THE MOONSTONE

WILKIE COLLINS

SOURCE: PROJECT GUTENBERG

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THE MOONSTONE
 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 lit-
erally, 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 dia-
mond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semitransparent 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 Hindu pilgrim-
age, 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 Brah-
mins, 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 ap-
peared to the three Brahmins in a dream.
The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the fore-
head 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 genera-
tions 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 suc-
cessors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone, night and
day. One age followed another until the first years of the eighteenth Christi-
an 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 Mo-
hammedan 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 Christi-
an 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 con-
fidence 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 mar-
vellous 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 un-
lucky 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 bey-
ond; 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 pre-
vent 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, ex-
asperated 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 unexpec-
tedly, 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 court-
yard, and at once ran towards the cries, in dread of finding some new out-
break 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 ar-
moury. 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 dag-
ger’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 an-
nounced 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 un-
der which I surprised him in the armoury has been enough to keep him si-
lent. 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 com-
mitted. 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 wheth-
er 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 cer-
tain superstition of my own in this matter. It is my conviction, or my delu-
sion, 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.
 FIRST PERIOD
THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)

The events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of

Julia, Lady Verinder.
 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 be-
fore 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 my-
self 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 eyewitness. 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 abilit-
ies 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 tobac-
co—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mor-
tal 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.
 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 ex-
istence 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 pageboy 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 some-
body 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 Gabri-
el 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 suchlike, 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 ac-
cordingly. 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 to-
gether 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 es-
tate 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 Cob-
bett 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 marry-
ing 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 sup-
pose, of the sort that you can’t take unless you are a person of quality. Un-
derstanding 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 situ-
ation; 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 featherbed 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 upstairs, 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 pro-
moted, 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 pageboy 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 astonish-
ment, 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 dis-
covered 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 hun-
dred and fifty-eight), as follows: “Today we love, what tomorrow we hate.”
I saw my way clear directly. Today I was all for continuing to be farm-
bailiff; tomorrow, on the authority of Robinson Crusoe, I should be all the
other way. Take myself tomorrow while in tomorrow’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 gentle-
men 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.
 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 tomorrow 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, be-
cause 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 fam-
ous 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 to-
gether 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, be-
fore 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 dis-
liked 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 im-
prove 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-six-
pence 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 under-
stand it. He wrote a little; he painted a little; he sang and played and com-
posed a little—borrowing, as I suspect, in all these cases, just as he had bor-
rowed 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 every-
where; 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 dinnertime) 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 but-
ler in my lady’s establishment, as well as steward (at my own particular re-
quest, mind, and because it vexed me to see anybody but myself in posses-
sion 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 Eng-
lish 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 man-
ners, presently informed me that my judgment was right. He requested per-
mission 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 ex-
plain 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 foreign-
ers—for no reason that I could discover, except that he was pretty and delic-
ate-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 fol-
lowing 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 Indi-
an, 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 mar-
ket—a hungry, ragged, and forsaken little boy. This, it seems, ended the dif-
ficulty. 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 today?”
The boy said, “It is on the road to this house, and on no other, that the
English gentleman will travel today.” 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 today.”
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 ar-
rival 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, clasp-
ing 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. Frank-
lin 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.
 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 sit-
ting-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. Hav-
ing 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 im-
morality—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 prom-
ise you!
Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common po-
liteness) 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, Ros-
anna 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 Ros-
anna 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 oth-
er 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 quar-
relled, 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 jut-
ting 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 back-
wards 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 Shiv-
ering 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 Spear-
man’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 par-
ticularly 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 suc-
ceeded—for which I respected her. “You’re very kind, Mr. Betteredge,” she
said. “I don’t want any dinner today—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 be 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 hun-
dreds 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 in-
terests, 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 be-
fore; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless sur-
prise. “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-col-
oured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose in his buttonhole, 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 ap-
pearance, 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 confu-
sion 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 Contin-
ental 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. Frank-
lin, 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.
 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, ex-
cept 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 wel-
come, 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 morn-
ing 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 today,” 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 re-
spect 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 jug-
glers 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 gentle-
man will travel today?’ ‘Has the English gentleman got It about him?’ I sus-
pect,” says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper parcel out of his pock-
et, “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 Col-
onel’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 whatnot. 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, in-
stead 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, begin-
ning 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 bulldog and gamecock,
with a dash of the savage. He was at the taking of Seringapatam. Soon af-
terwards 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, get-
ting 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 out-
lawed 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 nearsighted 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, hand-
some 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; some-
times 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 re-
ceived 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 upstairs 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 deathbed. 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 abomin-
able 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 ob-
ject 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 clearheaded 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 con-
spiracy 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 per-
turbed 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.
 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, con-
cerning 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
connection 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 try-
ing 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 comprom-
ised 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 pa-
pers. 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 strongroom—for the safe cus-
tody of valuables of high price. His main personal responsibility in the mat-
ter 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 stat-
ing 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 in-
valuable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonel’s letter. The
whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd. Somewhere in his Indian wan-
derings, 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 pre-
cautions 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 po-
lice. 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 accept-
ing 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 strongroom, 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 po-
sition, could have viewed the matter in any other way. Nothing in this
world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experi-
ence; 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 ma-
chinery, 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 broth-
er-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, busi-
nesslike 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 housework, 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 Dia-
mond 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 diffi-
culties. 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 drawback, however, the lowest of the various es-
timates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father’s astonish-
ment! 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 docu-
ment 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 Colon-
el 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 viol-
ence 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 strongroom 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 Hindu 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 Hindu superstition devoting them-
selves, 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 exist-
ence 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 con-
cerns 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 re-
minded 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 Dia-
mond 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 lug-
gage, 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 re-
covered 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 In-
dians 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 pur-
pose. 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 Eng-
land, 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 repres-
entative 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 be-
ing 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 state-
ment, 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 fin-
gers, 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 Sub-
jective 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 mys-
tery 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 pur-
posely 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 inter-
pretation 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 pos-
sibly, 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. Frank-
lin 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 clearheaded (before he began to talk the for-
eign 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 dis-
covery—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 col-
ouring 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 re-
membered, 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 strongroom 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.
 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 accord-
ingly 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 wor-
ries 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, Ros-
anna Spearman.
After leaving Mr. Franklin and me at the Shivering Sand, Rosanna, it ap-
peared, 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 sur-
prised, 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
today? Quite impossible! Had they heard anything of each other? Im-
possible 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 storybook in Christendom, if you can! I
laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks. Penelope resented my merri-
ment, 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. Frank-
lin 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), noth-
ing had happened. He had not met with the Indians, either going or return-
ing. 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 downstairs, feeling that this was rather a flat ending, after all our ex-
citement 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 fest-
ivals) 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 men-
tioned that she had never known Miss Rachel so particular about the dress-
ing 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 foot-
man’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 see-
ing 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 sandbank
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 no-
ticed, 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.
 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 noth-
ing 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 every-
body 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 per-
sons 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 Dia-
mond 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 res-
olute 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 par-
ticular 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 pillboxes, 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 re-
morse, 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. Some-
times, 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 every-
where, 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 accom-
paniment 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 suchlike—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 re-
spects, 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 my-
self 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 in-
formed, 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 com-
plexion (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 child-
hood, 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 notwith-
standing, 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 matrimoni-
al views.
On June the twelfth, an invitation from my mistress was sent to a gentle-
man 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 disap-
pointment 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. Able-
white, 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 pre-
sumed 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 misalliance 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 estima-
tion 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 col-
our; 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 wo-
men; 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 tem-
per 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 phil-
anthropist (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 birth-
day 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 in-
formed, 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. Able-
white’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 her-
self begged him to take to his cigars again. No! he would take to nothing
again that could cause her a moment’s annoyance; he would fight it out res-
olutely, 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 bedroom; rep-
resented 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 sup-
pose) to my lady. She probably hinted something about it next to her daugh-
ter. 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 sus-
pect 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 won-
der, 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, Ros-
anna Spearman.
This poor girl—who had puzzled me, as you know already, at the Shiver-
ing 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 Ros-
anna’s plain face. The poor thing’s appetite, never much, fell away dread-
fully; 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
buttonhole, 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.
 IX

June twenty-first, the day of the birthday, was cloudy and unsettled at sun-
rise, but towards noon it cleared up bravely.
We, in the servants’ hall, began this happy anniversary, as usual, by offer-
ing our little presents to Miss Rachel, with the regular speech delivered an-
nually by me as the chief. I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in open-
ing 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 sub-
ject 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 Dia-
mond in as many minutes. For my part, I stuck fast by the plain facts as 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 ap-
rons, 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 Moon-
stone, 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 cer-
tain 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 superabundant 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 Able-
whites 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, be-
fore 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 sud-
den 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 bookcase, tugging at his beard, and looking anxiously towards
the window. And there, at the window, stood the object he was contemplat-
ing—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 some-
thing 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 confer-
ence 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 know-
ledge 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 consider-
ate 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 un-
fathomable 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 for-
wards between the Diamond and me, said, “Carbon Betteredge! mere car-
bon, my good friend, after all!”
His object, I suppose, was to instruct me. All he did, however, was to re-
mind 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 God-
frey 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 com-
pany. 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 im-
proving 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’ committeeman, 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 Able-
white, 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 de-
fence between your hairbrush 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 noth-
ing 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 hairbrush, 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 in-
stantly 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 cere-
monies 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.
 X

One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the Able-
whites, 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 birth-
day 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. Every-
body wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the Diamond, as a mat-
ter 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, how-
ever, 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 pre-
cious 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 hum-
drum 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 birth-
day gift with you. A Hindu diamond is sometimes part of a Hindu 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 after-
wards, 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 priv-
ileged 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 un-
derstand 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 perpetu-
ally, 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 fa-
vourite 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 Pro-
fessor’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 Pro-
fessor’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 mention-
ing 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 him-
self 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 committeewomen—a spiritually-minded person, with a fine
show of collarbone and a pretty taste in champagne; liked it dry, you under-
stand, 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 res-
cued, 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 ob-
jectionable 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 com-
pany up into making a pleasant evening of it?
Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in won-
derful 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 hos-
pitable 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 hus-
band, and putting it in his clearheaded witty French way to the maiden aunt
of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the Ger-
man 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 com-
pany 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, grop-
ing 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-con-
trol, 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 ex-
tinguisher 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 rep-
resented 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 Moon-
stone 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 fol-
lowed; 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 Indi-
an, 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 in-
formed her that the exhibition was over. The Bouncers, indescribably disap-
pointed, 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 tonight is a very bad and clumsy imitation of it. Un-
less, 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 Hindu people are in concealing their feelings. There is a
mystery about their conduct that I can’t explain. They have doubly sacri-
ficed their caste—first, in crossing the sea; secondly, in disguising them-
selves 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. Frank-
lin, 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 some-
thing 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 experi-
ence 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 op-
portunity 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 be-
fore 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
tomorrow (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 sac-
red 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
tomorrow.”
“What about tonight, sir?” I asked. “Suppose the Indians come back?”
Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.
“The Indians won’t risk coming back tonight,” 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, tonight!”
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 per-
spiration, 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 Bur-
den 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 re-
served for some person with a livelier faith.
I was far on with my second pipe, and still lost in admiration of that won-
derful 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. God-
frey 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 exper-
ience 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 lurk-
ing 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.
 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-wa-
ter. 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
tonight?”
Miss Rachel was in high good spirits, just in that humour for talking non-
sense, 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 cab-
inet 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 tonight?” 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
tomorrow 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 pic-
ture. 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 tomorrow. 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 upstairs, that I ventured to advise his having a drop of brandy-and-water,
by way of nightcap. 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 cer-
tainly 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 upstairs 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 un-
buckled 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 be-
hind me.
I turned about, and there was Penelope flying down after me like mad.
“Father!” she screamed, “come upstairs, 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 dressing-gown
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 sitting-room, 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 her 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 bewilder-
ment, 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) ex-
actly 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 cabin-
et 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 bedroom door.
My lady answered the knock, and closed the door behind her. The mo-
ment 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. Frank-
lin. “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 perplex-
ities 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 dis-
trust 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 daugh-
ter 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 con-
soler-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 dis-
tress 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 re-
turned, 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. Su-
perintendent 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 Indi-
ans showed that they had not so much as attempted to leave the town. Fur-
ther 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 suspi-
cion 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 ignor-
antly done something (I forget what) in the town, which barely brought
them within the operation of the law. Every human institution (justice in-
cluded) will stretch a little, if you only pull it the right way. The worthy ma-
gistrate 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 po-
lice, as they went by, that the investigation was hopeless, before the invest-
igation 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 Superin-
tendent decided to begin by examining the boudoir, and, that done, to exam-
ine 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 dis-
tracted on the spot. They bounced out of their corners, whisked upstairs 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 downstairs 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 obedi-
ence, 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 start-
ing. “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. Police-
man!—and if father can stand there and hear me accused of falsehood and
thieving, and my own bedroom 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 foot-
ing together. The questions and answers went swimmingly, and ended in
nothing worth mentioning. My daughter had seen Miss Rachel put the Dia-
mond 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 men-
tioned 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 ex-
perienced 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 diffi-
culty, whispered to me: “That man will be of no earthly use to us. Superin-
tendent 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, appar-
ently, 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 bedroom was suddenly opened. After having denied herself to every-
body, 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 expres-
sion. 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 bedroom, wild
and angry, with fierce eyes and flaming cheeks. Mr. Superintendent once
more attempted to question her. She turned round on him at her bedroom
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 dis-
tressed me to see my young lady forget herself—even with a police-of-
ficer—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 con-
duct than words can tell. Taking what she had said at her bedroom 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 ter-
race 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. Frank-
lin’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 deadlock about Miss Rachel—and at a deadlock
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 approach-
ing the condition of a superintendent at his wits’ end.
Having ferreted about all over the “boudoir,” without making any discov-
eries 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 foot-
man, 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 them-
selves, 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 suspi-
cions to range over, he tried to narrow it by asking about the servants’ char-
acters 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 trust-
worthy girl. It was the Superintendent’s business to discover reason for sus-
pecting 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 char-
acters,” 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 readi-
ness 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 pleas-
ant eye to see. I laughed it off with poor Penelope, as something too ridicu-
lous 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 ser-
vants 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 con-
sider 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 do-
mestic 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 upstairs,” 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-ser-
vants 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 convey-
ance 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 upper-
most 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 fath-
er. 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 bedroom,” 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 sup-
pose she was afraid of your catching her here. At any rate, she changed col-
our, 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 be-
cause 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 in-
terest 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-ser-
vants 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 tele-
gram, 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 upstairs 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 be-
haviour 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 con-
clusion. Still sticking to his first text, namely, that somebody in the house
had stolen the jewel, our experienced officer was now of the 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 volun-
teered to take the Superintendent back to the town, from which he could
telegraph to London as easily as from our station. Mr. Godfrey, still de-
voutly 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 muddleheaded
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 Spear-
man. 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 oppor-
tunity failed to present itself. She only came downstairs again at teatime.
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 believ-
ing that she was to be forthwith tried, sentenced, and transported for theft.
The other women took to their Bibles and hymnbooks, 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 un-
accustomed 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 dinnertime, the two gentlemen came back from Friz-
inghall, 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 mat-
ter now rested till tomorrow came.
So much for the history of the day that followed the birthday. Not a glim-
mer 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.
 XII

The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened. With the Friday morn-
ing 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 footpath 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 upstairs 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, rep-
resented him to be lightheaded—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 sus-
pense 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 ex-
pected 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, in-
stantly 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 car-
riage 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 be-
ing 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 hear-
ing 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 de-
cent 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 Ser-
geant 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 fam-
ily, 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 conservator-
ies, 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 ap-
pearance 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 Ser-
geant, 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 Ser-
geant 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 cor-
rect 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 quick-
er 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 garden-
er. “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. See-
grave, 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 charac-
ter of an Ass—I can only say that I strongly suspected it.
 I led the way upstairs. The Sergeant went softly all over the Indian cabin-
et 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 paint-
ing 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 pet-
ticoats 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 ad-
dressing 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 experi-
ence 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.”
“Today is Friday,” said Sergeant Cuff, addressing himself to Superintend-
ent Seegrave. “Let us reckon back, sir. At three on the Wednesday after-
noon, 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 el-
even on Thursday morning you held your inquiry here. Take three from el-
even, and eight remains. That paint had been eight hours dry, Mr. Superin-
tendent, when you supposed that the women-servants’ petticoats smeared
it.”
First knockdown 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 mo-
ment, 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 extraordin-
ary 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 be-
fore 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 con-
sequence 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 Ver-
inder’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 bedrooms, 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 bedrooms. It took a pretty stiff exertion of my au-
thority, as chief, to prevent the whole of the female household from follow-
ing me and Penelope upstairs, 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, noth-
ing 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 discover-
ies 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 ac-
count for having been in this room, and smeared the paint, between mid-
night 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 dis-
posal, in case I want him—and allow me to wish you good morning.”
Superintendent Seegrave’s respect for the Sergeant was great; but his re-
spect 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. Superin-
tendent, 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 con-
sequence of your head being too high to see it.” Having returned his broth-
er-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 whist-
ling 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” evid-
ently 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 bedroom door. After a little he roused himself, nod-
ded 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 Ser-
geant 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.”
 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 com-
manded 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 con-
sult. 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 upstairs in Miss Ver-
inder’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 mis-
tress, 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 Ser-
geant. “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 them-
selves 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 investiga-
tion 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 deadlock. 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, interrupt-
ing 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 lady-
ship 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 mis-
tress, 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 goodbye, 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 upstairs 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 inconveni-
ence, sir, for a mere formality; but the example of their betters will do won-
ders 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 examina-
tion, 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 pre-
sume 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 presump-
tion that it has got the paint-stain on it, and that it has been purposely made
away with, yesterday or today, by the person owning it. Superintendent See-
grave,” added the Sergeant, turning to me, “pointed the attention of the wo-
men-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 re-
mained 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 suffi-
ciently 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 sus-
pect 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 upstairs, and ask for Miss Rachel’s
keys. The Sergeant was beforehand 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 re-
mark 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, be-
cause 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 ami-
able 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 some-
thing 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 Lon-
don 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.”
 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 bet-
ter understanding of what is now to come, I may add to this, that the shrub-
bery 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. Nev-
er 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 ward-
robes. 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 in-
stance? or unexpectedly taken ill?”
I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman’s sudden illness at yester-
day’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 Ros-
anna 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 any-
thing 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 shak-
ing 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 comprehen-
sion! 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. Re-
port, 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 re-
spectable 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 hardworking 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—look-
ing 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 sus-
picions, 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 re-
mained 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 ser-
vants’ 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 teapot, 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 be-
lieved 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 upstairs, 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 bedroom
in the month of June!) at four in the morning. All this they had told Ser-
geant 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 teapot), their readiness
to let their tongues run to any length on the subject of the Sergeant’s ungra-
cious behaviour to them.
Having had some experience of the great Cuff’s roundabout 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 unad-
visable 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 unaccount-
able 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 remem-
ber 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 im-
possible 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, mention-
ing particularly what my lady’s maid and the housemaid 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 crack-
ling 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 delic-
ate ground?”
“It isn’t the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I find myself tread-
ing 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 unac-
countable 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 ac-
count. For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your detect-
ive 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.
 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 de-
termined 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 evid-
ence 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 Ros-
anna 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 melan-
choly 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, to-
wards 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 al-
ways 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 ser-
vants 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, Super-
intendent 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 nightgown, or petticoat, or whatnot,
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 pos-
sibly 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 seashore 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 fol-
lowing another person along your seacoast, 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 tonight 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 sud-
denly 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 de-
clare 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 al-
most 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. Frank-
lin 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 wait-
ing, 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 foot-
steps 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 walk-
ing 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 Ser-
geant. “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—pur-
posely 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 foot-
step 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 some-
thing 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 inhab-
ited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grownup chil-
dren, 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 occa-
sionally 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 mis-
shapen 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
upstairs. 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, under-
ground way) to the loss of the Moonstone, the spitefulness of our first
housemaid, and the hard behaviour of the women-servants generally to-
wards 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 won-
derful 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 warn-
ing, 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 harm-
less 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, ex-
cept 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 upstairs 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 upstairs 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 some-
where, 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 establish-
ment, 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, sud-
denly 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 re-
spects?” 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 tomorrow 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 rub-
bish, 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 suchlike, 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 in-
debted 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 comfort-
ing 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, tonight, 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 con-
venience. 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 nightgown? 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 tomorrow, 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 re-
turned. Yes. When? Nearly an hour since. What had she done? She had
gone upstairs 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 par-
ticular window, on the bedroom 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 back-
wards 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 Ser-
geant 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 in-
timation 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 it-
self up somehow in my head with the report we had heard from the police-
man, 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 tonight. 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.
 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 tomorrow morning.”
Sergeant Cuff looked at me. I made a step forward to speak to my mis-
tress—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 Ver-
inder’s actions. All I can ask you to do is to put off her departure, if pos-
sible, till later in the day. I must go to Frizinghall myself tomorrow morn-
ing—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—unexpec-
tedly—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 tonight.”
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 kind-
ness 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, be-
cause 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 tomorrow,” said the Sergeant. “If Miss Ver-
inder refuses to put off her visit to her aunt (which you will find Miss Ver-
inder will do), I shall be obliged to lay the whole case before your mistress
tomorrow. 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 Ser-
geant 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 my-
self. 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 an-
swer 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 pre-
vented 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 Frizing-
hall 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 under-
stand 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 re-
marked, “there is much to be said on both sides.” In the temporary lull pro-
duced 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 gen-
tleman’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 See-
grave 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
tomorrow 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 want-
ing 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 ser-
vants’ 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 ac-
cidentally, 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 miser-
able 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 at-
tached 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 confid-
ence. 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 morti-
fied her without meaning it! She suddenly turned away. ‘He looks at the bil-
liard 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 inno-
cence. 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 some-
thing or destroying something, in private. And she had been at the Shiver-
ing 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 li-
brary, 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 Ser-
geant gone of his own accord to the bedchamber that was prepared for him?
I went upstairs 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 hon-
estly 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 tonight. 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.
 XVII

Nothing happened in the night; and (I am happy to add) no attempt at com-

munication 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 po-
litely wishing Mr. Franklin good morning.
“I have something to say to you, sir,” answered the Sergeant, “on the sub-
ject 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 dis-
tance,” 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 coattails 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 in-
terest 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. In-
stead 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 li-
quor, 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 lookout 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 be-
fore 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 Moon-
stone, 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 Ser-
geant. “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. Frank-
lin 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 fit-
test 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 some-
thing 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 oth-
er 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 con-
dition 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 dir-
ected 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, today.”
“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, sweep-
ing 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 re-
member) to the chill he had caught on the night of the dinner-party. His as-
sistant—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 oth-
er vexations this new trouble. Still, there was a necessity for doing some-
thing. 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 im-
possible 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 out-
side the house. I knew the voice directly. Sergeant Cuff had returned from
Frizinghall.
 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 my-
self, however, I felt an interest that there was no resisting. My sense of dig-
nity 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 Indi-
ans 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 mil-
liners’ or tailors’ shops; and she bought nothing at Maltby’s but a piece of
long cloth. She was very particular in choosing a certain quality. As to
quantity, she bought enough to make a nightgown.”
“Whose nightgown?” I asked.
“Her own, to be sure. Between twelve and three, on the Thursday morn-
ing, she must have slipped down to your young lady’s room, to settle the
hiding of the Moonstone while all the rest of you were in bed. In going back
to her own room, her nightgown must have brushed the wet paint on the
door. She couldn’t wash out the stain; and she couldn’t safely destroy the
nightgown without first providing another like it, to make the inventory of
her linen complete.”
“What proves that it was Rosanna’s nightgown?” I objected.
“The material she bought for making the substitute dress,” answered the
Sergeant. “If it had been Miss Verinder’s nightgown, she would have had to
buy lace, and frilling, and Lord knows what besides; and she wouldn’t have
had time to make it in one night. Plain long cloth means a plain servant’s
nightgown. No, no, Mr. Betteredge—all that is clear enough. The pinch of
the question is—why, after having provided the substitute dress, does she
hide the smeared nightgown, instead of destroying it? If the girl won’t
speak out, there is only one way of settling the difficulty. The hiding-place
at the Shivering Sand must be searched—and the true state of the case will
be discovered there.”
“How are you to find the place?” I inquired.
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said the Sergeant—“but that’s a secret
which I mean to keep to myself.”
(Not to irritate your curiosity, as he irritated mine, I may here inform you
that he had come back from Frizinghall provided with a search-warrant. His
experience in such matters told him that Rosanna was in all probability car-
rying about her a memorandum of the hiding-place, to guide her, in case she
returned to it, under changed circumstances and after a lapse of time. Pos-
sessed of this memorandum, the Sergeant would be furnished with all that
he could desire.)
“Now, Mr. Betteredge,” he went on, “suppose we drop speculation, and
get to business. I told Joyce to have an eye on Rosanna. Where is Joyce?”
Joyce was the Frizinghall policeman, who had been left by Superintend-
ent Seegrave at Sergeant Cuff’s disposal. The clock struck two, as he put
the question; and, punctual to the moment, the carriage came round to take
Miss Rachel to her aunt’s.
 “One thing at a time,” said the Sergeant, stopping me as I was about to
send in search of Joyce. “I must attend to Miss Verinder first.”
As the rain was still threatening, it was the close carriage that had been
appointed to take Miss Rachel to Frizinghall. Sergeant Cuff beckoned
Samuel to come down to him from the rumble behind.
“You will see a friend of mine waiting among the trees, on this side of the
lodge gate,” he said. “My friend, without stopping the carriage, will get up
into the rumble with you. You have nothing to do but to hold your tongue,
and shut your eyes. Otherwise, you will get into trouble.”
With that advice, he sent the footman back to his place. What Samuel
thought I don’t know. It was plain, to my mind, that Miss Rachel was to be
privately kept in view from the time when she left our house—if she did
leave it. A watch set on my young lady! A spy behind her in the rumble of
her mother’s carriage! I could have cut my own tongue out for having for-
gotten myself so far as to speak to Sergeant Cuff.
The first person to come out of the house was my lady. She stood aside,
on the top step, posting herself there to see what happened. Not a word did
she say, either to the Sergeant or to me. With her lips closed, and her arms
folded in the light garden cloak which she had wrapped round her on com-
ing into the air, there she stood, as still as a statue, waiting for her daughter
to appear.
In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs—very nicely dressed in
some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped her
tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart little straw
hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She had primrose-col-
oured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin. Her beautiful black
hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy
shells—they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out
to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every move-
ment she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was altered in
her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer
than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their
smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and
sudden manner on the cheek. She said, “Try to forgive me, mamma”—and
then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that she tore it. In
another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed into the car-
riage as if it was a hiding-place.
 Sergeant Cuff was just as quick on his side. He put Samuel back, and
stood before Miss Rachel, with the open carriage-door in his hand, at the
instant when she settled herself in her place.
“What do you want?” says Miss Rachel, from behind her veil.
“I want to say one word to you, miss,” answered the Sergeant, “before
you go. I can’t presume to stop your paying a visit to your aunt. I can only
venture to say that your leaving us, as things are now, puts an obstacle in
the way of my recovering your Diamond. Please to understand that; and
now decide for yourself whether you go or stay.”
Miss Rachel never even answered him. “Drive on, James!” she called out
to the coachman.
Without another word, the Sergeant shut the carriage-door. Just as he
closed it, Mr. Franklin came running down the steps. “Goodbye, Rachel,”
he said, holding out his hand.
“Drive on!” cried Miss Rachel, louder than ever, and taking no more no-
tice of Mr. Franklin than she had taken of Sergeant Cuff.
Mr. Franklin stepped back thunderstruck, as well he might be. The coach-
man, not knowing what to do, looked towards my lady, still standing im-
movable on the top step. My lady, with anger and sorrow and shame all
struggling together in her face, made him a sign to start the horses, and then
turned back hastily into the house. Mr. Franklin, recovering the use of his
speech, called after her, as the carriage drove off, “Aunt! you were quite
right. Accept my thanks for all your kindness—and let me go.”
My lady turned as though to speak to him. Then, as if distrusting herself,
waved her hand kindly. “Let me see you, before you leave us, Franklin,”
she said, in a broken voice—and went on to her own room.
“Do me a last favour, Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, turning to me, with
the tears in his eyes. “Get me away to the train as soon as you can!”
He too went his way into the house. For the moment, Miss Rachel had
completely unmanned him. Judge from that, how fond he must have been of
her!
Sergeant Cuff and I were left face to face, at the bottom of the steps. The
Sergeant stood with his face set towards a gap in the trees, commanding a
view of one of the windings of the drive which led from the house. He had
his hands in his pockets, and he was softly whistling “The Last Rose of
Summer” to himself.
 “There’s a time for everything,” I said savagely enough. “This isn’t a
time for whistling.”
At that moment, the carriage appeared in the distance, through the gap,
on its way to the lodge-gate. There was another man, besides Samuel,
plainly visible in the rumble behind.
“All right!” said the Sergeant to himself. He turned round to me. “It’s no
time for whistling, Mr. Betteredge, as you say. It’s time to take this business
in hand, now, without sparing anybody. We’ll begin with Rosanna Spear-
man. Where is Joyce?”
We both called for Joyce, and received no answer. I sent one of the
stable-boys to look for him.
“You heard what I said to Miss Verinder?” remarked the Sergeant, while
we were waiting. “And you saw how she received it? I tell her plainly that
her leaving us will be an obstacle in the way of my recovering her Dia-
mond—and she leaves, in the face of that statement! Your young lady has
got a travelling companion in her mother’s carriage, Mr. Betteredge—and
the name of it is, the Moonstone.”
I said nothing. I only held on like death to my belief in Miss Rachel.
The stable-boy came back, followed—very unwillingly, as it appeared to
me—by Joyce.
“Where is Rosanna Spearman?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
“I can’t account for it, sir,” Joyce began; “and I am very sorry. But some-
how or other—”
“Before I went to Frizinghall,” said the Sergeant, cutting him short, “I
told you to keep your eyes on Rosanna Spearman, without allowing her to
discover that she was being watched. Do you mean to tell me that you have
let her give you the slip?”
“I am afraid, sir,” says Joyce, beginning to tremble, “that I was perhaps a
little too careful not to let her discover me. There are such a many passages
in the lower parts of this house—”
“How long is it since you missed her?”
“Nigh on an hour since, sir.”
“You can go back to your regular business at Frizinghall,” said the Ser-
geant, speaking just as composedly as ever, in his usual quiet and dreary
way. “I don’t think your talents are at all in our line, Mr. Joyce. Your
present form of employment is a trifle beyond you. Good morning.”
 The man slunk off. I find it very difficult to describe how I was affected
by the discovery that Rosanna Spearman was missing. I seemed to be in
fifty different minds about it, all at the same time. In that state, I stood star-
ing at Sergeant Cuff—and my powers of language quite failed me.
“No, Mr. Betteredge,” said the Sergeant, as if he had discovered the up-
permost thought in me, and was picking it out to be answered, before all the
rest. “Your young friend, Rosanna, won’t slip through my fingers so easy as
you think. As long as I know where Miss Verinder is, I have the means at
my disposal of tracing Miss Verinder’s accomplice. I prevented them from
communicating last night. Very good. They will get together at Frizinghall,
instead of getting together here. The present inquiry must be simply shifted
(rather sooner than I had anticipated) from this house, to the house at which
Miss Verinder is visiting. In the meantime, I’m afraid I must trouble you to
call the servants together again.”
I went round with him to the servants’ hall. It is very disgraceful, but it is
not the less true, that I had another attack of the detective-fever, when he
said those last words. I forgot that I hated Sergeant Cuff. I seized him con-
fidentially by the arm. I said, “For goodness’ sake, tell us what you are go-
ing to do with the servants now?”
The great Cuff stood stock still, and addressed himself in a kind of mel-
ancholy rapture to the empty air.
“If this man,” said the Sergeant (apparently meaning me), “only under-
stood the growing of roses he would be the most completely perfect charac-
ter on the face of creation!” After that strong expression of feeling, he
sighed, and put his arm through mine. “This is how it stands,” he said, drop-
ping down again to business. “Rosanna has done one of two things. She has
either gone direct to Frizinghall (before I can get there), or she has gone
first to visit her hiding-place at the Shivering Sand. The first thing to find
out is, which of the servants saw the last of her before she left the house.”
On instituting this inquiry, it turned out that the last person who had set
eyes on Rosanna was Nancy, the kitchenmaid.
Nancy had seen her slip out with a letter in her hand, and stop the
butcher’s man who had just been delivering some meat at the back door.
Nancy had heard her ask the man to post the letter when he got back to
Frizinghall. The man had looked at the address, and had said it was a round-
about way of delivering a letter directed to Cobb’s Hole, to post it at Friz-
inghall—and that, moreover, on a Saturday, which would prevent the letter
from getting to its destination until Monday morning, Rosanna had
answered that the delivery of the letter being delayed till Monday was of no
importance. The only thing she wished to be sure of was that the man would
do what she told him. The man had promised to do it, and had driven away.
Nancy had been called back to her work in the kitchen. And no other person
had seen anything afterwards of Rosanna Spearman.
“Well?” I asked, when we were alone again.
“Well,” says the Sergeant. “I must go to Frizinghall.”
“About the letter, sir?”
“Yes. The memorandum of the hiding-place is in that letter. I must see the
address at the post-office. If it is the address I suspect, I shall pay our friend,
Mrs. Yolland, another visit on Monday next.”
I went with the Sergeant to order the pony-chaise. In the stable-yard we
got a new light thrown on the missing girl.
 XIX

The news of Rosanna’s disappearance had, as it appeared, spread among the

out-of-door servants. They too had made their inquiries; and they had just
laid hands on a quick little imp, nicknamed “Duffy”—who was occasion-
ally employed in weeding the garden, and who had seen Rosanna Spearman
as lately as half-an-hour since. Duffy was certain that the girl had passed
him in the fir-plantation, not walking, but running, in the direction of the
seashore.
“Does this boy know the coast hereabouts?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
“He has been born and bred on the coast,” I answered.
“Duffy!” says the Sergeant, “do you want to earn a shilling? If you do,
come along with me. Keep the pony-chaise ready, Mr. Betteredge, till I
come back.”
He started for the Shivering Sand, at a rate that my legs (though well
enough preserved for my time of life) had no hope of matching. Little
Duffy, as the way is with the young savages in our parts when they are in
high spirits, gave a howl, and trotted off at the Sergeant’s heels.
Here again, I find it impossible to give anything like a clear account of
the state of my mind in the interval after Sergeant Cuff had left us. A curi-
ous and stupefying restlessness got possession of me. I did a dozen different
needless things in and out of the house, not one of which I can now remem-
ber. I don’t even know how long it was after the Sergeant had gone to the
sands, when Duffy came running back with a message for me. Sergeant
Cuff had given the boy a leaf torn out of his pocketbook, on which was
written in pencil, “Send me one of Rosanna Spearman’s boots, and be quick
about it.”
I despatched the first woman-servant I could find to Rosanna’s room; and
I sent the boy back to say that I myself would follow him with the boot.
 This, I am well aware, was not the quickest way to take of obeying the
directions which I had received. But I was resolved to see for myself what
new mystification was going on before I trusted Rosanna’s boot in the Ser-
geant’s hands. My old notion of screening the girl, if I could, seemed to
have come back on me again, at the eleventh hour. This state of feeling (to
say nothing of the detective-fever) hurried me off, as soon as I had got the
boot, at the nearest approach to a run which a man turned seventy can reas-
onably hope to make.
As I got near the shore, the clouds gathered black, and the rain came
down, drifting in great white sheets of water before the wind. I heard the
thunder of the sea on the sandbank at the mouth of the bay. A little further
on, I passed the boy crouching for shelter under the lee of the sand hills.
Then I saw the raging sea, and the rollers tumbling in on the sandbank, and
the driven rain sweeping over the waters like a flying garment, and the yel-
low wilderness of the beach with one solitary black figure standing on it—
the figure of Sergeant Cuff.
He waved his hand towards the north, when he first saw me. “Keep on
that side!” he shouted. “And come on down here to me!”
I went down to him, choking for breath, with my heart leaping as if it was
like to leap out of me. I was past speaking. I had a hundred questions to put
to him; and not one of them would pass my lips. His face frightened me. I
saw a look in his eyes which was a look of horror. He snatched the boot out
of my hand, and set it in a footmark on the sand, bearing south from us as
we stood, and pointing straight towards the rocky ledge called the South
Spit. The mark was not yet blurred out by the rain—and the girl’s boot fitted
it to a hair.
The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word.
I caught at his arm, and tried to speak to him, and failed as I had failed
when I tried before. He went on, following the footsteps down and down to
where the rocks and the sand joined. The South Spit was just awash with
the flowing tide; the waters heaved over the hidden face of the Shivering
Sand. Now this way and now that, with an obstinate patience that was
dreadful to see, Sergeant Cuff tried the boot in the footsteps, and always
found it pointing the same way—straight to the rocks. Hunt as he might, no
sign could he find anywhere of the footsteps walking from them.
He gave it up at last. Still keeping silence, he looked again at me; and
then he looked out at the waters before us, heaving in deeper and deeper
over the quicksand. I looked where he looked—and I saw his thought in his
face. A dreadful dumb trembling crawled all over me on a sudden. I fell
upon my knees on the beach.
“She has been back at the hiding-place,” I heard the Sergeant say to him-
self. “Some fatal accident has happened to her on those rocks.”
The girl’s altered looks, and words, and actions—the numbed, deadened
way in which she listened to me, and spoke to me—when I had found her
sweeping the corridor but a few hours since, rose up in my mind, and
warned me, even as the Sergeant spoke, that his guess was wide of the
dreadful truth. I tried to tell him of the fear that had frozen me up. I tried to
say, “The death she has died, Sergeant, was a death of her own seeking.”
No! the words wouldn’t come. The dumb trembling held me in its grip. I
couldn’t feel the driving rain. I couldn’t see the rising tide. As in the vision
of a dream, the poor lost creature came back before me. I saw her again as I
had seen her in the past time—on the morning when I went to fetch her into
the house. I heard her again, telling me that the Shivering Sand seemed to
draw her to it against her will, and wondering whether her grave was wait-
ing for her there. The horror of it struck at me, in some unfathomable way,
through my own child. My girl was just her age. My girl, tried as Rosanna
was tried, might have lived that miserable life, and died this dreadful death.
The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of
the place where she had perished.
With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things about
me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw the menser-
vants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland, all running
down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm, calling out to know if
the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the Sergeant showed them the
evidence of the footmarks, and told them that a fatal accident must have
happened to her. He then picked out the fisherman from the rest, and put a
question to him, turning about again towards the sea: “Tell me,” he said.
“Could a boat have taken her off, in such weather as this, from those rocks
where her footmarks stop?”
The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sandbank, and to
the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on either
side of us.
“No boat that ever was built,” he answered, “could have got to her
through that.”
 Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the footmarks on the sand,
which the rain was now fast blurring out.
“There,” he said, “is the evidence that she can’t have left this place by
land. And here,” he went on, looking at the fisherman, “is the evidence that
she can’t have got away by sea.” He stopped, and considered for a minute.
“She was seen running towards this place, half an hour before I got here
from the house,” he said to Yolland. “Some time has passed since then. Call
it, altogether, an hour ago. How high would the water be, at that time, on
this side of the rocks?” He pointed to the south side—otherwise, the side
which was not filled up by the quicksand.
“As the tide makes today,” said the fisherman, “there wouldn’t have been
water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour since.”
Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.
“How much on this side?” he asked.
“Less still,” answered Yolland. “The Shivering Sand would have been
just awash, and no more.”
The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have
happened on the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that.
“No accident!” I told him. “When she came to this place, she came weary
of her life, to end it here.”
He started back from me. “How do you know?” he asked. The rest of
them crowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put
them back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had
shaken me; he said, “Let him alone a little.” Then he turned to Yolland, and
asked, “Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?” And
Yolland answered, “None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for ever.”
Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed himself to
me.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “I have a word to say to you about the young
woman’s death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit, there’s
a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. My question is—
why didn’t she strike that? If she slipped, by accident, from off the Spit, she
fell in where there’s foothold at the bottom, at a depth that would barely
cover her to the waist. She must have waded out, or jumped out, into the
Deeps beyond—or she wouldn’t be missing now. No accident, sir! The
Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And they have got her by her own
act.”
 After that testimony from a man whose knowledge was to be relied on,
the Sergeant was silent. The rest of us, like him, held our peace. With one
accord, we all turned back up the slope of the beach.
At the sand-hillocks we were met by the under-groom, running to us
from the house. The lad is a good lad, and has an honest respect for me. He
handed me a little note, with a decent sorrow in his face. “Penelope sent me
with this, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “She found it in Rosanna’s room.”
It was her last farewell word to the old man who had done his best—
thank God, always done his best—to befriend her.
“You have often forgiven me, Mr. Betteredge, in past times. When you
next see the Shivering Sand, try to forgive me once more. I have found my
grave where my grave was waiting for me. I have lived, and died, sir, grate-
ful for your kindness.”
There was no more than that. Little as it was, I hadn’t manhood enough
to hold up against it. Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and begin-
ning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it. I
burst out crying.
Sergeant Cuff took a step nearer to me—meaning kindly, I don’t doubt. I
shrank back from him. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “It’s the dread of you, that
has driven her to it.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, quietly. “But there will
be time enough to speak of it when we are indoors again.”
I followed the rest of them, with the help of the groom’s arm. Through
the driving rain we went back—to meet the trouble and the terror that were
waiting for us at the house.
 XX

Those in front had spread the news before us. We found the servants in a
state of panic. As we passed my lady’s door, it was thrown open violently
from the inner side. My mistress came out among us (with Mr. Franklin fol-
lowing, and trying vainly to compose her), quite beside herself with the hor-
ror of the thing.
“You are answerable for this!” she cried out, threatening the Sergeant
wildly with her hand. “Gabriel! give that wretch his money—and release
me from the sight of him!”
The Sergeant was the only one among us who was fit to cope with her—
being the only one among us who was in possession of himself.
“I am no more answerable for this distressing calamity, my lady, than you
are,” he said. “If, in half an hour from this, you still insist on my leaving the
house, I will accept your ladyship’s dismissal, but not your ladyship’s
money.”
It was spoken very respectfully, but very firmly at the same time—and it
had its effect on my mistress as well as on me. She suffered Mr. Franklin to
lead her back into the room. As the door closed on the two, the Sergeant,
looking about among the women-servants in his observant way, noticed that
while all the rest were merely frightened, Penelope was in tears. “When
your father has changed his wet clothes,” he said to her, “come and speak to
us, in your father’s room.”
Before the half-hour was out, I had got my dry clothes on, and had lent
Sergeant Cuff such change of dress as he required. Penelope came in to us
to hear what the Sergeant wanted with her. I don’t think I ever felt what a
good dutiful daughter I had, so strongly as I felt it at that moment. I took
her and sat her on my knee and I prayed God bless her. She hid her head on
my bosom, and put her arms round my neck—and we waited a little while
in silence. The poor dead girl must have been at the bottom of it, I think,
with my daughter and with me. The Sergeant went to the window, and stood
there looking out. I thought it right to thank him for considering us both in
this way—and I did.
People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others,
the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such priv-
ilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put
our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently
as may be. I don’t complain of this—I only notice it. Penelope and I were
ready for the Sergeant, as soon as the Sergeant was ready on his side. Asked
if she knew what had led her fellow-servant to destroy herself, my daughter
answered (as you will foresee) that it was for love of Mr. Franklin Blake.
Asked next, if she had mentioned this notion of hers to any other person,
Penelope answered, “I have not mentioned it, for Rosanna’s sake.” I felt it
necessary to add a word to this. I said, “And for Mr. Franklin’s sake, my
dear, as well. If Rosanna has died for love of him, it is not with his know-
ledge or by his fault. Let him leave the house today, if he does leave it,
without the useless pain of knowing the truth.” Sergeant Cuff said, “Quite
right,” and fell silent again; comparing Penelope’s notion (as it seemed to
me) with some other notion of his own which he kept to himself.
At the end of the half-hour, my mistress’s bell rang.
On my way to answer it, I met Mr. Franklin coming out of his aunt’s sit-
ting-room. He mentioned that her ladyship was ready to see Sergeant
Cuff—in my presence as before—and he added that he himself wanted to
say two words to the Sergeant first. On our way back to my room, he
stopped, and looked at the railway timetable in the hall.
“Are you really going to leave us, sir?” I asked. “Miss Rachel will surely
come right again, if you only give her time?”
“She will come right again,” answered Mr. Franklin, “when she hears
that I have gone away, and that she will see me no more.”
I thought he spoke in resentment of my young lady’s treatment of him.
But it was not so. My mistress had noticed, from the time when the police
first came into the house, that the bare mention of him was enough to set
Miss Rachel’s temper in a flame. He had been too fond of his cousin to like
to confess this to himself, until the truth had been forced on him, when she
drove off to her aunt’s. His eyes once opened in that cruel way which you
know of, Mr. Franklin had taken his resolution—the one resolution which a
man of any spirit could take—to leave the house.
What he had to say to the Sergeant was spoken in my presence. He de-
scribed her ladyship as willing to acknowledge that she had spoken over-
hastily. And he asked if Sergeant Cuff would consent—in that case—to ac-
cept his fee, and to leave the matter of the Diamond where the matter stood
now. The Sergeant answered, “No, sir. My fee is paid me for doing my duty.
I decline to take it, until my duty is done.”
“I don’t understand you,” says Mr. Franklin.
“I’ll explain myself, sir,” says the Sergeant. “When I came here, I under-
took to throw the necessary light on the matter of the missing Diamond. I
am now ready, and waiting to redeem my pledge. When I have stated the
case to Lady Verinder as the case now stands, and when I have told her
plainly what course of action to take for the recovery of the Moonstone, the
responsibility will be off my shoulders. Let her ladyship decide, after that,
whether she does, or does not, allow me to go on. I shall then have done
what I undertook to do—and I’ll take my fee.”
In those words Sergeant Cuff reminded us that, even in the Detective Po-
lice, a man may have a reputation to lose.
The view he took was so plainly the right one, that there was no more to
be said. As I rose to conduct him to my lady’s room, he asked if Mr. Frank-
lin wished to be present. Mr. Franklin answered, “Not unless Lady Verinder
desires it.” He added, in a whisper to me, as I was following the Sergeant
out, “I know what that man is going to say about Rachel; and I am too fond
of her to hear it, and keep my temper. Leave me by myself.”
I left him, miserable enough, leaning on the sill of my window, with his
face hidden in his hands and Penelope peeping through the door, longing to
comfort him. In Mr. Franklin’s place, I should have called her in. When you
are ill-used by one woman, there is great comfort in telling it to another—
because, nine times out of ten, the other always takes your side. Perhaps,
when my back was turned, he did call her in? In that case it is only doing
my daughter justice to declare that she would stick at nothing, in the way of
comforting Mr. Franklin Blake.
In the meantime, Sergeant Cuff and I proceeded to my lady’s room.
At the last conference we had held with her, we had found her not over
willing to lift her eyes from the book which she had on the table. On this
occasion there was a change for the better. She met the Sergeant’s eye with
an eye that was as steady as his own. The family spirit showed itself in
every line of her face; and I knew that Sergeant Cuff would meet his match,
when a woman like my mistress was strung up to hear the worst he could
say to her.
 XXI

The first words, when we had taken our seats, were spoken by my lady.
“Sergeant Cuff,” she said, “there was perhaps some excuse for the incon-
siderate manner in which I spoke to you half an hour since. I have no wish,
however, to claim that excuse. I say, with perfect sincerity, that I regret it, if
I wronged you.”
The grace of voice and manner with which she made him that atonement
had its due effect on the Sergeant. He requested permission to justify him-
self—putting his justification as an act of respect to my mistress. It was im-
possible, he said, that he could be in any way responsible for the calamity,
which had shocked us all, for this sufficient reason, that his success in
bringing his inquiry to its proper end depended on his neither saying nor do-
ing anything that could alarm Rosanna Spearman. He appealed to me to
testify whether he had, or had not, carried that object out. I could, and did,
bear witness that he had. And there, as I thought, the matter might have
been judiciously left to come to an end.
Sergeant Cuff, however, took it a step further, evidently (as you shall now
judge) with the purpose of forcing the most painful of all possible explana-
tions to take place between her ladyship and himself.
“I have heard a motive assigned for the young woman’s suicide,” said the
Sergeant, “which may possibly be the right one. It is a motive quite uncon-
nected with the case which I am conducting here. I am bound to add, how-
ever, that my own opinion points the other way. Some unbearable anxiety in
connection with the missing Diamond, has, I believe, driven the poor
creature to her own destruction. I don’t pretend to know what that unbear-
able anxiety may have been. But I think (with your ladyship’s permission) I
can lay my hand on a person who is capable of deciding whether I am right
or wrong.”
 “Is the person now in the house?” my mistress asked, after waiting a
little.
“The person has left the house, my lady.”
That answer pointed as straight to Miss Rachel as straight could be. A
silence dropped on us which I thought would never come to an end. Lord!
how the wind howled, and how the rain drove at the window, as I sat there
waiting for one or other of them to speak again!
“Be so good as to express yourself plainly,” said my lady. “Do you refer
to my daughter?”
“I do,” said Sergeant Cuff, in so many words.
My mistress had her chequebook on the table when we entered the
room—no doubt to pay the Sergeant his fee. She now put it back in the
drawer. It went to my heart to see how her poor hand trembled—the hand
that had loaded her old servant with benefits; the hand that, I pray God, may
take mine, when my time comes, and I leave my place for ever!
“I had hoped,” said my lady, very slowly and quietly, “to have recom-
pensed your services, and to have parted with you without Miss Verinder’s
name having been openly mentioned between us as it has been mentioned
now. My nephew has probably said something of this, before you came into
my room?”
“Mr. Blake gave his message, my lady. And I gave Mr. Blake a reason—”
“It is needless to tell me your reason. After what you have just said, you
know as well as I do that you have gone too far to go back. I owe it to my-
self, and I owe it to my child, to insist on your remaining here, and to insist
on your speaking out.”
The Sergeant looked at his watch.
“If there had been time, my lady,” he answered, “I should have preferred
writing my report, instead of communicating it by word of mouth. But, if
this inquiry is to go on, time is of too much importance to be wasted in writ-
ing. I am ready to go into the matter at once. It is a very painful matter for
me to speak of, and for you to hear—”
There my mistress stopped him once more.
“I may possibly make it less painful to you, and to my good servant and
friend here,” she said, “if I set the example of speaking boldly, on my side.
You suspect Miss Verinder of deceiving us all, by secreting the Diamond for
some purpose of her own? Is that true?”
“Quite true, my lady.”
 “Very well. Now, before you begin, I have to tell you, as Miss Verinder’s
mother, that she is absolutely incapable of doing what you suppose her to
have done. Your knowledge of her character dates from a day or two since.
My knowledge of her character dates from the beginning of her life. State
your suspicion of her as strongly as you please—it is impossible that you
can offend me by doing so. I am sure, beforehand, that (with all your exper-
ience) the circumstances have fatally misled you in this case. Mind! I am in
possession of no private information. I am as absolutely shut out of my
daughter’s confidence as you are. My one reason for speaking positively, is
the reason you have heard already. I know my child.”
She turned to me, and gave me her hand. I kissed it in silence. “You may
go on,” she said, facing the Sergeant again as steadily as ever.
Sergeant Cuff bowed. My mistress had produced but one effect on him.
His hatchet-face softened for a moment, as if he was sorry for her. As to
shaking him in his own conviction, it was plain to see that she had not
moved him by a single inch. He settled himself in his chair; and he began
his vile attack on Miss Rachel’s character in these words:
“I must ask your ladyship,” he said, “to look this matter in the face, from
my point of view as well as from yours. Will you please to suppose yourself
coming down here, in my place, and with my experience? and will you al-
low me to mention very briefly what that experience has been?”
My mistress signed to him that she would do this. The Sergeant went on:
“For the last twenty years,” he said, “I have been largely employed in
cases of family scandal, acting in the capacity of confidential man. The one
result of my domestic practice which has any bearing on the matter now in
hand, is a result which I may state in two words. It is well within my experi-
ence, that young ladies of rank and position do occasionally have private
debts which they dare not acknowledge to their nearest relatives and
friends. Sometimes, the milliner and the jeweller are at the bottom of it.
Sometimes, the money is wanted for purposes which I don’t suspect in this
case, and which I won’t shock you by mentioning. Bear in mind what I have
said, my lady—and now let us see how events in this house have forced me
back on my own experience, whether I liked it or not!”
He considered with himself for a moment, and went on—with a horrid
clearness that obliged you to understand him; with an abominable justice
that favoured nobody.
 “My first information relating to the loss of the Moonstone,” said the Ser-
geant, “came to me from Superintendent Seegrave. He proved to my com-
plete satisfaction that he was perfectly incapable of managing the case. The
one thing he said which struck me as worth listening to, was this—that Miss
Verinder had declined to be questioned by him, and had spoken to him with
a perfectly incomprehensible rudeness and contempt. I thought this curi-
ous—but I attributed it mainly to some clumsiness on the Superintendent’s
part which might have offended the young lady. After that, I put it by in my
mind, and applied myself, single-handed, to the case. It ended, as you are
aware, in the discovery of the smear on the door, and in Mr. Franklin
Blake’s evidence satisfying me, that this same smear, and the loss of the
Diamond, were pieces of the same puzzle. So far, if I suspected anything, I
suspected that the Moonstone had been stolen, and that one of the servants
might prove to be the thief. Very good. In this state of things, what hap-
pens? Miss Verinder suddenly comes out of her room, and speaks to me. I
observe three suspicious appearances in that young lady. She is still viol-
ently agitated, though more than four-and-twenty hours have passed since
the Diamond was lost. She treats me as she has already treated Superintend-
ent Seegrave. And she is mortally offended with Mr. Franklin Blake. Very
good again. Here (I say to myself) is a young lady who has lost a valuable
jewel—a young lady, also, as my own eyes and ears inform me, who is of
an impetuous temperament. Under these circumstances, and with that char-
acter, what does she do? She betrays an incomprehensible resentment
against Mr. Blake, Mr. Superintendent, and myself—otherwise, the very
three people who have all, in their different ways, been trying to help her to
recover her lost jewel. Having brought my inquiry to that point—then, my
lady, and not till then, I begin to look back into my own mind for my own
experience. My own experience explains Miss Verinder’s otherwise incom-
prehensible conduct. It associates her with those other young ladies that I
know of. It tells me she has debts she daren’t acknowledge, that must be
paid. And it sets me asking myself, whether the loss of the Diamond may
not mean—that the Diamond must be secretly pledged to pay them. That is
the conclusion which my experience draws from plain facts. What does
your ladyship’s experience say against it?”
“What I have said already,” answered my mistress. “The circumstances
have misled you.”
 I said nothing on my side. Robinson Crusoe—God knows how—had got
into my muddled old head. If Sergeant Cuff had found himself, at that mo-
ment, transported to a desert island, without a man Friday to keep him com-
pany, or a ship to take him off—he would have found himself exactly where
I wished him to be! (Nota bene:—I am an average good Christian, when
you don’t push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you—which is a
great comfort—are, in this respect, much the same as I am.)
Sergeant Cuff went on:
“Right or wrong, my lady,” he said, “having drawn my conclusion, the
next thing to do was to put it to the test. I suggested to your ladyship the ex-
amination of all the wardrobes in the house. It was a means of finding the
article of dress which had, in all probability, made the smear; and it was a
means of putting my conclusion to the test. How did it turn out? Your lady-
ship consented; Mr. Blake consented; Mr. Ablewhite consented. Miss Ver-
inder alone stopped the whole proceeding by refusing point-blank. That res-
ult satisfied me that my view was the right one. If your ladyship and
Mr. Betteredge persist in not agreeing with me, you must be blind to what
happened before you this very day. In your hearing, I told the young lady
that her leaving the house (as things were then) would put an obstacle in the
way of my recovering her jewel. You saw yourselves that she drove off in
the face of that statement. You saw yourself that, so far from forgiving
Mr. Blake for having done more than all the rest of you to put the clue into
my hands, she publicly insulted Mr. Blake, on the steps of her mother’s
house. What do these things mean? If Miss Verinder is not privy to the sup-
pression of the Diamond, what do these things mean?”
This time he looked my way. It was downright frightful to hear him pil-
ing up proof after proof against Miss Rachel, and to know, while one was
longing to defend her, that there was no disputing the truth of what he said.
I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason. This enabled me to
hold firm to my lady’s view, which was my view also. This roused my spir-
it, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good
friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles
of the vexing sort. Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare
the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your
own good!
Finding that I made no remark, and that my mistress made no remark,
Sergeant Cuff proceeded. Lord! how it did enrage me to notice that he was
not in the least put out by our silence!
“There is the case, my lady, as it stands against Miss Verinder alone,” he
said. “The next thing is to put the case as it stands against Miss Verinder
and the deceased Rosanna Spearman taken together. We will go back for a
moment, if you please, to your daughter’s refusal to let her wardrobe be ex-
amined. My mind being made up, after that circumstance, I had two ques-
tions to consider next. First, as to the right method of conducting my in-
quiry. Second, as to whether Miss Verinder had an accomplice among the
female servants in the house. After carefully thinking it over, I determined
to conduct the inquiry in, what we should call at our office, a highly irregu-
lar manner. For this reason: I had a family scandal to deal with, which it
was my business to keep within the family limits. The less noise made, and
the fewer strangers employed to help me, the better. As to the usual course
of taking people in custody on suspicion, going before the magistrate, and
all the rest of it—nothing of the sort was to be thought of, when your lady-
ship’s daughter was (as I believed) at the bottom of the whole business. In
this case, I felt that a person of Mr. Betteredge’s character and position in
the house—knowing the servants as he did, and having the honour of the
family at heart—would be safer to take as an assistant than any other person
whom I could lay my hand on. I should have tried Mr. Blake as well—but
for one obstacle in the way. he saw the drift of my proceedings at a very
early date; and, with his interest in Miss Verinder, any mutual understand-
ing was impossible between him and me. I trouble your ladyship with these
particulars to show you that I have kept the family secret within the family
circle. I am the only outsider who knows it—and my professional existence
depends on holding my tongue.”
Here I felt that my professional existence depended on not holding my
tongue. To be held up before my mistress, in my old age, as a sort of
deputy-policeman, was, once again, more than my Christianity was strong
enough to bear.
“I beg to inform your ladyship,” I said, “that I never, to my knowledge,
helped this abominable detective business, in any way, from first to last; and
I summon Sergeant Cuff to contradict me, if he dares!”
Having given vent in those words, I felt greatly relieved. Her ladyship
honoured me by a little friendly pat on the shoulder. I looked with righteous
indignation at the Sergeant, to see what he thought of such a testimony as
that. The Sergeant looked back like a lamb, and seemed to like me better
than ever.
My lady informed him that he might continue his statement. “I under-
stand,” she said, “that you have honestly done your best, in what you be-
lieve to be my interest. I am ready to hear what you have to say next.”
“What I have to say next,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “relates to Rosanna
Spearman. I recognised the young woman, as your ladyship may remember,
when she brought the washing-book into this room. Up to that time I was
inclined to doubt whether Miss Verinder had trusted her secret to any one.
When I saw Rosanna, I altered my mind. I suspected her at once of being
privy to the suppression of the Diamond. The poor creature has met her
death by a dreadful end, and I don’t want your ladyship to think, now she’s
gone, that I was unduly hard on her. If this had been a common case of
thieving, I should have given Rosanna the benefit of the doubt just as freely
as I should have given it to any of the other servants in the house. Our ex-
perience of the Reformatory woman is, that when tried in service—and
when kindly and judiciously treated—they prove themselves in the majority
of cases to be honestly penitent, and honestly worthy of the pains taken
with them. But this was not a common case of thieving. It was a case—in
my mind—of a deeply planned fraud, with the owner of the Diamond at the
bottom of it. Holding this view, the first consideration which naturally
presented itself to me, in connection with Rosanna, was this: Would Miss
Verinder be satisfied (begging your ladyship’s pardon) with leading us all to
think that the Moonstone was merely lost? Or would she go a step further,
and delude us into believing that the Moonstone was stolen? In the latter
event there was Rosanna Spearman—with the character of a thief—ready to
her hand; the person of all others to lead your ladyship off, and to lead me
off, on a false scent.”
Was it possible (I asked myself) that he could put his case against Miss
Rachel and Rosanna in a more horrid point of view than this? It was pos-
sible, as you shall now see.
“I had another reason for suspecting the deceased woman,” he said,
“which appears to me to have been stronger still. Who would be the very
person to help Miss Verinder in raising money privately on the Diamond?
Rosanna Spearman. No young lady in Miss Verinder’s position could man-
age such a risky matter as that by herself. A go-between she must have, and
who so fit, I ask again, as Rosanna Spearman? Your ladyship’s deceased
housemaid was at the top of her profession when she was a thief. She had
relations, to my certain knowledge, with one of the few men in London (in
the money-lending line) who would advance a large sum on such a notable
jewel as the Moonstone, without asking awkward questions, or insisting on
awkward conditions. Bear this in mind, my lady; and now let me show you
how my suspicions have been justified by Rosanna’s own acts, and by the
plain inferences to be drawn from them.”
He thereupon passed the whole of Rosanna’s proceedings under review.
You are already as well acquainted with those proceedings as I am; and you
will understand how unanswerably this part of his report fixed the guilt of
being concerned in the disappearance of the Moonstone on the memory of
the poor dead girl. Even my mistress was daunted by what he said now. She
made him no answer when he had done. It didn’t seem to matter to the Ser-
geant whether he was answered or not. On he went (devil take him!), just as
steady as ever.
“Having stated the whole case as I understand it,” he said, “I have only to
tell your ladyship, now, what I propose to do next. I see two ways of bring-
ing this inquiry successfully to an end. One of those ways I look upon as a
certainty. The other, I admit, is a bold experiment, and nothing more. Your
ladyship shall decide. Shall we take the certainty first?”
My mistress made him a sign to take his own way, and choose for
himself.
“Thank you,” said the Sergeant. “We’ll begin with the certainty, as your
ladyship is so good as to leave it to me. Whether Miss Verinder remains at
Frizinghall, or whether she returns here, I propose, in either case, to keep a
careful watch on all her proceedings—on the people she sees, on the rides
and walks she may take, and on the letters she may write and receive.”
“What next?” asked my mistress.
“I shall next,” answered the Sergeant, “request your ladyship’s leave to
introduce into the house, as a servant in the place of Rosanna Spearman, a
woman accustomed to private inquiries of this sort, for whose discretion I
can answer.”
“What next?” repeated my mistress.
“Next,” proceeded the Sergeant, “and last, I propose to send one of my
brother-officers to make an arrangement with that moneylender in London,
whom I mentioned just now as formerly acquainted with Rosanna Spear-
man—and whose name and address, your ladyship may rely on it, have
been communicated by Rosanna to Miss Verinder. I don’t deny that the
course of action I am now suggesting will cost money, and consume time.
But the result is certain. We run a line round the Moonstone, and we draw
that line closer and closer till we find it in Miss Verinder’s possession, sup-
posing she decides to keep it. If her debts press, and she decides on sending
it away, then we have our man ready, and we meet the Moonstone on its ar-
rival in London.”
To hear her own daughter made the subject of such a proposal as this,
stung my mistress into speaking angrily for the first time.
“Consider your proposal declined, in every particular,” she said. “And go
on to your other way of bringing the inquiry to an end.”
“My other way,” said the Sergeant, going on as easy as ever, “is to try
that bold experiment to which I have alluded. I think I have formed a pretty
correct estimate of Miss Verinder’s temperament. She is quite capable (ac-
cording to my belief) of committing a daring fraud. But she is too hot and
impetuous in temper, and too little accustomed to deceit as a habit, to act
the hypocrite in small things, and to restrain herself under all provocations.
Her feelings, in this case, have repeatedly got beyond her control, at the
very time when it was plainly her interest to conceal them. It is on this pe-
culiarity in her character that I now propose to act. I want to give her a great
shock suddenly, under circumstances that will touch her to the quick. In
plain English, I want to tell Miss Verinder, without a word of warning, of
Rosanna’s death—on the chance that her own better feelings will hurry her
into making a clean breast of it. Does your ladyship accept that
alternative?”
My mistress astonished me beyond all power of expression. She
answered him on the instant:
“Yes; I do.”
“The pony-chaise is ready,” said the Sergeant. “I wish your ladyship
good morning.”
My lady held up her hand, and stopped him at the door.
“My daughter’s better feelings shall be appealed to, as you propose,” she
said. “But I claim the right, as her mother, of putting her to the test myself.
You will remain here, if you please; and I will go to Frizinghall.”
For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement, like
an ordinary man.
 My mistress rang the bell, and ordered her waterproof things. It was still
pouring with rain; and the close carriage had gone, as you know, with Miss
Rachel to Frizinghall. I tried to dissuade her ladyship from facing the sever-
ity of the weather. Quite useless! I asked leave to go with her, and hold the
umbrella. She wouldn’t hear of it. The pony-chaise came round, with the
groom in charge. “You may rely on two things,” she said to Sergeant Cuff,
in the hall. “I will try the experiment on Miss Verinder as boldly as you
could try it yourself. And I will inform you of the result, either personally
or by letter, before the last train leaves for London tonight.”
With that, she stepped into the chaise, and, taking the reins herself, drove
off to Frizinghall.
 XXII

My mistress having left us, I had leisure to think of Sergeant Cuff. I found
him sitting in a snug corner of the hall, consulting his memorandum book,
and curling up viciously at the corners of the lips.
“Making notes of the case?” I asked.
“No,” said the Sergeant. “Looking to see what my next professional en-
gagement is.”
“Oh!” I said. “You think it’s all over then, here?”
“I think,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “that Lady Verinder is one of the
cleverest women in England. I also think a rose much better worth looking
at than a diamond. Where is the gardener, Mr. Betteredge?”
There was no getting a word more out of him on the matter of the Moon-
stone. He had lost all interest in his own inquiry; and he would persist in
looking for the gardener. An hour afterwards, I heard them at high words in
the conservatory, with the dog-rose once more at the bottom of the dispute.

In the meantime, it was my business to find out whether Mr. Franklin per-
sisted in his resolution to leave us by the afternoon train. After having been
informed of the conference in my lady’s room, and of how it had ended, he
immediately decided on waiting to hear the news from Frizinghall. This
very natural alteration in his plans—which, with ordinary people, would
have led to nothing in particular—proved, in Mr. Franklin’s case, to have
one objectionable result. It left him unsettled, with a legacy of idle time on
his hands, and, in so doing, it let out all the foreign sides of his character,
one on the top of another, like rats out of a bag.
 Now as an Italian-Englishman, now as a German-Englishman, and now
as a French-Englishman, he drifted in and out of all the sitting-rooms in the
house, with nothing to talk of but Miss Rachel’s treatment of him; and with
nobody to address himself to but me. I found him (for example) in the li-
brary, sitting under the map of Modern Italy, and quite unaware of any other
method of meeting his troubles, except the method of talking about them. “I
have several worthy aspirations, Betteredge; but what am I to do with them
now? I am full of dormant good qualities, if Rachel would only have helped
me to bring them out!” He was so eloquent in drawing the picture of his
own neglected merits, and so pathetic in lamenting over it when it was
done, that I felt quite at my wits’ end how to console him, when it suddenly
occurred to me that here was a case for the wholesome application of a bit
of Robinson Crusoe. I hobbled out to my own room, and hobbled back with
that immortal book. Nobody in the library! The map of Modern Italy stared
at me; and I stared at the map of Modern Italy.
I tried the drawing-room. There was his handkerchief on the floor, to
prove that he had drifted in. And there was the empty room to prove that he
had drifted out again.
I tried the dining-room, and discovered Samuel with a biscuit and a glass
of sherry, silently investigating the empty air. A minute since, Mr. Franklin
had rung furiously for a little light refreshment. On its production, in a viol-
ent hurry, by Samuel, Mr. Franklin had vanished before the bell downstairs
had quite done ringing with the pull he had given to it.
I tried the morning-room, and found him at last. There he was at the win-
dow, drawing hieroglyphics with his finger in the damp on the glass.
“Your sherry is waiting for you, sir,” I said to him. I might as well have
addressed myself to one of the four walls of the room; he was down in the
bottomless deep of his own meditations, past all pulling up. “How do you
explain Rachel’s conduct, Betteredge?” was the only answer I received. Not
being ready with the needful reply, I produced Robinson Crusoe, in which I
am firmly persuaded some explanation might have been found, if we had
only searched long enough for it. Mr. Franklin shut up Robinson Crusoe,
and floundered into his German-English gibberish on the spot. “Why not
look into it?” he said, as if I had personally objected to looking into it.
“Why the devil lose your patience, Betteredge, when patience is all that’s
wanted to arrive at the truth? Don’t interrupt me. Rachel’s conduct is per-
fectly intelligible, if you will only do her the common justice to take the
Objective view first, and the Subjective view next, and the Objective-Sub-
jective view to wind up with. What do we know? We know that the loss of
the Moonstone, on Thursday morning last, threw her into a state of nervous
excitement, from which she has not recovered yet. Do you mean to deny the
Objective view, so far? Very well, then—don’t interrupt me. Now, being in
a state of nervous excitement, how are we to expect that she should behave
as she might otherwise have behaved to any of the people about her? Ar-
guing in this way, from within-outwards, what do we reach? We reach the
Subjective view. I defy you to controvert the Subjective view. Very well
then—what follows? Good Heavens! the Objective-Subjective explanation
follows, of course! Rachel, properly speaking, is not Rachel, but Somebody
Else. Do I mind being cruelly treated by Somebody Else? You are unreason-
able enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how
does it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English narrowness and
prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable. Where’s the
sherry?”
My head was by this time in such a condition, that I was not quite sure
whether it was my own head, or Mr. Franklin’s. In this deplorable state, I
contrived to do, what I take to have been, three Objective things. I got
Mr. Franklin his sherry; I retired to my own room; and I solaced myself
with the most composing pipe of tobacco I ever remember to have smoked
in my life.
Don’t suppose, however, that I was quit of Mr. Franklin on such easy
terms as these. Drifting again, out of the morning-room into the hall, he
found his way to the offices next, smelt my pipe, and was instantly re-
minded that he had been simple enough to give up smoking for Miss
Rachel’s sake. In the twinkling of an eye, he burst in on me with his cigar-
case, and came out strong on the one everlasting subject, in his neat, witty,
unbelieving, French way. “Give me a light, Betteredge. Is it conceivable
that a man can have smoked as long as I have without discovering that there
is a complete system for the treatment of women at the bottom of his cigar-
case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove it in two words. You choose a
cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you. What do you do upon that? You
throw it away and try another. Now observe the application! You choose a
woman, you try her, and she breaks your heart. Fool! take a lesson from
your cigar-case. Throw her away, and try another!”
 I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my own ex-
perience was dead against it. “In the time of the late Mrs. Betteredge,” I
said, “I felt pretty often inclined to try your philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But
the law insists on your smoking your cigar, sir, when you have once chosen
it.” I pointed that observation with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laugh-
ing—and we were as merry as crickets, until the next new side of his char-
acter turned up in due course. So things went on with my young master and
me; and so (while the Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the
roses) we two spent the interval before the news came back from
Frizinghall.

The pony-chaise returned a good half hour before I had ventured to expect
it. My lady had decided to remain for the present, at her sister’s house. The
groom brought two letters from his mistress; one addressed to Mr. Franklin,
and the other to me.
Mr. Franklin’s letter I sent to him in the library—into which refuge his
driftings had now taken him for the second time. My own letter, I read in
my own room. A cheque, which dropped out when I opened it, informed me
(before I had mastered the contents) that Sergeant Cuff’s dismissal from the
inquiry after the Moonstone was now a settled thing.
I sent to the conservatory to say that I wished to speak to the Sergeant
directly. He appeared, with his mind full of the gardener and the dog-rose,
declaring that the equal of Mr. Begbie for obstinacy never had existed yet,
and never would exist again. I requested him to dismiss such wretched tri-
fling as this from our conversation, and to give his best attention to a really
serious matter. Upon that he exerted himself sufficiently to notice the letter
in my hand. “Ah!” he said in a weary way, “you have heard from her lady-
ship. Have I anything to do with it, Mr. Betteredge?”
“You shall judge for yourself, Sergeant.” I thereupon read him the letter
(with my best emphasis and discretion), in the following words:

“My good Gabriel—I request that you will inform Sergeant

Cuff, that I have performed the promise I made to him; with
this result, so far as Rosanna Spearman is concerned. Miss Ver-
inder solemnly declares, that she has never spoken a word in
private to Rosanna, since that unhappy woman first entered my
 house. They never met, even accidentally, on the night when
the Diamond was lost; and no communication of any sort
whatever took place between them, from the Thursday morning
when the alarm was first raised in the house, to this present Sat-
urday afternoon, when Miss Verinder left us. After telling my
daughter suddenly, and in so many words, of Rosanna Spear-
man’s suicide—this is what has come of it.”

Having reached that point, I looked up, and asked Sergeant Cuff what he
thought of the letter, so far?
“I should only offend you if I expressed my opinion,” answered the Ser-
geant. “Go on, Mr. Betteredge,” he said, with the most exasperating resig-
nation, “go on.”
When I remembered that this man had had the audacity to complain of
our gardener’s obstinacy, my tongue itched to “go on” in other words than
my mistress’s. This time, however, my Christianity held firm. I proceeded
steadily with her ladyship’s letter:

“Having appealed to Miss Verinder in the manner which the

officer thought most desirable, I spoke to her next in the man-
ner which I myself thought most likely to impress her. On two
different occasions, before my daughter left my roof, I
privately warned her that she was exposing herself to suspicion
of the most unendurable and most degrading kind. I have now
told her, in the plainest terms, that my apprehensions have been
realised.
“Her answer to this, on her own solemn affirmation, is as
plain as words can be. In the first place, she owes no money
privately to any living creature. In the second place, the Dia-
mond is not now, and never has been, in her possession, since
she put it into her cabinet on Wednesday night.
“The confidence which my daughter has placed in me goes
no further than this. She maintains an obstinate silence, when I
ask her if she can explain the disappearance of the Diamond.
She refuses, with tears, when I appeal to her to speak out for
my sake. ‘The day will come when you will know why I am
careless about being suspected, and why I am silent even to
 you. I have done much to make my mother pity me—nothing
to make my mother blush for me.’ Those are my daughter’s
own words.
“After what has passed between the officer and me, I think—
stranger as he is—that he should be made acquainted with what
Miss Verinder has said, as well as you. Read my letter to him,
and then place in his hands the cheque which I enclose. In
resigning all further claim on his services, I have only to say
that I am convinced of his honesty and his intelligence; but I
am more firmly persuaded than ever, that the circumstances, in
this case, have fatally misled him.”

