The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Go to Part 2 of 2

PROLOGUE

THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799)

Extracted from a Family Paper

I address these lines--written in India--to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse
the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle.
The reserve which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been
misinterpreted by members of my family whose good opinion I cannot
consent to forfeit. I request them to suspend their decision until
they have read my narrative. And I declare, on my word of honour,
that what I am now about to write is, strictly and literally,
the truth.

The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise
in a great public event in which we were both concerned--
the storming of Seringapatam, under General Baird, on the 4th
of May, 1799.

In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood,
I must revert for a moment to the period before the assault,
and to the stories current in our camp of the treasure in jewels
and gold stored up in the Palace of Seringapatam.

II

One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamond--
a famous gem in the native annals of India.

The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set
in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon.
Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which
represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned,
and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning
of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues
to be known in India to this day--the name of THE MOONSTONE.
A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard,
in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India),
to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semi-transparent
stone of the inferior order of gems, supposed to be affected
by the lunar influences--the moon, in this latter case also,
giving the name by which the stone is still known to collectors in our
own time.

The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh
century of the Christian era.

At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni, crossed India;
seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its treasures the
famous temple, which had stood for centuries--the shrine of Hindoo pilgrimage,
and the wonder of the Eastern world.

Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped
the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three Brahmins,
the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead, was removed
by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred cities of India--
the city of Benares.

Here, in a new shrine--in a hall inlaid with precious stones,
under a roof supported by pillars of gold--the moon-god was set up
and worshipped. Here, on the night when the shrine was completed,
Vishnu the Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.

The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the forehead
of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their robes.
The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from that
time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the
generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before his will.
The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal who laid
hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name who received
it after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be written over
the gates of the shrine in letters of gold.

One age followed another--and still, generation after generation,
the successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone,
night and day. One age followed another until the first years
of the eighteenth Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe,
Emperor of the Moguls. At his command havoc and rapine were let
loose once more among the temples of the worship of Brahmah.
The shrine of the four-handed god was polluted by the slaughter
of sacred animals; the images of the deities were broken in pieces;
and the Moonstone was seized by an officer of rank in the army
of Aurungzebe.

Powerless to recover their lost treasure by open force,
the three guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise.
The generations succeeded each other; the warrior who had
committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the Moonstone passed
(carrying its curse with it) from one lawless Mohammedan
hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes,
the successors of the three guardian priests kept their watch,
waiting the day when the will of Vishnu the Preserver should
restore to them their sacred gem. Time rolled on from the first
to the last years of the eighteenth Christian century. The Diamond
fell into the possession of Tippoo, Sultan of Seringapatam,
who caused it to be placed as an ornament in the handle of a dagger,
and who commanded it to be kept among the choicest treasures
of his armoury. Even then--in the palace of the Sultan himself--
the three guardian priests still kept their watch in secret.
There were three officers of Tippoo's household,
strangers to the rest, who had won their master's confidence
by conforming, or appearing to conform, to the Mussulman faith;
and to those three men report pointed as the three priests
in disguise.

III

So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of the Moonstone.
It made no serious impression on any of us except my cousin--
whose love of the marvellous induced him to believe it.
On the night before the assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly
angry with me, and with others, for treating the whole thing
as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle's
unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his
boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his finger,
if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted
by a roar of laughter, and there, as we all thought that night,
the thing ended.

Let me now take you on to the day of the assault. My cousin and I
were separated at the outset. I never saw him when we forded the river;
when we planted the English flag in the first breach; when we crossed
the ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the town.
It was only at dusk, when the place was ours, and after General Baird
himself had found the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the slain,
that Herncastle and I met.

We were each attached to a party sent out by the general's orders
to prevent the plunder and confusion which followed our conquest.
The camp-followers committed deplorable excesses; and, worse still,
the soldiers found their way, by a guarded door, into the treasury
of the Palace, and loaded themselves with gold and jewels.
It was in the court outside the treasury that my cousin and I met,
to enforce the laws of discipline on our own soldiers. Herncastle's fiery
temper had been, as I could plainly see, exasperated to a kind
of frenzy by the terrible slaughter through which we had passed.
He was very unfit, in my opinion, to perform the duty that had been
entrusted to him.

There was riot and confusion enough in the treasury, but no
violence that I saw. The men (if I may use such an expression)
disgraced themselves good-humouredly. All sorts of rough
jests and catchwords were bandied about among them;
and the story of the Diamond turned up again unexpectedly,
in the form of a mischievous joke. "Who's got the Moonstone?"
was the rallying cry which perpetually caused the plundering,
as soon as it was stopped in one place, to break out in another.
While I was still vainly trying to establish order, I heard
a frightful yelling on the other side of the courtyard, and at
once ran towards the cries, in dread of finding some new outbreak
of the pillage in that direction.

I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians
(by their dress, as I guessed, officers of the palace)
lying across the entrance, dead.

A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an armoury.
A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a man whose back
was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came in, and I saw
John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger dripping with blood
in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the dagger's handle,
flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me, like a gleam of fire.
The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle's
hand, and said, in his native language--"The Moonstone will have its vengeance
yet on you and yours!"  He spoke those words, and fell dead on the floor.

Before I could stir in the matter, the men who had followed me across
the courtyard crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman.
"Clear the room!" he shouted to me, "and set a guard on the door!"
The men fell back as he threw himself on them with his torch and his dagger.
I put two sentinels of my own company, on whom I could rely, to keep
the door. Through the remainder of the night, I saw no more of
my cousin.

Early in the morning, the plunder still going on, General Baird announced
publicly by beat of drum, that any thief detected in the fact, be he whom
he might, should be hung. The provost-marshal was in attendance,
to prove that the General was in earnest; and in the throng that followed
the proclamation, Herncastle and I met again.

He held out his hand, as usual, and said, "Good morning.

I waited before I gave him my hand in return.

"Tell me first," I said, "how the Indian in the armoury met his death,
and what those last words meant, when he pointed to the dagger in your hand."

"The Indian met his death, as I suppose, by a mortal wound,"
said Herncastle. "What his last words meant I know no more than
you do."

I looked at him narrowly. His frenzy of the previous day
had all calmed down. I determined to give him another chance.

"Is that all you have to tell me?"  I asked.

He answered, "That is all."

I turned my back on him; and we have not spoken since.

IV

I beg it to be understood that what I write here about my cousin
(unless some necessity should arise for making it public)
is for the information of the family only. Herncastle has said
nothing that can justify me in speaking to our commanding officer.
He has been taunted more than once about the Diamond, by those who
recollect his angry outbreak before the assault; but, as may easily
be imagined, his own remembrance of the circumstances under which I
surprised him in the armoury has been enough to keep him silent.
It is reported that he means to exchange into another regiment,
avowedly for the purpose of separating himself from ME.

Whether this be true or not, I cannot prevail upon myself to become
his accuser--and I think with good reason. If I made the matter public,
I have no evidence but moral evidence to bring forward.
I have not only no proof that he killed the two men at the door;
I cannot even declare that he killed the third man inside--
for I cannot say that my own eyes saw the deed committed.
It is true that I heard the dying Indian's words; but if those
words were pronounced to be the ravings of delirium, how could I
contradict the assertion from my own knowledge? Let our relatives,
on either side, form their own opinion on what I have written,
and decide for themselves whether the aversion I now feel towards
this man is well or ill founded.

Although I attach no sort of credit to the fantastic Indian legend
of the gem, I must acknowledge, before I conclude, that I am influenced
by a certain superstition of my own in this matter. It is my conviction,
or my delusion, no matter which, that crime brings its own fatality with it.
I am not only persuaded of Herncastle's guilt; I am even fanciful enough
to believe that he will live to regret it, if he keeps the Diamond;
and that others will live to regret taking it from him, if he gives the
Diamond away.

                       THE STORY

                     FIRST PERIOD

            THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)

The events related by GABRIEL BETTEREDGE, house-steward
        in the service of JULIA, LADY VERINDER

CHAPTER I

In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one hundred and twenty-nine,
you will find it thus written:

"Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we
count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go
through with it."

Only yesterday, I opened my ROBINSON CRUSOE at that place.
Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty),
came my lady's nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short
conversation with me, as follows:--

"Betteredge," says Mr. Franklin, "I have been to the lawyer's about some
family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the loss
of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt's house in Yorkshire, two years since.
Mr. Bruff thinks as I think, that the whole story ought, in the interests
of truth, to be placed on record in writing--and the sooner the better."

Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake
of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer's side, I said I thought so too.
Mr. Franklin went on.

"In this matter of the Diamond," he said, "the characters of innocent
people have suffered under suspicion already--as you know.
The memories of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want
of a record of the facts to which those who come after us can appeal.
There can be no doubt that this strange family story of ours ought
to be told. And I think, Betteredge, Mr. Bruff and I together have hit
on the right way of telling it."

Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to see
what I myself had to do with it, so far.

"We have certain events to relate," Mr. Franklin proceeded;
"and we have certain persons concerned in those events who are
capable of relating them. Starting from these plain facts, the idea
is that we should all write the story of the Moonstone in turn--
as far as our own personal experience extends, and no farther.
We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into the hands
of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India fifty years since.
This prefatory narrative I have already got by me in the form of an old
family paper, which relates the necessary particulars on the authority
of an eye-witness. The next thing to do is to tell how the Diamond
found its way into my aunt's house in Yorkshire, two years ago,
and how it came to be lost in little more than twelve hours afterwards.
Nobody knows as much as you do, Betteredge, about what went on in
the house at that time. So you must take the pen in hand, and start
the story."

In those terms I was informed of what my personal concern was
with the matter of the Diamond. If you are curious to know
what course I took under the circumstances, I beg to inform
you that I did what you would probably have done in my place.
I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task
imposed upon me--and I privately felt, all the time,
that I was quite clever enough to perform it, if I only gave
my own abilities a fair chance. Mr. Franklin, I imagine,
must have seen my private sentiments in my face. He declined
to believe in my modesty; and he insisted on giving my abilities
a fair chance.

Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As soon as his
back was turned, I went to my writing desk to start the story.
There I have sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since;
seeing what Robinson Crusoe saw, as quoted above--namely, the folly
of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge
rightly of our own strength to go through with it. Please to remember,
I opened the book by accident, at that bit, only the day before I
rashly undertook the business now in hand; and, allow me to ask--
if THAT isn't prophecy, what is?

I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time;
I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess
an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it,
if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express
my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written,
and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years--
generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco--and I have found
it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life.
When my spirits are bad--ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice--
ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me;
in present times when I have had a drop too much--ROBINSON CRUSOE.
I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service.
On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too
much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again.
Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into
the bargain.

Still, this don't look much like starting the story of the Diamond--does it?
I seem to be wandering off in search of Lord knows what, Lord knows where.
We will take a new sheet of paper, if you please, and begin over again,
with my best respects to you.

CHAPTER II

I spoke of my lady a line or two back. Now the Diamond could never have
been in our house, where it was lost, if it had not been made a present
of to my lady's daughter; and my lady's daughter would never have been
in existence to have the present, if it had not been for my lady who
(with pain and travail) produced her into the world. Consequently, if we
begin with my lady, we are pretty sure of beginning far enough back.
And that, let me tell you, when you have got such a job as mine in hand,
is a real comfort at starting.

If you know anything of the fashionable world, you have
heard tell of the three beautiful Miss Herncastles.
Miss Adelaide; Miss Caroline; and Miss Julia--this last being
the youngest and the best of the three sisters, in my opinion;
and I had opportunities of judging, as you shall presently see.
I went into the service of the old lord, their father
(thank God, we have got nothing to do with him, in this business
of the Diamond; he had the longest tongue and the shortest
temper of any man, high or low, I ever met with)--I say,
I went into the service of the old lord, as page-boy in waiting
on the three honourable young ladies, at the age of fifteen years.
There I lived till Miss Julia married the late Sir John Verinder.
An excellent man, who only wanted somebody to manage him;
and, between ourselves, he found somebody to do it;
and what is more, he throve on it and grew fat on it,
and lived happy and died easy on it, dating from the day
when my lady took him to church to be married, to the day
when she relieved him of his last breath, and closed his eyes
for ever.

I have omitted to state that I went with the bride to the
bride's husband's house and lands down here. "Sir John,"
she says, "I can't do without Gabriel Betteredge."  "My lady,"
says Sir John, "I can't do without him, either."  That was
his way with her--and that was how I went into his service.
It was all one to me where I went, so long as my mistress and I
were together.

Seeing that my lady took an interest in the out-of-door work,
and the farms, and such like, I took an interest in them too--
with all the more reason that I was a small farmer's seventh
son myself. My lady got me put under the bailiff, and I did
my best, and gave satisfaction, and got promotion accordingly.
Some years later, on the Monday as it might be,
my lady says, "Sir John, your bailiff is a stupid old man.
Pension him liberally, and let Gabriel Betteredge have his place."
On the Tuesday as it might be, Sir John says, "My lady,
the bailiff is pensioned liberally; and Gabriel Betteredge has
got his place."  You hear more than enough of married people
living together miserably. Here is an example to the contrary.
Let it be a warning to some of you, and an encouragement to others.
In the meantime, I will go on with my story.

Well, there I was in clover, you will say. Placed in a position
of trust and honour, with a little cottage of my own to live in,
with my rounds on the estate to occupy me in the morning,
and my accounts in the afternoon, and my pipe and my ROBINSON CRUSOE
in the evening--what more could I possibly want to make me happy?
Remember what Adam wanted when he was alone in the Garden of Eden;
and if you don't blame it in Adam, don't blame it in me.

The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept
house for me at my cottage. Her name was Selina Goby.
I agree with the late William Cobbett about picking a wife.
See that she chews her food well and sets her foot down
firmly on the ground when she walks, and you're all right.
Selina Goby was all right in both these respects, which was
one reason for marrying her. I had another reason, likewise,
entirely of my own discovering. Selina, being a single woman,
made me pay so much a week for her board and services.
Selina, being my wife, couldn't charge for her board, and would
have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point
of view I looked at it from. Economy--with a dash of love.
I put it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it
to myself.

"I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind," I said,
"and I think, my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than
to keep her."

My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn't know
which to be most shocked at--my language or my principles.
Some joke tickled her, I suppose, of the sort that you can't
take unless you are a person of quality. Understanding nothing
myself but that I was free to put it next to Selina,
I went and put it accordingly. And what did Selina say?
Lord! how little you must know of women, if you ask that.
Of course she said, Yes.

As my time drew nearer, and there got to be talk of my having
a new coat for the ceremony, my mind began to misgive me.
I have compared notes with other men as to what they
felt while they were in my interesting situation;
and they have all acknowledged that, about a week before
it happened, they privately wished themselves out of it.
I went a trifle further than that myself; I actually rose up,
as it were, and tried to get out of it. Not for nothing!
I was too just a man to expect she would let me off for nothing.
Compensation to the woman when the man gets out of it,
is one of the laws of England. In obedience to the laws,
and after turning it over carefully in my mind, I offered Selina
Goby a feather-bed and fifty shillings to be off the bargain.
You will hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true--she was
fool enough to refuse.

After that it was all over with me, of course. I got the new coat as cheap
as I could, and I went through all the rest of it as cheap as I could.
We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one
and half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don't understand, but we always
seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another's way.
When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife
wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to
my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased
an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife.
I was left with my little girl Penelope, and with no other child.
Shortly afterwards Sir John died, and my lady was left with her
little girl, Miss Rachel, and no other child. I have written
to very poor purpose of my lady, if you require to be told that my
little Penelope was taken care of, under my good mistress's own eye,
and was sent to school and taught, and made a sharp girl, and promoted,
when old enough, to be Miss Rachel's own maid.

As for me, I went on with my business as bailiff year after year up
to Christmas 1847, when there came a change in my life. On that day,
my lady invited herself to a cup of tea alone with me in my cottage.
She remarked that, reckoning from the year when I started as page-boy in
the time of the old lord, I had been more than fifty years in her service,
and she put into my hands a beautiful waistcoat of wool that she had
worked herself, to keep me warm in the bitter winter weather.

I received this magnificent present quite at a loss to find words to thank
my mistress with for the honour she had done me. To my great astonishment,
it turned out, however, that the waistcoat was not an honour, but a bribe.
My lady had discovered that I was getting old before I had discovered
it myself, and she had come to my cottage to wheedle me (if I may use
such an expression) into giving up my hard out-of-door work as bailiff,
and taking my ease for the rest of my days as steward in the house. I made
as good a fight of it against the indignity of taking my ease as I could.
But my mistress knew the weak side of me; she put it as a favour to herself.
The dispute between us ended, after that, in my wiping my eyes,
like an old fool, with my new woollen waistcoat, and saying I would think
about it.

The perturbation in my mind, in regard to thinking about it, being truly
dreadful after my lady had gone away, I applied the remedy which I
have never yet found to fail me in cases of doubt and emergency.
I smoked a pipe and took a turn at ROBINSON CRUSOE. Before I had
occupied myself with that extraordinary book five minutes, I came
on a comforting bit (page one hundred and fifty-eight), as follows:
"To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate."  I saw my way clear directly.
To-day I was all for continuing to be farm-bailiff; to-morrow, on
the authority of ROBINSON CRUSOE, I should be all the other way.
Take myself to-morrow while in to-morrow's humour, and the thing
was done. My mind being relieved in this manner, I went to sleep
that night in the character of Lady Verinder's farm bailiff,
and I woke up the next morning in the character of Lady
Verinder's house-steward. All quite comfortable, and all through
ROBINSON CRUSOE!

My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I
have done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written,
and every word of it true. But she points out one objection.
She says what I have done so far isn't in the least what I was
wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond and,
instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self.
Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder whether
the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books,
ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects,
like me? If they do, I can feel for them. In the meantime,
here is another false start, and more waste of good writing-paper.
What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you
to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over again for the
third time.

CHAPTER III

The question of how I am to start the story properly I have
tried to settle in two ways. First, by scratching my head,
which led to nothing. Second, by consulting my daughter Penelope,
which has resulted in an entirely new idea.

Penelope's notion is that I should set down what happened,
regularly day by day, beginning with the day when we got the news
that Mr. Franklin Blake was expected on a visit to the house.
When you come to fix your memory with a date in this way, it is
wonderful what your memory will pick up for you upon that compulsion.
The only difficulty is to fetch out the dates, in the first place.
This Penelope offers to do for me by looking into her own diary,
which she was taught to keep when she was at school, and which she has
gone on keeping ever since. In answer to an improvement on this notion,
devised by myself, namely, that she should tell the story instead
of me, out of her own diary, Penelope observes, with a fierce
look and a red face, that her journal is for her own private eye,
and that no living creature shall ever know what is in it but herself.
When I inquire what this means, Penelope says, "Fiddlesticks!"
I say, Sweethearts.

Beginning, then, on Penelope's plan, I beg to mention that I
was specially called one Wednesday morning into my lady's
own sitting-room, the date being the twenty-fourth of May,
Eighteen hundred and forty-eight.

"Gabriel," says my lady, "here is news that will surprise you.
Franklin Blake has come back from abroad. He has been staying
with his father in London, and he is coming to us to-morrow
to stop till next month, and keep Rachel's birthday."

If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but respect would have prevented me
from throwing that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr. Franklin since
he was a boy, living along with us in this house. He was, out of all sight
(as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.
Miss Rachel, who was present, and to whom I made that remark, observed,
in return, that SHE remembered him as the most atrocious tyrant that ever
tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted little girl
in string harness that England could produce. "I burn with indignation,
and I ache with fatigue," was the way Miss Rachel summed it up, "when I think
of Franklin Blake."

Hearing what I now tell you, you will naturally ask how it
was that Mr. Franklin should have passed all the years,
from the time when he was a boy to the time when he was a man,
out of his own country. I answer, because his father had
the misfortune to be next heir to a Dukedom, and not to be able
to prove it.

In two words, this was how the thing happened:

My lady's eldest sister married the celebrated Mr. Blake--
equally famous for his great riches, and his great suit at law.
How many years he went on worrying the tribunals of his
country to turn out the Duke in possession, and to put himself
in the Duke's place--how many lawyer's purses he filled
to bursting, and how many otherwise harmless people he set
by the ears together disputing whether he was right or wrong--
is more by a great deal than I can reckon up. His wife died,
and two of his three children died, before the tribunals could make
up their minds to show him the door and take no more of his money.
When it was all over, and the Duke in possession was left
in possession, Mr. Blake discovered that the only way of being
even with his country for the manner in which it had treated him,
was not to let his country have the honour of educating his son.
"How can I trust my native institutions," was the form in which
he put it, "after the way in which my native institutions have
behaved to ME?"  Add to this, that Mr. Blake disliked all boys,
his own included, and you will admit that it could only end
in one way. Master Franklin was taken from us in England,
and was sent to institutions which his father COULD trust,
in that superior country, Germany; Mr. Blake himself,
you will observe, remaining snug in England, to improve his
fellow-countrymen in the Parliament House, and to publish
a statement on the subject of the Duke in possession,
which has remained an unfinished statement from that day
to this.

There! thank God, that's told! Neither you nor I need trouble our
heads any more about Mr. Blake, senior. Leave him to the Dukedom;
and let you and I stick to the Diamond.

The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means
of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn't forget us after he went abroad. He wrote every
now and then; sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel,
and sometimes to me. We had had a transaction together,
before he left, which consisted in his borrowing of me a ball
of string, a four-bladed knife, and seven-and-sixpence in money--
the colour of which last I have not seen, and never expect to
see again. His letters to me chiefly related to borrowing more.
I heard, however, from my lady, how he got on abroad, as he grew
in years and stature. After he had learnt what the institutions
of Germany could teach him, he gave the French a turn next,
and the Italians a turn after that. They made him among them
a sort of universal genius, as well as I could understand it.
He wrote a little; he painted a little; he sang and played and
composed a little--borrowing, as I suspect, in all these cases,
just as he had borrowed from me. His mother's fortune
(seven hundred a year) fell to him when he came of age,
and ran through him, as it might be through a sieve.
The more money he had, the more he wanted; there was a hole
in Mr. Franklin's pocket that nothing would sew up.
Wherever he went, the lively, easy way of him made him welcome.
He lived here, there, and everywhere; his address (as he used
to put it himself) being "Post Office, Europe--to be left till
called for."  Twice over, he made up his mind to come back
to England and see us; and twice over (saving your presence),
some unmentionable woman stood in the way and stopped him.
His third attempt succeeded, as you know already from
what my lady told me. On Thursday the twenty-fifth of May,
we were to see for the first time what our nice boy had grown
to be as a man. He came of good blood; he had a high courage;
and he was five-and-twenty years of age, by our reckoning.
Now you know as much of Mr. Franklin Blake as I did--
before Mr. Franklin Blake came down to our house.

The Thursday was as fine a summer's day as ever you saw:
and my lady and Miss Rachel (not expecting Mr. Franklin
till dinner-time) drove out to lunch with some friends in
the neighbourhood.

When they were gone, I went and had a look at the bedroom which
had been got ready for our guest, and saw that all was straight.
Then, being butler in my lady's establishment, as well as steward
(at my own particular request, mind, and because it vexed me
to see anybody but myself in possession of the key of the late
Sir John's cellar)--then, I say, I fetched up some of our famous
Latour claret, and set it in the warm summer air to take off the chill
before dinner. Concluding to set myself in the warm summer air next--
seeing that what is good for old claret is equally good for old age--
I took up my beehive chair to go out into the back court, when I
was stopped by hearing a sound like the soft beating of a drum,
on the terrace in front of my lady's residence.

Going round to the terrace, I found three mahogany-coloured Indians,
in white linen frocks and trousers, looking up at the house.

The Indians, as I saw on looking closer, had small hand-drums slung in front
of them. Behind them stood a little delicate-looking light-haired English
boy carrying a bag. I judged the fellows to be strolling conjurors,
and the boy with the bag to be carrying the tools of their trade.
One of the three, who spoke English and who exhibited, I must own,
the most elegant manners, presently informed me that my judgment was right.
He requested permission to show his tricks in the presence of the lady of
the house.

Now I am not a sour old man. I am generally all for amusement,
and the last person in the world to distrust another person
because he happens to be a few shades darker than myself.
But the best of us have our weaknesses--and my weakness,
when I know a family plate-basket to be out on a pantry-table,
is to be instantly reminded of that basket by the sight
of a strolling stranger whose manners are superior to my own.
I accordingly informed the Indian that the lady of the house
was out; and I warned him and his party off the premises.
He made me a beautiful bow in return; and he and his party went
off the premises. On my side, I returned to my beehive chair,
and set myself down on the sunny side of the court, and fell
(if the truth must be owned), not exactly into a sleep, but into
the next best thing to it.

I was roused up by my daughter Penelope running out at me
as if the house was on fire. What do you think she wanted?
She wanted to have the three Indian jugglers instantly taken up;
for this reason, namely, that they knew who was coming from
London to visit us, and that they meant some mischief to
Mr. Franklin Blake.

Mr. Franklin's name roused me. I opened my eyes, and made my girl
explain herself.

It appeared that Penelope had just come from our lodge, where she
had been having a gossip with the lodge-keeper's daughter.
The two girls had seen the Indians pass out, after I had
warned them off, followed by their little boy. Taking it
into their heads that the boy was ill-used by the foreigners--
for no reason that I could discover, except that he was
pretty and delicate-looking--the two girls had stolen along
the inner side of the hedge between us and the road, and had
watched the proceedings of the foreigners on the outer side.
Those proceedings resulted in the performance of the following
extraordinary tricks.

They first looked up the road, and down the road, and made
sure that they were alone. Then they all three faced about,
and stared hard in the direction of our house. Then they
jabbered and disputed in their own language, and looked at
each other like men in doubt. Then they all turned to their
little English boy, as if they expected HIM to help them.
And then the chief Indian, who spoke English, said to the boy,
"Hold out your hand."

On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn't
know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her.
I thought privately that it might have been her stays.
All I said, however, was, "You make my flesh creep."  (NOTA BENE:
Women like these little compliments.)

Well, when the Indian said, "Hold out your hand," the boy
shrunk back, and shook his head, and said he didn't like it.
The Indian, thereupon, asked him (not at all unkindly), whether
he would like to be sent back to London, and left where they
had found him, sleeping in an empty basket in a market--
a hungry, ragged, and forsaken little boy. This, it seems,
ended the difficulty. The little chap unwillingly held out his hand.
Upon that, the Indian took a bottle from his bosom, and poured out
of it some black stuff, like ink, into the palm of the boy's hand.
The Indian--first touching the boy's head, and making signs over
it in the air--then said, "Look."  The boy became quite stiff,
and stood like a statue, looking into the ink in the hollow of
his hand.

(So far, it seemed to me to be juggling, accompanied by a foolish
waste of ink. I was beginning to feel sleepy again, when Penelope's
next words stirred me up.)

The Indians looked up the road and down the road once more--
and then the chief Indian said these words to the boy;
"See the English gentleman from foreign parts."

The boy said, "I see him."

The Indian said, "Is it on the road to this house, and on no other,
that the English gentleman will travel to-day?"

The boy said, "It is on the road to this house, and on no other,
that the English gentleman will travel to-day." The Indian put
a second question--after waiting a little first. He said:
"Has the English gentleman got It about him?"

The boy answered--also, after waiting a little first--"Yes."

The Indian put a third and last question: "Will the English gentleman
come here, as he has promised to come, at the close of day?"

The boy said, "I can't tell."

The Indian asked why.

The boy said, "I am tired. The mist rises in my head, and puzzles me.
I can see no more to-day."

With that the catechism ended. The chief Indian said something in his
own language to the other two, pointing to the boy, and pointing towards
the town, in which (as we afterwards discovered) they were lodged.
He then, after making more signs on the boy's head, blew on his forehead,
and so woke him up with a start. After that, they all went on their way
towards the town, and the girls saw them no more.

Most things they say have a moral, if you only look for it.
What was the moral of this?

The moral was, as I thought: First, that the chief juggler had heard
Mr. Franklin's arrival talked of among the servants out-of-doors, and saw
his way to making a little money by it. Second, that he and his men and boy
(with a view to making the said money) meant to hang about till they saw my
lady drive home, and then to come back, and foretell Mr. Franklin's arrival
by magic. Third, that Penelope had heard them rehearsing their hocus-pocus,
like actors rehearsing a play. Fourth, that I should do well to have an eye,
that evening, on the plate-basket. Fifth, that Penelope would do well to
cool down, and leave me, her father, to doze off again in the sun.

That appeared to me to be the sensible view. If you know anything of the ways
of young women, you won't be surprised to hear that Penelope wouldn't
take it. The moral of the thing was serious, according to my daughter.
She particularly reminded me of the Indian's third question, Has the English
gentleman got It about him? "Oh, father!" says Penelope, clasping her hands,
"don't joke about this. What does 'It' mean?"

"We'll ask Mr. Franklin, my dear," I said, "if you can wait till
Mr. Franklin comes. I winked to show I meant that in joke.
Penelope took it quite seriously. My girl's earnestness tickled me.
"What on earth should Mr. Franklin know about it?"  I inquired.
"Ask him," says Penelope. "And see whether HE thinks it
a laughing matter, too."  With that parting shot, my daughter
left me.

I settled it with myself, when she was gone, that I really
would ask Mr. Franklin--mainly to set Penelope's mind at rest.
What was said between us, when I did ask him, later on that same day,
you will find set out fully in its proper place. But as I
don't wish to raise your expectations and then disappoint them,
I will take leave to warn you here--before we go any further--
that you won't find the ghost of a joke in our conversation on
the subject of the jugglers. To my great surprise, Mr. Franklin,
like Penelope, took the thing seriously. How seriously,
you will understand, when I tell you that, in his opinion,
"It" meant the Moonstone.

CHAPTER IV

I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair.
A sleepy old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object,
I am well aware. But things must be put down in their places,
as things actually happened--and you must please to jog on a little
while longer with me, in expectation of Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival
later in the day.

Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope
had left me, I was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes
in the servants' hall, which meant that dinner was ready.
Taking my own meals in my own sitting-room, I had nothing to do
with the servants' dinner, except to wish them a good stomach to it
all round, previous to composing myself once more in my chair.
I was just stretching my legs, when out bounced another woman on me.
Not my daughter again; only Nancy, the kitchen-maid, this time.
I was straight in her way out; and I observed, as she asked
me to let her by, that she had a sulky face--a thing which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass me
without inquiry.

"What are you turning your back on your dinner for?"  I asked.
"What's wrong now, Nancy?"

Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up,
and took her by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass,
and it is customary with me to adopt that manner of showing
that I personally approve of a girl.

"What's wrong now?"  I said once more.

"Rosanna's late again for dinner," says Nancy. "And I'm sent to fetch
her in. All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house.
Let me alone, Mr. Betteredge!"

The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid.
Having a kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall
presently know), and seeing in Nancy's face, that she would fetch
her fellow-servant in with more hard words than might be needful
under the circumstances, it struck me that I had nothing particular
to do, and that I might as well fetch Rosanna myself; giving her
a hint to be punctual in future, which I knew she would take kindly
from ME.

"Where is Rosanna?"  I inquired.

"At the sands, of course!" says Nancy, with a toss of her head.
"She had another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked
to go out and get a breath of fresh air. I have no patience
with her!"

"Go back to your dinner, my girl," I said. "I have patience with her,
and I'll fetch her in."

Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased,
she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin.
It isn't immorality--it's only habit.

Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.

No! it won't do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you;
but you really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna--
for this reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly.
How hard I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way,
and how badly I succeed! But, there!--Persons and Things do turn up
so vexatiously in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed.
Let us take it easy, and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick of the
mystery soon, I promise you!

Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but
common politeness) was the only new servant in our house.
About four months before the time I am writing of,
my lady had been in London, and had gone over a Reformatory,
intended to save forlorn women from drifting back into bad ways,
after they had got released from prison. The matron, seeing my
lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a girl to her,
named Rosanna Spearman, and told her a most miserable story,
which I haven't the heart to repeat here; for I don't like
to be made wretched without any use, and no more do you.
The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief,
and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City,
and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one,
the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory
followed the lead of the law. The matron's opinion of Rosanna was
(in spite of what she had done) that the girl was one
in a thousand, and that she only wanted a chance to prove
herself worthy of any Christian woman's interest in her.
My lady (being a Christian woman, if ever there was one yet)
said to the matron, upon that, "Rosanna Spearman shall
have her chance, in my service."  In a week afterwards,
Rosanna Spearman entered this establishment as our second
housemaid.

Not a soul was told the girl's story, excepting Miss Rachel and me.
My lady, doing me the honour to consult me about most things,
consulted me about Rosanna. Having fallen a good deal latterly into
the late Sir John's way of always agreeing with my lady, I agreed
with her heartily about Rosanna Spearman.

A fairer chance no girl could have had than was given to this
poor girl of ours. None of the servants could cast her past life
in her teeth, for none of the servants knew what it had been.
She had her wages and her privileges, like the rest of them;
and every now and then a friendly word from my lady, in private,
to encourage her. In return, she showed herself, I am bound
to say, well worthy of the kind treatment bestowed upon her.
Though far from strong, and troubled occasionally with those
fainting-fits already mentioned, she went about her work
modestly and uncomplainingly, doing it carefully, and doing
it well. But, somehow, she failed to make friends among
the other women servants, excepting my daughter Penelope,
who was always kind to Rosanna, though never intimate
with her.

