Part 13

“It was while things were in this state, and about six or seven weeks ago, that, walking toward Cricklewood one morning, I saw a little fellow trotting along all alone, who actually startled me--startled me very much--by his resemblance to our poor little one. The likeness was one of those extraordinary ones that one only finds among young children. This child was a little bigger and stronger than ours was when he died, but then it was older--probably very nearly the age and size our own would have been had it lived. Nobody else was in sight, and I fancied the child looked about to cry, so I went to it and spoke. Plainly it had strayed, and could not tell me where it lived, only that its name was Charley. I took it in my arms and it grew quite friendly. As I talked to it suddenly Dr. Bailey’s suggestion came in my mind. If any child could deceive my poor husband, surely this was the one. Of course I should have to find its parents--probably through the police; but why not at any rate take it to Willesden in the meantime for an hour or so? I could not resist the temptation--I took the first available cab.

“The result of the experiment almost frightened me. My poor husband received the child with transports of delight, kissed it, and laughed and wept over it like a mother rather than a father, and refused to give it up for hours. The child of course would not answer to its strange name at first, but he seemed an adaptable little thing, and presently began calling my poor husband ‘daddy.’ I had not been so happy myself for months as I was as I watched them. I had told Dr. Bailey--what I fear was not strictly true--that I had borrowed the child from a friend. At length I felt I must go and take the boy to the police, and with great difficulty I managed to get it away, my poor husband crying like a child. Well, I took the little fellow to the station I judged nearest to where I found him, and gave him up to the care of the inspector. But I was a little frightened at having kept him so long, and gave a false name and address. Still, I learned from the inspector that the child had been inquired after, and by whom.

“My husband was quiet for some days after this, but then he began to ask for his boy with more vehemence than ever. He grew worse and worse, and soon his ravings were terrible. Dr. Bailey urged me to bring the child again, but what could I do? I formed a desperate idea of going to Mrs. Seton, telling her the whole thing, and imploring her to let me take the child again. But then would that be likely? Would she allow her child to be placed in the arms of a lunatic--one indeed who had already killed a child of his own? I felt that the thing was impossible. Still, I went to the house, and walked about it again and again, I scarcely knew why. And my poor husband in his confinement screamed for his child till I dared not go near him. So it was when one morning--last Monday morning--I had passed the front of the Setons’ house and turned up the lane at the side. I could see over the low fence and hedge, and as I came to the French window with the steps I saw that the window was open at one side and little Charley was standing on the top step. He recognised me, smiled and called just as my own child would have done; indeed, as I stood there I almost fell into the delusion of my poor mad husband. I took the gate in my hands, shaking it impatiently, and in attempting to open it from the wrong end, found the hinges lift out. I could see that nobody else was in the room behind the French window. There was the temptation--the overwhelming temptation--and I was distracted. I took the little fellow hurriedly in my arms and pulled the window to, so that the bottom bolt fell into the floor socket; then I replaced the gate as I found it, and ran to where I knew there was a cab-stand. Oh! Mr. Hewitt, was it so very sinful? And I meant to bring him back that same afternoon, I really did.

“The child was in indoor clothes, and had no hat. I called at a baby-linen shop and bought hat, cloak, frock and a new pair of shoes. Then I hurried to Willesden. Again the effect was magical. My husband was happy once more; but when at last I attempted to take the child away he would not let it go. It was terrible. Oh, I can’t describe the scene. Dr. Bailey told me that, come what might, I must stay that night in a room his wife would provide for me and keep the child, or perhaps I must sit up with my husband and let the child sleep on my knee. In the end it was the latter that I did.

“By the morning my senses were blunted, and I scarcely cared what happened. I determined that as I had gone so far I would keep the child that day at least; indeed, as I say, whether by the influence of my husband I know not, but I almost felt myself falling into his delusion that the child was ours. I went home for an hour at midday, taking the child, and then my wretched brother saw it and got the whole story from me. He told me that reward bills were out about the child, and then I dimly realised that its mother must be suffering pain, and I wrote the note you spoke of. Perhaps I had some little idea of delaying pursuit--I don’t know. At any rate I wrote it, and posted it at Willesden as I went back. My husband had been asleep when I left, but now he was awake again and asking for the child once more. There is little more to say. I stayed that night and the next day, and by that time my husband had become tranquil and rational as he had not been for months. If only the improvement can be sustained, they think of operating to-morrow or the next day.

