But, I tell you plainly, if I could have foreseen the price that was to be paid for it, I should have preferred leaving you in the dark."
"You have seen Rachel?"
"I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place; it was impossible to let her return in the carriage by herself. I can hardly hold you responsible--considering that you saw her in my house and by my permission--for the shock that this unlucky interview has inflicted on her. All I can do is to provide against a repetition of the mischief. She is young--she has a resolute spirit--she will get over this, with time and rest to help her. I want to be assured that you will do nothing to hinder her recovery. May I depend on your making no second attempt to see her--except with my sanction and approval?"
"After what she has suffered, and after what I have suffered," I said, "you may rely on me."
"I have your promise?"
"You have my promise."
Mr. Bruff looked relieved. He put down his hat, and drew his chair nearer to mine.
"That's settled!" he said. "Now, about the future--your future, I mean. To my mind, the result of the extraordinary turn which the matter has now taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachel has told you the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it. In the second place--though we know that there must be some dreadful mistake somewhere--we can hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty, on the evidence of her own senses; backed, as that evidence has been, by circumstances which appear, on the face of them, to tell dead against you."
There I interposed. "I don't blame Rachel," I said. "I only regret that she could not prevail on herself to speak more plainly to me at the time."
"You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else," rejoined Mr. Bruff. "And even then, I doubt if a girl of any delicacy, whose heart had been set on marrying you, could have brought herself to charge you to your face with being a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel's nature to do it. In a very different matter to this matter of yours-- which placed her, however, in a position not altogether unlike her position towards you--I happen to know that she was influenced by a similar motive to the motive which actuated her conduct in your case. Besides, as she told me herself, on our way to town this evening, if she had spoken plainly, she would no more have believed your denial then than she believes it now. What answer can you make to that? There is no answer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Franklin! my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit--but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in the past."
"Surely you forget," I said, "that the whole thing is essentially a matter of the past--so far as I am concerned?"
"Answer me this," retorted Mr. Bruff. "Is the Moonstone at the bottom of all the mischief--or is it not?"
"It is--of course."
"Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone, when it was taken to London?"
"It was pledged to Mr. Luker."
"We know that you are not the person who pledged it. Do we know who did?"
"No."
"Where do we believe the Moonstone to be now?"
"Deposited in the keeping of Mr. Luker's bankers."
"Exactly. Now observe. We are already in the month of June. Towards the end of the month (I can't be particular to a day) a year will have elapsed from the time when we believe the jewel to have been pledged. There is a chance--to say the least-- that the person who pawned it, may be prepared to redeem it when the year's time has expired. If he redeems it, Mr. Luker must himself--according to the terms of his own arrangement--take the Diamond out of his banker's hands. Under these circumstances, I propose setting a watch at the bank, as the present month draws to an end, and discovering who the person is to whom Mr. Luker restores the Moonstone. Do you see it now?"
I admitted (a little unwillingly) that the idea was a new one, at any rate.
"It's Mr. Murthwaite's idea quite as much as mine," said Mr. Bruff. "It might have never entered my head, but for a conversation we had together some time since. If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely to be on the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too-- and something serious may come of it. What comes of it doesn't matter to you and me except as it may help us to lay our hands on the mysterious Somebody who pawned the Diamond. That person, you may rely on it, is responsible (I don't pretend to know how) for the position in which you stand at this moment; and that person alone can set you right in Rachel's estimation."
"I can't deny," I said, "that the plan you propose meets the difficulty in a way that is very daring, and very ingenious, and very new. But----"
"But you have an objection to make?"
"Yes. My objection is, that your proposal obliges us to wait."
"Granted. As I reckon the time, it requires you to wait about a fortnight-- more or less. Is that so very long?"
"It's a life-time, Mr. Bruff, in such a situation as mine. My existence will be simply unendurable to me, unless I do something towards clearing my character at once."
"Well, well, I understand that. Have you thought yet of what you can do?"
"I have thought of consulting Sergeant Cuff."
"He has retired from the police. It's useless to expect the Sergeant to help you."
"I know where to find him; and I can but try."
"Try," said Mr. Bruff, after a moment's consideration. "The case has assumed such an extraordinary aspect since Sergeant Cuff's time, that you may revive his interest in the inquiry. Try, and let me hear the result. In the meanwhile," he continued, rising, "if you make no discoveries between this, and the end of the month, am I free to try, on my side, what can be done by keeping a lookout at the bank?"
"Certainly," I answered--"unless I relieve you of all necessity for trying the experiment in the interval."
Mr. Bruff smiled, and took up his hat.
"Tell Sergeant Cuff," he rejoined, "that I say the discovery of the truth depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. And let me hear what the Sergeant's experience says to that."
So we parted.
Early the next morning, I set forth for the little town of Dorking-- the place of Sergeant Cuff's retirement, as indicated to me by Betteredge.
Inquiring at the hotel, I received the necessary directions for finding the Sergeant's cottage. It was approached by a quiet bye-road, a little way out of the town, and it stood snugly in the middle of its own plot of garden ground, protected by a good brick wall at the back and the sides, and by a high quickset hedge in front. The gate, ornamented at the upper part by smartly-painted trellis-work, was locked. After ringing at the bell, I peered through the trellis-work, and saw the great Cuff's favourite flower everywhere; blooming in his garden, clustering over his door, looking in at his windows. Far from the crimes and the mysteries of the great city, the illustrious thief-taker was placidly living out the last Sybarite years of his life, smothered in roses!
A decent elderly woman opened the gate to me, and at once annihilated all the hopes I had built on securing the assistance of Sergeant Cuff. He had started, only the day before, on a journey to Ireland.
"Has he gone there on business?" I asked.
The woman smiled. "He has only one business now, sir," she said; "and that's roses. Some great man's gardener in Ireland has found out something new in the growing of roses--and Mr. Cuff's away to inquire into it."
"Do you know when he will be back?"
"It's quite uncertain, sir.