The Moonstone Page 47

  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 itsusual confidence and spirit. He shook hands with me, for the first timein 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, thatyou have got at the truth at last. But, I tell you plainly, if I couldhave foreseen the price that was to be paid for it, I should havepreferred leaving you in the dark."

  "You have seen Rachel?"

  "I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place; it wasimpossible to let her return in the carriage by herself. I can hardlyhold you responsible--considering that you saw her in my house and by mypermission--for the shock that this unlucky interview has inflicted onher. 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, withtime and rest to help her. I want to be assured that you will do nothingto hinder her recovery. May I depend on your making no second attempt tosee 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 chairnearer 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 hasnow taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachelhas told you the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it. In thesecond place--though we know that there must be some dreadful mistakesomewhere--we can hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty, onthe evidence of her own senses; backed, as that evidence has been, bycircumstances which appear, on the face of them, to tell dead againstyou."

  There I interposed. "I don't blame Rachel," I said. "I only regret thatshe could not prevail on herself to speak more plainly to me at thetime."

  "You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else," rejoinedMr. Bruff. "And even then, I doubt if a girl of any delicacy, whoseheart had been set on marrying you, could have brought herself to chargeyou to your face with being a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel'snature to do it. In a very different matter to this matter ofyours--which placed her, however, in a position not altogether unlikeher position towards you--I happen to know that she was influenced bya 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, ifshe had spoken plainly, she would no more have believed your denial thenthan she believes it now. What answer can you make to that? There is noanswer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Franklin! my view of the casehas been proved to be all wrong, I admit--but, as things are now, myadvice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall bewasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attemptto try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning.Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at LadyVerinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in thefuture, instead of to what we can NOT discover in the past."

  "Surely you forget," I said, "that the whole thing is essentially amatter of the past--so far as I am concerned?"

  "Answer me this," retorted Mr. Bruff. "Is the Moonstone at the bottom ofall the mischief--or is it not?"

  "It is--of course."

  "Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone, when it wastaken to London?"

  "It was pledged to Mr. Luker."

  "We know that you are not the person who pledged it. Do we know whodid?"

  "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. Towardsthe end of the month (I can't be particular to a day) a year will haveelapsed 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, maybe prepared to redeem it when the year's time has expired. If heredeems it, Mr. Luker must himself--according to the terms of his ownarrangement--take the Diamond out of his banker's hands. Under thesecircumstances, I propose setting a watch at the bank, as the presentmonth 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 anyrate.

  "It's Mr. Murthwaite's idea quite as much as mine," said Mr. Bruff. "Itmight have never entered my head, but for a conversation we had togethersome time since. If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely tobe on the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too--andsomething serious may come of it. What comes of it doesn't matter toyou and me except as it may help us to lay our hands on the mysteriousSomebody who pawned the Diamond. That person, you may rely on it, isresponsible (I don't pretend to know how) for the position in whichyou stand at this moment; and that person alone can set you right inRachel's estimation."

  "I can't deny," I said, "that the plan you propose meets the difficultyin 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 afortnight--more or less. Is that so very long?"

  "It's a life-time, Mr. Bruff, in such a situation as mine. My existencewill be simply unendurable to me, unless I do something towards clearingmy character at once."

  "Well, well, I understand that. Have you thought yet of what you cando?"

  "I have thought of consulting Sergeant Cuff."

  "He has retired from the police. It's useless to expect the Sergeant tohelp you."

  "I know where to find him; and I can but try."

  "Try," said Mr. Bruff, after a moment's consideration. "The case hasassumed such an extraordinary aspect since Sergeant Cuff's time, thatyou may revive his interest in the inquiry. Try, and let me hearthe result. In the meanwhile," he continued, rising, "if you make nodiscoveries between this, and the end of the month, am I free to try, onmy side, what can be done by keeping a lookout at the bank?"

  "Certainly," I answered--"unless I relieve you of all necessity fortrying the experiment in the interval."

  Mr. Bruff smiled, and took up his hat.

  "Tell Sergeant Cuff," he rejoined, "that I say the discovery of thetruth depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. Andlet 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--theplace of Sergeant Cuff's retirement, as indicated to me by Betteredge.

  Inquiring at the hotel, I received the necessary directions for findingthe Sergeant's cottage. It was approached by a quiet bye-road, a littleway out of the town, and it stood snugly in the middle of its own plotof garden ground, protected by a good brick wall at the back and thesides, and by a high quickset hedge in front. The gate, ornamentedat the upper part by smartly-painted trellis-work, was locked. Afterringing at the bell, I peered through the trellis-work, and saw thegreat Cuff's favourite flower everywhere; blooming in his garden,clustering over his door, looking in at his windows. Far from the crimesand the mysteries of the great city, the illustrious thief-taker wasplacidly living out the last Sybarite years of his life, smothered inroses!

