The Moonstone: The Discovery of the Truth 2: 3 Summary & Analysis

Bruff is at the dinner-party, and Mr. Murthwaite is also there. His “dangerous adventures” have won the interest of many of the English people he has encountered. He announces his plans “of penetrating into regions left still unexplored,” and everyone is enraptured by his courage and recklessness. The ladies leave after dinner and the men turn to politics, an “all-absorbing national topic” that Bruff finds “dreary” and “profitless,” about which Murthwaite appears to agree.

Bruff decides to bring up the Moonstone and explains his connection to the case. The whole group of men shifts focus to Murthwaite and Bruff, who brings up the Indian’s visit the day before and asks if Murthwaite might understand why the man asked about the repayment term of a loan. To Murthwaite, the man’s motive is obvious. He first points out that the three Indians are too young to be the same ones who followed Colonel Herncastle to England after he stole the Diamond from India, and that they must instead be the original men’s successors, now in charge of the organization that is seeking to take the Diamond back to India.

Murthwaite and Bruff agree that Herncastle’s death was the Indians’ first opportunity to take the Diamond, and that the Indians could easily find out where it was headed by getting a copy of Colonel Herncastle’s will and learning everything possible about Julia Verinder and Franklin Blake. Since it would likely be easier for them to seize the jewel from the Verinders’ estate, the three jugglers went to Frizinghall while other members of the organization stayed in London, following Franklin Blake and ingratiating his servants. But, Bruff asks Murthwaite, how would the Indians have known that Franklin put the Moonstone in the Frizinghall bank, and accordingly waited until Rachel’s birthday to try and steal it? (They agree that the jugglers’ ink-drop clairvoyance is an inadequate explanation.)

Murthwaite corrects Bruff: the Indians did not know that Franklin put the Diamond in the bank, which is why they showed up at the Verinder estate on the same night Franklin arrived. Realizing that Franklin was shrewd and capable of hiding the Diamond, the men waited until it passed into Rachel’s possession on her birthday (as promised by the will). This is why, at the time, Murthwaite advised the family to cut the Diamond up. Bruff agrees that this explanation is rational.

Murthwaite continues: the Indians’ “second chance” at stealing the Diamond occurred “while they were still in confinement.” The prison’s governor had brought Mr. Murthwaite a letter in Hindustani, addressed to the woman who was lodging the Indians in Frizinghall. The police had Murthwaite translate it, and he kept a copy.

The letter reads: “In the name of the Regent of the Night, whose seat is on the Antelope, whose arms embrace the four corners of the earth. Brothers, turn your faces to the south, and come to me in the street of many noises, which leads down to the muddy river. The reason is this. My own eyes have seen it.” Murthwaite explains that “the Regent of the Night” is the four-armed Hindu moon-god, who sits on an antelope. The remaining sentences seem to implore the recipients to go to London—as the three Indians did after their release from jail. To Murthwaite, it is obvious that the writer of this letter is the worker Septimus Luker fired for trying to steal an “Oriental treasure.” Bruff finally understands how the Indians knew Luker got the Moonstone.

Murthwaite now asks Bruff for “a piece of information”: does Bruff know who paid for Luker to buy the Moonstone? Bruff does not know, but Murthwaite suggests it may have been Godfrey Ablewhite. Bruff, however, explains that Godfrey “had been cleared of all suspicion.”

Returning to the timeline of the Indians’ actions, Murthwaite suggests that Mr. Luker is responsible for “the loss of their second chance of seizing the Diamond,” for he fired their accomplice and put the gem in the bank at once. Murthwaite thinks it is not worth determining how the Indians discovered the gem’s location in the bank, but instead asks Bruff: “what is their third chance of seizing the Diamond? and when will it come?”

Bruff immediately understands that the Indian man visited his office to figure out how soon the Diamond’s purchase can be paid off (when the bank can release it). In a year, Murthwaite declares, “the unknown person who has pledged the Moonstone can redeem it” and the men can try for a third time to steal it back. While Murthwaite will be “thousands of miles away from England,” he thinks Bruff should “arrange to be in London at the time.” Murthwaite feels he “shall be safer […] among the fiercest fanatics of Central Asia than […] with the Moonstone in my pocket.” With that, the party guests “dispersed” and Bruff writes himself a reminder to seek news of the Moonstone in late June, 1849.