[This episode is related by the physician in charge of Mr.
Franklin Blake, whose good name he wishes to clear from a charge
of fraud.]
Two o'clock A.M.--The experiment has been tried. With what result I am
now to describe.
At eleven o'clock I rang the bell for Betteredge and told Mr. Blake that
he might at last prepare himself for bed.... I followed Betteredge out
of the room, and told him to remove the medicine chest into Miss
Verinder's sitting-room.
The order seemed to take him completely by surprise. He looked as if he
suspected me of some occult design on Miss Verinder! "Might I presume to
ask," he said, "what my young lady and the medicine chest have got to do
with each other?"
"Stay in the sitting-room and you will see."
Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me
effectually, on an occasion when a medicine chest was included in the
proceedings.
"Is there any objection, sir," he asked, "to taking Mr. Bruff into this
part of the business?"
"Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me
down-stairs."
Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine chest without another word. I
went back into Mr. Blake's room, and knocked at the door of
communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his
hand--immersed in Law, impenetrable to Medicine.
"I am sorry to disturb you," I said. "But I am going to prepare the
laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present and to see
what I do."
"Yes," said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his
papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. "Anything else?"
"I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer the
dose."
"Anything else?"
"One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in Mr.
Blake's room to see what happens."
"Oh, very good!" said Mr. Bruff. "My room or Mr. Blake's room,--it
doesn't matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you
object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing _that_ amount of common-sense into
the proceedings?"
Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer,
speaking from his bed.
"Do you really mean to say that you don't feel any interest in what you
are going to do?" he asked. "Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination
than a cow!"
"A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake," said the lawyer. With that
reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his
hand.
We found Miss Verinder pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her
sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge,
on guard over the medicine chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair
that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged
back again into his papers on the spot.
Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one
all-absorbing interest--the interest in Mr. Blake.
"How is he now?" she asked. "Is he nervous? is he out of temper? Do you
think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do no harm?"
"Quite sure. Come and see me measure it out."
"One moment. It is past eleven now. How long will it be before anything
happens?"
"It is not easy to say. An hour, perhaps."
"I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?"
"Certainly."
"I shall wait in my bedroom--just as I did before. I shall keep the door
a little way open. It was a little way open last year. I will watch the
sitting-room door; and the moment it moves I will blow out my light. It
all happened in that way on my birthday night. And it must all happen
again in the same way, mustn't it?"
"Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?"
"In _his_ interests I can do anything!" she answered fervently.
One look at her face told me I could trust her. I addressed myself again
to Mr. Bruff.
"I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment," I said.
"Oh, certainly!" He got up with a start--as if I had disturbed him at a
particularly interesting place--and followed me to the medicine chest.
There, deprived of the breathless excitement incidental to the practice
of his profession, he looked at Betteredge and yawned wearily.
Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water which she had
taken from a side table. "Let me pour out the water," she whispered;
"I _must_ have a hand in it!"
I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured the laudanum
into a glass. "Fill it till it is three parts full," I said, and handed
the glass to Miss Verinder. I then directed Betteredge to lock up the
medicine chest, informing him that I had done with it now. A look of
unutterable relief overspread the old servant's countenance. He had
evidently suspected me of a medical design on his young lady!
After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder seized a
moment--while Betteredge was locking the chest and while Mr. Bruff was
looking back at his papers--and slyly kissed the rim of the medicine
glass. "When you give it to him," whispered the charming girl, "give it
to him on that side."
I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Diamond from my
pocket and gave it to her.
"You must have a hand in this too," I said. "You must put it where you
put the Moonstone last year."
She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Diamond into the
drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on the birthday night. Mr.
Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under protest, as he had witnessed
everything else. But the strong dramatic interest which the experiment
was now assuming proved (to my great amusement) to be too much for
Betteredge's capacity of self-restraint. His hand trembled as he held
the candle, and he whispered anxiously, "Are you sure, miss, it's the
right drawer?"
I led the way out again, with the laudanum and water in my hand. At the
door I stood to address a last word to Miss Verinder.
"Don't be long in putting out the lights," I said.
"I will put them out at once," she answered. "And I will wait in my
bedroom with only one candle alight."
She closed the sitting-room door behind us. Followed by Bruff and
Betteredge, I went back to Mr. Blake's room.
We found him moving restlessly from side to side of the bed, and
wondering irritably whether he was to have the laudanum that night. In
the presence of the two witnesses I gave him the dose, and shook up his
pillows, and told him to lie down again quietly and wait.