  A decent elderly woman opened the gate to me, and at once annihilatedall 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 outsomething new in the growing of roses--and Mr. Cuff's away to inquireinto 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 worthnothing, or worth looking into. If you have any message to leave forhim, I'll take care, sir, that he gets it."

  I gave her my card, having first written on it in pencil: "I havesomething to say about the Moonstone. Let me hear from you as soonas you get back." That done, there was nothing left but to submit tocircumstances, and return to London.

  In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am nowwriting, the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant's cottagesimply aggravated the restless impulse in me to be doing something. Onthe day of my return from Dorking, I determined that the next morningshould find me bent on a new effort at forcing my way, through allobstacles, from the darkness to the light.

  What form was my next experiment to take?

  If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was consideringthat question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts, hewould, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on thisoccasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps possiblethat my German training was in some degree responsible for the labyrinthof useless speculations in which I now involved myself. For the greaterpart of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories, one moreprofoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep, mywaking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning, withObjective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangledtogether in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my nexteffort at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had anysort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort ofthing (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 deliveredme. I happened to wear, that morning, the same coat which I had worn onthe day of my interview with Rachel. Searching for something else in oneof the pockets, I came upon a crumpled piece of paper, and, taking itout, found Betteredge's forgotten letter in my hand.

  It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply. Iwent to my writing-table, and read his letter again.

  A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it, isnot always an easy letter to answer. Betteredge's present effort atcorresponding with me came within this category. Mr. Candy's assistant,otherwise Ezra Jennings, had told his master that he had seen me; andMr. Candy, in his turn, wanted to see me and say something to me, whenI was next in the neighbourhood of Frizinghall. What was to be said inanswer to that, which would be worth the paper it was written on? I satidly drawing likenesses from memory of Mr. Candy's remarkable-lookingassistant, on the sheet of paper which I had vowed to dedicateto Betteredge--until it suddenly occurred to me that here was theirrepressible Ezra Jennings getting in my way again! I threw a dozenportraits, at least, of the man with the piebald hair (the hair in everycase, remarkably like), into the waste-paper basket--and then andthere, wrote my answer to Betteredge. It was a perfectly commonplaceletter--but it had one excellent effect on me. The effort of writinga few sentences, in plain English, completely cleared my mind of thecloudy nonsense which had filled it since the previous day.

  Devoting myself once more to the elucidation of the impenetrablepuzzle which my own position presented to me, I now tried to meet thedifficulty 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 earlierhours of the birthday for any incident which might prove of someassistance to me in finding the clue.

  Had anything happened while Rachel and I were finishing the painteddoor? or, later, when I rode over to Frizinghall? or afterwards, when Iwent back with Godfrey Ablewhite and his sisters? or, later again,when I put the Moonstone into Rachel's hands? or, later still, when thecompany came, and we all assembled round the dinner-table? My memorydisposed of that string of questions readily enough, until I came to thelast. Looking back at the social event of the birthday dinner, I foundmyself brought to a standstill at the outset of the inquiry. I was noteven capable of accurately remembering the number of the guests who hadsat 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 ofinvestigating them, formed parts of the same mental process, in my case.I believe other people, in a similar situation, would have reasoned asI did. When the pursuit of our own interests causes us to become objectsof inquiry to ourselves, we are naturally suspicious of what we don'tknow. Once in possession of the names of the persons who had beenpresent at the dinner, I resolved--as a means of enriching the deficientresources of my own memory--to appeal to the memory of the rest of theguests; to write down all that they could recollect of the social eventsof the birthday; and to test the result, thus obtained, by the light ofwhat had happened afterwards, when the company had left the house.

  This last and newest of my many contemplated experiments in the artof inquiry--which Betteredge would probably have attributed to theclear-headed, or French, side of me being uppermost for the moment--mayfairly claim record here, on its own merits. Unlikely as it may seem, Ihad now actually groped my way to the root of the matter at last. All Iwanted was a hint to guide me in the right direction at starting. Beforeanother day had passed over my head, that hint was given me by one ofthe company who had been present at the birthday feast!

  With the plan of proceeding which I now had in view, it was firstnecessary to possess the complete list of the guests. This I couldeasily obtain from Gabriel Betteredge. I determined to go back toYorkshire on that day, and to begin my contemplated investigation thenext morning.

