Adventures of Martin Hewitt (26 page)

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.”

“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 stable-yard.” 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
keyhole in a very loud whisper. “Who is it?” asked the voice.

Hewitt stooped to the keyhole 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.” 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 burglars. “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.”

“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. 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 gave herself out as a prophetess in 1790. 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. 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 possessed 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.

“First he tried to convert you to his belief. Then he tried to buy it;
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. 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. 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.”