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Title: The Moonstone

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release date: January 12, 2006 [eBook #155]
Most recently updated: January 10, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/155

Credits: John Hamm and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MOONSTONE ***

THE MOONSTONE

A Romance

by Wilkie Collins

Contents
PROLOGUE

THE STORY

FIRST PERIOD
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII

SECOND PERIOD
FIRST NARRATIVE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII

SECOND NARRATIVE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III

THIRD NARRATIVE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X

FOURTH NARRATIVE

FIFTH NARRATIVE

SIXTH NARRATIVE
I
II
III
IV
V

SEVENTH NARRATIVE

EIGHTH NARRATIVE

EPILOGUE
I
II
III

PROLOGUE
THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799):

(Extracted from a Family Paper.)

I
I address these lines—written in India—to my relatives in England.
My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the
right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve which I
have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted by members
of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit. I request them
to suspend their decision until they have read my narrative. And I declare,
on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and
literally, the truth.
The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise in a great
public event in which we were both concerned—the storming of
Seringapatam, under General Baird, on the 4th of May, 1799.
In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood, I must revert
for a moment to the period before the assault, and to the stories current in
our camp of the treasure in jewels and gold stored up in the Palace of
Seringapatam.

II
One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamond—a
famous gem in the native annals of India.
The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the
forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from
its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling
the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in
lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by

which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of THE
MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard,
in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a
diamond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of
the inferior order of gems, supposed to be affected by the lunar influences
—the moon, in this latter case also, giving the name by which the stone is
still known to collectors in our own time.
The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh century
of the Christian era.
At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni, crossed
India; seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its treasures the
famous temple, which had stood for centuries—the shrine of Hindoo
pilgrimage, and the wonder of the Eastern world.
Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped
the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three
Brahmins, the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead,
was removed by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred
cities of India—the city of Benares.
Here, in a new shrine—in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof
supported by pillars of gold—the moon-god was set up and worshipped.
Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the Preserver
appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.
The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the
forehead of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their
robes. The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from
that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the
generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before his will.
The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal who laid
hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name who received it
after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be written over the
gates of the shrine in letters of gold.
One age followed another—and still, generation after generation, the
successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone, night
and day. One age followed another until the first years of the eighteenth
Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of the Moguls. At
his command havoc and rapine were let loose once more among the temples

of the worship of Brahmah. The shrine of the four-handed god was polluted
by the slaughter of sacred animals; the images of the deities were broken in
pieces; and the Moonstone was seized by an officer of rank in the army of
Aurungzebe.
Powerless to recover their lost treasure by open force, the three guardian
priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations succeeded each
other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the
Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it) from one lawless
Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes,
the successors of the three guardian priests kept their watch, waiting the day
when the will of Vishnu the Preserver should restore to them their sacred
gem. Time rolled on from the first to the last years of the eighteenth
Christian century. The Diamond fell into the possession of Tippoo, Sultan
of Seringapatam, who caused it to be placed as an ornament in the handle of
a dagger, and who commanded it to be kept among the choicest treasures of
his armoury. Even then—in the palace of the Sultan himself—the three
guardian priests still kept their watch in secret. There were three officers of
Tippoo’s household, strangers to the rest, who had won their master’s
confidence by conforming, or appearing to conform, to the Mussulman
faith; and to those three men report pointed as the three priests in disguise.

III
So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of the Moonstone. It made
no serious impression on any of us except my cousin—whose love of the
marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the assault on
Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating
the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle’s
unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his boastful way, that
we should see the Diamond on his finger, if the English army took
Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by a roar of laughter, and there, as we
all thought that night, the thing ended.
Let me now take you on to the day of the assault.
My cousin and I were separated at the outset. I never saw him when we
forded the river; when we planted the English flag in the first breach; when
we crossed the ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered
the town. It was only at dusk, when the place was ours, and after General

Baird himself had found the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the slain,
that Herncastle and I met.
We were each attached to a party sent out by the general’s orders to
prevent the plunder and confusion which followed our conquest. The camp-
followers committed deplorable excesses; and, worse still, the soldiers
found their way, by an unguarded door, into the treasury of the Palace, and
loaded themselves with gold and jewels. It was in the court outside the
treasury that my cousin and I met, to enforce the laws of discipline on our
own soldiers. Herncastle’s fiery temper had been, as I could plainly see,
exasperated to a kind of frenzy by the terrible slaughter through which we
had passed. He was very unfit, in my opinion, to perform the duty that had
been entrusted to him.
There was riot and confusion enough in the treasury, but no violence that
I saw. The men (if I may use such an expression) disgraced themselves
good-humouredly. All sorts of rough jests and catchwords were bandied
about among them; and the story of the Diamond turned up again
unexpectedly, in the form of a mischievous joke. “Who’s got the
Moonstone?” was the rallying cry which perpetually caused the plundering,
as soon as it was stopped in one place, to break out in another. While I was
still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a frightful yelling on the other
side of the courtyard, and at once ran towards the cries, in dread of finding
some new outbreak of the pillage in that direction.
I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians (by their dress,
as I guessed, officers of the palace) lying across the entrance, dead.
A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an
armoury. A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a man
whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came in,
and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger dripping
with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the
dagger’s handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me, like a gleam
of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in
Herncastle’s hand, and said, in his native language—“The Moonstone will
have its vengeance yet on you and yours!” He spoke those words, and fell
dead on the floor.
Before I could stir in the matter, the men who had followed me across the
courtyard crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman.

“Clear the room!” he shouted to me, “and set a guard on the door!” The
men fell back as he threw himself on them with his torch and his dagger. I
put two sentinels of my own company, on whom I could rely, to keep the
door. Through the remainder of the night, I saw no more of my cousin.
Early in the morning, the plunder still going on, General Baird
announced publicly by beat of drum, that any thief detected in the fact, be
he whom he might, should be hung. The provost-marshal was in attendance,
to prove that the General was in earnest; and in the throng that followed the
proclamation, Herncastle and I met again.
He held out his hand, as usual, and said, “Good morning.”
I waited before I gave him my hand in return.
“Tell me first,” I said, “how the Indian in the armoury met his death, and
what those last words meant, when he pointed to the dagger in your hand.”
“The Indian met his death, as I suppose, by a mortal wound,” said
Herncastle. “What his last words meant I know no more than you do.”
I looked at him narrowly. His frenzy of the previous day had all calmed
down. I determined to give him another chance.
“Is that all you have to tell me?” I asked.
He answered, “That is all.”
I turned my back on him; and we have not spoken since.

IV
I beg it to be understood that what I write here about my cousin (unless
some necessity should arise for making it public) is for the information of
the family only. Herncastle has said nothing that can justify me in speaking
to our commanding officer. He has been taunted more than once about the
Diamond, by those who recollect his angry outbreak before the assault; but,
as may easily be imagined, his own remembrance of the circumstances
under which I surprised him in the armoury has been enough to keep him
silent. It is reported that he means to exchange into another regiment,
avowedly for the purpose of separating himself from me.
Whether this be true or not, I cannot prevail upon myself to become his
accuser—and I think with good reason. If I made the matter public, I have
no evidence but moral evidence to bring forward. I have not only no proof

that he killed the two men at the door; I cannot even declare that he killed
the third man inside—for I cannot say that my own eyes saw the deed
committed. It is true that I heard the dying Indian’s words; but if those
words were pronounced to be the ravings of delirium, how could I
contradict the assertion from my own knowledge? Let our relatives, on
either side, form their own opinion on what I have written, and decide for
themselves whether the aversion I now feel towards this man is well or ill
founded.
Although I attach no sort of credit to the fantastic Indian legend of the
gem, I must acknowledge, before I conclude, that I am influenced by a
certain superstition of my own in this matter. It is my conviction, or my
delusion, no matter which, that crime brings its own fatality with it. I am
not only persuaded of Herncastle’s guilt; I am even fanciful enough to
believe that he will live to regret it, if he keeps the Diamond; and that others
will live to regret taking it from him, if he gives the Diamond away.

THE STORY

FIRST PERIOD

THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)
The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of
Julia, Lady Verinder.

CHAPTER I
In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-
nine, you will find it thus written:
“Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we
count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go
through with it.”
Only yesterday, I opened my Robinson Crusoe at that place. Only this
morning (May twenty-first, eighteen hundred and fifty), came my lady’s
nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short conversation with me, as
follows:—
“Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, “I have been to the lawyer’s about some
family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the loss of
the Indian Diamond, in my aunt’s house in Yorkshire, two years since. Mr.
Bruff thinks as I think, that the whole story ought, in the interests of truth,
to be placed on record in writing—and the sooner the better.”
Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake
of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer’s side, I said I thought so too.
Mr. Franklin went on.
“In this matter of the Diamond,” he said, “the characters of innocent
people have suffered under suspicion already—as you know. The memories

of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want of a record of the facts to
which those who come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt that this
strange family story of ours ought to be told. And I think, Betteredge, Mr.
Bruff and I together have hit on the right way of telling it.”
Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to see what I
myself had to do with it, so far.
“We have certain events to relate,” Mr. Franklin proceeded; “and we have
certain persons concerned in those events who are capable of relating them.
Starting from these plain facts, the idea is that we should all write the story
of the Moonstone in turn—as far as our own personal experience extends,
and no farther. We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into
the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India fifty years
since. This prefatory narrative I have already got by me in the form of an
old family paper, which relates the necessary particulars on the authority of
an eye-witness. The next thing to do is to tell how the Diamond found its
way into my aunt’s house in Yorkshire, two years ago, and how it came to
be lost in little more than twelve hours afterwards. Nobody knows as much
as you do, Betteredge, about what went on in the house at that time. So you
must take the pen in hand, and start the story.”
In those terms I was informed of what my personal concern was with the
matter of the Diamond. If you are curious to know what course I took under
the circumstances, I beg to inform you that I did what you would probably
have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to
the task imposed upon me—and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite
clever enough to perform it, if I only gave my own abilities a fair chance.
Mr. Franklin, I imagine, must have seen my private sentiments in my face.
He declined to believe in my modesty; and he insisted on giving my
abilities a fair chance.
Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As soon as his back
was turned, I went to my writing-desk to start the story. There I have sat
helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since; seeing what Robinson Crusoe
saw, as quoted above—namely, the folly of beginning a work before we
count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go
through with it. Please to remember, I opened the book by accident, at that
bit, only the day before I rashly undertook the business now in hand; and,
allow me to ask—if that isn’t prophecy, what is?

I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a
scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active
memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the
saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as
Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have
tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco
—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal
life. When my spirits are bad—Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice—
Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times
when I have had a drop too much—Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six
stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady’s last
birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it;
and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence,
bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
Still, this don’t look much like starting the story of the Diamond—does
it? I seem to be wandering off in search of Lord knows what, Lord knows
where. We will take a new sheet of paper, if you please, and begin over
again, with my best respects to you.

CHAPTER II
I spoke of my lady a line or two back. Now the Diamond could never
have been in our house, where it was lost, if it had not been made a present
of to my lady’s daughter; and my lady’s daughter would never have been in
existence to have the present, if it had not been for my lady who (with pain
and travail) produced her into the world. Consequently, if we begin with my
lady, we are pretty sure of beginning far enough back. And that, let me tell
you, when you have got such a job as mine in hand, is a real comfort at
starting.
If you know anything of the fashionable world, you have heard tell of the
three beautiful Miss Herncastles. Miss Adelaide; Miss Caroline; and Miss
Julia—this last being the youngest and the best of the three sisters, in my
opinion; and I had opportunities of judging, as you shall presently see. I
went into the service of the old lord, their father (thank God, we have got
nothing to do with him, in this business of the Diamond; he had the longest
tongue and the shortest temper of any man, high or low, I ever met with)—I
say, I went into the service of the old lord, as page-boy in waiting on the
three honourable young ladies, at the age of fifteen years. There I lived till
Miss Julia married the late Sir John Verinder. An excellent man, who only
wanted somebody to manage him; and, between ourselves, he found
somebody to do it; and what is more, he throve on it and grew fat on it, and
lived happy and died easy on it, dating from the day when my lady took
him to church to be married, to the day when she relieved him of his last
breath, and closed his eyes for ever.
I have omitted to state that I went with the bride to the bride’s husband’s
house and lands down here. “Sir John,” she says, “I can’t do without
Gabriel Betteredge.” “My lady,” says Sir John, “I can’t do without him,
either.” That was his way with her—and that was how I went into his
service. It was all one to me where I went, so long as my mistress and I
were together.

Seeing that my lady took an interest in the out-of-door work, and the
farms, and such like, I took an interest in them too—with all the more
reason that I was a small farmer’s seventh son myself. My lady got me put
under the bailiff, and I did my best, and gave satisfaction, and got
promotion accordingly. Some years later, on the Monday as it might be, my
lady says, “Sir John, your bailiff is a stupid old man. Pension him liberally,
and let Gabriel Betteredge have his place.” On the Tuesday as it might be,
Sir John says, “My lady, the bailiff is pensioned liberally; and Gabriel
Betteredge has got his place.” You hear more than enough of married
people living together miserably. Here is an example to the contrary. Let it
be a warning to some of you, and an encouragement to others. In the
meantime, I will go on with my story.
Well, there I was in clover, you will say. Placed in a position of trust and
honour, with a little cottage of my own to live in, with my rounds on the
estate to occupy me in the morning, and my accounts in the afternoon, and
my pipe and my Robinson Crusoe in the evening—what more could I
possibly want to make me happy? Remember what Adam wanted when he
was alone in the Garden of Eden; and if you don’t blame it in Adam, don’t
blame it in me.
The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept house for me at
my cottage. Her name was Selina Goby. I agree with the late William
Cobbett about picking a wife. See that she chews her food well and sets her
foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you’re all right. Selina
Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for
marrying her. I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own
discovering. Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week
for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn’t charge for her
board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the
point of view I looked at it from. Economy—with a dash of love. I put it to
my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to myself.
“I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind,” I said, “and I think,
my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than to keep her.”
My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn’t know which to be most
shocked at—my language or my principles. Some joke tickled her, I
suppose, of the sort that you can’t take unless you are a person of quality.
Understanding nothing myself but that I was free to put it next to Selina, I

went and put it accordingly. And what did Selina say? Lord! how little you
must know of women, if you ask that. Of course she said, Yes.
As my time drew nearer, and there got to be talk of my having a new coat
for the ceremony, my mind began to misgive me. I have compared notes
with other men as to what they felt while they were in my interesting
situation; and they have all acknowledged that, about a week before it
happened, they privately wished themselves out of it. I went a trifle further
than that myself; I actually rose up, as it were, and tried to get out of it. Not
for nothing! I was too just a man to expect she would let me off for nothing.
Compensation to the woman when the man gets out of it, is one of the laws
of England. In obedience to the laws, and after turning it over carefully in
my mind, I offered Selina Goby a feather-bed and fifty shillings to be off
the bargain. You will hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true—she was
fool enough to refuse.
After that it was all over with me, of course. I got the new coat as cheap
as I could, and I went through all the rest of it as cheap as I could. We were
not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one and
half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don’t understand, but we always
seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another’s way. When
I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife
wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according
to my experience of it.
After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise
Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife. I was left with my
little girl Penelope, and with no other child. Shortly afterwards Sir John
died, and my lady was left with her little girl, Miss Rachel, and no other
child. I have written to very poor purpose of my lady, if you require to be
told that my little Penelope was taken care of, under my good mistress’s
own eye, and was sent to school and taught, and made a sharp girl, and
promoted, when old enough, to be Miss Rachel’s own maid.
As for me, I went on with my business as bailiff year after year up to
Christmas 1847, when there came a change in my life. On that day, my lady
invited herself to a cup of tea alone with me in my cottage. She remarked
that, reckoning from the year when I started as page-boy in the time of the
old lord, I had been more than fifty years in her service, and she put into my

hands a beautiful waistcoat of wool that she had worked herself, to keep me
warm in the bitter winter weather.
I received this magnificent present quite at a loss to find words to thank
my mistress with for the honour she had done me. To my great
astonishment, it turned out, however, that the waistcoat was not an honour,
but a bribe. My lady had discovered that I was getting old before I had
discovered it myself, and she had come to my cottage to wheedle me (if I
may use such an expression) into giving up my hard out-of-door work as
bailiff, and taking my ease for the rest of my days as steward in the house. I
made as good a fight of it against the indignity of taking my ease as I could.
But my mistress knew the weak side of me; she put it as a favour to herself.
The dispute between us ended, after that, in my wiping my eyes, like an old
fool, with my new woollen waistcoat, and saying I would think about it.
The perturbation in my mind, in regard to thinking about it, being truly
dreadful after my lady had gone away, I applied the remedy which I have
never yet found to fail me in cases of doubt and emergency. I smoked a pipe
and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe. Before I had occupied myself with that
extraordinary book five minutes, I came on a comforting bit (page one
hundred and fifty-eight), as follows: “Today we love, what tomorrow we
hate.” I saw my way clear directly. Today I was all for continuing to be
farm-bailiff; tomorrow, on the authority of Robinson Crusoe, I should be all
the other way. Take myself tomorrow while in tomorrow’s humour, and the
thing was done. My mind being relieved in this manner, I went to sleep that
night in the character of Lady Verinder’s farm-bailiff, and I woke up the
next morning in the character of Lady Verinder’s house-steward. All quite
comfortable, and all through Robinson Crusoe!
My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I
have done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written, and every word
of it true. But she points out one objection. She says what I have done so far
isn’t in the least what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the
Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self.
Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder whether the
gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books, ever find
their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me? If they do, I
can feel for them. In the meantime, here is another false start, and more
waste of good writing-paper. What’s to be done now? Nothing that I know

of, except for you to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over again
for the third time.

CHAPTER III
The question of how I am to start the story properly I have tried to settle
in two ways. First, by scratching my head, which led to nothing. Second, by
consulting my daughter Penelope, which has resulted in an entirely new
idea.
Penelope’s notion is that I should set down what happened, regularly day
by day, beginning with the day when we got the news that Mr. Franklin
Blake was expected on a visit to the house. When you come to fix your
memory with a date in this way, it is wonderful what your memory will pick
up for you upon that compulsion. The only difficulty is to fetch out the
dates, in the first place. This Penelope offers to do for me by looking into
her own diary, which she was taught to keep when she was at school, and
which she has gone on keeping ever since. In answer to an improvement on
this notion, devised by myself, namely, that she should tell the story instead
of me, out of her own diary, Penelope observes, with a fierce look and a red
face, that her journal is for her own private eye, and that no living creature
shall ever know what is in it but herself. When I inquire what this means,
Penelope says, “Fiddlesticks!” I say, Sweethearts.
Beginning, then, on Penelope’s plan, I beg to mention that I was specially
called one Wednesday morning into my lady’s own sitting-room, the date
being the twenty-fourth of May, eighteen hundred and forty-eight.
“Gabriel,” says my lady, “here is news that will surprise you. Franklin
Blake has come back from abroad. He has been staying with his father in
London, and he is coming to us tomorrow to stop till next month, and keep
Rachel’s birthday.”
If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but respect would have prevented
me from throwing that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr. Franklin
since he was a boy, living along with us in this house. He was, out of all
sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a
window. Miss Rachel, who was present, and to whom I made that remark,
observed, in return, that she remembered him as the most atrocious tyrant

that ever tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted little girl in
string harness that England could produce. “I burn with indignation, and I
ache with fatigue,” was the way Miss Rachel summed it up, “when I think
of Franklin Blake.”
Hearing what I now tell you, you will naturally ask how it was that Mr.
Franklin should have passed all the years, from the time when he was a boy
to the time when he was a man, out of his own country. I answer, because
his father had the misfortune to be next heir to a Dukedom, and not to be
able to prove it.
In two words, this was how the thing happened:
My lady’s eldest sister married the celebrated Mr. Blake—equally
famous for his great riches, and his great suit at law. How many years he
went on worrying the tribunals of his country to turn out the Duke in
possession, and to put himself in the Duke’s place—how many lawyer’s
purses he filled to bursting, and how many otherwise harmless people he set
by the ears together disputing whether he was right or wrong—is more by a
great deal than I can reckon up. His wife died, and two of his three children
died, before the tribunals could make up their minds to show him the door
and take no more of his money. When it was all over, and the Duke in
possession was left in possession, Mr. Blake discovered that the only way
of being even with his country for the manner in which it had treated him,
was not to let his country have the honour of educating his son. “How can I
trust my native institutions,” was the form in which he put it, “after the way
in which my native institutions have behaved to me?” Add to this, that Mr.
Blake disliked all boys, his own included, and you will admit that it could
only end in one way. Master Franklin was taken from us in England, and
was sent to institutions which his father could trust, in that superior country,
Germany; Mr. Blake himself, you will observe, remaining snug in England,
to improve his fellow-countrymen in the Parliament House, and to publish a
statement on the subject of the Duke in possession, which has remained an
unfinished statement from that day to this.
There! thank God, that’s told! Neither you nor I need trouble our heads
any more about Mr. Blake, senior. Leave him to the Dukedom; and let you
and I stick to the Diamond.
The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means
of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn’t forget us after he went abroad. He wrote every now
and then; sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel, and sometimes
to me. We had had a transaction together, before he left, which consisted in
his borrowing of me a ball of string, a four-bladed knife, and seven-and-
sixpence in money—the colour of which last I have not seen, and never
expect to see again. His letters to me chiefly related to borrowing more. I
heard, however, from my lady, how he got on abroad, as he grew in years
and stature. After he had learnt what the institutions of Germany could
teach him, he gave the French a turn next, and the Italians a turn after that.
They made him among them a sort of universal genius, as well as I could
understand it. He wrote a little; he painted a little; he sang and played and
composed a little—borrowing, as I suspect, in all these cases, just as he had
borrowed from me. His mother’s fortune (seven hundred a year) fell to him
when he came of age, and ran through him, as it might be through a sieve.
The more money he had, the more he wanted; there was a hole in Mr.
Franklin’s pocket that nothing would sew up. Wherever he went, the lively,
easy way of him made him welcome. He lived here, there, and everywhere;
his address (as he used to put it himself) being “Post Office, Europe—to be
left till called for.” Twice over, he made up his mind to come back to
England and see us; and twice over (saving your presence), some
unmentionable woman stood in the way and stopped him. His third attempt
succeeded, as you know already from what my lady told me. On Thursday
the twenty-fifth of May, we were to see for the first time what our nice boy
had grown to be as a man. He came of good blood; he had a high courage;
and he was five-and-twenty years of age, by our reckoning. Now you know
as much of Mr. Franklin Blake as I did—before Mr. Franklin Blake came
down to our house.

The Thursday was as fine a summer’s day as ever you saw: and my lady
and Miss Rachel (not expecting Mr. Franklin till dinner-time) drove out to
lunch with some friends in the neighbourhood.
When they were gone, I went and had a look at the bedroom which had
been got ready for our guest, and saw that all was straight. Then, being
butler in my lady’s establishment, as well as steward (at my own particular
request, mind, and because it vexed me to see anybody but myself in
possession of the key of the late Sir John’s cellar)—then, I say, I fetched up

some of our famous Latour claret, and set it in the warm summer air to take
off the chill before dinner. Concluding to set myself in the warm summer air
next—seeing that what is good for old claret is equally good for old age—I
took up my beehive chair to go out into the back court, when I was stopped
by hearing a sound like the soft beating of a drum, on the terrace in front of
my lady’s residence.
Going round to the terrace, I found three mahogany-coloured Indians, in
white linen frocks and trousers, looking up at the house.
The Indians, as I saw on looking closer, had small hand-drums slung in
front of them. Behind them stood a little delicate-looking light-haired
English boy carrying a bag. I judged the fellows to be strolling conjurors,
and the boy with the bag to be carrying the tools of their trade. One of the
three, who spoke English and who exhibited, I must own, the most elegant
manners, presently informed me that my judgment was right. He requested
permission to show his tricks in the presence of the lady of the house.
Now I am not a sour old man. I am generally all for amusement, and the
last person in the world to distrust another person because he happens to be
a few shades darker than myself. But the best of us have our weaknesses—
and my weakness, when I know a family plate-basket to be out on a pantry-
table, is to be instantly reminded of that basket by the sight of a strolling
stranger whose manners are superior to my own. I accordingly informed the
Indian that the lady of the house was out; and I warned him and his party
off the premises. He made me a beautiful bow in return; and he and his
party went off the premises. On my side, I returned to my beehive chair, and
set myself down on the sunny side of the court, and fell (if the truth must be
owned), not exactly into a sleep, but into the next best thing to it.
I was roused up by my daughter Penelope running out at me as if the
house was on fire. What do you think she wanted? She wanted to have the
three Indian jugglers instantly taken up; for this reason, namely, that they
knew who was coming from London to visit us, and that they meant some
mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.
Mr. Franklin’s name roused me. I opened my eyes, and made my girl
explain herself.
It appeared that Penelope had just come from our lodge, where she had
been having a gossip with the lodge-keeper’s daughter. The two girls had
seen the Indians pass out, after I had warned them off, followed by their

little boy. Taking it into their heads that the boy was ill-used by the
foreigners—for no reason that I could discover, except that he was pretty
and delicate-looking—the two girls had stolen along the inner side of the
hedge between us and the road, and had watched the proceedings of the
foreigners on the outer side. Those proceedings resulted in the performance
of the following extraordinary tricks.
They first looked up the road, and down the road, and made sure that
they were alone. Then they all three faced about, and stared hard in the
direction of our house. Then they jabbered and disputed in their own
language, and looked at each other like men in doubt. Then they all turned
to their little English boy, as if they expected him to help them. And then the
chief Indian, who spoke English, said to the boy, “Hold out your hand.”
On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn’t
know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought
privately that it might have been her stays. All I said, however, was, “You
make my flesh creep.” (Nota bene: Women like these little compliments.)
Well, when the Indian said, “Hold out your hand,” the boy shrunk back,
and shook his head, and said he didn’t like it. The Indian, thereupon, asked
him (not at all unkindly), whether he would like to be sent back to London,
and left where they had found him, sleeping in an empty basket in a market
—a hungry, ragged, and forsaken little boy. This, it seems, ended the
difficulty. The little chap unwillingly held out his hand. Upon that, the
Indian took a bottle from his bosom, and poured out of it some black stuff,
like ink, into the palm of the boy’s hand. The Indian—first touching the
boy’s head, and making signs over it in the air—then said, “Look.” The boy
became quite stiff, and stood like a statue, looking into the ink in the hollow
of his hand.
(So far, it seemed to me to be juggling, accompanied by a foolish waste
of ink. I was beginning to feel sleepy again, when Penelope’s next words
stirred me up.)
The Indians looked up the road and down the road once more—and then
the chief Indian said these words to the boy; “See the English gentleman
from foreign parts.”
The boy said, “I see him.”
The Indian said, “Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the
English gentleman will travel today?”

The boy said, “It is on the road to this house, and on no other, that the
English gentleman will travel today.”
The Indian put a second question—after waiting a little first. He said:
“Has the English gentleman got It about him?”
The boy answered—also, after waiting a little first—“Yes.”
The Indian put a third and last question: “Will the English gentleman
come here, as he has promised to come, at the close of day?”
The boy said, “I can’t tell.”
The Indian asked why.
The boy said, “I am tired. The mist rises in my head, and puzzles me. I
can see no more today.”
With that the catechism ended. The chief Indian said something in his
own language to the other two, pointing to the boy, and pointing towards
the town, in which (as we afterwards discovered) they were lodged. He
then, after making more signs on the boy’s head, blew on his forehead, and
so woke him up with a start. After that, they all went on their way towards
the town, and the girls saw them no more.
Most things they say have a moral, if you only look for it. What was the
moral of this?
The moral was, as I thought: First, that the chief juggler had heard Mr.
Franklin’s arrival talked of among the servants out-of-doors, and saw his
way to making a little money by it. Second, that he and his men and boy
(with a view to making the said money) meant to hang about till they saw
my lady drive home, and then to come back, and foretell Mr. Franklin’s
arrival by magic. Third, that Penelope had heard them rehearsing their
hocus-pocus, like actors rehearsing a play. Fourth, that I should do well to
have an eye, that evening, on the plate-basket. Fifth, that Penelope would
do well to cool down, and leave me, her father, to doze off again in the sun.
That appeared to me to be the sensible view. If you know anything of the
ways of young women, you won’t be surprised to hear that Penelope
wouldn’t take it. The moral of the thing was serious, according to my
daughter. She particularly reminded me of the Indian’s third question, Has
the English gentleman got It about him? “Oh, father!” says Penelope,
clasping her hands, “don’t joke about this. What does ‘It’ mean?”

“We’ll ask Mr. Franklin, my dear,” I said, “if you can wait till Mr.
Franklin comes.” I winked to show I meant that in joke. Penelope took it
quite seriously. My girl’s earnestness tickled me. “What on earth should Mr.
Franklin know about it?” I inquired. “Ask him,” says Penelope. “And see
whether he thinks it a laughing matter, too.” With that parting shot, my
daughter left me.
I settled it with myself, when she was gone, that I really would ask Mr.
Franklin—mainly to set Penelope’s mind at rest. What was said between us,
when I did ask him, later on that same day, you will find set out fully in its
proper place. But as I don’t wish to raise your expectations and then
disappoint them, I will take leave to warn you here—before we go any
further—that you won’t find the ghost of a joke in our conversation on the
subject of the jugglers. To my great surprise, Mr. Franklin, like Penelope,
took the thing seriously. How seriously, you will understand, when I tell
you that, in his opinion, “It” meant the Moonstone.

CHAPTER IV
I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy old
man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well aware. But
things must be put down in their places, as things actually happened—and
you must please to jog on a little while longer with me, in expectation of
Mr. Franklin Blake’s arrival later in the day.
Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope had left
me, I was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes in the servants’ hall,
which meant that dinner was ready. Taking my own meals in my own
sitting-room, I had nothing to do with the servants’ dinner, except to wish
them a good stomach to it all round, previous to composing myself once
more in my chair. I was just stretching my legs, when out bounced another
woman on me. Not my daughter again; only Nancy, the kitchen-maid, this
time. I was straight in her way out; and I observed, as she asked me to let
her by, that she had a sulky face—a thing which, as head of the servants, I
never allow, on principle, to pass me without inquiry.
“What are you turning your back on your dinner for?” I asked. “What’s
wrong now, Nancy?”
Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up, and
took her by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass, and it is customary with
me to adopt that manner of showing that I personally approve of a girl.
“What’s wrong now?” I said once more.
“Rosanna’s late again for dinner,” says Nancy. “And I’m sent to fetch her
in. All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house. Let me alone, Mr.
Betteredge!”
The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid.
Having a kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall presently
know), and seeing in Nancy’s face, that she would fetch her fellow-servant
in with more hard words than might be needful under the circumstances, it
struck me that I had nothing particular to do, and that I might as well fetch

Rosanna myself; giving her a hint to be punctual in future, which I knew
she would take kindly from me.
“Where is Rosanna?” I inquired.
“At the sands, of course!” says Nancy, with a toss of her head. “She had
another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked to go out and get a
breath of fresh air. I have no patience with her!”
“Go back to your dinner, my girl,” I said. “I have patience with her, and
I’ll fetch her in.”
Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased,
she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin. It isn’t
immorality—it’s only habit.
Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.
No! it won’t do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you; but you
really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna—for this
reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly. How hard
I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way, and how
badly I succeed! But, there!—Persons and Things do turn up so vexatiously
in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed. Let us take it easy,
and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick of the mystery soon, I
promise you!
Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common
politeness) was the only new servant in our house. About four months
before the time I am writing of, my lady had been in London, and had gone
over a Reformatory, intended to save forlorn women from drifting back into
bad ways, after they had got released from prison. The matron, seeing my
lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a girl to her, named Rosanna
Spearman, and told her a most miserable story, which I haven’t the heart to
repeat here; for I don’t like to be made wretched without any use, and no
more do you. The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief,
and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from
thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and
the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law. The matron’s
opinion of Rosanna was (in spite of what she had done) that the girl was
one in a thousand, and that she only wanted a chance to prove herself
worthy of any Christian woman’s interest in her. My lady (being a Christian
woman, if ever there was one yet) said to the matron, upon that, “Rosanna

Spearman shall have her chance, in my service.” In a week afterwards,
Rosanna Spearman entered this establishment as our second housemaid.
Not a soul was told the girl’s story, excepting Miss Rachel and me. My
lady, doing me the honour to consult me about most things, consulted me
about Rosanna. Having fallen a good deal latterly into the late Sir John’s
way of always agreeing with my lady, I agreed with her heartily about
Rosanna Spearman.
A fairer chance no girl could have had than was given to this poor girl of
ours. None of the servants could cast her past life in her teeth, for none of
the servants knew what it had been. She had her wages and her privileges,
like the rest of them; and every now and then a friendly word from my lady,
in private, to encourage her. In return, she showed herself, I am bound to
say, well worthy of the kind treatment bestowed upon her. Though far from
strong, and troubled occasionally with those fainting-fits already
mentioned, she went about her work modestly and uncomplainingly, doing
it carefully, and doing it well. But, somehow, she failed to make friends
among the other women servants, excepting my daughter Penelope, who
was always kind to Rosanna, though never intimate with her.
I hardly know what the girl did to offend them. There was certainly no
beauty about her to make the others envious; she was the plainest woman in
the house, with the additional misfortune of having one shoulder bigger
than the other. What the servants chiefly resented, I think, was her silent
tongue and her solitary ways. She read or worked in leisure hours when the
rest gossiped. And when it came to her turn to go out, nine times out of ten
she quietly put on her bonnet, and had her turn by herself. She never
quarrelled, she never took offence; she only kept a certain distance,
obstinately and civilly, between the rest of them and herself. Add to this
that, plain as she was, there was just a dash of something that wasn’t like a
housemaid, and that was like a lady, about her. It might have been in her
voice, or it might have been in her face. All I can say is, that the other
women pounced on it like lightning the first day she came into the house,
and said (which was most unjust) that Rosanna Spearman gave herself airs.
Having now told the story of Rosanna, I have only to notice one of the
many queer ways of this strange girl to get on next to the story of the sands.
Our house is high up on the Yorkshire coast, and close by the sea. We
have got beautiful walks all round us, in every direction but one. That one I

acknowledge to be a horrid walk. It leads, for a quarter of a mile, through a
melancholy plantation of firs, and brings you out between low cliffs on the
loneliest and ugliest little bay on all our coast.
The sandhills here run down to the sea, and end in two spits of rock
jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the water. One
is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the two, shifting
backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year, lies the most horrible
quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire. At the turn of the tide, something
goes on in the unknown deeps below, which sets the whole face of the
quicksand shivering and trembling in a manner most remarkable to see, and
which has given to it, among the people in our parts, the name of the
Shivering Sand. A great bank, half a mile out, nigh the mouth of the bay,
breaks the force of the main ocean coming in from the offing. Winter and
summer, when the tide flows over the quicksand, the sea seems to leave the
waves behind it on the bank, and rolls its waters in smoothly with a heave,
and covers the sand in silence. A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell
you! No boat ever ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-
village, called Cobb’s Hole, ever come here to play. The very birds of the
air, as it seems to me, give the Shivering Sand a wide berth. That a young
woman, with dozens of nice walks to choose from, and company to go with
her, if she only said “Come!”, should prefer this place, and should sit and
work or read in it, all alone, when it’s her turn out, I grant you, passes
belief. It’s true, nevertheless, account for it as you may, that this was
Rosanna Spearman’s favourite walk, except when she went once or twice to
Cobb’s Hole, to see the only friend she had in our neighbourhood, of whom
more anon. It’s also true that I was now setting out for this same place, to
fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings us round happily to our former
point, and starts us fair again on our way to the sands.
I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. When I got out, through the
sandhills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw bonnet, and her
plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her deformed shoulder as
much as might be—there she was, all alone, looking out on the quicksand
and the sea.
She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.
Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which, as head
of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass without inquiry—I

turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying. My bandanna
handkerchief—one of six beauties given to me by my lady—was handy in
my pocket. I took it out, and I said to Rosanna, “Come and sit down, my
dear, on the slope of the beach along with me. I’ll dry your eyes for you
first, and then I’ll make so bold as to ask what you have been crying about.”
When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of a
beach a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I was settled,
Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior handkerchief to mine
—cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very wretched; but she sat
down by me like a good girl, when I told her. When you want to comfort a
woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee. I thought of this golden
rule. But there! Rosanna wasn’t Nancy, and that’s the truth of it!
“Now, tell me, my dear,” I said, “what are you crying about?”
“About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge,” says Rosanna quietly.
“My past life still comes back to me sometimes.”
“Come, come, my girl,” I said, “your past life is all sponged out. Why
can’t you forget it?”
She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man,
and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.
Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my
grease. The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet
of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything. The
grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth
where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook her
head.
“The stain is taken off,” she said. “But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge—
the place shows!”
A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat is not an
easy remark to answer. Something in the girl herself, too, made me
particularly sorry for her just then. She had nice brown eyes, plain as she
was in other ways—and she looked at me with a sort of respect for my
happy old age and my good character, as things for ever out of her own
reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not feeling
myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to do. That thing
was—to take her in to dinner.

“Help me up,” I said. “You’re late for dinner, Rosanna—and I have come
to fetch you in.”
“You, Mr. Betteredge!” says she.
“They told Nancy to fetch you,” I said. “But I thought you might like
your scolding better, my dear, if it came from me.”
Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and
gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again, and
succeeded—for which I respected her. “You’re very kind, Mr. Betteredge,”
she said. “I don’t want any dinner today—let me bide a little longer here.”
“What makes you like to be here?” I asked. “What is it that brings you
everlastingly to this miserable place?”
“Something draws me to it,” says the girl, making images with her finger
in the sand. “I try to keep away from it, and I can’t. Sometimes,” says she in
a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy, “sometimes, Mr.
Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me here.”
“There’s roast mutton and suet pudding waiting for you!” says I. “Go in
to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an empty
stomach!” I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time of life) to
hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter end!
She didn’t seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept
me where I was, sitting by her side.
“I think the place has laid a spell on me,” she said. “I dream of it night
after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You know I am
grateful, Mr. Betteredge—you know I try to deserve your kindness, and my
lady’s confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes whether the life here is
too quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after all I have gone
through, Mr. Betteredge—after all I have gone through. It’s more lonely to
me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not what they are, than it
is to be here. My lady doesn’t know, the matron at the reformatory doesn’t
know, what a dreadful reproach honest people are in themselves to a woman
like me. Don’t scold me, there’s a dear good man. I do my work, don’t I?
Please not to tell my lady I am discontented—I am not. My mind’s unquiet,
sometimes, that’s all.” She snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly
pointed down to the quicksand. “Look!” she said “Isn’t it wonderful? isn’t it

terrible? I have seen it dozens of times, and it’s always as new to me as if I
had never seen it before!”
I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid sand
began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then
dimpled and quivered all over. “Do you know what it looks like to me?”
says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. “It looks as if it had
hundreds of suffocating people under it—all struggling to get to the surface,
and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr.
Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let’s see the sand suck it down!”
Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an
unquiet mind! My answer—a pretty sharp one, in the poor girl’s own
interests, I promise you!—was at my tongue’s end, when it was snapped
short off on a sudden by a voice among the sandhills shouting for me by my
name. “Betteredge!” cries the voice, “where are you?” “Here!” I shouted
out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was. Rosanna started to
her feet, and stood looking towards the voice. I was just thinking of getting
on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a sudden change in the girl’s
face.
Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it
before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless
surprise. “Who is it?” I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own question.
“Oh! who is it?” she said softly, more to herself than to me. I twisted round
on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on us from among the
hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a beautiful fawn-
coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose in his button-hole,
and a smile on his face that might have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling
at him in return. Before I could get on my legs, he plumped down on the
sand by the side of me, put his arm round my neck, foreign fashion, and
gave me a hug that fairly squeezed the breath out of my body. “Dear old
Betteredge!” says he. “I owe you seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know
who I am?”
Lord bless us and save us! Here—four good hours before we expected
him—was Mr. Franklin Blake!
Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to all
appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I looked at
the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than ever, seemingly at

having caught Mr. Franklin’s eye; and she turned and left us suddenly, in a
confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without either making her
curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me. Very unlike her usual self:
a civiller and better-behaved servant, in general, you never met with.
“That’s an odd girl,” says Mr. Franklin. “I wonder what she sees in me to
surprise her?”
“I suppose, sir,” I answered, drolling on our young gentleman’s
Continental education, “it’s the varnish from foreign parts.”
I set down here Mr. Franklin’s careless question, and my foolish answer,
as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people—it being, as I have
remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior fellow-creatures to find that
their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than they are. Neither Mr.
Franklin, with his wonderful foreign training, nor I, with my age,
experience, and natural mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea of what
Rosanna Spearman’s unaccountable behaviour really meant. She was out of
our thoughts, poor soul, before we had seen the last flutter of her little grey
cloak among the sandhills. And what of that? you will ask, naturally
enough. Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can, and perhaps you will
be as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I found out the truth.

CHAPTER V
The first thing I did, after we were left together alone, was to make a
third attempt to get up from my seat on the sand. Mr. Franklin stopped me.
“There is one advantage about this horrid place,” he said; “we have got it
all to ourselves. Stay where you are, Betteredge; I have something to say to
you.”
While he was speaking, I was looking at him, and trying to see something
of the boy I remembered, in the man before me. The man put me out. Look
as I might, I could see no more of his boy’s rosy cheeks than of his boy’s
trim little jacket. His complexion had got pale: his face, at the lower part
was covered, to my great surprise and disappointment, with a curly brown
beard and moustachios. He had a lively touch-and-go way with him, very
pleasant and engaging, I admit; but nothing to compare with his free-and-
easy manners of other times. To make matters worse, he had promised to be
tall, and had not kept his promise. He was neat, and slim, and well made;
but he wasn’t by an inch or two up to the middle height. In short, he baffled
me altogether. The years that had passed had left nothing of his old self,
except the bright, straightforward look in his eyes. There I found our nice
boy again, and there I concluded to stop in my investigation.
“Welcome back to the old place, Mr. Franklin,” I said. “All the more
welcome, sir, that you have come some hours before we expected you.”
“I have a reason for coming before you expected me,” answered Mr.
Franklin. “I suspect, Betteredge, that I have been followed and watched in
London, for the last three or four days; and I have travelled by the morning
instead of the afternoon train, because I wanted to give a certain dark-
looking stranger the slip.”
Those words did more than surprise me. They brought back to my mind,
in a flash, the three jugglers, and Penelope’s notion that they meant some
mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.
“Who’s watching you, sir,—and why?” I inquired.

“Tell me about the three Indians you have had at the house today,” says
Mr. Franklin, without noticing my question. “It’s just possible, Betteredge,
that my stranger and your three jugglers may turn out to be pieces of the
same puzzle.”
“How do you come to know about the jugglers, sir?” I asked, putting one
question on the top of another, which was bad manners, I own. But you
don’t expect much from poor human nature—so don’t expect much from
me.
“I saw Penelope at the house,” says Mr. Franklin; “and Penelope told me.
Your daughter promised to be a pretty girl, Betteredge, and she has kept her
promise. Penelope has got a small ear and a small foot. Did the late Mrs.
Betteredge possess those inestimable advantages?”
“The late Mrs. Betteredge possessed a good many defects, sir,” says I.
“One of them (if you will pardon my mentioning it) was never keeping to
the matter in hand. She was more like a fly than a woman: she couldn’t
settle on anything.”
“She would just have suited me,” says Mr. Franklin. “I never settle on
anything either. Betteredge, your edge is better than ever. Your daughter
said as much, when I asked for particulars about the jugglers. ‘Father will
tell you, sir. He’s a wonderful man for his age; and he expresses himself
beautifully.’ Penelope’s own words—blushing divinely. Not even my
respect for you prevented me from—never mind; I knew her when she was
a child, and she’s none the worse for it. Let’s be serious. What did the
jugglers do?”
I was something dissatisfied with my daughter—not for letting Mr.
Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to that—but for forcing me to
tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help for it now
but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin’s merriment all died away as
I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard. When I had
done, he repeated after me two of the questions which the chief juggler had
put to the boy—seemingly for the purpose of fixing them well in his mind.
“‘Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English
gentleman will travel today?’ ‘Has the English gentleman got It about him?’
I suspect,” says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper parcel out of his
pocket, “that ‘It’ means this. And ‘this,’ Betteredge, means my uncle
Herncastle’s famous Diamond.”

“Good Lord, sir!” I broke out, “how do you come to be in charge of the
wicked Colonel’s Diamond?”
“The wicked Colonel’s will has left his Diamond as a birthday present to
my cousin Rachel,” says Mr. Franklin. “And my father, as the wicked
Colonel’s executor, has given it in charge to me to bring down here.”
If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand, had been
changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I could have been
more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin spoke those words.
“The Colonel’s Diamond left to Miss Rachel!” says I. “And your father,
sir, the Colonel’s executor! Why, I would have laid any bet you like, Mr.
Franklin, that your father wouldn’t have touched the Colonel with a pair of
tongs!”
“Strong language, Betteredge! What was there against the Colonel? He
belonged to your time, not to mine. Tell me what you know about him, and
I’ll tell you how my father came to be his executor, and more besides. I
have made some discoveries in London about my uncle Herncastle and his
Diamond, which have rather an ugly look to my eyes; and I want you to
confirm them. You called him the ‘wicked Colonel’ just now. Search your
memory, my old friend, and tell me why.”
I saw he was in earnest, and I told him.
Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your
benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper
into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new
bonnet, or what not. Try if you can’t forget politics, horses, prices in the
City, and grievances at the club. I hope you won’t take this freedom on my
part amiss; it’s only a way I have of appealing to the gentle reader. Lord!
haven’t I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know
how ready your attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it,
instead of a person?