I hardly know what the girl did to offend them. There was
certainly no beauty about her to make the others envious;
she was the plainest woman in the house, with the additional
misfortune of having one shoulder bigger than the other.
What the servants chiefly resented, I think, was her silent
tongue and her solitary ways. She read or worked in leisure
hours when the rest gossiped. And when it came to her turn
to go out, nine times out of ten she quietly put on her bonnet,
and had her turn by herself. She never quarrelled,
she never took offence; she only kept a certain distance,
obstinately and civilly, between the rest of them and herself.
Add to this that, plain as she was, there was just a dash
of something that wasn't like a housemaid, and that WAS
like a lady, about her. It might have been in her voice,
or it might have been in her face. All I can say is,
that the other women pounced on it like lightning the first
day she came into the house, and said (which was most unjust)
that Rosanna Spearman gave herself airs.

Having now told the story of Rosanna, I have only to notice one of the many
queer ways of this strange girl to get on next to the story of the sands.

Our house is high up on the Yorkshire coast, and close by the sea.
We have got beautiful walks all round us, in every direction but one.
That one I acknowledge to be a horrid walk. It leads, for a quarter
of a mile, through a melancholy plantation of firs, and brings you
out between low cliffs on the loneliest and ugliest little bay on all
our coast.

The sand-hills here run down to the sea, and end in two spits of rock
jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the water.
One is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the two,
shifting backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year,
lies the most horrible quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire.
At the turn of the tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below,
which sets the whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling
in a manner most remarkable to see, and which has given to it,
among the people in our parts, the name of the Shivering Sand.
A great bank, half a mile out, nigh the mouth of the bay,
breaks the force of the main ocean coming in from the offing.
Winter and summer, when the tide flows over the quicksand,
the sea seems to leave the waves behind it on the bank, and rolls
its waters in smoothly with a heave, and covers the sand in silence.
A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell you! No boat ever
ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village, called
Cobb's Hole, ever come here to play. The very birds of the air,
as it seems to me, give the Shivering Sand a wide berth.
That a young woman, with dozens of nice walks to choose from,
and company to go with her, if she only said "Come!" should prefer
this place, and should sit and work or read in it, all alone,
when it's her turn out, I grant you, passes belief. It's true,
nevertheless, account for it as you may, that this was Rosanna Spearman's
favourite walk, except when she went once or twice to Cobb's Hole,
to see the only friend she had in our neighbourhood, of whom more anon.
It's also true that I was now setting out for this same place,
to fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings us round happily
to our former point, and starts us fair again on our way to the
sands.

I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. When I got out,
through the sand-hills, on to the beach, there she was,
in her little straw bonnet, and her plain grey cloak that she
always wore to hide her deformed shoulder as much as might be--
there she was, all alone, looking out on the quicksand and
the sea.

She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.
Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass
without inquiry--I turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying.
My bandanna handkerchief--one of six beauties given to me by my lady--
was handy in my pocket. I took it out, and I said to Rosanna,
"Come and sit down, my dear, on the slope of the beach along with me.
I'll dry your eyes for you first, and then I'll make so bold as to ask
what you have been crying about."

When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of a beach
a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I was settled,
Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior handkerchief to mine--
cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very wretched; but she sat
down by me like a good girl, when I told her. When you want to comfort
a woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee. I thought of this
golden rule. But there! Rosanna wasn't Nancy, and that's the truth
of it!

"Now, tell me, my dear," I said, "what are you crying about?"

"About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly.
"My past life still comes back to me sometimes."

"Come, come, my girl, I said, "your past life is all sponged out.
Why can't you forget it?"

She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man,
and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.
Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease.
The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat,
with a new composition, warranted to remove anything. The grease
was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth
where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook
her head.

"The stain is taken off," she said. "But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge--
the place shows!"

A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat
is not an easy remark to answer. Something in the girl
herself, too, made me particularly sorry for her just then.
She had nice brown eyes, plain as she was in other ways--
and she looked at me with a sort of respect for my happy old age
and my good character, as things for ever out of her own reach,
which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not feeling
myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to do.
That thing was--to take her in to dinner.

"Help me up," I said. "You're late for dinner, Rosanna--and I
have come to fetch you in."

"You, Mr. Betteredge!" says she.

"They told Nancy to fetch you," I said. "But thought you
might like your scolding better, my dear, if it came from me."

Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and gave it
a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again, and succeeded--
for which I respected her. "You're very kind, Mr. Betteredge," she said.
"I don't want any dinner to-day--let me bide a little longer here."

"What makes you like to be here?"  I asked. "What is it that brings
you everlastingly to this miserable place?"

"Something draws me to it," says the girl, making images with her finger
in the sand. "I try to keep away from it, and I can't. Sometimes,"
says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy,
"sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me here."

"There's roast mutton and suet-pudding waiting for you!"
says I. "Go in to dinner directly. This is what comes,
Rosanna, of thinking on an empty stomach!"  I spoke severely,
being naturally indignant (at my time of life) to hear a young
woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter end!

She didn't seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder,
and kept me where I was, sitting by her side.

"I think the place has laid a spell on me," she said.
"I dream of it night after night; I think of it when I sit
stitching at my work. You know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge--
you know I try to deserve your kindness, and my lady's confidence
in me. But I wonder sometimes whether the life here is too
quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after all I have
gone through, Mr. Betteredge--after all I have gone through.
It's more lonely to me to be among the other servants,
knowing I am not what they are, than it is to he here.
My lady doesn't know, the matron at the reformatory doesn't know,
what a dreadful reproach honest people are in themselves
to a woman like me. Don't scold me, there's a dear good man.
I do my work, don't I? Please not to tell my lady I am discontented--
I am not. My mind's unquiet, sometimes, that's all."
She snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed
down to the quicksand. "Look!" she said "Isn't it wonderful?
isn't it terrible? I have seen it dozens of times,
and it's always as new to me as if I had never seen
it before!"

I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid
sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly,
and then dimpled and quivered all over. "Do you know what it looks
like to ME?" says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again.
"It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it--
all struggling to get to the surface, and all sinking lower and
lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr. Betteredge!
Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck it down!"

Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach
feeding on an unquiet mind! My answer--a pretty sharp one,
in the poor girl's own interests, I promise you!--was at
my tongue's end, when it was snapped short off on a sudden
by a voice among the sand-hills shouting for me by my name.
"Betteredge!" cries the voice, "where are you?" " Here!"
I shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.
Rosanna started to her feet, and stood looking towards the voice.
I was just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was
staggered by a sudden change in the girl's face.

Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it before;
she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless surprise.
"Who is it?"  I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own question.
"Oh! who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than to me.
I twisted round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out
on us from among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman,
dressed in a beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match,
with a rose in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might
have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I
could get on my legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me,
put his arm round my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly
squeezed the breath out of my body. "Dear old Betteredge!" says he.
"I owe you seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know who I am?"

Lord bless us and save us! Here--four good hours before we expected him--
was Mr. Franklin Blake!

Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little
surprised to all appearance, look up from me to Rosanna.
Following his lead, I looked at the girl too. She was
blushing of a deeper red than ever, seemingly at having caught
Mr. Franklin's eye; and she turned and left us suddenly,
in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without either
making her curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me.
Very unlike her usual self: a civiller and better-behaved servant,
in general, you never met with.

"That's an odd girl," says Mr. Franklin. "I wonder what she sees
in me to surprise her?"

"I suppose, sir," I answered, drolling on our young gentleman's
Continental education, "it's the varnish from foreign parts."

I set down here Mr. Franklin's careless question, and my foolish answer,
as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people--it being,
as I have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior fellow-creatures
to find that their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than they are.
Neither Mr. Franklin, with his wonderful foreign training, nor I,
with my age, experience, and natural mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea
of what Rosanna Spearman's unaccountable behaviour really meant.
She was out of our thoughts, poor soul, before we had seen the last flutter
of her little grey cloak among the sand-hills. And what of that? you will ask,
naturally enough. Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can, and perhaps
you will be as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I found out
the truth.

CHAPTER V

The first thing I did, after we were left together alone,
was to make a third attempt to get up from my seat on the sand.
Mr. Franklin stopped me.

"There is one advantage about this horrid place," he said;
"we have got it all to ourselves. Stay where you are, Betteredge;
I have something to say to you."

While he was speaking, I was looking at him, and trying to see something
of the boy I remembered, in the man before me. The man put me out.
Look as I might, I could see no more of his boy's rosy cheeks than
of his boy's trim little jacket. His complexion had got pale:
his face, at the lower part was covered, to my great surprise
and disappointment, with a curly brown beard and mustachios.
He had a lively touch-and-go way with him, very pleasant and engaging,
I admit; but nothing to compare with his free-and-easy manners
of other times. To make matters worse, he had promised to be tall,
and had not kept his promise. He was neat, and slim, and well made;
but he wasn't by an inch or two up to the middle height. In short,
he baffled me altogether. The years that had passed had left nothing
of his old self, except the bright, straightforward look in his eyes.
There I found our nice boy again, and there I concluded to stop in
my investigation.

"Welcome back to the old place, Mr. Franklin," I said.
"All the more welcome, sir, that you have come some hours
before we expected you."

"I have a reason for coming before you expected me," answered Mr. Franklin.
"I suspect, Betteredge, that I have been followed and watched in London,
for the last three or four days; and I have travelled by the morning instead
of the afternoon train, because I wanted to give a certain dark-looking
stranger the slip."

Those words did more than surprise me. They brought back to my mind,
in a flash, the three jugglers, and Penelope's notion that they meant
some mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.

"Who's watching you, sir,--and why?"  I inquired.

"Tell me about the three Indians you have had at the house to-day,"
says Mr. Franklin, without noticing my question. "It's just possible,
Betteredge, that my stranger and your three jugglers may turn out to be
pieces of the same puzzle."

"How do you come to know about the jugglers, sir?"  I asked,
putting one question on the top of another, which was bad manners,
I own. But you don't expect much from poor human nature--
so don't expect much from me.

"I saw Penelope at the house," says Mr. Franklin; "and Penelope told me.
Your daughter promised to be a pretty girl, Betteredge, and she has
kept her promise. Penelope has got a small ear and a small foot.
Did the late Mrs. Betteredge possess those inestimable advantages?"

"The late Mrs. Betteredge possessed a good many defects, sir,"
says I. "One of them (if you will pardon my mentioning it)
was never keeping to the matter in hand. She was more like a fly
than a woman: she couldn't settle on anything."

"She would just have suited me," says Mr. Franklin. "I never settle
on anything either. Betteredge, your edge is better than ever.
Your daughter said as much, when I asked for particulars about the jugglers.
"Father will tell you, sir. He's a wonderful man for his age; and he
expresses himself beautifully."  Penelope's own words--blushing divinely.
Not even my respect for you prevented me from--never mind; I knew her
when she was a child, and she's none the worse for it. Let's be serious.
What did the jugglers do?"

I was something dissatisfied with my daughter--not for letting
Mr. Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to THAT--
but for forcing me to tell her foolish story at second hand.
However, there was no help for it now but to mention
the circumstances. Mr. Franklin's merriment all died away as I
went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard.
When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which
the chief juggler had put to the boy--seemingly for the purpose
of fixing them well in his mind.

"'Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English
gentleman will travel to-day?' 'Has the English gentleman got It about him?'
I suspect," says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper parcel
out of his pocket, "that 'It' means THIS. And 'this,' Betteredge,
means my uncle Herncastle's famous Diamond."

"Good Lord, sir!"  I broke out, "how do you come to be in charge
of the wicked Colonel's Diamond?"

"The wicked Colonel's will has left his Diamond as a birthday
present to my cousin Rachel," says Mr. Franklin. "And my father,
as the wicked Colonel's executor, has given it in charge to me
to bring down here."

If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand,
had been changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I
could have been more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin
spoke those words.

"The Colonel's Diamond left to Miss Rachel!" says I. "And
your father, sir, the Colonel's executor! Why, I would
have laid any bet you like, Mr. Franklin, that your father
wouldn't have touched the Colonel with a pair of tongs!"

"Strong language, Betteredge! What was there against the Colonel.
He belonged to your time, not to mine. Tell me what you know about him,
and I'll tell you how my father came to be his executor, and more besides.
I have made some discoveries in London about my uncle Herncastle
and his Diamond, which have rather an ugly look to my eyes; and I want
you to confirm them. You called him the 'wicked Colonel' just now.
Search your memory, my old friend, and tell me why."

I saw he was in earnest, and I told him.

Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely
for your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad,
when we get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children,
or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can't
forget politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club.
I hope you won't take this freedom on my part amiss; it's only a way
I have of appealing to the gentle reader. Lord! haven't I seen you
with the greatest authors in your hands, and don't I know how ready
your attention is to wander when it's a book that asks for it,
instead of a person?

I spoke, a little way back, of my lady's father, the old lord with
the short temper and the long tongue. He had five children in all.
Two sons to begin with; then, after a long time, his wife broke out
breeding again, and the three young ladies came briskly one after
the other, as fast as the nature of things would permit; my mistress,
as before mentioned, being the youngest and best of the three.
Of the two sons, the eldest, Arthur, inherited the title and estates.
The second, the Honourable John, got a fine fortune left him by a relative,
and went into the army.

It's an ill bird, they say, that fouls its own nest.
I look on the noble family of the Herncastles as being my nest;
and I shall take it as a favour if I am not expected to enter
into particulars on the subject of the Honourable John.
He was, I honestly believe, one of the greatest blackguards that
ever lived. I can hardly say more or less for him than that.
He went into the army, beginning in the Guards. He had to leave
the Guards before he was two-and-twenty--never mind why.
They are very strict in the army, and they were too strict for
the Honourable John. He went out to India to see whether they
were equally strict there, and to try a little active service.
In the matter of bravery (to give him his due), he was a
mixture of bull-dog and game-cock, with a dash of the savage.
He was at the taking of Seringapatam. Soon afterwards
he changed into another regiment, and, in course of time,
changed into a third. In the third he got his last step
as lieutenant-colonel, and, getting that, got also a sunstroke,
and came home to England.

He came back with a character that closed the doors of all his family
against him, my lady (then just married) taking the lead, and declaring
(with Sir John's approval, of course) that her brother should never
enter any house of hers. There was more than one slur on the Colonel
that made people shy of him; but the blot of the Diamond is all I need
mention here.

It was said he had got possession of his Indian jewel
by means which, bold as he was, he didn't dare acknowledge.
He never attempted to sell it--not being in need of money,
and not (to give him his due again) making money an object.
He never gave it away; he never even showed it to any living soul.
Some said he was afraid of its getting him into a difficulty with
the military authorities; others (very ignorant indeed of the real
nature of the man) said he was afraid, if he showed it, of its
costing him his life.

There was perhaps a grain of truth mixed up with this last report.
It was false to say that he was afraid; but it was a fact
that his life had been twice threatened in India; and it was
firmly believed that the Moonstone was at the bottom of it.
When he came back to England, and found himself avoided by everybody,
the Moonstone was thought to be at the bottom of it again.
The mystery of the Colonel's life got in the Colonel's way,
and outlawed him, as you may say, among his own people.
The men wouldn't let him into their clubs; the women--
more than one--whom he wanted to marry, refused him;
friends and relations got too near-sighted to see him in
the street.

Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right
with the world. But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had
all society against him, was not the way of the Honourable John.
He had kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India.
He kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England.
There you have the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture:
a character that braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was,
that looked possessed by the devil.

We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes they
said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books;
sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry;
sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest
people in the lowest slums of London. Anyhow, a solitary, vicious,
underground life was the life the Colonel led. Once, and once only,
after his return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.

About two years before the time of which I am now writing,
and about a year and a half before the time of his death,
the Colonel came unexpectedly to my lady's house in London.
It was the night of Miss Rachel's birthday, the twenty-first
of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual.
I received a message from the footman to say that a gentleman wanted
to see me. Going up into the hall, there I found the Colonel,
wasted, and worn, and old, and shabby, and as wild and as wicked
as ever.

"Go up to my sister," says he; "and say that I have called to wish my niece
many happy returns of the day."

He had made attempts by letter, more than once already, to be reconciled
with my lady, for no other purpose, I am firmly persuaded, than to annoy her.
But this was the first time he had actually come to the house. I had it
on the tip of my tongue to say that my mistress had a party that night.
But the devilish look of him daunted me. I went up-stairs with his message,
and left him, by his own desire, waiting in the hall. The servants stood
staring at him, at a distance, as if he was a walking engine of destruction,
loaded with powder and shot, and likely to go off among them at a
moment's notice.

My lady had a dash--no more--of the family temper.
"Tell Colonel Herncastle," she said, when I gave her her
brother's message, "that Miss Verinder is engaged, and that I
decline to see him."  I tried to plead for a civiller answer
than that; knowing the Colonel's constitutional superiority
to the restraints which govern gentlemen in general.
Quite useless! The family temper flashed out at me directly.
"When I want your advice," says my lady, "you know that I
always ask for it. I don't ask for it now."  I went downstairs
with the message, of which I took the liberty of presenting
a new and amended edition of my own contriving, as follows:
"My lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel;
and beg to be excused having the honour of seeing you."

I expected him to break out, even at that polite way of putting it.
To my surprise he did nothing of the sort; he alarmed me
by taking the thing with an unnatural quiet. His eyes,
of a glittering bright grey, just settled on me for a moment;
and he laughed, not out of himself, like other people,
but INTO himself, in a soft, chuckling, horridly mischievous way.
"Thank you, Betteredge," he said. "I shall remember
my niece's birthday."  With that, he turned on his heel,
and walked out of the house.

The next birthday came round, and we heard he was ill in bed.
Six months afterwards--that is to say, six months before
the time I am now writing of--there came a letter from a highly
respectable clergyman to my lady. It communicated two wonderful
things in the way of family news. First, that the Colonel
had forgiven his sister on his death-bed. Second, that he had
forgiven everybody else, and had made a most edifying end.
I have myself (in spite of the bishops and the clergy)
an unfeigned respect for the Church; but I am firmly persuaded,
at the same time, that the devil remained in undisturbed
possession of the Honourable John, and that the last abominable
act in the life of that abominable man was (saving your presence)
to take the clergyman in!

This was the sum-total of what I had to tell Mr. Franklin.
I remarked that he listened more and more eagerly the longer I
went on. Also, that the story of the Colonel being sent away
from his sister's door, on the occasion of his niece's birthday,
seemed to strike Mr. Franklin like a shot that had hit the mark.
Though he didn't acknowledge it, I saw that I had made him uneasy,
plainly enough, in his face.

"You have said your say, Betteredge," he remarked. "It's my turn now.
Before, however, I tell you what discoveries I have made in London,
and how I came to be mixed up in this matter of the Diamond, I want
to know one thing. You look, my old friend, as if you didn't quite
understand the object to be answered by this consultation of ours.
Do your looks belie you?"

"No, sir," I said. "My looks, on this occasion at any rate,
tell the truth."

"In that case," says Mr. Franklin, "suppose I put you up to my point
of view, before we go any further. I see three very serious questions
involved in the Colonel's birthday-gift to my cousin Rachel.
Follow me carefully, Betteredge; and count me off on your fingers,
if it will help you," says Mr. Franklin, with a certain pleasure
in showing how clear-headed he could be, which reminded me wonderfully
of old times when he was a boy. "Question the first: Was the Colonel's
Diamond the object of a conspiracy in India? Question the second:
Has the conspiracy followed the Colonel's Diamond to England?
Question the third: Did the Colonel know the conspiracy followed
the Diamond; and has he purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger
to his sister, through the innocent medium of his sister's child?
THAT is what I am driving at, Betteredge. Don't let me
frighten you."

It was all very well to say that, but he HAD frightened me.

If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded
by a devilish Indian Diamond--bringing after it a conspiracy
of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man.
There was our situation as revealed to me in Mr. Franklin's last words!
Who ever heard the like of it--in the nineteenth century, mind;
in an age of progress, and in a country which rejoices in the
blessings of the British constitution? Nobody ever heard the like
of it, and, consequently, nobody can be expected to believe it.
I shall go on with my story, however, in spite of that.

When you get a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now,
nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach.
When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you
begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand.
Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind--
which you please; they mean the same thing--and, checking himself
just as he was starting with his part of the story, said to me sharply,
"What do you want?"

What did I want? I didn't tell HIM; but I'll tell YOU, in confidence.
I wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at ROBINSON CRUSOE.

CHAPTER VI

Keeping my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr. Franklin
to go on. Mr. Franklin replied, "Don't fidget, Betteredge," and went on.

Our young gentleman's first words informed me that his discoveries,
concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit
which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at Hampstead.
A chance word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two were alone, one day,
after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his father with a
birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One thing led to another;
and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present really was,
and how the friendly connexion between the late Colonel and Mr. Blake,
senior, had taken its rise. The facts here are really so extraordinary,
that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice to them.
I prefer trying to report Mr. Franklin's discoveries, as nearly as may be,
in Mr. Franklin's own words.

"You remember the time, Betteredge," he said, "when my father
was trying to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom?
Well! that was also the time when my uncle Herncastle returned
from India. My father discovered that his brother-in-law
was in possession of certain papers which were likely to be
of service to him in his lawsuit. He called on the Colonel,
on pretence of welcoming him back to England. The Colonel was
not to be deluded in that way. "You want something," he said,
"or you would never have compromised your reputation by calling
on ME."  My father saw that the one chance for him was to show
his hand; he admitted, at once, that he wanted the papers.
The Colonel asked for a day to consider his answer.
His answer came in the shape of a most extraordinary letter,
which my friend the lawyer showed me. The Colonel began by saying
that he wanted something of my father, and that he begged
to propose an exchange of friendly services between them.
The fortune of war (that was the expression he used) had placed
him in possession of one of the largest Diamonds in the world;
and he had reason to believe that neither he nor his precious
jewel was safe in any house, in any quarter of the globe,
which they occupied together. Under these alarming circumstances,
he had determined to place his Diamond in the keeping of
another person. That person was not expected to run any risk.
He might deposit the precious stone in any place especially
guarded and set apart--like a banker's or jeweller's strong-room--
for the safe custody of valuables of high price.
His main personal responsibility in the matter was to be
of the passive kind. He was to undertake either by himself,
or by a trustworthy representative--to receive at a
prearranged address, on certain prearranged days in every year,
a note from the Colonel, simply stating the fact that he was
a living man at that date. In the event of the date passing
over without the note being received, the Colonel's silence
might be taken as a sure token of the Colonel's death by murder.
In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions
relating to the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited
with it, were to be opened, and followed implicitly.
If my father chose to accept this strange charge,
the Colonel's papers were at his disposal in return. That was
the letter."

"What did your father do, sir?"  I asked.

"Do?" says Mr. Franklin. "I'll tell you what he did.
He brought the invaluable faculty, called common sense,
to bear on the Colonel's letter. The whole thing, he declared,
was simply absurd. Somewhere in his Indian wanderings,
the Colonel had picked up with some wretched crystal which
he took for a diamond. As for the danger of his being murdered,
and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece
of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his
senses had only to apply to the police. The Colonel had been
a notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way
of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting
a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite
willing to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on him--
all the more readily that it involved no trouble to himself.
The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into his banker's
strong-room, and the Colonel's letters, periodically reporting
him a living man, were received and opened by our family lawyer,
Mr. Bruff, as my father's representative. No sensible person,
in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals
to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance
when we see it in a newspaper."

It was plain to me from this, that Mr. Franklin thought his father's notion
about the Colonel hasty and wrong.

"What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir?"
I asked.

"Let's finish the story of the Colonel first," says Mr. Franklin.
"There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind;
and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it. When we
are not occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking)
the most slovenly people in the universe."

"So much," I thought to myself, "for a foreign education!
He has learned that way of girding at us in France,
I suppose."

Mr. Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.

"My father," he said, "got the papers he wanted,
and never saw his brother-in-law again from that time.
Year after year, on the prearranged days, the prearranged
letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by Mr. Bruff.
I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in
the same brief, business-like form of words: " Sir,--This is
to certify that I am still a living man. Let the Diamond be.
John Herncastle."  That was all he ever wrote, and that came
regularly to the day; until some six or eight months since,
when the form of the letter varied for the first time.
It ran now: "Sir,--They tell me I am dying. Come to me,
and help me to make my will."  Mr. Bruff went, and found him,
in the little suburban villa, surrounded by its own grounds,
in which he had lived alone, ever since he had left India.
He had dogs, cats, and birds to keep him company;
but no human being near him, except the person who came
daily to do the house-work, and the doctor at the bedside.
The will was a very simple matter. The Colonel had dissipated
the greater part of his fortune in his chemical investigations.
His will began and ended in three clauses, which he dictated
from his bed, in perfect possession of his faculties. The first
clause provided for the safe keeping and support of his animals.
The second founded a professorship of experimental chemistry
at a northern university. The third bequeathed the Moonstone
as a birthday present to his niece, on condition that my father
would act as executor. My father at first refused to act.
On second thoughts, however, he gave way, partly because he was
assured that the executorship would involve him in no trouble;
partly because Mr. Bruff suggested, in Rachel's interest,
that the Diamond might be worth something, after all."

"Did the Colonel give any reason, sir," I inquired, "why he left
the Diamond to Miss Rachel?"

"He not only gave the reason--he had the reason written in his will,"
said Mr. Franklin. "I have got an extract, which you shall
see presently. Don't be slovenly-minded, Betteredge!
One thing at a time. You have heard about the Colonel's Will;
now you must hear what happened after the Colonel's death.
It was formally necessary to have the Diamond valued,
before the Will could be proved. All the jewellers consulted,
at once confirmed the Colonel's assertion that he possessed
one of the largest diamonds in the world. The question
of accurately valuing it presented some serious difficulties.
Its size made it a phenomenon in the diamond market;
its colour placed it in a category by itself; and, to add
to these elements of uncertainty, there was a defect,
in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone.
Even with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest
of the various estimates given was twenty thousand pounds.
Conceive my father's astonishment! He had been within
a hair's-breadth of refusing to act as executor, and of
allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the family.
The interest he took in the matter now, induced him to open
the sealed instructions which had been deposited with the Diamond.
Mr. Bruff showed this document to me, with the other papers;
and it suggests (to my mind) a clue to the nature of the conspiracy
which threatened the Colonel's life."

"Then you do believe, sir," I said, "that there was a conspiracy?"

"Not possessing my father's excellent common sense," answered Mr. Franklin,
"I believe the Colonel's life was threatened, exactly as the Colonel said.
The sealed instructions, as I think, explain how it was that he died,
after all, quietly in his bed. In the event of his death by violence (that is
to say, in the absence of the regular letter from him at the appointed date),
my father was then directed to send the Moonstone secretly to Amsterdam.
It was to be deposited in that city with a famous diamond-cutter, and it
was to be cut up into from four to six separate stones. The stones were
then to be sold for what they would fetch, and the proceeds were to be
applied to the founding of that professorship of experimental chemistry,
which the Colonel has since endowed by his Will. Now, Betteredge, exert those
sharp wits of yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel's
instructions point!"

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort;
and they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in hand,
and pointed out what they ought to see.

"Remark," says Mr. Franklin, "that the integrity of the Diamond,
as a whole stone, is here artfully made dependent on
the preservation from violence of the Colonel's life.
He is not satisfied with saying to the enemies he dreads, "Kill me--
and you will be no nearer to the Diamond than you are now;
it is where you can't get at it--in the guarded strong-room
of a bank."  He says instead, "Kill me--and the Diamond will
be the Diamond no longer; its identity will be destroyed."
What does that mean?"

Here I had (as I thought) a flash of the wonderful foreign brightness.

"I know," I said. "It means lowering the value of the stone,
and cheating the rogues in that way!"

"Nothing of the sort," says Mr. Franklin. "I have inquired
about that. The flawed Diamond, cut up, would actually fetch
more than the Diamond as it now is; for this plain reason--
that from four to six perfect brilliants might be cut from it,
which would be, collectively, worth more money than the large--
but imperfect single stone. If robbery for the purpose
of gain was at the bottom of the conspiracy, the Colonel's
instructions absolutely made the Diamond better worth stealing.
More money could have been got for it, and the disposal of it
in the diamond market would have been infinitely easier,
if it had passed through the hands of the workmen
of Amsterdam."

"Lord bless us, sir!"  I burst out. "What was the plot, then?"

"A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel,"
says Mr. Franklin--"a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at
the bottom of it. That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper
which I have about me at this moment."

I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers
at our house had presented itself to Mr. Franklin in the light
of a circumstance worth noting.

"I don't want to force my opinion on you," Mr. Franklin went on.
"The idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition
devoting themselves, through all difficulties and dangers,
to watching the opportunity of recovering their sacred gem,
appears to me to be perfectly consistent with everything that we
know of the patience of Oriental races, and the influence
of Oriental religions. But then I am an imaginative man;
and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer, are not
the only credible realities in existence to my mind.
Let the guess I have made at the truth in this matter go for what
it is worth, and let us get on to the only practical question
that concerns us. Does the conspiracy against the Moonstone
survive the Colonel's death? And did the Colonel know it,
when he left the birthday gift to his niece?"

I began to see my lady and Miss Rachel at the end of it all, now.
Not a word he said escaped me.

"I was not very willing, when I discovered the story of the Moonstone,"
said Mr. Franklin, "to be the means of bringing it here. But Mr. Bruff
reminded me that somebody must put my cousin's legacy into my cousin's hands--
and that I might as well do it as anybody else. After taking the Diamond
out of the bank, I fancied I was followed in the streets by a shabby,
dark-complexioned man. I went to my father's house to pick up my luggage,
and found a letter there, which unexpectedly detained me in London.
I went back to the bank with the Diamond, and thought I saw the shabby
man again. Taking the Diamond once more out of the bank this morning,
I saw the man for the third time, gave him the slip, and started
(before he recovered the trace of me) by the morning instead of
the afternoon train. Here I am, with the Diamond safe and sound--
and what is the first news that meets me? I find that three strolling
Indians have been at the house, and that my arrival from London,
and something which I am expected to have about me, are two special objects
of investigation to them when they believe themselves to be alone.
I don't waste time and words on their pouring the ink into the boy's hand,
and telling him to look in it for a man at a distance, and for something
in that man's pocket. The thing (which I have often seen done in the East)
is "hocus-pocus" in my opinion, as it is in yours. The present question
for us to decide is, whether I am wrongly attaching a meaning to a mere
accident? or whether we really have evidence of the Indians being on
the track of the Moonstone, the moment it is removed from the safe keeping of
the bank?"

Neither he nor I seemed to fancy dealing with this part of the inquiry.
We looked at each other, and then we looked at the tide, oozing in smoothly,
higher and higher, over the Shivering Sand.

"What are you thinking of?" says Mr. Franklin, suddenly.

"I was thinking, sir," I answered, "that I should like to shy the Diamond
into the quicksand, and settle the question in THAT way."

"If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket,"
answered Mr. Franklin, "say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!"

It's curious to note, when your mind's anxious, how very far in the way of
relief a very small joke will go. We found a fund of merriment, at the time,
in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel's lawful property, and getting
Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful trouble--though where the merriment was,
I am quite at a loss to discover now.

Mr. Franklin was the first to bring the talk back to the talk's
proper purpose. He took an envelope out of his pocket, opened it,
and handed to me the paper inside.

"Betteredge," he said, "we must face the question of the Colonel's
motive in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt's sake.
Bear in mind how Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time
when he returned to England, to the time when he told you he should
remember his niece's birthday. And read that."

He gave me the extract from the Colonel's Will. I have got it
by me while I write these words; and I copy it, as follows,
for your benefit:

"Thirdly, and lastly, I give and bequeath to my niece, Rachel Verinder,
daughter and only child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow--if her mother,
the said Julia Verinder, shall be living on the said Rachel Verinder's
next Birthday after my death--the yellow Diamond belonging to me, and known
in the East by the name of The Moonstone: subject to this condition,
that her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living at the time.
And I hereby desire my executor to give my Diamond, either by his
own hands or by the hands of some trustworthy representative whom
he shall appoint, into the personal possession of my said niece Rachel,
on her next birthday after my death, and in the presence, if possible,
of my sister, the said Julia Verinder. And I desire that my said sister
may be informed, by means of a true copy of this, the third and last
clause of my Will, that I give the Diamond to her daughter Rachel,
in token of my free forgiveness of the injury which her conduct towards
me has been the means of inflicting on my reputation in my lifetime;
and especially in proof that I pardon, as becomes a dying man,
the insult offered to me as an officer and a gentleman, when her servant,
by her orders, closed the door of her house against me, on the occasion of her
daughter's birthday."

More words followed these, providing if my lady was dead,
or if Miss Rachel was dead, at the time of the testator's decease,
for the Diamond being sent to Holland, in accordance
with the sealed instructions originally deposited with it.
The proceeds of the sale were, in that case, to be added
to the money already left by the Will for the professorship of
chemistry at the university in the north.

