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 my
friend, the lawyer, 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 tide,
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