The ensuing discussion was fast and furious, possibilities and suggestions canvassed rapidly and decisively. They all contributed. Despite Dillon’s wish to keep Rus’s involvement to a minimum-a stance Pris appreciated-there was one essential aspect in which her twin necessarily featured.
“Belle will need to be put through her paces-prepared as she normally would be before a race. Chances are, since we found her out at the cottage, she’ll have been left there without any regular runs. If they follow the same pattern they did when substituting Flyin’ Fury, they won’t bring Belle back to the string until after the race. They’ll need that time-at least four days-to bring the substitute along well enough to make a decent showing, to pass her off as the real Belle.”
Dillon held Rus’s gaze for a long moment, then grimaced. “What are you suggesting?”
“Other than Cromarty, only Harkness and Crom know of the scheme, so only they can check on Belle. I’m sure they would at least once a day, but with the meet only days away, during training times, both Harkness and Crom will be out on the Heath.” Rus glanced at Pris. “Well away from the cottage.”
He looked at Dillon. “What I’m suggesting is that during the training times, I go to the cottage and work with Belle. We’ve three days left, and she’s been stabled for nearly two. If I start working her later this afternoon, I’m sure I’ll have her raring to go come Tuesday.”
Dillon didn’t like it, but reluctantly agreed. Belle had to be prepared. It was the one true risk in their scheme-if she ran but still didn’t win.
Pris understood that; what she still didn’t understand was his underlying gravity.
“It’ll be best if I move to the Carisbrook house,” Rus said. “It’s much closer to the cottage-I won’t lose as much time going back and forth, and there’ll be less chance of anyone sighting me and reporting it to Harkness.”
Dillon grimaced, but nodded. “With one proviso-you take Patrick whenever you set foot outside the house.”
“You needn’t worry.” Pris caught Dillon’s eye, then met her brother’s. “He won’t be leaving the house alone.”
Rus grinned.
They organized for Pris to take Rus’s bags in the gig when she drove back with Adelaide. The three men would ride straight to the cottage to give Belle her first training session in days.
Satisfied Rus would be well protected, Pris accepted the arrangements with good grace. “Now, how do we go about reswitching Belle?”
That necessitated much discussion, but Dillon and Rus had more than enough knowledge of the movement and housing of horses before a race, and the scramble of activities that filled the morning of a race day, to formulate a plan.
“Cromarty’s using Figgs’s stable, just off the track.” Pulling a low table between their chairs, Dillon sketched a rough map of Newmarket and surrounds, marking in the relevant spots; they all pored over the map as he indicated Figgs’s stable with a box.
“We’ll need to bring Belle down to Hillgate End during the training session the afternoon before.” Dillon glanced at Rus, who nodded. “The best time to make the switch is just before dawn, as the day starts for the stables and all in them. I assume Crom at least will be sleeping in the stable?”
Rus nodded. “It’s usually only him from Cromarty’s, but there’s Figgs’s night watchman as well.”
“He’ll be easily distracted, at least long enough for our purposes, but Crom we don’t want to do anything with at all-nothing to trigger the slightest suspicion that anything might be going on. With the two fillies being all but identical, as long as we switch them without jolting Crom’s suspicions, it’s unlikely he’ll notice the reswitch, especially not with the usual hullabaloo of a race morning distracting him. Cromarty has three runners as well as Belle in the morning’s races. Crom will be too busy to dwell on little things like a horse’s personality. As long as he continues to believe that the horse in Belle’s stall is the substitute, that’s what he’ll see.”
Rus nodded. “I agree.”
Dillon again looked around the circle. “So here’s what we’re going to do-how we’re going to put Belle back in the race.”
Good evening, General.” Demon nodded to Dillon’s father as he walked through the doorway of Dillon’s study. It was later that evening; after dinner, Dillon and his father, alone again, had retired to the room in which they both felt most comfortable.
Noting the hardness in Demon’s blue eyes as they fixed on him, the crispness of the movement as he shut the study door, Dillon wasn’t surprised when he growled, “As for you, you infuriating whelp, what the devil do you think you’re up to?”
Having long ago learned that Demon’s bark was worse than his bite, and that that was almost always driven by concern, Dillon raised his brows mildly, and replied, “Doing what’s best for the racing fraternity.”
The words, along with his even tone, gave Demon pause. He blinked, then, frowning, grabbed the chair from behind Dillon’s desk and hauled it around to face Dillon and his father in the armchairs before the hearth. Dropping into the chair, crossing his long legs, Demon fixed Dillon with a steady, very direct gaze. “Explain.”
Then Demon’s eyes flicked to the General, briefly scanned the older man’s face. “He hasn’t told you either, has he?”
With unruffleable calm, the General smiled. “Dillon was about to explain all to me.” His gaze switched to Dillon’s face. “Do go on, m’boy.”
Dillon hadn’t been about to do any such thing-if he’d had his way, he would have shielded his father from any possible anxiety-but he appreciated his father’s tacit support and the unshakeable faith that lay beneath it.
“So what have you heard?” Setting aside his glass of port, he rose to pour one for Demon.
Demon watched him, still frowning. “Rus Dalling dropped by mid afternoon to beg off assisting Flick for the next few days. Incidentally, she’s of a mind to kiss your feet for bringing him to her attention-he’s a natural, and she’s in alt. But this afternoon she was out-Rus found me.” Demon took the glass Dillon offered him. “He told me he had to work on the real Belle, because you had some plan afoot to pull what amounts to a double substitution.”
Pausing to take a sip of port, Demon eyed Dillon as he resumed his seat. “I didn’t interrogate Dalling-in the circumstances, I thought it wiser to come and interrogate you.”
Dillon smiled, outwardly relaxed, inwardly unsure how the next few minutes would go. “This is the situation-what we now know.” Succinctly, he described the racket run by Mr. X, then outlined the options they faced.
“So I could deal with the scenario entirely as prescribed by the rule book, and achieve nothing more than removing Cromarty and Harkness from the industry. Or we can grasp the chance and shatter the entire scheme, and its perpetrator, too.”
Dillon paused, his gaze on Demon’s now seriously troubled face. He hadn’t been surprised that Rus and Pris had so readily embraced his plan; it was tailor-made to appeal to their wild and reckless natures. Barnaby, too, possessed a certain devil-take-the-hindmost streak. And Barnaby didn’t know enough of Dillon’s past to comprehend that in proposing let alone undertaking such a plan Dillon was taking a personal risk. That was something Demon and the General understood. There were, however, other issues here.
He chose his words with care, let his passion color them. “You understand what’s at stake. If we can strike at the heart of such a scheme, turn it back on itself so that the perpetrator and all his minions get badly stung rather than the gullible public they think to prey upon, that will be a more effective deterrent, one of infinitely greater magnitude, than the slight risk of a corrupt owner being exposed and tossed in jail.”
He caught Demon’s eye, faintly raised a brow. “Which of the two alternatives would you expect me to choose?”