Wessex Plate [it ran] 50 sovs each h ft with 1000 sovs added forfour and five year olds. Second, ￡300. Third, ￡200. New course(one mile and five furlongs). Mr. Heath Newton’s The Negro. Redcap. Cinnamon jacket. Colonel Wardlaw’s Pugilist. Pink cap. Blueand black jacket. Lord Backwater’s Desborough. Yellow cap andsleeves. Colonel Ross’s Silver Blaze. Black cap. Red jacket. Duke ofBalmoral’s Iris. Yellow and black stripes. Lord Singleford’s Rasper.
Purple cap. Black sleeves.
“We scratched our other one, and put all hopes on your word,”
said the Colonel. “Why, what is that? Silver Blaze favorite?”
“Five to four against Silver Blaze!” roared the ring. “Five to fouragainst Silver Blaze! Five to fifteen against Desborough! Five tofour on the field!”
“There are the numbers up,” I cried. “They are all six there.”
“All six there? Then my horse is running,” cried the Colonel ingreat agitation. “But I don’t see him. My colors have not passed.”
“Only five have passed. This must be he.”
As I spoke a powerful bay horse swept out from the weighingenclosure and cantered past us, bearing on its back the well-knownblack and red of the Colonel.
“That’s not my horse,” cried the owner. “That beast has not awhite hair upon its body. What is this that you have done, Mr.
Holmes?”
“Well, well, let us see how he gets on,” said my friend,imperturbably. For a few minutes he gazed through my field-glass.
“Capital! An excellent start!” he cried suddenly. “There they are,coming round the curve!”
From our drag we had a superb view as they came up thestraight. The six horses were so close together that a carpet couldhave covered them, but halfway up the yellow of the Mapletonstable showed to the front. Before they reached us, however,Desborough’s bolt was shot, and the Colonel’s horse, coming awaywith a rush, passed the post a good six lengths before its rival, theDuke of Balmoral’s Iris making a bad third.
“It’s my race, anyhow,” gasped the colonel, passing his hand overhis eyes. “I confess that I can make neither head nor tail of it.
Don’t you think that you have kept up your mystery long enough,Mr. Holmes?”
“Certainly, Colonel, you shall know everything. Let us all goround and have a look at the horse together. Here he is,” hecontinued, as we made our way into the weighing enclosure, whereonly owners and their friends find admittance. “You have only towash his face and his leg in spirits of wine, and you will find thathe is the same old Silver Blaze as ever.”
“You take my breath away!”
“I found him in the hands of a faker, and took the liberty ofrunning him just as he was sent over.”
“My dear sir, you have done wonders. The horse looks very fitand well. It never went better in its life. I owe you a thousandapologies for having doubted your ability. You have done me agreat service by recovering my horse. You would do me a greaterstill if you could lay your hands on the murderer of John Straker.”
“I have done so,” said Holmes quietly.
The colonel and I stared at him in amazement. “You have gothim! Where is he, then?”
“He is here.”
“Here! Where?”
“In my company at the present moment.”
The colonel flushed angrily. “I quite recognize that I am underobligations to you, Mr. Holmes,” said he, “but I must regard whatyou have just said as either a very bad joke or an insult.”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “I assure you that I have not associatedyou with the crime, Colonel,” said he. “The real murderer isstanding immediately behind you.” He stepped past and laid hishand upon the glossy neck of the thoroughbred.
“The horse!” cried both the Colonel and myself.
“Yes, the horse. And it may lessen his guilt if I say that it wasdone in self-defence, and that John Straker was a man who wasentirely unworthy of your confidence. But there goes the bell, andas I stand to win a little on this next race, I shall defer a lengthyexplanation until a more fitting time.”
We had the corner of a Pullman car to ourselves that eveningas we whirled back to London, and I fancy that the journey wasa short one to Colonel Ross as well as to myself as we listened toour companion’s narrative of the events which had occurred at theDartmoor training-stables upon the Monday night, and the meansby which he had unravelled them.
“I confess,” said he, “that any theories which I had formed fromthe newspaper reports were entirely erroneous. And yet therewere indications there, had they not been overlaid by other detailswhich concealed their true import. I went to Devonshire with theconviction that Fitzroy Simpson was the true culprit, although,of course, I saw that the evidence against him was by no meanscomplete. It was while I was in the carriage, just as we reachedthe trainer’s house, that the immense significance of the curriedmutton occurred to me. You may remember that I was distrait,and remained sitting after you had all alighted. I was marvelling inmy own mind how I could possibly have overlooked so obvious aclue.”
“I confess,” said the colonel, “that even now I cannot see how ithelps us.”