`Very good,' said Mr.Murthwaite.`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 (high caste Brahmins all of them, Mr.Bruff, when they left their native country!) who followed the Colonel to these shores.Very well.These present men of ours have succeeded to the men who were here before them.If they had only done that, the matter would not have been worth inquiring into.But they have done more.They have succeeded to the organization which their predecessors established in this country.Don't start! The organization is a very trumpery affair, according to our ideas, I have no doubt.I should reckon it up as including the command of money; the services, when needed, of that shady sort of Englishman, who lives in the byways of foreign life in London; and, lastly, the secret sympathy of such few men of their own country, and (formerly, at least) of their own religion, as happen to be employed in ministering to some of the multitudinous wants of this great city.Nothing very formidable, as you see! But worth notice at starting, because we may find occasion to refer to this modest little Indian organization as we go on.Having now cleared the ground, I am going to ask you a question; and I expect your experience to answer it.What was the event which gave the Indians their first chance of seizing the Diamond?'
I understood the allusion to my experience.
`The first chance they got,' I replied, `was clearly offered to them by Colonel Herncastle's death.They would be aware of his death, I suppose, as a matter of course?'
`As a matter of course.And his death, as you say, gave them their first chance.Up to that time the Moonstone was safe in the strong-room of the bank.You drew the Colonel's Will leaving his jewel to his niece; and the Will was proved in the usual way.As a lawyer, you can be at no loss to know what course the Indians would take (under English advice) after that.'
`They would provide themselves with a copy of the Will from Doctors'
Commons,' I said.
`Exactly.One or other of those shady Englishmen to whom I have alluded, would get them the copy you have described.That copy would inform them that the Moonstone was bequeathed to the daughter of Lady Verinder, and that Mr.Blake the elder, or some person appointed by him, was to place it in her hands.You will agree with me that the necessary information about persons in the position of Lady Verinder and Mr.Blake, would be perfectly easy information to obtain.The one difficulty for the Indians would be to decide, whether they should make their attempt on the diamond when it was in course of removal from the keeping of the bank, or whether they should wait until it was taken down to Yorkshire to Lady Verinder's house.The second way would be manifestly the safest way--and there you have the explanation of the appearance of the Indians at Frizinghall, disguised as jugglers, and waiting their time.In London, it is needless to say, they had their organization at their disposal to keep them informed of events.Two men would do it.One to follow anybody who went from Mr.Blake's house to the bank.And one to treat the lower men servants with beer, and to hear the news of the house.These commonplace precautions would readily inform them that Mr.Franklin Blake had been to the bank, and that Mr.
Franklin Blake was the only person in the house who was going to visit Lady Verinder.What actually followed upon that discovery, you remember, no doubt, quite as correctly as I do.'
I remembered that Franklin Blake had detected one of the spies, in the street--that he had, in consequence, advanced the time of his arrival in Yorkshire by some hours--and that (thanks to old Betteredge's excellent advice) he had lodged the Diamond in the bank at Frizinghall, before the Indians were so much as prepared to see him in the neighbourhood.All perfectly clear so far.But, the Indians being ignorant of the precaution thus taken, how was it that they had made no attempt on Lady Verinder's house (in which they must have supposed the Diamond to be) through the whole of the interval that elapsed before Rachel's birthday?
In putting this difficulty to Mr.Murthwaite, I thought it right to add that I had heard of the little boy, and the drop of ink, and the rest of it, and that any explanation based on the theory of clairvoyance was an explanation which would carry no conviction whatever with it, to my mind.
`Nor to mine either,' said Mr.Murthwaite.`The clairvoyance in this case is simply a development of the romantic side of the Indian character.
It would be a refreshment and an encouragement to those men--quite inconceivable, I grant you, to the English mind--to surround their wearisome and perilous errand in this country with a certain halo of the marvellous and the supernatural.
Their boy is unquestionably a sensitive subject to the mesmeric influence--and, under that influence, he has no doubt reflected what was already in the mind of the person mesmerizing him.I have tested the theory of clairvoyance--and I have never found the manifestations get beyond that point.The Indians don't investigate the matter in this way; the Indians look upon their boy as a seer of things invisible to their eyes--and, I repeat, in that marvel they find the source of a new interest in the purpose that unites them.