Pickering was essentially a man of action.
“We must go down that hole and explore,” he said determinedly. “We must know the whole of the secrets of this place before we go further. Edwards, just slip round to the station and get that rope-ladder we used in the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be too short. And bring P.C. Horton with you. Tell him to take his revolver. Look sharp.”
“Very well, sir,” replied the man, who clambered over the settle and down the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.
Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise we halted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of his friends.
Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied his enemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constable drew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained from the house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.
Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and within found a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced it open, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied with pink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity of negotiable foreign securities—mostly French.
“The proceeds of some robbery, most certainly,” declared Pickering, examining one after the other and inquiring of me their true character, he being ignorant of French.
“I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City,” I remarked after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value was about twenty thousand pounds.
“Yes. We’ll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There’s evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes, that you’ve been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!” the inspector added with a smile, “we ourselves couldn’t have done better—indeed, we couldn’t have done as well as you did.”
“I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend Domville,” I said. “I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He was in this room, I’ll swear to that. I’d know his voice among ten thousand.”
“We shall see,” remarked the officer, confidently. “First let us explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin will arrest them. We’ll take Edwards down with us.”
While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it, Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters. Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I opened written upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: “Harewolde Abbey, Herefordshire.” It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet! Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:—
“Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier. I hope this information will satisfy you.—S.”
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull South London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as their secret agent in society?
The suggestion held me stupefied.
At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable in plain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. He carried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope—which Pickering incidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notable Hampstead burglar—together with another lantern, a ball of string and a length of stout rope.
Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering, Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew the settle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole to move forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosing the black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, the stairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring or a counter-balancing weight beneath.
This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome by inserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keeping them open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of the banisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin tried its strength.
“I’ll go down first, sir,” volunteered Edwards. “You’ve got the lantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?”
So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrown across to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project of subterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon the string, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge of the stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lamp after him.
We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern but little save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of the ladder, like a pendulum.
“Great Moses!” we heard him ejaculate in amazement.
Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must have reached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra length of rope which Pickering had attached.
“All right, sir!” came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitch darkness. “It’s a jolly funny place down here, an’ no mistake. Will you come down? I’m releasing the lantern. Send down another, please. We’ll want it.”
Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin’s bull’s-eye to it, and let it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by the length of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to a much younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.
“If you’d like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me,” he exclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. “Horton, hold your light over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrest them quickly.”
“Very well, sir,” answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeper down until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presence there.
“All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful,” he cried up presently, his voice sounding far away. “You’ll have to slide down the rope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you’ll be all right.”
I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then with the light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemed large and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well with black slimy walls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth.
Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was the inspector’s encouraging voice, crying, “All right. Now then, take the rope in your legs and slip straight down.”
I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy cold stream, which swept and gurgled about me.
Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining upon the dark subterranean flood.
“Is this the place you remember?” asked the inspector, shining his bull’s-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind of circular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. From the right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by the opposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost to its keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flat stones—a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.
“This isn’t the place where I found myself,” I said, much surprised.
“No, I suppose not,” remarked the inspector. “This is fresh water, from a spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there’s probably a communication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept down there and out into the main sewer at once—like a good many others who have come down here. It’s an awful death-trap. Look up there,” and he shone his lamp above my head.
“Don’t you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall—and driven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago in this damp.”
“Well?” I said, not quite following him.
“That’s been put there so that the victims, in falling from the great height, should strike against it and be rendered unconscious before reaching the water. Look. There’s a bit of white stuff on it now—like silk from a lady’s evening dress!”
And sure enough I saw at the end of that iron bar a piece of white stuff fluttering in the draught, the grim relic of some unfortunate woman who had gone unconsciously to her death! The dank, gruesome place horrified me. Its terrible secrets held all three of us appalled. Even Pickering himself shuddered.
“To explore further is quite impossible,” he said. “That culvert leads into the main sewer, so we must leave its exploration to the sewermen. Lots of springs, of course, fall into the sewers, but the exact spots of their origin are unknown. They were found and connected when the sewers were constructed, and that’s all. My own opinion,” he added, “is that this place was originally the well of an ancient house, and that the blackguards discovered it in the cellar, explored it, ascertained that anything placed in it would be sucked down into that culvert, and then they opened up a way right through to the stairs.”
The inspector’s theory appeared to me to be a sound one.
I expressed fear of the rising of the water with the automatic flushing of the sewers, but he pointed out that where we stood must be on a slightly higher level, judging from the way the water rushed away down the culvert, while on the side of the well there was no recent mark of higher water, thus bearing out his idea of a spring.
