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

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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.




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