The Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard is divided into two parts, one for umbrellas and the other for miscellaneous things. Every day hundreds of persons seem to make a point of leaving something in a cab, and the doors of these offices are swinging continuously to let the losers in and out. A very nice policeman took down the particulars of the ring—what it was like, when and where Priscilla remembered seeing it last, the time she got into the cab and the time she left it, and so forth. Then he told them that if it were brought in they should have a letter.
But the letter did not come, and day after day passed, and Priscilla grew so tired of looking at cabmen in the hope of seeing her own cabman again that she slept badly and became pale and nervous, for she dreamed every night of nothing but hansoms, not only in the streets, but indoors too, and even upstairs, driven by men without faces at all. And they never said anything to her, but just drove on and on, never stopping to pick up passengers or put them down. The world was full of cabmen, cabmen, cabmen....
The doctor said that unless something happened to divert her mind Priscilla would be really ill.
But something did happen.
One evening, nearly a fortnight later, Priscilla’s father was sitting by the fire reading a book he had bought at a book-stall that afternoon. It was the life of an actor named Charles Mayne Young, who lived a hundred years ago, and it was full of odd and interesting things. Suddenly he said, “Listen to this,” and read to Priscilla and her mother the following story, which was told to Mr. Young’s son by a Brighton magistrate after dinner on Christmas Day, 1827:
“Some few years ago, a gentleman, a bachelor, residing in lodgings on the first floor of a respectable but small house in this town, appeared before the bench of magistrates with a charge against the maid of his lodging of having robbed him of a ring.
“It appeared that he occupied the front drawing-room on the first floor and slept in the back; that one night, having undressed by the drawing-room fire and wound up his watch, he deposited it, with his chain, two seals, and a ring attached to it, on the chimney-piece, and jumped into bed in the next room. In the morning, on dressing himself and going to the chimney-piece for his watch, he discovered that the ring, which he valued, was gone. As he was in the habit of sleeping with the folding-doors between the rooms ajar, and was always a light sleeper, he felt confident that no one had entered the room since he had left it overnight except the maid, who had come in early, as usual, to dust and sweep the room and lay the table for breakfast. The servant was so neat in her person, so pretty, gentle, and well conducted, that he felt loath to tell her his suspicions; but the moral certainty he entertained of her guilt, and the great value he set on the ring, determined him to conquer his scruples. On hearing herself charged with the theft, she started and stared, as if doubting the evidence of her ears, indignantly denied the charge, burst into tears, and told her mistress that she would not remain another hour under her roof, for that her lodger had taxed her with dishonesty. The landlady espoused the cause of her maid, and used such strong language against her accuser, that his blood in turn was roused, and he resolved to bring the matter to a determinate issue before the magistrates. My friend said he was on the bench, and that, prepossessed as he and his coadjutors were by the girl’s looks and manners, they felt quite unable to resist the weight of circumstantial evidence produced against her, and never had a moment’s hesitation in committing her for trial at the next assizes.
“Five or six weeks after she had been in jail the prosecutor went into Shaw’s, the pastry-cook’s in the Old Steyne, for an ice. While he was pausing deliberately between each spoonful, the sun burst forth in all its strength, and darted one of its beams along the floor of the shop, bringing into light an object which glistened vividly between the joists of the flooring. He took out his penknife, inserted the point of it between the boards, and, to his utter amazement, fished up his lost ring. He ran back to his lodgings, and, on referring to his diary, he found that, on the evening of the very night on which he had left his watch and its appendages on the chimney-piece, he had been at Shaw’s having some refreshment; and he conjectured that, as half the split ring from which his seals hung had been for some time a good deal wrenched apart, it must have come into contact with the edge of the counter, and thus liberated the ring from its hold; that it had fallen on the ground, been trodden under the feet of some of the visitors to the shop, and in this way been wedged in between the boards of the flooring. Stung to the quick by self-reproach, at the thought of having tarnished the good name of an innocent girl by false accusation, and of having exposed her to the unmerited sufferings of prison life, he instantly took a post-chaise and drove off to the jail in which she was confined, asked every particular about her from the governor, and found him enthusiastic in his admiration of her, and utterly incredulous of her guilt. ‘She’s the gentlest, sweetest-tempered creature we have ever had within these walls, and nothing shall make me believe she is a thief,’ said he. ‘No more she is,’ was the eager answer. ‘She has been falsely charged by me, and I have come to make her every reparation in my power.’ In one brief word, he offered her his hand, and married her.”
“There!” said Priscilla’s father, when he had finished. “Why shouldn’t our ring have fallen into a crack at the pastry-cook’s in just the same way? You say it was a little bit loose, and Priscilla remembers taking off her glove in the shop. It’s an old shop, isn’t it?” he added.