I thought to myself, "The Moonstone!" But I only said to Sergeant Cuff,
"Can't you guess?"
"It's not the Diamond," says the Sergeant. "The whole experience of my
life is at fault, if Rosanna Spearman has got the Diamond."
On hearing those words, the infernal detective-fever began, I suppose,
to burn in me again. At any rate, I forgot myself in the interest of
guessing this new riddle. I said rashly, "The stained dress!"
Sergeant Cuff stopped short in the dark, and laid his hand on my arm.
"Is anything thrown into that quicksand of yours, ever thrown up on the
surface again?" he asked.
"Never," I answered. "Light or heavy whatever goes into the Shivering
Sand is sucked down, and seen no more."
"Does Rosanna Spearman know that?"
"She knows it as well as I do."
"Then," says the Sergeant, "what on earth has she got to do but to tie
up a bit of stone in the stained dress and throw it into the quicksand?
There isn't the shadow of a reason why she should have hidden it--and
yet she must have hidden it. Query," says the Sergeant, walking on
again, "is the paint-stained dress a petticoat or a night-gown? or is it
something else which there is a reason for preserving at any risk? Mr.
Betteredge, if nothing occurs to prevent it, I must go to Frizinghall
to-morrow, and discover what she bought in the town, when she privately
got the materials for making the substitute dress. It's a risk to
leave the house, as things are now--but it's a worse risk still to stir
another step in this matter in the dark. Excuse my being a little out of
temper; I'm degraded in my own estimation--I have let Rosanna Spearman
puzzle me."
When we got back, the servants were at supper. The first person we saw
in the outer yard was the policeman whom Superintendent Seegrave had
left at the Sergeant's disposal. The Sergeant asked if Rosanna Spearman
had returned. Yes. When? Nearly an hour since. What had she done? She
had gone up-stairs to take off her bonnet and cloak--and she was now at
supper quietly with the rest.
Without making any remark, Sergeant Cuff walked on, sinking lower and
lower in his own estimation, to the back of the house. Missing the
entrance in the dark, he went on (in spite of my calling to him) till
he was stopped by a wicket-gate which led into the garden. When I joined
him to bring him back by the right way, I found that he was looking up
attentively at one particular window, on the bed-room floor, at the back
of the house.
Looking up, in my turn, I discovered that the object of his
contemplation was the window of Miss Rachel's room, and that lights were
passing backwards and forwards there as if something unusual was going
on.