The Victorian Mystery Megapack (150 page)

Some men have a knack of keeping appointments; and other men have a knack of missing them. I am one of the other men. Add to this, that I passed the evening at Portland Place, on the same seat with Rachel, in a room forty feet long, with Mrs. Merridew at the further end of it. Does anybody wonder that I got home at half past twelve instead of half past ten? How thoroughly heartless that person must be! And how earnestly I hope I may never make that person’s acquaintance!

My servant handed me a morsel of paper when he let me in.

I read, in a neat legal handwriting, these words—“If you please, sir, I am getting sleepy. I will come back tomorrow morning, between nine and ten.” Inquiry proved that a boy, with very extraordinary-looking eyes, had called, and presented my card and message, had waited an hour, had done nothing but fall asleep and wake up again, had written a line for me, and had gone home—after gravely informing the servant that “he was fit for nothing unless he got his night’s rest.”

At nine, the next morning, I was ready for my visitor. At half past nine, I heard steps outside my door. “Come in, Gooseberry!” I called out. “Thank you, sir,” answered a grave and melancholy voice. The door opened. I started to my feet, and confronted—Sergeant Cuff.

“I thought I would look in here, Mr. Blake, on the chance of your being in town, before I wrote to Yorkshire,” said the Sergeant.

He was as dreary and as lean as ever. His eyes had not lost their old trick (so subtly noticed in Betteredge’s
Narrative
) of “looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself.” But, so far as dress can alter a man, the great Cuff was changed beyond all recognition. He wore a broad-brimmed white hat, a light shooting jacket, white trousers, and drab gaiters. He carried a stout oak stick. His whole aim and object seemed to be to look as if he had lived in the country all his life. When I complimented him on his Metamorphosis, he declined to take it as a joke. He complained, quite gravely, of the noises and the smells of London. I declare I am far from sure that he did not speak with a slightly rustic accent! I offered him breakfast. The innocent countryman was quite shocked.
His
breakfast hour was half-past six—and
he
went to bed with the cocks and hens!

“I only got back from Ireland last night,” said the Sergeant, coming round to the practical object of his visit, in his own impenetrable manner. “Before I went to bed, I read your letter, telling me what has happened since my inquiry after the Diamond was suspended last year. There’s only one thing to be said about the matter on my side. I completely mistook my case. How any man living was to have seen things in their true light, in such a situation as mine was at the time, I don’t profess to know. But that doesn’t alter the facts as they stand. I own that I made a mess of it. Not the first mess, Mr. Blake, which has distinguished my professional career! It’s only in books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of making a mistake.”

“You have come in the nick of time to recover your reputation,” I said.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” rejoined the Sergeant. “Now I have retired from business, I don’t care a straw about my reputation. I have done with my reputation, thank God! I am here, sir, in grateful remembrance of the late Lady Verinder’s liberality to me. I will go back to my old work—if you want me, and if you will trust me—on that consideration, and on no other. Not a farthing of money is to pass, if you please, from you to me. This is on honour. Now tell me, Mr. Blake, how the case stands since you wrote to me last.”

I told him of the experiment with the opium, and of what had occurred afterwards at the bank in Lombard Street. He was greatly struck by the experiment—it was something entirely new in his experience. And he was particularly interested in the theory of Ezra Jennings, relating to what I had done with the Diamond, after I had left Rachel’s sitting-room, on the birthday night.

“I don’t hold with Mr. Jennings that you hid the Moonstone,” said Sergeant Cuff. “But I agree with him, that you must certainly have taken it back to your own room.”

“Well?” I asked. “And what happened then?”

“Have you no suspicion yourself of what happened, sir?”

“None whatever.”

“Has Mr. Bruff no suspicion?”

“No more than I have.”

Sergeant Cuff rose, and went to my writing-table. He came back with a sealed envelope. It was marked “Private;” it was addressed to me; and it had the Sergeant’s signature in the corner.

“I suspected the wrong person, last year,” he said: “and I may be suspecting the wrong person now. Wait to open the envelope, Mr. Blake, till you have got at the truth. And then compare the name of the guilty person, with the name that I have written in that sealed letter.”

I put the letter into my pocket—and then asked for the Sergeant’s opinion of the measures which we had taken at the bank.

“Very well intended, sir,” he answered, “and quite the right thing to do. But there was another person who ought to have been looked after besides Mr. Luker.”

“The person named in the letter you have just given to me?”

“Yes, Mr. Blake, the person named in the letter. It can’t be helped now. I shall have something to propose to you and Mr. Bruff, sir, when the time comes. Let’s wait, first, and see if the boy has anything to tell us that is worth hearing.”

It was close on ten o’clock, and the boy had not made his appearance. Sergeant Cuff talked of other matters. He asked after his old friend Betteredge, and his old enemy the gardener. In a minute more, he would no doubt have got from this, to the subject of his favourite roses, if my servant had not interrupted us by announcing that the boy was below.

On being brought into the room, Gooseberry stopped at the threshold of the door, and looked distrustfully at the stranger who was in my company. I told the boy to come to me.

“You may speak before this gentleman,” I said. “He is here to assist me; and he knows all that has happened. Sergeant Cuff,” I added, “this is the boy from Mr. Bruff’s office.”

In our modern system of civilisation, celebrity (no matter of what kind) is the lever that will move anything. The fame of the great Cuff had even reached the ears of the small Gooseberry. The boy’s ill-fixed eyes rolled, when I mentioned the illustrious name, till I thought they really must have dropped on the carpet.

“Come here, my lad,” said the Sergeant, “and let’s hear what you have got to tell us.”

The notice of the great man—the hero of many a famous story in every lawyer’s office in London—appeared to fascinate the boy. He placed himself in front of Sergeant Cuff, and put his hands behind him, after the approved fashion of a neophyte who is examined in his catechism.

