The Moonstone
of him uppermost once more. The man made of cotton had disappeared; and
the man made of iron sat before me again.
“Going to London, sir?” I asked.
“Going to telegraph to London,” says Mr. Franklin. “I have convinced my
aunt that we must have a cleverer head than Superintendent Seegrave’s
to help us; and I have got her permission to despatch a telegram to my
father. He knows the Chief Commissioner of Police, and the Commissioner
can lay his hand on the right man to solve the mystery of the Diamond.
Talking of mysteries, by-the-bye,” says Mr. Franklin, dropping his
voice, “I have another word to say to you before you go to the stables.
Don’t breathe a word of it to anybody as yet; but either Rosanna
Spearman’s head is not quite right, or I am afraid she knows more about
the Moonstone than she ought to know.”
I can hardly tell whether I was more startled or distressed at hearing
him say that. If I had been younger, I might have confessed as much to
Mr. Franklin. But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit. In
cases where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.
“She came in here with a ring I dropped in my 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 suppose she was afraid of your
catching her here. At any rate, she changed colour, and left the room.
What on earth does it mean?”
I could not bring myself to tell him the girl’s story, even then. It
would have been almost as good as telling him that she was the thief.
Besides, even if I had made a clean breast of it, and even supposing
she was the thief, the reason why she should let out her secret to Mr.
Franklin, of all the people in the world, would have been still as far
to seek as ever.
“I can’t bear the idea of getting the poor girl into a scrape, merely
because she has a flighty way with her, and talks very strangely,” Mr.
Franklin went on. “And yet if she had said to the Superintendent what
she said to me, fool as he is, I’m afraid——” He stopped there, and left
the rest unspoken.
“The best way, sir,” I said, “will be for me to say two words privately
to my mistress about it at the first opportunity. My lady has a very
friendly interest in Rosanna; and the girl may only have been forward
and foolish, after all. When there’s a mess of any kind in a house,
sir, the women-servants like to look at the gloomy side—it gives the
poor wretches a kind of importance in their own eyes. If there’s
anybody ill, trust the women for prophesying that the person will die.
If it’s a jewel lost, trust them for prophesying that it will never be
found again.”
This view (which I am bound to say, I thought a probable view myself,
on reflection) seemed to relieve Mr. Franklin mightily: he folded up
his telegram, and dismissed the subject. On my way to the stables, to
order the pony-chaise, I looked in at the servants’ hall, where they
were at dinner. Rosanna Spearman was not among them. On inquiry, I
found that she had been suddenly taken ill, and had gone 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
behaviour might have been all in this—that she didn’t care what she
said, so long as she could surprise Mr. Franklin into speaking to her.
Granting that to be the right reading of the riddle, it accounted,
perhaps, for her flighty, self-conceited manner when she passed me in
the hall. Though he had only said three words, still she had carried
her point, and Mr. Franklin _had_ spoken to her.
I saw the pony harnessed myself. In the infernal network of mysteries
and uncertainties that now surrounded us, I declare it was a relief to
observe how well the buckles and straps understood each other! When you
had seen the pony backed into the shafts of the chaise, you had seen
something there was no doubt about. And that, let me tell you, was
becoming a treat of the rarest kind in our household.
Going round with the chaise to the front door, I found not only Mr.
Franklin, but Mr. Godfrey and Superintendent Seegrave also waiting for
me on the steps.
Mr. Superintendent’s reflections (after failing to find the Diamond in
the servants’ rooms or boxes) had led him, it appeared, to an entirely
new conclusion. Still sticking to his first text, namely, that somebody
in the house had stolen the jewel, our experienced officer was now of
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 volunteered to take the Superintendent back
to the town, from which he could telegraph to London as easily as from
our station. Mr. Godfrey, still devoutly believing in Mr. Seegrave, and
greatly interested in witnessing the examination of the Indians, had
begged leave to accompany the officer to Frizinghall. One of the two
inferior policemen was to be left at the house, in case anything
happened. The other was to go back with the Superintendent to the town.
So the four places in the pony-chaise were just filled.
Before he took the reins to drive off, Mr. Franklin walked me away a
few steps out of hearing of the others.
“I will wait to telegraph to London,” he said, “till I see what comes
of our examination of the Indians. My own conviction is, that this
muddle-headed local police-officer is as much in the dark as ever, and
is simply trying to gain time. The idea of any of the servants being in
league with the Indians is a preposterous absurdity, in my opinion.
