The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (top 5 books to read .txt) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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I ought, I know, to have set him right before he went any farther. I ought to have told him that he was speaking in ignorance of a testimony to Mr. Godfreyâs innocence, offered by the only person who was undeniably competent to speak from a positive knowledge of the subject. Alas! the temptation to lead the lawyer artfully on to his own discomfiture was too much for me. I asked what he meant by âlater eventsââwith an appearance of the utmost innocence.
âBy later events, Miss Clack, I mean events in which the Indians are concerned,â proceeded Mr. Bruff, getting more and more superior to poor Me, the longer he went on. âWhat do the Indians do, the moment they are let out of the prison at Frizinghall? They go straight to London, and fix on Mr. Luker. What follows? Mr. Luker feels alarmed for the safety of âa valuable of great price,â which he has got in the house. He lodges it privately (under a general description) in his bankersâ strongroom. Wonderfully clever of him: but the Indians are just as clever on their side. They have their suspicions that the âvaluable of great priceâ is being shifted from one place to another; and they hit on a singularly bold and complete way of clearing those suspicions up. Whom do they seize and search? Not Mr. Luker onlyâwhich would be intelligible enoughâbut Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well. Why? Mr. Ablewhiteâs explanation is, that they acted on blind suspicion, after seeing him accidentally speaking to Mr. Luker. Absurd! Half-a-dozen other people spoke to Mr. Luker that morning. Why were they not followed home too, and decoyed into the trap? No! no! The plain inference is, that Mr. Ablewhite had his private interest in the âvaluableâ as well as Mr. Luker, and that the Indians were so uncertain as to which of the two had the disposal of it, that there was no alternative but to search them both. Public opinion says that, Miss Clack. And public opinion, on this occasion, is not easily refuted.â
He said those last words, looking so wonderfully wise in his own worldly conceit, that I really (to my shame be it spoken) could not resist leading him a little farther still, before I overwhelmed him with the truth.
âI donât presume to argue with a clever lawyer like you,â I said. âBut is it quite fair, sir, to Mr. Ablewhite to pass over the opinion of the famous London police officer who investigated this case? Not the shadow of a suspicion rested upon anybody but Miss Verinder, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.â
âDo you mean to tell me, Miss Clack, that you agree with the Sergeant?â
âI judge nobody, sir, and I offer no opinion.â
âAnd I commit both those enormities, maâam. I judge the Sergeant to have been utterly wrong; and I offer the opinion that, if he had known Rachelâs character as I know it, he would have suspected everybody in the house but her. I admit that she has her faultsâshe is secret, and self-willed; odd and wild, and unlike other girls of her age. But true as steel, and high-minded and generous to a fault. If the plainest evidence in the world pointed one way, and if nothing but Rachelâs word of honour pointed the other, I would take her word before the evidence, lawyer as I am! Strong language, Miss Clack; but I mean it.â
âWould you object to illustrate your meaning, Mr. Bruff, so that I may be sure I understand it? Suppose you found Miss Verinder quite unaccountably interested in what has happened to Mr. Ablewhite and Mr. Luker? Suppose she asked the strangest questions about this dreadful scandal, and displayed the most ungovernable agitation when she found out the turn it was taking?â
âSuppose anything you please, Miss Clack, it wouldnât shake my belief in Rachel Verinder by a hairâs-breadth.â
âShe is so absolutely to be relied on as that?â
âSo absolutely to be relied on as that.â
âThen permit me to inform you, Mr. Bruff, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was in this house not two hours since, and that his entire innocence of all concern in the disappearance of the Moonstone was proclaimed by Miss Verinder herself, in the strongest language I ever heard used by a young lady in my life.â
I enjoyed the triumphâthe unholy triumph, I fear I must admitâof seeing Mr. Bruff utterly confounded and overthrown by a few plain words from Me. He started to his feet, and stared at me in silence. I kept my seat, undisturbed, and related the whole scene as it had occurred. âAnd what do you say about Mr. Ablewhite now?â I asked, with the utmost possible gentleness, as soon as I had done.
âIf Rachel has testified to his innocence, Miss Clack, I donât scruple to say that I believe in his innocence as firmly as you do. I have been misled by appearances, like the rest of the world; and I will make the best atonement I can, by publicly contradicting the scandal which has assailed your friend wherever I meet with it. In the meantime, allow me to congratulate you on the masterly manner in which you have opened the full fire of your batteries on me at the moment when I least expected it. You would have done great things in my profession, maâam, if you had happened to be a man.â
With those words he turned away from me, and began walking irritably up and down the room.
I could see plainly that the new light I had thrown on the subject had greatly surprised and disturbed him. Certain expressions dropped from his lips, as he became more and more absorbed in his own thoughts, which suggested to my mind the abominable view that he had hitherto taken of the mystery of the lost Moonstone. He had not scrupled to suspect dear Mr. Godfrey of the infamy of stealing the Diamond, and to attribute Rachelâs conduct to a generous resolution to conceal the crime. On Miss Verinderâs own authorityâa perfectly unassailable authority, as you are aware, in the estimation of Mr. Bruffâthat explanation of the circumstances was now shown to be utterly wrong. The perplexity into which I had plunged this high legal authority was so overwhelming that he was quite unable to conceal it from notice. âWhat a case!â I heard him say to himself, stopping at the window in his walk, and drumming on the glass with his fingers. âIt not only defies explanation, itâs even beyond conjecture.â
There was nothing in these words which made any reply at all needful, on my partâand yet, I answered them! It seems hardly credible that I should not have been able to let Mr. Bruff alone, even now. It seems almost beyond mere mortal perversity that I should have discovered, in what he had just said, a new opportunity of making myself personally disagreeable to him. Butâah, my friends! nothing is beyond mortal perversity; and anything is credible when our fallen natures get the better of us!
