The Moonstone
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 individual 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 talking 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
releasing 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 towards
solving the problem. My own unaided ingenuity, consulted next, proved
quite unequal to grapple with the difficulty. I had a dinner engagement
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.
CHAPTER 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 announced his intention of returning to the scene of his exploits,
and of penetrating 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 allusion 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
conspiracy, 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
succession 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 Colonel 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 dulness to its lowest depths.
“Let me ask you one question,” he said. “In what position does the
conspiracy 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 alternatives 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 inquiring
into. But they have done more. They have succeeded to the organisation
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
services, when needed, of that shady sort of Englishman, who lives in
the byways 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
alluded, would get them the copy you have described. That copy would
inform them that the Moonstone was bequeathed to the daughter of Lady
Verinder, 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 information 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, disguised 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 going 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 perfectly 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