Chapter Nine.

Chapter Nine.Strictly in Secret.Thursday night was wet and dismal in London as I stood outside the underground railway station at King’s Cross at eight o’clock, keeping my appointment with the Honourable Sybil.There was a good deal of traffic and bustle in the Pentonville Road; the shops were still open, and the working-class population, notwithstanding the rain, were out with their baskets, making their purchases after their day’s labour.At that spot in the evening one sees a veritable panorama of London life, its humours and its tragedies, for there five of the great arteries of traffic converge, while every two minutes the subterranean railway belches forth its hurrying, breathless crowds to swell the number of passers-by.The station front towards the King’s Cross Road is somewhat in the shadow, and there I stood in patience and in wonder.What Eric and had discovered in Winsloe’s kitbag had rendered the mystery the more tantalising, it being a cheap carte-de-visite photograph of the dead stranger—a picture which showed him in a dark tweed suit and golf-cap stuck slightly askew, as many young men of the working-class wear their caps.We were both greatly puzzled. How came the portrait in Ellice’s possession? And why, if he were not in fear of some secret being divulged, did he not identify the stranger?Again I recollected well how Sybil had declared her intention to marry Ellice. For what reason? Was it in order to prevent her own secret being exposed?We had replaced the photograph—which, unfortunately, bore no photographer’s name—re-locked the bag, and left the room utterly confounded.During the two days that followed both of us had watched Winsloe carefully, and had seen his ill-concealed anxiety lest the dead man should be identified by Jack. Once or twice, as was but natural, at table or in the billiard-room, Scarcliff had referred to the strange affair and declared,—“I’m sure I’ve seen the poor chap before, but where, I can’t for the life of me recollect.”The face was constantly puzzling him, and thus Winsloe remained anxious and agitated.In order to watch and learn what I could, I remained Jack’s guest until after the inquest. The inquiry was duly held at the Spread Eagle at Midhurst, with the usual twelve respectable tradesmen as Jurymen, and created great excitement in the little town. Ellice went out shooting with Wydcombe on that day, while Jack, Eric and myself drove over to hear the evidence.There was very little to hear. The affair was still a complete mystery. According to the two doctors who had made the examination the stranger had been shot through the heart about eight hours prior to his discovery—murdered by an unknown hand, for although the police had made a strict search the weapon had not been discovered.The fact that not a scrap of anything remained to lead to the dead man’s identity puzzled the police, more especially the absence of the tab from the back of the coat. The two detectives from London sat beside us and listened to the evidence with dissatisfaction. Booth made his statement, and then the inquiry was formally adjourned.There was nothing else. Both police and public were puzzled and the coroner remarked to the jury that he hoped when they next met some information would be forthcoming which might lead to the stranger’s identity.We drove back in the dog-cart, and on the way Jack turned to me, saying,—“I’d give worlds to know the real truth of that affair. I’m quite positive I’ve seen the face somewhere, but where, I can’t fix.”“That’s a pity,” Eric remarked. “One day, however, it’ll come to you, and when it does we may hope to discover the guilty person.”That night in the billiard-room Winsloe asked us what had taken place at the inquest, endeavouring to put his question unconcernedly. Eric and I could, however, see how anxious he was.“Nobody knows yet who he is,” Jack answered, as he chalked his cue preparatory to making a shot. “The police have discovered nothing—except that a woman was seen coming from the wood just about four o’clock.”“A woman!” I cried, staring at him. “Who said so? It was not given in evidence.”“No,” he replied. “Booth told me just as we came out that somebody had said so, but that he did not give it in evidence, as he considered it wiser to say nothing.”I held my breath.“Who was the woman?” asked Winsloe, apparently as surprised as myself.“He didn’t tell me. In fact, I don’t think she was recognised. If she had been, he would, of course, have interrogated her by this time.”Ellice Winsloe was silent. I saw as he stood back in the shadow from the table that his brows had contracted and that he was pensive and puzzled. And yet upstairs in his bag he had a portrait of the dead man, and was, therefore, well aware of his identity.Now that we reflected we agreed that we really knew very little of Ellice Winsloe. He was Jack’s friend rather than ours. The son of a Cornishman whose income was derived from his interest in certain tin mines, he had, on his father’s death, been left well off. Jack had known him at Magdalen, but had lost sight of him for some years, when of a sudden they met again one night while at supper at the Savoy, and their old friendship had been renewed. Ellice, it appeared, was well known in a certain set in town, and up to the present moment we had both voted him as a good all-round sportsman, a good fellow and a gentleman. But this secret knowledge which he refused to betray, and his evident fear lest the dead man be identified, aroused our serious suspicions.“I wonder,” suggested Eric, when we were alone in my room on the night of the inquest, “I wonder whether Ellice was in hiding in those bushes watching us search the body? Do you know, the idea has been in my mind all day,” he added.“If he was, then we are placed in a very awkward position,” I said. “He may make a statement to the police.”