“Everythink’s tumbled about worse than ever, sir, and all different
from what it was yesterday; and there’s a box o’ papers in the attic
broke open, and all sorts o’ things.”
“Have you spoken to the police?”
“No, sir; I’m that frightened I don’t know what to do. And missis
was going to see a gentleman about it yesterday, and----”
“Very well, I am that gentleman--Mr. Martin Hewitt. I have come down
now to meet her by appointment. Did she say she was going anywhere
else as well as to my office and to her sister’s?”
“No, sir. And she--she’s got the snuff-box with her and all.” This
latter circumstance seemed largely to augment the girl’s terrors for
her mistress’s safety.
“Very well,” Hewitt said, “I think I’d better just look over the
house now, and then consider what has become of Mrs. Mallett--if she
isn’t heard of in the meantime.”
The girl found a great relief in Hewitt’s presence in the house, the
deaf old house-keeper, who seldom spoke and never heard, being, as
she said, “worse than nobody.”
“Have you been in all the rooms?” Hewitt asked.
“No, sir; I was afraid. When I came in I went straight upstairs to
my room, and as I was coming away I see the things upset in the other
attic. I went into Mrs. Perk’s room, next to mine (she’s the deaf old
woman), and she was there all right, but couldn’t hear anything. Then
I came down and only just peeped into two of the rooms and saw the
state they were in, and then I came out into the garden, and
presently this young woman came with the message from Mrs. Rudd.”
“Very well, we’ll look at the rooms now,” Hewitt said, and they
proceeded to do so. All were in a state of intense confusion.
Drawers, taken from chests and bureaux, littered about the floor,
with their contents scattered about them. Carpets and rugs had been
turned up and flung into corners, even pictures on the walls had been
disturbed, and while some hung awry, others rested on the floor and
on chairs. The things, however, appeared to have been fairly
carefully handled, for nothing was damaged except one or two framed
engravings, the brown paper on the backs of which had been cut round
with a knife and the wooden slats shifted so as to leave the backs of
the engravings bare. This, the girl told Hewitt, had not been done on
the night of the first burglary; the other articles also had not on
that occasion been so much disturbed as they now were.
Mrs. Mallett’s bedroom was the first floor front. Here the confusion
was, if possible, greater than in the other rooms. The bed had been
completely unmade and the clothes thrown separately on the floor, and
everything else was displaced. It was here, indeed, that the most
noticeable features of the disturbance were observed, for on the side
of the looking-glass hung a very long, old-fashioned gold chain
untouched, and on the dressing-table lay a purse with the money still
in it. And on the looking-glass, stuck into the crack of the frame,
was a half sheet of notepaper with this inscription scrawled in
pencil:--
_To Mr. Martin Hewitt._
_Mrs. Mallett is alright and in frends hands. She will return soon
alright, if you keep quiet. But if you folloe her or take any steps
the conseqinses will be very serious._
This paper was not only curious in itself, and curious as being
addressed to Hewitt, but it was plainly in the same handwriting as
were the most of the anonymous letters which Mrs. Mallett had
produced the day before in Hewitt’s office. Hewitt studied it
attentively for a few moments, and then thrust it in his pocket and
proceeded to inspect the rest of the rooms. All were the same--simply
well-furnished rooms turned upside down. The top floor consisted of
three comfortable attics, one used as a lumber room and the others
used respectively as bedrooms for the servant and the deaf old woman.
None of these rooms appeared to have been entered, the girl said, on
the first night, but now the lumber-room was almost as confused as
the rooms downstairs. Two or three boxes were opened and their
contents turned out. One of these was what is called a steel trunk--a
small one--which had held old papers; the others were filled chiefly
with old clothes.
The servant’s room next this was quite undisturbed and untouched;
and then Hewitt was admitted to the room of Mrs. Mallett’s deaf old
pensioner. The old woman sat propped up in her bed, and looked with
half-blind eyes at the peak in the bedclothes made by her bent knees.
The servant screamed in her ear, but she neither moved nor spoke.
Hewitt laid his hand on her shoulder and said, in the slow and
distinct tones he had found best for reaching the senses of deaf
people, “I hope you are well. Did anything disturb you in the night?”
