`I beg to congratulate you for the third time! If you ever feel inclined to travel beyond the civilized limits, Mr. Blake, let me know, and I will go with you. You are a lucky man.'
Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn't at all square with my English ideas.
`You don't really mean to say, sir,' I asked, `that they would have taken Mr. Franklin's life, to get their Diamond, if he had given them the chance?'
`Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?' says the traveller.
`Yes, sir.'
`Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it?'
`No, sir.'
`In the country those men came from, they care just as much about killing a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe. If a thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of their Diamond--and if they thought they could destroy those lives without discovery--they would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all.'
I expressed my opinion upon this, that they were a set of murdering thieves. Mr. Murthwaite expressed his opinion that they were a wonderful people. Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back to the matter in hand.
`They have seen the Moonstone on Miss Verinder's dress,' he said. `What is to be done?'
`What your uncle threatened to do,' answered Mr. Murthwaite. `Colonel Herncastle understood the people he had to deal with. Send the Diamond to-morrow (under guard of more than one man) to be cut up at Amsterdam. Make half a dozen diamonds of it, instead of one. There is an end of its sacred identity as The Moonstone--and there is an end of the conspiracy.'
Mr. Franklin turned to me.
`There is no help for it,' he said. `We must speak to Lady Verinder to-morrow.'
`What about to-night, sir?' I asked. `Suppose the Indians come back?'
Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.
`The Indians won't risk coming back to-night,' he said. `The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything--let alone a matter like this, in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching their end.'
`But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir?' I persisted.
`In that case,' says Mr. Murthwaite, `let the dogs loose. Have you got any big dogs in the yard?'
`Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound.'
`They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteredge, the mastiff and the bloodhound have one great merit--they are not likely to be troubled with your scruples about the sanctity of human life.'
The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing-room, as he fired that shot at me. He threw away his cheroot, and took Mr. Franklin's arm, to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast, as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked round at me, in his dry, drolling way, and said: