The man in the grey suit got into an omnibus, going westward.
We got in after him.
There were latent reserves of youth still left in Mr. Bruff.
I assert it positively--when he took his seat in the omnibus, he blushed!
The man in the grey suit stopped the omnibus, and got out in Oxford Street.
We followed him again.
He went into a chemist's shop.
Mr. Bruff started.
"My chemist!" he exclaimed.
"I am afraid we have made a mistake."
We entered the shop.
Mr. Bruff and the proprietor exchanged a few words in private. The lawyer joined me again, with a very crestfallen face.
"It's greatly to our credit," he said, as he took my arm, and led me out--"that's one comfort!"
"What is to our credit?" I asked.
"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."
I asked what was to be done next.
"Come back to my office," said Mr. Bruff. "Gooseberry, and my second man, have evidently followed somebody else.
Let us hope that THEY had their eyes about them at any rate!"
When we reached Gray's Inn Square, the second man had arrived there before us.
He had been waiting for more than a quarter of an hour.
"Well!" asked Mr. Bruff. "What's your news?"
"I am sorry to say, sir," replied the man, "that I have made a mistake.
I could have taken my oath that I saw Mr. Luker pass something to an elderly gentleman, in a light-coloured paletot.
The elderly gentleman turns out, sir, to be a most respectable master iron-monger in Eastcheap."
"Where is Gooseberry?" asked Mr. Bruff resignedly.
The man stared.
"I don't know, sir.
I have seen nothing of him since I left the bank."
Mr. Bruff dismissed the man.
"One of two things," he said to me. "Either Gooseberry has run away, or he is hunting on his own account.
What do you say to dining here, on the chance that the boy may come back in an hour or two?
I have got some good wine in the cellar, and we can get a chop from the coffee-house."
We dined at Mr. Bruff's chambers.
Before the cloth was removed, "a person" was announced as wanting to speak to the lawyer.
Was the person Gooseberry?
No: only the man who had been employed to follow Mr. Luker when he left the bank.
The report, in this case, presented no feature of the slightest interest.
Mr. Luker had gone back to his own house, and had there dismissed his guard.
He had not gone out again afterwards.
Towards dusk, the shutters had been put up, and the doors had been bolted.
The street before the house, and the alley behind the house, had been carefully watched.
No signs of the Indians had been visible. No person whatever had been seen loitering about the premises.
Having stated these facts, the man waited to know whether there were any further orders.
Mr. Bruff dismissed him for the night. "Do you think Mr. Luker has taken the Moonstone home with him?" I asked. "Not he," said Mr. Bruff. "He would never have dismissed his two policemen, if he had run the risk of keeping the Diamond in his own house again."
We waited another half-hour for the boy, and waited in vain.
It was then time for Mr. Bruff to go to Hampstead, and for me to return to Rachel in Portland Place.
I left my card, in charge of the porter at the chambers, with a line written on it to say that I should be at my lodgings at half past ten, that night.
The card was to be given to the boy, if the boy came back.