“My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe,” I replied, “would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to compromise my friend or not.”

“I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the question, long since,” said Ezra Jennings.  “Wherever my notes included anything which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes have been destroyed.  My manuscript experiments at my friend’s bedside, include nothing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to others, if he had recovered the use of his memory.  In your case, I have every reason to suppose that my notes contain something which he actually wished to say to you.”

“And yet, you hesitate?”

“And yet, I hesitate.  Remember the circumstances under which I obtained the information which I possess!  Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that there is a reason for doing so.  He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was so helplessly dependent upon Me!  Is it too much to ask, if I request you only to hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection—­or what you believe that lost recollection to be?”

To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond.  Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood.  I took refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared myself to meet the curiosity of strangers.

This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the part of the person to whom I addressed myself.  Ezra Jennings listened patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.

“I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to disappoint them,” he said.  “Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy’s illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his lips.  The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the recovery of Miss Verinder’s jewel.”

We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along which we had been walking branched off into two roads.  One led to Mr. Ablewhite’s house, and the other to a moorland village some two or three miles off.  Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the village.

“My way lies in this direction,” he said.  “I am really and truly sorry, Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.”

His voice told me that he spoke sincerely.  His soft brown eyes rested on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest.  He bowed, and went, without another word, on his way to the village.