Adventures of Martin Hewitt (27 page)

“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 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.”

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. 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 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.”

That night fell darker and foggier than the last. The advertisement went into
the daily papers, but Reuben Penner nevers 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. 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.