Edwards swarmed up the rope and managed to detach the piece of silk from the iron bar. When he handed it to us we saw that though faded and dirty it had been a piece of rich brocade, pale blue upon a cream ground, while attached was a tiny edging of pale blue chiffon—from a woman’s corsage, Pickering declared it to be—perhaps a scrap of the dress of the owner of that emerald necklet up above!
After a minute inspection of the grim ancient walls which rose from a channel of rock worn smooth by the action of the waters of ages, Pickering swarmed up the dangling rope, gained the ladder and climbed back again, an example which I quickly followed, although my legs were so chilled to the bone by the icy water that at first I found considerable difficulty in ascending.
Having gained the landing and been followed by Edwards, we drew up the ladder, removed the settle, allowed the fatal stairs to close again, and then bridged it over as before.
While we had been below Horton, who was a practised carpenter, had mended the latch of the front door, so that there should be no suspicion of our entry. We all clambered across the settle, descended the stairs to the basement, and were soon engaged in searching the downstairs rooms and cellar. We had found that the communication between the head of the well and the top of the house was a roughly-constructed shaft of boards when, of a sudden, while standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs we were startled by hearing the sharp click of a key in the lock of the front door above.
In an instant we were silent, and stood together breathless and listening. The dark slide slipped across the bull’s-eye.
It was truly an exciting moment.
Pickering, followed by Edwards and Marvin, crept noiselessly up the stairs, and while the person entering apparently had some difficulty with the lock they waited in the darkness.
I stood behind the inspector, my heart beating quickly, listening intently. It was an exciting moment standing ready in the pitch blackness of that silent house of doom.
The latch caught, probably on account of its recent disarrangement, but at last the key lifted it, the door opened, somebody entered the hall, and quietly re-closed the door.
Next instant Pickering sprang from his hiding-place, crying,—
“I arrest you on suspicion of being implicated in certain cases of wilful murder committed in this house!”
Horton at that same moment flashed his lamp full upon the face of the person who had entered there so stealthily, and who, startled by the dread accusation, stood glaring like some wild animal brought to bay, but motionless as though turned to stone.
The lamp-flash revealed a white, haggard countenance. I saw it; I recognised it!
A loud cry of horror and amazement escaped me. Was I dreaming? No. It was no dream, but a stern, living reality—a truth that bewildered and staggered me utterly—a grim, awful truth which deprived me of the power of speech.
The man under arrest was not, as I had expected, John Parham—but Eric Domville!
I stood glaring at him, utterly staggered.
Then I sprang forward to greet him—to welcome him as one returned from the grave, but next instant drew back. His face was changed—the expression upon it was that of terror—and of guilt!
“You are arrested,” continued Pickering, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, adding that phrase of patter which is spoken each time a person is taken into custody, “and I warn you that whatever statement you may now make will be taken down in writing and used in evidence against you at your trial.”
“I have no statement to make. I can do that later,” faltered the unhappy man whom I had, until that moment, regarded as my warmest friend.
The revelation struck me of a heap. At first I was unable to realise that I was awake, and in my right senses, yet there Domville stood, with a detective on either side of him, crushed and resistless. He had not even denied the truth of Pickering’s awful allegation.
Certainly in no man had I been more deceived them in him. I had given him hospitality; I had confided my secrets in him because we had been friends ever since our youth. Indeed, he had assisted me to shield Sybil, and yet the police had charged him with implication in the grim tragedies that had undoubtedly been enacted within those silent walls where we now stood.
“Is this true, Domville?” I cried at last, when I found tongue. “Speak.”
“True!” he echoed, with a strange, sickly smile, but in a low, hoarse tone. “The police are fools. Let them do as they like. They’ll soon find out that they’ve got hold of the wrong man. You surely know me well enough, Wilfrid, not to believe these fellows without proof.”
“Yes,” I cried, “I do, Eric. I believe you are innocent, and I’ll help you to prove it.”
Pickering smiled, saying, “At present, Mr Hughes, we must send this gentleman round to the station. We may discuss his innocence later on.” Then turning to Edwards he said in quick, peremptory tones, “Get a cab, you and Marvin, and take him round to the station. Then come back here. Tell Inspector Nicholls that I’ll charge him myself when I come round.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the man, and ten minutes later the prisoner and the two detectives drove off in a four-wheeled cab.