I spoke, a little way back, of my lady’s father, the old lord with the short
temper and the long tongue. He had five children in all. Two sons to begin
with; then, after a long time, his wife broke out breeding again, and the
three young ladies came briskly one after the other, as fast as the nature of
things would permit; my mistress, as before mentioned, being the youngest

and best of the three. Of the two sons, the eldest, Arthur, inherited the title
and estates. The second, the Honourable John, got a fine fortune left him by
a relative, and went into the army.
It’s an ill bird, they say, that fouls its own nest. I look on the noble family
of the Herncastles as being my nest; and I shall take it as a favour if I am
not expected to enter into particulars on the subject of the Honourable John.
He was, I honestly believe, one of the greatest blackguards that ever lived. I
can hardly say more or less for him than that. He went into the army,
beginning in the Guards. He had to leave the Guards before he was two-
and-twenty—never mind why. They are very strict in the army, and they
were too strict for the Honourable John. He went out to India to see whether
they were equally strict there, and to try a little active service. In the matter
of bravery (to give him his due), he was a mixture of bull-dog and game-
cock, with a dash of the savage. He was at the taking of Seringapatam. Soon
afterwards he changed into another regiment, and, in course of time,
changed into a third. In the third he got his last step as lieutenant-colonel,
and, getting that, got also a sunstroke, and came home to England.
He came back with a character that closed the doors of all his family
against him, my lady (then just married) taking the lead, and declaring (with
Sir John’s approval, of course) that her brother should never enter any
house of hers. There was more than one slur on the Colonel that made
people shy of him; but the blot of the Diamond is all I need mention here.
It was said he had got possession of his Indian jewel by means which,
bold as he was, he didn’t dare acknowledge. He never attempted to sell it—
not being in need of money, and not (to give him his due again) making
money an object. He never gave it away; he never even showed it to any
living soul. Some said he was afraid of its getting him into a difficulty with
the military authorities; others (very ignorant indeed of the real nature of
the man) said he was afraid, if he showed it, of its costing him his life.
There was perhaps a grain of truth mixed up with this last report. It was
false to say that he was afraid; but it was a fact that his life had been twice
threatened in India; and it was firmly believed that the Moonstone was at
the bottom of it. When he came back to England, and found himself
avoided by everybody, the Moonstone was thought to be at the bottom of it
again. The mystery of the Colonel’s life got in the Colonel’s way, and
outlawed him, as you may say, among his own people. The men wouldn’t

let him into their clubs; the women—more than one—whom he wanted to
marry, refused him; friends and relations got too near-sighted to see him in
the street.
Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right with the
world. But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had all society against
him, was not the way of the Honourable John. He had kept the Diamond, in
flat defiance of assassination, in India. He kept the Diamond, in flat
defiance of public opinion, in England. There you have the portrait of the
man before you, as in a picture: a character that braved everything; and a
face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed by the devil.
We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes they
said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books;
sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry;
sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest
people in the lowest slums of London. Anyhow, a solitary, vicious,
underground life was the life the Colonel led. Once, and once only, after his
return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.
About two years before the time of which I am now writing, and about a
year and a half before the time of his death, the Colonel came unexpectedly
to my lady’s house in London. It was the night of Miss Rachel’s birthday,
the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual. I
received a message from the footman to say that a gentleman wanted to see
me. Going up into the hall, there I found the Colonel, wasted, and worn, and
old, and shabby, and as wild and as wicked as ever.
“Go up to my sister,” says he; “and say that I have called to wish my
niece many happy returns of the day.”
He had made attempts by letter, more than once already, to be reconciled
with my lady, for no other purpose, I am firmly persuaded, than to annoy
her. But this was the first time he had actually come to the house. I had it on
the tip of my tongue to say that my mistress had a party that night. But the
devilish look of him daunted me. I went upstairs with his message, and left
him, by his own desire, waiting in the hall. The servants stood staring at
him, at a distance, as if he was a walking engine of destruction, loaded with
powder and shot, and likely to go off among them at a moment’s notice.
My lady had a dash—no more—of the family temper. “Tell Colonel
Herncastle,” she said, when I gave her her brother’s message, “that Miss

Verinder is engaged, and that I decline to see him.” I tried to plead for a
civiller answer than that; knowing the Colonel’s constitutional superiority to
the restraints which govern gentlemen in general. Quite useless! The family
temper flashed out at me directly. “When I want your advice,” says my lady,
“you know that I always ask for it. I don’t ask for it now.” I went downstairs
with the message, of which I took the liberty of presenting a new and
amended edition of my own contriving, as follows: “My lady and Miss
Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel; and beg to be excused having
the honour of seeing you.”
I expected him to break out, even at that polite way of putting it. To my
surprise he did nothing of the sort; he alarmed me by taking the thing with
an unnatural quiet. His eyes, of a glittering bright grey, just settled on me
for a moment; and he laughed, not out of himself, like other people, but into
himself, in a soft, chuckling, horridly mischievous way. “Thank you,
Betteredge,” he said. “I shall remember my niece’s birthday.” With that, he
turned on his heel, and walked out of the house.
The next birthday came round, and we heard he was ill in bed. Six
months afterwards—that is to say, six months before the time I am now
writing of—there came a letter from a highly respectable clergyman to my
lady. It communicated two wonderful things in the way of family news.
First, that the Colonel had forgiven his sister on his death-bed. Second, that
he had forgiven everybody else, and had made a most edifying end. I have
myself (in spite of the bishops and the clergy) an unfeigned respect for the
Church; but I am firmly persuaded, at the same time, that the devil
remained in undisturbed possession of the Honourable John, and that the
last abominable act in the life of that abominable man was (saving your
presence) to take the clergyman in!

This was the sum-total of what I had to tell Mr. Franklin. I remarked that
he listened more and more eagerly the longer I went on. Also, that the story
of the Colonel being sent away from his sister’s door, on the occasion of his
niece’s birthday, seemed to strike Mr. Franklin like a shot that had hit the
mark. Though he didn’t acknowledge it, I saw that I had made him uneasy,
plainly enough, in his face.
“You have said your say, Betteredge,” he remarked. “It’s my turn now.
Before, however, I tell you what discoveries I have made in London, and

how I came to be mixed up in this matter of the Diamond, I want to know
one thing. You look, my old friend, as if you didn’t quite understand the
object to be answered by this consultation of ours. Do your looks belie
you?”
“No, sir,” I said. “My looks, on this occasion at any rate, tell the truth.”
“In that case,” says Mr. Franklin, “suppose I put you up to my point of
view, before we go any further. I see three very serious questions involved
in the Colonel’s birthday-gift to my cousin Rachel. Follow me carefully,
Betteredge; and count me off on your fingers, if it will help you,” says Mr.
Franklin, with a certain pleasure in showing how clear-headed he could be,
which reminded me wonderfully of old times when he was a boy. “Question
the first: Was the Colonel’s Diamond the object of a conspiracy in India?
Question the second: Has the conspiracy followed the Colonel’s Diamond
to England? Question the third: Did the Colonel know the conspiracy
followed the Diamond; and has he purposely left a legacy of trouble and
danger to his sister, through the innocent medium of his sister’s child? That
is what I am driving at, Betteredge. Don’t let me frighten you.”
It was all very well to say that, but he had frightened me.
If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a
devilish Indian Diamond—bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues,
set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man. There was our situation as
revealed to me in Mr. Franklin’s last words! Who ever heard the like of it—
in the nineteenth century, mind; in an age of progress, and in a country
which rejoices in the blessings of the British constitution? Nobody ever
heard the like of it, and, consequently, nobody can be expected to believe it.
I shall go on with my story, however, in spite of that.
When you get a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times
out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your
stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently
in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a
perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—
and, checking himself just as he was starting with his part of the story, said
to me sharply, “What do you want?”
What did I want? I didn’t tell him; but I’ll tell you, in confidence. I
wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at Robinson Crusoe.

CHAPTER VI
Keeping my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr.
Franklin to go on. Mr. Franklin replied, “Don’t fidget, Betteredge,” and
went on.
Our young gentleman’s first words informed me that his discoveries,
concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit
which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at
Hampstead. A chance word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two were
alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his father
with a birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One thing led to
another; and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present really was,
and how the friendly connexion between the late Colonel and Mr. Blake,
senior, had taken its rise. The facts here are really so extraordinary, that I
doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice to them. I prefer trying to
report Mr. Franklin’s discoveries, as nearly as may be, in Mr. Franklin’s
own words.
“You remember the time, Betteredge,” he said, “when my father was
trying to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well! that was also the
time when my uncle Herncastle returned from India. My father discovered
that his brother-in-law was in possession of certain papers which were
likely to be of service to him in his lawsuit. He called on the Colonel, on
pretence of welcoming him back to England. The Colonel was not to be
deluded in that way. ‘You want something,’ he said, ‘or you would never
have compromised your reputation by calling on me.’ My father saw that
the one chance for him was to show his hand; he admitted, at once, that he
wanted the papers. The Colonel asked for a day to consider his answer. His
answer came in the shape of a most extraordinary letter, which my friend
the lawyer showed me. The Colonel began by saying that he wanted
something of my father, and that he begged to propose an exchange of
friendly services between them. The fortune of war (that was the expression
he used) had placed him in possession of one of the largest Diamonds in the
world; and he had reason to believe that neither he nor his precious jewel

was safe in any house, in any quarter of the globe, which they occupied
together. Under these alarming circumstances, he had determined to place
his Diamond in the keeping of another person. That person was not
expected to run any risk. He might deposit the precious stone in any place
especially guarded and set apart—like a banker’s or jeweller’s strongroom
—for the safe custody of valuables of high price. His main personal
responsibility in the matter was to be of the passive kind. He was to
undertake either by himself, or by a trustworthy representative—to receive
at a prearranged address, on certain prearranged days in every year, a note
from the Colonel, simply stating the fact that he was a living man at that
date. In the event of the date passing over without the note being received,
the Colonel’s silence might be taken as a sure token of the Colonel’s death
by murder. In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions relating
to the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited with it, were to be opened,
and followed implicitly. If my father chose to accept this strange charge, the
Colonel’s papers were at his disposal in return. That was the letter.”
“What did your father do, sir?” I asked.
“Do?” says Mr. Franklin. “I’ll tell you what he did. He brought the
invaluable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonel’s letter. The
whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd. Somewhere in his Indian
wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with some wretched crystal which
he took for a diamond. As for the danger of his being murdered, and the
precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece of crystal, this was the
nineteenth century, and any man in his senses had only to apply to the
police. The Colonel had been a notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if
the only way of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by
accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing
to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on him—all the more readily
that it involved no trouble to himself. The Diamond and the sealed
instructions went into his banker’s strongroom, and the Colonel’s letters,
periodically reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our
family lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my father’s representative. No sensible person,
in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own
trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a
newspaper.”

It was plain to me from this, that Mr. Franklin thought his father’s notion
about the Colonel hasty and wrong.
“What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir?” I asked.
“Let’s finish the story of the Colonel first,” says Mr. Franklin. “There is a
curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your question,
my old friend, is an instance of it. When we are not occupied in making
machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people in the
universe.”
“So much,” I thought to myself, “for a foreign education! He has learned
that way of girding at us in France, I suppose.”
Mr. Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.
“My father,” he said, “got the papers he wanted, and never saw his
brother-in-law again from that time. Year after year, on the prearranged
days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by Mr.
Bruff. I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in the same brief,
business-like form of words: ‘Sir,—This is to certify that I am still a living
man. Let the Diamond be. John Herncastle.’ That was all he ever wrote, and
that came regularly to the day; until some six or eight months since, when
the form of the letter varied for the first time. It ran now: ‘Sir,—They tell
me I am dying. Come to me, and help me to make my will.’ Mr. Bruff went,
and found him, in the little suburban villa, surrounded by its own grounds,
in which he had lived alone, ever since he had left India. He had dogs, cats,
and birds to keep him company; but no human being near him, except the
person who came daily to do the house-work, and the doctor at the bedside.
The will was a very simple matter. The Colonel had dissipated the greater
part of his fortune in his chemical investigations. His will began and ended
in three clauses, which he dictated from his bed, in perfect possession of his
faculties. The first clause provided for the safe keeping and support of his
animals. The second founded a professorship of experimental chemistry at a
northern university. The third bequeathed the Moonstone as a birthday
present to his niece, on condition that my father would act as executor. My
father at first refused to act. On second thoughts, however, he gave way,
partly because he was assured that the executorship would involve him in
no trouble; partly because Mr. Bruff suggested, in Rachel’s interest, that the
Diamond might be worth something, after all.”

“Did the Colonel give any reason, sir,” I inquired, “why he left the
Diamond to Miss Rachel?”
“He not only gave the reason—he had the reason written in his will,” said
Mr. Franklin. “I have got an extract, which you shall see presently. Don’t be
slovenly-minded, Betteredge! One thing at a time. You have heard about the
Colonel’s Will; now you must hear what happened after the Colonel’s
death. It was formally necessary to have the Diamond valued, before the
Will could be proved. All the jewellers consulted, at once confirmed the
Colonel’s assertion that he possessed one of the largest diamonds in the
world. The question of accurately valuing it presented some serious
difficulties. Its size made it a phenomenon in the diamond market; its colour
placed it in a category by itself; and, to add to these elements of uncertainty,
there was a defect, in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone.
Even with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various
estimates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father’s
astonishment! He had been within a hair’s-breadth of refusing to act as
executor, and of allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the family.
The interest he took in the matter now, induced him to open the sealed
instructions which had been deposited with the Diamond. Mr. Bruff showed
this document to me, with the other papers; and it suggests (to my mind) a
clue to the nature of the conspiracy which threatened the Colonel’s life.”
“Then you do believe, sir,” I said, “that there was a conspiracy?”
“Not possessing my father’s excellent common sense,” answered Mr.
Franklin, “I believe the Colonel’s life was threatened, exactly as the Colonel
said. The sealed instructions, as I think, explain how it was that he died,
after all, quietly in his bed. In the event of his death by violence (that is to
say, in the absence of the regular letter from him at the appointed date), my
father was then directed to send the Moonstone secretly to Amsterdam. It
was to be deposited in that city with a famous diamond-cutter, and it was to
be cut up into from four to six separate stones. The stones were then to be
sold for what they would fetch, and the proceeds were to be applied to the
founding of that professorship of experimental chemistry, which the
Colonel has since endowed by his Will. Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp
wits of yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel’s
instructions point!”

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and
they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in hand, and
pointed out what they ought to see.
“Remark,” says Mr. Franklin, “that the integrity of the Diamond, as a
whole stone, is here artfully made dependent on the preservation from
violence of the Colonel’s life. He is not satisfied with saying to the enemies
he dreads, ‘Kill me—and you will be no nearer to the Diamond than you are
now; it is where you can’t get at it—in the guarded strongroom of a bank.’
He says instead, ‘Kill me—and the Diamond will be the Diamond no
longer; its identity will be destroyed.’ What does that mean?”
Here I had (as I thought) a flash of the wonderful foreign brightness.
“I know,” I said. “It means lowering the value of the stone, and cheating
the rogues in that way!”
“Nothing of the sort,” says Mr. Franklin. “I have inquired about that. The
flawed Diamond, cut up, would actually fetch more than the Diamond as it
now is; for this plain reason—that from four to six perfect brilliants might
be cut from it, which would be, collectively, worth more money than the
large—but imperfect single stone. If robbery for the purpose of gain was at
the bottom of the conspiracy, the Colonel’s instructions absolutely made the
Diamond better worth stealing. More money could have been got for it, and
the disposal of it in the diamond market would have been infinitely easier, if
it had passed through the hands of the workmen of Amsterdam.”
“Lord bless us, sir!” I burst out. “What was the plot, then?”
“A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel,”
says Mr. Franklin—“a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at the bottom
of it. That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper which I have about
me at this moment.”
I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers at our house
had presented itself to Mr. Franklin in the light of a circumstance worth
noting.
“I don’t want to force my opinion on you,” Mr. Franklin went on. “The
idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting
themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the opportunity
of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be perfectly consistent with
everything that we know of the patience of Oriental races, and the influence

of Oriental religions. But then I am an imaginative man; and the butcher,
the baker, and the tax-gatherer, are not the only credible realities in
existence to my mind. Let the guess I have made at the truth in this matter
go for what it is worth, and let us get on to the only practical question that
concerns us. Does the conspiracy against the Moonstone survive the
Colonel’s death? And did the Colonel know it, when he left the birthday gift
to his niece?”
I began to see my lady and Miss Rachel at the end of it all, now. Not a
word he said escaped me.
“I was not very willing, when I discovered the story of the Moonstone,”
said Mr. Franklin, “to be the means of bringing it here. But Mr. Bruff
reminded me that somebody must put my cousin’s legacy into my cousin’s
hands—and that I might as well do it as anybody else. After taking the
Diamond out of the bank, I fancied I was followed in the streets by a
shabby, dark-complexioned man. I went to my father’s house to pick up my
luggage, and found a letter there, which unexpectedly detained me in
London. I went back to the bank with the Diamond, and thought I saw the
shabby man again. Taking the Diamond once more out of the bank this
morning, I saw the man for the third time, gave him the slip, and started
(before he recovered the trace of me) by the morning instead of the
afternoon train. Here I am, with the Diamond safe and sound—and what is
the first news that meets me? I find that three strolling Indians have been at
the house, and that my arrival from London, and something which I am
expected to have about me, are two special objects of investigation to them
when they believe themselves to be alone. I don’t waste time and words on
their pouring the ink into the boy’s hand, and telling him to look in it for a
man at a distance, and for something in that man’s pocket. The thing (which
I have often seen done in the East) is ‘hocus-pocus’ in my opinion, as it is in
yours. The present question for us to decide is, whether I am wrongly
attaching a meaning to a mere accident? or whether we really have evidence
of the Indians being on the track of the Moonstone, the moment it is
removed from the safe keeping of the bank?”
Neither he nor I seemed to fancy dealing with this part of the inquiry. We
looked at each other, and then we looked at the tide, oozing in smoothly,
higher and higher, over the Shivering Sand.
“What are you thinking of?” says Mr. Franklin, suddenly.

“I was thinking, sir,” I answered, “that I should like to shy the Diamond
into the quicksand, and settle the question in that way.”
“If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket,” answered Mr.
Franklin, “say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!”
It’s curious to note, when your mind’s anxious, how very far in the way
of relief a very small joke will go. We found a fund of merriment, at the
time, in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel’s lawful property, and
getting Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful trouble—though where the
merriment was, I am quite at a loss to discover now.
Mr. Franklin was the first to bring the talk back to the talk’s proper
purpose. He took an envelope out of his pocket, opened it, and handed to
me the paper inside.
“Betteredge,” he said, “we must face the question of the Colonel’s motive
in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt’s sake. Bear in mind how
Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time when he returned to
England, to the time when he told you he should remember his niece’s
birthday. And read that.”
He gave me the extract from the Colonel’s Will. I have got it by me while
I write these words; and I copy it, as follows, for your benefit:
“Thirdly, and lastly, I give and bequeath to my niece, Rachel Verinder,
daughter and only child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow—if her mother,
the said Julia Verinder, shall be living on the said Rachel Verinder’s next
Birthday after my death—the yellow Diamond belonging to me, and known
in the East by the name of The Moonstone: subject to this condition, that
her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living at the time. And I hereby
desire my executor to give my Diamond, either by his own hands or by the
hands of some trustworthy representative whom he shall appoint, into the
personal possession of my said niece Rachel, on her next birthday after my
death, and in the presence, if possible, of my sister, the said Julia Verinder.
And I desire that my said sister may be informed, by means of a true copy
of this, the third and last clause of my Will, that I give the Diamond to her
daughter Rachel, in token of my free forgiveness of the injury which her
conduct towards me has been the means of inflicting on my reputation in
my lifetime; and especially in proof that I pardon, as becomes a dying man,
the insult offered to me as an officer and a gentleman, when her servant, by

her orders, closed the door of her house against me, on the occasion of her
daughter’s birthday.”
More words followed these, providing if my lady was dead, or if Miss
Rachel was dead, at the time of the testator’s decease, for the Diamond
being sent to Holland, in accordance with the sealed instructions originally
deposited with it. The proceeds of the sale were, in that case, to be added to
the money already left by the Will for the professorship of chemistry at the
university in the north.
I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin, sorely troubled what to say to
him. Up to that moment, my own opinion had been (as you know) that the
Colonel had died as wickedly as he had lived. I don’t say the copy from his
Will actually converted me from that opinion: I only say it staggered me.
“Well,” says Mr. Franklin, “now you have read the Colonel’s own
statement, what do you say? In bringing the Moonstone to my aunt’s house,
am I serving his vengeance blindfold, or am I vindicating him in the
character of a penitent and Christian man?”
“It seems hard to say, sir,” I answered, “that he died with a horrid revenge
in his heart, and a horrid lie on his lips. God alone knows the truth. Don’t
ask me.”
Mr. Franklin sat twisting and turning the extract from the Will in his
fingers, as if he expected to squeeze the truth out of it in that manner. He
altered quite remarkably, at the same time. From being brisk and bright, he
now became, most unaccountably, a slow, solemn, and pondering young
man.
“This question has two sides,” he said. “An Objective side, and a
Subjective side. Which are we to take?”
He had had a German education as well as a French. One of the two had
been in undisturbed possession of him (as I supposed) up to this time. And
now (as well as I could make out) the other was taking its place. It is one of
my rules in life, never to notice what I don’t understand. I steered a middle
course between the Objective side and the Subjective side. In plain English
I stared hard, and said nothing.
“Let’s extract the inner meaning of this,” says Mr. Franklin. “Why did
my uncle leave the Diamond to Rachel? Why didn’t he leave it to my
aunt?”

“That’s not beyond guessing, sir, at any rate,” I said. “Colonel Herncastle
knew my lady well enough to know that she would have refused to accept
any legacy that came to her from him.”
“How did he know that Rachel might not refuse to accept it, too?”
“Is there any young lady in existence, sir, who could resist the temptation
of accepting such a birthday present as The Moonstone?”
“That’s the Subjective view,” says Mr. Franklin. “It does you great credit,
Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view. But there’s another
mystery about the Colonel’s legacy which is not accounted for yet. How are
we to explain his only giving Rachel her birthday present conditionally on
her mother being alive?”
“I don’t want to slander a dead man, sir,” I answered. “But if he has
purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, by the means of
her child, it must be a legacy made conditional on his sister’s being alive to
feel the vexation of it.”
“Oh! That’s your interpretation of his motive, is it? The Subjective
interpretation again! Have you ever been in Germany, Betteredge?”
“No, sir. What’s your interpretation, if you please?”
“I can see,” says Mr. Franklin, “that the Colonel’s object may, quite
possibly, have been—not to benefit his niece, whom he had never even seen
—but to prove to his sister that he had died forgiving her, and to prove it
very prettily by means of a present made to her child. There is a totally
different explanation from yours, Betteredge, taking its rise in a Subjective-
Objective point of view. From all I can see, one interpretation is just as
likely to be right as the other.”
Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr.
Franklin appeared to think that he had completed all that was required of
him. He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was to be
done next.
He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk the
foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead in the business up
to the present time, that I was quite unprepared for such a sudden change as
he now exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me. It was not till later that I
learned—by assistance of Miss Rachel, who was the first to make the
discovery—that these puzzling shifts and transformations in Mr. Franklin

were due to the effect on him of his foreign training. At the age when we
are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from
the colouring of other people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed
on from one nation to another, before there was time for any one colouring
more than another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he
had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or less
jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state of perpetual
contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man, and a lazy man; cloudy
in the head, and clear in the head; a model of determination, and a spectacle
of helplessness, all together. He had his French side, and his German side,
and his Italian side—the original English foundation showing through,
every now and then, as much as to say, “Here I am, sorely transmogrified,
as you see, but there’s something of me left at the bottom of him still.” Miss
Rachel used to remark that the Italian side of him was uppermost, on those
occasions when he unexpectedly gave in, and asked you in his nice sweet-
tempered way to take his own responsibilities on your shoulders. You will
do him no injustice, I think, if you conclude that the Italian side of him was
uppermost now.
“Isn’t it your business, sir,” I asked, “to know what to do next? Surely it
can’t be mine?”
Mr. Franklin didn’t appear to see the force of my question—not being in
a position, at the time, to see anything but the sky over his head.
“I don’t want to alarm my aunt without reason,” he said. “And I don’t
want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in
my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?”
In one word, I told him: “Wait.”
“With all my heart,” says Mr. Franklin. “How long?”
I proceeded to explain myself.
“As I understand it, sir,” I said, “somebody is bound to put this plaguy
Diamond into Miss Rachel’s hands on her birthday—and you may as well
do it as another. Very good. This is the twenty-fifth of May, and the birthday
is on the twenty-first of June. We have got close on four weeks before us.
Let’s wait and see what happens in that time; and let’s warn my lady, or not,
as the circumstances direct us.”

“Perfect, Betteredge, as far as it goes!” says Mr. Franklin. “But between
this and the birthday, what’s to be done with the Diamond?”
“What your father did with it, to be sure, sir!” I answered. “Your father
put it in the safe keeping of a bank in London. You put in the safe keeping
of the bank at Frizinghall.” (Frizinghall was our nearest town, and the Bank
of England wasn’t safer than the bank there.) “If I were you, sir,” I added, “I
would ride straight away with it to Frizinghall before the ladies come back.”
The prospect of doing something—and, what is more, of doing that
something on a horse—brought Mr. Franklin up like lightning from the flat
of his back. He sprang to his feet, and pulled me up, without ceremony, on
to mine. “Betteredge, you are worth your weight in gold,” he said. “Come
along, and saddle the best horse in the stables directly.”
Here (God bless it!) was the original English foundation of him showing
through all the foreign varnish at last! Here was the Master Franklin I
remembered, coming out again in the good old way at the prospect of a
ride, and reminding me of the good old times! Saddle a horse for him? I
would have saddled a dozen horses, if he could only have ridden them all!
We went back to the house in a hurry; we had the fleetest horse in the
stables saddled in a hurry; and Mr. Franklin rattled off in a hurry, to lodge
the cursed Diamond once more in the strongroom of a bank. When I heard
the last of his horse’s hoofs on the drive, and when I turned about in the
yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to ask myself if I
hadn’t woke up from a dream.

CHAPTER VII
While I was in this bewildered frame of mind, sorely needing a little
quiet time by myself to put me right again, my daughter Penelope got in my
way (just as her late mother used to get in my way on the stairs), and
instantly summoned me to tell her all that had passed at the conference
between Mr. Franklin and me. Under present circumstances, the one thing
to be done was to clap the extinguisher upon Penelope’s curiosity on the
spot. I accordingly replied that Mr. Franklin and I had both talked of foreign
politics, till we could talk no longer, and had then mutually fallen asleep in
the heat of the sun. Try that sort of answer when your wife or your daughter
next worries you with an awkward question at an awkward time, and
depend on the natural sweetness of women for kissing and making it up
again at the next opportunity.
The afternoon wore on, and my lady and Miss Rachel came back.
Needless to say how astonished they were, when they heard that Mr.
Franklin Blake had arrived, and had gone off again on horseback. Needless
also to say, that they asked awkward questions directly, and that the “foreign
politics” and the “falling asleep in the sun” wouldn’t serve a second time
over with them. Being at the end of my invention, I said Mr. Franklin’s
arrival by the early train was entirely attributable to one of Mr. Franklin’s
freaks. Being asked, upon that, whether his galloping off again on
horseback was another of Mr. Franklin’s freaks, I said, “Yes, it was;” and
slipped out of it—I think very cleverly—in that way.
Having got over my difficulties with the ladies, I found more difficulties
waiting for me when I went back to my own room. In came Penelope—with
the natural sweetness of women—to kiss and make it up again; and—with
the natural curiosity of women—to ask another question. This time she only
wanted me to tell her what was the matter with our second housemaid,
Rosanna Spearman.
After leaving Mr. Franklin and me at the Shivering Sand, Rosanna, it
appeared, had returned to the house in a very unaccountable state of mind.

She had turned (if Penelope was to be believed) all the colours of the
rainbow. She had been merry without reason, and sad without reason. In
one breath she asked hundreds of questions about Mr. Franklin Blake, and
in another breath she had been angry with Penelope for presuming to
suppose that a strange gentleman could possess any interest for her. She had
been surprised, smiling, and scribbling Mr. Franklin’s name inside her
workbox. She had been surprised again, crying and looking at her deformed
shoulder in the glass. Had she and Mr. Franklin known anything of each
other before today? Quite impossible! Had they heard anything of each
other? Impossible again! I could speak to Mr. Franklin’s astonishment as
genuine, when he saw how the girl stared at him. Penelope could speak to
the girl’s inquisitiveness as genuine, when she asked questions about Mr.
Franklin. The conference between us, conducted in this way, was tiresome
enough, until my daughter suddenly ended it by bursting out with what I
thought the most monstrous supposition I had ever heard in my life.
“Father!” says Penelope, quite seriously, “there’s only one explanation of
it. Rosanna has fallen in love with Mr. Franklin Blake at first sight!”
You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight, and
have thought it natural enough. But a housemaid out of a reformatory, with
a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love, at first sight, with a
gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress’s house, match me that, in
the way of an absurdity, out of any story-book in Christendom, if you can! I
laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks. Penelope resented my
merriment, in rather a strange way. “I never knew you cruel before, father,”
she said, very gently, and went out.
My girl’s words fell upon me like a splash of cold water. I was savage
with myself, for feeling uneasy in myself the moment she had spoken them
—but so it was. We will change the subject, if you please. I am sorry I
drifted into writing about it; and not without reason, as you will see when
we have gone on together a little longer.

The evening came, and the dressing-bell for dinner rang, before Mr.
Franklin returned from Frizinghall. I took his hot water up to his room
myself, expecting to hear, after this extraordinary delay, that something had
happened. To my great disappointment (and no doubt to yours also),
nothing had happened. He had not met with the Indians, either going or

returning. He had deposited the Moonstone in the bank—describing it
merely as a valuable of great price—and he had got the receipt for it safe in
his pocket. I went downstairs, feeling that this was rather a flat ending, after
all our excitement about the Diamond earlier in the day.
How the meeting between Mr. Franklin and his aunt and cousin went off,
is more than I can tell you.
I would have given something to have waited at table that day. But, in my
position in the household, waiting at dinner (except on high family
festivals) was letting down my dignity in the eyes of the other servants—a
thing which my lady considered me quite prone enough to do already,
without seeking occasions for it. The news brought to me from the upper
regions, that evening, came from Penelope and the footman. Penelope
mentioned that she had never known Miss Rachel so particular about the
dressing of her hair, and had never seen her look so bright and pretty as she
did when she went down to meet Mr. Franklin in the drawing-room. The
footman’s report was, that the preservation of a respectful composure in the
presence of his betters, and the waiting on Mr. Franklin Blake at dinner,
were two of the hardest things to reconcile with each other that had ever
tried his training in service. Later in the evening, we heard them singing and
playing duets, Mr. Franklin piping high, Miss Rachel piping higher, and my
lady, on the piano, following them as it were over hedge and ditch, and
seeing them safe through it in a manner most wonderful and pleasant to
hear through the open windows, on the terrace at night. Later still, I went to
Mr. Franklin in the smoking-room, with the soda water and brandy, and
found that Miss Rachel had put the Diamond clean out of his head. “She’s
the most charming girl I have seen since I came back to England!” was all I
could extract from him, when I endeavoured to lead the conversation to
more serious things.
Towards midnight, I went round the house to lock up, accompanied by
my second in command (Samuel, the footman), as usual. When all the doors
were made fast, except the side door that opened on the terrace, I sent
Samuel to bed, and stepped out for a breath of fresh air before I too went to
bed in my turn.
The night was still and close, and the moon was at the full in the heavens.
It was so silent out of doors, that I heard from time to time, very faint and
low, the fall of the sea, as the ground-swell heaved it in on the sand-bank

near the mouth of our little bay. As the house stood, the terrace side was the
dark side; but the broad moonlight showed fair on the gravel walk that ran
along the next side to the terrace. Looking this way, after looking up at the
sky, I saw the shadow of a person in the moonlight thrown forward from
behind the corner of the house.
Being old and sly, I forbore to call out; but being also, unfortunately, old
and heavy, my feet betrayed me on the gravel. Before I could steal suddenly
round the corner, as I had proposed, I heard lighter feet than mine—and
more than one pair of them as I thought—retreating in a hurry. By the time I
had got to the corner, the trespassers, whoever they were, had run into the
shrubbery at the off side of the walk, and were hidden from sight among the
thick trees and bushes in that part of the grounds. From the shrubbery, they
could easily make their way, over our fence into the road. If I had been forty
years younger, I might have had a chance of catching them before they got
clear of our premises. As it was, I went back to set a-going a younger pair
of legs than mine. Without disturbing anybody, Samuel and I got a couple
of guns, and went all round the house and through the shrubbery. Having
made sure that no persons were lurking about anywhere in our grounds, we
turned back. Passing over the walk where I had seen the shadow, I now
noticed, for the first time, a little bright object, lying on the clean gravel,
under the light of the moon. Picking the object up, I discovered it was a
small bottle, containing a thick sweet-smelling liquor, as black as ink.
I said nothing to Samuel. But, remembering what Penelope had told me
about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink into the palm of
the boy’s hand, I instantly suspected that I had disturbed the three Indians,
lurking about the house, and bent, in their heathenish way, on discovering
the whereabouts of the Diamond that night.

CHAPTER VIII
Here, for one moment, I find it necessary to call a halt.
On summoning up my own recollections—and on getting Penelope to
help me, by consulting her journal—I find that we may pass pretty rapidly
over the interval between Mr. Franklin Blake’s arrival and Miss Rachel’s
birthday. For the greater part of that time the days passed, and brought
nothing with them worth recording. With your good leave, then, and with
Penelope’s help, I shall notice certain dates only in this place; reserving to
myself to tell the story day by day, once more, as soon as we get to the time
when the business of the Moonstone became the chief business of
everybody in our house.
This said, we may now go on again—beginning, of course, with the
bottle of sweet-smelling ink which I found on the gravel walk at night.
On the next morning (the morning of the twenty-sixth) I showed Mr.
Franklin this article of jugglery, and told him what I have already told you.
His opinion was, not only that the Indians had been lurking about after the
Diamond, but also that they were actually foolish enough to believe in their
own magic—meaning thereby the making of signs on a boy’s head, and the
pouring of ink into a boy’s hand, and then expecting him to see persons and
things beyond the reach of human vision. In our country, as well as in the
East, Mr. Franklin informed me, there are people who practise this curious
hocus-pocus (without the ink, however); and who call it by a French name,
signifying something like brightness of sight. “Depend upon it,” says Mr.
Franklin, “the Indians took it for granted that we should keep the Diamond
here; and they brought their clairvoyant boy to show them the way to it, if
they succeeded in getting into the house last night.”
“Do you think they’ll try again, sir?” I asked.
“It depends,” says Mr. Franklin, “on what the boy can really do. If he can
see the Diamond through the iron safe of the bank at Frizinghall, we shall
be troubled with no more visits from the Indians for the present. If he can’t,

we shall have another chance of catching them in the shrubbery, before
many more nights are over our heads.”
I waited pretty confidently for that latter chance; but, strange to relate, it
never came.
Whether the jugglers heard, in the town, of Mr. Franklin having been
seen at the bank, and drew their conclusions accordingly; or whether the
boy really did see the Diamond where the Diamond was now lodged (which
I, for one, flatly disbelieve); or whether, after all, it was a mere effect of
chance, this at any rate is the plain truth—not the ghost of an Indian came
near the house again, through the weeks that passed before Miss Rachel’s
birthday. The jugglers remained in and about the town plying their trade;
and Mr. Franklin and I remained waiting to see what might happen, and
resolute not to put the rogues on their guard by showing our suspicions of
them too soon. With this report of the proceedings on either side, ends all
that I have to say about the Indians for the present.

On the twenty-ninth of the month, Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin hit on a
new method of working their way together through the time which might
otherwise have hung heavy on their hands. There are reasons for taking
particular notice here of the occupation that amused them. You will find it
has a bearing on something that is still to come.
Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life—the rock
ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being, for the most part, passed in
looking about them for something to do, it is curious to see—especially
when their tastes are of what is called the intellectual sort—how often they
drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Nine times out of ten they take to
torturing something, or to spoiling something—and they firmly believe they
are improving their minds, when the plain truth is, they are only making a
mess in the house. I have seen them (ladies, I am sorry to say, as well as
gentlemen) go out, day after day, for example, with empty pill-boxes, and
catch newts, and beetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and stick
pins through the miserable wretches, or cut them up, without a pang of
remorse, into little pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress,
poring over one of their spiders’ insides with a magnifying-glass; or you
meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without his head—and when
you wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a

taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history.
Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoiling a
pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to know
what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any
sweeter, when you do know? But there! the poor souls must get through the
time, you see—they must get through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud,
and made pies, when you were a child; and you dabble in nasty science, and
dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when you grow up. In the one case and in
the other, the secret of it is, that you have got nothing to think of in your
poor empty head, and nothing to do with your poor idle hands. And so it
ends in your spoiling canvas with paints, and making a smell in the house;
or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box full of dirty water, and turning
everybody’s stomach in the house; or in chipping off bits of stone here,
there, and everywhere, and dropping grit into all the victuals in the house;
or in staining your fingers in the pursuit of photography, and doing justice
without mercy on everybody’s face in the house. It often falls heavy
enough, no doubt, on people who are really obliged to get their living, to be
forced to work for the clothes that cover them, the roof that shelters them,
and the food that keeps them going. But compare the hardest day’s work
you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into
spiders’ stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it
must think of, and your hands something that they must do.
As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I am glad to
say. They simply confined themselves to making a mess; and all they spoilt,
to do them justice, was the panelling of a door.
Mr. Franklin’s universal genius, dabbling in everything, dabbled in what
he called “decorative painting.” He had invented, he informed us, a new
mixture to moisten paint with, which he described as a “vehicle.” What it
was made of, I don’t know. What it did, I can tell you in two words—it
stank. Miss Rachel being wild to try her hand at the new process, Mr.
Franklin sent to London for the materials; mixed them up, with
accompaniment of a smell which made the very dogs sneeze when they
came into the room; put an apron and a bib over Miss Rachel’s gown, and
set her to work decorating her own little sitting-room—called, for want of
English to name it in, her “boudoir.” They began with the inside of the door.
Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish with pumice-stone, and made
what he described as a surface to work on. Miss Rachel then covered the

surface, under his directions and with his help, with patterns and devices—
griffins, birds, flowers, cupids, and such like—copied from designs made
by a famous Italian painter, whose name escapes me: the one, I mean, who
stocked the world with Virgin Maries, and had a sweetheart at the baker’s.
Viewed as work, this decoration was slow to do, and dirty to deal with. But
our young lady and gentleman never seemed to tire of it. When they were
not riding, or seeing company, or taking their meals, or piping their songs,
there they were with their heads together, as busy as bees, spoiling the door.
Who was the poet who said that Satan finds some mischief still for idle
hands to do? If he had occupied my place in the family, and had seen Miss
Rachel with her brush, and Mr. Franklin with his vehicle, he could have
written nothing truer of either of them than that.

The next date worthy of notice is Sunday the fourth of June.
On that evening we, in the servants’ hall, debated a domestic question for
the first time, which, like the decoration of the door, has its bearing on
something that is still to come.
Seeing the pleasure which Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel took in each
other’s society, and noting what a pretty match they were in all personal
respects, we naturally speculated on the chance of their putting their heads
together with other objects in view besides the ornamenting of a door. Some
of us said there would be a wedding in the house before the summer was
over. Others (led by me) admitted it was likely enough Miss Rachel might
be married; but we doubted (for reasons which will presently appear)
whether her bridegroom would be Mr. Franklin Blake.
That Mr. Franklin was in love, on his side, nobody who saw and heard
him could doubt. The difficulty was to fathom Miss Rachel. Let me do
myself the honour of making you acquainted with her; after which, I will
leave you to fathom for yourself—if you can.
My young lady’s eighteenth birthday was the birthday now coming, on
the twenty-first of June. If you happen to like dark women (who, I am
informed, have gone out of fashion latterly in the gay world), and if you
have no particular prejudice in favour of size, I answer for Miss Rachel as
one of the prettiest girls your eyes ever looked on. She was small and slim,
but all in fine proportion from top to toe. To see her sit down, to see her get

up, and specially to see her walk, was enough to satisfy any man in his
senses that the graces of her figure (if you will pardon me the expression)
were in her flesh and not in her clothes. Her hair was the blackest I ever
saw. Her eyes matched her hair. Her nose was not quite large enough, I
admit. Her mouth and chin were (to quote Mr. Franklin) morsels for the
gods; and her complexion (on the same undeniable authority) was as warm
as the sun itself, with this great advantage over the sun, that it was always in
nice order to look at. Add to the foregoing that she carried her head as
upright as a dart, in a dashing, spirited, thoroughbred way—that she had a
clear voice, with a ring of the right metal in it, and a smile that began very
prettily in her eyes before it got to her lips—and there behold the portrait of
her, to the best of my painting, as large as life!
And what about her disposition next? Had this charming creature no
faults? She had just as many faults as you have, ma’am—neither more nor
less.
To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of
graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me
to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this—that
she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions
themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn’t suit her views. In trifles, this
independence of hers was all well enough; but in matters of importance, it
carried her (as my lady thought, and as I thought) too far. She judged for
herself, as few women of twice her age judge in general; never asked your
advice; never told you beforehand what she was going to do; never came
with secrets and confidences to anybody, from her mother downwards. In
little things and great, with people she loved, and people she hated (and she
did both with equal heartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her
own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life. Over and over
again I have heard my lady say, “Rachel’s best friend and Rachel’s worst
enemy are, one and the other—Rachel herself.”
Add one thing more to this, and I have done.
With all her secrecy, and self-will, there was not so much as the shadow
of anything false in her. I never remember her breaking her word; I never
remember her saying No, and meaning Yes. I can call to mind, in her
childhood, more than one occasion when the good little soul took the
blame, and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed by a

playfellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it, when
the thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterwards. But
nobody ever knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you straight in the
face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly, “I won’t tell you!”
Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry for saying “won’t;”
but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed—
devilish self-willed sometimes—I grant; but the finest creature,
nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this lower world. Perhaps you
think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear.
Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good
lady doesn’t exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time,
Heaven help you!—you have married a monster.

I have now brought you acquainted with Miss Rachel, which you will
find puts us face to face, next, with the question of that young lady’s
matrimonial views.
On June the twelfth, an invitation from my mistress was sent to a
gentleman in London, to come and help to keep Miss Rachel’s birthday.
This was the fortunate individual on whom I believed her heart to be
privately set! Like Mr. Franklin, he was a cousin of hers. His name was Mr.
Godfrey Ablewhite.
My lady’s second sister (don’t be alarmed; we are not going very deep
into family matters this time)—my lady’s second sister, I say, had a
disappointment in love; and taking a husband afterwards, on the neck or
nothing principle, made what they call a misalliance. There was terrible
work in the family when the Honourable Caroline insisted on marrying
plain Mr. Ablewhite, the banker at Frizinghall. He was very rich and very
respectable, and he begot a prodigious large family—all in his favour, so
far. But he had presumed to raise himself from a low station in the world—
and that was against him. However, Time and the progress of modern
enlightenment put things right; and the misalliance passed muster very well.
We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you can scratch me, if I
scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament, whether you are a
Dustman or a Duke? That’s the modern way of looking at it—and I keep up
with the modern way. The Ablewhites lived in a fine house and grounds, a
little out of Frizinghall. Very worthy people, and greatly respected in the

neighbourhood. We shall not be much troubled with them in these pages—
excepting Mr. Godfrey, who was Mr. Ablewhite’s second son, and who
must take his proper place here, if you please, for Miss Rachel’s sake.
With all his brightness and cleverness and general good qualities, Mr.
Franklin’s chance of topping Mr. Godfrey in our young lady’s estimation
was, in my opinion, a very poor chance indeed.
In the first place, Mr. Godfrey was, in point of size, the finest man by far
of the two. He stood over six feet high; he had a beautiful red and white
colour; a smooth round face, shaved as bare as your hand; and a head of
lovely long flaxen hair, falling negligently over the poll of his neck. But
why do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever
subscribed to a Ladies’ Charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession; a ladies’ man
by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and
female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for
confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women;
strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor men’s places, and
leaving the men to shift for themselves;—he was vice-president, manager,
referee to them all. Wherever there was a table with a committee of ladies
sitting round it in council there was Mr. Godfrey at the bottom of the board,
keeping the temper of the committee, and leading the dear creatures along
the thorny ways of business, hat in hand. I do suppose this was the most
accomplished philanthropist (on a small independence) that England ever
produced. As a speaker at charitable meetings the like of him for drawing
your tears and your money was not easy to find. He was quite a public
character. The last time I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats.
She sent me to the theatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage;
and she sent me to Exeter Hall to hear Mr. Godfrey. The lady did it, with a
band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief and a glass of
water. Crowds at the performance with the legs. Ditto at the performance
with the tongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person (I allude to
Mr. Godfrey)—the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please—you ever
met with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved him. What chance had
Mr. Franklin—what chance had anybody of average reputation and
capacities—against such a man as this?

On the fourteenth, came Mr. Godfrey’s answer.
He accepted my mistress’s invitation, from the Wednesday of the
birthday to the evening of Friday—when his duties to the Ladies’ Charities
would oblige him to return to town. He also enclosed a copy of verses on
what he elegantly called his cousin’s “natal day.” Miss Rachel, I was
informed, joined Mr. Franklin in making fun of the verses at dinner; and
Penelope, who was all on Mr. Franklin’s side, asked me, in great triumph,
what I thought of that. “Miss Rachel has led you off on a false scent, my
dear,” I replied; “but my nose is not so easily mystified. Wait till Mr.
Ablewhite’s verses are followed by Mr. Ablewhite himself.”
My daughter replied, that Mr. Franklin might strike in, and try his luck,
before the verses were followed by the poet. In favour of this view, I must
acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left no chance untried of winning Miss
Rachel’s good graces.
Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave up
his cigar, because she said, one day, she hated the stale smell of it in his
clothes. He slept so badly, after this effort of self-denial, for want of the
composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and came down
morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that Miss Rachel
herself begged him to take to his cigars again. No! he would take to nothing
again that could cause her a moment’s annoyance; he would fight it out
resolutely, and get back his sleep, sooner or later, by main force of patience
in waiting for it. Such devotion as this, you may say (as some of them said
downstairs), could never fail of producing the right effect on Miss Rachel—
backed up, too, as it was, by the decorating work every day on the door. All
very well—but she had a photograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bedroom;
represented speaking at a public meeting, with all his hair blown out by the
breath of his own eloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money
out of your pockets. What do you say to that? Every morning—as Penelope
herself owned to me—there was the man whom the women couldn’t do
without, looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair
combed. He would be looking on, in reality, before long—that was my
opinion of it.

June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr. Franklin’s chance
look, to my mind, a worse chance than ever.

A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent, came that
morning to the house, and asked to see Mr. Franklin Blake on business. The
business could not possibly have been connected with the Diamond, for
these two reasons—first, that Mr. Franklin told me nothing about it;
secondly, that he communicated it (when the gentleman had gone, as I
suppose) to my lady. She probably hinted something about it next to her
daughter. At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some severe
things to Mr. Franklin, at the piano that evening, about the people he had
lived among, and the principles he had adopted in foreign parts. The next
day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decoration of the door.
I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin’s on the Continent—with a
woman or a debt at the bottom of it—had followed him to England. But that
is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr. Franklin, but my lady too, for a
wonder, left me in the dark.

On the seventeenth, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again. They
returned to their decorating work on the door, and seemed to be as good
friends as ever. If Penelope was to be believed, Mr. Franklin had seized the
opportunity of the reconciliation to make an offer to Miss Rachel, and had
neither been accepted nor refused. My girl was sure (from signs and tokens
which I need not trouble you with) that her young mistress had fought Mr.
Franklin off by declining to believe that he was in earnest, and had then
secretly regretted treating him in that way afterwards. Though Penelope was
admitted to more familiarity with her young mistress than maids generally
are—for the two had been almost brought up together as children—still I
knew Miss Rachel’s reserved character too well to believe that she would
show her mind to anybody in this way. What my daughter told me, on the
present occasion, was, as I suspected, more what she wished than what she
really knew.

On the nineteenth another event happened. We had the doctor in the
house professionally. He was summoned to prescribe for a person whom I
have had occasion to present to you in these pages—our second housemaid,
Rosanna Spearman.

This poor girl—who had puzzled me, as you know already, at the
Shivering Sand—puzzled me more than once again, in the interval time of
which I am now writing. Penelope’s notion that her fellow-servant was in
love with Mr. Franklin (which my daughter, by my orders, kept strictly
secret) seemed to be just as absurd as ever. But I must own that what I
myself saw, and what my daughter saw also, of our second housemaid’s
conduct, began to look mysterious, to say the least of it.
For example, the girl constantly put herself in Mr. Franklin’s way—very
slyly and quietly, but she did it. He took about as much notice of her as he
took of the cat; it never seemed to occur to him to waste a look on
Rosanna’s plain face. The poor thing’s appetite, never much, fell away
dreadfully; and her eyes in the morning showed plain signs of waking and
crying at night. One day Penelope made an awkward discovery, which we
hushed up on the spot. She caught Rosanna at Mr. Franklin’s dressing-table,
secretly removing a rose which Miss Rachel had given him to wear in his
button-hole, and putting another rose like it, of her own picking, in its place.
She was, after that, once or twice impudent to me, when I gave her a well-
meant general hint to be careful in her conduct; and, worse still, she was not
over-respectful now, on the few occasions when Miss Rachel accidentally
spoke to her.
My lady noticed the change, and asked me what I thought about it. I tried
to screen the girl by answering that I thought she was out of health; and it
ended in the doctor being sent for, as already mentioned, on the nineteenth.
He said it was her nerves, and doubted if she was fit for service. My lady
offered to remove her for change of air to one of our farms, inland. She
begged and prayed, with the tears in her eyes, to be let to stop; and, in an
evil hour, I advised my lady to try her for a little longer. As the event
proved, and as you will soon see, this was the worst advice I could have
given. If I could only have looked a little way into the future, I would have
taken Rosanna Spearman out of the house, then and there, with my own
hand.
On the twentieth, there came a note from Mr. Godfrey. He had arranged
to stop at Frizinghall that night, having occasion to consult his father on
business. On the afternoon of the next day, he and his two eldest sisters
would ride over to us on horseback, in good time before dinner. An elegant
little casket in china accompanied the note, presented to Miss Rachel, with

her cousin’s love and best wishes. Mr. Franklin had only given her a plain
locket not worth half the money. My daughter Penelope, nevertheless—
such is the obstinacy of women—still backed him to win.
Thanks be to Heaven, we have arrived at the eve of the birthday at last!
You will own, I think, that I have got you over the ground this time, without
much loitering by the way. Cheer up! I’ll ease you with another new chapter
here—and, what is more, that chapter shall take you straight into the thick
of the story.

