The Moonstone
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
Sergeant 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 Frizinghall, when the whole household believed her to be ill
in her own room—Rosanna’s mysterious employment of the night-time 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 something 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 Coast-guard 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 slippery 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
measure 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, glittering 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
preliminary heaving of the Sand, and then the awful shiver that crept
over its surface—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
overhanging 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
pursued 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.
CHAPTER 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
recollection. 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 proceeding 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