Report, on coming out: "Sergeant Cuff is much
to be pitied. He must have been crossed in
love, father, when he was a young man." The
first housemaid followed Penelope. Remained,
like my lady's maid, a long time. Report, on
coming out: "I didn't enter her ladyship's
service, Mr. Betteredge, to be doubted to my
face by a low police-officer!" Rosanna Spearman
went next. Remained longer than any of
them. No report on coming out—dead silence,
and lips as pale as ashes. Samuel, the footman,
followed Rosanna. Remained a minute or
two. Report, on coming out: "Whoever
blacks Sergeant Cuff's boots ought to be
ashamed of himself." Nancy, the kitchenmaid,
went last. Remained a minute or two.
Report, on coming out: "Sergeant Cuff has a
heart; he doesn't cut jokes, Mr. Betteredge, with
a poor hard-working girl."

Going into the Court of Justice, when it was
all over, to hear if there were any further
commands for me, I found the Sergeant at his old
trick—looking out of window, and whistling
The Last Rose of Summer to himself.

"Any discoveries, sir?" I inquired.

"If Rosanna Spearman asks leave to go out,"
said the Sergeant, "let the poor thing go; but
let me know first."

I might as well have held my tongue about
Rosanna and Mr. Franklin! It was plain
enough; the unfortunate girl had fallen under
Sergeant Cuff's suspicions, in spite of all I
could do to prevent it.

"I hope you don't think Rosanna is
concerned in the loss of the Diamond?" I
ventured to say.

The corners of the Sergeant's melancholy
mouth curled up, and he looked hard in my
face, just as he had looked in the garden.

"I think I had better not tell you, Mr.
Betteredge," he said. "You might lose your head,
you know, for the second time."

I began to doubt whether I had been one too
many for the celebrated Cuff, after all! It was
rather a relief to me that we were interrupted
here by a knock at the door, and a message
from the cook. Rosanna Spearman had asked
to go out, for the usual reason, that her head
was bad, and she wanted a breath of fresh air.
At a sign from the Sergeant, I said, Yes.
"Which is the servants' way out?" he asked,
when the messenger had gone. I showed him
the servants' way out. "Lock the door of
your room," says the Sergeant; "and if
anybody asks for me, say I'm in there, composing
my mind." He curled up again, at the corners
of the lips, and disappeared.

Left alone, under those circumstances, a
devouring curiosity pushed me on to make some
discoveries for myself.

It was plain that Sergeant Cuff's suspicions
of Rosanna had been roused by something that
he had found out at his examination of the
servants in my room. Now, the only two
servants (excepting Rosanna herself) who had
remained under examination for any length of
time were my lady's own maid and the first
housemaid, those two being also the women
who had taken the lead in persecuting their
unfortunate fellow-servant from the first.
Reaching these conclusions, I looked in on them,
casually as it might be, in the servants' hall,
and, finding tea going forward, instantly
invited myself to that meal. (For, nota bene, a
drop of tea is, to a woman's tongue, what a
drop of oil is to a wasting lamp.)

My reliance on the tea-pot, as an ally, did
not go unrewarded. In less than half an hour
I knew as much as the Sergeant himself.

My lady's maid and the housemaid had, it
appeared, neither of them believed in Rosanna's
illness of the previous day. These two devils
—I ask your pardon; but how else can you
describe a couple of spiteful women?—had
stolen up-stairs, at intervals during the Thursday
afternoon; had tried Rosanna's door, and
found it locked; had knocked, and not been
answered; had listened, and not heard a sound
inside. When the girl had come down to tea,
and had been sent up, still out of sorts, to bed
again, the two devils aforesaid had tried her
door once more, and found it locked; had
looked at the keyhole, and found it stopped up;
had seen a light under the door at midnight,
and had heard the crackling of a fire (a fire
in a servant's bed-room in the month of
June!) at four in the morning. All this they
had told Sergeant Cuff, who, in return for
their anxiety to enlighten him, had eyed them
with sour and suspicious looks, and had shown
them plainly that he didn't believe either
one or the other. Hence, the unfavourable
reports of him which these two women had
brought out with them from the examination.
Hence, also (without reckoning the influence
of the teapot), their readiness to let their
tongues run to any length on the subject of the
Sergeant's ungracious behaviour to them.

Having had some experience of the great
Cuff's roundabout ways, and having last seen
him evidently bent on following Rosanna
privately when she went out for her walk, it
seemed clear to me that he had thought it
unadvisable to let the lady's maid and the housemaid
know how materially they had helped him.
They were just the sort of women, if he had
treated their evidence as trustworthy, to have
been puffed up by it, and to have said or done
something which would have put Rosanna
Spearman on her guard.

I walked out in the fine summer evening,
very sorry for the poor girl, and very uneasy in
my mind, generally, at the turn things had
taken. Drifting towards the shrubbery, there
I met Mr. Franklin in his favourite walk. He
had been back some time from the station, and
had been with my lady, holding a long
conversation with her. She had told him of Miss
Rachel's unaccountable refusal to let her
wardrobe be examined; and had put him in such
low spirits about my young lady, that he seemed
to shrink from speaking on the subject. The
family temper appeared in his face that evening,
for the first time in my experience of him.