“What do you mean, sir?” interrupted Lord Bellefield, drawing himself up with a haughty gesture.
“Nothing, my lud, nothing,” returned Turnbull obsequiously, “only as our colt stands first favourite, and as we’ve made our calcilations to win, I thought the Californian farthing would not be thrown away. According he brought up his mate, as he called him, which was the hidentical boy as first rode the colt, and he confessed that him and the boy that rode Tartuffe had met one day when they was out a exercising, and just for their own amusement they give ’em a three-mile gallop. They run very near together, but Tartuffe beat our colt by above a length; that he’d seen the trial afterwards, and that he knowed from the difference in Tartufife’s running that he was not rode fair, or was overweighted, or something. Well, my lud, this information bothered me, and made me feel suspicious that some move had been tried on which we was not up to, and while I was scheming how to cipher it out, the same boy cum again, and told me that the lad that rode Tartuffe at the second trial was a keeping company along with his sister, and that he thought she might worm something out of him if she could be got to try. Accordingly I sent for the gal, and between bribing, coaxing, and frightening her, persuaded her to undertake the job. She had some trouble with the young feller, but she is a sharp, clever gal, and she never left him till she dragged it out of him.”
“Drew what out of him?” interrupted Lord Bellefield, unable to restrain his impatience; “can’t you come to the point at once? you’ll distract me with your prosing.”
“Well, the long and short of it is, as I see your ludship’s getting in a hurry (and, indeed, there ain’t no time to be lost), the long and short of it is, that they’ve bin and turned the tables upon us: while we put 5 lbs. extra weight on our horse, they shoved 8 lbs. on theirs.”
“Then Tartuffe ran within a head of the colt carrying 3 lbs. extra,” exclaimed Lord Bellefield, “and of course without that disadvantage would again have beaten him.”
“I think Oracle is a better horse now than he was at the time the trial cum off,” was the reply, “but the race ain’t the safe thing I thought it. It’s rather a ticklish chance to trust to, if your ludship’s got at all a heavy book upon the ewent.”
As he made this uncomfortable acknowledgment the trainer leered inquiringly with his cunning little eyes at his employer.
Lord Bellefield did not immediately answer; but leaning his elbow on the chimney-piece, remained buried in thought, his pale cheeks and the eager quivering of his under lip, which from time to time he unconsciously bit till the marks of his teeth remained in blood upon it, alone testifying the mental suffering he experienced. Ruin and disgrace were before him. Nor was this all. The Duc d’Austerlitz, a young foreigner who, bitten with Anglo-mania, had purchased a racing stud and was the owner of Tartuffe, happened to be the individual before alluded to as Lord Bellefield’s successful rival in the venial affections of the fascinating danseuse. He hated him, accordingly, with an intensity which would have secured him the approbation of the good-hater-loving Dr. Johnson. If anything, therefore, were wanting to render the intelligence he had just received doubly irritating to him, this fact supplied the deficiency. His lordship, however, possessed one element of greatness—his spirit invariably rose with difficulties, and the greater the emergency the more cool and collected did he become. Having remained silent for some minutes, he observed quietly, “I suppose, Turnbull, you, being a shrewd, clever fellow in your way, scarcely came here merely to tell me this. You are perfectly aware that, relying upon your information and judgment, I have made a heavy book on this race, and can imagine that, however long my purse may be, I shall find it more agreeable to win than to lose. You have, therefore, I am sure, some expedient to propose. In fact, I read in your face that it is so.”
The man smiled.
“Your ludship I always knew to have a sharp eye for a good horse or a pretty gal,” he said, “but you must be wide awake if you can read a man’s thoughts in his face. It ain’t such an easy matter to say what is best to do; if your ludship made rather too heavy a book on the race, I should recommend a little careful hedging to-morrow morning.”