The Case of the Ward Lane Tabernacle | Page 6

it?"
"Oh, of course, and I have given strict orders that nothing is to be touched. To-morrow morning I should like you to come and look at it."
"I must look at it, certainly," Hewitt said, "but I would rather go at once."
"Pooh--nonsense!" Mrs. Mallett answered, with the airy obstinacy that Hewitt afterwards knew so well. "I'm not going home again now to spend an hour or two more. My sister will want to know what has become of me, and she mustn't suspect that anything is wrong, or it may do all sorts of harm. The place will keep till the morning, and I have the snuff-box safe with me. You have my card, Mr. Hewitt, haven't you? Very well. Can you be at my house to-morrow morning at half-past ten? I will be there, and you can see all you want by daylight. We'll consider that settled. Good-day."
Hewitt saw her to his office door and waited till she had half descended the stairs. Then he made for a staircase window which gave a view of the street. The evening was coming on murky and foggy, and the street lights were blotchy and vague. Outside a four-wheeled cab stood, and the driver eagerly watched the front door. When Mrs. Mallett emerged he instantly began to descend from the box with the quick invitation, "Cab, mum, cab?" He seemed very eager for his fare, and though Mrs. Mallett hesitated a second she eventually entered the cab. He drove off, and Hewitt tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the number of the cab behind. It was always a habit of his to note all such identifying marks throughout a case, whether they seemed important at the time or not, and he has often had occasion to be pleased with the outcome. Now, however, the light was too bad. No sooner had the cab started than a man emerged from a narrow passage opposite, and followed. He was a large, rather awkward, heavy-faced man of middle age, and had the appearance of a respectable artisan or small tradesman in his best clothes. Hewitt hurried downstairs and followed the direction the cab and the man had taken, toward the Strand. But the cab by this time was swallowed up in the Strand traffic, and the heavy-faced man had also disappeared. Hewitt returned to his office a little disappointed, for the man seemed rather closely to answer Mrs. Mallett's description of Reuben Penner.
II.
Punctually at half-past ten the next morning Hewitt was at Mrs. Mallett's house at Fulham. It was a pretty little house, standing back from the road in a generous patch of garden, and had evidently stood there when Fulham was an outlying village. Hewitt entered the gate, and made his way to the front door, where two young females, evidently servants, stood. They were in a very disturbed state, and when he asked for Mrs. Mallett, assured him that nobody knew where she was, and that she had not been seen since the previous afternoon.
"But," said Hewitt, "she was to stay at her sister's last night, I believe." "Yes, sir," answered the more distressed of the two girls--she in a cap--"but she hasn't been seen there. This is her sister's servant, and she's been sent over to know where she is, and why she hasn't been there."
This the other girl--in bonnet and shawl--corroborated. Nothing had been seen of Mrs. Mallett at her sister's since she had received the message the day before to the effect that the house had been broken into.
"And I'm so frightened," the other girl said, whimperingly. "They've been in the place again last night."
"Who have?"
"The robbers. When I came in this morning----"
"But didn't you sleep here?"
"I--I ought to ha' done sir, but--but after Mrs. Mallett went yesterday I got so frightened I went home at ten." And the girl showed signs of tears, which she had apparently been already indulging in.
"And what about the old woman--the deaf woman; where was she?"
"She was in the house, sir. There was nowhere else for her to go, and she was deaf and didn't know anything about what happened the night before, and confined to her room, and--and so I didn't tell her."
"I see," Hewitt said with a slight smile. "You left her here. She didn't see or hear anything, did she?"
"No sir; she can't hear, and she didn't see nothing."
"And how do you know thieves have been in the house?"
"Everythink's tumbled about worse than ever, sir, and all different from what it was yesterday; and there's a box o' papers in the attic broke open, and all sorts o' things."
"Have you spoken to the police?"
"No, sir; I'm that frightened I don't know what to do. And missis was going to see a gentleman about it yesterday, and----"
"Very well, I am that