Уильям Уилки Коллинз – The Moonstone (страница 12)

“Then you do believe, sir,” I said, “that there was a conspiracy?”

“Not possessing my father’s excellent common sense,” answered Mr. Franklin, “I believe the Colonel’s life was threatened, exactly as the Colonel said. The sealed instructions, as I think, explain how it was that he died, after all, quietly in his bed. In the event of his death by violence (that is to say, in the absence of the regular letter from him at the appointed date), my father was then directed to send the Moonstone secretly to Amsterdam. It was to be deposited in that city with a famous diamond-cutter, and it was to be cut up into from four to six separate stones. The stones were then to be sold for what they would fetch, and the proceeds were to be applied to the founding of that professorship of experimental chemistry, which the Colonel has since endowed by his Will. Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp wits of yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel’s instructions point!”

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in hand, and pointed out what they ought to see.

“Remark,” says Mr. Franklin, “that the integrity of the Diamond, as a whole stone, is here artfully made dependent on the preservation from violence of the Colonel’s life. He is not satisfied with saying to the enemies he dreads, ‘Kill me—and you will be no nearer the Diamond than you are now; it is where you can’t get at it—in the guarded strong-room of a bank.’ He says instead, ‘Kill me—and the Diamond will be the Diamond no longer; its identity will be destroyed.’ What does that mean?”

Here I had (as I thought) a flash of the wonderful foreign brightness.

“I know,” I said. “It means lowering the value of the stone, and cheating the rogues in that way!”

“Nothing of the sort,” says Mr. Franklin. “I have inquired about that. The flawed Diamond, cut up, would actually fetch more than the Diamond as it now is; for this plain reason—that from four to six perfect brilliants might be cut from it, which would be, collectively, worth more money than the large—but imperfect—single stone. If robbery for the purpose of gain was at the bottom of the conspiracy, the Colonel’s instructions absolutely made the Diamond better worth stealing. More money could have been got for it, and the disposal of it in the diamond market would have been infinitely easier, if it had passed through the hands of the workmen of Amsterdam.”

“Lord bless us, sir!” I burst out. “What was the plot then?”

“A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel,” says Mr. Franklin—“a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at the bottom of it. That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper which I have about me at this moment.”

I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers at our house had presented itself to Mr. Franklin in the light of a circumstance worth noting.

“I don’t want to force my opinion on you,” Mr. Franklin went on. “The idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the opportunity of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be perfectly consistent with everything that we know of the patience of Oriental races, and the influence of Oriental religions. But then I am an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind. Let the guess I have made at the truth in this matter go for what it is worth, and let us get on to the only practical question that concerns us. Does the conspiracy against the Moonstone survive the Colonel’s death? And did the Colonel know it, when he left the birthday gift to his niece?”

I began to see my lady and Miss Rachel at the end of it all, now. Not a word he said escaped me.

“I was not very willing, when I discovered the story of the Moonstone,” said Mr. Franklin, “to be the means of bringing it here. But Mr. Bruff reminded me that somebody must put my cousin’s legacy into my cousin’s hands—and that I might as well do it as anybody else. After taking the Diamond out of the bank, I fancied I was followed in the streets by a shabby, dark-complexioned man. I went to my father’s house to pick up my luggage, and found a letter there, which unexpectedly detained me in London. I went back to the bank with the Diamond, and thought I saw the shabby man again. Taking the Diamond once more out of the bank this morning, I saw the man for the third time, gave him the slip, and started (before he recovered the trace of me) by the morning instead of the afternoon train. Here I am, with the Diamond safe and sound—and what is the first news that meets me? I find that three strolling Indians have been at the house, and that my arrival from London, and something which I am expected to have about me, are two special objects of investigation to them when they believe themselves to be alone. I don’t waste time and words on their pouring the ink into the boy’s hand, and telling him to look in it for a man at a distance, and for something in that man’s pocket. The thing (which I have often seen done in the East) is ‘hocus-pocus’ in my opinion, as it is in yours. The present question for us to decide is, whether I am wrongly attaching a meaning to a mere accident? or whether we really have evidence of the Indians being on the track of the Moonstone, the moment it is removed from the safe keeping of the bank?”

Neither he nor I seemed to fancy dealing with this part of the inquiry. We looked at each other, and then we looked at the side, oozing in smoothly, higher and higher, over the Shivering Sand.

“What are you thinking of ?” says Mr. Franklin, suddenly.

“I was thinking, sir,” I answered, “that I should like to shy the Diamond into the quicksand, and settle the question in that way.”

“If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket,” answered Mr. Franklin, “say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!”

It’s curious to note, when your mind’s anxious, how very far in the way of relief a very small joke will go. We found a fund of merriment, at the time, in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel’s lawful property, and getting Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful trouble—though where the merriment was, I am quite at a loss to discover now.

Mr. Franklin was the first to bring the talk back to the talk’s proper purpose. He took an envelope out of his pocket, opened it, and handed to me the paper inside.

“Betteredge,” he said, “we must face the question of the Colonel’s motive in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt’s sake. Bear in mind how Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time when he returned to England, to the time when he told you he should remember his niece’s birthday. And read that.”

He gave me the extract from the Colonel’s Will. I have got it by me while I write these words; and I copy it, as follows, for your benefit:

“Thirdly, and lastly, I give and bequeath to my niece, Rachel Verinder, daughter and only child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow—if her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living on the said Rachel Verinder’s next Birthday after my death—the yellow Diamond belonging to me, and known in the East by the name of The Moonstone: subject to this condition, that her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living at the time. And I hereby desire my executor to give my Diamond, either by his own hands or by the hands of some trustworthy representative whom he shall appoint, into the personal possession of my said niece Rachel, on her next birthday after my death, and in the presence, if possible, of my sister, the said Julia Verinder. And I desire that my said sister may be informed, by means of a true copy of this, the third and last clause of my Will, that I give the Diamond to her daughter Rachel, in token of my free forgiveness of the injury which her conduct towards me has been the means of inflicting on my reputation in my lifetime; and especially in proof that I pardon, as becomes a dying man, the insult offered to me as an officer and a gentleman, when her servant, by her orders, closed the door of her house against me, on the occasion of her daughter’s birthday.”

More words followed these, providing if my lady was dead, or if Miss Rachel was dead, at the time of the testator’s decease, for the Diamond being sent to Holland, in accordance with the sealed instructions originally deposited with it. The proceeds of the sale were, in that case, to be added to the money already left by the Will for the professorship of chemistry at the university in the north.

I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin, sorely troubled what to say to him. Up to that moment, my own opinion had been (as you know) that the Colonel had died as wickedly as he had lived. I don’t say the copy from his Will actually converted me from that opinion: I only say it staggered me.