There the letter ended. Before presenting the cheque, I asked Sergeant
Cuff if he had any remark to make.
“It’s no part of my duty, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, “to make remarks
on a case, when I have done with it.”
I tossed the cheque across the table to him. “Do you believe in that part
of her ladyship’s letter?” I said, indignantly.
The Sergeant looked at the cheque, and lifted up his dismal eyebrows in
acknowledgment of her ladyship’s liberality.
“This is such a generous estimate of the value of my time,” he said, “that
I feel bound to make some return for it. I’ll bear in mind the amount in this
cheque, Mr. Betteredge, when the occasion comes round for remembering
it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Her ladyship has smoothed matters over for the present very cleverly,”
said the Sergeant. “But this family scandal is of the sort that bursts up again
when you least expect it. We shall have more detective-business on our
hands, sir, before the Moonstone is many months older.”
If those words meant anything, and if the manner in which he spoke them
meant anything—it came to this. My mistress’s letter had proved, to his
mind, that Miss Rachel was hardened enough to resist the strongest appeal
that could be addressed to her, and that she had deceived her own mother
(good God, under what circumstances!) by a series of abominable lies. How
other people, in my place, might have replied to the Sergeant, I don’t know.
I answered what he said in these plain terms:
 “Sergeant Cuff, I consider your last observation as an insult to my lady
and her daughter!”
“Mr. Betteredge, consider it as a warning to yourself, and you will be
nearer the mark.”
Hot and angry as I was, the infernal confidence with which he gave me
that answer closed my lips.
I walked to the window to compose myself. The rain had given over; and,
who should I see in the courtyard, but Mr. Begbie, the gardener, waiting
outside to continue the dog-rose controversy with Sergeant Cuff.
“My compliments to the Sairgent,” said Mr. Begbie, the moment he set
eyes on me. “If he’s minded to walk to the station, I’m agreeable to go with
him.”
“What!” cries the Sergeant, behind me, “are you not convinced yet?”
“The de’il a bit I’m convinced!” answered Mr. Begbie.
“Then I’ll walk to the station!” says the Sergeant.
“Then I’ll meet you at the gate!” says Mr. Begbie.
I was angry enough, as you know—but how was any man’s anger to hold
out against such an interruption as this? Sergeant Cuff noticed the change in
me, and encouraged it by a word in season. “Come! come!” he said, “why
not treat my view of the case as her ladyship treats it? Why not say, the cir-
cumstances have fatally misled me?”
To take anything as her ladyship took it was a privilege worth enjoying—
even with the disadvantage of its having been offered to me by Sergeant
Cuff. I cooled slowly down to my customary level. I regarded any other
opinion of Miss Rachel, than my lady’s opinion or mine, with a lofty con-
tempt. The only thing I could not do, was to keep off the subject of the
Moonstone! My own good sense ought to have warned me, I know, to let
the matter rest—but, there! the virtues which distinguish the present genera-
tion were not invented in my time. Sergeant Cuff had hit me on the raw,
and, though I did look down upon him with contempt, the tender place still
tingled for all that. The end of it was that I perversely led him back to the
subject of her ladyship’s letter. “I am quite satisfied myself,” I said. “But
never mind that! Go on, as if I was still open to conviction. You think Miss
Rachel is not to be believed on her word; and you say we shall hear of the
Moonstone again. Back your opinion, Sergeant,” I concluded, in an airy
way. “Back your opinion.”
 Instead of taking offence, Sergeant Cuff seized my hand, and shook it till
my fingers ached again.
“I declare to heaven,” says this strange officer solemnly, “I would take to
domestic service tomorrow, Mr. Betteredge, if I had a chance of being em-
ployed along with you! To say you are as transparent as a child, sir, is to pay
the children a compliment which nine out of ten of them don’t deserve.
There! there! we won’t begin to dispute again. You shall have it out of me
on easier terms than that. I won’t say a word more about her ladyship, or
about Miss Verinder—I’ll only turn prophet, for once in a way, and for your
sake. I have warned you already that you haven’t done with the Moonstone
yet. Very well. Now I’ll tell you, at parting, of three things which will hap-
pen in the future, and which, I believe, will force themselves on your atten-
tion, whether you like it or not.”
“Go on!” I said, quite unabashed, and just as airy as ever.
“First,” said the Sergeant, “you will hear something from the Yollands—
when the postman delivers Rosanna’s letter at Cobb’s Hole, on Monday
next.”
If he had thrown a bucket of cold water over me, I doubt if I could have
felt it much more unpleasantly than I felt those words. Miss Rachel’s asser-
tion of her innocence had left Rosanna’s conduct—the making the new
nightgown, the hiding the smeared nightgown, and all the rest of it—en-
tirely without explanation. And this had never occurred to me, till Sergeant
Cuff forced it on my mind all in a moment!
“In the second place,” proceeded the Sergeant, “you will hear of the three
Indians again. You will hear of them in the neighbourhood, if Miss Rachel
remains in the neighbourhood. You will hear of them in London, if Miss
Rachel goes to London.”
Having lost all interest in the three jugglers, and having thoroughly con-
vinced myself of my young lady’s innocence, I took this second prophecy
easily enough. “So much for two of the three things that are going to hap-
pen,” I said. “Now for the third!”
“Third, and last,” said Sergeant Cuff, “you will, sooner or later, hear
something of that moneylender in London, whom I have twice taken the
liberty of mentioning already. Give me your pocketbook, and I’ll make a
note for you of his name and address—so that there may be no mistake
about it if the thing really happens.”
 He wrote accordingly on a blank leaf—“Mr. Septimus Luker, Middlesex-
place, Lambeth, London.”
“There,” he said, pointing to the address, “are the last words, on the sub-
ject of the Moonstone, which I shall trouble you with for the present. Time
will show whether I am right or wrong. In the meanwhile, sir, I carry away
with me a sincere personal liking for you, which I think does honour to both
of us. If we don’t meet again before my professional retirement takes place,
I hope you will come and see me in a little house near London, which I
have got my eye on. There will be grass walks, Mr. Betteredge, I promise
you, in my garden. And as for the white moss rose—”
“The de’il a bit ye’ll get the white moss rose to grow, unless you bud him
on the dogue-rose first,” cried a voice at the window.
We both turned round. There was the everlasting Mr. Begbie, too eager
for the controversy to wait any longer at the gate. The Sergeant wrung my
hand, and darted out into the courtyard, hotter still on his side. “Ask him
about the moss rose, when he comes back, and see if I have left him a leg to
stand on!” cried the great Cuff, hailing me through the window in his turn.
“Gentlemen, both!” I answered, moderating them again as I had moderated
them once already.
“In the matter of the moss rose there is a great deal to be said on both
sides!” I might as well (as the Irish say) have whistled jigs to a milestone.
Away they went together, fighting the battle of the roses without asking or
giving quarter on either side. The last I saw of them, Mr. Begbie was shak-
ing his obstinate head, and Sergeant Cuff had got him by the arm like a pris-
oner in charge. Ah, well! well! I own I couldn’t help liking the Sergeant—
though I hated him all the time.
Explain that state of mind, if you can. You will soon be rid, now, of me
and my contradictions. When I have reported Mr. Franklin’s departure, the
history of the Saturday’s events will be finished at last. And when I have
next described certain strange things that happened in the course of the new
week, I shall have done my part of the story, and shall hand over the pen to
the person who is appointed to follow my lead. If you are as tired of reading
this narrative as I am of writing it—Lord, how we shall enjoy ourselves on
both sides a few pages further on!
 XXIII

I had kept the pony chaise ready, in case Mr. Franklin persisted in leaving
us by the train that night. The appearance of the luggage, followed down-
stairs by Mr. Franklin himself, informed me plainly enough that he had held
firm to a resolution for once in his life.
“So you have really made up your mind, sir?” I said, as we met in the
hall. “Why not wait a day or two longer, and give Miss Rachel another
chance?”
The foreign varnish appeared to have all worn off Mr. Franklin, now that
the time had come for saying goodbye. Instead of replying to me in words,
he put the letter which her ladyship had addressed to him into my hand. The
greater part of it said over again what had been said already in the other
communication received by me. But there was a bit about Miss Rachel ad-
ded at the end, which will account for the steadiness of Mr. Franklin’s de-
termination, if it accounts for nothing else.

“You will wonder, I dare say” (her ladyship wrote), “at my al-
lowing my own daughter to keep me perfectly in the dark. A
Diamond worth twenty thousand pounds has been lost—and I
am left to infer that the mystery of its disappearance is no mys-
tery to Rachel, and that some incomprehensible obligation of
silence has been laid on her, by some person or persons utterly
unknown to me, with some object in view at which I cannot
even guess. Is it conceivable that I should allow myself to be
trifled with in this way? It is quite conceivable, in Rachel’s
present state. She is in a condition of nervous agitation pitiable
to see. I dare not approach the subject of the Moonstone again
until time has done something to quiet her. To help this end, I
 have not hesitated to dismiss the police-officer. The mystery
which baffles us, baffles him too. This is not a matter in which
any stranger can help us. He adds to what I have to suffer; and
he maddens Rachel if she only hears his name.
“My plans for the future are as well settled as they can be.
My present idea is to take Rachel to London—partly to relieve
her mind by a complete change, partly to try what may be done
by consulting the best medical advice. Can I ask you to meet us
in town? My dear Franklin, you, in your way, must imitate my
patience, and wait, as I do, for a fitter time. The valuable assist-
ance which you rendered to the inquiry after the lost jewel is
still an unpardoned offence, in the present dreadful state of
Rachel’s mind. Moving blindfold in this matter, you have ad-
ded to the burden of anxiety which she has had to bear, by in-
nocently threatening her secret with discovery, through your
exertions. It is impossible for me to excuse the perversity that
holds you responsible for consequences which neither you nor I
could imagine or foresee. She is not to be reasoned with—she
can only be pitied. I am grieved to have to say it, but for the
present, you and Rachel are better apart. The only advice I can
offer you is, to give her time.”

I handed the letter back, sincerely sorry for Mr. Franklin, for I knew how
fond he was of my young lady; and I saw that her mother’s account of her
had cut him to the heart. “You know the proverb, sir,” was all I said to him.
“When things are at the worst, they’re sure to mend. Things can’t be much
worse, Mr. Franklin, than they are now.”
Mr. Franklin folded up his aunt’s letter, without appearing to be much
comforted by the remark which I had ventured on addressing to him.
“When I came here from London with that horrible Diamond,” he said, “I
don’t believe there was a happier household in England than this. Look at
the household now! Scattered, disunited—the very air of the place poisoned
with mystery and suspicion! Do you remember that morning at the Shiver-
ing Sand, when we talked about my uncle Herncastle, and his birthday gift?
The Moonstone has served the Colonel’s vengeance, Betteredge, by means
which the Colonel himself never dreamt of!”
With that he shook me by the hand, and went out to the pony chaise.
 I followed him down the steps. It was very miserable to see him leaving
the old place, where he had spent the happiest years of his life, in this way.
Penelope (sadly upset by all that had happened in the house) came round
crying, to bid him goodbye. Mr. Franklin kissed her. I waved my hand as
much as to say, “You’re heartily welcome, sir.” Some of the other female
servants appeared, peeping after him round the corner. He was one of those
men whom the women all like. At the last moment, I stopped the pony
chaise, and begged as a favour that he would let us hear from him by letter.
He didn’t seem to heed what I said—he was looking round from one thing
to another, taking a sort of farewell of the old house and grounds. “Tell us
where you are going to, sir!” I said, holding on by the chaise, and trying to
get at his future plans in that way. Mr. Franklin pulled his hat down sud-
denly over his eyes. “Going?” says he, echoing the word after me. “I am go-
ing to the devil!” The pony started at the word, as if he had felt a Christian
horror of it. “God bless you, sir, go where you may!” was all I had time to
say, before he was out of sight and hearing. A sweet and pleasant gentle-
man! With all his faults and follies, a sweet and pleasant gentleman! He left
a sad gap behind him, when he left my lady’s house.
It was dull and dreary enough, when the long summer evening closed in,
on that Saturday night.
I kept my spirits from sinking by sticking fast to my pipe and my Robin-
son Crusoe. The women (excepting Penelope) beguiled the time by talking
of Rosanna’s suicide. They were all obstinately of opinion that the poor girl
had stolen the Moonstone, and that she had destroyed herself in terror of
being found out. My daughter, of course, privately held fast to what she had
said all along. Her notion of the motive which was really at the bottom of
the suicide failed, oddly enough, just where my young lady’s assertion of
her innocence failed also. It left Rosanna’s secret journey to Frizinghall, and
Rosanna’s proceedings in the matter of the nightgown entirely unaccounted
for. There was no use in pointing this out to Penelope; the objection made
about as much impression on her as a shower of rain on a waterproof coat.
The truth is, my daughter inherits my superiority to reason—and, in respect
to that accomplishment, has got a long way ahead of her own father.
On the next day (Sunday), the close carriage, which had been kept at
Mr. Ablewhite’s, came back to us empty. The coachman brought a message
for me, and written instructions for my lady’s own maid and for Penelope.
The message informed me that my mistress had determined to take Miss
Rachel to her house in London, on the Monday. The written instructions in-
formed the two maids of the clothing that was wanted, and directed them to
meet their mistresses in town at a given hour. Most of the other servants
were to follow. My lady had found Miss Rachel so unwilling to return to the
house, after what had happened in it, that she had decided on going to Lon-
don direct from Frizinghall. I was to remain in the country, until further or-
ders, to look after things indoors and out. The servants left with me were to
be put on board wages.
Being reminded, by all this, of what Mr. Franklin had said about our be-
ing a scattered and disunited household, my mind was led naturally to
Mr. Franklin himself. The more I thought of him, the more uneasy I felt
about his future proceedings. It ended in my writing, by the Sunday’s post,
to his father’s valet, Mr. Jeffco (whom I had known in former years) to beg
he would let me know what Mr. Franklin had settled to do, on arriving in
London.
The Sunday evening was, if possible, duller even than the Saturday even-
ing. We ended the day of rest, as hundreds of thousands of people end it
regularly, once a week, in these islands—that is to say, we all anticipated
bedtime, and fell asleep in our chairs.

How the Monday affected the rest of the household I don’t know. The
Monday gave me a good shake up. The first of Sergeant Cuff’s prophecies
of what was to happen—namely, that I should hear from the Yollands—
came true on that day.
I had seen Penelope and my lady’s maid off in the railway with the lug-
gage for London, and was pottering about the grounds, when I heard my
name called. Turning round, I found myself face to face with the fisher-
man’s daughter, Limping Lucy. Bating her lame foot and her leanness (this
last a horrid drawback to a woman, in my opinion), the girl had some pleas-
ing qualities in the eye of a man. A dark, keen, clever face, and a nice clear
voice, and a beautiful brown head of hair counted among her merits. A
crutch appeared in the list of her misfortunes. And a temper reckoned high
in the sum total of her defects.
“Well, my dear,” I said, “what do you want with me?”
“Where’s the man you call Franklin Blake?” says the girl, fixing me with
a fierce look, as she rested herself on her crutch.
“That’s not a respectful way to speak of any gentleman,” I answered. “If
you wish to inquire for my lady’s nephew, you will please to mention him
as Mr. Franklin Blake.”
She limped a step nearer to me, and looked as if she could have eaten me
alive. “Mr. Franklin Blake?” she repeated after me. “Murderer Franklin
Blake would be a fitter name for him.”
My practice with the late Mrs. Betteredge came in handy here. Whenever
a woman tries to put you out of temper, turn the tables, and put her out of
temper instead. They are generally prepared for every effort you can make
in your own defence, but that. One word does it as well as a hundred; and
one word did it with Limping Lucy. I looked her pleasantly in the face; and
I said—“Pooh!”
The girl’s temper flamed out directly. She poised herself on her sound
foot, and she took her crutch, and beat it furiously three times on the
ground. “He’s a murderer! he’s a murderer! he’s a murderer! He has been
the death of Rosanna Spearman!” She screamed that answer out at the top
of her voice. One or two of the people at work in the grounds near us
looked up—saw it was Limping Lucy—knew what to expect from that
quarter—and looked away again.
“He has been the death of Rosanna Spearman?” I repeated. “What makes
you say that, Lucy?”
“What do you care? What does any man care? Oh! if she had only
thought of the men as I think, she might have been living now!”
“She always thought kindly of me, poor soul,” I said; “and, to the best of
my ability, I always tried to act kindly by her.”
I spoke those words in as comforting a manner as I could. The truth is, I
hadn’t the heart to irritate the girl by another of my smart replies. I had only
noticed her temper at first. I noticed her wretchedness now—and wretched-
ness is not uncommonly insolent, you will find, in humble life. My answer
melted Limping Lucy. She bent her head down, and laid it on the top of her
crutch.
 “I loved her,” the girl said softly. “She had lived a miserable life,
Mr. Betteredge—vile people had ill-treated her and led her wrong—and it
hadn’t spoiled her sweet temper. She was an angel. She might have been
happy with me. I had a plan for our going to London together like sisters,
and living by our needles. That man came here, and spoilt it all. He be-
witched her. Don’t tell me he didn’t mean it, and didn’t know it. He ought
to have known it. He ought to have taken pity on her. ‘I can’t live without
him—and, oh, Lucy, he never even looks at me.’ That’s what she said.
Cruel, cruel, cruel. I said, ‘No man is worth fretting for in that way.’ And
she said, ‘There are men worth dying for, Lucy, and he is one of them.’ I
had saved up a little money. I had settled things with father and mother. I
meant to take her away from the mortification she was suffering here. We
should have had a little lodging in London, and lived together like sisters.
She had a good education, sir, as you know, and she wrote a good hand. She
was quick at her needle. I have a good education, and I write a good hand. I
am not as quick at my needle as she was—but I could have done. We might
have got our living nicely. And, oh! what happens this morning? what hap-
pens this morning? Her letter comes and tells me that she has done with the
burden of her life. Her letter comes, and bids me goodbye for ever. Where is
he?” cries the girl, lifting her head from the crutch, and flaming out again
through her tears. “Where’s this gentleman that I mustn’t speak of, except
with respect? Ha, Mr. Betteredge, the day is not far off when the poor will
rise against the rich. I pray Heaven they may begin with him. I pray Heaven
they may begin with him.”
Here was another of your average good Christians, and here was the usu-
al breakdown, consequent on that same average Christianity being pushed
too far! The parson himself (though I own this is saying a great deal) could
hardly have lectured the girl in the state she was in now. All I ventured to
do was to keep her to the point—in the hope of something turning up which
might be worth hearing.
“What do you want with Mr. Franklin Blake?” I asked.
“I want to see him.”
“For anything particular?”
“I have got a letter to give him.”
“From Rosanna Spearman?”
“Yes.”
“Sent to you in your own letter?”
 “Yes.”
Was the darkness going to lift? Were all the discoveries that I was dying
to make, coming and offering themselves to me of their own accord? I was
obliged to wait a moment. Sergeant Cuff had left his infection behind him.
Certain signs and tokens, personal to myself, warned me that the detective-
fever was beginning to set in again.
“You can’t see Mr. Franklin,” I said.
“I must, and will, see him.”
“He went to London last night.”
Limping Lucy looked me hard in the face, and saw that I was speaking
the truth. Without a word more, she turned about again instantly towards
Cobb’s Hole.
“Stop!” I said. “I expect news of Mr. Franklin Blake tomorrow. Give me
your letter, and I’ll send it on to him by the post.”
Limping Lucy steadied herself on her crutch and looked back at me over
her shoulder.
“I am to give it from my hands into his hands,” she said. “And I am to
give it to him in no other way.”
“Shall I write, and tell him what you have said?”
“Tell him I hate him. And you will tell him the truth.”
“Yes, yes. But about the letter?”
“If he wants the letter, he must come back here, and get it from me.”
With those words she limped off on the way to Cobb’s Hole. The detect-
ive-fever burnt up all my dignity on the spot. I followed her, and tried to
make her talk. All in vain. It was my misfortune to be a man—and Limping
Lucy enjoyed disappointing me. Later in the day, I tried my luck with her
mother. Good Mrs. Yolland could only cry, and recommend a drop of com-
fort out of the Dutch bottle. I found the fisherman on the beach. He said it
was “a bad job,” and went on mending his net. Neither father nor mother
knew more than I knew. The one way left to try was the chance, which
might come with the morning, of writing to Mr. Franklin Blake.
I leave you to imagine how I watched for the postman on Tuesday morn-
ing. He brought me two letters. One, from Penelope (which I had hardly pa-
tience enough to read), announced that my lady and Miss Rachel were
safely established in London. The other, from Mr. Jeffco, informed me that
his master’s son had left England already.
 On reaching the metropolis, Mr. Franklin had, it appeared, gone straight
to his father’s residence. He arrived at an awkward time. Mr. Blake, the eld-
er, was up to his eyes in the business of the House of Commons, and was
amusing himself at home that night with the favourite parliamentary
plaything which they call “a private bill.” Mr. Jeffco himself showed
Mr. Franklin into his father’s study. “My dear Franklin! why do you sur-
prise me in this way? Anything wrong?” “Yes; something wrong with
Rachel; I am dreadfully distressed about it.” “Grieved to hear it. But I can’t
listen to you now.” “When can you listen?” “My dear boy! I won’t deceive
you. I can listen at the end of the session, not a moment before. Good
night.” “Thank you, sir. Good night.”
Such was the conversation, inside the study, as reported to me by
Mr. Jeffco. The conversation outside the study, was shorter still. “Jeffco, see
what time the tidal train starts tomorrow morning.” “At six-forty,
Mr. Franklin.” “Have me called at five.” “Going abroad, sir?” “Going,
Jeffco, wherever the railway chooses to take me.” “Shall I tell your father,
sir?” “Yes; tell him at the end of the session.”
The next morning Mr. Franklin had started for foreign parts. To what par-
ticular place he was bound, nobody (himself included) could presume to
guess. We might hear of him next in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. The
chances were as equally divided as possible, in Mr. Jeffco’s opinion, among
the four quarters of the globe.
This news—by closing up all prospects of my bringing Limping Lucy
and Mr. Franklin together—at once stopped any further progress of mine on
the way to discovery. Penelope’s belief that her fellow-servant had des-
troyed herself through unrequited love for Mr. Franklin Blake, was con-
firmed—and that was all. Whether the letter which Rosanna had left to be
given to him after her death did, or did not, contain the confession which
Mr. Franklin had suspected her of trying to make to him in her lifetime, it
was impossible to say. It might be only a farewell word, telling nothing but
the secret of her unhappy fancy for a person beyond her reach. Or it might
own the whole truth about the strange proceedings in which Sergeant Cuff
had detected her, from the time when the Moonstone was lost, to the time
when she rushed to her own destruction at the Shivering Sand. A sealed let-
ter it had been placed in Limping Lucy’s hand, and a sealed letter it re-
mained to me and to every one about the girl, her own parents included. We
all suspected her of having been in the dead woman’s confidence; we all
tried to make her speak; we all failed. Now one, and now another, of the
servants—still holding to the belief that Rosanna had stolen the Diamond
and had hidden it—peered and poked about the rocks to which she had been
traced, and peered and poked in vain. The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed;
the summer went on, and the autumn came. And the Quicksand, which hid
her body, hid her secret too.
The news of Mr. Franklin’s departure from England on the Sunday morn-
ing, and the news of my lady’s arrival in London with Miss Rachel on the
Monday afternoon, had reached me, as you are aware, by the Tuesday’s
post. The Wednesday came, and brought nothing. The Thursday produced a
second budget of news from Penelope.
My girl’s letter informed me that some great London doctor had been
consulted about her young lady, and had earned a guinea by remarking that
she had better be amused. Flower-shows, operas, balls—there was a whole
round of gaieties in prospect; and Miss Rachel, to her mother’s astonish-
ment, eagerly took to it all. Mr. Godfrey had called; evidently as sweet as
ever on his cousin, in spite of the reception he had met with, when he tried
his luck on the occasion of the birthday. To Penelope’s great regret, he had
been most graciously received, and had added Miss Rachel’s name to one of
his Ladies’ Charities on the spot. My mistress was reported to be out of
spirits, and to have held two long interviews with her lawyer. Certain specu-
lations followed, referring to a poor relation of the family—one Miss Clack,
whom I have mentioned in my account of the birthday dinner, as sitting
next to Mr. Godfrey, and having a pretty taste in champagne. Penelope was
astonished to find that Miss Clack had not called yet. She would surely not
be long before she fastened herself on my lady as usual—and so forth, and
so forth, in the way women have of girding at each other, on and off paper.
This would not have been worth mentioning, I admit, but for one reason. I
hear you are likely to be turned over to Miss Clack, after parting with me.
In that case, just do me the favour of not believing a word she says, if she
speaks of your humble servant.

On Friday, nothing happened—except that one of the dogs showed signs of

a breaking out behind the ears. I gave him a dose of syrup of buckthorn, and
put him on a diet of pot-liquor and vegetables till further orders. Excuse my
mentioning this. It has slipped in somehow. Pass it over please. I am fast
coming to the end of my offences against your cultivated modern taste. Be-
sides, the dog was a good creature, and deserved a good physicking; he did
indeed.

Saturday, the last day of the week, is also the last day in my narrative.
The morning’s post brought me a surprise in the shape of a London news-
paper. The handwriting on the direction puzzled me. I compared it with the
moneylender’s name and address as recorded in my pocketbook, and identi-
fied it at once as the writing of Sergeant Cuff.
Looking through the paper eagerly enough, after this discovery, I found
an ink-mark drawn round one of the police reports. Here it is, at your ser-
vice. Read it as I read it, and you will set the right value on the Sergeant’s
polite attention in sending me the news of the day:

“LAMBETH—Shortly before the closing of the court, Mr. Sep-

timus Luker, the well-known dealer in ancient gems, carvings,
intagli, etc., etc., applied to the sitting magistrate for advice.
The applicant stated that he had been annoyed, at intervals
throughout the day, by the proceedings of some of those
strolling Indians who infest the streets. The persons complained
of were three in number. After having been sent away by the
police, they had returned again and again, and had attempted to
enter the house on pretence of asking for charity. Warned off in
the front, they had been discovered again at the back of the
premises. Besides the annoyance complained of, Mr. Luker ex-
pressed himself as being under some apprehension that robbery
might be contemplated. His collection contained many unique
gems, both classical and Oriental, of the highest value. He had
only the day before been compelled to dismiss a skilled work-
man in ivory carving from his employment (a native of India,
as we understood), on suspicion of attempted theft; and he felt
by no means sure that this man and the street jugglers of whom
he complained, might not be acting in concert. It might be their
object to collect a crowd, and create a disturbance in the street,
and, in the confusion thus caused, to obtain access to the house.
 In reply to the magistrate, Mr. Luker admitted that he had no
evidence to produce of any attempt at robbery being in contem-
plation. He could speak positively to the annoyance and inter-
ruption caused by the Indians, but not to anything else. The ma-
gistrate remarked that, if the annoyance were repeated, the ap-
plicant could summon the Indians to that court, where they
might easily be dealt with under the Act. As to the valuables in
Mr. Luker’s possession, Mr. Luker himself must take the best
measures for their safe custody. He would do well perhaps to
communicate with the police, and to adopt such additional pre-
cautions as their experience might suggest. The applicant
thanked his worship, and withdrew.”

One of the wise ancients is reported (I forget on what occasion) as having

recommended his fellow-creatures to “look to the end.” Looking to the end
of these pages of mine, and wondering for some days past how I should
manage to write it, I find my plain statement of facts coming to a conclu-
sion, most appropriately, of its own self. We have gone on, in this matter of
the Moonstone, from one marvel to another; and here we end with the
greatest marvel of all—namely, the accomplishment of Sergeant Cuff’s
three predictions in less than a week from the time when he had made them.
After hearing from the Yollands on the Monday, I had now heard of the
Indians, and heard of the moneylender, in the news from London—Miss
Rachel herself remember, being also in London at the time. You see, I put
things at their worst, even when they tell dead against my own view. If you
desert me, and side with the Sergeant, on the evidence before you—if the
only rational explanation you can see is, that Miss Rachel and Mr. Luker
must have got together, and that the Moonstone must be now in pledge in
the moneylender’s house—I own, I can’t blame you for arriving at that con-
clusion. In the dark, I have brought you thus far. In the dark I am compelled
to leave you, with my best respects.
Why compelled? it may be asked. Why not take the persons who have
gone along with me, so far, up into those regions of superior enlightenment
in which I sit myself?
In answer to this, I can only state that I am acting under orders, and that
those orders have been given to me (as I understand) in the interests of
truth. I am forbidden to tell more in this narrative than I knew myself at the
time. Or, to put it plainer, I am to keep strictly within the limits of my own
experience, and am not to inform you of what other persons told me—for
the very sufficient reason that you are to have the information from those
other persons themselves, at first hand. In this matter of the Moonstone the
plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses. I picture to myself a
member of the family reading these pages fifty years hence. Lord! what a
compliment he will feel it, to be asked to take nothing on hearsay, and to be
treated in all respects like a Judge on the bench.
At this place, then, we part—for the present, at least—after long journey-
ing together, with a companionable feeling, I hope, on both sides. The dev-
il’s dance of the Indian Diamond has threaded its way to London; and to
London you must go after it, leaving me at the country-house. Please to ex-
cuse the faults of this composition—my talking so much of myself, and be-
ing too familiar, I am afraid, with you. I mean no harm; and I drink most
respectfully (having just done dinner) to your health and prosperity, in a
tankard of her ladyship’s ale. May you find in these leaves of my writing,
what Robinson Crusoe found in his experience on the desert island—
namely, “something to comfort yourselves from, and to set in the Descrip-
tion of Good and Evil, on the Credit Side of the Account.”—Farewell.
 SECOND PERIOD
THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH (1848–1849)

The events related in several narratives.

 FIRST NARRATIVE

Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder.

I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in heaven) for having had

habits of order and regularity instilled into me at a very early age.
In that happy bygone time, I was taught to keep my hair tidy at all hours
of the day and night, and to fold up every article of my clothing carefully, in
the same order, on the same chair, in the same place at the foot of the bed,
before retiring to rest. An entry of the day’s events in my little diary invari-
ably preceded the folding up. The “Evening Hymn” (repeated in bed) in-
variably followed the folding up. And the sweet sleep of childhood invari-
ably followed the “Evening Hymn.”
In later life (alas!) the Hymn has been succeeded by sad and bitter medit-
ations; and the sweet sleep has been but ill exchanged for the broken slum-
bers which haunt the uneasy pillow of care. On the other hand, I have con-
tinued to fold my clothes, and to keep my little diary. The former habit links
me to my happy childhood—before papa was ruined. The latter habit—
hitherto mainly useful in helping me to discipline the fallen nature which
we all inherit from Adam—has unexpectedly proved important to my
humble interests in quite another way. It has enabled poor me to serve the
caprice of a wealthy member of the family into which my late uncle mar-
ried. I am fortunate enough to be useful to Mr. Franklin Blake.
I have been cut off from all news of my relatives by marriage for some
time past. When we are isolated and poor, we are not infrequently forgotten.
I am now living, for economy’s sake, in a little town in Brittany, inhabited
by a select circle of serious English friends, and possessed of the inestim-
able advantages of a Protestant clergyman and a cheap market.
In this retirement—a Patmos amid the howling ocean of popery that sur-
rounds us—a letter from England has reached me at last. I find my insigni-
ficant existence suddenly remembered by Mr. Franklin Blake. My wealthy
relative—would that I could add my spiritually-wealthy relative!—writes,
without even an attempt at disguising that he wants something of me. The
whim has seized him to stir up the deplorable scandal of the Moonstone:
and I am to help him by writing the account of what I myself witnessed
while visiting at Aunt Verinder’s house in London. Pecuniary remuneration
is offered to me—with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich. I am to re-
open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely
painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by
a new laceration, in the shape of Mr. Blake’s cheque. My nature is weak. It
cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride,
and self-denial accepted the cheque.
Without my diary, I doubt—pray let me express it in the grossest
terms!—if I could have honestly earned my money. With my diary, the poor
labourer (who forgives Mr. Blake for insulting her) is worthy of her hire.
Nothing escaped me at the time I was visiting dear Aunt Verinder.
Everything was entered (thanks to my early training) day by day as it
happened; and everything down to the smallest particular, shall be told here.
My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above my respect for persons.
It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what may not prove to be suffi-
ciently flattering in these pages to the person chiefly concerned in them. He
has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my con-
science too.1
My diary informs me, that I was accidentally passing Aunt Verinder’s
house in Montagu Square, on Monday, 3rd July, 1848.
Seeing the shutters opened, and the blinds drawn up, I felt that it would
be an act of polite attention to knock, and make inquiries. The person who
answered the door, informed me that my aunt and her daughter (I really
cannot call her my cousin!) had arrived from the country a week since, and
meditated making some stay in London. I sent up a message at once, declin-
ing to disturb them, and only begging to know whether I could be of any
use.
The person who answered the door, took my message in insolent silence,
and left me standing in the hall. She is the daughter of a heathen old man
named Betteredge—long, too long, tolerated in my aunt’s family. I sat down
in the hall to wait for my answer—and, having always a few tracts in my
bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the
person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard;
but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite
above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series
addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was de-
voutly familiar. Its title was, “A Word With You On Your Cap-Ribbons.”
“My lady is much obliged, and begs you will come and lunch tomorrow
at two.”
I passed over the manner in which she gave her message, and the dread-
ful boldness of her look. I thanked this young castaway; and I said, in a tone
of Christian interest, “Will you favour me by accepting a tract?”
She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If it’s
written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If it’s written
by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it.” She handed
me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the good seed some-
how. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped the tract into the let-
ter-box. When I had dropped another tract through the area railings, I felt
relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy responsibility towards others.
We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers’-
Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is—
as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers’ trousers from
the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irre-
claimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of
the innocent son. I was a member, at that time, of the select committee; and
I mention the Society here, because my precious and admirable friend,
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, was associated with our work of moral and materi-
al usefulness. I had expected to see him in the boardroom, on the Monday
evening of which I am now writing, and had proposed to tell him, when we
met, of dear Aunt Verinder’s arrival in London. To my great disappointment
he never appeared. On my expressing a feeling of surprise at his absence,
my sisters of the Committee all looked up together from their trousers (we
had a great pressure of business that night), and asked in amazement, if I
had not heard the news. I acknowledged my ignorance, and was then told,
for the first time, of an event which forms, so to speak, the starting-point of
this narrative. On the previous Friday, two gentlemen—occupying widely-
different positions in society—had been the victims of an outrage which
had startled all London. One of the gentlemen was Mr. Septimus Luker, of
Lambeth. The other was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Living in my present isolation, I have no means of introducing the news-
paper-account of the outrage into my narrative. I was also deprived, at the
time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the events related by the fer-
vid eloquence of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. All I can do is to state the facts as
they were stated, on that Monday evening, to me; proceeding on the plan
which I have been taught from infancy to adopt in folding up my clothes.
Everything shall be put neatly, and everything shall be put in its place.
These lines are written by a poor weak woman. From a poor weak woman
who will be cruel enough to expect more?
The date—thanks to my dear parents, no dictionary that ever was written
can be more particular than I am about dates—was Friday, June 30th, 1848.
Early on that memorable day, our gifted Mr. Godfrey happened to be
cashing a cheque at a banking-house in Lombard Street. The name of the
firm is accidentally blotted in my diary, and my sacred regard for truth for-
bids me to hazard a guess in a matter of this kind. Fortunately, the name of
the firm doesn’t matter. What does matter is a circumstance that occurred
when Mr. Godfrey had transacted his business. On gaining the door, he en-
countered a gentleman—a perfect stranger to him—who was accidentally
leaving the office exactly at the same time as himself. A momentary contest
of politeness ensued between them as to who should be the first to pass
through the door of the bank. The stranger insisted on making Mr. Godfrey
precede him; Mr. Godfrey said a few civil words; they bowed, and parted in
the street.
Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very
trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner. Oh,
my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your
poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith be as your stockings,
and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put
on at a moment’s notice!
I beg a thousand pardons. I have fallen insensibly into my Sunday-school
style. Most inappropriate in such a record as this. Let me try to be
worldly—let me say that trifles, in this case as in many others, led to ter-
rible results. Merely premising that the polite stranger was Mr. Luker, of
Lambeth, we will now follow Mr. Godfrey home to his residence at
Kilburn.
He found waiting for him, in the hall, a poorly clad but delicate and inter-
esting-looking little boy. The boy handed him a letter, merely mentioning
that he had been entrusted with it by an old lady whom he did not know,
and who had given him no instructions to wait for an answer. Such incid-
ents as these were not uncommon in Mr. Godfrey’s large experience as a
promoter of public charities. He let the boy go, and opened the letter.
The handwriting was entirely unfamiliar to him. It requested his attend-
ance, within an hour’s time, at a house in Northumberland Street, Strand,
which he had never had occasion to enter before. The object sought was to
obtain from the worthy manager certain details on the subject of the Moth-
ers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and the information was wanted by
an elderly lady who proposed adding largely to the resources of the charity,
if her questions were met by satisfactory replies. She mentioned her name,
and she added that the shortness of her stay in London prevented her from
giving any longer notice to the eminent philanthropist whom she addressed.
Ordinary people might have hesitated before setting aside their own en-
gagements to suit the convenience of a stranger. The Christian Hero never
hesitates where good is to be done. Mr. Godfrey instantly turned back, and
proceeded to the house in Northumberland Street. A most respectable
though somewhat corpulent man answered the door, and, on hearing
Mr. Godfrey’s name, immediately conducted him into an empty apartment
at the back, on the drawing-room floor. He noticed two unusual things on
entering the room. One of them was a faint odour of musk and camphor.
The other was an ancient Oriental manuscript, richly illuminated with Indi-
an figures and devices, that lay open to inspection on a table.
He was looking at the book, the position of which caused him to stand
with his back turned towards the closed folding doors communicating with
the front room, when, without the slightest previous noise to warn him, he
felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind. He had just time
to notice that the arm round his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown col-
our, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was
thrown helpless on the floor by (as he judged) two men. A third rifled his
pockets, and—if, as a lady, I may venture to use such an expression—
searched him, without ceremony, through and through to his skin.
Here I should greatly enjoy saying a few cheering words on the devout
confidence which could alone have sustained Mr. Godfrey in an emergency
so terrible as this. Perhaps, however, the position and appearance of my ad-
mirable friend at the culminating period of the outrage (as above described)
are hardly within the proper limits of female discussion. Let me pass over
the next few moments, and return to Mr. Godfrey at the time when the odi-
ous search of his person had been completed. The outrage had been perpet-
rated throughout in dead silence. At the end of it some words were ex-
changed, among the invisible wretches, in a language which he did not un-
derstand, but in tones which were plainly expressive (to his cultivated ear)
of disappointment and rage. He was suddenly lifted from the ground, placed
in a chair, and bound there hand and foot. The next moment he felt the air
flowing in from the open door, listened, and concluded that he was alone
again in the room.
An interval elapsed, and he heard a sound below like the rustling sound
of a woman’s dress. It advanced up the stairs, and stopped. A female scream
rent the atmosphere of guilt. A man’s voice below exclaimed “Hullo!” A
man’s feet ascended the stairs. Mr. Godfrey felt Christian fingers unfasten-
ing his bandage, and extracting his gag. He looked in amazement at two re-
spectable strangers, and faintly articulated, “What does it mean?” The two
respectable strangers looked back, and said, “Exactly the question we were
going to ask you.”
The inevitable explanation followed. No! Let me be scrupulously particu-
lar. Sal volatile and water followed, to compose dear Mr. Godfrey’s nerves.
The explanation came next.
It appeared from the statement of the landlord and landlady of the house
(persons of good repute in the neighbourhood), that their first and second
floor apartments had been engaged, on the previous day, for a week certain,
by a most respectable-looking gentleman—the same who has been already
described as answering the door to Mr. Godfrey’s knock. The gentleman
had paid the week’s rent and all the week’s extras in advance, stating that
the apartments were wanted for three Oriental noblemen, friends of his,
who were visiting England for the first time. Early on the morning of the
outrage, two of the Oriental strangers, accompanied by their respectable
English friend, took possession of the apartments. The third was expected to
join them shortly; and the luggage (reported as very bulky) was announced
to follow when it had passed through the Customhouse, late in the after-
noon. Not more than ten minutes previous to Mr. Godfrey’s visit, the third
foreigner had arrived. Nothing out of the common had happened, to the
knowledge of the landlord and landlady downstairs, until within the last five
minutes—when they had seen the three foreigners, accompanied by their
respectable English friend, all leave the house together, walking quietly in
the direction of the Strand. Remembering that a visitor had called, and not
having seen the visitor also leave the house, the landlady had thought it
rather strange that the gentleman should be left by himself upstairs. After a
short discussion with her husband, she had considered it advisable to ascer-
tain whether anything was wrong. The result had followed, as I have
already attempted to describe it; and there the explanation of the landlord
and the landlady came to an end.
An investigation was next made in the room. Dear Mr. Godfrey’s prop-
erty was found scattered in all directions. When the articles were collected,
however, nothing was missing; his watch, chain, purse, keys, pocket-
handkerchief, notebook, and all his loose papers had been closely ex-
amined, and had then been left unharmed to be resumed by the owner. In
the same way, not the smallest morsel of property belonging to the propriet-
ors of the house had been abstracted. The Oriental noblemen had removed
their own illuminated manuscript, and had removed nothing else.
What did it mean? Taking the worldly point of view, it appeared to mean
that Mr. Godfrey had been the victim of some incomprehensible error, com-
mitted by certain unknown men. A dark conspiracy was on foot in the midst
of us; and our beloved and innocent friend had been entangled in its
meshes. When the Christian hero of a hundred charitable victories plunges
into a pitfall that has been dug for him by mistake, oh, what a warning it is
to the rest of us to be unceasingly on our guard! How soon may our own
evil passions prove to be Oriental noblemen who pounce on us unawares!
I could write pages of affectionate warning on this one theme, but (alas!)
I am not permitted to improve—I am condemned to narrate. My wealthy
relative’s cheque—henceforth, the incubus of my existence—warns me that
I have not done with this record of violence yet. We must leave Mr. Godfrey
to recover in Northumberland Street, and must follow the proceedings of
Mr. Luker at a later period of the day.
After leaving the bank, Mr. Luker had visited various parts of London on
business errands. Returning to his own residence, he found a letter waiting
for him, which was described as having been left a short time previously by
a boy. In this case, as in Mr. Godfrey’s case, the handwriting was strange;
but the name mentioned was the name of one of Mr. Luker’s customers. His
correspondent announced (writing in the third person—apparently by the
hand of a deputy) that he had been unexpectedly summoned to London. He
had just established himself in lodgings in Alfred Place, Tottenham Court
Road; and he desired to see Mr. Luker immediately, on the subject of a pur-
chase which he contemplated making. The gentleman was an enthusiastic
collector of Oriental antiquities, and had been for many years a liberal pat-
ron of the establishment in Lambeth. Oh, when shall we wean ourselves
from the worship of Mammon! Mr. Luker called a cab, and drove off in-
stantly to his liberal patron.
Exactly what had happened to Mr. Godfrey in Northumberland Street
now happened to Mr. Luker in Alfred Place. Once more the respectable
man answered the door, and showed the visitor upstairs into the back draw-
ing-room. There, again, lay the illuminated manuscript on a table.
Mr. Luker’s attention was absorbed, as Mr. Godfrey’s attention had been
absorbed, by this beautiful work of Indian art. He too was aroused from his
studies by a tawny naked arm round his throat, by a bandage over his eyes,
and by a gag in his mouth. He too was thrown prostrate and searched to the
skin. A longer interval had then elapsed than had passed in the experience
of Mr. Godfrey; but it had ended as before, in the persons of the house sus-
pecting something wrong, and going upstairs to see what had happened.
Precisely the same explanation which the landlord in Northumberland
Street had given to Mr. Godfrey, the landlord in Alfred Place now gave to
Mr. Luker. Both had been imposed on in the same way by the plausible ad-
dress and well-filled purse of the respectable stranger, who introduced him-
self as acting for his foreign friends. The one point of difference between
the two cases occurred when the scattered contents of Mr. Luker’s pockets
were being collected from the floor. His watch and purse were safe, but
(less fortunate than Mr. Godfrey) one of the loose papers that he carried
about him had been taken away. The paper in question acknowledged the
receipt of a valuable of great price which Mr. Luker had that day left in the
care of his bankers. This document would be useless for purposes of fraud,
inasmuch as it provided that the valuable should only be given up on the
personal application of the owner. As soon as he recovered himself,
Mr. Luker hurried to the bank, on the chance that the thieves who had
robbed him might ignorantly present themselves with the receipt. Nothing
had been seen of them when he arrived at the establishment, and nothing
was seen of them afterwards. Their respectable English friend had (in the
opinion of the bankers) looked the receipt over before they attempted to
make use of it, and had given them the necessary warning in good time.
Information of both outrages was communicated to the police, and the
needful investigations were pursued, I believe, with great energy. The au-
thorities held that a robbery had been planned, on insufficient information
received by the thieves. They had been plainly not sure whether Mr. Luker
had, or had not, trusted the transmission of his precious gem to another per-
son; and poor polite Mr. Godfrey had paid the penalty of having been seen
accidentally speaking to him. Add to this, that Mr. Godfrey’s absence from
our Monday evening meeting had been occasioned by a consultation of the
authorities, at which he was requested to assist—and all the explanations
required being now given, I may proceed with the simpler story of my own
little personal experiences in Montagu Square.

I was punctual to the luncheon hour on Tuesday. Reference to my diary

shows this to have been a chequered day—much in it to be devoutly regret-
ted, much in it to be devoutly thankful for.
Dear Aunt Verinder received me with her usual grace and kindness. But I
noticed, after a little while, that something was wrong. Certain anxious
looks escaped my aunt, all of which took the direction of her daughter. I
never see Rachel myself without wondering how it can be that so insignific-
ant-looking a person should be the child of such distinguished parents as Sir
John and Lady Verinder. On this occasion, however, she not only disappoin-
ted—she really shocked me. There was an absence of all ladylike restraint
in her language and manner most painful to see. She was possessed by
some feverish excitement which made her distressingly loud when she
laughed, and sinfully wasteful and capricious in what she ate and drank at
lunch. I felt deeply for her poor mother, even before the true state of the
case had been confidentially made known to me.
Luncheon over, my aunt said: “Remember what the doctor told you,
Rachel, about quieting yourself with a book after taking your meals.”
“I’ll go into the library, mamma,” she answered. “But if Godfrey calls,
mind I am told of it. I am dying for more news of him, after his adventure in
Northumberland Street.” She kissed her mother on the forehead, and looked
my way. “Goodbye, Clack,” she said, carelessly. Her insolence roused no
angry feeling in me; I only made a private memorandum to pray for her.
When we were left by ourselves, my aunt told me the whole horrible
story of the Indian Diamond, which, I am happy to know, it is not necessary
to repeat here. She did not conceal from me that she would have preferred
keeping silence on the subject. But when her own servants all knew of the
loss of the Moonstone, and when some of the circumstances had actually
found their way into the newspapers—when strangers were speculating
whether there was any connection between what had happened at Lady Ver-
inder’s country-house, and what had happened in Northumberland Street
and Alfred Place—concealment was not to be thought of; and perfect frank-
ness became a necessity as well as a virtue.
Some persons, hearing what I now heard, would have been probably
overwhelmed with astonishment. For my own part, knowing Rachel’s spirit
to have been essentially unregenerate from her childhood upwards, I was
prepared for whatever my aunt could tell me on the subject of her daughter.
It might have gone on from bad to worse till it ended in Murder; and I
should still have said to myself, The natural result! oh, dear, dear, the natur-
al result! The one thing that did shock me was the course my aunt had taken
under the circumstances. Here surely was a case for a clergyman, if ever
there was one yet! Lady Verinder had thought it a case for a physician. All
my poor aunt’s early life had been passed in her father’s godless household.
The natural result again! Oh, dear, dear, the natural result again!
“The doctors recommend plenty of exercise and amusement for Rachel,
and strongly urge me to keep her mind as much as possible from dwelling
on the past,” said Lady Verinder.
“Oh, what heathen advice!” I thought to myself. “In this Christian coun-
try, what heathen advice!”
My aunt went on, “I do my best to carry out my instructions. But this
strange adventure of Godfrey’s happens at a most unfortunate time. Rachel
has been incessantly restless and excited since she first heard of it. She left
me no peace till I had written and asked my nephew Ablewhite to come
here. She even feels an interest in the other person who was roughly used—
Mr. Luker, or some such name—though the man is, of course, a total
stranger to her.”
“Your knowledge of the world, dear aunt, is superior to mine,” I sugges-
ted diffidently. “But there must be a reason surely for this extraordinary
conduct on Rachel’s part. She is keeping a sinful secret from you and from
everybody. May there not be something in these recent events which
threatens her secret with discovery?”
“Discovery?” repeated my aunt. “What can you possibly mean? Discov-
ery through Mr. Luker? Discovery through my nephew?”
As the word passed her lips, a special providence occurred. The servant
opened the door, and announced Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
 II

Mr. Godfrey followed the announcement of his name—as Mr. Godfrey does
everything else—exactly at the right time. He was not so close on the ser-
vant’s heels as to startle us. He was not so far behind as to cause us the
double inconvenience of a pause and an open door. It is in the completeness
of his daily life that the true Christian appears. This dear man was very
complete.
“Go to Miss Verinder,” said my aunt, addressing the servant, “and tell her
Mr. Ablewhite is here.”
We both inquired after his health. We both asked him together whether he
felt like himself again, after his terrible adventure of the past week. With
perfect tact, he contrived to answer us at the same moment. Lady Verinder
had his reply in words. I had his charming smile.
“What,” he cried, with infinite tenderness, “have I done to deserve all this
sympathy? My dear aunt! my dear Miss Clack! I have merely been mis-
taken for somebody else. I have only been blindfolded; I have only been
strangled; I have only been thrown flat on my back, on a very thin carpet,
covering a particularly hard floor. Just think how much worse it might have
been! I might have been murdered; I might have been robbed. What have I
lost? Nothing but Nervous Force—which the law doesn’t recognise as prop-
erty; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost nothing at all. If I could have had
my own way, I would have kept my adventure to myself—I shrink from all
this fuss and publicity. But Mr. Luker made his injuries public, and my in-
juries, as the necessary consequence, have been proclaimed in their turn. I
have become the property of the newspapers, until the gentle reader gets
sick of the subject. I am very sick indeed of it myself. May the gentle reader
soon be like me! And how is dear Rachel? Still enjoying the gaieties of
London? So glad to hear it! Miss Clack, I need all your indulgence. I am
sadly behindhand with my Committee Work and my dear Ladies. But I
really do hope to look in at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes next week. Did you
make cheering progress at Monday’s Committee? Was the Board hopeful
about future prospects? And are we nicely off for trousers?”
The heavenly gentleness of his smile made his apologies irresistible. The
richness of his deep voice added its own indescribable charm to the interest-
ing business question which he had just addressed to me. In truth, we were
almost too nicely off for trousers; we were quite overwhelmed by them. I
was just about to say so, when the door opened again, and an element of
worldly disturbance entered the room, in the person of Miss Verinder.
She approached dear Mr. Godfrey at a most unladylike rate of speed,
with her hair shockingly untidy, and her face, what I should call, unbecom-
ingly flushed.
“I am charmed to see you, Godfrey,” she said, addressing him, I grieve to
add, in the offhand manner of one young man talking to another. “I wish
you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as our present ex-
citement lasts) are the two most interesting men in all London. It’s morbid
to say this; it’s unhealthy; it’s all that a well-regulated mind like Miss
Clack’s most instinctively shudders at. Never mind that. Tell me the whole
of the Northumberland Street story directly. I know the newspapers have
left some of it out.”
Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all inherit
from Adam—it is a very small share of our human legacy, but, alas! he has
it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel’s hand in both of his own
hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his waistcoat. It was a direct en-
couragement to her reckless way of talking, and her insolent reference to
me.
“Dearest Rachel,” he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when
he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, “the newspapers have told you
everything—and they have told it much better than I can.”
“Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,” my aunt remarked.
“He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.”
“Why?”
She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look
up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. On his side, he looked down at her with an in-
dulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called on to
interfere.
“Rachel, darling!” I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true courage
are ever modest.”
 “You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,” she said—not taking
the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin as if she
was one young man addressing another. “But I am quite sure you are not
great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary courage; and I am
firmly persuaded—if you ever had any modesty—that your lady-worship-
pers relieved you of that virtue a good many years since. You have some
private reason for not talking of your adventure in Northumberland Street;
and I mean to know it.”
“My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily acknow-
ledged,” he answered, still bearing with her. “I am tired of the subject.”
“You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a
remark.”
“What is it?”
“You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have
contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk non-
sense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the pleasure
of telling them. You can’t go straight with your lady-worshippers. I mean to
make you go straight with me. Come, and sit down. I am brimful of down-
right questions; and I expect you to be brimful of downright answers.”
She actually dragged him across the room to a chair by the window,
where the light would fall on his face. I deeply feel being obliged to report
such language, and to describe such conduct. But, hemmed in, as I am,
between Mr. Franklin Blake’s cheque on one side and my own sacred re-
gard for truth on the other, what am I to do? I looked at my aunt. She sat un-
moved; apparently in no way disposed to interfere. I had never noticed this
kind of torpor in her before. It was, perhaps, the reaction after the trying
time she had had in the country. Not a pleasant symptom to remark, be it
what it might, at dear Lady Verinder’s age, and with dear Lady Verinder’s
autumnal exuberance of figure.
In the meantime, Rachel had settled herself at the window with our ami-
able and forbearing—our too forbearing—Mr. Godfrey. She began the
string of questions with which she had threatened him, taking no more no-
tice of her mother, or of myself, than if we had not been in the room.
“Have the police done anything, Godfrey?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you were
the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?”
 “Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.”
“And not a trace of them has been discovered?”
“Not a trace.”
“It is thought—is it not?—that these three men are the three Indians who
came to our house in the country.”
“Some people think so.”
“Do you think so?”
“My dear Rachel, they blindfolded me before I could see their faces. I
know nothing whatever of the matter. How can I offer an opinion on it?”
Even the angelic gentleness of Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to
give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether unbridled
curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder’s questions I do
not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr. Godfrey’s attempting to
rise, after giving her the answer just described, she actually took him by the
two shoulders, and pushed him back into his chair—Oh, don’t say this was
immodest! don’t even hint that the recklessness of guilty terror could alone
account for such conduct as I have described! We must not judge others.
My Christian friends, indeed, indeed, indeed, we must not judge others!
She went on with her questions, unabashed. Earnest Biblical students will
perhaps be reminded—as I was reminded—of the blinded children of the
devil, who went on with their orgies, unabashed, in the time before the
Flood.
“I want to know something about Mr. Luker, Godfrey.”
“I am again unfortunate, Rachel. No man knows less of Mr. Luker than I
do.”
“You never saw him before you and he met accidentally at the bank?”
“Never.”
“You have seen him since?”
“Yes. We have been examined together, as well as separately, to assist the
police.”
“Mr. Luker was robbed of a receipt which he had got from his banker’s—
was he not? What was the receipt for?”
“For a valuable gem which he had placed in the safe keeping of the
bank.”
“That’s what the newspapers say. It may be enough for the general read-
er; but it is not enough for me. The banker’s receipt must have mentioned
what the gem was?”
 “The banker’s receipt, Rachel—as I have heard it described—mentioned
nothing of the kind. A valuable gem, belonging to Mr. Luker; deposited by
Mr. Luker; sealed with Mr. Luker’s seal; and only to be given up on
Mr. Luker’s personal application. That was the form, and that is all I know
about it.”
She waited a moment, after he had said that. She looked at her mother,
and sighed. She looked back again at Mr. Godfrey, and went on.
“Some of our private affairs, at home,” she said, “seem to have got into
the newspapers?”
“I grieve to say, it is so.”
“And some idle people, perfect strangers to us, are trying to trace a con-
nection between what happened at our house in Yorkshire and what has
happened since, here in London?”
“The public curiosity, in certain quarters, is, I fear, taking that turn.”
“The people who say that the three unknown men who ill-used you and
Mr. Luker are the three Indians, also say that the valuable gem—”
There she stopped. She had become gradually, within the last few mo-
ments, whiter and whiter in the face. The extraordinary blackness of her
hair made this paleness, by contrast, so ghastly to look at, that we all
thought she would faint, at the moment when she checked herself in the
middle of her question. Dear Mr. Godfrey made a second attempt to leave
his chair. My aunt entreated her to say no more. I followed my aunt with a
modest medicinal peace-offering, in the shape of a bottle of salts. We none
of us produced the slightest effect on her. “Godfrey, stay where you are.
Mamma, there is not the least reason to be alarmed about me. Clack, you’re
dying to hear the end of it—I won’t faint, expressly to oblige you.”
Those were the exact words she used—taken down in my diary the mo-
ment I got home. But, oh, don’t let us judge! My Christian friends, don’t let
us judge!
She turned once more to Mr. Godfrey. With an obstinacy dreadful to see,
she went back again to the place where she had checked herself, and com-
pleted her question in these words:
“I spoke to you, a minute since, about what people were saying in certain
quarters. Tell me plainly, Godfrey, do they any of them say that Mr. Luker’s
valuable gem is—the Moonstone?”
As the name of the Indian Diamond passed her lips, I saw a change come
over my admirable friend. His complexion deepened. He lost the genial
suavity of manner which is one of his greatest charms. A noble indignation
inspired his reply.
“They do say it,” he answered. “There are people who don’t hesitate to
accuse Mr. Luker of telling a falsehood to serve some private interests of
his own. He has over and over again solemnly declared that, until this scan-
dal assailed him, he had never even heard of the Moonstone. And these vile
people reply, without a shadow of proof to justify them, He has his reasons
for concealment; we decline to believe him on his oath. Shameful!
shameful!”
Rachel looked at him very strangely—I can’t well describe how—while
he was speaking. When he had done, she said, “Considering that Mr. Luker
is only a chance acquaintance of yours, you take up his cause, Godfrey,
rather warmly.”
My gifted friend made her one of the most truly evangelical answers I
ever heard in my life.
“I hope, Rachel, I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather
warmly,” he said.
The tone in which those words were spoken might have melted a stone.
But, oh dear, what is the hardness of stone? Nothing, compared to the hard-
ness of the unregenerate human heart! She sneered. I blush to record it—she
sneered at him to his face.
“Keep your noble sentiments for your Ladies’ Committees, Godfrey. I
am certain that the scandal which has assailed Mr. Luker, has not spared
you.”
Even my aunt’s torpor was roused by those words.
“My dear Rachel,” she remonstrated, “you have really no right to say
that!”
“I mean no harm, mamma—I mean good. Have a moment’s patience
with me, and you will see.”
She looked back at Mr. Godfrey, with what appeared to be a sudden pity
for him. She went the length—the very unladylike length—of taking him by
the hand.
“I am certain,” she said, “that I have found out the true reason of your un-
willingness to speak of this matter before my mother and before me. An un-
lucky accident has associated you in people’s minds with Mr. Luker. You
have told me what scandal says of him. What does scandal say of you?”
 Even at the eleventh hour, dear Mr. Godfrey—always ready to return
good for evil—tried to spare her.
“Don’t ask me!” he said. “It’s better forgotten, Rachel—it is, indeed.”
“I will hear it!” she cried out, fiercely, at the top of her voice.
“Tell her, Godfrey!” entreated my aunt. “Nothing can do her such harm
as your silence is doing now!”
Mr. Godfrey’s fine eyes filled with tears. He cast one last appealing look
at her—and then he spoke the fatal words:
“If you will have it, Rachel—scandal says that the Moonstone is in
pledge to Mr. Luker, and that I am the man who has pawned it.”
She started to her feet with a scream. She looked backwards and forwards
from Mr. Godfrey to my aunt, and from my aunt to Mr. Godfrey, in such a
frantic manner that I really thought she had gone mad.
“Don’t speak to me! Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed, shrinking back
from all of us (I declare like some hunted animal!) into a corner of the
room. “This is my fault! I must set it right. I have sacrificed myself—I had a
right to do that, if I liked. But to let an innocent man be ruined; to keep a
secret which destroys his character for life—Oh, good God, it’s too hor-
rible! I can’t bear it!”
My aunt half rose from her chair, then suddenly sat down again. She
called to me faintly, and pointed to a little phial in her work-box.
“Quick!” she whispered. “Six drops, in water. Don’t let Rachel see.”
Under other circumstances, I should have thought this strange. There was
no time now to think—there was only time to give the medicine. Dear
Mr. Godfrey unconsciously assisted me in concealing what I was about
from Rachel, by speaking composing words to her at the other end of the
room.
“Indeed, indeed, you exaggerate,” I heard him say. “My reputation stands
too high to be destroyed by a miserable passing scandal like this. It will be
all forgotten in another week. Let us never speak of it again.” She was per-
fectly inaccessible, even to such generosity as this. She went on from bad to
worse.
“I must, and will, stop it,” she said. “Mamma! hear what I say. Miss
Clack! hear what I say. I know the hand that took the Moonstone. I
know—” she laid a strong emphasis on the words; she stamped her foot in
the rage that possessed her—“I know that Godfrey Ablewhite is innocent.
Take me to the magistrate, Godfrey! Take me to the magistrate, and I will
swear it!”
My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, “Stand between us for a
minute or two. Don’t let Rachel see me.” I noticed a bluish tinge in her face
which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. “The drops will put me right in a
minute or two,” she said, and so closed her eyes, and waited a little.
While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently
remonstrating.
“You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this,” he said. “Your
reputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too sacred to be trifled
with.”
“My reputation!” She burst out laughing. “Why, I am accused, Godfrey,
as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I have
stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks—and he will tell you that
I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!” She stopped, ran
across the room—and fell on her knees at her mother’s feet. “Oh mamma!
mamma! mamma! I must be mad—mustn’t I?—not to own the truth now?”
She was too vehement to notice her mother’s condition—she was on her
feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. “I won’t let you—I
won’t let any innocent man—be accused and disgraced through my fault. If
you won’t take me before the magistrate, draw out a declaration of your in-
nocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I tell you, Godfrey, or I’ll write it
to the newspapers—I’ll go out, and cry it in the streets!”
We will not say this was the language of remorse—we will say it was the
language of hysterics. Indulgent Mr. Godfrey pacified her by taking a sheet
of paper, and drawing out the declaration. She signed it in a feverish hurry.
“Show it everywhere—don’t think of me,” she said, as she gave it to him. “I
am afraid, Godfrey, I have not done you justice, hitherto, in my thoughts.
You are more unselfish—you are a better man than I believed you to be.
Come here when you can, and I will try and repair the wrong I have done
you.”
She gave him her hand. Alas, for our fallen nature! Alas, for Mr. God-
frey! He not only forgot himself so far as to kiss her hand—he adopted a
gentleness of tone in answering her which, in such a case, was little better
than a compromise with sin. “I will come, dearest,” he said, “on condition
that we don’t speak of this hateful subject again.” Never had I seen and
heard our Christian Hero to less advantage than on this occasion.
 Before another word could be said by anybody, a thundering knock at the
street door startled us all. I looked through the window, and saw the World,
the Flesh, and the Devil waiting before the house—as typified in a carriage
and horses, a powdered footman, and three of the most audaciously dressed
women I ever beheld in my life.
Rachel started, and composed herself. She crossed the room to her
mother.
“They have come to take me to the flower-show,” she said. “One word,
mamma, before I go. I have not distressed you, have I?”
(Is the bluntness of moral feeling which could ask such a question as that,
after what had just happened, to be pitied or condemned? I like to lean to-
wards mercy. Let us pity it.)
The drops had produced their effect. My poor aunt’s complexion was like
itself again. “No, no, my dear,” she said. “Go with our friends, and enjoy
yourself.”
Her daughter stooped, and kissed her. I had left the window, and was near
the door, when Rachel approached it to go out. Another change had come
over her—she was in tears. I looked with interest at the momentary soften-
ing of that obdurate heart. I felt inclined to say a few earnest words. Alas!
my well-meant sympathy only gave offence. “What do you mean by pitying
me?” she asked in a bitter whisper, as she passed to the door. “Don’t you
see how happy I am? I’m going to the flower-show, Clack; and I’ve got the
prettiest bonnet in London.” She completed the hollow mockery of that ad-
dress by blowing me a kiss—and so left the room.
I wish I could describe in words the compassion I felt for this miserable
and misguided girl. But I am almost as poorly provided with words as with
money. Permit me to say—my heart bled for her.
Returning to my aunt’s chair, I observed dear Mr. Godfrey searching for
something softly, here and there, in different parts of the room. Before I
could offer to assist him he had found what he wanted. He came back to my
aunt and me, with his declaration of innocence in one hand, and with a box
of matches in the other.
“Dear aunt, a little conspiracy!” he said. “Dear Miss Clack, a pious fraud
which even your high moral rectitude will excuse! Will you leave Rachel to
suppose that I accept the generous self-sacrifice which has signed this pa-
per? And will you kindly bear witness that I destroy it in your presence, be-
fore I leave the house?” He kindled a match, and, lighting the paper, laid it
to burn in a plate on the table. “Any trifling inconvenience that I may suffer
is as nothing,” he remarked, “compared with the importance of preserving
that pure name from the contaminating contact of the world. There! We
have reduced it to a little harmless heap of ashes; and our dear impulsive
Rachel will never know what we have done! How do you feel? My precious
friends, how do you feel? For my poor part, I am as lighthearted as a boy!”
He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my aunt,
and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct to speak. I
closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual self-forgetfulness, to
my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh the ecstasy, the pure, un-
earthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat—I hardly know on what—quite lost in
my own exalted feelings. When I opened my eyes again, it was like des-
cending from heaven to earth. There was nobody but my aunt in the room.
He had gone.
I should like to stop here—I should like to close my narrative with the
record of Mr. Godfrey’s noble conduct. Unhappily there is more, much
more, which the unrelenting pecuniary pressure of Mr. Blake’s cheque ob-
liges me to tell. The painful disclosures which were to reveal themselves in
my presence, during that Tuesday’s visit to Montagu Square, were not at an
end yet.
Finding myself alone with Lady Verinder, I turned naturally to the subject
of her health; touching delicately on the strange anxiety which she had
shown to conceal her indisposition, and the remedy applied to it, from the
observation of her daughter.
My aunt’s reply greatly surprised me.
“Drusilla,” she said (if I have not already mentioned that my Christian
name is Drusilla, permit me to mention it now), “you are touching quite in-
nocently, I know—on a very distressing subject.”
I rose immediately. Delicacy left me but one alternative—the alternative,
after first making my apologies, of taking my leave. Lady Verinder stopped
me, and insisted on my sitting down again.
“You have surprised a secret,” she said, “which I had confided to my sis-
ter Mrs. Ablewhite, and to my lawyer Mr. Bruff, and to no one else. I can
trust in their discretion; and I am sure, when I tell you the circumstances, I
can trust in yours. Have you any pressing engagement, Drusilla? or is your
time your own this afternoon?”
It is needless to say that my time was entirely at my aunt’s disposal.
 “Keep me company then,” she said, “for another hour. I have something
to tell you which I believe you will be sorry to hear. And I shall have a ser-
vice to ask of you afterwards, if you don’t object to assist me.”
It is again needless to say that, so far from objecting, I was all eagerness
to assist her.
“You can wait here,” she went on, “till Mr. Bruff comes at five. And you
can be one of the witnesses, Drusilla, when I sign my Will.”
Her Will! I thought of the drops which I had seen in her work-box. I
thought of the bluish tinge which I had noticed in her complexion. A light
which was not of this world—a light shining prophetically from an unmade
grave—dawned on my mind. My aunt’s secret was a secret no longer.
 III

Consideration for poor Lady Verinder forbade me even to hint that I had
guessed the melancholy truth, before she opened her lips. I waited her
pleasure in silence; and, having privately arranged to say a few sustaining
words at the first convenient opportunity, felt prepared for any duty that
could claim me, no matter how painful it might be.
“I have been seriously ill, Drusilla, for some time past,” my aunt began.
“And, strange to say, without knowing it myself.”
I thought of the thousands and thousands of perishing human creatures
who were all at that moment spiritually ill, without knowing it themselves.
And I greatly feared that my poor aunt might be one of the number. “Yes,
dear,” I said, sadly. “Yes.”
“I brought Rachel to London, as you know, for medical advice,” she went
on. “I thought it right to consult two doctors.”
Two doctors! And, oh me (in Rachel’s state), not one clergyman! “Yes,
dear?” I said once more. “Yes?”
“One of the two medical men,” proceeded my aunt, “was a stranger to
me. The other had been an old friend of my husband’s, and had always felt
a sincere interest in me for my husband’s sake. After prescribing for Rachel,
he said he wished to speak to me privately in another room. I expected, of
course, to receive some special directions for the management of my daugh-
ter’s health. To my surprise, he took me gravely by the hand, and said, ‘I
have been looking at you, Lady Verinder, with a professional as well as a
personal interest. You are, I am afraid, far more urgently in need of medical
advice than your daughter.’ He put some questions to me, which I was at
first inclined to treat lightly enough, until I observed that my answers dis-
tressed him. It ended in his making an appointment to come and see me, ac-
companied by a medical friend, on the next day, at an hour when Rachel
would not be at home. The result of that visit—most kindly and gently con-
veyed to me—satisfied both the physicians that there had been precious
time lost, which could never be regained, and that my case had now passed
beyond the reach of their art. For more than two years I have been suffering
under an insidious form of heart disease, which, without any symptoms to
alarm me, has, by little and little, fatally broken me down. I may live for
some months, or I may die before another day has passed over my head—
the doctors cannot, and dare not, speak more positively than this. It would
be vain to say, my dear, that I have not had some miserable moments since
my real situation has been made known to me. But I am more resigned than
I was, and I am doing my best to set my worldly affairs in order. My one
great anxiety is that Rachel should be kept in ignorance of the truth. If she
knew it, she would at once attribute my broken health to anxiety about the
Diamond, and would reproach herself bitterly, poor child, for what is in no
sense her fault. Both the doctors agree that the mischief began two, if not
three years since. I am sure you will keep my secret, Drusilla—for I am
sure I see sincere sorrow and sympathy for me in your face.”
Sorrow and sympathy! Oh, what Pagan emotions to expect from a Chris-
tian Englishwoman anchored firmly on her faith!
Little did my poor aunt imagine what a gush of devout thankfulness
thrilled through me as she approached the close of her melancholy story.
Here was a career of usefulness opened before me! Here was a beloved rel-
ative and perishing fellow-creature, on the eve of the great change, utterly
unprepared; and led, providentially led, to reveal her situation to me! How
can I describe the joy with which I now remembered that the precious cler-
ical friends on whom I could rely, were to be counted, not by ones or twos,
but by tens and twenties. I took my aunt in my arms—my overflowing ten-
derness was not to be satisfied, now, with anything less than an embrace.
“Oh!” I said to her, fervently, “the indescribable interest with which you in-
spire me! Oh! the good I mean to do you, dear, before we part!” After an-
other word or two of earnest prefatory warning, I gave her her choice of
three precious friends, all plying the work of mercy from morning to night
in her own neighbourhood; all equally inexhaustible in exhortation; all af-
fectionately ready to exercise their gifts at a word from me. Alas! the result
was far from encouraging. Poor Lady Verinder looked puzzled and
frightened, and met everything I could say to her with the purely worldly
objection that she was not strong enough to face strangers. I yielded—for
the moment only, of course. My large experience (as Reader and Visitor,
under not less, first and last, than fourteen beloved clerical friends) in-
formed me that this was another case for preparation by books. I possessed
a little library of works, all suitable to the present emergency, all calculated
to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify my aunt. “You will read,
dear, won’t you?” I said, in my most winning way. “You will read, if I bring
you my own precious books? Turned down at all the right places, aunt. And
marked in pencil where you are to stop and ask yourself, ‘Does this apply to
me?’” Even that simple appeal—so absolutely heathenising is the influence
of the world—appeared to startle my aunt. She said, “I will do what I can,
Drusilla, to please you,” with a look of surprise, which was at once instruct-
ive and terrible to see. Not a moment was to be lost. The clock on the man-
telpiece informed me that I had just time to hurry home; to provide myself
with a first series of selected readings (say a dozen only); and to return in
time to meet the lawyer, and witness Lady Verinder’s Will. Promising faith-
fully to be back by five o’clock, I left the house on my errand of mercy.
When no interests but my own are involved, I am humbly content to get
from place to place by the omnibus. Permit me to give an idea of my devo-
tion to my aunt’s interests by recording that, on this occasion, I committed
the prodigality of taking a cab.
I drove home, selected and marked my first series of readings, and drove
back to Montagu Square, with a dozen works in a carpetbag, the like of
which, I firmly believe, are not to be found in the literature of any other
country in Europe. I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received it with
an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I had presented a pistol
at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater con-
sternation. He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dis-
may, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good
seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the
cab.