But she only turned her head half toward him and mumbled peevishly,
“I wish you’d bring my tea. You’re late enough this morning.”
Nothing seemed likely to be got from her, and Hewitt asked the
servant, “Is she altogether bedridden?”
“No,” the girl answered; “leastways she needn’t be. She stops in bed
most of the time, but she can get up when she likes--I’ve seen her.
But missis humours her and lets her do as she likes--and she gives
plenty of trouble. I don’t believe she’s as deaf as she makes out.”
“Indeed?” Hewitt answered. “Deafness _is_ convenient sometimes, I
know. Now I want you to stay here while I make some inquiries.
Perhaps you’d better keep Mrs. Rudd’s servant with you if you want
company. I don’t expect to be very long gone, and in any case it
wouldn’t do for her to go to her mistress and say that Mrs. Mallett
is missing, or it might upset her seriously.”
Hewitt left the house and walked till he found a public-house where
a post-office directory was kept. He took a glass of whisky and
water, most of which he left on the counter, and borrowed the
directory. He found “Greengrocers” in the “Trade” section and ran his
finger down the column till he came on this address:--
“Penner, Reuben, 8, Little Marsh Row, Hammersmith, W.”
Then he returned the directory and found the best cab he could to
take him to Hammersmith.
Little Marsh Row was not a vastly prosperous sort of place, and the
only shops were three--all small. Two were chandlers’, and the third
was a sort of semi-shed of the greengrocery and coal persuasion, with
the name “Penner” on a board over the door.
The shutters were all up, though the door was open, and the only
person visible was a very smudgy boy, who was in the act of wheeling
out a sack of coals. To the smudgy boy Hewitt applied himself. “I
don’t see Mr. Penner about,” he said; “will he be back soon?”
The boy stared hard at Hewitt. “No,” he said, “he won’t. ’E’s guv’
up the shop. ’E paid ’is next week’s rent this mornin’ and retired.”
[Illustration: “THE BOY STARED HARD AT HEWITT.”]
“Oh!” Hewitt answered sharply. “Retired, has he? And what’s become
of the stock, eh! Where are the cabbages and potatoes?”
“’E told me to give ’em to the pore, an’ I did. There’s lots o’
pore lives round ’ere. My mother’s one; an’ these ’ere coals is for
’er, an’ I’m goin’ to ’ave the trolley for myself.”
“Dear me!” Hewitt answered, regarding the boy with amused interest.
“You’re a very business-like almoner. And what will the Tabernacle do
without Mr. Penner?”
“I dunno,” the boy answered, closing the door behind him. “I dunno
nothin’ about the Tabernacle--only where it is.”
“Ah, and where is it? I might find him there, perhaps.”
“Ward Lane--fust on left, second on right. It’s a shop wot’s bin
shut up; next door to a stableyard.” And the smudgy boy started off
with his trolley.
The Tabernacle was soon found. At some very remote period it had
been an unlucky small shop, but now it was permanently shuttered, and
the interior was lighted by holes cut in the upper panels of the
shutters. Hewitt took a good look at the shuttered window and the
door beside it, and then entered the stable-yard at the side. To the
left of the passage giving entrance to the yard there was a door,
which plainly was another entrance to the house, and a still damp
mud-mark on the step proved it to have been lately used. Hewitt
rapped sharply at the door with his knuckles.
Presently a female voice from within could be heard speaking through
the key-hole in a very loud whisper. “Who is it?” asked the voice.
Hewitt stooped to the key-hole and whispered back, “Is Mr. Penner
here now?”
“No.”
“Then I must come in and wait for him. Open the door.”
A bolt was pulled back and the door cautiously opened a few inches.
Hewitt’s foot was instantly in the jamb, and he forced the door back
and entered. “Come,” he said in a loud voice, “I’ve come to find out
where Mr. Penner is, and to see whoever is in here.”
Immediately there was an assault of fists on the inside of a door at
the end of the passage, and a loud voice said, “Do you hear? Whoever
you are, I’ll give you five pounds if you’ll bring Mr. Martin Hewitt
here. His office is 25, Portsmouth Street, Strand. Or the same if
you’ll bring the police.” And the voice was that of Mrs. Mallett.
