I turned again to the window. The moment afterwards, I felt a soft pull
at my coat-tails, and a small voice whispered, "Look here, sir!"
Gooseberry had followed us into the room. His loose eyes rolled
frightfully--not in terror, but in exultation. He had made a
detective-discovery on his own account. "Look here, sir," he
repeated--and led me to a table in the corner of the room.
On the table stood a little wooden box, open, and empty. On one side of
the box lay some jewellers' cotton. On the other side, was a torn
sheet of white paper, with a seal on it, partly destroyed, and with
an inscription in writing, which was still perfectly legible. The
inscription was in these words: "Deposited with Messrs. Bushe, Lysaught, and Bushe, by Mr. Septimus
Luker, of Middlesex Place, Lambeth, a small wooden box, sealed up in
this envelope, and containing a valuable of great price. The box, when
claimed, to be only given up by Messrs. Bushe and Co. on the personal
application of Mr. Luker."
Those lines removed all further doubt, on one point at least. The sailor
had been in possession of the Moonstone, when he had left the bank on
the previous day.
I felt another pull at my coat-tails. Gooseberry had not done with me
yet.
"Robbery!" whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty
box.
"You were told to wait down-stairs," I said. "Go away!"
"And Murder!" added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to
the man on the bed.
There was something so hideous in the boy's enjoyment of the horror of
the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the
room.
At the moment when I crossed the threshold of the door, I heard Sergeant
Cuff's voice, asking where I was. He met me, as I returned into the
room, and forced me to go back with him to the bedside.
"Mr. Blake!" he said. "Look at the man's face. It is a face
disguised--and here's a proof of it!"
He traced with his finger a thin line of livid white, running backward
from the dead man's forehead, between the swarthy complexion, and the
slightly-disturbed black hair. "Let's see what is under this," said the
Sergeant, suddenly seizing the black hair, with a firm grip of his hand.
My nerves were not strong enough to bear it. I turned away again from
the bed.
The first sight that met my eyes, at the other end of the room, was
the irrepressible Gooseberry, perched on a chair, and looking with
breathless interest, over the heads of his elders, at the Sergeant's
proceedings.