“Pardon me, Mr Hughes,” said Pickering, after he had gone, “but is it not injudicious to presuppose that man’s innocence, especially when guilt is so plainly written on his face? Some men’s faces are to us as open as the columns of a newspaper. That man’s is. He is guilty—he is one of the gang. What proof have you that he is not?”
“He is my friend,” I protested.
“And may he not be a criminal at the same time? Of many of our friends we are utterly unaware what lives they lead in secret. Charles Peace, the daring burglar, as you will probably remember, taught in a Sunday-school. Therefore, never judge a man by his outward profession, either of friendship or of piety.”
“But I heard the villains threaten him in that upstairs room,” I exclaimed. “He was in peril of his life.”
“Because they had quarrelled—perhaps over the distribution of the spoils. Criminals more often than not quarrel over that, and in revenge give each other away to us. No, Mr Hughes, before you jump to any conclusion in this matter just wait a bit, wait, I mean, till we’ve concluded our inquiries. Depend upon it a very different complexion will soon be placed upon the whole affair.”
Edwards and Marvin returned half an hour after wards.
“He made no statement,” Edwards said. “He’s one of ’em, that’s certain.”
“Why?” I asked. “How are you so positive?”
“Well, sir, we can generally pretty well tell, you know. He was a bit too resigned to be innocent.”
Through the whole night, until the cold grey of the wintry dawn, we sat in the back sitting-room, with one single bull’s-eye lantern turned on, awaiting the arrival of any of the others who might make a midnight visit there. I, of course, knew the addresses of both Parham and Winsloe, and had given them to Pickering; but he preferred that night to wait, and if possible arrest them actually in that house of doom.
Just as the faint dawn began to show through the chinks of the closed shutters, and Pickering was giving his men instructions before returning to the station, we distinctly heard another key rattle in the latch.
We were all on the alert in an instant.
“We’ll let him go upstairs if that’s his intention,” whispered the inspector with satisfaction.
Again the newcomer had the same difficulty with the latch, but at length the door opened, letting in a flood of grey light into the hall, and then closed again. We had drawn back behind the half-closed door of the room wherein we had kept our night vigil, and standing there scarcely daring to breathe, we watched a dark-haired young man in a brown tweed suit ascend the stairs. He wore a thick travelling coat, a flat cloth cap, and carried a well-worn brown handbag. Evidently he had just come off a night journey, for he sighed wearily as humming to himself he ascended those fatal stairs.
Fortunately we had removed the settle back to its place, but on arrival on the first landing we heard him halt and pull a creaking lever somewhere—the mechanism by which the six stairs were held fast and secure. Then he went on up to the top and entered that well-furnished little sitting-room.
For ten minutes we allowed him to remain there undisturbed—“Just to allow him to settle himself,” as Pickering whispered grimly. Then one by one the officers crept noiselessly up until we had assembled on the landing outside the closed door.
Then, of a sudden, Pickering drew his revolver, threw open the door, and the sleek-haired newcomer was revealed.
He fell back as though he had received a blow.
“We are police officers,” explained Pickering, “and I arrest you.”
Then we saw that from his bag he had taken out a suit of clothes and some linen, which were flung upon a chair, while upon the table were two packets of German bank-notes, amounting to a considerable sum. A third packet he still held in his hand, for he had been in the act of counting them when surprised.
His dark eyes met mine, and the fellow started.
“I know you!” he cried to me. “You are not a detective at any rate. You are Wilfrid Hughes.”
“I have, I regret, not the pleasure of your acquaintance,” was my quick answer, somewhat surprised at his declaration.
“That woman has betrayed us—that woman, Sybil Burnet,” he cried angrily, his eyes flashing at us. “She shall pay for this—by heaven, she shall! She defied me, but I have not yet said my last word. Arrest me to-day, and to-morrow she will be arrested also,” he laughed, triumphantly.
“My name’s Ralph Vickers—if you must know,” he said to Pickering in reply to a question.
“And you’re just back from Germany—eh? Arrived by the night mail via the Hook of Holland.”
“Well, what of that?”
“And you’ve been to Germany to dispose of stolen property, and this money is the price you received for it. Am I not correct?”
“Find out,” was the smooth-haired young man’s insulting response.
“Take him to the station, Edwards, and ask Inspector Nicholls to step round here with two plain-clothes men. I’ll wait for him. Search the prisoner, and I’ll charge him—when I come round.”
And the young man, without a word, was conducted down the stairs. Then the inspector began counting the German notes rapidly, taking a note of the number in each of the packets secured by pins.