“What is your name?” said the Sergeant, beginning with the first question in the catechism.

“Octavius Guy,” answered the boy. “They call me Gooseberry at the office because of my eyes.”

“Octavius Guy, otherwise Gooseberry,” pursued the Sergeant, with the utmost gravity, “you were missed at the bank yesterday. What were you about?”

“If you please, sir, I was following a man.”

“Who was he?”

“A tall man, sir, with a big black beard, dressed like a sailor.”

“I remember the man!” I broke in. “Mr. Bruff and I thought he was a spy employed by the Indians.”

Sergeant Cuff did not appear to be much impressed by what Mr. Bruff and I had thought. He went on catechising Gooseberry.

“Well?” he said—“and why did you follow the sailor?”

“If you please, sir, Mr. Bruff wanted to know whether Mr. Luker passed anything to anybody on his way out of the bank. I saw Mr. Luker pass something to the sailor with the black beard.”

“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Bruff what you saw?”

“I hadn’t time to tell anybody, sir, the sailor went out in such a hurry.”

“And you ran out after him—eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gooseberry,” said the Sergeant, patting his head, “you have got something in that small skull of yours—and it isn’t cotton-wool. I am greatly pleased with you, so far.”

The boy blushed with pleasure. Sergeant Cuff went on.

“Well? and what did the sailor do, when he got into the street?”

“He called a cab, sir.”

“And what did you do?”

“Held on behind, and run after it.”

Before the Sergeant could put his next question, another visitor was announced—the head clerk from Mr. Bruff’s office.

Feeling the importance of not interrupting Sergeant Cuff’s examination of the boy, I received the clerk in another room. He came with bad news of his employer. The agitation and excitement of the last two days had proved too much for Mr. Bruff. He had awoke that morning with an attack of gout; he was confined to his room at Hampstead; and, in the present critical condition of our affairs, he was very uneasy at being compelled to leave me without the advice and assistance of an experienced person. The chief clerk had received orders to hold himself at my disposal, and was willing to do his best to replace Mr. Bruff.

I wrote at once to quiet the old gentleman’s mind, by telling him of Sergeant Cuff’s visit: adding that Gooseberry was at that moment under examination; and promising to inform Mr. Bruff, either personally, or by letter, of whatever might occur later in the day. Having despatched the clerk to Hampstead with my note, I returned to the room which I had left, and found Sergeant Cuff at the fireplace, in the act of ringing the bell.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” said the Sergeant. “I was just going to send word by your servant that I wanted to speak to you. There isn’t a doubt on my mind that this boy—this most meritorious boy,” added the Sergeant, patting Gooseberry on the head, “has followed the right man. Precious time has been lost, sir, through your unfortunately not being at home at half past ten last night. The only thing to do, now, is to send for a cab immediately.”

In five minutes more, Sergeant Cuff and I (with Gooseberry on the box to guide the driver) were on our way eastward, towards the City.

“One of these days,” said the Sergeant, pointing through the front window of the cab, “that boy will do great things in my late profession. He is the brightest and cleverest little chap I have met with, for many a long year past. You shall hear the substance, Mr. Blake, of what he told me while you were out of the room. You were present, I think, when he mentioned that he held on behind the cab, and ran after it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sir, the cab went from Lombard Street to the Tower Wharf. The sailor with the black beard got out, and spoke to the steward of the Rotterdam steamboat, which was to start next morning. He asked if he could be allowed to go on board at once, and sleep in his berth over-night. The steward said, No. The cabins, and berths, and bedding were all to have a thorough cleaning that evening, and no passenger could be allowed to come on board, before the morning. The sailor turned round, and left the wharf. When he got into the street again, the boy noticed for the first time, a man dressed like a respectable mechanic, walking on the opposite side of the road, and apparently keeping the sailor in view. The sailor stopped at an eating-house in the neighbourhood, and went in. The boy—not being able to make up his mind, at the moment—hung about among some other boys, staring at the good things in the eating-house window. He noticed the mechanic waiting, as he himself was waiting—but still on the opposite side of the street. After a minute, a cab came by slowly, and stopped where the mechanic was standing. The boy could only see plainly one person in the cab, who leaned forward at the window to speak to the mechanic. He described that person, Mr. Blake, without any prompting from me, as having a dark face, like the face of an Indian.”

It was plain, by this time, that Mr. Bruff and I had made another mistake. The sailor with the black beard was clearly not a spy in the service of the Indian conspiracy. Was he, by any possibility, the man who had got the Diamond?

“After a little,” pursued the Sergeant, “the cab moved on slowly down the street. The mechanic crossed the road, and went into the eating-house. The boy waited outside till he was hungry and tired—and then went into the eating-house, in his turn. He had a shilling in his pocket; and he dined sumptuously, he tells me, on a black-pudding, an eel-pie, and a bottle of ginger-beer. What can a boy not digest? The substance in question has never been found yet.”

“What did he see in the eating-house?” I asked.

“Well, Mr. Blake, he saw the sailor reading the newspaper at one table, and the mechanic reading the newspaper at another. It was dusk before the sailor got up, and left the place. He looked about him suspiciously when he got out into the street. The boy—
being
a boy—passed unnoticed. The mechanic had not come out yet. The sailor walked on, looking about him, and apparently not very certain of where he was going next. The mechanic appeared once more, on the opposite side of the road. The sailor went on, till he got to Shore Lane, leading into Lower Thames Street. There he stopped before a public-house, under the sign of ‘The Wheel of Fortune,’ and, after examining the place outside, went in. Gooseberry went in too. There were a great many people, mostly of the decent sort, at the bar. ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ is a very respectable house, Mr. Blake; famous for its porter and pork-pies.”