present, it still poured heavily, and the ground was in a perfect sop.
Samuel and I went all over the house, and shut up as usual. I examined everything myself, and trusted nothing to my deputy on this occasion. All was safe and fast when I rested my old bones in bed, between midnight and one in the morning.
The worries of the day had been a little too much for me, I suppose. At any rate, I had a touch of Mr. Franklin's malady that night. It was sunrise before I fell off at last into a sleep. All the time I lay awake the house was as quiet as the grave. Not a sound stirred but the splash of the rain, and the sighing of the wind among the trees as a breeze sprang up with the morning.
About half-past seven I woke, and opened my window on a fine sunshiny day. The clock had struck eight, and I was just going out to chain up the dogs again, when I heard a sudden whisking of petticoats on the stairs behind me.
I turned about, and there was Penelope flying down after me like mad. 'Father!' she screamed, 'come up-stairs, for God's sake! THE DIAMOND IS GONE!' 'Are you out of your mind?' I asked her.
'Gone!' says Penelope. 'Gone, nobody knows how! Come up and see.'
She dragged me after her into our young lady's sitting-room, which opened into her bedroom. There, on the threshold of her bedroom door, stood Miss Rachel, almost as white in the face as the white dressing-gown that clothed her. There also stood the two doors of the Indian cabinet, wide open. One, of the drawers inside was pulled out as far as it would go.
'Look!' says Penelope. 'I myself saw Miss Rachel put the Diamond into that drawer last night.' I went to the cabinet. The drawer was empty.
'Is this true, miss?' I asked.
With a look that was not like herself, with a voice that was not like her own, Miss Rachel answered as my daughter had answered: 'The Diamond is gone!' Having said those words, she withdrew into her bedroom, and shut and locked the door.
Before we knew which way to turn next, my lady came in, hearing my voice in her daughter's sitting-room, and wondering what had happened. The news of the loss of the Diamond seemed to petrify her. She went straight to Miss Rachel's bedroom, and insisted on being admitted. Miss Rachel let here in.
The alarm, running through the house like fire, caught the two gentlemen next.
Mr. Godfrey was the first to come out of his room. All he did when he heard what had happened was to hold up his hands in a state of bewilderment, which didn't say much for his natural strength of mind. Mr. Franklin, whose clear head I had confidently counted on to advise us, seemed to be as helpless as his cousin when he heard the news in his turn. For a wonder, he had had a good night's rest at last; and the unaccustomed luxury of sleep had, as he said himself, apparently stupefied him. However, when he had swallowed his cup of coffee—which he always took, on the foreign plan, some hours before he ate any breakfast—his brains brightened; the clear-headed side of him turned up, and he took the matter in hand, resolutely and cleverly, much as follows:
He first sent for the servants, and told them to leave all the lower doors and windows (with the exception of the front door, which I had opened) exactly as they had been left when we locked up over night. He next proposed to his cousin and to me to make quite sure, before we took any further steps, that the Diamond had not accidentally dropped somewhere out of sight—say at the back of the cabinet, or down behind the table on which the cabinet stood. Having searched in both places, and found nothing—having also questioned Penelope, and discovered from her no more than the little she had already told me—Mr. Franklin suggested next extending our inquiries to Miss Rachel, and sent Penelope to knock at her bed-room door.
My lady answered the knock, and closed the door behind her. The moment after we heard it locked inside by Miss Rachel. My mistress came out among us, looking sorely puzzled and distressed. 'The loss of the Diamond seems to have quite overwhelmed Rachel,' she said, in reply to Mr. Franklin. 'She shrinks, in the strangest manner, from speaking of it, even to ME. It is impossible you can see her for the present.' Having added to our perplexities by this account of Miss Rachel, my lady, after a little effort, recovered her usual composure, and acted with her usual decision.
'I suppose there is no help for it?' she said, quietly. 'I suppose I have no alternative but to send for the police?'
'And the first thing for the police to do,' added Mr. Franklin, catching her up, 'is to lay hands on the Indian jugglers who performed here last night.'
My lady and Mr. Godfrey (not knowing what Mr. Franklin and I knew) both started, and both looked surprised.