CHAPTER IX
June twenty-first, the day of the birthday, was cloudy and unsettled at
sunrise, but towards noon it cleared up bravely.
We, in the servants’ hall, began this happy anniversary, as usual, by
offering our little presents to Miss Rachel, with the regular speech delivered
annually by me as the chief. I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in
opening Parliament—namely, the plan of saying much the same thing
regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen’s) is
looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before.
When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though
they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next
year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that’s
the moral of it.
After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the
subject of the Moonstone—the time having now come for removing it from
the bank at Frizinghall, and placing it in Miss Rachel’s own hands.
Whether he had been trying to make love to his cousin again, and had got
a rebuff—or whether his broken rest, night after night, was aggravating the
queer contradictions and uncertainties in his character—I don’t know. But
certain it is, that Mr. Franklin failed to show himself at his best on the
morning of the birthday. He was in twenty different minds about the
Diamond in as many minutes. For my part, I stuck fast by the plain facts as
we knew them. Nothing had happened to justify us in alarming my lady on
the subject of the jewel; and nothing could alter the legal obligation that
now lay on Mr. Franklin to put it in his cousin’s possession. That was my
view of the matter; and, twist and turn it as he might, he was forced in the
end to make it his view too. We arranged that he was to ride over, after
lunch, to Frizinghall, and bring the Diamond back, with Mr. Godfrey and
the two young ladies, in all probability, to keep him company on the way
home again.
This settled, our young gentleman went back to Miss Rachel.

They consumed the whole morning, and part of the afternoon, in the
everlasting business of decorating the door, Penelope standing by to mix the
colours, as directed; and my lady, as luncheon time drew near, going in and
out of the room, with her handkerchief to her nose (for they used a deal of
Mr. Franklin’s vehicle that day), and trying vainly to get the two artists
away from their work. It was three o’clock before they took off their
aprons, and released Penelope (much the worse for the vehicle), and
cleaned themselves of their mess. But they had done what they wanted—
they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of
it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to
behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices,
and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them
unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of
looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning’s work
by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards the
vehicle. No! no! It left off stinking when it dried; and if Art requires these
sort of sacrifices—though the girl is my own daughter—I say, let Art have
them!
Mr. Franklin snatched a morsel from the luncheon-table, and rode off to
Frizinghall—to escort his cousins, as he told my lady. To fetch the
Moonstone, as was privately known to himself and to me.
This being one of the high festivals on which I took my place at the side-
board, in command of the attendance at table, I had plenty to occupy my
mind while Mr. Franklin was away. Having seen to the wine, and reviewed
my men and women who were to wait at dinner, I retired to collect myself
before the company came. A whiff of—you know what, and a turn at a
certain book which I have had occasion to mention in these pages,
composed me, body and mind. I was aroused from what I am inclined to
think must have been, not a nap, but a reverie, by the clatter of horses’ hoofs
outside; and, going to the door, received a cavalcade comprising Mr.
Franklin and his three cousins, escorted by one of old Mr. Ablewhite’s
grooms.
Mr. Godfrey struck me, strangely enough, as being like Mr. Franklin in
this respect—that he did not seem to be in his customary spirits. He kindly
shook hands with me as usual, and was most politely glad to see his old
friend Betteredge wearing so well. But there was a sort of cloud over him,

which I couldn’t at all account for; and when I asked how he had found his
father in health, he answered rather shortly, “Much as usual.” However, the
two Miss Ablewhites were cheerful enough for twenty, which more than
restored the balance. They were nearly as big as their brother; spanking,
yellow-haired, rosy lasses, overflowing with super-abundant flesh and
blood; bursting from head to foot with health and spirits. The legs of the
poor horses trembled with carrying them; and when they jumped from their
saddles (without waiting to be helped), I declare they bounced on the
ground as if they were made of india-rubber. Everything the Miss
Ablewhites said began with a large O; everything they did was done with a
bang; and they giggled and screamed, in season and out of season, on the
smallest provocation. Bouncers—that’s what I call them.
Under cover of the noise made by the young ladies, I had an opportunity
of saying a private word to Mr. Franklin in the hall.
“Have you got the Diamond safe, sir?”
He nodded, and tapped the breast-pocket of his coat.
“Have you seen anything of the Indians?”
“Not a glimpse.” With that answer, he asked for my lady, and, hearing
she was in the small drawing-room, went there straight. The bell rang,
before he had been a minute in the room, and Penelope was sent to tell Miss
Rachel that Mr. Franklin Blake wanted to speak to her.
Crossing the hall, about half an hour afterwards, I was brought to a
sudden standstill by an outbreak of screams from the small drawing-room. I
can’t say I was at all alarmed; for I recognised in the screams the favourite
large O of the Miss Ablewhites. However, I went in (on pretence of asking
for instructions about the dinner) to discover whether anything serious had
really happened.
There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated, with the
Colonel’s unlucky Diamond in her hand. There, on either side of her, knelt
the two Bouncers, devouring the jewel with their eyes, and screaming with
ecstasy every time it flashed on them in a new light. There, at the opposite
side of the table, stood Mr. Godfrey, clapping his hands like a large child,
and singing out softly, “Exquisite! exquisite!” There sat Mr. Franklin in a
chair by the bookcase, tugging at his beard, and looking anxiously towards
the window. And there, at the window, stood the object he was

contemplating—my lady, having the extract from the Colonel’s Will in her
hand, and keeping her back turned on the whole of the company.
She faced me, when I asked for my instructions; and I saw the family
frown gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the
corners of her mouth.
“Come to my room in half an hour,” she answered. “I shall have
something to say to you then.”
With those words, she went out. It was plain enough that she was posed
by the same difficulty which had posed Mr. Franklin and me in our
conference at the Shivering Sand. Was the legacy of the Moonstone a proof
that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? or was it a proof that he
was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him? Serious questions
those for my lady to determine, while her daughter, innocent of all
knowledge of the Colonel’s character, stood there with the Colonel’s
birthday gift in her hand.
Before I could leave the room in my turn, Miss Rachel, always
considerate to the old servant who had been in the house when she was
born, stopped me. “Look, Gabriel!” she said, and flashed the jewel before
my eyes in a ray of sunlight that poured through the window.
Lord bless us! it was a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover’s egg!
The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. When
you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew
your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable; this
jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed
unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set it in the sun, and then shut
the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own
brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was
fascinated: no wonder her cousins screamed. The Diamond laid such a hold
on me that I burst out with as large an “O” as the Bouncers themselves. The
only one of us who kept his senses was Mr. Godfrey. He put an arm round
each of his sisters’ waists, and, looking compassionately backwards and
forwards between the Diamond and me, said, “Carbon, Betteredge! mere
carbon, my good friend, after all!”
His object, I suppose, was to instruct me. All he did, however, was to
remind me of the dinner. I hobbled off to my army of waiters downstairs. As
I went out, Mr. Godfrey said, “Dear old Betteredge, I have the truest regard

for him!” He was embracing his sisters, and ogling Miss Rachel, while he
honoured me with that testimony of affection. Something like a stock of
love to draw on there! Mr. Franklin was a perfect savage by comparison
with him.
At the end of half an hour, I presented myself, as directed, in my lady’s
room.
What passed between my mistress and me, on this occasion, was, in the
main, a repetition of what had passed between Mr. Franklin and me at the
Shivering Sand—with this difference, that I took care to keep my own
counsel about the jugglers, seeing that nothing had happened to justify me
in alarming my lady on this head. When I received my dismissal, I could
see that she took the blackest view possible of the Colonel’s motives, and
that she was bent on getting the Moonstone out of her daughter’s possession
at the first opportunity.
On my way back to my own part of the house, I was encountered by Mr.
Franklin. He wanted to know if I had seen anything of his cousin Rachel. I
had seen nothing of her. Could I tell him where his cousin Godfrey was? I
didn’t know; but I began to suspect that cousin Godfrey might not be far
away from cousin Rachel. Mr. Franklin’s suspicions apparently took the
same turn. He tugged hard at his beard, and went and shut himself up in the
library with a bang of the door that had a world of meaning in it.
I was interrupted no more in the business of preparing for the birthday
dinner till it was time for me to smarten myself up for receiving the
company. Just as I had got my white waistcoat on, Penelope presented
herself at my toilet, on pretence of brushing what little hair I have got left,
and improving the tie of my white cravat. My girl was in high spirits, and I
saw she had something to say to me. She gave me a kiss on the top of my
bald head, and whispered, “News for you, father! Miss Rachel has refused
him.”
“Who’s ‘him’?” I asked.
“The ladies’ committee-man, father,” says Penelope. “A nasty sly fellow!
I hate him for trying to supplant Mr. Franklin!”
If I had had breath enough, I should certainly have protested against this
indecent way of speaking of an eminent philanthropic character. But my
daughter happened to be improving the tie of my cravat at that moment, and

the whole strength of her feelings found its way into her fingers. I never
was more nearly strangled in my life.
“I saw him take her away alone into the rose-garden,” says Penelope.
“And I waited behind the holly to see how they came back. They had gone
out arm-in-arm, both laughing. They came back, walking separate, as grave
as grave could be, and looking straight away from each other in a manner
which there was no mistaking. I never was more delighted, father, in my
life! There’s one woman in the world who can resist Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite, at any rate; and, if I was a lady, I should be another!”
Here I should have protested again. But my daughter had got the hair-
brush by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had passed into
that. If you are bald, you will understand how she sacrificed me. If you are
not, skip this bit, and thank God you have got something in the way of a
defence between your hair-brush and your head.
“Just on the other side of the holly,” Penelope went on, “Mr. Godfrey
came to a standstill. ‘You prefer,’ says he, ‘that I should stop here as if
nothing had happened?’ Miss Rachel turned on him like lightning. ‘You
have accepted my mother’s invitation,’ she said; ‘and you are here to meet
her guests. Unless you wish to make a scandal in the house, you will
remain, of course!’ She went on a few steps, and then seemed to relent a
little. ‘Let us forget what has passed, Godfrey,’ she said, ‘and let us remain
cousins still.’ She gave him her hand. He kissed it, which I should have
considered taking a liberty, and then she left him. He waited a little by
himself, with his head down, and his heel grinding a hole slowly in the
gravel walk; you never saw a man look more put out in your life.
‘Awkward!’ he said between his teeth, when he looked up, and went on to
the house—‘very awkward!’ If that was his opinion of himself, he was quite
right. Awkward enough, I’m sure. And the end of it is, father, what I told
you all along,” cries Penelope, finishing me off with a last scarification, the
hottest of all. “Mr. Franklin’s the man!”
I got possession of the hair-brush, and opened my lips to administer the
reproof which, you will own, my daughter’s language and conduct richly
deserved.
Before I could say a word, the crash of carriage-wheels outside struck in,
and stopped me. The first of the dinner-company had come. Penelope
instantly ran off. I put on my coat, and looked in the glass. My head was as

red as a lobster; but, in other respects, I was as nicely dressed for the
ceremonies of the evening as a man need be. I got into the hall just in time
to announce the two first of the guests. You needn’t feel particularly
interested about them. Only the philanthropist’s father and mother—Mr. and
Mrs. Ablewhite.

CHAPTER X
One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the
Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the
family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when they
were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector of
Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.
There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet
none of them a second time—in my part of the story, at any rate—with the
exception of two.
Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day,
was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she was
more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody’s eyes were
directed; for (to my lady’s secret annoyance) she wore her wonderful
birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest—the Moonstone. It was
without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but that universal
genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of his neat fingers and a
little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in the bosom of her white dress.
Everybody wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the Diamond, as a
matter of course. But the only two of the company who said anything out of
the common way about it were those two guests I have mentioned, who sat
by Miss Rachel on her right hand and her left.
The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.
This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,
however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his
joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk with
strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society, he was constantly
making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together. In
his medical practice he was a more prudent man; picking up his discretion
(as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right
where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong. What he
said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a

mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interests of science)
to let him take it home and burn it. “We will first heat it, Miss Rachel,” says
the doctor, “to such and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current of
air; and, little by little—puff!—we evaporate the Diamond, and spare you a
world of anxiety about the safe keeping of a valuable precious stone!” My
lady, listening with rather a careworn expression on her face, seemed to
wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could have found Miss
Rachel zealous enough in the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.
The other guest, who sat on my young lady’s right hand, was an eminent
public character—being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller, Mr.
Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguise where no
European had ever set foot before.
This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look, and
a very steady, attentive eye. It was rumoured that he was tired of the
humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back and
wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East. Except what he
said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke six words or drank
so much as a single glass of wine, all through the dinner. The Moonstone
was the only object that interested him in the smallest degree. The fame of
it seemed to have reached him, in some of those perilous Indian places
where his wanderings had lain. After looking at it silently for so long a time
that Miss Rachel began to get confused, he said to her in his cool
immovable way, “If you ever go to India, Miss Verinder, don’t take your
uncle’s birthday gift with you. A Hindoo diamond is sometimes part of a
Hindoo religion. I know a certain city, and a certain temple in that city,
where, dressed as you are now, your life would not be worth five minutes’
purchase.” Miss Rachel, safe in England, was quite delighted to hear of her
danger in India. The Bouncers were more delighted still; they dropped their
knives and forks with a crash, and burst out together vehemently, “O! how
interesting!” My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed the subject.

As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that this festival was
not prospering as other like festivals had prospered before it.
Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happened
afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must have
cast a blight on the whole company. I plied them well with wine; and being

a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round the table, and
whispered to the company confidentially, “Please to change your mind and
try it; for I know it will do you good.” Nine times out of ten they changed
their minds—out of regard for their old original Betteredge, they were
pleased to say—but all to no purpose. There were gaps of silence in the talk,
as the dinner got on, that made me feel personally uncomfortable. When
they did use their tongues again, they used them innocently, in the most
unfortunate manner and to the worst possible purpose. Mr. Candy, the
doctor, for instance, said more unlucky things than I ever knew him to say
before. Take one sample of the way in which he went on, and you will
understand what I had to put up with at the sideboard, officiating as I was in
the character of a man who had the prosperity of the festival at heart.
One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy Mrs. Threadgall, widow
of the late Professor of that name. Talking of her deceased husband
perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he was
deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult in England
ought to know as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence, somebody
mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy; whereupon
good Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband as usual,
without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described as the
Professor’s favourite recreation in his leisure hours. As ill-luck would have
it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing of the deceased
gentleman), heard her. Being the most polite of men, he seized the
opportunity of assisting the Professor’s anatomical amusements on the spot.
“They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College of
Surgeons,” says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice. “I
strongly recommend the Professor, ma’am, when he next has an hour to
spare, to pay them a visit.”
You might have heard a pin fall. The company (out of respect to the
Professor’s memory) all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs. Threadgall at the
time, plying her confidentially with a glass of hock. She dropped her head,
and said in a very low voice, “My beloved husband is no more.”
Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting
the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.
“The Professor may not be aware,” says he, “that the card of a member of
the College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours of

ten and four.”
Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower
voice still, repeated the solemn words, “My beloved husband is no more.”
I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Miss Rachel touched his
arm. My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On he went,
with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow. “I shall be delighted,”
says he, “to send the Professor my card, if you will oblige me by
mentioning his present address.”
“His present address, sir, is the grave,” says Mrs. Threadgall, suddenly
losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that made the
glasses ring again. “The Professor has been dead these ten years.”
“Oh, good Heavens!” says Mr. Candy. Excepting the Bouncers, who
burst out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might
all have been going the way of the Professor, and hailing as he did from the
direction of the grave.
So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as provoking in
their different ways as the doctor himself. When they ought to have spoken,
they didn’t speak; or when they did speak they were perpetually at cross
purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declined to exert
himself in private. Whether he was sulky, or whether he was bashful, after
his discomfiture in the rose-garden, I can’t say. He kept all his talk for the
private ear of the lady (a member of our family) who sat next to him. She
was one of his committee-women—a spiritually-minded person, with a fine
show of collar-bone and a pretty taste in champagne; liked it dry, you
understand, and plenty of it. Being close behind these two at the sideboard,
I can testify, from what I heard pass between them, that the company lost a
good deal of very improving conversation, which I caught up while drawing
the corks, and carving the mutton, and so forth. What they said about their
Charities I didn’t hear. When I had time to listen to them, they had got a
long way beyond their women to be confined, and their women to be
rescued, and were disputing on serious subjects. Religion (I understand Mr.
Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving) meant love. And love
meant religion. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And
heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. Earth had some very
objectionable people in it; but, to make amends for that, all the women in
heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that never quarrelled,

with all the men in attendance on them as ministering angels. Beautiful!
beautiful! But why the mischief did Mr. Godfrey keep it all to his lady and
himself?
Mr. Franklin again—surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred the
company up into making a pleasant evening of it?
Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in
wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, of
Mr. Godfrey’s reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might, nine
times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed himself to
the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some, and puzzled all
of them. That foreign training of his—those French and German and Italian
sides of him, to which I have already alluded—came out, at my lady’s
hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.
What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which a
married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her
husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the maiden
aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the
German side, of his telling the lord of the manor, while that great authority
on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls, that
experience, properly understood, counted for nothing, and that the proper
way to breed bulls was to look deep into your own mind, evolve out of it
the idea of a perfect bull, and produce him? What do you say, when our
county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of
democracy in England, burst out as follows: “If we once lose our ancient
safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?”—what do
you say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view: “We have
got three things left, sir—Love, Music, and Salad”? He not only terrified
the company with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of
him turned up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on
the subject of the medical profession, said such downright things in ridicule
of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr. Candy in a rage.
The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led—I forget how
—to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr. Candy
thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that he ought to
go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin replied that a
course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark, meant, in his

estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting back smartly, said
that Mr. Franklin himself was, constitutionally speaking, groping in the dark
after sleep, and that nothing but medicine could help him to find it. Mr.
Franklin, keeping the ball up on his side, said he had often heard of the
blind leading the blind, and now, for the first time, he knew what it meant.
In this way, they kept it going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them
got hot—Mr. Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in
defence of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere, and forbid
the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the last extinguisher
on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted up again here and there, for a
minute or two at a time; but there was a miserable lack of life and sparkle in
it. The Devil (or the Diamond) possessed that dinner-party; and it was a
relief to everybody when my mistress rose, and gave the ladies the signal to
leave the gentlemen over their wine.

I had just ranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Ablewhite (who
represented the master of the house), when there came a sound from the
terrace which startled me out of my company manners on the instant. Mr.
Franklin and I looked at each other; it was the sound of the Indian drum. As
I live by bread, here were the jugglers returning to us with the return of the
Moonstone to the house!
As they rounded the corner of the terrace, and came in sight, I hobbled
out to warn them off. But, as ill-luck would have it, the two Bouncers were
beforehand with me. They whizzed out on to the terrace like a couple of
skyrockets, wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. The other ladies
followed; the gentlemen came out on their side. Before you could say,
“Lord bless us!” the rogues were making their salaams; and the Bouncers
were kissing the pretty little boy.
Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behind her.
If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of all knowledge of
the truth, showing the Indians the Diamond in the bosom of her dress!
I can’t tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it. What with
the vexation about the dinner, and what with the provocation of the rogues
coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with their own eyes, I
own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember noticing was the sudden
appearance on the scene of the Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite. Skirting

the half-circle in which the gentlefolks stood or sat, he came quietly behind
the jugglers and spoke to them on a sudden in the language of their own
country.
If he had pricked them with a bayonet, I doubt if the Indians could have
started and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did, on
hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment they were
bowing and salaaming to him in their most polite and snaky way. After a
few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side, Mr.
Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached. The chief Indian,
who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again towards the
gentlefolks. I noticed that the fellow’s coffee-coloured face had turned grey
since Mr. Murthwaite had spoken to him. He bowed to my lady, and
informed her that the exhibition was over. The Bouncers, indescribably
disappointed, burst out with a loud “O!” directed against Mr. Murthwaite
for stopping the performance. The chief Indian laid his hand humbly on his
breast, and said a second time that the juggling was over. The little boy
went round with the hat. The ladies withdrew to the drawing-room; and the
gentlemen (excepting Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite) returned to their
wine. I and the footman followed the Indians, and saw them safe off the
premises.
Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt tobacco, and found Mr.
Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite (the latter smoking a cheroot) walking slowly
up and down among the trees. Mr. Franklin beckoned to me to join them.
“This,” says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to the great traveller, “is Gabriel
Betteredge, the old servant and friend of our family of whom I spoke to you
just now. Tell him, if you please, what you have just told me.”
Mr. Murthwaite took his cheroot out of his mouth, and leaned, in his
weary way, against the trunk of a tree.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he began, “those three Indians are no more jugglers
than you and I are.”
Here was a new surprise! I naturally asked the traveller if he had ever
met with the Indians before.
“Never,” says Mr. Murthwaite; “but I know what Indian juggling really
is. All you have seen tonight is a very bad and clumsy imitation of it.
Unless, after long experience, I am utterly mistaken, those men are high-
caste Brahmins. I charged them with being disguised, and you saw how it

told on them, clever as the Hindoo people are in concealing their feelings.
There is a mystery about their conduct that I can’t explain. They have
doubly sacrificed their caste—first, in crossing the sea; secondly, in
disguising themselves as jugglers. In the land they live in that is a
tremendous sacrifice to make. There must be some very serious motive at
the bottom of it, and some justification of no ordinary kind to plead for
them, in recovery of their caste, when they return to their own country.”
I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went on with his cheroot. Mr.
Franklin, after what looked to me like a little private veering about between
the different sides of his character, broke the silence as follows:
“I feel some hesitation, Mr. Murthwaite, in troubling you with family
matters, in which you can have no interest and which I am not very willing
to speak of out of our own circle. But, after what you have said, I feel
bound, in the interests of Lady Verinder and her daughter, to tell you
something which may possibly put the clue into your hands. I speak to you
in confidence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by not forgetting that?”
With this preface, he told the Indian traveller all that he had told me at
the Shivering Sand. Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite was so interested
in what he heard, that he let his cheroot go out.
“Now,” says Mr. Franklin, when he had done, “what does your
experience say?”
“My experience,” answered the traveller, “says that you have had more
narrow escapes of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I have had of mine;
and that is saying a great deal.”
It was Mr. Franklin’s turn to be astonished now.
“Is it really as serious as that?” he asked.
“In my opinion it is,” answered Mr. Murthwaite. “I can’t doubt, after
what you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone to its place on
the forehead of the Indian idol, is the motive and the justification of that
sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now. Those men will wait their
opportunity with the patience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity of
tigers. How you have escaped them I can’t imagine,” says the eminent
traveller, lighting his cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. “You
have been carrying the Diamond backwards and forwards, here and in
London, and you are still a living man! Let us try and account for it. It was

daylight, both times, I suppose, when you took the jewel out of the bank in
London?”
“Broad daylight,” says Mr. Franklin.
“And plenty of people in the streets?”
“Plenty.”
“You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady Verinder’s house at a certain
time? It’s a lonely country between this and the station. Did you keep your
appointment?”
“No. I arrived four hours earlier than my appointment.”
“I beg to congratulate you on that proceeding! When did you take the
Diamond to the bank at the town here?”
“I took it an hour after I had brought it to this house—and three hours
before anybody was prepared for seeing me in these parts.”
“I beg to congratulate you again! Did you bring it back here alone?”
“No. I happened to ride back with my cousins and the groom.”
“I beg to congratulate you for the third time! If you ever feel inclined to
travel beyond the civilised limits, Mr. Blake, let me know, and I will go
with you. You are a lucky man.”
Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn’t at all square with my English
ideas.
“You don’t really mean to say, sir,” I asked, “that they would have taken
Mr. Franklin’s life, to get their Diamond, if he had given them the chance?”
“Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?” says the traveller.
“Yes, sir.
“Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it?”
“No, sir.”
“In the country those men came from, they care just as much about
killing a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe. If a
thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of their Diamond—
and if they thought they could destroy those lives without discovery—they
would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if you
like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all.”

I expressed my opinion upon this, that they were a set of murdering
thieves. Mr. Murthwaite expressed his opinion that they were a wonderful
people. Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back to the
matter in hand.
“They have seen the Moonstone on Miss Verinder’s dress,” he said.
“What is to be done?”
“What your uncle threatened to do,” answered Mr. Murthwaite. “Colonel
Herncastle understood the people he had to deal with. Send the Diamond
tomorrow (under guard of more than one man) to be cut up at Amsterdam.
Make half a dozen diamonds of it, instead of one. There is an end of its
sacred identity as The Moonstone—and there is an end of the conspiracy.”
Mr. Franklin turned to me.
“There is no help for it,” he said. “We must speak to Lady Verinder
tomorrow.”
“What about tonight, sir?” I asked. “Suppose the Indians come back?”
Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.
“The Indians won’t risk coming back tonight,” he said. “The direct way
is hardly ever the way they take to anything—let alone a matter like this, in
which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching their end.”
“But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir?” I persisted.
“In that case,” says Mr. Murthwaite, “let the dogs loose. Have you got
any big dogs in the yard?”
“Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound.”
“They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteredge, the mastiff and
the bloodhound have one great merit—they are not likely to be troubled
with your scruples about the sanctity of human life.”
The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing-room, as he
fired that shot at me. He threw away his cheroot, and took Mr. Franklin’s
arm, to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast,
as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked
round at me, in his dry, droning way, and said:
“The Indians will want their umbrellas, Mr. Betteredge, tonight!”
It was all very well for him to joke. But I was not an eminent traveller—
and my way in this world had not led me into playing ducks and drakes

with my own life, among thieves and murderers in the outlandish places of
the earth. I went into my own little room, and sat down in my chair in a
perspiration, and wondered helplessly what was to be done next. In this
anxious frame of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves
up into a fever; I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe, and took a turn at
Robinson Crusoe.
Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit—page
one hundred and sixty-one—as follows:
“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself,
when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by
much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.”
The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that, is a man
with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own
self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved
for some person with a livelier faith.
I was far on with my second pipe, and still lost in admiration of that
wonderful book, when Penelope (who had been handing round the tea)
came in with her report from the drawing-room. She had left the Bouncers
singing a duet—words beginning with a large “O,” and music to
correspond. She had observed that my lady made mistakes in her game of
whist for the first time in our experience of her. She had seen the great
traveller asleep in a corner. She had overheard Mr. Franklin sharpening his
wits on Mr. Godfrey, at the expense of Ladies’ Charities in general; and she
had noticed that Mr. Godfrey hit him back again rather more smartly than
became a gentleman of his benevolent character. She had detected Miss
Rachel, apparently engaged in appeasing Mrs. Threadgall by showing her
some photographs, and really occupied in stealing looks at Mr. Franklin,
which no intelligent lady’s maid could misinterpret for a single instant.
Finally, she had missed Mr. Candy, the doctor, who had mysteriously
disappeared from the drawing-room, and had then mysteriously returned,
and entered into conversation with Mr. Godfrey. Upon the whole, things
were prospering better than the experience of the dinner gave us any right to
expect. If we could only hold on for another hour, old Father Time would
bring up their carriages, and relieve us of them altogether.
Everything wears off in this world; and even the comforting effect of
Robinson Crusoe wore off, after Penelope left me. I got fidgety again, and

resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came. Instead of
taking the footman, whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any
emergency, I took the bloodhound with me. His nose for a stranger was to
be depended on. We went all round the premises, and out into the road—
and returned as wise as we went, having discovered no such thing as a
lurking human creature anywhere.
The arrival of the carriages was the signal for the arrival of the rain. It
poured as if it meant to pour all night. With the exception of the doctor,
whose gig was waiting for him, the rest of the company went home snugly,
under cover, in close carriages. I told Mr. Candy that I was afraid he would
get wet through. He told me, in return, that he wondered I had arrived at my
time of life, without knowing that a doctor’s skin was waterproof. So he
drove away in the rain, laughing over his own little joke; and so we got rid
of our dinner company.
The next thing to tell is the story of the night.

CHAPTER XI
When the last of the guests had driven away, I went back into the inner
hall and found Samuel at the side-table, presiding over the brandy and soda
water. My lady and Miss Rachel came out of the drawing-room, followed
by the two gentlemen. Mr. Godfrey had some brandy and soda water, Mr.
Franklin took nothing. He sat down, looking dead tired; the talking on this
birthday occasion had, I suppose, been too much for him.
My lady, turning round to wish them good-night, looked hard at the
wicked Colonel’s legacy shining in her daughter’s dress.
“Rachel,” she asked, “where are you going to put your Diamond
tonight?”
Miss Rachel was in high good spirits, just in that humour for talking
nonsense, and perversely persisting in it as if it was sense, which you may
sometimes have observed in young girls, when they are highly wrought up,
at the end of an exciting day. First, she declared she didn’t know where to
put the Diamond. Then she said, “on her dressing-table, of course, along
with her other things.” Then she remembered that the Diamond might take
to shining of itself, with its awful moony light in the dark—and that would
terrify her in the dead of night. Then she bethought herself of an Indian
cabinet which stood in her sitting-room; and instantly made up her mind to
put the Indian diamond in the Indian cabinet, for the purpose of permitting
two beautiful native productions to admire each other. Having let her little
flow of nonsense run on as far as that point, her mother interposed and
stopped her.
“My dear! your Indian cabinet has no lock to it,” says my lady.
“Good Heavens, mamma!” cried Miss Rachel, “is this an hotel? Are there
thieves in the house?”
Without taking notice of this fantastic way of talking, my lady wished the
gentlemen good-night. She next turned to Miss Rachel, and kissed her.
“Why not let me keep the Diamond for you tonight?” she asked.

Miss Rachel received that proposal as she might, ten years since, have
received a proposal to part her from a new doll. My lady saw there was no
reasoning with her that night. “Come into my room, Rachel, the first thing
tomorrow morning,” she said. “I shall have something to say to you.” With
those last words she left us slowly; thinking her own thoughts, and, to all
appearance, not best pleased with the way by which they were leading her.
Miss Rachel was the next to say good-night. She shook hands first with
Mr. Godfrey, who was standing at the other end of the hall, looking at a
picture. Then she turned back to Mr. Franklin, still sitting weary and silent
in a corner.
What words passed between them I can’t say. But standing near the old
oak frame which holds our large looking-glass, I saw her reflected in it,
slyly slipping the locket which Mr. Franklin had given to her, out of the
bosom of her dress, and showing it to him for a moment, with a smile which
certainly meant something out of the common, before she tripped off to bed.
This incident staggered me a little in the reliance I had previously felt on
my own judgment. I began to think that Penelope might be right about the
state of her young lady’s affections, after all.
As soon as Miss Rachel left him eyes to see with, Mr. Franklin noticed
me. His variable humour, shifting about everything, had shifted about the
Indians already.
“Betteredge,” he said, “I’m half inclined to think I took Mr. Murthwaite
too seriously, when we had that talk in the shrubbery. I wonder whether he
has been trying any of his traveller’s tales on us? Do you really mean to let
the dogs loose?”
“I’ll relieve them of their collars, sir,” I answered, “and leave them free
to take a turn in the night, if they smell a reason for it.”
“All right,” says Mr. Franklin. “We’ll see what is to be done tomorrow. I
am not at all disposed to alarm my aunt, Betteredge, without a very pressing
reason for it. Good-night.”
He looked so worn and pale as he nodded to me, and took his candle to
go upstairs, that I ventured to advise his having a drop of brandy-and-water,
by way of night-cap. Mr. Godfrey, walking towards us from the other end of
the hall, backed me. He pressed Mr. Franklin, in the friendliest manner, to
take something, before he went to bed.

I only note these trifling circumstances, because, after all I had seen and
heard, that day, it pleased me to observe that our two gentlemen were on
just as good terms as ever. Their warfare of words (heard by Penelope in the
drawing-room), and their rivalry for the best place in Miss Rachel’s good
graces, seemed to have set no serious difference between them. But there!
they were both good-tempered, and both men of the world. And there is
certainly this merit in people of station, that they are not nearly so
quarrelsome among each other as people of no station at all.
Mr. Franklin declined the brandy-and-water, and went upstairs with Mr.
Godfrey, their rooms being next door to each other. On the landing,
however, either his cousin persuaded him, or he veered about and changed
his mind as usual. “Perhaps I may want it in the night,” he called down to
me. “Send up some brandy-and-water into my room.”
I sent up Samuel with the brandy-and-water; and then went out and
unbuckled the dogs’ collars. They both lost their heads with astonishment
on being set loose at that time of night, and jumped upon me like a couple
of puppies! However, the rain soon cooled them down again: they lapped a
drop of water each, and crept back into their kennels. As I went into the
house, I noticed signs in the sky which betokened a break in the weather for
the better. For the present, it still poured heavily, and the ground was in a
perfect sop.
Samuel and I went all over the house, and shut up as usual. I examined
everything myself, and trusted nothing to my deputy on this occasion. All
was safe and fast when I rested my old bones in bed, between midnight and
one in the morning.
The worries of the day had been a little too much for me, I suppose. At
any rate, I had a touch of Mr. Franklin’s malady that night. It was sunrise
before I fell off at last into a sleep. All the time I lay awake the house was
as quiet as the grave. Not a sound stirred but the splash of the rain, and the
sighing of the wind among the trees as a breeze sprang up with the morning.

About half-past seven I woke, and opened my window on a fine sunshiny
day. The clock had struck eight, and I was just going out to chain up the
dogs again, when I heard a sudden whisking of petticoats on the stairs
behind me.

I turned about, and there was Penelope flying down after me like mad.
“Father!” she screamed, “come upstairs, for God’s sake! The Diamond is
gone!”
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked her.
“Gone!” says Penelope. “Gone, nobody knows how! Come up and see.”
She dragged me after her into our young lady’s sitting-room, which
opened into her bedroom. There, on the threshold of her bedroom door,
stood Miss Rachel, almost as white in the face as the white dressing-gown
that clothed her. There also stood the two doors of the Indian cabinet, wide
open. One of the drawers inside was pulled out as far as it would go.
“Look!” says Penelope. “I myself saw Miss Rachel put the Diamond into
that drawer last night.” I went to the cabinet. The drawer was empty.
“Is this true, miss?” I asked.
With a look that was not like herself, with a voice that was not like her
own, Miss Rachel answered as my daughter had answered:
“The Diamond is gone!”
Having said those words, she withdrew into her bedroom, and shut and
locked the door.
Before we knew which way to turn next, my lady came in, hearing my
voice in her daughter’s sitting-room, and wondering what had happened.
The news of the loss of the Diamond seemed to petrify her. She went
straight to Miss Rachel’s bedroom, and insisted on being admitted. Miss
Rachel let her in.
The alarm, running through the house like fire, caught the two gentlemen
next.
Mr. Godfrey was the first to come out of his room. All he did when he
heard what had happened was to hold up his hands in a state of
bewilderment, which didn’t say much for his natural strength of mind. Mr.
Franklin, whose clear head I had confidently counted on to advise us,
seemed to be as helpless as his cousin when he heard the news in his turn.
For a wonder, he had had a good night’s rest at last; and the unaccustomed
luxury of sleep had, as he said himself, apparently stupefied him. However,
when he had swallowed his cup of coffee—which he always took, on the
foreign plan, some hours before he ate any breakfast—his brains

brightened; the clear-headed side of him turned up, and he took the matter
in hand, resolutely and cleverly, much as follows:
He first sent for the servants, and told them to leave all the lower doors
and windows (with the exception of the front door, which I had opened)
exactly as they had been left when we locked up over night. He next
proposed to his cousin and to me to make quite sure, before we took any
further steps, that the Diamond had not accidentally dropped somewhere
out of sight—say at the back of the cabinet, or down behind the table on
which the cabinet stood. Having searched in both places, and found nothing
—having also questioned Penelope, and discovered from her no more than
the little she had already told me—Mr. Franklin suggested next extending
our inquiries to Miss Rachel, and sent Penelope to knock at her bedroom
door.
My lady answered the knock, and closed the door behind her. The
moment after we heard it locked inside by Miss Rachel. My mistress came
out among us, looking sorely puzzled and distressed. “The loss of the
Diamond seems to have quite overwhelmed Rachel,” she said, in reply to
Mr. Franklin. “She shrinks, in the strangest manner, from speaking of it,
even to me. It is impossible you can see her for the present.”
Having added to our perplexities by this account of Miss Rachel, my
lady, after a little effort, recovered her usual composure, and acted with her
usual decision.
“I suppose there is no help for it?” she said, quietly. “I suppose I have no
alternative but to send for the police?”
“And the first thing for the police to do,” added Mr. Franklin, catching
her up, “is to lay hands on the Indian jugglers who performed here last
night.”
My lady and Mr. Godfrey (not knowing what Mr. Franklin and I knew)
both started, and both looked surprised.
“I can’t stop to explain myself now,” Mr. Franklin went on. “I can only
tell you that the Indians have certainly stolen the Diamond. Give me a letter
of introduction,” says he, addressing my lady, “to one of the magistrates at
Frizinghall—merely telling him that I represent your interests and wishes,
and let me ride off with it instantly. Our chance of catching the thieves may
depend on our not wasting one unnecessary minute.” (Nota bene: Whether

it was the French side or the English, the right side of Mr. Franklin seemed
to be uppermost now. The only question was, How long would it last?)
He put pen, ink, and paper before his aunt, who (as it appeared to me)
wrote the letter he wanted a little unwillingly. If it had been possible to
overlook such an event as the loss of a jewel worth twenty thousand
pounds, I believe—with my lady’s opinion of her late brother, and her
distrust of his birthday-gift—it would have been privately a relief to her to
let the thieves get off with the Moonstone scot free.
I went out with Mr. Franklin to the stables, and took the opportunity of
asking him how the Indians (whom I suspected, of course, as shrewdly as
he did) could possibly have got into the house.
“One of them might have slipped into the hall, in the confusion, when the
dinner company were going away,” says Mr. Franklin. “The fellow may
have been under the sofa while my aunt and Rachel were talking about
where the Diamond was to be put for the night. He would only have to wait
till the house was quiet, and there it would be in the cabinet, to be had for
the taking.” With those words, he called to the groom to open the gate, and
galloped off.
This seemed certainly to be the only rational explanation. But how had
the thief contrived to make his escape from the house? I had found the front
door locked and bolted, as I had left it at night, when I went to open it, after
getting up. As for the other doors and windows, there they were still, all
safe and fast, to speak for themselves. The dogs, too? Suppose the thief had
got away by dropping from one of the upper windows, how had he escaped
the dogs? Had he come provided for them with drugged meat? As the doubt
crossed my mind, the dogs themselves came galloping at me round a corner,
rolling each other over on the wet grass, in such lively health and spirits that
it was with no small difficulty I brought them to reason, and chained them
up again. The more I turned it over in my mind, the less satisfactory Mr.
Franklin’s explanation appeared to be.
We had our breakfasts—whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder,
it doesn’t matter, you must have your breakfast. When we had done, my
lady sent for me; and I found myself compelled to tell her all that I had
hitherto concealed, relating to the Indians and their plot. Being a woman of
a high courage, she soon got over the first startling effect of what I had to
communicate. Her mind seemed to be far more perturbed about her

daughter than about the heathen rogues and their conspiracy. “You know
how odd Rachel is, and how differently she behaves sometimes from other
girls,” my lady said to me. “But I have never, in all my experience, seen her
so strange and so reserved as she is now. The loss of her jewel seems almost
to have turned her brain. Who would have thought that horrible Diamond
could have laid such a hold on her in so short a time?”
It was certainly strange. Taking toys and trinkets in general, Miss Rachel
was nothing like so mad after them as most young girls. Yet there she was,
still locked up inconsolably in her bedroom. It is but fair to add that she was
not the only one of us in the house who was thrown out of the regular
groove. Mr. Godfrey, for instance—though professionally a sort of
consoler-general—seemed to be at a loss where to look for his own
resources. Having no company to amuse him, and getting no chance of
trying what his experience of women in distress could do towards
comforting Miss Rachel, he wandered hither and thither about the house
and gardens in an aimless uneasy way. He was in two different minds about
what it became him to do, after the misfortune that had happened to us.
Ought he to relieve the family, in their present situation, of the
responsibility of him as a guest, or ought he to stay on the chance that even
his humble services might be of some use? He decided ultimately that the
last course was perhaps the most customary and considerate course to take,
in such a very peculiar case of family distress as this was. Circumstances
try the metal a man is really made of. Mr. Godfrey, tried by circumstances,
showed himself of weaker metal than I had thought him to be. As for the
women-servants excepting Rosanna Spearman, who kept by herself—they
took to whispering together in corners, and staring at nothing suspiciously,
as is the manner of that weaker half of the human family, when anything
extraordinary happens in a house. I myself acknowledge to have been
fidgety and ill-tempered. The cursed Moonstone had turned us all upside
down.
A little before eleven Mr. Franklin came back. The resolute side of him
had, to all appearance, given way, in the interval since his departure, under
the stress that had been laid on it. He had left us at a gallop; he came back
to us at a walk. When he went away, he was made of iron. When he
returned, he was stuffed with cotton, as limp as limp could be.
“Well,” says my lady, “are the police coming?”

“Yes,” says Mr. Franklin; “they said they would follow me in a fly.
Superintendent Seegrave, of your local police force, and two of his men. A
mere form! The case is hopeless.”
“What! have the Indians escaped, sir?” I asked.
“The poor ill-used Indians have been most unjustly put in prison,” says
Mr. Franklin. “They are as innocent as the babe unborn. My idea that one of
them was hidden in the house has ended, like all the rest of my ideas, in
smoke. It’s been proved,” says Mr. Franklin, dwelling with great relish on
his own incapacity, “to be simply impossible.”
After astonishing us by announcing this totally new turn in the matter of
the Moonstone, our young gentleman, at his aunt’s request, took a seat, and
explained himself.
It appeared that the resolute side of him had held out as far as Frizinghall.
He had put the whole case plainly before the magistrate, and the magistrate
had at once sent for the police. The first inquiries instituted about the
Indians showed that they had not so much as attempted to leave the town.
Further questions addressed to the police, proved that all three had been
seen returning to Frizinghall with their boy, on the previous night between
ten and eleven—which (regard being had to hours and distances) also
proved that they had walked straight back after performing on our terrace.
Later still, at midnight, the police, having occasion to search the common
lodging-house where they lived, had seen them all three again, and their
little boy with them, as usual. Soon after midnight I myself had safely shut
up the house. Plainer evidence than this, in favour of the Indians, there
could not well be. The magistrate said there was not even a case of
suspicion against them so far. But, as it was just possible, when the police
came to investigate the matter, that discoveries affecting the jugglers might
be made, he would contrive, by committing them as rogues and vagabonds,
to keep them at our disposal, under lock and key, for a week. They had
ignorantly done something (I forget what) in the town, which barely
brought them within the operation of the law. Every human institution
(justice included) will stretch a little, if you only pull it the right way. The
worthy magistrate was an old friend of my lady’s, and the Indians were
“committed” for a week, as soon as the court opened that morning.
Such was Mr. Franklin’s narrative of events at Frizinghall. The Indian
clue to the mystery of the lost jewel was now, to all appearance, a clue that

had broken in our hands. If the jugglers were innocent, who, in the name of
wonder, had taken the Moonstone out of Miss Rachel’s drawer?
Ten minutes later, to our infinite relief, Superintendent Seegrave arrived
at the house. He reported passing Mr. Franklin on the terrace, sitting in the
sun (I suppose with the Italian side of him uppermost), and warning the
police, as they went by, that the investigation was hopeless, before the
investigation had begun.
For a family in our situation, the Superintendent of the Frizinghall police
was the most comforting officer you could wish to see. Mr. Seegrave was
tall and portly, and military in his manners. He had a fine commanding
voice, and a mighty resolute eye, and a grand frock-coat which buttoned
beautifully up to his leather stock. “I’m the man you want!” was written all
over his face; and he ordered his two inferior police men about with a
severity which convinced us all that there was no trifling with him.
He began by going round the premises, outside and in; the result of that
investigation proving to him that no thieves had broken in upon us from
outside, and that the robbery, consequently, must have been committed by
some person in the house. I leave you to imagine the state the servants were
in when this official announcement first reached their ears. The
Superintendent decided to begin by examining the boudoir, and, that done,
to examine the servants next. At the same time, he posted one of his men on
the staircase which led to the servants’ bedrooms, with instructions to let
nobody in the house pass him, till further orders.
At this latter proceeding, the weaker half of the human family went
distracted on the spot. They bounced out of their corners, whisked upstairs
in a body to Miss Rachel’s room (Rosanna Spearman being carried away
among them this time), burst in on Superintendent Seegrave, and, all
looking equally guilty, summoned him to say which of them he suspected,
at once.
Mr. Superintendent proved equal to the occasion; he looked at them with
his resolute eye, and he cowed them with his military voice.
“Now, then, you women, go downstairs again, every one of you. I won’t
have you here. Look!” says Mr. Superintendent, suddenly pointing to a little
smear of the decorative painting on Miss Rachel’s door, at the outer edge,
just under the lock. “Look what mischief the petticoats of some of you have
done already. Clear out! clear out!” Rosanna Spearman, who was nearest to

him, and nearest to the little smear on the door, set the example of
obedience, and slipped off instantly to her work. The rest followed her out.
The Superintendent finished his examination of the room, and, making
nothing of it, asked me who had first discovered the robbery. My daughter
had first discovered it. My daughter was sent for.
Mr. Superintendent proved to be a little too sharp with Penelope at
starting. “Now, young woman, attend to me, and mind you speak the truth.”
Penelope fired up instantly. “I’ve never been taught to tell lies Mr.
Policeman!—and if father can stand there and hear me accused of falsehood
and thieving, and my own bedroom shut against me, and my character taken
away, which is all a poor girl has left, he’s not the good father I take him
for!” A timely word from me put Justice and Penelope on a pleasanter
footing together. The questions and answers went swimmingly, and ended
in nothing worth mentioning. My daughter had seen Miss Rachel put the
Diamond in the drawer of the cabinet the last thing at night. She had gone
in with Miss Rachel’s cup of tea at eight the next morning, and had found
the drawer open and empty. Upon that, she had alarmed the house—and
there was an end of Penelope’s evidence.
Mr. Superintendent next asked to see Miss Rachel herself. Penelope
mentioned his request through the door. The answer reached us by the same
road: “I have nothing to tell the policeman—I can’t see anybody.” Our
experienced officer looked equally surprised and offended when he heard
that reply. I told him my young lady was ill, and begged him to wait a little
and see her later. We thereupon went downstairs again, and were met by Mr.
Godfrey and Mr. Franklin crossing the hall.
The two gentlemen, being inmates of the house, were summoned to say if
they could throw any light on the matter. Neither of them knew anything
about it. Had they heard any suspicious noises during the previous night?
They had heard nothing but the pattering of the rain. Had I, lying awake
longer than either of them, heard nothing either? Nothing! Released from
examination, Mr. Franklin, still sticking to the helpless view of our
difficulty, whispered to me: “That man will be of no earthly use to us.
Superintendent Seegrave is an ass.” Released in his turn, Mr. Godfrey
whispered to me—“Evidently a most competent person. Betteredge, I have
the greatest faith in him!” Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients
said, before my time.

