Not only had the horse to be run, but he had to be backed.
French had decided to win the City and Suburban. He wished sometimes now that he had made Punchestown the limit of his desires; but having come to a decision, this gentleman never went back on it. Besides, he would never have so good a chance again of winning a big English race and a fortune at the same time, for Garryowen was a dark horse, if ever a horse was dark, and a flyer, if ever a creature without wings deserved the title.
"Oh, bother the money! We'll get it somehow," French would say, closing his bank-book and tearing up the sheet of note-paper on which he had been making figures. He calculated that, gathering together all his resources, he would have enough to run the horse and back him for a thousand. To do this he would have to perform the most intricate evolutions in the borrowing line. It could be done, however, if Lewis were left out of the calculation.
The fifteen hundred owing to Lewis was a debt which would have to be paid by the third of March, and the City and Suburban is run in April. If it were not paid then Lewis would seize Garryowen with the rest of Mr. French's goods, and that unfortunate gentleman would be stranded so high and dry that he would never swim again.
The one bright spot in his affairs was the fact that Effie had two hundred and fifty a year, settled on her so tightly by a prescient grandfather that no art or artifice could unsettle it or fling it into the melting-pot.
This was French's pet grievance, and by a man's pet grievance you may generally know him.
Garryowen blew into his master's waistcoat, allowed his ears to be stroked, nibbled a lump of sugar, and replied to some confidential remarks of his owner by a subdued, flickering whinny. Then Mr. French barred the door, and, leaving the stableyard, came out into the kitchen-garden, whence a good view could be had of the road.
The adventure of the governess on the preceding night had greatly tickled his fancy. The idea of a sedate, elderly lady assisting, even unwillingly, in the marooning of the bailiff, had amused him, but that was nothing to the fact that Moriarty had used her for bait.
This morning, however, the amusement had worn off, and he was reckoning uncomfortably on an interview with an outraged elderly female, who would possibly carry her resentment to the point of renouncing her situation and returning home.