“No. I don’t think he’ll do that. If he did he would betray his own knowledge,” was my friend’s answer.The next day passed uneventfully, and beyond the general surprise at Tibbie’s continued absence there was nothing unusual in the household at Ryhall Place.Late that night Mason returned, saying that her mistress had driven the car to the Bath Hotel, at Bournemouth, and put it into the garage. Three hours later she left the hotel to go for a walk, but did not return. After she had gone the maid had, it seemed, found a letter in which her mistress ordered her to remain there until Wednesday, and telling her that if she did not return then she was to go back to Ryhall and send the chauffeur to Bournemouth for the car.Mason, used to Tibbie’s erratic ways, thought little of it. Her mistress travelled a great deal, had a very large circle of friends, and besides, was entirely unconventional and knew well how to take care of herself. Therefore the maid had remained until midday on Wednesday and then returned to Ryhall.“I’m getting a little anxious about Tibbie,” remarked old Lady Scarcliff in the drawing-room that evening. “This kind of thing is not at all proper—flying about the country alone.”Jack laughed.“No good worrying about Tibbie, mater. She’ll turn up all right to-morrow, or you’ll get a wire from her. You remember that time she met the Hursts in Nice and went off yachting with them down the Mediterranean, and we didn’t know where she was for three weeks. And then she calmly said she’d quite forgotten to tell us where she was going.”“Ah, I remember,” said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I liked immensely. “I do wish she would consider my feelings a little more.”With that the subject dropped.Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully as the wife of a compositor with forty shillings a week?Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a lady?I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back after the day’s toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road, and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the fugitive.“Tibbie!” I cried. “Then you’ve really come, after all?”“Of course,” was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. “When I make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can’t talk here, can we?”A hansom was passing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile,—“Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?”“My wife!” I echoed. “By Jove, yes. I forgot that,” and I recollected the strange game I was playing.“Don’t Mason’s things fit me well? She’s just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they’d come in useful.”I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.“It’s really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.“Yes. I’ve decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady’s-maid, and that we’ve been married nearly a year. Recollect that—in order to tell the same story. Where’s the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray’s Inn Road.“If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you’d be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.“No. What is it?” I asked.“Well—only—only that I wish you were my real husband,” she answered frankly. “If you were, then I should fear nothing. But it cannot be—I know that.”“What do you fear, Tibbie?” I asked, very seriously. “Tell me—do tell me.”“I—I can’t—I can’t now,” was her nervous response in a harder voice, turning her gaze away from mine. “If I did, you would withdraw your help—you would not dare to risk your own reputation and mine, as you are now doing, just because we are old boy-and-girl friends.”On we went through the streaming downpour along Chancery Lane and the Strand, the driver lowering the window, for the rain and mud were beating into our faces.“Well,” I said, “and what do you suggest doing?”“To-night I must disappear. I shall sleep in some obscure hotel across the water, and to-morrow you must call for me, and we’ll go together to fix upon our future ‘home.’” Then she inquired eagerly what impression her absence had produced at Ryhall, and I told her.For a time she remained serious and thoughtful. Her countenance had changed.“Then Mason came back, as I ordered her?”“Yes,” I answered, “but won’t she miss those things of hers you are now wearing?”“No. Because they were in a trunk that she had packed ready to send up to town. She won’t discover they’ve gone for some weeks, I feel sure.”She described her night run from Chichester to Bournemouth, how she had escaped from Mason, taken train direct up to Birmingham, remained that night at the Grand, then went on to Leicester, where she had spent a day, arriving in London that evening at seven o’clock. In Bull Street, Birmingham, she had been recognised by a friend, the wife of an alderman, and had some difficulty in explaining why she was there alone.Our present position was not without its embarrassments. I looked at the pretty woman who was about to pose as my wife, and asked,—“And what name shall we adopt? Have you thought of one?”“No. Let’s see,” she said. “How about Morton—Mr and Mrs William Morton?”“All right, then after to-morrow I shall be known as William Morton, compositor?”“And I shall be your very loving and devoted wife,” she laughed, her eyes dancing. “In any case, life in Camberwell will be an entirely new experience.”“Yes,” I said. “I only hope we sha’n’t be discovered. I must be careful—for I shall be compelled to lead a double life. I may be followed one day.”“Yes, but it is for my sake, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed, placing her small trembling hand upon my arm. “Remember that by doing this you are saving my life. Had it not been for you I should have been dead three days ago. My life is entirely in your hands. I am in deadly peril,” she added, in a low, desperate whisper. “You have promised to save me—and you will, Wilfrid—I know you will!”And she gripped my arm tightly, and looked into my face.Notwithstanding her assumed gaiety of manner, she was in terror.Was that dead, white face still haunting her—the face of the stranger who had, in secret, fallen by her hand?