The servant who answered the door—not the person with the cap-ribbons,
to my great relief, but the footman—informed me that the doctor had called,
and was still shut up with Lady Verinder. Mr. Bruff, the lawyer, had arrived
a minute since and was waiting in the library. I was shown into the library
to wait too.
 Mr. Bruff looked surprised to see me. He is the family solicitor, and we
had met more than once, on previous occasions, under Lady Verinder’s
roof. A man, I grieve to say, grown old and grizzled in the service of the
world. A man who, in his hours of business, was the chosen prophet of Law
and Mammon; and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally capable of
reading a novel and of tearing up a tract.
“Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?” he asked, with a look at my
carpetbag.
To reveal the contents of my precious bag to such a person as this would
have been simply to invite an outburst of profanity. I lowered myself to his
own level, and mentioned my business in the house.
“My aunt has informed me that she is about to sign her Will,” I answered.
“She has been so good as to ask me to be one of the witnesses.”
“Aye? aye? Well, Miss Clack, you will do. You are over twenty-one, and
you have not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder’s Will.”
Not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder’s Will. Oh, how
thankful I felt when I heard that! If my aunt, possessed of thousands, had
remembered poor me, to whom five pounds is an object—if my name had
appeared in the Will, with a little comforting legacy attached to it—my en-
emies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the
choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing resources
for the prodigal expenses of a cab. Not the cruellest scoffer of them all
could doubt now. Much better as it was! Oh, surely, surely, much better as it
was!
I was aroused from these consoling reflections by the voice of Mr. Bruff.
My meditative silence appeared to weigh upon the spirits of this worldling,
and to force him, as it were, into talking to me against his own will.
“Well, Miss Clack, what’s the last news in the charitable circles? How is
your friend Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, after the mauling he got from the
rogues in Northumberland Street? Egad! they’re telling a pretty story about
that charitable gentleman at my club!”
I had passed over the manner in which this person had remarked that I
was more than twenty-one, and that I had no pecuniary interest in my aunt’s
Will. But the tone in which he alluded to dear Mr. Godfrey was too much
for my forbearance. Feeling bound, after what had passed in my presence
that afternoon, to assert the innocence of my admirable friend, whenever I
found it called in question—I own to having also felt bound to include in
the accomplishment of this righteous purpose, a stinging castigation in the
case of Mr. Bruff.
“I live very much out of the world,” I said; “and I don’t possess the ad-
vantage, sir, of belonging to a club. But I happen to know the story to which
you allude; and I also know that a viler falsehood than that story never was
told.”
“Yes, yes, Miss Clack—you believe in your friend. Natural enough.
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, won’t find the world in general quite so easy to
convince as a committee of charitable ladies. Appearances are dead against
him. He was in the house when the Diamond was lost. And he was the first
person in the house to go to London afterwards. Those are ugly circum-
stances, ma’am, viewed by the light of later events.”
I ought, I know, to have set him right before he went any farther. I ought
to have told him that he was speaking in ignorance of a testimony to
Mr. Godfrey’s innocence, offered by the only person who was undeniably
competent to speak from a positive knowledge of the subject. Alas! the
temptation to lead the lawyer artfully on to his own discomfiture was too
much for me. I asked what he meant by “later events”—with an appearance
of the utmost innocence.
“By later events, Miss Clack, I mean events in which the Indians are con-
cerned,” proceeded Mr. Bruff, getting more and more superior to poor me,
the longer he went on. “What do the Indians do, the moment they are let out
of the prison at Frizinghall? They go straight to London, and fix on
Mr. Luker. What follows? Mr. Luker feels alarmed for the safety of ‘a valu-
able of great price,’ which he has got in the house. He lodges it privately
(under a general description) in his bankers’ strongroom. Wonderfully clev-
er of him: but the Indians are just as clever on their side. They have their
suspicions that the ‘valuable of great price’ is being shifted from one place
to another; and they hit on a singularly bold and complete way of clearing
those suspicions up. Whom do they seize and search? Not Mr. Luker only—
which would be intelligible enough—but Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well.
Why? Mr. Ablewhite’s explanation is, that they acted on blind suspicion,
after seeing him accidentally speaking to Mr. Luker. Absurd! Half-a-dozen
other people spoke to Mr. Luker that morning. Why were they not followed
home too, and decoyed into the trap? No! no! The plain inference is, that
Mr. Ablewhite had his private interest in the ‘valuable’ as well as
Mr. Luker, and that the Indians were so uncertain as to which of the two had
the disposal of it, that there was no alternative but to search them both. Pub-
lic opinion says that, Miss Clack. And public opinion, on this occasion, is
not easily refuted.”
He said those last words, looking so wonderfully wise in his own worldly
conceit, that I really (to my shame be it spoken) could not resist leading him
a little farther still, before I overwhelmed him with the truth.
“I don’t presume to argue with a clever lawyer like you,” I said. “But is it
quite fair, sir, to Mr. Ablewhite to pass over the opinion of the famous Lon-
don police officer who investigated this case? Not the shadow of a suspi-
cion rested upon anybody but Miss Verinder, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Miss Clack, that you agree with the Sergeant?”
“I judge nobody, sir, and I offer no opinion.”
“And I commit both those enormities, ma’am. I judge the Sergeant to
have been utterly wrong; and I offer the opinion that, if he had known
Rachel’s character as I know it, he would have suspected everybody in the
house but her. I admit that she has her faults—she is secret, and self-willed;
odd and wild, and unlike other girls of her age. But true as steel, and high-
minded and generous to a fault. If the plainest evidence in the world pointed
one way, and if nothing but Rachel’s word of honour pointed the other, I
would take her word before the evidence, lawyer as I am! Strong language,
Miss Clack; but I mean it.”
“Would you object to illustrate your meaning, Mr. Bruff, so that I may be
sure I understand it? Suppose you found Miss Verinder quite unaccountably
interested in what has happened to Mr. Ablewhite and Mr. Luker? Suppose
she asked the strangest questions about this dreadful scandal, and displayed
the most ungovernable agitation when she found out the turn it was
taking?”
“Suppose anything you please, Miss Clack, it wouldn’t shake my belief
in Rachel Verinder by a hair’s-breadth.”
“She is so absolutely to be relied on as that?”
“So absolutely to be relied on as that.”
“Then permit me to inform you, Mr. Bruff, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite
was in this house not two hours since, and that his entire innocence of all
concern in the disappearance of the Moonstone was proclaimed by Miss
Verinder herself, in the strongest language I ever heard used by a young
lady in my life.”
 I enjoyed the triumph—the unholy triumph, I fear I must admit—of see-
ing Mr. Bruff utterly confounded and overthrown by a few plain words
from me. He started to his feet, and stared at me in silence. I kept my seat,
undisturbed, and related the whole scene as it had occurred. “And what do
you say about Mr. Ablewhite now?” I asked, with the utmost possible gen-
tleness, as soon as I had done.
“If Rachel has testified to his innocence, Miss Clack, I don’t scruple to
say that I believe in his innocence as firmly as you do: I have been misled
by appearances, like the rest of the world; and I will make the best atone-
ment I can, by publicly contradicting the scandal which has assailed your
friend wherever I meet with it. In the meantime, allow me to congratulate
you on the masterly manner in which you have opened the full fire of your
batteries on me at the moment when I least expected it. You would have
done great things in my profession, ma’am, if you had happened to be a
man.”
With those words he turned away from me, and began walking irritably
up and down the room.
I could see plainly that the new light I had thrown on the subject had
greatly surprised and disturbed him. Certain expressions dropped from his
lips, as he became more and more absorbed in his own thoughts, which sug-
gested to my mind the abominable view that he had hitherto taken of the
mystery of the lost Moonstone. He had not scrupled to suspect dear
Mr. Godfrey of the infamy of stealing the Diamond, and to attribute
Rachel’s conduct to a generous resolution to conceal the crime. On Miss
Verinder’s own authority—a perfectly unassailable authority, as you are
aware, in the estimation of Mr. Bruff—that explanation of the circum-
stances was now shown to be utterly wrong. The perplexity into which I
had plunged this high legal authority was so overwhelming that he was
quite unable to conceal it from notice. “What a case!” I heard him say to
himself, stopping at the window in his walk, and drumming on the glass
with his fingers. “It not only defies explanation, it’s even beyond
conjecture.”
There was nothing in these words which made any reply at all needful,
on my part—and yet, I answered them! It seems hardly credible that I
should not have been able to let Mr. Bruff alone, even now. It seems almost
beyond mere mortal perversity that I should have discovered, in what he
had just said, a new opportunity of making myself personally disagreeable
to him. But—ah, my friends! nothing is beyond mortal perversity; and any-
thing is credible when our fallen natures get the better of us!
“Pardon me for intruding on your reflections,” I said to the unsuspecting
Mr. Bruff. “But surely there is a conjecture to make which has not occurred
to us yet.”
“Maybe, Miss Clack. I own I don’t know what it is.”
“Before I was so fortunate, sir, as to convince you of Mr. Ablewhite’s in-
nocence, you mentioned it as one of the reasons for suspecting him, that he
was in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost. Permit me to re-
mind you that Mr. Franklin Blake was also in the house at the time when
the Diamond was lost.”
The old worldling left the window, took a chair exactly opposite to mine,
and looked at me steadily, with a hard and vicious smile.
“You are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack,” he remarked in a meditative
manner, “as I supposed. You don’t know how to let well alone.”
“I am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruff,” I said, modestly.
“It won’t do, Miss Clack—it really won’t do a second time. Franklin
Blake is a prime favourite of mine, as you are well aware. But that doesn’t
matter. I’ll adopt your view, on this occasion, before you have time to turn
round on me. You’re quite right, ma’am. I have suspected Mr. Ablewhite,
on grounds which abstractedly justify suspecting Mr. Blake too. Very
good—let’s suspect them together. It’s quite in his character, we will say, to
be capable of stealing the Moonstone. The only question is, whether it was
his interest to do so.”
“Mr. Franklin Blake’s debts,” I remarked, “are matters of family
notoriety.”
“And Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s debts have not arrived at that stage of de-
velopment yet. Quite true. But there happen to be two difficulties in the way
of your theory, Miss Clack. I manage Franklin Blake’s affairs, and I beg to
inform you that the vast majority of his creditors (knowing his father to be a
rich man) are quite content to charge interest on their debts, and to wait for
their money. There is the first difficulty—which is tough enough. You will
find the second tougher still. I have it on the authority of Lady Verinder her-
self, that her daughter was ready to marry Franklin Blake, before that in-
fernal Indian Diamond disappeared from the house. She had drawn him on
and put him off again, with the coquetry of a young girl. But she had con-
fessed to her mother that she loved cousin Franklin, and her mother had
trusted cousin Franklin with the secret. So there he was, Miss Clack, with
his creditors content to wait, and with the certain prospect before him of
marrying an heiress. By all means consider him a scoundrel; but tell me, if
you please, why he should steal the Moonstone?”
“The human heart is unsearchable,” I said gently. “Who is to fathom it?”
“In other words, ma’am—though he hadn’t the shadow of a reason for
taking the Diamond—he might have taken it, nevertheless, through natural
depravity. Very well. Say he did. Why the devil—”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Bruff. If I hear the devil referred to in that man-
ner, I must leave the room.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Clack—I’ll be more careful in my choice of
language for the future. All I meant to ask was this. Why—even supposing
he did take the Diamond—should Franklin Blake make himself the most
prominent person in the house in trying to recover it? You may tell me he
cunningly did that to divert suspicion from himself. I answer that he had no
need to divert suspicion—because nobody suspected him. He first steals the
Moonstone (without the slightest reason) through natural depravity; and he
then acts a part, in relation to the loss of the jewel, which there is not the
slightest necessity to act, and which leads to his mortally offending the
young lady who would otherwise have married him. That is the monstrous
proposition which you are driven to assert, if you attempt to associate the
disappearance of the Moonstone with Franklin Blake. No, no, Miss Clack!
After what has passed here today, between us two, the deadlock, in this
case, is complete. Rachel’s own innocence is (as her mother knows, and as I
know) beyond a doubt. Mr. Ablewhite’s innocence is equally certain—or
Rachel would never have testified to it. And Franklin Blake’s innocence, as
you have just seen, unanswerably asserts itself. On the one hand, we are
morally certain of all these things. And, on the other hand, we are equally
sure that somebody has brought the Moonstone to London, and that
Mr. Luker, or his banker, is in private possession of it at this moment. What
is the use of my experience, what is the use of any person’s experience, in
such a case as that? It baffles me; it baffles you, it baffles everybody.”
No—not everybody. It had not baffled Sergeant Cuff. I was about to men-
tion this, with all possible mildness, and with every necessary protest
against being supposed to cast a slur upon Rachel—when the servant came
in to say that the doctor had gone, and that my aunt was waiting to receive
us.
 This stopped the discussion. Mr. Bruff collected his papers, looking a
little exhausted by the demands which our conversation had made on him. I
took up my bag-full of precious publications, feeling as if I could have gone
on talking for hours. We proceeded in silence to Lady Verinder’s room.
Permit me to add here, before my narrative advances to other events, that
I have not described what passed between the lawyer and me, without hav-
ing a definite object in view. I am ordered to include in my contribution to
the shocking story of the Moonstone a plain disclosure, not only of the turn
which suspicion took, but even of the names of the persons on whom suspi-
cion rested, at the time when the Indian Diamond was believed to be in
London. A report of my conversation in the library with Mr. Bruff appeared
to me to be exactly what was wanted to answer this purpose—while, at the
same time, it possessed the great moral advantage of rendering a sacrifice of
sinful self-esteem essentially necessary on my part. I have been obliged to
acknowledge that my fallen nature got the better of me. In making that hu-
miliating confession, I get the better of my fallen nature. The moral balance
is restored; the spiritual atmosphere feels clear once more. Dear friends, we
may go on again.
 IV

The signing of the Will was a much shorter matter than I had anticipated. It
was hurried over, to my thinking, in indecent haste. Samuel, the footman,
was sent for to act as second witness—and the pen was put at once into my
aunt’s hand. I felt strongly urged to say a few appropriate words on this sol-
emn occasion. But Mr. Bruff’s manner convinced me that it was wisest to
check the impulse while he was in the room. In less than two minutes it was
all over—and Samuel (unbenefited by what I might have said) had gone
downstairs again.
Mr. Bruff folded up the Will, and then looked my way; apparently won-
dering whether I did or did not mean to leave him alone with my aunt. I had
my mission of mercy to fulfil, and my bag of precious publications ready on
my lap. He might as well have expected to move St. Paul’s Cathedral by
looking at it, as to move me. There was one merit about him (due no doubt
to his worldly training) which I have no wish to deny. He was quick at see-
ing things. I appeared to produce almost the same impression on him which
I had produced on the cabman. He too uttered a profane expression, and
withdrew in a violent hurry, and left me mistress of the field.
As soon as we were alone, my aunt reclined on the sofa, and then al-
luded, with some appearance of confusion, to the subject of her Will.
“I hope you won’t think yourself neglected, Drusilla,” she said. “I mean
to give you your little legacy, my dear, with my own hand.”
Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I
instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication. It proved to be
an early edition—only the twenty-fifth—of the famous anonymous work
(believed to be by precious Miss Bellows), entitled The Serpent at Home.
The design of the book—with which the worldly reader may not be ac-
quainted—is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us in all the most ap-
parently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to
female perusal are “Satan in the Hair Brush;” “Satan behind the Looking
Glass;” “Satan under the Tea Table;” “Satan out of the Window”—and
many others.
“Give your attention, dear aunt, to this precious book—and you will give
me all I ask.” With those words, I handed it to her open, at a marked pas-
sage—one continuous burst of burning eloquence! Subject: Satan among
the Sofa Cushions.
Poor Lady Verinder (reclining thoughtlessly on her own sofa cushions)
glanced at the book, and handed it back to me looking more confused than
ever.
“I’m afraid, Drusilla,” she said, “I must wait till I am a little better, before
I can read that. The doctor—”
The moment she mentioned the doctor’s name, I knew what was coming.
Over and over again in my past experience among my perishing fellow-
creatures, the members of the notoriously infidel profession of Medicine
had stepped between me and my mission of mercy—on the miserable pre-
tence that the patient wanted quiet, and that the disturbing influence of all
others which they most dreaded, was the influence of Miss Clack and her
Books. Precisely the same blinded materialism (working treacherously be-
hind my back) now sought to rob me of the only right of property that my
poverty could claim—my right of spiritual property in my perishing aunt.
“The doctor tells me,” my poor misguided relative went on, “that I am
not so well today. He forbids me to see any strangers; and he orders me, if I
read at all, only to read the lightest and the most amusing books. ‘Do noth-
ing, Lady Verinder, to weary your head, or to quicken your pulse’—those
were his last words, Drusilla, when he left me today.”
There was no help for it but to yield again—for the moment only, as be-
fore. Any open assertion of the infinitely superior importance of such a min-
istry as mine, compared with the ministry of the medical man, would only
have provoked the doctor to practise on the human weakness of his patient,
and to threaten to throw up the case. Happily, there are more ways than one
of sowing the good seed, and few persons are better versed in those ways
than myself.
“You might feel stronger, dear, in an hour or two,” I said. “Or you might
wake, tomorrow morning, with a sense of something wanting, and even this
unpretending volume might be able to supply it. You will let me leave the
book, aunt? The doctor can hardly object to that!”
 I slipped it under the sofa cushions, half in, and half out, close by her
handkerchief, and her smelling-bottle. Every time her hand searched for
either of these, it would touch the book; and, sooner or later (who knows?)
the book might touch her. After making this arrangement, I thought it wise
to withdraw. “Let me leave you to repose, dear aunt; I will call again tomor-
row.” I looked accidentally towards the window as I said that. It was full of
flowers, in boxes and pots. Lady Verinder was extravagantly fond of these
perishable treasures, and had a habit of rising every now and then, and go-
ing to look at them and smell them. A new idea flashed across my mind.
“Oh! may I take a flower?” I said—and got to the window unsuspected, in
that way. Instead of taking away a flower, I added one, in the shape of an-
other book from my bag, which I left, to surprise my aunt, among the
geraniums and roses. The happy thought followed, “Why not do the same
for her, poor dear, in every other room that she enters?” I immediately said
goodbye; and, crossing the hall, slipped into the library. Samuel, coming up
to let me out, and supposing I had gone, went downstairs again. On the li-
brary table I noticed two of the “amusing books” which the infidel doctor
had recommended. I instantly covered them from sight with two of my own
precious publications. In the breakfast-room I found my aunt’s favourite ca-
nary singing in his cage. She was always in the habit of feeding the bird
herself. Some groundsel was strewed on a table which stood immediately
under the cage. I put a book among the groundsel. In the drawing-room I
found more cheering opportunities of emptying my bag. My aunt’s favour-
ite musical pieces were on the piano. I slipped in two more books among
the music. I disposed of another in the back drawing-room, under some un-
finished embroidery, which I knew to be of Lady Verinder’s working. A
third little room opened out of the back drawing-room, from which it was
shut off by curtains instead of a door. My aunt’s plain old-fashioned fan was
on the chimneypiece. I opened my ninth book at a very special passage, and
put the fan in as a marker, to keep the place. The question then came,
whether I should go higher still, and try the bedroom floor—at the risk, un-
doubtedly, of being insulted, if the person with the cap-ribbons happened to
be in the upper regions of the house, and to find me out. But oh, what of
that? It is a poor Christian that is afraid of being insulted. I went upstairs,
prepared to bear anything. All was silent and solitary—it was the servants’
teatime, I suppose. My aunt’s room was in front. The miniature of my late
dear uncle, Sir John, hung on the wall opposite the bed. It seemed to smile
at me; it seemed to say, “Drusilla! deposit a book.” There were tables on
either side of my aunt’s bed. She was a bad sleeper, and wanted, or thought
she wanted, many things at night. I put a book near the matches on one side,
and a book under the box of chocolate drops on the other. Whether she
wanted a light, or whether she wanted a drop, there was a precious publica-
tion to meet her eye, or to meet her hand, and to say with silent eloquence,
in either case, “Come, try me! try me!” But one book was now left at the
bottom of my bag, and but one apartment was still unexplored—the bath-
room, which opened out of the bedroom. I peeped in; and the holy inner
voice that never deceives, whispered to me, “You have met her, Drusilla,
everywhere else; meet her at the bath, and the work is done.” I observed a
dressing-gown thrown across a chair. It had a pocket in it, and in that pocket
I put my last book. Can words express my exquisite sense of duty done,
when I had slipped out of the house, unsuspected by any of them, and when
I found myself in the street with my empty bag under my arm? Oh, my
worldly friends, pursuing the phantom, pleasure, through the guilty mazes
of dissipation, how easy it is to be happy, if you will only be good!
When I folded up my things that night—when I reflected on the true
riches which I had scattered with such a lavish hand, from top to bottom of
the house of my wealthy aunt—I declare I felt as free from all anxiety as if I
had been a child again. I was so lighthearted that I sang a verse of the Even-
ing Hymn. I was so lighthearted that I fell asleep before I could sing anoth-
er. Quite like a child again! quite like a child again!
So I passed that blissful night. On rising the next morning, how young I
felt! I might add, how young I looked, if I were capable of dwelling on the
concerns of my own perishable body. But I am not capable—and I add
nothing.
Towards luncheon time—not for the sake of the creature-comforts, but
for the certainty of finding dear aunt—I put on my bonnet to go to Montagu
Square. Just as I was ready, the maid at the lodgings in which I then lived
looked in at the door, and said, “Lady Verinder’s servant, to see Miss
Clack.”
I occupied the parlour-floor, at that period of my residence in London.
The front parlour was my sitting-room. Very small, very low in the ceiling,
very poorly furnished—but, oh, so neat! I looked into the passage to see
which of Lady Verinder’s servants had asked for me. It was the young foot-
man, Samuel—a civil fresh-coloured person, with a teachable look and a
very obliging manner. I had always felt a spiritual interest in Samuel, and a
wish to try him with a few serious words. On this occasion, I invited him
into my sitting-room.
He came in, with a large parcel under his arm. When he put the parcel
down, it appeared to frighten him. “My lady’s love, Miss; and I was to say
that you would find a letter inside.” Having given that message, the fresh-
coloured young footman surprised me by looking as if he would have liked
to run away.
I detained him to make a few kind inquiries. Could I see my aunt, if I
called in Montagu Square? No; she had gone out for a drive. Miss Rachel
had gone with her, and Mr. Ablewhite had taken a seat in the carriage, too.
Knowing how sadly dear Mr. Godfrey’s charitable work was in arrear, I
thought it odd that he should be going out driving, like an idle man. I
stopped Samuel at the door, and made a few more kind inquiries. Miss
Rachel was going to a ball that night, and Mr. Ablewhite had arranged to
come to coffee, and go with her. There was a morning concert advertised
for tomorrow, and Samuel was ordered to take places for a large party, in-
cluding a place for Mr. Ablewhite. “All the tickets may be gone, Miss,” said
this innocent youth, “if I don’t run and get them at once!” He ran as he said
the words—and I found myself alone again, with some anxious thoughts to
occupy me.
We had a special meeting of the Mothers’ Small-Clothes-Conversion So-
ciety that night, summoned expressly with a view to obtaining Mr. God-
frey’s advice and assistance. Instead of sustaining our sisterhood, under an
overwhelming flow of trousers which quite prostrated our little community,
he had arranged to take coffee in Montagu Square, and to goto a ball after-
wards! The afternoon of the next day had been selected for the Festival of
the British-Ladies’ Servants’-Sunday-Sweetheart-Supervision Society. In-
stead of being present, the life and soul of that struggling Institution, he had
engaged to make one of a party of worldlings at a morning concert! I asked
myself what did it mean? Alas! it meant that our Christian Hero was to re-
veal himself to me in a new character, and to become associated in my mind
with one of the most awful backslidings of modern times.
To return, however, to the history of the passing day. On finding myself
alone in my room, I naturally turned my attention to the parcel which ap-
peared to have so strangely intimidated the fresh-coloured young footman.
Had my aunt sent me my promised legacy? and had it taken the form of
cast-off clothes, or worn-out silver spoons, or unfashionable jewellery, or
anything of that sort? Prepared to accept all, and to resent nothing, I opened
the parcel—and what met my view? The twelve precious publications
which I had scattered through the house, on the previous day; all returned to
me by the doctor’s orders! Well might the youthful Samuel shrink when he
brought his parcel into my room! Well might he run when he had performed
his miserable errand! As to my aunt’s letter, it simply amounted, poor soul,
to this—that she dare not disobey her medical man.
What was to be done now? With my training and my principles, I never
had a moment’s doubt.
Once self-supported by conscience, once embarked on a career of mani-
fest usefulness, the true Christian never yields. Neither public nor private
influences produce the slightest effect on us, when we have once got our
mission. Taxation may be the consequence of a mission; riots may be the
consequence of a mission; wars may be the consequence of a mission: we
go on with our work, irrespective of every human consideration which
moves the world outside us. We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule;
we see with nobody’s eyes, we hear with nobody’s ears, we feel with
nobody’s hearts, but our own. Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it
earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry! We
are the only people who can earn it—for we are the only people who are al-
ways right.
In the case of my misguided aunt, the form which pious perseverance
was next to take revealed itself to me plainly enough.
Preparation by clerical friends had failed, owing to Lady Verinder’s own
reluctance. Preparation by books had failed, owing to the doctor’s infidel
obstinacy. So be it! What was the next thing to try? The next thing to try
was—preparation by little notes. In other words, the books themselves hav-
ing been sent back, select extracts from the books, copied by different
hands, and all addressed as letters to my aunt, were, some to be sent by
post, and some to be distributed about the house on the plan I had adopted
on the previous day. As letters they would excite no suspicion; as letters
they would be opened—and, once opened, might be read. Some of them I
wrote myself. “Dear aunt, may I ask your attention to a few lines?” etc
“Dear aunt, I was reading last night, and I chanced on the following pas-
sage,” etc Other letters were written for me by my valued fellow-workers,
the sisterhood at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes. “Dear madam, pardon the in-
terest taken in you by a true, though humble, friend.” “Dear madam, may a
serious person surprise you by saying a few cheering words?” Using these
and other similar forms of courteous appeal, we reintroduced all my pre-
cious passages under a form which not even the doctor’s watchful material-
ism could suspect. Before the shades of evening had closed around us, I had
a dozen awakening letters for my aunt, instead of a dozen awakening books.
Six I made immediate arrangements for sending through the post, and six I
kept in my pocket for personal distribution in the house the next day.
Soon after two o’clock I was again on the field of pious conflict, address-
ing more kind inquiries to Samuel at Lady Verinder’s door.
My aunt had had a bad night. She was again in the room in which I had
witnessed her Will, resting on the sofa, and trying to get a little sleep.
I said I would wait in the library, on the chance of seeing her. In the fer-
vour of my zeal to distribute the letters, it never occurred to me to inquire
about Rachel. The house was quiet, and it was past the hour at which the
musical performance began. I took it for granted that she and her party of
pleasure-seekers (Mr. Godfrey, alas! included) were all at the concert, and
eagerly devoted myself to my good work, while time and opportunity were
still at my own disposal.
My aunt’s correspondence of the morning—including the six awakening
letters which I had posted overnight—was lying unopened on the library
table. She had evidently not felt herself equal to dealing with a large mass
of letters—and she might be daunted by the number of them, if she entered
the library later in the day. I put one of my second set of six letters on the
chimneypiece by itself; leaving it to attract her curiosity, by means of its
solitary position, apart from the rest. A second letter I put purposely on the
floor in the breakfast-room. The first servant who went in after me would
conclude that my aunt had dropped it, and would be specially careful to re-
store it to her. The field thus sown on the basement story, I ran lightly up-
stairs to scatter my mercies next over the drawing-room floor.
Just as I entered the front room, I heard a double knock at the street-
door—a soft, fluttering, considerate little knock. Before I could think of
slipping back to the library (in which I was supposed to be waiting), the act-
ive young footman was in the hall, answering the door. It mattered little, as
I thought. In my aunt’s state of health, visitors in general were not admitted.
To my horror and amazement, the performer of the soft little knock proved
to be an exception to general rules. Samuel’s voice below me (after appar-
ently answering some questions which I did not hear) said, unmistakably,
“Upstairs, if you please, sir.” The next moment I heard footsteps—a man’s
footsteps—approaching the drawing-room floor. Who could this favoured
male visitor possibly be? Almost as soon as I asked myself the question, the
answer occurred to me. Who could it be but the doctor?
In the case of any other visitor, I should have allowed myself to be dis-
covered in the drawing-room. There would have been nothing out of the
common in my having got tired of the library, and having gone upstairs for
a change. But my own self-respect stood in the way of my meeting the per-
son who had insulted me by sending me back my books. I slipped into the
little third room, which I have mentioned as communicating with the back
drawing-room, and dropped the curtains which closed the open doorway. If
I only waited there for a minute or two, the usual result in such cases would
take place. That is to say, the doctor would be conducted to his patient’s
room.
I waited a minute or two, and more than a minute or two. I heard the vis-
itor walking restlessly backwards and forwards. I also heard him talking to
himself. I even thought I recognised the voice. Had I made a mistake? Was
it not the doctor, but somebody else? Mr. Bruff, for instance? No! an unerr-
ing instinct told me it was not Mr. Bruff. Whoever he was, he was still talk-
ing to himself. I parted the heavy curtains the least little morsel in the
world, and listened.
The words I heard were, “I’ll do it today!” And the voice that spoke them
was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s.
 V

My hand dropped from the curtain. But don’t suppose—oh, don’t sup-
pose—that the dreadful embarrassment of my situation was the uppermost
idea in my mind! So fervent still was the sisterly interest I felt in Mr. God-
frey, that I never stopped to ask myself why he was not at the concert. No! I
thought only of the words—the startling words—which had just fallen from
his lips. He would do it today. He had said, in a tone of terrible resolution,
he would do it today. What, oh what, would he do? Something even more
deplorably unworthy of him than what he had done already? Would he
apostatise from the faith? Would he abandon us at the Mothers’ Small-
Clothes? Had we seen the last of his angelic smile in the committee-room?
Had we heard the last of his unrivalled eloquence at Exeter Hall? I was so
wrought up by the bare idea of such awful eventualities as these in connec-
tion with such a man, that I believe I should have rushed from my place of
concealment, and implored him in the name of all the ladies’ committees in
London to explain himself—when I suddenly heard another voice in the
room. It penetrated through the curtains; it was loud, it was bold, it was
wanting in every female charm. The voice of Rachel Verinder.
“Why have you come up here, Godfrey?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go
into the library?”
He laughed softly, and answered, “Miss Clack is in the library.”
“Clack in the library!” She instantly seated herself on the ottoman in the
back drawing-room. “You are quite right, Godfrey. We had much better stop
here.”
I had been in a burning fever, a moment since, and in some doubt what to
do next. I became extremely cold now, and felt no doubt whatever. To show
myself, after what I had heard, was impossible. To retreat—except into the
fireplace—was equally out of the question. A martyrdom was before me. In
justice to myself, I noiselessly arranged the curtains so that I could both see
and hear. And then I met my martyrdom, with the spirit of a primitive
Christian.
“Don’t sit on the ottoman,” the young lady proceeded. “Bring a chair,
Godfrey. I like people to be opposite to me when I talk to them.”
He took the nearest seat. It was a low chair. He was very tall, and many
sizes too large for it. I never saw his legs to such disadvantage before.
“Well?” she went on. “What did you say to them?”
“Just what you said, dear Rachel, to me.”
“That mamma was not at all well today? And that I didn’t quite like leav-
ing her to go to the concert?”
“Those were the words. They were grieved to lose you at the concert, but
they quite understood. All sent their love; and all expressed a cheering be-
lief that Lady Verinder’s indisposition would soon pass away.”
“You don’t think it’s serious, do you, Godfrey?”
“Far from it! In a few days, I feel quite sure, all will be well again.”
“I think so, too. I was a little frightened at first, but I think so too. It was
very kind to go and make my excuses for me to people who are almost
strangers to you. But why not have gone with them to the concert? It seems
very hard that you should miss the music too.”
“Don’t say that, Rachel! If you only knew how much happier I am—here,
with you!”
He clasped his hands, and looked at her. In the position which he occu-
pied, when he did that, he turned my way. Can words describe how I
sickened when I noticed exactly the same pathetic expression on his face,
which had charmed me when he was pleading for destitute millions of his
fellow-creatures on the platform at Exeter Hall!
“It’s hard to get over one’s bad habits, Godfrey. But do try to get over the
habit of paying compliments—do, to please me.”
“I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may
sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest,
always speaks the truth.”
He drew his chair close, and took her hand, when he said “hopeless
love.” There was a momentary silence. He, who thrilled everybody, had
doubtless thrilled her. I thought I now understood the words which had
dropped from him when he was alone in the drawing-room, “I’ll do it
today.” Alas! the most rigid propriety could hardly have failed to discover
that he was doing it now.
 “Have you forgotten what we agreed on, Godfrey, when you spoke to me
in the country? We agreed that we were to be cousins, and nothing more.”
“I break the agreement, Rachel, every time I see you.”
“Then don’t see me.”
“Quite useless! I break the agreement every time I think of you. Oh,
Rachel! how kindly you told me, only the other day, that my place in your
estimation was a higher place than it had ever been yet! Am I mad to build
the hopes I do on those dear words? Am I mad to dream of some future day
when your heart may soften to me? Don’t tell me so, if I am! Leave me my
delusion, dearest! I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have
nothing else!”
His voice trembled, and he put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Exeter
Hall again! Nothing wanting to complete the parallel but the audience, the
cheers, and the glass of water.
Even her obdurate nature was touched. I saw her lean a little nearer to
him. I heard a new tone of interest in her next words.
“Are you really sure, Godfrey, that you are so fond of me as that?”
“Sure! You know what I was, Rachel. Let me tell you what I am. I have
lost every interest in life, but my interest in you. A transformation has come
over me which I can’t account for, myself. Would you believe it? My charit-
able business is an unendurable nuisance to me; and when I see a ladies’
committee now, I wish myself at the uttermost ends of the earth!”
If the annals of apostasy offer anything comparable to such a declaration
as that, I can only say that the case in point is not producible from the stores
of my reading. I thought of the Mothers’ Small-Clothes. I thought of the
Sunday-Sweetheart-Supervision. I thought of the other Societies, too nu-
merous to mention, all built up on this man as on a tower of strength. I
thought of the struggling Female Boards, who, so to speak, drew the breath
of their business-life through the nostrils of Mr. Godfrey—of that same
Mr. Godfrey who had just reviled our good work as a “nuisance”—and just
declared that he wished he was at the uttermost ends of the earth when he
found himself in our company! My young female friends will feel encour-
aged to persevere, when I mention that it tried even my discipline before I
could devour my own righteous indignation in silence. At the same time, it
is only justice to myself to add, that I didn’t lose a syllable of the conversa-
tion. Rachel was the next to speak.
 “You have made your confession,” she said. “I wonder whether it would
cure you of your unhappy attachment to me, if I made mine?”
He started. I confess I started too. He thought, and I thought, that she was
about to divulge the mystery of the Moonstone.
“Would you think, to look at me,” she went on, “that I am the wretched-
est girl living? It’s true, Godfrey. What greater wretchedness can there be
than to live degraded in your own estimation? That is my life now.”
“My dear Rachel! it’s impossible you can have any reason to speak of
yourself in that way!”
“How do you know I have no reason?”
“Can you ask me the question! I know it, because I know you. Your si-
lence, dearest, has never lowered you in the estimation of your true friends.
The disappearance of your precious birthday gift may seem strange; your
unexplained connection with that event may seem stranger still.”
“Are you speaking of the Moonstone, Godfrey—”
“I certainly thought that you referred—”
“I referred to nothing of the sort. I can hear of the loss of the Moonstone,
let who will speak of it, without feeling degraded in my own estimation. If
the story of the Diamond ever comes to light, it will be known that I accep-
ted a dreadful responsibility; it will be known that I involved myself in the
keeping of a miserable secret—but it will be as clear as the sun at noonday
that I did nothing mean! You have misunderstood me, Godfrey. It’s my fault
for not speaking more plainly. Cost me what it may, I will be plainer now.
Suppose you were not in love with me? Suppose you were in love with
some other woman?”
“Yes?”
“Suppose you discovered that woman to be utterly unworthy of you?
Suppose you were quite convinced that it was a disgrace to you to waste an-
other thought on her? Suppose the bare idea of ever marrying such a person
made your face burn, only with thinking of it.”
“Yes?”
“And, suppose, in spite of all that—you couldn’t tear her from your
heart? Suppose the feeling she had roused in you (in the time when you be-
lieved in her) was not a feeling to be hidden? Suppose the love this wretch
had inspired in you—? Oh, how can I find words to say it in! How can I
make a man understand that a feeling which horrifies me at myself, can be a
feeling that fascinates me at the same time? It’s the breath of my life, God-
frey, and it’s the poison that kills me—both in one! Go away! I must be out
of my mind to talk as I am talking now. No! you mustn’t leave me—you
mustn’t carry away a wrong impression. I must say what is to be said in my
own defence. Mind this! He doesn’t know—he never will know, what I
have told you. I will never see him—I don’t care what happens—I will nev-
er, never, never see him again! Don’t ask me his name! Don’t ask me any
more! Let’s change the subject. Are you doctor enough, Godfrey, to tell me
why I feel as if I was stifling for want of breath? Is there a form of hysterics
that bursts into words instead of tears? I dare say! What does it matter? You
will get over any trouble I have caused you, easily enough now. I have
dropped to my right place in your estimation, haven’t I? Don’t notice me!
Don’t pity me! For God’s sake, go away!”
She turned round on a sudden, and beat her hands wildly on the back of
the ottoman. Her head dropped on the cushions; and she burst out crying.
Before I had time to feel shocked, at this, I was horror-struck by an entirely
unexpected proceeding on the part of Mr. Godfrey. Will it be credited that
he fell on his knees at her feet?—on both knees, I solemnly declare! May
modesty mention that he put his arms round her next? And may reluctant
admiration acknowledge that he electrified her with two words?
“Noble creature!”
No more than that! But he did it with one of the bursts which have made
his fame as a public speaker. She sat, either quite thunderstruck, or quite
fascinated—I don’t know which—without even making an effort to put his
arms back where his arms ought to have been. As for me, my sense of pro-
priety was completely bewildered. I was so painfully uncertain whether it
was my first duty to close my eyes, or to stop my ears, that I did neither. I
attribute my being still able to hold the curtain in the right position for look-
ing and listening, entirely to suppressed hysterics. In suppressed hysterics, it
is admitted, even by the doctors, that one must hold something.
“Yes,” he said, with all the fascination of his evangelical voice and man-
ner, “you are a noble creature! A woman who can speak the truth, for the
truth’s own sake—a woman who will sacrifice her pride, rather than sacri-
fice an honest man who loves her—is the most priceless of all treasures.
When such a woman marries, if her husband only wins her esteem and re-
gard, he wins enough to ennoble his whole life. You have spoken, dearest,
of your place in my estimation. Judge what that place is—when I implore
you on my knees, to let the cure of your poor wounded heart be my care.
Rachel! will you honour me, will you bless me, by being my wife?”
By this time I should certainly have decided on stopping my ears, if
Rachel had not encouraged me to keep them open, by answering him in the
first sensible words I had ever heard fall from her lips.
“Godfrey!” she said, “you must be mad!”
“I never spoke more reasonably, dearest—in your interests, as well as in
mine. Look for a moment to the future. Is your happiness to be sacrificed to
a man who has never known how you feel towards him, and whom you are
resolved never to see again? Is it not your duty to yourself to forget this ill-
fated attachment? and is forgetfulness to be found in the life you are leading
now? You have tried that life, and you are wearying of it already. Surround
yourself with nobler interests than the wretched interests of the world. A
heart that loves and honours you; a home whose peaceful claims and happy
duties win gently on you day by day—try the consolation, Rachel, which is
to be found there! I don’t ask for your love—I will be content with your af-
fection and regard. Let the rest be left, confidently left, to your husband’s
devotion, and to Time that heals even wounds as deep as yours.”
She began to yield already. Oh, what a bringing-up she must have had!
Oh, how differently I should have acted in her place!
“Don’t tempt me, Godfrey,” she said; “I am wretched enough and reck-
less enough as it is. Don’t tempt me to be more wretched and more wreck-
less still!”
“One question, Rachel. Have you any personal objection to me?”
“I! I always liked you. After what you have just said to me, I should be
insensible indeed if I didn’t respect and admire you as well.”
“Do you know many wives, my dear Rachel, who respect and admire
their husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well. How
many brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the
men who take them there? And yet it doesn’t end unhappily—somehow or
other the nuptial establishment jogs on. The truth is, that women try mar-
riage as a refuge, far more numerously than they are willing to admit; and,
what is more, they find that marriage has justified their confidence in it.
Look at your own case once again. At your age, and with your attractions, is
it possible for you to sentence yourself to a single life? Trust my knowledge
of the world—nothing is less possible. It is merely a question of time. You
may marry some other man, some years hence. Or you may marry the man,
dearest, who is now at your feet, and who prizes your respect and admira-
tion above the love of any other woman on the face of the earth.”
“Gently, Godfrey! you are putting something into my head which I never
thought of before. You are tempting me with a new prospect, when all my
other prospects are closed before me. I tell you again, I am miserable
enough and desperate enough, if you say another word, to marry you on
your own terms. Take the warning, and go!”
“I won’t even rise from my knees, till you have said yes!”
“If I say yes you will repent, and I shall repent, when it is too late!”
“We shall both bless the day, darling, when I pressed, and when you
yielded.”
“Do you feel as confidently as you speak?”
“You shall judge for yourself. I speak from what I have seen in my own
family. Tell me what you think of our household at Frizinghall. Do my fath-
er and mother live unhappily together?”
“Far from it—so far as I can see.”
“When my mother was a girl, Rachel (it is no secret in the family), she
had loved as you love—she had given her heart to a man who was un-
worthy of her. She married my father, respecting him, admiring him, but
nothing more. Your own eyes have seen the result. Is there no encourage-
ment in it for you and for me?”2
“You won’t hurry me, Godfrey?”
“My time shall be yours.”
“You won’t ask me for more than I can give?”
“My angel! I only ask you to give me yourself.”
“Take me!”
In those two words she accepted him!
He had another burst—a burst of unholy rapture this time. He drew her
nearer and nearer to him till her face touched his; and then—No! I really
cannot prevail upon myself to carry this shocking disclosure any farther. Let
me only say, that I tried to close my eyes before it happened, and that I was
just one moment too late. I had calculated, you see, on her resisting. She
submitted. To every right-feeling person of my own sex, volumes could say
no more.
Even my innocence in such matters began to see its way to the end of the
interview now. They understood each other so thoroughly by this time, that
I fully expected to see them walk off together, arm in arm, to be married.
There appeared, however, judging by Mr. Godfrey’s next words, to be one
more trifling formality which it was necessary to observe. He seated himsel-
f—unforbidden this time—on the ottoman by her side. “Shall I speak to
your dear mother?” he asked. “Or will you?”
She declined both alternatives.
“Let my mother hear nothing from either of us, until she is better. I wish
it to be kept a secret for the present, Godfrey. Go now, and come back this
evening. We have been here alone together quite long enough.”
She rose, and in rising, looked for the first time towards the little room in
which my martyrdom was going on.
“Who has drawn those curtains?” she exclaimed.
“The room is close enough, as it is, without keeping the air out of it in
that way.”
She advanced to the curtains. At the moment when she laid her hand on
them—at the moment when the discovery of me appeared to be quite inevit-
able—the voice of the fresh-coloured young footman, on the stairs, sud-
denly suspended any further proceedings on her side or on mine. It was un-
mistakably the voice of a man in great alarm.
“Miss Rachel!” he called out, “where are you, Miss Rachel?”
She sprang back from the curtains, and ran to the door.
The footman came just inside the room. His ruddy colour was all gone.
He said, “Please to come downstairs, Miss! My lady has fainted, and we
can’t bring her to again.”
In a moment more I was alone, and free to go downstairs in my turn,
quite unobserved.
Mr. Godfrey passed me in the hall, hurrying out, to fetch the doctor. “Go
in, and help them!” he said, pointing to the room. I found Rachel on her
knees by the sofa, with her mother’s head on her bosom. One look at my
aunt’s face (knowing what I knew) was enough to warn me of the dreadful
truth. I kept my thoughts to myself till the doctor came in. It was not long
before he arrived. He began by sending Rachel out of the room—and then
he told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no more. Serious persons, in
search of proofs of hardened scepticism, may be interested in hearing that
he showed no signs of remorse when he looked at me.
At a later hour I peeped into the breakfast-room, and the library. My aunt
had died without opening one of the letters which I had addressed to her. I
was so shocked at this, that it never occurred to me, until some days after-
wards, that she had also died without giving me my little legacy.
 VI

(1.) “Miss Clack presents her compliments to Mr. Franklin

Blake; and, in sending him the fifth chapter of her humble nar-
rative, begs to say that she feels quite unequal to enlarge as she
could wish on an event so awful, under the circumstances, as
Lady Verinder’s death. She has, therefore, attached to her own
manuscripts, copious Extracts from precious publications in her
possession, all bearing on this terrible subject. And may those
Extracts (Miss Clack fervently hopes) sound as the blast of a
trumpet in the ears of her respected kinsman, Mr. Franklin
Blake.”

(2.) “Mr. Franklin Blake presents his compliments to Miss

Clack, and begs to thank her for the fifth chapter of her narrat-
ive. In returning the extracts sent with it, he will refrain from
mentioning any personal objection which he may entertain to
this species of literature, and will merely say that the proposed
additions to the manuscript are not necessary to the fulfilment
of the purpose that he has in view.”

(3.) “Miss Clack begs to acknowledge the return of her Ex-

tracts. She affectionately reminds Mr. Franklin Blake that she is
a Christian, and that it is, therefore, quite impossible for him to
offend her. Miss C. persists in feeling the deepest interest in
Mr. Blake, and pledges herself, on the first occasion when sick-
ness may lay him low, to offer him the use of her Extracts for
the second time. In the meanwhile she would be glad to know,
before beginning the final chapters of her narrative, whether
she may be permitted to make her humble contribution com-
plete, by availing herself of the light which later discoveries
have thrown on the mystery of the Moonstone.”

(4.) “Mr. Franklin Blake is sorry to disappoint Miss Clack. He

can only repeat the instructions which he had the honour of
giving her when she began her narrative. She is requested to
limit herself to her own individual experience of persons and
events, as recorded in her diary. Later discoveries she will be
good enough to leave to the pens of those persons who can
write in the capacity of actual witnesses.”

(5.) “Miss Clack is extremely sorry to trouble Mr. Franklin

Blake with another letter. Her Extracts have been returned, and
the expression of her matured views on the subject of the
Moonstone has been forbidden. Miss Clack is painfully con-
scious that she ought (in the worldly phrase) to feel herself put
down. But, no—Miss C. has learnt perseverance in the school
of adversity. Her object in writing is to know whether
Mr. Blake (who prohibits everything else) prohibits the appear-
ance of the present correspondence in Miss Clack’s narrative?
Some explanation of the position in which Mr. Blake’s interfer-
ence has placed her as an authoress, seems due on the ground
of common justice. And Miss Clack, on her side, is most
anxious that her letters should be produced to speak for
themselves.”

(6.) “Mr. Franklin Blake agrees to Miss Clack’s proposal, on

the understanding that she will kindly consider this intimation
of his consent as closing the correspondence between them.”

(7.) “Miss Clack feels it an act of Christian duty (before the

correspondence closes) to inform Mr. Franklin Blake that his
last letter—evidently intended to offend her—has not suc-
ceeded in accomplishing the object of the writer. She affection-
ately requests Mr. Blake to retire to the privacy of his own
room, and to consider with himself whether the training which
can thus elevate a poor weak woman above the reach of insult,
be not worthy of greater admiration than he is now disposed to
feel for it. On being favoured with an intimation to that effect,
Miss C. solemnly pledges herself to send back the complete
series of her Extracts to Mr. Franklin Blake.”
[To this letter no answer was received. Comment is needless.
(Signed) Drusilla Clack]
 VII

The foregoing correspondence will sufficiently explain why no choice is

left to me but to pass over Lady Verinder’s death with the simple announce-
ment of the fact which ends my fifth chapter.
Keeping myself for the future strictly within the limits of my own per-
sonal experience, I have next to relate that a month elapsed from the time of
my aunt’s decease before Rachel Verinder and I met again. That meeting
was the occasion of my spending a few days under the same roof with her.
In the course of my visit, something happened, relative to her marriage-en-
gagement with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, which is important enough to re-
quire special notice in these pages. When this last of many painful family
circumstances has been disclosed, my task will be completed; for I shall
then have told all that I know, as an actual (and most unwilling) witness of
events.
My aunt’s remains were removed from London, and were buried in the
little cemetery attached to the church in her own park. I was invited to the
funeral with the rest of the family. But it was impossible (with my religious
views) to rouse myself in a few days only from the shock which this death
had caused me. I was informed, moreover, that the rector of Frizinghall was
to read the service. Having myself in past times seen this clerical castaway
making one of the players at Lady Verinder’s whist-table, I doubt, even if I
had been fit to travel, whether I should have felt justified in attending the
ceremony.
Lady Verinder’s death left her daughter under the care of her brother-in-
law, Mr. Ablewhite the elder. He was appointed guardian by the will, until
his niece married, or came of age. Under these circumstances, Mr. Godfrey
informed his father, I suppose, of the new relation in which he stood to-
wards Rachel. At any rate, in ten days from my aunt’s death, the secret of
the marriage-engagement was no secret at all within the circle of the family,
and the grand question for Mr. Ablewhite senior—another confirmed cast-
away!—was how to make himself and his authority most agreeable to the
wealthy young lady who was going to marry his son.
Rachel gave him some trouble at the outset, about the choice of a place in
which she could be prevailed upon to reside. The house in Montagu Square
was associated with the calamity of her mother’s death. The house in York-
shire was associated with the scandalous affair of the lost Moonstone. Her
guardian’s own residence at Frizinghall was open to neither of these objec-
tions. But Rachel’s presence in it, after her recent bereavement, operated as
a check on the gaieties of her cousins, the Miss Ablewhites—and she her-
self requested that her visit might be deferred to a more favourable oppor-
tunity. It ended in a proposal, emanating from old Mr. Ablewhite, to try a
furnished house at Brighton. His wife, an invalid daughter, and Rachel were
to inhabit it together, and were to expect him to join them later in the sea-
son. They would see no society but a few old friends, and they would have
his son Godfrey, travelling backwards and forwards by the London train,
always at their disposal.
I describe this aimless flitting about from one place of residence to an-
other—this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of soul—
merely with the view to arriving at results. The event which (under Provid-
ence) proved to be the means of bringing Rachel Verinder and myself to-
gether again, was no other than the hiring of the house at Brighton.
My Aunt Ablewhite is a large, silent, fair-complexioned woman, with
one noteworthy point in her character. From the hour of her birth she has
never been known to do anything for herself. She has gone through life, ac-
cepting everybody’s help, and adopting everybody’s opinions. A more
hopeless person, in a spiritual point of view, I have never met with—there is
absolutely, in this perplexing case, no obstructive material to work upon.
Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of Tibet exactly as she
listens to me, and would reflect his views quite as readily as she reflects
mine. She found the furnished house at Brighton by stopping at an hotel in
London, composing herself on a sofa, and sending for her son. She dis-
covered the necessary servants by breakfasting in bed one morning (still at
the hotel), and giving her maid a holiday on condition that the girl “would
begin enjoying herself by fetching Miss Clack.” I found her placidly fan-
ning herself in her dressing-gown at eleven o’clock. “Drusilla, dear, I want
some servants. You are so clever—please get them for me.” I looked round
the untidy room. The church-bells were going for a weekday service; they
suggested a word of affectionate remonstrance on my part. “Oh, aunt!” I
said sadly. “Is this worthy of a Christian Englishwoman? Is the passage
from time to eternity to be made in this manner?” My aunt answered, “I’ll
put on my gown, Drusilla, if you will be kind enough to help me.” What
was to be said after that? I have done wonders with murderesses—I have
never advanced an inch with Aunt Ablewhite. “Where is the list,” I asked,
“of the servants whom you require?” My aunt shook her head; she hadn’t
even energy enough to keep the list. “Rachel has got it, dear,” she said, “in
the next room.” I went into the next room, and so saw Rachel again for the
first time since we had parted in Montagu Square.
She looked pitiably small and thin in her deep mourning. If I attached
any serious importance to such a perishable trifle as personal appearance, I
might be inclined to add that hers was one of those unfortunate complex-
ions which always suffer when not relieved by a border of white next the
skin. But what are our complexions and our looks? Hindrances and pitfalls,
dear girls, which beset us on our way to higher things! Greatly to my sur-
prise, Rachel rose when I entered the room, and came forward to meet me
with outstretched hand.
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “Drusilla, I have been in the habit of
speaking very foolishly and very rudely to you, on former occasions. I beg
your pardon. I hope you will forgive me.”
My face, I suppose, betrayed the astonishment I felt at this. She coloured
up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.
“In my poor mother’s lifetime,” she went on, “her friends were not al-
ways my friends, too. Now I have lost her, my heart turns for comfort to the
people she liked. She liked you. Try to be friends with me, Drusilla, if you
can.”
To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was
simply shocking. Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state
of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort, that
she actually expected to find it among her mother’s friends! Here was a rel-
ative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards others, un-
der the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of sentiment and impulse!
Most deplorable to think of—but, still, suggestive of something hopeful, to
a person of my experience in plying the good work. There could be no
harm, I thought, in ascertaining the extent of the change which the loss of
her mother had wrought in Rachel’s character. I decided, as a useful test, to
probe her on the subject of her marriage-engagement to Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite.
Having first met her advances with all possible cordiality, I sat by her on
the sofa, at her own request. We discussed family affairs and future plans—
always excepting that one future plan which was to end in her marriage. Try
as I might to turn the conversation that way, she resolutely declined to take
the hint. Any open reference to the question, on my part, would have been
premature at this early stage of our reconciliation. Besides, I had discovered
all I wanted to know. She was no longer the reckless, defiant creature whom
I had heard and seen, on the occasion of my martyrdom in Montagu Square.
This was, of itself, enough to encourage me to take her future conversion in
hand—beginning with a few words of earnest warning directed against the
hasty formation of the marriage tie, and so getting on to higher things.
Looking at her, now, with this new interest—and calling to mind the head-
long suddenness with which she had met Mr. Godfrey’s matrimonial
views—I felt the solemn duty of interfering with a fervour which assured
me that I should achieve no common results. Rapidity of proceeding was, as
I believed, of importance in this case. I went back at once to the question of
the servants wanted for the furnished house.
“Where is the list, dear?”
Rachel produced it.
“Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, and footman,” I read. “My dear
Rachel, these servants are only wanted for a term—the term during which
your guardian has taken the house. We shall have great difficulty in finding
persons of character and capacity to accept a temporary engagement of that
sort, if we try in London. Has the house in Brighton been found yet?”
“Yes. Godfrey has taken it; and persons in the house wanted him to hire
them as servants. He thought they would hardly do for us, and came back
having settled nothing.”
“And you have no experience yourself in these matters, Rachel?”
“None whatever.”
“And Aunt Ablewhite won’t exert herself?”
“No, poor dear. Don’t blame her, Drusilla. I think she is the only really
happy woman I have ever met with.”
“There are degrees in happiness, darling. We must have a little talk, some
day, on that subject. In the meantime I will undertake to meet the difficulty
about the servants. Your aunt will write a letter to the people of the
house—”
“She will sign a letter, if I write it for her, which comes to the same
thing.”
“Quite the same thing. I shall get the letter, and I will go to Brighton
tomorrow.”
“How extremely kind of you! We will join you as soon as you are ready
for us. And you will stay, I hope, as my guest. Brighton is so lively; you are
sure to enjoy it.”
In those words the invitation was given, and the glorious prospect of in-
terference was opened before me.
It was then the middle of the week. By Saturday afternoon the house was
ready for them. In that short interval I had sifted, not the characters only,
but the religious views as well, of all the disengaged servants who applied
to me, and had succeeded in making a selection which my conscience ap-
proved. I also discovered, and called on two serious friends of mine, resid-
ents in the town, to whom I knew I could confide the pious object which
had brought me to Brighton. One of them—a clerical friend—kindly helped
me to take sittings for our little party in the church in which he himself min-
istered. The other—a single lady, like myself—placed the resources of her
library (composed throughout of precious publications) entirely at my dis-
posal. I borrowed half-a-dozen works, all carefully chosen with a view to
Rachel. When these had been judiciously distributed in the various rooms
she would be likely to occupy, I considered that my preparations were com-
plete. Sound doctrine in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in
the minister who preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on
her table—such was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the
motherless girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday
afternoon, as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The
giddy throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them
felt my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. Let us not pursue
it.
Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable sur-
prise, they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had anticipated), but by
the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.
“How do you do, Miss Clack?” he said. “I mean to stay this time.”
 That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him to postpone
his business to mine, when we were both visiting in Montagu Square, satis-
fied me that the old worldling had come to Brighton with some object of his
own in view. I had prepared quite a little Paradise for my beloved Rachel—
and here was the Serpent already!
“Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with
us,” said my Aunt Ablewhite. “There was something in the way which kept
him in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a holiday of
it till Monday morning. By-the-by, Mr. Bruff, I’m ordered to take exercise,
and I don’t like it. That,” added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out of window to
an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man, “is my idea of
exercise. If it’s air you want, you get it in your chair. And if it’s fatigue you
want, I am sure it’s fatigue enough to look at the man.”
Rachel stood silent, at a window by herself, with her eyes fixed on the
sea.
“Tired, love?” I inquired.
“No. Only a little out of spirits,” she answered. “I have often seen the
sea, on our Yorkshire coast, with that light on it. And I was thinking, Drusil-
la, of the days that can never come again.”
Mr. Bruff remained to dinner, and stayed through the evening. The more I
saw of him, the more certain I felt that he had some private end to serve in
coming to Brighton. I watched him carefully. He maintained the same ap-
pearance of ease, and talked the same godless gossip, hour after hour, until
it was time to take leave. As he shook hands with Rachel, I caught his hard
and cunning eyes resting on her for a moment with a peculiar interest and
attention. She was plainly concerned in the object that he had in view. He
said nothing out of the common to her or to anyone on leaving. He invited
himself to luncheon the next day, and then he went away to his hotel.
It was impossible the next morning to get my Aunt Ablewhite out of her
dressing-gown in time for church. Her invalid daughter (suffering from
nothing, in my opinion, but incurable laziness, inherited from her mother)
announced that she meant to remain in bed for the day. Rachel and I went
alone together to church. A magnificent sermon was preached by my gifted
friend on the heathen indifference of the world to the sinfulness of little
sins. For more than an hour his eloquence (assisted by his glorious voice)
thundered through the sacred edifice. I said to Rachel, when we came out,
“Has it found its way to your heart, dear?” And she answered, “No; it has
only made my head ache.” This might have been discouraging to some
people; but, once embarked on a career of manifest usefulness, nothing dis-
courages me.
We found Aunt Ablewhite and Mr. Bruff at luncheon. When Rachel de-
clined eating anything, and gave as a reason for it that she was suffering
from a headache, the lawyer’s cunning instantly saw, and seized, the chance
that she had given him.
“There is only one remedy for a headache,” said this horrible old man.
“A walk, Miss Rachel, is the thing to cure you. I am entirely at your service,
if you will honour me by accepting my arm.”
“With the greatest pleasure. A walk is the very thing I was longing for.”
“It’s past two,” I gently suggested. “And the afternoon service, Rachel,
begins at three.”
“How can you expect me to go to church again,” she asked, petulantly,
“with such a headache as mine?”
Mr. Bruff officiously opened the door for her. In another minute more
they were both out of the house. I don’t know when I have felt the solemn
duty of interfering so strongly as I felt it at that moment. But what was to be
done? Nothing was to be done but to interfere at the first opportunity, later
in the day.
On my return from the afternoon service I found that they had just got
back. One look at them told me that the lawyer had said what he wanted to
say. I had never before seen Rachel so silent and so thoughtful. I had never
before seen Mr. Bruff pay her such devoted attention, and look at her with
such marked respect. He had (or pretended that he had) an engagement to
dinner that day—and he took an early leave of us all; intending to go back
to London by the first train the next morning.
“Are you sure of your own resolution?” he said to Rachel at the door.
“Quite sure,” she answered—and so they parted.
The moment his back was turned, Rachel withdrew to her own room. She
never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons) was
sent downstairs to announce that her headache had returned. I ran up to her
and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door. It was locked, and she
kept it locked. Plenty of obstructive material to work on here! I felt greatly
cheered and stimulated by her locking the door.
When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed it in. I
sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words. She listened with languid
civility. I noticed my serious friend’s precious publications huddled together
on a table in a corner. Had she chanced to look into them?—I asked. Yes—
and they had not interested her. Would she allow me to read a few passages
of the deepest interest, which had probably escaped her eye? No, not now—
she had other things to think of. She gave these answers, with her attention
apparently absorbed in folding and refolding the frilling on her nightgown.
It was plainly necessary to rouse her by some reference to those worldly in-
terests which she still had at heart.
“Do you know, love,” I said, “I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about
Mr. Bruff? I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had
been telling you some bad news.”
Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown, and her fierce
black eyes flashed at me.
“Quite the contrary!” she said. “It was news I was interested in hearing—
and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it.”
“Yes?” I said, in a tone of gentle interest.
Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her head sullenly
away from me. I had been met in this manner, in the course of plying the
good work, hundreds of times. She merely stimulated me to try again. In
my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and openly alluded to
her marriage engagement.
“News you were interested in hearing?” I repeated. “I suppose, my dear
Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”
She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently on the
tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence of former
times. She checked herself—laid her head back on the pillow—considered a
minute—and then answered in these remarkable words:
“I shall never marry Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.”
It was my turn to start at that.
“What can you possibly mean?” I exclaimed. “The marriage is con-
sidered by the whole family as a settled thing!”
“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here today,” she said doggedly.
“Wait till he comes—and you will see.”
“But my dear Rachel—”
She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person with the cap-ribbons
appeared.
“Penelope! my bath.”
 Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment, I do
sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way of forcing me to
leave the room.
By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have been
viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind. I had reckoned on
leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest exhortation on the
subject of her marriage. And now, if she was to be believed, no such event
as her marriage was to take place at all. But ah, my friends! a working
Christian of my experience (with an evangelising prospect before her) takes
broader views than these. Supposing Rachel really broke off the marriage,
on which the Ablewhites, father and son, counted as a settled thing, what
would be the result? It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of
hard words and bitter accusations on both sides. And what would be the ef-
fect on Rachel when the stormy interview was over? A salutary moral de-
pression would be the effect. Her pride would be exhausted, her stubborn-
ness would be exhausted, by the resolute resistance which it was in her
character to make under the circumstances. She would turn for sympathy to
the nearest person who had sympathy to offer. And I was that nearest per-
son—brimful of comfort, charged to overflowing with seasonable and re-
viving words. Never had the evangelising prospect looked brighter, to my
eyes, than it looked now.
She came down to breakfast, but she ate nothing, and hardly uttered a
word.
After breakfast she wandered listlessly from room to room—then sud-
denly roused herself, and opened the piano. The music she selected to play
was of the most scandalously profane sort, associated with performances on
the stage which it curdles one’s blood to think of. It would have been pre-
mature to interfere with her at such a time as this. I privately ascertained the
hour at which Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was expected, and then I escaped the
music by leaving the house.
Being out alone, I took the opportunity of calling upon my two resident
friends. It was an indescribable luxury to find myself indulging in earnest
conversation with serious persons. Infinitely encouraged and refreshed, I
turned my steps back again to the house, in excellent time to await the ar-
rival of our expected visitor. I entered the dining-room, always empty at
that hour of the day, and found myself face to face with Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite!
 He made no attempt to fly the place. Quite the contrary. He advanced to
meet me with the utmost eagerness.
“Dear Miss Clack, I have been only waiting to see you! Chance set me
free of my London engagements today sooner than I had expected, and I
have got here, in consequence, earlier than my appointed time.”
Not the slightest embarrassment encumbered his explanation, though this
was his first meeting with me after the scene in Montagu Square. He was
not aware, it is true, of my having been a witness of that scene. But he
knew, on the other hand, that my attendances at the Mothers’ Small-
Clothes, and my relations with friends attached to other charities, must have
informed me of his shameless neglect of his ladies and of his poor. And yet
there he was before me, in full possession of his charming voice and his ir-
resistible smile!
“Have you seen Rachel yet?” I asked.
He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have
snatched my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had not
paralysed me with astonishment.
“I have seen Rachel,” he said with perfect tranquillity. “You are aware,
dear friend, that she was engaged to me? Well, she has taken a sudden resol-
ution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her that she will
best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash promise, and leaving
me free to make some happier choice elsewhere. That is the only reason she
will give, and the only answer she will make to every question that I can
ask of her.”
“What have you done on your side?” I inquired. “Have you submitted.”
“Yes,” he said with the most unruffled composure, “I have submitted.”
His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable, that I
stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness to stare at
anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman. I committed
both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a dream, “What does it mean?”
“Permit me to tell you,” he replied. “And suppose we sit down?”
He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was very
affectionate. I don’t think he put his arm round my waist to support me—
but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his ways with ladies were very
endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can answer for that, if I can answer
for nothing more.
 VIII

“I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent social position, and a handsome

income,” Mr. Godfrey began; “and I have submitted to it without a struggle.
What can be the motive for such extraordinary conduct as that? My pre-
cious friend, there is no motive.”
“No motive?” I repeated.
“Let me appeal, my dear Miss Clack, to your experience of children,” he
went on. “A child pursues a certain course of conduct. You are greatly
struck by it, and you attempt to get at the motive. The dear little thing is in-
capable of telling you its motive. You might as well ask the grass why it
grows, or the birds why they sing. Well! in this matter, I am like the dear
little thing—like the grass—like the birds. I don’t know why I made a pro-
posal of marriage to Miss Verinder. I don’t know why I have shamefully
neglected my dear ladies. I don’t know why I have apostatised from the
Mothers’ Small-Clothes. You say to the child, Why have you been naughty?
And the little angel puts its finger into its mouth, and doesn’t know. My
case exactly, Miss Clack! I couldn’t confess it to anybody else. I feel im-
pelled to confess it to you!”
I began to recover myself. A mental problem was involved here. I am
deeply interested in mental problems—and I am not, it is thought, without
some skill in solving them.
“Best of friends, exert your intellect, and help me,” he proceeded. “Tell
me—why does a time come when these matrimonial proceedings of mine
begin to look like something done in a dream? Why does it suddenly occur
to me that my true happiness is in helping my dear ladies, in going my mod-
est round of useful work, in saying my few earnest words when called on by
my Chairman? What do I want with a position? I have got a position! What
do I want with an income? I can pay for my bread and cheese, and my nice
little lodging, and my two coats a year. What do I want with Miss Verinder?
She has told me with her own lips (this, dear lady, is between ourselves)
that she loves another man, and that her only idea in marrying me is to try
and put that other man out of her head. What a horrid union is this! Oh, dear
me, what a horrid union is this! Such are my reflections, Miss Clack, on my
way to Brighton. I approach Rachel with the feeling of a criminal who is
going to receive his sentence. When I find that she has changed her mind
too—when I hear her propose to break the engagement—I experience (there
is no sort of doubt about it) a most overpowering sense of relief. A month
ago I was pressing her rapturously to my bosom. An hour ago, the happi-
ness of knowing that I shall never press her again, intoxicates me like
strong liquor. The thing seems impossible—the thing can’t be. And yet
there are the facts, as I had the honour of stating them when we first sat
down together in these two chairs. I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent
social position, and a handsome income; and I have submitted to it without
a struggle. Can you account for it, dear friend? It’s quite beyond me.”
His magnificent head sank on his breast, and he gave up his own mental
problem in despair.
I was deeply touched. The case (if I may speak as a spiritual physician)
was now quite plain to me. It is no uncommon event, in the experience of us
all, to see the possessors of exalted ability occasionally humbled to the level
of the most poorly-gifted people about them. The object, no doubt, in the
wise economy of Providence, is to remind greatness that it is mortal and
that the power which has conferred it can also take it away. It was now—to
my mind—easy to discern one of these salutary humiliations in the deplor-
able proceedings on dear Mr. Godfrey’s part, of which I had been the un-
seen witness. And it was equally easy to recognise the welcome reappear-
ance of his own finer nature in the horror with which he recoiled from the
idea of a marriage with Rachel, and in the charming eagerness which he
showed to return to his ladies and his poor.
I put this view before him in a few simple and sisterly words. His joy was
beautiful to see. He compared himself, as I went on, to a lost man emerging
from the darkness into the light. When I answered for a loving reception of
him at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes, the grateful heart of our Christian Hero
overflowed. He pressed my hands alternately to his lips. Overwhelmed by
the exquisite triumph of having got him back among us, I let him do what
he liked with my hands. I closed my eyes. I felt my head, in an ecstasy of
spiritual self-forgetfulness, sinking on his shoulder. In a moment more I
should certainly have swooned away in his arms, but for an interruption
from the outer world, which brought me to myself again. A horrid rattling
of knives and forks sounded outside the door, and the footman came in to
lay the table for luncheon.
Mr. Godfrey started up, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“How time flies with you!” he exclaimed. “I shall barely catch the train.”
I ventured on asking why he was in such a hurry to get back to town. His
answer reminded me of family difficulties that were still to be reconciled,
and of family disagreements that were yet to come.
“I have heard from my father,” he said. “Business obliges him to leave
Frizinghall for London today, and he proposes coming on here, either this
evening or tomorrow. I must tell him what has happened between Rachel
and me. His heart is set on our marriage—there will be great difficulty, I
fear, in reconciling him to the breaking-off of the engagement. I must stop
him, for all our sakes, from coming here till he is reconciled. Best and
dearest of friends, we shall meet again!”
With those words he hurried out. In equal haste on my side, I ran upstairs
to compose myself in my own room before meeting Aunt Ablewhite and
Rachel at the luncheon-table.
I am well aware—to dwell for a moment yet on the subject of Mr. God-
frey—that the all-profaning opinion of the world has charged him with hav-
ing his own private reasons for releasing Rachel from her engagement, at
the first opportunity she gave him. It has also reached my ears, that his anxi-
ety to recover his place in my estimation has been attributed in certain quar-
ters, to a mercenary eagerness to make his peace (through me) with a vener-
able committeewoman at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes, abundantly blessed
with the goods of this world, and a beloved and intimate friend of my own.
I only notice these odious slanders for the sake of declaring that they never
had a moment’s influence on my mind. In obedience to my instructions, I
have exhibited the fluctuations in my opinion of our Christian Hero, exactly
as I find them recorded in my diary. In justice to myself, let me here add
that, once reinstated in his place in my estimation, my gifted friend never
lost that place again. I write with the tears in my eyes, burning to say more.
But no—I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of persons and things.
In less than a month from the time of which I am now writing, events in the
money-market (which diminished even my miserable little income) forced
me into foreign exile, and left me with nothing but a loving remembrance of
Mr. Godfrey which the slander of the world has assailed, and assailed in
vain.
Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.
I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel was
affected by her release from her marriage engagement.
It appeared to me—but I own I am a poor authority in such matters—that
the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other man
whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being able to
control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly ashamed. Who was
the man? I had my suspicions—but it was needless to waste time in idle
speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as a matter of course,
have no concealments from me. I should hear all about the man; I should
hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no higher object in stirring her up
to a sense of spiritual things, the motive of relieving her mind of its guilty
secrets would have been enough of itself to encourage me to go on.
Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. “I wish I could drag the chair,” she broke out,
recklessly. “I wish I could fatigue myself till I was ready to drop.”
She was in the same humour in the evening. I discovered in one of my
friend’s precious publications—the Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss Jane
Ann Stamper, forty-fourth edition—passages which bore with a marvellous
appropriateness on Rachel’s present position. Upon my proposing to read
them, she went to the piano. Conceive how little she must have known of
serious people, if she supposed that my patience was to be exhausted in that
way! I kept Miss Jane Ann Stamper by me, and waited for events with the
most unfaltering trust in the future.
Old Mr. Ablewhite never made his appearance that night. But I knew the
importance which his worldly greed attached to his son’s marriage with
Miss Verinder—and I felt a positive conviction (do what Mr. Godfrey might
to prevent it) that we should see him the next day. With his interference in
the matter, the storm on which I had counted would certainly come, and the
salutary exhaustion of Rachel’s resisting powers would as certainly follow. I
am not ignorant that old Mr. Ablewhite has the reputation generally (espe-
cially among his inferiors) of being a remarkably good-natured man. Ac-
cording to my observation of him, he deserves his reputation as long as he
has his own way, and not a moment longer.
 The next day, exactly as I had foreseen, Aunt Ablewhite was as near to
being astonished as her nature would permit, by the sudden appearance of
her husband. He had barely been a minute in the house, before he was fol-
lowed, to my astonishment this time, by an unexpected complication in the
shape of Mr. Bruff.
I never remember feeling the presence of the lawyer to be more unwel-
come than I felt it at that moment. He looked ready for anything in the way
of an obstructive proceeding—capable even of keeping the peace with
Rachel for one of the combatants!
“This is a pleasant surprise, sir,” said Mr. Ablewhite, addressing himself
with his deceptive cordiality to Mr. Bruff. “When I left your office yester-
day, I didn’t expect to have the honour of seeing you at Brighton today.”
“I turned over our conversation in my mind, after you had gone,” replied
Mr. Bruff. “And it occurred to me that I might perhaps be of some use on
this occasion. I was just in time to catch the train, and I had no opportunity
of discovering the carriage in which you were travelling.”
Having given that explanation, he seated himself by Rachel. I retired
modestly to a corner—with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap, in case of
emergency. My aunt sat at the window; placidly fanning herself as usual.
Mr. Ablewhite stood up in the middle of the room, with his bald head much
pinker than I had ever seen it yet, and addressed himself in the most affec-
tionate manner to his niece.
“Rachel, my dear,” he said, “I have heard some very extraordinary news
from Godfrey. And I am here to inquire about it. You have a sitting-room of
your own in this house. Will you honour me by showing me the way to it?”
Rachel never moved. Whether she was determined to bring matters to a
crisis, or whether she was prompted by some private sign from Mr. Bruff, is
more than I can tell. She declined doing old Mr. Ablewhite the honour of
conducting him into her sitting-room.
“Whatever you wish to say to me,” she answered, “can be said here—in
the presence of my relatives, and in the presence” (she looked at Mr. Bruff)
“of my mother’s trusted old friend.”
“Just as you please, my dear,” said the amiable Mr. Ablewhite. He took a
chair. The rest of them looked at his face—as if they expected it, after sev-
enty years of worldly training, to speak the truth. I looked at the top of his
bald head; having noticed on other occasions that the temper which was
really in him had a habit of registering itself there.
 “Some weeks ago,” pursued the old gentleman, “my son informed me
that Miss Verinder had done him the honour to engage herself to marry him.
Is it possible, Rachel, that he can have misinterpreted—or presumed
upon—what you really said to him?”
“Certainly not,” she replied. “I did engage myself to marry him.”
“Very frankly answered!” said Mr. Ablewhite. “And most satisfactory,
my dear, so far. In respect to what happened some weeks since, Godfrey has
made no mistake. The error is evidently in what he told me yesterday. I be-
gin to see it now. You and he have had a lovers’ quarrel—and my foolish
son has interpreted it seriously. Ah! I should have known better than that at
his age.”
The fallen nature in Rachel—the mother Eve, so to speak—began to
chafe at this.
“Pray let us understand each other, Mr. Ablewhite,” she said. “Nothing in
the least like a quarrel took place yesterday between your son and me. If he
told you that I proposed breaking off our marriage engagement, and that he
agreed on his side—he told you the truth.”
The self-registering thermometer at the top of Mr. Ablewhite’s bald head
began to indicate a rise of temper. His face was more amiable than ever—
but there was the pink at the top of his face, a shade deeper already!
“Come, come, my dear!” he said, in his most soothing manner, “now
don’t be angry, and don’t be hard on poor Godfrey! He has evidently said
some unfortunate thing. He was always clumsy from a child—but he means
well, Rachel, he means well!”
“Mr. Ablewhite, I have either expressed myself very badly, or you are
purposely mistaking me. Once for all, it is a settled thing between your son
and myself that we remain, for the rest of our lives, cousins and nothing
more. Is that plain enough?”
The tone in which she said those words made it impossible, even for old
Mr. Ablewhite, to mistake her any longer. His thermometer went up another
degree, and his voice when he next spoke, ceased to be the voice which is
appropriate to a notoriously good-natured man.
“I am to understand, then,” he said, “that your marriage engagement is
broken off?”
“You are to understand that, Mr. Ablewhite, if you please.”
“I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal to withdraw from
the engagement came, in the first instance, from you?”
 “It came, in the first instance, from me. And it met, as I have told you,
with your son’s consent and approval.”
The thermometer went up to the top of the register. I mean, the pink
changed suddenly to scarlet.
“My son is a mean-spirited hound!” cried this furious old worldling. “In
justice to myself as his father—not in justice to him—I beg to ask you, Miss
Verinder, what complaint you have to make of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”
Here Mr. Bruff interfered for the first time.
“You are not bound to answer that question,” he said to Rachel.
Old Mr. Ablewhite fastened on him instantly.
“Don’t forget, sir,” he said, “that you are a self-invited guest here. Your
interference would have come with a better grace if you had waited until it
was asked for.”
Mr. Bruff took no notice. The smooth varnish on his wicked old face nev-
er cracked. Rachel thanked him for the advice he had given to her, and then
turned to old Mr. Ablewhite—preserving her composure in a manner which
(having regard to her age and her sex) was simply awful to see.
“Your son put the same question to me which you have just asked,” she
said. “I had only one answer for him, and I have only one answer for you. I
proposed that we should release each other, because reflection had con-
vinced me that I should best consult his welfare and mine by retracting a
rash promise, and leaving him free to make his choice elsewhere.”
“What has my son done?” persisted Mr. Ablewhite. “I have a right to
know that. What has my son done?”
She persisted just as obstinately on her side.
“You have had the only explanation which I think it necessary to give to
you, or to him,” she answered.
“In plain English, it’s your sovereign will and pleasure, Miss Verinder, to
jilt my son?”
Rachel was silent for a moment. Sitting close behind her, I heard her
sigh. Mr. Bruff took her hand, and gave it a little squeeze. She recovered
herself, and answered Mr. Ablewhite as boldly as ever.
“I have exposed myself to worse misconstruction than that,” she said.
“And I have borne it patiently. The time has gone by, when you could mor-
tify me by calling me a jilt.”
She spoke with a bitterness of tone which satisfied me that the scandal of
the Moonstone had been in some way recalled to her mind. “I have no more
to say,” she added, wearily, not addressing the words to anyone in particu-
lar, and looking away from us all, out of the window that was nearest to her.
Mr. Ablewhite got upon his feet, and pushed away his chair so violently
that it toppled over and fell on the floor.
“I have something more to say on my side,” he announced, bringing
down the flat of his hand on the table with a bang. “I have to say that if my
son doesn’t feel this insult, I do!”
Rachel started, and looked at him in sudden surprise.
“Insult?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Insult!” reiterated Mr. Ablewhite. “I know your motive, Miss Verinder,
for breaking your promise to my son! I know it as certainly as if you had
confessed it in so many words. Your cursed family pride is insulting God-
frey, as it insulted me when I married your aunt. Her family—her beggarly
family—turned their backs on her for marrying an honest man, who had
made his own place and won his own fortune. I had no ancestors. I wasn’t
descended from a set of cutthroat scoundrels who lived by robbery and
murder. I couldn’t point to the time when the Ablewhites hadn’t a shirt to
their backs, and couldn’t sign their own names. Ha! ha! I wasn’t good
enough for the Herncastles, when I married. And now, it comes to the
pinch, my son isn’t good enough for you. I suspected it, all along. You have
got the Herncastle blood in you, my young lady! I suspected it all along.”
“A very unworthy suspicion,” remarked Mr. Bruff. “I am astonished that
you have the courage to acknowledge it.”
Before Mr. Ablewhite could find words to answer in, Rachel spoke in a
tone of the most exasperating contempt.
“Surely,” she said to the lawyer, “this is beneath notice. If he can think in
that way, let us leave him to think as he pleases.”
From scarlet, Mr. Ablewhite was now becoming purple. He gasped for
breath; he looked backwards and forwards from Rachel to Mr. Bruff in such
a frenzy of rage with both of them that he didn’t know which to attack first.
His wife, who had sat impenetrably fanning herself up to this time, began to
be alarmed, and attempted, quite uselessly, to quiet him. I had, throughout
this distressing interview, felt more than one inward call to interfere with a
few earnest words, and had controlled myself under a dread of the possible
results, very unworthy of a Christian Englishwoman who looks, not to what
is meanly prudent, but to what is morally right. At the point at which mat-
ters had now arrived, I rose superior to all considerations of mere expedi-
ency. If I had contemplated interposing any remonstrance of my own
humble devising, I might possibly have still hesitated. But the distressing
domestic emergency which now confronted me, was most marvellously and
beautifully provided for in the Correspondence of Miss Jane Ann
Stamper—Letter one thousand and one, on “Peace in Families.” I rose in
my modest corner, and I opened my precious book.
“Dear Mr. Ablewhite,” I said, “one word!”
When I first attracted the attention of the company by rising, I could see
that he was on the point of saying something rude to me. My sisterly form
of address checked him. He stared at me in heathen astonishment.
“As an affectionate well-wisher and friend,” I proceeded, “and as one
long accustomed to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify others,
permit me to take the most pardonable of all liberties—the liberty of com-
posing your mind.”
He began to recover himself; he was on the point of breaking out—he
would have broken out, with anybody else. But my voice (habitually gentle)
possesses a high note or so, in emergencies. In this emergency, I felt imper-
atively called upon to have the highest voice of the two.
I held up my precious book before him; I rapped the open page impress-
ively with my forefinger. “Not my words!” I exclaimed, in a burst of fervent
interruption. “Oh, don’t suppose that I claim attention for My humble
words! Manna in the wilderness, Mr. Ablewhite! Dew on the parched earth!
Words of comfort, words of wisdom, words of love—the blessed, blessed,
blessed words of Miss Jane Ann Stamper!”
I was stopped there by a momentary impediment of the breath. Before I
could recover myself, this monster in human form shouted out furiously,
“Miss Jane Ann Stamper be ———!”
It is impossible for me to write the awful word, which is here represented
by a blank. I shrieked as it passed his lips; I flew to my little bag on the side
table; I shook out all my tracts; I seized the one particular tract on profane
swearing, entitled, “Hush, for Heaven’s Sake!”; I handed it to him with an
expression of agonised entreaty. He tore it in two, and threw it back at me
across the table. The rest of them rose in alarm, not knowing what might
happen next. I instantly sat down again in my corner. There had once been
an occasion, under somewhat similar circumstances, when Miss Jane Ann
Stamper had been taken by the two shoulders and turned out of a room. I
waited, inspired by her spirit, for a repetition of her martyrdom.
 But no—it was not to be. His wife was the next person whom he ad-
dressed. “Who—who—who,” he said, stammering with rage, “who asked
this impudent fanatic into the house? Did you?”
Before Aunt Ablewhite could say a word, Rachel answered for her.
“Miss Clack is here,” she said, “as my guest.”
Those words had a singular effect on Mr. Ablewhite. They suddenly
changed him from a man in a state of red-hot anger to a man in a state of
icy-cold contempt. It was plain to everybody that Rachel had said
something—short and plain as her answer had been—which gave him the
upper hand of her at last.
“Oh?” he said. “Miss Clack is here as your guest—in my house?”
It was Rachel’s turn to lose her temper at that. Her colour rose, and her
eyes brightened fiercely. She turned to the lawyer, and, pointing to
Mr. Ablewhite, asked haughtily, “What does he mean?”
Mr. Bruff interfered for the third time.
“You appear to forget,” he said, addressing Mr. Ablewhite, “that you took
this house as Miss Verinder’s guardian, for Miss Verinder’s use.”
“Not quite so fast,” interposed Mr. Ablewhite. “I have a last word to say,
which I should have said some time since, if this—” He looked my way,
pondering what abominable name he should call me—“if this rampant spin-
ster had not interrupted us. I beg to inform you, sir, that, if my son is not
good enough to be Miss Verinder’s husband, I cannot presume to consider
his father good enough to be Miss Verinder’s guardian. Understand, if you
please, that I refuse to accept the position which is offered to me by Lady
Verinder’s will. In your legal phrase, I decline to act. This house has neces-
sarily been hired in my name. I take the entire responsibility of it on my
shoulders. It is my house. I can keep it, or let it, just as I please. I have no
wish to hurry Miss Verinder. On the contrary, I beg her to remove her guest
and her luggage, at her own entire convenience.” He made a low bow, and
walked out of the room.
That was Mr. Ablewhite’s revenge on Rachel, for refusing to marry his
son!
The instant the door closed, Aunt Ablewhite exhibited a phenomenon
which silenced us all. She became endowed with energy enough to cross the
room!
“My dear,” she said, taking Rachel by the hand, “I should be ashamed of
my husband, if I didn’t know that it is his temper which has spoken to you,
and not himself. You,” continued Aunt Ablewhite, turning on me in my
corner with another endowment of energy, in her looks this time instead of
her limbs—“you are the mischievous person who irritated him. I hope I
shall never see you or your tracts again.” She went back to Rachel and
kissed her. “I beg your pardon, my dear,” she said, “in my husband’s name.
What can I do for you?”
Consistently perverse in everything—capricious and unreasonable in all
the actions of her life—Rachel melted into tears at those commonplace
words, and returned her aunt’s kiss in silence.
“If I may be permitted to answer for Miss Verinder,” said Mr. Bruff,
“might I ask you, Mrs. Ablewhite, to send Penelope down with her mis-
tress’s bonnet and shawl. Leave us ten minutes together,” he added, in a
lower tone, “and you may rely on my setting matters right, to your satisfac-
tion as well as to Rachel’s.”
The trust of the family in this man was something wonderful to see.
Without a word more, on her side, Aunt Ablewhite left the room.
“Ah!” said Mr. Bruff, looking after her. “The Herncastle blood has its
drawbacks, I admit. But there is something in good breeding after all!”
Having made that purely worldly remark, he looked hard at my corner, as
if he expected me to go. My interest in Rachel—an infinitely higher interest
than his—riveted me to my chair.
Mr. Bruff gave it up, exactly as he had given it up at Aunt Verinder’s, in
Montagu Square. He led Rachel to a chair by the window, and spoke to her
there.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “Mr. Ablewhite’s conduct has naturally
shocked you, and taken you by surprise. If it was worth while to contest the
question with such a man, we might soon show him that he is not to have
things all his own way. But it isn’t worth while. You were quite right in
what you said just now; he is beneath our notice.”
He stopped, and looked round at my corner. I sat there quite immovable,
with my tracts at my elbow and with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap.
“You know,” he resumed, turning back again to Rachel, “that it was part
of your poor mother’s fine nature always to see the best of the people about
her, and never the worst. She named her brother-in-law your guardian be-
cause she believed in him, and because she thought it would please her sis-
ter. I had never liked Mr. Ablewhite myself, and I induced your mother to
let me insert a clause in the will, empowering her executors, in certain
events, to consult with me about the appointment of a new guardian. One of
those events has happened today; and I find myself in a position to end all
these dry business details, I hope agreeably, with a message from my wife.
Will you honour Mrs. Bruff by becoming her guest? And will you remain
under my roof, and be one of my family, until we wise people have laid our
heads together, and have settled what is to be done next?”
At those words, I rose to interfere. Mr. Bruff had done exactly what I had
dreaded he would do, when he asked Mrs. Ablewhite for Rachel’s bonnet
and shawl.
Before I could interpose a word, Rachel had accepted his invitation in the
warmest terms. If I suffered the arrangement thus made between them to be
carried out—if she once passed the threshold of Mr. Bruff’s door—farewell
to the fondest hope of my life, the hope of bringing my lost sheep back to
the fold! The bare idea of such a calamity as this quite overwhelmed me. I
cast the miserable trammels of worldly discretion to the winds, and spoke
with the fervour that filled me, in the words that came first.
“Stop!” I said—“stop! I must be heard. Mr. Bruff! you are not related to
her, and I am. I invite her—I summon the executors to appoint me guardian.
Rachel, dearest Rachel, I offer you my modest home; come to London by
the next train, love, and share it with me!”
Mr. Bruff said nothing. Rachel looked at me with a cruel astonishment
which she made no effort to conceal.
“You are very kind, Drusilla,” she said. “I shall hope to visit you whenev-
er I happen to be in London. But I have accepted Mr. Bruff’s invitation, and
I think it will be best, for the present, if I remain under Mr. Bruff’s care.”
“Oh, don’t say so!” I pleaded. “I can’t part with you, Rachel—I can’t part
with you!”
I tried to fold her in my arms. But she drew back. My fervour did not
communicate itself; it only alarmed her.
“Surely,” she said, “this is a very unnecessary display of agitation? I
don’t understand it.”
“No more do I,” said Mr. Bruff.
Their hardness—their hideous, worldly hardness—revolted me.
“Oh, Rachel! Rachel!” I burst out. “Haven’t you seen yet, that my heart
yearns to make a Christian of you? Has no inner voice told you that I am
trying to do for you, what I was trying to do for your dear mother when
death snatched her out of my hands?”
 Rachel advanced a step nearer, and looked at me very strangely.
“I don’t understand your reference to my mother,” she said. “Miss Clack,
will you have the goodness to explain yourself?”
Before I could answer, Mr. Bruff came forward, and offering his arm to
Rachel, tried to lead her out of the room.
“You had better not pursue the subject, my dear,” he said. “And Miss
Clack had better not explain herself.”
If I had been a stock or a stone, such an interference as this must have
roused me into testifying to the truth. I put Mr. Bruff aside indignantly with
my own hand, and, in solemn and suitable language, I stated the view with
which sound doctrine does not scruple to regard the awful calamity of dying
unprepared.
Rachel started back from me—I blush to write—with a scream of horror.
“Come away!” she said to Mr. Bruff. “Come away, for God’s sake, before
that woman can say any more! Oh, think of my poor mother’s harmless,
useful, beautiful life! You were at the funeral, Mr. Bruff; you saw how
everybody loved her; you saw the poor helpless people crying at her grave
over the loss of their best friend. And that wretch stands there, and tries to
make me doubt that my mother, who was an angel on earth, is an angel in
heaven now! Don’t stop to talk about it! Come away! It stifles me to breathe
the same air with her! It frightens me to feel that we are in the same room
together!”
Deaf to all remonstrance, she ran to the door.
At the same moment, her maid entered with her bonnet and shawl. She
huddled them on anyhow. “Pack my things,” she said, “and bring them to
Mr. Bruff’s.” I attempted to approach her—I was shocked and grieved, but,
it is needless to say, not offended. I only wished to say to her, “May your
hard heart be softened! I freely forgive you!” She pulled down her veil, and
tore her shawl away from my hand, and, hurrying out, shut the door in my
face. I bore the insult with my customary fortitude. I remember it now with
my customary superiority to all feeling of offence.
Mr. Bruff had his parting word of mockery for me, before he too hurried
out, in his turn.
“You had better not have explained yourself, Miss Clack,” he said, and
bowed, and left the room.
The person with the cap-ribbons followed.
 “It’s easy to see who has set them all by the ears together,” she said. “I’m
only a poor servant—but I declare I’m ashamed of you!” She too went out,
and banged the door after her.
I was left alone in the room. Reviled by them all, deserted by them all, I
was left alone in the room.
Is there more to be added to this plain statement of facts—to this touch-
ing picture of a Christian persecuted by the world? No! my diary reminds
me that one more of the many chequered chapters in my life ends here.
From that day forth, I never saw Rachel Verinder again. She had my for-
giveness at the time when she insulted me. She has had my prayerful good
wishes ever since. And when I die—to complete the return on my part of
good for evil—she will have the Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss Jane
Ann Stamper left her as a legacy by my will.
 SECOND NARRATIVE

