“Gad, sir!” exclaimed he, in a voice of deep despair. “I’m afraid you will have to amend that statement so that it may read, ‘unless a miracle occurs there will be every horse in it but her’—every blessed one from Dawson-Blake’s Tarantula, the second favourite, down to the last ‘also ran’ of the lot.”
“Good heavens! The filly hasn’t ‘gone wrong’ suddenly, has she?”
“She’s done more than ‘gone wrong’—she’s gone altogether! Some beastly, low-lived cur of a horse thief broke into the stables the night before last and stole her—stole her, sir, body and bones—and there’s not so much as a hoofprint to tell what became of her.”
“Well, I’m blest!”
“Are you? B’gad, then, you’re about the only one who knows about it that is! For as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve not only lost the best filly in England but the best trainer as well: and the brute that carried off the one got at the other 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.”