His bed, provided with light chintz curtains, was placed with the head
against the wall of the room, so as to leave a good open space on either
side of it. On one side I drew the curtains completely, and in the part
of the room thus screened from his view I placed Mr. Bruff and
Betteredge to wait for the result. At the bottom of the bed I half drew
the curtains, and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that I
might let him see me or not see me, just as the circumstances might
direct. Having already been informed that he always slept with a light
in the room, I placed one of the two lighted candles on a little table
at the head of the bed, where the glare of the light would not strike on
his eyes. The other candle I gave to Mr. Bruff; the light in this
instance being subdued by the screen of the chintz curtains. The window
was open at the top so as to ventilate the room. The rain fell softly;
the house was quiet. It was twenty minutes past eleven by my watch when
the preparations were completed, and I took my place on the chair set
apart at the bottom of the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of being as deeply
interested in them as ever. But looking toward him now, I saw certain
signs and tokens which told me that the Law was beginning to lose its
hold on him at last. The suspended interest of the situation in which we
were now placed was slowly asserting its influence even on _his_
unimaginative mind. As for Betteredge, consistency of principle and
dignity of conduct had become in his case mere empty words. He forgot
that I was performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he forgot
that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot that I had not
read 'Robinson Crusoe' since I was a child. "For the Lord's sake, sir,"
he whispered to me, "tell us when it will begin to work."
"Not before midnight," I whispered back. "Say nothing and sit still."
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with me, without a
struggle to save himself. He answered by a wink!
Looking next toward Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as ever in his
bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the laudanum had not begun
to assert itself yet. To tell him in his present humor that the more he
fidgeted and wondered the longer he would delay the result for which we
were now waiting, would have been simply useless. The wiser course to
take was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his mind by leading him
insensibly to think of something else.
With this view I encouraged him to talk to me, contriving so to direct
the conversation, on my side, as to lead him back again to the subject
which had engaged us earlier in the evening,--the subject of the
Diamond. I took care to revert to those portions of the story of the
Moonstone which related to the transport of it from London to Yorkshire;
to the risk which Mr. Blake had run in removing it from the bank at
Frizinghall; and to the expected appearance of the Indians at the house
on the evening of the birthday. And I purposely assumed, in referring to
these events, to have misunderstood much of what Mr. Blake himself had
told me a few hours since. In this way I set him talking on the subject
with which it was now vitally important to fill his mind--without
allowing him to suspect that I was making him talk for a purpose. Little
by little he became so interested in putting me right that he forgot to
fidget in the bed. His mind was far away from the question of the opium
at the all-important time when his eyes first told me that the opium was
beginning to lay its hold upon his brain.
I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve when the
premonitory symptoms of the working of the laudanum first showed
themselves to me.
At this time no unpracticed eye would have detected any change in him.
But as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the swiftly subtle
progress of the influence began to show itself more plainly. The sublime
intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a steady
perspiration began to glisten on his face. In five minutes more the talk
which he still kept up with me failed in coherence. He held steadily to
the subject of the Diamond; but he ceased to complete his sentences. A
little later the sentences dropped to single words. Then there was an
interval of silence. Then he sat up in bed. Then, still busy with the
subject of the Diamond, he began to talk again--not to me but to
himself. That change told me the first stage in the experiment was
reached. The stimulant influence of the opium had got him.
The time now was twenty-three minutes past twelve. The next half-hour,
at most, would decide the question of whether he would or would not get
up from his bed and leave the room.
In the breathless interest of watching him--in the unutterable triumph
of seeing the first result of the experiment declare itself in the
manner, and nearly at the time, which I had anticipated--I had utterly
forgotten the two companions of my night vigil. Looking toward them now,
I saw the Law (as represented by Mr. Bruff's papers) lying unheeded on
the floor. Mr. Bruff himself was looking eagerly through a crevice left
in the imperfectly drawn curtains of the bed. And Betteredge, oblivious
of all respect for social distinctions, was peeping over Mr. Bruff's
shoulder.
They both started back on finding that I was looking at them, like two
boys caught out by their schoolmaster in a fault. I signed to them to
take off their boots quietly, as I was taking off mine. If Mr. Blake
gave us the chance of following him, it was vitally necessary to follow
him without noise.
Ten minutes passed--and nothing happened.
Then he suddenly threw the bedclothes off him. He put one leg out of
bed. He waited.
"I wish I had never taken it out of the bank," he said to himself. "It
was safe in the bank."
My heart throbbed fast; the pulses at my temples beat furiously. The
doubt about the safety of the Diamond was once more the dominant
impression in his brain! On that one pivot the whole success of the
experiment turned. The prospect thus suddenly opened before me was too
much for my shattered nerves. I was obliged to look away from him, or I
should have lost my self-control.