âPardon me for intruding on your reflections,â I said to the unsuspecting Mr. Bruff. âBut surely there is a conjecture to make which has not occurred to us yet.â
âMaybe, Miss Clack. I own I donât know what it is.â
âBefore I was so fortunate, sir, as to convince you of Mr. Ablewhiteâs innocence, you mentioned it as one of the reasons for suspecting him, that he was in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost. Permit me to remind you that Mr. Franklin Blake was also in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost.â
The old worldling left the window, took a chair exactly opposite to mine, and looked at me steadily, with a hard and vicious smile.
âYou are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack,â he remarked in a meditative manner, âas I supposed. You donât know how to let well alone.â
âI am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruff,â I said, modestly.
âIt wonât do, Miss Clackâit really wonât do a second time. Franklin Blake is a prime favourite of mine, as you are well aware. But that doesnât matter. Iâll adopt your view, on this occasion, before you have time to turn round on me. Youâre quite right, maâam. I have suspected Mr. Ablewhite, on grounds which abstractedly justify suspecting Mr. Blake too. Very goodâletâs suspect them together. Itâs quite in his character, we will say, to be capable of stealing the Moonstone. The only question is, whether it was his interest to do so.â
âMr. Franklin Blakeâs debts,â I remarked, âare matters of family notoriety.â
âAnd Mr. Godfrey Ablewhiteâs debts have not arrived at that stage of development yet. Quite true. But there happen to be two difficulties in the way of your theory, Miss Clack. I manage Franklin Blakeâs affairs, and I beg to inform you that the vast majority of his creditors (knowing his father to be a rich man) are quite content to charge interest on their debts, and to wait for their money. There is the first difficultyâwhich is tough enough. You will find the second tougher still. I have it on the authority of Lady Verinder herself, that her daughter was ready to marry Franklin Blake, before that infernal Indian Diamond disappeared from the house. She had drawn him on and put him off again, with the coquetry of a young girl. But she had confessed to her mother that she loved cousin Franklin, and her mother had trusted cousin Franklin with the secret. So there he was, Miss Clack, with his creditors content to wait, and with the certain prospect before him of marrying an heiress. By all means consider him a scoundrel; but tell me, if you please, why he should steal the Moonstone?â
âThe human heart is unsearchable,â I said gently. âWho is to fathom it?â
âIn other words, maâamâthough he hadnât the shadow of a reason for taking the Diamondâhe might have taken it, nevertheless, through natural depravity. Very well. Say he did. Why the devilâââ
âI beg your pardon, Mr. Bruff. If I hear the devil referred to in that manner, I must leave the room.â
âI beg your pardon, Miss ClackâIâll be more careful in my choice of language for the future. All I meant to ask was this. Whyâeven supposing he did take the Diamondâshould Franklin Blake make himself the most prominent person in the house in trying to recover it? You may tell me he cunningly did that to divert suspicion from himself. I answer that he had no need to divert suspicionâbecause nobody suspected him. He first steals the Moonstone (without the slightest reason) through natural depravity; and he then acts a part, in relation to the loss of the jewel, which there is not the slightest necessity to act, and which leads to his mortally offending the young lady who would otherwise have married him. That is the monstrous proposition which you are driven to assert, if you attempt to associate the disappearance of the Moonstone with Franklin Blake. No, no, Miss Clack! After what has passed here today, between us two, the dead-lock, in this case, is complete. Rachelâs own innocence is (as her mother knows, and as I know) beyond a doubt. Mr. Ablewhiteâs innocence is equally certainâor Rachel would never have testified to it. And Franklin Blakeâs innocence, as you have just seen, unanswerably asserts itself. On the one hand, we are morally certain of all these things. And, on the other hand, we are equally sure that somebody has brought the Moonstone to London, and that Mr. Luker, or his banker, is in private possession of it at this moment. What is the use of my experience, what is the use of any personâs experience, in such a case as that? It baffles me; it baffles you, it baffles everybody.â
Noânot everybody. It had not baffled Sergeant Cuff. I was about to mention this, with all possible mildness, and with every necessary protest against being supposed to cast a slur upon Rachelâwhen the servant came in to say that the doctor had gone, and that my aunt was waiting to receive us.
This stopped the discussion. Mr. Bruff collected his papers, looking a little exhausted by the demands which our conversation had made on him. I took up my bag-full of precious publications, feeling as if I could have gone on talking for hours. We proceeded in silence to Lady Verinderâs room.
Permit me to add here, before my narrative advances to other events, that I have not described what passed between the lawyer and me, without having a definite object in view. I am ordered to include in
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