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.”
“The robbers. When I came in this morning----”
“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.”
“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 gentleman--Mr. Martin Hewitt. I have come down now to meet her by appointment. Did she say she was going anywhere else as well as to my office and to her sister’s?”