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.