“How long would it take him to make the journey?”
“Oh, about five-and-twenty minutes—maybe half an hour: certainly not more.”
“So then it would be about quarter-past eleven when he arrived at the farrier’s? I see. Any idea at what time he got back?”
“Not the ghost of one. In fact, we should never have known that he ever did get back—for nobody heard a sound of his return the whole night long—were it not that when Captain MacTavish crossed the stable-yard at five o’clock in the morning and, seeing the door ajar, looked in, he found Chocolate Maid standing in her stall, the dog dead, and Highland Lassie gone. Of course, Chocolate Maid being there after we had passed Farrow on the road with her was proof that he did return at some hour of the night, you know: though when it was, or why he should have gone out again, heaven alone knows. Personally, you know, I am of the opinion that Highland Lassie was stolen while he was absent; that, on returning he discovered the robbery and, following the trail, went out after the robbers, and, coming up with them, got his terrible injuries that way.”
“H’m! Yes! I don’t think! What ‘trail’ was he to find, please, when you just now told me that there wasn’t so much as a hoofprint to tell the tale? Or was that an error?”
“No, it wasn’t. The entire stable-yard is paved with red tiles, and we’ve had such an uncommon spell of dry weather lately that the earth of the surrounding country is baked as hard as a brickbat. An elephant couldn’t make a footmark upon it, much less a horse. But, gravy, man! instead of making the thing clearer, I’m blest if you’re not adding gloom to darkness, and rendering it more mysterious than ever. What under the four corners of heaven could Farrow have followed, then, if the ‘trail’ is to be eliminated entirely?”
“Maybe his own inclination, Major—maybe nothing at all,” said Cleek, enigmatically. “If your little theory of his returning and finding Highland Lassie stolen were a thing that would hold water I am inclined to think that Mr. Tom Farrow would have raised an alarm that you could hear for half a mile, and that if he had started out after the robbers he would have done so with a goodly force of followers at his heels and with all the lanterns and torches that could be raked and scraped together.”
“Good lud, yes! of course he would. I never thought of that. Did you, Mary? His whole heart and soul were bound up in the animal. If he had thought that anything had happened to her, if he had known that she was gone, a pitful of raging devils would have been spirits of meekness beside him. Man alive, you make my head whiz. For him to go off over the moor without word or cry at such a time——I say, Mr. Cleek! For God’s sake, what do you make of such a thing as that at such a time, eh?”
“Well, Major,” replied Cleek, “I hate to destroy any man’s illusions and to besmirch any man’s reputation, but—que voulez vous? If Mr. Tom Farrow went out upon that moor after the mare was stolen, and went without giving an alarm or saying a word to anybody, then in my private opinion your precious trainer is nothing in the world but a precious double-faced, double-dealing, dishonourable blackguard, who treacherously sold you to the enemy and got just what he deserved by way of payment.”
Major Norcross made no reply. He simply screwed up his lips until they were a mere pucker of little creases, and looked round at his wife with something of the pain and hopeless bewilderment of an unjustly scolded child.