THE MOONSTONE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," &c. &c.

CHAPTER VI.

KEEPING my private sentiments to myself,
I respectfully requested Mr. Franklin to go
on. Mr. Franklin replied, "Don't fidget,
Betteredge," and went on.

Our young gentleman's first words informed
me that his discoveries, concerning the wicked
Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a
visit which he had paid (before he came to us)
to his father's lawyer, at Hampstead. A chance
word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two
were alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that
he had been charged by his father with a birthday
present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One
thing led to another; and it ended in the
lawyer mentioning what the present really was,
and how the friendly connexion between the
late Colonel and Mr. Blake, Senior, had taken
its rise. The facts here are really so
extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own
language to do justice to them. I prefer trying
to report Mr. Franklin's discoveries, as nearly
as may be, in Mr. Franklin's own words.

"You remember the time, Betteredge," he
said, "when my father was trying to prove
his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well!
that was also the time when my uncle
Herncastle returned from India. My father
discovered that his brother-in-law was in possession
of certain papers which were likely to be of
service to him in his lawsuit. He called on
the Colonel, on pretence of welcoming him
back to England. The Colonel was not to be
deluded in that way. ' You want something,'
he said, ' or you would never have compromised
your reputation by calling on me.' My
father saw that the one chance for him was to
show his hand: he admitted, at once, that he
wanted the papers. The Colonel asked for a
day to consider his answer. His answer came
in the shape of a most extraordinary letter, which
my friend the lawyer showed me. The Colonel
began by saying that he wanted something of
my father, and that he begged to propose an
exchange of friendly services between them.
The fortune of war (that was the expression
he used) had placed him in possession of one
of the largest Diamonds in the world; and he
had reason to believe that neither he nor his
precious jewel was safe in any house, in any
quarter of the globe, which they occupied
together. Under these alarming circumstances,
he had determined to place his Diamond in the
keeping of another person. That person was
not expected to run any risk. He might
deposit the precious stone in any place especially
guarded and set apart—like a banker's or
jeweller's strong-room—for the safe custody of
valuables of high price. His main personal
responsibility in the matter was to be of the
passive kind. He was to undertake—either
by himself, or by a trustworthy representative—
to receive at a pre-arranged address, on certain
pre-arranged days in every year, a note from the
Colonel, simply stating the fact that he was a living
man at that date. In the event of the date
passing over without the note being received,
the Colonel's silence might be taken as a sure
token of the Colonel's death by murder. In
that case, and in no other, certain sealed
instructions relating to the disposal of the
Diamond, and deposited with it, were to be opened,
and followed implicitly. If my father chose
to accept this strange charge, the Colonel's
papers were at his disposal in return. That was
the letter."

"What did your father do, sir?" I asked.

"Do?" says Mr. Franklin. "I'll tell you
what he did. He brought the invaluable
faculty, called common sense, to bear on the
Colonel's letter. The whole thing, he declared,
was simply absurd. Somewhere in his Indian
wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with
some wretched crystal which he took for a
diamond. As for the danger of his being
murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve
his life and his piece of crystal, this was the
nineteenth century, and any man in his senses
had only to apply to the police. The Colonel had
been a notorious opium-eater for years past;
and, if the only way of getting at the valuable
papers he possessed was by accepting a matter
of opium as a matter of fact, my father was
quite willing to take the ridiculous responsibility
imposed on him—all the more readily that
it involved no trouble to himself. The Diamond
and the sealed instructions went into his
banker's strong-room, and the Colonel's letters,
periodically reporting him a living man, were