"All that you have explained to me,"  I said,
"I understand perfectly.  But I own I am
puzzled on one point, which you have not made
clear to me yet."

"What is the point?"

"I don't understand the effect of the laudanum
on me.  I don't understand my walking
down-stairs, and along corridors, and my opening
and shutting the drawers of a cabinet, and
my going back again to my own room.  All
these are active proceedings.  I thought the
influence of opium was first to stupefy you, and
then to send you to sleep."

"The common error about opium, Mr. Blake!
I am, at this moment, exerting my intelligence
(such as it is) in your service, under the influence
of a dose of laudanum, some ten times
larger than the dose Mr. Candy administered to
you.  But don't trust to my authority—even on
a question which comes within my own personal
experience.  I anticipated the objection you
have just made; and I have again provided my
myself with independent testimony, which will
carry its due weight with it in your own mind,
and in the minds of your friends."

He handed me the second of the two books
which he had by him on the table.

"There," he said," are the far-famed
'Confessions of an English Opium Eater'!  Take the
book away with you, and read it.  At the passage
which I have marked, you will find that when
De Quincey had committed what he calls 'a
debauch of opium,' he either went to the gallery
at the Opera to enjoy the music, or he wandered
about the London markets on Saturday night,
and interested himself in observing all the little
shifts and bargainings of the poor in providing
their Sunday dinners.  So much for the capacity
of a man to occupy himself actively, and to
move about from place to place under the
influence of opium."

"I am answered so far," I said; "but I am
not answered yet as to the effect produced by
the opium on myself."

"I will try to answer you in few words,"
said Ezra Jennings.  "The action of opium is
comprised, in the majority of cases, in two
influences—a stimulating influence first, and a
sedative influence afterwards.  Under the stimulating
influence, the latest and most vivid
impressions left on your mind—namely, the
impressions relating to the Diamond—would be
likely, in your morbidly sensitive nervous
condition, to become intensified in your brain, and
would subordinate to themselves your judgment
and your will—exactly as an ordinary dream
subordinates to itself your judgment and your
will.  Little by little, under this action, any
apprehensions about the safety of the Diamond
which you might have felt during the day, would
be liable to develope themselves from the state
of doubt to the state of certainty—would impel
you into practical action to preserve the jewel
—would direct your steps, with that motive
in view, into the room which you entered and
would guide your hand to the drawers of the
cabinet, until you had found the drawer which
held the stone.  In the spiritualised intoxication
of opium, you would do all that.  Later, as the
sedative action began to gain on the stimulant
action, you would slowly become inert and
stupefied.  Later still, you would fall into a
deep sleep.  When the morning came, and the
effect of the opium had been all slept off, you
would wake as absolutely ignorant of what
you had done in the night as if you had been
living at the Antipodes.  Have I made it
tolerably clear to you, so far?"

"You have made it so clear," I said, "that
I want you to go farther.  You have shown me
how I entered the room, and how I came to
take the Diamond.  But Miss Verinder saw
me leave the room again, with the jewel in my
hand.  Can you trace my proceedings from
that moment?  Can you guess what I did
next?"

"That is the very point I was coming to,"
he rejoined.  "It is a question with me whether
the experiment which I propose as a means of
vindicating your innocence, may not also be
made a means of recovering the lost Diamond
as well.  When you left Miss Verinder' s sitting-room,
with the jewel in your hand, you went
back in all probability to your own room— "

"Yes? and what then?"

"It is possible, Mr. Blake—I dare not say
more—that your idea of preserving the Diamond
led, by a natural sequence, to the idea of hiding
the Diamond, and that the place in which you
hid it was somewhere in your bedroom.  In
that event, the case of the Irish porter may be
your case.  You may remember, under the
influence of the second dose of opium, the
place in which you hid the Diamond under the
influence of the first."

It was my turn, now, to enlighten Ezra
Jennings.  I stopped him, before he could say
any more.

"You are speculating," I said, "on a result
which cannot possibly take place.  The Diamond
is, at this moment, in London."

He started, and looked at me in great
surprise.

"In London?" he repeated. "How did it
get to London from Lady Verinder's house?"

"Nobody knows."

"You removed it with your own hand from
Miss Verinder's room.  How was it taken out
of your keeping?"

"I have no idea how it was taken out of my
keeping,"

"Did you see it, when you woke in the
morning?"

"No."

"Has Miss Verinder recovered possession
of it?"

"No."

"Mr. Blake! there seems to be something
here which wants clearing up.  May I ask how
you know that the Diamond is, at this
moment, in London?"

I had put precisely the same question to
Mr. Bruff, when I made my first inquiries
about the Moonstone, on my return to England.