“I carried Charley back in the dusk, intending to put him inside one of the gates, ring, and watch him safely in from a little way off, but as I passed down the side lane I saw the French window open again and nobody near. I had been that way before and felt bolder there. I took his hat and cloak (I had already changed his frock) and, after kissing him, put him hastily through the window and came away. But I had forgotten the new shoes. I remembered them, however, when I got home, and immediately conceived a fear that the child’s parents might trace me by their means. I mentioned this fear to my brother, and it appeared to frighten him. He borrowed some money of me yesterday, and, it seems, got intoxicated. In that state he is always anxious to do some noble action, though he is capable, I am grieved to say, of almost any meanness when sober. He lives here at my expense, indeed, and borrows money from his friends for drink. These may seem hard things for a sister to say, but everybody knows it. He has wearied me, and I have lost all shame of him. I suppose in his muddled state he got the notion that he would accuse himself of what I had done and so shield me. I expect he repented of his self-sacrifice this morning, though.”

Hewitt knew that he had, but said nothing. Also he said nothing of the anonymous letter he had in his pocket, wherein Mr. Oliver Neale had covertly demanded a hundred pounds for the restoration of Charley Seton. He guessed, however, that that gentleman had feared making the appointment that the advertisement answering his letter had suggested.

To Mr. and Mrs. Seton Hewitt told the whole story, omitting at first names and addresses. “I saw plainly,” he said in course of his talk, “that the child might easily have been taken from the French window. I did not say so, for Mrs. Seton was already sufficiently distressed, and the notion that the child was kidnapped, and not simply lost, might have made her worse just then. The toys--the cart with the string on it in particular--had been dragged in the direction of the window, and then nothing would be easier than for the child to open the window itself. There was nothing but a drop bolt, working very easily, which the child must often have seen lifted, and you will remember that the catch did not act. Once the child had opened the window and got outside, the whole thing was simple. The gate could be lifted, the child taken, and the window pulled to, so that the bolt would fall into its place and leave all as before.

“As to the previous occasion, I thought it curious at first that the child should stray before lunch and yet not be heard of again till the evening, and then apparently not be over-fatigued. But beyond these little things, and what I inferred from the letter, I had very little to help me indeed. Nothing, in fact, till I got the shoes, and they didn’t carry me very far. The drunken rant of the man in the police station attracted me because he spoke not only of taking away the child, but of buying it shoes. Now nobody could know of the buying of the shoes who did not know something more. But I knew it was a woman who had taken Charley, as you know, from the heel-mark and the evidence of the shop people, so that when the bemused fool talked of his sister, and sacrificing himself for her, and keeping her out of trouble, and so on, I ranged the case up in my mind, and, so far as I ventured, I guessed it aright. The police inspector knew nothing of the matter of the shoes, nor of the fact of the person I was after being a woman, so thought the thing no more than a drunken freak.

“And now,” Hewitt said, “before I tell you this woman’s name, don’t you think the poor creature has suffered enough?”

Both Mrs. Seton and her husband agreed that she had, and that, so far as they were concerned, no further steps should be taken. And when she was told where to go, Mrs. Seton went off at once to offer Mrs. Isitt her forgiveness and sympathy. But Mrs. Isitt’s punishment came in twenty-four hours, when her husband died in the surgeon’s hands.

THE CASE OF THE WARD LANE TABERNACLE

I

Among the few personal friendships that Martin Hewitt has allowed himself to make there is one for an eccentric but very excellent old lady named Mrs. Mallett. She must be more than seventy now, but she is of robust and active, not to say masculine, habit, and her relations with Hewitt are irregular and curious. He may not see her for many weeks, perhaps for months, until one day she will appear in the office, push directly past Kerrett (who knows better than to attempt to stop her) into the inner room, and salute Hewitt with a shake of the hand and a savage glare of the eye which would appall a stranger, but which is quite amiably meant. As for myself, it was long ere I could find any resource but instant retreat before her gaze, though we are on terms of moderate toleration now.

After her first glare she sits in the chair by the window and directs her glance at Hewitt’s small gas grill and kettle in the fireplace--a glance which Hewitt, with all expedition, translates into tea. Slightly mollified by the tea, Mrs. Mallett condescends to remark, in tones of tragic truculence, on passing matters of conventional interest--the weather, the influenza, her own health, Hewitt’s health, and so forth, any reply of Hewitt’s being commonly received with either disregard or contempt. In half an hour’s time or so she leaves the office with a stern command to Hewitt to attend at her house and drink tea on a day and at a time named--a command which Hewitt obediently fulfils, when he passes through a similarly exhilarating experience in Mrs. Mallett’s back drawing-room at her little freehold house in Fulham. Altogether Mrs. Mallett, to a stranger, is a singularly uninviting personality, and indeed, except Hewitt, who has learnt to appreciate her hidden good qualities, I doubt if she has a friend in the world. Her studiously concealed charities are a matter of as much amusement as gratification to Hewitt, who naturally, in the course of his peculiar profession, comes across many sad examples of poverty and suffering, commonly among the decent sort, who hide their troubles from strangers’ eyes, and suffer in secret. When such a case is in his mind it is Hewitt’s practice to inform Mrs. Mallett of it at one of the tea ceremonies. Mrs. Mallett receives the story with snorts of incredulity and scorn, but takes care, while expressing the most callous disregard and contempt of the troubles of the sufferers, to ascertain casually their names and addresses; twenty-four hours after which Hewitt need only make a visit to find their difficulties in some mysterious way alleviated.

