at your office? In your position, it may be of
very serious importance to the interests of Miss
Verinder, that you should be able to take
a clear view of this matter in case of need.
Tell me, bearing that in mind, whether you will
penetrate the Indian's motive for yourself? or
whether you wish me to save you the trouble
of making any inquiry into it?"

It is needless to say that I thoroughly
appreciated the practical purpose which I now
saw that he had in view, and that the first of
the two alternatives was the alternative I chose.

"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 organisation which
their predecessors established in this country.
Don't start! The organisation 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 byeways 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 organisation
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 organisation 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 common-place
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