The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

“Will you give up the habit again? Suddenly, mind!—as you gave it up before.”

  I began dimly to see his drift. “I will give it up, from this moment,” I answered.

  “If the same consequences follow, which followed last June,” said Ezra Jennings—“if you suffer once more as you suffered then, from sleepless nights, we shall have gained our first step. We shall have put you back again into something assimilating to your nervous condition on the birthday night. If we can next revive, or nearly revive, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you; and if we can occupy your mind again with the various questions concerning the Diamond which formerly agitated it, we shall have replaced you, as nearly as possible in the same position, physically and morally, in which the opium found you last year. In that case we may fairly hope that a repetition of the dose will lead, in a greater or lesser degree, to a repetition of the result. There is my proposal, expressed in a few hasty words. You shall now see what reasons I have to justify me in making it.”

  He turned to one of the books at his side, and opened it at a place marked by a small slip of paper.

  “Don’t suppose that I am going to weary you with a lecture on physiology,” he said. “I think myself bound to prove, in justice to both of us, that I am not asking you to try this experiment in deference to any theory of my own devising. Admitted principles, and recognised authorities, justify me in the view that I take. Give me five minutes of your attention; and I will undertake to show you that Science sanctions my proposal, fanciful as it may seem. Here, in the first place, is the physiological principle on which I am acting, stated by no less a person than Dr. Carpenter. Read it for yourself.”

  He handed me the slip of paper which had marked the place in the book. It contained a few lines of writing, as follows:—

  “There seems much ground for the belief, that every sensory impression which has once been recognised by the perceptive consciousness, is registered (so to speak) in the brain, and may be reproduced at some subsequent time, although there may be no consciousness of its existence in the mind during the whole intermediate period.”

  “Is that plain, so far?” asked Ezra Jennings.

  “Perfectly plain.”

  He pushed the open book across the table to me, and pointed to a passage, marked by pencil lines.

  “Now,” he said, “read that account of a case, which has—as I believe—a direct bearing on your own position, and on the experiment which I am tempting you to try. Observe, Mr. Blake, before you begin, that I am now referring you to one of the greatest of English physiologists. The book in your hand is Doctor Elliotson’s Human Physiology; and the case which the doctor cites rests on the well-known authority of Mr. Combe.”

  The passage pointed out to me was expressed in these terms:—

  “Dr. Abel informed me,” says Mr. Combe, “of an Irish porter to a warehouse, who forgot, when sober, what he had done when drunk; but, being drunk, again recollected the transactions of his former state of intoxication. On one occasion, being drunk, he had lost a parcel of some value, and in his sober moments could give no account of it. Next time he was intoxicated, he recollected that he had left the parcel at a certain house, and there being no address on it, it had remained there safely, and was got on his calling for it.”

  “Plain again?” asked Ezra Jennings.

  “As plain as need be.”

  He put back the slip of paper in its place, and closed the book.

  “Are you satisfied that I have not spoken without good authority to support me?” he asked. “If not, I have only to go to those bookshelves, and you have only to read the passages which I can point out to you.”

  “I am quite satisfied,” I said, “without reading a word more.”

  “In that case, we may return to your own personal interest in this matter. I am bound to tell you that there is something to be said against the experiment as well as for it. If we could, this year, exactly reproduce, in your case, the conditions as they existed last year, it is physiologically certain that we should arrive at exactly the same result. But this—there is no denying it—is simply impossible. We can only hope to approximate to the conditions; and if we don’t succeed in getting you nearly enough back to what you were, this venture of ours will fail. If we do succeed—and I am myself hopeful of success—you may at least so far repeat your proceedings on the birthday night, as to satisfy any reasonable person that you are guiltless, morally speaking, of the theft of the Diamond. I believe, Mr. Blake, I have now stated the question, on both sides of it, as fairly as I can, within the limits that I have imposed on myself. If there is anything that I have not made clear to you, tell me what it is—and if I can enlighten you, I will.”

  “All that you have explained to me,” I said, “I understand perfectly. But I own I am puzzled on one point, which you have not made clear to me yet.”

  “What is the point?”

  “I don’t understand the effect of the laudanum on me. I don’t understand my walking down-stairs, and along corridors, and my opening and shutting the drawers of a cabinet, and my going back again to my own room. All these are active proceedings. I thought the influence of opium was first to stupefy you, and then to send you to sleep.”

  “The common error about opium, Mr. Blake! I am, at this moment, exerting my intelligence (such as it is) in your service, under the influence of a dose of laudanum, some ten times larger than the dose Mr. Candy administered to you. But don’t trust to my authority—even on a question which comes within my own personal experience. I anticipated the objection you have just made: and I have again provided myself with independent testimony which will carry its due weight with it in your own mind, and in the minds of your friends.”

  He handed me the second of the two books which he had by him on the table.

