“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.”
That night fell darker and foggier than the last. The advertisement 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.