I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin, sorely troubled what to say
to him. Up to that moment, my own opinion had been (as you know)
that the Colonel had died as wickedly as he had lived. I don't say
the copy from his Will actually converted me from that opinion:
I only say it staggered me.

"Well," says Mr. Franklin, "now you have read the Colonel's own statement,
what do you say? In bringing the Moonstone to my aunt's house, am I
serving his vengeance blindfold, or am I vindicating him in the character
of a penitent and Christian man?"

"It seems hard to say, sir," I answered, "that he died with a horrid revenge
in his heart, and a horrid lie on his lips. God alone knows the truth.
Don't ask me."

Mr. Franklin sat twisting and turning the extract from the Will
in his fingers, as if he expected to squeeze the truth out of it
in that manner. He altered quite remarkably, at the same time.
From being brisk and bright, he now became, most unaccountably,
a slow, solemn, and pondering young man.

"This question has two sides," he said. "An Objective side,
and a Subjective side. Which are we to take?"

He had had a German education as well as a French. One of the two had
been in undisturbed possession of him (as I supposed) up to this time.
And now (as well as I could make out) the other was taking its place.
It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.
I steered a middle course between the Objective side and the Subjective side.
In plain English I stared hard, and said nothing.

"Let's extract the inner meaning of this," says Mr. Franklin.
"Why did my uncle leave the Diamond to Rachel? Why didn't he leave it
to my aunt?"

"That's not beyond guessing, sir, at any rate," I said.
"Colonel Herncastle knew my lady well enough to know that she
would have refused to accept any legacy that came to her
from HIM."

"How did he know that Rachel might not refuse to accept it, too?"

"Is there any young lady in existence, sir, who could resist the temptation
of accepting such a birthday present as The Moonstone?"

"That's the Subjective view," says Mr. Franklin. "It does you
great credit, Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view.
But there's another mystery about the Colonel's legacy which is not
accounted for yet. How are we to explain his only giving Rachel her
birthday present conditionally on her mother being alive?"

"I don't want to slander a dead man, sir," I answered.
"But if he HAS purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger
to his sister, by the means of her child, it must be a legacy
made conditional on his sister's being alive to feel the vexation
of it."

"Oh! That's your interpretation of his motive, is it?
The Subjective interpretation again! Have you ever been
in Germany, Betteredge?"

"No, sir. What's your interpretation, if you please?"

"I can see," says Mr. Franklin, "that the Colonel's object may,
quite possibly, have been--not to benefit his niece, whom he had never
even seen--but to prove to his sister that he had died forgiving her,
and to prove it very prettily by means of a present made to her child.
There is a totally different explanation from yours, Betteredge, taking its
rise in a Subjective-Objective point of view. From all I can see,
one interpretation is just as likely to be right as the other."

Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr. Franklin
appeared to think that he had completed all that was required of him.
He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was to be
done next.

He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk
the foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead
in the business up to the present time, that I was quite
unprepared for such a sudden change as he now exhibited in this
helpless leaning upon me. It was not till later that I learned--
by assistance of Miss Rachel, who was the first to make the discovery--
that these puzzling shifts and transformations in Mr. Franklin
were due to the effect on him of his foreign training.
At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring,
in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people,
he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation
to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than
another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this,
he had come back with so many different sides to his character,
all more or less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass
his life in a state of perpetual contradiction with himself.
He could be a busy man, and a lazy man; cloudy in the head,
and clear in the head; a model of determination, and a spectacle
of helplessness, all together. He had his French side,
and his German side, and his Italian side--the original
English foundation showing through, every now and then,
as much as to say, "Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see,
but there's something of me left at the bottom of him still."
Miss Rachel used to remark that the Italian side of him
was uppermost, on those occasions when he unexpectedly gave in,
and asked you in his nice sweet-tempered way to take his own
responsibilities on your shoulders. You will do him no injustice,
I think, if you conclude that the Italian side of him was
uppermost now.

"Isn't it your business, sir," I asked, "to know what to do next?
Surely it can't be mine?"

Mr. Franklin didn't appear to see the force of my question--
not being in a position, at the time, to see anything but the sky
over his head.

"I don't want to alarm my aunt without reason," he said.
"And I don't want to leave her without what may be a needful warning.
If you were in my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word,
what would you do?"

In one word, I told him: "Wait."

"With all my heart," says Mr. Franklin. "How long?"

I proceeded to explain myself.

"As I understand it, sir," I said, "somebody is bound to put
this plaguy Diamond into Miss Rachel's hands on her birthday--
and you may as well do it as another. Very good. This is
the twenty-fifth of May, and the birthday is on the twenty-first
of June. We have got close on four weeks before us.
Let's wait and see what happens in that time; and let's warn
my lady, or not, as the circumstances direct us."

"Perfect, Betteredge, as far as it goes!" says Mr. Franklin.
"But between this and the birthday, what's to be done with
the Diamond?"

"What your father did with it, to be sure, sir!"  I answered.
"Your father put it in the safe keeping of a bank in London.
You put in the safe keeping of the bank at Frizinghall."
(Frizinghall was our nearest town, and the Bank of England wasn't
safer than the bank there.) "If I were you, sir," I added,
"I would ride straight away with it to Frizinghall before the ladies
come back."

The prospect of doing something--and, what is more, of doing that something
on a horse--brought Mr. Franklin up like lightning from the flat of his back.
He sprang to his feet, and pulled me up, without ceremony, on to mine.
"Betteredge, you are worth your weight in gold," he said. "Come along,
and saddle the best horse in the stables directly."

Here (God bless it!) was the original English foundation
of him showing through all the foreign varnish at last!
Here was the Master Franklin I remembered, coming out again
in the good old way at the prospect of a ride, and reminding
me of the good old times! Saddle a horse for him?
I would have saddled a dozen horses, if he could only have ridden
them all!

We went back to the house in a hurry; we had the fleetest horse in
the stables saddled in a hurry; and Mr. Franklin rattled off in a hurry,
to lodge the cursed Diamond once more in the strong-room of a bank.
When I heard the last of his horse's hoofs on the drive, and when I turned
about in the yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to ask
myself if I hadn't woke up from a dream.

CHAPTER VII

While I was in this bewildered frame of mind, sorely needing
a little quiet time by myself to put me right again, my daughter
Penelope got in my way (just as her late mother used to get in my
way on the stairs), and instantly summoned me to tell her all
that had passed at the conference between Mr. Franklin and me.
Under present circumstances, the one thing to be done was to
clap the extinguisher upon Penelope's curiosity on the spot.
I accordingly replied that Mr. Franklin and I had both
talked of foreign politics, till we could talk no longer,
and had then mutually fallen asleep in the heat of the sun.
Try that sort of answer when your wife or your daughter
next worries you with an awkward question at an awkward time,
and depend on the natural sweetness of women for kissing and
making it up again at the next opportunity.

The afternoon wore on, and my lady and Miss Rachel came back.

Needless to say how astonished they were, when they heard that
Mr. Franklin Blake had arrived, and had gone off again on horseback.
Needless also to say, that THEY asked awkward questions directly,
and that the "foreign politics" and the "falling asleep in the sun"
wouldn't serve a second time over with THEM. Being at the end
of my invention, I said Mr. Franklin's arrival by the early train
was entirely attributable to one of Mr. Franklin's freaks.
Being asked, upon that, whether his galloping off again
on horseback was another of Mr. Franklin's freaks, I said,
"Yes, it was;" and slipped out of it--I think very cleverly--
in that way.

Having got over my difficulties with the ladies, I found more
difficulties waiting for me when I went back to my own room.
In came Penelope--with the natural sweetness of women--
to kiss and make it up again; and--with the natural curiosity
of women--to ask another question. This time she only wanted
me to tell her what was the matter with our second housemaid,
Rosanna Spearman.

After leaving Mr. Franklin and me at the Shivering Sand, Rosanna, it appeared,
had returned to the house in a very unaccountable state of mind.
She had turned (if Penelope was to be believed) all the colours of
the rainbow. She had been merry without reason, and sad without reason.
In one breath she asked hundreds of questions about Mr. Franklin Blake,
and in another breath she had been angry with Penelope for presuming
to suppose that a strange gentleman could possess any interest for her.
She had been surprised, smiling, and scribbling Mr. Franklin's name
inside her workbox. She had been surprised again, crying and looking
at her deformed shoulder in the glass. Had she and Mr. Franklin known
anything of each other before to-day? Quite impossible! Had they heard
anything of each other? Impossible again! I could speak to Mr. Franklin's
astonishment as genuine, when he saw how the girl stared at him.
Penelope could speak to the girl's inquisitiveness as genuine,
when she asked questions about Mr. Franklin. The conference between us,
conducted in this way, was tiresome enough, until my daughter suddenly ended
it by bursting out with what I thought the most monstrous supposition I
had ever heard in my life.

"Father!" says Penelope, quite seriously, "there's only one explanation
of it. Rosanna has fallen in love with Mr. Franklin Blake at first sight!"

You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight,
and have thought it natural enough. But a housemaid out of a reformatory,
with a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love, at first sight,
with a gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress's house, match me that,
in the way of an absurdity, out of any story-book in Christendom, if you can!
I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks. Penelope resented my
merriment, in rather a strange way. "I never knew you cruel before, father,"
she said, very gently, and went out.

My girl's words fell upon me like a splash of cold water.
I was savage with myself, for feeling uneasy in myself the moment
she had spoken them--but so it was. We will change the subject,
if you please. I am sorry I drifted into writing about it;
and not without reason, as you will see when we have gone on together
a little longer.

The evening came, and the dressing-bell for dinner rang,
before Mr. Franklin returned from Frizinghall. I took
his hot water up to his room myself, expecting to hear,
after this extraordinary delay, that something had happened.
To my great disappointment (and no doubt to yours also),
nothing had happened. He had not met with the Indians,
either going or returning. He had deposited the Moonstone
in the bank--describing it merely as a valuable of great price--
and he had got the receipt for it safe in his pocket.
I went down-stairs, feeling that this was rather a flat ending,
after all our excitement about the Diamond earlier in
the day.

How the meeting between Mr. Franklin and his aunt and cousin went off,
is more than I can tell you.

I would have given something to have waited at table that day.
But, in my position in the household, waiting at dinner (except on
high family festivals) was letting down my dignity in the eyes
of the other servants--a thing which my lady considered me quite
prone enough to do already, without seeking occasions for it.
The news brought to me from the upper regions, that evening,
came from Penelope and the footman. Penelope mentioned that she had
never known Miss Rachel so particular about the dressing of her hair,
and had never seen her look so bright and pretty as she did when she
went down to meet Mr. Franklin in the drawing-room. The footman's
report was, that the preservation of a respectful composure
in the presence of his betters, and the waiting on Mr. Franklin
Blake at dinner, were two of the hardest things to reconcile
with each other that had ever tried his training in service.
Later in the evening, we heard them singing and playing duets,
Mr. Franklin piping high, Miss Rachel piping higher, and my lady,
on the piano, following them as it were over hedge and ditch,
and seeing them safe through it in a manner most wonderful and
pleasant to hear through the open windows, on the terrace at night.
Later still, I went to Mr. Franklin in the smoking-room, with
the soda-water and brandy, and found that Miss Rachel had put
the Diamond clean out of his head. "She's the most charming girl
I have seen since I came back to England!" was all I could extract
from him, when I endeavoured to lead the conversation to more
serious things.

Towards midnight, I went round the house to lock up, accompanied by my
second in command (Samuel, the footman), as usual. When all the doors
were made fast, except the side door that opened on the terrace,
I sent Samuel to bed, and stepped out for a breath of fresh air before I
too went to bed in my turn.

The night was still and close, and the moon was at the full in the heavens.
It was so silent out of doors, that I heard from time to time,
very faint and low, the fall of the sea, as the ground-swell heaved it
in on the sand-bank near the mouth of our little bay. As the house stood,
the terrace side was the dark side; but the broad moonlight showed
fair on the gravel walk that ran along the next side to the terrace.
Looking this way, after looking up at the sky, I saw the shadow
of a person in the moonlight thrown forward from behind the corner of
the house.

Being old and sly, I forbore to call out; but being also, unfortunately,
old and heavy, my feet betrayed me on the gravel. Before I could steal
suddenly round the corner, as I had proposed, I heard lighter feet than mine--
and more than one pair of them as I thought--retreating in a hurry.
By the time I had got to the corner, the trespassers, whoever they were,
had run into the shrubbery at the off side of the walk, and were hidden
from sight among the thick trees and bushes in that part of the grounds.
From the shrubbery, they could easily make their way, over our fence
into the road. If I had been forty years younger, I might have had
a chance of catching them before they got clear of our premises.
As it was, I went back to set a-going a younger pair of legs than mine.
Without disturbing anybody, Samuel and I got a couple of guns, and went
all round the house and through the shrubbery. Having made sure that no
persons were lurking about anywhere in our grounds, we turned back.
Passing over the walk where I had seen the shadow, I now noticed,
for the first time, a little bright object, lying on the clean gravel,
under the light of the moon. Picking the object up, I discovered it
was a small bottle, containing a thick sweet-smelling liquor, as black as
ink.

I said nothing to Samuel. But, remembering what Penelope had told
me about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink
into the palm of the boy's hand, I instantly suspected that I had
disturbed the three Indians, lurking about the house, and bent,
in their heathenish way, on discovering the whereabouts of the Diamond
that night.

CHAPTER VIII

Here, for one moment, I find it necessary to call a halt.

On summoning up my own recollections--and on getting Penelope to help me,
by consulting her journal--I find that we may pass pretty rapidly over
the interval between Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival and Miss Rachel's birthday.
For the greater part of that time the days passed, and brought nothing with
them worth recording. With your good leave, then, and with Penelope's help,
I shall notice certain dates only in this place; reserving to myself
to tell the story day by day, once more, as soon as we get to the time
when the business of the Moonstone became the chief business of everybody
in our house.

This said, we may now go on again--beginning, of course,
with the bottle of sweet-smelling ink which I found on the gravel
walk at night.

On the next morning (the morning of the twenty-sixth) I showed Mr. Franklin
this article of jugglery, and told him what I have already told you.
His opinion was, not only that the Indians had been lurking about after
the Diamond, but also that they were actually foolish enough to believe
in their own magic--meaning thereby the making of signs on a boy's head,
and the pouring of ink into a boy's hand, and then expecting him to see
persons and things beyond the reach of human vision. In our country,
as well as in the East, Mr. Franklin informed me, there are people who
practise this curious hocus-pocus (without the ink, however); and who call
it by a French name, signifying something like brightness of sight.
"Depend upon it," says Mr. Franklin, "the Indians took it for granted
that we should keep the Diamond here; and they brought their clairvoyant
boy to show them the way to it, if they succeeded in getting into the house
last night."

"Do you think they'll try again, sir?"  I asked.

"It depends," says Mr. Franklin, "on what the boy can really do.
If he can see the Diamond through the iron safe of the bank at Frizinghall,
we shall be troubled with no more visits from the Indians for the present.
If he can't, we shall have another chance of catching them in the shrubbery,
before many more nights are over our heads."

I waited pretty confidently for that latter chance; but, strange to relate,
it never came.

Whether the jugglers heard, in the town, of Mr. Franklin having
been seen at the bank, and drew their conclusions accordingly;
or whether the boy really did see the Diamond where the Diamond
was now lodged (which I, for one, flatly disbelieve); or whether,
after all, it was a mere effect of chance, this at any rate is
the plain truth--not the ghost of an Indian came near the house again,
through the weeks that passed before Miss Rachel's birthday.
The jugglers remained in and about the town plying their trade;
and Mr. Franklin and I remained waiting to see what might happen,
and resolute not to put the rogues on their guard by showing our
suspicions of them too soon. With this report of the proceedings
on either side, ends all that I have to say about the Indians for
the present.

On the twenty-ninth of the month, Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin
hit on a new method of working their way together through
the time which might otherwise have hung heavy on their hands.
There are reasons for taking particular notice here of the
occupation that amused them. You will find it has a bearing
on something that is still to come.

Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life--
the rock ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being,
for the most part, passed in looking about them for something
to do, it is curious to see--especially when their tastes
are of what is called the intellectual sort--how often they
drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Nine times out of ten
they take to torturing something, or to spoiling something--
and they firmly believe they are improving their minds,
when the plain truth is, they are only making a mess in the house.
I have seen them (ladies, I am sorry to say, as well as gentlemen)
go out, day after day, for example, with empty pill-boxes,
and catch newts, and beetles, and spiders, and frogs,
and come home and stick pins through the miserable wretches,
or cut them up, without a pang of remorse, into little pieces.
You see my young master, or my young mistress, poring over
one of their spiders' insides with a magnifying-glass;
or you meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without
his head--and when you wonder what this cruel nastiness means,
you are told that it means a taste in my young master or my
young mistress for natural history. Sometimes, again, you see
them occupied for hours together in spoiling a pretty flower
with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to know
what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier,
or its scent any sweeter, when you DO know? But there!
the poor souls must get through the time, you see--they must
get through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud, and made pies,
when you were a child; and you dabble in nasty science,
and dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when you grow up.
In the one case and in the other, the secret of it is,
that you have got nothing to think of in your poor empty head,
and nothing to do with your poor idle hands. And so it ends in
your spoiling canvas with paints, and making a smell in the house;
or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box full of dirty water,
and turning everybody's stomach in the house; or in chipping off
bits of stone here, there, and everywhere, and dropping grit
into all the victuals in the house; or in staining your fingers
in the pursuit of photography, and doing justice without mercy
on everybody's face in the house. It often falls heavy enough,
no doubt, on people who are really obliged to get their living,
to be forced to work for the clothes that cover them, the roof
that shelters them, and the food that keeps them going.
But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the
idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders'
stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something
it MUST think of, and your hands something that they MUST
do.

As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I am glad to say.
They simply confined themselves to making a mess; and all they spoilt, to do
them justice, was the panelling of a door.

Mr. Franklin's universal genius, dabbling in everything,
dabbled in what he called "decorative painting."  He had invented,
he informed us, a new mixture to moisten paint with, which he
described as a "vehicle."  What it was made of, I don't know.
What it did, I can tell you in two words--it stank.
Miss Rachel being wild to try her hand at the new process,
Mr. Franklin sent to London for the materials; mixed them up,
with accompaniment of a smell which made the very dogs sneeze
when they came into the room; put an apron and a bib over
Miss Rachel's gown, and set her to work decorating her own
little sitting-room--called, for want of English to name it in,
her "boudoir."  They began with the inside of the door.
Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish with pumice-stone,
and made what he described as a surface to work on.
Miss Rachel then covered the surface, under his directions
and with his help, with patterns and devices--griffins, birds,
flowers, cupids, and such like--copied from designs made
by a famous Italian painter, whose name escapes me:
the one, I mean, who stocked the world with Virgin Maries,
and had a sweetheart at the baker's. Viewed as work,
this decoration was slow to do, and dirty to deal with.
But our young lady and gentleman never seemed to tire of it.
When they were not riding, or seeing company, or taking their meals,
or piping their songs, there they were with their heads together,
as busy as bees, spoiling the door. Who was the poet who said
that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do?
If he had occupied my place in the family, and had seen Miss
Rachel with her brush, and Mr. Franklin with his vehicle,
he could have written nothing truer of either of them than
that.

The next date worthy of notice is Sunday the fourth of June.

On that evening we, in the servants' hall, debated a domestic
question for the first time, which, like the decoration of the door,
has its bearing on something that is still to come.

Seeing the pleasure which Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel took
in each other's society, and noting what a pretty match
they were in all personal respects, we naturally speculated
on the chance of their putting their heads together with
other objects in view besides the ornamenting of a door.
Some of us said there would be a wedding in the house before
the summer was over. Others (led by me) admitted it was
likely enough Miss Rachel might be married; but we doubted
(for reasons which will presently appear) whether her bridegroom
would be Mr. Franklin Blake.

That Mr. Franklin was in love, on his side, nobody who saw and heard
him could doubt. The difficulty was to fathom Miss Rachel.
Let me do myself the honour of making you acquainted with her;
after which, I will leave you to fathom for yourself--
if you can.

My young lady's eighteenth birthday was the birthday now coming,
on the twenty-first of June. If you happen to like dark women
(who, I am informed, have gone out of fashion latterly in the gay
world), and if you have no particular prejudice in favour of size,
I answer for Miss Rachel as one of the prettiest girls your eyes
ever looked on. She was small and slim, but all in fine proportion
from top to toe. To see her sit down, to see her get up,
and specially to see her walk, was enough to satisfy any man
in his senses that the graces of her figure (if you will pardon
me the expression) were in her flesh and not in her clothes.
Her hair was the blackest I ever saw. Her eyes matched her hair.
Her nose was not quite large enough, I admit. Her mouth and chin were
(to quote Mr. Franklin) morsels for the gods; and her complexion
(on the same undeniable authority) was as warm as the sun itself,
with this great advantage over the sun, that it was always in nice
order to look at. Add to the foregoing that she carried her head
as upright as a dart, in a dashing, spirited, thoroughbred way--
that she had a clear voice, with a ring of the right metal in it,
and a smile that began very prettily in her eyes before it got to her lips--
and there behold the portrait of her, to the best of my painting, as large
as life!

And what about her disposition next? Had this charming creature no faults?
She had just as many faults as you have, ma'am--neither more nor less.

To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel,
possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect,
which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge.
She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this--that she had
ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions
themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit her views.
In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough;
but in matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought,
and as I thought) too far. She judged for herself, as few women
of twice her age judge in general; never asked your advice;
never told you beforehand what she was going to do;
never came with secrets and confidences to anybody, from her
mother downwards. In little things and great, with people
she loved, and people she hated (and she did both with equal
heartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own,
sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life.
Over and over again I have heard my lady say, "Rachel's best
friend and Rachel's worst enemy are, one and the other--
Rachel herself."

Add one thing more to this, and I have done.

With all her secrecy, and self-will, there was not so much as the shadow
of anything false in her. I never remember her breaking her word;
I never remember her saying No, and meaning Yes. I can call to mind,
in her childhood, more than one occasion when the good little soul
took the blame, and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed
by a playfellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it,
when the thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterwards.
But nobody ever knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you
straight in the face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly,
"I won't tell you!"  Punished again for this, she would own to being
sorry for saying "won't;" but, bread and water notwithstanding,
she never told you. Self-willed--devilish self-willed sometimes--I grant;
but the finest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this
lower world. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here?
In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, for the next
four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something in
the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!--you have married
a monster.

I have now brought you acquainted with Miss Rachel, which you will find
puts us face to face, next, with the question of that young lady's
matrimonial views.

On June the twelfth, an invitation from my mistress was sent to a
gentleman in London, to come and help to keep Miss Rachel's birthday.
This was the fortunate individual on whom I believed her heart
to be privately set! Like Mr. Franklin, he was a cousin of hers.
His name was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

My lady's second sister (don't be alarmed; we are not going very deep
into family matters this time)--my lady's second sister, I say,
had a disappointment in love; and taking a husband afterwards,
on the neck or nothing principle, made what they call a misalliance.
There was terrible work in the family when the Honourable Caroline
insisted on marrying plain Mr. Ablewhite, the banker at Frizinghall.
He was very rich and very respectable, and he begot a prodigious
large family--all in his favour, so far. But he had presumed
to raise himself from a low station in the world--and that was
against him. However, Time and the progress of modern enlightenment
put things right; and the mis-alliance passed muster very well.
We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you can scratch me,
if I scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament,
whether you are a Dustman or a Duke? That's the modern way of
looking at it--and I keep up with the modern way. The Ablewhites
lived in a fine house and grounds, a little out of Frizinghall.
Very worthy people, and greatly respected in the neighbourhood.
We shall not be much troubled with them in these pages--
excepting Mr. Godfrey, who was Mr. Ablewhite's second son, and who
must take his proper place here, if you please, for Miss Rachel's
sake.

With all his brightness and cleverness and general good qualities,
Mr. Franklin's chance of topping Mr. Godfrey in our young lady's
estimation was, in my opinion, a very poor chance indeed.

In the first place, Mr. Godfrey was, in point of size,
the finest man by far of the two. He stood over six feet high;
he had a beautiful red and white colour; a smooth round face,
shaved as bare as your hand; and a head of lovely long
flaxen hair, falling negligently over the poll of his neck.
But why do I try to give you this personal description of him?
If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London,
you know Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do.
He was a barrister by profession; a ladies' man by temperament;
and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female
destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for
confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women;
strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor
men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves;--
he was vice-president, manager, referee to them all.
Wherever there was a table with a committee of ladies sitting round
it in council there was Mr. Godfrey at the bottom of the board,
keeping the temper of the committee, and leading the dear
creatures along the thorny ways of business, hat in hand.
I do suppose this was the most accomplished philanthropist
(on a small independence) that England ever produced.
As a speaker at charitable meetings the like of him for
drawing your tears and your money was not easy to find.
He was quite a public character. The last time I was in London,
my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to the theatre
to see a dancing woman who was all the rage; and she sent
me to Exeter Hall to hear Mr. Godfrey. The lady did it,
with a band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief
and a glass of water. Crowds at the performance with the legs.
Ditto at the performance with the tongue. And with all this,
the sweetest tempered person (I allude to Mr. Godfrey)--
the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please--you ever
met with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved HIM.
What chance had Mr. Franklin--what chance had anybody
of average reputation and capacities--against such a man as
this?

On the fourteenth, came Mr. Godfrey's answer.

He accepted my mistress's invitation, from the Wednesday
of the birthday to the evening of Friday--when his duties
to the Ladies' Charities would oblige him to return to town.
He also enclosed a copy of verses on what he elegantly called
his cousin's "natal day."  Miss Rachel, I was informed,
joined Mr. Franklin in making fun of the verses at dinner;
and Penelope, who was all on Mr. Franklin's side, asked me,
in great triumph, what I thought of that. "Miss Rachel has led
you off on a false scent, my dear," I replied; "but MY nose is
not so easily mystified. Wait till Mr. Ablewhite's verses are
followed by Mr. Ablewhite himself."

My daughter replied, that Mr. Franklin might strike in,
and try his luck, before the verses were followed by the poet.
In favour of this view, I must acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left
no chance untried of winning Miss Rachel's good graces.

Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with,
he gave up his cigar, because she said, one day, she hated
the stale smell of it in his clothes. He slept so badly,
after this effort of self-denial, for want of the composing
effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and came down
morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that Miss
Rachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again.
No! he would take to nothing again that could cause here
a moment's annoyance; he would fight it out resolutely,
and get back his sleep, sooner or later, by main force of
patience in waiting for it. Such devotion as this, you may say
(as some of them said downstairs), could never fail of producing
the right effect on Miss Rachel--backed up, too, as it was,
by the decorating work every day on the door. All very well--
but she had a photograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bed-room;
represented speaking at a public meeting, with all his hair
blown out by the breath of his own eloquence, and his eyes,
most lovely, charming the money out of your pockets. What do you
say to that? Every morning--as Penelope herself owned to me--
there was the man whom the women couldn't do without, looking on,
in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair combed.
He would be looking on, in reality, before long--that was my opinion
of it.

June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr. Franklin's chance look,
to my mind, a worse chance than ever.

A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent,
came that morning to the house, and asked to see Mr. Franklin Blake
on business. The business could not possibly have been connected
with the Diamond, for these two reasons--first, that Mr. Franklin
told me nothing about it; secondly, that he communicated it
(when the gentleman had gone, as I suppose) to my lady.
She probably hinted something about it next to her daughter.
At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some
severe things to Mr. Franklin, at the piano that evening,
about the people he had lived among, and the principles he had
adopted in foreign parts. The next day, for the first time,
nothing was done towards the decoration of the door.
I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on the Continent--
with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it--had followed
him to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case,
not only Mr. Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, left me in
the dark.

On the seventeenth, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again.
They returned to their decorating work on the door, and seemed
to be as good friends as ever. If Penelope was to be believed,
Mr. Franklin had seized the opportunity of the reconciliation to make
an offer to Miss Rachel, and had neither been accepted nor refused.
My girl was sure (from signs and tokens which I need not trouble you with)
that her young mistress had fought Mr. Franklin off by declining
to believe that he was in earnest, and had then secretly regretted
treating him in that way afterwards. Though Penelope was admitted
to more familiarity with her young mistress than maids generally are--
for the two had been almost brought up together as children--still I
knew Miss Rachel's reserved character too well to believe that she
would show her mind to anybody in this way. What my daughter told me,
on the present occasion, was, as I suspected, more what she wished than
what she really knew.

On the nineteenth another event happened. We had the doctor
in the house professionally. He was summoned to prescribe for a
person whom I have had occasion to present to you in these pages--
our second housemaid, Rosanna Spearman.

This poor girl--who had puzzled me, as you know already,
at the Shivering Sand--puzzled me more than once again,
in the interval time of which I am now writing. Penelope's notion
that her fellow-servant was in love with Mr. Franklin
(which my daughter, by my orders, kept strictly secret)
seemed to be just as absurd as ever. But I must own that what I
myself saw, and what my daughter saw also, of our second
housemaid's conduct, began to look mysterious, to say the least
of it.

For example, the girl constantly put herself in Mr. Franklin's way--very slyly
and quietly, but she did it. He took about as much notice of her as he took
of the cat; it never seemed to occur to him to waste a look on Rosanna's
plain face. The poor thing's appetite, never much, fell away dreadfully;
and her eyes in the morning showed plain signs of waking and crying at night.
One day Penelope made an awkward discovery, which we hushed up on the spot.
She caught Rosanna at Mr. Franklin's dressing-table, secretly removing
a rose which Miss Rachel had given him to wear in his button-hole, and
putting another rose like it, of her own picking, in its place. She was,
after that, once or twice impudent to me, when I gave her a well-meant
general hint to be careful in her conduct; and, worse still, she was not
over-respectful now, on the few occasions when Miss Rachel accidentally spoke
to her.

My lady noticed the change, and asked me what I thought about it. I tried
to screen the girl by answering that I thought she was out of health; and it
ended in the doctor being sent for, as already mentioned, on the nineteenth.
He said it was her nerves, and doubted if she was fit for service.
My lady offered to remove her for change of air to one of our farms, inland.
She begged and prayed, with the tears in her eyes, to be let to stop;
and, in an evil hour, I advised my lady to try her for a little longer.
As the event proved, and as you will soon see, this was the worst advice I
could have given. If I could only have looked a little way into the future,
I would have taken Rosanna Spearman out of the house, then and there, with my
own hand.

On the twentieth, there came a note from Mr. Godfrey. He had arranged to stop
at Frizinghall that night, having occasion to consult his father on business.
On the afternoon of the next day, he and his two eldest sisters would ride
over to us on horseback, in good time before dinner. An elegant little
casket in China accompanied the note, presented to Miss Rachel, with her
cousin's love and best wishes. Mr. Franklin had only given her a plain
locket not worth half the money. My daughter Penelope, nevertheless--such is
the obstinacy of women--still backed him to win.

Thanks be to Heaven, we have arrived at the eve of the birthday at last!
You will own, I think, that I have got you over the ground this time,
without much loitering by the way. Cheer up! I'll ease you with another
new chapter here--and, what is more, that chapter shall take you straight
into the thick of the story.

              CHAPTER IX

June twenty-first, the day of the birthday, was cloudy and unsettled
at sunrise, but towards noon it cleared up bravely.

We, in the servants' hall, began this happy anniversary,
as usual, by offering our little presents to Miss Rachel,
with the regular speech delivered annually by me as the chief.
I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in opening Parliament--
namely, the plan of saying much the same thing regularly every year.
Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's)
is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever
been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not
to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little,
they look forward hopefully to something newer next year.
An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen--
that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I
had a private conference on the subject of the Moonstone--
the time having now come for removing it from the bank
at Frizinghall, and placing it in Miss Rachel's
own hands.

Whether he had been trying to make love to his cousin again,
and had got a rebuff--or whether his broken rest, night after night,
was aggravating the queer contradictions and uncertainties in
his character--I don't know. But certain it is, that Mr. Franklin
failed to show himself at his best on the morning of the birthday.
He was in twenty different minds about the Diamond in as many minutes.
For my part, I stuck fast by the plain facts a we knew them.
Nothing had happened to justify us in alarming my lady on the subject
of the jewel; and nothing could alter the legal obligation that
now lay on Mr. Franklin to put it in his cousin's possession.
That was my view of the matter; and, twist and turn it as
he might, he was forced in the end to make it his view too.
We arranged that he was to ride over, after lunch, to Frizinghall,
and bring the Diamond back, with Mr. Godfrey and the two
young ladies, in all probability, to keep him company on the way
home again.

This settled, our young gentleman went back to Miss Rachel.

They consumed the whole morning, and part of the afternoon,
in the everlasting business of decorating the door,
Penelope standing by to mix the colours, as directed; and my lady,
as luncheon time drew near, going in and out of the room,
with her handkerchief to her nose (for they used a deal
of Mr. Franklin's vehicle that day), and trying vainly to get
the two artists away from their work. It was three o'clock
before they took off their aprons, and released Penelope
(much the worse for the vehicle), and cleaned themselves of
their mess. But they had done what they wanted--they had finished
the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it.
The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful
to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers
and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes,
that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours
after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them.
If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work
by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly
spirit towards the vehicle. No! no! It left off stinking
when it dried; and if Art requires these sort of sacrifices--
though the girl is my own daughter--I say, let Art
have them!

