“I’ll be with you early, before people are about,” returned Lord Bellefield; “it is important that I should know the result of this scheme as soon as possible. The greatest caution must be observed lest the matter should transpire, and if anything comes out, you of course must take it upon yourself. The man should go abroad for a time. And now I must try and get a couple of hours’ sleep, or my head will not be fit for to-morrow’s work. I breakfast at Epsom with a set of men, but I’ll be with you first. You’ve acted with your usual zeal and cleverness, Turnbull, and I’ll take care that you shall have no reason to repent your honesty to your employer; only let us win to-morrow’s race and your fortune is made. Good-night.”
As he spoke he rang the bell, and with many servile acknowledgments of his master’s promised liberality the trainer departed.
While this interview was taking place a far different scene had been enacting in the premises occupied by the racing stud of the Due d’Austerlitz. As the clock over the stables chimed the hour after midnight a light ladder was placed against the wall of one of the outer buildings, and a slightly-framed, agile man ran up it, and drawing it cautiously after him laid it in a place of security, where it would remain unnoticed till his return. He then crept with noiseless, catlike steps over roofs and along parapets, finding among rain-gutters and coping-stones a dangerous and uncertain footing, until he reached a building nearly in the centre of the yard; here he paused, and drawing from his pocket a short iron instrument, shaped like a chisel at one end, he cautiously chipped away the mortar round one of the tiles which protected an angle of the roof, and by removing the tile, exposed the ends of a row of slating. Quietly raising one of the slates, he, by means of the instrument above alluded to, which is known to the initiated by the euphonious title of a “jemmy,” snapped the nails which retained it in its place and removed it. Having acted in a similar manner by two others, he produced a small cabinetmaker’s saw, and cutting through the battens, opened a space sufficiently wide to admit the passage of a man’s body. Replacing his tools, he crept through the aperture thus effected, and letting himself down by his hands into the loft beneath, dropped noiselessly on to some trusses of hay placed there for future consumption. Part of his task was now accomplished, for he was in the loft over the loose-box in which Tartuffe was reposing his graceful limbs before the coming struggle; but the most difficult and hazardous portion of his enterprise remained yet to be accomplished. Crawling on his hands and knees, he reached one of the openings by which the hay was let down into the racks beneath, and cautiously peeping over, gazed into the interior of the stable itself, and noted the precautions taken to secure the safety of the racehorse and the difficulties which lay before him. The box in which the animal was placed was secured by a strong padlock, the key of which rested at that moment under the pillow of Slangsby, the Due d’Austerlitz’s trainer, while in the next box, half-lying, half-sitting on a truss of straw, dozed “Yorkshire Joe,” a broad-shouldered, bowlegged lad some eighteen years of age, who had been a kind of equestrian valet to Tartuffe during the whole “educational course” of that promising quadruped.
These particulars the intelligent eye of the tenant of the hay-loft took in at a glance, while his quick wit decided as rapidly the exact degree in which they were calculated to tell for or against the object he sought to accomplish. The padlock was in his favour; for as he did not intend to enter the horse-box by the door, it would serve to keep Joe out without interfering with his design; but the presence of the stable-boy presented an insuperable obstacle to his further proceedings. This difficulty had, however, been foreseen and provided against. Stealing on tiptoe across the loft, he selected a long, stout straw, and thrusting it through the key-hole of the door by which the fodder was taken in, he suffered it to drop on the outside. Scarcely had he done so, when a low cough announced the presence of some confederate, and satisfied that everything was in a right train, he noiselessly returned to his post of observation. In another moment his quick ear caught the sound of a modest tap at the stable-door. Honest Joe’s senses not being equally on the alert, the knock had to be repeated more than once ere he became aware of it. As soon as he grew convinced that the sound was not the creation of his sleeping fancy, he rubbed his eyes, stretched himself, and drowsily inquired, “Who’s there?”
“It is I—Mary; and I want particularly to speak to you,” replied a woman’s voice.
“Thy want must wait till morning, lass; for I’m not a-goaing to leave this place to-night for nothink nor nobody; so gang thee whoam agin,” was the uncourteous reply.
“No, but Joe, dear Joe, you must hear me to-night; it is something very important indeed. You must hear me,” pleaded the temptress.
“I woan’t, I tell thee; gangwhoam!” returned Joe gruffly.
“Well, if I’d thought you’d have been so unkind, I would not have stayed out of my warm bed, trapesing through Hepsom streets at this time o’night, which ain’t fit for a respecktible young woman to be out in, and coming all this way to put you up to something as may lose you your place, and worse, if you ain’t told of it. I didn’t expect sich unkindness—and from you, too; that I didn’t;” and here a sound akin to a sob, apparently indicating that the speaker was weeping, found its way to Joe’s ears, and going thence straight to his honest, unsuspicious heart, overcame his prudence and conquered his resolution. Rising from his seat, he approached the door and listened; the sobs still continued.
“Mary, lass, what ails thee?” he said; “I didn’t mean to anger thee, wench! but thee knoas I dare na leave t’horse; besoids t’stable-dour be locked, and maister’s got t’key.”