Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.

I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like pale thin flame

old Cotter

Mr. Doran was very anxious indeed this Sunday morning. He had made two attempts to shave but his hand had been so unsteady that he had been obliged to desist.

She made Mary collect the crusts and pieces of broken bread to help to make Tuesday’s bread-pudding

young men

She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but I declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream

I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas.

“No, mother, you spoil father, and it’s not right. You ought to be stricter with him. He’s very naughty.”

Surely you could be happy in—in—appreciating it for a change. Or you could take up some hobby.”

“Have you really never been to a ball before

“Pardon,” she smiled at him more radiantly than ever. She didn’t even recognise him again.

“How heavenly; how simply heavenly!”

Leila softly, gently opening and shutting her fan.

She was like a woman who is saying “good-bye” to her friends on the station platform, with not a minute to spare before the train starts

blue dress

“A good one that will last,” thought dreamy Constantia, as if Josephine were buying a nightgown. But, of course, Josephine didn’t say that. “One suitable to our father’s position.” She was very nervous.

black cats.

their minds went on, thinking things out, talking things over, wondering, deciding, trying to remember where...

To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously.

"This Life is Wee-ary, Hope comes to Die. A Dream—a Wa-kening."

Ta-ta-ta Tee-ta!

“Mother says you’re to wear that sweet hat you had on last Sunday. Good. One o’clock. Bye-bye.”

They were like trees you imagined growing on a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendour. Must they be hidden by a marquee?

his soaking paws covered with sand, ran along with his nose to the ground, but carelessly, as if thinking of something else.

I hold that unlucky jewel in abhorrence–and I refer you to other authority than mine, for such news of the Moonstone as you may, at the present time, be expected to receive. My purpose, in this place, is to state a fact in the history of the family, which has been passed over by everybody, and which I won’t allow to be disrespectfully smothered up in that way.

Wednesday, September 26th, 1849.

On examination of the room (which is only seven feet high), a trap-door in the ceiling, leading out on to the roof of the house, was discovered open. The short ladder, used for obtaining access to the trap-door (and kept under the bed), was found placed at the opening, so as to enable any person or persons, in the room, to leave it again easily. In the trap-door itself was found a square aperture cut in the wood, apparently with some exceedingly sharp instrument, just behind the bolt which fastened the door on the inner side. In this way, any person from the outside could have drawn back the bolt, and opened the door, and have dropped (or have been noiselessly lowered by an accomplice) into the room–its height, as already observed, being only seven feet. That some person, or persons, must have got admission in this way, appears evident from the fact of the aperture being there. As to the manner in which he (or they) obtained access to the roof of the tavern, it is to be remarked that the third house, lower down in the street, was empty, and under repair–that a long ladder was left by the workmen, leading from the pavement to the top of the house–and that, on returning to their work, on the morning of the 27th, the men found the plank which they had tied to the ladder, to prevent anyone from using it in their absence, removed, and lying on the ground. As to the possibility of ascending by this ladder, passing over the roofs of the houses, passing back, and descending again, unobserved–it is discovered, on the evidence of the night policeman, that he only passes through Shore Lane twice in an hour, when out on his beat. The testimony of the inhabitants also declares, that Shore Lane, after midnight, is one of the quietest and loneliest streets in London. Here again, therefore, it seems fair to infer that–with ordinary caution, and presence of mind–any man, or men, might have ascended by the ladder, and might have descended again, unobserved. Once on the roof of the tavern, it has been proved, by experiment, that a man might cut through the trap-door, while lying down on it, and that in such a position, the parapet in front of the house would conceal him from the view of anyone passing in the street.

Chapter

“He’s pulled off his beard!” cried Gooseberry.

“Mr. Blake! you and I are the two worst amateur detectives that ever tried their hands at the trade. The man in the grey suit has been thirty years in the chemist’s service. He was sent to the bank to pay money to his master’s account–and he knows no more of the Moonstone than the babe unborn.”

“They must have their spy somewhere,” said Mr. Bruff, looking at the dark sailor in his turn. “And he may be the man.”

I had barely time to promise Rachel that I would return, and tell her everything that had happened, before Mr. Bruff seized me by the arm, and hurried me into a cab. The boy with the ill-secured eyes took his place on the box by the driver, and the driver was directed to go to Lombard Stree

Betteredge’s blunt pencil followed me conscientiously, word by word. “Go on, sir,” he said, with sardonic gravity. “There’s a deal of writing left in the point of this pencil yet.”

Betteredge took a chair and seated himself at the table. He produced a huge old-fashioned leather pocket-book, with a pencil of dimensions to match. Having put on his spectacles, he opened the pocket-book, at a blank page, and addressed himself to me once more.

Five o’clock.–I have written my reply to Miss Verinder.

June 17th

Exactly what happened last year, when I gave up my cigars.

“The Sergeant said it!” cried Betteredge. “From first to last, sir, the Sergeant said she had got a memorandum of the hiding-place. And here it is! Lord save us, Mr. Franklin, here is the secret that puzzled everybody, from the great Cuff downwards, ready and waiting, as one may say, to show itself to you! It’s the ebb now, sir, as anybody may see for themselves. How long will it be till the turn of the tide?” He looked up, and observed a lad at work, at some little distance from us, mending a net. “Tammie Bright!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

“Steady, sir!” proceeded Betteredge. “I mean what I say. Rosanna Spearman left a sealed letter behind her–a letter addressed to you.” “Where is it?”

Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond be! That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near it. Don’t waste your money and your temper–in the fine spring time of your life, sir–by meddling with the Moonstone. How can you hope to succeed (saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess of it? Sergeant Cuff!” repeated Betteredge, shaking his forefinger at me sternly. “The greatest policeman in England!”

For the rest of that woman’s life, Mr. Franklin, I never had to cook my dinner again! Moral: You have put up with Miss Rachel in London; don’t put up with her in Yorkshire. Come back to the house!”

The answer came back, literally in one sentence.

It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in returning to England.

JUNE, ’FORTY-NINE. EXPECT NEWS OF THE INDIANS, TOWARDS THE END OF THE MONTH.

We will take the question of the ages of the three Indians first. I can testify that they all look much about the same age–and you can decide for yourself, whether the man whom you saw was, or was not, in the prime of life. Not forty, you think? My idea too. We will say not forty. Now look back to the time when Colonel Herncastle came to England, and when you were concerned in the plan he adopted to preserve his life. I don’t want you to count the years. I will only say, it is clear that these present Indians, at their age, must be the successors of three other Indians

the Moonstone, or, to speak more correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond.

I have degraded myself by ever thinking of him as my husband. If I say what you tell me to say to him–I am owning that I have degraded myself to his face.

This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which could be contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could think of who had the slightest interest in examining it.

“Yes,” said Sir John. “Only, I put it shorter. Why can’t you put it shorter, and let me go to sleep again? Everything to my wife. That’s my Will.”

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.

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!

“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.

“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!

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.

. The Oriental noblemen had removed their own illuminated manuscript, and had removed nothing else.

The Christian Hero never hesitates where good is to be done.

Friday, June 30th

. He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my conscience too

Evening Hymn

“Nobody has stolen the diamond,” answered Sergeant Cuff

from Miss Rachel;

“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?”

roses,

I privately wondered, on my side, how the celebrated Cuff had got his reputation.

“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 bed-room 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!”

“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.”

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.

“Father!” she screamed, “come up-stairs, for God’s sake! The diamond is gone!” “Are you out of your mind?” I asked her.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

On the fourteenth, came Mr. Godfrey’s answer.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

“Who’s got the Moonstone?”

you

I work on its canonical fraction, which is not evenone per cent of published literature.