Contributed by Mathew Bruff, Solicitor, of Gray’s Inn Square

My fair friend, Miss Clack, having laid down the pen, there are two reasons
for my taking it up next, in my turn.
In the first place, I am in a position to throw the necessary light on certain
points of interest which have thus far been left in the dark. Miss Verinder
had her own private reason for breaking her marriage engagement—and I
was at the bottom of it. Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had his own private reason
for withdrawing all claim to the hand of his charming cousin—and I dis-
covered what it was.
In the second place, it was my good or ill fortune, I hardly know which,
to find myself personally involved—at the period of which I am now writ-
ing—in the mystery of the Indian Diamond. I had the honour of an inter-
view, at my own office, with an Oriental stranger of distinguished manners,
who was no other, unquestionably, than the chief of the three Indians. Add
to this, that I met with the celebrated traveller, Mr. Murthwaite, the day af-
terwards, and that I held a conversation with him on the subject of the
Moonstone, which has a very important bearing on later events. And there
you have the statement of my claims to fill the position which I occupy in
these pages.
The true story of the broken marriage engagement comes first in point of
time, and must therefore take the first place in the present narrative. Tracing
my way back along the chain of events, from one end to the other, I find it
necessary to open the scene, oddly enough as you will think, at the bedside
of my excellent client and friend, the late Sir John Verinder.
Sir John had his share—perhaps rather a large share—of the more harm-
less and amiable of the weaknesses incidental to humanity. Among these, I
may mention as applicable to the matter in hand, an invincible reluctance—
so long as he enjoyed his usual good health—to face the responsibility of
making his will. Lady Verinder exerted her influence to rouse him to a sense
of duty in this matter; and I exerted my influence. He admitted the justice of
our views—but he went no further than that, until he found himself afflicted
with the illness which ultimately brought him to his grave. Then, I was sent
for at last, to take my client’s instructions on the subject of his will. They
proved to be the simplest instructions I had ever received in the whole of
my professional career.
Sir John was dozing, when I entered the room. He roused himself at the
sight of me.
“How do you do, Mr. Bruff?” he said. “I shan’t be very long about this.
And then I’ll go to sleep again.” He looked on with great interest while I
collected pens, ink, and paper. “Are you ready?” he asked. I bowed and
took a dip of ink, and waited for my instructions.
“I leave everything to my wife,” said Sir John. “That’s all.” He turned
round on his pillow, and composed himself to sleep again.
I was obliged to disturb him.
“Am I to understand,” I asked, “that you leave the whole of the property,
of every sort and description, of which you die possessed, absolutely to
Lady Verinder?”
“Yes,” said Sir John. “Only, I put it shorter. Why can’t you put it shorter,
and let me go to sleep again? Everything to my wife. That’s my Will.”
His property was entirely at his own disposal, and was of two kinds.
Property in land (I purposely abstain from using technical language), and
property in money. In the majority of cases, I am afraid I should have felt it
my duty to my client to ask him to reconsider his Will. In the case of Sir
John, I knew Lady Verinder to be, not only worthy of the unreserved trust
which her husband had placed in her (all good wives are worthy of that)—
but to be also capable of properly administering a trust (which, in my exper-
ience of the fair sex, not one in a thousand of them is competent to do). In
ten minutes, Sir John’s Will was drawn, and executed, and Sir John himself,
good man, was finishing his interrupted nap.
Lady Verinder amply justified the confidence which her husband had
placed in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and made
her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly sound and
sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising her. My responsib-
ility began and ended with shaping her instructions into the proper legal
form. Before Sir John had been a fortnight in his grave, the future of his
daughter had been most wisely and most affectionately provided for.
The Will remained in its fireproof box at my office, through more years
than I like to reckon up. It was not till the summer of eighteen hundred and
forty-eight that I found occasion to look at it again under very melancholy
circumstances.
At the date I have mentioned, the doctors pronounced the sentence on
poor Lady Verinder, which was literally a sentence of death. I was the first
person whom she informed of her situation; and I found her anxious to go
over her Will again with me.
It was impossible to improve the provisions relating to her daughter. But,
in the lapse of time, her wishes in regard to certain minor legacies, left to
different relatives, had undergone some modification; and it became neces-
sary to add three or four codicils to the original document. Having done this
at once, for fear of accident, I obtained her ladyship’s permission to embody
her recent instructions in a second Will. My object was to avoid certain in-
evitable confusions and repetitions which now disfigured the original docu-
ment, and which, to own the truth, grated sadly on my professional sense of
the fitness of things.
The execution of this second Will has been described by Miss Clack,
who was so obliging as to witness it. So far as regarded Rachel Verinder’s
pecuniary interests, it was, word for word, the exact counterpart of the first
Will. The only changes introduced related to the appointment of a guardian,
and to certain provisions concerning that appointment, which were made
under my advice. On Lady Verinder’s death, the Will was placed in the
hands of my proctor to be “proved” (as the phrase is) in the usual way.
In about three weeks from that time—as well as I can remember—the
first warning reached me of something unusual going on under the surface. I
happened to be looking in at my friend the proctor’s office, and I observed
that he received me with an appearance of greater interest than usual.
“I have some news for you,” he said. “What do you think I heard at Doc-
tors’ Commons this morning? Lady Verinder’s Will has been asked for, and
examined, already!”
This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which could be
contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could think of who had the
slightest interest in examining it. (I shall perhaps do well if I explain in this
place, for the benefit of the few people who don’t know it already, that the
law allows all wills to be examined at Doctors’ Commons by anybody who
applies, on the payment of a shilling fee.)
“Did you hear who asked for the Will?” I asked.
“Yes; the clerk had no hesitation in telling me. Mr. Smalley, of the firm of
Skipp and Smalley, asked for it. The Will has not been copied yet into the
great Folio Registers. So there was no alternative but to depart from the
usual course, and to let him see the original document. He looked it over
carefully, and made a note in his pocketbook. Have you any idea of what he
wanted with it?”
I shook my head. “I shall find out,” I answered, “before I am a day
older.” With that I went back at once to my own office.
If any other firm of solicitors had been concerned in this unaccountable
examination of my deceased client’s Will, I might have found some diffi-
culty in making the necessary discovery. But I had a hold over Skipp and
Smalley which made my course in this matter a comparatively easy one.
My common-law clerk (a most competent and excellent man) was a brother
of Mr. Smalley’s; and, owing to this sort of indirect connection with me,
Skipp and Smalley had, for some years past, picked up the crumbs that fell
from my table, in the shape of cases brought to my office, which, for vari-
ous reasons, I did not think it worth while to undertake. My professional
patronage was, in this way, of some importance to the firm. I intended, if
necessary, to remind them of that patronage, on the present occasion.
The moment I got back I spoke to my clerk; and, after telling him what
had happened, I sent him to his brother’s office, “with Mr. Bruff’s compli-
ments, and he would be glad to know why Messrs. Skipp and Smalley had
found it necessary to examine Lady Verinder’s will.”
This message brought Mr. Smalley back to my office in company with
his brother. He acknowledged that he had acted under instructions received
from a client. And then he put it to me, whether it would not be a breach of
professional confidence on his part to say more.
We had a smart discussion upon that. He was right, no doubt; and I was
wrong. The truth is, I was angry and suspicious—and I insisted on knowing
more. Worse still, I declined to consider any additional information offered
me, as a secret placed in my keeping: I claimed perfect freedom to use my
own discretion. Worse even than that, I took an unwarrantable advantage of
my position. “Choose, sir,” I said to Mr. Smalley, “between the risk of los-
ing your client’s business and the risk of losing mine.” Quite indefensible, I
admit—an act of tyranny, and nothing less. Like other tyrants, I carried my
point. Mr. Smalley chose his alternative, without a moment’s hesitation.
He smiled resignedly, and gave up the name of his client:
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
That was enough for me—I wanted to know no more.

Having reached this point in my narrative, it now becomes necessary to

place the reader of these lines—so far as Lady Verinder’s Will is con-
cerned—on a footing of perfect equality, in respect of information, with
myself.
Let me state, then, in the fewest possible words, that Rachel Verinder had
nothing but a life-interest in the property. Her mother’s excellent sense, and
my long experience, had combined to relieve her of all responsibility, and to
guard her from all danger of becoming the victim in the future of some
needy and unscrupulous man. Neither she, nor her husband (if she married),
could raise sixpence, either on the property in land, or on the property in
money. They would have the houses in London and in Yorkshire to live in,
and they would have the handsome income—and that was all.
When I came to think over what I had discovered, I was sorely perplexed
what to do next.
Hardly a week had passed since I had heard (to my surprise and distress)
of Miss Verinder’s proposed marriage. I had the sincerest admiration and
affection for her; and I had been inexpressibly grieved when I heard that she
was about to throw herself away on Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. And now, here
was the man—whom I had always believed to be a smooth-tongued impost-
or—justifying the very worst that I had thought of him, and plainly reveal-
ing the mercenary object of the marriage, on his side! And what of that?—
you may reply—the thing is done every day. Granted, my dear sir. But
would you think of it quite as lightly as you do, if the thing was done (let us
say) with your own sister?
The first consideration which now naturally occurred to me was this.
Would Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite hold to his engagement, after what his law-
yer had discovered for him?
It depended entirely on his pecuniary position, of which I knew nothing.
If that position was not a desperate one, it would be well worth his while to
marry Miss Verinder for her income alone. If, on the other hand, he stood in
urgent need of realising a large sum by a given time, then Lady Verinder’s
Will would exactly meet the case, and would preserve her daughter from
falling into a scoundrel’s hands.
In the latter event, there would be no need for me to distress Miss Rachel,
in the first days of her mourning for her mother, by an immediate revelation
of the truth. In the former event, if I remained silent, I should be conniving
at a marriage which would make her miserable for life.
My doubts ended in my calling at the hotel in London, at which I knew
Mrs. Ablewhite and Miss Verinder to be staying. They informed me that
they were going to Brighton the next day, and that an unexpected obstacle
prevented Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite from accompanying them. I at once pro-
posed to take his place. While I was only thinking of Rachel Verinder, it
was possible to hesitate. When I actually saw her, my mind was made up
directly, come what might of it, to tell her the truth.
I found my opportunity, when I was out walking with her, on the day
after my arrival.
“May I speak to you,” I asked, “about your marriage engagement?”
“Yes,” she said, indifferently, “if you have nothing more interesting to
talk about.”
“Will you forgive an old friend and servant of your family, Miss Rachel,
if I venture on asking whether your heart is set on this marriage?”
“I am marrying in despair, Mr. Bruff—on the chance of dropping into
some sort of stagnant happiness which may reconcile me to my life.”
Strong language! and suggestive of something below the surface, in the
shape of a romance. But I had my own object in view, and I declined (as we
lawyers say) to pursue the question into its side issues.
 “Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite can hardly be of your way of thinking,” I said.
“His heart must be set on the marriage at any rate?”
“He says so, and I suppose I ought to believe him. He would hardly
marry me, after what I have owned to him, unless he was fond of me.”
Poor thing! the bare idea of a man marrying her for his own selfish and
mercenary ends had never entered her head. The task I had set myself began
to look like a harder task than I had bargained for.
“It sounds strangely,” I went on, “in my old-fashioned ears—”
“What sounds strangely?” she asked.
“To hear you speak of your future husband as if you were not quite sure
of the sincerity of his attachment. Are you conscious of any reason in your
own mind for doubting him?”
Her astonishing quickness of perception, detected a change in my voice,
or my manner, when I put that question, which warned her that I had been
speaking all along with some ulterior object in view. She stopped, and tak-
ing her arm out of mine, looked me searchingly in the face.
“Mr. Bruff,” she said, “you have something to tell me about Godfrey
Ablewhite. Tell it.”
I knew her well enough to take her at her word. I told it.
She put her arm again into mine, and walked on with me slowly. I felt her
hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm, and I saw her getting
paler and paler as I went on—but, not a word passed her lips while I was
speaking. When I had done, she still kept silence. Her head drooped a little,
and she walked by my side, unconscious of my presence, unconscious of
everything about her; lost—buried, I might almost say—in her own
thoughts.
I made no attempt to disturb her. My experience of her disposition
warned me, on this, as on former occasions, to give her time.
The first instinct of girls in general, on being told of anything which in-
terests them, is to ask a multitude of questions, and then to run off, and talk
it all over with some favourite friend. Rachel Verinder’s first instinct, under
similar circumstances, was to shut herself up in her own mind, and to think
it over by herself. This absolute self-dependence is a great virtue in a man.
In a woman it has a serious drawback of morally separating her from the
mass of her sex, and so exposing her to misconstruction by the general
opinion. I strongly suspect myself of thinking as the rest of the world think
in this matter—except in the case of Rachel Verinder. The self-dependence
in her character, was one of its virtues in my estimation; partly, no doubt,
because I sincerely admired and liked her; partly, because the view I took of
her connection with the loss of the Moonstone was based on my own spe-
cial knowledge of her disposition. Badly as appearances might look, in the
matter of the Diamond—shocking as it undoubtedly was to know that she
was associated in any way with the mystery of an undiscovered theft—I
was satisfied nevertheless that she had done nothing unworthy of her, be-
cause I was also satisfied that she had not stirred a step in the business,
without shutting herself up in her own mind, and thinking it over first.
We had walked on, for nearly a mile I should say before Rachel roused
herself. She suddenly looked up at me with a faint reflection of her smile of
happier times—the most irresistible smile I have ever seen on a woman’s
face.
“I owe much already to your kindness,” she said. “And I feel more
deeply indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours of my mar-
riage when you get back to London contradict them at once, on my
authority.”
“Have you resolved to break your engagement?” I asked.
“Can you doubt it?” she returned proudly, “after what you have told me!”
“My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young—and you may find more dif-
ficulty in withdrawing from your present position than you anticipate. Have
you no one—I mean a lady, of course—whom you could consult?”
“No one,” she answered.
It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She was
so young and so lonely—and she bore it so well! The impulse to help her
got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have felt un-
der the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as occurred to
me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I have advised a
prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some exceedingly awk-
ward difficulties, in my time. But this was the first occasion on which I had
ever found myself advising a young lady how to obtain her release from a
marriage engagement. The suggestion I offered amounted briefly to this. I
recommended her to tell Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite—at a private interview, of
course—that he had, to her certain knowledge, betrayed the mercenary
nature of the motive on his side. She was then to add that their marriage,
after what she had discovered, was a simple impossibility—and she was to
put it to him, whether he thought it wisest to secure her silence by falling in
with her views, or to force her, by opposing them, to make the motive under
which she was acting generally known. If he attempted to defend himself,
or to deny the facts, she was, in that event, to refer him to me.
Miss Verinder listened attentively till I had done. She then thanked me
very prettily for my advice, but informed me at the same time that it was
impossible for her to follow it.
“May I ask,” I said, “what objection you see to following it?”
She hesitated—and then met me with a question on her side.
“Suppose you were asked to express your opinion of Mr. Godfrey Able-
white’s conduct?” she began.
“Yes?”
“What would you call it?”
“I should call it the conduct of a meanly deceitful man.”
“Mr. Bruff! I have believed in that man. I have promised to marry that
man. How can I tell him he is mean, how can I tell him he has deceived me,
how can I disgrace him in the eyes of the world after that? I have degraded
myself by ever thinking of him as my husband. If I say what you tell me to
say to him—I am owning that I have degraded myself to his face. I can’t do
that. After what has passed between us, I can’t do that! The shame of it
would be nothing to him. But the shame of it would be unendurable to me.”
Here was another of the marked peculiarities in her character disclosing
itself to me without reserve. Here was her sensitive horror of the bare con-
tact with anything mean, blinding her to every consideration of what she
owed to herself, hurrying her into a false position which might compromise
her in the estimation of all her friends! Up to this time, I had been a little
diffident about the propriety of the advice I had given to her. But, after what
she had just said, I had no sort of doubt that it was the best advice that could
have been offered; and I felt no sort of hesitation in pressing it on her again.
She only shook her head, and repeated her objection in other words.
“He has been intimate enough with me to ask me to be his wife. He has
stood high enough in my estimation to obtain my consent. I can’t tell him to
his face that he is the most contemptible of living creatures, after that!”
“But, my dear Miss Rachel,” I remonstrated, “it’s equally impossible for
you to tell him that you withdraw from your engagement without giving
some reason for it.”
“I shall say that I have thought it over, and that I am satisfied it will be
best for both of us if we part.”
 “No more than that?”
“No more.”
“Have you thought of what he may say, on his side?”
“He may say what he pleases.”
It was impossible not to admire her delicacy and her resolution, and it
was equally impossible not to feel that she was putting herself in the wrong.
I entreated her to consider her own position. I reminded her that she would
be exposing herself to the most odious misconstruction of her motives.
“You can’t brave public opinion,” I said, “at the command of private
feeling.”
“I can,” she answered. “I have done it already.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have forgotten the Moonstone, Mr. Bruff. Have I not braved public
opinion, there, with my own private reasons for it?”
Her answer silenced me for the moment. It set me trying to trace the ex-
planation of her conduct, at the time of the loss of the Moonstone, out of the
strange avowal which had just escaped her. I might perhaps have done it
when I was younger. I certainly couldn’t do it now.
I tried a last remonstrance before we returned to the house. She was just
as immovable as ever. My mind was in a strange conflict of feelings about
her when I left her that day. She was obstinate; she was wrong. She was in-
teresting; she was admirable; she was deeply to be pitied. I made her prom-
ise to write to me the moment she had any news to send. And I went back to
my business in London, with a mind exceedingly ill at ease.
On the evening of my return, before it was possible for me to receive my
promised letter, I was surprised by a visit from Mr. Ablewhite the elder, and
was informed that Mr. Godfrey had got his dismissal—and had accepted
it—that very day.
With the view I already took of the case, the bare fact stated in the words
that I have underlined, revealed Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s motive for sub-
mission as plainly as if he had acknowledged it himself. He needed a large
sum of money; and he needed it by a given time. Rachel’s income, which
would have helped him to anything else, would not help him here; and
Rachel had accordingly released herself, without encountering a moment’s
serious opposition on his part. If I am told that this is a mere speculation, I
ask, in my turn, what other theory will account for his giving up a marriage
which would have maintained him in splendour for the rest of his life?
 Any exultation I might otherwise have felt at the lucky turn which things
had now taken, was effectually checked by what passed at my interview
with old Mr. Ablewhite.
He came, of course, to know whether I could give him any explanation of
Miss Verinder’s extraordinary conduct. It is needless to say that I was quite
unable to afford him the information he wanted. The annoyance which I
thus inflicted, following on the irritation produced by a recent interview
with his son, threw Mr. Ablewhite off his guard. Both his looks and his lan-
guage convinced me that Miss Verinder would find him a merciless man to
deal with, when he joined the ladies at Brighton the next day.
I had a restless night, considering what I ought to do next. How my re-
flections ended, and how thoroughly well founded my distrust of Mr. Able-
white proved to be, are items of information which (as I am told) have
already been put tidily in their proper places, by that exemplary person,
Miss Clack. I have only to add—in completion of her narrative—that Miss
Verinder found the quiet and repose which she sadly needed, poor thing, in
my house at Hampstead. She honoured us by making a long stay. My wife
and daughters were charmed with her; and, when the executors decided on
the appointment of a new guardian, I feel sincere pride and pleasure in re-
cording that my guest and my family parted like old friends, on either side.
 II

The next thing I have to do, is to present such additional information as I

possess on the subject of the Moonstone, or, to speak more correctly, on the
subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond. The little that I have to tell
is (as I think I have already said) of some importance, nevertheless, in re-
spect of its bearing very remarkably on events which are still to come.
About a week or ten days after Miss Verinder had left us, one of my
clerks entered the private room at my office, with a card in his hand, and
informed me that a gentleman was below, who wanted to speak to me.
I looked at the card. There was a foreign name written on it, which has
escaped my memory. It was followed by a line written in English at the bot-
tom of the card, which I remember perfectly well:
“Recommended by Mr. Septimus Luker.”
The audacity of a person in Mr. Luker’s position presuming to recom-
mend anybody to me, took me so completely by surprise, that I sat silent for
the moment, wondering whether my own eyes had not deceived me. The
clerk, observing my bewilderment, favoured me with the result of his own
observation of the stranger who was waiting downstairs.
“He is rather a remarkable-looking man, sir. So dark in the complexion
that we all set him down in the office for an Indian, or something of that
sort.”
Associating the clerk’s idea with the line inscribed on the card in my
hand, I thought it possible that the Moonstone might be at the bottom of
Mr. Luker’s recommendation, and of the stranger’s visit at my office. To the
astonishment of my clerk, I at once decided on granting an interview to the
gentleman below.
In justification of the highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity
which I thus made, permit me to remind anybody who may read these lines,
that no living person (in England, at any rate) can claim to have had such an
intimate connection with the romance of the Indian Diamond as mine has
been. I was trusted with the secret of Colonel Herncastle’s plan for escaping
assassination. I received the Colonel’s letters, periodically reporting himself
a living man. I drew his Will, leaving the Moonstone to Miss Verinder. I
persuaded his executor to act, on the chance that the jewel might prove to
be a valuable acquisition to the family. And, lastly, I combated Mr. Franklin
Blake’s scruples, and induced him to be the means of transporting the Dia-
mond to Lady Verinder’s house. If anyone can claim a prescriptive right of
interest in the Moonstone, and in everything connected with it, I think it is
hardly to be denied that I am the man.
The moment my mysterious client was shown in, I felt an inner convic-
tion that I was in the presence of one of the three Indians—probably of the
chief. He was carefully dressed in European costume. But his swarthy com-
plexion, his long lithe figure, and his grave and graceful politeness of man-
ner were enough to betray his Oriental origin to any intelligent eyes that
looked at him.
I pointed to a chair, and begged to be informed of the nature of his busi-
ness with me.
After first apologising—in an excellent selection of English words—for
the liberty which he had taken in disturbing me, the Indian produced a small
parcel the outer covering of which was of cloth of gold. Removing this and
a second wrapping of some silken fabric, he placed a little box, or casket,
on my table, most beautifully and richly inlaid in jewels, on an ebony
ground.
“I have come, sir,” he said, “to ask you to lend me some money. And I
leave this as an assurance to you that my debt will be paid back.”
I pointed to his card. “And you apply to me,” I rejoined, “at Mr. Luker’s
recommendation?”
The Indian bowed.
“May I ask how it is that Mr. Luker himself did not advance the money
that you require?”
“Mr. Luker informed me, sir, that he had no money to lend.”
“And so he recommended you to come to me?”
The Indian, in his turn, pointed to the card. “It is written there,” he said.
Briefly answered, and thoroughly to the purpose! If the Moonstone had
been in my possession, this Oriental gentleman would have murdered me, I
am well aware, without a moment’s hesitation. At the same time, and bar-
ring that slight drawback, I am bound to testify that he was the perfect mod-
el of a client. He might not have respected my life. But he did what none of
my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience of them—he re-
spected my time.
“I am sorry,” I said, “that you should have had the trouble of coming to
me. Mr. Luker is quite mistaken in sending you here. I am trusted, like other
men in my profession, with money to lend. But I never lend it to strangers,
and I never lend it on such a security as you have produced.”
Far from attempting, as other people would have done, to induce me to
relax my own rules, the Indian only made me another bow, and wrapped up
his box in its two coverings without a word of protest. He rose—this admir-
able assassin rose to go, the moment I had answered him!
“Will your condescension towards a stranger, excuse my asking one
question,” he said, “before I take my leave?”
I bowed on my side. Only one question at parting! The average in my ex-
perience was fifty.
“Supposing, sir, it had been possible (and customary) for you to lend me
the money,” he said, “in what space of time would it have been possible
(and customary) for me to pay it back?”
“According to the usual course pursued in this country,” I answered, “you
would have been entitled to pay the money back (if you liked) in one year’s
time from the date at which it was first advanced to you.”
The Indian made me a last bow, the lowest of all—and suddenly and
softly walked out of the room.
It was done in a moment, in a noiseless, supple, cat-like way, which a
little startled me, I own. As soon as I was composed enough to think, I ar-
rived at one distinct conclusion in reference to the otherwise incomprehens-
ible visitor who had favoured me with a call.
His face, voice, and manner—while I was in his company—were under
such perfect control that they set all scrutiny at defiance. But he had given
me one chance of looking under the smooth outer surface of him, for all
that. He had not shown the slightest sign of attempting to fix anything that I
had said to him in his mind, until I mentioned the time at which it was cus-
tomary to permit the earliest repayment, on the part of a debtor, of money
that had been advanced as a loan. When I gave him that piece of informa-
tion, he looked me straight in the face, while I was speaking, for the first
time. The inference I drew from this was—that he had a special purpose in
asking me his last question, and a special interest in hearing my answer to
it. The more carefully I reflected on what had passed between us, the more
shrewdly I suspected the production of the casket, and the application for
the loan, of having been mere formalities, designed to pave the way for the
parting inquiry addressed to me.
I had satisfied myself of the correctness of this conclusion—and was try-
ing to get on a step further, and penetrate the Indian’s motives next—when
a letter was brought to me, which proved to be from no less a person that
Mr. Septimus Luker himself. He asked my pardon in terms of sickening
servility, and assured me that he could explain matters to my satisfaction, if
I would honour him by consenting to a personal interview.
I made another unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity. I honoured him
by making an appointment at my office, for the next day.
Mr. Luker was, in every respect, such an inferior creature to the Indian—
he was so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy—that he is quite un-
worthy of being reported, at any length, in these pages. The substance of
what he had to tell me may be fairly stated as follows:
The day before I had received the visit of the Indian, Mr. Luker had been
favoured with a call from that accomplished gentleman. In spite of his Eu-
ropean disguise, Mr. Luker had instantly identified his visitor with the chief
of the three Indians, who had formerly annoyed him by loitering about his
house, and who had left him no alternative but to consult a magistrate. From
this startling discovery he had rushed to the conclusion (naturally enough I
own) that he must certainly be in the company of one of the three men, who
had blindfolded him, gagged him, and robbed him of his banker’s receipt.
The result was that he became quite paralysed with terror, and that he firmly
believed his last hour had come.
On his side, the Indian preserved the character of a perfect stranger. He
produced the little casket, and made exactly the same application which he
had afterwards made to me. As the speediest way of getting rid of him,
Mr. Luker had at once declared that he had no money. The Indian had
thereupon asked to be informed of the best and safest person to apply to for
the loan he wanted. Mr. Luker had answered that the best and safest person,
in such cases, was usually a respectable solicitor. Asked to name some indi-
vidual of that character and profession, Mr. Luker had mentioned me—for
the one simple reason that, in the extremity of his terror, mine was the first
name which occurred to him. “The perspiration was pouring off me like
rain, sir,” the wretched creature concluded. “I didn’t know what I was talk-
ing about. And I hope you’ll look over it, Mr. Bruff, sir, in consideration of
my having been really and truly frightened out of my wits.”
I excused the fellow graciously enough. It was the readiest way of releas-
ing myself from the sight of him. Before he left me, I detained him to make
one inquiry.
Had the Indian said anything noticeable, at the moment of quitting
Mr. Luker’s house?
Yes! The Indian had put precisely the same question to Mr. Luker, at
parting, which he had put to me; receiving of course, the same answer as
the answer which I had given him.
What did it mean? Mr. Luker’s explanation gave me no assistance to-
wards solving the problem. My own unaided ingenuity, consulted next,
proved quite unequal to grapple with the difficulty. I had a dinner engage-
ment that evening; and I went upstairs, in no very genial frame of mind,
little suspecting that the way to my dressing-room and the way to discovery,
meant, on this particular occasion, one and the same thing.
 III

The prominent personage among the guests at the dinner party I found to be
Mr. Murthwaite.
On his appearance in England, after his wanderings, society had been
greatly interested in the traveller, as a man who had passed through many
dangerous adventures, and who had escaped to tell the tale. He had now an-
nounced his intention of returning to the scene of his exploits, and of penet-
rating into regions left still unexplored. This magnificent indifference to
placing his safety in peril for the second time, revived the flagging interest
of the worshippers in the hero. The law of chances was clearly against his
escaping on this occasion. It is not every day that we can meet an eminent
person at dinner, and feel that there is a reasonable prospect of the news of
his murder being the news that we hear of him next.
When the gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining-room, I found
myself sitting next to Mr. Murthwaite. The guests present being all English,
it is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check exercised by the
presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation turned on politics as a
necessary result.
In respect to this all-absorbing national topic, I happen to be one of the
most un-English Englishmen living. As a general rule, political talk appears
to me to be of all talk the most dreary and the most profitless. Glancing at
Mr. Murthwaite, when the bottles had made their first round of the table, I
found that he was apparently of my way of thinking. He was doing it very
dexterously—with all possible consideration for the feelings of his host—
but it is not the less certain that he was composing himself for a nap. It
struck me as an experiment worth attempting, to try whether a judicious al-
lusion to the subject of the Moonstone would keep him awake, and, if it did,
to see what he thought of the last new complication in the Indian conspir-
acy, as revealed in the prosaic precincts of my office.
 “If I am not mistaken, Mr. Murthwaite,” I began, “you were acquainted
with the late Lady Verinder, and you took some interest in the strange suc-
cession of events which ended in the loss of the Moonstone?”
The eminent traveller did me the honour of waking up in an instant, and
asking me who I was.
I informed him of my professional connection with the Herncastle family,
not forgetting the curious position which I had occupied towards the Colon-
el and his Diamond in the bygone time.
Mr. Murthwaite shifted round in his chair, so as to put the rest of the
company behind him (Conservatives and Liberals alike), and concentrated
his whole attention on plain Mr. Bruff, of Gray’s Inn Square.
“Have you heard anything, lately, of the Indians?” he asked.
“I have every reason to believe,” I answered, “that one of them had an
interview with me, in my office, yesterday.”
Mr. Murthwaite was not an easy man to astonish; but that last answer of
mine completely staggered him. I described what had happened to
Mr. Luker, and what had happened to myself, exactly as I have described it
here. “It is clear that the Indian’s parting inquiry had an object,” I added.
“Why should he be so anxious to know the time at which a borrower of
money is usually privileged to pay the money back?”
“Is it possible that you don’t see his motive, Mr. Bruff?”
“I am ashamed of my stupidity, Mr. Murthwaite—but I certainly don’t
see it.”
The great traveller became quite interested in sounding the immense
vacuity of my dullness to its lowest depths.
“Let me ask you one question,” he said. “In what position does the con-
spiracy to seize the Moonstone now stand?”
“I can’t say,” I answered. “The Indian plot is a mystery to me.”
“The Indian plot, Mr. Bruff, can only be a mystery to you, because you
have never seriously examined it. Shall we run it over together, from the
time when you drew Colonel Herncastle’s Will, to the time when the Indian
called at your office? In your position, it may be of very serious importance
to the interests of Miss Verinder, that you should be able to take a clear
view of this matter in case of need. Tell me, bearing that in mind, whether
you will penetrate the Indian’s motive for yourself? or whether you wish me
to save you the trouble of making any inquiry into it?”
 It is needless to say that I thoroughly appreciated the practical purpose
which I now saw that he had in view, and that the first of the two alternat-
ives was the alternative I chose.
“Very good,” said Mr. Murthwaite. “We will take the question of the ages
of the three Indians first. I can testify that they all look much about the same
age—and you can decide for yourself, whether the man whom you saw
was, or was not, in the prime of life. Not forty, you think? My idea too. We
will say not forty. Now look back to the time when Colonel Herncastle
came to England, and when you were concerned in the plan he adopted to
preserve his life. I don’t want you to count the years. I will only say, it is
clear that these present Indians, at their age, must be the successors of three
other Indians (high caste Brahmins all of them, Mr. Bruff, when they left
their native country!) who followed the Colonel to these shores. Very well.
These present men of ours have succeeded to the men who were here before
them. If they had only done that, the matter would not have been worth in-
quiring into. But they have done more. They have succeeded to the organ-
isation which their predecessors established in this country. Don’t start! The
organisation is a very trumpery affair, according to our ideas, I have no
doubt. I should reckon it up as including the command of money; the ser-
vices, when needed, of that shady sort of Englishman, who lives in the by-
ways of foreign life in London; and, lastly, the secret sympathy of such few
men of their own country, and (formerly, at least) of their own religion, as
happen to be employed in ministering to some of the multitudinous wants
of this great city. Nothing very formidable, as you see! But worth notice at
starting, because we may find occasion to refer to this modest little Indian
organisation as we go on. Having now cleared the ground, I am going to ask
you a question; and I expect your experience to answer it. What was the
event which gave the Indians their first chance of seizing the Diamond?”
I understood the allusion to my experience.
“The first chance they got,” I replied, “was clearly offered to them by
Colonel Herncastle’s death. They would be aware of his death, I suppose, as
a matter of course?”
“As a matter of course. And his death, as you say, gave them their first
chance. Up to that time the Moonstone was safe in the strongroom of the
bank. You drew the Colonel’s Will leaving his jewel to his niece; and the
Will was proved in the usual way. As a lawyer, you can be at no loss to
know what course the Indians would take (under English advice) after
that.”
“They would provide themselves with a copy of the Will from Doctors’
Commons,” I said.
“Exactly. One or other of those shady Englishmen to whom I have al-
luded, would get them the copy you have described. That copy would in-
form them that the Moonstone was bequeathed to the daughter of Lady Ver-
inder, and that Mr. Blake the elder, or some person appointed by him, was
to place it in her hands. You will agree with me that the necessary informa-
tion about persons in the position of Lady Verinder and Mr. Blake, would be
perfectly easy information to obtain. The one difficulty for the Indians
would be to decide whether they should make their attempt on the Diamond
when it was in course of removal from the keeping of the bank, or whether
they should wait until it was taken down to Yorkshire to Lady Verinder’s
house. The second way would be manifestly the safest way—and there you
have the explanation of the appearance of the Indians at Frizinghall, dis-
guised as jugglers, and waiting their time. In London, it is needless to say,
they had their organisation at their disposal to keep them informed of
events. Two men would do it. One to follow anybody who went from
Mr. Blake’s house to the bank. And one to treat the lower men servants with
beer, and to hear the news of the house. These commonplace precautions
would readily inform them that Mr. Franklin Blake had been to the bank,
and that Mr. Franklin Blake was the only person in the house who was go-
ing to visit Lady Verinder. What actually followed upon that discovery, you
remember, no doubt, quite as correctly as I do.”
I remembered that Franklin Blake had detected one of the spies, in the
street—that he had, in consequence, advanced the time of his arrival in
Yorkshire by some hours—and that (thanks to old Betteredge’s excellent
advice) he had lodged the Diamond in the bank at Frizinghall, before the
Indians were so much as prepared to see him in the neighbourhood. All per-
fectly clear so far. But the Indians being ignorant of the precautions thus
taken, how was it that they had made no attempt on Lady Verinder’s house
(in which they must have supposed the Diamond to be) through the whole
of the interval that elapsed before Rachel’s birthday?
In putting this difficulty to Mr. Murthwaite, I thought it right to add that I
had heard of the little boy, and the drop of ink, and the rest of it, and that
any explanation based on the theory of clairvoyance was an explanation
which would carry no conviction whatever with it, to my mind.
“Nor to mine either,” said Mr. Murthwaite. “The clairvoyance in this case
is simply a development of the romantic side of the Indian character. It
would be refreshment and an encouragement to those men—quite incon-
ceivable, I grant you, to the English mind—to surround their wearisome and
perilous errand in this country with a certain halo of the marvellous and the
supernatural. Their boy is unquestionably a sensitive subject to the mesmer-
ic influence—and, under that influence, he has no doubt reflected what was
already in the mind of the person mesmerising him. I have tested the theory
of clairvoyance—and I have never found the manifestations get beyond that
point. The Indians don’t investigate the matter in this way; the Indians look
upon their boy as a seer of things invisible to their eyes—and, I repeat, in
that marvel they find the source of a new interest in the purpose that unites
them. I only notice this as offering a curious view of human character,
which must be quite new to you. We have nothing whatever to do with
clairvoyance, or with mesmerism, or with anything else that is hard of be-
lief to a practical man, in the inquiry that we are now pursuing. My object
in following the Indian plot, step by step, is to trace results back, by rational
means, to natural causes. Have I succeeded to your satisfaction so far?”
“Not a doubt of it, Mr. Murthwaite! I am waiting, however, with some
anxiety, to hear the rational explanation of the difficulty which I have just
had the honour of submitting to you.”
Mr. Murthwaite smiled. “It’s the easiest difficulty to deal with of all,” he
said. “Permit me to begin by admitting your statement of the case as a per-
fectly correct one. The Indians were undoubtedly not aware of what
Mr. Franklin Blake had done with the Diamond—for we find them making
their first mistake, on the first night of Mr. Blake’s arrival at his aunt’s
house.”
“Their first mistake?” I repeated.
“Certainly! The mistake of allowing themselves to be surprised, lurking
about the terrace at night, by Gabriel Betteredge. However, they had the
merit of seeing for themselves that they had taken a false step—for, as you
say, again, with plenty of time at their disposal, they never came near the
house for weeks afterwards.”
“Why, Mr. Murthwaite? That’s what I want to know! Why?”
 “Because no Indian, Mr. Bruff, ever runs an unnecessary risk. The clause
you drew in Colonel Herncastle’s Will, informed them (didn’t it?) that the
Moonstone was to pass absolutely into Miss Verinder’s possession on her
birthday. Very well. Tell me which was the safest course for men in their
position? To make their attempt on the Diamond while it was under the con-
trol of Mr. Franklin Blake, who had shown already that he could suspect
and outwit them? Or to wait till the Diamond was at the disposal of a young
girl, who would innocently delight in wearing the magnificent jewel at
every possible opportunity? Perhaps you want a proof that my theory is cor-
rect? Take the conduct of the Indians themselves as the proof. They ap-
peared at the house, after waiting all those weeks, on Miss Verinder’s birth-
day; and they were rewarded for the patient accuracy of their calculations
by seeing the Moonstone in the bosom of her dress! When I heard the story
of the Colonel and the Diamond, later in the evening, I felt so sure about the
risk Mr. Franklin Blake had run (they would have certainly attacked him, if
he had not happened to ride back to Lady Verinder’s in the company of oth-
er people); and I was so strongly convinced of the worse risk still, in store
for Miss Verinder, that I recommended following the Colonel’s plan, and
destroying the identity of the gem by having it cut into separate stones.
How its extraordinary disappearance that night, made my advice useless,
and utterly defeated the Hindu plot—and how all further action on the part
of the Indians was paralysed the next day by their confinement in prison as
rogues and vagabonds—you know as well as I do. The first act in the con-
spiracy closes there. Before we go on to the second, may I ask whether I
have met your difficulty, with an explanation which is satisfactory to the
mind of a practical man?”
It was impossible to deny that he had met my difficulty fairly; thanks to
his superior knowledge of the Indian character—and thanks to his not hav-
ing had hundreds of other wills to think of since Colonel Herncastle’s time!
“So far, so good,” resumed Mr. Murthwaite. “The first chance the Indians
had of seizing the Diamond was a chance lost, on the day when they were
committed to the prison at Frizinghall. When did the second chance offer
itself? The second chance offered itself—as I am in a condition to prove—
while they were still in confinement.”
He took out his pocketbook, and opened it at a particular leaf, before he
went on.
 “I was staying,” he resumed, “with some friends at Frizinghall, at the
time. A day or two before the Indians were set free (on a Monday, I think),
the governor of the prison came to me with a letter. It had been left for the
Indians by one Mrs. Macann, of whom they had hired the lodging in which
they lived; and it had been delivered at Mrs. Macann’s door, in ordinary
course of post, on the previous morning. The prison authorities had noticed
that the postmark was ‘Lambeth,’ and that the address on the outside,
though expressed in correct English, was, in form, oddly at variance with
the customary method of directing a letter. On opening it, they had found
the contents to be written in a foreign language, which they rightly guessed
at as Hindustani. Their object in coming to me was, of course, to have the
letter translated to them. I took a copy in my pocketbook of the original,
and of my translation—and there they are at your service.”
He handed me the open pocketbook. The address on the letter was the
first thing copied. It was all written in one paragraph, without any attempt at
punctuation, thus: “To the three Indian men living with the lady called
Macann at Frizinghall in Yorkshire.” The Hindu characters followed; and
the English translation appeared at the end, expressed in these mysterious
words:

“In the name of the Regent of the Night, whose seat is on the
Antelope, whose arms embrace the four corners of the earth.
“Brothers, turn your faces to the south, and come to me in
the street of many noises, which leads down to the muddy river.
“The reason is this.
“My own eyes have seen it.”

There the letter ended, without either date or signature. I handed it back
to Mr. Murthwaite, and owned that this curious specimen of Hindu corres-
pondence rather puzzled me.
“I can explain the first sentence to you,” he said; “and the conduct of the
Indians themselves will explain the rest. The god of the moon is represen-
ted, in the Hindu mythology, as a four-armed deity, seated on an antelope;
and one of his titles is the regent of the night. Here, then, to begin with, is
something which looks suspiciously like an indirect reference to the Moon-
stone. Now, let us see what the Indians did, after the prison authorities had
allowed them to receive their letter. On the very day when they were set
free they went at once to the railway station, and took their places in the
first train that started for London. We all thought it a pity at Frizinghall that
their proceedings were not privately watched. But, after Lady Verinder had
dismissed the police-officer, and had stopped all further inquiry into the loss
of the Diamond, no one else could presume to stir in the matter. The Indians
were free to go to London, and to London they went. What was the next
news we heard of them, Mr. Bruff?”
“They were annoying Mr. Luker,” I answered, “by loitering about the
house at Lambeth.”
“Did you read the report of Mr. Luker’s application to the magistrate?”
“Yes.”
“In the course of his statement he referred, if you remember, to a foreign
workman in his employment, whom he had just dismissed on suspicion of
attempted theft, and whom he also distrusted as possibly acting in collusion
with the Indians who had annoyed him. The inference is pretty plain,
Mr. Bruff, as to who wrote that letter which puzzled you just now, and as to
which of Mr. Luker’s Oriental treasures the workman had attempted to
steal.”
The inference (as I hastened to acknowledge) was too plain to need being
pointed out. I had never doubted that the Moonstone had found its way into
Mr. Luker’s hands, at the time Mr. Murthwaite alluded to. My only question
had been, How had the Indians discovered the circumstance? This question
(the most difficult to deal with of all, as I had thought) had now received its
answer, like the rest. Lawyer as I was, I began to feel that I might trust
Mr. Murthwaite to lead me blindfold through the last windings of the
labyrinth, along which he had guided me thus far. I paid him the compli-
ment of telling him this, and found my little concession very graciously
received.
“You shall give me a piece of information in your turn before we go on,”
he said. “Somebody must have taken the Moonstone from Yorkshire to
London. And somebody must have raised money on it, or it would never
have been in Mr. Luker’s possession. Has there been any discovery made of
who that person was?”
“None that I know of.”
“There was a story (was there not?) about Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. I am
told he is an eminent philanthropist—which is decidedly against him, to be-
gin with.”
 I heartily agreed in this with Mr. Murthwaite. At the same time, I felt
bound to inform him (without, it is needless to say, mentioning Miss Ver-
inder’s name) that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had been cleared of all suspicion,
on evidence which I could answer for as entirely beyond dispute.
“Very well,” said Mr. Murthwaite, quietly, “let us leave it to time to clear
the matter up. In the meanwhile, Mr. Bruff, we must get back again to the
Indians, on your account. Their journey to London simply ended in their
becoming the victims of another defeat. The loss of their second chance of
seizing the Diamond is mainly attributable, as I think, to the cunning and
foresight of Mr. Luker—who doesn’t stand at the top of the prosperous and
ancient profession of usury for nothing! By the prompt dismissal of the man
in his employment, he deprived the Indians of the assistance which their
confederate would have rendered them in getting into the house. By the
prompt transport of the Moonstone to his banker’s, he took the conspirators
by surprise before they were prepared with a new plan for robbing him.
How the Indians, in this latter case, suspected what he had done, and how
they contrived to possess themselves of his banker’s receipt, are events too
recent to need dwelling on. Let it be enough to say that they know the
Moonstone to be once more out of their reach; deposited (under the general
description of ‘a valuable of great price’) in a banker’s strong room. Now,
Mr. Bruff, what is their third chance of seizing the Diamond? and when will
it come?”
As the question passed his lips, I penetrated the motive of the Indian’s
visit to my office at last!
“I see it!” I exclaimed. “The Indians take it for granted, as we do, that the
Moonstone has been pledged; and they want to be certainly informed of the
earliest period at which the pledge can be redeemed—because that will be
the earliest period at which the Diamond can be removed from the safe
keeping of the bank!”
“I told you you would find it out for yourself, Mr. Bruff, if I only gave
you a fair chance. In a year from the time when the Moonstone was
pledged, the Indians will be on the watch for their third chance. Mr. Luker’s
own lips have told them how long they will have to wait, and your respect-
able authority has satisfied them that Mr. Luker has spoken the truth. When
do we suppose, at a rough guess, that the Diamond found its way into the
moneylender’s hands?”
“Towards the end of last June,” I answered, “as well as I can reckon it.”
 “And we are now in the year ‘forty-eight. Very good. If the unknown per-
son who has pledged the Moonstone can redeem it in a year, the jewel will
be in that person’s possession again at the end of June, ’forty-nine. I shall
be thousands of miles from England and English news at that date. But it
may be worth your while to take a note of it, and to arrange to be in London
at the time.”
“You think something serious will happen?” I said.
“I think I shall be safer,” he answered, “among the fiercest fanatics of
Central Asia than I should be if I crossed the door of the bank with the
Moonstone in my pocket. The Indians have been defeated twice running,
Mr. Bruff. It’s my firm belief that they won’t be defeated a third time.”
Those were the last words he said on the subject. The coffee came in; the
guests rose, and dispersed themselves about the room; and we joined the
ladies of the dinner-party upstairs.
I made a note of the date, and it may not be amiss if I close my narrative
by repeating that note here:
June, ’forty-nine. Expect news of the Indians, toward the end of the
month.
And that done, I hand the pen, which I have now no further claim to use,
to the writer who follows me next.
 THIRD NARRATIVE

Contributed by Franklin Blake

In the spring of the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine I was wandering
in the East, and had then recently altered the travelling plans which I had
laid out some months before, and which I had communicated to my lawyer
and my banker in London.
This change made it necessary for me to send one of my servants to ob-
tain my letters and remittances from the English consul in a certain city,
which was no longer included as one of my resting-places in my new travel-
ling scheme. The man was to join me again at an appointed place and time.
An accident, for which he was not responsible, delayed him on his errand.
For a week I and my people waited, encamped on the borders of a desert. At
the end of that time the missing man made his appearance, with the money
and the letters, at the entrance of my tent.
“I am afraid I bring you bad news, sir,” he said, and pointed to one of the
letters, which had a mourning border round it, and the address on which
was in the handwriting of Mr. Bruff.
I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense. The
letter with the mourning border was the letter that I opened first.
 It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great
fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its re-
sponsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in return-
ing to England.
By daybreak the next morning, I was on my way back to my own
country.

The picture presented of me, by my old friend Betteredge, at the time of my

departure from England, is (as I think) a little overdrawn. He has, in his
own quaint way, interpreted seriously one of his young mistress’s many
satirical references to my foreign education; and has persuaded himself that
he actually saw those French, German, and Italian sides to my character,
which my lively cousin only professed to discover in jest, and which never
had any real existence, except in our good Betteredge’s own brain. But, bar-
ring this drawback, I am bound to own that he has stated no more than the
truth in representing me as wounded to the heart by Rachel’s treatment, and
as leaving England in the first keenness of suffering caused by the bitterest
disappointment of my life.
I went abroad, resolved—if change and absence could help me—to forget
her. It is, I am persuaded, no true view of human nature which denies that
change and absence do help a man under these circumstances; they force
his attention away from the exclusive contemplation of his own sorrow. I
never forgot her; but the pang of remembrance lost its worst bitterness, little
by little, as time, distance, and novelty interposed themselves more and
more effectually between Rachel and me.
On the other hand, it is no less certain that, with the act of turning home-
ward, the remedy which had gained its ground so steadily, began now, just
as steadily, to drop back. The nearer I drew to the country which she inhab-
ited, and to the prospect of seeing her again, the more irresistibly her influ-
ence began to recover its hold on me. On leaving England she was the last
person in the world whose name I would have suffered to pass my lips. On
returning to England, she was the first person I inquired after, when
Mr. Bruff and I met again.
I was informed, of course, of all that had happened in my absence; in oth-
er words, of all that has been related here in continuation of Betteredge’s
narrative—one circumstance only being excepted. Mr. Bruff did not, at that
time, feel himself at liberty to inform me of the motives which had privately
influenced Rachel and Godfrey Ablewhite in recalling the marriage prom-
ise, on either side. I troubled him with no embarrassing questions on this
delicate subject. It was relief enough to me, after the jealous disappointment
caused by hearing that she had ever contemplated being Godfrey’s wife, to
know that reflection had convinced her of acting rashly, and that she had
effected her own release from her marriage engagement.
Having heard the story of the past, my next inquiries (still inquiries after
Rachel!) advanced naturally to the present time. Under whose care had she
been placed after leaving Mr. Bruff’s house? and where was she living
now?
She was living under the care of a widowed sister of the late Sir John
Verinder—one Mrs. Merridew—whom her mother’s executors had reques-
ted to act as guardian, and who had accepted the proposal. They were repor-
ted to me as getting on together admirably well, and as being now estab-
lished, for the season, in Mrs. Merridew’s house in Portland Place.
Half an hour after receiving this information, I was on my way to Port-
land Place—without having had the courage to own it to Mr. Bruff!
The man who answered the door was not sure whether Miss Verinder was
at home or not. I sent him upstairs with my card, as the speediest way of
setting the question at rest. The man came down again with an impenetrable
face, and informed me that Miss Verinder was out.
I might have suspected other people of purposely denying themselves to
me. But it was impossible to suspect Rachel. I left word that I would call
again at six o’clock that evening.
At six o’clock I was informed for the second time that Miss Verinder was
not at home. Had any message been left for me. No message had been left
for me. Had Miss Verinder not received my card? The servant begged my
pardon—Miss Verinder had received it.
The inference was too plain to be resisted. Rachel declined to see me.
On my side, I declined to be treated in this way, without making an at-
tempt, at least, to discover a reason for it. I sent up my name to Mrs. Mer-
ridew, and requested her to favour me with a personal interview at any hour
which it might be most convenient to her to name.
Mrs. Merridew made no difficulty about receiving me at once. I was
shown into a comfortable little sitting-room, and found myself in the pres-
ence of a comfortable little elderly lady. She was so good as to feel great
regret and much surprise, entirely on my account. She was at the same time,
however, not in a position to offer me any explanation, or to press Rachel
on a matter which appeared to relate to a question of private feeling alone.
This was said over and over again, with a polite patience that nothing could
tire; and this was all I gained by applying to Mrs. Merridew.
My last chance was to write to Rachel. My servant took a letter to her the
next day, with strict instructions to wait for an answer.
The answer came back, literally in one sentence.
“Miss Verinder begs to decline entering into any correspondence with
Mr. Franklin Blake.”
Fond as I was of her, I felt indignantly the insult offered to me in that
reply. Mr. Bruff came in to speak to me on business, before I had recovered
possession of myself. I dismissed the business on the spot, and laid the
whole case before him. He proved to be as incapable of enlightening me as
Mrs. Merridew herself. I asked him if any slander had been spoken of me in
Rachel’s hearing. Mr. Bruff was not aware of any slander of which I was the
object. Had she referred to me in any way while she was staying under
Mr. Bruff’s roof? Never. Had she not so much as asked, during all my long
absence, whether I was living or dead? No such question had ever passed
her lips. I took out of my pocketbook the letter which poor Lady Verinder
had written to me from Frizinghall, on the day when I left her house in
Yorkshire. And I pointed Mr. Bruff’s attention to these two sentences in it:

“The valuable assistance which you rendered to the inquiry

after the lost jewel is still an unpardoned offence, in the present
dreadful state of Rachel’s mind. Moving blindfold in this mat-
ter, you have added to the burden of anxiety which she has had
to bear, by innocently threatening her secret with discovery
through your exertions.”

“Is it possible,” I asked, “that the feeling towards me which is there de-
scribed, is as bitter as ever against me now?”
Mr. Bruff looked unaffectedly distressed.
“If you insist on an answer,” he said, “I own I can place no other inter-
pretation on her conduct than that.”
 I rang the bell, and directed my servant to pack my portmanteau, and to
send out for a railway guide. Mr. Bruff asked, in astonishment, what I was
going to do.
“I am going to Yorkshire,” I answered, “by the next train.”
“May I ask for what purpose?”
“Mr. Bruff, the assistance I innocently rendered to the inquiry after the
Diamond was an unpardoned offence, in Rachel’s mind, nearly a year since;
and it remains an unpardoned offence still. I won’t accept that position! I
am determined to find out the secret of her silence towards her mother, and
her enmity towards me. If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my
hand on the thief who took the Moonstone!”
The worthy old gentleman attempted to remonstrate—to induce me to
listen to reason—to do his duty towards me, in short. I was deaf to
everything that he could urge. No earthly consideration would, at that mo-
ment, have shaken the resolution that was in me.
“I shall take up the inquiry again,” I went on, “at the point where I
dropped it; and I shall follow it onwards, step by step, till I come to the
present time. There are missing links in the evidence, as I left it, which
Gabriel Betteredge can supply, and to Gabriel Betteredge I go!”
Towards sunset that evening I stood again on the well-remembered ter-
race, and looked once more at the peaceful old country house. The gardener
was the first person whom I saw in the deserted grounds. He had left
Betteredge, an hour since, sunning himself in the customary corner of the
back yard. I knew it well; and I said I would go and seek him myself.
I walked round by the familiar paths and passages, and looked in at the
open gate of the yard.
There he was—the dear old friend of the happy days that were never to
come again—there he was in the old corner, on the old beehive chair, with
his pipe in his mouth, and his Robinson Crusoe on his lap, and his two
friends, the dogs, dozing on either side of him! In the position in which I
stood, my shadow was projected in front of me by the last slanting rays of
the sun. Either the dogs saw it, or their keen scent informed them of my ap-
proach; they started up with a growl. Starting in his turn, the old man
quieted them by a word, and then shaded his failing eyes with his hand, and
looked inquiringly at the figure at the gate.
My own eyes were full of tears. I was obliged to wait a moment before I
could trust myself to speak to him.
 II

“Betteredge!” I said, pointing to the well-remembered book on his knee,

“has Robinson Crusoe informed you, this evening, that you might expect to
see Franklin Blake?”
“By the lord Harry, Mr. Franklin!” cried the old man, “that’s exactly what
Robinson Crusoe has done!”
He struggled to his feet with my assistance, and stood for a moment,
looking backwards and forwards between Robinson Crusoe and me, appar-
ently at a loss to discover which of us had surprised him most. The verdict
ended in favour of the book. Holding it open before him in both hands, he
surveyed the wonderful volume with a stare of unutterable anticipation—as
if he expected to see Robinson Crusoe himself walk out of the pages, and
favour us with a personal interview.
“Here’s the bit, Mr. Franklin!” he said, as soon as he had recovered the
use of his speech. “As I live by bread, sir, here’s the bit I was reading, the
moment before you came in! Page one hundred and fifty-six as follows:—‘I
stood like one Thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an Apparition.’ If that isn’t
as much as to say: ‘Expect the sudden appearance of Mr. Franklin Blake’—
there’s no meaning in the English language!” said Betteredge, closing the
book with a bang, and getting one of his hands free at last to take the hand
which I offered him.
I had expected him, naturally enough under the circumstances, to over-
whelm me with questions. But no—the hospitable impulse was the upper-
most impulse in the old servant’s mind, when a member of the family ap-
peared (no matter how!) as a visitor at the house.
“Walk in, Mr. Franklin,” he said, opening the door behind him, with his
quaint old-fashioned bow. “I’ll ask what brings you here afterwards—I
must make you comfortable first. There have been sad changes, since you
went away. The house is shut up, and the servants are gone. Never mind
that! I’ll cook your dinner; and the gardener’s wife will make your bed—
and if there’s a bottle of our famous Latour claret left in the cellar, down
your throat, Mr. Franklin, that bottle shall go. I bid you welcome, sir! I bid
you heartily welcome!” said the poor old fellow, fighting manfully against
the gloom of the deserted house, and receiving me with the sociable and
courteous attention of the bygone time.
It vexed me to disappoint him. But the house was Rachel’s house, now.
Could I eat in it, or sleep in it, after what had happened in London? The
commonest sense of self-respect forbade me—properly forbade me—to
cross the threshold.
I took Betteredge by the arm, and led him out into the garden. There was
no help for it. I was obliged to tell him the truth. Between his attachment to
Rachel, and his attachment to me, he was sorely puzzled and distressed at
the turn things had taken. His opinion, when he expressed it, was given in
his usual downright manner, and was agreeably redolent of the most posit-
ive philosophy I know—the philosophy of the Betteredge school.
“Miss Rachel has her faults—I’ve never denied it,” he began. “And rid-
ing the high horse, now and then, is one of them. She has been trying to ride
over you—and you have put up with it. Lord, Mr. Franklin, don’t you know
women by this time better than that? You have heard me talk of the late
Mrs. Betteredge?”
I had heard him talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge pretty often—invariably
producing her as his one undeniable example of the inbred frailty and per-
versity of the other sex. In that capacity he exhibited her now.
“Very well, Mr. Franklin. Now listen to me. Different women have differ-
ent ways of riding the high horse. The late Mrs. Betteredge took her exer-
cise on that favourite female animal whenever I happened to deny her any-
thing that she had set her heart on. So sure as I came home from my work
on these occasions, so sure was my wife to call to me up the kitchen stairs,
and to say that, after my brutal treatment of her, she hadn’t the heart to cook
me my dinner. I put up with it for some time—just as you are putting up
with it now from Miss Rachel. At last my patience wore out. I went down-
stairs, and I took Mrs. Betteredge—affectionately, you understand—up in
my arms, and carried her, holus-bolus, into the best parlour where she re-
ceived her company. I said ‘That’s the right place for you, my dear,’ and so
went back to the kitchen. I locked myself in, and took off my coat, and
turned up my shirtsleeves, and cooked my own dinner. When it was done, I
served it up in my best manner, and enjoyed it most heartily. I had my pipe
and my drop of grog afterwards; and then I cleared the table, and washed
the crockery, and cleaned the knives and forks, and put the things away, and
swept up the hearth. When things were as bright and clean again, as bright
and clean could be, I opened the door and let Mrs. Betteredge in. ‘I’ve had
my dinner, my dear,’ I said; ‘and I hope you will find that I have left the kit-
chen all that your fondest wishes can desire.’ For the rest of that woman’s
life, Mr. Franklin, I never had to cook my dinner again! Moral: You have
put up with Miss Rachel in London; don’t put up with her in Yorkshire.
Come back to the house!”
Quite unanswerable! I could only assure my good friend that even his
powers of persuasion were, in this case, thrown away on me.
“It’s a lovely evening,” I said. “I shall walk to Frizinghall, and stay at the
hotel, and you must come tomorrow morning and breakfast with me. I have
something to say to you.”
Betteredge shook his head gravely.
“I am heartily sorry for this,” he said. “I had hoped, Mr. Franklin, to hear
that things were all smooth and pleasant again between you and Miss
Rachel. If you must have your own way, sir,” he continued, after a mo-
ment’s reflection, “there is no need to go to Frizinghall tonight for a bed.
It’s to be had nearer than that. There’s Hotherstone’s Farm, barely two miles
from here. You can hardly object to that on Miss Rachel’s account,” the old
man added slily. “Hotherstone lives, Mr. Franklin, on his own freehold.”
I remembered the place the moment Betteredge mentioned it. The farm-
house stood in a sheltered inland valley, on the banks of the prettiest stream
in that part of Yorkshire: and the farmer had a spare bedroom and parlour,
which he was accustomed to let to artists, anglers, and tourists in general. A
more agreeable place of abode, during my stay in the neighbourhood, I
could not have wished to find.
“Are the rooms to let?” I inquired.
“Mrs. Hotherstone herself, sir, asked for my good word to recommend
the rooms, yesterday.”
“I’ll take them, Betteredge, with the greatest pleasure.”
We went back to the yard, in which I had left my travelling-bag. After
putting a stick through the handle, and swinging the bag over his shoulder,
Betteredge appeared to relapse into the bewilderment which my sudden ap-
pearance had caused, when I surprised him in the beehive chair. He looked
incredulously at the house, and then he wheeled about, and looked more in-
credulously still at me.
“I’ve lived a goodish long time in the world,” said this best and dearest of
all old servants—“but the like of this, I never did expect to see. There
stands the house, and here stands Mr. Franklin Blake—and, Damme, if one
of them isn’t turning his back on the other, and going to sleep in a lodging!”
He led the way out, wagging his head and growling ominously. “There’s
only one more miracle that can happen,” he said to me, over his shoulder.
“The next thing you’ll do, Mr. Franklin, will be to pay me back that seven-
and-sixpence you borrowed of me when you were a boy.”
This stroke of sarcasm put him in a better humour with himself and with
me. We left the house, and passed through the lodge gates. Once clear of the
grounds, the duties of hospitality (in Betteredge’s code of morals) ceased,
and the privileges of curiosity began.
He dropped back, so as to let me get on a level with him. “Fine evening
for a walk, Mr. Franklin,” he said, as if we had just accidentally en-
countered each other at that moment. “Supposing you had gone to the hotel
at Frizinghall, sir?”
“Yes?”
“I should have had the honour of breakfasting with you, tomorrow
morning.”
“Come and breakfast with me at Hotherstone’s Farm, instead.”
“Much obliged to you for your kindness, Mr. Franklin. But it wasn’t ex-
actly breakfast that I was driving at. I think you mentioned that you had
something to say to me? If it’s no secret, sir,” said Betteredge, suddenly
abandoning the crooked way, and taking the straight one, “I’m burning to
know what’s brought you down here, if you please, in this sudden way.”
“What brought me here before?” I asked.
“The Moonstone, Mr. Franklin. But what brings you now, sir?”
“The Moonstone again, Betteredge.”
The old man suddenly stood still, and looked at me in the grey twilight as
if he suspected his own ears of deceiving him.
“If that’s a joke, sir,” he said, “I’m afraid I’m getting a little dull in my
old age. I don’t take it.”
“It’s no joke,” I answered. “I have come here to take up the inquiry
which was dropped when I left England. I have come here to do what
nobody has done yet—to find out who took the Diamond.”
 “Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond
be! That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near
it. Don’t waste your money and your temper—in the fine spring time of
your life, sir—by meddling with the Moonstone. How can you hope to suc-
ceed (saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess of
it? Sergeant Cuff!” repeated Betteredge, shaking his forefinger at me
sternly. “The greatest policeman in England!”
“My mind is made up, my old friend. Even Sergeant Cuff doesn’t daunt
me. By-the-bye, I may want to speak to him, sooner or later. Have you
heard anything of him lately?”
“The Sergeant won’t help you, Mr. Franklin.”
“Why not?”
“There has been an event, sir, in the police-circles, since you went away.
The great Cuff has retired from business. He has got a little cottage at Dork-
ing; and he’s up to his eyes in the growing of roses. I have it in his own
handwriting, Mr. Franklin. He has grown the white moss rose, without bud-
ding it on the dog-rose first. And Mr. Begbie the gardener is to go to Dork-
ing, and own that the Sergeant has beaten him at last.”
“It doesn’t much matter,” I said. “I must do without Sergeant Cuff’s help.
And I must trust to you, at starting.”
It is likely enough that I spoke rather carelessly.
At any rate, Betteredge seemed to be piqued by something in the reply
which I had just made to him. “You might trust to worse than me,
Mr. Franklin—I can tell you that,” he said a little sharply.
The tone in which he retorted, and a certain disturbance, after he had
spoken, which I detected in his manner, suggested to me that he was pos-
sessed of some information which he hesitated to communicate.
“I expect you to help me,” I said, “in picking up the fragments of evid-
ence which Sergeant Cuff has left behind him. I know you can do that. Can
you do no more?”
“What more can you expect from me, sir?” asked Betteredge, with an ap-
pearance of the utmost humility.
“I expect more—from what you said just now.”
“Mere boasting, Mr. Franklin,” returned the old man obstinately. “Some
people are born boasters, and they never get over it to their dying day. I’m
one of them.”
 There was only one way to take with him. I appealed to his interest in
Rachel, and his interest in me.
“Betteredge, would you be glad to hear that Rachel and I were good
friends again?”
“I have served your family, sir, to mighty little purpose, if you doubt it!”
“Do you remember how Rachel treated me, before I left England?”
“As well as if it was yesterday! My lady herself wrote you a letter about
it; and you were so good as to show the letter to me. It said that Miss
Rachel was mortally offended with you, for the part you had taken in trying
to recover her jewel. And neither my lady, nor you, nor anybody else could
guess why.”
“Quite true, Betteredge! And I come back from my travels, and find her
mortally offended with me still. I knew that the Diamond was at the bottom
of it, last year, and I know that the Diamond is at the bottom of it now. I
have tried to speak to her, and she won’t see me. I have tried to write to her,
and she won’t answer me. How, in Heaven’s name, am I to clear the matter
up? The chance of searching into the loss of the Moonstone, is the one
chance of inquiry that Rachel herself has left me.”
Those words evidently put the case before him, as he had not seen it yet.
He asked a question which satisfied me that I had shaken him.
“There is no ill-feeling in this, Mr. Franklin, on your side—is there?”
“There was some anger,” I answered, “when I left London. But that is all
worn out now. I want to make Rachel come to an understanding with me—
and I want nothing more.”
“You don’t feel any fear, sir—supposing you make any discoveries—in
regard to what you may find out about Miss Rachel?”
I understood the jealous belief in his young mistress which prompted
those words.
“I am as certain of her as you are,” I answered. “The fullest disclosure of
her secret will reveal nothing that can alter her place in your estimation, or
in mine.”
Betteredge’s last-left scruples vanished at that.
“If I am doing wrong to help you, Mr. Franklin,” he exclaimed, “all I can
say is—I am as innocent of seeing it as the babe unborn! I can put you on
the road to discovery, if you can only go on by yourself. You remember that
poor girl of ours—Rosanna Spearman?”
“Of course!”
 “You always thought she had some sort of confession in regard to this
matter of the Moonstone, which she wanted to make to you?”
“I certainly couldn’t account for her strange conduct in any other way.”
“You may set that doubt at rest, Mr. Franklin, whenever you please.”
It was my turn to come to a standstill now. I tried vainly, in the gathering
darkness, to see his face. In the surprise of the moment, I asked a little im-
patiently what he meant.
“Steady, sir!” proceeded Betteredge. “I mean what I say. Rosanna Spear-
man left a sealed letter behind her—a letter addressed to you.”
“Where is it?”
“In the possession of a friend of hers, at Cobb’s Hole. You must have
heard tell, when you were here last, sir, of Limping Lucy—a lame girl with
a crutch.”
“The fisherman’s daughter?”
“The same, Mr. Franklin.”
“Why wasn’t the letter forwarded to me?”
“Limping Lucy has a will of her own, sir. She wouldn’t give it into any
hands but yours. And you had left England before I could write to you.”
“Let’s go back, Betteredge, and get it at once!”
“Too late, sir, tonight. They’re great savers of candles along our coast;
and they go to bed early at Cobb’s Hole.”
“Nonsense! We might get there in half an hour.”
“You might, sir. And when you did get there, you would find the door
locked. He pointed to a light, glimmering below us; and, at the same mo-
ment, I heard through the stillness of the evening the bubbling of a stream.
‘There’s the farm, Mr. Franklin! Make yourself comfortable for tonight, and
come to me tomorrow morning if you’ll be so kind?’”
“You will go with me to the fisherman’s cottage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Early?”
“As early, Mr. Franklin, as you like.”
We descended the path that led to the Farm.
 III

I have only the most indistinct recollection of what happened at Hother-

stone’s Farm.
I remember a hearty welcome; a prodigious supper, which would have
fed a whole village in the East; a delightfully clean bedroom, with nothing
in it to regret but that detestable product of the folly of our forefathers—a
featherbed; a restless night, with much kindling of matches, and many light-
ings of one little candle; and an immense sensation of relief when the sun
rose, and there was a prospect of getting up.
It had been arranged overnight with Betteredge, that I was to call for him,
on our way to Cobb’s Hole, as early as I liked—which, interpreted by my
impatience to get possession of the letter, meant as early as I could. Without
waiting for breakfast at the farm, I took a crust of bread in my hand, and set
forth, in some doubt whether I should not surprise the excellent Betteredge
in his bed. To my great relief he proved to be quite as excited about the
coming event as I was. I found him ready, and waiting for me, with his stick
in his hand.
“How are you this morning, Betteredge?”
“Very poorly, sir.”
“Sorry to hear it. What do you complain of?”
“I complain of a new disease, Mr. Franklin, of my own inventing. I don’t
want to alarm you, but you’re certain to catch it before the morning is out.”
“The devil I am!”
“Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a
nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you
at Cobb’s Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught
it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.”
“Aye! aye! and the cure in this instance is to open Rosanna Spearman’s
letter, I suppose? Come along, and let’s get it.”
 Early as it was, we found the fisherman’s wife astir in her kitchen. On my
presentation by Betteredge, good Mrs. Yolland performed a social cere-
mony, strictly reserved (as I afterwards learnt) for strangers of distinction.
She put a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table, and
opened the conversation by saying, “What news from London, sir?”
Before I could find an answer to this immensely comprehensive question,
an apparition advanced towards me, out of a dark corner of the kitchen. A
wan, wild, haggard girl, with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce
keenness in her eyes, came limping up on a crutch to the table at which I
was sitting, and looked at me as if I was an object of mingled interest and
horror, which it quite fascinated her to see.
“Mr. Betteredge,” she said, without taking her eyes off me, “mention his
name again, if you please.”
“This gentleman’s name,” answered Betteredge (with a strong emphasis
on gentleman), “is Mr. Franklin Blake.”
The girl turned her back on me, and suddenly left the room. Good
Mrs. Yolland—as I believe—made some apologies for her daughter’s odd
behaviour, and Betteredge (probably) translated them into polite English. I
speak of this in complete uncertainty. My attention was absorbed in follow-
ing the sound of the girl’s crutch. Thump-thump, up the wooden stairs;
thump-thump across the room above our heads; thump-thump down the
stairs again—and there stood the apparition at the open door, with a letter in
its hand, beckoning me out!
I left more apologies in course of delivery behind me, and followed this
strange creature—limping on before me, faster and faster—down the slope
of the beach. She led me behind some boats, out of sight and hearing of the
few people in the fishing-village, and then stopped, and faced me for the
first time.
“Stand there,” she said, “I want to look at you.”
There was no mistaking the expression on her face. I inspired her with
the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust. Let me not be vain
enough to say that no woman had ever looked at me in this manner before. I
will only venture on the more modest assertion that no woman had ever let
me perceive it yet. There is a limit to the length of the inspection which a
man can endure, under certain circumstances. I attempted to direct Limping
Lucy’s attention to some less revolting object than my face.
 “I think you have got a letter to give me,” I began. “Is it the letter there,
in your hand?”
“Say that again,” was the only answer I received.
I repeated the words, like a good child learning its lesson.
“No,” said the girl, speaking to herself, but keeping her eyes still merci-
lessly fixed on me. “I can’t find out what she saw in his face. I can’t guess
what she heard in his voice.” She suddenly looked away from me, and res-
ted her head wearily on the top of her crutch. “Oh, my poor dear!” she said,
in the first soft tones which had fallen from her, in my hearing. “Oh, my lost
darling! what could you see in this man?” She lifted her head again fiercely,
and looked at me once more. “Can you eat and drink?” she asked.
I did my best to preserve my gravity, and answered, “Yes.”
“Can you sleep?”
“Yes.”
“When you see a poor girl in service, do you feel no remorse?”
“Certainly not. Why should I?”
She abruptly thrust the letter (as the phrase is) into my face.
“Take it!” she exclaimed furiously. “I never set eyes on you before. God
Almighty forbid I should ever set eyes on you again.”
With those parting words she limped away from me at the top of her
speed. The one interpretation that I could put on her conduct has, no doubt,
been anticipated by everybody. I could only suppose that she was mad.
Having reached that inevitable conclusion, I turned to the more interest-
ing object of investigation which was presented to me by Rosanna Spear-
man’s letter. The address was written as follows:—“For Franklin Blake,
Esq. To be given into his own hands (and not to be trusted to any one else),
by Lucy Yolland.”
I broke the seal. The envelope contained a letter: and this, in its turn, con-
tained a slip of paper. I read the letter first:—

“Sir—If you are curious to know the meaning of my behaviour

to you, whilst you were staying in the house of my mistress,
Lady Verinder, do what you are told to do in the memorandum
enclosed with this—and do it without any person being present
to overlook you. Your humble servant,
“Rosanna Spearman.”
 I turned to the slip of paper next. Here is the literal copy of it, word for
word:

“Memorandum:—To go to the Shivering Sand at the turn of the

tide. To walk out on the South Spit, until I get the South Spit
Beacon, and the flagstaff at the Coastguard station above
Cobb’s Hole in a line together. To lay down on the rocks, a
stick, or any straight thing to guide my hand, exactly in the line
of the beacon and the flagstaff. To take care, in doing this, that
one end of the stick shall be at the edge of the rocks, on the
side of them which overlooks the quicksand. To feel along the
stick, among the seaweed (beginning from the end of the stick
which points towards the beacon), for the chain. To run my
hand along the chain, when found, until I come to the part of it
which stretches over the edge of the rocks, down into the
quicksand. And then to pull the chain.”

