He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.
"There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin," he answered. "If you take my advice you will keep the letter in the cover till these present anxieties of yours have come to an end.
It will sorely distress you, whenever you read it.
Don't read it now." I put the letter away in my pocket-book. A glance back at the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Betteredge's Narrative will show that there really was a reason for my thus sparing myself, at a time when my fortitude had been already cruelly tried. Twice over, the unhappy woman had made her last attempt to speak to me. And twice over, it had been my misfortune (God knows how innocently!) to repel the advances she had made to me. On the Friday night, as Betteredge truly describes it, she had found me alone at the billiard-table. Her manner and language suggested to me and would have suggested to any man, under the circumstances--that she was about to confess a guilty knowledge of the disappearance of the Diamond. For her own sake, I had purposely shown no special interest in what was coming; for her own sake, I had purposely looked at the billiard-balls, instead of looking at HER--and what had been the result? I had sent her away from me, wounded to the heart! On the Saturday again--on the day when she must have foreseen, after what Penelope had told her, that my departure was close at hand--the same fatality still pursued us. She had once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had found me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing, the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to my interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature's own sake, I had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared--loudly declared, so that she might hear me too--that I felt "no interest whatever in Rosanna Spearman." At those words, solely designed to warn her against attempting to gain my private ear, she had turned away and left the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomed to destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have already traced the succession of events which led me to the astounding discovery at the quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable story of Rosanna Spearman--to which, even at this distance of time, I cannot revert without a pang of distress--to suggest for itself all that is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the suicide at the Shivering Sand, with its strange and terrible influence on my present position and future prospects, to interests which concern the living people of this narrative, and to events which were already paving my way for the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness to the light.
CHAPTER VI
I walked to the railway station accompanied, it is needless to say, by Gabriel Betteredge.
I had the letter in my pocket, and the nightgown safely packed in a little bag--both to be submitted, before I slept that night, to the investigation of Mr. Bruff.
We left the house in silence.
For the first time in my experience of him, I found old Betteredge in my company without a word to say to me.
Having something to say on my side, I opened the conversation as soon as we were clear of the lodge gates.
"Before I go to London," I began, "I have two questions to ask you.
They relate to myself, and I believe they will rather surprise you."
"If they will put that poor creature's letter out of my head, Mr. Franklin, they may do anything else they like with me.
Please to begin surprising me, sir, as soon as you can."
"My first question, Betteredge, is this. Was I drunk on the night of Rachel's Birthday?"
"YOU drunk!" exclaimed the old man.
"Why it's the great defect of your character, Mr. Franklin that you only drink with your dinner, and never touch a drop of liquor afterwards!"
"But the birthday was a special occasion.
I might have abandoned my regular habits, on that night of all others."
Betteredge considered for a moment.
"You did go out of your habits, sir," he said. "And I'll tell you how.
You looked wretchedly ill--and we persuaded you to have a drop of brandy and water to cheer you up a little."
"I am not used to brandy and water.
It is quite possible----"
"Wait a bit, Mr. Franklin.
I knew you were not used, too. I poured you out half a wineglass-full of our fifty year old Cognac; and (more shame for me!) I drowned that noble liquor in nigh on a tumbler-full of cold water.
A child couldn't have got drunk on it--let alone a grown man!"
I knew I could depend on his memory, in a matter of this kind.
It was plainly impossible that I could have been intoxicated.
I passed on to the second question.
"Before I was sent abroad, Betteredge, you saw a great deal of me when I was a boy?
Now tell me plainly, do you remember anything strange of me, after I had gone to bed at night?
Did you ever discover me walking in my sleep?"
Betteredge stopped, looked at me for a moment, nodded his head, and walked on again.
"I see your drift now, Mr. Franklin!" he said
"You're trying to account for how you got the paint on your nightgown, without knowing it yourself. It won't do, sir.
You're miles away still from getting at the truth.
Walk in your sleep?
You never did such a thing in your life!"
Here again, I felt that Betteredge must be right.
Neither at home nor abroad had my life ever been of the solitary sort.
If I had been a sleep-walker, there were hundreds on hundreds of people who must have discovered me, and who, in the interest of my own safety, would have warned me of the habit, and have taken precautions to restrain it.
Still, admitting all this, I clung--with an obstinacy which was surely natural and excusable, under the circumstances--to one or other of the only two explanations that I could see which accounted for the unendurable position in which I then stood.
Observing that I was not yet satisfied, Betteredge shrewdly adverted to certain later events in the history of the Moonstone; and scattered both my theories to the wind at once and for ever.
"Let's try it another way, sir," he said. "Keep your own opinion, and see how far it will take you towards finding out the truth.
If we are to believe the nightgown--which I don't for one--you not only smeared off the paint from the door, without knowing it, but you also took the Diamond without knowing it.
Is that right, so far?"
"Quite right.
Go on."
"Very good, sir.