‘Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see.’
Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-chest was included in the proceedings.
‘Is there any objection, sir,’ he asked, ‘to taking Mr. Bruff into this part of the business?’
‘Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me downstairs.’
Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without another word. I went back into Mr. Blake’s room, and knocked at the door of communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his hand—immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.
‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ I said. But I am going to prepare the laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present, and to see what I do.’
“Yes?’ said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. ‘Anything else?’
‘I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer the dose.’
‘Anything else?’
‘One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in Mr. Blake’s room, and of waiting to see what happens.’
‘Oh, very good!’ said Mr. Bruff. ‘My room, or Mr. Blake’s room—it doesn’t matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing that amount of common sense into the proceedings?’
Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer, speaking from his bed.
‘Do you really mean to say that you don’t feel any interest in what we are going to do?’ he asked. ‘Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination than a cow!’
‘A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake,’ said the lawyer. With that reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his hand.
We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge, on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged back again into his papers on the spot.
Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one all-absorbing interest—her interest in Mr. Blake.
‘How is he now?’ she asked. ‘Is he nervous? is he out of temper? Do you think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do no harm?’
‘Quite sure. Come, and see me measure it out.’
‘One moment! It is past eleven now. How long will it be before anything happens?’
‘It is not easy to say. An hour perhaps.’
‘I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I shall wait in my bedroom—just as I did before. I shall keep the door a little way open. It was a little way open last year. I will watch the sitting-room door; and the moment it moves, I will blow out my light. It all happened in that way, on my birthday night. And it must all happen again in the same way, mustn’t it?’
‘Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?’
In his interests, I can do anything!’ she answered fervently.
One look at her face told me that I could trust her. I addressed myself again to Mr. Bruff.
‘I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment,’ I said.
‘Oh, certainly!’ He got up with a start—as if I had disturbed him at a particularly interesting place—and followed me to the medicine-chest. There, deprived of the breathless excitement incidental to the practice of his profession, he looked at Betteredge—and yawned wearily.
Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water, which she had taken from a side-table. ‘Let me pour out the water,’ she whispered. ‘I must have a hand in it!’
I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured the laudanum into a medicine glass. ‘Fill it till it is three parts full,’ I said, and handed the glass to Miss Verinder. I then directed Betteredge to lock up the medicine chest; informing him that I had done with it now. A look of unutterable relief overspread the old servant’s countenance. He had evidently suspected me of a medical design on his young lady!
After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder seized a moment—while Betteredge was locking the chest, and while Mr. Bruff was looking back at his papers—and slyly kissed the rim of the medicine glass. ‘When you give it to him,’ said the charming girl, ‘give it to him on that side!’
I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Diamond from my pocket, and gave it to her.
‘You must have a hand in this, too,’ I said. ‘You must put it where you put the Moonstone last year.’
She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Diamond into the drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on the birthday night. Mr. Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under protest, as he had witnessed everything else. But the strong dramatic interest which the experiment was now assuming, proved (to my great amusement) to be too much for Betteredge’s capacity of sell-restraint. His hand trembled as he held the candle, and he whispered anxiously, ‘Are you sure, miss, it’s the right drawer?’
I led the way out again, with the laudanum and water in my hand. At the door, I stopped to address a last word to Miss Verinder.
‘Don’t be long in putting out the lights,’ I said.
‘I will put them out at once,’ she answered. ‘And I will wait in my bedroom, with only one candle alight.’
She closed the sitting-room door behind us. Followed by Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, I went back to Mr. Blake’s room.
We found him moving restlessly from side to side of the bed, and wondering irritably whether he was to have the laudanum that night. In the presence of the two witnesses, I gave him the dose, and shook up his pillows, and told him to lie down again quietly and wait.
His bed, provided with light chintz curtains, was placed, with the head against the wall of the room, so as to leave a good open space on either side of it. On one side, I drew the curtains completely—and in the part of the room thus screened from his view, I placed Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, to wait for the result. At the bottom of the bed I half drew the curtains—and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that I might let him see me or not see me, speak to me or not speak to me, just as the circumstances might direct. Having already been informed that he always slept with a light in the room, I placed one of the two lighted candles on a little table at the head of the bed, where the glare of the light would not strike on his eyes. The other candle I gave to Mr. Bruff; the light, in this instance, being subdued by the screen of the chintz curtains. The window was open at the top, so as to ventilate the room. The rain fell softly, the house was quiet. It was twenty minutes past eleven, by my watch, when the preparations were completed, and I took my place on the chair set apart at the bottom of the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of being as deeply interested in them as ever. But looking towards him now, I saw certain signs and tokens which told me that the Law was beginning to lose its hold on him at last. The suspended interest of the situation in which we were now placed was slowly asserting its influence even on his unimaginative mind. As for Betteredge, consistency of principle and dignity of conduct had become, in his case, mere empty words. He forgot that I was performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he forgot that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot that I had not read Robinson Crusoe since I was a child. ‘For the Lord’s sake, sir,’ he whispered to me, ‘tell us when it will begin to work.’
‘Not before midnight,’ I whispered back. ‘Say nothing, and sit still.’
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with me, without a struggle to save himself. He answered by a wink!
Looking next towards Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as ever in his bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the laudanum had not begun to assert itself yet. To tell him, in his present humour, that the more he fidgeted and wondered, the longer he would delay the result for which we were now waiting, would have been simply useless. The wiser course to take was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his mind, by leading him insensibly to think of something else.