“You think something serious will happen?” I said.

“I think I shall be safer,” he answered, “among the fiercest fanatics of Central Asia than I should be if I crossed the door of the bank with the Moonstone in my pocket.  The Indians have been defeated twice running, Mr. Bruff.  It’s my firm belief that they won’t be defeated a third time.”

Those were the last words he said on the subject.  The coffee came in; the guests rose, and dispersed themselves about the room; and we joined the ladies of the dinner-party upstairs.

I made a note of the date, and it may not be amiss if I close my narrative by repeating that note here: 

June, ’forty-nine.  Expect news of the Indians, towards the end of the month.

And that done, I hand the pen, which I have now no further claim to use, to the writer who follows me next.

THIRD NARRATIVE

Contributed by Franklin Blake

CHAPTER I

In the spring of the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine I was wandering in the East, and had then recently altered the travelling plans which I had laid out some months before, and which I had communicated to my lawyer and my banker in London.

This change made it necessary for me to send one of my servants to obtain my letters and remittances from the English consul in a certain city, which was no longer included as one of my resting-places in my new travelling scheme.  The man was to join me again at an appointed place and time.  An accident, for which he was not responsible, delayed him on his errand.  For a week I and my people waited, encamped on the borders of a desert.  At the end of that time the missing man made his appearance, with the money and the letters, at the entrance of my tent.

“I am afraid I bring you bad news, sir,” he said, and pointed to one of the letters, which had a mourning border round it, and the address on which was in the handwriting of Mr. Bruff.

I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense.  The letter with the mourning border was the letter that I opened first.

It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great fortune.  The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in returning to England.

By daybreak the next morning, I was on my way back to my own country.