Just as I had read the last words—underlined in the original—I heard the
voice of Betteredge behind me. The inventor of the detective-fever had
completely succumbed to that irresistible malady. “I can’t stand it any
longer, Mr. Franklin. What does her letter say? For mercy’s sake, sir, tell us,
what does her letter say?”
I handed him the letter, and the memorandum. He read the first without
appearing to be much interested in it. But the second—the memorandum—
produced a strong impression on him.
“The Sergeant said it!” cried Betteredge. “From first to last, sir, the Ser-
geant said she had got a memorandum of the hiding-place. And here it is!
Lord save us, Mr. Franklin, here is the secret that puzzled everybody, from
the great Cuff downwards, ready and waiting, as one may say, to show itself
to you! It’s the ebb now, sir, as anybody may see for themselves. How long
will it be till the turn of the tide?” He looked up, and observed a lad at
work, at some little distance from us, mending a net. “Tammie Bright!” he
shouted at the top of his voice.
“I hear you!” Tammie shouted back.
“When’s the turn of the tide?”
“In an hour’s time.”
We both looked at our watches.
 “We can go round by the coast, Mr. Franklin,” said Betteredge; “and get
to the quicksand in that way with plenty of time to spare. What do you say,
sir?”
“Come along!”
On our way to the Shivering Sand, I applied to Betteredge to revive my
memory of events (as affecting Rosanna Spearman) at the period of Ser-
geant Cuff’s inquiry. With my old friend’s help, I soon had the succession
of circumstances clearly registered in my mind. Rosanna’s journey to Friz-
inghall, when the whole household believed her to be ill in her own room—
Rosanna’s mysterious employment of the nighttime with her door locked,
and her candle burning till the morning—Rosanna’s suspicious purchase of
the japanned tin case, and the two dog’s chains from Mrs. Yolland—the
Sergeant’s positive conviction that Rosanna had hidden something at the
Shivering Sand, and the Sergeant’s absolute ignorance as to what that some-
thing might be—all these strange results of the abortive inquiry into the loss
of the Moonstone were clearly present to me again, when we reached the
quicksand, and walked out together on the low ledge of rocks called the
South Spit.
With Betteredge’s help, I soon stood in the right position to see the
Beacon and the Coastguard flagstaff in a line together. Following the
memorandum as our guide, we next laid my stick in the necessary direction,
as neatly as we could, on the uneven surface of the rocks. And then we
looked at our watches once more.
It wanted nearly twenty minutes yet of the turn of the tide. I suggested
waiting through this interval on the beach, instead of on the wet and slip-
pery surface of the rocks. Having reached the dry sand, I prepared to sit
down; and, greatly to my surprise, Betteredge prepared to leave me.
“What are you going away for?” I asked.
“Look at the letter again, sir, and you will see.”
A glance at the letter reminded me that I was charged, when I made my
discovery, to make it alone.
“It’s hard enough for me to leave you, at such a time as this,” said
Betteredge. “But she died a dreadful death, poor soul—and I feel a kind of
call on me, Mr. Franklin, to humour that fancy of hers. Besides,” he added,
confidentially, “there’s nothing in the letter against your letting out the
secret afterwards. I’ll hang about in the fir plantation, and wait till you pick
me up. Don’t be longer than you can help, sir. The detective-fever isn’t an
easy disease to deal with, under these circumstances.”
With that parting caution, he left me.
The interval of expectation, short as it was when reckoned by the meas-
ure of time, assumed formidable proportions when reckoned by the measure
of suspense. This was one of the occasions on which the invaluable habit of
smoking becomes especially precious and consolatory. I lit a cigar, and sat
down on the slope of the beach.
The sunlight poured its unclouded beauty on every object that I could
see. The exquisite freshness of the air made the mere act of living and
breathing a luxury. Even the lonely little bay welcomed the morning with a
show of cheerfulness; and the bared wet surface of the quicksand itself, glit-
tering with a golden brightness, hid the horror of its false brown face under
a passing smile. It was the finest day I had seen since my return to England.
The turn of the tide came, before my cigar was finished. I saw the prelim-
inary heaving of the Sand, and then the awful shiver that crept over its sur-
face—as if some spirit of terror lived and moved and shuddered in the
fathomless deeps beneath. I threw away my cigar, and went back again to
the rocks.
My directions in the memorandum instructed me to feel along the line
traced by the stick, beginning with the end which was nearest to the beacon.
I advanced, in this manner, more than half way along the stick, without
encountering anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or two further on,
however, my patience was rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just within
reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain. Attempting, next, to follow it, by
touch, in the direction of the quicksand, I found my progress stopped by a
thick growth of seaweed—which had fastened itself into the fissure, no
doubt, in the time that had elapsed since Rosanna Spearman had chosen her
hiding-place.
It was equally impossible to pull up the seaweed, or to force my hand
through it. After marking the spot indicated by the end of the stick which
was placed nearest to the quicksand, I determined to pursue the search for
the chain on a plan of my own. My idea was to “sound” immediately under
the rocks, on the chance of recovering the lost trace of the chain at the point
at which it entered the sand. I took up the stick, and knelt down on the brink
of the South Spit.
 In this position, my face was within a few feet of the surface of the
quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by its
hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves for the moment. A horrible fancy
that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide, to assist my
search—an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the heaving surface
of the sand, and point to the place—forced itself into my mind, and turned
me cold in the warm sunlight. I own I closed my eyes at the moment when
the point of the stick first entered the quicksand.
The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more
than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious terror,
and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding blindfold,
at my first attempt—at that first attempt I had sounded right! The stick
struck the chain.
Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand, I laid
myself down over the brink, and felt with my right hand under the over-
hanging edges of the rock. My right hand found the chain.
I drew it up without the slightest difficulty. And there was the japanned
tin case fastened to the end of it.
The action of the water had so rusted the chain, that it was impossible for
me to unfasten it from the hasp which attached it to the case. Putting the
case between my knees and exerting my utmost strength, I contrived to
draw off the cover. Some white substance filled the whole interior when I
looked in. I put in my hand, and found it to be linen.
In drawing out the linen, I also drew out a letter crumpled up with it.
After looking at the direction, and discovering that it bore my name, I put
the letter in my pocket, and completely removed the linen. It came out in a
thick roll, moulded, of course, to the shape of the case in which it had been
so long confined, and perfectly preserved from any injury by the sea.
I carried the linen to the dry sand of the beach, and there unrolled and
smoothed it out. There was no mistaking it as an article of dress. It was a
nightgown.
The uppermost side, when I spread it out, presented to view innumerable
folds and creases, and nothing more. I tried the undermost side, next—and
instantly discovered the smear of the paint from the door of Rachel’s
boudoir!
My eyes remained riveted on the stain, and my mind took me back at a
leap from present to past. The very words of Sergeant Cuff recurred to me,
as if the man himself was at my side again, pointing to the unanswerable
inference which he drew from the smear on the door.
“Find out whether there is any article of dress in this house with the stain
of paint on it. Find out who that dress belongs to. Find out how the person
can account for having been in the 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 took the Diamond.”
One after another those words travelled over my memory, repeating
themselves again and again with a wearisome, mechanical reiteration. I was
roused from what felt like a trance of many hours—from what was really,
no doubt, the pause of a few moments only—by a voice calling to me. I
looked up, and saw that Betteredge’s patience had failed him at last. He was
just visible between the sandhills, returning to the beach.
The old man’s appearance recalled me, the moment I perceived it, to my
sense of present things, and reminded me that the inquiry which I had pur-
sued thus far still remained incomplete. I had discovered the smear on the
nightgown. To whom did the nightgown belong?
My first impulse was to consult the letter in my pocket—the letter which
I had found in the case.
As I raised my hand to take it out, I remembered that there was a shorter
way to discovery than this. The nightgown itself would reveal the truth, for,
in all probability, the nightgown was marked with its owner’s name.
I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.
I found the mark, and read—
MY OWN NAME.
There were the familiar letters which told me that the nightgown was
mine. I looked up from them. There was the sun; there were the glittering
waters of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advancing nearer and nearer to
me. I looked back again at the letters. My own name. Plainly confronting
me—my own name.
“If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief who
took the Moonstone.”—I had left London, with those words on my lips. I
had penetrated the secret which the quicksand had kept from every other
living creature. And, on the unanswerable evidence of the paint-stain, I had
discovered myself as the thief.
 IV

I have not a word to say about my own sensations.

My impression is that the shock inflicted on me completely suspended
my thinking and feeling power. I certainly could not have known what I
was about when Betteredge joined me—for I have it on his authority that I
laughed, when he asked what was the matter, and putting the nightgown
into his hands, told him to read the riddle for himself.
Of what was said between us on the beach, I have not the faintest recol-
lection. The first place in which I can now see myself again plainly is the
plantation of firs. Betteredge and I are walking back together to the house;
and Betteredge is telling me that I shall be able to face it, and he will be
able to face it, when we have had a glass of grog.
The scene shifts from the plantation, to Betteredge’s little sitting-room.
My resolution not to enter Rachel’s house is forgotten. I feel gratefully the
coolness and shadiness and quiet of the room. I drink the grog (a perfectly
new luxury to me, at that time of day), which my good old friend mixes
with icy-cold water from the well. Under any other circumstances, the drink
would simply stupefy me. As things are, it strings up my nerves. I begin to
“face it,” as Betteredge has predicted. And Betteredge, on his side, begins
to “face it,” too.
The picture which I am now presenting of myself, will, I suspect, be
thought a very strange one, to say the least of it. Placed in a situation which
may, I think, be described as entirely without parallel, what is the first pro-
ceeding to which I resort? Do I seclude myself from all human society? Do
I set my mind to analyse the abominable impossibility which, nevertheless,
confronts me as an undeniable fact? Do I hurry back to London by the first
train to consult the highest authorities, and to set a searching inquiry on foot
immediately? No. I accept the shelter of a house which I had resolved never
to degrade myself by entering again; and I sit, tippling spirits and water in
the company of an old servant, at ten o’clock in the morning. Is this the
conduct that might have been expected from a man placed in my horrible
position? I can only answer that the sight of old Betteredge’s familiar face
was an inexpressible comfort to me, and that the drinking of old
Betteredge’s grog helped me, as I believe nothing else would have helped
me, in the state of complete bodily and mental prostration into which I had
fallen. I can only offer this excuse for myself; and I can only admire that
invariable preservation of dignity, and that strictly logical consistency of
conduct which distinguish every man and woman who may read these lines,
in every emergency of their lives from the cradle to the grave.
“Now, Mr. Franklin, there’s one thing certain, at any rate,” said
Betteredge, throwing the nightgown down on the table between us, and
pointing to it as if it was a living creature that could hear him. “He’s a liar,
to begin with.”
This comforting view of the matter was not the view that presented itself
to my mind.
“I am as innocent of all knowledge of having taken the Diamond as you
are,” I said. “But there is the witness against me! The paint on the night-
gown, and the name on the nightgown are facts.”
Betteredge lifted my glass, and put it persuasively into my hand.
“Facts?” he repeated. “Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you’ll
get over the weakness of believing in facts! Foul play, sir!” he continued,
dropping his voice confidentially. “That is how I read the riddle. Foul play
somewhere—and you and I must find it out. Was there nothing else in the
tin case, when you put your hand into it?”
The question instantly reminded me of the letter in my pocket. I took it
out, and opened it. It was a letter of many pages, closely written. I looked
impatiently for the signature at the end. “Rosanna Spearman.”
As I read the name, a sudden remembrance illuminated my mind, and a
sudden suspicion rose out of the new light.
“Stop!” I exclaimed. “Rosanna Spearman came to my aunt out of a re-
formatory? Rosanna Spearman had once been a thief?”
“There’s no denying that, Mr. Franklin. What of it now, if you please?”
“What of it now? How do we know she may not have stolen the Dia-
mond after all? How do we know she may not have smeared my nightgown
purposely with the paint?”
Betteredge laid his hand on my arm, and stopped me before I could say
any more.
 “You will be cleared of this, Mr. Franklin, beyond all doubt. But I hope
you won’t be cleared in that way. See what the letter says, sir. In justice to
the girl’s memory, see what it says.”
I felt the earnestness with which he spoke—felt it as a friendly rebuke to
me. “You shall form your own judgment on her letter,” I said. “I will read it
out.”
I began—and read these lines:

“Sir—I have something to own to you. A confession which

means much misery, may sometimes be made in very few
words. This confession can be made in three words. I love
you.”

The letter dropped from my hand. I looked at Betteredge. “In the name of
Heaven,” I said, “what does it mean?”
He seemed to shrink from answering the question.
“You and Limping Lucy were alone together this morning, sir,” he said.
“Did she say nothing about Rosanna Spearman?”
“She never even mentioned Rosanna Spearman’s name.”
“Please to go back to the letter, Mr. Franklin. I tell you plainly, I can’t
find it in my heart to distress you, after what you have had to bear already.
Let her speak for herself, sir. And get on with your grog. For your own
sake, get on with your grog.”
I resumed the reading of the letter.

“It would be very disgraceful to me to tell you this, if I was a

living woman when you read it. I shall be dead and gone, sir,
when you find my letter. It is that which makes me bold. Not
even my grave will be left to tell of me. I may own the truth—
with the quicksand waiting to hide me when the words are
written.
“Besides, you will find your nightgown in my hiding-place,
with the smear of the paint on it; and you will want to know
how it came to be hidden by me? and why I said nothing to you
about it in my lifetime? I have only one reason to give. I did
these strange things, because I loved you.
 “I won’t trouble you with much about myself, or my life, be-
fore you came to my lady’s house. Lady Verinder took me out
of a reformatory. I had gone to the reformatory from the prison.
I was put in the prison, because I was a thief. I was a thief, be-
cause my mother went on the streets when I was quite a little
girl. My mother went on the streets, because the gentleman
who was my father deserted her. There is no need to tell such a
common story as this, at any length. It is told quite often
enough in the newspapers.
“Lady Verinder was very kind to me, and Mr. Betteredge
was very kind to me. Those two, and the matron at the reform-
atory, are the only good people I have ever met with in all my
life. I might have got on in my place—not happily—but I
might have got on, if you had not come visiting. I don’t blame
you, sir. It’s my fault—all my fault.
“Do you remember when you came out on us from among
the sand hills, that morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge? You
were like a prince in a fairy-story. You were like a lover in a
dream. You were the most adorable human creature I had ever
seen. Something that felt like the happy life I had never led yet,
leapt up in me at the instant I set eyes on you. Don’t laugh at
this if you can help it. Oh, if I could only make you feel how
serious it is to me!
“I went back to the house, and wrote your name and mine in
my work-box, and drew a true lovers’ knot under them. Then,
some devil—no, I ought to say some good angel—whispered to
me, ‘Go and look in the glass.’ The glass told me—never mind
what. I was too foolish to take the warning. I went on getting
fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in your own
rank of life, and the most beautiful creature your eyes ever res-
ted on. I tried—oh, dear, how I tried—to get you to look at me.
If you had known how I used to cry at night with the misery
and the mortification of your never taking any notice of me,
you would have pitied me perhaps, and have given me a look
now and then to live on.
“It would have been no very kind look, perhaps, if you had
known how I hated Miss Rachel. I believe I found out you were
in love with her, before you knew it yourself. She used to give
you roses to wear in your buttonhole. Ah, Mr. Franklin, you
wore my roses oftener than either you or she thought! The only
comfort I had at that time, was putting my rose secretly in your
glass of water, in place of hers—and then throwing her rose
away.
“If she had been really as pretty as you thought her, I might
have borne it better. No; I believe I should have been more
spiteful against her still. Suppose you put Miss Rachel into a
servant’s dress, and took her ornaments off? I don’t know what
is the use of my writing in this way. It can’t be denied that she
had a bad figure; she was too thin. But who can tell what the
men like? And young ladies may behave in a manner which
would cost a servant her place. It’s no business of mine. I can’t
expect you to read my letter, if I write it in this way. But it does
stir one up to hear Miss Rachel called pretty, when one knows
all the time that it’s her dress does it, and her confidence in
herself.
“Try not to lose patience with me, sir. I will get on as fast as
I can to the time which is sure to interest you—the time when
the Diamond was lost.
“But there is one thing which I have got it on my mind to tell
you first.
“My life was not a very hard life to bear, while I was a thief.
It was only when they had taught me at the reformatory to feel
my own degradation, and to try for better things, that the days
grew long and weary. Thoughts of the future forced themselves
on me now. I felt the dreadful reproach that honest people—
even the kindest of honest people—were to me in themselves.
A heartbreaking sensation of loneliness kept with me, go where
I might, and do what I might, and see what persons I might. It
was my duty, I know, to try and get on with my fellow-servants
in my new place. Somehow, I couldn’t make friends with them.
They looked (or I thought they looked) as if they suspected
what I had been. I don’t regret, far from it, having been roused
to make the effort to be a reformed woman—but, indeed, in-
deed it was a weary life. You had come across it like a beam of
sunshine at first—and then you too failed me. I was mad
enough to love you; and I couldn’t even attract your notice.
There was great misery—there really was great misery in that.
“Now I am coming to what I wanted to tell you. In those
days of bitterness, I went two or three times, when it was my
turn to go out, to my favourite place—the beach above the
Shivering Sand. And I said to myself, ‘I think it will end here.
When I can bear it no longer, I think it will end here.’ You will
understand, sir, that the place had laid a kind of spell on me be-
fore you came. I had always had a notion that something would
happen to me at the quicksand. But I had never looked at it,
with the thought of its being the means of my making away
with myself, till the time came of which I am now writing.
Then I did think that here was a place which would end all my
troubles for me in a moment or two—and hide me for ever
afterwards.
“This is all I have to say about myself, reckoning from the
morning when I first saw you, to the morning when the alarm
was raised in the house that the Diamond was lost.
“I was so aggravated by the foolish talk among the women
servants, all wondering who was to be suspected first; and I
was so angry with you (knowing no better at that time) for the
pains you took in hunting for the jewel, and sending for the po-
lice, that I kept as much as possible away by myself, until later
in the day, when the officer from Frizinghall came to the house.
“Mr. Seegrave began, as you may remember, by setting a
guard on the women’s bedrooms; and the women all followed
him upstairs in a rage, to know what he meant by the insult he
had put on them. I went with the rest, because if I had done
anything different from the rest, Mr. Seegrave was the sort of
man who would have suspected me directly. We found him in
Miss Rachel’s room. He told us he wouldn’t have a lot of wo-
men there; and he pointed to the smear on the painted door, and
said some of our petticoats had done the mischief, and sent us
all downstairs again.
“After leaving Miss Rachel’s room, I stopped a moment on
one of the landings, by myself, to see if I had got the paint-stain
by any chance on my gown. Penelope Betteredge (the only one
of the women with whom I was on friendly terms) passed, and
noticed what I was about.
“ ‘You needn’t trouble yourself, Rosanna,’ she said. ‘The
paint on Miss Rachel’s door has been dry for hours. If Mr. See-
grave hadn’t set a watch on our bedrooms, I might have told
him as much. I don’t know what you think—I was never so in-
sulted before in my life!’
“Penelope was a hot-tempered girl. I quieted her, and
brought her back to what she had said about the paint on the
door having been dry for hours.
“ ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
“ ‘I was with Miss Rachel, and Mr. Franklin, all yesterday
morning,’ Penelope said, ‘mixing the colours, while they fin-
ished the door. I heard Miss Rachel ask whether the door would
be dry that evening, in time for the birthday company to see it.
And Mr. Franklin shook his head, and said it wouldn’t be dry in
less than twelve hours. It was long past luncheon-time—it was
three o’clock before they had done. What does your arithmetic
say, Rosanna? Mine says the door was dry by three this
morning.’
“ ‘Did some of the ladies go upstairs yesterday evening to see
it?’ I asked. ‘I thought I heard Miss Rachel warning them to
keep clear of the door.’
“ ‘None of the ladies made the smear,’ Penelope answered. ‘I
left Miss Rachel in bed at twelve last night. And I noticed the
door, and there was nothing wrong with it then.’
“ ‘Oughtn’t you to mention this to Mr. Seegrave, Penelope?’
“ ‘I wouldn’t say a word to help Mr. Seegrave for anything
that could be offered to me!’
“She went to her work, and I went to mine.
“My work, sir, was to make your bed, and to put your room
tidy. It was the happiest hour I had in the whole day. I used to
kiss the pillow on which your head had rested all night. No
matter who has done it since, you have never had your clothes
folded as nicely as I folded them for you. Of all the little knick-
knacks in your dressing-case, there wasn’t one that had so
 much as a speck on it. You never noticed it, any more than you
noticed me. I beg your pardon; I am forgetting myself. I will
make haste, and go on again.
“Well, I went in that morning to do my work in your room.
There was your nightgown tossed across the bed, just as you
had thrown it off. I took it up to fold it—and I saw the stain of
the paint from Miss Rachel’s door!
“I was so startled by the discovery that I ran out with the
nightgown in my hand, and made for the back stairs, and
locked myself into my own room, to look at it in a place where
nobody could intrude and interrupt me.
“As soon as I got my breath again, I called to mind my talk
with Penelope, and I said to myself, ‘Here’s the proof that he
was in Miss Rachel’s sitting-room between twelve last night,
and three this morning!’
“I shall not tell you in plain words what was the first suspi-
cion that crossed my mind, when I had made that discovery.
You would only be angry—and, if you were angry, you might
tear my letter up and read no more of it.
“Let it be enough, if you please, to say only this. After think-
ing it over to the best of my ability, I made it out that the thing
wasn’t likely, for a reason that I will tell you. If you had been in
Miss Rachel’s sitting-room, at that time of night, with Miss
Rachel’s knowledge (and if you had been foolish enough to
forget to take care of the wet door) she would have reminded
you—she would never have let you carry away such a witness
against her, as the witness I was looking at now! At the same
time, I own I was not completely certain in my own mind that I
had proved my own suspicion to be wrong. You will not have
forgotten that I have owned to hating Miss Rachel. Try to think,
if you can, that there was a little of that hatred in all this. It
ended in my determining to keep the nightgown, and to wait,
and watch, and see what use I might make of it. At that time,
please to remember, not the ghost of an idea entered my head
that you had stolen the Diamond.”

There, I broke off in the reading of the letter for the second time.
 I had read those portions of the miserable woman’s confession which re-
lated to myself, with unaffected surprise, and, I can honestly add, with sin-
cere distress. I had regretted, truly regretted, the aspersion which I had
thoughtlessly cast on her memory, before I had seen a line of her letter. But
when I had advanced as far as the passage which is quoted above, I own I
felt my mind growing bitterer and bitterer against Rosanna Spearman as I
went on. “Read the rest for yourself,” I said, handing the letter to
Betteredge across the table. “If there is anything in it that I must look at,
you can tell me as you go on.”
“I understand you, Mr. Franklin,” he answered. “It’s natural, sir, in you.
And, God help us all!” he added, in a lower tone, “it’s no less natural in
her.”
I proceed to copy the continuation of the letter from the original, in my
own possession:—

“Having determined to keep the nightgown, and to see what

use my love, or my revenge (I hardly know which) could turn it
to in the future, the next thing to discover was how to keep it
without the risk of being found out.
“There was only one way—to make another nightgown ex-
actly like it, before Saturday came, and brought the laundrywo-
man and her inventory to the house.
“I was afraid to put it off till next day (the Friday); being in
doubt lest some accident might happen in the interval. I de-
termined to make the new nightgown on that same day (the
Thursday), while I could count, if I played my cards properly,
on having my time to myself. The first thing to do (after lock-
ing up your nightgown in my drawer) was to go back to your
bedroom—not so much to put it to rights (Penelope would have
done that for me, if I had asked her) as to find out whether you
had smeared off any of the paint-stain from your nightgown, on
the bed, or on any piece of furniture in the room.
“I examined everything narrowly, and at last, I found a few
streaks of the paint on the inside of your dressing-gown—not
the linen dressing-gown you usually wore in that summer sea-
son, but a flannel dressing-gown which you had with you also.
I suppose you felt chilly after walking to and fro in nothing but
your nightdress, and put on the warmest thing you could find.
At any rate, there were the stains, just visible, on the inside of
the dressing-gown. I easily got rid of these by scraping away
the stuff of the flannel. This done, the only proof left against
you was the proof locked up in my drawer.
“I had just finished your room when I was sent for to be
questioned by Mr. Seegrave, along with the rest of the servants.
Next came the examination of all our boxes. And then followed
the most extraordinary event of the day—to me—since I had
found the paint on your nightgown. This event came out of the
second questioning of Penelope Betteredge by Superintendent
Seegrave.
“Penelope returned to us quite beside herself with rage at the
manner in which Mr. Seegrave had treated her. He had hinted,
beyond the possibility of mistaking him, that he suspected her
of being the thief. We were all equally astonished at hearing
this, and we all asked, Why?
“ ‘Because the Diamond was in Miss Rachel’s sitting-room,”
Penelope answered. ‘And because I was the last person in the
sitting-room at night!’
“Almost before the words had left her lips, I remembered
that another person had been in the sitting-room later than
Penelope. That person was yourself. My head whirled round,
and my thoughts were in dreadful confusion. In the midst of it
all, something in my mind whispered to me that the smear on
your nightgown might have a meaning entirely different to the
meaning which I had given to it up to that time. ‘If the last per-
son who was in the room is the person to be suspected,’ I
thought to myself, ‘the thief is not Penelope, but Mr. Franklin
Blake!’
“In the case of any other gentleman, I believe I should have
been ashamed of suspecting him of theft, almost as soon as the
suspicion had passed through my mind.
“But the bare thought that you had let yourself down to my
level, and that I, in possessing myself of your nightgown, had
also possessed myself of the means of shielding you from be-
ing discovered, and disgraced for life—I say, sir, the bare
thought of this seemed to open such a chance before me of
winning your good will, that I passed blindfold, as one may
say, from suspecting to believing. I made up my mind, on the
spot, that you had shown yourself the busiest of anybody in
fetching the police, as a blind to deceive us all; and that the
hand which had taken Miss Rachel’s jewel could by no possib-
ility be any other hand than yours.
“The excitement of this new discovery of mine must, I think,
have turned my head for a while. I felt such a devouring eager-
ness to see you—to try you with a word or two about the Dia-
mond, and to make you look at me, and speak to me, in that
way—that I put my hair tidy, and made myself as nice as I
could, and went to you boldly in the library where I knew you
were writing.
“You had left one of your rings upstairs, which made as good
an excuse for my intrusion as I could have desired. But, oh, sir!
if you have ever loved, you will understand how it was that all
my courage cooled, when I walked into the room, and found
myself in your presence. And then, you looked up at me so
coldly, and you thanked me for finding your ring in such an in-
different manner, that my knees trembled under me, and I felt
as if I should drop on the floor at your feet. When you had
thanked me, you looked back, if you remember, at your writ-
ing. I was so mortified at being treated in this way, that I
plucked up spirit enough to speak. I said, ‘This is a strange
thing about the Diamond, sir.’ And you looked up again, and
said, ‘Yes, it is!’ You spoke civilly (I can’t deny that); but still
you kept a distance—a cruel distance between us. Believing, as
I did, that you had got the lost Diamond hidden about you,
while you were speaking, your coolness so provoked me that I
got bold enough, in the heat of the moment, to give you a hint.
I said, ‘They will never find the Diamond, sir, will they? No!
nor the person who took it—I’ll answer for that.’ I nodded, and
smiled at you, as much as to say, ‘I know!’ This time, you
looked up at me with something like interest in your eyes; and I
felt that a few more words on your side and mine might bring
out the truth. Just at that moment, Mr. Betteredge spoilt it all by
coming to the door. I knew his footstep, and I also knew that it
was against his rules for me to be in the library at that time of
day—let alone being there along with you. I had only just time
to get out of my own accord, before he could come in and tell
me to go. I was angry and disappointed; but I was not entirely
without hope for all that. The ice, you see, was broken between
us—and I thought I would take care, on the next occasion, that
Mr. Betteredge was out of the way.
“When I got back to the servants’ hall, the bell was going for
our dinner. Afternoon already! and the materials for making the
new nightgown were still to be got! There was but one chance
of getting them. I shammed ill at dinner; and so secured the
whole of the interval from then till teatime to my own use.
“What I was about, while the household believed me to be
lying down in my own room; and how I spent the night, after
shamming ill again at teatime, and having been sent up to bed,
there is no need to tell you. Sergeant Cuff discovered that
much, if he discovered nothing more. And I can guess how. I
was detected (though I kept my veil down) in the draper’s shop
at Frizinghall. There was a glass in front of me, at the counter
where I was buying the longcloth; and—in that glass—I saw
one of the shopmen point to my shoulder and whisper to anoth-
er. At night again, when I was secretly at work, locked into my
room, I heard the breathing of the women servants who suspec-
ted me, outside my door.
“It didn’t matter then; it doesn’t matter now. On the Friday
morning, hours before Sergeant Cuff entered the house, there
was the new nightgown—to make up your number in place of
the nightgown that I had got—made, wrung out, dried, ironed,
marked, and folded as the laundry woman folded all the others,
safe in your drawer. There was no fear (if the linen in the house
was examined) of the newness of the nightgown betraying me.
All your underclothing had been renewed, when you came to
our house—I suppose on your return home from foreign parts.
“The next thing was the arrival of Sergeant Cuff; and the
next great surprise was the announcement of what he thought
about the smear on the door.
 “I had believed you to be guilty (as I have owned), more be-
cause I wanted you to be guilty than for any other reason. And
now, the Sergeant had come round by a totally different way to
the same conclusion (respecting the nightgown) as mine! And I
had got the dress that was the only proof against you! And not
a living creature knew it—yourself included! I am afraid to tell
you how I felt when I called these things to mind—you would
hate my memory for ever afterwards.”

At that place, Betteredge looked up from the letter.

“Not a glimmer of light so far, Mr. Franklin,” said the old man, taking off
his heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, and pushing Rosanna Spearman’s confes-
sion a little away from him. “Have you come to any conclusion, sir, in your
own mind, while I have been reading?”
“Finish the letter first, Betteredge; there may be something to enlighten
us at the end of it. I shall have a word or two to say to you after that.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll just rest my eyes, and then I’ll go on again. In the
meantime, Mr. Franklin—I don’t want to hurry you—but would you mind
telling me, in one word, whether you see your way out of this dreadful mess
yet?”
“I see my way back to London,” I said, “to consult Mr. Bruff. If he can’t
help me—”
“Yes, sir?”
“And if the Sergeant won’t leave his retirement at Dorking—”
“He won’t, Mr. Franklin!”
“Then, Betteredge—as far as I can see now—I am at the end of my re-
sources. After Mr. Bruff and the Sergeant, I don’t know of a living creature
who can be of the slightest use to me.”
As the words passed my lips, some person outside knocked at the door of
the room.
Betteredge looked surprised as well as annoyed by the interruption.
“Come in,” he called out, irritably, “whoever you are!”
The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most remarkable-
looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his move-
ments, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with
Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy
darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the
bone projected like a penthouse. His nose presented the fine shape and mod-
elling so often found among the ancient people of the East, so seldom vis-
ible among the newer races of the West. His forehead rose high and straight
from the brow. His marks and wrinkles were innumerable. From this
strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—eyes dreamy and
mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my
case, at least) took your attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity
of thick closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost its
colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the top of
his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round
the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of grey to break the
force of the extraordinary contrast—it had turned completely white. The
line between the two colours preserved no sort of regularity. At one place,
the white hair ran up into the black; at another, the black hair ran down into
the white. I looked at the man with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say, I
found it quite impossible to control. His soft brown eyes looked back at me
gently; and he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at him, with an apo-
logy which I was conscious that I had not deserved.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea that Mr. Betteredge was en-
gaged.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to
Betteredge. “The list for next week,” he said. His eyes just rested on me
again—and he left the room as quietly as he had entered it.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Mr. Candy’s assistant,” said Betteredge. “By-the-bye, Mr. Franklin, you
will be sorry to hear that the little doctor has never recovered that illness he
caught, going home from the birthday dinner. He’s pretty well in health; but
he lost his memory in the fever, and he has never recovered more than the
wreck of it since. The work all falls on his assistant. Not much of it now,
except among the poor. They can’t help themselves, you know. They must
put up with the man with the piebald hair, and the gipsy complexion—or
they would get no doctoring at all.”
“You don’t seem to like him, Betteredge?”
“Nobody likes him, sir.”
“Why is he so unpopular?”
“Well, Mr. Franklin, his appearance is against him, to begin with. And
then there’s a story that Mr. Candy took him with a very doubtful character.
Nobody knows who he is—and he hasn’t a friend in the place. How can you
expect one to like him, after that?”
“Quite impossible, of course! May I ask what he wanted with you, when
he gave you that bit of paper?”
“Only to bring me the weekly list of the sick people about here, sir, who
stand in need of a little wine. My lady always had a regular distribution of
good sound port and sherry among the infirm poor; and Miss Rachel wishes
the custom to be kept up. Times have changed! times have changed! I re-
member when Mr. Candy himself brought the list to my mistress. Now it’s
Mr. Candy’s assistant who brings the list to me. I’ll go on with the letter, if
you will allow me, sir,” said Betteredge, drawing Rosanna Spearman’s con-
fession back to him. “It isn’t lively reading, I grant you. But, there! it keeps
me from getting sour with thinking of the past.” He put on his spectacles,
and wagged his head gloomily. “There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr. Frank-
lin, in our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of
life. We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world.
And we are all of us right.”
Mr. Candy’s assistant had produced too strong an impression on me to be
immediately dismissed from my thoughts. I passed over the last unanswer-
able utterance of the Betteredge philosophy; and returned to the subject of
the man with the piebald hair.
“What is his name?” I asked.
“As ugly a name as need be,” Betteredge answered gruffly. “Ezra
Jennings.”
 V

Having told me the name of Mr. Candy’s assistant, Betteredge appeared to

think that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant subject. He
resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman’s letter.
On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done. Little by
little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings—it seemed per-
fectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine, that any human being
should have produced an impression on me at all!—faded from my mind.
My thoughts flowed back into their former channel. Once more, I forced
myself to look my own incredible position resolutely in the face. Once
more, I reviewed in my own mind the course which I had at last summoned
composure enough to plan out for the future.
To go back to London that day; to put the whole case before Mr. Bruff;
and, last and most important, to obtain (no matter by what means or at what
sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel—this was my plan of action, so
far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There was more than an hour
still to spare before the train started. And there was the bare chance that
Betteredge might discover something in the unread portion of Rosanna
Spearman’s letter, which it might be useful for me to know before I left the
house in which the Diamond had been lost. For that chance I was now
waiting.
The letter ended in these terms:

“You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel

some little triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects in
life in my own hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to
me. With the view Sergeant Cuff took of the loss of the Dia-
mond, he would be sure to end in examining our linen and our
dresses. There was no place in my room—there was no place in
the house—which I could feel satisfied would be safe from
him. How to hide the nightgown so that not even the Sergeant
could find it? and how to do that without losing one moment of
precious time?—these were not easy questions to answer. My
uncertainties ended in my taking a way that may make you
laugh. I undressed, and put the nightgown on me. You had
worn it—and I had another little moment of pleasure in wear-
ing it after you.
“The next news that reached us in the servants’ hall showed
that I had not made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon.
Sergeant Cuff wanted to see the washing-book.
“I found it, and took it to him in my lady’s sitting-room. The
Sergeant and I had come across each other more than once in
former days. I was certain he would know me again—and I
was not certain of what he might do when he found me em-
ployed as servant in a house in which a valuable jewel had
been lost. In this suspense, I felt it would be a relief to me to
get the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of it at
once.
“He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him
the washing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking
me for bringing it. I thought those were both bad signs. There
was no knowing what he might say of me behind my back;
there was no knowing how soon I might not find myself taken
in custody on suspicion, and searched. It was then time for your
return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off by the railway;
and I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to try for
another chance of speaking to you—the last chance, for all I
knew to the contrary, that I might have.
“You never appeared; and, what was worse still,
Mr. Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff passed by the place where I
was hiding—and the Sergeant saw me.
“I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place
and my proper work, before more disasters happened to me.
Just as I was going to step across the path, you came back from
the railway. You were making straight for the shrubbery, when
you saw me—I am certain, sir, you saw me—and you turned
away as if I had got the plague, and went into the house.3
 “I made the best of my way indoors again, returning by the
servants’ entrance. There was nobody in the laundry-room at
that time; and I sat down there alone. I have told you already of
the thoughts which the Shivering Sand put into my head. Those
thoughts came back to me now. I wondered in myself which it
would be harder to do, if things went on in this manner—to
bear Mr. Franklin Blake’s indifference to me, or to jump into
the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?
“It’s useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this
time. I try—and I can’t understand it myself.
“Why didn’t I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel
manner? Why didn’t I call out, ‘Mr. Franklin, I have got some-
thing to say to you; it concerns yourself, and you must, and
shall, hear it?’ You were at my mercy—I had got the whip-
hand of you, as they say. And better than that, I had the means
(if I could only make you trust me) of being useful to you in
the future. Of course, I never supposed that you—a gentle-
man—had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing
it. No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard
Mr. Betteredge, talk about your extravagance and your debts. It
was plain enough to me that you had taken the Diamond to sell
it, or pledge it, and so to get the money of which you stood in
need. Well! I could have told you of a man in London who
would have advanced a good large sum on the jewel, and who
would have asked no awkward questions about it either.
“Why didn’t I speak to you! why didn’t I speak to you!
“I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping the
nightgown were as much as I could manage, without having
other risks and difficulties added to them? This might have
been the case with some women—but how could it be the case
with me? In the days when I was a thief, I had run fifty times
greater risks, and found my way out of difficulties to which this
difficulty was mere child’s play. I had been apprenticed, as you
may say, to frauds and deceptions—some of them on such a
grand scale, and managed so cleverly, that they became fam-
ous, and appeared in the newspapers. Was such a little thing as
the keeping of the nightgown likely to weigh on my spirits, and
to set my heart sinking within me, at the time when I ought to
have spoken to you? What nonsense to ask the question! The
thing couldn’t be.
“Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own
folly? The plain truth is plain enough, surely? Behind your
back, I loved you with all my heart and soul. Before your
face—there’s no denying it—I was frightened of you;
frightened of making you angry with me; frightened of what
you might say to me (though you had taken the Diamond) if I
presumed to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near
to it as I dared when I spoke to you in the library. You had not
turned your back on me then. You had not started away from
me as if I had got the plague. I tried to provoke myself into
feeling angry with you, and to rouse up my courage in that
way. No! I couldn’t feel anything but the misery and the morti-
fication of it. You’re a plain girl; you have got a crooked
shoulder; you’re only a housemaid—what do you mean by at-
tempting to speak to me?” You never uttered a word of that,
Mr. Franklin; but you said it all to me, nevertheless! Is such
madness as this to be accounted for? No. There is nothing to be
done but to confess it, and let it be.
“I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my
pen. There is no fear of its happening again. I am close at the
end now.
“The first person who disturbed me by coming into the
empty room was Penelope. She had found out my secret long
since, and she had done her best to bring me to my senses—and
done it kindly too.
“ ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘I know why you’re sitting here, and fret-
ting, all by yourself. The best thing that can happen for your
advantage, Rosanna, will be for Mr. Franklin’s visit here to
come to an end. It’s my belief that he won’t be long now before
he leaves the house.”
“In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going
away. I couldn’t speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.
“ ‘I’ve just left Miss Rachel,’ Penelope went on. ‘And a hard
matter I have had of it to put up with her temper. She says the
house is unbearable to her with the police in it; and she’s de-
termined to speak to my lady this evening, and to go to her
Aunt Ablewhite tomorrow. If she does that, Mr. Franklin will
be the next to find a reason for going away, you may depend on
it!’
“I recovered the use of my tongue at that. ‘Do you mean to
say Mr. Franklin will go with her?’ I asked.
“ ‘Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won’t. He
has been made to feel her temper; he is in her black books
too—and that after having done all he can to help her, poor fel-
low! No! no! If they don’t make it up before tomorrow, you
will see Miss Rachel go one way, and Mr. Franklin another.
Where he may betake himself to I can’t say. But he will never
stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.’
“I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of
your going away. To own the truth, I saw a little glimpse of
hope for myself if there was really a serious disagreement
between Miss Rachel and you. ‘Do you know,’ I asked, ‘what
the quarrel is between them?’
“ ‘It is all on Miss Rachel’s side,’ Penelope said. ‘And, for
anything I know to the contrary, it’s all Miss Rachel’s temper,
and nothing else. I am loth to distress you, Rosanna; but don’t
run away with the notion that Mr. Franklin is ever likely to
quarrel with her. He’s a great deal too fond of her for that!’
“She had only just spoken those cruel words when there
came a call to us from Mr. Betteredge. All the indoor servants
were to assemble in the hall. And then we were to go in, one by
one, and be questioned in Mr. Betteredge’s room by Sergeant
Cuff.
“It came to my turn to go in, after her ladyship’s maid and
the upper housemaid had been questioned first. Sergeant Cuff’s
inquiries—though he wrapped them up very cunningly—soon
showed me that those two women (the bitterest enemies I had
in the house) had made their discoveries outside my door, on
the Tuesday afternoon, and again on the Thursday night. They
had told the Sergeant enough to open his eyes to some part of
the truth. He rightly believed me to have made a new night-
gown secretly, but he wrongly believed the paint-stained night-
gown to be mine. I felt satisfied of another thing, from what he
said, which it puzzled me to understand. He suspected me, of
course, of being concerned in the disappearance of the Dia-
mond. But, at the same time, he let me see—purposely, as I
thought—that he did not consider me as the person chiefly an-
swerable for the loss of the jewel. He appeared to think that I
had been acting under the direction of somebody else. Who that
person might be, I couldn’t guess then, and can’t guess now.
“In this uncertainty, one thing was plain—that Sergeant Cuff
was miles away from knowing the whole truth. You were safe
as long as the nightgown was safe—and not a moment longer.
“I quite despair of making you understand the distress and
terror which pressed upon me now. It was impossible for me to
risk wearing your nightgown any longer. I might find myself
taken off, at a moment’s notice, to the police court at Frizing-
hall, to be charged on suspicion, and searched accordingly.
While Sergeant Cuff still left me free, I had to choose—and at
once—between destroying the nightgown, or hiding it in some
safe place, at some safe distance from the house.
“If I had only been a little less fond of you, I think I should
have destroyed it. But oh! how could I destroy the only thing I
had which proved that I had saved you from discovery? If we
did come to an explanation together, and if you suspected me
of having some bad motive, and denied it all, how could I win
upon you to trust me, unless I had the nightgown to produce?
Was it wronging you to believe, as I did and do still, that you
might hesitate to let a poor girl like me be the sharer of your
secret, and your accomplice in the theft which your money-
troubles had tempted you to commit? Think of your cold beha-
viour to me, sir, and you will hardly wonder at my unwilling-
ness to destroy the only claim on your confidence and your
gratitude which it was my fortune to possess.
“I determined to hide it; and the place I fixed on was the
place I knew best—the Shivering Sand.
“As soon as the questioning was over, I made the first excuse
that came into my head, and got leave to go out for a breath of
fresh air. I went straight to Cobb’s Hole, to Mr. Yolland’s cot-
tage. His wife and daughter were the best friends I had. Don’t
suppose I trusted them with your secret—I have trusted
nobody. All I wanted was to write this letter to you, and to have
a safe opportunity of taking the nightgown off me. Suspected
as I was, I could do neither of those things with any sort of se-
curity, at the house.
“And now I have nearly got through my long letter, writing it
alone in Lucy Yolland’s bedroom. When it is done, I shall go
downstairs with the nightgown rolled up, and hidden under my
cloak. I shall find the means I want for keeping it safe and dry
in its hiding-place, among the litter of old things in Mrs. Yol-
land’s kitchen. And then I shall go to the Shivering Sand—
don’t be afraid of my letting my footmarks betray me!—and
hide the nightgown down in the sand, where no living creature
can find it without being first let into the secret by myself.
“And, when that’s done, what then?
“Then, Mr. Franklin, I shall have two reasons for making an-
other attempt to say the words to you which I have not said yet.
If you leave the house, as Penelope believes you will leave it,
and if I haven’t spoken to you before that, I shall lose my op-
portunity forever. That is one reason. Then, again, there is the
comforting knowledge—if my speaking does make you
angry—that I have got the nightgown ready to plead my cause
for me as nothing else can. That is my other reason. If these
two together don’t harden my heart against the coldness which
has hitherto frozen it up (I mean the coldness of your treatment
of me), there will be the end of my efforts—and the end of my
life.
“Yes. If I miss my next opportunity—if you are as cruel as
ever, and if I feel it again as I have felt it already—goodbye to
the world which has grudged me the happiness that it gives to
others. Goodbye to life, which nothing but a little kindness
from you can ever make pleasurable to me again. Don’t blame
yourself, sir, if it ends in this way. But try—do try—to feel
some forgiving sorrow for me! I shall take care that you find
out what I have done for you, when I am past telling you of it
 myself. Will you say something kind of me then—in the same
gentle way that you have when you speak to Miss Rachel? If
you do that, and if there are such things as ghosts, I believe my
ghost will hear it, and tremble with the pleasure of it.
“It’s time I left off. I am making myself cry. How am I to see
my way to the hiding-place if I let these useless tears come and
blind me?
“Besides, why should I look at the gloomy side? Why not
believe, while I can, that it will end well after all? I may find
you in a good humour tonight—or, if not, I may succeed better
tomorrow morning. I shan’t improve my plain face by fret-
ting—shall I? Who knows but I may have filled all these weary
long pages of paper for nothing? They will go, for safety’s sake
(never mind now for what other reason) into the hiding-place
along with the nightgown. It has been hard, hard work writing
my letter. Oh! if we only end in understanding each other, how
I shall enjoy tearing it up!
“I beg to remain, sir, your true lover and humble servant,
“Rosanna Spearman.”

The reading of the letter was completed by Betteredge in silence. After

carefully putting it back in the envelope, he sat thinking, with his head
bowed down, and his eyes on the ground.
“Betteredge,” I said, “is there any hint to guide me at the end of the
letter?”
He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.
“There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin,” he answered. “If you take
my advice you will keep the letter in the cover till these present anxieties of
yours have come to an end. It will sorely distress you, whenever you read it.
Don’t read it now.”
I put the letter away in my pocketbook.
A glance back at the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Betteredge’s
Narrative will show that there really was a reason for my thus sparing my-
self, at a time when my fortitude had been already cruelly tried. Twice over,
the unhappy woman had made her last attempt to speak to me. And twice
over, it had been my misfortune (God knows how innocently!) to repel the
advances she had made to me. On the Friday night, as Betteredge truly de-
scribes it, she had found me alone at the billiard-table. Her manner and lan-
guage suggested to me and would have suggested to any man, under the cir-
cumstances—that she was about to confess a guilty knowledge of the disap-
pearance of the Diamond. For her own sake, I had purposely shown no spe-
cial interest in what was coming; for her own sake, I had purposely looked
at the billiard-balls, instead of looking at her—and what had been the res-
ult? I had sent her away from me, wounded to the heart! On the Saturday
again—on the day when she must have foreseen, after what Penelope had
told her, that my departure was close at hand—the same fatality still pur-
sued us. She had once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk,
and she had found me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff.
In her hearing, the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had
appealed to my interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature’s
own sake, I had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared—
loudly declared, so that she might hear me too—that I felt “no interest
whatever in Rosanna Spearman.” At those words, solely designed to warn
her against attempting to gain my private ear, she had turned away and left
the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomed to de-
struction, as I know now. From that point, I have already traced the succes-
sion of events which led me to the astounding discovery at the quicksand.
The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable story of Rosanna
Spearman—to which, even at this distance of time, I cannot revert without a
pang of distress—to suggest for itself all that is here purposely left unsaid. I
may pass from the suicide at the Shivering Sand, with its strange and ter-
rible influence on my present position and future prospects, to interests
which concern the living people of this narrative, and to events which were
already paving my way for the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness
to the light.
 VI

I walked to the railway station accompanied, it is needless to say, by Gabri-

el Betteredge. I had the letter in my pocket, and the nightgown safely
packed in a little bag—both to be submitted, before I slept that night, to the
investigation of Mr. Bruff.
We left the house in silence. For the first time in my experience of him, I
found old Betteredge in my company without a word to say to me. Having
something to say on my side, I opened the conversation as soon as we were
clear of the lodge gates.
“Before I go to London,” I began, “I have two questions to ask you. They
relate to myself, and I believe they will rather surprise you.”
“If they will put that poor creature’s letter out of my head, Mr. Franklin,
they may do anything else they like with me. Please to begin surprising me,
sir, as soon as you can.”
“My first question, Betteredge, is this. Was I drunk on the night of
Rachel’s Birthday?”
“You drunk!” exclaimed the old man. “Why it’s the great defect of your
character, Mr. Franklin that you only drink with your dinner, and never
touch a drop of liquor afterwards!”
“But the birthday was a special occasion. I might have abandoned my
regular habits, on that night of all others.”
Betteredge considered for a moment.
“You did go out of your habits, sir,” he said. “And I’ll tell you how. You
looked wretchedly ill—and we persuaded you to have a drop of brandy and
water to cheer you up a little.”
“I am not used to brandy and water. It is quite possible—”
“Wait a bit, Mr. Franklin. I knew you were not used, too. I poured you
out half a wineglass-full of our fifty year old Cognac; and (more shame for
me!) I drowned that noble liquor in nigh on a tumbler-full of cold water. A
child couldn’t have got drunk on it—let alone a grown man!”
 I knew I could depend on his memory, in a matter of this kind. It was
plainly impossible that I could have been intoxicated. I passed on to the
second question.
“Before I was sent abroad, Betteredge, you saw a great deal of me when I
was a boy? Now tell me plainly, do you remember anything strange of me,
after I had gone to bed at night? Did you ever discover me walking in my
sleep?”
Betteredge stopped, looked at me for a moment, nodded his head, and
walked on again.
“I see your drift now, Mr. Franklin!” he said. “You’re trying to account
for how you got the paint on your nightgown, without knowing it yourself.
It won’t do, sir. You’re miles away still from getting at the truth. Walk in
your sleep? You never did such a thing in your life!”
Here again, I felt that Betteredge must be right. Neither at home nor
abroad had my life ever been of the solitary sort. If I had been a sleepwalk-
er, there were hundreds on hundreds of people who must have discovered
me, and who, in the interest of my own safety, would have warned me of
the habit, and have taken precautions to restrain it.
Still, admitting all this, I clung—with an obstinacy which was surely nat-
ural and excusable, under the circumstances—to one or other of the only
two explanations that I could see which accounted for the unendurable posi-
tion in which I then stood. Observing that I was not yet satisfied, Betteredge
shrewdly adverted to certain later events in the history of the Moonstone;
and scattered both my theories to the wind at once and for ever.
“Let’s try it another way, sir,” he said. “Keep your own opinion, and see
how far it will take you towards finding out the truth. If we are to believe
the nightgown—which I don’t for one—you not only smeared off the paint
from the door, without knowing it, but you also took the Diamond without
knowing it. Is that right, so far?”
“Quite right. Go on.”
“Very good, sir. We’ll say you were drunk, or walking in your sleep,
when you took the jewel. That accounts for the night and morning, after the
birthday. But how does it account for what has happened since that time?
The Diamond has been taken to London, since that time. The Diamond has
been pledged to Mr. Luker, since that time. Did you do those two things,
without knowing it, too? Were you drunk when I saw you off in the pony-
chaise on that Saturday evening? And did you walk in your sleep to
Mr. Luker’s, when the train had brought you to your journey’s end? Excuse
me for saying it, Mr. Franklin, but this business has so upset you, that
you’re not fit yet to judge for yourself. The sooner you lay your head along-
side Mr. Bruff’s head, the sooner you will see your way out of the deadlock
that has got you now.”
We reached the station, with only a minute or two to spare.
I hurriedly gave Betteredge my address in London, so that he might write
to me, if necessary; promising, on my side, to inform him of any news
which I might have to communicate. This done, and just as I was bidding
him farewell, I happened to glance towards the book-and-newspaper stall.
There was Mr. Candy’s remarkable-looking assistant again, speaking to the
keeper of the stall! Our eyes met at the same moment. Ezra Jennings took
off his hat to me. I returned the salute, and got into a carriage just as the
train started. It was a relief to my mind, I suppose, to dwell on any subject
which appeared to be, personally, of no sort of importance to me. At all
events, I began the momentous journey back which was to take me to
Mr. Bruff, wondering—absurdly enough, I admit—that I should have seen
the man with the piebald hair twice in one day!
The hour at which I arrived in London precluded all hope of my finding
Mr. Bruff at his place of business. I drove from the railway to his private
residence at Hampstead, and disturbed the old lawyer dozing alone in his
dining-room, with his favourite pug-dog on his lap, and his bottle of wine at
his elbow.
I shall best describe the effect which my story produced on the mind of
Mr. Bruff by relating his proceedings when he had heard it to the end. He
ordered lights, and strong tea, to be taken into his study; and he sent a mes-
sage to the ladies of his family, forbidding them to disturb us on any pre-
tence whatever. These preliminaries disposed of, he first examined the
nightgown, and then devoted himself to the reading of Rosanna Spearman’s
letter.
The reading completed, Mr. Bruff addressed me for the first time since
we had been shut up together in the seclusion of his own room.
“Franklin Blake,” said the old gentleman, “this is a very serious matter,
in more respects than one. In my opinion, it concerns Rachel quite as nearly
as it concerns you. Her extraordinary conduct is no mystery now. She be-
lieves you have stolen the Diamond.”
 I had shrunk from reasoning my own way fairly to that revolting conclu-
sion. But it had forced itself on me, nevertheless. My resolution to obtain a
personal interview with Rachel, rested really and truly on the ground just
stated by Mr. Bruff.
“The first step to take in this investigation,” the lawyer proceeded, “is to
appeal to Rachel. She has been silent all this time, from motives which I
(who know her character) can readily understand. It is impossible, after
what has happened, to submit to that silence any longer. She must be per-
suaded to tell us, or she must be forced to tell us, on what grounds she bases
her belief that you took the Moonstone. The chances are, that the whole of
this case, serious as it seems now, will tumble to pieces, if we can only
break through Rachel’s inveterate reserve, and prevail upon her to speak
out.”
“That is a very comforting opinion for me,” I said. “I own I should like to
know.”
“You would like to know how I can justify it,” interposed Mr. Bruff. “I
can tell you in two minutes. Understand, in the first place, that I look at this
matter from a lawyer’s point of view. It’s a question of evidence, with me.
Very well. The evidence breaks down, at the outset, on one important
point.”
“On what point?”
“You shall hear. I admit that the mark of the name proves the nightgown
to be yours. I admit that the mark of the paint proves the nightgown to have
made the smear on Rachel’s door. But what evidence is there to prove that
you are the person who wore it, on the night when the Diamond was lost?”
The objection struck me, all the more forcibly that it reflected an objec-
tion which I had felt myself.
“As to this,” pursued the lawyer taking up Rosanna Spearman’s confes-
sion, “I can understand that the letter is a distressing one to you. I can un-
derstand that you may hesitate to analyse it from a purely impartial point of
view. But I am not in your position. I can bring my professional experience
to bear on this document, just as I should bring it to bear on any other.
Without alluding to the woman’s career as a thief, I will merely remark that
her letter proves her to have been an adept at deception, on her own show-
ing; and I argue from that, that I am justified in suspecting her of not having
told the whole truth. I won’t start any theory, at present, as to what she may
or may not have done. I will only say that, if Rachel has suspected you on
the evidence of the nightgown only, the chances are ninety-nine to a hun-
dred that Rosanna Spearman was the person who showed it to her. In that
case, there is the woman’s letter, confessing that she was jealous of Rachel,
confessing that she changed the roses, confessing that she saw a glimpse of
hope for herself, in the prospect of a quarrel between Rachel and you. I
don’t stop to ask who took the Moonstone (as a means to her end, Rosanna
Spearman would have taken fifty Moonstones)—I only say that the disap-
pearance of the jewel gave this reclaimed thief who was in love with you,
an opportunity of setting you and Rachel at variance for the rest of your
lives. She had not decided on destroying herself, then, remember; and, hav-
ing the opportunity, I distinctly assert that it was in her character, and in her
position at the time, to take it. What do you say to that?”
“Some such suspicion,” I answered, “crossed my own mind, as soon as I
opened the letter.”
“Exactly! And when you had read the letter, you pitied the poor creature,
and couldn’t find it in your heart to suspect her. Does you credit, my dear
sir—does you credit!”
“But suppose it turns out that I did wear the nightgown? What then?”
“I don’t see how the fact can be proved,” said Mr. Bruff. “But assuming
the proof to be possible, the vindication of your innocence would be no
easy matter. We won’t go into that, now. Let us wait and see whether Rachel
hasn’t suspected you on the evidence of the nightgown only.”
“Good God, how coolly you talk of Rachel suspecting me!” I broke out.
“What right has she to suspect me, on any evidence, of being a thief?”
“A very sensible question, my dear sir. Rather hotly put—but well worth
considering for all that. What puzzles you, puzzles me too. Search your
memory, and tell me this. Did anything happen while you were staying at
the house—not, of course, to shake Rachel’s belief in your honour—but, let
us say, to shake her belief (no matter with how little reason) in your prin-
ciples generally?”
I started, in ungovernable agitation, to my feet. The lawyer’s question re-
minded me, for the first time since I had left England, that something had
happened.
In the eighth chapter of Betteredge’s Narrative, an allusion will be found
to the arrival of a foreigner and a stranger at my aunt’s house, who came to
see me on business. The nature of his business was this.
 I had been foolish enough (being, as usual, straitened for money at the
time) to accept a loan from the keeper of a small restaurant in Paris, to
whom I was well known as a customer. A time was settled between us for
paying the money back; and when the time came, I found it (as thousands of
other honest men have found it) impossible to keep my engagement. I sent
the man a bill. My name was unfortunately too well known on such docu-
ments: he failed to negotiate it. His affairs had fallen into disorder, in the
interval since I had borrowed of him; bankruptcy stared him in the face; and
a relative of his, a French lawyer, came to England to find me, and to insist
upon the payment of my debt. He was a man of violent temper; and he took
the wrong way with me. High words passed on both sides; and my aunt and
Rachel were unfortunately in the next room, and heard us. Lady Verinder
came in, and insisted on knowing what was the matter. The Frenchman pro-
duced his credentials, and declared me to be responsible for the ruin of a
poor man, who had trusted in my honour. My aunt instantly paid him the
money, and sent him off. She knew me better of course than to take the
Frenchman’s view of the transaction. But she was shocked at my careless-
ness, and justly angry with me for placing myself in a position, which, but
for her interference, might have become a very disgraceful one. Either her
mother told her, or Rachel heard what passed—I can’t say which. She took
her own romantic, high-flown view of the matter. I was “heartless”; I was
“dishonourable”; I had “no principle”; there was “no knowing what I might
do next”—in short, she said some of the severest things to me which I had
ever heard from a young lady’s lips. The breach between us lasted for the
whole of the next day. The day after, I succeeded in making my peace, and
thought no more of it. Had Rachel reverted to this unlucky accident, at the
critical moment when my place in her estimation was again, and far more
seriously, assailed? Mr. Bruff, when I had mentioned the circumstances to
him, answered the question at once in the affirmative.
“It would have its effect on her mind,” he said gravely. “And I wish, for
your sake, the thing had not happened. However, we have discovered that
there was a predisposing influence against you—and there is one uncer-
tainty cleared out of our way, at any rate. I see nothing more that we can do
now. Our next step in this inquiry must be the step that takes us to Rachel.”
He rose, and began walking thoughtfully up and down the room. Twice, I
was on the point of telling him that I had determined on seeing Rachel per-
sonally; and twice, having regard to his age and his character, I hesitated to
take him by surprise at an unfavourable moment.
“The grand difficulty is,” he resumed, “how to make her show her whole
mind in this matter, without reserve. Have you any suggestions to offer?”
“I have made up my mind, Mr. Bruff, to speak to Rachel myself.”
“You!” He suddenly stopped in his walk, and looked at me as if he
thought I had taken leave of my senses. “You, of all the people in the
world!” He abruptly checked himself, and took another turn in the room.
“Wait a little,” he said. “In cases of this extraordinary kind, the rash way is
sometimes the best way.” He considered the question for a moment or two,
under that new light, and ended boldly by a decision in my favour. “Nothing
venture, nothing have,” the old gentleman resumed. “You have a chance in
your favour which I don’t possess—and you shall be the first to try the
experiment.”
“A chance in my favour?” I repeated, in the greatest surprise.
Mr. Bruff’s face softened, for the first time, into a smile.
“This is how it stands,” he said. “I tell you fairly, I don’t trust your dis-
cretion, and I don’t trust your temper. But I do trust in Rachel’s still pre-
serving, in some remote little corner of her heart, a certain perverse weak-
ness for you. Touch that—and trust to the consequences for the fullest dis-
closures that can flow from a woman’s lips! The question is—how are you
to see her?”
“She has been a guest of yours at this house,” I answered. “May I venture
to suggest—if nothing was said about me beforehand—that I might see her
here?”
“Cool!” said Mr. Bruff. With that one word of comment on the reply that
I had made to him, he took another turn up and down the room.
“In plain English,” he said, “my house is to be turned into a trap to catch
Rachel; with a bait to tempt her, in the shape of an invitation from my wife
and daughters. If you were anybody else but Franklin Blake, and if this mat-
ter was one atom less serious than it really is, I should refuse point-blank.
As things are, I firmly believe Rachel will live to thank me for turning trait-
or to her in my old age. Consider me your accomplice. Rachel shall be
asked to spend the day here; and you shall receive due notice of it.”
“When? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow won’t give us time enough to get her answer. Say the day
after.”
 “How shall I hear from you?”
“Stay at home all the morning and expect me to call on you.”
I thanked him for the inestimable assistance which he was rendering to
me, with the gratitude that I really felt; and, declining a hospitable invita-
tion to sleep that night at Hampstead, returned to my lodgings in London.
Of the day that followed, I have only to say that it was the longest day of
my life. Innocent as I knew myself to be, certain as I was that the abomin-
able imputation which rested on me must sooner or later be cleared off,
there was nevertheless a sense of self-abasement in my mind which instinct-
ively disinclined me to see any of my friends. We often hear (almost invari-
ably, however, from superficial observers) that guilt can look like inno-
cence. I believe it to be infinitely the truer axiom of the two that innocence
can look like guilt. I caused myself to be denied all day, to every visitor
who called; and I only ventured out under cover of the night.
The next morning, Mr. Bruff surprised me at the breakfast-table. He
handed me a large key, and announced that he felt ashamed of himself for
the first time in his life.
“Is she coming?”
“She is coming today, to lunch and spend the afternoon with my wife and
my girls.”
“Are Mrs. Bruff, and your daughters, in the secret?”
“Inevitably. But women, as you may have observed, have no principles.
My family don’t feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you
and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means em-
ployed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits.”
“I am infinitely obliged to them. What is this key?”
“The key of the gate in my back-garden wall. Be there at three this after-
noon. Let yourself into the garden, and make your way in by the conservat-
ory door. Cross the small drawing-room, and open the door in front of you
which leads into the music-room. There, you will find Rachel—and find
her, alone.”
“How can I thank you!”
“I will tell you how. Don’t blame me for what happens afterwards.”
With those words, he went out.
I had many weary hours still to wait through. To while away the time, I
looked at my letters. Among them was a letter from Betteredge.
 I opened it eagerly. To my surprise and disappointment, it began with an
apology warning me to expect no news of any importance. In the next sen-
tence the everlasting Ezra Jennings appeared again! He had stopped
Betteredge on the way out of the station, and had asked who I was. In-
formed on this point, he had mentioned having seen me to his master
Mr. Candy. Mr. Candy hearing of this, had himself driven over to
Betteredge, to express his regret at our having missed each other. He had a
reason for wishing particularly to speak to me; and when I was next in the
neighbourhood of Frizinghall, he begged I would let him know. Apart from
a few characteristic utterances of the Betteredge philosophy, this was the
sum and substance of my correspondent’s letter. The warmhearted, faithful
old man acknowledged that he had written “mainly for the pleasure of writ-
ing to me.”
I crumpled up the letter in my pocket, and forgot it the moment after, in
the all-absorbing interest of my coming interview with Rachel.
As the clock of Hampstead church struck three, I put Mr. Bruff’s key into
the lock of the door in the wall. When I first stepped into the garden, and
while I was securing the door again on the inner side, I own to having felt a
certain guilty doubtfulness about what might happen next. I looked furtively
on either side of me; suspicious of the presence of some unexpected witness
in some unknown corner of the garden. Nothing appeared, to justify my ap-
prehensions. The walks were, one and all, solitudes; and the birds and the
bees were the only witnesses.
I passed through the garden; entered the conservatory; and crossed the
small drawing-room. As I laid my hand on the door opposite, I heard a few
plaintive chords struck on the piano in the room within. She had often idled
over the instrument in this way, when I was staying at her mother’s house. I
was obliged to wait a little, to steady myself. The past and present rose side
by side, at that supreme moment—and the contrast shook me.
After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door.
 VII