  It was just too late to start by the train which left London beforenoon. There was no alternative but to wait, nearly three hours, for thedeparture 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 theguests, I remembered readily enough that by far the larger proportionof them came from Frizinghall, or from its neighbourhood. But the largerproportion was not all. Some few of us were not regular residents inthe country. I myself was one of the few. Mr. Murthwaite was another.Godfrey Ablewhite was a third. Mr. Bruff--no: I called to mind thatbusiness had prevented Mr. Bruff from making one of the party. Had anyladies been present, whose usual residence was in London? I could onlyremember Miss Clack as coming within this latter category. However, herewere three of the guests, at any rate, whom it was clearly advisable forme 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, andthinking 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 hisvaluable time. In that minute, however, he contrived to dispose--in themost discouraging manner--of all the questions I had to put to him.

  In the first place, he considered my newly-discovered method of findinga clue to the mystery as something too purely fanciful to be seriouslydiscussed. In the second, third, and fourth places, Mr. Murthwaite wasnow on his way back to the scene of his past adventures; Miss Clack hadsuffered losses, and had settled, from motives of economy, in France;Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite might, or might not, be discoverable somewhere inLondon. 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 includethe one necessity of discovering Godfrey's address
, I took the lawyer'shint, and drove to his club.

  In the hall, I met with one of the members, who was an old friend of mycousin's, and who was also an acquaintance of my own. This gentleman,after enlightening me on the subject of Godfrey's address, told meof two recent events in his life, which were of some importance inthemselves, and which had not previously reached my ears.

  It appeared that Godfrey, far from being discouraged by Rachel'swithdrawal from her engagement to him had made matrimonial advances soonafterwards to another young lady, reputed to be a great heiress. Hissuit had prospered, and his marriage had been considered as a settledand certain thing. But, here again, the engagement had been suddenlyand unexpectedly broken off--owing, it was said, on this occasion, toa serious difference of opinion between the bridegroom and the lady'sfather, on the question of settlements.

  As some compensation for this second matrimonial disaster, Godfrey hadsoon afterwards found himself the object of fond pecuniary remembrance,on the part of one of his many admirers. A rich old lady--highlyrespected at the Mothers' Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and agreat friend of Miss Clack's (to whom she left nothing but a mourningring)--had bequeathed to the admirable and meritorious Godfrey a legacyof five thousand pounds. After receiving this handsome addition to hisown modest pecuniary resources, he had been heard to say that he feltthe necessity of getting a little respite from his charitable labours,and that his doctor prescribed "a run on the Continent, as likely tobe productive of much future benefit to his health." If I wanted to seehim, it would be advisable to lose no time in paying my contemplatedvisit.

  I went, then and there, to pay my visit.

  The same fatality which had made me just one day too late in calling onSergeant Cuff, made me again one day too late in calling on Godfrey. Hehad 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 toBrussels. The time of his return was rather uncertain; but I might besure he would be away at least three months.

  I went back to my lodgings a little depressed in spirits. Three ofthe guests at the birthday dinner--and those three all exceptionallyintelligent people--were out of my reach, at the very time when it wasmost important to be able to communicate with them. My last hopes nowrested on Betteredge, and on the friends of the late Lady Verinderwhom I might still find living in the neighbourhood of Rachel's countryhouse.

  On this occasion, I travelled straight to Frizinghall--the town beingnow the central point in my field of inquiry. I arrived too late in theevening to be able to communicate with Betteredge. The next morning, Isent 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 accommodateBetteredge--of sending my messenger in a fly, I had a reasonableprospect, if no delays occurred, of seeing the old man within less thantwo hours from the time when I had sent for him. During this interval, Iarranged to employ myself in opening my contemplated inquiry, among theguests present at the birthday dinner who were personally known tome, and who were easily within my reach. These were my relatives, theAblewhites, and Mr. Candy. The doctor had expressed a special wish tosee me, and the doctor lived in the next street. So to Mr. Candy I wentfirst.

  After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated findingtraces in the doctor's face of the severe illness from which he hadsuffered. But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in himwhen he entered the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were dim;his hair had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his figurehad shrunk. I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorouslittle doctor--associated in my remembrance with the perpetration ofincorrigible social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes--andI saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgarsmartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and hisjewellery--in cruel mockery of the change in him--were as gay and asgaudy as ever.

  "I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake," he said; "and I am heartilyglad to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you,pray command my services, sir--pray command my services!"

  He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness,and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, whichhe was perfectly--I might say childishly--incapable of concealing fromnotice.

  With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen thenecessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before Icould hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing theirbest to assist my inquiry. On the journey to Frizinghall I had arrangedwhat my explanation was to be--and I seized the opportunity now offeredto me of trying the effect of it on Mr. Candy.