Hewitt turned to the woman who had opened the door, and who now
stood, much frightened, in the corner beside him. “Come,” he said,
“your keys, quick, and don’t offer to stir, or I’ll have you brought
back and taken to the station.”
The woman gave him a bunch of keys, without a word. Hewitt opened
the door at the end of the passage, and once more Mrs. Mallett stood
before him, prim and rigid as ever, except that her bonnet was sadly
out of shape and her mantle was torn. “Thank you, Mr. Hewitt,” she
said. “I thought you’d come, though where I am I know no more than
Adam. Somebody shall smart severely for this. Why, and that
woman--_that_ woman,” she pointed contemptuously at the woman in the
corner, who was about two-thirds her height, “was going to _search_
me--_me_! Why----” Mrs. Mallett, blazing with suddenly revived
indignation, took a step forward, and the woman vanished through the
outer door.
“Come,” Hewitt said, “no doubt you’ve been shamefully treated; but
we must be quiet for a little. First I will make quite sure that
nobody else is here, and then we’ll get to your house.”
Nobody was there. The rooms were dreary and mostly empty. The front
room, which was lighted by the holes in the shutters, had a rough
reading-desk and a table, with half a dozen wooden chairs. “This,”
said Hewitt, “is no doubt the Tabernacle proper, and there is very
little to see in it. Come back now, Mrs. Mallett, to your house, and
we’ll see if some explanation of these things is not possible. I hope
your snuff-box is quite safe?”
Mrs. Mallett drew it from her pocket and exhibited it triumphantly.
“I told them they should never get it,” she said, “and they saw I
meant it, and left off trying.”
She had straightened her bonnet and concealed the rent in her mantle
as best she could. As they emerged in the street she said, “The first
thing, of course, is to bring the police into this place.”
“No, I think we won’t do that yet,” Hewitt said. “In the first
place, the case is one of assault and detention, and your remedy is
by summons or action; and then there are other things to speak of. We
shall get a cab in the High Street, and you shall tell me what has
happened to you.”
Mrs. Mallett’s story was simple. The cab in which she left Hewitt’s
office had travelled west, and was apparently making for the locality
of her sister’s house; but the evening was dark, the fog increased
greatly, and she shut the windows and took no particular notice of
the streets through which she was passing. Indeed, with such a fog
that would have been impossible. She had a sort of undefined notion
that some of the streets were rather narrow and dirty, but she
thought nothing of it, since all cabmen are given to selecting
unexpected routes. After a time, however, the cab slowed, made a
sharp turn, and pulled up. The door was opened, and “Here you are,
mum,” said the cabby. She did not understand the sharp turn, and had
a general feeling that the place could not be her sister’s, but as
she alighted she found she had stepped directly upon the threshold of
a narrow door, into which she was immediately pulled by two persons
inside. This, she was sure, must have been the side-door in the
stable-yard, through which Hewitt himself had lately obtained
entrance to the Tabernacle. Before she had recovered from her
surprise the door was shut behind her. She struggled stoutly, and
screamed, but the place she was in was absolutely dark; she was taken
by surprise, and she found resistance useless. They were men who held
her, and the voice of the only one who spoke she did not know. He
demanded in firm and distinct tones that the “sacred thing” should be
given up, and that Mrs. Mallett should sign a paper agreeing to
prosecute nobody before she was allowed to go. She, however, as she
asserted with her customary emphasis, was not the sort of woman to
give in to that. She resolutely declined to do anything of the sort,
and promised her captors, whoever they were, a full and legal return
for their behaviour. Then she became conscious that a woman was
somewhere present, and the man threatened that this woman should
search her. This threat Mrs. Mallett met as boldly as the others. She
should like to meet the woman who would dare attempt to search her,
she said. She defied anybody to attempt it. As for her Uncle Joseph’s
snuff-box, no matter where it was, it was where they would not be
able to get it. That they should never have, but sooner or later they
should have something very unpleasant for their attempts to steal it.
