第15章

K EEPING my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr.Franklin to go on.Mr.Franklin replied, `Don't fidget, Betteredge,'

and went on.

Our young gentleman's first words informed me that his discoveries, concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at Hampstead.

A chance word dropped by Mr.Franklin, when the two were alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his father with a birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel.One thing led to another; and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present really was, and how the friendly connection between the late Colonel and Mr.Blake, senior, had taken its rise.The facts here are really so extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice to them.I prefer trying to report Mr.Franklin's discoveries, as nearly as may be, in Mr.Franklin's own words.

`You remember the time, Betteredge,' he said, `when my father was trying to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well! that was also the time when my uncle Herncastle returned from India.My father discovered that his brother-in-law was in possession of certain papers which were likely to be of service to him in his lawsuit.He called on the Colonel, on pretence of welcoming him back to England.The Colonel was not to be deluded in that way."You want something," he said, "or you would never have compromised your reputation by calling on me." My father saw that the one chance for him was to show his hand; he admitted, at once, that he wanted the papers.The Colonel asked for a day to consider his answer.His answer came in the shape of a most extraordinary letter, which my friend the lawyer showed me.The Colonel began by saying that he wanted something of my father, and that he begged to propose an exchange of friendly services between them.The fortune of war (that was the expression he used) had placed him in possession of one of the largest Diamonds in the world; and he had reason to believe that neither he nor his precious jewel was safe in any house, in any quarter of the globe, which they occupied together.Under these alarming circumstances, he had determined to place his Diamond in the keeping of another person.That person was not expected to run any risk.He might deposit the precious stone in any place especially guarded and set apart -- like a banker's or jeweller's strong-room -- for the safe custody of valuables of high price.His main personal responsibility in the matter was to be of the passive kind.He was to undertake -- either by himself, or by a trustworthy representative -- to receive at a prearranged address, on certain prearranged days in every year, a note from the Colonel, simply stating the fact that he was a living man at that date.In the event of the date passing over without the note being received, the Colonel's silence might be taken as a sure token of the Colonel's death by murder.In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions relating to the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited with it, were to be opened, and followed implicitly.If my father chose to accept this strange charge, the Colonel's papers were at his disposal in return.That was the letter.'

`What did your father do, sir?' I asked.

`Do?' says Mr.Franklin.`I'll tell you what he did.He brought the invaluable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonel's letter.

The whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd.Somewhere in his Indian wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with some wretched crystal which he took for a diamond.As for the danger of his being murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his senses had only to apply to the police.The Colonel had been a notorious opium-eater for years past;and, if the only way of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on him -- all the more readily that it involved no trouble to himself.The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into his banker's strong-room, and the Colonel's letters, periodically reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family lawyer, Mr.Bruff, as my father's representative.No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.'

It was plain to me from this, that Mr.Franklin thought his father's notion about the Colonel hasty and wrong.

`What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir?' I asked.

`Let's finish the story of the Colonel first,' says Mr.Franklin.`There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it.When we are not occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people in the universe.'

`So much,' I thought to myself, `for a foreign education! He has learned that way of girding at us in France, I suppose.'

Mr.Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.

`My father,' he said, `got the papers he wanted, and never saw his brother-in-law again from that time.Year after year, on the prearranged days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by Mr.Bruff.I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in the same brief, business-like form of words: "Sir, -- This is to certify that I am still a living man.