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

I am not to stir out of this part of the house until she comes and sets me free. She has no idea that the chief scene of the experiment is my sitting-room⁠—or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum; I want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant character of a mere looker-on.⁠—R. V.”

I followed Betteredge out of the room, and told him to remove the medicine-chest into Miss Verinder’s sitting-room.

The order appeared to take him completely by surprise. He looked as if he suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! “Might I presume to ask,” he said, “what my young lady and the medicine-chest have got to do with each other?”

“Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see.”

Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-chest was included in the proceedings.

“Is there any objection, sir” he asked, “to taking Mr. Bruff into this part of the business?”

“Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me downstairs.”

Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without another word. I went back into Mr. Blake’s room, and knocked at the door of communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his hand⁠—immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I am going to prepare the laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present, and to see what I do.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. “Anything else?”

“I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer the dose.”

“Anything else?”

“One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in Mr. Blake’s room, and of waiting to see what happens.”

“Oh, very good!” said Mr. Bruff. “My room, or Mr. Blake’s room⁠—it doesn’t matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing that amount of common sense into the proceedings?”

Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer, speaking from his bed.

“Do you really mean to say that you don’t feel any interest in what we are going to do?” he asked. “Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination than a cow!”

“A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake,” said the lawyer. With that reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his hand.

We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge, on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged back again into his papers on the spot.

Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one all-absorbing interest⁠—her interest in Mr. Blake.

“How is he now?” she asked. “Is he nervous? is he out of temper? Do you think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do no harm?”

“Quite sure. Come, and see me measure it out.”

“One moment! It is past eleven now. How long will it be before anything happens?”

“It is not easy to say. An hour perhaps.”

“I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?”

“Certainly.”

“I shall wait in my bedroom⁠—just as I did before. I shall keep the door a little way open. It was a little way open last year. I will watch the sitting-room door; and the moment it moves, I will blow out my light. It all happened in that way, on my birthday night. And it must all happen again in the same way, musn’t it?”

“Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?”

“In his interests, I can do anything!” she answered fervently.

One look at her face told me that I could trust her. I addressed myself again to Mr. Bruff.

“I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment,” I said.

“Oh, certainly!” He got up with a start⁠—as if I had disturbed him at a particularly interesting place⁠—and followed me to the medicine-chest. There, deprived of the breathless excitement incidental to the practice of his profession, he looked at Betteredge⁠—and yawned wearily.

Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water, which she had taken from a side-table. “Let me pour out the water,” she whispered. “I must have a hand in it!”

I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured the laudanum into a medicine glass. “Fill it till it is three parts full,” I said, and handed the glass to Miss Verinder. I then directed Betteredge to lock up the medicine chest; informing him that I had done with it now. A look of unutterable relief overspread the old servant’s countenance. He had evidently suspected me of a medical design on his young lady!

After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder seized a moment⁠—while Betteredge was locking the chest, and while Mr. Bruff was looking back to his papers⁠—and slyly kissed the rim of the medicine glass. “When you give it to him,” said the charming girl, “give it to him on that side!”

I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Diamond from my pocket, and gave it to her.

“You must have a hand in this, too,” I said. “You must put it where you put the Moonstone last year.”

She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Diamond into the drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on the birthday night. Mr. Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under protest, as he had witnessed everything else. But the strong dramatic interest which the experiment was now assuming, proved (to my great amusement) to be too much for Betteredge’s capacity of self restraint. His hand trembled as he held the candle, and he whispered anxiously, “Are you sure, miss, it’s the right drawer?”

I led the way out again, with