At the moment when I showed myself in the doorway, Rachel rose from the
piano.
I closed the door behind me. We confronted each other in silence, with
the full length of the room between us. The movement she had made in
rising appeared to be the one exertion of which she was capable. All use of
every other faculty, bodily or mental, seemed to be merged in the mere act
of looking at me.
A fear crossed my mind that I had shown myself too suddenly. I ad-
vanced a few steps towards her. I said gently, “Rachel!”
The sound of my voice brought the life back to her limbs, and the colour
to her face. She advanced, on her side, still without speaking. Slowly, as if
acting under some influence independent of her own will, she came nearer
and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks, the light of
reviving intelligence brightening every instant in her eyes. I forgot the ob-
ject that had brought me into her presence; I forgot the vile suspicion that
rested on my good name; I forgot every consideration, past, present, and fu-
ture, which I was bound to remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved
coming nearer and nearer to me. She trembled; she stood irresolute. I could
resist it no longer—I caught her in my arms, and covered her face with
kisses.
There was a moment when I thought the kisses were returned; a moment
when it seemed as if she, too might have forgotten. Almost before the idea
could shape itself in my mind, her first voluntary action made me feel that
she remembered. With a cry which was like a cry of horror—with a strength
which I doubt if I could have resisted if I had tried—she thrust me back
from her. I saw merciless anger in her eyes; I saw merciless contempt on
her lips. She looked me over, from head to foot, as she might have looked at
a stranger who had insulted her.
“You coward!” she said. “You mean, miserable, heartless coward!”
 Those were her first words! The most unendurable reproach that a wo-
man can address to a man, was the reproach that she picked out to address
to me.
“I remember the time, Rachel,” I said, “when you could have told me that
I had offended you, in a worthier way than that. I beg your pardon.”
Something of the bitterness that I felt may have communicated itself to
my voice. At the first words of my reply, her eyes, which had been turned
away the moment before, looked back at me unwillingly. She answered in a
low tone, with a sullen submission of manner which was quite new in my
experience of her.
“Perhaps there is some excuse for me,” she said. “After what you have
done, is it a manly action, on your part, to find your way to me as you have
found it today? It seems a cowardly experiment, to try an experiment on my
weakness for you. It seems a cowardly surprise, to surprise me into letting
you kiss me. But that is only a woman’s view. I ought to have known it
couldn’t be your view. I should have done better if I had controlled myself,
and said nothing.”
The apology was more unendurable than the insult. The most degraded
man living would have felt humiliated by it.
“If my honour was not in your hands,” I said, “I would leave you this in-
stant, and never see you again. You have spoken of what I have done. What
have I done?”
“What have you done! You ask that question of me?”
“I ask it.”
“I have kept your infamy a secret,” she answered. “And I have suffered
the consequences of concealing it. Have I no claim to be spared the insult of
your asking me what you have done? Is all sense of gratitude dead in you?
You were once a gentleman. You were once dear to my mother, and dearer
still to me—”
Her voice failed her. She dropped into a chair, and turned her back on me,
and covered her face with her hands.
I waited a little before I trusted myself to say any more. In that moment
of silence, I hardly know which I felt most keenly—the sting which her
contempt had planted in me, or the proud resolution which shut me out
from all community with her distress.
“If you will not speak first,” I said, “I must. I have come here with some-
thing serious to say to you. Will you do me the common justice of listening
while I say it?”
She neither moved, nor answered. I made no second appeal to her; I nev-
er advanced an inch nearer to her chair. With a pride which was as obstinate
as her pride, I told her of my discovery at the Shivering Sand, and of all that
had led to it. The narrative, of necessity, occupied some little time. From
beginning to end, she never looked round at me, and she never uttered a
word.
I kept my temper. My whole future depended, in all probability, on my
not losing possession of myself at that moment. The time had come to put
Mr. Bruff’s theory to the test. In the breathless interest of trying that experi-
ment, I moved round so as to place myself in front of her.
“I have a question to ask you,” I said. “It obliges me to refer again to a
painful subject. Did Rosanna Spearman show you the nightgown. Yes, or
no?”
She started to her feet; and walked close up to me of her own accord. Her
eyes looked me searchingly in the face, as if to read something there which
they had never read yet.
“Are you mad?” she asked.
I still restrained myself. I said quietly, “Rachel, will you answer my
question?”
She went on, without heeding me.
“Have you some object to gain which I don’t understand? Some mean
fear about the future, in which I am concerned? They say your father’s
death has made you a rich man. Have you come here to compensate me for
the loss of my Diamond? And have you heart enough left to feel ashamed
of your errand? Is that the secret of your pretence of innocence, and your
story about Rosanna Spearman? Is there a motive of shame at the bottom of
all the falsehood, this time?”
I stopped her there. I could control myself no longer.
“You have done me an infamous wrong!” I broke out hotly. “You suspect
me of stealing your Diamond. I have a right to know, and I will know, the
reason why!”
“Suspect you!” she exclaimed, her anger rising with mine. “You villain, I
saw you take the Diamond with my own eyes!”
The revelation which burst upon me in those words, the overthrow which
they instantly accomplished of the whole view of the case on which
Mr. Bruff had relied, struck me helpless. Innocent as I was, I stood before
her in silence. To her eyes, to any eyes, I must have looked like a man over-
whelmed by the discovery of his own guilt.
She drew back from the spectacle of my humiliation and of her triumph.
The sudden silence that had fallen upon me seemed to frighten her. “I
spared you, at the time,” she said. “I would have spared you now, if you had
not forced me to speak.” She moved away as if to leave the room—and hes-
itated before she got to the door. “Why did you come here to humiliate
yourself?” she asked. “Why did you come here to humiliate me?” She went
on a few steps, and paused once more. “For God’s sake, say something!”
she exclaimed, passionately. “If you have any mercy left, don’t let me de-
grade myself in this way! Say something—and drive me out of the room!”
I advanced towards her, hardly conscious of what I was doing. I had pos-
sibly some confused idea of detaining her until she had told me more. From
the moment when I knew that the evidence on which I stood condemned in
Rachel’s mind, was the evidence of her own eyes, nothing—not even my
conviction of my own innocence—was clear to my mind. I took her by the
hand; I tried to speak firmly and to the purpose. All I could say was,
“Rachel, you once loved me.”
She shuddered, and looked away from me. Her hand lay powerless and
trembling in mine. “Let go of it,” she said faintly.
My touch seemed to have the same effect on her which the sound of my
voice had produced when I first entered the room. After she had said the
word which called me a coward, after she had made the avowal which
branded me as a thief—while her hand lay in mine I was her master still!
I drew her gently back into the middle of the room. I seated her by the
side of me. “Rachel,” I said, “I can’t explain the contradiction in what I am
going to tell you. I can only speak the truth as you have spoken it. You saw
me—with your own eyes, you saw me take the Diamond. Before God who
hears us, I declare that I now know I took it for the first time! Do you doubt
me still?”
She had neither heeded nor heard me. “Let go of my hand,” she repeated
faintly. That was her only answer. Her head sank on my shoulder; and her
hand unconsciously closed on mine, at the moment when she asked me to
release it.
I refrained from pressing the question. But there my forbearance stopped.
My chance of ever holding up my head again among honest men depended
on my chance of inducing her to make her disclosure complete. The one
hope left for me was the hope that she might have overlooked something in
the chain of evidence—some mere trifle, perhaps, which might neverthe-
less, under careful investigation, be made the means of vindicating my in-
nocence in the end. I own I kept possession of her hand. I own I spoke to
her with all that I could summon back of the sympathy and confidence of
the bygone time.
“I want to ask you something,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything
that happened, from the time when we wished each other good night, to the
time when you saw me take the Diamond.”
She lifted her head from my shoulder, and made an effort to release her
hand. “Oh, why go back to it!” she said. “Why go back to it!”
“I will tell you why, Rachel. You are the victim, and I am the victim, of
some monstrous delusion which has worn the mask of truth. If we look at
what happened on the night of your birthday together, we may end in under-
standing each other yet.”
Her head dropped back on my shoulder. The tears gathered in her eyes,
and fell slowly over her cheeks. “Oh!” she said, “have I never had that
hope? Have I not tried to see it, as you are trying now?”
“You have tried by yourself,” I answered. “You have not tried with me to
help you.”
Those words seemed to awaken in her something of the hope which I felt
myself when I uttered them. She replied to my questions with more than do-
cility—she exerted her intelligence; she willingly opened her whole mind to
me.
“Let us begin,” I said, “with what happened after we had wished each
other good night. Did you go to bed? or did you sit up?”
“I went to bed.”
“Did you notice the time? Was it late?”
“Not very. About twelve o’clock, I think.”
“Did you fall asleep?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep that night.”
“You were restless?”
“I was thinking of you.”
The answer almost unmanned me. Something in the tone, even more than
in the words, went straight to my heart. It was only after pausing a little first
that I was able to go on.
“Had you any light in your room?” I asked.
 “None—until I got up again, and lit my candle.”
“How long was that, after you had gone to bed?”
“About an hour after, I think. About one o’clock.”
“Did you leave your bedroom?”
“I was going to leave it. I had put on my dressing-gown; and I was going
into my sitting-room to get a book—”
“Had you opened your bedroom door?”
“I had just opened it.”
“But you had not gone into the sitting-room?”
“No—I was stopped from going into it.”
“What stopped you?”
“I saw a light, under the door; and I heard footsteps approaching it.”
“Were you frightened?”
“Not then. I knew my poor mother was a bad sleeper; and I remembered
that she had tried hard, that evening, to persuade me to let her take charge
of my Diamond. She was unreasonably anxious about it, as I thought; and I
fancied she was coming to me to see if I was in bed, and to speak to me
about the Diamond again, if she found that I was up.”
“What did you do?”
“I blew out my candle, so that she might think I was in bed. I was unreas-
onable, on my side—I was determined to keep my Diamond in the place of
my own choosing.”
“After blowing out the candle, did you go back to bed?”
“I had no time to go back. At the moment when I blew the candle out, the
sitting-room door opened, and I saw—”
“You saw?”
“You.”
“Dressed as usual?”
“No.”
“In my nightgown?”
“In your nightgown—with your bedroom candle in your hand.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
“Could you see my face?”
“Yes.”
“Plainly?”
“Quite plainly. The candle in your hand showed it to me.”
 “Were my eyes open?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything strange in them? Anything like a fixed, vacant
expression?”
“Nothing of the sort. Your eyes were bright—brighter than usual. You
looked about in the room, as if you knew you were where you ought not to
be, and as if you were afraid of being found out.”
“Did you observe one thing when I came into the room—did you observe
how I walked?”
“You walked as you always do. You came in as far as the middle of the
room—and then you stopped and looked about you.”
“What did you do, on first seeing me?”
“I could do nothing. I was petrified. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t call out, I
couldn’t even move to shut my door.”
“Could I see you, where you stood?”
“You might certainly have seen me. But you never looked towards me.
It’s useless to ask the question. I am sure you never saw me.”
“How are you sure?”
“Would you have taken the Diamond? would you have acted as you did
afterwards? would you be here now—if you had seen that I was awake and
looking at you? Don’t make me talk of that part of it! I want to answer you
quietly. Help me to keep as calm as I can. Go on to something else.”
She was right—in every way, right. I went on to other things.
“What did I do, after I had got to the middle of the room, and had
stopped there?”
“You turned away, and went straight to the corner near the window—
where my Indian cabinet stands.”
“When I was at the cabinet, my back must have been turned towards you.
How did you see what I was doing?”
“When you moved, I moved.”
“So as to see what I was about with my hands?”
“There are three glasses in my sitting-room. As you stood there, I saw all
that you did, reflected in one of them.”
“What did you see?”
“You put your candle on the top of the cabinet. You opened, and shut,
one drawer after another, until you came to the drawer in which I had put
my Diamond. You looked at the open drawer for a moment. And then you
put your hand in, and took the Diamond out.”
“How do you know I took the Diamond out?”
“I saw your hand go into the drawer. And I saw the gleam of the stone
between your finger and thumb, when you took your hand out.”
“Did my hand approach the drawer again—to close it, for instance?”
“No. You had the Diamond in your right hand; and you took the candle
from the top of the cabinet with your left hand.”
“Did I look about me again, after that?”
“No.”
“Did I leave the room immediately?”
“No. You stood quite still, for what seemed a long time. I saw your face
sideways in the glass. You looked like a man thinking, and dissatisfied with
his own thoughts.”
“What happened next?”
“You roused yourself on a sudden, and you went straight out of the
room.”
“Did I close the door after me?”
“No. You passed out quickly into the passage, and left the door open.”
“And then?”
“Then, your light disappeared, and the sound of your steps died away,
and I was left alone in the dark.”
“Did nothing happen—from that time, to the time when the whole house
knew that the Diamond was lost?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure of that? Might you not have been asleep a part of the
time?”
“I never slept. I never went back to my bed. Nothing happened until
Penelope came in, at the usual time in the morning.”
I dropped her hand, and rose, and took a turn in the room. Every question
that I could put had been answered. Every detail that I could desire to know
had been placed before me. I had even reverted to the idea of sleepwalking,
and the idea of intoxication; and, again, the worthlessness of the one theory
and the other had been proved—on the authority, this time, of the witness
who had seen me. What was to be said next? what was to be done next?
There rose the horrible fact of the theft—the one visible, tangible object that
confronted me, in the midst of the impenetrable darkness which enveloped
all besides! Not a glimpse of light to guide me, when I had possessed my-
self of Rosanna Spearman’s secret at the Shivering Sand. And not a glimpse
of light now, when I had appealed to Rachel herself, and had heard the hate-
ful story of the night from her own lips.
She was the first, this time, to break the silence.
“Well?” she said, “you have asked, and I have answered. You have made
me hope something from all this, because you hoped something from it.
What have you to say now?”
The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a
lost influence once more.
“We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together,” she
went on; “and we were then to understand each other. Have we done that?”
She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed a fatal
error—I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get the better of
my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her for the silence
which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the truth.
“If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken,” I began; “if you had
done me the common justice to explain yourself—”
She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed
to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.
“Explain myself!” she repeated. “Oh! is there another man like this in the
world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my own
character is at stake; and he—of all human beings, he—turns on me now,
and tells me that I ought to have explained myself! After believing in him
as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by day, and dream-
ing of him by night—he wonders I didn’t charge him with his disgrace the
first time we met: ‘My heart’s darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I
love and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night, and
stolen my Diamond!’ That is what I ought to have said. You villain, you
mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty diamonds, rather than see
your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!”
I took up my hat. In mercy to her—yes! I can honestly say it—in mercy
to her, I turned away without a word, and opened the door by which I had
entered the room.
She followed, and snatched the door out of my hand; she closed it, and
pointed back to the place that I had left.
 “No!” she said. “Not yet! It seems that I owe a justification of my con-
duct to you. You shall stay and hear it. Or you shall stoop to the lowest in-
famy of all, and force your way out.”
It wrung my heart to see her; it wrung my heart to hear her. I answered by
a sign—it was all I could do—that I submitted myself to her will.
The crimson flush of anger began to fade out of her face, as I went back,
and took my chair in silence. She waited a little, and steadied herself. When
she went on, but one sign of feeling was discernible in her. She spoke
without looking at me. Her hands were fast clasped in her lap, and her eyes
were fixed on the ground.
“I ought to have done you the common justice to explain myself,” she
said, repeating my own words. “You shall see whether I did try to do you
justice, or not. I told you just now that I never slept, and never returned to
my bed, after you had left my sitting-room. It’s useless to trouble you by
dwelling on what I thought—you would not understand my thoughts—I
will only tell you what I did, when time enough had passed to help me to
recover myself. I refrained from alarming the house, and telling everybody
what had happened—as I ought to have done. In spite of what I had seen, I
was fond enough of you to believe—no matter what!—any impossibility,
rather than admit it to my own mind that you were deliberately a thief. I
thought and thought—and I ended in writing to you.”
“I never received the letter.”
“I know you never received it. Wait a little, and you shall hear why. My
letter would have told you nothing openly. It would not have ruined you for
life, if it had fallen into some other person’s hands. It would only have
said—in a manner which you yourself could not possibly have mistaken—
that I had reason to know you were in debt, and that it was in my experience
and in my mother’s experience of you, that you were not very discreet, or
very scrupulous about how you got money when you wanted it. You would
have remembered the visit of the French lawyer, and you would have
known what I referred to. If you had read on with some interest after that,
you would have come to an offer I had to make to you—the offer, privately
(not a word, mind, to be said openly about it between us!), of the loan of as
large a sum of money as I could get.—And I would have got it!” she ex-
claimed, her colour beginning to rise again, and her eyes looking up at me
once more. “I would have pledged the Diamond myself, if I could have got
the money in no other way! In those words I wrote to you. Wait! I did more
than that. I arranged with Penelope to give you the letter when nobody was
near. I planned to shut myself into my bedroom, and to have the sitting-
room left open and empty all the morning. And I hoped—with all my heart
and soul I hoped!—that you would take the opportunity, and put the Dia-
mond back secretly in the drawer.”
I attempted to speak. She lifted her hand impatiently, and stopped me. In
the rapid alternations of her temper, her anger was beginning to rise again.
She got up from her chair, and approached me.
“I know what you are going to say,” she went on. “You are going to re-
mind me again that you never received my letter. I can tell you why. I tore it
up.”
“For what reason?” I asked.
“For the best of reasons. I preferred tearing it up to throwing it away
upon such a man as you! What was the first news that reached me in the
morning? Just as my little plan was complete, what did I hear? I heard that
you—you!!!—were the foremost person in the house in fetching the police.
You were the active man; you were the leader; you were working harder
than any of them to recover the jewel! You even carried your audacity far
enough to ask to speak to me about the loss of the Diamond—the Diamond
which you yourself had stolen; the Diamond which was all the time in your
own hands! After that proof of your horrible falseness and cunning, I tore
up my letter. But even then—even when I was maddened by the searching
and questioning of the policeman, whom you had sent in—even then, there
was some infatuation in my mind which wouldn’t let me give you up. I said
to myself, ‘He has played his vile farce before everybody else in the house.
Let me try if he can play it before me.’ Somebody told me you were on the
terrace. I went down to the terrace. I forced myself to look at you; I forced
myself to speak to you. Have you forgotten what I said?”
I might have answered that I remembered every word of it. But what pur-
pose, at that moment, would the answer have served?
How could I tell her that what she had said had astonished me, had dis-
tressed me, had suggested to me that she was in a state of dangerous
nervous excitement, had even roused a moment’s doubt in my mind wheth-
er the loss of the jewel was as much a mystery to her as to the rest of us—
but had never once given me so much as a glimpse at the truth? Without the
shadow of a proof to produce in vindication of my innocence, how could I
persuade her that I knew no more than the veriest stranger could have
known of what was really in her thoughts when she spoke to me on the
terrace?
“It may suit your convenience to forget; it suits my convenience to re-
member,” she went on. “I know what I said—for I considered it with my-
self, before I said it. I gave you one opportunity after another of owning the
truth. I left nothing unsaid that I could say—short of actually telling you
that I knew you had committed the theft. And all the return you made, was
to look at me with your vile pretence of astonishment, and your false face of
innocence—just as you have looked at me today; just as you are looking at
me now! I left you, that morning, knowing you at last for what you were—
for what you are—as base a wretch as ever walked the earth!”
“If you had spoken out at the time, you might have left me, Rachel,
knowing that you had cruelly wronged an innocent man.”
“If I had spoken out before other people,” she retorted, with another burst
of indignation, “you would have been disgraced for life! If I had spoken out
to no ears but yours, you would have denied it, as you are denying it now!
Do you think I should have believed you? Would a man hesitate at a lie,
who had done what I saw you do—who had behaved about it afterwards, as
I saw you behave? I tell you again, I shrank from the horror of hearing you
lie, after the horror of seeing you thieve. You talk as if this was a misunder-
standing which a few words might have set right! Well! the misunderstand-
ing is at an end. Is the thing set right? No! the thing is just where it was. I
don’t believe you now! I don’t believe you found the nightgown, I don’t be-
lieve in Rosanna Spearman’s letter, I don’t believe a word you have said.
You stole it—I saw you! You affected to help the police—I saw you! You
pledged the Diamond to the moneylender in London—I am sure of it! You
cast the suspicion of your disgrace (thanks to my base silence!) on an inno-
cent man! You fled to the Continent with your plunder the next morning!
After all that vileness, there was but one thing more you could do. You
could come here with a last falsehood on your lips—you could come here,
and tell me that I have wronged you!”
If I had stayed a moment more, I know not what words might have es-
caped me which I should have remembered with vain repentance and regret.
I passed by her, and opened the door for the second time. For the second
time—with the frantic perversity of a roused woman—she caught me by the
arm, and barred my way out.
“Let me go, Rachel,” I said. “It will be better for both of us. Let me go.”
 The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom—her quickened convulsive
breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back at the door.
“Why did you come here?” she persisted, desperately. “I ask you again—
why did you come here? Are you afraid I shall expose you? Now you are a
rich man, now you have got a place in the world, now you may marry the
best lady in the land—are you afraid I shall say the words which I have nev-
er said yet to anybody but you? I can’t say the words! I can’t expose you! I
am worse, if worse can be, than you are yourself.” Sobs and tears burst
from her. She struggled with them fiercely; she held me more and more
firmly. “I can’t tear you out of my heart,” she said, “even now! You may
trust in the shameful, shameful weakness which can only struggle against
you in this way!” She suddenly let go of me—she threw up her hands, and
wrung them frantically in the air. “Any other woman living would shrink
from the disgrace of touching him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, God! I despise
myself even more heartily than I despise him!”
The tears were forcing their way into my eyes in spite of me—the horror
of it was to be endured no longer.
“You shall know that you have wronged me, yet,” I said. “Or you shall
never see me again!”
With those words, I left her. She started up from the chair on which she
had dropped the moment before: she started up—the noble creature!—and
followed me across the outer room, with a last merciful word at parting.
“Franklin!” she said, “I forgive you! Oh, Franklin, Franklin! we shall
never meet again. Say you forgive me!”
I turned, so as to let my face show her that I was past speaking—I turned,
and waved my hand, and saw her dimly, as in a vision, through the tears
that had conquered me at last.
The next moment, the worst bitterness of it was over. I was out in the
garden again. I saw her, and heard her, no more.
 VIII

Late that evening, I was surprised at my lodgings by a visit from Mr. Bruff.
There was a noticeable change in the lawyer’s manner. It had lost its usu-
al confidence and spirit. He shook hands with me, for the first time in his
life, in silence.
“Are you going back to Hampstead?” I asked, by way of saying
something.
“I have just left Hampstead,” he answered. “I know, Mr. Franklin, that
you have got at the truth at last. But, I tell you plainly, if I could have fore-
seen the price that was to be paid for it, I should have preferred leaving you
in the dark.”
“You have seen Rachel?”
“I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place; it was im-
possible to let her return in the carriage by herself. I can hardly hold you
responsible—considering that you saw her in my house and by my permis-
sion—for the shock that this unlucky interview has inflicted on her. All I
can do is to provide against a repetition of the mischief. She is young—she
has a resolute spirit—she will get over this, with time and rest to help her. I
want to be assured that you will do nothing to hinder her recovery. May I
depend on your making no second attempt to see her—except with my
sanction and approval?”
“After what she has suffered, and after what I have suffered,” I said, “you
may rely on me.”
“I have your promise?”
“You have my promise.”
Mr. Bruff looked relieved. He put down his hat, and drew his chair nearer
to mine.
“That’s settled!” he said. “Now, about the future—your future, I mean.
To my mind, the result of the extraordinary turn which the matter has now
taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachel has told you
the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it. In the second place—though
we know that there must be some dreadful mistake somewhere—we can
hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty, on the evidence of her own
senses; backed, as that evidence has been, by circumstances which appear,
on the face of them, to tell dead against you.”
There I interposed. “I don’t blame Rachel,” I said. “I only regret that she
could not prevail on herself to speak more plainly to me at the time.”
“You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else,” rejoined
Mr. Bruff. “And even then, I doubt if a girl of any delicacy, whose heart had
been set on marrying you, could have brought herself to charge you to your
face with being a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel’s nature to do it. In a
very different matter to this matter of yours—which placed her, however, in
a position not altogether unlike her position towards you—I happen to
know that she was influenced by a similar motive to the motive which actu-
ated her conduct in your case. Besides, as she told me herself, on our way to
town this evening, if she had spoken plainly, she would no more have be-
lieved your denial then than she believes it now. What answer can you
make to that? There is no answer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Frank-
lin! my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit—but, as
things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you
plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no pur-
pose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from
the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last
year at Lady Verinder’s country house; and let us look to what we can dis-
cover in the future, instead of to what we can not discover in the past.”
“Surely you forget,” I said, “that the whole thing is essentially a matter of
the past—so far as I am concerned?”
“Answer me this,” retorted Mr. Bruff. “Is the Moonstone at the bottom of
all the mischief—or is it not?”
“It is—of course.”
“Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone, when it
was taken to London?”
“It was pledged to Mr. Luker.”
“We know that you are not the person who pledged it. Do we know who
did?”
“No.”
“Where do we believe the Moonstone to be now?”
 “Deposited in the keeping of Mr. Luker’s bankers.”
“Exactly. Now observe. We are already in the month of June. Towards
the end of the month (I can’t be particular to a day) a year will have elapsed
from the time when we believe the jewel to have been pledged. There is a
chance—to say the least—that the person who pawned it, may be prepared
to redeem it when the year’s time has expired. If he redeems it, Mr. Luker
must himself—according to the terms of his own arrangement—take the
Diamond out of his banker’s hands. Under these circumstances, I propose
setting a watch at the bank, as the present month draws to an end, and dis-
covering who the person is to whom Mr. Luker restores the Moonstone. Do
you see it now?”
I admitted (a little unwillingly) that the idea was a new one, at any rate.
“It’s Mr. Murthwaite’s idea quite as much as mine,” said Mr. Bruff. “It
might have never entered my head, but for a conversation we had together
some time since. If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely to be on
the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too—and something
serious may come of it. What comes of it doesn’t matter to you and me ex-
cept as it may help us to lay our hands on the mysterious Somebody who
pawned the Diamond. That person, you may rely on it, is responsible (I
don’t pretend to know how) for the position in which you stand at this mo-
ment; and that person alone can set you right in Rachel’s estimation.”
“I can’t deny,” I said, “that the plan you propose meets the difficulty in a
way that is very daring, and very ingenious, and very new. But—”
“But you have an objection to make?”
“Yes. My objection is, that your proposal obliges us to wait.”
“Granted. As I reckon the time, it requires you to wait about a fortnight—
more or less. Is that so very long?”
“It’s a lifetime, Mr. Bruff, in such a situation as mine. My existence will
be simply unendurable to me, unless I do something towards clearing my
character at once.”
“Well, well, I understand that. Have you thought yet of what you can
do?”
“I have thought of consulting Sergeant Cuff.”
“He has retired from the police. It’s useless to expect the Sergeant to help
you.”
“I know where to find him; and I can but try.”
 “Try,” said Mr. Bruff, after a moment’s consideration. “The case has as-
sumed such an extraordinary aspect since Sergeant Cuff’s time, that you
may revive his interest in the inquiry. Try, and let me hear the result. In the
meanwhile,” he continued, rising, “if you make no discoveries between this,
and the end of the month, am I free to try, on my side, what can be done by
keeping a lookout at the bank?”
“Certainly,” I answered—“unless I relieve you of all necessity for trying
the experiment in the interval.”
Mr. Bruff smiled, and took up his hat.
“Tell Sergeant Cuff,” he rejoined, “that I say the discovery of the truth
depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. And let
me hear what the Sergeant’s experience says to that.”
So we parted.
Early the next morning, I set forth for the little town of Dorking—the
place of Sergeant Cuff’s retirement, as indicated to me by Betteredge.
Inquiring at the hotel, I received the necessary directions for finding the
Sergeant’s cottage. It was approached by a quiet bye-road, a little way out
of the town, and it stood snugly in the middle of its own plot of garden
ground, protected by a good brick wall at the back and the sides, and by a
high quickset hedge in front. The gate, ornamented at the upper part by
smartly-painted trellis-work, was locked. After ringing at the bell, I peered
through the trellis-work, and saw the great Cuff’s favourite flower every-
where; blooming in his garden, clustering over his door, looking in at his
windows. Far from the crimes and the mysteries of the great city, the illus-
trious thief-taker was placidly living out the last Sybarite years of his life,
smothered in roses!
A decent elderly woman opened the gate to me, and at once annihilated
all the hopes I had built on securing the assistance of Sergeant Cuff. He had
started, only the day before, on a journey to Ireland.
“Has he gone there on business?” I asked.
The woman smiled. “He has only one business now, sir,” she said; “and
that’s roses. Some great man’s gardener in Ireland has found out something
new in the growing of roses—and Mr. Cuff’s away to inquire into it.”
“Do you know when he will be back?”
“It’s quite uncertain, sir. Mr. Cuff said he should come back directly, or
be away some time, just according as he found the new discovery worth
nothing, or worth looking into. If you have any message to leave for him,
I’ll take care, sir, that he gets it.”
I gave her my card, having first written on it in pencil: “I have something
to say about the Moonstone. Let me hear from you as soon as you get
back.” That done, there was nothing left but to submit to circumstances, and
return to London.
In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am now writ-
ing, the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant’s cottage simply ag-
gravated the restless impulse in me to be doing something. On the day of
my return from Dorking, I determined that the next morning should find me
bent on a new effort at forcing my way, through all obstacles, from the
darkness to the light.
What form was my next experiment to take?
If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering that
question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts, he would, no
doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on this occasion, my
uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps possible that my German
training was in some degree responsible for the labyrinth of useless specula-
tions in which I now involved myself. For the greater part of the night, I sat
smoking, and building up theories, one more profoundly improbable than
another. When I did get to sleep, my waking fancies pursued me in dreams.
I rose the next morning, with Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Object-
ive inextricably entangled together in my mind; and I began the day which
was to witness my next effort at practical action of some kind, by doubting
whether I had any sort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to con-
sider any sort of thing (the Diamond included) as existing at all.
How long I might have remained lost in the mist of my own metaphysics,
if I had been left to extricate myself, it is impossible for me to say. As the
event proved, accident came to my rescue, and happily delivered me. I
happened to wear, that morning, the same coat which I had worn on the day
of my interview with Rachel. Searching for something else in one of the
pockets, I came upon a crumpled piece of paper, and, taking it out, found
Betteredge’s forgotten letter in my hand.
It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply. I
went to my writing-table, and read his letter again.
A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it, is not always
an easy letter to answer. Betteredge’s present effort at corresponding with
me came within this category. Mr. Candy’s assistant, otherwise Ezra Jen-
nings, had told his master that he had seen me; and Mr. Candy, in his turn,
wanted to see me and say something to me, when I was next in the neigh-
bourhood of Frizinghall. What was to be said in answer to that, which
would be worth the paper it was written on? I sat idly drawing likenesses
from memory of Mr. Candy’s remarkable-looking assistant, on the sheet of
paper which I had vowed to dedicate to Betteredge—until it suddenly oc-
curred to me that here was the irrepressible Ezra Jennings getting in my
way again! I threw a dozen portraits, at least, of the man with the piebald
hair (the hair in every case, remarkably like), into the waste-paper basket—
and then and there, wrote my answer to Betteredge. It was a perfectly com-
monplace letter—but it had one excellent effect on me. The effort of writing
a few sentences, in plain English, completely cleared my mind of the
cloudy nonsense which had filled it since the previous day.
Devoting myself once more to the elucidation of the impenetrable puzzle
which my own position presented to me, I now tried to meet the difficulty
by investigating it from a plainly practical point of view. The events of the
memorable night being still unintelligible to me, I looked a little farther
back, and searched my memory of the earlier hours of the birthday for any
incident which might prove of some assistance to me in finding the clue.
Had anything happened while Rachel and I were finishing the painted
door? or, later, when I rode over to Frizinghall? or afterwards, when I went
back with Godfrey Ablewhite and his sisters? or, later again, when I put the
Moonstone into Rachel’s hands? or, later still, when the company came, and
we all assembled round the dinner-table? My memory disposed of that
string of questions readily enough, until I came to the last. Looking back at
the social event of the birthday dinner, I found myself brought to a standstill
at the outset of the inquiry. I was not even capable of accurately remember-
ing the number of the guests who had sat at the same table with me.
To feel myself completely at fault here, and to conclude, thereupon, that
the incidents of the dinner might especially repay the trouble of investigat-
ing them, formed parts of the same mental process, in my case. I believe
other people, in a similar situation, would have reasoned as I did. When the
pursuit of our own interests causes us to become objects of inquiry to
ourselves, we are naturally suspicious of what we don’t know. Once in pos-
session of the names of the persons who had been present at the dinner, I
resolved—as a means of enriching the deficient resources of my own
memory—to appeal to the memory of the rest of the guests; to write down
all that they could recollect of the social events of the birthday; and to test
the result, thus obtained, by the light of what had happened afterwards,
when the company had left the house.
This last and newest of my many contemplated experiments in the art of
inquiry—which Betteredge would probably have attributed to the clear-
headed, or French, side of me being uppermost for the moment—may fairly
claim record here, on its own merits. Unlikely as it may seem, I had now
actually groped my way to the root of the matter at last. All I wanted was a
hint to guide me in the right direction at starting. Before another day had
passed over my head, that hint was given me by one of the company who
had been present at the birthday feast!

With the plan of proceeding which I now had in view, it was first necessary
to possess the complete list of the guests. This I could easily obtain from
Gabriel Betteredge. I determined to go back to Yorkshire on that day, and to
begin my contemplated investigation the next morning.
It was just too late to start by the train which left London before noon.
There was no alternative but to wait, nearly three hours, for the departure of
the next train. Was there anything I could do in London, which might use-
fully occupy this interval of time?
My thoughts went back again obstinately to the birthday dinner.
Though I had forgotten the numbers, and, in many cases, the names of
the guests, I remembered readily enough that by far the larger proportion of
them came from Frizinghall, or from its neighbourhood. But the larger pro-
portion was not all. Some few of us were not regular residents in the coun-
try. I myself was one of the few. Mr. Murthwaite was another. Godfrey
Ablewhite was a third. Mr. Bruff—no: I called to mind that business had
prevented Mr. Bruff from making one of the party. Had any ladies been
present, whose usual residence was in London? I could only remember
Miss Clack as coming within this latter category. However, here were three
of the guests, at any rate, whom it was clearly advisable for me to see be-
fore I left town. I drove off at once to Mr. Bruff’s office; not knowing the
addresses of the persons of whom I was in search, and thinking it probable
that he might put me in the way of finding them.
 Mr. Bruff proved to be too busy to give me more than a minute of his
valuable time. In that minute, however, he contrived to dispose—in the
most discouraging manner—of all the questions I had to put to him.
In the first place, he considered my newly-discovered method of finding a
clue to the mystery as something too purely fanciful to be seriously dis-
cussed. In the second, third, and fourth places, Mr. Murthwaite was now on
his way back to the scene of his past adventures; Miss Clack had suffered
losses, and had settled, from motives of economy, in France; Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite might, or might not, be discoverable somewhere in London. Sup-
pose I inquired at his club? And suppose I excused Mr. Bruff, if he went
back to his business and wished me good morning?
The field of inquiry in London, being now so narrowed as only to include
the one necessity of discovering Godfrey’s address, I took the lawyer’s hint,
and drove to his club.
In the hall, I met with one of the members, who was an old friend of my
cousin’s, and who was also an acquaintance of my own. This gentleman,
after enlightening me on the subject of Godfrey’s address, told me of two
recent events in his life, which were of some importance in themselves, and
which had not previously reached my ears.
It appeared that Godfrey, far from being discouraged by Rachel’s with-
drawal from her engagement to him had made matrimonial advances soon
afterwards to another young lady, reputed to be a great heiress. His suit had
prospered, and his marriage had been considered as a settled and certain
thing. But, here again, the engagement had been suddenly and unexpectedly
broken off—owing, it was said, on this occasion, to a serious difference of
opinion between the bridegroom and the lady’s father, on the question of
settlements.
As some compensation for this second matrimonial disaster, Godfrey had
soon afterwards found himself the object of fond pecuniary remembrance,
on the part of one of his many admirers. A rich old lady—highly respected
at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and a great friend of
Miss Clack’s (to whom she left nothing but a mourning ring)—had be-
queathed to the admirable and meritorious Godfrey a legacy of five thou-
sand pounds. After receiving this handsome addition to his own modest pe-
cuniary resources, he had been heard to say that he felt the necessity of get-
ting a little respite from his charitable labours, and that his doctor pre-
scribed “a run on the Continent, as likely to be productive of much future
benefit to his health.” If I wanted to see him, it would be advisable to lose
no time in paying my contemplated visit.
I went, then and there, to pay my visit.
The same fatality which had made me just one day too late in calling on
Sergeant Cuff, made me again one day too late in calling on Godfrey. He
had left London, on the previous morning, by the tidal train, for Dover. He
was to cross to Ostend; and his servant believed he was going on to Brus-
sels. The time of his return was rather uncertain; but I might be sure he
would be away at least three months.
I went back to my lodgings a little depressed in spirits. Three of the
guests at the birthday dinner—and those three all exceptionally intelligent
people—were out of my reach, at the very time when it was most important
to be able to communicate with them. My last hopes now rested on
Betteredge, and on the friends of the late Lady Verinder whom I might still
find living in the neighbourhood of Rachel’s country house.

On this occasion, I travelled straight to Frizinghall—the town being now

the central point in my field of inquiry. I arrived too late in the evening to be
able to communicate with Betteredge. The next morning, I sent a messenger
with a letter, requesting him to join me at the hotel, at his earliest
convenience.
Having taken the precaution—partly to save time, partly to accommodate
Betteredge—of sending my messenger in a fly, I had a reasonable prospect,
if no delays occurred, of seeing the old man within less than two hours from
the time when I had sent for him. During this interval, I arranged to employ
myself in opening my contemplated inquiry, among the guests present at the
birthday dinner who were personally known to me, and who were easily
within my reach. These were my relatives, the Ablewhites, and Mr. Candy.
The doctor had expressed a special wish to see me, and the doctor lived in
the next street. So to Mr. Candy I went first.
After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding traces
in the doctor’s face of the severe illness from which he had suffered. But I
was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in him when he entered
the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were dim; his hair had turned
completely grey; his face was wizen; his figure had shrunk. I looked at the
once lively, rattlepated, humorous little doctor—associated in my remem-
brance with the perpetration of incorrigible social indiscretions and innu-
merable boyish jokes—and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old
tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his
clothes and his jewellery—in cruel mockery of the change in him—were as
gay and as gaudy as ever.
“I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake,” he said; “and I am heartily glad
to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you, pray command
my services, sir—pray command my services!”
He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eager-
ness, and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, which
he was perfectly—I might say childishly—incapable of concealing from
notice.
With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen the necessity
of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before I could hope to
interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing their best to assist my in-
quiry. On the journey to Frizinghall I had arranged what my explanation
was to be—and I seized the opportunity now offered to me of trying the ef-
fect of it on Mr. Candy.
“I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, on
rather a romantic errand,” I said. “It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in which the
late Lady Verinder’s friends all took some interest. You remember the mys-
terious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since? Circumstances
have lately happened which lead to the hope that it may yet be found—and
I am interesting myself, as one of the family, in recovering it. Among the
obstacles in my way, there is the necessity of collecting again all the evid-
ence which was discovered at the time, and more if possible. There are pe-
culiarities in this case which make it desirable to revive my recollection of
everything that happened in the house, on the evening of Miss Verinder’s
birthday. And I venture to appeal to her late mother’s friends who were
present on that occasion, to lend me the assistance of their memories—”
I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, when I was
suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy’s face that my experiment
on him was a total failure.
The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers all the
time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face with an
expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see. What he was
thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thing clearly visible was
that I had failed, after the first two or three words, in fixing his attention.
The only chance of recalling him to himself appeared to lie in changing the
subject. I tried a new topic immediately.
“So much,” I said, gaily, “for what brings me to Frizinghall! Now,
Mr. Candy, it’s your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge—”
He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.
“Yes! yes! yes!” he exclaimed eagerly. “That’s it! I sent you a message!”
“And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter,” I went on. “You had
something to say to me, the next time I was in your neighbourhood. Well,
Mr. Candy, here I am!”
“Here you are!” echoed the doctor. “And Betteredge was quite right. I
had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is a won-
derful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!”
He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again. Re-
collecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of the fever on
his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that I might help
him at starting.
“It’s a long time since we met,” I said. “We last saw each other at the last
birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give.”
“That’s it!” cried Mr. Candy. “The birthday dinner!” He started impuls-
ively to his feet, and looked at me. A deep flush suddenly overspread his
faded face, and he abruptly sat down again, as if conscious of having be-
trayed a weakness which he would fain have concealed. It was plain, piti-
ably plain, that he was aware of his own defect of memory, and that he was
bent on hiding it from the observation of his friends.
Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words he had
just said—few as they were—roused my curiosity instantly to the highest
pitch. The birthday dinner had already become the one event in the past, at
which I looked back with strangely-mixed feelings of hope and distrust.
And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaiming itself as the
subject on which Mr. Candy had something important to say to me!
I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time, my own interests
were at the bottom of my compassionate motive, and they hurried me on a
little too abruptly, to the end I had in view.
“It’s nearly a year now,” I said, “since we sat at that pleasant table. Have
you made any memorandum—in your diary, or otherwise—of what you
wanted to say to me?”
Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understood
it, as an insult.
“I require no memorandum, Mr. Blake,” he said, stiffly enough. “I am not
such a very old man, yet—and my memory (thank God) is to be thoroughly
depended on!”
It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was offended
with me.
“I wish I could say the same of my memory,” I answered. “When I try to
think of matters that are a year old, I seldom find my remembrance as vivid
as I could wish it to be. Take the dinner at Lady Verinder’s, for instance—”
Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.
“Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder’s!” he exclaimed, more
eagerly than ever. “I have got something to say to you about that.”
His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry, so
wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidently trying
hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection. “It was a very
pleasant dinner,” he burst out suddenly, with an air of saying exactly what
he wanted to say. “A very pleasant dinner, Mr. Blake, wasn’t it?” He nod-
ded and smiled, and appeared to think, poor fellow, that he had succeeded
in concealing the total failure of his memory, by a well-timed exertion of
his own presence of mind.
It was so distressing that I at once shifted the talk—deeply as I was inter-
ested in his recovering the lost remembrance—to topics of local interest.
Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery little scandals and quarrels in
the town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to his
memory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth gossiping
fluency of former times. But there were moments, even in the full flow of
his talkativeness, when he suddenly hesitated—looked at me for a moment
with the vacant inquiry once more in his eyes—controlled himself—and
went on again. I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is surely nothing
less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies, to absorb in si-
lent resignation the news of a country town?) until the clock on the chim-
neypiece told me that my visit had been prolonged beyond half an hour.
Having now some right to consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take
leave. As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted to the birthday festival of his
own accord.
 “I am so glad we have met again,” he said. “I had it on my mind—I
really had it on my mind, Mr. Blake, to speak to you. About the dinner at
Lady Verinder’s, you know? A pleasant dinner—really a pleasant dinner
now, wasn’t it?”
On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel hardly as certain of having
prevented me from suspecting his lapse of memory, as he had felt on the
first occasion. The wistful look clouded his face again: and, after apparently
designing to accompany me to the street door, he suddenly changed his
mind, rang the bell for the servant, and remained in the drawing-room.
I went slowly down the doctor’s stairs, feeling the disheartening convic-
tion that he really had something to say which it was vitally important to me
to hear, and that he was morally incapable of saying it. The effort of re-
membering that he wanted to speak to me was, but too evidently, the only
effort that his enfeebled memory was now able to achieve.
Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner on my
way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the ground floor
of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me:—
“I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?”
I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.
 IX

The doctor’s pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street door
open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning light fell full
on the face of Mr. Candy’s assistant when I turned, and looked at him.
It was impossible to dispute Betteredge’s assertion that the appearance of
Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against him. His
gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy
eyes, his extraordinary particoloured hair, the puzzling contradiction
between his face and figure which made him look old and young both to-
gether—were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable im-
pression of him on a stranger’s mind. And yet—feeling this as I certainly
did—it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal
to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist. While my know-
ledge of the world warned me to answer the question which he had put, ac-
knowledging that I did indeed find Mr. Candy sadly changed, and then to
proceed on my way out of the house—my interest in Ezra Jennings held me
rooted to the place, and gave him the opportunity of speaking to me in
private about his employer, for which he had been evidently on the watch.
“Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?” I said, observing that he held
his hat in his hand. “I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite.”
Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was walk-
ing my way.
We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl—who
was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way
out—received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to the
time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips, and with
eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in his face. The
poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out of the house, I had
Betteredge’s word for it that he was unpopular everywhere. “What a life!” I
thought to myself, as we descended the doctor’s doorsteps.
 Having already referred to Mr. Candy’s illness on his side, Ezra Jennings
now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the subject. His si-
lence said significantly, “It’s your turn now.” I, too, had my reasons for re-
ferring to the doctor’s illness: and I readily accepted the responsibility of
speaking first.
“Judging by the change I see in him,” I began, “Mr. Candy’s illness must
have been far more serious that I had supposed?”
“It is almost a miracle,” said Ezra Jennings, “that he lived through it.”
“Is his memory never any better than I have found it today? He has been
trying to speak to me—”
“Of something which happened before he was taken ill?” asked the as-
sistant, observing that I hesitated.
“Yes.”
“His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled,” said
Ezra Jennings. “It is almost to be deplored, poor fellow, that even the wreck
of it remains. While he remembers dimly plans that he formed—things,
here and there, that he had to say or do before his illness—he is perfectly
incapable of recalling what the plans were, or what the thing was that he
had to say or do. He is painfully conscious of his own deficiency, and pain-
fully anxious, as you must have seen, to hide it from observation. If he
could only have recovered in a complete state of oblivion as to the past, he
would have been a happier man. Perhaps we should all be happier,” he ad-
ded, with a sad smile, “if we could but completely forget!”
“There are some events surely in all men’s lives,” I replied, “the memory
of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose?”
“That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid it cannot
truly be said of all. Have you any reason to suppose that the lost remem-
brance which Mr. Candy tried to recover—while you were speaking to him
just now—was a remembrance which it was important to you that he should
recall?”
In saying those words, he had touched, of his own accord, on the very
point upon which I was anxious to consult him. The interest I felt in this
strange man had impelled me, in the first instance, to give him the oppor-
tunity of speaking to me; reserving what I might have to say, on my side, in
relation to his employer, until I was first satisfied that he was a person in
whose delicacy and discretion I could trust. The little that he had said, thus
far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman.
He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession,
which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere
else in the civilised world. Whatever the object which he had in view, in
putting the question that he had just addressed to me, I felt no doubt that I
was justified—so far—in answering him without reserve.
“I believe I have a strong interest,” I said, “in tracing the lost remem-
brance which Mr. Candy was unable to recall. May I ask whether you can
suggest to me any method by which I might assist his memory?”
Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden flash of interest in his dreamy
brown eyes.
“Mr. Candy’s memory is beyond the reach of assistance,” he said. “I have
tried to help it often enough since his recovery, to be able to speak posit-
ively on that point.”
This disappointed me; and I owned it.
“I confess you led me to hope for a less discouraging answer than that,” I
said.
Ezra Jennings smiled. “It may not, perhaps, be a final answer, Mr. Blake.
It may be possible to trace Mr. Candy’s lost recollection, without the neces-
sity of appealing to Mr. Candy himself.”
“Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask how?”
“By no means. My only difficulty in answering your question, is the diffi-
culty of explaining myself. May I trust to your patience, if I refer once more
to Mr. Candy’s illness: and if I speak of it this time without sparing you cer-
tain professional details?”
“Pray go on! You have interested me already in hearing the details.”
My eagerness seemed to amuse—perhaps, I might rather say, to please
him. He smiled again. We had by this time left the last houses in the town
behind us. Ezra Jennings stopped for a moment, and picked some wild
flowers from the hedge by the roadside. “How beautiful they are!” he said,
simply, showing his little nosegay to me. “And how few people in England
seem to admire them as they deserve!”
“You have not always been in England?” I said.
“No. I was born, and partly brought up, in one of our colonies. My father
was an Englishman; but my mother—We are straying away from our sub-
ject, Mr. Blake; and it is my fault. The truth is, I have associations with
these modest little hedgeside flowers—It doesn’t matter; we were speaking
of Mr. Candy. To Mr. Candy let us return.”
 Connecting the few words about himself which thus reluctantly escaped
him, with the melancholy view of life which led him to place the conditions
of human happiness in complete oblivion of the past, I felt satisfied that the
story which I had read in his face was, in two particulars at least, the story
that it really told. He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mix-
ture of some foreign race in his English blood.
“You have heard, I dare say, of the original cause of Mr. Candy’s
illness?” he resumed. “The night of Lady Verinder’s dinner-party was a
night of heavy rain. My employer drove home through it in his gig, and
reached the house wetted to the skin. He found an urgent message from a
patient, waiting for him; and he most unfortunately went at once to visit the
sick person, without stopping to change his clothes. I was myself profes-
sionally detained, that night, by a case at some distance from Frizinghall.
When I got back the next morning, I found Mr. Candy’s groom waiting in
great alarm to take me to his master’s room. By that time the mischief was
done; the illness had set in.”
“The illness has only been described to me, in general terms, as a fever,”
I said.
“I can add nothing which will make the description more accurate,”
answered Ezra Jennings. “From first to last the fever assumed no specific
form. I sent at once to two of Mr. Candy’s medical friends in the town, both
physicians, to come and give me their opinion of the case. They agreed with
me that it looked serious; but they both strongly dissented from the view I
took of the treatment. We differed entirely in the conclusions which we
drew from the patient’s pulse. The two doctors, arguing from the rapidity of
the beat, declared that a lowering treatment was the only treatment to be ad-
opted. On my side, I admitted the rapidity of the pulse, but I also pointed to
its alarming feebleness as indicating an exhausted condition of the system,
and as showing a plain necessity for the administration of stimulants. The
two doctors were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade, barley-water, and so
on. I was for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine. A
serious difference of opinion, as you see! A difference between two physi-
cians of established local repute, and a stranger who was only an assistant
in the house. For the first few days, I had no choice but to give way to my
elders and betters; the patient steadily sinking all the time. I made a second
attempt to appeal to the plain, undeniably plain, evidence of the pulse. Its
rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness had increased. The two doctors
took offence at my obstinacy. They said, ‘Mr. Jennings, either we manage
this case, or you manage it. Which is it to be?’ I said, ‘Gentlemen, give me
five minutes to consider, and that plain question shall have a plain reply.’
When the time expired, I was ready with my answer. I said, ‘You positively
refuse to try the stimulant treatment?’ They refused in so many words. ‘I
mean to try it at once, gentlemen.’—‘Try it, Mr. Jennings, and we withdraw
from the case.’ I sent down to the cellar for a bottle of champagne; and I ad-
ministered half a tumbler-full of it to the patient with my own hand. The
two physicians took up their hats in silence, and left the house.”
“You had assumed a serious responsibility,” I said. “In your place, I am
afraid I should have shrunk from it.”
“In my place, Mr. Blake, you would have remembered that Mr. Candy
had taken you into his employment, under circumstances which made you
his debtor for life. In my place, you would have seen him sinking, hour by
hour; and you would have risked anything, rather than let the one man on
earth who had befriended you, die before your eyes. Don’t suppose that I
had no sense of the terrible position in which I had placed myself! There
were moments when I felt all the misery of my friendlessness, all the peril
of my dreadful responsibility. If I had been a happy man, if I had led a pros-
perous life, I believe I should have sunk under the task I had imposed on
myself. But I had no happy time to look back at, no past peace of mind to
force itself into contrast with my present anxiety and suspense—and I held
firm to my resolution through it all. I took an interval in the middle of the
day, when my patient’s condition was at its best, for the repose I needed.
For the rest of the four-and-twenty hours, as long as his life was in danger, I
never left his bedside. Towards sunset, as usual in such cases, the delirium
incidental to the fever came on. It lasted more or less through the night; and
then intermitted, at that terrible time in the early morning—from two
o’clock to five—when the vital energies even of the healthiest of us are at
their lowest. It is then that Death gathers in his human harvest most abund-
antly. It was then that Death and I fought our fight over the bed, which
should have the man who lay on it. I never hesitated in pursuing the treat-
ment on which I had staked everything. When wine failed, I tried brandy.
When the other stimulants lost their influence, I doubled the dose. After an
interval of suspense—the like of which I hope to God I shall never feel
again—there came a day when the rapidity of the pulse slightly, but appre-
ciably, diminished; and, better still, there came also a change in the beat—
an unmistakable change to steadiness and strength. Then, I knew that I had
saved him; and then I own I broke down. I laid the poor fellow’s wasted
hand back on the bed, and burst out crying. An hysterical relief,
Mr. Blake—nothing more! Physiology says, and says truly, that some men
are born with female constitutions—and I am one of them!”
He made that bitterly professional apology for his tears, speaking quietly
and unaffectedly, as he had spoken throughout. His tone and manner, from
beginning to end, showed him to be especially, almost morbidly, anxious
not to set himself up as an object of interest to me.
“You may well ask, why I have wearied you with all these details?” he
went on. “It is the only way I can see, Mr. Blake, of properly introducing to
you what I have to say next. Now you know exactly what my position was,
at the time of Mr. Candy’s illness, you will the more readily understand the
sore need I had of lightening the burden on my mind by giving it, at inter-
vals, some sort of relief. I have had the presumption to occupy my leisure,
for some years past, in writing a book, addressed to the members of my pro-
fession—a book on the intricate and delicate subject of the brain and the
nervous system. My work will probably never be finished; and it will cer-
tainly never be published. It has none the less been the friend of many
lonely hours; and it helped me to while away the anxious time—the time of
waiting, and nothing else—at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I told you he was deliri-
ous, I think? And I mentioned the time at which his delirium came on?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I had reached a section of my book, at that time, which touched on
this same question of delirium. I won’t trouble you at any length with my
theory on the subject—I will confine myself to telling you only what it is
your present interest to know. It has often occurred to me in the course of
my medical practice, to doubt whether we can justifiably infer—in cases of
delirium—that the loss of the faculty of speaking connectedly, implies of
necessity the loss of the faculty of thinking connectedly as well. Poor
Mr. Candy’s illness gave me an opportunity of putting this doubt to the test.
I understand the art of writing in shorthand; and I was able to take down the
patient’s ‘wanderings’, exactly as they fell from his lips.—Do you see,
Mr. Blake, what I am coming to at last?”
I saw it clearly, and waited with breathless interest to hear more.
“At odds and ends of time,” Ezra Jennings went on, “I reproduced my
shorthand notes, in the ordinary form of writing—leaving large spaces
between the broken phrases, and even the single words, as they had fallen
disconnectedly from Mr. Candy’s lips. I then treated the result thus ob-
tained, on something like the principle which one adopts in putting together
a child’s puzzle. It is all confusion to begin with; but it may be all brought
into order and shape, if you can only find the right way. Acting on this plan,
I filled in each blank space on the paper, with what the words or phrases on
either side of it suggested to me as the speaker’s meaning; altering over and
over again, until my additions followed naturally on the spoken words
which came before them, and fitted naturally into the spoken words which
came after them. The result was, that I not only occupied in this way many
vacant and anxious hours, but that I arrived at something which was (as it
seemed to me) a confirmation of the theory that I held. In plainer words,
after putting the broken sentences together I found the superior faculty of
thinking going on, more or less connectedly, in my patient’s mind, while the
inferior faculty of expression was in a state of almost complete incapacity
and confusion.”
“One word!” I interposed eagerly. “Did my name occur in any of his
wanderings?”
“You shall hear, Mr. Blake. Among my written proofs of the assertion
which I have just advanced—or, I ought to say, among the written experi-
ments, tending to put my assertion to the proof—there is one, in which your
name occurs. For nearly the whole of one night, Mr. Candy’s mind was oc-
cupied with something between himself and you. I have got the broken
words, as they dropped from his lips, on one sheet of paper. And I have got
the links of my own discovering which connect those words together, on
another sheet of paper. The product (as the arithmeticians would say) is an
intelligible statement—first, of something actually done in the past;
secondly, of something which Mr. Candy contemplated doing in the future,
if his illness had not got in the way, and stopped him. The question is
whether this does, or does not, represent the lost recollection which he
vainly attempted to find when you called on him this morning?”
“Not a doubt of it!” I answered. “Let us go back directly, and look at the
papers!”
“Quite impossible, Mr. Blake.”
“Why?”
“Put yourself in my position for a moment,” said Ezra Jennings. “Would
you disclose to another person what had dropped unconsciously from the
lips of your suffering patient and your helpless friend, without first knowing
that there was a necessity to justify you in opening your lips?”
I felt that he was unanswerable, here; but I tried to argue the question,
nevertheless.
“My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe,” I replied, “would
depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to compromise my
friend or not.”
“I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the question,
long since,” said Ezra Jennings. “Wherever my notes included anything
which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes have been
destroyed. My manuscript experiments at my friend’s bedside, include noth-
ing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to others, if he
had recovered the use of his memory. In your case, I have every reason to
suppose that my notes contain something which he actually wished to say to
you.”
“And yet, you hesitate?”
“And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances under which I ob-
tained the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail
upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that there is a
reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was so
helplessly dependent upon me! Is it too much to ask, if I request you only to
hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection—or what you believe
that lost recollection to be?”
To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his
manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to
openly acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond.
Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest which I
had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable reluctance to dis-
close the degrading position in which I stood. I took refuge once more in
the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared myself to meet the curi-
osity of strangers.
This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the part
of the person to whom I addressed myself. Ezra Jennings listened patiently,
even anxiously, until I had done.
“I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to disap-
point them,” he said. “Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy’s illness,
from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his lips. The
matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can assure you, no
discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the recovery of Miss Ver-
inder’s jewel.”
We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along
which we had been walking branched off into two roads. One led to
Mr. Ablewhite’s house, and the other to a moorland village some two or
three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the village.
“My way lies in this direction,” he said. “I am really and truly sorry,
Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.”
His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested on
me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and went,
without another word, on his way to the village.
For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther and
farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I
now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned, after
walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still standing at the
place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting whether I might not
wish to speak to him again. There was no time for me to reason out my own
situation—to remind myself that I was losing my opportunity, at what might
be the turning point of my life, and all to flatter nothing more important
than my own self-esteem! There was only time to call him back first, and to
think afterwards. I suspect I am one of the rashest of existing men. I called
him back—and then I said to myself, “Now there is no help for it. I must
tell him the truth!”
He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.
“Mr. Jennings,” I said. “I have not treated you quite fairly. My interest in
tracing Mr. Candy’s lost recollection is not the interest of recovering the
Moonstone. A serious personal matter is at the bottom of my visit to York-
shire. I have but one excuse for not having dealt frankly with you in this
matter. It is more painful to me than I can say, to mention to anybody what
my position really is.”
Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment
which I had seen in him yet.
“I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish,” he said, “to intrude myself into
your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for having
(most innocently) put you to a painful test.”
 “You have a perfect right,” I rejoined, “to fix the terms on which you feel
justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I understand
and respect the delicacy which influences you in this matter. How can I ex-
pect to be taken into your confidence if I decline to admit you into mine?
You ought to know, and you shall know, why I am interested in discovering
what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me. If I turn out to be mistaken in my an-
ticipations, and if you prove unable to help me when you are really aware of
what I want, I shall trust to your honour to keep my secret—and something
tells me that I shall not trust in vain.”
“Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said before you go
any farther.” I looked at him in astonishment. The grip of some terrible
emotion seemed to have seized him, and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy
complexion had altered to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had suddenly
become wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a tone—low, stern,
and resolute—which I now heard for the first time. The latent resources in
the man, for good or for evil—it was hard, at that moment, to say which—
leapt up in him and showed themselves to me, with the suddenness of a
flash of light.
“Before you place any confidence in me,” he went on, “you ought to
know, and you must know, under what circumstances I have been received
into Mr. Candy’s house. It won’t take long. I don’t profess, sir, to tell my
story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die with me. All I ask, is
to be permitted to tell you, what I have told Mr. Candy. If you are still in the
mind, when you have heard that, to say what you have proposed to say, you
will command my attention and command my services. Shall we walk on?”
The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question
by a sign. We walked on.
After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap in
the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road, at this part of it.
“Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?” he asked. “I am not what I
was—and some things shake me.”
I agreed of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on
the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest
to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate
view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had
gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim.
The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still colourless—met us without
a smile.
We sat down in silence. Ezra Jennings laid aside his hat, and passed his
hand wearily over his forehead, wearily through his startling white and
black hair. He tossed his little nosegay of wild flowers away from him, as if
the remembrances which it recalled were remembrances which hurt him
now.
“Mr. Blake!” he said, suddenly. “You are in bad company. The cloud of a
horrible accusation has rested on me for years. I tell you the worst at once. I
am a man whose life is a wreck, and whose character is gone.”
I attempted to speak. He stopped me.
“No,” he said. “Pardon me; not yet. Don’t commit yourself to expressions
of sympathy which you may afterwards wish to recall. I have mentioned an
accusation which has rested on me for years. There are circumstances in
connection with it that tell against me. I cannot bring myself to acknow-
ledge what the accusation is. And I am incapable, perfectly incapable, of
proving my innocence. I can only assert my innocence. I assert it, sir, on my
oath, as a Christian. It is useless to appeal to my honour as a man.”
He paused again. I looked round at him. He never looked at me in return.
His whole being seemed to be absorbed in the agony of recollecting, and in
the effort to speak.
“There is much that I might say,” he went on, “about the merciless treat-
ment of me by my own family, and the merciless enmity to which I have
fallen a victim. But the harm is done; the wrong is beyond all remedy. I de-
cline to weary or distress you, sir, if I can help it. At the outset of my career
in this country, the vile slander to which I have referred struck me down at
once and for ever. I resigned my aspirations in my profession—obscurity
was the only hope left for me. I parted with the woman I loved—how could
I condemn her to share my disgrace? A medical assistant’s place offered it-
self, in a remote corner of England. I got the place. It promised me peace; it
promised me obscurity, as I thought. I was wrong. Evil report, with time
and chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far. The accusation from
which I had fled followed me. I got warning of its approach. I was able to
leave my situation voluntarily, with the testimonials that I had earned. They
got me another situation in another remote district. Time passed again; and
again the slander that was death to my character found me out. On this oc-
casion I had no warning. My employer said, ‘Mr. Jennings, I have no com-
plaint to make against you; but you must set yourself right, or leave me.’ I
had but one choice—I left him. It’s useless to dwell on what I suffered after
that. I am only forty years old now. Look at my face, and let it tell for me
the story of some miserable years. It ended in my drifting to this place, and
meeting with Mr. Candy. He wanted an assistant. I referred him, on the
question of capacity, to my last employer. The question of character re-
mained. I told him what I have told you—and more. I warned him that there
were difficulties in the way, even if he believed me. ‘Here, as elsewhere,’ I
said ‘I scorn the guilty evasion of living under an assumed name: I am no
safer at Frizinghall than at other places from the cloud that follows me, go
where I may.’ He answered, ‘I don’t do things by halves—I believe you,
and I pity you. If you will risk what may happen, I will risk it too.’ God
Almighty bless him! He has given me shelter, he has given me employment,
he has given me rest of mind—and I have the certain conviction (I have had
it for some months past) that nothing will happen now to make him regret
it.”
“The slander has died out?” I said.
“The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here, it will
come too late.”
“You will have left the place?”
“No, Mr. Blake—I shall be dead. For ten years past I have suffered from
an incurable internal complaint. I don’t disguise from you that I should have
let the agony of it kill me long since, but for one last interest in life, which
makes my existence of some importance to me still. I want to provide for a
person—very dear to me—whom I shall never see again. My own little pat-
rimony is hardly sufficient to make her independent of the world. The hope,
if I could only live long enough, of increasing it to a certain sum, has im-
pelled me to resist the disease by such palliative means as I could devise.
The one effectual palliative in my case, is—opium. To that all-potent and
all-merciful drug I am indebted for a respite of many years from my sen-
tence of death. But even the virtues of opium have their limit. The progress
of the disease has gradually forced me from the use of opium to the abuse
of it. I am feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system is shattered; my
nights are nights of horror. The end is not far off now. Let it come—I have
not lived and worked in vain. The little sum is nearly made up; and I have
the means of completing it, if my last reserves of life fail me sooner than I
expect. I hardly know how I have wandered into telling you this. I don’t
think I am mean enough to appeal to your pity. Perhaps, I fancy you may be
all the readier to believe me, if you know that what I have said to you, I
have said with the certain knowledge in me that I am a dying man. There is
no disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me. I have attempted to make my
poor friend’s loss of memory the means of bettering my acquaintance with
you. I have speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing curiosity
about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy it. Is there no
excuse for my intruding myself on you? Perhaps there is some excuse. A
man who has lived as I have lived has his bitter moments when he ponders
over human destiny. You have youth, health, riches, a place in the world, a
prospect before you. You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of hu-
man life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving, before I go.
However this talk between us may end, I shall not forget that you have done
me a kindness in doing that. It rests with you, sir, to say what you proposed
saying, or to wish me good morning.”
I had but one answer to make to that appeal. Without a moment’s hesita-
tion I told him the truth, as unreservedly as I have told it in these pages.
He started to his feet, and looked at me with breathless eagerness as I ap-
proached the leading incident of my story.
“It is certain that I went into the room,” I said; “it is certain that I took the
Diamond. I can only meet those two plain facts by declaring that, do what I
might, I did it without my own knowledge—”
Ezra Jennings caught me excitedly by the arm.
“Stop!” he said. “You have suggested more to me than you suppose.
Have you ever been accustomed to the use of opium?”
“I never tasted it in my life.”
“Were your nerves out of order, at this time last year? Were you unusu-
ally restless and irritable?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sleep badly?”
“Wretchedly. Many nights I never slept at all.”
“Was the birthday night an exception? Try, and remember. Did you sleep
well on that one occasion?”
“I do remember! I slept soundly.”
He dropped my arm as suddenly as he had taken it—and looked at me
with the air of a man whose mind was relieved of the last doubt that rested
on it.
 “This is a marked day in your life, and in mine,” he said, gravely. “I am
absolutely certain, Mr. Blake, of one thing—I have got what Mr. Candy
wanted to say to you this morning, in the notes that I took at my patient’s
bedside. Wait! that is not all. I am firmly persuaded that I can prove you to
have been unconscious of what you were about, when you entered the room
and took the Diamond. Give me time to think, and time to question you. I
believe the vindication of your innocence is in my hands!”
“Explain yourself, for God’s sake! What do you mean?”
In the excitement of our colloquy, we had walked on a few steps, beyond
the clump of dwarf trees which had hitherto screened us from view. Before
Ezra Jennings could answer me, he was hailed from the high road by a man,
in great agitation, who had been evidently on the lookout for him.
“I am coming,” he called back; “I am coming as fast as I can!” He turned
to me. “There is an urgent case waiting for me at the village yonder; I ought
to have been there half an hour since—I must attend to it at once. Give me
two hours from this time, and call at Mr. Candy’s again—and I will engage
to be ready for you.”
“How am I to wait!” I exclaimed, impatiently. “Can’t you quiet my mind
by a word of explanation before we part?”
“This is far too serious a matter to be explained in a hurry, Mr. Blake. I
am not wilfully trying your patience—I should only be adding to your sus-
pense, if I attempted to relieve it as things are now. At Frizinghall, sir, in
two hours’ time!”
The man on the high road hailed him again. He hurried away, and left
me.
 X

How the interval of suspense in which I was now condemned might have
affected other men in my position, I cannot pretend to say. The influence of
the two hours’ probation upon my temperament was simply this. I felt phys-
ically incapable of remaining still in any one place, and morally incapable
of speaking to any one human being, until I had first heard all that Ezra Jen-
nings had to say to me.
In this frame of mind, I not only abandoned my contemplated visit to
Mrs. Ablewhite—I even shrank from encountering Gabriel Betteredge
himself.
Returning to Frizinghall, I left a note for Betteredge, telling him that I
had been unexpectedly called away for a few hours, but that he might cer-
tainly expect me to return towards three o’clock in the afternoon. I reques-
ted him, in the interval, to order his dinner at the usual hour, and to amuse
himself as he pleased. He had, as I well knew, hosts of friends in Frizing-
hall; and he would be at no loss how to fill up his time until I returned to the
hotel.
This done, I made the best of my way out of the town again, and roamed
the lonely moorland country which surrounds Frizinghall, until my watch
told me that it was time, at last, to return to Mr. Candy’s house.
I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me.
He was sitting alone in a bare little room, which communicated by a
glazed door with a surgery. Hideous coloured diagrams of the ravages of
hideous diseases decorated the barren buff-coloured walls. A bookcase
filled with dingy medical works, and ornamented at the top with a skull, in
place of the customary bust; a large deal table copiously splashed with ink;
wooden chairs of the sort that are seen in kitchens and cottages; a thread-
bare drugget in the middle of the floor; a sink of water, with a basin and
waste-pipe roughly let into the wall, horribly suggestive of its connection
with surgical operations—comprised the entire furniture of the room. The
bees were humming among a few flowers placed in pots outside the win-
dow; the birds were singing in the garden, and the faint intermittent jingle
of a tuneless piano in some neighbouring house forced itself now and again
on the ear. In any other place, these everyday sounds might have spoken
pleasantly of the everyday world outside. Here, they came in as intruders on
a silence which nothing but human suffering had the privilege to disturb. I
looked at the mahogany instrument case, and at the huge roll of lint, oc-
cupying places of their own on the bookshelves, and shuddered inwardly as
I thought of the sounds, familiar and appropriate to the everyday use of
Ezra Jennings’ room.
“I make no apology, Mr. Blake, for the place in which I am receiving
you,” he said. “It is the only room in the house, at this hour of the day, in
which we can feel quite sure of being left undisturbed. Here are my papers
ready for you; and here are two books to which we may have occasion to
refer, before we have done. Bring your chair to the table, and we shall be
able to consult them together.”
I drew up to the table; and Ezra Jennings handed me his manuscript
notes. They consisted of two large folio leaves of paper. One leaf contained
writing which only covered the surface at intervals. The other presented
writing, in red and black ink, which completely filled the page from top to
bottom. In the irritated state of my curiosity, at that moment, I laid aside the
second sheet of paper in despair.
“Have some mercy on me!” I said. “Tell me what I am to expect, before I
attempt to read this.”
“Willingly, Mr. Blake! Do you mind my asking you one or two more
questions?”
“Ask me anything you like!”
He looked at me with the sad smile on his lips, and the kindly interest in
his soft brown eyes.
“You have already told me,” he said, “that you have never—to your
knowledge—tasted opium in your life.”
“To my knowledge,” I repeated.
“You will understand directly why I speak with that reservation. Let us
go on. You are not aware of ever having taken opium. At this time, last
year, you were suffering from nervous irritation, and you slept wretchedly
at night. On the night of the birthday, however, there was an exception to
the rule—you slept soundly. Am I right, so far?”
 “Quite right!”
“Can you assign any cause for the nervous suffering, and your want of
sleep?”
“I can assign no cause. Old Betteredge made a guess at the cause, I re-
member. But that is hardly worth mentioning.”
“Pardon me. Anything is worth mentioning in such a case as this.
Betteredge attributed your sleeplessness to something. To what?”
“To my leaving off smoking.”
“Had you been an habitual smoker?”
“Yes.”
“Did you leave off the habit suddenly?”
“Yes.”
“Betteredge was perfectly right, Mr. Blake. When smoking is a habit, a
man must have no common constitution who can leave it off suddenly
without some temporary damage to his nervous system. Your sleepless
nights are accounted for, to my mind. My next question refers to Mr. Candy.
Do you remember having entered into anything like a dispute with him—at
the birthday dinner, or afterwards—on the subject of his profession?”
The question instantly awakened one of my dormant remembrances in
connection with the birthday festival. The foolish wrangle which took
place, on that occasion, between Mr. Candy and myself, will be found de-
scribed at much greater length than it deserves in the tenth chapter of
Betteredge’s Narrative. The details there presented of the dispute—so little
had I thought of it afterwards—entirely failed to recur to my memory. All
that I could now recall, and all that I could tell Ezra Jennings was, that I had
attacked the art of medicine at the dinner-table with sufficient rashness and
sufficient pertinacity to put even Mr. Candy out of temper for the moment. I
also remembered that Lady Verinder had interfered to stop the dispute, and
that the little doctor and I had “made it up again,” as the children say, and
had become as good friends as ever, before we shook hands that night.
“There is one thing more,” said Ezra Jennings, “which it is very import-
ant I should know. Had you any reason for feeling any special anxiety about
the Diamond, at this time last year?”
“I had the strongest reasons for feeling anxiety about the Diamond. I
knew it to be the object of a conspiracy; and I was warned to take measures
for Miss Verinder’s protection, as the possessor of the stone.”
 “Was the safety of the Diamond the subject of conversation between you
and any other person, immediately before you retired to rest on the birthday
night?”
“It was the subject of a conversation between Lady Verinder and her
daughter—”
“Which took place in your hearing?”
“Yes.”
Ezra Jennings took up his notes from the table, and placed them in my
hands.
“Mr. Blake,” he said, “if you read those notes now, by the light which my
questions and your answers have thrown on them, you will make two
astounding discoveries concerning yourself. You will find—First, that you
entered Miss Verinder’s sitting-room and took the Diamond, in a state of
trance, produced by opium. Secondly, that the opium was given to you by
Mr. Candy—without your own knowledge—as a practical refutation of the
opinions which you had expressed to him at the birthday dinner.”
I sat with the papers in my hand completely stupefied.
“Try and forgive poor Mr. Candy,” said the assistant gently. “He has done
dreadful mischief, I own; but he has done it innocently. If you will look at
the notes, you will see that—but for his illness—he would have returned to
Lady Verinder’s the morning after the party, and would have acknowledged
the trick that he had played you. Miss Verinder would have heard of it, and
Miss Verinder would have questioned him—and the truth which has laid
hidden for a year would have been discovered in a day.”
I began to regain my self-possession. “Mr. Candy is beyond the reach of
my resentment,” I said angrily. “But the trick that he played me is not the
less an act of treachery, for all that. I may forgive, but I shall not forget it.”
“Every medical man commits that act of treachery, Mr. Blake, in the
course of his practice. The ignorant distrust of opium (in England) is by no
means confined to the lower and less cultivated classes. Every doctor in
large practice finds himself, every now and then, obliged to deceive his pa-
tients, as Mr. Candy deceived you. I don’t defend the folly of playing you a
trick under the circumstances. I only plead with you for a more accurate and
more merciful construction of motives.”
“How was it done?” I asked. “Who gave me the laudanum, without my
knowing it myself?”
 “I am not able to tell you. Nothing relating to that part of the matter
dropped from Mr. Candy’s lips, all through his illness. Perhaps your own
memory may point to the person to be suspected.”
“No.”
“It is useless, in that case, to pursue the inquiry. The laudanum was
secretly given to you in some way. Let us leave it there, and go on to mat-
ters of more immediate importance. Read my notes, if you can. Familiarise
your mind with what has happened in the past. I have something very bold
and very startling to propose to you, which relates to the future.”
Those last words roused me.
I looked at the papers, in the order in which Ezra Jennings had placed
them in my hands. The paper which contained the smaller quantity of writ-
ing was the uppermost of the two. On this, the disconnected words, and
fragments of sentences, which had dropped from Mr. Candy in his delirium,
appeared as follows:

“… Mr. Franklin Blake … and agreeable … down a peg …

medicine … confesses … sleep at night … tell him … out of or-
der … medicine … he tells me … and groping in the dark mean
one and the same thing … all the company at the dinner-table …
I say … groping after sleep … nothing but medicine … he
says … leading the blind … know what it means … witty … a
night’s rest in spite of his teeth … wants sleep … Lady Ver-
inder’s medicine chest … five-and-twenty minims … without
his knowing it … tomorrow morning … Well, Mr. Blake …
medicine today … never … without it … out, Mr. Candy … ex-
cellent … without it … down on him … truth … something be-
sides … excellent … dose of laudanum, sir … bed … what …
medicine now.”

There, the first of the two sheets of paper came to an end. I handed it
back to Ezra Jennings.
“That is what you heard at his bedside?” I said.
“Literally and exactly what I heard,” he answered—“except that the repe-
titions are not transferred here from my shorthand notes. He reiterated cer-
tain words and phrases a dozen times over, fifty times over, just as he at-
tached more or less importance to the idea which they represented. The re-
petitions, in this sense, were of some assistance to me in putting together
those fragments. Don’t suppose,” he added, pointing to the second sheet of
paper, “that I claim to have reproduced the expressions which Mr. Candy
himself would have used if he had been capable of speaking connectedly. I
only say that I have penetrated through the obstacle of the disconnected ex-
pression, to the thought which was underlying it connectedly all the time.
Judge for yourself.”
I turned to the second sheet of paper, which I now knew to be the key to
the first.
Once more, Mr. Candy’s wanderings appeared, copied in black ink; the
intervals between the phrases being filled up by Ezra Jennings in red ink. I
reproduce the result here, in one plain form; the original language and the
interpretation of it coming close enough together in these pages to be easily
compared and verified.

