The Moonstone
for him, I’ll take care, sir, that he gets it.”
I gave her my card, having first written on it in pencil: “I have
something to say about the Moonstone. Let me hear from you as soon as
you get back.” That done, there was nothing left but to submit to
circumstances, and return to London.
In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am now
writing, the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant’s cottage
simply aggravated the restless impulse in me to be doing something. On
the day of my return from Dorking, I determined that the next morning
should find me bent on a new effort at forcing my way, through all
obstacles, from the darkness to the light.
What form was my next experiment to take?
If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering
that question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts,
he would, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on
this occasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps
possible that my German training was in some degree responsible for the
labyrinth of useless speculations in which I now involved myself. For
the greater part of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories,
one more profoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep,
my waking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning, with
Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangled
together in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my next
effort at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had any
sort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort of
thing (the Diamond included) as existing at all.
How long I might have remained lost in the mist of my own metaphysics,
if I had been left to extricate myself, it is impossible for me to say.
As the event proved, accident came to my rescue, and happily delivered
me. I happened to wear, that morning, the same coat which I had worn on
the day of my interview with Rachel. Searching for something else in
one of the pockets, I came upon a crumpled piece of paper, and, taking
it out, found Betteredge’s forgotten letter in my hand.
It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply. I
went to my writing-table, and read his letter again.
A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it, is not
always an easy letter to answer. Betteredge’s present effort at
corresponding with me came within this category. Mr. Candy’s assistant,
otherwise Ezra Jennings, had told his master that he had seen me; and
Mr. Candy, in his turn, wanted to see me and say something to me, when
I was next in the neighbourhood of Frizinghall. What was to be said in
answer to that, which would be worth the paper it was written on? I sat
idly drawing likenesses from memory of Mr. Candy’s remarkable-looking
assistant, on the sheet of paper which I had vowed to dedicate to
Betteredge—until it suddenly occurred to me that here was the
irrepressible Ezra Jennings getting in my way again! I threw a dozen
portraits, at least, of the man with the piebald hair (the hair in
every case, remarkably like), into the waste-paper basket—and then and
there, wrote my answer to Betteredge. It was a perfectly commonplace
letter—but it had one excellent effect on me. The effort of writing a
few sentences, in plain English, completely cleared my mind of the
cloudy nonsense which had filled it since the previous day.
Devoting myself once more to the elucidation of the impenetrable puzzle
which my own position presented to me, I now tried to meet the
difficulty by investigating it from a plainly practical point of view.
The events of the memorable night being still unintelligible to me, I
looked a little farther back, and searched my memory of the earlier
hours of the birthday for any incident which might prove of some
assistance to me in finding the clue.
Had anything happened while Rachel and I were finishing the painted
door? or, later, when I rode over to Frizinghall? or afterwards, when I
went back with Godfrey Ablewhite and his sisters? or, later again, when
I put the Moonstone into Rachel’s hands? or, later still, when the
company came, and we all assembled round the dinner-table? My memory
disposed of that string of questions readily enough, until I came to
the last. Looking back at the social event of the birthday dinner, I
found myself brought to a standstill at the outset of the inquiry. I
was not even capable of accurately remembering the number of the guests
who had sat at the same table with me.
To feel myself completely at fault here, and to conclude, thereupon,
that the incidents of the dinner might especially repay the trouble of
investigating them, formed parts of the same mental process, in my
case. I believe other people, in a similar situation, would have
reasoned as I did. When the pursuit of our own interests causes us to
become objects of inquiry to ourselves, we are naturally suspicious of
what we don’t know. Once in possession of the names of the persons who
had been present at the dinner, I resolved—as a means of enriching the
deficient resources of my own memory—to appeal to the memory of the
rest of the guests; to write down all that they could recollect of the
social events of the birthday; and to test the result, thus obtained,
by the light of what had happened afterwards, when the company had left
the house.
This last and newest of my many contemplated experiments in the art of
inquiry—which Betteredge would probably have attributed to the
clear-headed, or French, side of me being uppermost for the moment—may
fairly claim record here, on its own merits. Unlikely as it may seem, I
had now actually groped my way to the root of the matter at last. All I
wanted was a hint to guide me in the right direction at starting.
Before another day had passed over my head, that hint was given me by
one of the company who had been present at the birthday feast!
With the plan of proceeding which I now had in view, it was first
necessary to possess the complete list of the guests. This I could
easily obtain from Gabriel Betteredge. I determined to go back to
Yorkshire on that day, and to begin my contemplated investigation the
next morning.