There was another interval of silence.
When I could trust myself to look back at him he was out of his bed,
standing erect at the side of it. The pupils of his eyes were now
contracted; his eyeballs gleamed in the light of the candle as he moved
his head slowly to and fro. He was thinking; he was doubting; he spoke
again.
"How do I know?" he said. "The Indians may be hidden in the house."
He stopped, and walked slowly to the other end of the room. He
turned,--waited,--came back to the bed.
"It's not even locked up," he went on. "It's in the drawer of her
cabinet. And the drawer doesn't lock."
He sat down on the side of the bed. "Anybody might take it," he said.
He rose again restlessly, and reiterated his first words. "How do I
know? The Indians may be hidden in the house."
He waited again. I drew back behind the half-curtain of the bed. He
looked about the room, with the vacant glitter in his eyes. It was a
breathless moment. There was a pause of some sort. A pause in the action
of the opium? a pause in the action of the brain? Who could tell?
Everything depended now on what he did next.
He laid himself down again on the bed!
A horrible doubt crossed my mind. Was it possible that the sedative
action of the opium was making itself felt already? It was not in my
experience that it should do this. But what is experience where opium is
concerned? There are probably no two men in existence on whom the drug
acts in exactly the same manner. Was some constitutional peculiarity in
him feeling the influence in some new way? Were we to fail, on the very
brink of success?
No! He got up again very abruptly. "How the devil am I to sleep," he
said, "with _this_ on my mind?"
He looked at the light burning on the table at the head of his bed.
After a moment he took the candle in his hand.
I blew out the second candle burning behind the closed curtains. I drew
back, with Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, into the farthest corner by the
bed. I signed to them to be silent, as if their lives depended on it.
We waited--seeing and hearing nothing. We waited, hidden from him by the
curtains.
The light which he was holding on the other side of us moved suddenly.
The next moment he passed us, swift and noiseless, with the candle in
his hand.
He opened the bedroom door and went out.
We followed him along the corridor. We followed him down the stairs. We
followed him along the second corridor. He never looked back; he never
hesitated.
He opened the sitting-room door and went in, leaving it open behind him.
The door was hung (like all the other doors in the house) on large
old-fashioned hinges. When it was opened, a crevice was opened between
the door and the post. I signed to my two companions to look through
this, so as to keep them from showing themselves. I placed
myself--outside the door also--on the opposite side. A recess in the
wall was at my left hand, in which I could instantly hide myself if he
showed any signs of looking back into the corridor.
He advanced to the middle of the room, with the candle still in his
hand; he looked about him,--but he never looked back.
I saw the door of Miss Verinder's bedroom standing ajar. She had put out
her light. She controlled herself nobly. The dim white outline of her
summer dress was all that I could see. Nobody who had not known it
beforehand would have suspected that there was a living creature in the
room. She kept back in the dark; not a word, not a movement escaped her.
It was now ten minutes past one. I heard through the silence the soft
drip of the rain, and the tremulous passage of the night air through the
trees.
After waiting irresolute for a minute or more in the middle of the room,
he moved to the corner near the window where the Indian cabinet stood.
He put his candle on the top of the cabinet. He opened and shut one
drawer after another, until he came to the drawer in which the mock
Diamond was put. He looked into the drawer for a moment. Then he took
the mock Diamond out with his right hand. With the other hand he took
the candle from the top of the cabinet.
He walked back a few steps toward the middle of the room and stood still
again.
Thus far he had exactly repeated what he had done on the birthday night.
Would his next proceeding be the same as the proceeding of last year?
Would he leave the room? Would he go back now, as I believed he had gone
back then, to his bed-chamber? Would he show us what he had done with
the Diamond when he had returned to his own room?
His first action, when he moved once more, proved to be an action which
he had _not_ performed when he was under the influence of the opium for
the first time. He put the candle down on a table and wandered on a
little toward the farther end of the room. There was a sofa here. He
leaned heavily on the back of it with his left hand--then roused himself
and returned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes. They
were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them was fast dying out.
The suspense of the moment proved too much for Miss Verinder's
self-control. She advanced a few steps,--then stopped again. Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge looked across the open doorway at me for the first time.
The prevision of a coming disappointment was impressing itself on their
minds as well as on mine. Still, so long as he stood where he was, there
was hope. We waited in unutterable expectation to see what would happen
next.
The next event was decisive. He let the mock Diamond drop out of his
hand.