Mrs. Mallett never had any children, and was early left a widow. Her appearance, for some reason or another, commonly leads strangers to believe her an old maid. She lives in her little detached house with its square piece of ground, attended by a housekeeper, older than herself, and one maid-servant. She lost her only sister by death soon after the events I am about to set down, and now has, I believe, no relations in the world. It was also soon after these events that her present housekeeper first came to her, in place of an older and very deaf woman, quite useless, who had been with her before. I believe she is moderately rich, and that one or two charities will benefit considerably at her death; also I should be far from astonished to find Hewitt’s own name in her will, though this is no more than idle conjecture. The one possession to which she clings with all her soul--her one pride and treasure--is her great-uncle Joseph’s snuff-box, the lid of which she steadfastly believes to be made of a piece of Noah’s original ark, discovered on the top of Mount Ararat by some intrepid explorer of vague identity about a hundred years ago. This is her one weakness, and woe to the unhappy creature who dares hint a suggestion that possibly the wood of the ark rotted away to nothing a few thousand years before her great-uncle Joseph ever took snuff. I believe he would be bodily assaulted. The box is brought out for Hewitt’s admiration at every tea ceremony at Fulham, when Hewitt handles it reverently, and expresses as much astonishment and interest as if he had never seen or heard of it before. It is on these occasions only that Mrs. Mallett’s customary stiffness relaxes. The sides of the box are of cedar of Lebanon, she explains (which very possibly they are), and the gold mountings were worked up from spade guineas (which one can believe without undue strain on the reason). And it is usually these times, when the old lady softens under the combined influence of tea and Uncle Joseph’s snuff-box, that Hewitt seizes to lead up to his hint of some starving governess or distressed clerk, with the full confidence that the more savagely the story is received the better will the poor people be treated as soon as he turns his back.

It was her jealous care of Uncle Joseph’s snuff-box that first brought Mrs. Mallett into contact with Martin Hewitt, and the occasion, though not perhaps testing his acuteness to the extent that some did, was nevertheless one of the most curious and fantastic on which he has ever been engaged. She was then some ten or twelve years younger than she is now, but Hewitt assures me she looked exactly the same; that is to say, she was harsh, angular, and seemed little more than fifty years of age. It was before the time of Kerrett, and another youth occupied the outer office. Hewitt sat late one afternoon with his door ajar when he heard a stranger enter the outer office, and a voice, which he afterwards knew well as Mrs. Mallett’s, ask “Is Mr. Martin Hewitt in?”

“Yes, ma’am, I think so. If you will write your name and----”

“Is he in _there_?” And with three strides Mrs. Mallett was at the inner door and stood before Hewitt himself, while the routed office-lad stared helplessly in the rear.

“Mr. Hewitt,” Mrs. Mallet said, “I have come to put an affair into your hands, which I shall require to be attended to at once.”

Hewitt was surprised, but he bowed politely, and said, with some suspicion of a hint in his tone, “Yes--I rather supposed you were in a hurry.”

She glanced quickly in Hewitt’s face and went on: “I am not accustomed to needless ceremony, Mr. Hewitt. My name is Mallett--Mrs. Mallett--and here is my card. I have come to consult you on a matter of great annoyance and some danger to myself. The fact is I am being watched and followed by a number of persons.”

Hewitt’s gaze was steadfast, but he reflected that possibly this curious woman was a lunatic, the delusion of being watched and followed by unknown people being perhaps the most common of all; also it was no unusual thing to have a lunatic visit the office with just such a complaint. So he only said soothingly, “Indeed? That must be very annoying.”

“Yes, yes; the annoyance is bad enough, perhaps,” she answered shortly; “but I am chiefly concerned about my great-uncle Joseph’s snuff-box.”

This utterance sounded a trifle more insane than the other, so Hewitt answered, a little more soothingly still: “Ah, of course. A very important thing, the snuff-box, no doubt.”

