After that answer, my lady rose to go upstairs
and ask for Miss Rachel's keys. The
Sergeant was beforehand with me in opening the
door for her. He made a very low bow. My
lady shuddered as she passed him.

We waited, and waited, and no keys appeared.
Sergeant Cuff made no remark to me. He
turned his melancholy face to the window; he put
his lanky hands into his pockets, and whistled
The Last Rose of Summer drearily to himself.

At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys,
but with a morsel of paper for me. I got at
my spectacles, with some fumbling and
difficulty, feeling the Sergeant's dismal eyes fixed
on me all the time. There were two or three
lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady.
They informed me that Miss Rachel flatly
refused to have her wardrobe examined. Asked
for her reasons, she had burst out crying.
Asked again, she had said: "I won't, because
I won't. I must yield to force if you use it,
but I will yield to nothing else." I understood
my lady's disinclination to face Sergeant Cuff
with such an answer from her daughter as that.
If I had not been too old for the amiable weaknesses
of youth, I believe I should have blushed
at the notion of facing him myself.

"Any news of Miss Verinder's keys?" asked
the Sergeant.

"My young lady refuses to have her wardrobe
examined."

"Ah!" said the Sergeant.

His voice was not quite in such a perfect
state of discipline as his face. When he said
"Ah!" he said it in the tone of a man who had
heard something which he expected to hear.
He half angered and half frightened me—why,
I couldn't tell, but he did it.

"Must the search be given up?" I asked.

"Yes," said the Sergeant, "the search must
be given up, because your young lady refuses to
submit to it like the rest. We must examine all
the wardrobes in the house or none. Send Mr.
Ablewhite's portmanteau to London by the
next train, and return the washing-book, with
my compliments and thanks, to the young
woman who brought it in."

He laid the washing-book on the table, and,
taking out his penknife, began to trim his nails.

"You don't seem to be much disappointed,"
I said.

"No," said Sergeant Cuff; "I'm not much
disappointed."

I tried to make him explain himself.

"Why should Miss Rachel put an obstacle
in your way?" I inquired. "Isn't it her
interest to help you?"

"Wait a little, Mr, Betteredge—wait a
little."

Cleverer heads than mine might have seen
his drift. Or a person less fond of Miss
Rachel than I was, might have seen his drift.
My lady's horror of him might (as I have since
thought) have meant that she saw his drift (as
the scripture says) "in a glass darkly." I
didn't see it yet—that's all I know.

"What's to be done next?" I asked.

Sergeant Cuff finished the nail on which he
was at work, looked at it for a moment with a
a melancholy interest, and put up his pen-knife.

"Come out into the garden," he said, "and
let's have a look at the roses."

CHAPTER XIV.

The nearest way to the garden, on going
out of my lady's sitting-room, was by the
shrubbery path, which you already know of.
For the sake of your better understanding of
what is now to come, I may add to this, that
the shrubbery path was Mr. Franklin's favourite
walk. When he was out in the grounds, and
when we failed to find him anywhere else, we
generally found him here.

I am afraid I must own that I am rather an
obstinate old man. The more firmly Sergeant
Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me, the
more firmly I persisted in trying to look in at
them. As we turned into the shrubbery path,
I attempted to circumvent him in another way.

"As things are now," I said, "if I was in
your place, I should be at my wits' end."

"If you were in my place," answered the
Sergeant, "you would have formed an opinion
—and, as things are now, any doubt you
might previously have felt about your own
conclusions would be completely set at rest.
Never mind, for the present, what those
conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge. I haven't
brought you out here to draw me like a badger;
I have brought you out here to ask for some
information. You might have given it to me,
no doubt, in the house, instead of out of it.
But doors and listeners have a knack of getting
together, and, in my line of life, we sometimes
cultivate a healthy taste for the open air."

Who was to circumvent this man? I gave
in—and waited as patiently as I could to hear
what was coming next.

"We won't enter into your young lady's
motives," the Sergeant went on; "we will only say
it's a pity she declines to assist me, because, by
so doing, she makes this investigation more difficult
than it might otherwise have been. We
must now try to solve the mystery of the smear
on the door—which, you may take my word for
it, means the mystery of the Diamond also—in
some other way. I have decided to see the
servants, and to search their thoughts and
actions, Mr. Betteredge, instead of searching
their wardrobes. Before I begin, however, I
want to ask you a question or two. You are
an observant man—did you notice anything
strange in any of the servants (making due
allowance, of course, for fright and fluster),
after the loss of the Diamond was found out?
Any particular quarrel among them? Any one
of them not in his or her usual spirits?
Unexpectedly out of temper, for instance? or
unexpectedly taken ill?"

I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman's
sudden illness at yesterday's dinner—but
not time to make any answer—when I saw
Sergeant Cuff's eyes suddenly turn aside towards