It fell on the floor, before the doorway--plainly visible to him and to
every one. He made no effort to pick it up; he looked down at it
vacantly, and as he looked, his head sank on his breast. He
staggered--roused himself for an instant--walked back unsteadily to the
sofa--and sat down on it. He made a last effort; he tried to rise, and
sank back. His head fell on the sofa cushions. It was then twenty-five
minutes past one o'clock. Before I had put my watch back in my pocket he
was asleep.
It was over now. The sedative influence had got him; the experiment was
at an end.
I entered the room, telling Mr. Bruff and Betteredge that they might
follow me. There was no fear of disturbing him. We were free to move and
speak.
"The first thing to settle," I said, "is the question of what we are to
do with him. He will probably sleep for the next six or seven hours at
least. It is some distance to carry him back to his own room. When I was
younger I could have done it alone. But my health and strength are not
what they were--I am afraid I will have to ask you to help me."
Before they could answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly. She met me
at the door of her room with a light shawl and with the counterpane from
her own bed.
"Do you mean to watch him while he sleeps?" she asked.
"Yes. I am not sure enough of the action of the opium in this case, to
be willing to leave him alone."
She handed me the shawl and the counterpane.
"Why should you disturb him?" she whispered. "Make his bed on the sofa.
I can shut my door and keep in my room."
It was infinitely the simplest and the safest way of disposing of him
for the night. I mentioned the suggestion to Mr. Bruff and Betteredge,
who both approved of my adopting it. In five minutes I had laid him
comfortably on the sofa, and had covered him lightly with the
counterpane and the shawl. Miss Verinder wished us good-night and closed
the door. At my request we three then drew round the table in the middle
of the room, on which the candle was still burning, and on which writing
materials were placed.
"Before we separate," I began, "I have a word to say about the
experiment which has been tried to-night. Two distinct objects were to
be gained by it. The first of these objects was to prove that Mr. Blake
entered this room and took the Diamond last year, acting unconsciously
and irresponsibly, under the influence of opium. After what you have
both seen, are you both satisfied so far?"
They answered me in the affirmative, without a moment's hesitation.
"The second object," I went on, "was to discover what he did with the
Diamond after he was seen by Miss Verinder to leave her sitting-room
with the jewel in his hand on the birthday night. The gaining of this
object depended, of course, on his still continuing exactly to repeat
his proceedings of last year. He has failed to do that; and the purpose
of the experiment is defeated accordingly. I can't assert that I am not
disappointed at the result--but I can honestly say that I am not
surprised by it. I told Mr. Blake from the first that our complete
success in this matter depended on our completely reproducing in him the
physical and moral conditions of last year; and I warned him that this
was the next thing to a downright impossibility. We have only partially
reproduced the conditions, and the experiment has been only partially
successful in consequence. It is also possible that I may have
administered too large a dose of laudanum. But I myself look upon the
first reason that I have given as the true reason why we have to lament
a failure, as well as to rejoice over a success."
After saying those words I put the writing materials before Mr. Bruff,
and asked him if he had any objection, before we separated for the
night, to draw out and sign a plain statement of what he had seen. He at
once took the pen, and produced the statement with the fluent readiness
of a practiced hand.
"I owe you this," he said, signing the paper, "as some atonement for
what passed between us earlier in the evening. I beg your pardon, Mr.
Jennings, for having doubted you. You have done Franklin Blake an
inestimable service. In our legal phrase, you have proved your case."
Betteredge's apology was characteristic of the man.
"Mr. Jennings," he said, "when you read 'Robinson Crusoe' again (which I
strongly recommend you to do), you will find that he never scruples to
acknowledge it when he turns out to have been in the wrong. Please to
consider me, sir, as doing what Robinson Crusoe did on the present
occasion." With those words he signed the paper in his turn.
Mr. Bruff took me aside as we rose from the table.
"One word about the Diamond," he said. "Your theory is that Franklin
Blake hid the Moonstone in his room. My theory is that the Moonstone is
in the possession of Mr. Luker's bankers in London. We won't dispute
which of us is right. We will only ask, which of us is in a position to
put his theory to the test first?"
"The test in my case," I answered, "has been tried to-night, and has
failed."
"The test in my case," rejoined Mr. Bruff, "is still in process of
trial. For the last two days I have had a watch set for Mr. Luker at the
bank; and I shall cause that watch to be continued until the last day of
the month. I know that he must take the Diamond himself out of his
bankers' hands, and I am acting on the chance that the person who has
pledged the Diamond may force him to do this by redeeming the pledge. In
that case I may be able to lay my hand on the person. And there is a
prospect of our clearing up the mystery exactly at the point where the
mystery baffles us now! Do you admit that, so far?"