Mr. Superintendent’s next proceeding took him back to the “boudoir”
again, with my daughter and me at his heels. His object was to discover
whether any of the furniture had been moved, during the night, out of its
customary place—his previous investigation in the room having,
apparently, not gone quite far enough to satisfy his mind on this point.
While we were still poking about among the chairs and tables, the door
of the bedroom was suddenly opened. After having denied herself to
everybody, Miss Rachel, to our astonishment, walked into the midst of us of
her own accord. She took up her garden hat from a chair, and then went
straight to Penelope with this question:—
“Mr. Franklin Blake sent you with a message to me this morning?”
“Yes, miss.”
“He wished to speak to me, didn’t he?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Where is he now?”
Hearing voices on the terrace below, I looked out of window, and saw the
two gentlemen walking up and down together. Answering for my daughter,
I said, “Mr. Franklin is on the terrace, miss.”
Without another word, without heeding Mr. Superintendent, who tried to
speak to her, pale as death, and wrapped up strangely in her own thoughts,
she left the room, and went down to her cousins on the terrace.
It showed a want of due respect, it showed a breach of good manners, on
my part, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t help looking out of window when
Miss Rachel met the gentlemen outside. She went up to Mr. Franklin
without appearing to notice Mr. Godfrey, who thereupon drew back and left
them by themselves. What she said to Mr. Franklin appeared to be spoken
vehemently. It lasted but for a short time, and, judging by what I saw of his
face from the window, seemed to astonish him beyond all power of
expression. While they were still together, my lady appeared on the terrace.
Miss Rachel saw her—said a few last words to Mr. Franklin—and suddenly
went back into the house again, before her mother came up with her. My
lady, surprised herself, and noticing Mr. Franklin’s surprise, spoke to him.
Mr. Godfrey joined them, and spoke also. Mr. Franklin walked away a little
between the two, telling them what had happened I suppose, for they both
stopped short, after taking a few steps, like persons struck with amazement.

I had just seen as much as this, when the door of the sitting-room was
opened violently. Miss Rachel walked swiftly through to her bedroom, wild
and angry, with fierce eyes and flaming cheeks. Mr. Superintendent once
more attempted to question her. She turned round on him at her bedroom
door. “I have not sent for you!” she cried out vehemently. “I don’t want
you. My Diamond is lost. Neither you nor anybody else will ever find it!”
With those words she went in, and locked the door in our faces. Penelope,
standing nearest to it, heard her burst out crying the moment she was alone
again.
In a rage, one moment; in tears, the next! What did it mean?
I told the Superintendent it meant that Miss Rachel’s temper was upset by
the loss of her jewel. Being anxious for the honour of the family, it
distressed me to see my young lady forget herself—even with a police-
officer—and I made the best excuse I could, accordingly. In my own private
mind I was more puzzled by Miss Rachel’s extraordinary language and
conduct than words can tell. Taking what she had said at her bedroom door
as a guide to guess by, I could only conclude that she was mortally offended
by our sending for the police, and that Mr. Franklin’s astonishment on the
terrace was caused by her having expressed herself to him (as the person
chiefly instrumental in fetching the police) to that effect. If this guess was
right, why—having lost her Diamond—should she object to the presence in
the house of the very people whose business it was to recover it for her?
And how, in Heaven’s name, could she know that the Moonstone would
never be found again?
As things stood, at present, no answer to those questions was to be hoped
for from anybody in the house. Mr. Franklin appeared to think it a point of
honour to forbear repeating to a servant—even to so old a servant as I was
—what Miss Rachel had said to him on the terrace. Mr. Godfrey, who, as a
gentleman and a relative, had been probably admitted into Mr. Franklin’s
confidence, respected that confidence as he was bound to do. My lady, who
was also in the secret no doubt, and who alone had access to Miss Rachel,
owned openly that she could make nothing of her. “You madden me when
you talk of the Diamond!” All her mother’s influence failed to extract from
her a word more than that.
Here we were, then, at a dead-lock about Miss Rachel—and at a dead-
lock about the Moonstone. In the first case, my lady was powerless to help

us. In the second (as you shall presently judge), Mr. Seegrave was fast
approaching the condition of a superintendent at his wits’ end.
Having ferreted about all over the “boudoir,” without making any
discoveries among the furniture, our experienced officer applied to me to
know, whether the servants in general were or were not acquainted with the
place in which the Diamond had been put for the night.
“I knew where it was put, sir,” I said, “to begin with. Samuel, the
footman, knew also—for he was present in the hall, when they were talking
about where the Diamond was to be kept that night. My daughter knew, as
she has already told you. She or Samuel may have mentioned the thing to
the other servants—or the other servants may have heard the talk for
themselves, through the side-door of the hall, which might have been open
to the back staircase. For all I can tell, everybody in the house may have
known where the jewel was, last night.”
My answer presenting rather a wide field for Mr. Superintendent’s
suspicions to range over, he tried to narrow it by asking about the servants’
characters next.
I thought directly of Rosanna Spearman. But it was neither my place nor
my wish to direct suspicion against a poor girl, whose honesty had been
above all doubt as long as I had known her. The matron at the Reformatory
had reported her to my lady as a sincerely penitent and thoroughly
trustworthy girl. It was the Superintendent’s business to discover reason for
suspecting her first—and then, and not till then, it would be my duty to tell
him how she came into my lady’s service. “All our people have excellent
characters,” I said. “And all have deserved the trust their mistress has
placed in them.” After that, there was but one thing left for Mr. Seegrave to
do—namely, to set to work, and tackle the servants’ characters himself.
One after another, they were examined. One after another, they proved to
have nothing to say—and said it (so far as the women were concerned) at
great length, and with a very angry sense of the embargo laid on their
bedrooms. The rest of them being sent back to their places downstairs,
Penelope was then summoned, and examined separately a second time.
My daughter’s little outbreak of temper in the “boudoir,” and her
readiness to think herself suspected, appeared to have produced an
unfavourable impression on Superintendent Seegrave. It seemed also to
dwell a little on his mind, that she had been the last person who saw the

Diamond at night. When the second questioning was over, my girl came
back to me in a frenzy. There was no doubt of it any longer—the police-
officer had almost as good as told her she was the thief! I could scarcely
believe him (taking Mr. Franklin’s view) to be quite such an ass as that. But,
though he said nothing, the eye with which he looked at my daughter was
not a very pleasant eye to see. I laughed it off with poor Penelope, as
something too ridiculous to be treated seriously—which it certainly was.
Secretly, I am afraid I was foolish enough to be angry too. It was a little
trying—it was, indeed. My girl sat down in a corner, with her apron over
her head, quite broken-hearted. Foolish of her, you will say. She might have
waited till he openly accused her. Well, being a man of just an equal temper,
I admit that. Still Mr. Superintendent might have remembered—never mind
what he might have remembered. The devil take him!
The next and last step in the investigation brought matters, as they say, to
a crisis. The officer had an interview (at which I was present) with my lady.
After informing her that the Diamond must have been taken by somebody
in the house, he requested permission for himself and his men to search the
servants’ rooms and boxes on the spot. My good mistress, like the generous
high-bred woman she was, refused to let us be treated like thieves. “I will
never consent to make such a return as that,” she said, “for all I owe to the
faithful servants who are employed in my house.”
Mr. Superintendent made his bow, with a look in my direction, which
said plainly, “Why employ me, if you are to tie my hands in this way?” As
head of the servants, I felt directly that we were bound, in justice to all
parties, not to profit by our mistress’s generosity. “We gratefully thank your
ladyship,” I said; “but we ask your permission to do what is right in this
matter by giving up our keys. When Gabriel Betteredge sets the example,”
says I, stopping Superintendent Seegrave at the door, “the rest of the
servants will follow, I promise you. There are my keys, to begin with!” My
lady took me by the hand, and thanked me with the tears in her eyes. Lord!
what would I not have given, at that moment, for the privilege of knocking
Superintendent Seegrave down!
As I had promised for them, the other servants followed my lead, sorely
against the grain, of course, but all taking the view that I took. The women
were a sight to see, while the police-officers were rummaging among their
things. The cook looked as if she could grill Mr. Superintendent alive on a

furnace, and the other women looked as if they could eat him when he was
done.
The search over, and no Diamond or sign of a Diamond being found, of
course, anywhere, Superintendent Seegrave retired to my little room to
consider with himself what he was to do next. He and his men had now
been hours in the house, and had not advanced us one inch towards a
discovery of how the Moonstone had been taken, or of whom we were to
suspect as the thief.
While the police-officer was still pondering in solitude, I was sent for to
see Mr. Franklin in the library. To my unutterable astonishment, just as my
hand was on the door, it was suddenly opened from the inside, and out
walked Rosanna Spearman!

After the library had been swept and cleaned in the morning, neither first
nor second housemaid had any business in that room at any later period of
the day. I stopped Rosanna Spearman, and charged her with a breach of
domestic discipline on the spot.
“What might you want in the library at this time of day?” I inquired.
“Mr. Franklin Blake dropped one of his rings upstairs,” says Rosanna;
“and I have been into the library to give it to him.” The girl’s face was all in
a flush as she made me that answer; and she walked away with a toss of her
head and a look of self-importance which I was quite at a loss to account
for. The proceedings in the house had doubtless upset all the women-
servants more or less; but none of them had gone clean out of their natural
characters, as Rosanna, to all appearance, had now gone out of hers.
I found Mr. Franklin writing at the library-table. He asked for a
conveyance to the railway station the moment I entered the room. The first
sound of his voice informed me that we now had the resolute side of him
uppermost once more. The man made of cotton had disappeared; and the
man made of iron sat before me again.
“Going to London, sir?” I asked.
“Going to telegraph to London,” says Mr. Franklin. “I have convinced
my aunt that we must have a cleverer head than Superintendent Seegrave’s
to help us; and I have got her permission to despatch a telegram to my
father. He knows the Chief Commissioner of Police, and the Commissioner

can lay his hand on the right man to solve the mystery of the Diamond.
Talking of mysteries, by-the-bye,” says Mr. Franklin, dropping his voice, “I
have another word to say to you before you go to the stables. Don’t breathe
a word of it to anybody as yet; but either Rosanna Spearman’s head is not
quite right, or I am afraid she knows more about the Moonstone than she
ought to know.”
I can hardly tell whether I was more startled or distressed at hearing him
say that. If I had been younger, I might have confessed as much to Mr.
Franklin. But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit. In cases
where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.
“She came in here with a ring I dropped in my bedroom,” Mr. Franklin
went on. “When I had thanked her, of course I expected her to go. Instead
of that, she stood opposite to me at the table, looking at me in the oddest
manner—half frightened, and half familiar—I couldn’t make it out. ‘This is
a strange thing about the Diamond, sir,’ she said, in a curiously sudden,
headlong way. I said, ‘Yes, it was,’ and wondered what was coming next.
Upon my honour, Betteredge, I think she must be wrong in the head! She
said, ‘They will never find the Diamond, sir, will they? No! nor the person
who took it—I’ll answer for that.’ She actually nodded and smiled at me!
Before I could ask her what she meant, we heard your step outside. I
suppose she was afraid of your catching her here. At any rate, she changed
colour, and left the room. What on earth does it mean?”
I could not bring myself to tell him the girl’s story, even then. It would
have been almost as good as telling him that she was the thief. Besides,
even if I had made a clean breast of it, and even supposing she was the
thief, the reason why she should let out her secret to Mr. Franklin, of all the
people in the world, would have been still as far to seek as ever.
“I can’t bear the idea of getting the poor girl into a scrape, merely
because she has a flighty way with her, and talks very strangely,” Mr.
Franklin went on. “And yet if she had said to the Superintendent what she
said to me, fool as he is, I’m afraid——” He stopped there, and left the rest
unspoken.
“The best way, sir,” I said, “will be for me to say two words privately to
my mistress about it at the first opportunity. My lady has a very friendly
interest in Rosanna; and the girl may only have been forward and foolish,
after all. When there’s a mess of any kind in a house, sir, the women-

servants like to look at the gloomy side—it gives the poor wretches a kind
of importance in their own eyes. If there’s anybody ill, trust the women for
prophesying that the person will die. If it’s a jewel lost, trust them for
prophesying that it will never be found again.”
This view (which I am bound to say, I thought a probable view myself,
on reflection) seemed to relieve Mr. Franklin mightily: he folded up his
telegram, and dismissed the subject. On my way to the stables, to order the
pony-chaise, I looked in at the servants’ hall, where they were at dinner.
Rosanna Spearman was not among them. On inquiry, I found that she had
been suddenly taken ill, and had gone upstairs to her own room to lie down.
“Curious! She looked well enough when I saw her last,” I remarked.
Penelope followed me out. “Don’t talk in that way before the rest of
them, father,” she said. “You only make them harder on Rosanna than ever.
The poor thing is breaking her heart about Mr. Franklin Blake.”
Here was another view of the girl’s conduct. If it was possible for
Penelope to be right, the explanation of Rosanna’s strange language and
behaviour might have been all in this—that she didn’t care what she said, so
long as she could surprise Mr. Franklin into speaking to her. Granting that
to be the right reading of the riddle, it accounted, perhaps, for her flighty,
self-conceited manner when she passed me in the hall. Though he had only
said three words, still she had carried her point, and Mr. Franklin had
spoken to her.
I saw the pony harnessed myself. In the infernal network of mysteries
and uncertainties that now surrounded us, I declare it was a relief to observe
how well the buckles and straps understood each other! When you had seen
the pony backed into the shafts of the chaise, you had seen something there
was no doubt about. And that, let me tell you, was becoming a treat of the
rarest kind in our household.
Going round with the chaise to the front door, I found not only Mr.
Franklin, but Mr. Godfrey and Superintendent Seegrave also waiting for me
on the steps.
Mr. Superintendent’s reflections (after failing to find the Diamond in the
servants’ rooms or boxes) had led him, it appeared, to an entirely new
conclusion. Still sticking to his first text, namely, that somebody in the
house had stolen the jewel, our experienced officer was now of the opinion
that the thief (he was wise enough not to name poor Penelope, whatever he

might privately think of her!) had been acting in concert with the Indians;
and he accordingly proposed shifting his inquiries to the jugglers in the
prison at Frizinghall. Hearing of this new move, Mr. Franklin had
volunteered to take the Superintendent back to the town, from which he
could telegraph to London as easily as from our station. Mr. Godfrey, still
devoutly believing in Mr. Seegrave, and greatly interested in witnessing the
examination of the Indians, had begged leave to accompany the officer to
Frizinghall. One of the two inferior policemen was to be left at the house, in
case anything happened. The other was to go back with the Superintendent
to the town. So the four places in the pony-chaise were just filled.
Before he took the reins to drive off, Mr. Franklin walked me away a few
steps out of hearing of the others.
“I will wait to telegraph to London,” he said, “till I see what comes of our
examination of the Indians. My own conviction is, that this muddle-headed
local police-officer is as much in the dark as ever, and is simply trying to
gain time. The idea of any of the servants being in league with the Indians is
a preposterous absurdity, in my opinion. Keep about the house, Betteredge,
till I come back, and try what you can make of Rosanna Spearman. I don’t
ask you to do anything degrading to your own self-respect, or anything
cruel towards the girl. I only ask you to exercise your observation more
carefully than usual. We will make as light of it as we can before my aunt—
but this is a more important matter than you may suppose.”
“It is a matter of twenty thousand pounds, sir,” I said, thinking of the
value of the Diamond.
“It’s a matter of quieting Rachel’s mind,” answered Mr. Franklin gravely.
“I am very uneasy about her.”
He left me suddenly; as if he desired to cut short any further talk between
us. I thought I understood why. Further talk might have let me into the
secret of what Miss Rachel had said to him on the terrace.
So they drove away to Frizinghall. I was ready enough, in the girl’s own
interest, to have a little talk with Rosanna in private. But the needful
opportunity failed to present itself. She only came downstairs again at tea-
time. When she did appear, she was flighty and excited, had what they call
an hysterical attack, took a dose of sal-volatile by my lady’s order, and was
sent back to her bed.

The day wore on to its end drearily and miserably enough, I can tell you.
Miss Rachel still kept her room, declaring that she was too ill to come down
to dinner that day. My lady was in such low spirits about her daughter, that I
could not bring myself to make her additionally anxious, by reporting what
Rosanna Spearman had said to Mr. Franklin. Penelope persisted in
believing that she was to be forthwith tried, sentenced, and transported for
theft. The other women took to their Bibles and hymn-books, and looked as
sour as verjuice over their reading—a result, which I have observed, in my
sphere of life, to follow generally on the performance of acts of piety at
unaccustomed periods of the day. As for me, I hadn’t even heart enough to
open my Robinson Crusoe. I went out into the yard, and, being hard up for
a little cheerful society, set my chair by the kennels, and talked to the dogs.
Half an hour before dinner-time, the two gentlemen came back from
Frizinghall, having arranged with Superintendent Seegrave that he was to
return to us the next day. They had called on Mr. Murthwaite, the Indian
traveller, at his present residence, near the town. At Mr. Franklin’s request,
he had kindly given them the benefit of his knowledge of the language, in
dealing with those two, out of the three Indians, who knew nothing of
English. The examination, conducted carefully, and at great length, had
ended in nothing; not the shadow of a reason being discovered for
suspecting the jugglers of having tampered with any of our servants. On
reaching that conclusion, Mr. Franklin had sent his telegraphic message to
London, and there the matter now rested till tomorrow came.
So much for the history of the day that followed the birthday. Not a
glimmer of light had broken in on us, so far. A day or two after, however,
the darkness lifted a little. How, and with what result, you shall presently
see.

CHAPTER XII
The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened. With the Friday
morning came two pieces of news.
Item the first: the baker’s man declared he had met Rosanna Spearman,
on the previous afternoon, with a thick veil on, walking towards Frizinghall
by the foot-path way over the moor. It seemed strange that anybody should
be mistaken about Rosanna, whose shoulder marked her out pretty plainly,
poor thing—but mistaken the man must have been; for Rosanna, as you
know, had been all the Thursday afternoon ill upstairs in her room.
Item the second came through the postman. Worthy Mr. Candy had said
one more of his many unlucky things, when he drove off in the rain on the
birthday night, and told me that a doctor’s skin was waterproof. In spite of
his skin, the wet had got through him. He had caught a chill that night, and
was now down with a fever. The last accounts, brought by the postman,
represented him to be light-headed—talking nonsense as glibly, poor man,
in his delirium as he often talked it in his sober senses. We were all sorry for
the little doctor; but Mr. Franklin appeared to regret his illness, chiefly on
Miss Rachel’s account. From what he said to my lady, while I was in the
room at breakfast-time, he appeared to think that Miss Rachel—if the
suspense about the Moonstone was not soon set at rest—might stand in
urgent need of the best medical advice at our disposal.
Breakfast had not been over long, when a telegram from Mr. Blake, the
elder, arrived, in answer to his son. It informed us that he had laid hands (by
help of his friend, the Commissioner) on the right man to help us. The name
of him was Sergeant Cuff; and the arrival of him from London might be
expected by the morning train.
At reading the name of the new police-officer, Mr. Franklin gave a start.
It seems that he had heard some curious anecdotes about Sergeant Cuff,
from his father’s lawyer, during his stay in London.
“I begin to hope we are seeing the end of our anxieties already,” he said.
“If half the stories I have heard are true, when it comes to unravelling a

mystery, there isn’t the equal in England of Sergeant Cuff!”
We all got excited and impatient as the time drew near for the appearance
of this renowned and capable character. Superintendent Seegrave, returning
to us at his appointed time, and hearing that the Sergeant was expected,
instantly shut himself up in a room, with pen, ink, and paper, to make notes
of the Report which would be certainly expected from him. I should have
liked to have gone to the station myself, to fetch the Sergeant. But my
lady’s carriage and horses were not to be thought of, even for the celebrated
Cuff; and the pony-chaise was required later for Mr. Godfrey. He deeply
regretted being obliged to leave his aunt at such an anxious time; and he
kindly put off the hour of his departure till as late as the last train, for the
purpose of hearing what the clever London police-officer thought of the
case. But on Friday night he must be in town, having a Ladies’ Charity, in
difficulties, waiting to consult him on Saturday morning.
When the time came for the Sergeant’s arrival, I went down to the gate to
look out for him.
A fly from the railway drove up as I reached the lodge; and out got a
grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got
an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was dressed all in
decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a
hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn
leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when
they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more
from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice was
melancholy; his long lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might have
been a parson, or an undertaker—or anything else you like, except what he
really was. A more complete opposite to Superintendent Seegrave than
Sergeant Cuff, and a less comforting officer to look at, for a family in
distress, I defy you to discover, search where you may.
“Is this Lady Verinder’s?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I am Sergeant Cuff.”
“This way, sir, if you please.”
On our road to the house, I mentioned my name and position in the
family, to satisfy him that he might speak to me about the business on

which my lady was to employ him. Not a word did he say about the
business, however, for all that. He admired the grounds, and remarked that
he felt the sea air very brisk and refreshing. I privately wondered, on my
side, how the celebrated Cuff had got his reputation. We reached the house,
in the temper of two strange dogs, coupled up together for the first time in
their lives by the same chain.
Asking for my lady, and hearing that she was in one of the
conservatories, we went round to the gardens at the back, and sent a servant
to seek her. While we were waiting, Sergeant Cuff looked through the
evergreen arch on our left, spied out our rosery, and walked straight in, with
the first appearance of anything like interest that he had shown yet. To the
gardener’s astonishment, and to my disgust, this celebrated policeman
proved to be quite a mine of learning on the trumpery subject of rose-
gardens.
“Ah, you’ve got the right exposure here to the south and sou’-west,” says
the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his
melancholy voice. “This is the shape for a rosery—nothing like a circle set
in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn’t to
be gravel walks like these. Grass, Mr. Gardener—grass walks between your
roses; gravel’s too hard for them. That’s a sweet pretty bed of white roses
and blush roses. They always mix well together, don’t they? Here’s the
white musk rose, Mr. Betteredge—our old English rose holding up its head
along with the best and the newest of them. Pretty dear!” says the Sergeant,
fondling the Musk Rose with his lanky fingers, and speaking to it as if he
was speaking to a child.
This was a nice sort of man to recover Miss Rachel’s Diamond, and to
find out the thief who stole it!
“You seem to be fond of roses, Sergeant?” I remarked.
“I haven’t much time to be fond of anything,” says Sergeant Cuff. “But
when I have a moment’s fondness to bestow, most times, Mr. Betteredge,
the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father’s nursery garden,
and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please
God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.
There will be grass walks, Mr. Gardener, between my beds,” says the
Sergeant, on whose mind the gravel paths of our rosery seemed to dwell
unpleasantly.

“It seems an odd taste, sir,” I ventured to say, “for a man in your line of
life.”
“If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),” says
Sergeant Cuff, “you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times,
as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business. Show me any two
things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I’ll
correct my tastes accordingly—if it isn’t too late at my time of life. You find
the damask rose a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts, don’t you, Mr.
Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here’s a lady coming. Is it Lady Verinder?”
He had seen her before either I or the gardener had seen her, though we
knew which way to look, and he didn’t. I began to think him rather a
quicker man than he appeared to be at first sight.
The Sergeant’s appearance, or the Sergeant’s errand—one or both—
seemed to cause my lady some little embarrassment. She was, for the first
time in all my experience of her, at a loss what to say at an interview with a
stranger. Sergeant Cuff put her at her ease directly. He asked if any other
person had been employed about the robbery before we sent for him; and
hearing that another person had been called in, and was now in the house,
begged leave to speak to him before anything else was done.
My lady led the way back. Before he followed her, the Sergeant relieved
his mind on the subject of the gravel walks by a parting word to the
gardener. “Get her ladyship to try grass,” he said, with a sour look at the
paths. “No gravel! no gravel!”
Why Superintendent Seegrave should have appeared to be several sizes
smaller than life, on being presented to Sergeant Cuff, I can’t undertake to
explain. I can only state the fact. They retired together; and remained a
weary long time shut up from all mortal intrusion. When they came out, Mr.
Superintendent was excited, and Mr. Sergeant was yawning.
“The Sergeant wishes to see Miss Verinder’s sitting-room,” says Mr.
Seegrave, addressing me with great pomp and eagerness. “The Sergeant
may have some questions to ask. Attend the Sergeant, if you please!”
While I was being ordered about in this way, I looked at the great Cuff.
The great Cuff, on his side, looked at Superintendent Seegrave in that
quietly expecting way which I have already noticed. I can’t affirm that he
was on the watch for his brother officer’s speedy appearance in the
character of an Ass—I can only say that I strongly suspected it.

I led the way upstairs. The Sergeant went softly all over the Indian
cabinet and all round the “boudoir;” asking questions (occasionally only of
Mr. Superintendent, and continually of me), the drift of which I believe to
have been equally unintelligible to both of us. In due time, his course
brought him to the door, and put him face to face with the decorative
painting that you know of. He laid one lean inquiring finger on the small
smear, just under the lock, which Superintendent Seegrave had already
noticed, when he reproved the women-servants for all crowding together
into the room.
“That’s a pity,” says Sergeant Cuff. “How did it happen?”
He put the question to me. I answered that the women-servants had
crowded into the room on the previous morning, and that some of their
petticoats had done the mischief, “Superintendent Seegrave ordered them
out, sir,” I added, “before they did any more harm.”
“Right!” says Mr. Superintendent in his military way. “I ordered them
out. The petticoats did it, Sergeant—the petticoats did it.”
“Did you notice which petticoat did it?” asked Sergeant Cuff, still
addressing himself, not to his brother-officer, but to me.
“No, sir.”
He turned to Superintendent Seegrave upon that, and said, “You noticed, I
suppose?”
Mr. Superintendent looked a little taken aback; but he made the best of it.
“I can’t charge my memory, Sergeant,” he said, “a mere trifle—a mere
trifle.”
Sergeant Cuff looked at Mr. Seegrave, as he had looked at the gravel
walks in the rosery, and gave us, in his melancholy way, the first taste of his
quality which we had had yet.
“I made a private inquiry last week, Mr. Superintendent,” he said. “At
one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there was a
spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for. In all my
experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met
with such a thing as a trifle yet. Before we go a step further in this business
we must see the petticoat that made the smear, and we must know for
certain when that paint was wet.”

Mr. Superintendent—taking his set-down rather sulkily—asked if he
should summon the women. Sergeant Cuff, after considering a minute,
sighed, and shook his head.
“No,” he said, “we’ll take the matter of the paint first. It’s a question of
Yes or No with the paint—which is short. It’s a question of petticoats with
the women—which is long. What o’clock was it when the servants were in
this room yesterday morning? Eleven o’clock—eh? Is there anybody in the
house who knows whether that paint was wet or dry, at eleven yesterday
morning?”
“Her ladyship’s nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, knows,” I said.
“Is the gentleman in the house?”
Mr. Franklin was as close at hand as could be—waiting for his first
chance of being introduced to the great Cuff. In half a minute he was in the
room, and was giving his evidence as follows:
“That door, Sergeant,” he said, “has been painted by Miss Verinder, under
my inspection, with my help, and in a vehicle of my own composition. The
vehicle dries whatever colours may be used with it, in twelve hours.”
“Do you remember when the smeared bit was done, sir?” asked the
Sergeant.
“Perfectly,” answered Mr. Franklin. “That was the last morsel of the door
to be finished. We wanted to get it done, on Wednesday last—and I myself
completed it by three in the afternoon, or soon after.”
“Today is Friday,” said Sergeant Cuff, addressing himself to
Superintendent Seegrave. “Let us reckon back, sir. At three on the
Wednesday afternoon, that bit of the painting was completed. The vehicle
dried it in twelve hours—that is to say, dried it by three o’clock on
Thursday morning. At eleven on Thursday morning you held your inquiry
here. Take three from eleven, and eight remains. That paint had been eight
hours dry, Mr. Superintendent, when you supposed that the women-
servants’ petticoats smeared it.”
First knock-down blow for Mr. Seegrave! If he had not suspected poor
Penelope, I should have pitied him.
Having settled the question of the paint, Sergeant Cuff, from that
moment, gave his brother-officer up as a bad job—and addressed himself to
Mr. Franklin, as the more promising assistant of the two.

“It’s quite on the cards, sir,” he said, “that you have put the clue into our
hands.”
As the words passed his lips, the bedroom door opened, and Miss Rachel
came out among us suddenly.
She addressed herself to the Sergeant, without appearing to notice (or to
heed) that he was a perfect stranger to her.
“Did you say,” she asked, pointing to Mr. Franklin, “that he had put the
clue into your hands?”
(“This is Miss Verinder,” I whispered, behind the Sergeant.)
“That gentleman, miss,” says the Sergeant—with his steely-grey eyes
carefully studying my young lady’s face—“has possibly put the clue into
our hands.”
She turned for one moment, and tried to look at Mr. Franklin. I say, tried,
for she suddenly looked away again before their eyes met. There seemed to
be some strange disturbance in her mind. She coloured up, and then she
turned pale again. With the paleness, there came a new look into her face—
a look which it startled me to see.
“Having answered your question, miss,” says the Sergeant, “I beg leave
to make an inquiry in my turn. There is a smear on the painting of your
door, here. Do you happen to know when it was done? or who did it?”
Instead of making any reply, Miss Rachel went on with her questions, as
if he had not spoken, or as if she had not heard him.
“Are you another police-officer?” she asked.
“I am Sergeant Cuff, miss, of the Detective Police.”
“Do you think a young lady’s advice worth having?”
“I shall be glad to hear it, miss.”
“Do your duty by yourself—and don’t allow Mr. Franklin Blake to help
you!”
She said those words so spitefully, so savagely, with such an
extraordinary outbreak of ill-will towards Mr. Franklin, in her voice and in
her look, that—though I had known her from a baby, though I loved and
honoured her next to my lady herself—I was ashamed of Miss Rachel for
the first time in my life.

Sergeant Cuff’s immovable eyes never stirred from off her face. “Thank
you, miss,” he said. “Do you happen to know anything about the smear?
Might you have done it by accident yourself?”
“I know nothing about the smear.”
With that answer, she turned away, and shut herself up again in her
bedroom. This time, I heard her—as Penelope had heard her before—burst
out crying as soon as she was alone again.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at the Sergeant—I looked at Mr. Franklin,
who stood nearest to me. He seemed to be even more sorely distressed at
what had passed than I was.
“I told you I was uneasy about her,” he said. “And now you see why.”
“Miss Verinder appears to be a little out of temper about the loss of her
Diamond,” remarked the Sergeant. “It’s a valuable jewel. Natural enough!
natural enough!”
Here was the excuse that I had made for her (when she forgot herself
before Superintendent Seegrave, on the previous day) being made for her
over again, by a man who couldn’t have had my interest in making it—for
he was a perfect stranger! A kind of cold shudder ran through me, which I
couldn’t account for at the time. I know, now, that I must have got my first
suspicion, at that moment, of a new light (and horrid light) having suddenly
fallen on the case, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff—purely and entirely in
consequence of what he had seen in Miss Rachel, and heard from Miss
Rachel, at that first interview between them.
“A young lady’s tongue is a privileged member, sir,” says the Sergeant to
Mr. Franklin. “Let us forget what has passed, and go straight on with this
business. Thanks to you, we know when the paint was dry. The next thing to
discover is when the paint was last seen without that smear. You have got a
head on your shoulders—and you understand what I mean.”
Mr. Franklin composed himself, and came back with an effort from Miss
Rachel to the matter in hand.
“I think I do understand,” he said. “The more we narrow the question of
time, the more we also narrow the field of inquiry.”
“That’s it, sir,” said the Sergeant. “Did you notice your work here, on the
Wednesday afternoon, after you had done it?”
Mr. Franklin shook his head, and answered, “I can’t say I did.”

“Did you?” inquired Sergeant Cuff, turning to me.
“I can’t say I did either, sir.”
“Who was the last person in the room, the last thing on Wednesday
night?”
“Miss Rachel, I suppose, sir.”
Mr. Franklin struck in there, “Or possibly your daughter, Betteredge.” He
turned to Sergeant Cuff, and explained that my daughter was Miss
Verinder’s maid.
“Mr. Betteredge, ask your daughter to step up. Stop!” says the Sergeant,
taking me away to the window, out of earshot. “Your Superintendent here,”
he went on, in a whisper, “has made a pretty full report to me of the manner
in which he has managed this case. Among other things, he has, by his own
confession, set the servants’ backs up. It’s very important to smooth them
down again. Tell your daughter, and tell the rest of them, these two things,
with my compliments: First, that I have no evidence before me, yet, that the
Diamond has been stolen; I only know that the Diamond has been lost.
Second, that my business here with the servants is simply to ask them to lay
their heads together and help me to find it.”
My experience of the women-servants, when Superintendent Seegrave
laid his embargo on their rooms, came in handy here.
“May I make so bold, Sergeant, as to tell the women a third thing?” I
asked. “Are they free (with your compliments) to fidget up and downstairs,
and whisk in and out of their bedrooms, if the fit takes them?”
“Perfectly free,” said the Sergeant.
“That will smooth them down, sir,” I remarked, “from the cook to the
scullion.”
“Go, and do it at once, Mr. Betteredge.”
I did it in less than five minutes. There was only one difficulty when I
came to the bit about the bedrooms. It took a pretty stiff exertion of my
authority, as chief, to prevent the whole of the female household from
following me and Penelope upstairs, in the character of volunteer witnesses
in a burning fever of anxiety to help Sergeant Cuff.
The Sergeant seemed to approve of Penelope. He became a trifle less
dreary; and he looked much as he had looked when he noticed the white

musk rose in the flower-garden. Here is my daughter’s evidence, as drawn
off from her by the Sergeant. She gave it, I think, very prettily—but, there!
she is my child all over: nothing of her mother in her; Lord bless you,
nothing of her mother in her!
Penelope examined: Took a lively interest in the painting on the door,
having helped to mix the colours. Noticed the bit of work under the lock,
because it was the last bit done. Had seen it, some hours afterwards, without
a smear. Had left it, as late as twelve at night, without a smear. Had, at that
hour, wished her young lady good-night in the bedroom; had heard the
clock strike in the “boudoir”; had her hand at the time on the handle of the
painted door; knew the paint was wet (having helped to mix the colours, as
aforesaid); took particular pains not to touch it; could swear that she held up
the skirts of her dress, and that there was no smear on the paint then; could
not swear that her dress mightn’t have touched it accidentally in going out;
remembered the dress she had on, because it was new, a present from Miss
Rachel; her father remembered, and could speak to it, too; could, and
would, and did fetch it; dress recognised by her father as the dress she wore
that night; skirts examined, a long job from the size of them; not the ghost
of a paint-stain discovered anywhere. End of Penelope’s evidence—and
very pretty and convincing, too. Signed, Gabriel Betteredge.
The Sergeant’s next proceeding was to question me about any large dogs
in the house who might have got into the room, and done the mischief with
a whisk of their tails. Hearing that this was impossible, he next sent for a
magnifying-glass, and tried how the smear looked, seen that way. No skin-
mark (as of a human hand) printed off on the paint. All the signs visible—
signs which told that the paint had been smeared by some loose article of
somebody’s dress touching it in going by. That somebody (putting together
Penelope’s evidence and Mr. Franklin’s evidence) must have been in the
room, and done the mischief, between midnight and three o’clock on the
Thursday morning.
Having brought his investigation to this point, Sergeant Cuff discovered
that such a person as Superintendent Seegrave was still left in the room,
upon which he summed up the proceedings for his brother-officer’s benefit,
as follows:
“This trifle of yours, Mr. Superintendent,” says the Sergeant, pointing to
the place on the door, “has grown a little in importance since you noticed it

last. At the present stage of the inquiry there are, as I take it, three
discoveries to make, starting from that smear. Find out (first) whether there
is any article of dress in this house with the smear of the paint on it. Find
out (second) who that dress belongs to. Find out (third) how the person can
account for having been in this 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 has got the Diamond. I’ll work this by
myself, if you please, and detain you no longer from your regular business
in the town. You have got one of your men here, I see. Leave him here at
my disposal, in case I want him—and allow me to wish you good morning.”
Superintendent Seegrave’s respect for the Sergeant was great; but his
respect for himself was greater still. Hit hard by the celebrated Cuff, he hit
back smartly, to the best of his ability, on leaving the room.
“I have abstained from expressing any opinion, so far,” says Mr.
Superintendent, with his military voice still in good working order. “I have
now only one remark to offer on leaving this case in your hands. There is
such a thing, Sergeant, as making a mountain out of a molehill. Good
morning.”
“There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a molehill, in
consequence of your head being too high to see it.” Having returned his
brother-officer’s compliments in those terms, Sergeant Cuff wheeled about,
and walked away to the window by himself.
Mr. Franklin and I waited to see what was coming next. The Sergeant
stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, looking out, and
whistling the tune of “The Last Rose of Summer” softly to himself. Later in
the proceedings, I discovered that he only forgot his manners so far as to
whistle, when his mind was hard at work, seeing its way inch by inch to its
own private ends, on which occasions “The Last Rose of Summer”
evidently helped and encouraged him. I suppose it fitted in somehow with
his character. It reminded him, you see, of his favourite roses, and, as he
whistled it, it was the most melancholy tune going.
Turning from the window, after a minute or two, the Sergeant walked
into the middle of the room, and stopped there, deep in thought, with his
eyes on Miss Rachel’s bedroom door. After a little he roused himself,
nodded his head, as much as to say, “That will do,” and, addressing me,

asked for ten minutes’ conversation with my mistress, at her ladyship’s
earliest convenience.
Leaving the room with this message, I heard Mr. Franklin ask the
Sergeant a question, and stopped to hear the answer also at the threshold of
the door.
“Can you guess yet,” inquired Mr. Franklin, “who has stolen the
Diamond?”
“Nobody has stolen the Diamond,” answered Sergeant Cuff.
We both started at that extraordinary view of the case, and both earnestly
begged him to tell us what he meant.
“Wait a little,” said the Sergeant. “The pieces of the puzzle are not all put
together yet.”

CHAPTER XIII
I found my lady in her own sitting room. She started and looked annoyed
when I mentioned that Sergeant Cuff wished to speak to her.
“Must I see him?” she asked. “Can’t you represent me, Gabriel?”
I felt at a loss to understand this, and showed it plainly, I suppose, in my
face. My lady was so good as to explain herself.
“I am afraid my nerves are a little shaken,” she said. “There is something
in that police-officer from London which I recoil from—I don’t know why.
I have a presentiment that he is bringing trouble and misery with him into
the house. Very foolish, and very unlike me—but so it is.”
I hardly knew what to say to this. The more I saw of Sergeant Cuff, the
better I liked him. My lady rallied a little after having opened her heart to
me—being, naturally, a woman of a high courage, as I have already told
you.
“If I must see him, I must,” she said. “But I can’t prevail on myself to see
him alone. Bring him in, Gabriel, and stay here as long as he stays.”
This was the first attack of the megrims that I remembered in my mistress
since the time when she was a young girl. I went back to the “boudoir.” Mr.
Franklin strolled out into the garden, and joined Mr. Godfrey, whose time
for departure was now drawing near. Sergeant Cuff and I went straight to
my mistress’s room.
I declare my lady turned a shade paler at the sight of him! She
commanded herself, however, in other respects, and asked the Sergeant if
he had any objection to my being present. She was so good as to add, that I
was her trusted adviser, as well as her old servant, and that in anything
which related to the household I was the person whom it might be most
profitable to consult. The Sergeant politely answered that he would take my
presence as a favour, having something to say about the servants in general,
and having found my experience in that quarter already of some use to him.
My lady pointed to two chairs, and we set in for our conference
immediately.

“I have already formed an opinion on this case,” says Sergeant Cuff,
“which I beg your ladyship’s permission to keep to myself for the present.
My business now is to mention what I have discovered upstairs in Miss
Verinder’s sitting-room, and what I have decided (with your ladyship’s
leave) on doing next.”
He then went into the matter of the smear on the paint, and stated the
conclusions he drew from it—just as he had stated them (only with greater
respect of language) to Superintendent Seegrave. “One thing,” he said, in
conclusion, “is certain. The Diamond is missing out of the drawer in the
cabinet. Another thing is next to certain. The marks from the smear on the
door must be on some article of dress belonging to somebody in this house.
We must discover that article of dress before we go a step further.”
“And that discovery,” remarked my mistress, “implies, I presume, the
discovery of the thief?”
“I beg your ladyship’s pardon—I don’t say the Diamond is stolen. I only
say, at present, that the Diamond is missing. The discovery of the stained
dress may lead the way to finding it.”
Her ladyship looked at me. “Do you understand this?” she said.
“Sergeant Cuff understands it, my lady,” I answered.
“How do you propose to discover the stained dress?” inquired my
mistress, addressing herself once more to the Sergeant. “My good servants,
who have been with me for years, have, I am ashamed to say, had their
boxes and rooms searched already by the other officer. I can’t and won’t
permit them to be insulted in that way a second time!”
(There was a mistress to serve! There was a woman in ten thousand, if
you like!)
“That is the very point I was about to put to your ladyship,” said the
Sergeant. “The other officer has done a world of harm to this inquiry, by
letting the servants see that he suspected them. If I give them cause to think
themselves suspected a second time, there’s no knowing what obstacles
they may not throw in my way—the women especially. At the same time,
their boxes must be searched again—for this plain reason, that the first
investigation only looked for the Diamond, and that the second
investigation must look for the stained dress. I quite agree with you, my

lady, that the servants’ feelings ought to be consulted. But I am equally
clear that the servants’ wardrobes ought to be searched.”
This looked very like a dead-lock. My lady said so, in choicer language
than mine.
“I have got a plan to meet the difficulty,” said Sergeant Cuff, “if your
ladyship will consent to it. I propose explaining the case to the servants.”
“The women will think themselves suspected directly,” I said,
interrupting him.
“The women won’t, Mr. Betteredge,” answered the Sergeant, “if I can tell
them I am going to examine the wardrobes of everybody—from her
ladyship downwards—who slept in the house on Wednesday night. It’s a
mere formality,” he added, with a side look at my mistress; “but the
servants will accept it as even dealing between them and their betters; and,
instead of hindering the investigation, they will make a point of honour of
assisting it.”
I saw the truth of that. My lady, after her first surprise was over, saw the
truth of it also.
“You are certain the investigation is necessary?” she said.
“It’s the shortest way that I can see, my lady, to the end we have in view.”
My mistress rose to ring the bell for her maid. “You shall speak to the
servants,” she said, “with the keys of my wardrobe in your hand.”
Sergeant Cuff stopped her by a very unexpected question.
“Hadn’t we better make sure first,” he asked, “that the other ladies and
gentlemen in the house will consent, too?”
“The only other lady in the house is Miss Verinder,” answered my
mistress, with a look of surprise. “The only gentlemen are my nephews, Mr.
Blake and Mr. Ablewhite. There is not the least fear of a refusal from any of
the three.”
I reminded my lady here that Mr. Godfrey was going away. As I said the
words, Mr. Godfrey himself knocked at the door to say good-bye, and was
followed in by Mr. Franklin, who was going with him to the station. My
lady explained the difficulty. Mr. Godfrey settled it directly. He called to
Samuel, through the window, to take his portmanteau upstairs again, and he
then put the key himself into Sergeant Cuff’s hand. “My luggage can follow

me to London,” he said, “when the inquiry is over.” The Sergeant received
the key with a becoming apology. “I am sorry to put you to any
inconvenience, sir, for a mere formality; but the example of their betters
will do wonders in reconciling the servants to this inquiry.” Mr. Godfrey,
after taking leave of my lady, in a most sympathising manner, left a farewell
message for Miss Rachel, the terms of which made it clear to my mind that
he had not taken No for an answer, and that he meant to put the marriage
question to her once more, at the next opportunity. Mr. Franklin, on
following his cousin out, informed the Sergeant that all his clothes were
open to examination, and that nothing he possessed was kept under lock and
key. Sergeant Cuff made his best acknowledgments. His views, you will
observe, had been met with the utmost readiness by my lady, by Mr.
Godfrey, and by Mr. Franklin. There was only Miss Rachel now wanting to
follow their lead, before we called the servants together, and began the
search for the stained dress.
My lady’s unaccountable objection to the Sergeant seemed to make our
conference more distasteful to her than ever, as soon as we were left alone
again. “If I send you down Miss Verinder’s keys,” she said to him, “I
presume I shall have done all you want of me for the present?”
“I beg your ladyship’s pardon,” said Sergeant Cuff. “Before we begin, I
should like, if convenient, to have the washing-book. The stained article of
dress may be an article of linen. If the search leads to nothing, I want to be
able to account next for all the linen in the house, and for all the linen sent
to the wash. If there is an article missing, there will be at least a
presumption that it has got the paint-stain on it, and that it has been
purposely made away with, yesterday or today, by the person owning it.
Superintendent Seegrave,” added the Sergeant, turning to me, “pointed the
attention of the women-servants to the smear, when they all crowded into
the room on Thursday morning. That may turn out, Mr. Betteredge, to have
been one more of Superintendent Seegrave’s many mistakes.”
My lady desired me to ring the bell, and order the washing-book. She
remained with us until it was produced, in case Sergeant Cuff had any
further request to make of her after looking at it.
The washing-book was brought in by Rosanna Spearman. The girl had
come down to breakfast that morning miserably pale and haggard, but
sufficiently recovered from her illness of the previous day to do her usual

work. Sergeant Cuff looked attentively at our second housemaid—at her
face, when she came in; at her crooked shoulder, when she went out.
“Have you anything more to say to me?” asked my lady, still as eager as
ever to be out of the Sergeant’s society.
The great Cuff opened the washing-book, understood it perfectly in half a
minute, and shut it up again. “I venture to trouble your ladyship with one
last question,” he said. “Has the young woman who brought us this book
been in your employment as long as the other servants?”
“Why do you ask?” said my lady.
“The last time I saw her,” answered the Sergeant, “she was in prison for
theft.”
After that, there was no help for it, but to tell him the truth. My mistress
dwelt strongly on Rosanna’s good conduct in her service, and on the high
opinion entertained of her by the matron at the Reformatory. “You don’t
suspect her, I hope?” my lady added, in conclusion, very earnestly.
“I have already told your ladyship that I don’t suspect any person in the
house of thieving—up to the present time.”
After that answer, my lady rose to go upstairs, and ask for Miss Rachel’s
keys. The Sergeant was beforehand with me in opening the door for her. He
made a very low bow. My lady shuddered as she passed him.
We waited, and waited, and no keys appeared. Sergeant Cuff made no
remark to me. He turned his melancholy face to the window; he put his
lanky hands into his pockets; and he whistled “The Last Rose of Summer”
softly to himself.
At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper for
me. I got at my spectacles, with some fumbling and difficulty, feeling the
Sergeant’s dismal eyes fixed on me all the time. There were two or three
lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady. They informed me that
Miss Rachel flatly refused to have her wardrobe examined. Asked for her
reasons, she had burst out crying. Asked again, she had said: “I won’t,
because I won’t. I must yield to force if you use it, but I will yield to
nothing else.” I understood my lady’s disinclination to face Sergeant Cuff
with such an answer from her daughter as that. If I had not been too old for
the amiable weaknesses of youth, I believe I should have blushed at the
notion of facing him myself.