Thursday night was wet and dismal in London as I stood outside the underground railway station at King’s Cross at eight o’clock, keeping my appointment with the Honourable Sybil.

There was a good deal of traffic and bustle in the Pentonville Road; the shops were still open, and the working-class population, notwithstanding the rain, were out with their baskets, making their purchases after their day’s labour.

At that spot in the evening one sees a veritable panorama of London life, its humours and its tragedies, for there five of the great arteries of traffic converge, while every two minutes the subterranean railway belches forth its hurrying, breathless crowds to swell the number of passers-by.

The station front towards the King’s Cross Road is somewhat in the shadow, and there I stood in patience and in wonder.

What Eric and had discovered in Winsloe’s kitbag had rendered the mystery the more tantalising, it being a cheap carte-de-visite photograph of the dead stranger—a picture which showed him in a dark tweed suit and golf-cap stuck slightly askew, as many young men of the working-class wear their caps.

We were both greatly puzzled. How came the portrait in Ellice’s possession? And why, if he were not in fear of some secret being divulged, did he not identify the stranger?

Again I recollected well how Sybil had declared her intention to marry Ellice. For what reason? Was it in order to prevent her own secret being exposed?

We had replaced the photograph—which, unfortunately, bore no photographer’s name—re-locked the bag, and left the room utterly confounded.

During the two days that followed both of us had watched Winsloe carefully, and had seen his ill-concealed anxiety lest the dead man should be identified by Jack. Once or twice, as was but natural, at table or in the billiard-room, Scarcliff had referred to the strange affair and declared,—

“I’m sure I’ve seen the poor chap before, but where, I can’t for the life of me recollect.”

The face was constantly puzzling him, and thus Winsloe remained anxious and agitated.

In order to watch and learn what I could, I remained Jack’s guest until after the inquest. The inquiry was duly held at the Spread Eagle at Midhurst, with the usual twelve respectable tradesmen as Jurymen, and created great excitement in the little town. Ellice went out shooting with Wydcombe on that day, while Jack, Eric and myself drove over to hear the evidence.

There was very little to hear. The affair was still a complete mystery. According to the two doctors who had made the examination the stranger had been shot through the heart about eight hours prior to his discovery—murdered by an unknown hand, for although the police had made a strict search the weapon had not been discovered.

The fact that not a scrap of anything remained to lead to the dead man’s identity puzzled the police, more especially the absence of the tab from the back of the coat. The two detectives from London sat beside us and listened to the evidence with dissatisfaction. Booth made his statement, and then the inquiry was formally adjourned.

There was nothing else. Both police and public were puzzled and the coroner remarked to the jury that he hoped when they next met some information would be forthcoming which might lead to the stranger’s identity.

We drove back in the dog-cart, and on the way Jack turned to me, saying,—

“I’d give worlds to know the real truth of that affair. I’m quite positive I’ve seen the face somewhere, but where, I can’t fix.”

“That’s a pity,” Eric remarked. “One day, however, it’ll come to you, and when it does we may hope to discover the guilty person.”

That night in the billiard-room Winsloe asked us what had taken place at the inquest, endeavouring to put his question unconcernedly. Eric and I could, however, see how anxious he was.

