touts, billiard markers, card sharpers, and people of that sort. I had not seen him for six years, when he turned up suddenly in this neighbourhood three days ago and endeavoured to scrape acquaintance with one of the Abbey grooms.”
“And under an assumed name, Mr. Cleek,” supplemented the major somewhat excitedly. “He was calling himself John Clark and was trying to wheedle information regarding Highland Lassie out of my stable-boys. Fortunately, Lady Mary caught sight of him without being seen, and at once gave orders that he was to be turned off the premises, and never allowed to come near them again. He was known, however, to be in this neighbourhood up to dusk on the following evening, but he has never been seen since Highland Lassie disappeared. You know now, perhaps, why I have elected to conduct everything connected with this affair with the utmost secrecy. Little as we desire to be in any way associated with such a man, we cannot but remember that he is connected with us by ties of blood, and unless Farrow dies of his injuries—which God forbid! we will hush the thing up, cost what it may. All that I want is to get the animal back—not to punish the man: if, indeed, he be the guilty party; for there is really no actual proof of that. But if Dawson-Blake knew, it would be different. He would move heaven and earth to get the convict’s ‘broad arrow’ on him and to bring disgrace upon everybody connected with the man.”
“H’m, I see!” said Cleek, puckering up his brows and thoughtfully stroking his chin. “So that, naturally, there is—with this added to the rivalry of the two horses—no very good blood existing between Sir Gregory Dawson-Blake and yourself?”
“No, there is not. If, apart from these things, Mr. Cleek, you want my private opinion of the man, it can be summed up in the word ‘Bounder.’ There is not one instinct of the gentleman about him. He is simply a vulgar, money-gilded, low-minded cad, and I wouldn’t put it beyond him to be mixed up in this disappearance of the filly himself but that I know Chadwick was about the place; and for there to be anything between Chadwick and him is as impossible as it is for the two poles to come together, or for oil to assimilate with water. That is the one thing in this world that Dawson-Blake would not do under any circumstances whatsoever. Beyond that, I put nothing beneath the man—nothing too despicable for him to attempt in the effort to gain his own end and aim. He races not for the sport of the thing, but for the publicity, the glory of getting talked about, and of making the vulgar stare. He wants the blue ribbon of the turf for the simple fame of the thing; and he’d buy it if buying it were possible, and either bribes or trickery could carry off the race.”
“H’m! That’s a sweeping assertion, Major.”
“But made upon a basis of absolute fact, Mr. Cleek. He has twice endeavoured to buy Farrow to desert me by an offer of double wages and a pension; and, failing that, only last week he offered my jockey £10,000 cash on the nail to slip off over to France on the night before Derby Day, and promised him a further five thousand if Tarantula carried off the race.”
“Oho!” said Cleek, in two different tones; and with a look of supremest contempt. “So our Tinplate Knight is that sort of a sportsman, is he, the cad? And having failed to get hold
