“Wait a bit,” cried Simmonds. “I’ve got it now. Second horse from the top of the column in to-morrow’s entries in yesterday’s Sportsman.”
Dale understood exactly what the other man meant, and, so long as he understood, the fact may suffice for the rest of the world.
“Tell you wot,” he suggested eagerly, “when you’re ready we’ll just run to the station an’ arsk the bookstall people for yesterday’s paper.”
The inquiry, the search, the triumphant discovery, the telegraphing of the “information” and a sovereign to Tomkinson in Cavendish Square—“five bob each way” for each of the two—all these things took time, and time was very precious to Dale just then. Unhappily, time is often mute as to its value, and Bath is really quite close to Bristol.
The choice secret of the Beckhampton stable was safely launched—in its speculative element, at any rate—and Dale was about to seat himself beside Simmonds, when an astonished and somewhat irate old gentleman hooked the handle of an umbrella into his collar and shouted:
“Confound you, Dale! What are you doing here, and where is your master?”
Dale’s tanned face grew pale, his ears and eyes assumed the semblance of a scared rabbit’s, and the power of speech positively failed him.
“Do you hear me, Dale?” cried the Earl, that instant alighted from a cab. “I am asking you where Viscount Medenham is. If he has gone to town, why have you remained in Bristol?”
“But his lordship hasn’t gone to London, my lord,” stuttered Dale, finding his voice at last, and far too flustered to collect his wits, though he realized in a dazed way that it was his duty to act exactly as Viscount Medenham would wish him to act in such trying circumstances.