Keep about the house, Betteredge, till I come back, and try what you
can make of Rosanna Spearman. I don’t ask you to do anything degrading
to your own self-respect, or anything cruel towards the girl. I only
ask you to exercise your observation more carefully than usual. We will
make as light of it as we can before my aunt—but this is a more
important matter than you may suppose.”
“It is a matter of twenty thousand pounds, sir,” I said, thinking of
the value of the Diamond.
“It’s a matter of quieting Rachel’s mind,” answered Mr. Franklin
gravely. “I am very uneasy about her.”
He left me suddenly; as if he desired to cut short any further talk
between us. I thought I understood why. Further talk might have let me
into the secret of what Miss Rachel had said to him on the terrace.
So they drove away to Frizinghall. I was ready enough, in the girl’s
own interest, to have a little talk with Rosanna in private. But the
needful opportunity failed to present itself. She only came downstairs
again at tea-time. When she did appear, she was flighty and excited,
had what they call an hysterical attack, took a dose of sal-volatile by
my lady’s order, and was sent back to her bed.
The day wore on to its end drearily and miserably enough, I can tell
you. Miss Rachel still kept her room, declaring that she was too ill to
come down to dinner that day. My lady was in such low spirits about her
daughter, that I could not bring myself to make her additionally
anxious, by reporting what Rosanna Spearman had said to Mr. Franklin.
Penelope persisted in believing that she was to be forthwith tried,
sentenced, and transported for theft. The other women took to their
Bibles and hymn-books, and looked as sour as verjuice over their
reading—a result, which I have observed, in my sphere of life, to
follow generally on the performance of acts of piety at unaccustomed
periods of the day. As for me, I hadn’t even heart enough to open my
_Robinson Crusoe_. I went out into the yard, and, being hard up for a
little cheerful society, set my chair by the kennels, and talked to the
dogs.
Half an hour before dinner-time, the two gentlemen came back from
Frizinghall, having arranged with Superintendent Seegrave that he was
to return to us the next day. They had called on Mr. Murthwaite, the
Indian traveller, at his present residence, near the town. At Mr.
Franklin’s request, he had kindly given them the benefit of his
knowledge of the language, in dealing with those two, out of the three
Indians, who knew nothing of English. The examination, conducted
carefully, and at great length, had ended in nothing; not the shadow of
a reason being discovered for suspecting the jugglers of having
tampered with any of our servants. On reaching that conclusion, Mr.
Franklin had sent his telegraphic message to London, and there the
matter now rested till tomorrow came.
So much for the history of the day that followed the birthday. Not a
glimmer of light had broken in on us, so far. A day or two after,
however, the darkness lifted a little. How, and with what result, you
shall presently see.
CHAPTER XII
The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened. With the Friday
morning came two pieces of news.
Item the first: the baker’s man declared he had met Rosanna Spearman,
on the previous afternoon, with a thick veil on, walking towards
Frizinghall by the foot-path way over the moor. It seemed strange that
anybody should be mistaken about Rosanna, whose shoulder marked her out
pretty plainly, poor thing—but mistaken the man must have been; for
Rosanna, as you know, had been all the Thursday afternoon ill 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, represented him to be light-headed—talking nonsense as
glibly, poor man, in his delirium as he often talked it in his sober
senses. We were all sorry for the little doctor; but Mr. Franklin
appeared to regret his illness, chiefly on Miss Rachel’s account. From
what he said to my lady, while I was in the room at breakfast-time, he
appeared to think that Miss Rachel—if the suspense about the Moonstone
was not soon set at rest—might stand in urgent need of the best medical
advice at our disposal.
Breakfast had not been over long, when a telegram from Mr. Blake, the
elder, arrived, in answer to his son. It informed us that he had laid
hands (by help of his friend, the Commissioner) on the right man to
help us. The name of him was Sergeant Cuff; and the arrival of him from
London might be expected by the morning train.
At reading the name of the new police-officer, Mr. Franklin gave a
start. It seems that he had heard some curious anecdotes about Sergeant
Cuff, from his father’s lawyer, during his stay in London.
“I begin to hope we are seeing the end of our anxieties already,” he
said. “If half the stories I have heard are true, when it comes to