The Moonstone - Page 357/404

My watch informs me that it is close on eleven o'clock. I must shut up

these leaves once more.

* * * * * Two o'clock A.M.--The experiment has been tried. With what result, I am

now to describe.

At eleven o'clock, I rang the bell for Betteredge, and told Mr. Blake

that he might at last prepare himself for bed.

I looked out of the window at the night. It was mild and rainy,

resembling, in this respect, the night of the birthday--the twenty-first

of June, last year. Without professing to believe in omens, it was at

least encouraging to find no direct nervous influences--no stormy or

electric perturbations--in the atmosphere. Betteredge joined me at the

window, and mysteriously put a little slip of paper into my hand. It

contained these lines: "Mrs. Merridew has gone to bed, on the distinct understanding that the

explosion is to take place at nine to-morrow morning, and that I am not

to stir out of this part of the house until she comes and sets me

free. She has no idea that the chief scene of the experiment is my

sitting-room--or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am

alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum; I

want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant character

of a mere looker-on.--R.V."

I followed Betteredge out of the room, and told him to remove the

medicine-chest into Miss Verinder's sitting-room.

The order appeared to take him completely by surprise. He looked as if

he suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! "Might

I presume to ask," he said, "what my young lady and the medicine-chest

have got to do with each other?"

"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

down-stairs."

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."