The Moonstone
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. Public 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 London police officer who investigated this case? Not the shadow
of a suspicion 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 seeing
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 gentleness, 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 atonement 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 suggested 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 circumstances 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 anything 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
innocence, 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 remind 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
development 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 herself,
that her daughter was ready to marry Franklin Blake, before that
infernal 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 confessed 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
manner, 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 dead-lock, 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
mention 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 having 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 suspicion 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 humiliating
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.
CHAPTER 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