“… Mr. Franklin Blake is clever and agreeable, but he wants

taking down a peg when he talks of medicine. He confesses
that he has been suffering from want of sleep at night. I tell him
that his nerves are out of order, and that he ought to take medi-
cine. He tells me that taking medicine and groping in the dark
mean one and the same thing. This before all the company at
the dinner-table. I say to him, you are groping after sleep, and
nothing but medicine can help you to find it. He says to me, I
have heard of the blind leading the blind, and now I know what
it means. Witty—but I can give him a night’s rest in spite of his
teeth. He really wants sleep; and Lady Verinder’s medicine
chest is at my disposal. Give him five-and-twenty minims of
laudanum tonight, without his knowing it; and then call tomor-
row morning. ‘Well, Mr. Blake, will you try a little medicine
today? You will never sleep without it.’—‘There you are out,
Mr. Candy: I have had an excellent night’s rest without it.’
Then, come down on him with the truth! ‘You have had some-
thing besides an excellent night’s rest; you had a dose of
laudanum, sir, before you went to bed. What do you say to the
art of medicine, now?’”
 Admiration of the ingenuity which had woven this smooth and finished
texture out of the ravelled skein was naturally the first impression that I felt,
on handing the manuscript back to Ezra Jennings. He modestly interrupted
the first few words in which my sense of surprise expressed itself, by asking
me if the conclusion which he had drawn from his notes was also the con-
clusion at which my own mind had arrived.
“Do you believe as I believe,” he said, “that you were acting under the
influence of the laudanum in doing all that you did, on the night of Miss
Verinder’s birthday, in Lady Verinder’s house?”
“I am too ignorant of the influence of laudanum to have an opinion of my
own,” I answered. “I can only follow your opinion, and feel convinced that
you are right.”
“Very well. The next question is this. You are convinced; and I am con-
vinced—how are we to carry our conviction to the minds of other people?”
I pointed to the two manuscripts, lying on the table between us. Ezra Jen-
nings shook his head.
“Useless, Mr. Blake! Quite useless, as they stand now for three un-
answerable reasons. In the first place, those notes have been taken under
circumstances entirely out of the experience of the mass of mankind.
Against them, to begin with! In the second place, those notes represent a
medical and metaphysical theory. Against them, once more! In the third
place, those notes are of my making; there is nothing but my assertion to the
contrary, to guarantee that they are not fabrications. Remember what I told
you on the moor—and ask yourself what my assertion is worth. No! my
notes have but one value, looking to the verdict of the world outside. Your
innocence is to be vindicated; and they show how it can be done. We must
put our conviction to the proof—and you are the man to prove it!”
“How?” I asked.
He leaned eagerly nearer to me across the table that divided us.
“Are you willing to try a bold experiment?”
“I will do anything to clear myself of the suspicion that rests on me now.”
“Will you submit to some personal inconvenience for a time?”
“To any inconvenience, no matter what it may be.”
“Will you be guided implicitly by my advice? It may expose you to the
ridicule of fools; it may subject you to the remonstrances of friends whose
opinions you are bound to respect.”
 “Tell me what to do!” I broke out impatiently. “And, come what may, I’ll
do it.”
“You shall do this, Mr. Blake,” he answered. “You shall steal the Dia-
mond, unconsciously, for the second time, in the presence of witnesses
whose testimony is beyond dispute.”
I started to my feet. I tried to speak. I could only look at him.
“I believe it can be done,” he went on. “And it shall be done—if you will
only help me. Try to compose yourself—sit down, and hear what I have to
say to you. You have resumed the habit of smoking; I have seen that for
myself. How long have you resumed it.”
“For nearly a year.”
“Do you smoke more or less than you did?”
“More.”
“Will you give up the habit again? Suddenly, mind!—as you gave it up
before.”
I began dimly to see his drift. “I will give it up, from this moment,” I
answered.
“If the same consequences follow, which followed last June,” said Ezra
Jennings—“if you suffer once more as you suffered then, from sleepless
nights, we shall have gained our first step. We shall have put you back again
into something assimilating to your nervous condition on the birthday night.
If we can next revive, or nearly revive, the domestic circumstances which
surrounded you; and if we can occupy your mind again with the various
questions concerning the Diamond which formerly agitated it, we shall have
replaced you, as nearly as possible in the same position, physically and
morally, in which the opium found you last year. In that case we may fairly
hope that a repetition of the dose will lead, in a greater or lesser degree, to a
repetition of the result. There is my proposal, expressed in a few hasty
words. You shall now see what reasons I have to justify me in making it.”
He turned to one of the books at his side, and opened it at a place marked
by a small slip of paper.
“Don’t suppose that I am going to weary you with a lecture on
physiology,” he said. “I think myself bound to prove, in justice to both of
us, that I am not asking you to try this experiment in deference to any the-
ory of my own devising. Admitted principles, and recognised authorities,
justify me in the view that I take. Give me five minutes of your attention;
and I will undertake to show you that Science sanctions my proposal, fanci-
ful as it may seem. Here, in the first place, is the physiological principle on
which I am acting, stated by no less a person than Dr. Carpenter. Read it for
yourself.”
He handed me the slip of paper which had marked the place in the book.
It contained a few lines of writing, as follows:—

“There seems much ground for the belief, that every sensory
impression which has once been recognised by the perceptive
consciousness, is registered (so to speak) in the brain, and may
be reproduced at some subsequent time, although there may be
no consciousness of its existence in the mind during the whole
intermediate period.”

“Is that plain, so far?” asked Ezra Jennings.

“Perfectly plain.”
He pushed the open book across the table to me, and pointed to a pas-
sage, marked by pencil lines.
“Now,” he said, “read that account of a case, which has—as I believe—a
direct bearing on your own position, and on the experiment which I am
tempting you to try. Observe, Mr. Blake, before you begin, that I am now
referring you to one of the greatest of English physiologists. The book in
your hand is Doctor Elliotson’s Human Physiology; and the case which the
doctor cites rests on the well-known authority of Mr. Combe.”
The passage pointed out to me was expressed in these terms:—

“Dr. Abel informed me,” says Mr. Combe, “of an Irish porter to
a warehouse, who forgot, when sober, what he had done when
drunk; but, being drunk, again recollected the transactions of
his former state of intoxication. On one occasion, being drunk,
he had lost a parcel of some value, and in his sober moments
could give no account of it. Next time he was intoxicated, he
recollected that he had left the parcel at a certain house, and
there being no address on it, it had remained there safely, and
was got on his calling for it.”

“Plain again?” asked Ezra Jennings.

“As plain as need be.”
He put back the slip of paper in its place, and closed the book.
 “Are you satisfied that I have not spoken without good authority to sup-
port me?” he asked. “If not, I have only to go to those bookshelves, and you
have only to read the passages which I can point out to you.”
“I am quite satisfied,” I said, “without reading a word more.”
“In that case, we may return to your own personal interest in this matter. I
am bound to tell you that there is something to be said against the experi-
ment as well as for it. If we could, this year, exactly reproduce, in your case,
the conditions as they existed last year, it is physiologically certain that we
should arrive at exactly the same result. But this—there is no denying it—is
simply impossible. We can only hope to approximate to the conditions; and
if we don’t succeed in getting you nearly enough back to what you were,
this venture of ours will fail. If we do succeed—and I am myself hopeful of
success—you may at least so far repeat your proceedings on the birthday
night, as to satisfy any reasonable person that you are guiltless, morally
speaking, of the theft of the Diamond. I believe, Mr. Blake, I have now
stated the question, on both sides of it, as fairly as I can, within the limits
that I have imposed on myself. If there is anything that I have not made
clear to you, tell me what it is—and if I can enlighten you, I will.”
“All that you have explained to me,” I said, “I understand perfectly. But I
own I am puzzled on one point, which you have not made clear to me yet.”
“What is the point?”
“I don’t understand the effect of the laudanum on me. I don’t understand
my walking downstairs, and along corridors, and my opening and shutting
the drawers of a cabinet, and my going back again to my own room. All
these are active proceedings. I thought the influence of opium was first to
stupefy you, and then to send you to sleep.”
“The common error about opium, Mr. Blake! I am, at this moment, exert-
ing my intelligence (such as it is) in your service, under the influence of a
dose of laudanum, some ten times larger than the dose Mr. Candy admin-
istered to you. But don’t trust to my authority—even on a question which
comes within my own personal experience. I anticipated the objection you
have just made: and I have again provided myself with independent testi-
mony which will carry its due weight with it in your own mind, and in the
minds of your friends.”
He handed me the second of the two books which he had by him on the
table.
 “There,” he said, “are the far-famed Confessions of an English Opium
Eater! Take the book away with you, and read it. At the passage which I
have marked, you will find that when De Quincey had committed what he
calls ‘a debauch of opium,’ he either went to the gallery at the Opera to en-
joy the music, or he wandered about the London markets on Saturday night,
and interested himself in observing all the little shifts and bargainings of the
poor in providing their Sunday’s dinner. So much for the capacity of a man
to occupy himself actively, and to move about from place to place under the
influence of opium.”
“I am answered so far,” I said; “but I am not answered yet as to the effect
produced by the opium on myself.”
“I will try to answer you in a few words,” said Ezra Jennings. “The ac-
tion of opium is comprised, in the majority of cases, in two influences—a
stimulating influence first, and a sedative influence afterwards. Under the
stimulating influence, the latest and most vivid impressions left on your
mind—namely, the impressions relating to the Diamond—would be likely,
in your morbidly sensitive nervous condition, to become intensified in your
brain, and would subordinate to themselves your judgment and your will
exactly as an ordinary dream subordinates to itself your judgment and your
will. Little by little, under this action, any apprehensions about the safety of
the Diamond which you might have felt during the day would be liable to
develop themselves from the state of doubt to the state of certainty—would
impel you into practical action to preserve the jewel—would direct your
steps, with that motive in view, into the room which you entered—and
would guide your hand to the drawers of the cabinet, until you had found
the drawer which held the stone. In the spiritualised intoxication of opium,
you would do all that. Later, as the sedative action began to gain on the
stimulant action, you would slowly become inert and stupefied. Later still
you would fall into a deep sleep. When the morning came, and the effect of
the opium had been all slept off, you would wake as absolutely ignorant of
what you had done in the night as if you had been living at the Antipodes.
Have I made it tolerably clear to you so far?”
“You have made it so clear,” I said, “that I want you to go farther. You
have shown me how I entered the room, and how I came to take the Dia-
mond. But Miss Verinder saw me leave the room again, with the jewel in
my hand. Can you trace my proceedings from that moment? Can you guess
what I did next?”
 “That is the very point I was coming to,” he rejoined. “It is a question
with me whether the experiment which I propose as a means of vindicating
your innocence, may not also be made a means of recovering the lost Dia-
mond as well. When you left Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, with the jewel in
your hand, you went back in all probability to your own room—”
“Yes? and what then?”
“It is possible, Mr. Blake—I dare not say more—that your idea of pre-
serving the Diamond led, by a natural sequence, to the idea of hiding the
Diamond, and that the place in which you hid it was somewhere in your
bedroom. In that event, the case of the Irish porter may be your case. You
may remember, under the influence of the second dose of opium, the place
in which you hid the Diamond under the influence of the first.”
It was my turn, now, to enlighten Ezra Jennings. I stopped him, before he
could say any more.
“You are speculating,” I said, “on a result which cannot possibly take
place. The Diamond is, at this moment, in London.”
He started, and looked at me in great surprise.
“In London?” he repeated. “How did it get to London from Lady Ver-
inder’s house?”
“Nobody knows.”
“You removed it with your own hand from Miss Verinder’s room. How
was it taken out of your keeping?”
“I have no idea how it was taken out of my keeping.”
“Did you see it, when you woke in the morning?”
“No.”
“Has Miss Verinder recovered possession of it?”
“No.”
“Mr. Blake! there seems to be something here which wants clearing up.
May I ask how you know that the Diamond is, at this moment, in London?”
I had put precisely the same question to Mr. Bruff when I made my first
inquiries about the Moonstone, on my return to England. In answering Ezra
Jennings, I accordingly repeated what I had myself heard from the lawyer’s
own lips—and what is already familiar to the readers of these pages.
He showed plainly that he was not satisfied with my reply.
“With all deference to you,” he said, “and with all deference to your legal
adviser, I maintain the opinion which I expressed just now. It rests, I am
well aware, on a mere assumption. Pardon me for reminding you, that your
opinion also rests on a mere assumption as well.”
The view he took of the matter was entirely new to me. I waited
anxiously to hear how he would defend it.
“I assume,” pursued Ezra Jennings, “that the influence of the opium—
after impelling you to possess yourself of the Diamond, with the purpose of
securing its safety—might also impel you, acting under the same influence
and the same motive, to hide it somewhere in your own room. You assume
that the Hindu conspirators could by no possibility commit a mistake. The
Indians went to Mr. Luker’s house after the Diamond—and, therefore, in
Mr. Luker’s possession the Diamond must be! Have you any evidence to
prove that the Moonstone was taken to London at all? You can’t even guess
how, or by whom, it was removed from Lady Verinder’s house! Have you
any evidence that the jewel was pledged to Mr. Luker? He declares that he
never heard of the Moonstone; and his bankers’ receipt acknowledges noth-
ing but the deposit of a valuable of great price. The Indians assume that
Mr. Luker is lying—and you assume again that the Indians are right. All I
say, in differing with you, is—that my view is possible. What more,
Mr. Blake, either logically, or legally, can be said for yours?”
It was put strongly; but there was no denying that it was put truly as well.
“I confess you stagger me,” I replied. “Do you object to my writing to
Mr. Bruff, and telling him what you have said?”
“On the contrary, I shall be glad if you will write to Mr. Bruff. If we con-
sult his experience, we may see the matter under a new light. For the
present, let us return to our experiment with the opium. We have decided
that you leave off the habit of smoking from this moment.”
“From this moment?”
“That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we can,
the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year.”
How was this to be done? Lady Verinder was dead. Rachel and I, so long
as the suspicion of theft rested on me, were parted irrevocably. Godfrey
Ablewhite was away travelling on the Continent. It was simply impossible
to reassemble the people who had inhabited the house, when I had slept in it
last. The statement of this objection did not appear to embarrass Ezra Jen-
nings. He attached very little importance, he said, to reassembling the same
people—seeing that it would be vain to expect them to reassume the various
positions which they had occupied towards me in the past times. On the
other hand, he considered it essential to the success of the experiment, that I
should see the same objects about me which had surrounded me when I was
last in the house.
“Above all things,” he said, “you must sleep in the room which you slept
in, on the birthday night, and it must be furnished in the same way. The
stairs, the corridors, and Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, must also be restored
to what they were when you saw them last. It is absolutely necessary,
Mr. Blake, to replace every article of furniture in that part of the house
which may now be put away. The sacrifice of your cigars will be useless,
unless we can get Miss Verinder’s permission to do that.”
“Who is to apply to her for permission?” I asked.
“Is it not possible for you to apply?”
“Quite out of the question. After what has passed between us on the sub-
ject of the lost Diamond, I can neither see her, nor write to her, as things are
now.”
Ezra Jennings paused, and considered for a moment.
“May I ask you a delicate question?” he said.
I signed to him to go on.
“Am I right, Mr. Blake, in fancying (from one or two things which have
dropped from you) that you felt no common interest in Miss Verinder, in
former times?”
“Quite right.”
“Was the feeling returned?”
“It was.”
“Do you think Miss Verinder would be likely to feel a strong interest in
the attempt to prove your innocence?”
“I am certain of it.”
“In that case, I will write to Miss Verinder—if you will give me leave.”
“Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me?”
“Telling her of everything that has passed between us today.”
It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had
offered to me.
“I shall have time to write by today’s post,” he said, looking at his watch.
“Don’t forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the hotel! I will
call tomorrow morning and hear how you have passed the night.”
I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful sense of
his kindness which I really felt.
 He pressed my hand gently. “Remember what I told you on the moor,” he
answered. “If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel it like a
last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and clouded day.”

We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next ten
days—every one of them more or less directly connected with the experi-
ment of which I was the passive object—are all placed on record, exactly as
they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy’s assistant. In
the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and nothing is forgotten.
Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the opium was tried, and how it
ended.
 FOURTH NARRATIVE

Extracted from the Journal of Erza Jennings.

1849.—June 15. … With some interruption from patients, and

some interruption from pain, I finished my letter to Miss Ver-
inder in time for today’s post. I failed to make it as short a letter
as I could have wished. But I think I have made it plain. It
leaves her entirely mistress of her own decision. If she consents
to assist the experiment, she consents of her own free will, and
not as a favour to Mr. Franklin Blake or to me.

June 16th.—Rose late, after a dreadful night; the vengeance of

yesterday’s opium, pursuing me through a series of frightful
dreams. At one time I was whirling through empty space with
the phantoms of the dead, friends and enemies together. At an-
other, the one beloved face which I shall never see again, rose
at my bedside, hideously phosphorescent in the black darkness,
and glared and grinned at me. A slight return of the old pain, at
the usual time in the early morning, was welcome as a change.
It dispelled the visions—and it was bearable because it did that.
My bad night made it late in the morning, before I could get
to Mr. Franklin Blake. I found him stretched on the sofa, break-
fasting on brandy and soda-water, and a dry biscuit.
“I am beginning, as well as you could possibly wish,” he
said. “A miserable, restless night; and a total failure of appetite
this morning. Exactly what happened last year, when I gave up
my cigars. The sooner I am ready for my second dose of
laudanum, the better I shall be pleased.”
“You shall have it on the earliest possible day,” I answered.
“In the meantime, we must be as careful of your health as we
can. If we allow you to become exhausted, we shall fail in that
way. You must get an appetite for your dinner. In other words,
you must get a ride or a walk this morning, in the fresh air.”
“I will ride, if they can find me a horse here. By-the-by, I
wrote to Mr. Bruff, yesterday. Have you written to Miss
Verinder?”
“Yes—by last night’s post.”
“Very good. We shall have some news worth hearing, to tell
each other tomorrow. Don’t go yet! I have a word to say to you.
You appeared to think, yesterday, that our experiment with the
opium was not likely to be viewed very favourably by some of
my friends. You were quite right. I call old Gabriel Betteredge
one of my friends; and you will be amused to hear that he pro-
tested strongly when I saw him yesterday. ‘You have done a
wonderful number of foolish things in the course of your life,
Mr. Franklin, but this tops them all!’ There is Betteredge’s
opinion! You will make allowance for his prejudices, I am sure,
if you and he happen to meet?”
I left Mr. Blake, to go my rounds among my patients; feeling
the better and the happier even for the short interview that I had
had with him.
What is the secret of the attraction that there is for me in this
man? Does it only mean that I feel the contrast between the
frankly kind manner in which he has allowed me to become ac-
quainted with him, and the merciless dislike and distrust with
which I am met by other people? Or is there really something
in him which answers to the yearning that I have for a little hu-
man sympathy—the yearning, which has survived the solitude
and persecution of many years; which seems to grow keener
and keener, as the time comes nearer and nearer when I shall
endure and feel no more? How useless to ask these questions!
Mr. Blake has given me a new interest in life. Let that be
enough, without seeking to know what the new interest is.
June 17th.—Before breakfast, this morning, Mr. Candy in-
formed me that he was going away for a fortnight, on a visit to
a friend in the south of England. He gave me as many special
directions, poor fellow, about the patients, as if he still had the
large practice which he possessed before he was taken ill. The
practice is worth little enough now! Other doctors have super-
seded him; and nobody who can help it will employ me.
It is perhaps fortunate that he is to be away just at this time.
He would have been mortified if I had not informed him of the
experiment which I am going to try with Mr. Blake. And I
hardly know what undesirable results might not have happened,
if I had taken him into my confidence. Better as it is. Unques-
tionably, better as it is.
The post brought me Miss Verinder’s answer, after
Mr. Candy had left the house.
A charming letter! It gives me the highest opinion of her.
There is no attempt to conceal the interest that she feels in our
proceedings. She tells me, in the prettiest manner, that my letter
has satisfied her of Mr. Blake’s innocence, without the slightest
need (so far as she is concerned) of putting my assertion to the
proof. She even upbraids herself—most undeservedly, poor
thing!—for not having divined at the time what the true solu-
tion of the mystery might really be. The motive underlying all
this proceeds evidently from something more than a generous
eagerness to make atonement for a wrong which she has inno-
cently inflicted on another person. It is plain that she has loved
him, throughout the estrangement between them. In more than
one place the rapture of discovering that he has deserved to be
loved, breaks its way innocently through the stoutest formalit-
ies of pen and ink, and even defies the stronger restraint still of
writing to a stranger. Is it possible (I ask myself, in reading this
delightful letter) that I, of all men in the world, am chosen to be
the means of bringing these two young people together again?
My own happiness has been trampled under foot; my own love
has been torn from me. Shall I live to see a happiness of others,
which is of my making—a love renewed, which is of my bring-
ing back? Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms
enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, “Rest at last!”
There are two requests contained in the letter. One of them
prevents me from showing it to Mr. Franklin Blake. I am au-
thorised to tell him that Miss Verinder willingly consents to
place her house at our disposal; and, that said, I am desired to
add no more.
So far, it is easy to comply with her wishes. But the second
request embarrasses me seriously.
Not content with having written to Mr. Betteredge, instruct-
ing him to carry out whatever directions I may have to give,
Miss Verinder asks leave to assist me, by personally superin-
tending the restoration of her own sitting-room. She only waits
a word of reply from me to make the journey to Yorkshire, and
to be present as one of the witnesses on the night when the opi-
um is tried for the second time.
Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here
again, I fancy that I can find it out.
What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is
(as I interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, before he
is put to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes
of other people. I understand and admire this generous anxiety
to acquit him, without waiting until his innocence may, or may
not, be proved. It is the atonement that she is longing to make,
poor girl, after having innocently and inevitably wronged him.
But the thing cannot be done. I have no sort of doubt that the
agitation which a meeting between them would produce on
both sides—reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old
memories, awakening new hopes—would, in their effect on the
mind of Mr. Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of
our experiment. It is hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in
him the conditions as they existed, or nearly as they existed,
last year. With new interests and new emotions to agitate him,
the attempt would be simply useless.
And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disap-
point her. I must try if I can discover some new arrangement,
before post-time, which will allow me to say Yes to Miss Ver-
inder, without damage to the service which I have bound my-
self to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.

Two o’clock.—I have just returned from my round of medical

visits; having begun, of course, by calling at the hotel.
Mr. Blake’s report of the night is the same as before. He has
had some intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it
less today, having slept after yesterday’s dinner. This after-din-
ner sleep is the result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him
to take. I fear I shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in
the fresh air. He must not be too well; he must not be too ill. It
is a case (as a sailor would say) of very fine steering.
He has not heard yet from Mr. Bruff. I found him eager to
know if I had received any answer from Miss Verinder.
I told him exactly what I was permitted to tell, and no more.
It was quite needless to invent excuses for not showing him the
letter. He told me bitterly enough, poor fellow, that he under-
stood the delicacy which disinclined me to produce it. “She
consents, of course, as a matter of common courtesy and com-
mon justice,” he said. “But she keeps her own opinion of me,
and waits to see the result.” I was sorely tempted to hint that he
was now wronging her as she had wronged him. On reflection,
I shrank from forestalling her in the double luxury of surprising
and forgiving him.
My visit was a very short one. After the experience of the
other night, I have been compelled once more to give up my
dose of opium. As a necessary result, the agony of the disease
that is in me has got the upper hand again. I felt the attack com-
ing on, and left abruptly, so as not to alarm or distress him. It
only lasted a quarter of an hour this time, and it left me strength
enough to go on with my work.

Five o’clock.—I have written my reply to Miss Verinder.

The arrangement I have proposed reconciles the interests on
both sides, if she will only consent to it. After first stating the
objections that there are to a meeting between Mr. Blake and
herself, before the experiment is tried, I have suggested that she
should so time her journey as to arrive at the house privately,
on the evening when we make the attempt. Travelling by the
afternoon train from London, she would delay her arrival until
nine o’clock. At that hour, I have undertaken to see Mr. Blake
safely into his bedchamber; and so to leave Miss Verinder free
to occupy her own rooms until the time comes for administer-
ing the laudanum. When that has been done, there can be no
objection to her watching the result, with the rest of us. On the
next morning, she shall show Mr. Blake (if she likes) her cor-
respondence with me, and shall satisfy him in that way that he
was acquitted in her estimation, before the question of his inno-
cence was put to the proof.
In that sense, I have written to her. This is all that I can do
today. Tomorrow I must see Mr. Betteredge, and give the ne-
cessary directions for reopening the house.

June 18th.—Late again, in calling on Mr. Franklin Blake. More

of that horrible pain in the early morning; followed, this time,
by complete prostration, for some hours. I foresee, in spite of
the penalties which it exacts from me, that I shall have to return
to the opium for the hundredth time. If I had only myself to
think of, I should prefer the sharp pains to the frightful dreams.
But the physical suffering exhausts me. If I let myself sink, it
may end in my becoming useless to Mr. Blake at the time when
he wants me most.
It was nearly one o’clock before I could get to the hotel
today. The visit, even in my shattered condition, proved to be a
most amusing one—thanks entirely to the presence on the
scene of Gabriel Betteredge.
I found him in the room, when I went in. He withdrew to the
window and looked out, while I put my first customary ques-
tion to my patient. Mr. Blake had slept badly again, and he felt
the loss of rest this morning more than he had felt it yet.
I asked next if he had heard from Mr. Bruff.
A letter had reached him that morning. Mr. Bruff expressed
the strongest disapproval of the course which his friend and cli-
ent was taking under my advice. It was mischievous—for it ex-
cited hopes that might never be realised. It was quite unintelli-
gible to his mind, except that it looked like a piece of trickery,
akin to the trickery of mesmerism, clairvoyance, and the like. It
unsettled Miss Verinder’s house, and it would end in unsettling
Miss Verinder herself. He had put the case (without mentioning
names) to an eminent physician; and the eminent physician had
smiled, had shaken his head, and had said—nothing. On these
grounds, Mr. Bruff entered his protest, and left it there.
My next inquiry related to the subject of the Diamond. Had
the lawyer produced any evidence to prove that the jewel was
in London?
No, the lawyer had simply declined to discuss the question.
He was himself satisfied that the Moonstone had been pledged
to Mr. Luker. His eminent absent friend, Mr. Murthwaite
(whose consummate knowledge of the Indian character no one
could deny), was satisfied also. Under these circumstances, and
with the many demands already made on him, he must decline
entering into any disputes on the subject of evidence. Time
would show; and Mr. Bruff was willing to wait for time.
It was quite plain—even if Mr. Blake had not made it plainer
still by reporting the substance of the letter, instead of reading
what was actually written—that distrust of me was at the bot-
tom of all this. Having myself foreseen that result, I was neither
mortified nor surprised. I asked Mr. Blake if his friend’s protest
had shaken him. He answered emphatically, that it had not pro-
duced the slightest effect on his mind. I was free after that to
dismiss Mr. Bruff from consideration—and I did dismiss him
accordingly.
A pause in the talk between us, followed—and Gabriel
Betteredge came out from his retirement at the window.
“Can you favour me with your attention, sir?” he inquired,
addressing himself to me.
“I am quite at your service,” I answered.
Betteredge took a chair and seated himself at the table. He
produced a huge old-fashioned leather pocketbook, with a pen-
cil of dimensions to match. Having put on his spectacles, he
opened the pocketbook, at a blank page, and addressed himself
to me once more.
“I have lived,” said Betteredge, looking at me sternly, “nigh
on fifty years in the service of my late lady. I was pageboy be-
fore that, in the service of the old lord, her father. I am now
somewhere between seventy and eighty years of age—never
mind exactly where! I am reckoned to have got as pretty a
knowledge and experience of the world as most men. And what
does it all end in? It ends, Mr. Ezra Jennings, in a conjuring
trick being performed on Mr. Franklin Blake, by a doctor’s as-
sistant with a bottle of laudanum—and by the living jingo, I’m
appointed, in my old age, to be conjurer’s boy!”
Mr. Blake burst out laughing. I attempted to speak.
Betteredge held up his hand, in token that he had not done yet.
“Not a word, Mr. Jennings!” he said, “It don’t want a word,
sir, from you. I have got my principles, thank God. If an order
comes to me, which is own brother to an order come from Bed-
lam, it don’t matter. So long as I get it from my master or mis-
tress, as the case may be, I obey it. I may have my own opin-
ion, which is also, you will please to remember, the opinion of
Mr. Bruff—the Great Mr. Bruff!” said Betteredge, raising his
voice, and shaking his head at me solemnly. “It don’t matter; I
withdraw my opinion, for all that. My young lady says, ‘Do it.’
And I say, ‘Miss, it shall be done.’ Here I am, with my book
and my pencil—the latter not pointed so well as I could wish,
but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect
that pencils will keep their points? Give me your orders,
Mr. Jennings. I’ll have them in writing, sir. I’m determined not
to be behind ’em, or before ’em, by so much as a hair’s
breadth. I’m a blind agent—that’s what I am. A blind agent!”
repeated Betteredge, with infinite relish of his own description
of himself.
“I am very sorry,” I began, “that you and I don’t agree—”
“Don’t bring me, into it!” interposed Betteredge. “This is not
a matter of agreement, it’s a matter of obedience. Issue your
directions, sir—issue your directions!”
 Mr. Blake made me a sign to take him at his word. I “issued
my directions” as plainly and as gravely as I could.
“I wish certain parts of the house to be reopened,” I said,
“and to be furnished, exactly as they were furnished at this time
last year.”
Betteredge gave his imperfectly-pointed pencil a preliminary
lick with his tongue. “Name the parts, Mr. Jennings!” he said
loftily.
“First, the inner hall, leading to the chief staircase.”
“ ‘First, the inner hall,’” Betteredge wrote. “Impossible to
furnish that, sir, as it was furnished last year—to begin with.”
“Why?”
“Because there was a stuffed buzzard, Mr. Jennings, in the
hall last year. When the family left, the buzzard was put away
with the other things. When the buzzard was put away—he
burst.”
“We will except the buzzard then.”
Betteredge took a note of the exception. “ ‘The inner hall to
be furnished again, as furnished last year. A burst buzzard
alone excepted.’ Please to go on, Mr. Jennings.”
“The carpet to be laid down on the stairs, as before.”
“ ‘The carpet to be laid down on the stairs, as before.’ Sorry
to disappoint you, sir. But that can’t be done either.”
“Why not?”
“Because the man who laid that carpet down is dead,
Mr. Jennings—and the like of him for reconciling together a
carpet and a corner, is not to be found in all England, look
where you may.”
“Very well. We must try the next best man in England.”
Betteredge took another note; and I went on issuing my
directions.
“Miss Verinder’s sitting-room to be restored exactly to what
it was last year. Also, the corridor leading from the sitting-
room to the first landing. Also, the second corridor, leading
from the second landing to the best bedrooms. Also, the bed-
room occupied last June by Mr. Franklin Blake.”
 Betteredge’s blunt pencil followed me conscientiously, word
by word. “Go on, sir,” he said, with sardonic gravity. “There’s a
deal of writing left in the point of this pencil yet.”
I told him that I had no more directions to give. “Sir,” said
Betteredge, “in that case, I have a point or two to put on my
own behalf.” He opened the pocketbook at a new page, and
gave the inexhaustible pencil another preliminary lick.
“I wish to know,” he began, “whether I may, or may not,
wash my hands—”
“You may decidedly,” said Mr. Blake. “I’ll ring for the
waiter.”
“—of certain responsibilities,” pursued Betteredge, impenet-
rably declining to see anybody in the room but himself and me.
“As to Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, to begin with. When we
took up the carpet last year, Mr. Jennings, we found a surpris-
ing quantity of pins. Am I responsible for putting back the
pins?”
“Certainly not.”
Betteredge made a note of that concession, on the spot.
“As to the first corridor next,” he resumed. “When we
moved the ornaments in that part, we moved a statue of a fat
naked child—profanely described in the catalogue of the house
as ‘Cupid, god of Love.’ He had two wings last year, in the
fleshy part of his shoulders. My eye being off him, for the mo-
ment, he lost one of them. Am I responsible for Cupid’s wing?”
I made another concession, and Betteredge made another
note.
“As to the second corridor,” he went on. “There having been
nothing in it, last year, but the doors of the rooms (to every one
of which I can swear, if necessary), my mind is easy, I admit,
respecting that part of the house only. But, as to Mr. Franklin’s
bedroom (if that is to be put back to what it was before), I want
to know who is responsible for keeping it in a perpetual state of
litter, no matter how often it may be set right—his trousers
here, his towels there, and his French novels everywhere. I say,
who is responsible for untidying the tidiness of Mr. Franklin’s
room, him or me?”
 Mr. Blake declared that he would assume the whole respons-
ibility with the greatest pleasure. Betteredge obstinately de-
clined to listen to any solution of the difficulty, without first re-
ferring it to my sanction and approval. I accepted Mr. Blake’s
proposal; and Betteredge made a last entry in the pocketbook to
that effect.
“Look in when you like, Mr. Jennings, beginning from to-
morrow,” he said, getting on his legs. “You will find me at
work, with the necessary persons to assist me. I respectfully
beg to thank you, sir, for overlooking the case of the stuffed
buzzard, and the other case of the Cupid’s wing—as also for
permitting me to wash my hands of all responsibility in respect
of the pins on the carpet, and the litter in Mr. Franklin’s room.
Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to you. Speaking
as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of
maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment
as a delusion and a snare. Don’t be afraid, on that account, of
my feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a ser-
vant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir,
you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house on fire,
damned if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and
order them first!”
With that farewell assurance, he made me a bow, and walked
out of the room.
“Do you think we can depend on him?” I asked.
“Implicitly,” answered Mr. Blake. “When we go to the
house, we shall find nothing neglected, and nothing forgotten.”

June 19th.—Another protest against our contemplated proceed-

ings! From a lady this time.
The morning’s post brought me two letters. One from Miss
Verinder, consenting, in the kindest manner, to the arrangement
that I have proposed. The other from the lady under whose care
she is living—one Mrs. Merridew.
Mrs. Merridew presents her compliments, and does not pre-
tend to understand the subject on which I have been corres-
ponding with Miss Verinder, in its scientific bearings. Viewed
in its social bearings, however, she feels free to pronounce an
opinion. I am probably, Mrs. Merridew thinks, not aware that
Miss Verinder is barely nineteen years of age. To allow a young
lady, at her time of life, to be present (without a “chaperone”)
in a house full of men among whom a medical experiment is
being carried on, is an outrage on propriety which Mrs. Mer-
ridew cannot possibly permit. If the matter is allowed to pro-
ceed, she will feel it to be her duty—at a serious sacrifice of her
own personal convenience—to accompany Miss Verinder to
Yorkshire. Under these circumstances, she ventures to request
that I will kindly reconsider the subject; seeing that Miss Ver-
inder declines to be guided by any opinion but mine. Her pres-
ence cannot possibly be necessary; and a word from me, to that
effect, would relieve both Mrs. Merridew and myself of a very
unpleasant responsibility.
Translated from polite commonplace into plain English, the
meaning of this is, as I take it, that Mrs. Merridew stands in
mortal fear of the opinion of the world. She has unfortunately
appealed to the very last man in existence who has any reason
to regard that opinion with respect. I won’t disappoint Miss
Verinder; and I won’t delay a reconciliation between two young
people who love each other, and who have been parted too long
already. Translated from plain English into polite common-
place, this means that Mr. Jennings presents his compliments to
Mrs. Merridew, and regrets that he cannot feel justified in inter-
fering any farther in the matter.
Mr. Blake’s report of himself, this morning, was the same as
before. We determined not to disturb Betteredge by overlook-
ing him at the house today. Tomorrow will be time enough for
our first visit of inspection.

June 20th.—Mr. Blake is beginning to feel his continued rest-

lessness at night. The sooner the rooms are refurnished, now,
the better.
On our way to the house, this morning, he consulted me,
with some nervous impatience and irresolution, about a letter
(forwarded to him from London) which he had received from
Sergeant Cuff.
The Sergeant writes from Ireland. He acknowledges the re-
ceipt (through his housekeeper) of a card and message which
Mr. Blake left at his residence near Dorking, and announces his
return to England as likely to take place in a week or less. In
the meantime, he requests to be favoured with Mr. Blake’s
reasons for wishing to speak to him (as stated in the message)
on the subject of the Moonstone. If Mr. Blake can convict him
of having made any serious mistake, in the course of his last
year’s inquiry concerning the Diamond, he will consider it a
duty (after the liberal manner in which he was treated by the
late Lady Verinder) to place himself at that gentleman’s dispos-
al. If not, he begs permission to remain in his retirement, sur-
rounded by the peaceful horticultural attractions of a country
life.
After reading the letter, I had no hesitation in advising
Mr. Blake to inform Sergeant Cuff, in reply, of all that had
happened since the inquiry was suspended last year, and to
leave him to draw his own conclusions from the plain facts.
On second thoughts I also suggested inviting the Sergeant to
be present at the experiment, in the event of his returning to
England in time to join us. He would be a valuable witness to
have, in any case; and, if I proved to be wrong in believing the
Diamond to be hidden in Mr. Blake’s room, his advice might be
of great importance, at a future stage of the proceedings over
which I could exercise no control. This last consideration ap-
peared to decide Mr. Blake. He promised to follow my advice.
The sound of the hammer informed us that the work of refur-
nishing was in full progress, as we entered the drive that led to
the house.
Betteredge, attired for the occasion in a fisherman’s red cap,
and an apron of green baize, met us in the outer hall. The mo-
ment he saw me, he pulled out the pocketbook and pencil, and
obstinately insisted on taking notes of everything that I said to
him. Look where we might, we found, as Mr. Blake had fore-
told that the work was advancing as rapidly and as intelligently
as it was possible to desire. But there was still much to be done
in the inner hall, and in Miss Verinder’s room. It seemed doubt-
ful whether the house would be ready for us before the end of
the week.
Having congratulated Betteredge on the progress that he had
made (he persisted in taking notes every time I opened my lips;
declining, at the same time, to pay the slightest attention to
anything said by Mr. Blake); and having promised to return for
a second visit of inspection in a day or two, we prepared to
leave the house, going out by the back way. Before we were
clear of the passages downstairs, I was stopped by Betteredge,
just as I was passing the door which led into his own room.
“Could I say two words to you in private?” he asked, in a
mysterious whisper.
I consented of course. Mr. Blake walked on to wait for me in
the garden, while I accompanied Betteredge into his room. I
fully anticipated a demand for certain new concessions, follow-
ing the precedent already established in the cases of the stuffed
buzzard, and the Cupid’s wing. To my great surprise,
Betteredge laid his hand confidentially on my arm, and put this
extraordinary question to me:
“Mr. Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with Robin-
son Crusoe?”
I answered that I had read Robinson Crusoe when I was a
child.
“Not since then?” inquired Betteredge.
“Not since then.”
He fell back a few steps, and looked at me with an expres-
sion of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe.
“He has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a child,”
said Betteredge, speaking to himself—not to me. “Let’s try
how Robinson Crusoe strikes him now!”
He unlocked a cupboard in a corner, and produced a dirty
and dog’seared book, which exhaled a strong odour of stale to-
bacco as he turned over the leaves. Having found a passage of
which he was apparently in search, he requested me to join him
in the corner; still mysteriously confidential, and still speaking
under his breath.
“In respect to this hocus-pocus of yours, sir, with the laudan-
um and Mr. Franklin Blake,” he began. “While the workpeople
are in the house, my duty as a servant gets the better of my
feelings as a man. When the workpeople are gone, my feelings
as a man get the better of my duty as a servant. Very good. Last
night, Mr. Jennings, it was borne in powerfully on my mind
that this new medical enterprise of yours would end badly. If I
had yielded to that secret dictate, I should have put all the fur-
niture away again with my own hand, and have warned the
workmen off the premises when they came the next morning.”
“I am glad to find, from what I have seen upstairs,” I said,
“that you resisted the secret dictate.”
“Resisted isn’t the word,” answered Betteredge. “Wrostled is
the word. I wrostled, sir, between the silent orders in my bosom
pulling me one way, and the written orders in my pocketbook
pushing me the other, until (saving your presence) I was in a
cold sweat. In that dreadful perturbation of mind and laxity of
body, to what remedy did I apply? To the remedy, sir, which
has never failed me yet for the last thirty years and more—to
this book!”
He hit the book a sounding blow with his open hand, and
struck out of it a stronger smell of stale tobacco than ever.
“What did I find here,” pursued Betteredge, “at the first page
I opened? This awful bit, sir, page one hundred and seventy-
eight, as follows.—‘Upon these, and many like Reflections, I
afterwards made it a certain rule with me, That whenever I
found those secret Hints or Pressings of my Mind, to doing, or
not doing any Thing that presented; or to going this Way, or
that Way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate.’ As I live by
bread, Mr. Jennings, those were the first words that met my
eye, exactly at the time when I myself was setting the secret
dictate at defiance! You don’t see anything at all out of the
common in that, do you, sir?”
“I see a coincidence—nothing more.”
 “You don’t feel at all shaken, Mr. Jennings, in respect to this
medical enterprise of yours?
“Not the least in the world.”
Betteredge stared hard at me, in dead silence. He closed the
book with great deliberation; he locked it up again in the cup-
board with extraordinary care; he wheeled round, and stared
hard at me once more. Then he spoke.
“Sir,” he said gravely, “there are great allowances to be made
for a man who has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a
child. I wish you good morning.”
He opened his door with a low bow, and left me at liberty to
find my own way into the garden. I met Mr. Blake returning to
the house.
“You needn’t tell me what has happened,” he said.
“Betteredge has played his last card: he has made another
prophetic discovery in Robinson Crusoe. Have you humoured
his favourite delusion? No? You have let him see that you don’t
believe in Robinson Crusoe? Mr. Jennings! you have fallen to
the lowest possible place in Betteredge’s estimation. Say what
you like, and do what you like, for the future. You will find that
he won’t waste another word on you now.”

June 21st.—A short entry must suffice in my journal today.

Mr. Blake has had the worst night that he has passed yet. I
have been obliged, greatly against my will, to prescribe for
him. Men of his sensitive organisation are fortunately quick in
feeling the effect of remedial measures. Otherwise, I should be
inclined to fear that he will be totally unfit for the experiment
when the time comes to try it.
As for myself, after some little remission of my pains for the
last two days I had an attack this morning, of which I shall say
nothing but that it has decided me to return to the opium. I shall
close this book, and take my full dose—five hundred drops.

June 22nd.—Our prospects look better today. Mr. Blake’s

nervous suffering is greatly allayed. He slept a little last night.
My night, thanks to the opium, was the night of a man who is
stunned. I can’t say that I woke this morning; the fitter expres-
sion would be, that I recovered my senses.
We drove to the house to see if the refurnishing was done. It
will be completed tomorrow—Saturday. As Mr. Blake foretold,
Betteredge raised no further obstacles. From first to last, he was
ominously polite, and ominously silent.
My medical enterprise (as Betteredge calls it) must now, in-
evitably, be delayed until Monday next. Tomorrow evening the
workmen will be late in the house. On the next day, the estab-
lished Sunday tyranny which is one of the institutions of this
free country, so times the trains as to make it impossible to ask
anybody to travel to us from London. Until Monday comes,
there is nothing to be done but to watch Mr. Blake carefully,
and to keep him, if possible, in the same state in which I find
him today.
In the meanwhile, I have prevailed on him to write to
Mr. Bruff, making a point of it that he shall be present as one of
the witnesses. I especially choose the lawyer, because he is
strongly prejudiced against us. If we convince him, we place
our victory beyond the possibility of dispute.
Mr. Blake has also written to Sergeant Cuff; and I have sent
a line to Miss Verinder. With these, and with old Betteredge
(who is really a person of importance in the family) we shall
have witnesses enough for the purpose—without including
Mrs. Merridew, if Mrs. Merridew persists in sacrificing herself
to the opinion of the world.

June 23rd.—The vengeance of the opium overtook me again

last night. No matter; I must go on with it now till Monday is
past and gone.
Mr. Blake is not so well again today. At two this morning, he
confesses that he opened the drawer in which his cigars are put
away. He only succeeded in locking it up again by a violent ef-
fort. His next proceeding, in case of temptation, was to throw
the key out of window. The waiter brought it in this morning,
discovered at the bottom of an empty cistern—such is fate! I
have taken possession of the key until Tuesday next.
June 24th.—Mr. Blake and I took a long drive in an open car-
riage. We both felt beneficially the blessed influence of the soft
summer air. I dined with him at the hotel. To my great relief—
for I found him in an overwrought, overexcited state this morn-
ing—he had two hours’ sound sleep on the sofa after dinner. If
he has another bad night, now—I am not afraid of the
consequence.

June 25th, Monday.—The day of the experiment! It is five

o’clock in the afternoon. We have just arrived at the house.
The first and foremost question, is the question of
Mr. Blake’s health.
So far as it is possible for me to judge, he promises (physic-
ally speaking) to be quite as susceptible to the action of the opi-
um tonight as he was at this time last year. He is, this after-
noon, in a state of nervous sensitiveness which just stops short
of nervous irritation. He changes colour readily; his hand is not
quite steady; and he starts at chance noises, and at unexpected
appearances of persons and things.
These results have all been produced by deprivation of sleep,
which is in its turn the nervous consequence of a sudden cessa-
tion in the habit of smoking, after that habit has been carried to
an extreme. Here are the same causes at work again, which op-
erated last year; and here are, apparently, the same effects. Will
the parallel still hold good, when the final test has been tried?
The events of the night must decide.
While I write these lines, Mr. Blake is amusing himself at the
billiard table in the inner hall, practising different strokes in the
game, as he was accustomed to practise them when he was a
guest in this house in June last. I have brought my journal here,
partly with a view to occupying the idle hours which I am sure
to have on my hands between this and tomorrow morning;
partly in the hope that something may happen which it may be
worth my while to place on record at the time.
Have I omitted anything, thus far? A glance at yesterday’s
entry shows me that I have forgotten to note the arrival of the
morning’s post. Let me set this right before I close these leaves
for the present, and join Mr. Blake.
I received a few lines then, yesterday, from Miss Verinder.
She has arranged to travel by the afternoon train, as I recom-
mended. Mrs. Merridew has insisted on accompanying her. The
note hints that the old lady’s generally excellent temper is a
little ruffled, and requests all due indulgence for her, in consid-
eration of her age and her habits. I will endeavour, in my rela-
tions with Mrs. Merridew, to emulate the moderation which
Betteredge displays in his relations with me. He received us
today, portentously arrayed in his best black suit, and his
stiffest white cravat. Whenever he looks my way, he remem-
bers that I have not read Robinson Crusoe since I was a child,
and he respectfully pities me.
Yesterday, also, Mr. Blake had the lawyer’s answer.
Mr. Bruff accepts the invitation—under protest. It is, he thinks,
clearly necessary that a gentleman possessed of the average al-
lowance of common sense, should accompany Miss Verinder to
the scene of, what we will venture to call, the proposed exhibi-
tion. For want of a better escort, Mr. Bruff himself will be that
gentleman.—So here is poor Miss Verinder provided with two
“chaperones.” It is a relief to think that the opinion of the world
must surely be satisfied with this!
Nothing has been heard of Sergeant Cuff. He is no doubt still
in Ireland. We must not expect to see him tonight.
Betteredge has just come in, to say that Mr. Blake has asked
for me. I must lay down my pen for the present.

Seven o’clock.—We have been all over the refurnished rooms

and staircases again; and we have had a pleasant stroll in the
shrubbery, which was Mr. Blake’s favourite walk when he was
here last. In this way, I hope to revive the old impressions of
places and things as vividly as possible in his mind.
We are now going to dine, exactly at the hour at which the
birthday dinner was given last year. My object, of course, is a
purely medical one in this case. The laudanum must find the
process of digestion, as nearly as may be, where the laudanum
found it last year.
At a reasonable time after dinner I propose to lead the con-
versation back again—as inartificially as I can—to the subject
of the Diamond, and of the Indian conspiracy to steal it. When
I have filled his mind with these topics, I shall have done all
that it is in my power to do, before the time comes for giving
him the second dose.

Half-past eight.—I have only this moment found an opportun-

ity of attending to the most important duty of all; the duty of
looking in the family medicine chest, for the laudanum which
Mr. Candy used last year.
Ten minutes since, I caught Betteredge at an unoccupied mo-
ment, and told him what I wanted. Without a word of objection,
without so much as an attempt to produce his pocketbook, he
led the way (making allowances for me at every step) to the
storeroom in which the medicine chest is kept.
I discovered the bottle, carefully guarded by a glass stopper
tied over with leather. The preparation which it contained was,
as I had anticipated, the common Tincture of Opium. Finding
the bottle still well filled, I have resolved to use it, in prefer-
ence to employing either of the two preparations with which I
had taken care to provide myself, in case of emergency.
The question of the quantity which I am to administer
presents certain difficulties. I have thought it over, and have de-
cided on increasing the dose.
My notes inform me that Mr. Candy only administered
twenty-five minims. This is a small dose to have produced the
results which followed—even in the case of a person so sensit-
ive as Mr. Blake. I think it highly probable that Mr. Candy gave
more than he supposed himself to have given—knowing, as I
do, that he has a keen relish of the pleasures of the table, and
that he measured out the laudanum on the birthday, after din-
ner. In any case, I shall run the risk of enlarging the dose to
forty minims. On this occasion, Mr. Blake knows beforehand
that he is going to take the laudanum—which is equivalent,
physiologically speaking, to his having (unconsciously to him-
self) a certain capacity in him to resist the effects. If my view is
right, a larger quantity is therefore imperatively required, this
time, to repeat the results which the smaller quantity produced,
last year.

Ten o’clock.—The witnesses, or the company (which shall I

call them?) reached the house an hour since.
A little before nine o’clock, I prevailed on Mr. Blake to ac-
company me to his bedroom; stating, as a reason, that I wished
him to look round it, for the last time, in order to make quite
sure that nothing had been forgotten in the refurnishing of the
room. I had previously arranged with Betteredge, that the bed-
chamber prepared for Mr. Bruff should be the next room to
Mr. Blake’s, and that I should be informed of the lawyer’s ar-
rival by a knock at the door. Five minutes after the clock in the
hall had struck nine, I heard the knock; and, going out immedi-
ately, met Mr. Bruff in the corridor.
My personal appearance (as usual) told against me.
Mr. Bruff’s distrust looked at me plainly enough out of
Mr. Bruff’s eyes. Being well used to producing this effect on
strangers, I did not hesitate a moment in saying what I wanted
to say, before the lawyer found his way into Mr. Blake’s room.
“You have travelled here, I believe, in company with
Mrs. Merridew and Miss Verinder?” I said.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Bruff, as drily as might be.
“Miss Verinder has probably told you, that I wish her pres-
ence in the house (and Mrs. Merridew’s presence of course) to
be kept a secret from Mr. Blake, until my experiment on him
has been tried first?”
“I know that I am to hold my tongue, sir!” said Mr. Bruff,
impatiently. “Being habitually silent on the subject of human
folly, I am all the readier to keep my lips closed on this occa-
sion. Does that satisfy you?”
I bowed, and left Betteredge to show him to his room.
Betteredge gave me one look at parting, which said, as if in so
many words, “You have caught a Tartar, Mr. Jennings—and the
name of him is Bruff.”
It was next necessary to get the meeting over with the two
ladies. I descended the stairs—a little nervously, I confess—on
my way to Miss Verinder’s sitting-room.
The gardener’s wife (charged with looking after the accom-
modation of the ladies) met me in the first-floor corridor. This
excellent woman treats me with an excessive civility which is
plainly the offspring of downright terror. She stares, trembles,
and curtseys, whenever I speak to her. On my asking for Miss
Verinder, she stared, trembled, and would no doubt have curt-
seyed next, if Miss Verinder herself had not cut that ceremony
short, by suddenly opening her sitting-room door.
“Is that Mr. Jennings?” she asked.
Before I could answer, she came out eagerly to speak to me
in the corridor. We met under the light of a lamp on a bracket.
At the first sight of me, Miss Verinder stopped, and hesitated.
She recovered herself instantly, coloured for a moment—and
then, with a charming frankness, offered me her hand.
“I can’t treat you like a stranger, Mr. Jennings,” she said.
“Oh, if you only knew how happy your letters have made me!”
She looked at my ugly wrinkled face, with a bright gratitude
so new to me in my experience of my fellow-creatures, that I
was at a loss how to answer her. Nothing had prepared me for
her kindness and her beauty. The misery of many years has not
hardened my heart, thank God. I was as awkward and as shy
with her, as if I had been a lad in my teens.
“Where is he now?” she asked, giving free expression to her
one dominant interest—the interest in Mr. Blake. “What is he
doing? Has he spoken of me? Is he in good spirits? How does
he bear the sight of the house, after what happened in it last
year? When are you going to give him the laudanum? May I
see you pour it out? I am so interested; I am so excited—I have
ten thousand things to say to you, and they all crowd together
so that I don’t know what to say first. Do you wonder at the in-
terest I take in this?”
“No,” I said. “I venture to think that I thoroughly understand
it.”
She was far above the paltry affectation of being confused.
She answered me as she might have answered a brother or a
father.
“You have relieved me of indescribable wretchedness; you
have given me a new life. How can I be ungrateful enough to
have any concealment from you? I love him,” she said simply,
“I have loved him from first to last—even when I was wrong-
ing him in my own thoughts; even when I was saying the hard-
est and the cruellest words to him. Is there any excuse for me,
in that? I hope there is—I am afraid it is the only excuse I have.
When tomorrow comes, and he knows that I am in the house,
do you think—”
She stopped again, and looked at me very earnestly.
“When tomorrow comes,” I said, “I think you have only to
tell him what you have just told me.”
Her face brightened; she came a step nearer to me. Her fin-
gers trifled nervously with a flower which I had picked in the
garden, and which I had put into the buttonhole of my coat.
“You have seen a great deal of him lately,” she said. “Have
you, really and truly, seen that?”
“Really and truly,” I answered. “I am quite certain of what
will happen tomorrow. I wish I could feel as certain of what
will happen tonight.”
At that point in the conversation, we were interrupted by the
appearance of Betteredge with the tea-tray. He gave me another
significant look as he passed on into the sitting-room. “Aye!
aye! make your hay while the sun shines. The Tartar’s upstairs,
Mr. Jennings—the Tartar’s upstairs!”
We followed him into the room. A little old lady, in a corner,
very nicely dressed, and very deeply absorbed over a smart
piece of embroidery, dropped her work in her lap, and uttered a
faint little scream at the first sight of my gipsy complexion and
my piebald hair.
“Mrs. Merridew,” said Miss Verinder, “this is Mr. Jennings.”
“I beg Mr. Jennings’s pardon,” said the old lady, looking at
Miss Verinder, and speaking at me. “Railway travelling always
makes me nervous. I am endeavouring to quiet my mind by oc-
cupying myself as usual. I don’t know whether my embroidery
is out of place, on this extraordinary occasion. If it interferes
with Mr. Jennings’s medical views, I shall be happy to put it
away of course.”
I hastened to sanction the presence of the embroidery, ex-
actly as I had sanctioned the absence of the burst buzzard and
the Cupid’s wing. Mrs. Merridew made an effort—a grateful
effort—to look at my hair. No! it was not to be done. Mrs. Mer-
ridew looked back again at Miss Verinder.
“If Mr. Jennings will permit me,” pursued the old lady, “I
should like to ask a favour. Mr. Jennings is about to try a sci-
entific experiment tonight. I used to attend scientific experi-
ments when I was a girl at school. They invariably ended in an
explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be so very kind, I should like to
be warned of the explosion this time. With a view to getting it
over, if possible, before I go to bed.”
I attempted to assure Mrs. Merridew that an explosion was
not included in the programme on this occasion.
“No,” said the old lady. “I am much obliged to Mr. Jenning-
s—I am aware that he is only deceiving me for my own good. I
prefer plain dealing. I am quite resigned to the explosion—but I
do want to get it over, if possible, before I go to bed.”
Here the door opened, and Mrs. Merridew uttered another
little scream. The advent of the explosion? No: only the advent
of Betteredge.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings,” said Betteredge, in his
most elaborately confidential manner. “Mr. Franklin wishes to
know where you are. Being under your orders to deceive him,
in respect to the presence of my young lady in the house, I have
said I don’t know. That you will please to observe, was a lie.
Having one foot already in the grave, sir, the fewer lies you ex-
pect me to tell, the more I shall be indebted to you, when my
conscience pricks me and my time comes.”
There was not a moment to be wasted on the purely speculat-
ive question of Betteredge’s conscience. Mr. Blake might make
his appearance in search of me, unless I went to him at once in
his own room. Miss Verinder followed me out into the corridor.
“They seem to be in a conspiracy to persecute you,” she said.
“What does it mean?”
“Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder—on a very
small scale—against anything that is new.”
“What are we to do with Mrs. Merridew?”
“Tell her the explosion will take place at nine tomorrow
morning.”
“So as to send her to bed?”
“Yes—so as to send her to bed.”
Miss Verinder went back to the sitting-room, and I went up-
stairs to Mr. Blake.
To my surprise I found him alone; restlessly pacing his
room, and a little irritated at being left by himself.
“Where is Mr. Bruff?” I asked.
He pointed to the closed door of communication between the
two rooms. Mr. Bruff had looked in on him, for a moment; had
attempted to renew his protest against our proceedings; and had
once more failed to produce the smallest impression on
Mr. Blake. Upon this, the lawyer had taken refuge in a black
leather bag, filled to bursting with professional papers. “The
serious business of life,” he admitted, “was sadly out of place
on such an occasion as the present. But the serious business of
life must be carried on, for all that. Mr. Blake would perhaps
kindly make allowance for the old-fashioned habits of a prac-
tical man. Time was money—and, as for Mr. Jennings, he
might depend on it that Mr. Bruff would be forthcoming when
called upon.” With that apology, the lawyer had gone back to
his own room, and had immersed himself obstinately in his
black bag.
I thought of Mrs. Merridew and her embroidery, and of
Betteredge and his conscience. There is a wonderful sameness
in the solid side of the English character—just as there is a
wonderful sameness in the solid expression of the English face.
“When are you going to give me the laudanum?” asked
Mr. Blake impatiently.
“You must wait a little longer,” I said. “I will stay and keep
you company till the time comes.”
It was then not ten o’clock. Inquiries which I had made, at
various times, of Betteredge and Mr. Blake, had led me to the
conclusion that the dose of laudanum given by Mr. Candy
could not possibly have been administered before eleven. I had
accordingly determined not to try the second dose until that
time.
We talked a little; but both our minds were preoccupied by
the coming ordeal. The conversation soon flagged—then
dropped altogether. Mr. Blake idly turned over the books on his
bedroom table. I had taken the precaution of looking at them,
when we first entered the room. The Guardian; The Tatler;
Richardson’s Pamela; Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling; Roscoe’s
Lorenzo de’ Medici; and Robertson’s Charles the Fifth—all
classical works; all (of course) immeasurably superior to any-
thing produced in later times; and all (from my present point of
view) possessing the one great merit of enchaining nobody’s
interest, and exciting nobody’s brain. I left Mr. Blake to the
composing influence of Standard Literature, and occupied my-
self in making this entry in my journal.
My watch informs me that it is close on eleven o’clock. I
must shut up these leaves once more.

Two o’clock a.m.—The experiment has been tried. With what

result, I am now to describe.
At eleven o’clock, I rang the bell for Betteredge, and told
Mr. Blake that he might at last prepare himself for bed.
I looked out of the window at the night. It was mild and
rainy, resembling, in this respect, the night of the birthday—the
twenty-first of June, last year. Without professing to believe in
omens, it was at least encouraging to find no direct nervous in-
fluences—no stormy or electric perturbations—in the atmo-
sphere. Betteredge joined me at the window, and mysteriously
put a little slip of paper into my hand. It contained these lines:

“Mrs. Merridew has gone to bed, on the distinct

understanding that the explosion is to take place at
nine tomorrow morning, and that I am not to stir
out of this part of the house until she comes and
sets me free. She has no idea that the chief scene
of the experiment is my sitting-room—or she
would have remained in it for the whole night! I
am alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you
measure out the laudanum; I want to have some-
thing to do with it, even in the unimportant charac-
ter of a mere looker-on.—R. V.”

I followed Betteredge out of the room, and told him to re-

move the medicine-chest into Miss Verinder’s sitting-room.
The order appeared to take him completely by surprise. He
looked as if he suspected me of some occult medical design on
Miss Verinder! “Might I presume to ask,” he said, “what my
young lady and the medicine-chest have got to do with each
other?”
“Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see.”
Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to
superintend me effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-
chest was included in the proceedings.
“Is there any objection, sir” he asked, “to taking Mr. Bruff
into this part of the business?”
“Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to ac-
company me downstairs.”
Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without
another word. I went back into Mr. Blake’s room, and knocked
at the door of communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his pa-
pers in his hand—immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I am going to pre-
pare the laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be
present, and to see what I do.”
 “Yes?” said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riv-
eted on his papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to
me. “Anything else?”
“I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me ad-
minister the dose.”
“Anything else?”
“One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of re-
maining in Mr. Blake’s room, and of waiting to see what
happens.”
“Oh, very good!” said Mr. Bruff. “My room, or Mr. Blake’s
room—it doesn’t matter which; I can go on with my papers
anywhere. Unless you object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing
that amount of common sense into the proceedings?”
Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the
lawyer, speaking from his bed.
“Do you really mean to say that you don’t feel any interest in
what we are going to do?” he asked. “Mr. Bruff, you have no
more imagination than a cow!”
“A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake,” said the lawyer.
With that reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping
his papers in his hand.
We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing
her sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood
Betteredge, on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat
down on the first chair that he could find, and (emulating the
usefulness of the cow) plunged back again into his papers on
the spot.
Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her
one all-absorbing interest—her interest in Mr. Blake.
“How is he now?” she asked. “Is he nervous? is he out of
temper? Do you think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do
no harm?”
“Quite sure. Come, and see me measure it out.”
“One moment! It is past eleven now. How long will it be be-
fore anything happens?”
“It is not easy to say. An hour perhaps.”
“I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?”
 “Certainly.”
“I shall wait in my bedroom—just as I did before. I shall
keep the door a little way open. It was a little way open last
year. I will watch the sitting-room door; and the moment it
moves, I will blow out my light. It all happened in that way, on
my birthday night. And it must all happen again in the same
way, musn’t it?”
“Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?”
“In his interests, I can do anything!” she answered fervently.
One look at her face told me that I could trust her. I ad-
dressed myself again to Mr. Bruff.
“I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment,” I
said.
“Oh, certainly!” He got up with a start—as if I had disturbed
him at a particularly interesting place—and followed me to the
medicine-chest. There, deprived of the breathless excitement
incidental to the practice of his profession, he looked at
Betteredge—and yawned wearily.
Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water,
which she had taken from a side-table. “Let me pour out the
water,” she whispered. “I must have a hand in it!”
I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured
the laudanum into a medicine glass. “Fill it till it is three parts
full,” I said, and handed the glass to Miss Verinder. I then dir-
ected Betteredge to lock up the medicine chest; informing him
that I had done with it now. A look of unutterable relief over-
spread the old servant’s countenance. He had evidently suspec-
ted me of a medical design on his young lady!
After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder
seized a moment—while Betteredge was locking the chest, and
while Mr. Bruff was looking back to his papers—and slyly
kissed the rim of the medicine glass. “When you give it to
him,” said the charming girl, “give it to him on that side!”
I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Dia-
mond from my pocket, and gave it to her.
“You must have a hand in this, too,” I said. “You must put it
where you put the Moonstone last year.”
 She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Dia-
mond into the drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on
the birthday night. Mr. Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under
protest, as he had witnessed everything else. But the strong dra-
matic interest which the experiment was now assuming, proved
(to my great amusement) to be too much for Betteredge’s capa-
city of self restraint. His hand trembled as he held the candle,
and he whispered anxiously, “Are you sure, miss, it’s the right
drawer?”
I led the way out again, with the laudanum and water in my
hand. At the door, I stopped to address a last word to Miss
Verinder.
“Don’t be long in putting out the lights,” I said.
“I will put them out at once,” she answered. “And I will wait
in my bedroom, with only one candle alight.”
She closed the sitting-room door behind us. Followed by
Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, I went back to Mr. Blake’s room.
We found him moving restlessly from side to side of the bed,
and wondering irritably whether he was to have the laudanum
that night. In the presence of the two witnesses, I gave him the
dose, and shook up his pillows, and told him to lie down again
quietly and wait.
His bed, provided with light chintz curtains, was placed,
with the head against the wall of the room, so as to leave a
good open space on either side of it. On one side, I drew the
curtains completely—and in the part of the room thus screened
from his view, I placed Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, to wait for
the result. At the bottom of the bed I half drew the curtains—
and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that I might let
him see me or not see me, speak to me or not speak to me, just
as the circumstances might direct. Having already been in-
formed that he always slept with a light in the room, I placed
one of the two lighted candles on a little table at the head of the
bed, where the glare of the light would not strike on his eyes.
The other candle I gave to Mr. Bruff; the light, in this instance,
being subdued by the screen of the chintz curtains. The window
was open at the top, so as to ventilate the room. The rain fell
softly, the house was quiet. It was twenty minutes past eleven,
by my watch, when the preparations were completed, and I
took my place on the chair set apart at the bottom of the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of be-
ing as deeply interested in them as ever. But looking towards
him now, I saw certain signs and tokens which told me that the
Law was beginning to lose its hold on him at last. The suspen-
ded interest of the situation in which we were now placed was
slowly asserting its influence even on his unimaginative mind.
As for Betteredge, consistency of principle and dignity of con-
duct had become, in his case, mere empty words. He forgot that
I was performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he
forgot that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot
that I had not read Robinson Crusoe since I was a child. “For
the Lord’s sake, sir,” he whispered to me, “tell us when it will
begin to work.”
“Not before midnight,” I whispered back. “Say nothing, and
sit still.”
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with
me, without a struggle to save himself. He answered by a wink!
Looking next towards Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as
ever in his bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the
laudanum had not begun to assert itself yet. To tell him, in his
present humour, that the more he fidgeted and wondered, the
longer he would delay the result for which we were now wait-
ing, would have been simply useless. The wiser course to take
was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his mind, by leading
him insensibly to think of something else.
With this view, I encouraged him to talk to me; contriving so
to direct the conversation, on my side, as to lead it back again
to the subject which had engaged us earlier in the evening—the
subject of the Diamond. I took care to revert to those portions
of the story of the Moonstone, which related to the transport of
it from London to Yorkshire; to the risk which Mr. Blake had
run in removing it from the bank at Frizinghall: and to the un-
expected appearance of the Indians at the house, on the evening
of the birthday. And I purposely assumed, in referring to these
events, to have misunderstood much of what Mr. Blake himself
had told me a few hours since. In this way, I set him talking on
the subject with which it was now vitally important to fill his
mind—without allowing him to suspect that I was making him
talk for a purpose. Little by little, he became so interested in
putting me right that he forgot to fidget in the bed. His mind
was far away from the question of the opium, at the all-import-
ant time when his eyes first told me that the opium was begin-
ning to lay its hold on his brain.
I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve, when
the premonitory symptoms of the working of the laudanum first
showed themselves to me.
At this time, no unpractised eyes would have detected any
change in him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore
away, the swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to
show itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium
gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a stealthy perspiration began to
glisten on his face. In five minutes more, the talk which he still
kept up with me, failed in coherence. He held steadily to the
subject of the Diamond; but he ceased to complete his sen-
tences. A little later, the sentences dropped to single words.
Then, there was an interval of silence. Then, he sat up in bed.
Then, still busy with the subject of the Diamond, he began to
talk again—not to me, but to himself. That change told me that
the first stage in the experiment was reached. The stimulant in-
fluence of the opium had got him.
The time, now, was twenty-three minutes past twelve. The
next half hour, at most, would decide the question of whether
he would, or would not, get up from his bed, and leave the
room.
In the breathless interest of watching him—in the unutter-
able triumph of seeing the first result of the experiment declare
itself in the manner, and nearly at the time, which I had anticip-
ated—I had utterly forgotten the two companions of my night
vigil. Looking towards them now, I saw the Law (as represen-
ted by Mr. Bruff’s papers) lying unheeded on the floor.
Mr. Bruff himself was looking eagerly through a crevice left in
the imperfectly-drawn curtains of the bed. And Betteredge, ob-
livious of all respect for social distinctions, was peeping over
Mr. Bruff’s shoulder.
They both started back, on finding that I was looking at
them, like two boys caught out by their schoolmaster in a fault.
I signed to them to take off their boots quietly, as I was taking
off mine. If Mr. Blake gave us the chance of following him, it
was vitally necessary to follow him without noise.
Ten minutes passed—and nothing happened. Then, he sud-
denly threw the bedclothes off him. He put one leg out of bed.
He waited.
“I wish I had never taken it out of the bank,” he said to him-
self. “It was safe in the bank.”
My heart throbbed fast; the pulses at my temples beat furi-
ously. The doubt about the safety of the Diamond was, once
more, the dominant impression in his brain! On that one pivot,
the whole success of the experiment turned. The prospect thus
suddenly opened before me was too much for my shattered
nerves. I was obliged to look away from him—or I should have
lost my self-control.
There was another interval of silence.
When I could trust myself to look back at him he was out of
his bed, standing erect at the side of it. The pupils of his eyes
were now contracted; his eyeballs gleamed in the light of the
candle as he moved his head slowly to and fro. He was think-
ing; he was doubting—he spoke again.
“How do I know?” he said. “The Indians may be hidden in
the house.”
He stopped, and walked slowly to the other end of the room.
He turned—waited—came back to the bed.
“It’s not even locked up,” he went on. “It’s in the drawer of
her cabinet. And the drawer doesn’t lock.”
He sat down on the side of the bed. “Anybody might take it,”
he said.
He rose again restlessly, and reiterated his first words.
“How do I know? The Indians may be hidden in the house.”
 He waited again. I drew back behind the half curtain of the
bed. He looked about the room, with a vacant glitter in his
eyes. It was a breathless moment. There was a pause of some
sort. A pause in the action of the opium? a pause in the action
of the brain? Who could tell? Everything depended, now, on
what he did next.
He laid himself down again on the bed!
A horrible doubt crossed my mind. Was it possible that the
sedative action of the opium was making itself felt already? It
was not in my experience that it should do this. But what is ex-
perience, where opium is concerned? There are probably no
two men in existence on whom the drug acts in exactly the
same manner. Was some constitutional peculiarity in him, feel-
ing the influence in some new way? Were we to fail on the very
brink of success?
No! He got up again abruptly. “How the devil am I to sleep,”
he said, “with this on my mind?”
He looked at the light, burning on the table at the head of his
bed. After a moment, he took the candle in his hand.
I blew out the second candle, burning behind the closed cur-
tains. I drew back, with Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, into the
farthest corner by the bed. I signed to them to be silent, as if
their lives had depended on it.
We waited—seeing and hearing nothing. We waited, hidden
from him by the curtains.
The light which he was holding on the other side of us
moved suddenly. The next moment he passed us, swift and
noiseless, with the candle in his hand.
He opened the bedroom door, and went out.
We followed him along the corridor. We followed him down
the stairs. We followed him along the second corridor. He never
looked back; he never hesitated.
He opened the sitting-room door, and went in, leaving it
open behind him.
The door was hung (like all the other doors in the house) on
large old-fashioned hinges. When it was opened, a crevice was
opened between the door and the post. I signed to my two com-
panions to look through this, so as to keep them from showing
themselves. I placed myself—outside the door also—on the op-
posite side. A recess in the wall was at my left hand, in which I
could instantly hide myself, if he showed any signs of looking
back into the corridor.
He advanced to the middle of the room, with the candle still
in his hand: he looked about him—but he never looked back.
I saw the door of Miss Verinder’s bedroom, standing ajar.
She had put out her light. She controlled herself nobly. The dim
white outline of her summer dress was all that I could see.
Nobody who had not known it beforehand would have suspec-
ted that there was a living creature in the room. She kept back,
in the dark: not a word, not a movement escaped her.
It was now ten minutes past one. I heard, through the dead
silence, the soft drip of the rain and the tremulous passage of
the night air through the trees.
After waiting irresolute, for a minute or more, in the middle
of the room, he moved to the corner near the window, where
the Indian cabinet stood.
He put his candle on the top of the cabinet. He opened, and
shut, one drawer after another, until he came to the drawer in
which the mock Diamond was put. He looked into the drawer
for a moment. Then he took the mock Diamond out with his
right hand. With the other hand, he took the candle from the top
of the cabinet.
He walked back a few steps towards the middle of the room,
and stood still again.
Thus far, he had exactly repeated what he had done on the
birthday night. Would his next proceeding be the same as the
proceeding of last year? Would he leave the room? Would he
go back now, as I believed he had gone back then, to his bed-
chamber? Would he show us what he had done with the Dia-
mond, when he had returned to his own room?
His first action, when he moved once more, proved to be an
action which he had not performed, when he was under the in-
fluence of the opium for the first time. He put the candle down
on a table, and wandered on a little towards the farther end of
the room. There was a sofa there. He leaned heavily on the
back of it, with his left hand—then roused himself, and re-
turned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes.
They were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them was fast
dying out.
The suspense of the moment proved too much for Miss Ver-
inder’s self-control. She advanced a few steps—then stopped
again. Mr. Bruff and Betteredge looked across the open door-
way at me for the first time. The prevision of a coming disap-
pointment was impressing itself on their minds as well as on
mine.
Still, so long as he stood where he was, there was hope. We
waited, in unutterable expectation, to see what would happen
next.
The next event was decisive. He let the mock Diamond drop
out of his hand.
It fell on the floor, before the doorway—plainly visible to
him, and to everyone. He made no effort to pick it up: he
looked down at it vacantly, and, as he looked, his head sank on
his breast. He staggered—roused himself for an instant—
walked back unsteadily to the sofa—and sat down on it. He
made a last effort; he tried to rise, and sank back. His head fell
on the sofa cushions. It was then twenty-five minutes past one
o’clock. Before I had put my watch back in my pocket, he was
asleep.
It was all over now. The sedative influence had got him; the
experiment was at an end.

I entered the room, telling Mr. Bruff and Betteredge that they
might follow me. There was no fear of disturbing him. We
were free to move and speak.
“The first thing to settle,” I said, “is the question of what we
are to do with him. He will probably sleep for the next six or
seven hours, at least. It is some distance to carry him back to
his own room. When I was younger, I could have done it alone.
But my health and strength are not what they were—I am
afraid I must ask you to help me.”
Before they could answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly.
She met me at the door of her room, with a light shawl, and
with the counterpane from her own bed.
“Do you mean to watch him while he sleeps?” she asked.
“Yes, I am not sure enough of the action of the opium in his
case to be willing to leave him alone.”
She handed me the shawl and the counterpane.
“Why should you disturb him?” she whispered. “Make his
bed on the sofa. I can shut my door, and keep in my room.”
It was infinitely the simplest and the safest way of disposing
of him for the night. I mentioned the suggestion to Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge—who both approved of my adopting it. In five
minutes I had laid him comfortably on the sofa, and had
covered him lightly with the counterpane and the shawl. Miss
Verinder wished us good night, and closed the door. At my re-
quest, we three then drew round the table in the middle of the
room, on which the candle was still burning, and on which
writing materials were placed.
“Before we separate,” I began, “I have a word to say about
the experiment which has been tried tonight. Two distinct ob-
jects were to be gained by it. The first of these objects was to
prove, that Mr. Blake entered this room, and took the Diamond,
last year, acting unconsciously and irresponsibly, under the in-
fluence of opium. After what you have both seen, are you both
satisfied, so far?”
They answered me in the affirmative, without a moment’s
hesitation.
“The second object,” I went on, “was to discover what he did
with the Diamond, after he was seen by Miss Verinder to leave
her sitting-room with the jewel in his hand, on the birthday
night. The gaining of this object depended, of course, on his
still continuing exactly to repeat his proceedings of last year.
He has failed to do that; and the purpose of the experiment is
defeated accordingly. I can’t assert that I am not disappointed
at the result—but I can honestly say that I am not surprised by
it. I told Mr. Blake from the first, that our complete success in
this matter depended on our completely reproducing in him the
physical and moral conditions of last year—and I warned him
that this was the next thing to a downright impossibility. We
have only partially reproduced the conditions, and the experi-
ment has been only partially successful in consequence. It is
also possible that I may have administered too large a dose of
laudanum. But I myself look upon the first reason that I have
given, as the true reason why we have to lament a failure, as
well as to rejoice over a success.”
After saying those words, I put the writing materials before
Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he had any objection—before we
separated for the night—to draw out, and sign, a plain state-
ment of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and pro-
duced the statement with the fluent readiness of a practised
hand.
“I owe you this,” he said, signing the paper, “as some atone-
ment for what passed between us earlier in the evening. I beg
your pardon, Mr. Jennings, for having doubted you. You have
done Franklin Blake an inestimable service. In our legal phrase,
you have proved your case.”
Betteredge’s apology was characteristic of the man.
“Mr. Jennings,” he said, “when you read Robinson Crusoe
again (which I strongly recommend you to do), you will find
that he never scruples to acknowledge it, when he turns out to
have been in the wrong. Please to consider me, sir, as doing
what Robinson Crusoe did, on the present occasion.” With
those words he signed the paper in his turn.
Mr. Bruff took me aside, as we rose from the table.
“One word about the Diamond,” he said. “Your theory is that
Franklin Blake hid the Moonstone in his room. My theory is,
that the Moonstone is in the possession of Mr. Luker’s bankers
in London. We won’t dispute which of us is right. We will only
ask, which of us is in a position to put his theory to the test?”
“The test, in my case,” I answered, “has been tried tonight,
and has failed.”
 “The test, in my case,” rejoined Mr. Bruff, “is still in process
of trial. For the last two days I have had a watch set for
Mr. Luker at the bank; and I shall cause that watch to be con-
tinued until the last day of the month. I know that he must take
the Diamond himself out of his bankers’ hands—and I am act-
ing on the chance that the person who has pledged the Dia-
mond may force him to do this by redeeming the pledge. In that
case I may be able to lay my hand on the person. If I succeed, I
clear up the mystery, exactly at the point where the mystery
baffles us now! Do you admit that, so far?”
I admitted it readily.
“I am going back to town by the morning train,” pursued the
lawyer. “I may hear, when I return, that a discovery has been
made—and it may be of the greatest importance that I should
have Franklin Blake at hand to appeal to, if necessary. I intend
to tell him, as soon as he wakes, that he must return with me to
London. After all that has happened, may I trust to your influ-
ence to back me?”
“Certainly!” I said.
Mr. Bruff shook hands with me, and left the room.
Betteredge followed him out.