  “There,” he said, “are the far-famed Confessions of an English Opium Eater! Take the book away with you, and read it. At the passage which I have marked, you will find that when De Quincey had committed what he calls ‘a debauch of opium,’ he either went to the gallery at the Opera to enjoy the music, or he wandered about the London markets on Saturday night, and interested himself in observing all the little shifts and bargainings of the poor in providing their Sunday’s dinner. So much for the capacity of a man to occupy himself actively, and to move about from place to place under the influence of opium.”

  “I am answered so far,” I said; “but I am not answered yet as to the effect produced by the opium on myself.”

  “I will try to answer you in a few words,” said Ezra Jennings. “The action of opium is comprised, in the majority of cases, in two influences—a stimulating influence first, and a sedative influence afterwards. Under the stimulating influence, the latest and most vivid impressions left on your mind—namely, the impressions relating to the Diamond—would be likely, in your morbidly sensitive nervous condition, to become intensified in your brain, and would subordinate to themselves your judgment and your will exactly as an ordinary dream subordinates to itself your judgment and your will. Little by little, under this action, any apprehensions about the safety of the Diamond which you might have felt during the day would be liable to develop themselves from the state of doubt to the state of certainty—would impel you into practical action to preserve the jewel—would direct your steps, with that motive in view, into the room which you entered—and would guide your hand to the drawers of the cabinet, until you had found the drawer which held the stone. In the spiritualised intoxication of opium, you would do all that. Later, as the sedative action began to gain on the stimulant action, you would slowly become inert and stupefied. Later still you would fall into a deep sleep. When the morning came, and the effect of the opium had been all slept off, you would wake as absolutely ignorant of what you had done in the night as if you had been living at the Antipodes. Have I made it tolerably clear to you so far?”

  “You have made it so clear,” I said, “that I want you to go farther. You have shown me how I ente
red the room, and how I came to take the Diamond. But Miss Verinder saw me leave the room again, with the jewel in my hand. Can you trace my proceedings from that moment? Can you guess what I did next?”

  “That is the very point I was coming to,” he rejoined. “It is a question with me whether the experiment which I propose as a means of vindicating your innocence, may not also be made a means of recovering the lost Diamond as well. When you left Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, with the jewel in your hand, you went back in all probability to your own room——”

  “Yes? and what then?”

  “It is possible, Mr. Blake—I dare not say more—that your idea of preserving the Diamond led, by a natural sequence, to the idea of hiding the Diamond, and that the place in which you hid it was somewhere in your bedroom. In that event, the case of the Irish porter may be your case. You may remember, under the influence of the second dose of opium, the place in which you hid the Diamond under the influence of the first.”

  It was my turn, now, to enlighten Ezra Jennings. I stopped him, before he could say any more.

  “You are speculating,” I said, “on a result which cannot possibly take place. The Diamond is, at this moment, in London.”

  He started, and looked at me in great surprise.

  “In London?” he repeated. “How did it get to London from Lady Verinder’s house?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “You removed it with your own hand from Miss Verinder’s room. How was it taken out of your keeping?”

  “I have no idea how it was taken out of my keeping.”

  “Did you see it, when you woke in the morning?”

  “No.”

  “Has Miss Verinder recovered possession of it?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Blake! there seems to be something here which wants clearing up. May I ask how you know that the Diamond is, at this moment, in London?”

  I had put precisely the same question to Mr. Bruff when I made my first inquiries about the Moonstone, on my return to England. In answering Ezra Jennings, I accordingly repeated what I had myself heard from the lawyer’s own lips—and what is already familiar to the readers of these pages.

  He showed plainly that he was not satisfied with my reply.

  “With all deference to you,” he said, “and with all deference to your legal adviser, I maintain the opinion which I expressed just now. It rests, I am well aware, on a mere assumption. Pardon me for reminding you, that your opinion also rests on a mere assumption as well.”

  The view he took of the matter was entirely new to me. I waited anxiously to hear how he would defend it.

  “I assume,” pursued Ezra Jennings, “that the influence of the opium—after impelling you to possess yourself of the Diamond, with the purpose of securing its safety—might also impel you, acting under the same influence and the same motive, to hide it somewhere in your own room. You assume that the Hindoo conspirators could by no possibility commit a mistake. The Indians went to Mr. Luker’s house after the Diamond—and, therefore, in Mr. Luker’s possession the Diamond must be! Have you any evidence to prove that the Moonstone was taken to London at all? You can’t even guess how, or by whom, it was removed from Lady Verinder’s house! Have you any evidence that the jewel was pledged to Mr. Luker? He declares that he never heard of the Moonstone; and his bankers’ receipt acknowledges nothing but the deposit of a valuable of great price. The Indians assume that Mr. Luker is lying—and you assume again that the Indians are right. All I say, in differing with you, is—that my view is possible. What more, Mr. Blake, either logically, or legally, can be said for yours?”

  It was put strongly; but there was no denying that it was put truly as well.

  “I confess you stagger me,” I replied. “Do you object to my writing to Mr. Bruff, and telling him what you have said?”