Mr. Franklin snatched a morsel from the luncheon-table, and rode
off to Frizinghall--to escort his cousins, as he told my lady.
To fetch the Moonstone, as was privately known to himself and
to me.

This being one of the high festivals on which I took my place
at the side-board, in command of the attendance at table,
I had plenty to occupy my mind while Mr. Franklin was away.
Having seen to the wine, and reviewed my men and women who
were to wait at dinner, I retired to collect myself before
the company came. A whiff of--you know what, and a turn at a
certain book which I have had occasion to mention in these pages,
composed me, body and mind. I was aroused from what I am
inclined to think must have been, not a nap, but a reverie,
by the clatter of horses' hoofs outside; and, going to the door,
received a cavalcade comprising Mr. Franklin and his three cousins,
escorted by one of old Mr. Ablewhite's grooms.

Mr. Godfrey struck me, strangely enough, as being like Mr. Franklin
in this respect--that he did not seem to be in his customary spirits.
He kindly shook hands with me as usual, and was most politely glad
to see his old friend Betteredge wearing so well. But there was a sort
of cloud over him, which I couldn't at all account for; and when I asked
how he had found his father in health, he answered rather shortly,
"Much as usual."  However, the two Miss Ablewhites were cheerful enough
for twenty, which more than restored the balance. They were nearly as big
as their brother; spanking, yellow-haired, rosy lasses, overflowing with
super-abundant flesh and blood; bursting from head to foot with health
and spirits. The legs of the poor horses trembled with carrying them;
and when they jumped from their saddles (without waiting to be helped), I
declare they bounced on the ground as if they were made of india-rubber.
Everything the Miss Ablewhites said began with a large O; everything they
did was done with a bang; and they giggled and screamed, in season
and out of season, on the smallest provocation. Bouncers--that's what I
call them.

Under cover of the noise made by the young ladies, I had an opportunity
of saying a private word to Mr. Franklin in the hall.

"Have you got the Diamond safe, sir?"

He nodded, and tapped the breast-pocket of his coat.

"Have you seen anything of the Indians?"

"Not a glimpse."  With that answer, he asked for my lady, and,
hearing she was in the small drawing-room, went there straight.
The bell rang, before he had been a minute in the room, and Penelope
was sent to tell Miss Rachel that Mr. Franklin Blake wanted to speak
to her.

Crossing the hall, about half an hour afterwards, I was brought
to a sudden standstill by an outbreak of screams from the small
drawing-room. I can't say I was at all alarmed; for I recognised
in the screams the favourite large O of the Miss Ablewhites.
However, I went in (on pretence of asking for instructions about
the dinner) to discover whether anything serious had really happened.

There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated,
with the Colonel's unlucky Diamond in her hand. There, on either side
of her, knelt the two Bouncers, devouring the jewel with their eyes,
and screaming with ecstasy every time it flashed on them in a new light.
There, at the opposite side of the table, stood Mr. Godfrey, clapping his
hands like a large child, and singing out softly, "Exquisite! exquisite!"
There sat Mr. Franklin in a chair by the book-case, tugging at his beard,
and looking anxiously towards the window. And there, at the window,
stood the object he was contemplating--my lady, having the extract from
the Colonel's Will in her hand, and keeping her back turned on the whole of
the company.

She faced me, when I asked for my instructions; and I saw the family frown
gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the corners
of her mouth.

"Come to my room in half an hour," she answered. "I shall
have something to say to you then."

With those words she went out. It was plain enough that she was posed
by the same difficulty which had posed Mr. Franklin and me in our
conference at the Shivering Sand. Was the legacy of the Moonstone
a proof that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? or was it
a proof that he was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him?
Serious questions those for my lady to determine, while her daughter,
innocent of all knowledge of the Colonel's character, stood there with
the Colonel's birthday gift in her hand.

Before I could leave the room in my turn, Miss Rachel, always considerate
to the old servant who had been in the house when she was born, stopped me.
"Look, Gabriel!" she said, and flashed the jewel before my eyes in a ray of
sunlight that poured through the window.

Lord bless us! it WAS a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg!
The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon.
When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow
deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else.
It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your
finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves.
We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room,
and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness,
with a moony gleam, in the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated:
no wonder her cousins screamed. The Diamond laid such a hold on ME
that I burst out with as large an "O" as the Bouncers themselves.
The only one of us who kept his senses was Mr. Godfrey.
He put an arm round each of his sister's waists, and, looking
compassionately backwards and forwards between the Diamond
and me, said, "Carbon Betteredge! mere carbon, my good friend,
after all!"

His object, I suppose, was to instruct me. All he did, however, was to
remind me of the dinner. I hobbled off to my army of waiters downstairs.
As I went out, Mr. Godfrey said, "Dear old Betteredge, I have the truest
regard for him!"  He was embracing his sisters, and ogling Miss Rachel,
while he honoured me with that testimony of affection. Something like
a stock of love to draw on THERE! Mr. Franklin was a perfect savage by
comparison with him.

At the end of half an hour, I presented myself, as directed,
in my lady's room.

What passed between my mistress and me, on this occasion, was,
in the main, a repetition of what had passed between Mr. Franklin
and me at the Shivering Sand--with this difference, that I took
care to keep my own counsel about the jugglers, seeing that nothing
had happened to justify me in alarming my lady on this head.
When I received my dismissal, I could see that she took the blackest
view possible of the Colonel's motives, and that she was bent on getting
the Moonstone out of her daughter's possession at the first opportunity.

On my way back to my own part of the house, I was encountered by
Mr. Franklin. He wanted to know if I had seen anything of his cousin Rachel.
I had seen nothing of her. Could I tell him where his cousin Godfrey was?
I didn't know; but I began to suspect that cousin Godfrey might not be
far away from cousin Rachel. Mr. Franklin's suspicions apparently took
the same turn. He tugged hard at his beard, and went and shut himself
up in the library with a bang of the door that had a world of meaning
in it.

I was interrupted no more in the business of preparing for the birthday dinner
till it was time for me to smarten myself up for receiving the company.
Just as I had got my white waistcoat on, Penelope presented herself
at my toilet, on pretence of brushing what little hair I have got left,
and improving the tie of my white cravat. My girl was in high spirits,
and I saw she had something to say to me. She gave me a kiss on the top
of my bald head, and whispered, "News for you, father! Miss Rachel has
refused him."

"Who's 'HIM'?" I asked.

"The ladies' committee-man, father," says Penelope. "A nasty sly fellow!
I hate him for trying to supplant Mr. Franklin!"

If I had had breath enough, I should certainly have protested against
this indecent way of speaking of an eminent philanthropic character.
But my daughter happened to be improving the tie of my cravat at that moment,
and the whole strength of her feelings found its way into her fingers.
I never was more nearly strangled in my life.

"I saw him take her away alone into the rose-garden," says Penelope.
"And I waited behind the holly to see how they came back.
They had gone out arm-in-arm, both laughing. They came back,
walking separate, as grave as grave could be, and looking straight
away from each other in a manner which there was no mistaking.
I never was more delighted, father, in my life! There's one woman
in the world who can resist Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, at any rate; and, if I
was a lady, I should be another!"

Here I should have protested again. But my daughter had got the hair-brush
by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had passed into THAT.
If you are bald, you will understand how she sacrificed me. If you are not,
skip this bit, and thank God you have got something in the way of a defence
between your hair-brush and your head.

"Just on the other side of the holly," Penelope went on,
"Mr. Godfrey came to a standstill. 'You prefer,' says he,
'that I should stop here as if nothing had happened?'
Miss Rachel turned on him like lightning. 'You have accepted my
mother's invitation,' she said; 'and you are here to meet her guests.
Unless you wish to make a scandal in the house, you will remain,
of course!'  She went on a few steps, and then seemed to relent
a little. 'Let us forget what has passed, Godfrey,' she said,
'and let us remain cousins still.'  She gave him her hand.
He kissed it, which I should have considered taking a liberty,
and then she left him. He waited a little by himself,
with his head down, and his heel grinding a hole slowly
in the gravel walk; you never saw a man look more put
out in your life. 'Awkward!' he said between his teeth,
when he looked up, and went on to the house--'very awkward!'
If that was his opinion of himself, he was quite right.
Awkward enough, I'm sure. And the end of it is, father, what I
told you all along," cries Penelope, finishing me off with
a last scarification, the hottest of all. "Mr. Franklin's
the man!"

I got possession of the hair-brush, and opened my lips to administer
the reproof which, you will own, my daughter's language and conduct
richly deserved.

Before I could say a word, the crash of carriage-wheels outside
struck in, and stopped me. The first of the dinner-company had come.
Penelope instantly ran off. I put on my coat, and looked in the glass.
My head was as red as a lobster; but, in other respects, I was as
nicely dressed for the ceremonies of the evening as a man need be.
I got into the hall just in time to announce the two first of the guests.
You needn't feel particularly interested about them. Only the
philanthropist's father and mother--Mr. and Mrs. Ablewhite.

CHAPTER X

One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed
the Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete.
Including the family, they were twenty-four in all.
It was a noble sight to see, when they were settled in their
places round the dinner-table, and the Rector of Frizinghall
(with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.

There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests.
You will meet none of them a second time--in my part of the story,
at any rate--with the exception of two.

Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen
of the day, was naturally the great attraction of the party.
On this occasion she was more particularly the centre-point
towards which everybody's eyes were directed; for (to my lady's
secret annoyance) she wore her wonderful birthday present,
which eclipsed all the rest--the Moonstone. It was
without any setting when it had been placed in her hands;
but that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived,
with the help of his neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire,
to fix it as a brooch in the bosom of her white dress.
Everybody wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the Diamond,
as a matter of course. But the only two of the company who said
anything out of the common way about it were those two guests
I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand and
her left.

The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback, however,
I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his joke,
and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk with strangers,
without waiting to feel his way first. In society he was constantly
making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together.
In his medical practice he was a more prudent man; picking up his discretion
(as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right
where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong.

What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual,
by way of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her
(in the interests of science) to let him take it home and burn it.
"We will first heat it, Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such
and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current of air;
and, little by little--puff!--we evaporate the Diamond, and spare you
a world of anxiety about the safe keeping of a valuable precious stone!"
My lady, listening with rather a careworn expression on her face,
seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could
have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in the cause of science to sacrifice
her birthday gift.

The other guest, who sat on my young lady's right hand, was an eminent
public character--being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller,
Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguise
where no European had ever set foot before.

This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look,
and a very steady, attentive eye. It was rumoured that he was tired
of the humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go
back and wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East.
Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke six
words or drank so much as a single glass of wine, all through the dinner.
The Moonstone was the only object that interested him in the smallest degree.
The fame of it seemed to have reached him, in some of those perilous
Indian places where his wanderings had lain. After looking at it
silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to get confused,
he said to her in his cool immovable way, "If you ever go to India,
Miss Verinder, don't take your uncle's birthday gift with you. A Hindoo
diamond is sometimes part of a Hindoo religion. I know a certain city,
and a certain temple in that city, where, dressed as you are now,
your life would not be worth five minutes' purchase."  Miss Rachel,
safe in England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India.
The Bouncers were more delighted still; they dropped their knives
and forks with a crash, and burst out together vehemently,
"O! how interesting!"  My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed
the subject.

As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little,
that this festival was not prospering as other like festivals
had prospered before it.

Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happened afterwards,
I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must have cast
a blight on the whole company. I plied them well with wine;
and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes
round the table, and whispered to the company confidentially,
"Please to change your mind and try it; for I know it will do you good."
Nine times out of ten they changed their minds--out of regard
for their old original Betteredge, they were pleased to say--
but all to no purpose. There were gaps of silence in the talk,
as the dinner got on, that made me feel personally uncomfortable.
When they did use their tongues again, they used them innocently,
in the most unfortunate manner and to the worst possible purpose.
Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said more unlucky things than I ever
knew him to say before. Take one sample of the way in which he went on,
and you will understand what I had to put up with at the sideboard,
officiating as I was in the character of a man who had the prosperity
of the festival at heart.

One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy Mrs. Threadgall,
widow of the late Professor of that name. Talking of her deceased
husband perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers
that he WAS deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every
able-bodied adult in England ought to know as much as that.
In one of the gaps of silence, somebody mentioned the dry
and rather nasty subject of human anatomy; whereupon good
Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband as usual,
without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described
as the Professor's favourite recreation in his leisure hours.
As ill-luck would have it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite
(who knew nothing of the deceased gentleman), heard her.
Being the most polite of men, he seized the opportunity
of assisting the Professor's anatomical amusements on
the spot.

"They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College
of Surgeons," says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice.
"I strongly recommend the Professor, ma'am, when he next has an hour to spare,
to pay them a visit."

You might have heard a pin fall. The company (out of respect
to the Professor's memory) all sat speechless. I was behind
Mrs. Threadgall at the time, plying her confidentially with a glass
of hock. She dropped her head, and said in a very low voice,
"My beloved husband is no more."

Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting
the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.

"The Professor may not be aware," says he, "that the card of a member
of the College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours
of ten and four."

Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower
voice still, repeated the solemn words, "My beloved husband is no more."

I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Miss Rachel touched his arm.
My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On he went,
with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow. "I shall be delighted,"
says he, "to send the Professor my card, if you will oblige me by mentioning
his present address."

"His present address, sir, is THE GRAVE," says Mrs. Threadgall,
suddenly losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury
that made the glasses ring again. "The Professor has been dead
these ten years."

"Oh, good heavens!" says Mr. Candy. Excepting the Bouncers,
who burst out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company,
that they might all have been going the way of the Professor,
and hailing as he did from the direction of the grave.

So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as
provoking in their different ways as the doctor himself.
When they ought to have spoken, they didn't speak;
or when they did speak they were perpetually at cross purposes.
Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declined to exert himself
in private. Whether he was sulky, or whether he was bashful,
after his discomfiture in the rose-garden, I can't say.
He kept all his talk for the private ear of the lady
(a member of our family) who sat next to him. She was
one of his committee-women--a spiritually-minded person,
with a fine show of collar-bone and a pretty taste in champagne;
liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it.
Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify,
from what I heard pass between them, that the company lost
a good deal of very improving conversation, which I caught up
while drawing the corks, and carving the mutton, and so forth.
What they said about their Charities I didn't hear.
When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long way beyond
their women to be confined, and their women to be rescued,
and were disputing on serious subjects. Religion (I understand
Mr. Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving) meant love.
And love meant religion. And earth was heaven a little the worse
for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
Earth had some very objectionable people in it; but, to make
amends for that, all the women in heaven would be members of a
prodigious committee that never quarrelled, with all the men in
attendance on them as ministering angels. Beautiful! beautiful!
But why the mischief did Mr. Godfrey keep it all to his lady
and himself?

Mr. Franklin again--surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred the company
up into making a pleasant evening of it?

Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in
wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect,
of Mr. Godfrey's reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might,
nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed
himself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some,
and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his--those French
and German and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded--
came out, at my lady's hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.

What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths
to which a married woman might let her admiration go for a man
who was not her husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty
French way to the maiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall?
What do you think, when he shifted to the German side,
of his telling the lord of the manor, while that great authority
on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls,
that experience, properly understood counted for nothing, and that
the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into your own mind,
evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce him?
What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese
and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England,
burst out as follows: "If we once lose our ancient safeguards,
Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?"--what do you
say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view:
"We have got three things left, sir--Love, Music, and Salad"?
He not only terrified the company with such outbreaks as these,
but, when the English side of him turned up in due course,
he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on the subject
of the medical profession, said such downright things in ridicule
of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr. Candy in
a rage.

The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led--I forget how--
to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night.
Mr. Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order
and that he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately.
Mr. Franklin replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping
in the dark, meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing.
Mr. Candy, hitting back smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was,
constitutionally speaking, groping in the dark after sleep,
and that nothing but medicine could help him to find it.
Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his side, said he had often
heard of the blind leading the blind, and now, for the first time,
he knew what it meant. In this way, they kept it going briskly,
cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot--Mr. Candy,
in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in defence
of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere,
and forbid the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority
put the last extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk
spurted up again here and there, for a minute or two at a time;
but there was a miserable lack of life and sparkle in it. The Devil
(or the Diamond) possessed that dinner-party; and it was a relief
to everybody when my mistress rose, and gave the ladies the signal
to leave the gentlemen over their wine.

I had just ranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Ablewhite
(who represented the master of the house), when there came
a sound from the terrace which, startled me out of my company
manners on the instant. Mr. Franklin and I looked at each other;
it was the sound of the Indian drum. As I live by bread,
here were the jugglers returning to us with the return of the
Moonstone to the house!

As they rounded the corner of the terrace, and came
in sight, I hobbled out to warn them off. But, as ill--
luck would have it, the two Bouncers were beforehand with me.
They whizzed out on to the terrace like a couple of skyrockets,
wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. The other
ladies followed; the gentlemen came out on their side.
Before you could say, "Lord bless us!" the rogues were making
their salaams; and the Bouncers were kissing the pretty
little boy.

Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behind her.
If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of all knowledge of
the truth, showing the Indians the Diamond in the bosom of her dress!

I can't tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it.
What with the vexation about the dinner, and what with the
provocation of the rogues coming back just in the nick of time
to see the jewel with their own eyes, I own I lost my head.
The first thing that I remember noticing was the sudden
appearance on the scene of the Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite.
Skirting the half-circle in which the gentlefolks stood or sat,
he came quietly behind the jugglers and spoke to them on a sudden in
the language of their own country.

If he had pricked them with a bayonet, I doubt if the Indians could have
started and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did,
on hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment they
were bowing and salaaming to him in their most polite and snaky way.
After a few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side,
Mr. Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached.
The chief Indian, who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again
towards the gentlefolks. I noticed that the fellow's coffee-coloured
face had turned grey since Mr. Murthwaite had spoken to him.
He bowed to my lady, and informed her that the exhibition was over.
The Bouncers, indescribably disappointed, burst out with a loud
"O!" directed against Mr. Murthwaite for stopping the performance.
The chief Indian laid his hand humbly on his breast, and said a second
time that the juggling was over. The little boy went round with the hat.
The ladies withdrew to the drawing--room; and the gentlemen
(excepting Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite) returned to their wine.
I and the footman followed the Indians, and saw them safe off
the premises.

Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt tobacco, and found
Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite (the latter smoking a cheroot)
walking slowly up and down among the trees. Mr. Franklin beckoned
to me to join them.

"This," says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to the great traveller,
"is Gabriel Betteredge, the old servant and friend of our family
of whom I spoke to you just now. Tell him, if you please, what you
have just told me."

Mr. Murthwaite took his cheroot out of his mouth, and leaned,
in his weary way, against the trunk of a tree.

"Mr. Betteredge," he began, "those three Indians are no more jugglers
than you and I are."

Here was a new surprise! I naturally asked the traveller if he had ever met
with the Indians before.

"Never," says Mr. Murthwaite; "but I know what Indian
juggling really is. All you have seen to-night is a very bad
and clumsy imitation of it. Unless, after long experience,
I am utterly mistaken, those men are high-caste Brahmins.
I charged them with being disguised, and you saw how it told on them,
clever as the Hindoo people are in concealing their feelings.
There is a mystery about their conduct that I can't explain.
They have doubly sacrificed their caste--first, in crossing
the sea; secondly, in disguising themselves as jugglers.
In the land they live in that is a tremendous sacrifice to make.
There must be some very serious motive at the bottom of it,
and some justification of no ordinary kind to plead for them,
in recovery of their caste, when they return to their own
country."

I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went on with his cheroot.
Mr. Franklin, after what looked to me like a little private
veering about between the different sides of his character,
broke the silence as follows:

"I feel some hesitation, Mr. Murthwaite, in troubling you with family matters,
in which you can have no interest and which I am not very willing
to speak of out of our own circle. But, after what you have said,
I feel bound, in the interests of Lady Verinder and her daughter,
to tell you something which may possibly put the clue into your hands.
I speak to you in confidence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by not
forgetting that?"

With this preface, he told the Indian traveller all that he had
told me at the Shivering Sand. Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite
was so interested in what he heard, that he let his cheroot go out.

"Now," says Mr. Franklin, when he had done, "what does your experience say?"

"My experience," answered the traveller, "says that you have had more
narrow escapes of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I have had of mine;
and that is saying a great deal."

It was Mr. Franklin's turn to be astonished now.

"Is it really as serious as that?" he asked.

"In my opinion it is," answered Mr. Murthwaite. "I can't doubt,
after what you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone
to its place on the forehead of the Indian idol, is the motive and the
justification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now.
Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats,
and will use it with the ferocity of tigers. How you have escaped
them I can't imagine," says the eminent traveller, lighting his
cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. "You have been
carrying the Diamond backwards and forwards, here and in London,
and you are still a living man! Let us try and account for it.
It was daylight, both times, I suppose, when you took the jewel out of
the bank in London?"

"Broad daylight," says Mr. Franklin.

"And plenty of people in the streets?"

"Plenty."

"You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady Verinder's house at a
certain time? It's a lonely country between this and the station.
Did you keep your appointment?"

"No. I arrived four hours earlier than my appointment."

"I beg to congratulate you on that proceeding! When did you take
the Diamond to the bank at the town here?"

"I took it an hour after I had brought it to this house--
and three hours before anybody was prepared for seeing me in
these parts."

"I beg to congratulate you again! Did you bring it back here alone?"

"No. I happened to ride back with my cousins and the groom."

"I beg to congratulate you for the third time! If you ever
feel inclined to travel beyond the civilised limits, Mr. Blake,
let me know, and I will go with you. You are a lucky man."

Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn't at all square
with my English ideas.

"You don't really mean to say, sir," I asked, "that they
would have taken Mr. Franklin's life, to get their Diamond,
if he had given them the chance?"

"Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?" says the traveller.

"Yes, sir.

"Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it?"

"No, sir."

"In the country those men came from, they care just as much about
killing a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe.
If a thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of their Diamond--
and if they thought they could destroy those lives without discovery--
they would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India,
if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all."

I expressed my opinion upon this, that they were a set of murdering thieves.
Mr. Murthwaite expressed HIS opinion that they were a wonderful people.
Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back to the matter
in hand.

"They have seen the Moonstone on Miss Verinder's dress," he said.
"What is to be done?"

"What your uncle threatened to do," answered Mr. Murthwaite.
"Colonel Herncastle understood the people he had to deal with.
Send the Diamond to-morrow (under guard of more than one man) to be cut
up at Amsterdam. Make half a dozen diamonds of it, instead of one.
There is an end of its sacred identity as The Moonstone--and there is an
end of the conspiracy."

Mr. Franklin turned to me.

"There is no help for it," he said. "We must speak to Lady
Verinder to-morrow."

"What about to-night, sir?"  I asked. "Suppose the Indians come back?"

Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.

"The Indians won't risk coming back to-night," he said.
"The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything--
let alone a matter like this, in which the slightest mistake
might be fatal to their reaching their end."

"But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir?"  I persisted.

"In that case," says Mr. Murthwaite, "let the dogs loose.
Have you got any big dogs in the yard?"

"Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound."

"They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteredge,
the mastiff and the bloodhound have one great merit--
they are not likely to be troubled with your scruples about
the sanctity of human life."

The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing-room,
as he fired that shot at me. He threw away his cheroot,
and took Mr. Franklin's arm, to go back to the ladies.
I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast, as I followed them
to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked round
at me, in his dry, droning way, and said:

"The Indians will want their umbrellas, Mr. Betteredge, to-night!"

It was all very well for HIM to joke. But I was not an eminent traveller--
and my way in this world had not led me into playing ducks and drakes with my
own life, among thieves and murderers in the outlandish places of the earth.
I went into my own little room, and sat down in my chair in a perspiration,
and wondered helplessly what was to be done next. In this anxious frame
of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves up into a fever;
I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe, and took a turn at
ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit--
page one hundred and sixty-one--as follows:

"Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself,
when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater,
by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about."

The man who doesn't believe in ROBINSON CRUSOE, after THAT,
is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man
lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown
away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person
with a livelier faith.

I was far on with my second pipe, and still lost in admiration of that
wonderful book, when Penelope (who had been handing round the tea)
came in with her report from the drawing-room. She had left the Bouncers
singing a duet-words beginning with a large "O," and music to correspond.
She had observed that my lady made mistakes in her game of whist
for the first time in our experience of her. She had seen the great
traveller asleep in a corner. She had overheard Mr. Franklin sharpening
his wits on Mr. Godfrey, at the expense of Ladies' Charities in general;
and she had noticed that Mr. Godfrey hit him back again rather more smartly
than became a gentleman of his benevolent character. She had detected
Miss Rachel, apparently engaged in appeasing Mrs. Threadgall by showing
her some photographs, and really occupied in stealing looks at Mr. Franklin,
which no intelligent lady's maid could misinterpret for a single instant.
Finally, she had missed Mr. Candy, the doctor, who had mysteriously
disappeared from the drawing-room, and had then mysteriously returned,
and entered into conversation with Mr. Godfrey. Upon the whole,
things were prospering better than the experience of the dinner gave
us any right to expect. If we could only hold on for another hour,
old Father Time would bring up their carriages, and relieve us of
them altogether.

Everything wears off in this world; and even the comforting
effect of ROBINSON CRUSOE wore off, after Penelope left me.
I got fidgety again, and resolved on making a survey of the
grounds before the rain came. Instead of taking the footman,
whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any emergency,
I took the bloodhound with me. HIS nose for a stranger
was to be depended on. We went all round the premises,
and out into the road--and returned as wise as we went,
having discovered no such thing as a lurking human
creature anywhere.

The arrival of the carriages was the signal for the arrival of the rain.
It poured as if it meant to pour all night. With the exception of the doctor,
whose gig was waiting for him, the rest of the company went home snugly,
under cover, in close carriages. I told Mr. Candy that I was afraid he would
get wet through. He told me, in return, that he wondered I had arrived
at my time of life, without knowing that a doctor's skin was waterproof.
So he drove away in the rain, laughing over his own little joke; and so we got
rid of our dinner company.

The next thing to tell is the story of the night.

CHAPTER XI

When the last of the guests had driven away, I went back into
the inner hall and found Samuel at the side-table, presiding
over the brandy and soda-water. My lady and Miss Rachel came
out of the drawing-room, followed by the two gentlemen.
Mr. Godfrey had some brandy and soda-water, Mr. Franklin
took nothing. He sat down, looking dead tired; the talking
on this birthday occasion had, I suppose, been too much
for him.

My lady, turning round to wish them good-night, looked hard
at the wicked Colonel's legacy shining in her daughter's dress.

"Rachel," she asked, "where are you going to put your Diamond to-night?"

Miss Rachel was in high good spirits, just in that humour
for talking nonsense, and perversely persisting in it as if it
was sense, which you may sometimes have observed in young girls,
when they are highly wrought up, at the end of an exciting day.
First, she declared she didn't know where to put the Diamond.
Then she said, "on her dressing-table, of course, along with
her other things."  Then she remembered that the Diamond
might take to shining of itself, with its awful moony light
in the dark--and that would terrify her in the dead of night.
Then she bethought herself of an Indian cabinet which stood
in her sitting-room; and instantly made up her mind to put
the Indian diamond in the Indian cabinet, for the purpose of
permitting two beautiful native productions to admire each other.
Having let her little flow of nonsense run on as far as that point,
her mother interposed and stopped her.

"My dear! your Indian cabinet has no lock to it," says my lady.

"Good Heavens, mamma!" cried Miss Rachel, "is this an hotel?
Are there thieves in the house?"

Without taking notice of this fantastic way of talking, my lady
wished the gentlemen good-night. She next turned to Miss Rachel,
and kissed her. "Why not let ME keep the Diamond for you to-night?"
she asked.

Miss Rachel received that proposal as she might, ten years since,
have received a proposal to part her from a new doll.
My lady saw there was no reasoning with her that night.
"Come into my room, Rachel, the first thing to-morrow morning,"
she said. "I shall have something to say to you."  With those
last words she left us slowly; thinking her own thoughts, and,
to all appearance, not best pleased with the way by which they were
leading her.

Miss Rachel was the next to say good-night. She shook hands first
with Mr. Godfrey, who was standing at the other end of the hall,
looking at a picture. Then she turned back to Mr. Franklin,
still sitting weary and silent in a corner.

What words passed between them I can't say. But standing near the old
oak frame which holds our large looking-glass, I saw her reflected
in it, slyly slipping the locket which Mr. Franklin had given to her,
out of the bosom of her dress, and showing it to him for a moment,
with a smile which certainly meant something out of the common,
before she tripped off to bed. This incident staggered me a little
in the reliance I had previously felt on my own judgment. I began
to think that Penelope might be right about the state of her young
lady's affections, after all.

As soon as Miss Rachel left him eyes to see with, Mr. Franklin noticed me.
His variable humour, shifting about everything, had shifted about the
Indians already.

"Betteredge," he said, "I'm half inclined to think I took Mr. Murthwaite
too seriously, when we had that talk in the shrubbery. I wonder whether
he has been trying any of his traveller's tales on us? Do you really mean
to let the dogs loose?"

"I'll relieve them of their collars, sir," I answered, "and leave
them free to take a turn in the night, if they smell a reason for it."

"All right," says Mr. Franklin. "We'll see what is to be done to-morrow. I
am not at all disposed to alarm my aunt, Betteredge, without a very pressing
reason for it. Good-night."

He looked so worn and pale as he nodded to me, and took his
candle to go up-stairs, that I ventured to advise his having
a drop of brandy-and-water, by way of night-cap. Mr. Godfrey,
walking towards us from the other end of the hall, backed me.
He pressed Mr. Franklin, in the friendliest manner, to take something,
before he went to bed.

I only note these trifling circumstances, because, after all
I had seen and heard, that day, it pleased me to observe
that our two gentlemen were on just as good terms as ever.
Their warfare of words (heard by Penelope in the drawing-room),
and their rivalry for the best place in Miss Rachel's good graces,
seemed to have set no serious difference between them.
But there! they were both good-tempered, and both men of the world.
And there is certainly this merit in people of station, that they
are not nearly so quarrelsome among each other as people of no
station at all.

Mr. Franklin declined the brandy-and-water, and went up-stairs
with Mr. Godfrey, their rooms being next door to each other.
On the landing, however, either his cousin persuaded him,
or he veered about and changed his mind as usual.
"Perhaps I may want it in the night," he called down to me.
"Send up some brandy-and-water into my room."

I sent up Samuel with the brandy-and-water; and then went out
and unbuckled the dogs' collars. They both lost their heads
with astonishment on being set loose at that time of night,
and jumped upon me like a couple of puppies! However, the rain
soon cooled them down again: they lapped a drop of water each,
and crept back into their kennels. As I went into the house I
noticed signs in the sky which betokened a break in the weather
for the better. For the present, it still poured heavily,
and the ground was in a perfect sop.

Samuel and I went all over the house, and shut up as usual.
I examined everything myself, and trusted nothing to my deputy
on this occasion. All was safe and fast when I rested my old bones
in bed, between midnight and one in the morning.

The worries of the day had been a little too much for me, I suppose.
At any rate, I had a touch of Mr. Franklin's malady that night.
It was sunrise before I fell off at last into a sleep.
All the time I lay awake the house was as quiet as the grave.
Not a sound stirred but the splash of the rain, and the sighing
of the wind among the trees as a breeze sprang up with
the morning.

About half-past seven I woke, and opened my window on a fine sunshiny day.
The clock had struck eight, and I was just going out to chain up the dogs
again, when I heard a sudden whisking of petticoats on the stairs behind me.

I turned about, and there was Penelope flying down after me like mad.
"Father!" she screamed, "come up-stairs, for God's sake! THE DIAMOND
IS GONE!"  "Are you out of your mind? "I asked her.

"Gone!" says Penelope. "Gone, nobody knows how! Come up and see."

She dragged me after her into our young lady's sitting-room, which opened into
her bedroom. There, on the threshold of her bedroom door, stood Miss Rachel,
almost as white in the face as the white dressinggown that clothed her.
There also stood the two doors of the Indian cabinet, wide open. One, of the
drawers inside was pulled out as far as it would go.

"Look!" says Penelope. "I myself saw Miss Rachel put the Diamond
into that drawer last night."  I went to the cabinet. The drawer
was empty.

"Is this true, miss?"  I asked.

With a look that was not like herself, with a voice that was not like her own,
Miss Rachel answered as my daughter had answered: "The Diamond is gone!"
Having said those words, she withdrew into her bedroom, and shut and locked
the door.

Before we knew which way to turn next, my lady came in, hearing my
voice in her daughter's sittingroom, and wondering what had happened.
The news of the loss of the Diamond seemed to petrify her. She went
straight to Miss Rachel's bedroom, and insisted on being admitted.
Miss Rachel let here in.

The alarm, running through the house like fire, caught the two gentlemen next.

Mr. Godfrey was the first to come out of his room.
All he did when he heard what had happened was to hold up
his hands in a state of bewilderment, which didn't say much
for his natural strength of mind. Mr. Franklin, whose clear
head I had confidently counted on to advise us, seemed to be
as helpless as his cousin when he heard the news in his turn.
For a wonder, he had had a good night's rest at last;
and the unaccustomed luxury of sleep had, as he said himself,
apparently stupefied him. However, when he had swallowed
his cup of coffee--which he always took, on the foreign plan,
some hours before he ate any breakfast--his brains brightened;
the clear-headed side of him turned up, and he took the matter
in hand, resolutely and cleverly, much as follows:

He first sent for the servants, and told them to leave all the lower doors
and windows (with the exception of the front door, which I had opened)
exactly as they had been left when we locked up over night. He next proposed
to his cousin and to me to make quite sure, before we took any further steps,
that the Diamond had not accidentally dropped somewhere out of sight--say at
the back of the cabinet, or down behind the table on which the cabinet stood.
Having searched in both places, and found nothing--having also questioned
Penelope, and discovered from her no more than the little she had already
told me--Mr. Franklin suggested next extending our inquiries to Miss Rachel,
and sent Penelope to knock at her bed-room door.

My lady answered the knock, and closed the door behind her.
The moment after we heard it locked inside by Miss Rachel.
My mistress came out among us, looking sorely puzzled
and distressed. "The loss of the Diamond seems to have quite
overwhelmed Rachel," she said, in reply to Mr. Franklin.
"She shrinks, in the strangest manner, from speaking of it,
even to ME. It is impossible you can see her for the present."
Having added to our perplexities by this account of Miss Rachel,
my lady, after a little effort, recovered her usual composure,
and acted with her usual decision.

"I suppose there is no help for it?" she said, quietly. "I suppose I
have no alternative but to send for the police?"

"And the first thing for the police to do," added Mr. Franklin,
catching her up, "is to lay hands on the Indian jugglers
who performed here last night."

My lady and Mr. Godfrey (not knowing what Mr. Franklin and I knew)
both started, and both looked surprised.

"I can't stop to explain myself now," Mr. Franklin went on.
"I can only tell you that the Indians have certainly stolen
the Diamond. Give me a letter of introduction," says he,
addressing my lady, "to one of the magistrates at Frizinghall--
merely telling him that I represent your interests and wishes,
and let me ride off with it instantly. Our chance of catching
the thieves may depend on our not wasting one unnecessary minute."
(Nota bene: Whether it was the French side or the English,
the right side of Mr. Franklin seemed to be uppermost now. The only
question was, How long would it last?)

He put pen, ink, and paper before his aunt, who (as it appeared to me)
wrote the letter he wanted a little unwillingly. If it had been possible
to overlook such an event as the loss of a jewel worth twenty thousand pounds,
I believe--with my lady's opinion of her late brother, and her distrust
of his birthday-gift--it would have been privately a relief to her to let
the thieves get off with the Moonstone scot free.

I went out with Mr. Franklin to the stables, and took the opportunity
of asking him how the Indians (whom I suspected, of course, as shrewdly
as he did) could possibly have got into the house.

"One of them might have slipped into the hall, in the confusion,
when the dinner company were going away," says Mr. Franklin.
"The fellow may have been under the sofa while my aunt and Rachel
were talking about where the Diamond was to be put for the night.
He would only have to wait till the house was quiet, and there
it would be in the cabinet, to be had for the taking."
With those words, he called to the groom to open the gate,
and galloped off.

This seemed certainly to be the only rational explanation.
But how had the thief contrived to make his escape from the house?
I had found the front door locked and bolted, as I had left
it at night, when I went to open it, after getting up.
As for the other doors and windows, there they were still,
all safe and fast, to speak for themselves. The dogs, too?
Suppose the thief had got away by dropping from one of the
upper windows, how had he escaped the dogs? Had he come provided
for them with drugged meat? As the doubt crossed my mind,
the dogs themselves came galloping at me round a corner, rolling each
other over on the wet grass, in such lively health and spirits
that it was with no small difficulty I brought them to reason,
and chained them up again. The more I turned it over in my mind,
the less satisfactory Mr. Franklin's explanation appeared
to be.

We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder,
it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast. When we had done,
my lady sent for me; and I found myself compelled to tell her all that I
had hitherto concealed, relating to the Indians and their plot.
Being a woman of a high courage, she soon got over the first startling effect
of what I had to communicate. Her mind seemed to be far more perturbed
about her daughter than about the heathen rogues and their conspiracy.
"You know how odd Rachel is, and how differently she behaves sometimes
from other girls," my lady said to me. "But I have never, in all
my experience, seen her so strange and so reserved as she is now.
The loss of her jewel seems almost to have turned her brain. Who would have
thought that horrible Diamond could have laid such a hold on her in so short
a time?"

It was certainly strange. Taking toys and trinkets in general,
Miss Rachel was nothing like so mad after them as most young girls.
Yet there she was, still locked up inconsolably in her bedroom.
It is but fair to add that she was not the only one of us in the house
who was thrown out of the regular groove. Mr. Godfrey, for instance--
though professionally a sort of consoler-general--seemed to be at
a loss where to look for his own resources. Having no company
to amuse him, and getting no chance of trying what his experience
of women in distress could do towards comforting Miss Rachel,
he wandered hither and thither about the house and gardens in an
aimless uneasy way. He was in two different minds about what it
became him to do, after the misfortune that had happened to us.
Ought he to relieve the family, in their present situation,
of the responsibility of him as a guest, or ought he to stay on
the chance that even his humble services might be of some use?
He decided ultimately that the last course was perhaps the most
customary and considerate course to take, in such a very peculiar
case of family distress as this was. Circumstances try the metal
a man is really made of. Mr. Godfrey, tried by circumstances,
showed himself of weaker metal than I had thought him to be.
As for the women-servants excepting Rosanna Spearman, who kept by herself--
they took to whispering together in corners, and staring at nothing
suspiciously, as is the manner of that weaker half of the human family,
when anything extraordinary happens in a house. I myself acknowledge
to have been fidgety and ill-tempered. The cursed Moonstone had
turned us all upside down.

A little before eleven Mr. Franklin came back. The resolute
side of him had, to all appearance, given way, in the interval
since his departure, under the stress that had been laid on it.
He had left us at a gallop; he came back to us at a walk.
When he went away, he was made of iron. When he returned, he was
stuffed with cotton, as limp as limp could be.

"Well," says my lady, "are the police coming?"

"Yes," says Mr. Franklin; "they said they would follow me in a fly.
Superintendent Seegrave, of your local police force, and two of his men.
A mere form! The case is hopeless."

"What! have the Indians escaped, sir?"  I asked.

"The poor ill-used Indians have been most unjustly put in prison,"
says Mr. Franklin. "They are as innocent as the babe unborn.
My idea that one of them was hidden in the house has ended,
like all the rest of my ideas, in smoke. It's been proved,"
says Mr. Franklin, dwelling with great relish on his own incapacity,
"to be simply impossible."

After astonishing us by announcing this totally new turn in the matter
of the Moonstone, our young gentleman, at his aunt's request, took a seat,
and explained himself.

It appeared that the resolute side of him had held out as far
as Frizinghall. He had put the whole case plainly before
the magistrate, and the magistrate had at once sent for the police.
The first inquiries instituted about the Indians showed
that they had not so much as attempted to leave the town.
Further questions addressed to the police, proved that all
three had been seen returning to Frizinghall with their boy,
on the previous night between ten and eleven--which (regard being
had to hours and distances) also proved that they had
walked straight back after performing on our terrace.
Later still, at midnight, the police, having occasion to search
the common lodging-house where they lived, had seen them
all three again, and their little boy with them, as usual.
Soon after midnight I myself had safely shut up the house.
Plainer evidence than this, in favour of the Indians,
there could not well be. The magistrate said there was not
even a case of suspicion against them so far. But, as it was
just possible, when the police came to investigate the matter,
that discoveries affecting the jugglers might be made,
he would contrive, by committing them as rogues and vagabonds,
to keep them at our disposal, under lock and key, for a week.
They had ignorantly done something (I forget what) in the town,
which barely brought them within the operation of the law.
Every human institution (justice included) will stretch
a little, if you only pull it the right way. The worthy
magistrate was an old friend of my lady's, and the Indians
were "committed" for a week, as soon as the court opened that
morning.

Such was Mr. Franklin's narrative of events at Frizinghall.
The Indian clue to the mystery of the lost jewel was now,
to all appearance, a clue that had broken in our hands.
If the jugglers were innocent, who, in the name of wonder, had taken
the Moonstone out of Miss Rachel's drawer?

Ten minutes later, to our infinite relief; Superintendent Seegrave
arrived at the house. He reported passing Mr. Franklin on the terrace,
sitting in the sun (I suppose with the Italian side of him uppermost),
and warning the police, as they went by, that the investigation was hopeless,
before the investigation had begun.

For a family in our situation, the Superintendent of the Frizinghall
police was the most comforting officer you could wish to see.
Mr. Seegrave was tall and portly, and military in his manners.
He had a fine commanding voice, and a mighty resolute eye, and a grand
frock-coat which buttoned beautifully up to his leather stock.
"I'm the man you want!" was written all over his face; and he ordered
his two inferior police men about with a severity which convinced us all
that there was no trifling with HIM.

He began by going round the premises, outside and in;
the result of that investigation proving to him that no thieves
had broken in upon us from outside, and that the robbery,
consequently, must have been committed by some person in the house.
I leave you to imagine the state the servants were in when this
official announcement first reached their ears. The Superintendent
decided to begin by examining the boudoir, and, that done,
to examine the servants next. At the same time, he posted
one of his men on the staircase which led to the servants'
bedrooms, with instructions to let nobody in the house pass him,
till further orders.

At this latter proceeding, the weaker half of the human family went distracted
on the spot. They bounced out of their comers, whisked up-stairs in a body
to Miss Rachel's room (Rosanna Spearman being carried away among them this
time), burst in on Superintendent Seegrave, and, all looking equally guilty,
summoned him to say which of them he suspected, at once.

Mr. Superintendent proved equal to the occasion; he looked at them
with his resolute eye, and he cowed them with his military voice.

"Now, then, you women, go down-stairs again, every one of you;
I won't have you here. Look!" says Mr. Superintendent,
suddenly pointing to a little smear of the decorative painting
on Miss Rachel's door, at the outer edge, just under the lock.
"Look what mischief the petticoats of some of you have done already.
Clear out! clear out!"  Rosanna Spearman, who was nearest to him,
and nearest to the little smear on the door, set the example
of obedience, and slipped off instantly to her work. The rest
followed her out. The Superintendent finished his examination
of the room, and, making nothing of it, asked me who had first
discovered the robbery. My daughter had first discovered it.
My daughter was sent for.

Mr. Superintendent proved to be a little too sharp with
Penelope at starting. "Now, young woman, attend to me,
and mind you speak the truth."  Penelope fired up instantly.
"I've never been taught to tell lies Mr. Policeman!--
and if father can stand there and hear me accused of falsehood
and thieving, and my own bed-room shut against me, and my
character taken away, which is all a poor girl has left,
he's not the good father I take him for!"  A timely word from me
put Justice and Penelope on a pleasanter footing together.
The questions and answers went swimmingly, and ended in nothing
worth mentioning. My daughter had seen Miss Rachel put
the Diamond in the drawer of the cabinet the last thing at night.
She had gone in with Miss Rachel's cup of tea at eight
the next morning, and had found the drawer open and empty.
Upon that, she had alarmed the house--and there was an end of
Penelope's evidence.

Mr. Superintendent next asked to see Miss Rachel herself.
Penelope mentioned his request through the door. The answer reached
us by the same road: "I have nothing to tell the policeman--
I can't see anybody."  Our experienced officer looked
equally surprised and offended when he heard that reply.
I told him my young lady was ill, and begged him to wait
a little and see her later. We thereupon went downstairs again,
and were met by Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Franklin crossing
the hall.

The two gentlemen, being inmates of the house, were summoned to say if they
could throw any light on the matter. Neither of them knew anything about it.
Had they heard any suspicious noises during the previous night? They had
heard nothing but the pattering of the rain. Had I, lying awake longer than
either of them, heard nothing either? Nothing! Released from examination,
Mr. Franklin, still sticking to the helpless view of our difficulty, whispered
to me: "That man will be of no earthly use to us. Superintendent Seegrave
is an ass."  Released in his turn, Mr. Godfrey whispered to me--"Evidently
a most competent person. Betteredge, I have the greatest faith in him!"
Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients said, before my time.

Mr. Superintendent's next proceeding took him back to the "boudoir" again,
with my daughter and me at his heels. His object was to discover whether any
of the furniture had been moved, during the night, out of its customary place--
his previous investigation in the room having, apparently, not gone quite far
enough to satisfy his mind on this point.

While we were still poking about among the chairs and tables,
the door of the bed-room was suddenly opened. After having
denied herself to everybody, Miss Rachel, to our astonishment,
walked into the midst of us of her own accord. She took up
her garden hat from a chair, and then went straight to Penelope
with this question:-

"Mr. Franklin Blake sent you with a message to me this morning?"

"Yes, miss."

"He wished to speak to me, didn't he?"

"Yes, miss."

"Where is he now?"

Hearing voices on the terrace below, I looked out of window,
and saw the two gentlemen walking up and down together.
Answering for my daughter, I said, "Mr. Franklin is on
the terrace, miss."

Without another word, without heeding Mr. Superintendent,
who tried to speak to her, pale as death, and wrapped up
strangely in her own thoughts, she left the room, and went
down to her cousins on the terrace.

It showed a want of due respect, it showed a breach of good manners,
on my part, but, for the life of me, I couldn't help looking
out of window when Miss Rachel met the gentlemen outside.
She went up to Mr. Franklin without appearing to notice
Mr. Godfrey, who thereupon drew back and left them by themselves.
What she said to Mr. Franklin appeared to be spoken vehemently.
It lasted but for a short time, and, judging by what I saw
of his face from the window, seemed to astonish him beyond
all power of expression. While they were still together,
my lady appeared on the terrace. Miss Rachel saw her--
said a few last words to Mr. Franklin--and suddenly went back
into the house again, before her mother came up with her.
My lady surprised herself, and noticing Mr. Franklin's surprise,
spoke to him. Mr. Godfrey joined them, and spoke also.
Mr. Franklin walked away a little between the two, telling them
what had happened I suppose, for they both stopped short,
after taking a few steps, like persons struck with amazement.
I had just seen as much as this, when the door of the sitting-room
was opened violently. Miss Rachel walked swiftly through to her
bed-room, wild and angry, with fierce eyes and flaming cheeks.
Mr. Superintendent once more attempted to question her.
She turned round on him at her bed-room door.
"I have not sent for you!" she cried out vehemently.
"I don't want you. My Diamond is lost. Neither you nor
anybody else will ever find it! With those words she went in,
and locked the door in our faces. Penelope, standing nearest
to it, heard her burst out crying the moment she was alone
again.

In a rage, one moment; in tears, the next! What did it mean?

I told the Superintendent it meant that Miss Rachel's temper was upset
by the loss of her jewel. Being anxious for the honour of the family,
it distressed me to see my young lady forget herself--even with
a police-officer--and I made the best excuse I could, accordingly.
In my own private mind I was more puzzled by Miss Rachel's extraordinary
language and conduct than words can tell. Taking what she had said at her
bed-room door as a guide to guess by, I could only conclude that she was
mortally offended by our sending for the police, and that Mr. Franklin's
astonishment on the terrace was caused by her having expressed herself
to him (as the person chiefly instrumental in fetching the police)
to that effect. If this guess was right, why--having lost her Diamond--
should she object to the presence in the house of the very people whose
business it was to recover it for her? And how, in Heaven's name,
could SHE know that the Moonstone would never be found again?

As things stood, at present, no answer to those questions was to be
hoped for from anybody in the house. Mr. Franklin appeared to think
it a point of honour to forbear repeating to a servant--even to so old
a servant as I was--what Miss Rachel had said to him on the terrace.
Mr. Godfrey, who, as a gentleman and a relative, had been probably
admitted into Mr. Franklin's confidence, respected that confidence
as he was bound to do. My lady, who was also in the secret no doubt,
and who alone had access to Miss Rachel, owned openly that she could
make nothing of her. "You madden me when you talk of the Diamond!"
All her mother's influence failed to extract from her a word more
than that.

Here we were, then, at a dead-lock about Miss Rachel--
and at a dead-lock about the Moonstone. In the first case,
my lady was powerless to help us. In the second (as you shall
presently judge), Mr. Seegrave was fast approaching the condition
of a superintendent at his wits' end.

Having ferreted about all over the "boudoir," without making
any discoveries among the furniture, our experienced officer
applied to me to know, whether the servants in general were
or were not acquainted with the place in which the Diamond
had been put for the night.

"I knew where it was put, sir," I said, "to begin with.
Samuel, the footman, knew also--for he was present in the hall,
when they were talking about where the Diamond was to be kept
that night. My daughter knew, as she has already told you.
She or Samuel may have mentioned the thing to the other servants--
or the other servants may have heard the talk for themselves,
through the side-door of the hall, which might have
been open to the back staircase. For all I can tell,
everybody in the house may have known where the jewel was,
last night."

My answer presenting rather a wide field for Mr. Superintendent's
suspicions to range over, he tried to narrow it by asking about
the servants' characters next.

I thought directly of Rosanna Spearman. But it was neither
my place nor my wish to direct suspicion against a poor girl,
whose honesty had been above all doubt as long as I had known her.
The matron at the Reformatory had reported her to my lady
as a sincerely penitent and thoroughly trustworthy girl.
It was the Superintendent's business to discover reason for
suspecting her first--and then, and not till then, it would
be my duty to tell him how she came into my lady's service.
"All our people have excellent characters," I said. "And all
have deserved the trust their mistress has placed in them."
After that, there was but one thing left for Mr. Seegrave
to do--namely, to set to work, and tackle the servants'
characters himself.

One after another, they were examined. One after another, they proved
to have nothing to say--and said it (so far as the women were concerned)
at great length, and with a very angry sense of the embargo laid on their
bed-rooms. The rest of them being sent back to their places downstairs,
Penelope was then summoned, and examined separately a second time.

My daughter's little outbreak of temper in the "boudoir,"
and her readiness to think herself suspected, appeared to have
produced an unfavourable impression on Superintendent Seegrave.
It seemed also to dwell a little on his mind, that she
had been the last person who saw the Diamond at night.
When the second questioning was over, my girl came back
to me in a frenzy. There was no doubt of it any longer--
the police-officer had almost as good as told her she was the thief!
I could scarcely believe him (taking Mr. Franklin's view)
to be quite such an ass as that. But, though he said nothing,
the eye with which he looked at my daughter was not a very pleasant
eye to see. I laughed it off with poor Penelope, as something
too ridiculous to be treated seriously--which it certainly was.
Secretly, I am afraid I was foolish enough to be angry too.
It was a little trying--it was, indeed. My girl sat down in a corner,
with her apron over her head, quite broken-hearted. Foolish
of her, you will say. she might have waited till he openly
accused her. Well, being a man of just an equal temper,
I admit that. Still Mr. Superintendent might have remembered--
never mind what he might have remembered. The devil
take him!

The next and last step in the investigation brought matters, as they say,
to a crisis. The officer had an interview (at which I was present)
with my lady. After informing her that the Diamond must have been taken
by somebody in the house, he requested permission for himself and his men
to search the servants' rooms and boxes on the spot. My good mistress,
like the generous high-bred woman she was, refused to let us be treated
like thieves. "I will never consent to make such a return as that,"
she said, "for all I owe to the faithful servants who are employed in
my house."

Mr. Superintendent made his bow, with a look in my direction,
which said plainly, "Why employ me, if you are to tie my hands
in this way?"  As head of the servants, I felt directly that we
were bound, in justice to all parties, not to profit by our
mistress's generosity. "We gratefully thank your ladyship," I said;
"but we ask your permission to do what is right in this matter
by giving up our keys. When Gabriel Betteredge sets the example,"
says I, stopping Superintendent Seegrave at the door, "the rest
of the servants will follow, I promise you. There are my keys,
to begin with!"  My lady took me by the hand, and thanked me
with the tears in her eyes. Lord! what would I not have given,
at that moment, for the privilege of knocking Superintendent
Seegrave down!

As I had promised for them, the other servants followed my lead,
sorely against the grain, of course, but all taking the view that I took.
The women were a sight to see, while the police-officers were rummaging among
their things. The cook looked as if she could grill Mr. Superintendent
alive on a furnace, and the other women looked as if they could eat him
when he was done.

The search over, and no Diamond or sign of a Diamond being found,
of course, anywhere, Superintendent Seegrave retired to my
little room to consider with himself what he was to do next.
He and his men had now been hours in the house, and had not
advanced us one inch towards a discovery of how the Moonstone had
been taken, or of whom we were to suspect as the thief.

While the police-officer was still pondering in solitude,
I was sent for to see Mr. Franklin in the library.
To my unutterable astonishment, just as my hand was on the door,
it was suddenly opened from the inside, and out walked
Rosanna Spearman!

After the library had been swept and cleaned in the morning,
neither first nor second housemaid had any business in that room
at any later period of the day. I stopped Rosanna Spearman,
and charged her with a breach of domestic discipline on
the spot.

"What might you want in the library at this time of day?"
I inquired.

"Mr. Franklin Blake dropped one of his rings up-stairs,"
says Rosanna; "and I have been into the library to give it to him."
The girl's face was all in a flush as she made me that answer;
and she walked away with a toss of her head and a look of
self-importance which I was quite at a loss to account for.
The proceedings in the house had doubtless upset all the
women-servants more or less; but none of them had gone clean
out of their natural characters, as Rosanna, to all appearance,
had now gone out of hers.

I found Mr. Franklin writing at the library-table. He asked for a
conveyance to the railway station the moment I entered the room.
The first sound of his voice informed me that we now had the resolute
side of him uppermost once more. The man made of cotton had disappeared;
and the man made of iron sat before me again.

"Going to London, sir?"  I asked.

"Going to telegraph to London," says Mr. Franklin. "I have convinced my aunt
that we must have a cleverer head than Superintendent Seegrave's to help us;
and I have got her permission to despatch a telegram to my father.
He knows the Chief Commissioner of Police, and the Commissioner can
lay his hand on the right man to solve the mystery of the Diamond.
Talking of mysteries, by-the-bye," says Mr. Franklin, dropping his voice,
"I have another word to say to you before you go to the stables.
Don't breathe a word of it to anybody as yet; but either Rosanna Spearman's
head is not quite right, or I am afraid she knows more about the Moonstone
than she ought to know."

I can hardly tell whether I was more startled or distressed at hearing
him say that. If I had been younger, I might have confessed as much
to Mr. Franklin. But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit.
In cases where you don't see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.

"She came in here with a ring I dropped in my bed-room,"
Mr. Franklin went on. "When I had thanked her, of course
I expected her to go. Instead of that, she stood opposite
to me at the table, looking at me in the oddest manner--
half frightened, and half familiar--I couldn't make it out.
'This is a strange thing about the Diamond, sir,' she said,
in a curiously sudden, headlong way. I said, 'Yes, it was,'
and wondered what was coming next. Upon my honour, Betteredge,
I think she must be wrong in the head! She said, 'They will never
find the Diamond, sir, will they? No! nor the person who took it--
I'll answer for that.'  She actually nodded and smiled at me!
Before I could ask her what she meant, we heard your step outside.
I suppose she was afraid of your catching her here.
At any rate, she changed colour, and left the room.
What on earth does it mean?

I could not bring myself to tell him the girl's story, even then.
It would have been almost as good as telling him that she was
the thief. Besides, even if I had made a clean breast of it,
and even supposing she was the thief, the reason why she should let
out her secret to Mr. Franklin, of all the people in the world,
would have been still as far to seek as ever.

"I can't bear the idea of getting the poor girl into a scrape,
merely because she has a flighty way with her, and talks very strangely,"
Mr. Franklin went on. "And yet if she had said to, the Superintendent
what she said to me, fool as he is, I'm afraid----" He stopped there,
and left the rest unspoken.

"The best way, sir," I said, "will be for me to say two words
privately to my mistress about it at the first opportunity.
My lady has a very friendly interest in Rosanna; and the girl
may only have been forward and foolish, after all.
When there's a mess of any kind in a house, sir, the women-servants
like to look at the gloomy side--it gives the poor wretches
a kind of importance in their own eyes. If there's anybody ill,
trust the women for prophesying that the person will die.
If it's a jewel lost, trust them for prophesying that it will
never be found again."

This view (which I am bound to say, I thought a probable view myself,
on reflection) seemed to relieve Mr. Franklin mightily:
he folded up his telegram, and dismissed the subject.
On my way to the stables, to order the pony-chaise, I looked
in at the servants' hall, where they were at dinner.
Rosanna Spearman was not among them. On inquiry, I found that she
had been suddenly taken ill, and had gone up-stairs to her own room
to lie down.

"Curious! She looked well enough when I saw her last,"
I remarked.

Penelope followed me out. "Don't talk in that way before the rest
of them, father," she said. "You only make them harder on Rosanna than ever.
The poor thing is breaking her heart about Mr. Franklin Blake."

Here was another view of the girl's conduct. If it was possible for
Penelope to be right, the explanation of Rosanna's strange language and
behaviour might have been all in this--that she didn't care what she said,
so long as she could surprise Mr. Franklin into speaking to her.
Granting that to be the right reading of the riddle, it accounted, perhaps,
for her flighty, self-conceited manner when she passed me in the hall.
Though he had only said three words, still she had carried her point,
and Mr. Franklin had spoken to her.

I saw the pony harnessed myself. In the infernal network of mysteries
and uncertainties that now surrounded us, I declare it was a relief
to observe how well the buckles and straps understood each other!
When you had seen the pony backed into the shafts of the chaise,
you had seen something there was no doubt about. And that,
let me tell you, was becoming a treat of the rarest kind in
our household.

Going round with the chaise to the front door, I found not only Mr. Franklin,
but Mr. Godfrey and Superintendent Seegrave also waiting for me on the steps.

Mr. Superintendent's reflections (after failing to find
the Diamond in the servants' rooms or boxes) had led him,
it appeared, to an entirely new conclusion. Still sticking
to his first text, namely, that somebody in the house had
stolen the jewel, our experienced officer was now of opinion
that the thief (he was wise enough not to name poor Penelope,
whatever he might privately think of her!) had been acting
in concert with the Indians; and he accordingly proposed shifting
his inquiries to the jugglers in the prison at Frizinghall.
Hearing of this new move, Mr. Franklin had volunteered
to take the Superintendent back to the town, from which
he could telegraph to London as easily as from our station.
Mr. Godfrey, still devoutly believing in Mr. Seegrave, and greatly
interested in witnessing the examination of the Indians,
had begged leave to accompany the officer to Frizinghall.
One of the two inferior policemen was to be left at the house,
in case anything happened. The other was to go back with the
Superintendent to the town. So the four places in the pony-chaise
were just filled.

Before he took the reins to drive off, Mr. Franklin walked me away
a few steps out of hearing of the others.

"I will wait to telegraph to London," he said, "till I see what comes
of our examination of the Indians. My own conviction is, that this
muddle-headed local police-officer is as much in the dark as ever,
and is simply trying to gain time. The idea of any of the servants being
in league with the Indians is a preposterous absurdity, in my opinion.
Keep about the house, Betteredge, till I come back, and try what you
can make of Rosanna Spearman. I don't ask you to do anything degrading
to your own self-respect, or anything cruel towards the girl.
I only ask you to exercise your observation more carefully than usual.
We will make as light of it as we can before my aunt--but this is a more
important matter than you may suppose."

"It is a matter of twenty thousand pounds, sir," I said,
thinking of the value of the Diamond.

"It's a matter of quieting Rachel's mind," answered Mr. Franklin gravely.
"I am very uneasy about her."

He left me suddenly; as if he desired to cut short any further talk
between us. I thought I understood why. Further talk might have let
me into the secret of what Miss Rachel had said to him on the terrace.

So they drove away to Frizinghall. I was ready enough, in the girl's
own interest, to have a little talk with Rosanna in private.
But the needful opportunity failed to present itself.
She only came downstairs again at tea-time. When she did appear,
she was flighty and excited, had what they call an hysterical attack,
took a dose of sal-volatile by my lady's order, and was sent back to
her bed.

The day wore on to its end drearily and miserably enough,
I can tell you. Miss Rachel still kept her room,
declaring that she was too ill to come down to dinner that day.
My lady was in such low spirits about her daughter, that I
could not bring myself to make her additionally anxious,
by reporting what Rosanna Spearman had said to Mr. Franklin.
Penelope persisted in believing that she was to be forthwith
tried, sentenced, and transported for theft. The other women
took to their Bibles and hymn-books, and looked as sour as
verjuice over their reading--a result, which I have observed,
in my sphere of life, to follow generally on the performance
of acts of piety at unaccustomed periods of the day.
As for me, I hadn't even heart enough to open my ROBINSON CRUSOE.
I went out into the yard, and, being hard up for a little
cheerful society, set my chair by the kennels, and talked to
the dogs.

Half an hour before dinner-time, the two gentlemen came back from Frizinghall,
having arranged with Superintendent Seegrave that he was to return to us
the next day. They had called on Mr. Murthwaite, the Indian traveller,
at his present residence, near the town. At Mr. Franklin's request,
he had kindly given them the benefit of his knowledge of the language,
in dealing with those two, out of the three Indians, who knew nothing
of English. The examination, conducted carefully, and at great length,
had ended in nothing; not the shadow of a reason being discovered for
suspecting the jugglers of having tampered with any of our servants.
On reaching that conclusion, Mr. Franklin had sent his telegraphic message
to London, and there the matter now rested till to-morrow came.

So much for the history of the day that followed the birthday.
Not a glimmer of light had broken in on us, so far.
A day or two after, however, the darkness lifted a little.
How, and with what result, you shall presently see.

CHAPTER XII

The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened. With the Friday
morning came two pieces of news.

Item the first: the baker's man declared he had met Rosanna
Spearman, on the previous afternoon, with a thick veil on,
walking towards Frizinghall by the foot-path way over the moor.
It seemed strange that anybody should be mistaken about Rosanna,
whose shoulder marked her out pretty plainly, poor thing--
but mistaken the man must have been; for Rosanna, as you know,
had been all the Thursday afternoon ill up-stairs in her room.

Item the second came through the postman. Worthy Mr. Candy
had said one more of his many unlucky things, when he drove off
in the rain on the birthday night, and told me that a doctor's skin
was waterproof. In spite of his skin, the wet had got through him.
He had caught a chill that night, and was now down with a fever.
The last accounts, brought by the postman, represented him
to be light-headed--talking nonsense as glibly, poor man,
in his delirium as he often talked it in his sober senses.
We were all sorry for the little doctor; but Mr. Franklin appeared
to regret his illness, chiefly on Miss Rachel's account.
From what he said to my lady, while I was in the room
at breakfast-time, he appeared to think that Miss Rachel--
if the suspense about the Moonstone was not soon set at rest--
might stand in urgent need of the best medical advice at
our disposal.

Breakfast had not been over long, when a telegram from Mr. Blake,
the elder, arrived, in answer to his son. It informed us
that he had laid hands (by help of his friend, the Commissioner)
on the right man to help us. The name of him was Sergeant Cuff;
and the arrival of him from London might be expected by the
morning train.

At reading the name of the new police-officer, Mr. Franklin gave a start.
It seems that he had heard some curious anecdotes about Sergeant Cuff,
from his father's lawyer, during his stay in London.

"I begin to hope we are seeing the end of our anxieties already," he said.
"If half the stories I have heard are true, when it comes to unravelling
a mystery, there isn't the equal in England of Sergeant Cuff!"

We all got excited and impatient as the time drew near
for the appearance of this renowned and capable character.
Superintendent Seegrave, returning to us at his appointed time,
and hearing that the Sergeant was expected, instantly shut
himself up in a room, with pen, ink, and paper, to make notes
of the Report which would be certainly expected from him.
I should have liked to have gone to the station myself,
to fetch the Sergeant. But my lady's carriage and horses
were not to be thought of, even for the celebrated Cuff;
and the pony-chaise was required later for Mr. Godfrey.
He deeply regretted being obliged to leave his aunt at such
an anxious time; and he kindly put off the hour of his departure
till as late as the last train, for the purpose of hearing
what the clever London police-officer thought of the case.
But on Friday night he must be in town, having a Ladies'
Charity, in difficulties, waiting to consult him on Saturday
morning.

When the time came for the Sergeant's arrival, I went down to the gate
to look out for him.

A fly from the railway drove up as I reached the lodge; and out got
a grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if
he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him.
He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck.
His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow
and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey,
had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking
as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself.
His walk was soft; his voice was melancholy; his long lanky fingers
were hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or an undertaker--
or anything else you like, except what he really was. A more complete
opposite to Superintendent Seegrave than Sergeant Cuff, and a less comforting
officer to look at, for a family in distress, I defy you to discover,
search where you may.

"Is this Lady Verinder's?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"I am Sergeant Cuff."