“We’ve done a good night’s work, I think, Mr Hughes,” he said afterwards, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. “Thanks to you we’re on the track of one of the biggest criminal conspiracies that London has known for years. But,” he added, “who’s the woman that fellow mentioned—Sybil Burnet? He seems to know something against her—alleges that she’s also a member of the gang. I think we’d better arrest her, or in any case keep her under observation, for the instant she hears of the arrests she’ll, of course, fly.”
I held my breath, and I think I must have turned pale at this unforeseen result of my information against the malefactors. I recollected the affair in Charlton Wood. What could I reply?
“It is true, Inspector Pickering, that I am acquainted with Miss Sybil Burnet, but I have reason for being confident of her innocence.”
“As you are confident of the innocence of your friend Domville—eh?” he asked dubiously with a sarcastic smile.
“Well,” I said, desperately, “I am going now, at once, to see her. And if you leave the matter in my hands and promise that I shall not be followed, I, on my part, will promise that later she shall reply to any questions you may put to her.”
He was only half-convinced.
“You take a great responsibility upon yourself, Mr Hughes,” he remarked. “Why are you so anxious that this woman’s whereabouts should not be known?”
“To avoid a scandal,” I said. “She is a gentlewoman.”
Pickering smiled again.
“Well, Mr Hughes,” he said with great reluctance, “that man Vickers has made a direct charge against her, and it must be investigated, as you quite understand, whether she be a gentlewoman or not. But I leave you to question her, on the understanding that you prevent her from warning the other two men still at liberty—Parham and Winsloe. Probably they will come here to-day to meet Vickers on his return from Germany—at any rate, we shall be here in waiting for them.”
What might not this terrible exposure mean to Sybil?
Sybil saw me from the window as I walked up Neate Street at ten o’clock that morning. Then, letting myself in with the latchkey, I ascended the stairs, finding her as usual, fresh and dainty, although she was engaged in the prosaic operation of dusting the room.
“Why, Wilfrid!” she gasped, “what’s the matter? You’re not well, surely!” she cried in anxiety, coming forward towards me.
I threw my cap upon the couch, and halting upon the hearthrug, said in a low, serious voice,—
“Sybil, I think I may speak to you plainly, without preamble. I want to ask you a simple question. Who is Ralph Vickers?”
The light died out of her face in an instant. She went pale and her white lips trembled at mention of that name.
She was silent. She made no response. The blow that she had so long dreaded had fallen!
“Tell me, Sybil,” I urged in a low, kindly tone. “Who is this man?”
“Ah! no, Wilfrid!” she gasped at last, her face cast down as though in shame. “Don’t ask that. How—how can I, of all women, tell you?”
“But you must,” I said firmly. “All is known. The brutal devilish conspiracy of those men Parham, Winsloe and Vickers is exposed.”
“Exposed! Then they know about that—about that awful house in Clipstone Street?” she gasped, her eyes starting from her head in abject terror.
“The horrible truth has been discovered. The police went to the house last night.”
“The police!”
“Yes, and Vickers, who is under arrest, has denounced you as one of their accomplices. Tell me,” I cried hoarsely, “tell me, Sybil, the real honest truth.”
“I knew he would denounce me,” she cried bitterly. “He has been my bitterest enemy from the very first. To that man I owe all my sorrow and degradation. He and his friends are fiends—veritable fiends in human shape—vampires who have sucked the blood of the innocent, and cast them away in secret in that dark house in Clipstone Street without mercy and without compunction. He carried out his threat once, and denounced me, but he did not succeed in effecting my ruin. And now, when arrested he has told the police what—what, Wilfrid, is, alas! the truth.”
“The truth!” I gasped, drawing away from her in horror. “The truth, Sybil. Then you are really guilty,” I wailed. “Ah! Heaven—I believed you were innocent!”
She stood swaying to and fro, then staggering unevenly to the table, gripped it to save herself from falling.
Her countenance was bloodless and downcast.
“I—I thought to hide my secret from you, of all men,” she faltered. “I feared that if you knew all you would hate and despise me, therefore my lips were sealed by fear of those men on the one hand, and on the other because I still strove to retain you as my friend and protector. I have remained silent, allowing you to form your own conclusions—nay,” she added bitterly, “allowing you to place yourself in a position of great personal peril, for I knew how they entrapped you in that awful place, and how they believed you dead like the others.” And she paused, her nervous fingers twisting the cheap jet brooch at her throat.
“But you will tell me now,” I urged quickly, “you will tell me the truth, Sybil.”