It was just too late to start by the train which left London before
noon. There was no alternative but to wait, nearly three hours, for the
departure of the next train. Was there anything I could do in London,
which might usefully occupy this interval of time?
My thoughts went back again obstinately to the birthday dinner.
Though I had forgotten the numbers, and, in many cases, the names of
the guests, I remembered readily enough that by far the larger
proportion of them came from Frizinghall, or from its neighbourhood.
But the larger proportion was not all. Some few of us were not regular
residents in the country. I myself was one of the few. Mr. Murthwaite
was another. Godfrey Ablewhite was a third. Mr. Bruff—no: I called to
mind that business had prevented Mr. Bruff from making one of the
party. Had any ladies been present, whose usual residence was in
London? I could only remember Miss Clack as coming within this latter
category. However, here were three of the guests, at any rate, whom it
was clearly advisable for me to see before I left town. I drove off at
once to Mr. Bruff’s office; not knowing the addresses of the persons of
whom I was in search, and thinking it probable that he might put me in
the way of finding them.
Mr. Bruff proved to be too busy to give me more than a minute of his
valuable time. In that minute, however, he contrived to dispose—in the
most discouraging manner—of all the questions I had to put to him.
In the first place, he considered my newly-discovered method of finding
a clue to the mystery as something too purely fanciful to be seriously
discussed. In the second, third, and fourth places, Mr. Murthwaite was
now on his way back to the scene of his past adventures; Miss Clack had
suffered losses, and had settled, from motives of economy, in France;
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite might, or might not, be discoverable somewhere in
London. Suppose I inquired at his club? And suppose I excused Mr.
Bruff, if he went back to his business and wished me good morning?
The field of inquiry in London, being now so narrowed as only to
include the one necessity of discovering Godfrey’s address, I took the
lawyer’s hint, and drove to his club.
In the hall, I met with one of the members, who was an old friend of my
cousin’s, and who was also an acquaintance of my own. This gentleman,
after enlightening me on the subject of Godfrey’s address, told me of
two recent events in his life, which were of some importance in
themselves, and which had not previously reached my ears.
It appeared that Godfrey, far from being discouraged by Rachel’s
withdrawal from her engagement to him had made matrimonial advances
soon afterwards to another young lady, reputed to be a great heiress.
His suit had prospered, and his marriage had been considered as a
settled and certain thing. But, here again, the engagement had been
suddenly and unexpectedly broken off—owing, it was said, on this
occasion, to a serious difference of opinion between the bridegroom and
the lady’s father, on the question of settlements.
As some compensation for this second matrimonial disaster, Godfrey had
soon afterwards found himself the object of fond pecuniary remembrance,
on the part of one of his many admirers. A rich old lady—highly
respected at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and a great
friend of Miss Clack’s (to whom she left nothing but a mourning
ring)—had bequeathed to the admirable and meritorious Godfrey a legacy
of five thousand pounds. After receiving this handsome addition to his
own modest pecuniary resources, he had been heard to say that he felt
the necessity of getting a little respite from his charitable labours,
and that his doctor prescribed “a run on the Continent, as likely to be
productive of much future benefit to his health.” If I wanted to see
him, it would be advisable to lose no time in paying my contemplated
visit.
I went, then and there, to pay my visit.
The same fatality which had made me just one day too late in calling on
Sergeant Cuff, made me again one day too late in calling on Godfrey. He
had left London, on the previous morning, by the tidal train, for
Dover. He was to cross to Ostend; and his servant believed he was going
on to Brussels. The time of his return was rather uncertain; but I
might be sure he would be away at least three months.
I went back to my lodgings a little depressed in spirits. Three of the
guests at the birthday dinner—and those three all exceptionally
intelligent people—were out of my reach, at the very time when it was
most important to be able to communicate with them. My last hopes now
rested on Betteredge, and on the friends of the late Lady Verinder whom
I might still find living in the neighbourhood of Rachel’s country
house.
On this occasion, I travelled straight to Frizinghall—the town being
now the central point in my field of inquiry. I arrived too late in the
evening to be able to communicate with Betteredge. The next morning, I
sent a messenger with a letter, requesting him to join me at the hotel,
at his earliest convenience.
Having taken the precaution—partly to save time, partly to accommodate
Betteredge—of sending my messenger in a fly, I had a reasonable
prospect, if no delays occurred, of seeing the old man within less than
two hours from the time when I had sent for him. During this interval,
I arranged to employ myself in opening my contemplated inquiry, among
the guests present at the birthday dinner who were personally known to