I went to the sofa to look at Mr. Blake. He had not moved since
I had laid him down and made his bed—he lay locked in a deep
and quiet sleep.
While I was still looking at him, I heard the bedroom door
softly opened. Once more, Miss Verinder appeared on the
threshold, in her pretty summer dress.
“Do me a last favour?” she whispered. “Let me watch him
with you.”
I hesitated—not in the interests of propriety; only in the in-
terest of her night’s rest. She came close to me, and took my
hand.
“I can’t sleep; I can’t even sit still, in my own room,” she
said. “Oh, Mr. Jennings, if you were me, only think how you
would long to sit and look at him. Say, yes! Do!”
Is it necessary to mention that I gave way? Surely not!
She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa. She looked at him in
a silent ecstasy of happiness, till the tears rose in her eyes. She
dried her eyes, and said she would fetch her work. She fetched
her work, and never did a single stitch of it. It lay in her lap—
she was not even able to look away from him long enough to
thread her needle. I thought of my own youth; I thought of the
gentle eyes which had once looked love at me. In the heaviness
of my heart I turned to my Journal for relief, and wrote in it
what is written here.
So we kept our watch together in silence. One of us absorbed
in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.
Hour after hour he lay in his deep sleep. The light of the new
day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.
Towards six o’clock, I felt the warning which told me that
my pains were coming back. I was obliged to leave her alone
with him for a little while. I said I would go upstairs, and fetch
another pillow for him out of his room. It was not a long attack,
this time. In a little while I was able to venture back, and let her
see me again.
I found her at the head of the sofa, when I returned. She was
just touching his forehead with her lips. I shook my head as
soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair. She looked back at
me with a bright smile, and a charming colour in her face. “You
would have done it,” she whispered, “in my place!”

It is just eight o’clock. He is beginning to move for the first

time.
Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the sofa. She has so
placed herself that when his eyes first open, they must open on
her face.
Shall I leave them together?
Yes!
Eleven o’clock.—The house is empty again. They have ar-
ranged it among themselves; they have all gone to London by
the ten o’clock train. My brief dream of happiness is over. I
have awakened again to the realities of my friendless and
lonely life.
I dare not trust myself to write down, the kind words that
have been said to me especially by Miss Verinder and
Mr. Blake. Besides, it is needless. Those words will come back
to me in my solitary hours, and will help me through what is
left of the end of my life. Mr. Blake is to write, and tell me
what happens in London. Miss Verinder is to return to York-
shire in the autumn (for her marriage, no doubt); and I am to
take a holiday, and be a guest in the house. Oh me, how I felt,
as the grateful happiness looked at me out of her eyes, and the
warm pressure of her hand said, “This is your doing!”
My poor patients are waiting for me. Back again, this morn-
ing, to the old routine! Back again, tonight, to the dreadful al-
ternative between the opium and the pain!
God be praised for His mercy! I have seen a little sunshine—
I have had a happy time.
 FIFTH NARRATIVE

The Story Resumed by Franklin Blake

But few words are needed, on my part, to complete the narrative that has
been presented in the Journal of Ezra Jennings.
Of myself, I have only to say that I awoke on the morning of the twenty-
sixth, perfectly ignorant of all that I had said and done under the influence
of the opium—from the time when the drug first laid its hold on me, to the
time when I opened my eyes, in Rachel’s sitting-room.
Of what happened after my waking, I do not feel called upon to render an
account in detail. Confining myself merely to results, I have to report that
Rachel and I thoroughly understood each other, before a single word of ex-
planation had passed on either side. I decline to account, and Rachel de-
clines to account, for the extraordinary rapidity of our reconciliation. Sir
and Madam, look back at the time when you were passionately attached to
each other—and you will know what happened, after Ezra Jennings had
shut the door of the sitting-room, as well as I know it myself.
I have, however, no objection to add, that we should have been certainly
discovered by Mrs. Merridew, but for Rachel’s presence of mind. She heard
the sound of the old lady’s dress in the corridor, and instantly ran out to
meet her; I heard Mrs. Merridew say, “What is the matter?” and I heard
Rachel answer, “The explosion!” Mrs. Merridew instantly permitted herself
to be taken by the arm, and led into the garden, out of the way of the im-
pending shock. On her return to the house, she met me in the hall, and ex-
pressed herself as greatly struck by the vast improvement in Science, since
the time when she was a girl at school. “Explosions, Mr. Blake, are infin-
itely milder than they were. I assure you, I barely heard Mr. Jennings’s ex-
plosion from the garden. And no smell afterwards, that I can detect, now we
have come back to the house! I must really apologise to your medical
friend. It is only due to him to say that he has managed it beautifully!”
So, after vanquishing Betteredge and Mr. Bruff, Ezra Jennings van-
quished Mrs. Merridew herself. There is a great deal of undeveloped liberal
feeling in the world, after all!
At breakfast, Mr. Bruff made no secret of his reasons for wishing that I
should accompany him to London by the morning train. The watch kept at
the bank, and the result which might yet come of it, appealed so irresistibly
to Rachel’s curiosity, that she at once decided (if Mrs. Merridew had no ob-
jection) on accompanying us back to town—so as to be within reach of the
earliest news of our proceedings.
Mrs. Merridew proved to be all pliability and indulgence, after the truly
considerate manner in which the explosion had conducted itself; and
Betteredge was accordingly informed that we were all four to travel back
together by the morning train. I fully expected that he would have asked
leave to accompany us. But Rachel had wisely provided her faithful old ser-
vant with an occupation that interested him. He was charged with complet-
ing the refurnishing of the house, and was too full of his domestic respons-
ibilities to feel the “detective-fever” as he might have felt it under other
circumstances.
Our one subject of regret, in going to London, was the necessity of part-
ing, more abruptly than we could have wished, with Ezra Jennings. It was
impossible to persuade him to accompany us. I could only promise to write
to him—and Rachel could only insist on his coming to see her when she re-
turned to Yorkshire. There was every prospect of our meeting again in a few
months—and yet there was something very sad in seeing our best and
dearest friend left standing alone on the platform, as the train moved out of
the station.
On our arrival in London, Mr. Bruff was accosted at the terminus by a
small boy, dressed in a jacket and trousers of threadbare black cloth, and
personally remarkable in virtue of the extraordinary prominence of his eyes.
They projected so far, and they rolled about so loosely, that you wondered
uneasily why they remained in their sockets. After listening to the boy,
Mr. Bruff asked the ladies whether they would excuse our accompanying
them back to Portland Place. I had barely time to promise Rachel that I
would return, and tell her everything that had happened, before Mr. Bruff
seized me by the arm, and hurried me into a cab. The boy with the ill-se-
cured eyes took his place on the box by the driver, and the driver was direc-
ted to go to Lombard Street.
“News from the bank?” I asked, as we started.
“News of Mr. Luker,” said Mr. Bruff. “An hour ago, he was seen to leave
his house at Lambeth, in a cab, accompanied by two men, who were recog-
nised by my men as police officers in plain clothes. If Mr. Luker’s dread of
the Indians is at the bottom of this precaution, the inference is plain enough.
He is going to take the Diamond out of the bank.”
“And we are going to the bank to see what comes of it?”
“Yes—or to hear what has come of it, if it is all over by this time. Did
you notice my boy—on the box, there?”
“I noticed his eyes.”
Mr. Bruff laughed. “They call the poor little wretch ‘Gooseberry’ at the
office,” he said. “I employ him to go on errands—and I only wish my clerks
who have nicknamed him were as thoroughly to be depended on as he is.
Gooseberry is one of the sharpest boys in London, Mr. Blake, in spite of his
eyes.”
It was twenty minutes to five when we drew up before the bank in Lom-
bard Street. Gooseberry looked longingly at his master, as he opened the
cab door.
“Do you want to come in too?” asked Mr. Bruff kindly. “Come in then,
and keep at my heels till further orders. He’s as quick as lightning,” pursued
Mr. Bruff, addressing me in a whisper. “Two words will do with Goose-
berry, where twenty would be wanted with another boy.”
We entered the bank. The outer office—with the long counter, behind
which the cashiers sat—was crowded with people; all waiting their turn to
take money out, or to pay money in, before the bank closed at five o’clock.
Two men among the crowd approached Mr. Bruff, as soon as he showed
himself.
“Well,” asked the lawyer. “Have you seen him?”
“He passed us here half an hour since, sir, and went on into the inner
office.”
“Has he not come out again yet?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Bruff turned to me. “Let us wait,” he said.
 I looked round among the people about me for the three Indians. Not a
sign of them was to be seen anywhere. The only person present with a no-
ticeably dark complexion was a tall man in a pilot coat, and a round hat,
who looked like a sailor. Could this be one of them in disguise? Impossible!
The man was taller than any of the Indians; and his face, where it was not
hidden by a bushy black beard, was twice the breadth of any of their faces
at least.
“They must have their spy somewhere,” said Mr. Bruff, looking at the
dark sailor in his turn. “And he may be the man.”
Before he could say more, his coattail was respectfully pulled by his at-
tendant sprite with the gooseberry eyes. Mr. Bruff looked where the boy
was looking. “Hush!” he said. “Here is Mr. Luker!”
The moneylender came out from the inner regions of the bank, followed
by his two guardian policemen in plain clothes.
“Keep your eye on him,” whispered Mr. Bruff. “If he passes the Diamond
to anybody, he will pass it here.”
Without noticing either of us, Mr. Luker slowly made his way to the
door—now in the thickest, now in the thinnest part of the crowd. I distinctly
saw his hand move, as he passed a short, stout man, respectably dressed in a
suit of sober grey. The man started a little, and looked after him. Mr. Luker
moved on slowly through the crowd. At the door his guard placed them-
selves on either side of him. They were all three followed by one of
Mr. Bruff’s men—and I saw them no more.
I looked round at the lawyer, and then looked significantly towards the
man in the suit of sober grey. “Yes!” whispered Mr. Bruff, “I saw it too!”
He turned about, in search of his second man. The second man was
nowhere to be seen. He looked behind him for his attendant sprite. Goose-
berry had disappeared.
“What the devil does it mean?” said Mr. Bruff angrily. “They have both
left us at the very time when we want them most.”
It came to the turn of the man in the grey suit to transact his business at
the counter. He paid in a cheque—received a receipt for it—and turned to
go out.
“What is to be done?” asked Mr. Bruff. “We can’t degrade ourselves by
following him.”
“I can!” I said. “I wouldn’t lose sight of that man for ten thousand
pounds!”
 “In that case,” rejoined Mr. Bruff, “I wouldn’t lose sight of you, for twice
the money. A nice occupation for a man in my position,” he muttered to
himself, as we followed the stranger out of the bank. “For Heaven’s sake
don’t mention it. I should be ruined if it was known.”
The man in the grey suit got into an omnibus, going westward. We got in
after him. There were latent reserves of youth still left in Mr. Bruff. I assert
it positively—when he took his seat in the omnibus, he blushed!
The man in the grey suit stopped the omnibus, and got out in Oxford
Street. We followed him again. He went into a chemist’s shop.
Mr. Bruff started. “My chemist!” he exclaimed. “I am afraid we have
made a mistake.”
We entered the shop. Mr. Bruff and the proprietor exchanged a few words
in private. The lawyer joined me again, with a very crestfallen face.
“It’s greatly to our credit,” he said, as he took my arm, and led me
out—“that’s one comfort!”
“What is to our credit?” I asked.
“Mr. Blake! you and I are the two worst amateur detectives that ever tried
their hands at the trade. The man in the grey suit has been thirty years in the
chemist’s service. He was sent to the bank to pay money to his master’s ac-
count—and he knows no more of the Moonstone than the babe unborn.”
I asked what was to be done next.
“Come back to my office,” said Mr. Bruff. “Gooseberry, and my second
man, have evidently followed somebody else. Let us hope that they had
their eyes about them at any rate!”
When we reached Gray’s Inn Square, the second man had arrived there
before us. He had been waiting for more than a quarter of an hour.
“Well!” asked Mr. Bruff. “What’s your news?”
“I am sorry to say, sir,” replied the man, “that I have made a mistake. I
could have taken my oath that I saw Mr. Luker pass something to an elderly
gentleman, in a light-coloured paletot. The elderly gentleman turns out, sir,
to be a most respectable master ironmonger in Eastcheap.”
“Where is Gooseberry?” asked Mr. Bruff resignedly.
The man stared. “I don’t know, sir. I have seen nothing of him since I left
the bank.”
Mr. Bruff dismissed the man. “One of two things,” he said to me. “Either
Gooseberry has run away, or he is hunting on his own account. What do
you say to dining here, on the chance that the boy may come back in an
hour or two? I have got some good wine in the cellar, and we can get a chop
from the coffeehouse.”
We dined at Mr. Bruff’s chambers. Before the cloth was removed, “a per-
son” was announced as wanting to speak to the lawyer. Was the person
Gooseberry? No: only the man who had been employed to follow Mr. Luker
when he left the bank.
The report, in this case, presented no feature of the slightest interest.
Mr. Luker had gone back to his own house, and had there dismissed his
guard. He had not gone out again afterwards. Towards dusk, the shutters
had been put up, and the doors had been bolted. The street before the house,
and the alley behind the house, had been carefully watched. No signs of the
Indians had been visible. No person whatever had been seen loitering about
the premises. Having stated these facts, the man waited to know whether
there were any further orders. Mr. Bruff dismissed him for the night.
“Do you think Mr. Luker has taken the Moonstone home with him?” I
asked.
“Not he,” said Mr. Bruff. “He would never have dismissed his two po-
licemen, if he had run the risk of keeping the Diamond in his own house
again.”
We waited another half-hour for the boy, and waited in vain. It was then
time for Mr. Bruff to go to Hampstead, and for me to return to Rachel in
Portland Place. I left my card, in charge of the porter at the chambers, with
a line written on it to say that I should be at my lodgings at half past ten,
that night. The card was to be given to the boy, if the boy came back.
Some men have a knack of keeping appointments; and other men have a
knack of missing them. I am one of the other men. Add to this, that I passed
the evening at Portland Place, on the same seat with Rachel, in a room forty
feet long, with Mrs. Merridew at the further end of it. Does anybody won-
der that I got home at half past twelve instead of half past ten? How thor-
oughly heartless that person must be! And how earnestly I hope I may never
make that person’s acquaintance!
My servant handed me a morsel of paper when he let me in.
I read, in a neat legal handwriting, these words—“If you please, sir, I am
getting sleepy. I will come back tomorrow morning, between nine and ten.”
Inquiry proved that a boy, with very extraordinary-looking eyes, had called,
and presented my card and message, had waited an hour, had done nothing
but fall asleep and wake up again, had written a line for me, and had gone
home—after gravely informing the servant that “he was fit for nothing un-
less he got his night’s rest.”
At nine, the next morning, I was ready for my visitor. At half past nine, I
heard steps outside my door. “Come in, Gooseberry!” I called out. “Thank
you, sir,” answered a grave and melancholy voice. The door opened. I star-
ted to my feet, and confronted—Sergeant Cuff.
“I thought I would look in here, Mr. Blake, on the chance of your being
in town, before I wrote to Yorkshire,” said the Sergeant.
He was as dreary and as lean as ever. His eyes had not lost their old trick
(so subtly noticed in Betteredge’s narrative) of “looking as if they expected
something more from you than you were aware of yourself.” But, so far as
dress can alter a man, the great Cuff was changed beyond all recognition.
He wore a broad-brimmed white hat, a light shooting jacket, white trousers,
and drab gaiters. He carried a stout oak stick. His whole aim and object
seemed to be to look as if he had lived in the country all his life. When I
complimented him on his metamorphosis, he declined to take it as a joke.
He complained, quite gravely, of the noises and the smells of London. I de-
clare I am far from sure that he did not speak with a slightly rustic accent! I
offered him breakfast. The innocent countryman was quite shocked. His
breakfast hour was half-past six—and he went to bed with the cocks and
hens!
“I only got back from Ireland last night,” said the Sergeant, coming round
to the practical object of his visit, in his own impenetrable manner. “Before
I went to bed, I read your letter, telling me what has happened since my in-
quiry after the Diamond was suspended last year. There’s only one thing to
be said about the matter on my side. I completely mistook my case. How
any man living was to have seen things in their true light, in such a situation
as mine was at the time, I don’t profess to know. But that doesn’t alter the
facts as they stand. I own that I made a mess of it. Not the first mess,
Mr. Blake, which has distinguished my professional career! It’s only in
books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of
making a mistake.”
“You have come in the nick of time to recover your reputation,” I said.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” rejoined the Sergeant. “Now I have re-
tired from business, I don’t care a straw about my reputation. I have done
with my reputation, thank God! I am here, sir, in grateful remembrance of
the late Lady Verinder’s liberality to me. I will go back to my old work—if
you want me, and if you will trust me—on that consideration, and on no
other. Not a farthing of money is to pass, if you please, from you to me.
This is on honour. Now tell me, Mr. Blake, how the case stands since you
wrote to me last.”
I told him of the experiment with the opium, and of what had occurred
afterwards at the bank in Lombard Street. He was greatly struck by the ex-
periment—it was something entirely new in his experience. And he was
particularly interested in the theory of Ezra Jennings, relating to what I had
done with the Diamond, after I had left Rachel’s sitting-room, on the birth-
day night.
“I don’t hold with Mr. Jennings that you hid the Moonstone,” said Ser-
geant Cuff. “But I agree with him, that you must certainly have taken it
back to your own room.”
“Well?” I asked. “And what happened then?”
“Have you no suspicion yourself of what happened, sir?”
“None whatever.”
“Has Mr. Bruff no suspicion?”
“No more than I have.”
Sergeant Cuff rose, and went to my writing-table. He came back with a
sealed envelope. It was marked “Private;” it was addressed to me; and it
had the Sergeant’s signature in the corner.
“I suspected the wrong person, last year,” he said: “and I may be suspect-
ing the wrong person now. Wait to open the envelope, Mr. Blake, till you
have got at the truth. And then compare the name of the guilty person, with
the name that I have written in that sealed letter.”
I put the letter into my pocket—and then asked for the Sergeant’s opinion
of the measures which we had taken at the bank.
“Very well intended, sir,” he answered, “and quite the right thing to do.
But there was another person who ought to have been looked after besides
Mr. Luker.”
“The person named in the letter you have just given to me?”
“Yes, Mr. Blake, the person named in the letter. It can’t be helped now. I
shall have something to propose to you and Mr. Bruff, sir, when the time
comes. Let’s wait, first, and see if the boy has anything to tell us that is
worth hearing.”
It was close on ten o’clock, and the boy had not made his appearance.
Sergeant Cuff talked of other matters. He asked after his old friend
Betteredge, and his old enemy the gardener. In a minute more, he would no
doubt have got from this, to the subject of his favourite roses, if my servant
had not interrupted us by announcing that the boy was below.
On being brought into the room, Gooseberry stopped at the threshold of
the door, and looked distrustfully at the stranger who was in my company. I
told the boy to come to me.
“You may speak before this gentleman,” I said. “He is here to assist me;
and he knows all that has happened. Sergeant Cuff,” I added, “this is the
boy from Mr. Bruff’s office.”
In our modern system of civilisation, celebrity (no matter of what kind) is
the lever that will move anything. The fame of the great Cuff had even
reached the ears of the small Gooseberry. The boy’s ill-fixed eyes rolled,
when I mentioned the illustrious name, till I thought they really must have
dropped on the carpet.
“Come here, my lad,” said the Sergeant, “and let’s hear what you have
got to tell us.”
The notice of the great man—the hero of many a famous story in every
lawyer’s office in London—appeared to fascinate the boy. He placed him-
self in front of Sergeant Cuff, and put his hands behind him, after the ap-
proved fashion of a neophyte who is examined in his catechism.
“What is your name?” said the Sergeant, beginning with the first question
in the catechism.
“Octavius Guy,” answered the boy. “They call me Gooseberry at the of-
fice because of my eyes.”
“Octavius Guy, otherwise Gooseberry,” pursued the Sergeant, with the
utmost gravity, “you were missed at the bank yesterday. What were you
about?”
“If you please, sir, I was following a man.”
“Who was he?”
“A tall man, sir, with a big black beard, dressed like a sailor.”
“I remember the man!” I broke in. “Mr. Bruff and I thought he was a spy
employed by the Indians.”
Sergeant Cuff did not appear to be much impressed by what Mr. Bruff
and I had thought. He went on catechising Gooseberry.
“Well?” he said—“and why did you follow the sailor?”
“If you please, sir, Mr. Bruff wanted to know whether Mr. Luker passed
anything to anybody on his way out of the bank. I saw Mr. Luker pass
something to the sailor with the black beard.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Bruff what you saw?”
“I hadn’t time to tell anybody, sir, the sailor went out in such a hurry.”
“And you ran out after him—eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gooseberry,” said the Sergeant, patting his head, “you have got some-
thing in that small skull of yours—and it isn’t cotton-wool. I am greatly
pleased with you, so far.”
The boy blushed with pleasure. Sergeant Cuff went on.
“Well? and what did the sailor do, when he got into the street?”
“He called a cab, sir.”
“And what did you do?”
“Held on behind, and run after it.”
Before the Sergeant could put his next question, another visitor was an-
nounced—the head clerk from Mr. Bruff’s office.
Feeling the importance of not interrupting Sergeant Cuff’s examination
of the boy, I received the clerk in another room. He came with bad news of
his employer. The agitation and excitement of the last two days had proved
too much for Mr. Bruff. He had awoke that morning with an attack of gout;
he was confined to his room at Hampstead; and, in the present critical con-
dition of our affairs, he was very uneasy at being compelled to leave me
without the advice and assistance of an experienced person. The chief clerk
had received orders to hold himself at my disposal, and was willing to do
his best to replace Mr. Bruff.
I wrote at once to quiet the old gentleman’s mind, by telling him of Ser-
geant Cuff’s visit: adding that Gooseberry was at that moment under exam-
ination; and promising to inform Mr. Bruff, either personally, or by letter, of
whatever might occur later in the day. Having despatched the clerk to
Hampstead with my note, I returned to the room which I had left, and found
Sergeant Cuff at the fireplace, in the act of ringing the bell.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” said the Sergeant. “I was just going to
send word by your servant that I wanted to speak to you. There isn’t a doubt
on my mind that this boy—this most meritorious boy,” added the Sergeant,
patting Gooseberry on the head, “has followed the right man. Precious time
has been lost, sir, through your unfortunately not being at home at half past
ten last night. The only thing to do, now, is to send for a cab immediately.”
 In five minutes more, Sergeant Cuff and I (with Gooseberry on the box to
guide the driver) were on our way eastward, towards the City.
“One of these days,” said the Sergeant, pointing through the front win-
dow of the cab, “that boy will do great things in my late profession. He is
the brightest and cleverest little chap I have met with, for many a long year
past. You shall hear the substance, Mr. Blake, of what he told me while you
were out of the room. You were present, I think, when he mentioned that he
held on behind the cab, and ran after it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sir, the cab went from Lombard Street to the Tower Wharf. The
sailor with the black beard got out, and spoke to the steward of the Rotter-
dam steamboat, which was to start next morning. He asked if he could be
allowed to go on board at once, and sleep in his berth overnight. The stew-
ard said, No. The cabins, and berths, and bedding were all to have a thor-
ough cleaning that evening, and no passenger could be allowed to come on
board, before the morning. The sailor turned round, and left the wharf.
When he got into the street again, the boy noticed for the first time, a man
dressed like a respectable mechanic, walking on the opposite side of the
road, and apparently keeping the sailor in view. The sailor stopped at an eat-
ing-house in the neighbourhood, and went in. The boy—not being able to
make up his mind, at the moment—hung about among some other boys,
staring at the good things in the eating-house window. He noticed the mech-
anic waiting, as he himself was waiting—but still on the opposite side of
the street. After a minute, a cab came by slowly, and stopped where the
mechanic was standing. The boy could only see plainly one person in the
cab, who leaned forward at the window to speak to the mechanic. He de-
scribed that person, Mr. Blake, without any prompting from me, as having a
dark face, like the face of an Indian.”
It was plain, by this time, that Mr. Bruff and I had made another mistake.
The sailor with the black beard was clearly not a spy in the service of the
Indian conspiracy. Was he, by any possibility, the man who had got the
Diamond?
“After a little,” pursued the Sergeant, “the cab moved on slowly down the
street. The mechanic crossed the road, and went into the eating-house. The
boy waited outside till he was hungry and tired—and then went into the eat-
ing-house, in his turn. He had a shilling in his pocket; and he dined sumptu-
ously, he tells me, on a black-pudding, an eel-pie, and a bottle of ginger-
beer. What can a boy not digest? The substance in question has never been
found yet.”
“What did he see in the eating-house?” I asked.
“Well, Mr. Blake, he saw the sailor reading the newspaper at one table,
and the mechanic reading the newspaper at another. It was dusk before the
sailor got up, and left the place. He looked about him suspiciously when he
got out into the street. The boy—being a boy—passed unnoticed. The
mechanic had not come out yet. The sailor walked on, looking about him,
and apparently not very certain of where he was going next. The mechanic
appeared once more, on the opposite side of the road. The sailor went on,
till he got to Shore Lane, leading into Lower Thames Street. There he
stopped before a public-house, under the sign of ‘The Wheel of Fortune,’
and, after examining the place outside, went in. Gooseberry went in too.
There were a great many people, mostly of the decent sort, at the bar. ‘The
Wheel of Fortune’ is a very respectable house, Mr. Blake; famous for its
porter and porkpies.”
The Sergeant’s digressions irritated me. He saw it; and confined himself
more strictly to Gooseberry’s evidence when he went on.
“The sailor,” he resumed, “asked if he could have a bed. The landlord
said ‘No; they were full.’ The barmaid corrected him, and said ‘Number
Ten was empty.’ A waiter was sent for to show the sailor to Number Ten.
Just before that, Gooseberry had noticed the mechanic among the people at
the bar. Before the waiter had answered the call, the mechanic had van-
ished. The sailor was taken off to his room. Not knowing what to do next,
Gooseberry had the wisdom to wait and see if anything happened. Some-
thing did happen. The landlord was called for. Angry voices were heard up-
stairs. The mechanic suddenly made his appearance again, collared by the
landlord, and exhibiting, to Gooseberry’s great surprise, all the signs and
tokens of being drunk. The landlord thrust him out at the door, and
threatened him with the police if he came back. From the altercation
between them, while this was going on, it appeared that the man had been
discovered in Number Ten, and had declared with drunken obstinacy that he
had taken the room. Gooseberry was so struck by this sudden intoxication
of a previously sober person, that he couldn’t resist running out after the
mechanic into the street. As long as he was in sight of the public-house, the
man reeled about in the most disgraceful manner. The moment he turned the
corner of the street, he recovered his balance instantly, and became as sober
a member of society as you could wish to see. Gooseberry went back to
‘The Wheel of Fortune’ in a very bewildered state of mind. He waited about
again, on the chance of something happening. Nothing happened; and noth-
ing more was to be heard, or seen, of the sailor. Gooseberry decided on go-
ing back to the office. Just as he came to this conclusion, who should ap-
pear, on the opposite side of the street as usual, but the mechanic again! He
looked up at one particular window at the top of the public-house, which
was the only one that had a light in it. The light seemed to relieve his mind.
He left the place directly. The boy made his way back to Gray’s Inn—got
your card and message—called—and failed to find you. There you have the
state of the case, Mr. Blake, as it stands at the present time.”
“What is your own opinion of the case, Sergeant?”
“I think it’s serious, sir. Judging by what the boy saw, the Indians are in
it, to begin with.”
“Yes. And the sailor is evidently the person to whom Mr. Luker passed
the Diamond. It seems odd that Mr. Bruff, and I, and the man in Mr. Bruff’s
employment, should all have been mistaken about who the person was.”
“Not at all, Mr. Blake. Considering the risk that person ran, it’s likely
enough that Mr. Luker purposely misled you, by previous arrangement
between them.”
“Do you understand the proceedings at the public-house?” I asked. “The
man dressed like a mechanic was acting of course in the employment of the
Indians. But I am as much puzzled to account for his sudden assumption of
drunkenness as Gooseberry himself.”
“I think I can give a guess at what it means, sir,” said the Sergeant. “If
you will reflect, you will see that the man must have had some pretty strict
instructions from the Indians. They were far too noticeable themselves to
risk being seen at the bank, or in the public-house—they were obliged to
trust everything to their deputy. Very good. Their deputy hears a certain
number named in the public-house, as the number of the room which the
sailor is to have for the night—that being also the room (unless our notion
is all wrong) which the Diamond is to have for the night, too. Under those
circumstances, the Indians, you may rely on it, would insist on having a de-
scription of the room—of its position in the house, of its capability of being
approached from the outside, and so on. What was the man to do, with such
orders as these? Just what he did! He ran upstairs to get a look at the room,
before the sailor was taken into it. He was found there, making his observa-
tions—and he shammed drunk, as the easiest way of getting out of the diffi-
culty. That’s how I read the riddle. After he was turned out of the public-
house, he probably went with his report to the place where his employers
were waiting for him. And his employers, no doubt, sent him back to make
sure that the sailor was really settled at the public-house till the next morn-
ing. As for what happened at ‘The Wheel of Fortune,’ after the boy left—
we ought to have discovered that last night. It’s eleven in the morning, now.
We must hope for the best, and find out what we can.”
In a quarter of an hour more, the cab stopped in Shore Lane, and Goose-
berry opened the door for us to get out.
“All right?” asked the Sergeant.
“All right,” answered the boy.
The moment we entered “The Wheel of Fortune” it was plain even to my
inexperienced eyes that there was something wrong in the house.
The only person behind the counter at which the liquors were served, was
a bewildered servant girl, perfectly ignorant of the business. One or two
customers, waiting for their morning drink, were tapping impatiently on the
counter with their money. The barmaid appeared from the inner regions of
the parlour, excited and preoccupied. She answered Sergeant Cuff’s inquiry
for the landlord, by telling him sharply that her master was upstairs, and
was not to be bothered by anybody.
“Come along with me, sir,” said Sergeant Cuff, coolly leading the way
upstairs, and beckoning to the boy to follow him.
The barmaid called to her master, and warned him that strangers were in-
truding themselves into the house. On the first floor we were encountered
by the landlord, hurrying down, in a highly irritated state, to see what was
the matter.
“Who the devil are you? and what do you want here?” he asked.
“Keep your temper,” said the Sergeant, quietly. “I’ll tell you who I am to
begin with. I am Sergeant Cuff.”
The illustrious name instantly produced its effect. The angry landlord
threw open the door of a sitting-room, and asked the Sergeant’s pardon.
“I am annoyed and out of sorts, sir—that’s the truth,” he said. “Some-
thing unpleasant has happened in the house this morning. A man in my way
of business has a deal to upset his temper, Sergeant Cuff.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said the Sergeant. “I’ll come at once, if you will al-
low me, to what brings us here. This gentleman and I want to trouble you
with a few inquiries, on a matter of some interest to both of us.”
“Relating to what, sir?” asked the landlord.
“Relating to a dark man, dressed like a sailor, who slept here last night.”
“Good God! that’s the man who is upsetting the whole house at this mo-
ment!” exclaimed the landlord. “Do you, or does this gentleman know any-
thing about him?”
“We can’t be certain till we see him,” answered the Sergeant.
“See him?” echoed the landlord. “That’s the one thing that nobody has
been able to do since seven o’clock this morning. That was the time when
he left word, last night, that he was to be called. He was called—and there
was no getting an answer from him, and no opening his door to see what
was the matter. They tried again at eight, and they tried again at nine. No
use! There was the door still locked—and not a sound to be heard in the
room! I have been out this morning—and I only got back a quarter of an
hour ago. I have hammered at the door myself—and all to no purpose. The
potboy has gone to fetch a carpenter. If you can wait a few minutes, gentle-
men, we will have the door opened, and see what it means.”
“Was the man drunk last night?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
“Perfectly sober, sir—or I would never have let him sleep in my house.”
“Did he pay for his bed beforehand?”
“No.”
“Could he leave the room in any way, without going out by the door?”
“The room is a garret,” said the landlord. “But there’s a trap-door in the
ceiling, leading out on to the roof—and a little lower down the street,
there’s an empty house under repair. Do you think, Sergeant, the blackguard
has got off in that way, without paying?”
“A sailor,” said Sergeant Cuff, “might have done it—early in the morn-
ing, before the street was astir. He would be used to climbing, and his head
wouldn’t fail him on the roofs of the houses.”
As he spoke, the arrival of the carpenter was announced. We all went up-
stairs, at once, to the top story. I noticed that the Sergeant was unusually
grave, even for him. It also struck me as odd that he told the boy (after hav-
ing previously encouraged him to follow us), to wait in the room below till
we came down again.
The carpenter’s hammer and chisel disposed of the resistance of the door
in a few minutes. But some article of furniture had been placed against it
inside, as a barricade. By pushing at the door, we thrust this obstacle aside,
and so got admission to the room. The landlord entered first; the Sergeant
second; and I third. The other persons present followed us.
We all looked towards the bed, and all started.
The man had not left the room. He lay, dressed, on the bed—with a white
pillow over his face, which completely hid it from view.
“What does that mean?” said the landlord, pointing to the pillow.
Sergeant Cuff led the way to the bed, without answering, and removed
the pillow.
The man’s swarthy face was placid and still; his black hair and beard
were slightly, very slightly, discomposed. His eyes stared wide-open, glassy
and vacant, at the ceiling. The filmy look and the fixed expression of them
horrified me. I turned away, and went to the open window. The rest of them
remained, where Sergeant Cuff remained, at the bed.
“He’s in a fit!” I heard the landlord say.
“He’s dead,” the Sergeant answered. “Send for the nearest doctor, and
send for the police.”
The waiter was despatched on both errands. Some strange fascination
seemed to hold Sergeant Cuff to the bed. Some strange curiosity seemed to
keep the rest of them waiting, to see what the Sergeant would do next.
I turned again to the window. The moment afterwards, I felt a soft pull at
my coattails, and a small voice whispered, “Look here, sir!”
Gooseberry had followed us into the room. His loose eyes rolled fright-
fully—not in terror, but in exultation. He had made a detective-discovery on
his own account. “Look here, sir,” he repeated—and led me to a table in the
corner of the room.
On the table stood a little wooden box, open, and empty. On one side of
the box lay some jewellers’ cotton. On the other side, was a torn sheet of
white paper, with a seal on it, partly destroyed, and with an inscription in
writing, which was still perfectly legible. The inscription was in these
words:

“Deposited with Messrs. Bushe, Lysaught, and Bushe, by

Mr. Septimus Luker, of Middlesex Place, Lambeth, a small
wooden box, sealed up in this envelope, and containing a valu-
able of great price. The box, when claimed, to be only given up
by Messrs. Bushe and Co. on the personal application of
Mr. Luker.”
 Those lines removed all further doubt, on one point at least. The sailor
had been in possession of the Moonstone, when he had left the bank on the
previous day.
I felt another pull at my coattails. Gooseberry had not done with me yet.
“Robbery!” whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty
box.
“You were told to wait downstairs,” I said. “Go away!”
“And murder!” added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to
the man on the bed.
There was something so hideous in the boy’s enjoyment of the horror of
the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the room.
At the moment when I crossed the threshold of the door, I heard Sergeant
Cuff’s voice, asking where I was. He met me, as I returned into the room,
and forced me to go back with him to the bedside.
“Mr. Blake!” he said. “Look at the man’s face. It is a face disguised—and
here’s a proof of it!”
He traced with his finger a thin line of livid white, running backward
from the dead man’s forehead, between the swarthy complexion, and the
slightly-disturbed black hair. “Let’s see what is under this,” said the Ser-
geant, suddenly seizing the black hair, with a firm grip of his hand.
My nerves were not strong enough to bear it. I turned away again from
the bed.
The first sight that met my eyes, at the other end of the room, was the ir-
repressible Gooseberry, perched on a chair, and looking with breathless in-
terest, over the heads of his elders, at the Sergeant’s proceedings.
“He’s pulling off his wig!” whispered Gooseberry, compassionating my
position, as the only person in the room who could see nothing.
There was a pause—and then a cry of astonishment among the people
round the bed.
“He’s pulled off his beard!” cried Gooseberry.
There was another pause—Sergeant Cuff asked for something. The land-
lord went to the wash-hand-stand, and returned to the bed with a basin of
water and a towel.
Gooseberry danced with excitement on the chair. “Come up here, along
with me, sir! He’s washing off his complexion now!”
The Sergeant suddenly burst his way through the people about him, and
came, with horror in his face, straight to the place where I was standing.
 “Come back to the bed, sir!” he began. He looked at me closer, and
checked himself “No!” he resumed. “Open the sealed letter first—the letter
I gave you this morning.”
I opened the letter.
“Read the name, Mr. Blake, that I have written inside.”
I read the name that he had written. It was Godfrey Ablewhite.
“Now,” said the Sergeant, “come with me, and look at the man on the
bed.”
I went with him, and looked at the man on the bed.
GODFREY ABLEWHITE!
 SIXTH NARRATIVE

Contributed by Sergeant Cuff

Dorking, Surrey, July 30th, 1849.

To Franklin Blake, Esq. Sir—I beg to apologise for the delay
that has occurred in the production of the report, with which I
engaged to furnish you. I have waited to make it a complete re-
port; and I have been met, here and there, by obstacles which it
was only possible to remove by some little expenditure of pa-
tience and time.
The object which I proposed to myself has now, I hope, been
attained. You will find, in these pages, answers to the greater
part—if not all—of the questions, concerning the late Mr. God-
frey Ablewhite, which occurred to your mind when I last had
the honour of seeing you.
I propose to tell you—in the first place—what is known of
the manner in which your cousin met his death; appending to
the statement such inferences and conclusions as we are justi-
fied (according to my opinion) in drawing from the facts.
I shall then endeavour—in the second place—to put you in
possession of such discoveries as I have made, respecting the
proceedings of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, before, during and after
the time, when you and he met as guests at the late Lady Ver-
inder’s country-house.

II

As to your cousin’s death, then, first.

It appears to be established, beyond any reasonable doubt,
that he was killed (while he was asleep, or immediately on his
waking) by being smothered with a pillow from his bed—that
the persons guilty of murdering him are the three Indians—and
that the object contemplated (and achieved) by the crime, was
to obtain possession of the diamond, called the Moonstone.
The facts from which this conclusion is drawn, are derived
partly from an examination of the room at the tavern; and
partly from the evidence obtained at the Coroner’s Inquest.
On forcing the door of the room, the deceased gentleman
was discovered, dead, with the pillow of the bed over his face.
The medical man who examined him, being informed of this
circumstance, considered the postmortem appearances as being
perfectly compatible with murder by smothering—that is to
say, with murder committed by some person, or persons, press-
ing the pillow over the nose and mouth of the deceased, until
death resulted from congestion of the lungs.
Next, as to the motive for the crime.
A small box, with a sealed paper torn off from it (the paper
containing an inscription) was found open, and empty, on a
table in the room. Mr. Luker has himself personally identified
the box, the seal, and the inscription. He has declared that the
box did actually contain the diamond, called the Moonstone;
and he has admitted having given the box (thus sealed up) to
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite (then concealed under a disguise), on
the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of June last. The fair infer-
ence from all this is, that the stealing of the Moonstone was the
motive of the crime.
Next, as to the manner in which the crime was committed.
On examination of the room (which is only seven feet high),
a trap-door in the ceiling, leading out on to the roof of the
house, was discovered open. The short ladder, used for obtain-
ing access to the trap-door (and kept under the bed), was found
placed at the opening, so as to enable any person or persons, in
the room, to leave it again easily. In the trap-door itself was
found a square aperture cut in the wood, apparently with some
exceedingly sharp instrument, just behind the bolt which
fastened the door on the inner side. In this way, any person
from the outside could have drawn back the bolt, and opened
the door, and have dropped (or have been noiselessly lowered
by an accomplice) into the room—its height, as already ob-
served, being only seven feet. That some person, or persons,
must have got admission in this way, appears evident from the
fact of the aperture being there. As to the manner in which he
(or they) obtained access to the roof of the tavern, it is to be re-
marked that the third house, lower down in the street, was
empty, and under repair—that a long ladder was left by the
workmen, leading from the pavement to the top of the house—
and that, on returning to their work, on the morning of the 27th,
the men found the plank which they had tied to the ladder, to
prevent anyone from using it in their absence, removed, and
lying on the ground. As to the possibility of ascending by this
ladder, passing over the roofs of the houses, passing back, and
descending again, unobserved—it is discovered, on the evid-
ence of the night policeman, that he only passes through Shore
Lane twice in an hour, when out on his beat. The testimony of
the inhabitants also declares, that Shore Lane, after midnight, is
one of the quietest and loneliest streets in London. Here again,
therefore, it seems fair to infer that—with ordinary caution, and
presence of mind—any man, or men, might have ascended by
the ladder, and might have descended again, unobserved. Once
on the roof of the tavern, it has been proved, by experiment,
that a man might cut through the trap-door, while lying down
on it, and that in such a position, the parapet in front of the
house would conceal him from the view of anyone passing in
the street.
Lastly, as to the person, or persons, by whom the crime was
committed.
It is known (1) that the Indians had an interest in possessing
themselves of the Diamond. (2) It is at least probable that the
man looking like an Indian, whom Octavius Guy saw at the
window of the cab, speaking to the man dressed like a mechan-
ic, was one of the three Hindu conspirators. (3) It is certain that
this same man dressed like a mechanic, was seen keeping
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite in view, all through the evening of the
26th, and was found in the bedroom (before Mr. Ablewhite was
shown into it) under circumstances which lead to the suspicion
that he was examining the room. (4) A morsel of torn gold
thread was picked up in the bedroom, which persons expert in
such matters, declare to be of Indian manufacture, and to be a
species of gold thread not known in England. (5) On the morn-
ing of the 27th, three men, answering to the description of the
three Indians, were observed in Lower Thames Street, were
traced to the Tower Wharf, and were seen to leave London by
the steamer bound for Rotterdam.
There is here, moral, if not legal, evidence, that the murder
was committed by the Indians.
Whether the man personating a mechanic was, or was not, an
accomplice in the crime, it is impossible to say. That he could
have committed the murder alone, seems beyond the limits of
probability. Acting by himself, he could hardly have smothered
Mr. Ablewhite—who was the taller and stronger man of the
two—without a struggle taking place, or a cry being heard. A
servant girl, sleeping in the next room, heard nothing. The
landlord, sleeping in the room below, heard nothing. The whole
evidence points to the inference that more than one man was
concerned in this crime—and the circumstances, I repeat, mor-
ally justify the conclusion that the Indians committed it.
 I have only to add, that the verdict at the Coroner’s Inquest
was Wilful Murder against some person, or persons, unknown.
Mr. Ablewhite’s family have offered a reward, and no effort
has been left untried to discover the guilty persons. The man
dressed like a mechanic has eluded all inquiries. The Indians
have been traced. As to the prospect of ultimately capturing
these last, I shall have a word to say to you on that head, when
I reach the end of the present Report.
In the meanwhile, having now written all that is needful on
the subject of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s death, I may pass next
to the narrative of his proceedings before, during, and after the
time, when you and he met at the late Lady Verinder’s house.

III

With regard to the subject now in hand, I may state, at the out-
set, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s life had two sides to it.
The side turned up to the public view, presented the spec-
tacle of a gentleman, possessed of considerable reputation as a
speaker at charitable meetings, and endowed with administrat-
ive abilities, which he placed at the disposal of various Bene-
volent Societies, mostly of the female sort. The side kept hid-
den from the general notice, exhibited this same gentleman in
the totally different character of a man of pleasure, with a villa
in the suburbs which was not taken in his own name, and with
a lady in the villa, who was not taken in his own name, either.
My investigations in the villa have shown me several fine
pictures and statues; furniture tastefully selected, and admir-
ably made; and a conservatory of the rarest flowers, the match
of which it would not be easy to find in all London. My invest-
igation of the lady has resulted in the discovery of jewels which
are worthy to take rank with the flowers, and of carriages and
horses which have (deservedly) produced a sensation in the
Park, among persons well qualified to judge of the build of the
one, and the breed of the others.
All this is, so far, common enough. The villa and the lady are
such familiar objects in London life, that I ought to apologise
for introducing them to notice. But what is not common and
not familiar (in my experience), is that all these fine things
were not only ordered, but paid for. The pictures, the statues,
the flowers, the jewels, the carriages, and the horses—inquiry
proved, to my indescribable astonishment, that not a sixpence
of debt was owing on any of them. As to the villa, it had been
bought, out and out, and settled on the lady.
I might have tried to find the right reading of this riddle, and
tried in vain—but for Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s death, which
caused an inquiry to be made into the state of his affairs.
The inquiry elicited these facts:—
That Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was entrusted with the care of a
sum of twenty thousand pounds—as one of two Trustees for a
young gentleman, who was still a minor in the year eighteen
hundred and forty-eight. That the Trust was to lapse, and that
the young gentleman was to receive the twenty thousand
pounds on the day when he came of age, in the month of Feb-
ruary, eighteen hundred and fifty. That, pending the arrival of
this period, an income of six hundred pounds was to be paid to
him by his two Trustees, half-yearly—at Christmas and Mid-
summer Day. That this income was regularly paid by the active
Trustee, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. That the twenty thousand
pounds (from which the income was supposed to be derived)
had every farthing of it been sold out of the Funds, at different
periods, ending with the end of the year eighteen hundred and
forty-seven. That the power of attorney, authorising the bankers
to sell out the stock, and the various written orders telling them
what amounts to sell out, were formally signed by both the
Trustees. That the signature of the second Trustee (a retired
army officer, living in the country) was a signature forged, in
every case, by the active Trustee—otherwise Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite.
 In these facts lies the explanation of Mr. Godfrey’s honour-
able conduct, in paying the debts incurred for the lady and the
villa—and (as you will presently see) of more besides.
We may now advance to the date of Miss Verinder’s birthday
(in the year eighteen hundred and forty-eight)—the twenty-first
of June.
On the day before, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite arrived at his
father’s house, and asked (as I know from Mr. Ablewhite, seni-
or, himself) for a loan of three hundred pounds. Mark the sum;
and remember at the same time, that the half-yearly payment to
the young gentleman was due on the twenty-fourth of the
month. Also, that the whole of the young gentleman’s fortune
had been spent by his Trustee, by the end of the year ’forty-
seven.
Mr. Ablewhite, senior, refused to lend his son a farthing.
The next day Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite rode over, with you, to
Lady Verinder’s house. A few hours afterwards, Mr. Godfrey
(as you yourself have told me) made a proposal of marriage to
Miss Verinder. Here, he saw his way no doubt—if accepted—to
the end of all his money anxieties, present and future. But, as
events actually turned out, what happened? Miss Verinder re-
fused him.
On the night of the birthday, therefore, Mr. Godfrey Able-
white’s pecuniary position was this. He had three hundred
pounds to find on the twenty-fourth of the month, and twenty
thousand pounds to find in February eighteen hundred and fifty.
Failing to raise these sums, at these times, he was a ruined man.
Under those circumstances, what takes place next?
You exasperate Mr. Candy, the doctor, on the sore subject of
his profession; and he plays you a practical joke, in return, with
a dose of laudanum. He trusts the administration of the dose,
prepared in a little phial, to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite—who has
himself confessed the share he had in the matter, under circum-
stances which shall presently be related to you. Mr. Godfrey is
all the readier to enter into the conspiracy, having himself
suffered from your sharp tongue in the course of the evening.
He joins Betteredge in persuading you to drink a little brandy
and water before you go to bed. He privately drops the dose of
laudanum into your cold grog. And you drink the mixture.
Let us now shift the scene, if you please to Mr. Luker’s
house at Lambeth. And allow me to remark, by way of preface,
that Mr. Bruff and I, together, have found a means of forcing
the moneylender to make a clean breast of it. We have carefully
sifted the statement he has addressed to us; and here it is at
your service.

IV

Late on the evening of Friday, the twenty-third of June (’forty-

eight), Mr. Luker was surprised by a visit from Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite. He was more than surprised, when Mr. Godfrey
produced the Moonstone. No such Diamond (according to
Mr. Luker’s experience) was in the possession of any private
person in Europe.
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had two modest proposals to make,
in relation to this magnificent gem. First, Would Mr. Luker be
so good as to buy it? Secondly, Would Mr. Luker (in default of
seeing his way to the purchase) undertake to sell it on commis-
sion, and to pay a sum down, on the anticipated result?
Mr. Luker tested the Diamond, weighed the Diamond and
estimated the value of the Diamond, before he answered a
word. His estimate (allowing for the flaw in the stone) was
thirty thousand pounds.
Having reached that result, Mr. Luker opened his lips, and
put a question: “How did you come by this?” Only six words!
But what volumes of meaning in them!
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite began a story. Mr. Luker opened his
lips again, and only said three words, this time. “That won’t
do!”
 Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite began another story. Mr. Luker
wasted no more words on him. He got up, and rang the bell for
the servant to show the gentleman out.
Upon this compulsion, Mr. Godfrey made an effort, and
came out with a new and amended version of the affair, to the
following effect.
After privately slipping the laudanum into your brandy and
water, he wished you good night, and went into his own room.
It was the next room to yours; and the two had a door of com-
munication between them. On entering his own room Mr. God-
frey (as he supposed) closed his door. His money troubles kept
him awake. He sat, in his dressing-gown and slippers, for
nearly an hour, thinking over his position. Just as he was pre-
paring to get into bed, he heard you, talking to yourself, in your
own room, and going to the door of communication, found that
he had not shut it as he supposed.
He looked into your room to see what was the matter. He
discovered you with the candle in your hand, just leaving your
bedchamber. He heard you say to yourself, in a voice quite un-
like your own voice, “How do I know? The Indians may be
hidden in the house.”
Up to that time, he had simply supposed himself (in giving
you the laudanum) to be helping to make you the victim of a
harmless practical joke. It now occurred to him, that the
laudanum had taken some effect on you, which had not been
foreseen by the doctor, any more than by himself. In the fear of
an accident happening he followed you softly to see what you
would do.
He followed you to Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, and saw
you go in. You left the door open. He looked through the
crevice thus produced, between the door and the post, before he
ventured into the room himself.
In that position, he not only detected you in taking the Dia-
mond out of the drawer—he also detected Miss Verinder, si-
lently watching you from her bedroom, through her open door.
His own eyes satisfied him that she saw you take the Diamond,
too.
 Before you left the sitting-room again, you hesitated a little.
Mr. Godfrey took advantage of this hesitation to get back again
to his bedroom before you came out, and discovered him. He
had barely got back, before you got back too. You saw him (as
he supposes) just as he was passing through the door of com-
munication. At any rate, you called to him in a strange, drowsy
voice.
He came back to you. You looked at him in a dull sleepy
way. You put the Diamond into his hand. You said to him,
“Take it back, Godfrey, to your father’s bank. It’s safe there—
it’s not safe here.” You turned away unsteadily, and put on your
dressing-gown. You sat down in the large armchair in your
room. You said, “I can’t take it back to the bank. My head’s
like lead—and I can’t feel my feet under me.” Your head sank
on the back of the chair—you heaved a heavy sigh—and you
fell asleep.
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite went back, with the Diamond, into
his own room. His statement is, that he came to no conclusion,
at that time—except that he would wait, and see what happened
in the morning.
When the morning came, your language and conduct showed
that you were absolutely ignorant of what you had said and
done overnight. At the same time, Miss Verinder’s language
and conduct showed that she was resolved to say nothing (in
mercy to you) on her side. If Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite chose to
keep the Diamond, he might do so with perfect impunity. The
Moonstone stood between him and ruin. He put the Moonstone
into his pocket.

V
This was the story told by your cousin (under pressure of ne-
cessity) to Mr. Luker.
Mr. Luker believed the story to be, as to all main essentials,
true—on this ground, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was too
great a fool to have invented it. Mr. Bruff and I agree with
Mr. Luker, in considering this test of the truth of the story to be
a perfectly reliable one.
The next question, was the question of what Mr. Luker
would do in the matter of the Moonstone. He proposed the fol-
lowing terms, as the only terms on which he would consent to
mix himself up with, what was (even in his line of business) a
doubtful and dangerous transaction.
Mr. Luker would consent to lend Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite the
sum of two thousand pounds, on condition that the Moonstone
was to be deposited with him as a pledge. If, at the expiration
of one year from that date, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite paid three
thousand pounds to Mr. Luker, he was to receive back the Dia-
mond, as a pledge redeemed. If he failed to produce the money
at the expiration of the year, the pledge (otherwise the Moon-
stone) was to be considered as forfeited to Mr. Luker—who
would, in this latter case, generously make Mr. Godfrey a
present of certain promissory notes of his (relating to former
dealings) which were then in the moneylender’s possession.
It is needless to say, that Mr. Godfrey indignantly refused to
listen to these monstrous terms. Mr. Luker thereupon, handed
him back the Diamond, and wished him good night.
Your cousin went to the door, and came back again. How
was he to be sure that the conversation of that evening would
be kept strictly secret between his friend and himself?
Mr. Luker didn’t profess to know how. If Mr. Godfrey had
accepted his terms, Mr. Godfrey would have made him an ac-
complice, and might have counted on his silence as on a cer-
tainty. As things were, Mr. Luker must be guided by his own
interests. If awkward inquiries were made, how could he be ex-
pected to compromise himself, for the sake of a man who had
declined to deal with him?
 Receiving this reply, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite did, what all
animals (human and otherwise) do, when they find themselves
caught in a trap. He looked about him in a state of helpless des-
pair. The day of the month, recorded on a neat little card in a
box on the moneylender’s chimneypiece, happened to attract
his eye. It was the twenty-third of June. On the twenty-fourth
he had three hundred pounds to pay to the young gentleman for
whom he was trustee, and no chance of raising the money, ex-
cept the chance that Mr. Luker had offered to him. But for this
miserable obstacle, he might have taken the Diamond to Ams-
terdam, and have made a marketable commodity of it, by hav-
ing it cut up into separate stones. As matters stood, he had no
choice but to accept Mr. Luker’s terms. After all, he had a year
at his disposal, in which to raise the three thousand pounds—
and a year is a long time.
Mr. Luker drew out the necessary documents on the spot.
When they were signed, he gave Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite two
cheques. One, dated June 23rd, for three hundred pounds. An-
other, dated a week on, for the remaining balance—seventeen
hundred pounds.
How the Moonstone was trusted to the keeping of
Mr. Luker’s bankers, and how the Indians treated Mr. Luker
and Mr. Godfrey (after that had been done) you know already.
The next event in your cousin’s life refers again to Miss Ver-
inder. He proposed marriage to her for the second time—and
(after having being accepted) he consented, at her request, to
consider the marriage as broken off. One of his reasons for
making this concession has been penetrated by Mr. Bruff. Miss
Verinder had only a life interest in her mother’s property—and
there was no raising the twenty thousand pounds on that.
But you will say, he might have saved the three thousand
pounds, to redeem the pledged Diamond, if he had married. He
might have done so certainly—supposing neither his wife, nor
her guardians and trustees, objected to his anticipating more
than half of the income at his disposal, for some unknown pur-
pose, in the first year of his marriage. But even if he got over
this obstacle, there was another waiting for him in the back-
ground. The lady at the Villa, had heard of his contemplated
marriage. A superb woman, Mr. Blake, of the sort that are not
to be trifled with—the sort with the light complexion and the
Roman nose. She felt the utmost contempt for Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite. It would be silent contempt, if he made a handsome
provision for her. Otherwise, it would be contempt with a
tongue to it. Miss Verinder’s life interest allowed him no more
hope of raising the “provision” than of raising the twenty thou-
sand pounds. He couldn’t marry—he really couldn’t marry, un-
der all the circumstances.
How he tried his luck again with another lady, and how that
marriage also broke down on the question of money, you know
already. You also know of the legacy of five thousand pounds,
left to him shortly afterwards, by one of those many admirers
among the soft sex whose good graces this fascinating man had
contrived to win. That legacy (as the event has proved) led him
to his death.
I have ascertained that when he went abroad, on getting his
five thousand pounds, he went to Amsterdam. There he made
all the necessary arrangements for having the Diamond cut into
separate stones. He came back (in disguise), and redeemed the
Moonstone, on the appointed day. A few days were allowed to
elapse (as a precaution agreed to by both parties) before the
jewel was actually taken out of the bank. If he had got safe
with it to Amsterdam, there would have been just time between
July ’forty-nine, and February ’fifty (when the young gentle-
man came of age) to cut the Diamond, and to make a market-
able commodity (polished or unpolished) of the separate
stones. Judge from this, what motives he had to run the risk
which he actually ran. It was “neck or nothing” with him—if
ever it was “neck or nothing” with a man yet.
I have only to remind you, before closing this report, that
there is a chance of laying hands on the Indians, and of recov-
ering the Moonstone yet. They are now (there is every reason
to believe) on their passage to Bombay, in an East Indiaman.
The ship (barring accidents) will touch at no other port on her
way out; and the authorities at Bombay (already communicated
with by letter, overland) will be prepared to board the vessel,
the moment she enters the harbour.
I have the honour to remain, dear sir, your obedient servant,
Richard Cuff (late sergeant in the Detective Force, Scotland
Yard, London).4
 SEVENTH NARRATIVE

In a Letter from Mr. Candy

Frizinghall, Wednesday, September 26th, 1849.

Dear Mr. Franklin Blake, you will anticipate the sad news I
have to tell you, on finding your letter to Ezra Jennings re-
turned to you, unopened, in this enclosure. He died in my arms,
at sunrise, on Wednesday last.
I am not to blame for having failed to warn you that his end
was at hand. He expressly forbade me to write to you. “I am
indebted to Mr. Franklin Blake,” he said, “for having seen
some happy days. Don’t distress him, Mr. Candy—don’t dis-
tress him.”
His sufferings, up to the last six hours of his life, were ter-
rible to see. In the intervals of remission, when his mind was
clear, I entreated him to tell me of any relatives of his to whom
I might write. He asked to be forgiven for refusing anything to
me. And then he said—not bitterly—that he would die as he
had lived, forgotten and unknown. He maintained that resolu-
tion to the last. There is no hope now of making any discover-
ies concerning him. His story is a blank.
The day before he died, he told me where to find all his pa-
pers. I brought them to him on his bed. There was a little
bundle of old letters which he put aside. There was his unfin-
ished book. There was his diary—in many locked volumes. He
opened the volume for this year, and tore out, one by one, the
pages relating to the time when you and he were together.
“Give those,” he said, “to Mr. Franklin Blake. In years to come,
he may feel an interest in looking back at what is written
there.” Then he clasped his hands, and prayed God fervently to
bless you, and those dear to you. He said he should like to see
you again. But the next moment he altered his mind. “No,” he
answered when I offered to write. “I won’t distress him! I
won’t distress him!”
At his request I next collected the other papers—that is to
say, the bundle of letters, the unfinished book and the volumes
of the diary—and enclosed them all in one wrapper, sealed with
my own seal. “Promise,” he said, “that you will put this into
my coffin with your own hand; and that you will see that no
other hand touches it afterwards.”
I gave him my promise. And the promise has been
performed.
He asked me to do one other thing for him—which it cost
me a hard struggle to comply with. He said, “Let my grave be
forgotten. Give me your word of honour that you will allow no
monument of any sort—not even the commonest tombstone—
to mark the place of my burial. Let me sleep, nameless. Let me
rest, unknown.” When I tried to plead with him to alter his res-
olution, he became for the first, and only time, violently agit-
ated. I could not bear to see it; and I gave way. Nothing but a
little grass mound marks the place of his rest. In time, the
tombstones will rise round it. And the people who come after
us will look and wonder at the nameless grave.
As I have told you, for six hours before his death his suffer-
ings ceased. He dozed a little. I think he dreamed. Once or
twice he smiled. A woman’s name, as I suppose—the name of
“Ella”—was often on his lips at this time. A few minutes be-
fore the end he asked me to lift him on his pillow, to see the
sun rise through the window. He was very weak. His head fell
on my shoulder. He whispered, “It’s coming!” Then he said,
“Kiss me!” I kissed his forehead. On a sudden he lifted his
head. The sunlight touched his face. A beautiful expression, an
angelic expression, came over it. He cried out three times,
“Peace! peace! peace!” His head sank back again on my
shoulder, and the long trouble of his life was at an end.
So he has gone from us. This was, as I think, a great man—
though the world never knew him. He had the sweetest temper
I have ever met with. The loss of him makes me feel very
lonely. Perhaps I have never been quite myself since my ill-
ness. Sometimes, I think of giving up my practice, and going
away, and trying what some of the foreign baths and waters
will do for me.
It is reported here, that you and Miss Verinder are to be mar-
ried next month. Please to accept my best congratulations.
The pages of my poor friend’s journal are waiting for you at
my house—sealed up, with your name on the wrapper. I was
afraid to trust them to the post.
My best respects and good wishes attend Miss Verinder. I re-
main, dear Mr. Franklin Blake, truly yours,
Thomas Candy.
 EIGHTH NARRATIVE

Contributed by Gabriel Betteredge

I am the person (as you remember no doubt) who led the way in these
pages, and opened the story. I am also the person who is left behind, as it
were, to close the story up.
Let nobody suppose that I have any last words to say here concerning the
Indian Diamond. I hold that unlucky jewel in abhorrence—and I refer you
to other authority than mine, for such news of the Moonstone as you may, at
the present time, be expected to receive. My purpose, in this place, is to
state a fact in the history of the family, which has been passed over by
everybody, and which I won’t allow to be disrespectfully smothered up in
that way. The fact to which I allude is—the marriage of Miss Rachel and
Mr. Franklin Blake. This interesting event took place at our house in York-
shire, on Tuesday, October ninth, eighteen hundred and forty-nine. I had a
new suit of clothes on the occasion. And the married couple went to spend
the honeymoon in Scotland.
Family festivals having been rare enough at our house, since my poor
mistress’s death, I own—on this occasion of the wedding—to having (to-
wards the latter part of the day) taken a drop too much on the strength of it.
If you have ever done the same sort of thing yourself you will understand
and feel for me. If you have not, you will very likely say, “Disgusting old
man! why does he tell us this?” The reason why is now to come.
Having, then, taken my drop (bless you! you have got your favourite
vice, too; only your vice isn’t mine, and mine isn’t yours), I next applied the
one infallible remedy—that remedy being, as you know, Robinson Crusoe.
Where I opened that unrivalled book, I can’t say. Where the lines of print at
last left off running into each other, I know, however, perfectly well. It was
at page three hundred and eighteen—a domestic bit concerning Robinson
Crusoe’s marriage, as follows:
“With those Thoughts, I considered my new Engagement, that I had a
Wife”—(Observe! so had Mr. Franklin!)—“one Child born”—(Observe
again! that might yet be Mr. Franklin’s case, too!)—“and my Wife then”—
What Robinson Crusoe’s wife did, or did not do, “then,” I felt no desire to
discover. I scored the bit about the child with my pencil, and put a morsel of
paper for a mark to keep the place; “Lie you there,” I said, “till the marriage
of Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel is some months older—and then we’ll
see!”
The months passed (more than I had bargained for), and no occasion
presented itself for disturbing that mark in the book. It was not till this
present month of November, eighteen hundred and fifty, that Mr. Franklin
came into my room, in high good spirits, and said, “Betteredge! I have got
some news for you! Something is going to happen in the house, before we
are many months older.”
“Does it concern the family, sir?” I asked.
“It decidedly concerns the family,” says Mr. Franklin.
“Has your good lady anything to do with it, if you please, sir?”
“She has a great deal to do with it,” says Mr. Franklin, beginning to look
a little surprised.
“You needn’t say a word more, sir,” I answered. “God bless you both!
I’m heartily glad to hear it.”
Mr. Franklin stared like a person thunderstruck. “May I venture to inquire
where you got your information?” he asked. “I only got mine (imparted in
the strictest secrecy) five minutes since.”
Here was an opportunity of producing Robinson Crusoe! Here was a
chance of reading that domestic bit about the child which I had marked on
the day of Mr. Franklin’s marriage! I read those miraculous words with an
emphasis which did them justice, and then I looked him severely in the
face. “Now, sir, do you believe in Robinson Crusoe?” I asked, with a solem-
nity, suitable to the occasion.
“Betteredge!” says Mr. Franklin, with equal solemnity, “I’m convinced at
last.” He shook hands with me—and I felt that I had converted him.
 With the relation of this extraordinary circumstance, my reappearance in
these pages comes to an end. Let nobody laugh at the unique anecdote here
related. You are welcome to be as merry as you please over everything else
I have written. But when I write of Robinson Crusoe, by the Lord it’s seri-
ous—and I request you to take it accordingly!
When this is said, all is said. Ladies and gentlemen, I make my bow, and
shut up the story.
 EPILOGUE
THE FINDING OF THE DIAMOND
 I
THE STATEMENT OF SERGEANT CUFF’S MAN (1849)

On the twenty-seventh of June last, I received instructions from Sergeant

Cuff to follow three men; suspected of murder, and described as Indians.
They had been seen on the Tower Wharf that morning, embarking on board
the steamer bound for Rotterdam.
I left London by a steamer belonging to another company, which sailed
on the morning of Thursday the twenty-eighth. Arriving at Rotterdam, I
succeeded in finding the commander of the Wednesday’s steamer. He in-
formed me that the Indians had certainly been passengers on board his ves-
sel—but as far as Gravesend only. Off that place, one of the three had in-
quired at what time they would reach Calais. On being informed that the
steamer was bound to Rotterdam, the spokesman of the party expressed the
greatest surprise and distress at the mistake which he and his two friends
had made. They were all willing (he said) to sacrifice their passage money,
if the commander of the steamer would only put them ashore. Commiserat-
ing their position, as foreigners in a strange land, and knowing no reason for
detaining them, the commander signalled for a shore boat, and the three
men left the vessel.
This proceeding of the Indians having been plainly resolved on before-
hand, as a means of preventing their being traced, I lost no time in returning
to England. I left the steamer at Gravesend, and discovered that the Indians
had gone from that place to London. Thence, I again traced them as having
left for Plymouth. Inquiries made at Plymouth proved that they had sailed,
forty-eight hours previously, in the Bewley Castle, East Indiaman, bound
direct to Bombay.
On receiving this intelligence, Sergeant Cuff caused the authorities at
Bombay to be communicated with, overland—so that the vessel might be
boarded by the police immediately on her entering the port. This step hav-
ing been taken, my connection with the matter came to an end. I have heard
nothing more of it since that time.
 II
THE STATEMENT OF THE CAPTAIN (1849)

I am requested by Sergeant Cuff to set in writing certain facts, concerning

three men (believed to be Hindus) who were passengers, last summer, in the
ship Bewley Castle, bound for Bombay direct, under my command.
The Hindus joined us at Plymouth. On the passage out I heard no com-
plaint of their conduct. They were berthed in the forward part of the vessel.
I had but few occasions myself of personally noticing them.
In the latter part of the voyage, we had the misfortune to be becalmed for
three days and nights, off the coast of India. I have not got the ship’s journal
to refer to, and I cannot now call to mind the latitude and longitude. As to
our position, therefore, I am only able to state generally that the currents
drifted us in towards the land, and that when the wind found us again, we
reached our port in twenty-four hours afterwards.
The discipline of a ship (as all seafaring persons know) becomes relaxed
in a long calm. The discipline of my ship became relaxed. Certain gentle-
men among the passengers got some of the smaller boats lowered, and
amused themselves by rowing about, and swimming, when the sun at even-
ing time was cool enough to let them divert themselves in that way. The
boats when done with ought to have been slung up again in their places. In-
stead of this they were left moored to the ship’s side. What with the heat,
and what with the vexation of the weather, neither officers nor men seemed
to be in heart for their duty while the calm lasted.
On the third night, nothing unusual was heard or seen by the watch on
deck. When the morning came, the smallest of the boats was missing—and
the three Hindus were next reported to be missing, too.
If these men had stolen the boat shortly after dark (which I have no doubt
they did), we were near enough to the land to make it vain to send in pursuit
of them, when the discovery was made in the morning. I have no doubt they
got ashore, in that calm weather (making all due allowance for fatigue and
clumsy rowing), before daybreak.
 On reaching our port I there learnt, for the first time, the reason these pas-
sengers had for seizing their opportunity of escaping from the ship. I could
only make the same statement to the authorities which I have made here.
They considered me to blame for allowing the discipline of the vessel to be
relaxed. I have expressed my regret on this score to them, and to my
owners.
Since that time, nothing has been heard to my knowledge of the three
Hindus. I have no more to add to what is here written.
 III
THE STATEMENT OF MR. MURTHWAITE (1850)

(In a letter to Mr. Bruff)

Have you any recollection, my dear sir, of a semi-savage person whom you
met out at dinner, in London, in the autumn of ’forty-eight? Permit me to
remind you that the person’s name was Murthwaite, and that you and he
had a long conversation together after dinner. The talk related to an Indian
Diamond, called the Moonstone, and to a conspiracy then in existence to
get possession of the gem.
Since that time, I have been wandering in Central Asia. Thence I have
drifted back to the scene of some of my past adventures in the north and
northwest of India. About a fortnight since, I found myself in a certain dis-
trict or province (but little known to Europeans) called Kattiawar.
Here an adventure befell me, in which (incredible as it may appear) you
are personally interested.
In the wild regions of Kattiawar (and how wild they are, you will under-
stand, when I tell you that even the husbandmen plough the land, armed to
the teeth), the population is fanatically devoted to the old Hindu religion—
to the ancient worship of Bramah and Vishnu. The few Muhammadan fam-
ilies, thinly scattered about the villages in the interior, are afraid to taste
meat of any kind. A Muhammadan even suspected of killing that sacred an-
imal, the cow, is, as a matter of course, put to death without mercy in these
parts by the pious Hindu neighbours who surround him. To strengthen the
religious enthusiasm of the people, two of the most famous shrines of
Hindu pilgrimage are contained within the boundaries of Kattiawar. One of
them is Dwarka, the birthplace of the god Krishna. The other is the sacred
city of Somnauth—sacked, and destroyed as long since as the eleventh cen-
tury, by the Muhammadan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni.
 Finding myself, for the second time, in these romantic regions, I resolved
not to leave Kattiawar, without looking once more on the magnificent desol-
ation of Somnauth. At the place where I planned to do this, I was (as nearly
as I could calculate it) some three days distant, journeying on foot, from the
sacred city.
I had not been long on the road, before I noticed that other people—by
twos and threes—appeared to be travelling in the same direction as myself.
To such of these as spoke to me, I gave myself out as a Hindu-Boodhist,
from a distant province, bound on a pilgrimage. It is needless to say that my
dress was of the sort to carry out this description. Add, that I know the lan-
guage as well as I know my own, and that I am lean enough and brown
enough to make it no easy matter to detect my European origin—and you
will understand that I passed muster with the people readily: not as one of
themselves, but as a stranger from a distant part of their own country.
On the second day, the number of Hindus travelling in my direction had
increased to fifties and hundreds. On the third day, the throng had swollen
to thousands; all slowly converging to one point—the city of Somnauth.
A trifling service which I was able to render to one of my fellow-pil-
grims, during the third day’s journey, proved the means of introducing me
to certain Hindus of the higher caste. From these men I learnt that the multi-
tude was on its way to a great religious ceremony, which was to take place
on a hill at a little distance from Somnauth. The ceremony was in honour of
the god of the Moon; and it was to be held at night.
The crowd detained us as we drew near to the place of celebration. By
the time we reached the hill the moon was high in the heaven. My Hindu
friends possessed some special privileges which enabled them to gain ac-
cess to the shrine. They kindly allowed me to accompany them. When we
arrived at the place, we found the shrine hidden from our view by a curtain
hung between two magnificent trees. Beneath the trees a flat projection of
rock jutted out, and formed a species of natural platform. Below this, I
stood, in company with my Hindu friends.
Looking back down the hill, the view presented the grandest spectacle of
Nature and Man, in combination, that I have ever seen. The lower slopes of
the eminence melted imperceptibly into a grassy plain, the place of the
meeting of three rivers. On one side, the graceful winding of the waters
stretched away, now visible, now hidden by trees, as far as the eye could
see. On the other, the waveless ocean slept in the calm of the night. People
this lovely scene with tens of thousands of human creatures, all dressed in
white, stretching down the sides of the hill, overflowing into the plain, and
fringing the nearer banks of the winding rivers. Light this halt of the pil-
grims by the wild red flames of cressets and torches, streaming up at inter-
vals from every part of the innumerable throng. Imagine the moonlight of
the East, pouring in unclouded glory over all—and you will form some idea
of the view that met me when I looked forth from the summit of the hill.
A strain of plaintive music, played on stringed instruments, and flutes,
recalled my attention to the hidden shrine.
I turned, and saw on the rocky platform the figures of three men. In the
central figure of the three I recognised the man to whom I had spoken in
England, when the Indians appeared on the terrace at Lady Verinder’s
house. The other two who had been his companions on that occasion were
no doubt his companions also on this.
One of the spectators, near whom I was standing, saw me start. In a whis-
per, he explained to me the apparition of the three figures on the platform of
rock.
They were Brahmins (he said) who had forfeited their caste in the service
of the god. The god had commanded that their purification should be the
purification by pilgrimage. On that night, the three men were to part. In
three separate directions, they were to set forth as pilgrims to the shrines of
India. Never more were they to look on each other’s faces. Never more
were they to rest on their wanderings, from the day which witnessed their
separation, to the day which witnessed their death.
As those words were whispered to me, the plaintive music ceased. The
three men prostrated themselves on the rock, before the curtain which hid
the shrine. They rose—they looked on one another—they embraced. Then
they descended separately among the people. The people made way for
them in dead silence. In three different directions I saw the crowd part, at
one and the same moment. Slowly the grand white mass of the people
closed together again. The track of the doomed men through the ranks of
their fellow mortals was obliterated. We saw them no more.
A new strain of music, loud and jubilant, rose from the hidden shrine.
The crowd around me shuddered, and pressed together.
The curtain between the trees was drawn aside, and the shrine was dis-
closed to view.
 There, raised high on a throne—seated on his typical antelope, with his
four arms stretching towards the four corners of the earth—there, soared
above us, dark and awful in the mystic light of heaven, the god of the
Moon. And there, in the forehead of the deity, gleamed the yellow Dia-
mond, whose splendour had last shone on me in England, from the bosom
of a woman’s dress!
Yes! after the lapse of eight centuries, the Moonstone looks forth once
more, over the walls of the sacred city in which its story first began. How it
has found its way back to its wild native land—by what accident, or by
what crime, the Indians regained possession of their sacred gem, may be in
your knowledge, but is not in mine. You have lost sight of it in England,
and (if I know anything of this people) you have lost sight of it for ever.
So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in
the cycles of time. What will be the next adventures of the Moonstone?
Who can tell?
 ENDNOTES

1. Note: Added by Franklin Blake—Miss Clack may make her mind quite
easy on this point. Nothing will be added, altered or removed, in her
manuscript, or in any of the other manuscripts which pass through my
hands. Whatever opinions any of the writers may express, whatever
peculiarities of treatment may mark, and perhaps in a literary sense,
disfigure the narratives which I am now collecting, not a line will be
tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As genuine documents they
are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall preserve them, en-
dorsed by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the facts. It
only remains to be added that “the person chiefly concerned” in Miss
Clack’s narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to
brave the smartest exercise of Miss Clack’s pen, but even to recognise
its unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss
Clack’s character. ↩

2. See Betteredge’s Narrative, Chapter VIII ↩

3. Note: by Franklin Blake.—The writer is entirely mistaken, poor

creature. I never noticed her. My intention was certainly to have taken
a turn in the shrubbery. But, remembering at the same moment that my
aunt might wish to see me, after my return from the railway, I altered
my mind, and went into the house. ↩

4. Note.—Wherever the Report touches on the events of the birthday, or

of the three days that followed it, compare with Betteredge’s Narrative,
Chapters VIII to XIII ↩
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Table of Contents
1. Titlepage
2. The Moonstone
1. Prologue
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
2. First Period: The Loss of the Diamond (1848)
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V
6. VI
7. VII
8. VIII
9. IX
10. X
11. XI
12. XII
13. XIII
14. XIV
15. XV
16. XVI
17. XVII
18. XVIII
19. XIX
20. XX
21. XXI
22. XXII
23. XXIII
3. Second Period: The Discovery of the Truth (1848–1849)
1. First Narrative
 1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V
6. VI
7. VII
8. VIII
2. Second Narrative
1. I
2. II
3. III
3. Third Narrative
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V
6. VI
7. VII
8. VIII
9. IX
10. X
4. Fourth Narrative
5. Fifth Narrative
6. Sixth Narrative
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V
7. Seventh Narrative
8. Eighth Narrative
4. Epilogue: The Finding of the Diamond
1. I: The Statement of Sergeant Cuff’s Man (1849)
2. II: The Statement of the Captain (1849)
3. III: The Statement of Mr. Murthwaite (1850)
3. Endnotes
4. Colophon