This declaration had an immediate effect. They importuned her no
more, and she was left in an inner room and the key was turned on
her. There she sat, dozing occasionally, the whole night, her
indomitable spirit remaining proof through all those doubtful hours
of darkness. Once or twice she heard people enter and move about, and
each time she called aloud to offer, as Hewitt had heard, a reward to
anybody who should bring the police or communicate her situation to
Hewitt. Day broke and still she waited, sleepless and unfed, till
Hewitt at last arrived and released her.
On Mrs. Mallett’s arrival at her house Mrs. Rudd’s servant was at
once despatched with reassuring news, and Hewitt once more addressed
himself to the question of the burglary. “First, Mrs. Mallett,” he
said, “did you ever conceal anything--anything at all, mind--in the
frame of an engraving?”
“No, never.”
“Were any of your engravings framed before you had them?”
“Not one that I can remember. They were mostly Uncle Joseph’s, and
he kept them with a lot of others in drawers. He was rather a
collector, you know.”
“Very well. Now come up to the attic. Something has been opened
there that was not touched at the first attempt.”
Mrs. Mallett’s indignation at the second burglary was something to
see. But there was triumph in her manner; she still had the snuff-box.
“See now,” said Hewitt, when the attic was reached, “here is a box
full of papers. Do you know everything that was in it?”
“No, I don’t,” Mrs. Mallett replied. “There were a lot of my uncle’s
manuscript plays. Here, you see, ‘The Dead Bridegroom, or the Drum of
Fortune,’ and so on; and there were a lot of autographs. I took no
interest in them, although some were rather valuable, I believe.”
“Now bring your recollection to bear as strongly as you can,” Hewitt
said. “Do you ever remember seeing in this box a paper bearing
nothing whatever upon it but a wax seal?”
“Oh yes, I remember that well enough. I’ve noticed it each time I’ve
turned the box over--which is very seldom. It was a plain slip of
vellum paper with a red seal, cracked and rather worn--some
celebrated person’s seal, I suppose. What about it?”
Hewitt was turning the papers over one at a time. “It doesn’t seem
to be here now,” he said. “Do you see it?”
“No,” Mrs. Mallett returned, examining the papers herself, “it
isn’t. It appears to be the only thing missing. But why should they
take it?”
“I think we are at the bottom of all this mystery now,” Hewitt
answered quietly. “It is the Seal of the Woman.”
“The _what_? I don’t understand.”
“The fact is, Mrs. Mallett, that these people have never wanted your
Uncle Joseph’s snuff-box at all, but that seal.”
“Not wanted the snuff-box? Nonsense! Why, didn’t I tell you Penner
asked for it--wanted to buy it?”
“Yes, you did, but so far as I can remember you never spoke of a
single instance of Penner mentioning the snuff-box by name. He spoke
of a sacred relic, and you, of course, very naturally assumed he
spoke of the box. None of the anonymous letters mentioned the box,
you know, and once or twice they actually did mention a seal, though
usually the thing was spoken of in a roundabout and figurative way,
as is the manner of many people of strange beliefs in speaking of
anything they particularly venerate. Moreover, remember that when
they had entrapped you last night, the moment you mentioned the
snuff-box specifically by name they ceased troubling you, and
contented themselves with shutting you up. All along, these
people--Reuben Penner and the others--have been after the seal, and
you have been defending the snuff-box.”
“But why the seal?”
“Did you never hear of Joanna Southcott?”
“Oh yes, of course; she was an ignorant visionary who set up as
prophetess eighty or ninety years ago or more.”