"This way, sir, if you please."

On our road to the house, I mentioned my name and position
in the family, to satisfy him that he might speak to me
about the business on which my lady was to employ him.
Not a word did he say about the business, however, for all that.
He admired the grounds, and remarked that he felt the sea
air very brisk and refreshing. I privately wondered,
on my side, how the celebrated Cuff had got his reputation.
We reached the house, in the temper of two strange dogs,
coupled up together for the first time in their lives by the
same chain.

Asking for my lady, and hearing that she was in one of the conservatories,
we went round to the gardens at the back, and sent a servant to seek her.
While we were waiting, Sergeant Cuff looked through the evergreen
arch on our left, spied out our rosery, and walked straight in,
with the first appearance of anything like interest that he had shown yet.
To the gardener's astonishment, and to my disgust, this celebrated
policeman proved to be quite a mine of learning on the trumpery subject of
rose-gardens.

"Ah, you've got the right exposure here to the south and sou'-west,"
says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak
of pleasure in his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery--
nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks
between all the beds. But they oughtn't to be gravel walks
like these. Grass, Mr. Gardener--grass walks between your roses;
gravel's too hard for them. That's a sweet pretty bed of white
roses and blush roses. They always mix well together, don't they?
Here's the white musk rose, Mr. Betteredge--our old English rose
holding up its head along with the best and the newest of them.
Pretty dear!" says the Sergeant, fondling the Musk Rose with
his lanky fingers, and speaking to it as if he was speaking to
a child.

This was a nice sort of man to recover Miss Rachel's Diamond,
and to find out the thief who stole it!

"You seem to be fond of roses, Sergeant?"  I remarked.

"I haven't much time to be fond of anything, 'says Sergeant Cuff.
"But when I HAVE a moment's fondness to bestow, most times,
Mr. Betteredge, the roses get it. I began my life among them
in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them,
if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire
from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.
There will be grass walks, Mr. Gardener, between my beds,"
says the Sergeant, on whose mind the gravel paths of our rosery seemed
to dwell unpleasantly.

"It seems an odd taste, sir," I ventured to say, "for a man
in your line of life."

"If you will look about you (which most people won't do),"
says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see that the nature of a man's
tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature
of a man's business. Show me any two things more opposite
one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I'll correct
my tastes accordingly--if it isn't too late at my time of life.
You find the damask rose a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts,
don't you, Mr. Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here's a lady coming.
Is it Lady Verinder?"

He had seen her before either I or the gardener had seen her,
though we knew which way to look, and he didn't. I began
to think him rather a quicker man than he appeared to be at
first sight.

The Sergeant's appearance, or the Sergeant's errand--
one or both--seemed to cause my lady some little embarrassment.
She was, for the first time in all my experience of her,
at a loss what to say at an interview with a stranger.
Sergeant Cuff put her at her ease directly. He asked if any other
person had been employed about the robbery before we sent for him;
and hearing that another person had been called in, and was now
in the house, begged leave to speak to him before anything else
was done.

My lady led the way back. Before he followed her, the Sergeant relieved his
mind on the subject of the gravel walks by a parting word to the gardener.
"Get her ladyship to try grass," he said, with a sour look at the paths.
"No gravel! no gravel!"

Why Superintendent Seegrave should have appeared to be several
sizes smaller than life, on being presented to Sergeant Cuff,
I can't undertake to explain. I can only state the fact.
They retired together; and remained a weary long time shut up
from all mortal intrusion. When they came out, Mr. Superintendent
was excited, and Mr. Sergeant was yawning.

"The Sergeant wishes to see Miss Verinder's sitting-room,"
says Mr. Seegrave, addressing me with great pomp and eagerness.
"The Sergeant may have some questions to ask. Attend the Sergeant,
if you please!"

While I was being ordered about in this way, I looked at the great Cuff.
The great Cuff, on his side, looked at Superintendent Seegrave
in that quietly expecting way which I have already noticed.
I can't affirm that he was on the watch for his brother officer's
speedy appearance in the character of an Ass--I can only say that I
strongly suspected it.

I led the way up-stairs. The Sergeant went softly all over
the Indian cabinet and all round the "boudoir;" asking questions
(occasionally only of Mr. Superintendent, and continually of me),
the drift of which I believe to have been equally unintelligible
to both of us. In due time, his course brought him to the door,
and put him face to face with the decorative painting that you know of.
He laid one lean inquiring finger on the small smear, just under
the lock, which Superintendent Seegrave had already noticed,
when he reproved the women-servants for all crowding together into
the room.

"That's a pity," says Sergeant Cuff. "How did it happen?"

He put the question to me. I answered that the women-servants had crowded
into the room on the previous morning, and that some of their petticoats had
done the mischief, "Superintendent Seegrave ordered them out, sir," I added,
"before they did any more harm."

"Right!" says Mr. Superintendent in his military way. "I ordered them out.
The petticoats did it, Sergeant--the petticoats did it."

"Did you notice which petticoat did it?" asked Sergeant Cuff,
still addressing himself, not to his brother-officer, but to me.

"No, sir."

He turned to Superintendent Seegrave upon that, and said, "You noticed,
I suppose?"

Mr. Superintendent looked a little taken aback; but he made the best of it.
"I can't charge my memory, Sergeant," he said, "a mere trifle--a mere trifle."

Sergeant Cuff looked at Mr. Seegrave, as he had looked at the gravel
walks in the rosery, and gave us, in his melancholy way, the first taste
of his quality which we had had yet.

"I made a private inquiry last week, Mr. Superintendent," he said.
"At one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end
there was a spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for.
In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world,
I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet. Before we go a step
further in this business we must see the petticoat that made the smear,
and we must know for certain when that paint was wet."

Mr. Superintendent--taking his set-down rather sulkily--
asked if he should summon the women. Sergeant Cuff,
after considering a minute, sighed, and shook his head.

"No," he said, "we'll take the matter of the paint first.
It's a question of Yes or No with the paint--which is short.
It's a question of petticoats with the women--which is long.
What o'clock was it when the servants were in this room
yesterday morning? Eleven o'clock--eh? Is there anybody in
the house who knows whether that paint was wet or dry, at eleven
yesterday morning?"

"Her ladyship's nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, knows," I said.

"Is the gentleman in the house?"

Mr. Franklin was as close at hand as could be--waiting for his first chance
of being introduced to the great Cuff. In half a minute he was in the room,
and was giving his evidence as follows:

"That door, Sergeant," he said, "has been painted by Miss Verinder,
under my inspection, with my help, and in a vehicle of my own composition.
The vehicle dries whatever colours may be used with it, in twelve hours."

"Do you remember when the smeared bit was done, sir?" asked the Sergeant.

"Perfectly," answered Mr. Franklin. "That was the last morsel of the door
to be finished. We wanted to get it done, on Wednesday last--and I myself
completed it by three in the afternoon, or soon after."

"To-day is Friday," said Sergeant Cuff, addressing himself to
Superintendent Seegrave. "Let us reckon back, sir. At three on
the Wednesday afternoon, that bit of the painting was completed.
The vehicle dried it in twelve hours--that is to say, dried it
by three o'clock on Thursday morning. At eleven on Thursday
morning you held your inquiry here. Take three from eleven,
and eight remains. That paint had been EIGHT HOURS DRY,
Mr. Superintendent, when you supposed that the women-servants'
petticoats smeared it."

First knock-down blow for Mr. Seegrave! If he had not suspected
poor Penelope, I should have pitied him.

Having settled the question of the paint, Sergeant Cuff,
from that moment, gave his brother-officer up as a bad job--
and addressed himself to Mr. Franklin, as the more promising
assistant of the two.

"It's quite on the cards, sir," he said, "that you have put
the clue into our hands."

As the words passed his lips, the bedroom door opened, and Miss Rachel
came out among us suddenly.

She addressed herself to the Sergeant, without appearing to notice
(or to heed) that he was a perfect stranger to her.

"Did you say," she asked, pointing to Mr. Franklin, "that HE
had put the clue into your hands?"

("This is Miss Verinder," I whispered, behind the Sergeant.)

"That gentleman, miss," says the Sergeant--with his steely-grey
eyes carefully studying my young lady's face--"has possibly put
the clue into our hands."

She turned for one moment, and tried to look at Mr. Franklin.
I say, tried, for she suddenly looked away again before their eyes met.
There seemed to be some strange disturbance in her mind.
She coloured up, and then she turned pale again. With the paleness,
there came a new look into her face--a look which it startled me
to see.

"Having answered your question, miss," says the Sergeant,
"I beg leave to make an inquiry in my turn. There is a smear
on the painting of your door, here. Do you happen to know
when it was done? or who did it?"

Instead of making any reply, Miss Rachel went on with her questions,
as if he had not spoken, or as if she had not heard him.

"Are you another police-officer?" she asked.

"I am Sergeant Cuff, miss, of the Detective Police."

"Do you think a young lady's advice worth having?"

"I shall be glad to hear it, miss."

"Do your duty by yourself--and don't allow Mr Franklin Blake to help you!"

She said those words so spitefully, so savagely, with such
an extraordinary outbreak of ill-will towards Mr. Franklin,
in her voice and in her look, that--though I had known her from
a baby, though I loved and honoured her next to my lady herself--
I was ashamed of Miss Rachel for the first time in my life.

Sergeant Cuff's immovable eyes never stirred from off her face.
"Thank you, miss," he said. "Do you happen to know anything about
the smear? Might you have done it by accident yourself?"

"I know nothing about the smear."

With that answer, she turned away, and shut herself up again in her
bed-room. This time, I heard her--as Penelope had heard her before--
burst out crying as soon as she was alone again.

I couldn't bring myself to look at the Sergeant--I looked at Mr. Franklin,
who stood nearest to me. He seemed to be even more sorely distressed at what
had passed than I was.

"I told you I was uneasy about her," he said. "And now you see why."

"Miss Verinder appears to be a little out of temper about the loss
of her Diamond," remarked the Sergeant. "It's a valuable jewel.
Natural enough! natural enough!"

Here was the excuse that I had made for her (when she forgot
herself before Superintendent Seegrave, on the previous day)
being made for her over again, by a man who couldn't have had
MY interest in making it--for he was a perfect stranger!
A kind of cold shudder ran through me, which I couldn't
account for at the time. I know, now, that I must have got my
first suspicion, at that moment, of a new light (and horrid light)
having suddenly fallen on the case, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff--
purely and entirely in consequence of what he had seen in
Miss Rachel, and heard from Miss Rachel, at that first interview
between them.

"A young lady's tongue is a privileged member, sir," says the Sergeant
to Mr. Franklin. "Let us forget what has passed, and go straight on
with this business. Thanks to you, we know when the paint was dry.
The next thing to discover is when the paint was last seen without
that smear. YOU have got a head on your shoulders--and you understand
what I mean."

Mr. Franklin composed himself, and came back with an effort from Miss
Rachel to the matter in hand.

"I think I do understand," he said. "The more we narrow the question of time,
the more we also narrow the field of inquiry."

"That's it, sir," said the Sergeant. "Did you notice your work here,
on the Wednesday afternoon, after you had done it?"

Mr. Franklin shook his head, and answered, "I can't say I did."

"Did you?" inquired Sergeant Cuff, turning to me.

"I can't say I did either, sir."

"Who was the last person in the room, the last thing on Wednesday night?"

"Miss Rachel, I suppose, sir."

Mr. Franklin struck in there, "Or possibly your daughter, Betteredge."
He turned to Sergeant Cuff, and explained that my daughter was Miss
Verinder's maid.

"Mr. Betteredge, ask your daughter to step up. Stop!" says the Sergeant,
taking me away to the window, out of earshot, "Your Superintendent here,"
he went on, in a whisper, "has made a pretty full report to me
of the manner in which he has managed this case. Among other things,
he has, by his own confession, set the servants' backs up. It's very
important to smooth them down again. Tell your daughter, and tell
the rest of them, these two things, with my compliments: First, that I
have no evidence before me, yet, that the Diamond has been stolen;
I only know that the Diamond has been lost. Second, that my business
here with the servants is simply to ask them to lay their heads together
and help me to find it."

My experience of the women-servants, when Superintendent Seegrave
laid his embargo on their rooms, came in handy here.

"May I make so bold, Sergeant, as to tell the women a third thing?"
I asked. "Are they free (with your compliments) to fidget up
and downstairs, and whisk in and out of their bed-rooms, if the fit
takes them?"

"Perfectly free," said the Sergeant.

"THAT will smooth them down, sir," I remarked, "from the cook
to the scullion."

"Go, and do it at once, Mr. Betteredge."

I did it in less than five minutes. There was only one difficulty when I
came to the bit about the bed-rooms. It took a pretty stiff exertion
of my authority, as chief, to prevent the whole of the female household
from following me and Penelope up-stairs, in the character of volunteer
witnesses in a burning fever of anxiety to help Sergeant Cuff.

The Sergeant seemed to approve of Penelope. He became a trifle less dreary;
and he looked much as he had looked when he noticed the white musk rose
in the flower-garden. Here is my daughter's evidence, as drawn off from
her by the Sergeant. She gave it, I think, very prettily--but, there! she
is my child all over: nothing of her mother in her; Lord bless you,
nothing of her mother in her!

Penelope examined: Took a lively interest in the painting
on the door, having helped to mix the colours. Noticed the bit
of work under the lock, because it was the last bit done.
Had seen it, some hours afterwards, without a smear.
Had left it, as late as twelve at night, without a smear.
Had, at that hour, wished her young lady good night in the bedroom;
had heard the clock strike in the "boudoir"; had her hand
at the time on the handle of the painted door; knew the paint
was wet (having helped to mix the colours, as aforesaid);
took particular pains not to touch it; could swear that she
held up the skirts of her dress, and that there was no smear
on the paint then; could not swear that her dress mightn't
have touched it accidentally in going out; remembered the dress
she had on, because it was new, a present from Miss Rachel;
her father remembered, and could speak to it, too; could, and would,
and did fetch it; dress recognised by her father as the dress
she wore that night; skirts examined, a long job from the size
of them; not the ghost of a paint-stain discovered anywhere.
End of Penelope's evidence--and very pretty and convincing, too.
Signed, Gabriel Betteredge.

The Sergeant's next proceeding was to question me about any
large dogs in the house who might have got into the room,
and done the mischief with a whisk of their tails.
Hearing that this was impossible, he next sent for a
magnifying-glass, and tried how the smear looked, seen that way.
No skin-mark (as of a human hand) printed off on the paint.
All the signs visible--signs which told that the paint had been
smeared by some loose article of somebody's dress touching
it in going by. That somebody (putting together Penelope's
evidence and Mr. Franklin's evidence) must have been in the room,
and done the mischief, between midnight and three o'clock
on the Thursday morning.

Having brought his investigation to this point, Sergeant Cuff discovered
that such a person as Superintendent Seegrave was still left in the room,
upon which he summed up the proceedings for his brother-officer's benefit,
as follows:

"This trifle of yours, Mr. Superintendent," says the Sergeant,
pointing to the place on the door, "has grown a little in importance
since you noticed it last. At the present stage of the inquiry there are,
as I take it, three discoveries to make, starting from that smear.
Find out (first) whether there is any article of dress in this house with
the smear of the paint on it. Find out (second) who that dress belongs to.
Find out (third) how the person can account for having been in this room,
and smeared the paint, between midnight and three in the morning.
If the person can't satisfy you, you haven't far to look for the hand that
has got the Diamond. I'll work this by myself, if you please, and detain
you no longer-from your regular business in the town. You have got one
of your men here, I see. Leave him here at my disposal, in case I want him--
and allow me to wish you good morning."

Superintendent Seegrave's respect for the Sergeant was great;
but his respect for himself was greater still. Hit hard by the
celebrated Cuff, he hit back smartly, to the best of his ability,
on leaving the room.

"I have abstained from expressing any opinion, so far,"
says Mr. Superintendent, with his military voice still
in good working order. "I have now only one remark to
offer on leaving this case in your hands. There IS such
a thing, Sergeant, as making a mountain out of a molehill.
Good morning."

"There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a molehill,
in consequence of your head being too high to see it."
Having returned his brother-officer's compliments in those terms,
Sergeant Cuff wheeled about, and walked away to the window
by himself.

Mr. Franklin and I waited to see what was coming next.
The Sergeant stood at the window with his hands in his pockets,
looking out, and whistling the tune of "The Last Rose of Summer"
softly to himself. Later in the proceedings, I discovered
that he only forgot his manners so far as to whistle, when his
mind was hard at work, seeing its way inch by inch to its own
private ends, on which occasions "The Last Rose of Summer"
evidently helped and encouraged him. I suppose it fitted
in somehow with his character. It reminded him, you see, of his
favourite roses, and, as HE whistled it, it was the most melancholy
tune going.

Turning from the window, after a minute or two, the Sergeant
walked into the middle of the room, and stopped there,
deep in thought, with his eyes on Miss Rachel's bed-room door.
After a little he roused himself, nodded his head, as much
as to say, "That will do," and, addressing me, asked for
ten minutes' conversation with my mistress, at her ladyship's
earliest convenience.

Leaving the room with this message, I heard Mr. Franklin ask the Sergeant
a question, and stopped to hear the answer also at the threshold of the door.

"Can you guess yet," inquired Mr. Franklin, "who has stolen the Diamond?"

"NOBODY HAS STOLEN THE DIAMOND," answered Sergeant Cuff.

We both started at that extraordinary view of the case,
and both earnestly begged him to tell us what he meant.

"Wait a little," said the Sergeant. "The pieces of the puzzle
are not all put together yet."

CHAPTER XIII

I found my lady in her own sitting room. She started and looked
annoyed when I mentioned that Sergeant Cuff wished to speak to her.

"MUST I see him?" she asked. "Can't you represent me, Gabriel?"

I felt at a loss to understand this, and showed it plainly, I suppose,
in my face. My lady was so good as to explain herself.

"I am afraid my nerves are a little shaken," she said.
"There is something in that police-officer from London which I
recoil from--I don't know why. I have a presentiment that
he is bringing trouble and misery with him into the house.
Very foolish, and very unlike ME--but so it is."

I hardly knew what to say to this. The more I saw of Sergeant Cuff,
the better I liked him. My lady rallied a little after having opened
her heart to me--being, naturally, a woman of a high courage, as I have
already told you.

"If I must see him, I must," she said. "But I can't prevail on myself
to see him alone. Bring him in, Gabriel, and stay here as long as he stays."

This was the first attack of the megrims that I remembered
in my mistress since the time when she was a young girl.
I went back to the "boudoir."  Mr. Franklin strolled out into
the garden, and joined Mr. Godfrey, whose time for departure
was now drawing near. Sergeant Cuff and I went straight to my
mistress's room.

I declare my lady turned a shade paler at the sight of him!
She commanded herself, however, in other respects, and asked
the Sergeant if he had any objection to my being present.
She was so good as to add, that I was her trusted adviser,
as well as her old servant, and that in anything which related
to the household I was the person whom it might be most
profitable to consult. The Sergeant politely answered
that he would take my presence as a favour, having something
to say about the servants in general, and having found
my experience in that quarter already of some use to him.
My lady pointed to two chairs, and we set in for our
conference immediately.

"I have already formed an opinion on this case, says Sergeant Cuff,
"which I beg your ladyship's permission to keep to myself for the present.
My business now is to mention what I have discovered up-stairs in Miss
Verinder's sitting-room, and what I have decided (with your ladyship's leave)
on doing next."

He then went into the matter of the smear on the paint, and stated
the conclusions he drew from it--just as he had stated them
(only with greater respect of language) to Superintendent Seegrave.
"One thing," he said, in conclusion, "is certain. The Diamond is missing
out of the drawer in the cabinet. Another thing is next to certain.
The marks from the smear on the door must be on some article of dress
belonging to somebody in this house. We must discover that article of
dress before we go a step further."

"And that discovery," remarked my mistress, "implies, I presume,
the discovery of the thief?"

"I beg your ladyship's pardon--I don't say the Diamond is stolen.
I only say, at present, that the Diamond is missing. The discovery
of the stained dress may lead the way to finding it."

Her ladyship looked at me. "Do you understand this?" she said.

"Sergeant Cuff understands it, my lady," I answered.

"How do you propose to discover the stained dress?" inquired my mistress,
addressing herself once more to the Sergeant. "My good servants,
who have been with me for years, have, I am ashamed to say, had their
boxes and rooms searched already by the other officer. I can't and won't
permit them to be insulted in that way a second time!"

(There was a mistress to serve! There was a woman in ten thousand,
if you like!)

"That is the very point I was about to put to your ladyship,"
said the Sergeant. "The other officer has done a world of harm
to this inquiry, by letting the servants see that he suspected them.
If I give them cause to think themselves suspected a second time,
there's no knowing what obstacles they may not throw in my way--
the women especially. At the same time, their boxes must be
searched again--for this plain reason, that the first investigation
only looked for the Diamond, and that the second investigation
must look for the stained dress. I quite agree with you,
my lady, that the servants' feelings ought to be consulted.
But I am equally clear that the servants' wardrobes ought to
be searched."

This looked very like a dead-lock. My lady said so, in choicer language
than mine.

"I have got a plan to meet the difficulty," said Sergeant Cuff,
"if your ladyship will consent to it. I propose explaining the case
to the servants."

"The women will think themselves suspected directly, I said,
interrupting him.

"The women won't, Mr. Betteredge," answered the Sergeant, "if I
can tell them I am going to examine the wardrobes of EVERYBODY--
from her ladyship downwards--who slept in the house on Wednesday night.
It's a mere formality," he added, with a side look at my mistress;
"but the servants will accept it as even dealing between them
and their betters; and, instead of hindering the investigation,
they will make a point of honour of assisting it."

I saw the truth of that. My lady, after her first surprise was over,
saw the truth of it also.

"You are certain the investigation is necessary?" she said.

"It's the shortest way that I can see, my lady, to the end we have in view."

My mistress rose to ring the bell for her maid. "You shall speak
to the servants," she said, "with the keys of my wardrobe in your hand."

Sergeant Cuff stopped her by a very unexpected question.

"Hadn't we better make sure first," he asked, "that the other ladies
and gentlemen in the house will consent, too?"

"The only other lady in the house is Miss Verinder," answered my mistress,
with a look of surprise. "The only gentlemen are my nephews, Mr. Blake
and Mr. Ablewhite. There is not the least fear of a refusal from any of
the three."

I reminded my lady here that Mr. Godfrey was going away.
As I said the words, Mr. Godfrey himself knocked at the door to say
good-bye, and was followed in by Mr. Franklin, who was going
with him to the station. My lady explained the difficulty.
Mr. Godfrey settled it directly. He called to Samuel,
through the window, to take his portmanteau up-stairs again,
and he then put the key himself into Sergeant Cuff's hand.
"My luggage can follow me to London," he said, "when the inquiry
is over."  The Sergeant received the key with a becoming apology.
"I am sorry to put you to any inconvenience, sir, for a
mere formality; but the example of their betters will do wonders
in reconciling the servants to this inquiry."  Mr. Godfrey,
after taking leave of my lady, in a most sympathising manner?
left a farewell message for Miss Rachel, the terms of which made
it clear to my mind that he had not taken No for an answer,
and that he meant to put the marriage question to her once more,
at the next opportunity. Mr. Franklin, on following his
cousin out, informed the Sergeant that all his clothes were open
to examination, and that nothing he possessed was kept under
lock and key. Sergeant Cuff made his best acknowledgments.
His views, you will observe, had been met with the utmost
readiness by my lady, by Mr. Godfrey, and by Mr. Franklin.
There was only Miss. Rachel now wanting to follow their lead,
before we-called the servants together, and began the search for the
stained dress.

My lady's unaccountable objection to the Sergeant seemed to make
our conference more distasteful to her than ever, as soon as we
were left alone again. "If I send you down Miss Verinder's keys,"
she said to him, "I presume I shall have done all you want of me
for the present?"

"I beg your ladyship's pardon," said Sergeant Cuff. "Before we begin,
I should like, if convenient, to have the washing-book. The stained article
of dress may be an article of linen. If the search leads to nothing,
I want to be able to account next for all the linen in the house,
and for all the linen sent to the wash. If there is an article missing,
there will be at least a presumption that it has got the paint-stain on it,
and that it has been purposely made away with, yesterday or to-day,
by the person owning it. Superintendent Seegrave," added the Sergeant,
turning to me, "pointed the attention of the women-servants to the smear,
when they all crowded into the room on Thursday morning. That may turn out,
Mr. Betteredge, to have been one more of Superintendent Seegrave's
many mistakes."

My lady desired me to ring the bell, and order the washing-book.
She remained with us until it was produced, in case Sergeant Cuff
had any further request to make of her after looking at it.

The washing-book was brought in by Rosanna Spearman. The girl had come
down to breakfast that morning miserably pale and haggard, but sufficiently
recovered from her illness of the previous day to do her usual work.
Sergeant Cuff looked attentively at our second housemaid--at her face,
when she came in; at her crooked shoulder, when she went out.

"Have you anything more to say to me?" asked my lady, still as eager
as ever to be out of the Sergeant's society.

The great Cuff opened the washing-book, understood it perfectly in half
a minute, and shut it up again. "I venture to trouble your ladyship
with one last question," he said. "Has the young woman who brought us
this book been in your employment as long as the other servants?"

"Why do you ask?" said my lady.

"The last time I saw her," answered the Sergeant, "she was in prison
for theft."

After that, there was no help for it, but to tell him the truth.
My mistress dwelt strongly on Rosanna's good conduct in her service,
and on the high opinion entertained of her by the matron at the reformatory.
"You don't suspect her, I hope?" my lady added, in conclusion,
very earnestly.

"I have already told your ladyship that I don't suspect any person
in the house of thieving--up to the present time."

After that answer, my lady rose to go up-stairs, and ask
for Miss Rachel's keys. The Sergeant was before-hand with me
in opening the door for her. He made a very low bow.
My lady shuddered as she passed him.

We waited, and waited, and no keys appeared. Sergeant Cuff made
no remark to me. He turned his melancholy face to the window;
he put his lanky hands into his pockets; and he whistled "The Last
Rose of Summer" softly to himself.

At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper
for me. I got at my spectacles, with some fumbling and difficulty,
feeling the Sergeant's dismal eyes fixed on me all the time.
There were two or three lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady.
They informed me that Miss Rachel flatly refused to have her
wardrobe examined. Asked for her reasons, she had burst out crying.
Asked again, she had said: "I won't, because I won't. I must
yield to force if you use it, but I will yield to nothing else."
I understood my lady's disinclination to face Sergeant Cuff with such
an answer from her daughter as that. If I had not been too old
for the amiable weaknesses of youth, I believe I should have blushed
at the notion of facing him myself.

"Any news of Miss Verinder's keys?" asked the Sergeant.

"My young lady refuses to have her wardrobe examined."

"Ah!" said the Sergeant.

His voice was not quite in such a perfect state of discipline as his face.
When he said "Ah!" he said it in the tone of a man who had heard something
which he expected to hear. He half angered and half frightened me--why, I
couldn't tell, but he did it.

"Must the search be given up?"  I asked.

"Yes," said the Sergeant, "the search must be given up,
because your young lady refuses to submit to it like the rest.
We must examine all the wardrobes in the house or none.
Send Mr. Ablewhite's portmanteau to London by the next train,
and return the washing-book, with my compliments and thanks,
to the young woman who brought it in."

He laid the washing-book on the table, and taking out his penknife,
began to trim his nails.

"You don't seem to be much disappointed," I said.

"No," said Sergeant Cuff; "I am not much disappointed."

I tried to make him explain himself.

"Why should Miss Rachel put an obstacle in your way?"  I inquired.
"Isn't it her interest to help you?"

"Wait a little, Mr. Betteredge--wait a little."

Cleverer heads than mine might have seen his drift. Or a person
less fond of Miss Rachel than I was, might have seen his drift.
My lady's horror of him might (as I have since thought)
have meant that she saw his drift (as the scripture says)
"in a glass darkly."  I didn't see it yet--that's all
I know.

"What's to be done next?"  I asked.

Sergeant Cuff finished the nail on which he was then at work,
looked at it for a moment with a melancholy interest, and put up
his penknife.

"Come out into the garden," he said " and let's have a look at the roses."

CHAPTER XIV

The nearest way to the garden, on going out of my lady's sitting-room,
was by the shrubbery path, which you already know of. For the sake
of your better understanding of what is now to come, I may add to this,
that the shrubbery path was Mr. Franklin's favourite walk. When he was
out in the grounds, and when we failed to find him anywhere else,
we generally found him here.

I am afraid I must own that I am rather an obstinate old man.
The more firmly Sergeant Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me,
the more firmly I persisted in trying to look in at them.
As we turned into the shrubbery path, I attempted to circumvent
him in another way.

"As things are now," I said, "if I was in your place, I should be at
my wits' end."

"If you were in my place," answered the Sergeant, "you would have formed
an opinion--and, as things are now, any doubt you might previously
have felt about your own conclusions would be completely set at rest.
Never mind for the present what those conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge.
I haven't brought you out here to draw me like a badger; I have brought you
out here to ask for some information. You might have given it to me no doubt,
in the house, instead of out of it. But doors and listeners have a knack
of getting together; and, in my line of life, we cultivate a healthy taste
for the open air."

Who was to circumvent THIS man? I gave in--and waited as patiently
as I could to hear what was coming next.

"We won't enter into your young lady's motives," the Sergeant went on;
"we will only say it's a pity she declines to assist me, because,
by so doing, she makes this investigation more difficult than it
might otherwise have been. We must now try to solve the mystery
of the smear on the door--which, you may take my word for it,
means the mystery of the Diamond also--in some other way.
I have decided to see the servants, and to search their thoughts
and actions, Mr. Betteredge, instead of searching their wardrobes.
Before I begin, however, I want to ask you a question or two.
You are an observant man--did you notice anything strange in any of
the servants (making due allowance, of course, for fright and fluster),
after the loss of the Diamond was found out? Any particular quarrel
among them? Any one of them not in his or her usual spirits?
Unexpectedly out of temper, for instance? or unexpectedly
taken ill?"

I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman's sudden illness
at yesterday's dinner--but not time to make any answer--when I saw
Sergeant Cuff's eyes suddenly turn aside towards the shrubbery;
and I heard him say softly to himself, "Hullo!"

"What's the matter?"  I asked.

"A touch of the rheumatics in my back," said the Sergeant,
in a loud voice, as if he wanted some third person to hear us.
"We shall have a change in the weather before long."

A few steps further brought us to the corner of the house.
Turning off sharp to the right, we entered on the terrace,
and went down, by the steps in the middle, into the garden below.
Sergeant Cuff stopped there, in the open space, where we could see
round us on every side.

"About that young person, Rosanna Spearman?" he said.
"It isn't very likely, with her personal appearance, that she
has got a lover. But, for the girl's own sake, I must ask you
at once whether SHE has provided herself with a sweetheart,
poor wretch, like the rest of them?"

What on earth did he mean, under present circumstances,
by putting such a question to me as that? I stared at him,
instead of answering him.

"I saw Rosanna Spearman hiding in the shrubbery as we went by,"
said the Sergeant.

"When you said 'Hullo'?"

"Yes--when I said 'Hullo!'  If there's a sweetheart in the case,
the hiding doesn't much matter. If there isn't--as things are
in this house--the hiding is a highly suspicious circumstance,
and it will be my painful duty to act on it accordingly."

What, in God's name, was I to say to him? I knew the shrubbery
was Mr. Franklin's favourite walk; I knew he would most
likely turn that way when he came back from the station;
I knew that Penelope had over and over again caught her
fellow-servant hanging about there, and had always declared to me
that Rosanna's object was to attract Mr. Franklin's attention.
If my daughter was right, she might well have been lying in wait
for Mr. Franklin's return when the Sergeant noticed her.
I was put between the two difficulties of mentioning Penelope's
fanciful notion as if it was mine, or of leaving an unfortunate
creature to suffer the consequences, the very serious consequences,
of exciting the suspicion of Sergeant Cuff. Out of pure pity
for the girl--on my soul and my character, out of pure pity
for the girl--I gave the Sergeant the necessary explanations,
and told him that Rosanna had been mad enough to set her heart on
Mr. Franklin Blake.

Sergeant Cuff never laughed. On the few occasions when anything amused him,
he curled up a little at the corners of the lips, nothing more. He curled
up now.

"Hadn't you better say she's mad enough to be an ugly girl and only
a servant?" he asked. "The falling in love with a gentleman of Mr. Franklin
Blake's manners and appearance doesn't seem to me to be the maddest part
of her conduct by any means. However, I'm glad the thing is cleared up:
it relieves one's mind to have things cleared up. Yes, I'll keep it
a secret, Mr. Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmity--
though I don't get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life.
You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn't got a suspicion of the girl's fancy
for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been
nice-looking. The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world;
let's hope it will be made up to them in another. You have got a nice
garden here, and a well-kept lawn. See for yourself how much better
the flowers look with grass about them instead of gravel. No, thank you.
I won't take a rose. It goes to my heart to break them off the stem.
Just as it goes to your heart, you know, when there's something wrong
in the servants' hall. Did you notice anything you couldn't account
for in any of the servants when the loss of the Diamond was first
found out?"