“Any news of Miss Verinder’s keys?” asked the Sergeant.
“My young lady refuses to have her wardrobe examined.”
“Ah!” said the Sergeant.
His voice was not quite in such a perfect state of discipline as his face.
When he said “Ah!” he said it in the tone of a man who had heard
something which he expected to hear. He half angered and half frightened
me—why, I couldn’t tell, but he did it.
“Must the search be given up?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “the search must be given up, because your
young lady refuses to submit to it like the rest. We must examine all the
wardrobes in the house or none. Send Mr. Ablewhite’s portmanteau to
London by the next train, and return the washing-book, with my
compliments and thanks, to the young woman who brought it in.”
He laid the washing-book on the table, and taking out his penknife, began
to trim his nails.
“You don’t seem to be much disappointed,” I said.
“No,” said Sergeant Cuff; “I am not much disappointed.”
I tried to make him explain himself.
“Why should Miss Rachel put an obstacle in your way?” I inquired.
“Isn’t it her interest to help you?”
“Wait a little, Mr. Betteredge—wait a little.”
Cleverer heads than mine might have seen his drift. Or a person less fond
of Miss Rachel than I was, might have seen his drift. My lady’s horror of
him might (as I have since thought) have meant that she saw his drift (as the
scripture says) “in a glass darkly.” I didn’t see it yet—that’s all I know.
“What’s to be done next?” I asked.
Sergeant Cuff finished the nail on which he was then at work, looked at it
for a moment with a melancholy interest, and put up his penknife.
“Come out into the garden,” he said, “and let’s have a look at the roses.”

CHAPTER XIV
The nearest way to the garden, on going out of my lady’s sitting-room,
was by the shrubbery path, which you already know of. For the sake of your
better understanding of what is now to come, I may add to this, that the
shrubbery path was Mr. Franklin’s favourite walk. When he was out in the
grounds, and when we failed to find him anywhere else, we generally found
him here.
I am afraid I must own that I am rather an obstinate old man. The more
firmly Sergeant Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me, the more firmly I
persisted in trying to look in at them. As we turned into the shrubbery path,
I attempted to circumvent him in another way.
“As things are now,” I said, “if I was in your place, I should be at my
wits’ end.”
“If you were in my place,” answered the Sergeant, “you would have
formed an opinion—and, as things are now, any doubt you might previously
have felt about your own conclusions would be completely set at rest.
Never mind for the present what those conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge. I
haven’t brought you out here to draw me like a badger; I have brought you
out here to ask for some information. You might have given it to me no
doubt, in the house, instead of out of it. But doors and listeners have a
knack of getting together; and, in my line of life, we cultivate a healthy
taste for the open air.”
Who was to circumvent this man? I gave in—and waited as patiently as I
could to hear what was coming next.
“We won’t enter into your young lady’s motives,” the Sergeant went on;
“we will only say it’s a pity she declines to assist me, because, by so doing,
she makes this investigation more difficult than it might otherwise have
been. We must now try to solve the mystery of the smear on the door—
which, you may take my word for it, means the mystery of the Diamond
also—in some other way. I have decided to see the servants, and to search
their thoughts and actions, Mr. Betteredge, instead of searching their

wardrobes. Before I begin, however, I want to ask you a question or two.
You are an observant man—did you notice anything strange in any of the
servants (making due allowance, of course, for fright and fluster), after the
loss of the Diamond was found out? Any particular quarrel among them?
Anyone of them not in his or her usual spirits? Unexpectedly out of temper,
for instance? or unexpectedly taken ill?”
I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman’s sudden illness at
yesterday’s dinner—but not time to make any answer—when I saw
Sergeant Cuff’s eyes suddenly turn aside towards the shrubbery; and I heard
him say softly to himself, “Hullo!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“A touch of the rheumatics in my back,” said the Sergeant, in a loud
voice, as if he wanted some third person to hear us. “We shall have a
change in the weather before long.”
A few steps further brought us to the corner of the house. Turning off
sharp to the right, we entered on the terrace, and went down, by the steps in
the middle, into the garden below. Sergeant Cuff stopped there, in the open
space, where we could see round us on every side.
“About that young person, Rosanna Spearman?” he said. “It isn’t very
likely, with her personal appearance, that she has got a lover. But, for the
girl’s own sake, I must ask you at once whether she has provided herself
with a sweetheart, poor wretch, like the rest of them?”
What on earth did he mean, under present circumstances, by putting such
a question to me as that? I stared at him, instead of answering him.
“I saw Rosanna Spearman hiding in the shrubbery as we went by,” said
the Sergeant.
“When you said ‘Hullo’?”
“Yes—when I said ‘Hullo!’ If there’s a sweetheart in the case, the hiding
doesn’t much matter. If there isn’t—as things are in this house—the hiding
is a highly suspicious circumstance, and it will be my painful duty to act on
it accordingly.”
What, in God’s name, was I to say to him? I knew the shrubbery was Mr.
Franklin’s favourite walk; I knew he would most likely turn that way when
he came back from the station; I knew that Penelope had over and over
again caught her fellow-servant hanging about there, and had always

declared to me that Rosanna’s object was to attract Mr. Franklin’s attention.
If my daughter was right, she might well have been lying in wait for Mr.
Franklin’s return when the Sergeant noticed her. I was put between the two
difficulties of mentioning Penelope’s fanciful notion as if it was mine, or of
leaving an unfortunate creature to suffer the consequences, the very serious
consequences, of exciting the suspicion of Sergeant Cuff. Out of pure pity
for the girl—on my soul and my character, out of pure pity for the girl—I
gave the Sergeant the necessary explanations, and told him that Rosanna
had been mad enough to set her heart on Mr. Franklin Blake.
Sergeant Cuff never laughed. On the few occasions when anything
amused him, he curled up a little at the corners of the lips, nothing more. He
curled up now.
“Hadn’t you better say she’s mad enough to be an ugly girl and only a
servant?” he asked. “The falling in love with a gentleman of Mr. Franklin
Blake’s manners and appearance doesn’t seem to me to be the maddest part
of her conduct by any means. However, I’m glad the thing is cleared up: it
relieves one’s mind to have things cleared up. Yes, I’ll keep it a secret, Mr.
Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmity—though I don’t get many
chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin
Blake hasn’t got a suspicion of the girl’s fancy for him? Ah! he would have
found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women have
a bad time of it in this world; let’s hope it will be made up to them in
another. You have got a nice garden here, and a well-kept lawn. See for
yourself how much better the flowers look with grass about them instead of
gravel. No, thank you. I won’t take a rose. It goes to my heart to break them
off the stem. Just as it goes to your heart, you know, when there’s
something wrong in the servants’ hall. Did you notice anything you couldn’t
account for in any of the servants when the loss of the Diamond was first
found out?”
I had got on very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far. But the slyness
with which he slipped in that last question put me on my guard. In plain
English, I didn’t at all relish the notion of helping his inquiries, when those
inquiries took him (in the capacity of snake in the grass) among my fellow-
servants.
“I noticed nothing,” I said, “except that we all lost our heads together,
myself included.”

“Oh,” says the Sergeant, “that’s all you have to tell me, is it?”
I answered, with (as I flattered myself) an unmoved countenance, “That
is all.”
Sergeant Cuff’s dismal eyes looked me hard in the face.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “have you any objection to oblige me by
shaking hands? I have taken an extraordinary liking to you.”
(Why he should have chosen the exact moment when I was deceiving
him to give me that proof of his good opinion, is beyond all
comprehension! I felt a little proud—I really did feel a little proud of having
been one too many at last for the celebrated Cuff!)
We went back to the house; the Sergeant requesting that I would give him
a room to himself, and then send in the servants (the indoor servants only),
one after another, in the order of their rank, from first to last.
I showed Sergeant Cuff into my own room, and then called the servants
together in the hall. Rosanna Spearman appeared among them, much as
usual. She was as quick in her way as the Sergeant in his, and I suspect she
had heard what he said to me about the servants in general, just before he
discovered her. There she was, at any rate, looking as if she had never heard
of such a place as the shrubbery in her life.
I sent them in, one by one, as desired. The cook was the first to enter the
Court of Justice, otherwise my room. She remained but a short time.
Report, on coming out: “Sergeant Cuff is depressed in his spirits; but
Sergeant Cuff is a perfect gentleman.” My lady’s own maid followed.
Remained much longer. Report, on coming out: “If Sergeant Cuff doesn’t
believe a respectable woman, he might keep his opinion to himself, at any
rate!” Penelope went next. Remained only a moment or two. Report, on
coming out: “Sergeant Cuff is much to be pitied. He must have been
crossed in love, father, when he was a young man.” The first housemaid
followed Penelope. Remained, like my lady’s maid, a long time. Report, on
coming out: “I didn’t enter her ladyship’s service, Mr. Betteredge, to be
doubted to my face by a low police-officer!” Rosanna Spearman went next.
Remained longer than any of them. No report on coming out—dead silence,
and lips as pale as ashes. Samuel, the footman, followed Rosanna.
Remained a minute or two. Report, on coming out: “Whoever blacks
Sergeant Cuff’s boots ought to be ashamed of himself.” Nancy, the kitchen-
maid, went last. Remained a minute or two. Report, on coming out:

“Sergeant Cuff has a heart; he doesn’t cut jokes, Mr. Betteredge, with a
poor hard-working girl.”
Going into the Court of Justice, when it was all over, to hear if there were
any further commands for me, I found the Sergeant at his old trick—
looking out of window, and whistling “The Last Rose of Summer” to
himself.
“Any discoveries, sir?” I inquired.
“If Rosanna Spearman asks leave to go out,” said the Sergeant, “let the
poor thing go; but let me know first.”
I might as well have held my tongue about Rosanna and Mr. Franklin! It
was plain enough; the unfortunate girl had fallen under Sergeant Cuff’s
suspicions, in spite of all I could do to prevent it.
“I hope you don’t think Rosanna is concerned in the loss of the
Diamond?” I ventured to say.
The corners of the Sergeant’s melancholy mouth curled up, and he looked
hard in my face, just as he had looked in the garden.
“I think I had better not tell you, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “You might
lose your head, you know, for the second time.”
I began to doubt whether I had been one too many for the celebrated
Cuff, after all! It was rather a relief to me that we were interrupted here by a
knock at the door, and a message from the cook. Rosanna Spearman had
asked to go out, for the usual reason, that her head was bad, and she wanted
a breath of fresh air. At a sign from the Sergeant, I said, Yes. “Which is the
servants’ way out?” he asked, when the messenger had gone. I showed him
the servants’ way out. “Lock the door of your room,” says the Sergeant;
“and if anybody asks for me, say I’m in there, composing my mind.” He
curled up again at the corners of the lips, and disappeared.
Left alone, under those circumstances, a devouring curiosity pushed me
on to make some discoveries for myself.
It was plain that Sergeant Cuff’s suspicions of Rosanna had been roused
by something that he had found out at his examination of the servants in my
room. Now, the only two servants (excepting Rosanna herself) who had
remained under examination for any length of time, were my lady’s own
maid and the first housemaid, those two being also the women who had
taken the lead in persecuting their unfortunate fellow-servant from the first.

Reaching these conclusions, I looked in on them, casually as it might be, in
the servants’ hall, and, finding tea going forward, instantly invited myself to
that meal. (For, nota bene, a drop of tea is to a woman’s tongue what a drop
of oil is to a wasting lamp.)
My reliance on the tea-pot, as an ally, did not go unrewarded. In less than
half an hour I knew as much as the Sergeant himself.
My lady’s maid and the housemaid, had, it appeared, neither of them
believed in Rosanna’s illness of the previous day. These two devils—I ask
your pardon; but how else can you describe a couple of spiteful women?—
had stolen upstairs, at intervals during the Thursday afternoon; had tried
Rosanna’s door, and found it locked; had knocked, and not been answered;
had listened, and not heard a sound inside. When the girl had come down to
tea, and had been sent up, still out of sorts, to bed again, the two devils
aforesaid had tried her door once more, and found it locked; had looked at
the keyhole, and found it stopped up; had seen a light under the door at
midnight, and had heard the crackling of a fire (a fire in a servant’s
bedroom in the month of June!) at four in the morning. All this they had
told Sergeant Cuff, who, in return for their anxiety to enlighten him, had
eyed them with sour and suspicious looks, and had shown them plainly that
he didn’t believe either one or the other. Hence, the unfavourable reports of
him which these two women had brought out with them from the
examination. Hence, also (without reckoning the influence of the tea-pot),
their readiness to let their tongues run to any length on the subject of the
Sergeant’s ungracious behaviour to them.
Having had some experience of the great Cuff’s roundabout ways, and
having last seen him evidently bent on following Rosanna privately when
she went out for her walk, it seemed clear to me that he had thought it
unadvisable to let the lady’s maid and the housemaid know how materially
they had helped him. They were just the sort of women, if he had treated
their evidence as trustworthy, to have been puffed up by it, and to have said
or done something which would have put Rosanna Spearman on her guard.
I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor girl,
and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken. Drifting towards
the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin. After returning
from seeing his cousin off at the station, he had been with my lady, holding
a long conversation with her. She had told him of Miss Rachel’s

unaccountable refusal to let her wardrobe be examined; and had put him in
such low spirits about my young lady that he seemed to shrink from
speaking on the subject. The family temper appeared in his face that
evening, for the first time in my experience of him.
“Well, Betteredge,” he said, “how does the atmosphere of mystery and
suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you? Do you
remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone? I wish
to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!”
After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking again until he
had composed himself. We walked silently, side by side, for a minute or
two, and then he asked me what had become of Sergeant Cuff. It was
impossible to put Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant being in
my room, composing his mind. I told him exactly what had happened,
mentioning particularly what my lady’s maid and the house-maid had said
about Rosanna Spearman.
Mr. Franklin’s clear head saw the turn the Sergeant’s suspicions had
taken, in the twinkling of an eye.
“Didn’t you tell me this morning,” he said, “that one of the tradespeople
declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to Frizinghall,
when we supposed her to be ill in her room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If my aunt’s maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may
depend upon it the tradesman did meet her. The girl’s attack of illness was a
blind to deceive us. She had some guilty reason for going to the town
secretly. The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire heard
crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit to destroy it.
Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond. I’ll go in directly, and tell my
aunt the turn things have taken.”
“Not just yet, if you please, sir,” said a melancholy voice behind us.
We both turned about, and found ourselves face to face with Sergeant
Cuff.
“Why not just yet?” asked Mr. Franklin.
“Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell Miss
Verinder.”

“Suppose she does. What then?” Mr. Franklin said those words with a
sudden heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended him.
“Do you think it’s wise, sir,” said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, “to put such a
question as that to me—at such a time as this?”
There was a moment’s silence between them: Mr. Franklin walked close
up to the Sergeant. The two looked each other straight in the face. Mr.
Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had raised it.
“I suppose you know, Mr. Cuff,” he said, “that you are treading on
delicate ground?”
“It isn’t the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I find myself
treading on delicate ground,” answered the other, as immovable as ever.
“I am to understand that you forbid me to tell my aunt what has
happened?”
“You are to understand, if you please, sir, that I throw up the case, if you
tell Lady Verinder, or tell anybody, what has happened, until I give you
leave.”
That settled it. Mr. Franklin had no choice but to submit. He turned away
in anger—and left us.
I had stood there listening to them, all in a tremble; not knowing whom to
suspect, or what to think next. In the midst of my confusion, two things,
however, were plain to me. First, that my young lady was, in some
unaccountable manner, at the bottom of the sharp speeches that had passed
between them. Second, that they thoroughly understood each other, without
having previously exchanged a word of explanation on either side.
“Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, “you have done a very foolish thing
in my absence. You have done a little detective business on your own
account. For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your
detective business along with me.”
He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by
which he had come. I dare say I had deserved his reproof—but I was not
going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman, for all that. Thief or
no thief, legal or not legal, I don’t care—I pitied her.
“What do you want of me?” I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.

“Only a little information about the country round here,” said the
Sergeant.
I couldn’t well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.
“Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from this
house?” asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke, to the fir-plantation
which led to the Shivering Sand.
“Yes,” I said, “there is a path.”
“Show it to me.”
Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and I set
forth for the Shivering Sand.

CHAPTER XV
The Sergeant remained silent, thinking his own thoughts, till we entered
the plantation of firs which led to the quicksand. There he roused himself,
like a man whose mind was made up, and spoke to me again.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “as you have honoured me by taking an oar in
my boat, and as you may, I think, be of some assistance to me before the
evening is out, I see no use in our mystifying one another any longer, and I
propose to set you an example of plain speaking on my side. You are
determined to give me no information to the prejudice of Rosanna
Spearman, because she has been a good girl to you, and because you pity
her heartily. Those humane considerations do you a world of credit, but they
happen in this instance to be humane considerations clean thrown away.
Rosanna Spearman is not in the slightest danger of getting into trouble—no,
not if I fix her with being concerned in the disappearance of the Diamond,
on evidence which is as plain as the nose on your face!”
“Do you mean that my lady won’t prosecute?” I asked.
“I mean that your lady can’t prosecute,” said the Sergeant. “Rosanna
Spearman is simply an instrument in the hands of another person, and
Rosanna Spearman will be held harmless for that other person’s sake.”
He spoke like a man in earnest—there was no denying that. Still, I felt
something stirring uneasily against him in my mind. “Can’t you give that
other person a name?” I said.
“Can’t you, Mr. Betteredge?”
“No.”
Sergeant Cuff stood stock-still, and surveyed me with a look of
melancholy interest.
“It’s always a pleasure to me to be tender towards human infirmity,” he
said. “I feel particularly tender at the present moment, Mr. Betteredge,
towards you. And you, with the same excellent motive, feel particularly

tender towards Rosanna Spearman, don’t you? Do you happen to know
whether she has had a new outfit of linen lately?”
What he meant by slipping in this extraordinary question unawares, I was
at a total loss to imagine. Seeing no possible injury to Rosanna if I owned
the truth, I answered that the girl had come to us rather sparely provided
with linen, and that my lady, in recompense for her good conduct (I laid a
stress on her good conduct), had given her a new outfit not a fortnight since.
“This is a miserable world,” says the Sergeant. “Human life, Mr.
Betteredge, is a sort of target—misfortune is always firing at it, and always
hitting the mark. But for that outfit, we should have discovered a new
nightgown or petticoat among Rosanna’s things, and have nailed her in that
way. You’re not at a loss to follow me, are you? You have examined the
servants yourself, and you know what discoveries two of them made
outside Rosanna’s door. Surely you know what the girl was about yesterday,
after she was taken ill? You can’t guess? Oh dear me, it’s as plain as that
strip of light there, at the end of the trees. At eleven, on Thursday morning,
Superintendent Seegrave (who is a mass of human infirmity) points out to
all the women servants the smear on the door. Rosanna has her own reasons
for suspecting her own things; she takes the first opportunity of getting to
her room, finds the paint-stain on her night-gown, or petticoat, or what not,
shams ill and slips away to the town, gets the materials for making a new
petticoat or nightgown, makes it alone in her room on the Thursday night,
lights a fire (not to destroy it; two of her fellow-servants are prying outside
her door, and she knows better than to make a smell of burning, and to have
a lot of tinder to get rid of)—lights a fire, I say, to dry and iron the
substitute dress after wringing it out, keeps the stained dress hidden
(probably on her), and is at this moment occupied in making away with it,
in some convenient place, on that lonely bit of beach ahead of us. I have
traced her this evening to your fishing village, and to one particular cottage,
which we may possibly have to visit, before we go back. She stopped in the
cottage for some time, and she came out with (as I believe) something
hidden under her cloak. A cloak (on a woman’s back) is an emblem of
charity—it covers a multitude of sins. I saw her set off northwards along the
coast, after leaving the cottage. Is your sea-shore here considered a fine
specimen of marine landscape, Mr. Betteredge?”
I answered, “Yes,” as shortly as might be.

“Tastes differ,” says Sergeant Cuff. “Looking at it from my point of view,
I never saw a marine landscape that I admired less. If you happen to be
following another person along your sea-coast, and if that person happens
to look round, there isn’t a scrap of cover to hide you anywhere. I had to
choose between taking Rosanna in custody on suspicion, or leaving her, for
the time being, with her little game in her own hands. For reasons which I
won’t trouble you with, I decided on making any sacrifice rather than give
the alarm as soon as tonight to a certain person who shall be nameless
between us. I came back to the house to ask you to take me to the north end
of the beach by another way. Sand—in respect of its printing off people’s
footsteps—is one of the best detective officers I know. If we don’t meet
with Rosanna Spearman by coming round on her in this way, the sand may
tell us what she has been at, if the light only lasts long enough. Here is the
sand. If you will excuse my suggesting it—suppose you hold your tongue,
and let me go first?”
If there is such a thing known at the doctor’s shop as a detective-fever,
that disease had now got fast hold of your humble servant. Sergeant Cuff
went on between the hillocks of sand, down to the beach. I followed him
(with my heart in my mouth); and waited at a little distance for what was to
happen next.
As it turned out, I found myself standing nearly in the same place where
Rosanna Spearman and I had been talking together when Mr. Franklin
suddenly appeared before us, on arriving at our house from London. While
my eyes were watching the Sergeant, my mind wandered away in spite of
me to what had passed, on that former occasion, between Rosanna and me.
I declare I almost felt the poor thing slip her hand again into mine, and give
it a little grateful squeeze to thank me for speaking kindly to her. I declare I
almost heard her voice telling me again that the Shivering Sand seemed to
draw her to it against her own will, whenever she went out—almost saw her
face brighten again, as it brightened when she first set eyes upon Mr.
Franklin coming briskly out on us from among the hillocks. My spirits fell
lower and lower as I thought of these things—and the view of the lonesome
little bay, when I looked about to rouse myself, only served to make me feel
more uneasy still.
The last of the evening light was fading away; and over all the desolate
place there hung a still and awful calm. The heave of the main ocean on the

great sandbank out in the bay, was a heave that made no sound. The inner
sea lay lost and dim, without a breath of wind to stir it. Patches of nasty
ooze floated, yellow-white, on the dead surface of the water. Scum and
slime shone faintly in certain places, where the last of the light still caught
them on the two great spits of rock jutting out, north and south, into the sea.
It was now the time of the turn of the tide: and even as I stood there
waiting, the broad brown face of the quicksand began to dimple and quiver
—the only moving thing in all the horrid place.
I saw the Sergeant start as the shiver of the sand caught his eye. After
looking at it for a minute or so, he turned and came back to me.
“A treacherous place, Mr. Betteredge,” he said; “and no signs of Rosanna
Spearman anywhere on the beach, look where you may.”
He took me down lower on the shore, and I saw for myself that his
footsteps and mine were the only footsteps printed off on the sand.
“How does the fishing village bear, standing where we are now?” asked
Sergeant Cuff.
“Cobb’s Hole,” I answered (that being the name of the place), “bears as
near as may be, due south.”
“I saw the girl this evening, walking northward along the shore, from
Cobb’s Hole,” said the Sergeant. “Consequently, she must have been
walking towards this place. Is Cobb’s Hole on the other side of that point of
land there? And can we get to it—now it’s low water—by the beach?”
I answered, “Yes,” to both those questions.
“If you’ll excuse my suggesting it, we’ll step out briskly,” said the
Sergeant. “I want to find the place where she left the shore, before it gets
dark.”
We had walked, I should say, a couple of hundred yards towards Cobb’s
Hole, when Sergeant Cuff suddenly went down on his knees on the beach,
to all appearance seized with a sudden frenzy for saying his prayers.
“There’s something to be said for your marine landscape here, after all,”
remarked the Sergeant. “Here are a woman’s footsteps, Mr. Betteredge! Let
us call them Rosanna’s footsteps, until we find evidence to the contrary that
we can’t resist. Very confused footsteps, you will please to observe—
purposely confused, I should say. Ah, poor soul, she understands the
detective virtues of sand as well as I do! But hasn’t she been in rather too

great a hurry to tread out the marks thoroughly? I think she has. Here’s one
footstep going from Cobb’s Hole; and here is another going back to it. Isn’t
that the toe of her shoe pointing straight to the water’s edge? And don’t I
see two heel-marks further down the beach, close at the water’s edge also? I
don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’m afraid Rosanna is sly. It looks as if
she had determined to get to that place you and I have just come from,
without leaving any marks on the sand to trace her by. Shall we say that she
walked through the water from this point till she got to that ledge of rocks
behind us, and came back the same way, and then took to the beach again
where those two heel marks are still left? Yes, we’ll say that. It seems to fit
in with my notion that she had something under her cloak, when she left the
cottage. No! not something to destroy—for, in that case, where would have
been the need of all these precautions to prevent my tracing the place at
which her walk ended? Something to hide is, I think, the better guess of the
two. Perhaps, if we go on to the cottage, we may find out what that
something is?”
At this proposal, my detective-fever suddenly cooled. “You don’t want
me,” I said. “What good can I do?”
“The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge,” said the Sergeant, “the more
virtues I discover. Modesty—oh dear me, how rare modesty is in this
world! and how much of that rarity you possess! If I go alone to the cottage,
the people’s tongues will be tied at the first question I put to them. If I go
with you, I go introduced by a justly respected neighbour, and a flow of
conversation is the necessary result. It strikes me in that light; how does it
strike you?”
Not having an answer of the needful smartness as ready as I could have
wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to go to.
On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognised it as a cottage
inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grown-up
children, a son and a daughter. If you will look back, you will find that, in
first presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have described her as
occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand, by a visit to some
friends of hers at Cobb’s Hole. Those friends were the Yollands—
respectable, worthy people, a credit to the neighbourhood. Rosanna’s
acquaintance with them had begun by means of the daughter, who was
afflicted with a misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by the

name of Limping Lucy. The two deformed girls had, I suppose, a kind of
fellow-feeling for each other. Anyway, the Yollands and Rosanna always
appeared to get on together, at the few chances they had of meeting, in a
pleasant and friendly manner. The fact of Sergeant Cuff having traced the
girl to their cottage, set the matter of my helping his inquiries in quite a new
light. Rosanna had merely gone where she was in the habit of going; and to
show that she had been in company with the fisherman and his family was
as good as to prove that she had been innocently occupied so far, at any
rate. It would be doing the girl a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I
allowed myself to be convinced by Sergeant Cuff’s logic. I professed
myself convinced by it accordingly.
We went on to Cobb’s Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as
the light lasted.
On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in the
boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her bed
upstairs. Good Mrs. Yolland received us alone in her kitchen. When she
heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she clapped
a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table, and stared as
if she could never see enough of him.
I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would find his
way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman. His usual roundabout manner of
going to work proved, on this occasion, to be more roundabout than ever.
How he managed it is more than I could tell at the time, and more than I can
tell now. But this is certain, he began with the Royal Family, the Primitive
Methodists, and the price of fish; and he got from that (in his dismal,
underground way) to the loss of the Moonstone, the spitefulness of our first
house-maid, and the hard behaviour of the women-servants generally
towards Rosanna Spearman. Having reached his subject in this fashion, he
described himself as making his inquiries about the lost Diamond, partly
with a view to find it, and partly for the purpose of clearing Rosanna from
the unjust suspicions of her enemies in the house. In about a quarter of an
hour from the time when we entered the kitchen, good Mrs. Yolland was
persuaded that she was talking to Rosanna’s best friend, and was pressing
Sergeant Cuff to comfort his stomach and revive his spirits out of the Dutch
bottle.

Being firmly persuaded that the Sergeant was wasting his breath to no
purpose on Mrs. Yolland, I sat enjoying the talk between them, much as I
have sat, in my time, enjoying a stage play. The great Cuff showed a
wonderful patience; trying his luck drearily this way and that way, and
firing shot after shot, as it were, at random, on the chance of hitting the
mark. Everything to Rosanna’s credit, nothing to Rosanna’s prejudice—that
was how it ended, try as he might; with Mrs. Yolland talking nineteen to the
dozen, and placing the most entire confidence in him. His last effort was
made, when we had looked at our watches, and had got on our legs previous
to taking leave.
“I shall now wish you good-night, ma’am,” says the Sergeant. “And I
shall only say, at parting, that Rosanna Spearman has a sincere well-wisher
in myself, your obedient servant. But, oh dear me! she will never get on in
her present place; and my advice to her is—leave it.”
“Bless your heart alive! she is going to leave it!” cries Mrs. Yolland.
(Nota bene—I translate Mrs. Yolland out of the Yorkshire language into the
English language. When I tell you that the all-accomplished Cuff was every
now and then puzzled to understand her until I helped him, you will draw
your own conclusions as to what your state of mind would be if I reported
her in her native tongue.)
Rosanna Spearman going to leave us! I pricked up my ears at that. It
seemed strange, to say the least of it, that she should have given no
warning, in the first place, to my lady or to me. A certain doubt came up in
my mind whether Sergeant Cuff’s last random shot might not have hit the
mark. I began to question whether my share in the proceedings was quite as
harmless a one as I had thought it. It might be all in the way of the
Sergeant’s business to mystify an honest woman by wrapping her round in a
network of lies but it was my duty to have remembered, as a good
Protestant, that the father of lies is the Devil—and that mischief and the
Devil are never far apart. Beginning to smell mischief in the air, I tried to
take Sergeant Cuff out. He sat down again instantly, and asked for a little
drop of comfort out of the Dutch bottle. Mrs. Yolland sat down opposite to
him, and gave him his nip. I went on to the door, excessively
uncomfortable, and said I thought I must bid them good-night—and yet I
didn’t go.

“So she means to leave?” says the Sergeant. “What is she to do when she
does leave? Sad, sad! The poor creature has got no friends in the world,
except you and me.”
“Ah, but she has though!” says Mrs. Yolland. “She came in here, as I told
you, this evening; and, after sitting and talking a little with my girl Lucy
and me she asked to go upstairs by herself, into Lucy’s room. It’s the only
room in our place where there’s pen and ink. ‘I want to write a letter to a
friend,’ she says ‘and I can’t do it for the prying and peeping of the servants
up at the house.’ Who the letter was written to I can’t tell you: it must have
been a mortal long one, judging by the time she stopped upstairs over it. I
offered her a postage-stamp when she came down. She hadn’t got the letter
in her hand, and she didn’t accept the stamp. A little close, poor soul (as you
know), about herself and her doings. But a friend she has got somewhere, I
can tell you; and to that friend you may depend upon it, she will go.”
“Soon?” asked the Sergeant.
“As soon as she can,” says Mrs. Yolland.
Here I stepped in again from the door. As chief of my lady’s
establishment, I couldn’t allow this sort of loose talk about a servant of ours
going, or not going, to proceed any longer in my presence, without noticing
it.
“You must be mistaken about Rosanna Spearman,” I said. “If she had
been going to leave her present situation, she would have mentioned it, in
the first place, to me.”
“Mistaken?” cries Mrs. Yolland. “Why, only an hour ago she bought
some things she wanted for travelling—of my own self, Mr. Betteredge, in
this very room. And that reminds me,” says the wearisome woman,
suddenly beginning to feel in her pocket, “of something I have got it on my
mind to say about Rosanna and her money. Are you either of you likely to
see her when you go back to the house?”
“I’ll take a message to the poor thing, with the greatest pleasure,”
answered Sergeant Cuff, before I could put in a word edgewise.
Mrs. Yolland produced out of her pocket, a few shillings and sixpences,
and counted them out with a most particular and exasperating carefulness in
the palm of her hand. She offered the money to the Sergeant, looking
mighty loth to part with it all the while.

“Might I ask you to give this back to Rosanna, with my love and
respects?” says Mrs. Yolland. “She insisted on paying me for the one or two
things she took a fancy to this evening—and money’s welcome enough in
our house, I don’t deny it. Still, I’m not easy in my mind about taking the
poor thing’s little savings. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think my man
would like to hear that I had taken Rosanna Spearman’s money, when he
comes back tomorrow morning from his work. Please say she’s heartily
welcome to the things she bought of me—as a gift. And don’t leave the
money on the table,” says Mrs. Yolland, putting it down suddenly before the
Sergeant, as if it burnt her fingers—“don’t, there’s a good man! For times
are hard, and flesh is weak; and I might feel tempted to put it back in my
pocket again.”
“Come along!” I said, “I can’t wait any longer: I must go back to the
house.”
“I’ll follow you directly,” says Sergeant Cuff.
For the second time, I went to the door; and, for the second time, try as I
might, I couldn’t cross the threshold.
“It’s a delicate matter, ma’am,” I heard the Sergeant say, “giving money
back. You charged her cheap for the things, I’m sure?”
“Cheap!” says Mrs. Yolland. “Come and judge for yourself.”
She took up the candle and led the Sergeant to a corner of the kitchen.
For the life of me, I couldn’t help following them. Shaken down in the
corner was a heap of odds and ends (mostly old metal), which the fisherman
had picked up at different times from wrecked ships, and which he hadn’t
found a market for yet, to his own mind. Mrs. Yolland dived into this
rubbish, and brought up an old japanned tin case, with a cover to it, and a
hasp to hang it up by—the sort of thing they use, on board ship, for keeping
their maps and charts, and such-like, from the wet.
“There!” says she. “When Rosanna came in this evening, she bought the
fellow to that. ‘It will just do,’ she says, ‘to put my cuffs and collars in, and
keep them from being crumpled in my box.’ One and ninepence, Mr. Cuff.
As I live by bread, not a halfpenny more!”
“Dirt cheap!” says the Sergeant, with a heavy sigh.
He weighed the case in his hand. I thought I heard a note or two of “The
Last Rose of Summer” as he looked at it. There was no doubt now! He had

made another discovery to the prejudice of Rosanna Spearman, in the place
of all others where I thought her character was safest, and all through me! I
leave you to imagine what I felt, and how sincerely I repented having been
the medium of introduction between Mrs. Yolland and Sergeant Cuff.
“That will do,” I said. “We really must go.”
Without paying the least attention to me, Mrs. Yolland took another dive
into the rubbish, and came up out of it, this time, with a dog-chain.
“Weigh it in your hand, sir,” she said to the Sergeant. “We had three of
these; and Rosanna has taken two of them. ‘What can you want, my dear,
with a couple of dog’s chains?’ says I. ‘If I join them together they’ll go
round my box nicely,’ says she. ‘Rope’s cheapest,’ says I. ‘Chain’s surest,’
says she. ‘Who ever heard of a box corded with chain,’ says I. ‘Oh, Mrs.
Yolland, don’t make objections!’ says she; ‘let me have my chains!’ A
strange girl, Mr. Cuff—good as gold, and kinder than a sister to my Lucy—
but always a little strange. There! I humoured her. Three and sixpence. On
the word of an honest woman, three and sixpence, Mr. Cuff!”
“Each?” says the Sergeant.
“Both together!” says Mrs. Yolland. “Three and sixpence for the two.”
“Given away, ma’am,” says the Sergeant, shaking his head. “Clean given
away!”
“There’s the money,” says Mrs. Yolland, getting back sideways to the
little heap of silver on the table, as if it drew her in spite of herself. “The tin
case and the dog chains were all she bought, and all she took away. One and
ninepence and three and sixpence—total, five and three. With my love and
respects—and I can’t find it in my conscience to take a poor girl’s savings,
when she may want them herself.”
“I can’t find it in my conscience, ma’am, to give the money back,” says
Sergeant Cuff. “You have as good as made her a present of the things—you
have indeed.”
“Is that your sincere opinion, sir?” says Mrs. Yolland brightening up
wonderfully.
“There can’t be a doubt about it,” answered the Sergeant. “Ask Mr.
Betteredge.”
It was no use asking me. All they got out of me was, “Good-night.”

“Bother the money!” says Mrs. Yolland. With these words, she appeared
to lose all command over herself; and, making a sudden snatch at the heap
of silver, put it back, holus-bolus, in her pocket. “It upsets one’s temper, it
does, to see it lying there, and nobody taking it,” cries this unreasonable
woman, sitting down with a thump, and looking at Sergeant Cuff, as much
as to say, “It’s in my pocket again now—get it out if you can!”
This time, I not only went to the door, but went fairly out on the road
back. Explain it how you may, I felt as if one or both of them had mortally
offended me. Before I had taken three steps down the village, I heard the
Sergeant behind me.
“Thank you for your introduction, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “I am
indebted to the fisherman’s wife for an entirely new sensation. Mrs. Yolland
has puzzled me.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to have given him a sharp answer, for no
better reason than this—that I was out of temper with him, because I was
out of temper with myself. But when he owned to being puzzled, a
comforting doubt crossed my mind whether any great harm had been done
after all. I waited in discreet silence to hear more.
“Yes,” says the Sergeant, as if he was actually reading my thoughts in the
dark. “Instead of putting me on the scent, it may console you to know, Mr.
Betteredge (with your interest in Rosanna), that you have been the means of
throwing me off. What the girl has done, tonight, is clear enough, of course.
She has joined the two chains, and has fastened them to the hasp in the tin
case. She has sunk the case, in the water or in the quicksand. She has made
the loose end of the chain fast to some place under the rocks, known only to
herself. And she will leave the case secure at its anchorage till the present
proceedings have come to an end; after which she can privately pull it up
again out of its hiding-place, at her own leisure and convenience. All
perfectly plain, so far. But,” says the Sergeant, with the first tone of
impatience in his voice that I had heard yet, “the mystery is—what the devil
has she hidden in the tin case?”
I thought to myself, “The Moonstone!” But I only said to Sergeant Cuff,
“Can’t you guess?”
“It’s not the Diamond,” says the Sergeant. “The whole experience of my
life is at fault, if Rosanna Spearman has got the Diamond.”

On hearing those words, the infernal detective-fever began, I suppose, to
burn in me again. At any rate, I forgot myself in the interest of guessing this
new riddle. I said rashly, “The stained dress!”
Sergeant Cuff stopped short in the dark, and laid his hand on my arm.
“Is anything thrown into that quicksand of yours, ever thrown up on the
surface again?” he asked.
“Never,” I answered. “Light or heavy, whatever goes into the Shivering
Sand is sucked down, and seen no more.”
“Does Rosanna Spearman know that?”
“She knows it as well as I do.”
“Then,” says the Sergeant, “what on earth has she got to do but to tie up a
bit of stone in the stained dress and throw it into the quicksand? There isn’t
the shadow of a reason why she should have hidden it—and yet she must
have hidden it. Query,” says the Sergeant, walking on again, “is the paint-
stained dress a petticoat or a night-gown? or is it something else which
there is a reason for preserving at any risk? Mr. Betteredge, if nothing
occurs to prevent it, I must go to Frizinghall tomorrow, and discover what
she bought in the town, when she privately got the materials for making the
substitute dress. It’s a risk to leave the house, as things are now—but it’s a
worse risk still to stir another step in this matter in the dark. Excuse my
being a little out of temper; I’m degraded in my own estimation—I have let
Rosanna Spearman puzzle me.”
When we got back, the servants were at supper. The first person we saw
in the outer yard was the policeman whom Superintendent Seegrave had left
at the Sergeant’s disposal. The Sergeant asked if Rosanna Spearman had
returned. Yes. When? Nearly an hour since. What had she done? She had
gone upstairs to take off her bonnet and cloak—and she was now at supper
quietly with the rest.
Without making any remark, Sergeant Cuff walked on, sinking lower and
lower in his own estimation, to the back of the house. Missing the entrance
in the dark, he went on (in spite of my calling to him) till he was stopped by
a wicket-gate which led into the garden. When I joined him to bring him
back by the right way, I found that he was looking up attentively at one
particular window, on the bedroom floor, at the back of the house.

Looking up, in my turn, I discovered that the object of his contemplation
was the window of Miss Rachel’s room, and that lights were passing
backwards and forwards there as if something unusual was going on.
“Isn’t that Miss Verinder’s room?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
I replied that it was, and invited him to go in with me to supper. The
Sergeant remained in his place, and said something about enjoying the
smell of the garden at night. I left him to his enjoyment. Just as I was
turning in at the door, I heard “The Last Rose of Summer” at the wicket-
gate. Sergeant Cuff had made another discovery! And my young lady’s
window was at the bottom of it this time!
The latter reflection took me back again to the Sergeant, with a polite
intimation that I could not find it in my heart to leave him by himself. “Is
there anything you don’t understand up there?” I added, pointing to Miss
Rachel’s window.
Judging by his voice, Sergeant Cuff had suddenly risen again to the right
place in his own estimation. “You are great people for betting in Yorkshire,
are you not?” he asked.
“Well?” I said. “Suppose we are?”
“If I was a Yorkshireman,” proceeded the Sergeant, taking my arm, “I
would lay you an even sovereign, Mr. Betteredge, that your young lady has
suddenly resolved to leave the house. If I won on that event, I should offer
to lay another sovereign, that the idea has occurred to her within the last
hour.” The first of the Sergeant’s guesses startled me. The second mixed
itself up somehow in my head with the report we had heard from the
policeman, that Rosanna Spearman had returned from the sands within the
last hour. The two together had a curious effect on me as we went in to
supper. I shook off Sergeant Cuff’s arm, and, forgetting my manners,
pushed by him through the door to make my own inquiries for myself.
Samuel, the footman, was the first person I met in the passage.
“Her ladyship is waiting to see you and Sergeant Cuff,” he said, before I
could put any questions to him.
“How long has she been waiting?” asked the Sergeant’s voice behind me.
“For the last hour, sir.”
There it was again! Rosanna had come back; Miss Rachel had taken
some resolution out of the common; and my lady had been waiting to see

the Sergeant—all within the last hour! It was not pleasant to find these very
different persons and things linking themselves together in this way. I went
on upstairs, without looking at Sergeant Cuff, or speaking to him. My hand
took a sudden fit of trembling as I lifted it to knock at my mistress’s door.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” whispered the Sergeant over my shoulder, “if
a scandal was to burst up in the house tonight. Don’t be alarmed! I have put
the muzzle on worse family difficulties than this, in my time.”
As he said the words I heard my mistress’s voice calling to us to come in.

CHAPTER XVI
We found my lady with no light in the room but the reading-lamp. The
shade was screwed down so as to overshadow her face. Instead of looking
up at us in her usual straightforward way, she sat close at the table, and kept
her eyes fixed obstinately on an open book.
“Officer,” she said, “is it important to the inquiry you are conducting, to
know beforehand if any person now in this house wishes to leave it?”
“Most important, my lady.”
“I have to tell you, then, that Miss Verinder proposes going to stay with
her aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite, of Frizinghall. She has arranged to leave us the
first thing tomorrow morning.”
Sergeant Cuff looked at me. I made a step forward to speak to my
mistress—and, feeling my heart fail me (if I must own it), took a step back
again, and said nothing.
“May I ask your ladyship when Miss Verinder informed you that she was
going to her aunt’s?” inquired the Sergeant.
“About an hour since,” answered my mistress.
Sergeant Cuff looked at me once more. They say old people’s hearts are
not very easily moved. My heart couldn’t have thumped much harder than it
did now, if I had been five-and-twenty again!
“I have no claim, my lady,” says the Sergeant, “to control Miss
Verinder’s actions. All I can ask you to do is to put off her departure, if
possible, till later in the day. I must go to Frizinghall myself tomorrow
morning—and I shall be back by two o’clock, if not before. If Miss
Verinder can be kept here till that time, I should wish to say two words to
her—unexpectedly—before she goes.”
My lady directed me to give the coachman her orders, that the carriage
was not to come for Miss Rachel until two o’clock. “Have you more to
say?” she asked of the Sergeant, when this had been done.

“Only one thing, your ladyship. If Miss Verinder is surprised at this
change in the arrangements, please not to mention Me as being the cause of
putting off her journey.”
My mistress lifted her head suddenly from her book as if she was going
to say something—checked herself by a great effort—and, looking back
again at the open page, dismissed us with a sign of her hand.
“That’s a wonderful woman,” said Sergeant Cuff, when we were out in
the hall again. “But for her self-control, the mystery that puzzles you, Mr.
Betteredge, would have been at an end tonight.”
At those words, the truth rushed at last into my stupid old head. For the
moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses. I seized the
Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him against the wall.
“Damn you!” I cried out, “there’s something wrong about Miss Rachel—
and you have been hiding it from me all this time!”
Sergeant Cuff looked up at me—flat against the wall—without stirring a
hand, or moving a muscle of his melancholy face.
“Ah,” he said, “you’ve guessed it at last.”
My hand dropped from his collar, and my head sunk on my breast. Please
to remember, as some excuse for my breaking out as I did, that I had served
the family for fifty years. Miss Rachel had climbed upon my knees, and
pulled my whiskers, many and many a time when she was a child. Miss
Rachel, with all her faults, had been, to my mind, the dearest and prettiest
and best young mistress that ever an old servant waited on, and loved. I
begged Sergeant’s Cuff’s pardon, but I am afraid I did it with watery eyes,
and not in a very becoming way.
“Don’t distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, with more
kindness than I had any right to expect from him. “In my line of life if we
were quick at taking offence, we shouldn’t be worth salt to our porridge. If
it’s any comfort to you, collar me again. You don’t in the least know how to
do it; but I’ll overlook your awkwardness in consideration of your
feelings.”
He curled up at the corners of his lips, and, in his own dreary way,
seemed to think he had delivered himself of a very good joke.
I led him into my own little sitting-room, and closed the door.

“Tell me the truth, Sergeant,” I said. “What do you suspect? It’s no
kindness to hide it from me now.”
“I don’t suspect,” said Sergeant Cuff. “I know.”
My unlucky temper began to get the better of me again.
“Do you mean to tell me, in plain English,” I said, “that Miss Rachel has
stolen her own Diamond?”
“Yes,” says the Sergeant; “that is what I mean to tell you, in so many
words. Miss Verinder has been in secret possession of the Moonstone from
first to last; and she has taken Rosanna Spearman into her confidence,
because she has calculated on our suspecting Rosanna Spearman of the
theft. There is the whole case in a nutshell. Collar me again, Mr. Betteredge.
If it’s any vent to your feelings, collar me again.”
God help me! my feelings were not to be relieved in that way. “Give me
your reasons!” That was all I could say to him.
“You shall hear my reasons tomorrow,” said the Sergeant. “If Miss
Verinder refuses to put off her visit to her aunt (which you will find Miss
Verinder will do), I shall be obliged to lay the whole case before your
mistress tomorrow. And, as I don’t know what may come of it, I shall
request you to be present, and to hear what passes on both sides. Let the
matter rest for tonight. No, Mr. Betteredge, you don’t get a word more on
the subject of the Moonstone out of me. There is your table spread for
supper. That’s one of the many human infirmities which I always treat
tenderly. If you will ring the bell, I’ll say grace. ‘For what we are going to
receive——’”
“I wish you a good appetite to it, Sergeant,” I said. “My appetite is gone.
I’ll wait and see you served, and then I’ll ask you to excuse me, if I go
away, and try to get the better of this by myself.”
I saw him served with the best of everything—and I shouldn’t have been
sorry if the best of everything had choked him. The head gardener (Mr.
Begbie) came in at the same time, with his weekly account. The Sergeant
got on the subject of roses and the merits of grass walks and gravel walks
immediately. I left the two together, and went out with a heavy heart. This
was the first trouble I remember for many a long year which wasn’t to be
blown off by a whiff of tobacco, and which was even beyond the reach of
Robinson Crusoe.