“Nobody knows yet who he is,” Jack answered, as he chalked his cue preparatory to making a shot. “The police have discovered nothing—except that a woman was seen coming from the wood just about four o’clock.”

“A woman!” I cried, staring at him. “Who said so? It was not given in evidence.”

“No,” he replied. “Booth told me just as we came out that somebody had said so, but that he did not give it in evidence, as he considered it wiser to say nothing.”

I held my breath.

“Who was the woman?” asked Winsloe, apparently as surprised as myself.

“He didn’t tell me. In fact, I don’t think she was recognised. If she had been, he would, of course, have interrogated her by this time.”

Ellice Winsloe was silent. I saw as he stood back in the shadow from the table that his brows had contracted and that he was pensive and puzzled. And yet upstairs in his bag he had a portrait of the dead man, and was, therefore, well aware of his identity.

Now that we reflected we agreed that we really knew very little of Ellice Winsloe. He was Jack’s friend rather than ours. The son of a Cornishman whose income was derived from his interest in certain tin mines, he had, on his father’s death, been left well off. Jack had known him at Magdalen, but had lost sight of him for some years, when of a sudden they met again one night while at supper at the Savoy, and their old friendship had been renewed. Ellice, it appeared, was well known in a certain set in town, and up to the present moment we had both voted him as a good all-round sportsman, a good fellow and a gentleman. But this secret knowledge which he refused to betray, and his evident fear lest the dead man be identified, aroused our serious suspicions.

“I wonder,” suggested Eric, when we were alone in my room on the night of the inquest, “I wonder whether Ellice was in hiding in those bushes watching us search the body? Do you know, the idea has been in my mind all day,” he added.

“If he was, then we are placed in a very awkward position,” I said. “He may make a statement to the police.”

“No. I don’t think he’ll do that. If he did he would betray his own knowledge,” was my friend’s answer.

The next day passed uneventfully, and beyond the general surprise at Tibbie’s continued absence there was nothing unusual in the household at Ryhall Place.

Late that night Mason returned, saying that her mistress had driven the car to the Bath Hotel, at Bournemouth, and put it into the garage. Three hours later she left the hotel to go for a walk, but did not return. After she had gone the maid had, it seemed, found a letter in which her mistress ordered her to remain there until Wednesday, and telling her that if she did not return then she was to go back to Ryhall and send the chauffeur to Bournemouth for the car.

Mason, used to Tibbie’s erratic ways, thought little of it. Her mistress travelled a great deal, had a very large circle of friends, and besides, was entirely unconventional and knew well how to take care of herself. Therefore the maid had remained until midday on Wednesday and then returned to Ryhall.

“I’m getting a little anxious about Tibbie,” remarked old Lady Scarcliff in the drawing-room that evening. “This kind of thing is not at all proper—flying about the country alone.”

Jack laughed.

“No good worrying about Tibbie, mater. She’ll turn up all right to-morrow, or you’ll get a wire from her. You remember that time she met the Hursts in Nice and went off yachting with them down the Mediterranean, and we didn’t know where she was for three weeks. And then she calmly said she’d quite forgotten to tell us where she was going.”

“Ah, I remember,” said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I liked immensely. “I do wish she would consider my feelings a little more.”

With that the subject dropped.

Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.

As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully as the wife of a compositor with forty shillings a week?

Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a lady?

I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back after the day’s toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road, and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the fugitive.

“Tibbie!” I cried. “Then you’ve really come, after all?”

“Of course,” was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. “When I make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can’t talk here, can we?”

A hansom was passing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile,—

“Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?”

“My wife!” I echoed. “By Jove, yes. I forgot that,” and I recollected the strange game I was playing.

“Don’t Mason’s things fit me well? She’s just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they’d come in useful.”

I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.

“It’s really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.

“Yes. I’ve decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady’s-maid, and that we’ve been married nearly a year. Recollect that—in order to tell the same story. Where’s the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray’s Inn Road.

“If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you’d be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.

“No. What is it?” I asked.

“Well—only—only that I wish you were my real husband,” she answered frankly. “If you were, then I should fear nothing. But it cannot be—I know that.”

“What do you fear, Tibbie?” I asked, very seriously. “Tell me—do tell me.”

