The Moonstone
thieve. You talk as if this was a misunderstanding which a few words
might have set right! Well! the misunderstanding 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 believe 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 money-lender in London—I am sure of it! You
cast the suspicion of your disgrace (thanks to my base silence!) on an
innocent 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 escaped
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 never 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.
CHAPTER 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
usual 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 foreseen 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
impossible 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
permission—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 actuated 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 believed 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. Franklin! 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 purpose, 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_ discover 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 discovering 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 except 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 moment; 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 life-time, 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
assumed 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 by-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 everywhere; 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 illustrious 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