The Moonstone
Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one
all-absorbing interest—her interest in Mr. Blake.
“How is he now?” she asked. “Is he nervous? is he out of temper? Do you
think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do no harm?”
“Quite sure. Come, and see me measure it out.”
“One moment! It is past eleven now. How long will it be before anything
happens?”
“It is not easy to say. An hour perhaps.”
“I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?”
“Certainly.”
“I shall wait in my bedroom—just as I did before. I shall keep the door
a little way open. It was a little way open last year. I will watch the
sitting-room door; and the moment it moves, I will blow out my light.
It all happened in that way, on my birthday night. And it must all
happen again in the same way, musn’t it?”
“Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?”
“In _his_ interests, I can do anything!” she answered fervently.
One look at her face told me that I could trust her. I addressed myself
again to Mr. Bruff.
“I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment,” I said.
“Oh, certainly!” He got up with a start—as if I had disturbed him at a
particularly interesting place—and followed me to the medicine-chest.
There, deprived of the breathless excitement incidental to the practice
of his profession, he looked at Betteredge—and yawned wearily.
Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water, which she had
taken from a side-table. “Let me pour out the water,” she whispered. “I
_must_ have a hand in it!”
I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured the
laudanum into a medicine glass. “Fill it till it is three parts full,”
I said, and handed the glass to Miss Verinder. I then directed
Betteredge to lock up the medicine chest; informing him that I had done
with it now. A look of unutterable relief overspread the old servant’s
countenance. He had evidently suspected me of a medical design on his
young lady!
After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder seized a
moment—while Betteredge was locking the chest, and while Mr. Bruff was
looking back to his papers—and slyly kissed the rim of the medicine
glass. “When you give it to him,” said the charming girl, “give it to
him on that side!”
I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Diamond from my
pocket, and gave it to her.
“You must have a hand in this, too,” I said. “You must put it where you
put the Moonstone last year.”
She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Diamond into
the drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on the birthday night.
Mr. Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under protest, as he had witnessed
everything else. But the strong dramatic interest which the experiment
was now assuming, proved (to my great amusement) to be too much for
Betteredge’s capacity of self-restraint. His hand trembled as he held
the candle, and he whispered anxiously, “Are you sure, miss, it’s the
right drawer?”
I led the way out again, with the laudanum and water in my hand. At the
door, I stopped to address a last word to Miss Verinder.
“Don’t be long in putting out the lights,” I said.
“I will put them out at once,” she answered. “And I will wait in my
bedroom, with only one candle alight.”
She closed the sitting-room door behind us. Followed by Mr. Bruff and
Betteredge, I went back to Mr. Blake’s room.
We found him moving restlessly from side to side of the bed, and
wondering irritably whether he was to have the laudanum that night. In
the presence of the two witnesses, I gave him the dose, and shook up
his pillows, and told him to lie down again quietly and wait.
His bed, provided with light chintz curtains, was placed, with the head
against the wall of the room, so as to leave a good open space on
either side of it. On one side, I drew the curtains completely—and in
the part of the room thus screened from his view, I placed Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge, to wait for the result. At the bottom of the bed I half
drew the curtains—and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that
I might let him see me or not see me, speak to me or not speak to me,
just as the circumstances might direct. Having already been informed
that he always slept with a light in the room, I placed one of the two
lighted candles on a little table at the head of the bed, where the
glare of the light would not strike on his eyes. The other candle I
gave to Mr. Bruff; the light, in this instance, being subdued by the
screen of the chintz curtains. The window was open at the top, so as to
ventilate the room. The rain fell softly, the house was quiet. It was
twenty minutes past eleven, by my watch, when the preparations were
completed, and I took my place on the chair set apart at the bottom of
the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of being as deeply
interested in them as ever. But looking towards him now, I saw certain
signs and tokens which told me that the Law was beginning to lose its
hold on him at last. The suspended interest of the situation in which
we were now placed was slowly asserting its influence even on _his_
unimaginative mind. As for Betteredge, consistency of principle and
dignity of conduct had become, in his case, mere empty words. He forgot
that I was performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he
forgot that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot that I
had not read _Robinson Crusoe_ since I was a child. “For the Lord’s
sake, sir,” he whispered to me, “tell us when it will begin to work.”
“Not before midnight,” I whispered back. “Say nothing, and sit still.”
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with me, without
a struggle to save himself. He answered by a wink!
Looking next towards Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as ever in his
bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the laudanum had not
begun to assert itself yet. To tell him, in his present humour, that
the more he fidgeted and wondered, the longer he would delay the result
for which we were now waiting, would have been simply useless. The
wiser course to take was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his
mind, by leading him insensibly to think of something else.