“I—I can’t—I can’t now,” was her nervous response in a harder voice, turning her gaze away from mine. “If I did, you would withdraw your help—you would not dare to risk your own reputation and mine, as you are now doing, just because we are old boy-and-girl friends.”

On we went through the streaming downpour along Chancery Lane and the Strand, the driver lowering the window, for the rain and mud were beating into our faces.

“Well,” I said, “and what do you suggest doing?”

“To-night I must disappear. I shall sleep in some obscure hotel across the water, and to-morrow you must call for me, and we’ll go together to fix upon our future ‘home.’” Then she inquired eagerly what impression her absence had produced at Ryhall, and I told her.

For a time she remained serious and thoughtful. Her countenance had changed.

“Then Mason came back, as I ordered her?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but won’t she miss those things of hers you are now wearing?”

“No. Because they were in a trunk that she had packed ready to send up to town. She won’t discover they’ve gone for some weeks, I feel sure.”

She described her night run from Chichester to Bournemouth, how she had escaped from Mason, taken train direct up to Birmingham, remained that night at the Grand, then went on to Leicester, where she had spent a day, arriving in London that evening at seven o’clock. In Bull Street, Birmingham, she had been recognised by a friend, the wife of an alderman, and had some difficulty in explaining why she was there alone.

Our present position was not without its embarrassments. I looked at the pretty woman who was about to pose as my wife, and asked,—

“And what name shall we adopt? Have you thought of one?”

“No. Let’s see,” she said. “How about Morton—Mr and Mrs William Morton?”

“All right, then after to-morrow I shall be known as William Morton, compositor?”

“And I shall be your very loving and devoted wife,” she laughed, her eyes dancing. “In any case, life in Camberwell will be an entirely new experience.”

“Yes,” I said. “I only hope we sha’n’t be discovered. I must be careful—for I shall be compelled to lead a double life. I may be followed one day.”

“Yes, but it is for my sake, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed, placing her small trembling hand upon my arm. “Remember that by doing this you are saving my life. Had it not been for you I should have been dead three days ago. My life is entirely in your hands. I am in deadly peril,” she added, in a low, desperate whisper. “You have promised to save me—and you will, Wilfrid—I know you will!”

And she gripped my arm tightly, and looked into my face.

Notwithstanding her assumed gaiety of manner, she was in terror.

Was that dead, white face still haunting her—the face of the stranger who had, in secret, fallen by her hand?

