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Surely it can't be mine?" Mr. Franklin didn't appear to see the force of my question not being in a position, at the time, to see anything but the sky over his head. "I don't want to alarm my aunt without reason," he said. "And I don't want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?"
You are unreasonable enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how does it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English narrowness and prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable. Where's the sherry?" My head was by this time in such a condition, that I was not quite sure whether it was my own head, or Mr. Franklin's.
"Tell Sergeant Cuff," he rejoined, "that I say the discovery of the truth depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. And let me hear what the Sergeant's experience says to that." So we parted. Early the next morning, I set forth for the little town of Dorking the place of Sergeant Cuff's retirement, as indicated to me by Betteredge.
My resolution not to enter Rachel's house is forgotten. I feel gratefully the coolness and shadiness and quiet of the room. Under any other circumstances, the drink would simply stupefy me. As things are, it strings up my nerves. I begin to "face it," as Betteredge has predicted. And Betteredge, on his side, begins to "face it," too.
When it was done, I served it up in my best manner, and enjoyed it most heartily. I had my pipe and my drop of grog afterwards; and then I cleared the table, and washed the crockery, and cleaned the knives and forks, and put the things away, and swept up the hearth. When things were as bright and clean again, as bright and clean could be, I opened the door and let Mrs. Betteredge in.
Betteredge," he said, "as you have honoured me by taking an oar in my boat, and as you may, I think, be of some assistance to me before the evening is out, I see no use in our mystifying one another any longer, and I propose to set you an example of plain speaking on my side.
Having taken the precaution partly to save time, partly to accommodate Betteredge of sending my messenger in a fly, I had a reasonable prospect, if no delays occurred, of seeing the old man within less than two hours from the time when I had sent for him.
Betteredge," says the Sergeant, "you have done a very foolish thing in my absence. You have done a little detective business on your own account. For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your detective business along with me." He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by which he had come.
"Now, tell me, my dear," I said, "what are you crying about?" "About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly. "My past life still comes back to me sometimes." "Come, come, my girl," I said, "your past life is all sponged out. Why can't you forget it?" She took me by one of the lappets of my coat.
Do you happen to know whether she has had a new outfit of linen lately?" What he meant by slipping in this extraordinary question unawares, I was at a total loss to imagine. "This is a miserable world," says the Sergeant. "Human life, Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target misfortune is always firing at it, and always hitting the mark.
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