Being restless and miserable, and having no particular room to go to, I
took a turn on the terrace, and thought it over in peace and quietness by
myself. It doesn’t much matter what my thoughts were. I felt wretchedly
old, and worn out, and unfit for my place—and began to wonder, for the
first time in my life, when it would please God to take me. With all this, I
held firm, notwithstanding, to my belief in Miss Rachel. If Sergeant Cuff
had been Solomon in all his glory, and had told me that my young lady had
mixed herself up in a mean and guilty plot, I should have had but one
answer for Solomon, wise as he was, “You don’t know her; and I do.”
My meditations were interrupted by Samuel. He brought me a written
message from my mistress.
Going into the house to get a light to read it by, Samuel remarked that
there seemed a change coming in the weather. My troubled mind had
prevented me from noticing it before. But, now my attention was roused, I
heard the dogs uneasy, and the wind moaning low. Looking up at the sky, I
saw the rack of clouds getting blacker and blacker, and hurrying faster and
faster over a watery moon. Wild weather coming—Samuel was right, wild
weather coming.
The message from my lady informed me, that the magistrate at
Frizinghall had written to remind her about the three Indians. Early in the
coming week, the rogues must needs be released, and left free to follow
their own devices. If we had any more questions to ask them, there was no
time to lose. Having forgotten to mention this, when she had last seen
Sergeant Cuff, my mistress now desired me to supply the omission. The
Indians had gone clean out of my head (as they have, no doubt, gone clean
out of yours). I didn’t see much use in stirring that subject again. However,
I obeyed my orders on the spot, as a matter of course.
I found Sergeant Cuff and the gardener, with a bottle of Scotch whisky
between them, head over ears in an argument on the growing of roses. The
Sergeant was so deeply interested that he held up his hand, and signed to
me not to interrupt the discussion, when I came in. As far as I could
understand it, the question between them was, whether the white moss rose
did, or did not, require to be budded on the dog-rose to make it grow well.
Mr. Begbie said, Yes; and Sergeant Cuff said, No. They appealed to me, as
hotly as a couple of boys. Knowing nothing whatever about the growing of
roses, I steered a middle course—just as her Majesty’s judges do, when the

scales of justice bother them by hanging even to a hair. “Gentlemen,” I
remarked, “there is much to be said on both sides.” In the temporary lull
produced by that impartial sentence, I laid my lady’s written message on the
table, under the eyes of Sergeant Cuff.
I had got by this time, as nearly as might be, to hate the Sergeant. But
truth compels me to acknowledge that, in respect of readiness of mind, he
was a wonderful man.
In half a minute after he had read the message, he had looked back into
his memory for Superintendent Seegrave’s report; had picked out that part
of it in which the Indians were concerned; and was ready with his answer. A
certain great traveller, who understood the Indians and their language, had
figured in Mr. Seegrave’s report, hadn’t he? Very well. Did I know the
gentleman’s name and address? Very well again. Would I write them on the
back of my lady’s message? Much obliged to me. Sergeant Cuff would look
that gentleman up, when he went to Frizinghall in the morning.
“Do you expect anything to come of it?” I asked. “Superintendent
Seegrave found the Indians as innocent as the babe unborn.”
“Superintendent Seegrave has been proved wrong, up to this time, in all
his conclusions,” answered the Sergeant. “It may be worth while to find out
tomorrow whether Superintendent Seegrave was wrong about the Indians as
well.” With that he turned to Mr. Begbie, and took up the argument again
exactly at the place where it had left off. “This question between us is a
question of soils and seasons, and patience and pains, Mr. Gardener. Now
let me put it to you from another point of view. You take your white moss
rose——”
By that time, I had closed the door on them, and was out of hearing of the
rest of the dispute.
In the passage, I met Penelope hanging about, and asked what she was
waiting for.
She was waiting for her young lady’s bell, when her young lady chose to
call her back to go on with the packing for the next day’s journey. Further
inquiry revealed to me, that Miss Rachel had given it as a reason for
wanting to go to her aunt at Frizinghall, that the house was unendurable to
her, and that she could bear the odious presence of a policeman under the
same roof with herself no longer. On being informed, half an hour since,
that her departure would be delayed till two in the afternoon, she had flown

into a violent passion. My lady, present at the time, had severely rebuked
her, and then (having apparently something to say, which was reserved for
her daughter’s private ear) had sent Penelope out of the room. My girl was
in wretchedly low spirits about the changed state of things in the house.
“Nothing goes right, father; nothing is like what it used to be. I feel as if
some dreadful misfortune was hanging over us all.”
That was my feeling too. But I put a good face on it, before my daughter.
Miss Rachel’s bell rang while we were talking. Penelope ran up the back
stairs to go on with the packing. I went by the other way to the hall, to see
what the glass said about the change in the weather.
Just as I approached the swing-door leading into the hall from the
servants’ offices, it was violently opened from the other side, and Rosanna
Spearman ran by me, with a miserable look of pain in her face, and one of
her hands pressed hard over her heart, as if the pang was in that quarter.
“What’s the matter, my girl?” I asked, stopping her. “Are you ill?” “For
God’s sake, don’t speak to me,” she answered, and twisted herself out of my
hands, and ran on towards the servants’ staircase. I called to the cook (who
was within hearing) to look after the poor girl. Two other persons proved to
be within hearing, as well as the cook. Sergeant Cuff darted softly out of my
room, and asked what was the matter. I answered, “Nothing.” Mr. Franklin,
on the other side, pulled open the swing-door, and beckoning me into the
hall, inquired if I had seen anything of Rosanna Spearman.
“She has just passed me, sir, with a very disturbed face, and in a very odd
manner.”
“I am afraid I am innocently the cause of that disturbance, Betteredge.”
“You, sir!”
“I can’t explain it,” says Mr. Franklin; “but, if the girl is concerned in the
loss of the Diamond, I do really believe she was on the point of confessing
everything—to me, of all the people in the world—not two minutes since.”
Looking towards the swing-door, as he said those last words, I fancied I
saw it opened a little way from the inner side.
Was there anybody listening? The door fell to, before I could get to it.
Looking through, the moment after, I thought I saw the tails of Sergeant
Cuff’s respectable black coat disappearing round the corner of the passage.
He knew, as well as I did, that he could expect no more help from me, now

that I had discovered the turn which his investigations were really taking.
Under those circumstances, it was quite in his character to help himself, and
to do it by the underground way.
Not feeling sure that I had really seen the Sergeant—and not desiring to
make needless mischief, where, Heaven knows, there was mischief enough
going on already—I told Mr. Franklin that I thought one of the dogs had got
into the house—and then begged him to describe what had happened
between Rosanna and himself.
“Were you passing through the hall, sir?” I asked. “Did you meet her
accidentally, when she spoke to you?”
Mr. Franklin pointed to the billiard-table.
“I was knocking the balls about,” he said, “and trying to get this
miserable business of the Diamond out of my mind. I happened to look up
—and there stood Rosanna Spearman at the side of me, like a ghost! Her
stealing on me in that way was so strange, that I hardly knew what to do at
first. Seeing a very anxious expression in her face, I asked her if she wished
to speak to me. She answered, ‘Yes, if I dare.’ Knowing what suspicion
attached to her, I could only put one construction on such language as that. I
confess it made me uncomfortable. I had no wish to invite the girl’s
confidence. At the same time, in the difficulties that now beset us, I could
hardly feel justified in refusing to listen to her, if she was really bent on
speaking to me. It was an awkward position; and I dare say I got out of it
awkwardly enough. I said to her, ‘I don’t quite understand you. Is there
anything you want me to do?’ Mind, Betteredge, I didn’t speak unkindly!
The poor girl can’t help being ugly—I felt that, at the time. The cue was
still in my hand, and I went on knocking the balls about, to take off the
awkwardness of the thing. As it turned out, I only made matters worse still.
I’m afraid I mortified her without meaning it! She suddenly turned away.
‘He looks at the billiard balls,’ I heard her say. ‘Anything rather than look at
me!’ Before I could stop her, she had left the hall. I am not quite easy about
it, Betteredge. Would you mind telling Rosanna that I meant no unkindness?
I have been a little hard on her, perhaps, in my own thoughts—I have
almost hoped that the loss of the Diamond might be traced to her. Not from
any ill-will to the poor girl: but——” He stopped there, and going back to
the billiard-table, began to knock the balls about once more.

After what had passed between the Sergeant and me, I knew what it was
that he had left unspoken as well as he knew it himself.
Nothing but the tracing of the Moonstone to our second housemaid could
now raise Miss Rachel above the infamous suspicion that rested on her in
the mind of Sergeant Cuff. It was no longer a question of quieting my
young lady’s nervous excitement; it was a question of proving her
innocence. If Rosanna had done nothing to compromise herself, the hope
which Mr. Franklin confessed to having felt would have been hard enough
on her in all conscience. But this was not the case. She had pretended to be
ill, and had gone secretly to Frizinghall. She had been up all night, making
something or destroying something, in private. And she had been at the
Shivering Sand, that evening, under circumstances which were highly
suspicious, to say the least of them. For all these reasons (sorry as I was for
Rosanna) I could not but think that Mr. Franklin’s way of looking at the
matter was neither unnatural nor unreasonable, in Mr. Franklin’s position. I
said a word to him to that effect.
“Yes, yes!” he said in return. “But there is just a chance—a very poor
one, certainly—that Rosanna’s conduct may admit of some explanation
which we don’t see at present. I hate hurting a woman’s feelings,
Betteredge! Tell the poor creature what I told you to tell her. And if she
wants to speak to me—I don’t care whether I get into a scrape or not—send
her to me in the library.” With those kind words he laid down the cue and
left me.
Inquiry at the servants’ offices informed me that Rosanna had retired to
her own room. She had declined all offers of assistance with thanks, and
had only asked to be left to rest in quiet. Here, therefore, was an end of any
confession on her part (supposing she really had a confession to make) for
that night. I reported the result to Mr. Franklin, who, thereupon, left the
library, and went up to bed.
I was putting the lights out, and making the windows fast, when Samuel
came in with news of the two guests whom I had left in my room.
The argument about the white moss rose had apparently come to an end
at last. The gardener had gone home, and Sergeant Cuff was nowhere to be
found in the lower regions of the house.
I looked into my room. Quite true—nothing was to be discovered there
but a couple of empty tumblers and a strong smell of hot grog. Had the

Sergeant gone of his own accord to the bedchamber that was prepared for
him? I went upstairs to see.
After reaching the second landing, I thought I heard a sound of quiet and
regular breathing on my left-hand side. My left-hand side led to the corridor
which communicated with Miss Rachel’s room. I looked in, and there,
coiled up on three chairs placed right across the passage—there, with a red
handkerchief tied round his grizzled head, and his respectable black coat
rolled up for a pillow, lay and slept Sergeant Cuff!
He woke, instantly and quietly, like a dog, the moment I approached him.
“Good-night, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “And mind, if you ever take to
growing roses, the white moss rose is all the better for not being budded on
the dog-rose, whatever the gardener may say to the contrary!”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why are you not in your proper
bed?”
“I am not in my proper bed,” answered the Sergeant, “because I am one
of the many people in this miserable world who can’t earn their money
honestly and easily at the same time. There was a coincidence, this evening,
between the period of Rosanna Spearman’s return from the Sands and the
period when Miss Verinder stated her resolution to leave the house.
Whatever Rosanna may have hidden, it’s clear to my mind that your young
lady couldn’t go away until she knew that it was hidden. The two must have
communicated privately once already tonight. If they try to communicate
again, when the house is quiet, I want to be in the way, and stop it. Don’t
blame me for upsetting your sleeping arrangements, Mr. Betteredge—blame
the Diamond.”
“I wish to God the Diamond had never found its way into this house!” I
broke out.
Sergeant Cuff looked with a rueful face at the three chairs on which he
had condemned himself to pass the night.
“So do I,” he said, gravely.

CHAPTER XVII
Nothing happened in the night; and (I am happy to add) no attempt at
communication between Miss Rachel and Rosanna rewarded the vigilance
of Sergeant Cuff.
I had expected the Sergeant to set off for Frizinghall the first thing in the
morning. He waited about, however, as if he had something else to do first.
I left him to his own devices; and going into the grounds shortly after, met
Mr. Franklin on his favourite walk by the shrubbery side.
Before we had exchanged two words, the Sergeant unexpectedly joined
us. He made up to Mr. Franklin, who received him, I must own, haughtily
enough. “Have you anything to say to me?” was all the return he got for
politely wishing Mr. Franklin good morning.
“I have something to say to you, sir,” answered the Sergeant, “on the
subject of the inquiry I am conducting here. You detected the turn that
inquiry was really taking, yesterday. Naturally enough, in your position,
you are shocked and distressed. Naturally enough, also, you visit your own
angry sense of your own family scandal upon Me.”
“What do you want?” Mr. Franklin broke in, sharply enough.
“I want to remind you, sir, that I have at any rate, thus far, not been
proved to be wrong. Bearing that in mind, be pleased to remember, at the
same time, that I am an officer of the law acting here under the sanction of
the mistress of the house. Under these circumstances, is it, or is it not, your
duty as a good citizen, to assist me with any special information which you
may happen to possess?”
“I possess no special information,” says Mr. Franklin.
Sergeant Cuff put that answer by him, as if no answer had been made.
“You may save my time, sir, from being wasted on an inquiry at a
distance,” he went on, “if you choose to understand me and speak out.”
“I don’t understand you,” answered Mr. Franklin; “and I have nothing to
say.”

“One of the female servants (I won’t mention names) spoke to you
privately, sir, last night.”
Once more Mr. Franklin cut him short; once more Mr. Franklin
answered, “I have nothing to say.”
Standing by in silence, I thought of the movement in the swing-door on
the previous evening, and of the coat-tails which I had seen disappearing
down the passage. Sergeant Cuff had, no doubt, just heard enough, before I
interrupted him, to make him suspect that Rosanna had relieved her mind
by confessing something to Mr. Franklin Blake.
This notion had barely struck me—when who should appear at the end of
the shrubbery walk but Rosanna Spearman in her own proper person! She
was followed by Penelope, who was evidently trying to make her retrace
her steps to the house. Seeing that Mr. Franklin was not alone, Rosanna
came to a standstill, evidently in great perplexity what to do next. Penelope
waited behind her. Mr. Franklin saw the girls as soon as I saw them. The
Sergeant, with his devilish cunning, took on not to have noticed them at all.
All this happened in an instant. Before either Mr. Franklin or I could say a
word, Sergeant Cuff struck in smoothly, with an appearance of continuing
the previous conversation.
“You needn’t be afraid of harming the girl, sir,” he said to Mr. Franklin,
speaking in a loud voice, so that Rosanna might hear him. “On the contrary,
I recommend you to honour me with your confidence, if you feel any
interest in Rosanna Spearman.”
Mr. Franklin instantly took on not to have noticed the girls either. He
answered, speaking loudly on his side:
“I take no interest whatever in Rosanna Spearman.”
I looked towards the end of the walk. All I saw at the distance was that
Rosanna suddenly turned round, the moment Mr. Franklin had spoken.
Instead of resisting Penelope, as she had done the moment before, she now
let my daughter take her by the arm and lead her back to the house.
The breakfast-bell rang as the two girls disappeared—and even Sergeant
Cuff was now obliged to give it up as a bad job! He said to me quietly, “I
shall go to Frizinghall, Mr. Betteredge; and I shall be back before two.” He
went his way without a word more—and for some few hours we were well
rid of him.

“You must make it right with Rosanna,” Mr. Franklin said to me, when
we were alone. “I seem to be fated to say or do something awkward, before
that unlucky girl. You must have seen yourself that Sergeant Cuff laid a trap
for both of us. If he could confuse me, or irritate her into breaking out,
either she or I might have said something which would answer his purpose.
On the spur of the moment, I saw no better way out of it than the way I
took. It stopped the girl from saying anything, and it showed the Sergeant
that I saw through him. He was evidently listening, Betteredge, when I was
speaking to you last night.”
He had done worse than listen, as I privately thought to myself. He had
remembered my telling him that the girl was in love with Mr. Franklin; and
he had calculated on that, when he appealed to Mr. Franklin’s interest in
Rosanna—in Rosanna’s hearing.
“As to listening, sir,” I remarked (keeping the other point to myself), “we
shall all be rowing in the same boat if this sort of thing goes on much
longer. Prying, and peeping, and listening are the natural occupations of
people situated as we are. In another day or two, Mr. Franklin, we shall all
be struck dumb together—for this reason, that we shall all be listening to
surprise each other’s secrets, and all know it. Excuse my breaking out, sir.
The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like
liquor, and makes me wild. I won’t forget what you have told me. I’ll take
the first opportunity of making it right with Rosanna Spearman.”
“You haven’t said anything to her yet about last night, have you?” Mr.
Franklin asked.
“No, sir.”
“Then say nothing now. I had better not invite the girl’s confidence, with
the Sergeant on the look-out to surprise us together. My conduct is not very
consistent, Betteredge—is it? I see no way out of this business, which isn’t
dreadful to think of, unless the Diamond is traced to Rosanna. And yet I
can’t, and won’t, help Sergeant Cuff to find the girl out.”
Unreasonable enough, no doubt. But it was my state of mind as well. I
thoroughly understood him. If you will, for once in your life, remember that
you are mortal, perhaps you will thoroughly understand him too.

The state of things, indoors and out, while Sergeant Cuff was on his way
to Frizinghall, was briefly this:
Miss Rachel waited for the time when the carriage was to take her to her
aunt’s, still obstinately shut up in her own room. My lady and Mr. Franklin
breakfasted together. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin took one of his sudden
resolutions, and went out precipitately to quiet his mind by a long walk. I
was the only person who saw him go; and he told me he should be back
before the Sergeant returned. The change in the weather, foreshadowed
overnight, had come. Heavy rain had been followed soon after dawn, by
high wind. It was blowing fresh, as the day got on. But though the clouds
threatened more than once, the rain still held off. It was not a bad day for a
walk, if you were young and strong, and could breast the great gusts of
wind which came sweeping in from the sea.
I attended my lady after breakfast, and assisted her in the settlement of
our household accounts. She only once alluded to the matter of the
Moonstone, and that was in the way of forbidding any present mention of it
between us. “Wait till that man comes back,” she said, meaning the
Sergeant. “We must speak of it then: we are not obliged to speak of it now.”
After leaving my mistress, I found Penelope waiting for me in my room.
“I wish, father, you would come and speak to Rosanna,” she said. “I am
very uneasy about her.”
I suspected what was the matter readily enough. But it is a maxim of
mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women—if
they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it
doesn’t matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make
them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will
find them in all the relations of life. It isn’t their fault (poor wretches!) that
they act first and think afterwards; it’s the fault of the fools who humour
them.
Penelope’s reason why, on this occasion, may be given in her own words.
“I am afraid, father,” she said, “Mr. Franklin has hurt Rosanna cruelly,
without intending it.”
“What took Rosanna into the shrubbery walk?” I asked.
“Her own madness,” says Penelope; “I can call it nothing else. She was
bent on speaking to Mr. Franklin, this morning, come what might of it. I did

my best to stop her; you saw that. If I could only have got her away before
she heard those dreadful words——”
“There! there!” I said, “don’t lose your head. I can’t call to mind that
anything happened to alarm Rosanna.”
“Nothing to alarm her, father. But Mr. Franklin said he took no interest
whatever in her—and, oh, he said it in such a cruel voice!”
“He said it to stop the Sergeant’s mouth,” I answered.
“I told her that,” says Penelope. “But you see, father (though Mr.
Franklin isn’t to blame), he’s been mortifying and disappointing her for
weeks and weeks past; and now this comes on the top of it all! She has no
right, of course, to expect him to take any interest in her. It’s quite
monstrous that she should forget herself and her station in that way. But she
seems to have lost pride, and proper feeling, and everything. She frightened
me, father, when Mr. Franklin said those words. They seemed to turn her
into stone. A sudden quiet came over her, and she has gone about her work,
ever since, like a woman in a dream.”
I began to feel a little uneasy. There was something in the way Penelope
put it which silenced my superior sense. I called to mind, now my thoughts
were directed that way, what had passed between Mr. Franklin and Rosanna
overnight. She looked cut to the heart on that occasion; and now, as ill-luck
would have it, she had been unavoidably stung again, poor soul, on the
tender place. Sad! sad!—all the more sad because the girl had no reason to
justify her, and no right to feel it.
I had promised Mr. Franklin to speak to Rosanna, and this seemed the
fittest time for keeping my word.
We found the girl sweeping the corridor outside the bedrooms, pale and
composed, and neat as ever in her modest print dress. I noticed a curious
dimness and dullness in her eyes—not as if she had been crying but as if
she had been looking at something too long. Possibly, it was a misty
something raised by her own thoughts. There was certainly no object about
her to look at which she had not seen already hundreds on hundreds of
times.
“Cheer up, Rosanna!” I said. “You mustn’t fret over your own fancies. I
have got something to say to you from Mr. Franklin.”

I thereupon put the matter in the right view before her, in the friendliest
and most comforting words I could find. My principles, in regard to the
other sex, are, as you may have noticed, very severe. But somehow or other,
when I come face to face with the women, my practice (I own) is not
conformable.
“Mr. Franklin is very kind and considerate. Please to thank him.” That
was all the answer she made me.
My daughter had already noticed that Rosanna went about her work like
a woman in a dream. I now added to this observation, that she also listened
and spoke like a woman in a dream. I doubted if her mind was in a fit
condition to take in what I had said to her.
“Are you quite sure, Rosanna, that you understand me?” I asked.
“Quite sure.”
She echoed me, not like a living woman, but like a creature moved by
machinery. She went on sweeping all the time. I took away the broom as
gently and as kindly as I could.
“Come, come, my girl!” I said, “this is not like yourself. You have got
something on your mind. I’m your friend—and I’ll stand your friend, even
if you have done wrong. Make a clean breast of it, Rosanna—make a clean
breast of it!”
The time had been, when my speaking to her in that way would have
brought the tears into her eyes. I could see no change in them now.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll make a clean breast of it.”
“To my lady?” I asked.
“No.”
“To Mr. Franklin?”
“Yes; to Mr. Franklin.”
I hardly knew what to say to that. She was in no condition to understand
the caution against speaking to him in private, which Mr. Franklin had
directed me to give her. Feeling my way, little by little, I only told her Mr.
Franklin had gone out for a walk.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I shan’t trouble Mr. Franklin, today.”
“Why not speak to my lady?” I said. “The way to relieve your mind is to
speak to the merciful and Christian mistress who has always been kind to

you.”
She looked at me for a moment with a grave and steady attention, as if
she was fixing what I said in her mind. Then she took the broom out of my
hands and moved off with it slowly, a little way down the corridor.
“No,” she said, going on with her sweeping, and speaking to herself; “I
know a better way of relieving my mind than that.”
“What is it?”
“Please to let me go on with my work.”
Penelope followed her, and offered to help her.
She answered, “No. I want to do my work. Thank you, Penelope.” She
looked round at me. “Thank you, Mr. Betteredge.”
There was no moving her—there was nothing more to be said. I signed to
Penelope to come away with me. We left her, as we had found her,
sweeping the corridor, like a woman in a dream.
“This is a matter for the doctor to look into,” I said. “It’s beyond me.”
My daughter reminded me of Mr. Candy’s illness, owing (as you may
remember) to the chill he had caught on the night of the dinner-party. His
assistant—a certain Mr. Ezra Jennings—was at our disposal, to be sure. But
nobody knew much about him in our parts. He had been engaged by Mr.
Candy under rather peculiar circumstances; and, right or wrong, we none of
us liked him or trusted him. There were other doctors at Frizinghall. But
they were strangers to our house; and Penelope doubted, in Rosanna’s
present state, whether strangers might not do her more harm than good.
I thought of speaking to my lady. But, remembering the heavy weight of
anxiety which she already had on her mind, I hesitated to add to all the
other vexations this new trouble. Still, there was a necessity for doing
something. The girl’s state was, to my thinking, downright alarming—and
my mistress ought to be informed of it. Unwilling enough, I went to her
sitting-room. No one was there. My lady was shut up with Miss Rachel. It
was impossible for me to see her till she came out again.
I waited in vain till the clock on the front staircase struck the quarter to
two. Five minutes afterwards, I heard my name called, from the drive
outside the house. I knew the voice directly. Sergeant Cuff had returned
from Frizinghall.

CHAPTER XVIII
Going down to the front door, I met the Sergeant on the steps.
It went against the grain with me, after what had passed between us, to
show him that I felt any sort of interest in his proceedings. In spite of
myself, however, I felt an interest that there was no resisting. My sense of
dignity sank from under me, and out came the words: “What news from
Frizinghall?”
“I have seen the Indians,” answered Sergeant Cuff. “And I have found
out what Rosanna bought privately in the town, on Thursday last. The
Indians will be set free on Wednesday in next week. There isn’t a doubt on
my mind, and there isn’t a doubt on Mr. Murthwaite’s mind, that they came
to this place to steal the Moonstone. Their calculations were all thrown out,
of course, by what happened in the house on Wednesday night; and they
have no more to do with the actual loss of the jewel than you have. But I
can tell you one thing, Mr. Betteredge—if we don’t find the Moonstone,
they will. You have not heard the last of the three jugglers yet.”
Mr. Franklin came back from his walk as the Sergeant said those startling
words. Governing his curiosity better than I had governed mine, he passed
us without a word, and went on into the house.
As for me, having already dropped my dignity, I determined to have the
whole benefit of the sacrifice. “So much for the Indians,” I said. “What
about Rosanna next?”
Sergeant Cuff shook his head.
“The mystery in that quarter is thicker than ever,” he said. “I have traced
her to a shop at Frizinghall, kept by a linen draper named Maltby. She
bought nothing whatever at any of the other drapers’ shops, or at any
milliners’ or tailors’ shops; and she bought nothing at Maltby’s but a piece
of long cloth. She was very particular in choosing a certain quality. As to
quantity, she bought enough to make a nightgown.”
“Whose nightgown?” I asked.

“Her own, to be sure. Between twelve and three, on the Thursday
morning, she must have slipped down to your young lady’s room, to settle
the hiding of the Moonstone while all the rest of you were in bed. In going
back to her own room, her nightgown must have brushed the wet paint on
the door. She couldn’t wash out the stain; and she couldn’t safely destroy
the night-gown without first providing another like it, to make the inventory
of her linen complete.”
“What proves that it was Rosanna’s nightgown?” I objected.
“The material she bought for making the substitute dress,” answered the
Sergeant. “If it had been Miss Verinder’s nightgown, she would have had to
buy lace, and frilling, and Lord knows what besides; and she wouldn’t have
had time to make it in one night. Plain long cloth means a plain servant’s
nightgown. No, no, Mr. Betteredge—all that is clear enough. The pinch of
the question is—why, after having provided the substitute dress, does she
hide the smeared nightgown, instead of destroying it? If the girl won’t
speak out, there is only one way of settling the difficulty. The hiding-place
at the Shivering Sand must be searched—and the true state of the case will
be discovered there.”
“How are you to find the place?” I inquired.
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said the Sergeant—“but that’s a secret
which I mean to keep to myself.”
(Not to irritate your curiosity, as he irritated mine, I may here inform you
that he had come back from Frizinghall provided with a search-warrant. His
experience in such matters told him that Rosanna was in all probability
carrying about her a memorandum of the hiding-place, to guide her, in case
she returned to it, under changed circumstances and after a lapse of time.
Possessed of this memorandum, the Sergeant would be furnished with all
that he could desire.)
“Now, Mr. Betteredge,” he went on, “suppose we drop speculation, and
get to business. I told Joyce to have an eye on Rosanna. Where is Joyce?”
Joyce was the Frizinghall policeman, who had been left by
Superintendent Seegrave at Sergeant Cuff’s disposal. The clock struck two,
as he put the question; and, punctual to the moment, the carriage came
round to take Miss Rachel to her aunt’s.

“One thing at a time,” said the Sergeant, stopping me as I was about to
send in search of Joyce. “I must attend to Miss Verinder first.”
As the rain was still threatening, it was the close carriage that had been
appointed to take Miss Rachel to Frizinghall. Sergeant Cuff beckoned
Samuel to come down to him from the rumble behind.
“You will see a friend of mine waiting among the trees, on this side of the
lodge gate,” he said. “My friend, without stopping the carriage, will get up
into the rumble with you. You have nothing to do but to hold your tongue,
and shut your eyes. Otherwise, you will get into trouble.”
With that advice, he sent the footman back to his place. What Samuel
thought I don’t know. It was plain, to my mind, that Miss Rachel was to be
privately kept in view from the time when she left our house—if she did
leave it. A watch set on my young lady! A spy behind her in the rumble of
her mother’s carriage! I could have cut my own tongue out for having
forgotten myself so far as to speak to Sergeant Cuff.
The first person to come out of the house was my lady. She stood aside,
on the top step, posting herself there to see what happened. Not a word did
she say, either to the Sergeant or to me. With her lips closed, and her arms
folded in the light garden cloak which she had wrapped round her on
coming into the air, there she stood, as still as a statue, waiting for her
daughter to appear.
In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs—very nicely dressed in
some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped her
tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart little straw
hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She had primrose-
coloured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin. Her beautiful black
hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy
shells—they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out
to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every
movement she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was
altered in her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter
and fiercer than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their
colour and their smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother
in a hasty and sudden manner on the cheek. She said, “Try to forgive me,
mamma”—and then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that

she tore it. In another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed
into the carriage as if it was a hiding-place.
Sergeant Cuff was just as quick on his side. He put Samuel back, and
stood before Miss Rachel, with the open carriage-door in his hand, at the
instant when she settled herself in her place.
“What do you want?” says Miss Rachel, from behind her veil.
“I want to say one word to you, miss,” answered the Sergeant, “before
you go. I can’t presume to stop your paying a visit to your aunt. I can only
venture to say that your leaving us, as things are now, puts an obstacle in
the way of my recovering your Diamond. Please to understand that; and
now decide for yourself whether you go or stay.”
Miss Rachel never even answered him. “Drive on, James!” she called out
to the coachman.
Without another word, the Sergeant shut the carriage-door. Just as he
closed it, Mr. Franklin came running down the steps. “Good-bye, Rachel,”
he said, holding out his hand.
“Drive on!” cried Miss Rachel, louder than ever, and taking no more
notice of Mr. Franklin than she had taken of Sergeant Cuff.
Mr. Franklin stepped back thunderstruck, as well he might be. The
coachman, not knowing what to do, looked towards my lady, still standing
immovable on the top step. My lady, with anger and sorrow and shame all
struggling together in her face, made him a sign to start the horses, and then
turned back hastily into the house. Mr. Franklin, recovering the use of his
speech, called after her, as the carriage drove off, “Aunt! you were quite
right. Accept my thanks for all your kindness—and let me go.”
My lady turned as though to speak to him. Then, as if distrusting herself,
waved her hand kindly. “Let me see you, before you leave us, Franklin,”
she said, in a broken voice—and went on to her own room.
“Do me a last favour, Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, turning to me, with
the tears in his eyes. “Get me away to the train as soon as you can!”
He too went his way into the house. For the moment, Miss Rachel had
completely unmanned him. Judge from that, how fond he must have been of
her!
Sergeant Cuff and I were left face to face, at the bottom of the steps. The
Sergeant stood with his face set towards a gap in the trees, commanding a

view of one of the windings of the drive which led from the house. He had
his hands in his pockets, and he was softly whistling “The Last Rose of
Summer” to himself.
“There’s a time for everything,” I said savagely enough. “This isn’t a
time for whistling.”
At that moment, the carriage appeared in the distance, through the gap,
on its way to the lodge-gate. There was another man, besides Samuel,
plainly visible in the rumble behind.
“All right!” said the Sergeant to himself. He turned round to me. “It’s no
time for whistling, Mr. Betteredge, as you say. It’s time to take this business
in hand, now, without sparing anybody. We’ll begin with Rosanna
Spearman. Where is Joyce?”
We both called for Joyce, and received no answer. I sent one of the
stable-boys to look for him.
“You heard what I said to Miss Verinder?” remarked the Sergeant, while
we were waiting. “And you saw how she received it? I tell her plainly that
her leaving us will be an obstacle in the way of my recovering her Diamond
—and she leaves, in the face of that statement! Your young lady has got a
travelling companion in her mother’s carriage, Mr. Betteredge—and the
name of it is, the Moonstone.”
I said nothing. I only held on like death to my belief in Miss Rachel.
The stable-boy came back, followed—very unwillingly, as it appeared to
me—by Joyce.
“Where is Rosanna Spearman?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
“I can’t account for it, sir,” Joyce began; “and I am very sorry. But
somehow or other——”
“Before I went to Frizinghall,” said the Sergeant, cutting him short, “I
told you to keep your eyes on Rosanna Spearman, without allowing her to
discover that she was being watched. Do you mean to tell me that you have
let her give you the slip?”
“I am afraid, sir,” says Joyce, beginning to tremble, “that I was perhaps a
little too careful not to let her discover me. There are such a many passages
in the lower parts of this house——”
“How long is it since you missed her?”

“Nigh on an hour since, sir.”
“You can go back to your regular business at Frizinghall,” said the
Sergeant, speaking just as composedly as ever, in his usual quiet and dreary
way. “I don’t think your talents are at all in our line, Mr. Joyce. Your present
form of employment is a trifle beyond you. Good morning.”
The man slunk off. I find it very difficult to describe how I was affected
by the discovery that Rosanna Spearman was missing. I seemed to be in
fifty different minds about it, all at the same time. In that state, I stood
staring at Sergeant Cuff—and my powers of language quite failed me.
“No, Mr. Betteredge,” said the Sergeant, as if he had discovered the
uppermost thought in me, and was picking it out to be answered, before all
the rest. “Your young friend, Rosanna, won’t slip through my fingers so
easy as you think. As long as I know where Miss Verinder is, I have the
means at my disposal of tracing Miss Verinder’s accomplice. I prevented
them from communicating last night. Very good. They will get together at
Frizinghall, instead of getting together here. The present inquiry must be
simply shifted (rather sooner than I had anticipated) from this house, to the
house at which Miss Verinder is visiting. In the meantime, I’m afraid I must
trouble you to call the servants together again.”
I went round with him to the servants’ hall. It is very disgraceful, but it is
not the less true, that I had another attack of the detective-fever, when he
said those last words. I forgot that I hated Sergeant Cuff. I seized him
confidentially by the arm. I said, “For goodness’ sake, tell us what you are
going to do with the servants now?”
The great Cuff stood stock-still, and addressed himself in a kind of
melancholy rapture to the empty air.
“If this man,” said the Sergeant (apparently meaning me), “only
understood the growing of roses he would be the most completely perfect
character on the face of creation!” After that strong expression of feeling, he
sighed, and put his arm through mine. “This is how it stands,” he said,
dropping down again to business. “Rosanna has done one of two things.
She has either gone direct to Frizinghall (before I can get there), or she has
gone first to visit her hiding-place at the Shivering Sand. The first thing to
find out is, which of the servants saw the last of her before she left the
house.”

On instituting this inquiry, it turned out that the last person who had set
eyes on Rosanna was Nancy, the kitchenmaid.
Nancy had seen her slip out with a letter in her hand, and stop the
butcher’s man who had just been delivering some meat at the back door.
Nancy had heard her ask the man to post the letter when he got back to
Frizinghall. The man had looked at the address, and had said it was a
roundabout way of delivering a letter directed to Cobb’s Hole, to post it at
Frizinghall—and that, moreover, on a Saturday, which would prevent the
letter from getting to its destination until Monday morning. Rosanna had
answered that the delivery of the letter being delayed till Monday was of no
importance. The only thing she wished to be sure of was that the man would
do what she told him. The man had promised to do it, and had driven away.
Nancy had been called back to her work in the kitchen. And no other person
had seen anything afterwards of Rosanna Spearman.
“Well?” I asked, when we were alone again.
“Well,” says the Sergeant. “I must go to Frizinghall.”
“About the letter, sir?”
“Yes. The memorandum of the hiding-place is in that letter. I must see the
address at the post-office. If it is the address I suspect, I shall pay our friend,
Mrs. Yolland, another visit on Monday next.”
I went with the Sergeant to order the pony-chaise. In the stable-yard we
got a new light thrown on the missing girl.

CHAPTER XIX
The news of Rosanna’s disappearance had, as it appeared, spread among
the out-of-door servants. They too had made their inquiries; and they had
just laid hands on a quick little imp, nicknamed “Duffy”—who was
occasionally employed in weeding the garden, and who had seen Rosanna
Spearman as lately as half-an-hour since. Duffy was certain that the girl had
passed him in the fir-plantation, not walking, but running, in the direction
of the sea-shore.
“Does this boy know the coast hereabouts?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
“He has been born and bred on the coast,” I answered.
“Duffy!” says the Sergeant, “do you want to earn a shilling? If you do,
come along with me. Keep the pony-chaise ready, Mr. Betteredge, till I
come back.”
He started for the Shivering Sand, at a rate that my legs (though well
enough preserved for my time of life) had no hope of matching. Little
Duffy, as the way is with the young savages in our parts when they are in
high spirits, gave a howl, and trotted off at the Sergeant’s heels.
Here again, I find it impossible to give anything like a clear account of
the state of my mind in the interval after Sergeant Cuff had left us. A
curious and stupefying restlessness got possession of me. I did a dozen
different needless things in and out of the house, not one of which I can
now remember. I don’t even know how long it was after the Sergeant had
gone to the sands, when Duffy came running back with a message for me.
Sergeant Cuff had given the boy a leaf torn out of his pocket-book, on
which was written in pencil, “Send me one of Rosanna Spearman’s boots,
and be quick about it.”
I despatched the first woman-servant I could find to Rosanna’s room; and
I sent the boy back to say that I myself would follow him with the boot.
This, I am well aware, was not the quickest way to take of obeying the
directions which I had received. But I was resolved to see for myself what
new mystification was going on before I trusted Rosanna’s boot in the

Sergeant’s hands. My old notion of screening the girl, if I could, seemed to
have come back on me again, at the eleventh hour. This state of feeling (to
say nothing of the detective-fever) hurried me off, as soon as I had got the
boot, at the nearest approach to a run which a man turned seventy can
reasonably hope to make.
As I got near the shore, the clouds gathered black, and the rain came
down, drifting in great white sheets of water before the wind. I heard the
thunder of the sea on the sand-bank at the mouth of the bay. A little further
on, I passed the boy crouching for shelter under the lee of the sandhills.
Then I saw the raging sea, and the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and
the driven rain sweeping over the waters like a flying garment, and the
yellow wilderness of the beach with one solitary black figure standing on it
—the figure of Sergeant Cuff.
He waved his hand towards the north, when he first saw me. “Keep on
that side!” he shouted. “And come on down here to me!”
I went down to him, choking for breath, with my heart leaping as if it was
like to leap out of me. I was past speaking. I had a hundred questions to put
to him; and not one of them would pass my lips. His face frightened me. I
saw a look in his eyes which was a look of horror. He snatched the boot out
of my hand, and set it in a footmark on the sand, bearing south from us as
we stood, and pointing straight towards the rocky ledge called the South
Spit. The mark was not yet blurred out by the rain—and the girl’s boot
fitted it to a hair.
The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word.
I caught at his arm, and tried to speak to him, and failed as I had failed
when I tried before. He went on, following the footsteps down and down to
where the rocks and the sand joined. The South Spit was just awash with
the flowing tide; the waters heaved over the hidden face of the Shivering
Sand. Now this way and now that, with an obstinate patience that was
dreadful to see, Sergeant Cuff tried the boot in the footsteps, and always
found it pointing the same way—straight to the rocks. Hunt as he might, no
sign could he find anywhere of the footsteps walking from them.
He gave it up at last. Still keeping silence, he looked again at me; and
then he looked out at the waters before us, heaving in deeper and deeper
over the quicksand. I looked where he looked—and I saw his thought in his

face. A dreadful dumb trembling crawled all over me on a sudden. I fell
upon my knees on the beach.
“She has been back at the hiding-place,” I heard the Sergeant say to
himself. “Some fatal accident has happened to her on those rocks.”
The girl’s altered looks, and words, and actions—the numbed, deadened
way in which she listened to me, and spoke to me—when I had found her
sweeping the corridor but a few hours since, rose up in my mind, and
warned me, even as the Sergeant spoke, that his guess was wide of the
dreadful truth. I tried to tell him of the fear that had frozen me up. I tried to
say, “The death she has died, Sergeant, was a death of her own seeking.”
No! the words wouldn’t come. The dumb trembling held me in its grip. I
couldn’t feel the driving rain. I couldn’t see the rising tide. As in the vision
of a dream, the poor lost creature came back before me. I saw her again as I
had seen her in the past time—on the morning when I went to fetch her into
the house. I heard her again, telling me that the Shivering Sand seemed to
draw her to it against her will, and wondering whether her grave was
waiting for her there. The horror of it struck at me, in some unfathomable
way, through my own child. My girl was just her age. My girl, tried as
Rosanna was tried, might have lived that miserable life, and died this
dreadful death.
The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of
the place where she had perished.
With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things about
me, as things really were. Looking towards the sandhills, I saw the men-
servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland, all running
down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm, calling out to know if
the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the Sergeant showed them the
evidence of the footmarks, and told them that a fatal accident must have
happened to her. He then picked out the fisherman from the rest, and put a
question to him, turning about again towards the sea: “Tell me,” he said.
“Could a boat have taken her off, in such weather as this, from those rocks
where her footmarks stop?”
The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and to
the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on either
side of us.

“No boat that ever was built,” he answered, “could have got to her
through that.”
Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand,
which the rain was now fast blurring out.
“There,” he said, “is the evidence that she can’t have left this place by
land. And here,” he went on, looking at the fisherman, “is the evidence that
she can’t have got away by sea.” He stopped, and considered for a minute.
“She was seen running towards this place, half an hour before I got here
from the house,” he said to Yolland. “Some time has passed since then. Call
it, altogether, an hour ago. How high would the water be, at that time, on
this side of the rocks?” He pointed to the south side—otherwise, the side
which was not filled up by the quicksand.
“As the tide makes today,” said the fisherman, “there wouldn’t have been
water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour since.”
Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.
“How much on this side?” he asked.
“Less still,” answered Yolland. “The Shivering Sand would have been
just awash, and no more.”
The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have
happened on the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that.
“No accident!” I told him. “When she came to this place, she came weary
of her life, to end it here.”
He started back from me. “How do you know?” he asked. The rest of
them crowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put
them back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had
shaken me; he said, “Let him alone a little.” Then he turned to Yolland, and
asked, “Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?” And
Yolland answered, “None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for ever.”
Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed himself
to me.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “I have a word to say to you about the young
woman’s death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit, there’s
a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. My question is—
why didn’t she strike that? If she slipped, by accident, from off the Spit, she
fell in where there’s foothold at the bottom, at a depth that would barely

cover her to the waist. She must have waded out, or jumped out, into the
Deeps beyond—or she wouldn’t be missing now. No accident, sir! The
Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And they have got her by her own
act.”
After that testimony from a man whose knowledge was to be relied on,
the Sergeant was silent. The rest of us, like him, held our peace. With one
accord, we all turned back up the slope of the beach.
At the sandhillocks we were met by the under-groom, running to us from
the house. The lad is a good lad, and has an honest respect for me. He
handed me a little note, with a decent sorrow in his face. “Penelope sent me
with this, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “She found it in Rosanna’s room.”
It was her last farewell word to the old man who had done his best—
thank God, always done his best—to befriend her.
“You have often forgiven me, Mr. Betteredge, in past times. When you
next see the Shivering Sand, try to forgive me once more. I have found my
grave where my grave was waiting for me. I have lived, and died, sir,
grateful for your kindness.”
There was no more than that. Little as it was, I hadn’t manhood enough
to hold up against it. Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and
beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it.
I burst out crying.
Sergeant Cuff took a step nearer to me—meaning kindly, I don’t doubt. I
shrank back from him. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “It’s the dread of you, that
has driven her to it.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, quietly. “But there will
be time enough to speak of it when we are indoors again.”
I followed the rest of them, with the help of the groom’s arm. Through
the driving rain we went back—to meet the trouble and the terror that were
waiting for us at the house.

CHAPTER XX
Those in front had spread the news before us. We found the servants in a
state of panic. As we passed my lady’s door, it was thrown open violently
from the inner side. My mistress came out among us (with Mr. Franklin
following, and trying vainly to compose her), quite beside herself with the
horror of the thing.
“You are answerable for this!” she cried out, threatening the Sergeant
wildly with her hand. “Gabriel! give that wretch his money—and release
me from the sight of him!”
The Sergeant was the only one among us who was fit to cope with her—
being the only one among us who was in possession of himself.
“I am no more answerable for this distressing calamity, my lady, than you
are,” he said. “If, in half an hour from this, you still insist on my leaving the
house, I will accept your ladyship’s dismissal, but not your ladyship’s
money.”
It was spoken very respectfully, but very firmly at the same time—and it
had its effect on my mistress as well as on me. She suffered Mr. Franklin to
lead her back into the room. As the door closed on the two, the Sergeant,
looking about among the women-servants in his observant way, noticed that
while all the rest were merely frightened, Penelope was in tears. “When
your father has changed his wet clothes,” he said to her, “come and speak to
us, in your father’s room.”
Before the half-hour was out, I had got my dry clothes on, and had lent
Sergeant Cuff such change of dress as he required. Penelope came in to us
to hear what the Sergeant wanted with her. I don’t think I ever felt what a
good dutiful daughter I had, so strongly as I felt it at that moment. I took
her and sat her on my knee and I prayed God bless her. She hid her head on
my bosom, and put her arms round my neck—and we waited a little while
in silence. The poor dead girl must have been at the bottom of it, I think,
with my daughter and with me. The Sergeant went to the window, and stood

there looking out. I thought it right to thank him for considering us both in
this way—and I did.
People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others,
the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such
privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to
put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as
patiently as may be. I don’t complain of this—I only notice it. Penelope and
I were ready for the Sergeant, as soon as the Sergeant was ready on his side.
Asked if she knew what had led her fellow-servant to destroy herself, my
daughter answered (as you will foresee) that it was for love of Mr. Franklin
Blake. Asked next, if she had mentioned this notion of hers to any other
person, Penelope answered, “I have not mentioned it, for Rosanna’s sake.” I
felt it necessary to add a word to this. I said, “And for Mr. Franklin’s sake,
my dear, as well. If Rosanna has died for love of him, it is not with his
knowledge or by his fault. Let him leave the house today, if he does leave it,
without the useless pain of knowing the truth.” Sergeant Cuff said, “Quite
right,” and fell silent again; comparing Penelope’s notion (as it seemed to
me) with some other notion of his own which he kept to himself.
At the end of the half-hour, my mistress’s bell rang.
On my way to answer it, I met Mr. Franklin coming out of his aunt’s
sitting-room. He mentioned that her ladyship was ready to see Sergeant
Cuff—in my presence as before—and he added that he himself wanted to
say two words to the Sergeant first. On our way back to my room, he
stopped, and looked at the railway time-table in the hall.
“Are you really going to leave us, sir?” I asked. “Miss Rachel will surely
come right again, if you only give her time?”
“She will come right again,” answered Mr. Franklin, “when she hears
that I have gone away, and that she will see me no more.”
I thought he spoke in resentment of my young lady’s treatment of him.
But it was not so. My mistress had noticed, from the time when the police
first came into the house, that the bare mention of him was enough to set
Miss Rachel’s temper in a flame. He had been too fond of his cousin to like
to confess this to himself, until the truth had been forced on him, when she
drove off to her aunt’s. His eyes once opened in that cruel way which you
know of, Mr. Franklin had taken his resolution—the one resolution which a
man of any spirit could take—to leave the house.

What he had to say to the Sergeant was spoken in my presence. He
described her ladyship as willing to acknowledge that she had spoken over-
hastily. And he asked if Sergeant Cuff would consent—in that case—to
accept his fee, and to leave the matter of the Diamond where the matter
stood now. The Sergeant answered, “No, sir. My fee is paid me for doing
my duty. I decline to take it, until my duty is done.”
“I don’t understand you,” says Mr. Franklin.
“I’ll explain myself, sir,” says the Sergeant. “When I came here, I
undertook to throw the necessary light on the matter of the missing
Diamond. I am now ready, and waiting to redeem my pledge. When I have
stated the case to Lady Verinder as the case now stands, and when I have
told her plainly what course of action to take for the recovery of the
Moonstone, the responsibility will be off my shoulders. Let her ladyship
decide, after that, whether she does, or does not, allow me to go on. I shall
then have done what I undertook to do—and I’ll take my fee.”
In those words Sergeant Cuff reminded us that, even in the Detective
Police, a man may have a reputation to lose.
The view he took was so plainly the right one, that there was no more to
be said. As I rose to conduct him to my lady’s room, he asked if Mr.
Franklin wished to be present. Mr. Franklin answered, “Not unless Lady
Verinder desires it.” He added, in a whisper to me, as I was following the
Sergeant out, “I know what that man is going to say about Rachel; and I am
too fond of her to hear it, and keep my temper. Leave me by myself.”
I left him, miserable enough, leaning on the sill of my window, with his
face hidden in his hands and Penelope peeping through the door, longing to
comfort him. In Mr. Franklin’s place, I should have called her in. When you
are ill-used by one woman, there is great comfort in telling it to another—
because, nine times out of ten, the other always takes your side. Perhaps,
when my back was turned, he did call her in? In that case it is only doing
my daughter justice to declare that she would stick at nothing, in the way of
comforting Mr. Franklin Blake.
In the meantime, Sergeant Cuff and I proceeded to my lady’s room.
At the last conference we had held with her, we had found her not over
willing to lift her eyes from the book which she had on the table. On this
occasion there was a change for the better. She met the Sergeant’s eye with
an eye that was as steady as his own. The family spirit showed itself in

every line of her face; and I knew that Sergeant Cuff would meet his match,
when a woman like my mistress was strung up to hear the worst he could
say to her.

CHAPTER XXI
The first words, when we had taken our seats, were spoken by my lady.
“Sergeant Cuff,” she said, “there was perhaps some excuse for the
inconsiderate manner in which I spoke to you half an hour since. I have no
wish, however, to claim that excuse. I say, with perfect sincerity, that I
regret it, if I wronged you.”
The grace of voice and manner with which she made him that atonement
had its due effect on the Sergeant. He requested permission to justify
himself—putting his justification as an act of respect to my mistress. It was
impossible, he said, that he could be in any way responsible for the
calamity, which had shocked us all, for this sufficient reason, that his
success in bringing his inquiry to its proper end depended on his neither
saying nor doing anything that could alarm Rosanna Spearman. He
appealed to me to testify whether he had, or had not, carried that object out.
I could, and did, bear witness that he had. And there, as I thought, the
matter might have been judiciously left to come to an end.
Sergeant Cuff, however, took it a step further, evidently (as you shall now
judge) with the purpose of forcing the most painful of all possible
explanations to take place between her ladyship and himself.
“I have heard a motive assigned for the young woman’s suicide,” said the
Sergeant, “which may possibly be the right one. It is a motive quite
unconnected with the case which I am conducting here. I am bound to add,
however, that my own opinion points the other way. Some unbearable
anxiety in connexion with the missing Diamond, has, I believe, driven the
poor creature to her own destruction. I don’t pretend to know what that
unbearable anxiety may have been. But I think (with your ladyship’s
permission) I can lay my hand on a person who is capable of deciding
whether I am right or wrong.”
“Is the person now in the house?” my mistress asked, after waiting a
little.
“The person has left the house, my lady.”

That answer pointed as straight to Miss Rachel as straight could be. A
silence dropped on us which I thought would never come to an end. Lord!
how the wind howled, and how the rain drove at the window, as I sat there
waiting for one or other of them to speak again!
“Be so good as to express yourself plainly,” said my lady. “Do you refer
to my daughter?”
“I do,” said Sergeant Cuff, in so many words.
My mistress had her cheque-book on the table when we entered the room
—no doubt to pay the Sergeant his fee. She now put it back in the drawer. It
went to my heart to see how her poor hand trembled—the hand that had
loaded her old servant with benefits; the hand that, I pray God, may take
mine, when my time comes, and I leave my place for ever!
“I had hoped,” said my lady, very slowly and quietly, “to have
recompensed your services, and to have parted with you without Miss
Verinder’s name having been openly mentioned between us as it has been
mentioned now. My nephew has probably said something of this, before
you came into my room?”
“Mr. Blake gave his message, my lady. And I gave Mr. Blake a reason
——”
“It is needless to tell me your reason. After what you have just said, you
know as well as I do that you have gone too far to go back. I owe it to
myself, and I owe it to my child, to insist on your remaining here, and to
insist on your speaking out.”
The Sergeant looked at his watch.
“If there had been time, my lady,” he answered, “I should have preferred
writing my report, instead of communicating it by word of mouth. But, if
this inquiry is to go on, time is of too much importance to be wasted in
writing. I am ready to go into the matter at once. It is a very painful matter
for me to speak of, and for you to hear.”
There my mistress stopped him once more.
“I may possibly make it less painful to you, and to my good servant and
friend here,” she said, “if I set the example of speaking boldly, on my side.
You suspect Miss Verinder of deceiving us all, by secreting the Diamond for
some purpose of her own? Is that true?”
“Quite true, my lady.”

“Very well. Now, before you begin, I have to tell you, as Miss Verinder’s
mother, that she is absolutely incapable of doing what you suppose her to
have done. Your knowledge of her character dates from a day or two since.
My knowledge of her character dates from the beginning of her life. State
your suspicion of her as strongly as you please—it is impossible that you
can offend me by doing so. I am sure, beforehand, that (with all your
experience) the circumstances have fatally misled you in this case. Mind! I
am in possession of no private information. I am as absolutely shut out of
my daughter’s confidence as you are. My one reason for speaking
positively, is the reason you have heard already. I know my child.”
She turned to me, and gave me her hand. I kissed it in silence. “You may
go on,” she said, facing the Sergeant again as steadily as ever.
Sergeant Cuff bowed. My mistress had produced but one effect on him.
His hatchet-face softened for a moment, as if he was sorry for her. As to
shaking him in his own conviction, it was plain to see that she had not
moved him by a single inch. He settled himself in his chair; and he began
his vile attack on Miss Rachel’s character in these words:
“I must ask your ladyship,” he said, “to look this matter in the face, from
my point of view as well as from yours. Will you please to suppose yourself
coming down here, in my place, and with my experience? and will you
allow me to mention very briefly what that experience has been?”
My mistress signed to him that she would do this. The Sergeant went on:
“For the last twenty years,” he said, “I have been largely employed in
cases of family scandal, acting in the capacity of confidential man. The one
result of my domestic practice which has any bearing on the matter now in
hand, is a result which I may state in two words. It is well within my
experience, that young ladies of rank and position do occasionally have
private debts which they dare not acknowledge to their nearest relatives and
friends. Sometimes, the milliner and the jeweller are at the bottom of it.
Sometimes, the money is wanted for purposes which I don’t suspect in this
case, and which I won’t shock you by mentioning. Bear in mind what I have
said, my lady—and now let us see how events in this house have forced me
back on my own experience, whether I liked it or not!”
He considered with himself for a moment, and went on—with a horrid
clearness that obliged you to understand him; with an abominable justice
that favoured nobody.

“My first information relating to the loss of the Moonstone,” said the
Sergeant, “came to me from Superintendent Seegrave. He proved to my
complete satisfaction that he was perfectly incapable of managing the case.
The one thing he said which struck me as worth listening to, was this—that
Miss Verinder had declined to be questioned by him, and had spoken to him
with a perfectly incomprehensible rudeness and contempt. I thought this
curious—but I attributed it mainly to some clumsiness on the
Superintendent’s part which might have offended the young lady. After that,
I put it by in my mind, and applied myself, single-handed, to the case. It
ended, as you are aware, in the discovery of the smear on the door, and in
Mr. Franklin Blake’s evidence satisfying me, that this same smear, and the
loss of the Diamond, were pieces of the same puzzle. So far, if I suspected
anything, I suspected that the Moonstone had been stolen, and that one of
the servants might prove to be the thief. Very good. In this state of things,
what happens? Miss Verinder suddenly comes out of her room, and speaks
to me. I observe three suspicious appearances in that young lady. She is still
violently agitated, though more than four-and-twenty hours have passed
since the Diamond was lost. She treats me as she has already treated
Superintendent Seegrave. And she is mortally offended with Mr. Franklin
Blake. Very good again. Here (I say to myself) is a young lady who has lost
a valuable jewel—a young lady, also, as my own eyes and ears inform me,
who is of an impetuous temperament. Under these circumstances, and with
that character, what does she do? She betrays an incomprehensible
resentment against Mr. Blake, Mr. Superintendent, and myself—otherwise,
the very three people who have all, in their different ways, been trying to
help her to recover her lost jewel. Having brought my inquiry to that point
—then, my lady, and not till then, I begin to look back into my own mind
for my own experience. My own experience explains Miss Verinder’s
otherwise incomprehensible conduct. It associates her with those other
young ladies that I know of. It tells me she has debts she daren’t
acknowledge, that must be paid. And it sets me asking myself, whether the
loss of the Diamond may not mean—that the Diamond must be secretly
pledged to pay them. That is the conclusion which my experience draws
from plain facts. What does your ladyship’s experience say against it?”
“What I have said already,” answered my mistress. “The circumstances
have misled you.”

I said nothing on my side. Robinson Crusoe—God knows how—had got
into my muddled old head. If Sergeant Cuff had found himself, at that
moment, transported to a desert island, without a man Friday to keep him
company, or a ship to take him off—he would have found himself exactly
where I wished him to be! (Nota bene:—I am an average good Christian,
when you don’t push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you—
which is a great comfort—are, in this respect, much the same as I am.)
Sergeant Cuff went on:
“Right or wrong, my lady,” he said, “having drawn my conclusion, the
next thing to do was to put it to the test. I suggested to your ladyship the
examination of all the wardrobes in the house. It was a means of finding the
article of dress which had, in all probability, made the smear; and it was a
means of putting my conclusion to the test. How did it turn out? Your
ladyship consented; Mr. Blake consented; Mr. Ablewhite consented. Miss
Verinder alone stopped the whole proceeding by refusing point-blank. That
result satisfied me that my view was the right one. If your ladyship and Mr.
Betteredge persist in not agreeing with me, you must be blind to what
happened before you this very day. In your hearing, I told the young lady
that her leaving the house (as things were then) would put an obstacle in the
way of my recovering her jewel. You saw yourselves that she drove off in
the face of that statement. You saw yourself that, so far from forgiving Mr.
Blake for having done more than all the rest of you to put the clue into my
hands, she publicly insulted Mr. Blake, on the steps of her mother’s house.
What do these things mean? If Miss Verinder is not privy to the suppression
of the Diamond, what do these things mean?”
This time he looked my way. It was downright frightful to hear him
piling up proof after proof against Miss Rachel, and to know, while one was
longing to defend her, that there was no disputing the truth of what he said.
I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason. This enabled me to
hold firm to my lady’s view, which was my view also. This roused my
spirit, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good
friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles
of the vexing sort. Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare
the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your
own good!

Finding that I made no remark, and that my mistress made no remark,
Sergeant Cuff proceeded. Lord! how it did enrage me to notice that he was
not in the least put out by our silence!
“There is the case, my lady, as it stands against Miss Verinder alone,” he
said. “The next thing is to put the case as it stands against Miss Verinder
and the deceased Rosanna Spearman taken together. We will go back for a
moment, if you please, to your daughter’s refusal to let her wardrobe be
examined. My mind being made up, after that circumstance, I had two
questions to consider next. First, as to the right method of conducting my
inquiry. Second, as to whether Miss Verinder had an accomplice among the
female servants in the house. After carefully thinking it over, I determined
to conduct the inquiry in, what we should call at our office, a highly
irregular manner. For this reason: I had a family scandal to deal with, which
it was my business to keep within the family limits. The less noise made,
and the fewer strangers employed to help me, the better. As to the usual
course of taking people in custody on suspicion, going before the
magistrate, and all the rest of it—nothing of the sort was to be thought of,
when your ladyship’s daughter was (as I believed) at the bottom of the
whole business. In this case, I felt that a person of Mr. Betteredge’s
character and position in the house—knowing the servants as he did, and
having the honour of the family at heart—would be safer to take as an
assistant than any other person whom I could lay my hand on. I should have
tried Mr. Blake as well—but for one obstacle in the way. He saw the drift of
my proceedings at a very early date; and, with his interest in Miss Verinder,
any mutual understanding was impossible between him and me. I trouble
your ladyship with these particulars to show you that I have kept the family
secret within the family circle. I am the only outsider who knows it—and
my professional existence depends on holding my tongue.”
Here I felt that my professional existence depended on not holding my
tongue. To be held up before my mistress, in my old age, as a sort of
deputy-policeman, was, once again, more than my Christianity was strong
enough to bear.
“I beg to inform your ladyship,” I said, “that I never, to my knowledge,
helped this abominable detective business, in any way, from first to last;
and I summon Sergeant Cuff to contradict me, if he dares!”

Having given vent in those words, I felt greatly relieved. Her ladyship
honoured me by a little friendly pat on the shoulder. I looked with righteous
indignation at the Sergeant, to see what he thought of such a testimony as
that! The Sergeant looked back like a lamb, and seemed to like me better
than ever.
My lady informed him that he might continue his statement. “I
understand,” she said, “that you have honestly done your best, in what you
believe to be my interest. I am ready to hear what you have to say next.”
“What I have to say next,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “relates to Rosanna
Spearman. I recognised the young woman, as your ladyship may remember,
when she brought the washing-book into this room. Up to that time I was
inclined to doubt whether Miss Verinder had trusted her secret to anyone.
When I saw Rosanna, I altered my mind. I suspected her at once of being
privy to the suppression of the Diamond. The poor creature has met her
death by a dreadful end, and I don’t want your ladyship to think, now she’s
gone, that I was unduly hard on her. If this had been a common case of
thieving, I should have given Rosanna the benefit of the doubt just as freely
as I should have given it to any of the other servants in the house. Our
experience of the Reformatory women is, that when tried in service—and
when kindly and judiciously treated—they prove themselves in the majority
of cases to be honestly penitent, and honestly worthy of the pains taken
with them. But this was not a common case of thieving. It was a case—in
my mind—of a deeply planned fraud, with the owner of the Diamond at the
bottom of it. Holding this view, the first consideration which naturally
presented itself to me, in connection with Rosanna, was this: Would Miss
Verinder be satisfied (begging your ladyship’s pardon) with leading us all to
think that the Moonstone was merely lost? Or would she go a step further,
and delude us into believing that the Moonstone was stolen? In the latter
event there was Rosanna Spearman—with the character of a thief—ready to
her hand; the person of all others to lead your ladyship off, and to lead me
off, on a false scent.”
Was it possible (I asked myself) that he could put his case against Miss
Rachel and Rosanna in a more horrid point of view than this? It was
possible, as you shall now see.
“I had another reason for suspecting the deceased woman,” he said,
“which appears to me to have been stronger still. Who would be the very

person to help Miss Verinder in raising money privately on the Diamond?
Rosanna Spearman. No young lady in Miss Verinder’s position could
manage such a risky matter as that by herself. A go-between she must have,
and who so fit, I ask again, as Rosanna Spearman? Your ladyship’s
deceased housemaid was at the top of her profession when she was a thief.
She had relations, to my certain knowledge, with one of the few men in
London (in the money-lending line) who would advance a large sum on
such a notable jewel as the Moonstone, without asking awkward questions,
or insisting on awkward conditions. Bear this in mind, my lady; and now let
me show you how my suspicions have been justified by Rosanna’s own
acts, and by the plain inferences to be drawn from them.”
He thereupon passed the whole of Rosanna’s proceedings under review.
You are already as well acquainted with those proceedings as I am; and you
will understand how unanswerably this part of his report fixed the guilt of
being concerned in the disappearance of the Moonstone on the memory of
the poor dead girl. Even my mistress was daunted by what he said now. She
made him no answer when he had done. It didn’t seem to matter to the
Sergeant whether he was answered or not. On he went (devil take him!),
just as steady as ever.
“Having stated the whole case as I understand it,” he said, “I have only to
tell your ladyship, now, what I propose to do next. I see two ways of
bringing this inquiry successfully to an end. One of those ways I look upon
as a certainty. The other, I admit, is a bold experiment, and nothing more.
Your ladyship shall decide. Shall we take the certainty first?”
My mistress made him a sign to take his own way, and choose for
himself.
“Thank you,” said the Sergeant. “We’ll begin with the certainty, as your
ladyship is so good as to leave it to me. Whether Miss Verinder remains at
Frizinghall, or whether she returns here, I propose, in either case, to keep a
careful watch on all her proceedings—on the people she sees, on the rides
and walks she may take, and on the letters she may write and receive.”
“What next?” asked my mistress.
“I shall next,” answered the Sergeant, “request your ladyship’s leave to
introduce into the house, as a servant in the place of Rosanna Spearman, a
woman accustomed to private inquiries of this sort, for whose discretion I
can answer.”

“What next?” repeated my mistress.
“Next,” proceeded the Sergeant, “and last, I propose to send one of my
brother-officers to make an arrangement with that money-lender in London,
whom I mentioned just now as formerly acquainted with Rosanna
Spearman—and whose name and address, your ladyship may rely on it,
have been communicated by Rosanna to Miss Verinder. I don’t deny that
the course of action I am now suggesting will cost money, and consume
time. But the result is certain. We run a line round the Moonstone, and we
draw that line closer and closer till we find it in Miss Verinder’s possession,
supposing she decides to keep it. If her debts press, and she decides on
sending it away, then we have our man ready, and we meet the Moonstone
on its arrival in London.”
To hear her own daughter made the subject of such a proposal as this,
stung my mistress into speaking angrily for the first time.
“Consider your proposal declined, in every particular,” she said. “And go
on to your other way of bringing the inquiry to an end.”
“My other way,” said the Sergeant, going on as easy as ever, “is to try
that bold experiment to which I have alluded. I think I have formed a pretty
correct estimate of Miss Verinder’s temperament. She is quite capable
(according to my belief) of committing a daring fraud. But she is too hot
and impetuous in temper, and too little accustomed to deceit as a habit, to
act the hypocrite in small things, and to restrain herself under all
provocations. Her feelings, in this case, have repeatedly got beyond her
control, at the very time when it was plainly her interest to conceal them. It
is on this peculiarity in her character that I now propose to act. I want to
give her a great shock suddenly, under circumstances that will touch her to
the quick. In plain English, I want to tell Miss Verinder, without a word of
warning, of Rosanna’s death—on the chance that her own better feelings
will hurry her into making a clean breast of it. Does your ladyship accept
that alternative?”
My mistress astonished me beyond all power of expression. She
answered him on the instant:
“Yes; I do.”
“The pony-chaise is ready,” said the Sergeant. “I wish your ladyship
good morning.”

My lady held up her hand, and stopped him at the door.
“My daughter’s better feelings shall be appealed to, as you propose,” she
said. “But I claim the right, as her mother, of putting her to the test myself.
You will remain here, if you please; and I will go to Frizinghall.”
For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement, like
an ordinary man.
My mistress rang the bell, and ordered her waterproof things. It was still
pouring with rain; and the close carriage had gone, as you know, with Miss
Rachel to Frizinghall. I tried to dissuade her ladyship from facing the
severity of the weather. Quite useless! I asked leave to go with her, and hold
the umbrella. She wouldn’t hear of it. The pony-chaise came round, with
the groom in charge. “You may rely on two things,” she said to Sergeant
Cuff, in the hall. “I will try the experiment on Miss Verinder as boldly as
you could try it yourself. And I will inform you of the result, either
personally or by letter, before the last train leaves for London tonight.”
With that, she stepped into the chaise, and, taking the reins herself, drove
off to Frizinghall.

CHAPTER XXII
My mistress having left us, I had leisure to think of Sergeant Cuff. I
found him sitting in a snug corner of the hall, consulting his memorandum
book, and curling up viciously at the corners of the lips.
“Making notes of the case?” I asked.
“No,” said the Sergeant. “Looking to see what my next professional
engagement is.”
“Oh!” I said. “You think it’s all over then, here?”
“I think,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “that Lady Verinder is one of the
cleverest women in England. I also think a rose much better worth looking
at than a diamond. Where is the gardener, Mr. Betteredge?”
There was no getting a word more out of him on the matter of the
Moonstone. He had lost all interest in his own inquiry; and he would persist
in looking for the gardener. An hour afterwards, I heard them at high words
in the conservatory, with the dog-rose once more at the bottom of the
dispute.

In the meantime, it was my business to find out whether Mr. Franklin
persisted in his resolution to leave us by the afternoon train. After having
been informed of the conference in my lady’s room, and of how it had
ended, he immediately decided on waiting to hear the news from
Frizinghall. This very natural alteration in his plans—which, with ordinary
people, would have led to nothing in particular—proved, in Mr. Franklin’s
case, to have one objectionable result. It left him unsettled, with a legacy of
idle time on his hands, and, in so doing, it let out all the foreign sides of his
character, one on the top of another, like rats out of a bag.
Now as an Italian-Englishman, now as a German-Englishman, and now
as a French-Englishman, he drifted in and out of all the sitting-rooms in the
house, with nothing to talk of but Miss Rachel’s treatment of him; and with
nobody to address himself to but me. I found him (for example) in the

library, sitting under the map of Modern Italy, and quite unaware of any
other method of meeting his troubles, except the method of talking about
them. “I have several worthy aspirations, Betteredge; but what am I to do
with them now? I am full of dormant good qualities, if Rachel would only
have helped me to bring them out!” He was so eloquent in drawing the
picture of his own neglected merits, and so pathetic in lamenting over it
when it was done, that I felt quite at my wits’ end how to console him, when
it suddenly occurred to me that here was a case for the wholesome
application of a bit of Robinson Crusoe. I hobbled out to my own room, and
hobbled back with that immortal book. Nobody in the library! The map of
Modern Italy stared at me; and I stared at the map of Modern Italy.
I tried the drawing-room. There was his handkerchief on the floor, to
prove that he had drifted in. And there was the empty room to prove that he
had drifted out again.
I tried the dining-room, and discovered Samuel with a biscuit and a glass
of sherry, silently investigating the empty air. A minute since, Mr. Franklin
had rung furiously for a little light refreshment. On its production, in a
violent hurry, by Samuel, Mr. Franklin had vanished before the bell
downstairs had quite done ringing with the pull he had given to it.
I tried the morning-room, and found him at last. There he was at the
window, drawing hieroglyphics with his finger in the damp on the glass.
“Your sherry is waiting for you, sir,” I said to him. I might as well have
addressed myself to one of the four walls of the room; he was down in the
bottomless deep of his own meditations, past all pulling up. “How do you
explain Rachel’s conduct, Betteredge?” was the only answer I received. Not
being ready with the needful reply, I produced Robinson Crusoe, in which I
am firmly persuaded some explanation might have been found, if we had
only searched long enough for it. Mr. Franklin shut up Robinson Crusoe,
and floundered into his German-English gibberish on the spot. “Why not
look into it?” he said, as if I had personally objected to looking into it.
“Why the devil lose your patience, Betteredge, when patience is all that’s
wanted to arrive at the truth? Don’t interrupt me. Rachel’s conduct is
perfectly intelligible, if you will only do her the common justice to take the
Objective view first, and the Subjective view next, and the Objective-
Subjective view to wind up with. What do we know? We know that the loss
of the Moonstone, on Thursday morning last, threw her into a state of

nervous excitement, from which she has not recovered yet. Do you mean to
deny the Objective view, so far? Very well, then—don’t interrupt me. Now,
being in a state of nervous excitement, how are we to expect that she should
behave as she might otherwise have behaved to any of the people about
her? Arguing in this way, from within-outwards, what do we reach? We
reach the Subjective view. I defy you to controvert the Subjective view.
Very well then—what follows? Good Heavens! the Objective-Subjective
explanation follows, of course! Rachel, properly speaking, is not Rachel,
but Somebody Else. Do I mind being cruelly treated by Somebody Else?
You are unreasonable enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of
that. Then how does it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English
narrowness and prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable.
Where’s the sherry?”
My head was by this time in such a condition, that I was not quite sure
whether it was my own head, or Mr. Franklin’s. In this deplorable state, I
contrived to do, what I take to have been, three Objective things. I got Mr.
Franklin his sherry; I retired to my own room; and I solaced myself with the
most composing pipe of tobacco I ever remember to have smoked in my
life.
Don’t suppose, however, that I was quit of Mr. Franklin on such easy
terms as these. Drifting again, out of the morning-room into the hall, he
found his way to the offices next, smelt my pipe, and was instantly
reminded that he had been simple enough to give up smoking for Miss
Rachel’s sake. In the twinkling of an eye, he burst in on me with his cigar-
case, and came out strong on the one everlasting subject, in his neat, witty,
unbelieving, French way. “Give me a light, Betteredge. Is it conceivable
that a man can have smoked as long as I have without discovering that there
is a complete system for the treatment of women at the bottom of his cigar-
case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove it in two words. You choose a
cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you. What do you do upon that? You
throw it away and try another. Now observe the application! You choose a
woman, you try her, and she breaks your heart. Fool! take a lesson from
your cigar-case. Throw her away, and try another!”
I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my own
experience was dead against it. “In the time of the late Mrs. Betteredge,” I
said, “I felt pretty often inclined to try your philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But

the law insists on your smoking your cigar, sir, when you have once chosen
it.” I pointed that observation with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing
—and we were as merry as crickets, until the next new side of his character
turned up in due course. So things went on with my young master and me;
and so (while the Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses)
we two spent the interval before the news came back from Frizinghall.

The pony-chaise returned a good half hour before I had ventured to
expect it. My lady had decided to remain for the present, at her sister’s
house. The groom brought two letters from his mistress; one addressed to
Mr. Franklin, and the other to me.
Mr. Franklin’s letter I sent to him in the library—into which refuge his
driftings had now taken him for the second time. My own letter, I read in
my own room. A cheque, which dropped out when I opened it, informed me
(before I had mastered the contents) that Sergeant Cuff’s dismissal from the
inquiry after the Moonstone was now a settled thing.
I sent to the conservatory to say that I wished to speak to the Sergeant
directly. He appeared, with his mind full of the gardener and the dog-rose,
declaring that the equal of Mr. Begbie for obstinacy never had existed yet,
and never would exist again. I requested him to dismiss such wretched
trifling as this from our conversation, and to give his best attention to a
really serious matter. Upon that he exerted himself sufficiently to notice the
letter in my hand. “Ah!” he said in a weary way, “you have heard from her
ladyship. Have I anything to do with it, Mr. Betteredge?”
“You shall judge for yourself, Sergeant.” I thereupon read him the letter
(with my best emphasis and discretion), in the following words:

“MY GOOD GABRIEL,—I request that you will inform Sergeant Cuff,
that I have performed the promise I made to him; with this result, so far as
Rosanna Spearman is concerned. Miss Verinder solemnly declares, that she
has never spoken a word in private to Rosanna, since that unhappy woman
first entered my house. They never met, even accidentally, on the night
when the Diamond was lost; and no communication of any sort whatever
took place between them, from the Thursday morning when the alarm was
first raised in the house, to this present Saturday afternoon, when Miss

Verinder left us. After telling my daughter suddenly, and in so many words,
of Rosanna Spearman’s suicide—this is what has come of it.”

Having reached that point, I looked up, and asked Sergeant Cuff what he
thought of the letter, so far?
“I should only offend you if I expressed my opinion,” answered the
Sergeant. “Go on, Mr. Betteredge,” he said, with the most exasperating
resignation, “go on.”
When I remembered that this man had had the audacity to complain of
our gardener’s obstinacy, my tongue itched to “go on” in other words than
my mistress’s. This time, however, my Christianity held firm. I proceeded
steadily with her ladyship’s letter:

“Having appealed to Miss Verinder in the manner which the officer
thought most desirable, I spoke to her next in the manner which I myself
thought most likely to impress her. On two different occasions, before my
daughter left my roof, I privately warned her that she was exposing herself
to suspicion of the most unendurable and most degrading kind. I have now
told her, in the plainest terms, that my apprehensions have been realised.
“Her answer to this, on her own solemn affirmation, is as plain as words
can be. In the first place, she owes no money privately to any living
creature. In the second place, the Diamond is not now, and never has been,
in her possession, since she put it into her cabinet on Wednesday night.
“The confidence which my daughter has placed in me goes no further
than this. She maintains an obstinate silence, when I ask her if she can
explain the disappearance of the Diamond. She refuses, with tears, when I
appeal to her to speak out for my sake. ‘The day will come when you will
know why I am careless about being suspected, and why I am silent even to
you. I have done much to make my mother pity me—nothing to make my
mother blush for me.’ Those are my daughter’s own words.
“After what has passed between the officer and me, I think—stranger as
he is—that he should be made acquainted with what Miss Verinder has said,
as well as you. Read my letter to him, and then place in his hands the
cheque which I enclose. In resigning all further claim on his services, I have
only to say that I am convinced of his honesty and his intelligence; but I am

more firmly persuaded than ever, that the circumstances, in this case, have
fatally misled him.”

There the letter ended. Before presenting the cheque, I asked Sergeant
Cuff if he had any remark to make.
“It’s no part of my duty, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, “to make remarks
on a case, when I have done with it.”
I tossed the cheque across the table to him. “Do you believe in that part
of her ladyship’s letter?” I said, indignantly.
The Sergeant looked at the cheque, and lifted up his dismal eyebrows in
acknowledgment of her ladyship’s liberality.
“This is such a generous estimate of the value of my time,” he said, “that
I feel bound to make some return for it. I’ll bear in mind the amount in this
cheque, Mr. Betteredge, when the occasion comes round for remembering
it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Her ladyship has smoothed matters over for the present very cleverly,”
said the Sergeant. “But this family scandal is of the sort that bursts up again
when you least expect it. We shall have more detective-business on our
hands, sir, before the Moonstone is many months older.”
If those words meant anything, and if the manner in which he spoke them
meant anything—it came to this. My mistress’s letter had proved, to his
mind, that Miss Rachel was hardened enough to resist the strongest appeal
that could be addressed to her, and that she had deceived her own mother
(good God, under what circumstances!) by a series of abominable lies. How
other people, in my place, might have replied to the Sergeant, I don’t know.
I answered what he said in these plain terms:
“Sergeant Cuff, I consider your last observation as an insult to my lady
and her daughter!”
“Mr. Betteredge, consider it as a warning to yourself, and you will be
nearer the mark.”
Hot and angry as I was, the infernal confidence with which he gave me
that answer closed my lips.

I walked to the window to compose myself. The rain had given over; and,
who should I see in the court-yard, but Mr. Begbie, the gardener, waiting
outside to continue the dog-rose controversy with Sergeant Cuff.
“My compliments to the Sairgent,” said Mr. Begbie, the moment he set
eyes on me. “If he’s minded to walk to the station, I’m agreeable to go with
him.”
“What!” cries the Sergeant, behind me, “are you not convinced yet?”
“The de’il a bit I’m convinced!” answered Mr. Begbie.
“Then I’ll walk to the station!” says the Sergeant.
“Then I’ll meet you at the gate!” says Mr. Begbie.
I was angry enough, as you know—but how was any man’s anger to hold
out against such an interruption as this? Sergeant Cuff noticed the change in
me, and encouraged it by a word in season. “Come! come!” he said, “why
not treat my view of the case as her ladyship treats it? Why not say, the
circumstances have fatally misled me?”
To take anything as her ladyship took it was a privilege worth enjoying—
even with the disadvantage of its having been offered to me by Sergeant
Cuff. I cooled slowly down to my customary level. I regarded any other
opinion of Miss Rachel, than my lady’s opinion or mine, with a lofty
contempt. The only thing I could not do, was to keep off the subject of the
Moonstone! My own good sense ought to have warned me, I know, to let
the matter rest—but, there! the virtues which distinguish the present
generation were not invented in my time. Sergeant Cuff had hit me on the
raw, and, though I did look down upon him with contempt, the tender place
still tingled for all that. The end of it was that I perversely led him back to
the subject of her ladyship’s letter. “I am quite satisfied myself,” I said.
“But never mind that! Go on, as if I was still open to conviction. You think
Miss Rachel is not to be believed on her word; and you say we shall hear of
the Moonstone again. Back your opinion, Sergeant,” I concluded, in an airy
way. “Back your opinion.”
Instead of taking offence, Sergeant Cuff seized my hand, and shook it till
my fingers ached again.
“I declare to heaven,” says this strange officer solemnly, “I would take to
domestic service tomorrow, Mr. Betteredge, if I had a chance of being
employed along with You! To say you are as transparent as a child, sir, is to

pay the children a compliment which nine out of ten of them don’t deserve.
There! there! we won’t begin to dispute again. You shall have it out of me
on easier terms than that. I won’t say a word more about her ladyship, or
about Miss Verinder—I’ll only turn prophet, for once in a way, and for your
sake. I have warned you already that you haven’t done with the Moonstone
yet. Very well. Now I’ll tell you, at parting, of three things which will
happen in the future, and which, I believe, will force themselves on your
attention, whether you like it or not.”
“Go on!” I said, quite unabashed, and just as airy as ever.
“First,” said the Sergeant, “you will hear something from the Yollands—
when the postman delivers Rosanna’s letter at Cobb’s Hole, on Monday
next.”
If he had thrown a bucket of cold water over me, I doubt if I could have
felt it much more unpleasantly than I felt those words. Miss Rachel’s
assertion of her innocence had left Rosanna’s conduct—the making the new
nightgown, the hiding the smeared nightgown, and all the rest of it—
entirely without explanation. And this had never occurred to me, till
Sergeant Cuff forced it on my mind all in a moment!
“In the second place,” proceeded the Sergeant, “you will hear of the three
Indians again. You will hear of them in the neighbourhood, if Miss Rachel
remains in the neighbourhood. You will hear of them in London, if Miss
Rachel goes to London.”
Having lost all interest in the three jugglers, and having thoroughly
convinced myself of my young lady’s innocence, I took this second
prophecy easily enough. “So much for two of the three things that are going
to happen,” I said. “Now for the third!”
“Third, and last,” said Sergeant Cuff, “you will, sooner or later, hear
something of that money-lender in London, whom I have twice taken the
liberty of mentioning already. Give me your pocket-book, and I’ll make a
note for you of his name and address—so that there may be no mistake
about it if the thing really happens.”
He wrote accordingly on a blank leaf—“Mr. Septimus Luker, Middlesex-
place, Lambeth, London.”
“There,” he said, pointing to the address, “are the last words, on the
subject of the Moonstone, which I shall trouble you with for the present.

Time will show whether I am right or wrong. In the meanwhile, sir, I carry
away with me a sincere personal liking for you, which I think does honour
to both of us. If we don’t meet again before my professional retirement
takes place, I hope you will come and see me in a little house near London,
which I have got my eye on. There will be grass walks, Mr. Betteredge, I
promise you, in my garden. And as for the white moss rose——”
“The de’il a bit ye’ll get the white moss rose to grow, unless you bud him
on the dogue-rose first,” cried a voice at the window.
We both turned round. There was the everlasting Mr. Begbie, too eager
for the controversy to wait any longer at the gate. The Sergeant wrung my
hand, and darted out into the court-yard, hotter still on his side. “Ask him
about the moss rose, when he comes back, and see if I have left him a leg to
stand on!” cried the great Cuff, hailing me through the window in his turn.
“Gentlemen, both!” I answered, moderating them again as I had moderated
them once already. “In the matter of the moss rose there is a great deal to be
said on both sides!” I might as well (as the Irish say) have whistled jigs to a
milestone. Away they went together, fighting the battle of the roses without
asking or giving quarter on either side. The last I saw of them, Mr. Begbie
was shaking his obstinate head, and Sergeant Cuff had got him by the arm
like a prisoner in charge. Ah, well! well! I own I couldn’t help liking the
Sergeant—though I hated him all the time.
Explain that state of mind, if you can. You will soon be rid, now, of me
and my contradictions. When I have reported Mr. Franklin’s departure, the
history of the Saturday’s events will be finished at last. And when I have
next described certain strange things that happened in the course of the new
week, I shall have done my part of the Story, and shall hand over the pen to
the person who is appointed to follow my lead. If you are as tired of reading
this narrative as I am of writing it—Lord, how we shall enjoy ourselves on
both sides a few pages further on!

CHAPTER XXIII
I had kept the pony-chaise ready, in case Mr. Franklin persisted in
leaving us by the train that night. The appearance of the luggage, followed
downstairs by Mr. Franklin himself, informed me plainly enough that he
had held firm to a resolution for once in his life.
“So you have really made up your mind, sir?” I said, as we met in the
hall. “Why not wait a day or two longer, and give Miss Rachel another
chance?”
The foreign varnish appeared to have all worn off Mr. Franklin, now that
the time had come for saying good-bye. Instead of replying to me in words,
he put the letter which her ladyship had addressed to him into my hand. The
greater part of it said over again what had been said already in the other
communication received by me. But there was a bit about Miss Rachel
added at the end, which will account for the steadiness of Mr. Franklin’s
determination, if it accounts for nothing else.

“You will wonder, I dare say” (her ladyship wrote), “at my allowing my
own daughter to keep me perfectly in the dark. A Diamond worth twenty
thousand pounds has been lost—and I am left to infer that the mystery of its
disappearance is no mystery to Rachel, and that some incomprehensible
obligation of silence has been laid on her, by some person or persons utterly
unknown to me, with some object in view at which I cannot even guess. Is
it conceivable that I should allow myself to be trifled with in this way? It is
quite conceivable, in Rachel’s present state. She is in a condition of nervous
agitation pitiable to see. I dare not approach the subject of the Moonstone
again until time has done something to quiet her. To help this end, I have
not hesitated to dismiss the police-officer. The mystery which baffles us,
baffles him too. This is not a matter in which any stranger can help us. He
adds to what I have to suffer; and he maddens Rachel if she only hears his
name.

“My plans for the future are as well settled as they can be. My present
idea is to take Rachel to London—partly to relieve her mind by a complete
change, partly to try what may be done by consulting the best medical
advice. Can I ask you to meet us in town? My dear Franklin, you, in your
way, must imitate my patience, and wait, as I do, for a fitter time. The
valuable assistance which you rendered to the inquiry after the lost jewel is
still an unpardoned offence, in the present dreadful state of Rachel’s mind.
Moving blindfold in this matter, you have added to the burden of anxiety
which she has had to bear, by innocently threatening her secret with
discovery, through your exertions. It is impossible for me to excuse the
perversity that holds you responsible for consequences which neither you
nor I could imagine or foresee. She is not to be reasoned with—she can
only be pitied. I am grieved to have to say it, but for the present, you and
Rachel are better apart. The only advice I can offer you is, to give her time.”

I handed the letter back, sincerely sorry for Mr. Franklin, for I knew how
fond he was of my young lady; and I saw that her mother’s account of her
had cut him to the heart. “You know the proverb, sir,” was all I said to him.
“When things are at the worst, they’re sure to mend. Things can’t be much
worse, Mr. Franklin, than they are now.”
Mr. Franklin folded up his aunt’s letter, without appearing to be much
comforted by the remark which I had ventured on addressing to him.
“When I came here from London with that horrible Diamond,” he said, “I
don’t believe there was a happier household in England than this. Look at
the household now! Scattered, disunited—the very air of the place poisoned
with mystery and suspicion! Do you remember that morning at the
Shivering Sand, when we talked about my uncle Herncastle, and his
birthday gift? The Moonstone has served the Colonel’s vengeance,
Betteredge, by means which the Colonel himself never dreamt of!”
With that he shook me by the hand, and went out to the pony-chaise.
I followed him down the steps. It was very miserable to see him leaving
the old place, where he had spent the happiest years of his life, in this way.
Penelope (sadly upset by all that had happened in the house) came round
crying, to bid him good-bye. Mr. Franklin kissed her. I waved my hand as
much as to say, “You’re heartily welcome, sir.” Some of the other female

servants appeared, peeping after him round the corner. He was one of those
men whom the women all like. At the last moment, I stopped the pony-
chaise, and begged as a favour that he would let us hear from him by letter.
He didn’t seem to heed what I said—he was looking round from one thing
to another, taking a sort of farewell of the old house and grounds. “Tell us
where you are going to, sir!” I said, holding on by the chaise, and trying to
get at his future plans in that way. Mr. Franklin pulled his hat down
suddenly over his eyes. “Going?” says he, echoing the word after me. “I am
going to the devil!” The pony started at the word, as if he had felt a
Christian horror of it. “God bless you, sir, go where you may!” was all I had
time to say, before he was out of sight and hearing. A sweet and pleasant
gentleman! With all his faults and follies, a sweet and pleasant gentleman!
He left a sad gap behind him, when he left my lady’s house.
It was dull and dreary enough, when the long summer evening closed in,
on that Saturday night.
I kept my spirits from sinking by sticking fast to my pipe and my
Robinson Crusoe. The women (excepting Penelope) beguiled the time by
talking of Rosanna’s suicide. They were all obstinately of opinion that the
poor girl had stolen the Moonstone, and that she had destroyed herself in
terror of being found out. My daughter, of course, privately held fast to
what she had said all along. Her notion of the motive which was really at
the bottom of the suicide failed, oddly enough, just where my young lady’s
assertion of her innocence failed also. It left Rosanna’s secret journey to
Frizinghall, and Rosanna’s proceedings in the matter of the nightgown
entirely unaccounted for. There was no use in pointing this out to Penelope;
the objection made about as much impression on her as a shower of rain on
a waterproof coat. The truth is, my daughter inherits my superiority to
reason—and, in respect to that accomplishment, has got a long way ahead
of her own father.

On the next day (Sunday), the close carriage, which had been kept at Mr.
Ablewhite’s, came back to us empty. The coachman brought a message for
me, and written instructions for my lady’s own maid and for Penelope.
The message informed me that my mistress had determined to take Miss
Rachel to her house in London, on the Monday. The written instructions
informed the two maids of the clothing that was wanted, and directed them

to meet their mistresses in town at a given hour. Most of the other servants
were to follow. My lady had found Miss Rachel so unwilling to return to the
house, after what had happened in it, that she had decided on going to
London direct from Frizinghall. I was to remain in the country, until further
orders, to look after things indoors and out. The servants left with me were
to be put on board wages.
Being reminded, by all this, of what Mr. Franklin had said about our
being a scattered and disunited household, my mind was led naturally to
Mr. Franklin himself. The more I thought of him, the more uneasy I felt
about his future proceedings. It ended in my writing, by the Sunday’s post,
to his father’s valet, Mr. Jeffco (whom I had known in former years) to beg
he would let me know what Mr. Franklin had settled to do, on arriving in
London.
The Sunday evening was, if possible, duller even than the Saturday
evening. We ended the day of rest, as hundreds of thousands of people end
it regularly, once a week, in these islands—that is to say, we all anticipated
bedtime, and fell asleep in our chairs.

How the Monday affected the rest of the household I don’t know. The
Monday gave me a good shake up. The first of Sergeant Cuff’s prophecies
of what was to happen—namely, that I should hear from the Yollands—
came true on that day.
I had seen Penelope and my lady’s maid off in the railway with the
luggage for London, and was pottering about the grounds, when I heard my
name called. Turning round, I found myself face to face with the
fisherman’s daughter, Limping Lucy. Bating her lame foot and her leanness
(this last a horrid draw-back to a woman, in my opinion), the girl had some
pleasing qualities in the eye of a man. A dark, keen, clever face, and a nice
clear voice, and a beautiful brown head of hair counted among her merits. A
crutch appeared in the list of her misfortunes. And a temper reckoned high
in the sum total of her defects.
“Well, my dear,” I said, “what do you want with me?”
“Where’s the man you call Franklin Blake?” says the girl, fixing me with
a fierce look, as she rested herself on her crutch.

“That’s not a respectful way to speak of any gentleman,” I answered. “If
you wish to inquire for my lady’s nephew, you will please to mention him
as Mr. Franklin Blake.”
She limped a step nearer to me, and looked as if she could have eaten me
alive. “Mr. Franklin Blake?” she repeated after me. “Murderer Franklin
Blake would be a fitter name for him.”
My practice with the late Mrs. Betteredge came in handy here. Whenever
a woman tries to put you out of temper, turn the tables, and put her out of
temper instead. They are generally prepared for every effort you can make
in your own defence, but that. One word does it as well as a hundred; and
one word did it with Limping Lucy. I looked her pleasantly in the face; and
I said—“Pooh!”
The girl’s temper flamed out directly. She poised herself on her sound
foot, and she took her crutch, and beat it furiously three times on the
ground. “He’s a murderer! he’s a murderer! he’s a murderer! He has been
the death of Rosanna Spearman!” She screamed that answer out at the top
of her voice. One or two of the people at work in the grounds near us
looked up—saw it was Limping Lucy—knew what to expect from that
quarter—and looked away again.
“He has been the death of Rosanna Spearman?” I repeated. “What makes
you say that, Lucy?”
“What do you care? What does any man care? Oh! if she had only
thought of the men as I think, she might have been living now!”
“She always thought kindly of me, poor soul,” I said; “and, to the best of
my ability, I always tried to act kindly by her.”
I spoke those words in as comforting a manner as I could. The truth is, I
hadn’t the heart to irritate the girl by another of my smart replies. I had only
noticed her temper at first. I noticed her wretchedness now—and
wretchedness is not uncommonly insolent, you will find, in humble life. My
answer melted Limping Lucy. She bent her head down, and laid it on the
top of her crutch.
“I loved her,” the girl said softly. “She had lived a miserable life, Mr.
Betteredge—vile people had ill-treated her and led her wrong—and it
hadn’t spoiled her sweet temper. She was an angel. She might have been
happy with me. I had a plan for our going to London together like sisters,

and living by our needles. That man came here, and spoilt it all. He
bewitched her. Don’t tell me he didn’t mean it, and didn’t know it. He ought
to have known it. He ought to have taken pity on her. ‘I can’t live without
him—and, oh, Lucy, he never even looks at me.’ That’s what she said.
Cruel, cruel, cruel. I said, ‘No man is worth fretting for in that way.’ And
she said, ‘There are men worth dying for, Lucy, and he is one of them.’ I
had saved up a little money. I had settled things with father and mother. I
meant to take her away from the mortification she was suffering here. We
should have had a little lodging in London, and lived together like sisters.
She had a good education, sir, as you know, and she wrote a good hand. She
was quick at her needle. I have a good education, and I write a good hand. I
am not as quick at my needle as she was—but I could have done. We might
have got our living nicely. And, oh! what happens this morning? what
happens this morning? Her letter comes and tells me that she has done with
the burden of her life. Her letter comes, and bids me good-bye for ever.
Where is he?” cries the girl, lifting her head from the crutch, and flaming
out again through her tears. “Where’s this gentleman that I mustn’t speak
of, except with respect? Ha, Mr. Betteredge, the day is not far off when the
poor will rise against the rich. I pray Heaven they may begin with him. I
pray Heaven they may begin with him.”
Here was another of your average good Christians, and here was the
usual break-down, consequent on that same average Christianity being
pushed too far! The parson himself (though I own this is saying a great
deal) could hardly have lectured the girl in the state she was in now. All I
ventured to do was to keep her to the point—in the hope of something
turning up which might be worth hearing.
“What do you want with Mr. Franklin Blake?” I asked.
“I want to see him.”
“For anything particular?”
“I have got a letter to give him.”
“From Rosanna Spearman?”
“Yes.”
“Sent to you in your own letter?”
“Yes.”

