lone, even now. It seems
almost beyond mere mortal perversity that I should have discovered, in
what he had just said, a new opportunity of making myself personally
disagreeable to him. But--ah, my friends! nothing is beyond mortal
perversity; and anything is credible when our fallen natures get the
better of us!

"Pardon me for intruding on your reflections," I said to the
unsuspecting Mr. Bruff. "But surely there is a conjecture to make which
has not occurred to us yet."

"Maybe, Miss Clack. I own I don't know what it is."

"Before I was so fortunate, sir, as to convince you of Mr. Ablewhite's
innocence, you mentioned it as one of the reasons for suspecting him,
that he was in the house at the time when the Diamond was lost. Permit
me to remind you that Mr. Franklin Blake was also in the house at the
time when the Diamond was lost."

The old worldling left the window, took a chair exactly opposite to mine,
and looked at me steadily, with a hard and vicious smile.

"You are not so good a lawyer, Miss Clack," he remarked in a meditative
manner, "as I supposed. You don't know how to let well alone."

"I am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruff," I said, modestly.

"It won't do, Miss Clack--it really won't do a second time. Franklin
Blake is a prime favourite of mine, as you are well aware. But that
doesn't matter. I'll adopt your view, on this occasion, before you have
time to turn round on me. You're quite right, ma'am. I have suspected
Mr. Ablewhite, on grounds which abstractedly justify suspecting Mr.
Blake too. Very good--let's suspect them together. It's quite in his
character, we will say, to be capable of stealing the Moonstone. The
only question is, whether it was his interest to do so."

"Mr. Franklin Blake's debts," I remarked, "are matters of family
notoriety."

"And Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite's debts have not arrived at that stage of
development yet. Quite true. But there happen to be two difficulties in
the way of your theory, Miss Clack. I manage Franklin Blake's affairs,
and I beg to inform you that the vast majority of his creditors (knowing
his father to be a rich man) are quite content to charge interest
on their debts, and to wait for their money. There is the first
difficulty--which is tough enough. You will find the second tougher
still. I have it on the authority of Lady Verinder herself, that her
daughter was ready to marry Franklin Blake, before that infernal Indian
Diamond disappeared from