He looked into your room to see what was the matter.  He discovered you with the candle in your hand, just leaving your bed-chamber.  He heard you say to yourself, in a voice quite unlike your own voice, “How do I know?  The Indians may be hidden in the house.”

Up to that time, he had simply supposed himself (in giving you the laudanum) to be helping to make you the victim of a harmless practical joke.  It now occurred to him, that the laudanum had taken some effect on you, which had not been foreseen by the doctor, any more than by himself.  In the fear of an accident happening he followed you softly to see what you would do.

He followed you to Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, and saw you go in.  You left the door open.  He looked through the crevice thus produced, between the door and the post, before he ventured into the room himself.

In that position, he not only detected you in taking the Diamond out of the drawer—­he also detected Miss Verinder, silently watching you from her bedroom, through her open door.  His own eyes satisfied him that she saw you take the Diamond, too.

Before you left the sitting-room again, you hesitated a little.  Mr. Godfrey took advantage of this hesitation to get back again to his bedroom before you came out, and discovered him.  He had barely got back, before you got back too.  You saw him (as he supposes) just as he was passing through the door of communication.  At any rate, you called to him in a strange, drowsy voice.

He came back to you.  You looked at him in a dull sleepy way.  You put the Diamond into his hand.  You said to him, “Take it back, Godfrey, to your father’s bank.  It’s safe there—­it’s not safe here.”  You turned away unsteadily, and put on your dressing-gown.  You sat down in the large arm-chair in your room.  You said, “I can’t take it back to the bank.  My head’s like lead—­and I can’t feel my feet under me.”  Your head sank on the back of the chair—­you heaved a heavy sigh—­and you fell asleep.

Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite went back, with the Diamond, into his own room.  His statement is, that he came to no conclusion, at that time—­except that he would wait, and see what happened in the morning.

When the morning came, your language and conduct showed that you were absolutely ignorant of what you had said and done overnight.  At the same time, Miss Verinder’s language and conduct showed that she was resolved to say nothing (in mercy to you) on her side.  If Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite chose to keep the Diamond, he might do so with perfect impunity.  The Moonstone stood between him and ruin.  He put the Moonstone into his pocket.

V

This was the story told by your cousin (under pressure of necessity) to Mr. Luker.

Mr. Luker believed the story to be, as to all main essentials, true—­on this ground, that Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was too great a fool to have invented it.  Mr. Bruff and I agree with Mr. Luker, in considering this test of the truth of the story to be a perfectly reliable one.