“Yes—yes. I will confess everything,” she exclaimed with an effort. “Surely there is no woman so sad and unhappy in all London as I am at this moment—as I have been these past two years! It commenced long ago, but I’ll relate it all as clearly and briefly as I can. You know how, in order to finish my education, I was sent to Madame Perrin’s at Versailles. Well, on one of my journeys home for the summer holiday I met in the train between the Gare du Nord and Calais an extremely agreeable young Englishman, resident in Paris, who spoke to me, and afterwards gave me his card, expressing a hope that when I returned to Versailles I should manage to meet him again. A sweetheart in secret is always an attraction to the schoolgirl, and surely I was no exception. With the connivance of three other girls, whom I let into my secret, I contrived to meet him often in the narrow, unfrequented Allée des Sabotiers that runs down to La Croix, and wrote him letters of girlish affection. This continued for nearly a year, when one evening, about a month before I left Madame Perrin’s for ever, I met him for a few moments close behind the school in the Rue du Parc de Clagny, and he surprised me by remarking that my uncle was Vice-Admiral Hellard, a high official at the Admiralty in London, or Second Sea-Lord as he was called, I believe. He asked me to do him a great favour when I returned to London, and take a little present of a dozen Bohemian liqueur glasses to deliver into his, the Admiral’s hand, personally. This I, of course, consented to do, and a few weeks later I found him at the Gare du Nord on my departure. Calling me aside, he handed me a little box about a foot long, and six inches deep, whispering that probably the Admiral would acknowledge the receipt of the gift, and therefore he would be in London a week later, meet me, and receive my uncle’s reply. But he urged me to give the present into the hands of no person other than the Admiral himself. He was most particular on that point.
“Well,” she continued in a low voice, almost as though she were speaking to herself, “three days later I called at Albert Gate, saw my uncle alone, and handed him the little box, which he seemed much surprised at receiving, and which he took into an adjoining room and opened. When he returned to me he was greatly excited, and asked me if I was aware what the box contained. I told him that they were a set of liqueur glasses. He smiled. Then he asked me who gave it to me, and I told him a young gentleman whom I knew slightly, and that if there was any reply I would hand it to him myself. ‘You shall have the reply for him to-morrow, Sybil,’ was the old man’s answer. ‘I can only say that you’ve brought me the most valuable present that I’ve ever received in all my life.’ My curiosity was at once aroused, and I asked to see the glasses, but he refused, saying that they did not concern me. Two days later I returned, and he handed me a sealed letter addressed to ‘Ralph Vickers, Esquire,’ and—”
“Vickers!” I gasped. “The sleek-haired fellow who was arrested this morning?”
“The same,” she answered hoarsely. “He was the man who met me in Paris, and into whose unscrupulous hands and those of his associates I so innocently fell. A few days after receiving the note from the Admiral, Vickers was, I found, in London, and late one evening I slipped out of the house to the corner of Berkeley Square, and there delivered the Admiral’s reply into his hands. He remained in England, but somehow—why I really can’t tell—I began to suspect that his mode of life was not altogether honest. Perhaps it was because one day the Admiral, who came to stay with us at Ryhall, was very inquisitive about him, and added that he sincerely hoped I had broken off the acquaintanceship. At any rate, although I sometimes met him I no longer entertained any affection for him. My girlish idol was, indeed, broken sadly when just as I made my début in society he began to write letters compelling me to meet him, and commenced to seek information from me concerning the habits and movements of certain people whom I met in our set in London. Well,” she sighed, “this went on for about a year. I hated him now, for I had detected how false he was. Yet moving with Cynthia in the gay set I saw that I could never afford to allow the fellow to disclose those foolish letters I had written to him. At this juncture, while I was staying up in Durham, came a note which placed Ralph Vickers in his true light—that of a blackguard. In guarded language he explained that he had, previous to making my acquaintance, done three years in prison, and that as he was now without funds I must obtain money for him—indeed, pay him in order to keep the secret of those letters—the secret that I had loved a gaol-bird! In reply, however, I openly defied him. In response he came up to Durham, and I was compelled to meet him in secret. The object of his visit was truly a brutal one. Finding that I resisted his demands, he revealed to me the contents of that box which I had conveyed to my uncle. It had contained a French naval secret—a copy of the secret plans and specifications of the new French submarine boat then being built at Brest, for which the British Admiralty had paid him three thousand pounds, a draft for this amount being contained in my uncle’s sealed letter. He had, he acknowledged, obtained the plans from a French naval lieutenant, and the pair had divided the proceeds. He was a spy, as well as a blackmailer. I asked what this had to do with me, whereupon he revealed to me an appalling fact, which utterly stunned me. Till then, I was in total ignorance of how entirely and completely I had fallen beneath his unscrupulous influence. But when he explained I saw in an instant that my future was hopeless; that escape was impossible. I was bound irrevocably to him and to his blackguardly accomplices.”
