“Precisely. I hope you have left the disturbance in your house exactly as you found 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.