"I expect you to help me," I said, "in picking up the fragments of
evidence which Sergeant Cuff has left behind him. I know you can do
that. Can you do no more?"
"What more can you expect from me, sir?" asked Betteredge, with an
appearance of the utmost humility.
"I expect more--from what you said just now."
"Mere boasting, Mr. Franklin," returned the old man obstinately. "Some
people are born boasters, and they never get over it to their dying day.
I'm one of them."
There was only one way to take with him. I appealed to his interest in
Rachel, and his interest in me.
"Betteredge, would you be glad to hear that Rachel and I were good
friends again?"
"I have served your family, sir, to mighty little purpose, if you doubt
it!"
"Do you remember how Rachel treated me, before I left England?"
"As well as if it was yesterday! My lady herself wrote you a letter
about it; and you were so good as to show the letter to me. It said that
Miss Rachel was mortally offended with you, for the part you had taken
in trying to recover her jewel. And neither my lady, nor you, nor
anybody else could guess why.
"Quite true, Betteredge! And I come back from my travels, and find her
mortally offended with me still. I knew that the Diamond was at the
bottom of it, last year, and I know that the Diamond is at the bottom of
it now. I have tried to speak to her, and she won't see me. I have tried
to write to her, and she won't answer me. How, in Heaven's name, am I
to clear the matter up? The chance of searching into the loss of the
Moonstone, is the one chance of inquiry that Rachel herself has left
me."
Those words evidently put the case before him, as he had not seen it
yet. He asked a question which satisfied me that I had shaken him.
"There is no ill-feeling in this, Mr. Franklin, on your side--is there?"
"There was some anger," I answered, "when I left London. But that is
all worn out now. I want to make Rachel come to an understanding with
me--and I want nothing more."
"You don't feel any fear, sir--supposing you make any discoveries--in
regard to what you may find out about Miss Rachel?"
I understood the jealous belief in his young mistress which prompted
those words.
"I am as certain of her as you are," I answered. "The fullest disclosure
of her secret will reveal nothing that can alter her place in your
estimation, or in mine."
Betteredge's last-left scruples vanished at that.
"If I am doing wrong to help you, Mr. Franklin," he exclaimed, "all I
can say is--I am as innocent of seeing it as the babe unborn! I can put
you on the road to discovery, if you can only go on by yourself. You
remember that poor girl of ours--Rosanna Spearman?"