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.