Having had some experience of the great Cuff's round-about ways, and
having last seen him evidently bent on following Rosanna privately when
she went out for her walk, it seemed clear to me that he had thought it
unadvisable to let the lady's maid and the housemaid know how materially
they had helped him. They were just the sort of women, if he had treated
their evidence as trustworthy, to have been puffed up by it, and to
have said or done something which would have put Rosanna Spearman on her
guard.
I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor
girl, and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken. Drifting
towards the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin. After
returning from seeing his cousin off at the station, he had been with
my lady, holding a long conversation with her. She had told him of Miss
Rachel's unaccountable refusal to let her wardrobe be examined; and had
put him in such low spirits about my young lady that he seemed to shrink
from speaking on the subject. The family temper appeared in his face
that evening, for the first time in my experience of him.
"Well, Betteredge," he said, "how does the atmosphere of mystery
and suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you? Do you
remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone? I wish
to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!"
After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking again until
he had composed himself. We walked silently, side by side, for a minute
or two, and then he asked me what had become of Sergeant Cuff. It was
impossible to put Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant being
in my room, composing his mind. I told him exactly what had happened,
mentioning particularly what my lady's maid and the house-maid had said
about Rosanna Spearman.
Mr. Franklin's clear head saw the turn the Sergeant's suspicions had
taken, in the twinkling of an eye.
"Didn't you tell me this morning," he said, "that one of the
tradespeople declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to
Frizinghall, when we supposed her to be ill in her room?"
"Yes, sir."
"If my aunt's maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may
depend upon it the tradesman did meet her. The girl's attack of illness
was a blind to deceive us. She had some guilty reason for going to the
town secretly. The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire
heard crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit
to destroy it. Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond. I'll go in
directly, and tell my aunt the turn things have taken."