The Moonstone - Page 106/404

At this proposal, my detective-fever suddenly cooled. "You don't want

me," I said. "What good can I do?"

"The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge," said the Sergeant, "the more

virtues I discover. Modesty--oh dear me, how rare modesty is in this

world! and how much of that rarity you possess! If I go alone to the

cottage, the people's tongues will be tied at the first question I

put to them. If I go with you, I go introduced by a justly respected

neighbour, and a flow of conversation is the necessary result. It

strikes me in that light; how does it strike you?"

Not having an answer of the needful smartness as ready as I could have

wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to go

to.

On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognised it as a cottage

inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grown-up

children, a son and a daughter. If you will look back, you will find

that, in first presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have

described her as occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand, by

a visit to some friends of hers at Cobb's Hole. Those friends were the

Yollands--respectable, worthy people, a credit to the neighbourhood.

Rosanna's acquaintance with them had begun by means of the daughter, who

was afflicted with a misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by

the name of Limping Lucy. The two deformed girls had, I suppose, a

kind of fellow-feeling for each other. Anyway, the Yollands and Rosanna

always appeared to get on together, at the few chances they had of

meeting, in a pleasant and friendly manner. The fact of Sergeant Cuff

having traced the girl to THEIR cottage, set the matter of my helping

his inquiries in quite a new light. Rosanna had merely gone where she

was in the habit of going; and to show that she had been in company with

the fisherman and his family was as good as to prove that she had been

innocently occupied so far, at any rate. It would be doing the girl

a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be

convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic. I professed myself convinced by it

accordingly.

We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as

the light lasted.

On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in

the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her

bed up-stairs. Good Mrs. Yolland received us alone in her kitchen. When

she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she

clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table,

and stared as if she could never see enough of him.