I had got on very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far.
But the slyness with which he slipped in that last question
put me on my guard. In plain English, I didn't at all relish
the notion of helping his inquiries, when those inquiries
took him (in the capacity of snake in the grass) among my
fellow-servants.

"I noticed nothing," I said, "except that we all lost our heads together,
myself included."

"Oh," says the Sergeant, "that's all you have to tell me,
is it?"

I answered, with (as I flattered myself) an unmoved countenance,
"That is all."

Sergeant Cuff's dismal eyes looked me hard in the face.

"Mr. Betteredge," he said, "have you any objection to oblige me
by shaking hands? I have taken an extraordinary liking to you."

(Why he should have chosen the exact moment when I was deceiving him
to give me that proof of his good opinion, is beyond all comprehension!
I felt a little proud--I really did feel a little proud of having been one
too many at last for the celebrated Cuff!)

We went back to the house; the Sergeant requesting that I would
give him a room to himself, and then send in the servants
(the indoor servants only), one after another, in the order
of their rank, from first to last.

I showed Sergeant Cuff into my own room, and then called the servants
together in the hall. Rosanna Spearman appeared among them, much as usual.
She was as quick in her way as the Sergeant in his, and I suspect she
had heard what he said to me about the servants in general, just before
he discovered her. There she was, at any rate, looking as if she had
never heard of such a place as the shrubbery in her life.

I sent them in, one by one, as desired. The cook was
the first to enter the Court of Justice, otherwise my room.
She remained but a short time. Report, on coming out:
"Sergeant Cuff is depressed in his spirits; but Sergeant
Cuff is a perfect gentleman."  My lady's own maid followed.
Remained much longer. Report, on coming out: "If Sergeant
Cuff doesn't believe a respectable woman, he might keep
his opinion to himself, at any rate!"  Penelope went next.
Remained only a moment or two. Report, on coming out:
"Sergeant Cuff is much to be pitied. He must have been
crossed in love, father, when he was a young man."
The first housemaid followed Penelope. Remained, like my
lady's maid, a long time. Report, on coming out: "I didn't
enter her ladyship's service, Mr. Betteredge, to be doubted
to my face by a low police-officer!" Rosanna Spearman went next.
Remained longer than any of them. No report on coming out--
dead silence, and lips as pale as ashes. Samuel, the footman,
followed Rosanna. Remained a minute or two. Report, on coming out:
"Whoever blacks Sergeant Cuff's boots ought to be ashamed
of himself."  Nancy, the kitchen-maid, went last. Remained a minute
or two. Report, on coming out: "Sergeant Cuff has a heart;
HE doesn't cut jokes, Mr. Betteredge, with a poor hard-working
girl."

Going into the Court of Justice, when it was all over, to hear if there
were any further commands for me, I found the Sergeant at his old trick--
looking out of window, and whistling "The Last Rose of Summer"
to himself.

"Any discoveries, sir?"  I inquired.

"If Rosanna Spearman asks leave to go out," said the Sergeant,
"let the poor thing go; but let me know first."

I might as well have held my tongue about Rosanna and Mr. Franklin!
It was plain enough; the unfortunate girl had fallen under Sergeant
Cuff's suspicions, in spite of all I could do to prevent it.

"I hope you don't think Rosanna is concerned in the loss of the Diamond?"
I ventured to say.

The corners of the Sergeant's melancholy mouth curled up,
and he looked hard in my face, just as he had looked in the garden.

"I think I had better not tell you, Mr. Betteredge," he said.
"You might lose your head, you know, for the second time."

I began to doubt whether I had been one too many for the celebrated Cuff,
after all! It was rather a relief to me that we were interrupted
here by a knock at the door, and a message from the cook.
Rosanna Spearman HAD asked to go out, for the usual reason,
that her head was bad, and she wanted a breath of fresh air.
At a sign from the Sergeant, I said, Yes. "Which is the servants'
way out?" he asked, when the messenger had gone. I showed
him the servants' way out. "Lock the door of your room,"
says the Sergeant; "and if anybody asks for me, say I'm in there,
composing my mind."  He curled up again at the corners of the lips,
and disappeared.

Left alone, under those circumstances, a devouring curiosity pushed me
on to make some discoveries for myself.

It was plain that Sergeant Cuff's suspicions of Rosanna had been roused
by something that he had found out at his examination of the servants
in my room. Now, the only two servants (excepting Rosanna herself)
who had remained under examination for any length of time, were my lady's own
maid and the first housemaid, those two being also the women who had taken
the lead in persecuting their unfortunate fellow-servant from the first.
Reaching these conclusions, I looked in on them, casually as it might be,
in the servants' hall, and, finding tea going forward, instantly invited
myself to that meal. (For, NOTA BENE, a drop of tea is to a woman's tongue
what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp.)

My reliance on the tea-pot, as an ally, did not go unrewarded.
In less than half an hour I knew as much as the Sergeant himself.

My lady's maid and the housemaid, had, it appeared, neither of them
believed in Rosanna's illness of the previous day. These two devils--
I ask your pardon; but how else CAN you describe a couple of spiteful women?--
had stolen up-stairs, at intervals during the Thursday afternoon; had tried
Rosanna's door, and found it locked; had knocked, and not been answered;
had listened, and not heard a sound inside. When the girl had come
down to tea, and had been sent up, still out of sorts, to bed again,
the two devils aforesaid had tried her door once more, and found it locked;
had looked at the keyhole, and found it stopped up; had seen a light
under the door at midnight, and had heard the crackling of a fire (a fire
in a servant's bed-room in the month of June!) at four in the morning.
All this they had told Sergeant Cuff, who, in return for their anxiety
to enlighten him, had eyed them with sour and suspicious looks, and had
shown them plainly that he didn't believe either one or the other.
Hence, the unfavourable reports of him which these two women had brought
out with them from the examination. Hence, also (without reckoning
the influence of the tea-pot), their readiness to let their tongues run
to any length on the subject of the Sergeant's ungracious behaviour
to them.

Having had some experience of the great Cuff's round-about ways,
and having last seen him evidently bent on following Rosanna
privately when she went out for her walk, it seemed clear to me
that he had thought it unadvisable to let the lady's maid
and the housemaid know how materially they had helped him.
They were just the sort of women, if he had treated their evidence
as trustworthy, to have been puffed up by it, and to have said
or done something which would have put Rosanna Spearman on
her guard.

I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor girl,
and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken.
Drifting towards the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin.
After returning from seeing his cousin off at the station,
he had been with my lady, holding a long conversation with her.
She had told him of Miss Rachel's unaccountable refusal to let her
wardrobe be examined; and had put him in such low spirits about my
young lady that he seemed to shrink from speaking on the subject.
The family temper appeared in his face that evening, for the first time in
my experience of him.

"Well, Betteredge," he said, "how does the atmosphere of mystery
and suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you?
Do you remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone?
I wish to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!"

After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking
again until he had composed himself. We walked silently,
side by side, for a minute or two, and then he asked me
what had become of Sergeant Cuff. It was impossible to put
Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant being in my room,
composing his mind. I told him exactly what had happened,
mentioning particularly what my lady's maid and the house-maid
had said about Rosanna Spearman.

Mr. Franklin's clear head saw the turn the Sergeant's suspicions had taken,
in the twinkling of an eye.

"Didn't you tell me this morning," he said, "that one of the tradespeople
declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to Frizinghall,
when we supposed her to be ill in her room?"

"Yes, sir."

"If my aunt's maid and the other woman have spoken the truth,
you may depend upon it the tradesman did meet her.
The girl's attack of illness was a blind to deceive us.
She had some guilty reason for going to the town secretly.
The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire heard
crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit
to destroy it. Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond.
I'll go in directly, and tell my aunt the turn things
have taken."

"Not just yet, if you please, sir," said a melancholy voice behind us.

We both turned about, and found ourselves face to face with Sergeant Cuff.

"Why not just yet?" asked Mr. Franklin.

"Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell
Miss Verinder."

"Suppose she does. What then?"  Mr. Franklin said those words with a sudden
heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended him.

"Do you think it's wise, sir," said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, "to put
such a question as that to me--at such a time as this?"

There was a moment's silence between them: Mr. Franklin walked close
up to the Sergeant. The two looked each other straight in the face.
Mr. Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had
raised it.

"I suppose you know, Mr. Cuff," he said, "that you are treading
on delicate ground?"

"It isn't the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I
find myself treading on delicate ground," answered the other,
as immovable as ever.

"I am to understand that you forbid me to tell my aunt what has happened?"

"You are to understand, if you please, sir, that I throw up the case,
if you tell Lady Verinder, or tell anybody, what has happened, until I
give you leave."

That settled it. Mr. Franklin had no choice but to submit.
He turned away in anger--and left us.

I had stood there listening to them, all in a tremble; not knowing
whom to suspect, or what to think next. In the midst of my confusion,
two things, however, were plain to me. First, that my young lady was,
in some unaccountable manner, at the bottom of the sharp speeches that had
passed between them. Second, that they thoroughly understood each other,
without having previously exchanged a word of explanation on either side.

"Mr. Betteredge," says the Sergeant, "you have done a very foolish thing in
my absence. You have done a little detective business on your own account.
For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your detective
business along with me."

He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road
by which he had come. I dare say I had deserved his reproof--
but I was not going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman,
for all that. Thief or no thief, legal or not legal, I don't care--
I pitied her.

"What do you want of me?"  I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.

"Only a little information about the country round here,"
said the Sergeant.

I couldn't well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.

"Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach
from this house?" asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke,
to the fir-plantation which led to the Shivering Sand.

"Yes," I said, "there is a path."

"Show it to me."

Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and I
set forth for the Shivering Sand.

CHAPTER XV

The Sergeant remained silent, thinking his own thoughts, till we
entered the plantation of firs which led to the quicksand.
There he roused himself, like a man whose mind was made up,
and spoke to me again.

"Mr. Betteredge," he said, "as you have honoured me by taking an oar
in my boat, and as you may, I think, be of some assistance to me before
the evening is out, I see no use in our mystifying one another any longer,
and I propose to set you an example of plain speaking on my side. You are
determined to give me no information to the prejudice of Rosanna Spearman,
because she has been a good girl to YOU, and because you pity her heartily.
Those humane considerations do you a world of credit, but they happen
in this instance to be humane considerations clean thrown away.
Rosanna Spearman is not in the slightest danger of getting into trouble--
no, not if I fix her with being concerned in the disappearance of the Diamond,
on evidence which is as plain as the nose on your face!"

"Do you mean that my lady won't prosecute?"  I asked.

"I mean that your lady CAN'T prosecute," said the Sergeant.
"Rosanna Spearman is simply an instrument in the hands
of another person, and Rosanna Spearman will be held harmless
for that other person's sake."

He spoke like a man in earnest--there was no denying that.
Still, I felt something stirring uneasily against him in my mind.
"Can't you give that other person a name?"  I said.

"Can't you, Mr. Betteredge?"

"No."

Sergeant Cuff stood stock still, and surveyed me with a look
of melancholy interest.

"It's always a pleasure to me to be tender towards human infirmity,"
he said. "I feel particularly tender at the present moment,
Mr. Betteredge, towards you. And you, with the same excellent motive,
feel particularly tender towards Rosanna Spearman, don't you?
Do you happen to know whether she has had a new outfit of
linen lately?"

What he meant by slipping in this extraordinary question unawares,
I was at a total loss to imagine. Seeing no possible injury
to Rosanna if I owned the truth, I answered that the girl had
come to us rather sparely provided with linen, and that my lady,
in recompense for her good conduct (I laid a stress on her good
conduct), had given her a new outfit not a fortnight since.

"This is a miserable world," says the Sergeant. "Human life,
Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target--misfortune is always firing
at it, and always hitting the mark. But for that outfit,
we should have discovered a new nightgown or petticoat
among Rosanna's things, and have nailed her in that way.
You're not at a loss to follow me, are you? You have examined
the servants yourself, and you know what discoveries two of them
made outside Rosanna's door. Surely you know what the girl
was about yesterday, after she was taken ill? You can't guess?
Oh dear me, it's as plain as that strip of light there,
at the end of the trees. At eleven, on Thursday morning,
Superintendent Seegrave (who is a mass of human infirmity)
points out to all the women servants the smear on the door.
Rosanna has her own reasons for suspecting her own things;
she takes the first opportunity of getting to her room,
finds the paint-stain on her night-gown, or petticoat,
or what not, shams ill and slips away to the town,
gets the materials for making a new petticoat or nightgown,
makes it alone in her room on the Thursday night lights a fire
(not to destroy it; two of her fellow-servants are prying outside
her door, and she knows better than to make a smell of burning,
and to have a lot of tinder to get rid of)--lights a fire, I say,
to dry and iron the substitute dress after wringing it out,
keeps the stained dress hidden (probably ON her), and is at this
moment occupied in making away with it, in some convenient place,
on that lonely bit of beach ahead of us. I have traced her this
evening to your fishing village, and to one particular cottage,
which we may possibly have to visit, before we go back.
She stopped in the cottage for some time, and she came
out with (as I believe) something hidden under her cloak.
A cloak (on a woman's back) is an emblem of charity--
it covers a multitude of sins. I saw her set off northwards
along the coast, after leaving the cottage. Is your sea-shore
here considered a fine specimen of marine landscape,
Mr. Betteredge?"

I answered, "Yes," as shortly as might be.

"Tastes differ," says Sergeant Cuff. "Looking at it from my point
of view, I never saw a marine landscape that I admired less.
If you happen to be following another person along your
sea-coast, and if that person happens to look round, there isn't
a scrap of cover to hide you anywhere. I had to choose
between taking Rosanna in custody on suspicion, or leaving her,
for the time being, with her little game in her own hands.
For reasons which I won't trouble you with, I decided on making
any sacrifice rather than give the alarm as soon as to-night
to a certain person who shall be nameless between us.
I came back to the house to ask you to take me to the north end
of the beach by another way. Sand--in respect of its printing off
people's footsteps--is one of the best detective officers I know.
If we don't meet with Rosanna Spearman by coming round on
her in this way, the sand may tell us what she has been at,
if the light only lasts long enough. Here IS the sand.
If you will excuse my suggesting it--suppose you hold your tongue,
and let me go first?"

If there is such a thing known at the doctor's shop as a DETECTIVE-FEVER,
that disease had now got fast hold of your humble servant. Sergeant Cuff
went on between the hillocks of sand, down to the beach. I followed him
(with my heart in my mouth); and waited at a little distance for what was to
happen next.

As it turned out, I found myself standing nearly in the same place
where Rosanna Spearman and I had been talking together when Mr. Franklin
suddenly appeared before us, on arriving at our house from London.
While my eyes were watching the Sergeant, my mind wandered away in spite
of me to what had passed, on that former occasion, between Rosanna and me.
I declare I almost felt the poor thing slip her hand again into mine,
and give it a little grateful squeeze to thank me for speaking kindly to her.
I declare I almost heard her voice telling me again that the Shivering
Sand seemed to draw her to it against her own will, whenever she went out--
almost saw her face brighten again, as it brightened when she first set
eyes upon Mr. Franklin coming briskly out on us from among the hillocks.
My spirits fell lower and lower as I thought of these things--and the view
of the lonesome little bay, when I looked about to rouse myself, only served
to make me feel more uneasy still.

The last of the evening light was fading away; and over
all the desolate place there hung a still and awful calm.
The heave of the main ocean on the great sandbank out in the bay,
was a heave that made no sound. The inner sea lay lost and dim,
without a breath of wind to stir it. Patches of nasty
ooze floated, yellow-white, on the dead surface of the water.
Scum and slime shone faintly in certain places, where the last
of the light still caught them on the two great spits of rock
jutting out, north and south, into the sea. It was now the time
of the turn of the tide: and even as I stood there waiting,
the broad brown face of the quicksand began to dimple and quiver--
the only moving thing in all the horrid place.

I saw the Sergeant start as the shiver of the sand caught his eye.
After looking at it for a minute or so, he turned and came back
to me.

"A treacherous place, Mr. Betteredge," he said; "and no signs
of Rosanna Spearman anywhere on the beach, look where you may."

He took me down lower on the shore, and I saw for myself that his footsteps
and mine were the only footsteps printed off on the sand.

"How does the fishing village bear, standing where we are now?"
asked Sergeant Cuff.

"Cobb's Hole," I answered (that being the name of the place), "bears
as near as may be, due south."

"I saw the girl this evening, walking northward along the shore,
from Cobb's Hole," said the Sergeant. "Consequently, she must have
been walking towards this place. Is Cobb's Hole on the other side
of that point of land there? And can we get to it--now it's low water--
by the beach?"

I answered, "Yes," to both those questions.

"If you'll excuse my suggesting it, we'll step out briskly,"
said the Sergeant. "I want to find the place where she left
the shore, before it gets dark."

We had walked, I should say, a couple of hundred yards towards Cobb's Hole,
when Sergeant Cuff suddenly went down on his knees on the beach, to all
appearance seized with a sudden frenzy for saying his prayers.

"There's something to be said for your marine landscape here, after all,"
remarked the Sergeant. "Here are a woman's footsteps, Mr. Betteredge!
Let us call them Rosanna's footsteps, until we find evidence to the contrary
that we can't resist. Very confused footsteps, you will please to observe--
purposely confused, I should say. Ah, poor soul, she understands
the detective virtues of sand as well as I do! But hasn't she been
in rather too great a hurry to tread out the marks thoroughly?
I think she has. Here's one footstep going FROM Cobb's Hole;
and here is another going back to it. Isn't that the toe of her
shoe pointing straight to the water's edge? And don't I see two
heel-marks further down the beach, close at the water's edge also?
I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I'm afraid Rosanna is sly.
It looks as if she had determined to get to that place you and I have
just come from, without leaving any marks on the sand to trace her by.
Shall we say that she walked through the water from this point till
she got to that ledge of rocks behind us, and came back the same way,
and then took to the beach again where those two heel marks are
still left? Yes, we'll say that. It seems to fit in with my notion
that she had something under her cloak, when she left the cottage.
No! not something to destroy--for, in that case, where would have been
the need of all these precautions to prevent my tracing the place at
which her walk ended? Something to hide is, I think, the better guess
of the two. Perhaps, if we go on to the cottage, we may find out what that
something is?"

At this proposal, my detective-fever suddenly cooled. "You don't want me,"
I said. "What good can I do?"

"The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge," said the Sergeant,
"the more virtues I discover. Modesty--oh dear me, how rare
modesty is in this world! and how much of that rarity you possess!
If I go alone to the cottage, the people's tongues will be
tied at the first question I put to them. If I go with you,
I go introduced by a justly respected neighbour, and a flow of
conversation is the necessary result. It strikes me in that light;
how does it strike you?"

Not having an answer of the needful smartness as ready as I could have wished,
I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to go to.

On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognised it
as a cottage inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland,
with his wife and two grown-up children, a son and a daughter.
If you will look back, you will find that, in first presenting
Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have described her
as occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand,
by a visit to some friends of hers at Cobb's Hole.
Those friends were the Yollands--respectable, worthy people,
a credit to the neighbourhood. Rosanna's acquaintance with them
had begun by means of the daughter, who was afflicted with a
misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by the name
of Limping Lucy. The two deformed girls had, I suppose,
a kind of fellow-feeling for each other. Anyway, the Yollands
and Rosanna always appeared to get on together, at the few
chances they had of meeting, in a pleasant and friendly manner.
The fact of Sergeant Cuff having traced the girl to THEIR cottage,
set the matter of my helping his inquiries in quite a new light.
Rosanna had merely gone where she was in the habit of going;
and to show that she had been in company with the fisherman and
his family was as good as to prove that she had been innocently
occupied so far, at any rate. It would be doing the girl
a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself
to be convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic. I professed myself
convinced by it accordingly.

We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand,
as long as the light lasted.

On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out
in the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on
her bed up-stairs. Good Mrs. Yolland received us alone in her kitchen.
When she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London,
she clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table,
and stared as if she could never see enough of him.

I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would
find his way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman. His usual
roundabout manner of going to work proved, on this occasion,
to be more roundabout than ever. How he managed it is more
than I could tell at the time, and more than I can tell now.
But this is certain, he began with the Royal Family,
the Primitive Methodists, and the price of fish; and he got from that
(in his dismal, underground way) to the loss of the Moonstone,
the spitefulness of our first house-maid, and the hard behaviour
of the women-servants generally towards Rosanna Spearman.
Having reached his subject in this fashion, he described himself
as making his inquiries about the lost Diamond, partly with a view
to find it, and partly for the purpose of clearing Rosanna
from the unjust suspicions of her enemies in the house.
In about a quarter of an hour from the time when we entered
the kitchen, good Mrs. Yolland was persuaded that she was
talking to Rosanna's best friend, and was pressing Sergeant
Cuff to comfort his stomach and revive his spirits out of the
Dutch bottle.

Being firmly persuaded that the Sergeant was wasting his breath
to no purpose on Mrs. Yolland, I sat enjoying the talk between them,
much as I have sat, in my time, enjoying a stage play.
The great Cuff showed a wonderful patience; trying his luck
drearily this way and that way, and firing shot after shot,
as it were, at random, on the chance of hitting the mark.
Everything to Rosanna's credit, nothing to Rosanna's prejudice--
that was how it ended, try as he might; with Mrs. Yolland
talking nineteen to the dozen, and placing the most entire
confidence in him. His last effort was made, when we had
looked at our watches, and had got on our legs previous to
taking leave.

"I shall now wish you good-night, ma'am," says the Sergeant.
"And I shall only say, at parting, that Rosanna Spearman has
a sincere well-wisher in myself, your obedient servant.
But, oh dear me! she will never get on in her present place;
and my advice to her is--leave it."

"Bless your heart alive! she is GOING to leave it!" cries Mrs. Yolland.
(NOTA BENE--I translate Mrs. Yolland out of the Yorkshire language into
the English language. When I tell you that the all-accomplished Cuff
was every now and then puzzled to understand her until I helped him,
you will draw your own conclusions as to what your state of mind would be if I
reported her in her native tongue.)

Rosanna Spearman going to leave us! I pricked up my ears at that.
It seemed strange, to say the least of it, that she should have
given no warning, in the first place, to my lady or to me.
A certain doubt came up in my mind whether Sergeant Cuff's last random
shot might not have hit the mark. I began to question whether my share
in the proceedings was quite as harmless a one as I had thought it.
It might be all in the way of the Sergeant's business to mystify
an honest woman by wrapping her round in a network of lies
but it was my duty to have remembered, as a good Protestant,
that the father of lies is the Devil--and that mischief and the Devil
are never far apart. Beginning to smell mischief in the air,
I tried to take Sergeant Cuff out. He sat down again instantly,
and asked for a little drop of comfort out of the Dutch bottle.
Mrs Yolland sat down opposite to him, and gave him his nip.
I went on to the door, excessively uncomfortable, and said I thought I
must bid them good-night--and yet I didn't go.

"So she means to leave?" says the Sergeant. "What is she to do when she
does leave? Sad, sad! The poor creature has got no friends in the world,
except you and me."

"Ah, but she has though!" says Mrs. Yolland. "She came in here,
as I told you, this evening; and, after sitting and talking a little
with my girl Lucy and me she asked to go up-stairs by herself,
into Lucy's room. It's the only room in our place where there's
pen and ink. "I want to write a letter to a friend," she says
"and I can't do it for the prying and peeping of the servants up
at the house."  Who the letter was written to I can't tell you:
it must have been a mortal long one, judging by the time she stopped
up-stairs over it. I offered her a postage-stamp when she came down.
She hadn't got the letter in her hand, and she didn't accept the stamp.
A little close, poor soul (as you know), about herself and her doings.
But a friend she has got somewhere, I can tell you; and to that friend
you may depend upon it, she will go."

"Soon?" asked the Sergeant.

"As soon as she can."  says Mrs. Yolland.

Here I stepped in again from the door. As chief of my lady's establishment,
I couldn't allow this sort of loose talk about a servant of ours going,
or not going, to proceed any longer in my presence, without noticing it.

"You must be mistaken about Rosanna Spearman, I said.
"If she had been going to leave her present situation, she would
have mentioned it, in the first place, to ME.

"Mistaken?" cries Mrs. Yolland. "Why, only an hour ago she bought some things
she wanted for travelling--of my own self, Mr. Betteredge, in this very room.
And that reminds me," says the wearisome woman, suddenly beginning to feel
in her pocket, "of something I have got it on my mind to say about Rosanna
and her money. Are you either of you likely to see her when you go back to
the house?"

"I'll take a message to the poor thing, with the greatest pleasure,"
answered Sergeant Cuff, before I could put in a word edgewise.

Mrs. Yolland produced out of her pocket, a few shillings and sixpences,
and counted them out with a most particular and exasperating carefulness
in the palm of her hand. She offered the money to the Sergeant,
looking mighty loth to part with it all the while.

"Might I ask you to give this back to Rosanna, with my love
and respects?" says Mrs. Yolland. "She insisted on paying me
for the one or two things she took a fancy to this evening--
and money's welcome enough in our house, I don't deny it.
Still, I m not easy in my mind about taking the poor thing's
little savings. And to tell you the truth, I don't think my man
would like to hear that I had taken Rosanna Spearman's money,
when he comes back to-morrow morning from his work. Please say
she's heartily welcome to the things she bought of me--as a gift.
And don't leave the money on the table," says Mrs. Yolland,
putting it down suddenly before the Sergeant, as if it burnt
her fingers--"don't, there's a good man! For times are hard,
and flesh is weak; and I MIGHT feel tempted to put it back in my
pocket again."

"Come along!"  I said, "I can't wait any longer: I must go back
to the house."

"I'll follow you directly," says Sergeant Cuff.

For the second time, I went to the door; and, for the second time,
try as I might, I couldn't cross the threshold.

"It's a delicate matter, ma'am," I heard the Sergeant say,
"giving money back. You charged her cheap for the things,
I'm sure?"

"Cheap!" says Mrs. Yolland. "Come and judge for yourself."

She took up the candle and led the Sergeant to a corner of the kitchen.
For the life of me, I couldn't help following them. Shaken down in the corner
was a heap of odds and ends (mostly old metal), which the fisherman had picked
up at different times from wrecked ships, and which he hadn't found a market
for yet, to his own mind. Mrs. Yolland dived into this rubbish, and brought
up an old japanned tin case, with a cover to it, and a hasp to hang it up by--
the sort of thing they use, on board ship, for keeping their maps and charts,
and such-like, from the wet.

"There!" says she. "When Rosanna came in this evening, she bought the fellow
to that. 'It will just do,' she says, 'to put my cuffs and collars in,
and keep them from being crumpled in my box.'  One and ninepence, Mr. Cuff.
As I live by bread, not a halfpenny more!"

"Dirt cheap!" says the Sergeant, with a heavy sigh.

He weighed the case in his hand. I thought I heard a note or two of "The
Last Rose of Summer" as he looked at it. There was no doubt now!
He had made another discovery to the prejudice of Rosanna Spearman,
in the place of all others where I thought her character was safest,
and all through me! I leave you to imagine what I felt, and how sincerely
I repented having been the medium of introduction between Mrs. Yolland and
Sergeant Cuff.

"That will do," I said. "We really must go."

Without paying the least attention to me, Mrs. Yolland took
another dive into the rubbish, and came up out of it, this time,
with a dog-chain.

"Weigh it in your hand, sir," she said to the Sergeant.
"We had three of these; and Rosanna has taken two of them.
'What can you want, my dear, with a couple of dog's chains?'
says I. 'If I join them together they'll do round my box nicely,'
says she. 'Rope's cheapest,' says I. 'Chain's surest,'
says she. 'Who ever heard of a box corded with chain,'
says I. 'Oh, Mrs. Yolland, don't make objections!' says she;
'let me have my chains!'  A strange girl, Mr. Cuff--
good as gold, and kinder than a sister to my Lucy--but always
a little strange. There! I humoured her. Three and sixpence.
On the word of an honest woman, three and sixpence,
Mr. Cuff!"

"Each?" says the Sergeant.

"Both together!" says Mrs. Yolland. "Three and sixpence for the two."

"Given away, ma'am," says the Sergeant, shaking his head.
"Clean given away!"

"There's the money," says Mrs. Yolland, getting back sideways to the little
heap of silver on the table, as if it drew her in spite of herself.
"The tin case and the dog chains were all she bought, and all she took away.
One and ninepence and three and sixpence--total, five and three.
With my love and respects--and I can't find it in my conscience to take a poor
girl's savings, when she may want them herself."

"I can't find it in MY conscience, ma'am, to give the money back,"
says Sergeant Cuff. "You have as good as made her a present of the things--
you have indeed."

"Is that your sincere opinion, sir?" says Mrs. Yolland brightening
up wonderfully.

"There can't be a doubt about it," answered the Sergeant.
"Ask Mr. Betteredge."

It was no use asking ME. All they got out of ME was, "Good-night."

"Bother the money!" says Mrs. Yolland. With these words, she appeared to lose
all command over herself; and, making a sudden snatch at the heap of silver,
put it back, holus-bolus, in her pocket. "It upsets one's temper, it does,
to see it lying there, and nobody taking it," cries this unreasonable woman,
sitting down with a thump, and looking at Sergeant Cuff, as much as to say,
"It's in my pocket again now--get it out if you can!"

This time, I not only went to the door, but went fairly out on the road back.
Explain it how you may, I felt as if one or both of them had mortally
offended me. Before I had taken three steps down the village, I heard
the Sergeant behind me.

"Thank you for your introduction, Mr. Betteredge," he said.
"I am indebted to the fisherman's wife for an entirely new sensation.
Mrs. Yolland has puzzled me."

It was on the tip of my tongue to have given him a sharp answer,
for no better reason than this--that I was out of temper with him,
because I was out of temper with myself. But when he owned
to being puzzled, a comforting doubt crossed my mind whether any
great harm had been done after all. I waited in discreet silence
to hear more.

"Yes," says the Sergeant, as if he was actually reading my
thoughts in the dark. "Instead of putting me on the scent,
it may console you to know, Mr. Betteredge (with your interest
in Rosanna), that you have been the means of throwing me off.
What the girl has done, to-night, is clear enough, of course.
She has joined the two chains, and has fastened them to
the hasp in the tin case. She has sunk the case, in the water
or in the quicksand. She has made the loose end of the chain
fast to some place under the rocks, known only to herself.
And she will leave the case secure at its anchorage till
the present proceedings have come to an end; after which she
can privately pull it up again out of its hiding-place,
at her own leisure and convenience. All perfectly plain,
so far. But," says the Sergeant, with the first tone of impatience
in his voice that I had heard yet, "the mystery is--what the devil
has she hidden in the tin case?"

I thought to myself, "The Moonstone!"  But I only said to Sergeant Cuff,
"Can't you guess?"

"It's not the Diamond," says the Sergeant. "The whole experience
of my life is at fault, if Rosanna Spearman has got the Diamond."

On hearing those words, the infernal detective-fever began,
I suppose, to burn in me again. At any rate, I forgot myself
in the interest of guessing this new riddle. I said rashly,
"The stained dress!"

Sergeant Cuff stopped short in the dark, and laid his hand on my arm.

"Is anything thrown into that quicksand of yours, ever thrown up
on the surface again?" he asked.

"Never," I answered. "Light or heavy whatever goes into the Shivering
Sand is sucked down, and seen no more."

"Does Rosanna Spearman know that?"

"She knows it as well as I do."

"Then," says the Sergeant, "what on earth has she got to do but to tie
up a bit of stone in the stained dress and throw it into the quicksand?
There isn't the shadow of a reason why she should have hidden it--and yet
she must have hidden it. Query," says the Sergeant, walking on again,
"is the paint-stained dress a petticoat or a night-gown? or is it
something else which there is a reason for preserving at any risk?
Mr. Betteredge, if nothing occurs to prevent it, I must go to Frizinghall
to-morrow, and discover what she bought in the town, when she privately
got the materials for making the substitute dress. It's a risk to leave
the house, as things are now--but it's a worse risk still to stir another
step in this matter in the dark. Excuse my being a little out of temper;
I'm degraded in my own estimation--I have let Rosanna Spearman
puzzle me."

When we got back, the servants were at supper. The first person
we saw in the outer yard was the policeman whom Superintendent
Seegrave had left at the Sergeant's disposal. The Sergeant asked
if Rosanna Spearman had returned. Yes. When? Nearly an hour since.
What had she done? She had gone up-stairs to take off her bonnet
and cloak--and she was now at supper quietly with the rest.

Without making any remark, Sergeant Cuff walked on, sinking lower
and lower in his own estimation, to the back of the house.
Missing the entrance in the dark, he went on (in spite of my calling
to him) till he was stopped by a wicket-gate which led into the garden.
When I joined him to bring him back by the right way, I found
that he was looking up attentively at one particular window,
on the bed-room floor, at the back of the house.

Looking up, in my turn, I discovered that the object of his contemplation
was the window of Miss Rachel's room, and that lights were passing backwards
and forwards there as if something unusual was going on.

"Isn't that Miss Verinder's room?" asked Sergeant Cuff.

