went into the daily papers, but Reuben Penner never saw it. Late the
next day a bargeman passing Old Swan Pier struck some large object
with his boat-hook and brought it to the surface. It was the body of
a drowned man, and it was afterwards identified as that of Reuben
Penner, late greengrocer, of Hammersmith. How he came into the water
there was nothing to show. Others have been drowned by accident on
those foggy nights; but then there have also been suicides in the
river Thames on nights just as foggy. Nobody knew There was no money
nor any valuables found on the body, and there was a story of a
large, heavy-faced man who had given a poor woman--a perfect
stranger--a watch and chain and a handful of money down near Tower
Hill on that foggy evening. But this again was only a story, not
definitely authenticated. What was certain was that, tied securely
round the dead man’s neck with a cord, and gripped and crumpled
tightly in his right hand, was a soddened piece of vellum paper,
blank, but carrying an old red seal, of which the device was almost
entirely rubbed and cracked away. Nobody at the inquest quite
understood this.
[Transcriber’s Note: The final paragraph contains an apparent
printing error after the words “Nobody knew”, possibly involving a
missing line of text.]
Transcriber’s Note
The text in this eBook follows the 1896 book edition of the stories,
which differs from the earlier versions published in the _Windsor_
magazine, principally in punctuation.
End of Project Gutenberg's Adventures of Martin Hewitt, by Arthur Morrison