“Joanna Southcott, as you may see by any suitable book of reference,
gave herself out as a prophetess in 1790. She was an ignorant woman,
and no doubt deceived herself, and really believed in the extravagant
claims she put forward. She was to be the mother of the Messiah, she
said, and she was the woman driven into the wilderness, as foretold
in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation. She died at the end
of 1814, when her followers numbered more than 100,000, all fanatic
believers, though, of course, mostly ignorant people. She had made
rather a good thing in her lifetime by the sale of seals, each of
which was to secure the eternal salvation of the holder. At her
death, of course, many of the believers fell away, but others held on
as faithfully as ever, asserting that ‘the holy Joanna’ would rise
again and fulfil all the prophecies. These poor people dwindled in
numbers gradually, and although they attempted to bring up their
children in their own faith, the whole belief has been practically
extinct for years now. You will remember that you told me of Penner’s
mother being a superstitious fanatic of some sort, and that your
Uncle Joseph had checked her extravagances. The thing seems pretty
plain now. Your uncle Joseph possessed himself of Joanna Southcott’s
seal by way of removing from poor old Mrs. Penner an object of a sort
of idolatry, and kept it as a curiosity. Reuben Penner grew up strong
in his mother’s delusions, and to him and the few believers he had
gathered round him at his Tabernacle the seal was an object worth
risking anything to get. I should think that probably it is the only
one remaining in existence at the present moment. You see, he tried
every way of getting at it. First, he tried to convert you to his
belief. Then he tried to buy it; and you will remember his mentioning
that it had been his mother’s--a suggestion which you, thinking of
the snuff-box, naturally resented. After that he and his friends
tried anonymous letters, and at last, grown desperate, they resorted
to watching you, burglary, and kidnapping. Their first night’s raid
was unsuccessful, so last night they tried kidnapping you by the aid
of a cabman--possibly one of themselves. When they had got you, and
you had at last given them to understand that it was your Uncle
Joseph’s snuff-box you were defending, they tried the house again,
and this time were successful. On the occasion of their first
burglary they avoided the top floor, because of the servant sleeping
there. This time she went home--they probably saw her go--and they
got at the box in the attic. I guessed they had succeeded then, from
a simple circumstance. They had begun to cut out the backs of framed
engravings for purposes of search, but only some of the engravings
were so treated. That meant either that the article wanted was found
behind one of them, or that the intruders broke off in their
picture-examination to search somewhere else, and were then
successful, and so under no necessity of opening the other
engravings. You assured me that nothing could have been concealed in
any of the engravings, so I at once assumed that they had found what
they were after in the only place wherein they had not searched the
night before--the attic--and probably among the papers in the trunk.”
“But then if they found it there, why didn’t they return and let me
go?”
“Because you would have found where they had brought you. They
probably intended to keep you there till the dark of the next
evening, and then take you away in a cab again and leave you some
distance off. To prevent my following and possibly finding you they
left here on your looking-glass this note” (Hewitt produced it),
“threatening all sorts of vague consequences if you were not left to
them. They knew you had come to me, of course, having followed you to
my office. And now Penner feels himself anything but safe. He has
relinquished his greengrocery and dispensed his stock in charity, and
probably, having got the seal--the only thing he coveted in the
world--he has taken himself off. Not so much perhaps from fear of
punishment as for fear the seal may be taken from him, and with it
the salvation his odd belief teaches him it will confer.” And then
Hewitt related the circumstance of the smudgy boy and his sack of
coals.
Mrs. Mallett sat silently for a little while, and then said in a
rather softened voice, “Mr. Hewitt, I am not what is called a woman
of sentiment, as you may have observed, and I have been most
shamefully treated over this wretched seal--if that was really what
Penner wanted. But if all you tell me has been actually what has
happened, I have a sort of perverse inclination to forgive the man in
spite of myself. The thing probably had been his mother’s--or, at any
rate, he believed so--and his giving up his little all to attain the
object of his ridiculous faith, and distributing his goods among the
poor people and all that--really it’s worthy of an old martyr, if
only it were done in the cause of a faith a little less
stupid--though, of course, _he_ thinks his is the only religion, as
others do of theirs. But then”--Mrs. Mallett stiffened
again--“there’s not much to prove your theories, is there?”
Hewitt smiled. “Perhaps not,” he said, “except that, to my mind, at
any rate, everything points to my explanation being the only possible
one. The thing presented itself to you, from the beginning, as an
attempt on the snuff-box you value so highly, and the possibility of
the seal being the object aimed at never entered your mind. I saw it
whole from the outside, and on thinking the thing over after our
first interview, I remembered Joanna Southcott. I think you will find
I am right.”
“Well, if you are, as I said, I half believe I shall forgive the
man. We will advertise, if you like, telling him he has nothing to
fear if he can give an explanation of his conduct consistent with
what he calls his religious belief, absurd as it may be.”