“And what did he reveal?” I inquired anxiously, as her terrified eyes met mine.
“He pointed out, with brutal frankness, that although in England the French law could not reach him, yet in my own case it was different. The French Government could apply for my arrest and extradition for selling a State secret, because, in the eyes of the French law, I was a French subject, I having been born at my father’s villa at Cannes, and had never taken out letters of naturalisation as a British subject. I saw his intention. If unable to raise money to supply his needs he would give information against me in Paris, and cause my arrest. He feared nothing for himself, he said, as he was a British-born subject. I alone would suffer. What could I do in face of such a terrible eventuality? He pointed out that although a person born of British parents abroad is under English law British, yet if wanted for a crime committed in the country of birth, the person may be arrested and extradited. I heard him to the end, and saw that I was helpless in his hands. He had entrapped me, and I was as a fly in a spider’s web. I saw my peril; therefore, in order to avoid scandal and arrest I was compelled to send him money from time to time. Moreover, he also compelled me to furnish secret information about persons whom I met in society, for what purpose I could only guess—blackmail. Gradually, I thus became a tool of Vickers and those fiends whom I felt were in association with him, although for some time the latter never betrayed themselves. This went on for nearly a couple of years until Ellice Winsloe proposed marriage to me. I was driven desperate, always wanting to reveal to you the truth and ask your advice, Wilfrid, and yet always in fear lest you should turn your back upon me as an associate of a gang of blackmailers. One autumn day, while motoring with Cynthia from London up to visit the Beebys at Grantham, and without a chauffeur, I had a tyre-burst near a place called Stretton, on the Great North Road, and a young man passing on a bicycle very kindly offered to change the cover for me. He was a rather good-looking young fellow and evidently a gentleman. A week later we met again at a party at Belton, when I discovered that his name was Arthur Rumbold, and that he was son of Canon Rumbold, of Lincoln, who held the living of Folkingham. He was a medical student at Guy’s, and home for the vacation. We met again and accidentally, at a dance in town; and although I am no more of a flirt than other girls, I confess that he attracted me. In fact, after a couple of months he fell desperately in love with me, when suddenly I discovered a most amazing and alarming fact, namely, that he actually occupied furnished rooms in the same house in Vincent Square, Westminster, where lodged Ralph Vickers. He knew the fellow well, he said, but was unaware, of course, of how he lived.
“Meanwhile,” she went on, her face slightly flushed by the effort of speaking, “Vickers was constantly pressing me for more money, threatening that if he did not get it he would hand me over to the French police. I was desperate, and at last one dark winter’s night, when walking with Arthur in one of the quiet streets in Kensington where we would not be recognised, I made a clean breast of my girlish foolishness and my present difficulties. He promised to at once help me, but it was three weeks afterwards when he wrote to me while I was at Ryhall, saying that he had searched the rooms of his fellow-lodger, had found my letters, and was bringing them to me. He had, he said, secretly watched Vickers, and found that he was in association with Parham, Winsloe and Domville in a great ruthless conspiracy of blackmail, and further that he had seen persons enter the house in Clipstone Street and never emerge again! Think of the effect this amazing statement had upon me. Winsloe and Domville were our guests at that moment, and the last-named was your most intimate friend. Three days previously I had received a letter from Vickers demanding that I should meet him in secret in the park, and I had replied making an evening appointment. Then, to Arthur I replied that I would meet him in the afternoon in Charlton Wood, a lonely spot where we had met before, telling him to bring the letters, and to explain everything to me. Well,” she said hoarsely, after a pause, “we met. He told me of his suspicion of that house in Clipstone Street and I at once saw to what dastardly use had been put the information regarding certain persons which these men had forced from me. But as he was telling me the truth a man rushed wildly out from the trees and sprang between us threatening to kill him if he uttered another word. He naturally defied his assailant, who in a moment drew a revolver and shot him dead before my eyes. Then turning to me the assassin said, calmly, ‘Of this affair you know nothing, remember. Otherwise, you’ll quickly find yourself arrested for the affair in Paris. Besides,’ he added, ‘you met the fellow here. He was your lover, and you’ve rid yourself of him. You see how the circumstantial evidence against you stands. Go. And you’d better leave Ryhall as soon as you can.’ Then he disappeared into the thicket while I stood half dazed, staring at the body of the man lying stark and dead before me.”