Chapter Ten.Explains Certain Important Facts.That night she remained at a small quiet hotel near Waterloo Station, a place patronised by third-class passengers from the West of England, and at ten o’clock next morning I called for her.To disguise oneself as a working-man is no easy matter. I had experienced one difficulty which I had not foreseen, namely, how to allay the suspicions of my man, Budd, when he found me going out in the cheap clothes and hat I had purchased at an outfitter’s in the Lambeth Road on the previous night.On getting up I dressed myself in them, and then examined myself in the glass. I cut a figure that was, in my eyes, ridiculous. The suit bore a stiff air and odour of newness that was tantalising, yet I saw no way of altering it, save by pressing out the creases, and with that object I called Budd, who first looked me up and down, and then regarded me as though I had taken leave of my senses.“Is that a new suit, sir?” he asked, scrutinising it.“Yes, Budd,” I replied. “Now, you see what it is. I want to appear like a working-man,” I added confidentially. “The truth is I’m watching somebody, though, of course, you’ll say nothing.”“Of course not, sir,” he answered discreetly, for he was a reliable servant.Then I took counsel with him how to take off the palpable newness of the clothes, and he, like the clever valet he was, took them out, and after a while returned with them greatly improved.So when dressed in a cheap cotton shirt, a dark red tie, a suit of dark grey tweed, and a drab cap, I at last looked the typical working-man from South London wearing his best clothes.With Budd’s ready assistance I slipped out of my chambers into Bolton Street, and half an hour later arrived by omnibus at the obscure hotel where Tibbie awaited me.When she saw me she smiled merrily; and when we were alone together in the Waterloo Bridge Road she burst out laughing, saying,—“What an interesting pair we really do make. Your get-up is delightful, Wilfrid. You look a real compositor. But just put your cap a little on one side—it’s more graceful. What does Budd say?”“He first thought I’d taken leave of my senses; but I’ve allayed all his suspicions.”And so we went jauntily on along the wide road to the Obelisk and then up the London Road, where the costermongers’ barrows were ranged and hoarse-voiced men were crying their cheap wares to thrifty housewives.All was strange to her. She knew nothing of working London, and viewed everything with keen interest. I could not help smiling at her demure little figure in the cheap black dress.At the bottom of the London Road we entered a tram and went as far as Camberwell Gate, the neighbourhood where she had decided to establish herself as Mrs William Morton.Leaving the main road we turned down a long, dreary street of uniform smoke-blackened houses with deep areas in search of a card showing “apartments to let furnished,” and at last discovering one, we ascended the steps with considerable trepidation and knocked.“You talk to them,” I whispered. “You want three rooms furnished,” and next second the door opened and we were face to face with a big, red-faced woman whose bloated countenance was certainly due to the undue consumption of alcohol—probably that spirit so dear to the lower class feminine palate—Old Tom.Sybil explained that we were in search of apartments, and we were conducted up to the second floor and shown three dirty, badly-furnished rooms, the very sight of which was depressing.Tibbie’s gaze met mine, and then she inquired the price.“Of course, you’d want the use of the kitchen. That’s downstairs,” replied the woman.“Oh! there’s no kitchen, I see,” Tibbie remarked quickly, seizing that defect as a means of escape from the miserable place. “I’m afraid then they won’t suit us. My husband is always so very particular about having the kitchen on the same floor.”And then with many regrets we withdrew, and found ourselves once more out upon the pavement.House after house we visited, some very poor but clean, others dirty, neglected and malodorous. Surely there are no more dismal dwelling-places in England than furnished lodgings in South London. Through the Boyson and Albany Roads, through Villa Street and Faraday Street we searched, but discovered no place where Tibbie could possibly live. Tousled-haired women were mostly the landladies, evil-faced scowling creatures who drank gin, and talked with that nasal twang so essentially the dialect of once-rural Camberwell.At last in Neate Street, a quiet thoroughfare lying between the Camberwell and Old Kent Roads, we saw a card in the parlour window of a small house lying back from the street behind a strip of smoke-dried garden. On inquiry the landlady, a clean, hard-working, middle-aged woman, took us upstairs, and there we found three cheaply-furnished rooms with tiny kitchen all bearing the hall-mark of the hire system.The woman, who seemed a respectable person, told us that she had been a parlour-maid in the employ of a lady at Kensington, and her husband was foreman in a mineral-water factory in the neighbourhood.Tibbie was struck with the woman’s homely manner. She was from Devonshire, and the way she spoke of her own village showed her to be a true lover of the country.“My husband, Mr Morton, is a compositor on a newspaper in Fleet Street and is always away at nights,” Tibbie explained. “We’ve been married nearly a year. I, too, was in service—a lady’s-maid.”“Ah! I thought you ’ad been,” replied the landlady, whose name was Williams. “You speak so refined.”So after re-examining the rooms Tibbie seated herself in the wicker armchair of the little parlour, and leaning back suggested that we should engage the apartments.To this I, of course, agreed, and having given Mrs Williams half a sovereign as deposit, we left promising to take possession with our personal belongings—that same evening.Outside, Tibbie expressed herself well pleased.