"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."
"What is 'just so'?" inquired the major eagerly. "You seem to have hit upon some sort of an idea right at the start. Mind telling me what it is?"
"Certainly not. I could imagine that when a man keeps silent about such a thing at such a time there is a possibility that he has a faint idea of who the criminal may be and that he has excellent reasons for not wishing the world at large to share that idea. In other words, that he would sooner lose the value of the animal fifty times over than have the crime brought home to the person he suspects."
Lady Mary made a faint moaning sound. The major's face was a study.
"I don't know whether you are a wizard or not, Mr. Cleek," he said, after a moment; "but you have certainly hit upon the facts of the matter. It is for that very reason that I have refrained from making the affair public. It is bad enough that Lady Mary and I should have our suspicions regarding the identity of the--er--person implicated without letting others share them. There's Dawson-Blake for one. If he knew, he'd move heaven and earth to ruin him."
"Dawson-Blake?" repeated Cleek. "Pardon, but will that be the particular Sir Gregory Dawson-Blake the millionaire brewer who achieved a knighthood in the last 'Honours List' and whose horse, Tarantula, is second favourite for the coming Derby?"
"Yes, the very man. He is almost what you might call a neighbour of ours, Mr. Cleek. His place, Castle Claverdale, is just over the border line of Northumberland and about five miles distant from Morcan Abbey. His stables are, if anything, superior to my own; and we both use the intervening moorland as a training ground. Also, it was Dawson-Blake's daughter that Lieutenant Chadwick played fast and loose with. Jilted her, you know--threw her over at the eleventh hour and married a chorus girl who had nothing to bless herself with but a pretty face and a long line of lodging-house ancestry. Not that Miss Dawson-Blake lost anything by getting rid of such a man before she committed the folly of tying herself to him for life, but her father never forgave Lieutenant Chadwick and would spend a million for the satisfaction of putting him behind bars."