“It is, Mr. Hewitt--it is important, as I think you will admit when you have seen it. Here it is,” and she produced from a small handbag the article that Hewitt was destined so often again to see and affect an interest in. “You may be incredulous, Mr. Hewitt, but it is, nevertheless, a fact that the lid of this snuff-box is made of the wood of the original ark that rested on Mount Ararat.”

She handed the box to Hewitt, who murmured, “Indeed! Very interesting--very wonderful, really,” and returned it to the lady immediately.

“That, Mr. Hewitt, was the property of my great-uncle, Joseph Simpson, who once had the honour of shaking hands with his late Majesty King George the Fourth. The box was presented to my uncle by----,” and then Mrs. Mallett plunged into the whole history and adventures of the box, in the formula wherewith Hewitt subsequently became so well acquainted, and which need not be here set out in detail. When the box had been properly honoured Mrs. Mallett proceeded with her business.

“I am convinced, Mr. Hewitt,” she said, “that systematic attempts are being made to rob me of this snuff-box. I am not a nervous or weak-minded woman, or perhaps I might have sought your assistance before. The watching and following of myself I might have disregarded, but when it comes to burglary I think it is time to do something.”

“Certainly,” Hewitt agreed.

“Well, I have been pestered with demands for the box for some time past. I have here some of the letters which I have received, and I am sure I know at whose instigation they were sent.” She placed on the table a handful of papers of various sizes, which Hewitt examined one after another. They were mostly in the same handwriting, and all were unsigned. Every one was couched in a fanatically-toned imitation of scriptural diction, and all sorts of threats were expressed with many emphatic underlinings. The spelling was not of the best, the writing was mostly uncouth, and the grammar was in ill shape in many places, the “thous” and “thees” and their accompanying verbs falling over each other disastrously. The purport of the messages was rather vaguely expressed, but all seemed to make a demand for the restoration of some article held in extreme veneration. This was alluded to in many figurative ways as the “token of life,” the “seal of the woman,” and so forth, and sometimes Mrs. Mallett was requested to restore it to the “ark of the covenant.” One of the least vague of these singular documents ran thus:--

“Thou of no faith put the bond of the woman clothed with the sun on the stoan sete in thy back garden this night or thy blood beest on your own hed. Give it back to us the five righteous only in this citty, give us that what saves the faithful when the erth is swalloed up.”

Hewitt read over these fantastic missives one by one till he began to suspect that his client, mad or not, certainly corresponded with mad Quakers. Then he said, “Yes, Mrs. Mallett, these are most extraordinary letters. Are there any more of them?”

“Bless the man, yes, there were a lot that I burnt. All the same crack-brained sort of thing.”

“They are mostly in one handwriting,” Hewitt said, “though some are in another. But I confess I don’t see any very direct reference to the snuff-box.”

“Oh, but it’s the only thing they _can_ mean,” Mrs. Mallett replied with great positiveness. “Why, he wanted me to sell it him; and last night my house was broken into in my absence and everything ransacked and turned over, but not a thing was taken. Why? Because I had the box with me at my sister’s. And this is the only sacred relic in my possession. And what saved the faithful when the world was swallowed up? Why, the ark, of course.”

The old lady’s manner was odd, but notwithstanding the bizarre and disjointed character of her complaint, Hewitt had now had time to observe that she had none of the unmistakable signs of the lunatic. Her eye was steady and clear, and she had none of the restless habits of the mentally deranged. Even at that time Hewitt had met with curious adventures enough to teach him not to be astonished at a new one, and now he set himself seriously to get at his client’s case in full order and completeness.

“Come, Mrs. Mallett,” he said, “I am a stranger, and I can never understand your case till I have it, not as it presents itself to your mind, in the order of importance of events, but in the exact order in which they happened. You had a great-uncle, I understand, living in the early part of the century, who left you at his death the snuff-box which you value so highly. Now you suspect that somebody is attempting to extort or steal it from you. Tell me as clearly and simply as you can whom you suspect, and the whole story of the attempts.”

“That’s just what I’m coming to,” the old lady answered, rather pettishly. “My uncle Joseph had an old housekeeper, who, of course, knew all about the snuff-box, and it is her son Reuben Penner who is trying to get it from me. The old woman was half crazy with one extraordinary religious superstition and another, and her son seems to be just the same. My great-uncle was a man of strong common sense and a Churchman (though he _did_ think he could write plays), and if it hadn’t been for his restraint I believe--that is, I have been told--Mrs. Penner would have gone clean demented with religious mania. Well, she died in course of time, and my great-uncle died some time after, leaving me the most important thing in his possession (I allude to the snuff-box of course), a good bit of property, and a tin box full of his worthless manuscripts. I became a widow at twenty-six, and since then I have lived very quietly in my present house in Fulham.