第141章

The affair of Prime Minister and the nail was not allowed to fade away into obscurity. Through September and October it was made matter for pungent inquiry. The Jockey Club was alive. Mr Pook was very instant,--with many Pookites anxious to free themselves from suspicion. Sporting men declared that the honour of the turf required that every detail of the case should be laid open. But by the end of October, though every detail had been surmised, nothing had in truth been discovered. Nobody doubted but that Tifto had driven the nail into the horse's foot, and that Green and Gilbert Villiers had shared the bulk of the plunder. They had gone off on their travels together, and the fact that each of them had been in possession of about twenty thousand pounds was proved. But then there is no law against two gentlemen having such a sum of money.

It was notorious that Captain Green and Mr Gilbert Villiers had enriched themselves to this extent by the failure of Prime Minister. But yet nothing was proved!

That the Major had either himself driven the nail or seen it done, all racing men were agreed. He had been out with the horse in the morning and had been the first to declare that the animal was lame. And he had been with the horse till the farrier had come.

But he had concocted a story for himself. He did not dispute that the horse had been lamed by the machinations of Green and Villiers,--with the assistance of the groom. No doubt he said, these men, who had been afraid to face an inquiry, had contrived and had carried out the iniquity. How the lameness had been caused he could not pretend to say. The groom who was at the horse's head, and who evidently knew how these things were done, might have struck a nerve in the horse's foot with his boot. But when the horse was got into the stable, he, Tifto,--so he declared,--at once ran out to send for the farrier. During the minutes so occupied, the operation must have been made with the nail. That was Tifto's story,--and as he kept his ground, there were some few who believed it.

But though the story was so far good, he had at moments been imprudent, and had talked when he should have been silent. The whole matter had been a torment to him. In the first place his conscience made him miserable. As long as it had been possible to prevent the evil he had hoped to make a clean breast of it to Lord Silverbridge. Up to this period of his life everything had been 'square' with him. He had betted 'square', and had ridden 'square', and had run horses 'square'. He had taken a pride in this, as though it had been a great virtue. It was not without great inward grief that he had deprived himself of the consolations of those reflections! But when he had approached his noble partner, his noble partner snubbed him at every turn,--and he did the deed.

His reward was to be three thousand pounds,--and he got his money.

The money was very much to him,--would perhaps have been almost enough to comfort him in his misery, had not those other rascals got so much more. When he heard that the groom's fee was higher than his own, it almost broke his heart. Green and Villiers, men of infinitely lower standing,--men at whom the Beargarden would not have looked,--had absolutely netted fortunes on which they could live in comfort. No doubt they had run away while Tifto still stood his ground,--but he soon began to doubt whether to have run away with twenty thousand pounds was not better than to remain with such small plunder as had fallen to his lot, among such faces as those which now looked upon him! Then when he had drunk a few glasses of whisky-and-water, he said something very foolish as to his power of punishing that swindler Green.

An attempt had been made to induce Silverbridge to delay the payment of his bets;--but he had been very eager that they should be paid. Under the joint auspices of Mr Lupton and Mr Moreton the horses were sold, and the establishment was annihilated,--with considerable loss, but with great despatch. The Duke had been urgent. The Jockey Club, and the racing world, and the horsey fraternity generally, might do what seemed to them good,--so that Silverbridge was extricated from the matter. Silverbridge was extricated,--and the Duke cared nothing for the rest.