With this view, I encouraged him to talk to me; contriving so to direct
the conversation, on my side, as to lead it back again to the subject
which had engaged us earlier in the evening—the subject of the Diamond.
I took care to revert to those portions of the story of the Moonstone,
which related to the transport of it from London to Yorkshire; to the
risk which Mr. Blake had run in removing it from the bank at
Frizinghall; and to the unexpected appearance of the Indians at the
house, on the evening of the birthday. And I purposely assumed, in
referring to these events, to have misunderstood much of what Mr. Blake
himself had told me a few hours since. In this way, I set him talking
on the subject with which it was now vitally important to fill his
mind—without allowing him to suspect that I was making him talk for a
purpose. Little by little, he became so interested in putting me right
that he forgot to fidget in the bed. His mind was far away from the
question of the opium, at the all-important time when his eyes first
told me that the opium was beginning to lay its hold on his brain.
I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve, when the
premonitory symptoms of the working of the laudanum first showed
themselves to me.
At this time, no unpractised eyes would have detected any change in
him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the
swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to show itself more
plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew
of a stealthy perspiration began to glisten on his face. In five
minutes more, the talk which he still kept up with me, failed in
coherence. He held steadily to the subject of the Diamond; but he
ceased to complete his sentences. A little later, the sentences dropped
to single words. Then, there was an interval of silence. Then, he sat
up in bed. Then, still busy with the subject of the Diamond, he began
to talk again—not to me, but to himself. That change told me that the
first stage in the experiment was reached. The stimulant influence of
the opium had got him.
The time, now, was twenty-three minutes past twelve. The next half
hour, at most, would decide the question of whether he would, or would
not, get up from his bed, and leave the room.
In the breathless interest of watching him—in the unutterable triumph
of seeing the first result of the experiment declare itself in the
manner, and nearly at the time, which I had anticipated—I had utterly
forgotten the two companions of my night vigil. Looking towards them
now, I saw the Law (as represented by Mr. Bruff’s papers) lying
unheeded on the floor. Mr. Bruff himself was looking eagerly through a
crevice left in the imperfectly-drawn curtains of the bed. And
Betteredge, oblivious of all respect for social distinctions, was
peeping over Mr. Bruff’s shoulder.
They both started back, on finding that I was looking at them, like two
boys caught out by their schoolmaster in a fault. I signed to them to
take off their boots quietly, as I was taking off mine. If Mr. Blake
gave us the chance of following him, it was vitally necessary to follow
him without noise.
Ten minutes passed—and nothing happened. Then, he suddenly threw the
bed-clothes off him. He put one leg out of bed. He waited.
“I wish I had never taken it out of the bank,” he said to himself. “It
was safe in the bank.”
My heart throbbed fast; the pulses at my temples beat furiously. The
doubt about the safety of the Diamond was, once more, the dominant
impression in his brain! On that one pivot, the whole success of the
experiment turned. The prospect thus suddenly opened before me was too
much for my shattered nerves. I was obliged to look away from him—or I
should have lost my self-control.
There was another interval of silence.
When I could trust myself to look back at him he was out of his bed,
standing erect at the side of it. The pupils of his eyes were now
contracted; his eyeballs gleamed in the light of the candle as he moved
his head slowly to and fro. He was thinking; he was doubting—he spoke
again.
“How do I know?” he said. “The Indians may be hidden in the house.”
He stopped, and walked slowly to the other end of the room. He
turned—waited—came back to the bed.
“It’s not even locked up,” he went on. “It’s in the drawer of her
cabinet. And the drawer doesn’t lock.”
He sat down on the side of the bed. “Anybody might take it,” he said.
He rose again restlessly, and reiterated his first words.
“How do I know? The Indians may be hidden in the house.”
He waited again. I drew back behind the half curtain of the bed. He
looked about the room, with a vacant glitter in his eyes. It was a
breathless moment. There was a pause of some sort. A pause in the
action of the opium? a pause in the action of the brain? Who could
tell? Everything depended, now, on what he did next.
He laid himself down again on the bed!
A horrible doubt crossed my mind. Was it possible that the sedative
action of the opium was making itself felt already? It was not in my
experience that it should do this. But what is experience, where opium
is concerned? There are probably no two men in existence on whom the
drug acts in exactly the same manner. Was some constitutional
peculiarity in him, feeling the influence in some new way? Were we to
fail on the very brink of success?
No! He got up again abruptly. “How the devil am I to sleep,” he said,
“with _this_ on my mind?”
He looked at the light, burning on the table at the head of his bed.