Was the darkness going to lift? Were all the discoveries that I was dying
to make, coming and offering themselves to me of their own accord? I was
obliged to wait a moment. Sergeant Cuff had left his infection behind him.
Certain signs and tokens, personal to myself, warned me that the detective-
fever was beginning to set in again.
“You can’t see Mr. Franklin,” I said.
“I must, and will, see him.”
“He went to London last night.”
Limping Lucy looked me hard in the face, and saw that I was speaking
the truth. Without a word more, she turned about again instantly towards
Cobb’s Hole.
“Stop!” I said. “I expect news of Mr. Franklin Blake tomorrow. Give me
your letter, and I’ll send it on to him by the post.”
Limping Lucy steadied herself on her crutch and looked back at me over
her shoulder.
“I am to give it from my hands into his hands,” she said. “And I am to
give it to him in no other way.”
“Shall I write, and tell him what you have said?”
“Tell him I hate him. And you will tell him the truth.”
“Yes, yes. But about the letter——?”
“If he wants the letter, he must come back here, and get it from Me.”
With those words she limped off on the way to Cobb’s Hole. The
detective-fever burnt up all my dignity on the spot. I followed her, and tried
to make her talk. All in vain. It was my misfortune to be a man—and
Limping Lucy enjoyed disappointing me. Later in the day, I tried my luck
with her mother. Good Mrs. Yolland could only cry, and recommend a drop
of comfort out of the Dutch bottle. I found the fisherman on the beach. He
said it was “a bad job,” and went on mending his net. Neither father nor
mother knew more than I knew. The one way left to try was the chance,
which might come with the morning, of writing to Mr. Franklin Blake.
I leave you to imagine how I watched for the postman on Tuesday
morning. He brought me two letters. One, from Penelope (which I had
hardly patience enough to read), announced that my lady and Miss Rachel

were safely established in London. The other, from Mr. Jeffco, informed me
that his master’s son had left England already.
On reaching the metropolis, Mr. Franklin had, it appeared, gone straight
to his father’s residence. He arrived at an awkward time. Mr. Blake, the
elder, was up to his eyes in the business of the House of Commons, and was
amusing himself at home that night with the favourite parliamentary
plaything which they call “a private bill.” Mr. Jeffco himself showed Mr.
Franklin into his father’s study. “My dear Franklin! why do you surprise me
in this way? Anything wrong?” “Yes; something wrong with Rachel; I am
dreadfully distressed about it.” “Grieved to hear it. But I can’t listen to you
now.” “When can you listen?” “My dear boy! I won’t deceive you. I can
listen at the end of the session, not a moment before. Good-night.” “Thank
you, sir. Good-night.”
Such was the conversation, inside the study, as reported to me by Mr.
Jeffco. The conversation outside the study, was shorter still. “Jeffco, see
what time the tidal train starts tomorrow morning.” “At six-forty, Mr.
Franklin.” “Have me called at five.” “Going abroad, sir?” “Going, Jeffco,
wherever the railway chooses to take me.” “Shall I tell your father, sir?”
“Yes; tell him at the end of the session.”
The next morning Mr. Franklin had started for foreign parts. To what
particular place he was bound, nobody (himself included) could presume to
guess. We might hear of him next in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. The
chances were as equally divided as possible, in Mr. Jeffco’s opinion, among
the four quarters of the globe.
This news—by closing up all prospects of my bringing Limping Lucy
and Mr. Franklin together—at once stopped any further progress of mine on
the way to discovery. Penelope’s belief that her fellow-servant had
destroyed herself through unrequited love for Mr. Franklin Blake, was
confirmed—and that was all. Whether the letter which Rosanna had left to
be given to him after her death did, or did not, contain the confession which
Mr. Franklin had suspected her of trying to make to him in her life-time, it
was impossible to say. It might be only a farewell word, telling nothing but
the secret of her unhappy fancy for a person beyond her reach. Or it might
own the whole truth about the strange proceedings in which Sergeant Cuff
had detected her, from the time when the Moonstone was lost, to the time
when she rushed to her own destruction at the Shivering Sand. A sealed

letter it had been placed in Limping Lucy’s hand, and a sealed letter it
remained to me and to every one about the girl, her own parents included.
We all suspected her of having been in the dead woman’s confidence; we all
tried to make her speak; we all failed. Now one, and now another, of the
servants—still holding to the belief that Rosanna had stolen the Diamond
and had hidden it—peered and poked about the rocks to which she had been
traced, and peered and poked in vain. The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed;
the summer went on, and the autumn came. And the Quicksand, which hid
her body, hid her secret too.
The news of Mr. Franklin’s departure from England on the Sunday
morning, and the news of my lady’s arrival in London with Miss Rachel on
the Monday afternoon, had reached me, as you are aware, by the Tuesday’s
post. The Wednesday came, and brought nothing. The Thursday produced a
second budget of news from Penelope.
My girl’s letter informed me that some great London doctor had been
consulted about her young lady, and had earned a guinea by remarking that
she had better be amused. Flower-shows, operas, balls—there was a whole
round of gaieties in prospect; and Miss Rachel, to her mother’s
astonishment, eagerly took to it all. Mr. Godfrey had called; evidently as
sweet as ever on his cousin, in spite of the reception he had met with, when
he tried his luck on the occasion of the birthday. To Penelope’s great regret,
he had been most graciously received, and had added Miss Rachel’s name
to one of his Ladies’ Charities on the spot. My mistress was reported to be
out of spirits, and to have held two long interviews with her lawyer. Certain
speculations followed, referring to a poor relation of the family—one Miss
Clack, whom I have mentioned in my account of the birthday dinner, as
sitting next to Mr. Godfrey, and having a pretty taste in champagne.
Penelope was astonished to find that Miss Clack had not called yet. She
would surely not be long before she fastened herself on my lady as usual—
and so forth, and so forth, in the way women have of girding at each other,
on and off paper. This would not have been worth mentioning, I admit, but
for one reason. I hear you are likely to be turned over to Miss Clack, after
parting with me. In that case, just do me the favour of not believing a word
she says, if she speaks of your humble servant.

On Friday, nothing happened—except that one of the dogs showed signs
of a breaking out behind the ears. I gave him a dose of syrup of buckthorn,
and put him on a diet of pot-liquor and vegetables till further orders. Excuse
my mentioning this. It has slipped in somehow. Pass it over please. I am fast
coming to the end of my offences against your cultivated modern taste.
Besides, the dog was a good creature, and deserved a good physicking; he
did indeed.

Saturday, the last day of the week, is also the last day in my narrative.
The morning’s post brought me a surprise in the shape of a London
newspaper. The handwriting on the direction puzzled me. I compared it
with the money-lender’s name and address as recorded in my pocket-book,
and identified it at once as the writing of Sergeant Cuff.
Looking through the paper eagerly enough, after this discovery, I found
an ink-mark drawn round one of the police reports. Here it is, at your
service. Read it as I read it, and you will set the right value on the
Sergeant’s polite attention in sending me the news of the day:

“LAMBETH—Shortly before the closing of the court, Mr. Septimus
Luker, the well-known dealer in ancient gems, carvings, intagli, &c., &c.,
applied to the sitting magistrate for advice. The applicant stated that he had
been annoyed, at intervals throughout the day, by the proceedings of some
of those strolling Indians who infest the streets. The persons complained of
were three in number. After having been sent away by the police, they had
returned again and again, and had attempted to enter the house on pretence
of asking for charity. Warned off in the front, they had been discovered
again at the back of the premises. Besides the annoyance complained of,
Mr. Luker expressed himself as being under some apprehension that
robbery might be contemplated. His collection contained many unique
gems, both classical and Oriental, of the highest value. He had only the day
before been compelled to dismiss a skilled workman in ivory carving from
his employment (a native of India, as we understood), on suspicion of
attempted theft; and he felt by no means sure that this man and the street
jugglers of whom he complained, might not be acting in concert. It might be
their object to collect a crowd, and create a disturbance in the street, and, in

the confusion thus caused, to obtain access to the house. In reply to the
magistrate, Mr. Luker admitted that he had no evidence to produce of any
attempt at robbery being in contemplation. He could speak positively to the
annoyance and interruption caused by the Indians, but not to anything else.
The magistrate remarked that, if the annoyance were repeated, the applicant
could summon the Indians to that court, where they might easily be dealt
with under the Act. As to the valuables in Mr. Luker’s possession, Mr.
Luker himself must take the best measures for their safe custody. He would
do well perhaps to communicate with the police, and to adopt such
additional precautions as their experience might suggest. The applicant
thanked his worship, and withdrew.”

One of the wise ancients is reported (I forget on what occasion) as having
recommended his fellow-creatures to “look to the end.” Looking to the end
of these pages of mine, and wondering for some days past how I should
manage to write it, I find my plain statement of facts coming to a
conclusion, most appropriately, of its own self. We have gone on, in this
matter of the Moonstone, from one marvel to another; and here we end with
the greatest marvel of all—namely, the accomplishment of Sergeant Cuff’s
three predictions in less than a week from the time when he had made them.
After hearing from the Yollands on the Monday, I had now heard of the
Indians, and heard of the money-lender, in the news from London—Miss
Rachel herself remember, being also in London at the time. You see, I put
things at their worst, even when they tell dead against my own view. If you
desert me, and side with the Sergeant, on the evidence before you—if the
only rational explanation you can see is, that Miss Rachel and Mr. Luker
must have got together, and that the Moonstone must be now in pledge in
the money-lender’s house—I own, I can’t blame you for arriving at that
conclusion. In the dark, I have brought you thus far. In the dark I am
compelled to leave you, with my best respects.
Why compelled? it may be asked. Why not take the persons who have
gone along with me, so far, up into those regions of superior enlightenment
in which I sit myself?
In answer to this, I can only state that I am acting under orders, and that
those orders have been given to me (as I understand) in the interests of
truth. I am forbidden to tell more in this narrative than I knew myself at the

time. Or, to put it plainer, I am to keep strictly within the limits of my own
experience, and am not to inform you of what other persons told me—for
the very sufficient reason that you are to have the information from those
other persons themselves, at first hand. In this matter of the Moonstone the
plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses. I picture to myself a
member of the family reading these pages fifty years hence. Lord! what a
compliment he will feel it, to be asked to take nothing on hear-say, and to
be treated in all respects like a Judge on the bench.
At this place, then, we part—for the present, at least—after long
journeying together, with a companionable feeling, I hope, on both sides.
The devil’s dance of the Indian Diamond has threaded its way to London;
and to London you must go after it, leaving me at the country house. Please
to excuse the faults of this composition—my talking so much of myself,
and being too familiar, I am afraid, with you. I mean no harm; and I drink
most respectfully (having just done dinner) to your health and prosperity, in
a tankard of her ladyship’s ale. May you find in these leaves of my writing,
what Robinson Crusoe found in his experience on the desert island—
namely, “something to comfort yourselves from, and to set in the
Description of Good and Evil, on the Credit Side of the Account.”—
Farewell.
THE END OF THE FIRST PERIOD.

SECOND PERIOD.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH. (1848-1849.)
The Events related in several Narratives.

FIRST NARRATIVE.
Contributed by Miss Clack; niece of the late Sir John Verinder

CHAPTER I
I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in heaven) for having had
habits of order and regularity instilled into me at a very early age.
In that happy bygone time, I was taught to keep my hair tidy at all hours
of the day and night, and to fold up every article of my clothing carefully, in
the same order, on the same chair, in the same place at the foot of the bed,
before retiring to rest. An entry of the day’s events in my little diary
invariably preceded the folding up. The “Evening Hymn” (repeated in bed)
invariably followed the folding up. And the sweet sleep of childhood
invariably followed the “Evening Hymn.”
In later life (alas!) the Hymn has been succeeded by sad and bitter
meditations; and the sweet sleep has been but ill exchanged for the broken
slumbers which haunt the uneasy pillow of care. On the other hand, I have
continued to fold my clothes, and to keep my little diary. The former habit
links me to my happy childhood—before papa was ruined. The latter habit

—hitherto mainly useful in helping me to discipline the fallen nature which
we all inherit from Adam—has unexpectedly proved important to my
humble interests in quite another way. It has enabled poor Me to serve the
caprice of a wealthy member of the family into which my late uncle
married. I am fortunate enough to be useful to Mr. Franklin Blake.
I have been cut off from all news of my relatives by marriage for some
time past. When we are isolated and poor, we are not infrequently forgotten.
I am now living, for economy’s sake, in a little town in Brittany, inhabited
by a select circle of serious English friends, and possessed of the
inestimable advantages of a Protestant clergyman and a cheap market.
In this retirement—a Patmos amid the howling ocean of popery that
surrounds us—a letter from England has reached me at last. I find my
insignificant existence suddenly remembered by Mr. Franklin Blake. My
wealthy relative—would that I could add my spiritually-wealthy relative!—
writes, without even an attempt at disguising that he wants something of
me. The whim has seized him to stir up the deplorable scandal of the
Moonstone: and I am to help him by writing the account of what I myself
witnessed while visiting at Aunt Verinder’s house in London. Pecuniary
remuneration is offered to me—with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich.
I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most
intensely painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself
compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Mr. Blake’s cheque. My
nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility
conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.
Without my diary, I doubt—pray let me express it in the grossest terms!
—if I could have honestly earned my money. With my diary, the poor
labourer (who forgives Mr. Blake for insulting her) is worthy of her hire.
Nothing escaped me at the time I was visiting dear Aunt Verinder.
Everything was entered (thanks to my early training) day by day as it
happened; and everything, down to the smallest particular, shall be told
here. My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above my respect for
persons. It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what may not prove to be
sufficiently flattering in these pages to the person chiefly concerned in
them. He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my
conscience too.*

[*Note. Added by Franklin Blake.—Miss Clack may make her mind quite easy
on this point. Nothing will be added, altered or removed, in her manuscript, or in
any of the other manuscripts which pass through my hands. Whatever opinions
any of the writers may express, whatever peculiarities of treatment may mark,
and perhaps in a literary sense, disfigure the narratives which I am now
collecting, not a line will be tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As
genuine documents they are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall
preserve them, endorsed by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the
facts. It only remains to be added that “the person chiefly concerned” in Miss
Clack’s narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to brave the
smartest exercise of Miss Clack’s pen, but even to recognise its unquestionable
value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss Clack’s character.]

My diary informs me, that I was accidentally passing Aunt Verinder’s
house in Montagu Square, on Monday, 3rd July, 1848.
Seeing the shutters opened, and the blinds drawn up, I felt that it would
be an act of polite attention to knock, and make inquiries. The person who
answered the door, informed me that my aunt and her daughter (I really
cannot call her my cousin!) had arrived from the country a week since, and
meditated making some stay in London. I sent up a message at once,
declining to disturb them, and only begging to know whether I could be of
any use.
The person who answered the door, took my message in insolent silence,
and left me standing in the hall. She is the daughter of a heathen old man
named Betteredge—long, too long, tolerated in my aunt’s family. I sat down
in the hall to wait for my answer—and, having always a few tracts in my
bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the
person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard;
but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite
above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series
addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was
devoutly familiar. Its title was, “A Word With You On Your Cap-Ribbons.”
“My lady is much obliged, and begs you will come and lunch tomorrow
at two.”
I passed over the manner in which she gave her message, and the
dreadful boldness of her look. I thanked this young castaway; and I said, in
a tone of Christian interest, “Will you favour me by accepting a tract?”
She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If it’s
written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If it’s written

by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it.” She handed
me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the good seed
somehow. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped the tract into
the letter-box. When I had dropped another tract through the area railings, I
felt relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy responsibility towards others.
We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers’-
Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is—
as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers’ trousers from
the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the
irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions
of the innocent son. I was a member, at that time, of the select committee;
and I mention the Society here, because my precious and admirable friend,
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, was associated with our work of moral and
material usefulness. I had expected to see him in the boardroom, on the
Monday evening of which I am now writing, and had proposed to tell him,
when we met, of dear Aunt Verinder’s arrival in London. To my great
disappointment he never appeared. On my expressing a feeling of surprise
at his absence, my sisters of the Committee all looked up together from
their trousers (we had a great pressure of business that night), and asked in
amazement, if I had not heard the news. I acknowledged my ignorance, and
was then told, for the first time, of an event which forms, so to speak, the
starting-point of this narrative. On the previous Friday, two gentlemen—
occupying widely-different positions in society—had been the victims of an
outrage which had startled all London. One of the gentlemen was Mr.
Septimus Luker, of Lambeth. The other was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Living in my present isolation, I have no means of introducing the
newspaper-account of the outrage into my narrative. I was also deprived, at
the time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the events related by the
fervid eloquence of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. All I can do is to state the facts
as they were stated, on that Monday evening, to me; proceeding on the plan
which I have been taught from infancy to adopt in folding up my clothes.
Everything shall be put neatly, and everything shall be put in its place.
These lines are written by a poor weak woman. From a poor weak woman
who will be cruel enough to expect more?
The date—thanks to my dear parents, no dictionary that ever was written
can be more particular than I am about dates—was Friday, June 30th, 1848.

Early on that memorable day, our gifted Mr. Godfrey happened to be
cashing a cheque at a banking-house in Lombard Street. The name of the
firm is accidentally blotted in my diary, and my sacred regard for truth
forbids me to hazard a guess in a matter of this kind. Fortunately, the name
of the firm doesn’t matter. What does matter is a circumstance that occurred
when Mr. Godfrey had transacted his business. On gaining the door, he
encountered a gentleman—a perfect stranger to him—who was accidentally
leaving the office exactly at the same time as himself. A momentary contest
of politeness ensued between them as to who should be the first to pass
through the door of the bank. The stranger insisted on making Mr. Godfrey
precede him; Mr. Godfrey said a few civil words; they bowed, and parted in
the street.
Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very
trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner. Oh,
my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your
poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith be as your stockings,
and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put
on at a moment’s notice!
I beg a thousand pardons. I have fallen insensibly into my Sunday-school
style. Most inappropriate in such a record as this. Let me try to be worldly
—let me say that trifles, in this case as in many others, led to terrible
results. Merely premising that the polite stranger was Mr. Luker, of
Lambeth, we will now follow Mr. Godfrey home to his residence at
Kilburn.
He found waiting for him, in the hall, a poorly clad but delicate and
interesting-looking little boy. The boy handed him a letter, merely
mentioning that he had been entrusted with it by an old lady whom he did
not know, and who had given him no instructions to wait for an answer.
Such incidents as these were not uncommon in Mr. Godfrey’s large
experience as a promoter of public charities. He let the boy go, and opened
the letter.
The handwriting was entirely unfamiliar to him. It requested his
attendance, within an hour’s time, at a house in Northumberland Street,
Strand, which he had never had occasion to enter before. The object sought
was to obtain from the worthy manager certain details on the subject of the
Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and the information was

wanted by an elderly lady who proposed adding largely to the resources of
the charity, if her questions were met by satisfactory replies. She mentioned
her name, and she added that the shortness of her stay in London prevented
her from giving any longer notice to the eminent philanthropist whom she
addressed.
Ordinary people might have hesitated before setting aside their own
engagements to suit the convenience of a stranger. The Christian Hero never
hesitates where good is to be done. Mr. Godfrey instantly turned back, and
proceeded to the house in Northumberland Street. A most respectable
though somewhat corpulent man answered the door, and, on hearing Mr.
Godfrey’s name, immediately conducted him into an empty apartment at the
back, on the drawing-room floor. He noticed two unusual things on entering
the room. One of them was a faint odour of musk and camphor. The other
was an ancient Oriental manuscript, richly illuminated with Indian figures
and devices, that lay open to inspection on a table.
He was looking at the book, the position of which caused him to stand
with his back turned towards the closed folding doors communicating with
the front room, when, without the slightest previous noise to warn him, he
felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind. He had just time
to notice that the arm round his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown
colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was
thrown helpless on the floor by (as he judged) two men. A third rifled his
pockets, and—if, as a lady, I may venture to use such an expression—
searched him, without ceremony, through and through to his skin.
Here I should greatly enjoy saying a few cheering words on the devout
confidence which could alone have sustained Mr. Godfrey in an emergency
so terrible as this. Perhaps, however, the position and appearance of my
admirable friend at the culminating period of the outrage (as above
described) are hardly within the proper limits of female discussion. Let me
pass over the next few moments, and return to Mr. Godfrey at the time
when the odious search of his person had been completed. The outrage had
been perpetrated throughout in dead silence. At the end of it some words
were exchanged, among the invisible wretches, in a language which he did
not understand, but in tones which were plainly expressive (to his cultivated
ear) of disappointment and rage. He was suddenly lifted from the ground,
placed in a chair, and bound there hand and foot. The next moment he felt

the air flowing in from the open door, listened, and concluded that he was
alone again in the room.
An interval elapsed, and he heard a sound below like the rustling sound
of a woman’s dress. It advanced up the stairs, and stopped. A female scream
rent the atmosphere of guilt. A man’s voice below exclaimed “Hullo!” A
man’s feet ascended the stairs. Mr. Godfrey felt Christian fingers
unfastening his bandage, and extracting his gag. He looked in amazement at
two respectable strangers, and faintly articulated, “What does it mean?” The
two respectable strangers looked back, and said, “Exactly the question we
were going to ask you.”
The inevitable explanation followed. No! Let me be scrupulously
particular. Sal volatile and water followed, to compose dear Mr. Godfrey’s
nerves. The explanation came next.
It appeared from the statement of the landlord and landlady of the house
(persons of good repute in the neighbourhood), that their first and second
floor apartments had been engaged, on the previous day, for a week certain,
by a most respectable-looking gentleman—the same who has been already
described as answering the door to Mr. Godfrey’s knock. The gentleman
had paid the week’s rent and all the week’s extras in advance, stating that
the apartments were wanted for three Oriental noblemen, friends of his,
who were visiting England for the first time. Early on the morning of the
outrage, two of the Oriental strangers, accompanied by their respectable
English friend, took possession of the apartments. The third was expected to
join them shortly; and the luggage (reported as very bulky) was announced
to follow when it had passed through the Custom-house, late in the
afternoon. Not more than ten minutes previous to Mr. Godfrey’s visit, the
third foreigner had arrived. Nothing out of the common had happened, to
the knowledge of the landlord and landlady downstairs, until within the last
five minutes—when they had seen the three foreigners, accompanied by
their respectable English friend, all leave the house together, walking
quietly in the direction of the Strand. Remembering that a visitor had called,
and not having seen the visitor also leave the house, the landlady had
thought it rather strange that the gentleman should be left by himself
upstairs. After a short discussion with her husband, she had considered it
advisable to ascertain whether anything was wrong. The result had

followed, as I have already attempted to describe it; and there the
explanation of the landlord and the landlady came to an end.
An investigation was next made in the room. Dear Mr. Godfrey’s
property was found scattered in all directions. When the articles were
collected, however, nothing was missing; his watch, chain, purse, keys,
pocket-handkerchief, note-book, and all his loose papers had been closely
examined, and had then been left unharmed to be resumed by the owner. In
the same way, not the smallest morsel of property belonging to the
proprietors of the house had been abstracted. The Oriental noblemen had
removed their own illuminated manuscript, and had removed nothing else.
What did it mean? Taking the worldly point of view, it appeared to mean
that Mr. Godfrey had been the victim of some incomprehensible error,
committed by certain unknown men. A dark conspiracy was on foot in the
midst of us; and our beloved and innocent friend had been entangled in its
meshes. When the Christian hero of a hundred charitable victories plunges
into a pitfall that has been dug for him by mistake, oh, what a warning it is
to the rest of us to be unceasingly on our guard! How soon may our own
evil passions prove to be Oriental noblemen who pounce on us unawares!
I could write pages of affectionate warning on this one theme, but (alas!)
I am not permitted to improve—I am condemned to narrate. My wealthy
relative’s cheque—henceforth, the incubus of my existence—warns me that
I have not done with this record of violence yet. We must leave Mr. Godfrey
to recover in Northumberland Street, and must follow the proceedings of
Mr. Luker at a later period of the day.
After leaving the bank, Mr. Luker had visited various parts of London on
business errands. Returning to his own residence, he found a letter waiting
for him, which was described as having been left a short time previously by
a boy. In this case, as in Mr. Godfrey’s case, the handwriting was strange;
but the name mentioned was the name of one of Mr. Luker’s customers. His
correspondent announced (writing in the third person—apparently by the
hand of a deputy) that he had been unexpectedly summoned to London. He
had just established himself in lodgings in Alfred Place, Tottenham Court
Road; and he desired to see Mr. Luker immediately, on the subject of a
purchase which he contemplated making. The gentleman was an
enthusiastic collector of Oriental antiquities, and had been for many years a
liberal patron of the establishment in Lambeth. Oh, when shall we wean

ourselves from the worship of Mammon! Mr. Luker called a cab, and drove
off instantly to his liberal patron.
Exactly what had happened to Mr. Godfrey in Northumberland Street
now happened to Mr. Luker in Alfred Place. Once more the respectable man
answered the door, and showed the visitor upstairs into the back drawing-
room. There, again, lay the illuminated manuscript on a table. Mr. Luker’s
attention was absorbed, as Mr. Godfrey’s attention had been absorbed, by
this beautiful work of Indian art. He too was aroused from his studies by a
tawny naked arm round his throat, by a bandage over his eyes, and by a gag
in his mouth. He too was thrown prostrate and searched to the skin. A
longer interval had then elapsed than had passed in the experience of Mr.
Godfrey; but it had ended as before, in the persons of the house suspecting
something wrong, and going upstairs to see what had happened. Precisely
the same explanation which the landlord in Northumberland Street had
given to Mr. Godfrey, the landlord in Alfred Place now gave to Mr. Luker.
Both had been imposed on in the same way by the plausible address and
well-filled purse of the respectable stranger, who introduced himself as
acting for his foreign friends. The one point of difference between the two
cases occurred when the scattered contents of Mr. Luker’s pockets were
being collected from the floor. His watch and purse were safe, but (less
fortunate than Mr. Godfrey) one of the loose papers that he carried about
him had been taken away. The paper in question acknowledged the receipt
of a valuable of great price which Mr. Luker had that day left in the care of
his bankers. This document would be useless for purposes of fraud,
inasmuch as it provided that the valuable should only be given up on the
personal application of the owner. As soon as he recovered himself, Mr.
Luker hurried to the bank, on the chance that the thieves who had robbed
him might ignorantly present themselves with the receipt. Nothing had been
seen of them when he arrived at the establishment, and nothing was seen of
them afterwards. Their respectable English friend had (in the opinion of the
bankers) looked the receipt over before they attempted to make use of it,
and had given them the necessary warning in good time.
Information of both outrages was communicated to the police, and the
needful investigations were pursued, I believe, with great energy. The
authorities held that a robbery had been planned, on insufficient information
received by the thieves. They had been plainly not sure whether Mr. Luker
had, or had not, trusted the transmission of his precious gem to another

person; and poor polite Mr. Godfrey had paid the penalty of having been
seen accidentally speaking to him. Add to this, that Mr. Godfrey’s absence
from our Monday evening meeting had been occasioned by a consultation
of the authorities, at which he was requested to assist—and all the
explanations required being now given, I may proceed with the simpler
story of my own little personal experiences in Montagu Square.

I was punctual to the luncheon hour on Tuesday. Reference to my diary
shows this to have been a chequered day—much in it to be devoutly
regretted, much in it to be devoutly thankful for.
Dear Aunt Verinder received me with her usual grace and kindness. But I
noticed, after a little while, that something was wrong. Certain anxious
looks escaped my aunt, all of which took the direction of her daughter. I
never see Rachel myself without wondering how it can be that so
insignificant-looking a person should be the child of such distinguished
parents as Sir John and Lady Verinder. On this occasion, however, she not
only disappointed—she really shocked me. There was an absence of all
lady-like restraint in her language and manner most painful to see. She was
possessed by some feverish excitement which made her distressingly loud
when she laughed, and sinfully wasteful and capricious in what she ate and
drank at lunch. I felt deeply for her poor mother, even before the true state
of the case had been confidentially made known to me.
Luncheon over, my aunt said: “Remember what the doctor told you,
Rachel, about quieting yourself with a book after taking your meals.”
“I’ll go into the library, mamma,” she answered. “But if Godfrey calls,
mind I am told of it. I am dying for more news of him, after his adventure in
Northumberland Street.” She kissed her mother on the forehead, and looked
my way. “Good-bye, Clack,” she said, carelessly. Her insolence roused no
angry feeling in me; I only made a private memorandum to pray for her.
When we were left by ourselves, my aunt told me the whole horrible
story of the Indian Diamond, which, I am happy to know, it is not necessary
to repeat here. She did not conceal from me that she would have preferred
keeping silence on the subject. But when her own servants all knew of the
loss of the Moonstone, and when some of the circumstances had actually
found their way into the newspapers—when strangers were speculating

whether there was any connection between what had happened at Lady
Verinder’s country house, and what had happened in Northumberland Street
and Alfred Place—concealment was not to be thought of; and perfect
frankness became a necessity as well as a virtue.
Some persons, hearing what I now heard, would have been probably
overwhelmed with astonishment. For my own part, knowing Rachel’s spirit
to have been essentially unregenerate from her childhood upwards, I was
prepared for whatever my aunt could tell me on the subject of her daughter.
It might have gone on from bad to worse till it ended in Murder; and I
should still have said to myself, The natural result! oh, dear, dear, the
natural result! The one thing that did shock me was the course my aunt had
taken under the circumstances. Here surely was a case for a clergyman, if
ever there was one yet! Lady Verinder had thought it a case for a physician.
All my poor aunt’s early life had been passed in her father’s godless
household. The natural result again! Oh, dear, dear, the natural result again!
“The doctors recommend plenty of exercise and amusement for Rachel,
and strongly urge me to keep her mind as much as possible from dwelling
on the past,” said Lady Verinder.
“Oh, what heathen advice!” I thought to myself. “In this Christian
country, what heathen advice!”
My aunt went on, “I do my best to carry out my instructions. But this
strange adventure of Godfrey’s happens at a most unfortunate time. Rachel
has been incessantly restless and excited since she first heard of it. She left
me no peace till I had written and asked my nephew Ablewhite to come
here. She even feels an interest in the other person who was roughly used—
Mr. Luker, or some such name—though the man is, of course, a total
stranger to her.”
“Your knowledge of the world, dear aunt, is superior to mine,” I
suggested diffidently. “But there must be a reason surely for this
extraordinary conduct on Rachel’s part. She is keeping a sinful secret from
you and from everybody. May there not be something in these recent events
which threatens her secret with discovery?”
“Discovery?” repeated my aunt. “What can you possibly mean?
Discovery through Mr. Luker? Discovery through my nephew?”
As the word passed her lips, a special providence occurred. The servant
opened the door, and announced Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

CHAPTER II
Mr. Godfrey followed the announcement of his name—as Mr. Godfrey
does everything else—exactly at the right time. He was not so close on the
servant’s heels as to startle us. He was not so far behind as to cause us the
double inconvenience of a pause and an open door. It is in the completeness
of his daily life that the true Christian appears. This dear man was very
complete.
“Go to Miss Verinder,” said my aunt, addressing the servant, “and tell her
Mr. Ablewhite is here.”
We both inquired after his health. We both asked him together whether he
felt like himself again, after his terrible adventure of the past week. With
perfect tact, he contrived to answer us at the same moment. Lady Verinder
had his reply in words. I had his charming smile.
“What,” he cried, with infinite tenderness, “have I done to deserve all this
sympathy? My dear aunt! my dear Miss Clack! I have merely been
mistaken for somebody else. I have only been blindfolded; I have only been
strangled; I have only been thrown flat on my back, on a very thin carpet,
covering a particularly hard floor. Just think how much worse it might have
been! I might have been murdered; I might have been robbed. What have I
lost? Nothing but Nervous Force—which the law doesn’t recognise as
property; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost nothing at all. If I could have
had my own way, I would have kept my adventure to myself—I shrink from
all this fuss and publicity. But Mr. Luker made his injuries public, and my
injuries, as the necessary consequence, have been proclaimed in their turn. I
have become the property of the newspapers, until the gentle reader gets
sick of the subject. I am very sick indeed of it myself. May the gentle reader
soon be like me! And how is dear Rachel? Still enjoying the gaieties of
London? So glad to hear it! Miss Clack, I need all your indulgence. I am
sadly behind-hand with my Committee Work and my dear Ladies. But I
really do hope to look in at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes next week. Did you

make cheering progress at Monday’s Committee? Was the Board hopeful
about future prospects? And are we nicely off for Trousers?”
The heavenly gentleness of his smile made his apologies irresistible. The
richness of his deep voice added its own indescribable charm to the
interesting business question which he had just addressed to me. In truth,
we were almost too nicely off for Trousers; we were quite overwhelmed by
them. I was just about to say so, when the door opened again, and an
element of worldly disturbance entered the room, in the person of Miss
Verinder.
She approached dear Mr. Godfrey at a most unladylike rate of speed,
with her hair shockingly untidy, and her face, what I should call,
unbecomingly flushed.
“I am charmed to see you, Godfrey,” she said, addressing him, I grieve to
add, in the off-hand manner of one young man talking to another. “I wish
you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as our present
excitement lasts) are the two most interesting men in all London. It’s
morbid to say this; it’s unhealthy; it’s all that a well-regulated mind like
Miss Clack’s most instinctively shudders at. Never mind that. Tell me the
whole of the Northumberland Street story directly. I know the newspapers
have left some of it out.”
Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all inherit
from Adam—it is a very small share of our human legacy, but, alas! he has
it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel’s hand in both of his own
hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his waistcoat. It was a direct
encouragement to her reckless way of talking, and her insolent reference to
me.
“Dearest Rachel,” he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when
he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, “the newspapers have told you
everything—and they have told it much better than I can.”
“Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,” my aunt remarked.
“He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.”
“Why?”
She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look
up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. On his side, he looked down at her with an

indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called on to
interfere.
“Rachel, darling!” I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true courage
are ever modest.”
“You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,” she said—not taking
the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin as if she
was one young man addressing another. “But I am quite sure you are not
great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary courage; and I am
firmly persuaded—if you ever had any modesty—that your lady-
worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years since. You have
some private reason for not talking of your adventure in Northumberland
Street; and I mean to know it.”
“My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily
acknowledged,” he answered, still bearing with her. “I am tired of the
subject.”
“You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a
remark.”
“What is it?”
“You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have
contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk
nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the
pleasure of telling them. You can’t go straight with your lady-worshippers. I
mean to make you go straight with me. Come, and sit down. I am brimful of
downright questions; and I expect you to be brimful of downright answers.”
She actually dragged him across the room to a chair by the window,
where the light would fall on his face. I deeply feel being obliged to report
such language, and to describe such conduct. But, hemmed in, as I am,
between Mr. Franklin Blake’s cheque on one side and my own sacred
regard for truth on the other, what am I to do? I looked at my aunt. She sat
unmoved; apparently in no way disposed to interfere. I had never noticed
this kind of torpor in her before. It was, perhaps, the reaction after the trying
time she had had in the country. Not a pleasant symptom to remark, be it
what it might, at dear Lady Verinder’s age, and with dear Lady Verinder’s
autumnal exuberance of figure.

In the meantime, Rachel had settled herself at the window with our
amiable and forbearing—our too forbearing—Mr. Godfrey. She began the
string of questions with which she had threatened him, taking no more
notice of her mother, or of myself, than if we had not been in the room.
“Have the police done anything, Godfrey?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you were
the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?”
“Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.”
“And not a trace of them has been discovered?”
“Not a trace.”
“It is thought—is it not?—that these three men are the three Indians who
came to our house in the country.”
“Some people think so.”
“Do you think so?”
“My dear Rachel, they blindfolded me before I could see their faces. I
know nothing whatever of the matter. How can I offer an opinion on it?”
Even the angelic gentleness of Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to
give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether unbridled
curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder’s questions I do
not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr. Godfrey’s attempting to
rise, after giving her the answer just described, she actually took him by the
two shoulders, and pushed him back into his chair—Oh, don’t say this was
immodest! don’t even hint that the recklessness of guilty terror could alone
account for such conduct as I have described! We must not judge others.
My Christian friends, indeed, indeed, indeed, we must not judge others!
She went on with her questions, unabashed. Earnest Biblical students will
perhaps be reminded—as I was reminded—of the blinded children of the
devil, who went on with their orgies, unabashed, in the time before the
Flood.
“I want to know something about Mr. Luker, Godfrey.”
“I am again unfortunate, Rachel. No man knows less of Mr. Luker than I
do.”
“You never saw him before you and he met accidentally at the bank?”

“Never.”
“You have seen him since?”
“Yes. We have been examined together, as well as separately, to assist the
police.”
“Mr. Luker was robbed of a receipt which he had got from his banker’s—
was he not? What was the receipt for?”
“For a valuable gem which he had placed in the safe keeping of the
bank.”
“That’s what the newspapers say. It may be enough for the general
reader; but it is not enough for me. The banker’s receipt must have
mentioned what the gem was?”
“The banker’s receipt, Rachel—as I have heard it described—mentioned
nothing of the kind. A valuable gem, belonging to Mr. Luker; deposited by
Mr. Luker; sealed with Mr. Luker’s seal; and only to be given up on Mr.
Luker’s personal application. That was the form, and that is all I know
about it.”
She waited a moment, after he had said that. She looked at her mother,
and sighed. She looked back again at Mr. Godfrey, and went on.
“Some of our private affairs, at home,” she said, “seem to have got into
the newspapers?”
“I grieve to say, it is so.”
“And some idle people, perfect strangers to us, are trying to trace a
connexion between what happened at our house in Yorkshire and what has
happened since, here in London?”
“The public curiosity, in certain quarters, is, I fear, taking that turn.”
“The people who say that the three unknown men who ill-used you and
Mr. Luker are the three Indians, also say that the valuable gem——”
There she stopped. She had become gradually, within the last few
moments, whiter and whiter in the face. The extraordinary blackness of her
hair made this paleness, by contrast, so ghastly to look at, that we all
thought she would faint, at the moment when she checked herself in the
middle of her question. Dear Mr. Godfrey made a second attempt to leave
his chair. My aunt entreated her to say no more. I followed my aunt with a
modest medicinal peace-offering, in the shape of a bottle of salts. We none

of us produced the slightest effect on her. “Godfrey, stay where you are.
Mamma, there is not the least reason to be alarmed about me. Clack, you’re
dying to hear the end of it—I won’t faint, expressly to oblige you.”
Those were the exact words she used—taken down in my diary the
moment I got home. But, oh, don’t let us judge! My Christian friends, don’t
let us judge!
She turned once more to Mr. Godfrey. With an obstinacy dreadful to see,
she went back again to the place where she had checked herself, and
completed her question in these words:
“I spoke to you, a minute since, about what people were saying in certain
quarters. Tell me plainly, Godfrey, do they any of them say that Mr. Luker’s
valuable gem is—the Moonstone?”
As the name of the Indian Diamond passed her lips, I saw a change come
over my admirable friend. His complexion deepened. He lost the genial
suavity of manner which is one of his greatest charms. A noble indignation
inspired his reply.
“They do say it,” he answered. “There are people who don’t hesitate to
accuse Mr. Luker of telling a falsehood to serve some private interests of
his own. He has over and over again solemnly declared that, until this
scandal assailed him, he had never even heard of the Moonstone. And these
vile people reply, without a shadow of proof to justify them, He has his
reasons for concealment; we decline to believe him on his oath. Shameful!
shameful!”
Rachel looked at him very strangely—I can’t well describe how—while
he was speaking. When he had done, she said, “Considering that Mr. Luker
is only a chance acquaintance of yours, you take up his cause, Godfrey,
rather warmly.”
My gifted friend made her one of the most truly evangelical answers I
ever heard in my life.
“I hope, Rachel, I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather
warmly,” he said.
The tone in which those words were spoken might have melted a stone.
But, oh dear, what is the hardness of stone? Nothing, compared to the
hardness of the unregenerate human heart! She sneered. I blush to record it
—she sneered at him to his face.

“Keep your noble sentiments for your Ladies’ Committees, Godfrey. I am
certain that the scandal which has assailed Mr. Luker, has not spared You.”
Even my aunt’s torpor was roused by those words.
“My dear Rachel,” she remonstrated, “you have really no right to say
that!”
“I mean no harm, mamma—I mean good. Have a moment’s patience
with me, and you will see.”
She looked back at Mr. Godfrey, with what appeared to be a sudden pity
for him. She went the length—the very unladylike length—of taking him by
the hand.
“I am certain,” she said, “that I have found out the true reason of your
unwillingness to speak of this matter before my mother and before me. An
unlucky accident has associated you in people’s minds with Mr. Luker. You
have told me what scandal says of him. What does scandal say of you?”
Even at the eleventh hour, dear Mr. Godfrey—always ready to return
good for evil—tried to spare her.
“Don’t ask me!” he said. “It’s better forgotten, Rachel—it is, indeed.”
“I will hear it!” she cried out, fiercely, at the top of her voice.
“Tell her, Godfrey!” entreated my aunt. “Nothing can do her such harm
as your silence is doing now!”
Mr. Godfrey’s fine eyes filled with tears. He cast one last appealing look
at her—and then he spoke the fatal words:
“If you will have it, Rachel—scandal says that the Moonstone is in
pledge to Mr. Luker, and that I am the man who has pawned it.”
She started to her feet with a scream. She looked backwards and forwards
from Mr. Godfrey to my aunt, and from my aunt to Mr. Godfrey, in such a
frantic manner that I really thought she had gone mad.
“Don’t speak to me! Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed, shrinking back
from all of us (I declare like some hunted animal!) into a corner of the
room. “This is my fault! I must set it right. I have sacrificed myself—I had
a right to do that, if I liked. But to let an innocent man be ruined; to keep a
secret which destroys his character for life—Oh, good God, it’s too
horrible! I can’t bear it!”

My aunt half rose from her chair, then suddenly sat down again. She
called to me faintly, and pointed to a little phial in her work-box.
“Quick!” she whispered. “Six drops, in water. Don’t let Rachel see.”
Under other circumstances, I should have thought this strange. There was
no time now to think—there was only time to give the medicine. Dear Mr.
Godfrey unconsciously assisted me in concealing what I was about from
Rachel, by speaking composing words to her at the other end of the room.
“Indeed, indeed, you exaggerate,” I heard him say. “My reputation stands
too high to be destroyed by a miserable passing scandal like this. It will be
all forgotten in another week. Let us never speak of it again.” She was
perfectly inaccessible, even to such generosity as this. She went on from
bad to worse.
“I must, and will, stop it,” she said. “Mamma! hear what I say. Miss
Clack! hear what I say. I know the hand that took the Moonstone. I know
—” she laid a strong emphasis on the words; she stamped her foot in the
rage that possessed her—“I know that Godfrey Ablewhite is innocent! Take
me to the magistrate, Godfrey! Take me to the magistrate, and I will swear
it!”
My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, “Stand between us for a
minute or two. Don’t let Rachel see me.” I noticed a bluish tinge in her face
which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. “The drops will put me right in a
minute or two,” she said, and so closed her eyes, and waited a little.
While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently
remonstrating.
“You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this,” he said. “Your
reputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too sacred to be trifled
with.”
“My reputation!” She burst out laughing. “Why, I am accused, Godfrey,
as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I have
stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks—and he will tell you that
I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!” She stopped, ran
across the room—and fell on her knees at her mother’s feet. “Oh mamma!
mamma! mamma! I must be mad—mustn’t I?—not to own the truth now!”
She was too vehement to notice her mother’s condition—she was on her
feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. “I won’t let you—I

won’t let any innocent man—be accused and disgraced through my fault. If
you won’t take me before the magistrate, draw out a declaration of your
innocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I tell you, Godfrey, or I’ll write
it to the newspapers—I’ll go out, and cry it in the streets!”
We will not say this was the language of remorse—we will say it was the
language of hysterics. Indulgent Mr. Godfrey pacified her by taking a sheet
of paper, and drawing out the declaration. She signed it in a feverish hurry.
“Show it everywhere—don’t think of me,” she said, as she gave it to him. “I
am afraid, Godfrey, I have not done you justice, hitherto, in my thoughts.
You are more unselfish—you are a better man than I believed you to be.
Come here when you can, and I will try and repair the wrong I have done
you.”
She gave him her hand. Alas, for our fallen nature! Alas, for Mr.
Godfrey! He not only forgot himself so far as to kiss her hand—he adopted
a gentleness of tone in answering her which, in such a case, was little better
than a compromise with sin. “I will come, dearest,” he said, “on condition
that we don’t speak of this hateful subject again.” Never had I seen and
heard our Christian Hero to less advantage than on this occasion.
Before another word could be said by anybody, a thundering knock at the
street door startled us all. I looked through the window, and saw the World,
the Flesh, and the Devil waiting before the house—as typified in a carriage
and horses, a powdered footman, and three of the most audaciously dressed
women I ever beheld in my life.
Rachel started, and composed herself. She crossed the room to her
mother.
“They have come to take me to the flower-show,” she said. “One word,
mamma, before I go. I have not distressed you, have I?”
(Is the bluntness of moral feeling which could ask such a question as that,
after what had just happened, to be pitied or condemned? I like to lean
towards mercy. Let us pity it.)
The drops had produced their effect. My poor aunt’s complexion was like
itself again. “No, no, my dear,” she said. “Go with our friends, and enjoy
yourself.”
Her daughter stooped, and kissed her. I had left the window, and was near
the door, when Rachel approached it to go out. Another change had come

over her—she was in tears. I looked with interest at the momentary
softening of that obdurate heart. I felt inclined to say a few earnest words.
Alas! my well-meant sympathy only gave offence. “What do you mean by
pitying me?” she asked in a bitter whisper, as she passed to the door. “Don’t
you see how happy I am? I’m going to the flower-show, Clack; and I’ve got
the prettiest bonnet in London.” She completed the hollow mockery of that
address by blowing me a kiss—and so left the room.
I wish I could describe in words the compassion I felt for this miserable
and misguided girl. But I am almost as poorly provided with words as with
money. Permit me to say—my heart bled for her.
Returning to my aunt’s chair, I observed dear Mr. Godfrey searching for
something softly, here and there, in different parts of the room. Before I
could offer to assist him he had found what he wanted. He came back to my
aunt and me, with his declaration of innocence in one hand, and with a box
of matches in the other.
“Dear aunt, a little conspiracy!” he said. “Dear Miss Clack, a pious fraud
which even your high moral rectitude will excuse! Will you leave Rachel to
suppose that I accept the generous self-sacrifice which has signed this
paper? And will you kindly bear witness that I destroy it in your presence,
before I leave the house?” He kindled a match, and, lighting the paper, laid
it to burn in a plate on the table. “Any trifling inconvenience that I may
suffer is as nothing,” he remarked, “compared with the importance of
preserving that pure name from the contaminating contact of the world.
There! We have reduced it to a little harmless heap of ashes; and our dear
impulsive Rachel will never know what we have done! How do you feel?
My precious friends, how do you feel? For my poor part, I am as light-
hearted as a boy!”
He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my aunt,
and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct to speak. I
closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual self-forgetfulness, to
my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh the ecstasy, the pure,
unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat—I hardly know on what—quite lost
in my own exalted feelings. When I opened my eyes again, it was like
descending from heaven to earth. There was nobody but my aunt in the
room. He had gone.

I should like to stop here—I should like to close my narrative with the
record of Mr. Godfrey’s noble conduct. Unhappily there is more, much
more, which the unrelenting pecuniary pressure of Mr. Blake’s cheque
obliges me to tell. The painful disclosures which were to reveal themselves
in my presence, during that Tuesday’s visit to Montagu Square, were not at
an end yet.
Finding myself alone with Lady Verinder, I turned naturally to the subject
of her health; touching delicately on the strange anxiety which she had
shown to conceal her indisposition, and the remedy applied to it, from the
observation of her daughter.
My aunt’s reply greatly surprised me.
“Drusilla,” she said (if I have not already mentioned that my Christian
name is Drusilla, permit me to mention it now), “you are touching—quite
innocently, I know—on a very distressing subject.”
I rose immediately. Delicacy left me but one alternative—the alternative,
after first making my apologies, of taking my leave. Lady Verinder stopped
me, and insisted on my sitting down again.
“You have surprised a secret,” she said, “which I had confided to my
sister Mrs. Ablewhite, and to my lawyer Mr. Bruff, and to no one else. I can
trust in their discretion; and I am sure, when I tell you the circumstances, I
can trust in yours. Have you any pressing engagement, Drusilla? or is your
time your own this afternoon?”
It is needless to say that my time was entirely at my aunt’s disposal.
“Keep me company then,” she said, “for another hour. I have something
to tell you which I believe you will be sorry to hear. And I shall have a
service to ask of you afterwards, if you don’t object to assist me.”
It is again needless to say that, so far from objecting, I was all eagerness
to assist her.
“You can wait here,” she went on, “till Mr. Bruff comes at five. And you
can be one of the witnesses, Drusilla, when I sign my Will.”
Her Will! I thought of the drops which I had seen in her work-box. I
thought of the bluish tinge which I had noticed in her complexion. A light
which was not of this world—a light shining prophetically from an unmade
grave—dawned on my mind. My aunt’s secret was a secret no longer.