I replied that it was, and invited him to go in with me to supper.
The Sergeant remained in his place, and said something about enjoying
the smell of the garden at night. I left him to his enjoyment.
Just as I was turning in at the door, I heard "The Last Rose of Summer"
at the wicket-gate. Sergeant Cuff had made another discovery!
And my young lady's window was at the bottom of it this time!

The latter reflection took me back again to the Sergeant, with a polite
intimation that I could not find it in my heart to leave him by himself.
"Is there anything you don't understand up there?"  I added, pointing to Miss
Rachel's window.

Judging by his voice, Sergeant Cuff had suddenly risen again to the right
place in his own estimation. "You are great people for betting in Yorkshire,
are you not?" he asked.

"Well?"  I said. "Suppose we are?"

"If I was a Yorkshireman," proceeded the Sergeant, taking my arm,
"I would lay you an even sovereign, Mr. Betteredge,
that your young lady has suddenly resolved to leave the house.
If I won on that event, I should offer to lay another sovereign,
that the idea has occurred to her within the last hour."
The first of the Sergeant's guesses startled me.
The second mixed itself up somehow in my head with the report
we had heard from the policeman, that Rosanna Spearman
had returned from the sands with in the last hour. The two
together had a curious effect on me as we went in to supper.
I shook off Sergeant Cuff's arm, and, forgetting my manners,
pushed by him through the door to make my own inquiries
for myself.

Samuel, the footman, was the first person I met in the passage.

"Her ladyship is waiting to see you and Sergeant Cuff," he said,
before I could put any questions to him.

"How long has she been waiting?" asked the Sergeant's voice behind me.

"For the last hour, sir."

There it was again! Rosanna had come back; Miss Rachel
had taken some resolution out of the common; and my lady had
been waiting to see the Sergeant--all within the last hour!
It was not pleasant to find these very different persons and things
linking themselves together in this way. I went on upstairs,
without looking at Sergeant Cuff, or speaking to him.
My hand took a sudden fit of trembling as I lifted it to knock
at my mistress's door.

"I shouldn't be surprised," whispered the Sergeant over my shoulder,
"if a scandal was to burst up in the house to-night. Don't be alarmed!
I have put the muzzle on worse family difficulties than this,
in my time."

As he said the words I heard my mistress's voice calling to us to come in.

CHAPTER XVI

We found my lady with no light in the room but the reading-lamp.
The shade was screwed down so as to overshadow her face.
Instead of looking up at us in her usual straightforward way,
she sat close at the table, and kept her eyes fixed obstinately on
an open book.

"Officer," she said, "is it important to the inquiry you are conducting,
to know beforehand if any person now in this house wishes to leave it?"

"Most important, my lady."

"I have to tell you, then, that Miss Verinder proposes going
to stay with her aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite, of Frizinghall.
She has arranged to leave us the first thing to-morrow morning."

Sergeant Cuff looked at me. I made a step forward to speak to my mistress--
and, feeling my heart fail me (if I must own it), took a step back again,
and said nothing.

"May I ask your ladyship WHEN Miss Verinder informed you that she
was going to her aunt's?" inquired the Sergeant.

"About an hour since," answered my mistress.

Sergeant Cuff looked at me once more. They say old people's hearts
are not very easily moved. My heart couldn't have thumped much
harder than it did now, if I had been five-and-twenty again!

"I have no claim, my lady," says the Sergeant, "to control
Miss Verinder's actions. All I can ask you to do is to put
off her departure, if possible, till later in the day.
I must go to Frizinghall myself to-morrow morning--and I shall
be back by two o'clock, if not before. If Miss Verinder can
be kept here till that time, I should wish to say two words
to her--unexpectedly--before she goes."

My lady directed me to give the coachman her orders, that the carriage
was not to come for Miss Rachel until two o'clock. "Have you more to say?"
she asked of the Sergeant, when this had been done.

"Only one thing, your ladyship. If Miss Verinder is surprised at this
change in the arrangements, please not to mention Me as being the cause
of putting off her journey."

My mistress lifted her head suddenly from her book as if she was going
to say something--checked herself by a great effort--and, looking back
again at the open page, dismissed us with a sign of her hand.

"That's a wonderful woman," said Sergeant Cuff, when we were
out in the hall again. "But for her self-control, the mystery
that puzzles you, Mr. Betteredge, would have been at an end to-night."

At those words, the truth rushed at last into my stupid old head.
For the moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses.
I seized the Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him against
the wall.

"Damn you!"  I cried out, "there's something wrong about Miss Rachel--
and you have been hiding it from me all this time!"

Sergeant Cuff looked up at me--flat against the wall--without stirring a hand,
or moving a muscle of his melancholy face.

"Ah," he said, "you've guessed it at last."

My hand dropped from his collar, and my head sunk on my breast.
Please to remember, as some excuse for my breaking out
as I did, that I had served the family for fifty years.
Miss Rachel had climbed upon my knees, and pulled my whiskers,
many and many a time when she was a child. Miss Rachel,
with all her faults, had been, to my mind, the dearest and
prettiest and best young mistress that ever an old servant
waited on, and loved. I begged Sergeant's Cuff's pardon,
but I am afraid I did it with watery eyes, and not in a very
becoming way.

"Don't distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge," says the Sergeant,
with more kindness than I had any right to expect from him.
"In my line of life if we were quick at taking offence, we shouldn't
be worth salt to our porridge. If it's any comfort to you,
collar me again. You don't in the least know how to do it;
but I'll overlook your awkwardness in consideration of
your feelings."

He curled up at the corners of his lips, and, in his own dreary way,
seemed to think he had delivered himself of a very good joke.

I led him into my own little sitting-room, and closed the door.

"Tell me the truth, Sergeant," I said. "What do you suspect?
It's no kindness to hide it from me now."

"I don't suspect," said Sergeant Cuff. "I know."

My unlucky temper began to get the better of me again.

"Do you mean to tell me, in plain English," I said, "that Miss Rachel
has stolen her own Diamond?"

"Yes," says the Sergeant; "that is what I mean to tell you, in so many words.
Miss Verinder has been in secret possession of the Moonstone from
first to last; and she has taken Rosanna Spearman into her confidence,
because she has calculated on our suspecting Rosanna Spearman of the theft.
There is the whole case in a nutshell. Collar me again, Mr. Betteredge.
If it's any vent to your feelings, collar me again."

God help me! my feelings were not to be relieved in that way.
"Give me your reasons!"  That was all I could say to him.

"You shall hear my reasons to-morrow," said the Sergeant.
"If Miss Verinder refuses to put off her visit to her aunt
(which you will find Miss Verinder will do), I shall be obliged
to lay the whole case before your mistress to-morrow. And,
as I don't know what may come of it, I shall request you
to be present, and to hear what passes on both sides.
Let the matter rest for to-night. No, Mr. Betteredge, you don't
get a word more on the subject of the Moonstone out of me.
There is your table spread for supper. That's one of
the many human infirmities which I always treat tenderly.
If you will ring the bell, I'll say grace. 'For what we are going
to receive----'"

"I wish you a good appetite to it, Sergeant," I said. "My appetite is gone.
I'll wait and see you served, and then I'll ask you to excuse me, if I
go away, and try to get the better of this by myself."

I saw him served with the best of everything--and I shouldn't
have been sorry if the best of everything had choked him.
The head gardener (Mr. Begbie) came in at the same time,
with his weekly account. The Sergeant got on the subject of roses
and the merits of grass walks and gravel walks immediately.
I left the two together, and went out with a heavy heart.
This was the first trouble I remember for many a long year
which wasn't to be blown off by a whiff of tobacco, and which was
even beyond the reach of ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Being restless and miserable, and having no particular room to go to,
I took a turn on the terrace, and thought it over in peace and quietness
by myself. It doesn't much matter what my thoughts were. I felt
wretchedly old, and worn out, and unfit for my place--and began to wonder,
for the first time in my life, when it would please God to take me.
With all this, I held firm, notwithstanding, to my belief in Miss Rachel.
If Sergeant Cuff had been Solomon in all his glory, and had told me that
my young lady had mixed herself up in a mean and guilty plot, I should
have had but one answer for Solomon, wise as he was, "You don't know her;
and I do."

My meditations were interrupted by Samuel. He brought me a written message
from my mistress.

Going into the house to get a light to read it by, Samuel remarked
that there seemed a change coming in the weather. My troubled mind
had prevented me from noticing it before. But, now my attention
was roused, I heard the dogs uneasy, and the wind moaning low.
Looking up at the sky, I saw the rack of clouds getting blacker
and blacker, and hurrying faster and faster over a watery moon.
Wild weather coming--Samuel was right, wild weather coming.

The message from my lady informed me, that the magistrate at
Frizinghall had written to remind her about the three Indians.
Early in the coming week, the rogues must needs be released,
and left free to follow their own devices. If we had any
more questions to ask them, there was no time to lose.
Having forgotten to mention this, when she had last seen
Sergeant Cuff, my mistress now desired me to supply the omission.
The Indians had gone clean out of my head (as they have, no doubt,
gone clean out of yours). I didn't see much use in stirring
that subject again. However, I obeyed my orders on the spot,
as a matter of course.

I found Sergeant Cuff and the gardener, with a bottle of Scotch whisky
between them, head over ears in an argument on the growing of roses.
The Sergeant was so deeply interested that he held up his hand,
and signed to me not to interrupt the discussion, when I came in.
As far as I could understand it, the question between them was,
whether the white moss rose did, or did not, require to be budded
on the dog-rose to make it grow well. Mr. Begbie said, Yes;
and Sergeant Cuff said, No. They appealed to me, as hotly as a couple
of boys. Knowing nothing whatever about the growing of roses,
I steered a middle course--just as her Majesty's judges do,
when the scales of justice bother them by hanging even to a hair.
"Gentlemen," I remarked, "there is much to be said on both sides."
In the temporary lull produced by that impartial sentence, I laid
my lady's written message on the table, under the eyes of Sergeant
Cuff.

I had got by this time, as nearly as might be, to hate the Sergeant.
But truth compels me to acknowledge that, in respect of readiness of mind,
he was a wonderful man.

In half a minute after he had read the message, he had looked
back into his memory for Superintendent Seegrave's report;
had picked out that part of it in which the Indians were concerned;
and was ready with his answer. A certain great traveller,
who understood the Indians and their language, had figured
in Mr. Seegrave's report, hadn't he? Very well. Did I know
the gentleman's name and address? Very well again. Would I write
them on the back of my lady's message? Much obliged to me.
Sergeant Cuff would look that gentleman up, when he went to
Frizinghall in the morning.

"Do you expect anything to come of it?"  I asked. "Superintendent Seegrave
found the Indians as innocent as the babe unborn."

"Superintendent Seegrave has been proved wrong, up to this time,
in all his conclusions," answered the Sergeant. "It may be worth
while to find out to-morrow whether Superintendent Seegrave was wrong
about the Indians as well."  With that he turned to Mr. Begbie, and took
up the argument again exactly at the place where it had left off.
"This question between us is a question of soils and seasons,
and patience and pains, Mr. Gardener. Now let me put it to you from
another point of view. You take your white moss rose----"

By that time, I had closed the door on them, and was out of hearing
of the rest of the dispute.

In the passage, I met Penelope hanging about, and asked what she
was waiting for.

She was waiting for her young lady's bell, when her young lady chose
to call her back to go on with the packing for the next day's journey.
Further inquiry revealed to me, that Miss Rachel had given it as a
reason for wanting to go to her aunt at Frizinghall, that the house
was unendurable to her, and that she could bear the odious presence
of a policeman under the same roof with herself no longer.
On being informed, half an hour since, that her departure would be
delayed till two in the afternoon, she had flown into a violent passion.
My lady, present at the time, had severely rebuked her, and then
(having apparently something to say, which was reserved for her
daughter's private ear) had sent Penelope out of the room.
My girl was in wretchedly low spirits about the changed state of things
in the house. "Nothing goes right, father; nothing is like what it
used to be. I feel as if some dreadful misfortune was hanging over
us all."

That was my feeling too. But I put a good face on it, before my daughter.
Miss Rachel's bell rang while we were talking. Penelope ran up the back
stairs to go on with the packing. I went by the other way to the hall, to see
what the glass said about the change in the weather.

Just as I approached the swing-door leading into the hall from
the servants' offices, it was violently opened from the other side,
and Rosanna Spearman ran by me, with a miserable look of pain
in her face, and one of her hands pressed hard over her heart,
as if the pang was in that quarter. "What's the matter, my girl?"
I asked, stopping her. "Are you ill?"  "For God's sake, don't speak
to me," she answered, and twisted herself out of my hands,
and ran on towards the servants' staircase. I called to the cook
(who was within hearing) to look after the poor girl.
Two other persons proved to be within hearing, as well as the cook.
Sergeant Cuff darted softly out of my room, and asked what was the matter.
I answered, "Nothing."  Mr. Franklin, on the other side, pulled open
the swing-door, and beckoning me into the hall, inquired if I had seen
anything of Rosanna Spearman.

"She has just passed me, sir, with a very disturbed face,
and in a very odd manner."

"I am afraid I am innocently the cause of that disturbance, Betteredge."

"You, sir!"

"I can't explain it," says Mr. Franklin; "but, if the girl IS concerned
in the loss of the Diamond, I do really believe she was on the point
of confessing everything--to me, of all the people in the world--
not two minutes since."

Looking towards the swing-door, as he said those last words,
I fancied I saw it opened a little way from the inner side.

Was there anybody listening? The door fell to, before I could get to it.
Looking through, the moment after, I thought I saw the tails of Sergeant
Cuff's respectable black coat disappearing round the corner of the passage.
He knew, as well as I did, that he could expect no more help from me, now that
I had discovered the turn which his investigations were really taking.
Under those circumstances, it was quite in his character to help himself,
and to do it by the underground way.

Not feeling sure that I had really seen the Sergeant--
and not desiring to make needless mischief, where, Heaven knows,
there was mischief enough going on already--I told Mr. Franklin
that I thought one of the dogs had got into the house--
and then begged him to describe what had happened between Rosanna
and himself.

"Were you passing through the hall, sir?"  I asked. "Did you meet
her accidentally, when she spoke to you?"

Mr. Franklin pointed to the billiard-table.

"I was knocking the balls about," he said, "and trying to get
this miserable business of the Diamond out of my mind.
I happened to look up--and there stood Rosanna Spearman at
the side of me, like a ghost! Her stealing on me in that way
was so strange, that I hardly knew what to do at first.
Seeing a very anxious expression in her face, I asked her if
she wished to speak to me. She answered, "Yes, if I dare."
Knowing what suspicion attached to her, I could only put
one construction on such language as that. I confess it made
me uncomfortable. I had no wish to invite the girl's confidence.
At the same time, in the difficulties that now beset us,
I could hardly feel justified in refusing to listen to her, if she
was really bent on speaking to me. It was an awkward position;
and I dare say I got out of it awkwardly enough. I said to her,
"I don't quite understand you. Is there anything you want
me to do?"  Mind, Betteredge, I didn't speak unkindly!
The poor girl can't help being ugly--I felt that, at the time.
The cue was still in my hand, and I went on knocking
the balls about, to take off the awkwardness of the thing.
As it turned out, I only made matters worse still. I'm afraid
I mortified her without meaning it! She suddenly turned away.
"He looks at the billiard balls," I heard her say.
"Anything rather than look at ME!"  Before I could stop her,
she had left the hall. I am not quite easy about it, Betteredge.
Would you mind telling Rosanna that I meant no unkindness?
I have been a little hard on her, perhaps, in my own thoughts--I have
almost hoped that the loss of the Diamond might be traced to HER.
Not from any ill-will to the poor girl: but----" He stopped there,
and going back to the billiard-table, began to knock the balls
about once more.

After what had passed between the Sergeant and me, I knew what it
was that he had left unspoken as well as he knew it himself.

Nothing but the tracing of the Moonstone to our second
housemaid could now raise Miss Rachel above the infamous
suspicion that rested on her in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.
It was no longer a question of quieting my young lady's
nervous excitement; it was a question of proving her innocence.
If Rosanna had done nothing to compromise herself, the hope
which Mr. Franklin confessed to having felt would have been hard
enough on her in all conscience. But this was not the case.
She had pretended to be ill, and had gone secretly to Frizinghall.
She had been up all night, making something or destroying something,
in private. And she had been at the Shivering Sand,
that evening, under circumstances which were highly suspicious,
to say the least of them. For all these reasons (sorry as I
was for Rosanna) I could not but think that Mr. Franklin's way
of looking at the matter was neither unnatural nor unreasonable,
in Mr. Franklin's position. I said a word to him to
that effect.

"Yes, yes!" he said in return. "But there is just a chance--
a very poor one, certainly--that Rosanna's conduct may admit
of some explanation which we don't see at present. I hate
hurting a woman's feelings, Betteredge! Tell the poor creature
what I told you to tell her. And if she wants to speak to me--
I don't care whether I get into a scrape or not--send her to me
in the library."  With those kind words he laid down the cue and
left me.

Inquiry at the servants' offices informed me that Rosanna had retired
to her own room. She had declined all offers of assistance with thanks,
and had only asked to be left to rest in quiet. Here, therefore, was an end
of any confession on her part (supposing she really had a confession to make)
for that night. I reported the result to Mr. Franklin, who, thereupon,
left the library, and went up to bed.

I was putting the lights out, and making the windows fast,
when Samuel came in with news of the two guests whom I had left
in my room.

The argument about the white moss rose had apparently come to an end at last.
The gardener had gone home, and Sergeant Cuff was nowhere to be found in the
lower regions of the house.

I looked into my room. Quite true--nothing was to be discovered
there but a couple of empty tumblers and a strong smell of hot grog.
Had the Sergeant gone of his own accord to the bed-chamber that was
prepared for him? I went up-stairs to see.

After reaching the second landing, I thought I heard a sound of quiet
and regular breathing on my left-hand side. My left-hand side
led to the corridor which communicated with Miss Rachel's room.
I looked in, and there, coiled up on three chairs placed right across
the passage--there, with a red handkerchief tied round his grizzled head,
and his respectable black coat rolled up for a pillow, lay and slept
Sergeant Cuff!

He woke, instantly and quietly, like a dog, the moment I approached him.

"Good night, Mr. Betteredge," he said. "And mind, if you ever take
to growing roses, the white moss rose is all the better for not being
budded on the dog-rose, whatever the gardener may say to the contrary!"

"What are you doing here?"  I asked. "Why are you not in your proper bed?"

"I am not in my proper bed," answered the Sergeant, "because I
am one of the many people in this miserable world who can't
earn their money honestly and easily at the same time.
There was a coincidence, this evening, between the period
of Rosanna Spearman's return from the Sands and the period
when Miss Verinder stated her resolution to leave the house.
Whatever Rosanna may have hidden, it's clear to my mind that your
young lady couldn't go away until she knew that it WAS hidden.
The two must have communicated privately once already to-night.
If they try to communicate again, when the house is quiet,
I want to be in the way, and stop it. Don't blame me
for upsetting your sleeping arrangements, Mr. Betteredge--
blame the Diamond."

"I wish to God the Diamond had never found its way into this house!"
I broke out.

Sergeant Cuff looked with a rueful face at the three chairs
on which he had condemned himself to pass the night.

"So do I," he said, gravely.

CHAPTER XVII

Nothing happened in the night; and (I am happy to add)
no attempt at communication between Miss Rachel and Rosanna
rewarded the vigilance of Sergeant Cuff.

I had expected the Sergeant to set off for Frizinghall the first thing
in the morning. He waited about, however, as if he had something else
to do first. I left him to his own devices; and going into the grounds
shortly after, met Mr. Franklin on his favourite walk by the shrubbery side.

Before we had exchanged two words, the Sergeant unexpectedly joined us.
He made up to Mr. Franklin, who received him, I must own, haughtily enough.
"Have you anything to say to me?" was all the return he got for politely
wishing Mr. Franklin good morning.

"I have something to say to you, sir," answered the Sergeant,
"on the subject of the inquiry I am conducting here.
You detected the turn that inquiry was really taking, yesterday.
Naturally enough, in your position, you are shocked and distressed.
Naturally enough, also, you visit your own angry sense of your own
family scandal upon Me."

"What do you want?"  Mr. Franklin broke in, sharply enough.

"I want to remind you, sir, that I have at any rate, thus far,
not been PROVED to be wrong. Bearing that in mind, be pleased
to remember, at the same time, that I am an officer of the law
acting here under the sanction of the mistress of the house.
Under these circumstances, is it, or is it not, your duty as a
good citizen, to assist me with any special information which you
may happen to possess?"

"I possess no special information," says Mr. Franklin.

Sergeant Cuff put that answer by him, as if no answer had been made.

"You may save my time, sir, from being wasted on an inquiry at a distance,"
he went on, "if you choose to understand me and speak out."

"I don't understand you," answered Mr. Franklin; "and I have nothing to say."

"One of the female servants (I won't mention names) spoke to you privately,
sir, last night."

Once more Mr. Franklin cut him short; once more Mr. Franklin answered,
"I have nothing to say."

Standing by in silence, I thought of the movement in the swing-door on
the previous evening, and of the coat-tails which I had seen disappearing
down the passage. Sergeant Cuff had, no doubt, just heard enough,
before I interrupted him, to make him suspect that Rosanna had relieved
her mind by confessing something to Mr. Franklin Blake.

This notion had barely struck me--when who should appear at the end
of the shrubbery walk but Rosanna Spearman in her own proper person!
She was followed by Penelope, who was evidently trying to make her
retrace her steps to the house. Seeing that Mr. Franklin was not alone,
Rosanna came to a standstill, evidently in great perplexity what to do next.
Penelope waited behind her. Mr. Franklin saw the girls as soon as I
saw them. The Sergeant, with his devilish cunning, took on not to have
noticed them at all. All this happened in an instant. Before either
Mr. Franklin or I could say a word, Sergeant Cuff struck in smoothly,
with an appearance of continuing the previous conversation.

"You needn't be afraid of harming the girl, sir," he said to Mr. Franklin,
speaking in a loud voice, so that Rosanna might hear him. "On the contrary,
I recommend you to honour me with your confidence, if you feel any interest in
Rosanna Spearman."

Mr. Franklin instantly took on not to have noticed the girls either.
He answered, speaking loudly on his side:

"I take no interest whatever in Rosanna Spearman."

I looked towards the end of the walk. All I saw at the distance was
that Rosanna suddenly turned round, the moment Mr. Franklin had spoken.
Instead of resisting Penelope, as she had done the moment before,
she now let my daughter take her by the arm and lead her back to
the house.

The breakfast-bell rang as the two girls disappeared--and even
Sergeant Cuff was now obliged to give it up as a bad job!
He said to me quietly, "I shall go to Frizinghall, Mr. Betteredge;
and I shall be back before two."  He went his way without
a word more--and for some few hours we were well rid of him.

"You must make it right with Rosanna," Mr. Franklin said to me, when we
were alone. "I seem to be fated to say or do something awkward, before that
unlucky girl. You must have seen yourself that Sergeant Cuff laid a trap
for both of us. If he could confuse ME, or irritate HER into breaking out,
either she or I might have said something which would answer his purpose.
On the spur of the moment, I saw no better way out of it than the way I took.
It stopped the girl from saying anything, and it showed the Sergeant that I
saw through him. He was evidently listening, Betteredge, when I was speaking
to you last night."

He had done worse than listen, as I privately thought to myself.
He had remembered my telling him that the girl was in love with
Mr. Franklin; and he had calculated on THAT, when he appealed to
Mr. Franklin's interest in Rosanna--in Rosanna's hearing.

"As to listening, sir," I remarked (keeping the other point
to myself), we shall all be rowing in the same boat if this
sort of thing goes on much longer. Prying, and peeping,
and listening are the natural occupations of people situated
as we are. In another day or two, Mr. Franklin, we shall all
be struck dumb together--for this reason, that we shall all be
listening to surprise each other's secrets, and all know it.
Excuse my breaking out, sir. The horrid mystery hanging
over us in this house gets into my head like liquor,
and makes me wild. I won't forget what you have told me.
I'll take the first opportunity of making it right with
Rosanna Spearman."

"You haven't said anything to her yet about last night, have you?"
Mr. Franklin asked.

"No, sir."

"Then say nothing now. I had better not invite the girl's confidence,
with the Sergeant on the look-out to surprise us together.
My conduct is not very consistent, Betteredge--is it?
I see no way out of this business, which isn't dreadful
to think of, unless the Diamond is traced to Rosanna.
And yet I can't, and won't, help Sergeant Cuff to find the
girl out."

Unreasonable enough, no doubt. But it was my state of mind as well.
I thoroughly understood him. If you will, for once in your life,
remember that you are mortal, perhaps you will thoroughly understand
him too.

The state of things, indoors and out, while Sergeant Cuff was on his way
to Frizinghall, was briefly this:

Miss Rachel waited for the time when the carriage was to take
her to her aunt's, still obstinately shut up in her own room.
My lady and Mr. Franklin breakfasted together. After breakfast,
Mr. Franklin took one of his sudden resolutions, and went
out precipitately to quiet his mind by a long walk.
I was the only person who saw him go; and he told
me he should be back before the Sergeant returned.
The change in the weather, foreshadowed overnight, had come.
Heavy rain had been followed soon after dawn, by high wind.
It was blowing fresh, as the day got on. But though the clouds
threatened more than once, the rain still held off.
It was not a bad day for a walk, if you were young and strong,
and could breast the great gusts of wind which came sweeping in from
the sea.

I attended my lady after breakfast, and assisted her in the settlement of our
household accounts. She only once alluded to the matter of the Moonstone,
and that was in the way of forbidding any present mention of it between us.
"Wait till that man comes back," she said, meaning the Sergeant. "We MUST
speak of it then: we are not obliged to speak of it now."

After leaving my mistress, I found Penelope waiting for me in my room.

"I wish, father, you would come and speak to Rosanna," she said.
"I am very uneasy about her."

I suspected what was the matter readily enough. But it is a maxim
of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women--
if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter,
or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why.
The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason,
the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life.
It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and
think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.

Penelope's reason why, on this occasion, may be given in her own words.
"I am afraid, father," she said, "Mr. Franklin has hurt Rosanna cruelly,
without intending it."

"What took Rosanna into the shrubbery walk?"  I asked.

"Her own madness," says Penelope; "I can call it nothing else.
She was bent on speaking to Mr. Franklin, this morning,
come what might of it. I did my best to stop her; you saw that.
If I could only have got her away before she heard those
dreadful words----"

"There! there!"  I said, "don't lose your head. I can't call to mind
that anything happened to alarm Rosanna."

"Nothing to alarm her, father. But Mr. Franklin said he took no interest
whatever in her--and, oh, he said it in such a cruel voice!"

"He said it to stop the Sergeant's mouth," I answered.

"I told her that," says Penelope. "But you see, father (though Mr. Franklin
isn't to blame), he's been mortifying and disappointing her for weeks
and weeks past; and now this comes on the top of it all! She has no right,
of course, to expect him to take any interest in her. It's quite
monstrous that she should forget herself and her station in that way.
But she seems to have lost pride, and proper feeling, and everything.
She frightened me, father, when Mr. Franklin said those words.
They seemed to turn her into stone. A sudden quiet came over her,
and she has gone about her work, ever since, like a woman in a dream."

I began to feel a little uneasy. There was something in
the way Penelope put it which silenced my superior sense.
I called to mind, now my thoughts were directed that way,
what had passed between Mr. Franklin and Rosanna overnight.
She looked cut to the heart on that occasion; and now,
as ill-luck would have it, she had been unavoidably stung again,
poor soul, on the tender place. Sad! sad!--all the more sad
because the girl had no reason to justify her, and no right to
feel it.

I had promised Mr. Franklin to speak to Rosanna, and this seemed
the fittest time for keeping my word.

We found the girl sweeping the corridor outside the bedrooms,
pale and composed, and neat as ever in her modest print dress.
I noticed a curious dimness and dullness in her eyes--
not as if she had been crying but as if she had been looking
at something too long. Possibly, it was a misty something raised
by her own thoughts. There was certainly no object about her
to look at which she had not seen already hundreds on hundreds
of times.

"Cheer up, Rosanna!"  I said. "You mustn't fret over your own fancies.
I have got something to say to you from Mr. Franklin."

I thereupon put the matter in the right view before her,
in the friendliest and most comforting words I could find.
My principles, in regard to the other sex, are, as you
may have noticed, very severe. But somehow or other,
when I come face to face with the women, my practice (I own)
is not conformable.

"Mr. Franklin is very kind and considerate. Please to thank him."
That was all the answer she made me.

My daughter had already noticed that Rosanna went about her work
like a woman in a dream. I now added to this observation,
that she also listened and spoke like a woman in a dream.
I doubted if her mind was in a fit condition to take in what I had
said to her.

"Are you quite sure, Rosanna, that you understand me?"
I asked.

"Quite sure."

She echoed me, not like a living woman, but like a creature
moved by machinery. She went on sweeping all the time.
I took away the broom as gently and as kindly as I could.

"Come, come, my girl!"  I said, "this is not like yourself.
You have got something on your mind. I'm your friend--
and I'll stand your friend, even if you have done wrong.
Make a clean breast of it, Rosanna--make a clean breast
of it!"

The time had been, when my speaking to her in that way would
have brought the tears into her eyes. I could see no change
in them now.

"Yes," she said, "I'll make a clean breast of it."

"To my lady?"  I asked.

"No."

"To Mr. Franklin?"

"Yes; to Mr. Franklin."

I hardly knew what to say to that. She was in no condition
to understand the caution against speaking to him in private,
which Mr. Franklin had directed me to give her. Feeling my way,
little by little, I only told her Mr. Franklin had gone out for
a walk.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "I shan't trouble Mr. Franklin, to-day."

"Why not speak to my lady?"  I said. "The way to relieve your mind
is to speak to the merciful and Christian mistress who has always
been kind to you."

She looked at me for a moment with a grave and steady attention,
as if she was fixing what I said in her mind. Then she took
the broom out of my hands and moved off with it slowly,
a little way down the corridor.

"No," she said, going on with her sweeping, and speaking to herself;
"I know a better way of relieving my mind than that."

"What is it?"

"Please to let me go on with my work."

Penelope followed her, and offered to help her.

She answered, "No. I want to do my work. Thank you, Penelope."
She looked round at me. "Thank you, Mr. Betteredge."

There was no moving her--there was nothing more to be said.
I signed to Penelope to come away with me. We left her,
as we had found her, sweeping the corridor, like a woman in
a dream.

"This is a matter for the doctor to look into," I said.
"It's beyond me."

My daughter reminded me of Mr. Candy's illness, owing (as you may remember)
to the chill he had caught on the night of the dinner-party. His assistant--
a certain Mr. Ezra Jennings--was at our disposal, to be sure. But nobody
knew much about him in our parts. He had been engaged by Mr. Candy under
rather peculiar circumstances; and, right or wrong, we none of us liked him
or trusted him. There were other doctors at Frizinghall. But they were
strangers to our house; and Penelope doubted, in Rosanna's present state,
whether strangers might not do her more harm than good.

I thought of speaking to my lady. But, remembering the heavy weight
of anxiety which she already had on her mind, I hesitated to add
to all the other vexations this new trouble. Still, there was a
necessity for doing something. The girl's state was, to my thinking,
downright alarming--and my mistress ought to be informed of it.
Unwilling enough, I went to her sitting-room. No one was there.
My lady was shut up with Miss Rachel. It was impossible for me to see her
till she came out again.

I waited in vain till the clock on the front staircase struck
the quarter to two. Five minutes afterwards, I heard my name called,
from the drive outside the house. I knew the voice directly.
Sergeant Cuff had returned from Frizinghall.

CHAPTER XVIII

Going down to the front door, I met the Sergeant on the steps.

It went against the grain with me, after what had passed between us,
to show him that I felt any sort of interest in his proceedings.
In spite of myself, however, I felt an interest that there was no resisting.
My sense of dignity sank from under me, and out came the words: "What news
from Frizinghall?"

"I have seen the Indians," answered Sergeant Cuff. "And I have found
out what Rosanna bought privately in the town, on Thursday last.
The Indians will be set free on Wednesday in next week.
There isn't a doubt on my mind, and there isn't a doubt on
Mr. Murthwaite's mind, that they came to this place to steal
the Moonstone. Their calculations were all thrown out,
of course, by what happened in the house on Wednesday night;
and they have no more to do with the actual loss of the jewel
than you have. But I can tell you one thing, Mr. Betteredge--
if WE don't find the Moonstone, THEY will. You have not heard the
last of the three jugglers yet."

Mr. Franklin came back from his walk as the Sergeant said
those startling words. Governing his curiosity better
than I had governed mine, he passed us without a word,
and went on into the house.

As for me, having already dropped my dignity, I determined to have
the whole benefit of the sacrifice. "So much for the Indians," I said.
"What about Rosanna next?"

Sergeant Cuff shook his head.

"The mystery in that quarter is thicker than ever," he said.
"I have traced her to a shop at Frizinghall, kept by a linen
draper named Maltby. She bought nothing whatever at any of
the other drapers' shops, or at any milliners' or tailors' shops;
and she bought nothing at Maltby's but a piece of long cloth.
She was very particular