  "I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, onrather a romantic errand," I said. "It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in whichthe late Lady Verinder's friends all took some interest. You rememberthe mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since?Circumstances have lately happened which lead to the hope that it mayyet be found--and I am interesting myself, as one of the family, inrecovering it. Among the obstacles in my way, there is the necessity ofcollecting again all the evidence which was discovered at the time, andmore if possible. There are peculiarities in this case which make itdesirable to revive my recollection of everything that happened in thehouse, on the evening of Miss Verinder's birthday. And I venture toappeal to her late mother's friends who were present on that occasion,to lend me the assistance of their memories----"

  I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, whenI was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy's face that myexperiment on him was a total failure.

  The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingersall the time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my facewith an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see.What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thingclearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or threewords, in fixing his attention. The only chance of recalling him tohimself appeared to lie in changing the subject. I tried a new topicimmediately.

  "So much," I said, gaily, "for what brings me to Frizinghall! Now, Mr.Candy, it's your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge----"

  He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.

  "Yes! yes! yes!" he exclaimed eagerly. "That's it! I sent you amessage!"

  "And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter," I went on. "You hadsomething to say to me, the next time I was in your neighbourhood. Well,Mr. Candy, here I am!"

  "Here you are!" echoed the doctor. "And Betteredge was quite right.I had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is awonderful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!"

  He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again.Recollecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of thefever on his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that Imight help him at starting.

  "It's a long time since we met," I said. "We last saw each other at thelast birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give."

  "That's it!" cried Mr. Candy. "The birthday dinner!" He startedimpulsively to his feet, and looked at me. A deep flush suddenlyoverspread his faded face, and he abruptly sat down again, as ifconscious of having betrayed a weakness which he would fain haveconcealed. It was plain, pitiably plain, that he was aware of his owndefect of memory, and that he was bent on hiding it from the observationof his friends.

  Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words he hadjust said--few as they were--roused my curiosity instantly to thehighest pitch. The birthday dinner had already become the one event inthe past, at which I looked back with strangely-mixed feelings of hopeand distrust. And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaimingitself as the subject on which Mr. Candy had something important to sayto me!

  I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time, my own
interestswere at the bottom of my compassionate motive, and they hurried me on alittle too abruptly, to the end I had in view.

  "It's nearly a year now," I said, "since we sat at that pleasant table.Have you made any memorandum--in your diary, or otherwise--of what youwanted to say to me?"

  Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understoodit, as an insult.

  "I require no memorandum, Mr. Blake," he said, stiffly enough. "I am notsuch a very old man, yet--and my memory (thank God) is to be thoroughlydepended on!"

  It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was offendedwith me.

  "I wish I could say the same of my memory," I answered. "When I try tothink of matters that are a year old, I seldom find my remembrance asvivid as I could wish it to be. Take the dinner at Lady Verinder's, forinstance----"

  Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.

  "Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder's!" he exclaimed, moreeagerly than ever. "I have got something to say to you about that."

  His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry,so wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidentlytrying hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection."It was a very pleasant dinner," he burst out suddenly, with an airof saying exactly what he wanted to say. "A very pleasant dinner, Mr.Blake, wasn't it?" He nodded and smiled, and appeared to think, poorfellow, that he had succeeded in concealing the total failure of hismemory, by a well-timed exertion of his own presence of mind.

  It was so distressing that I at once shifted the talk--deeply as I wasinterested in his recovering the lost remembrance--to topics of localinterest.

  Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery little scandals and quarrels inthe town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to hismemory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth gossipingfluency of former times. But there were moments, even in the full flowof his talkativeness, when he suddenly hesitated--looked at me fora moment with the vacant inquiry once more in his eyes--controlledhimself--and went on again. I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it issurely nothing less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies,to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?) until theclock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit had been prolongedbeyond half an hour. Having now some right to consider the sacrifice ascomplete, I rose to take leave. As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted tothe birthday festival of his own accord.

  "I am so glad we have met again," he said. "I had it on my mind--Ireally had it on my mind, Mr. Blake, to speak to you. About the dinnerat Lady Verinder's, you know? A pleasant dinner--really a pleasantdinner now, wasn't it?"

  On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel hardly as certain of havingprevented me from suspecting his lapse of memory, as he had felt onthe first occasion. The wistful look clouded his face again: and, afterapparently designing to accompany me to the street door, he suddenlychanged his mind, rang the bell for the servant, and remained in thedrawing-room.

  I went slowly down the doctor's stairs, feeling the dishearteningconviction that he really had something to say which it was vitallyimportant to me to hear, and that he was morally incapable of sayingit. The effort of remembering that he wanted to speak to me was, buttoo evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled memory was now able toachieve.

  Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner onmy way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the groundfloor of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me:--

  "I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?"

  I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.