“Now, then, hold up, man!” he cried out, as Tom fell off the horse’s back in a swoon when he tried to get off. “By George, though, I think we want this gentleman; there is a warrant out for Bats, isn’t there, Jim?” he said to a police trooper, who was standing by, after he had picked up Tom and brought him into the store.
“Yer right, sergeant, I am the man and there is a warrant; but never mind me, look after the horse—Captain Brereton’s Kildare, favourite for Diggers’ Stakes; they got Bill Bledshaw to jump him, and I have jumped him from Bill. Look after the little horse; he has been knocked about fearfully to-day,” said Tom, getting fainter and queerer as he spoke.
The sergeant gave some orders about the horse, then looked after Tom Bats, whom he saw to be a good deal hurt, and when he was revived a little asked him more about the whereabouts of Bill Bledshaw.
It happened that the sergeant took a good deal of interest in the Kimberley races, and he at once shared Tom Bats’ suspicion that Bill was acting for some one else; so thinking it would be a capital thing if those who plotted to get Kildare out of the way were caught in their own trap, he said nothing about Kildare having turned up in the letter he wrote to the authorities, while he wrote another letter, to be opened by either Brereton or Crotty, saying the horse was safe and did not seem much the worse. After he had sent off these letters by a Kaffir on a horse he started off with two policemen—all the force he had—to see if he could come across Bill Bledshaw.
Chapter Three.
“It’s all right, now go and back The Pirate for what you can get,” said Nat Lane, as he came into Mr Gideon’s house, where that gentleman had been waiting for some hours on the day of Jack Brereton’s misadventure in a fever of excitement.
“Are you sure he has done it all right?” asked Gideon.
“Certain; I have got this,” and Nat showed the other a piece of paper on which the words “Done the job all right” were written. “That’s what we settled that he was to write; a boy just brought it me. Now you go and look for clever Mr Crotty; we ought to have him for a good bit.”
Mr Gideon at once started off to make prompt use of his information. First he went to two men who usually worked with him, and were in this robbery to a certain extent, and commissioned them to back The Pirate and lay against Kildare; then he tried to find Crotty, whom he intended to make his chief victim. They had made Kildare a very hot favourite. In fact, with the exception of The Pirate there was no other horse backed. It happened that Mr Crotty had gone to the river that day, so Mr Gideon was destined to be disappointed of his prey, and waited up hour after hour at the club without meeting him, for Mr Crotty on his return had supper at the house of the men he had gone to the river with, and then had gone straight to bed. After he had been in bed some hours he was roused by a knock at the door of his own house, and opening it let in Jack Brereton.