The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (ebook reader screen TXT) 📗

before we have done. Bring your chair to the table, and we shall be able to consult them together.”

I drew up to the table; and Ezra Jennings handed me his manuscript notes. They consisted of two large folio leaves of paper. One leaf contained writing which only covered the surface at intervals. The other presented writing, in red and black ink, which completely filled the page from top to bottom. In the irritated state of my curiosity, at that moment, I laid aside the second sheet of paper in despair.

“Have some mercy on me!” I said. “Tell me what I am to expect, before I attempt to read this.”

“Willingly, Mr. Blake! Do you mind my asking you one or two more questions?”

“Ask me anything you like!”

He looked at me with the sad smile on his lips, and the kindly interest in his soft brown eyes.

“You have already told me,” he said, “that you have never⁠—to your knowledge⁠—tasted opium in your life.”

“To my knowledge,” I repeated.

“You will understand directly why I speak with that reservation. Let us go on. You are not aware of ever having taken opium. At this time, last year, you were suffering from nervous irritation, and you slept wretchedly at night. On the night of the birthday, however, there was an exception to the rule⁠—you slept soundly. Am I right, so far?”

“Quite right!”

“Can you assign any cause for the nervous suffering, and your want of sleep?”

“I can assign no cause. Old Betteredge made a guess at the cause, I remember. But that is hardly worth mentioning.”

“Pardon me. Anything is worth mentioning in such a case as this. Betteredge attributed your sleeplessness to something. To what?”

“To my leaving off smoking.”

“Had you been an habitual smoker?”

“Yes.”

“Did you leave off the habit suddenly?”

“Yes.”

“Betteredge was perfectly right, Mr. Blake. When smoking is a habit, a man must have no common constitution who can leave it off suddenly without some temporary damage to his nervous system. Your sleepless nights are accounted for, to my mind. My next question refers to Mr. Candy. Do you remember having entered into anything like a dispute with him⁠—at the birthday dinner, or afterwards⁠—on the subject of his profession?”

The question instantly awakened one of my dormant remembrances in connection with the birthday festival. The foolish wrangle which took place, on that occasion, between Mr. Candy and myself, will be found described at much greater length than it deserves in the tenth chapter of Betteredge’s Narrative. The details there presented of the dispute⁠—so little had I thought of it afterwards⁠—entirely failed to recur to my memory. All that I could now recall, and all that I could tell Ezra Jennings was, that I had attacked the art of medicine at the dinner-table with sufficient rashness and sufficient pertinacity to put even Mr. Candy out of temper for the moment. I also remembered that Lady Verinder had interfered to stop the dispute, and that the little doctor and I had “made it up again,” as the children say, and had become as good friends as ever, before we shook hands that night.

“There is one thing more,” said Ezra Jennings, “which it is very important I should know. Had you any reason for feeling any special anxiety about the Diamond, at this time last year?”

“I had the strongest reasons for feeling anxiety about the Diamond. I knew it to be the object of a conspiracy; and I was warned to take measures for Miss Verinder’s protection, as the possessor of the stone.”

“Was the safety of the Diamond the subject of conversation between you and any other person, immediately before you retired to rest on the birthday night?”

“It was the subject of a conversation between Lady Verinder and her daughter⁠—”

“Which took place in your hearing?”

“Yes.”

Ezra Jennings took up his notes from the table, and placed them in my hands.

“Mr. Blake,” he said, “if you read those notes now, by the light which my questions and your answers have thrown on them, you will make two astounding discoveries concerning yourself. You will find⁠—First, that you entered Miss Verinder’s sitting-room and took the Diamond, in a state of trance, produced by opium. Secondly, that the opium was given to you by Mr. Candy⁠—without your own knowledge⁠—as a practical refutation of the opinions which you had expressed to him at the birthday dinner.”

I sat with the papers in my hand completely stupefied.

“Try and forgive poor Mr. Candy,” said the assistant gently. “He has done dreadful mischief, I own; but he has done it innocently. If you will look at the notes, you will see that⁠—but for his illness⁠—he would have returned to Lady Verinder’s the morning after the party, and would have acknowledged the trick that he had played you. Miss Verinder would have heard of it, and Miss Verinder would have questioned him⁠—and the truth which has laid hidden for a year would have been discovered in a day.”

I began to regain my self-possession. “Mr. Candy is beyond the reach of my resentment,” I said angrily. “But the trick that he played me is not the less an act of treachery, for all that. I may forgive, but I shall not forget it.”

“Every medical man commits that act of treachery, Mr. Blake, in the course of his practice. The ignorant distrust of opium (in England) is by no means confined to the lower and less cultivated classes. Every doctor in large practice finds himself, every now and then, obliged to deceive his patients, as Mr. Candy deceived you. I don’t defend the folly of playing you a trick under the circumstances. I only plead with you for a more accurate and more merciful construction of motives.”

“How was it done?” I asked. “Who gave me the laudanum, without my knowing it myself?”

“I am not able to tell you. Nothing relating to that part of the matter dropped from Mr. Candy’s lips, all through his illness. Perhaps your own memory may point to the person to be suspected.”

“No.”

“It is useless, in that case, to pursue the inquiry. The laudanum was secretly given to you in some way.