“But who was the man who fired the fatal shot?” I demanded breathlessly.
She refused to answer!
I repeated my question, looking straight into her face.
“Your friend, Eric Domville.”
“Eric!” I gasped, starting forward. “Why, he told me that you had killed him. He described in detail how he had been an eye-witness of your crime!”
“Ah, of course!” she said, bitterly. “In order to throw suspicion off himself. But I swear to you, before Heaven, that it was he who killed Arthur Rumbold—they killed him because they knew he had discovered the truth concerning the house in Clipstone Street. Among Vickers’s effects Arthur had found certain letters which had given him the clue to the awful truth. Your friend Domville was, you will remember, often absent for long periods in Africa. But I now have reason for knowing that he lived in Paris with Vickers as agent of the gang, and sometimes up in Manchester, where he passed as Charles Denton. Some of his absences from his friends, too, were due to certain periods of imprisonment which he had, from time to time, served. He was not the real Eric Domville, the African traveller, for the latter has his home in Cape Town, and had not been in London for twelve years or so.”
“Sybil,” I faltered, “what you have just revealed to me places an entirely new complexion upon the astounding affair. I see now how cleverly Domville planned to cast the guilt of Arthur Rumbold’s death upon you. I found upon him the letters you had written to Vickers, and naturally concluded that the dead man was a scoundrel and a blackmailer. Besides, he wore your miniature and there was in my mind no question that you had loved him. Therefore I took counsel with Domville, and we agreed to keep your secret. Ah!” I cried, “how cleverly I was deceived! I ought to have detected that he was not my old friend Eric. That man was possessed of the devil’s cunning! But tell me, why did you fly that night—why did you ask me to pose as your husband?”
“For the simple reason that, appalled by the vengeance that they had dealt out to poor Arthur, I sought to escape them. Domville might accuse me of the murder in the wood, or Vickers might give my secret to the Prefect of Paris Police. In either case I would be in deadly peril. I saw one way out of the latter—which seemed to me the secret mode by which they would eventually attack me—and that was to make pretence that I had a husband—that I had hidden myself and married a working-man.”
“Why? How did that safeguard you?”
“Because I had discovered that by marriage a woman follows her husband’s nationality, so that if I married you I should at once become a British subject, and beyond the influence of French law,” was her frank answer. “Don’t you remember that while we were in the north two men called at Neate Street, made inquiries about us, and went away satisfied. They were agents of the French Police, and from what Mrs Williams told them they believed that you were my husband, therefore they went away, hesitating to apply for my arrest. So you see Vickers actually carried out his threat. Since the day after poor Arthur was killed Vickers has been in Germany to dispose of a quantity of stolen jewellery, therefore Domville had no opportunity of telling him the truth that you were posing as my husband, while your friend on his part deemed it to their interests to allow us both to remain in fear and in hiding. Of course I had no knowledge that Domville was aware of your having assumed the character of William Morton, and our position has all along been rendered the more perilous on that account. For us, however, it was most fortunate that Vickers has been abroad and that Domville kept his knowledge to himself. By your aid, Wilfrid, I was saved from those French agents, but now that the secret of Clipstone Street is out I fear that they may discover I am not married, and return. If they do,” she sighed, “if they do, then I must stand in a criminal dock, and bear the scandal that these villains have heaped upon me in order to hold me as their unwilling accomplice. Ah! Wilfrid!” she gasped, terrified, “I shudder when I think of the awful doom of those unfortunate ones about whom I once gave secret information so innocently. It is horrible—horrible,” and she covered her drawn, haggard countenance with her slim, white hands.
“Never shall I forget that moment when poor Arthur Rumbold fell dead at my feet—shot down mercilessly because he was in the act of revealing to me the terrible truth,” she cried. “The memory of that ghastly moment lives ever within me—the dead face still stares at me, and I never seem able to get away from it. He had an intuition that his enemies, having found out that he had discovered the grim secret of the house in Clipstone Street, were following him with the intention of killing him in secret. They had obtained his photograph, and intended that he should die. Therefore, knowing that he was followed he had come, ill-dressed and disguised, by a circuitous route to Charlton Wood. Naturally the police, when they found him dead, believed him to be a tramp, while I, of course, was in hourly terror that the letters he had secured from Vickers’s rooms and my miniature, which I knew he wore, would be found upon him, and thus connect me with the crime. In breathless dread I existed for days and days, and never knew until now that you had secured them prior to the arrival of the police.”