  “On the contrary, I shall be glad if you will write to Mr. Bruff. If we consult his experience, we may see the matter under a new light. For the present, let us return to our experiment with the opium. We have decided that you leave off the habit of smoking from this moment.”

  “From this moment?”

  “That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we can, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year.”

  How was this to be done? Lady Verinder was dead. Rachel and I, so long as the suspicion of theft rested on me, were parted irrevocably. Godfrey Ablewhite was away travelling on the Continent. It was simply impossible to reassemble the people who had inhabited the house, when I had slept in it last. The statement of this objection did not appear to embarrass Ezra Jennings. He attached very little importance, he said, to reassembling the same people—seeing that it would be vain to expect them to reassume the various positions which they had occupied towards me in the past times. On the other hand, he considered it essential to the success of the experiment, that I should see the same objects about me which had surrounded me when I was last in the house.

  “Above all things,” he said, “you must sleep in the room which you slept in, on the birthday night, and it must be furnished in the same way. The stairs, the corridors, and Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, must also be restored to what they were when you saw them last. It is absolutely necessary, Mr. Blake, to replace every article of furniture in that part of the house which may now be put away. The sacrifice of your cigars will be useless, unless we can get Miss Verinder’s permission to do that.”

  “Who is to apply to her for permission?” I asked.

  “Is it not possible for you to apply?”

  “Quite out of the question. After what has passed between us on the subject of the lost Diamond, I can neither see her, nor write to her, as things are now.”

  Ezra Jennings paused, and considered for a moment.

  “May I ask you a delicate question?” he said.

  I signed to him to go on.

  “Am I right, Mr. Blake, in fancying (from one or two things which have dropped from you) that you felt no common interest in Miss Verinder, in former times?”

  “Quite right.”

  “Was the feeling returned?”

  “It was.”

  “Do you think Miss Verinder would be likely to feel a strong interest in the attempt to prove your innocence?”

  “I am certain of it.”

  “In that case, I will write to Miss Verinder—if you will give me leave.”

  “Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me?”

  “Telling her of everything that has passed between us today.”

  It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had offered to me.

  “I shall have time to write by today’s post,” he said, looking at his watch. “Don’t forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the hotel! I will call tomorrow morning and hear how you have passed the night.”

  I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful sense of his kindness which I really felt.

  He pressed my hand gently. “Remember what I told you on the moor,” he answered. “If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and clouded day.”

  We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next ten days—every one of them more or less directly connected with the experiment of which I was the passive object—are all placed on record, exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy’s assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the opium was tried, and how it ended.

  FOURTH NARRATIVE

  Extracted from the Journal of EZRA JENNINGS

  1849.—June 15.… With some interruption from patients, and some interruption from pain, I finished my letter to Miss Verinder in time for today’s post. I failed to make it as short a letter as I could have wished. But I think I have made it plain. It leaves her entirely mistress of her
own decision. If she consents to assist the experiment, she consents of her own free will, and not as a favour to Mr. Franklin Blake or to me.

  June 16th.—Rose late, after a dreadful night; the vengeance of yesterday’s opium, pursuing me through a series of frightful dreams. At one time I was whirling through empty space with the phantoms of the dead, friends and enemies together. At another, the one beloved face which I shall never see again, rose at my bedside, hideously phosphorescent in the black darkness, and glared and grinned at me. A slight return of the old pain, at the usual time in the early morning, was welcome as a change. It dispelled the visions—and it was bearable because it did that.

  My bad night made it late in the morning, before I could get to Mr. Franklin Blake. I found him stretched on the sofa, breakfasting on brandy and soda-water, and a dry biscuit.

  “I am beginning, as well as you could possibly wish,” he said. “A miserable, restless night; and a total failure of appetite this morning. Exactly what happened last year, when I gave up my cigars. The sooner I am ready for my second dose of laudanum, the better I shall be pleased.”

  “You shall have it on the earliest possible day,” I answered. “In the meantime, we must be as careful of your health as we can. If we allow you to become exhausted, we shall fail in that way. You must get an appetite for your dinner. In other words, you must get a ride or a walk this morning, in the fresh air.”

  “I will ride, if they can find me a horse here. By-the-by, I wrote to Mr. Bruff, yesterday. Have you written to Miss Verinder?”

  “Yes—by last night’s post.”

  “Very good. We shall have some news worth hearing, to tell each other tomorrow. Don’t go yet! I have a word to say to you. You appeared to think, yesterday, that our experiment with the opium was not likely to be viewed very favourably by some of my friends. You were quite right. I call old Gabriel Betteredge one of my friends; and you will be amused to hear that he protested strongly when I saw him yesterday. ‘You have done a wonderful number of foolish things in the course of your life, Mr. Franklin, but this tops them all!’ There is Betteredge’s opinion! You will make allowance for his prejudices, I am sure, if you and he happen to meet?”