“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.”