I ought, I know, to have set him right before he went any farther.  I ought to have told him that he was speaking in ignorance of a testimony to Mr. Godfrey’s innocence, offered by the only person who was undeniably competent to speak from a positive knowledge of the subject.  Alas! the temptation to lead the lawyer artfully on to his own discomfiture was too much for me.  I asked what he meant by “later events”—­with an appearance of the utmost innocence.

“By later events, Miss Clack, I mean events in which the Indians are concerned,” proceeded Mr. Bruff, getting more and more superior to poor Me, the longer he went on.  “What do the Indians do, the moment they are let out of the prison at Frizinghall?  They go straight to London, and fix on Mr. Luker.  What follows?  Mr. Luker feels alarmed for the safety of ‘a valuable of great price,’ which he has got in the house.  He lodges it privately (under a general description) in his bankers’ strong-room.  Wonderfully clever of him:  but the Indians are just as clever on their side.  They have their suspicions that the ‘valuable of great price’ is being shifted from one place to another; and they hit on a singularly bold and complete way of clearing those suspicions up.  Whom do they seize and search?  Not Mr. Luker only—­which would be intelligible enough—­but Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well.  Why?  Mr. Ablewhite’s explanation is, that they acted on blind suspicion, after seeing him accidentally speaking to Mr. Luker.  Absurd!  Half-a-dozen other people spoke to Mr. Luker that morning.  Why were they not followed home too, and decoyed into the trap?  No! no!  The plain inference is, that Mr. Ablewhite had his private interest in the ‘valuable’ as well as Mr. Luker, and that the Indians were so uncertain as to which of the two had the disposal of it, that there was no alternative but to search them both.  Public opinion says that, Miss Clack.  And public opinion, on this occasion, is not easily refuted.”

He said those last words, looking so wonderfully wise in his own worldly conceit, that I really (to my shame be it spoken) could not resist leading him a little farther still, before I overwhelmed him with the truth.

“I don’t presume to argue with a clever lawyer like you,” I said.  “But is it quite fair, sir, to Mr. Ablewhite to pass over the opinion of the famous London police officer who investigated this case?  Not the shadow of a suspicion rested upon anybody but Miss Verinder, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.”

“Do you mean to tell me, Miss Clack, that you agree with the Sergeant?”

“I judge nobody, sir, and I offer no opinion.”

“And I commit both those enormities, ma’am.  I judge the Sergeant to have been utterly wrong; and I offer the opinion that, if he had known Rachel’s character as I know it, he would have suspected everybody in the house but her.  I admit that she has her faults—­she is secret, and self-willed; odd and wild, and unlike other girls of her age.  But true as steel, and high-minded and generous to a fault.  If the plainest evidence in the world pointed one way, and if nothing but Rachel’s word of honour pointed the other, I would take her word before the evidence, lawyer as I am!  Strong language, Miss Clack; but I mean it.”