“You addressed in cipher a message in an advertisement to someone whom you called ‘Nello,’” I said. “Who was he?”
“The man John Parham. He had always expressed pity for me. To the others he was known as Nello, his real name being Lionel. I was mistaken, however. He was no better than the others. The cipher they had given to me in order that I could communicate with them in secret if occasion demanded.”
At six o’clock that same evening, after Sybil had returned to her mother’s house in Grosvenor Street, I entered the Tottenham Court Road Police Station, and there found Pickering anxiously awaiting me.
“I wasn’t far wrong, Mr Hughes,” he exclaimed quickly. “Parham came to Clipstone Street just before noon, and dropped into Nicholls’ hands. Winsloe somehow got wind of the affair, and has bolted—on his way to the Continent, probably. We’ve circulated his description and hope to get him. But he’s a wily bird, it seems, from all accounts. Your friend Domville was a pretty tough customer, too,” he added.
“Why? I don’t quite follow you.”
“Well, when I got back here and went to his cell I found him stone dead. He’d poisoned himself! Swallowed a strychnine pill.”
“Because he was the murderer of Arthur Rumbold,” I answered. “Miss Burnet will later on explain everything.”
“H’m,” he grunted. “A pretty complicated bit of business, when all the threads are gathered up.”
There were still a few other matters to investigate, I pointed out, and an hour later we went out to Sydenham Hill, and there saw Mrs Parham and Miss O’Hara. When we told the poor lady of her husband’s arrest, and the charge against him, she fainted. Then, presently, when she came to, she confessed that soon after her marriage she had had certain suspicions aroused, for she discovered that her husband was wanted by the French police for some offence committed in Bordeaux. The secret cavity had been made in the drawing-room floor by him, and in it he kept his private papers. Her own opinion was that the agents of French police wanted to search there for certain evidence, the evidence of that gruesome eye, no doubt, but knowing that no English magistrate would grant them a search-warrant they resolved to make a raid on the place, as though they were thieves. Though they overlooked the strange eye which, with some ulterior motive Parham had preserved, they nevertheless secured sufficient evidence to warrant them in applying for the man’s extradition for the murder of a banker at Bordeaux, which indeed the French Consulate-General had done three weeks previously. Miss O’Hara, it appeared, had accidentally discovered the cipher hidden behind a heavy wardrobe in one of the bedrooms, and by its means had read my messages and gone to Baker Street and to Dean’s Yard out of sheer curiosity.
Surely I need not dwell upon the boundless delight with which poor, ill-judged and helpless Sybil was hailed on her return to Grosvenor Street, or the sensation when that same evening in the drawing-room, before her mother, Jack, Cynthia and Lord Wydcombe, she repeated the whole of the strange circumstances, just as she had related them to me.
Jack was furious, for he saw how cleverly he had been fleeced by Ellice Winsloe, while I, on my part, turned to the little love of my youth, saying frankly,—
“As Tibbie seems to be still in fear that the French police may apply for her extradition on account of the sale of the naval secret to our Admiralty, she may be inclined to change her nationality in real earnest. She can do this by marriage, easier than by letters of naturalisation, and as we are man and wife and poor in the eyes of Camberwell, so, if Tibbie consents, will we become the same in the eyes of Society.”
For answer she clung to me quickly with a cry of joy, and allowed me to kiss away the tears from her dear face, while Jack clapped me heartily upon the shoulder and said,—
“Wilfrid, old fellow! It’s just as it should be. Tibbie’s loved you for years. Everybody who wasn’t blind has seen that. You’ve saved her, and you’ve a right to her.”
And five minutes later my well-beloved and I were receiving the congratulations of the whole family.
What else need I say?
To tell you that we are now living in our pretty rose-embowered home near Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, which Lady Scarcliff bought and gave to Tibbie as a wedding present, and that we are supremely happy in each other’s love is only to tell you what you already know. The smart set know Tibbie no more, for she is content with her simple, healthful country life. And she is all in all to me—my love.
Winsloe, who has been traced to Buenos Ayres, has not yet been arrested, although Pickering is still confident of success, but Parham and Vickers are now awaiting trial on the very serious charges of blackmail, robbery and murder. Very little evidence was given before the magistrate at Bow Street, but at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, London will surely be startled by the sensational evidence which the police will give concerning that grim dark house in Clipstone Street—the House of Doom.
Death sentences await both prisoners, without a doubt.
“Whatsoever a Man Soweth, that shall he also Reap.”
The End.