“I rather like that woman. She’s honest and genuine, I’m sure,” she declared. “Now I must buy a second-hand trunk and some clothes suited to my station as your humble and obedient wife,” she laughed.So we went through into the Old Kent Road, and there purchased two big old travelling trunks, into which we afterwards placed the parcels which she had purchased at a cheap draper’s. Then, just before dusk, we returned to our new abode and entered into possession. We had tea together, prepared for us by Mrs Williams.“You really make a model husband, Wilfrid,” she laughed when we were alone, holding her cup in her hand. “I suppose you’ll have to go to work very soon. I wonder what time compositors go to work at night?”“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” I declared. “I must find out. I suppose about seven or eight. But,” I added, “I hope you will be comfortable, and that you won’t be too dull.”“I shall work,” she said. “I’ll keep the rooms clean and dusted, and when I’ve got nothing to do there’s always needlework.”“We must pretend to be very frugal, you know,” I urged. “A compositor’s wages are not high.”“Of course. Leave that to me. You’ll have to buy some more clothes. A Sunday suit, for instance, and a pair of squeaky boots.”She had made no mention of the affair in Charlton Wood, but on the excuse that she might be lonely when I had left her, she had bought both the morning and evening papers, although as yet she had not glanced at them.Besides posing as William Morton I had much else to do, and many inquiries to make. I intended to lose no time in ascertaining who was the man living on Sydenham Hill, and whether he had any acquaintance with the dead unknown.For quite an hour we were alone in the rather cosy little parlour, the blind down and the gas lit. The furniture was indeed a strange contrast to that at Ryhall, yet the couple of wicker armchairs were decidedly comfortable, and the fire gave out a pleasant warmth as we sat near it.“Ours is a curious position, Wilfrid, isn’t it?” she whispered at last, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.“What would the world think if they knew the truth?”“If they knew the truth,” she said, seriously, “they would admire you for your self-sacrifice in assisting a helpless woman. Yet it is really very amusing,” and Tibbie, so well known and popular in the smart set of London, leaned back and smiled.I was about to refer to the mystery of her flight, yet I hesitated. There was time for that, I thought, when she was more settled in her hiding-place.It was certainly a novel experience to pose as the husband of Tibbie—the gay, merry, vivacious Tibbie Burnet, who was the life and soul of the go-ahead set in which she moved, and as we sat chatting we had many a good laugh over the ludicrous situation in which we found ourselves.“You’ll have to pretend, in any case, to be very fond of me,” she laughed.“I suppose I ought to call you ‘dear’ sometimes,” I remarked humorously.“Yes, dear,” she responded, with the final word accentuated. “And I shall call you William—my dear Willie.”“And what am I to call you?”“Oh! Molly would be a good name. Yes. Call me Molly,” and she held her new wedding ring before my eyes with a tantalising laugh.“We shall have to be very careful to keep up the fiction,” I said. “These people will, no doubt, watch us at first.”“I shall soon make friends of Mrs Williams,” she said. “Leave that to me. I can be circumspect enough when occasion requires. But—oh—I’d so love to smoke a cigarette.”“A cigarette!” I cried, horrified; “women don’t smoke in this neighbourhood. Whatever you do, don’t smoke when I’m not here, they’ll smell it at once.”“Yes,” she sighed. “The ideas of the poor people are quite different to ours, aren’t they?” she reflected.At that moment there was a tap at the door, and the landlady begged leave to introduce her husband, a rather tall, well-set-up man with a closely-cropped dark beard.He greeted me pleasantly, and expressed a hope that we should be comfortable.“The missis will do all she can for Mrs Morton, I’m sure,” she said. “I hear you’re on night-work.”“Yes, unfortunately,” I said, “our work is mostly at night, you know—getting ready the next day’s paper.”He was affable from the first, and apparently entirely unsuspicious, for he sent his wife downstairs for a jug of ale, and I was compelled to take a glass with him in order to cement our acquaintanceship, after which he and his wife discreetly withdrew with, I hope, the opinion that we were “a very nice, quiet couple.”At eight o’clock I took leave of Tibbie after we had had a supper of cold meat. She rather missed her dinner, but assured me that she would soon get used to dining in the middle of the day. Then, after seeing that she was quite comfortable, and that the locks on the doors acted, I shook hands with her.“Good-bye, Willie dear,” she laughed. “Come home early, won’t you?”“Of course,” I replied, echoing her laugh, and then as William Morton I went out to my work.Walking through Trafalgar Road I found myself in the Old Kent Road, and presently hailing a hansom I drove as far as Piccadilly Circus, where I alighted and went on foot to my rooms.As I entered Eric Domville came to the door of my sitting-room to meet me. He had been awaiting my return.I saw from his face that something had occurred.“Why, Eric—you?” I gasped. “What has happened?”He placed his forefinger to his lips, indicative of silence, and glanced behind me along the hall to the room wherein Budd had disappeared. Then, when I had passed into my own cosy den, he closed the door carefully.“Yes,” he said, in a low, strained voice, “something has happened, old fellow—something serious. I’ve discovered a fact that puts an entirely new complexion upon the affair. You are both in gravest peril. Listen, and I’ll explain.”

That night she remained at a small quiet hotel near Waterloo Station, a place patronised by third-class passengers from the West of England, and at ten o’clock next morning I called for her.

To disguise oneself as a working-man is no easy matter. I had experienced one difficulty which I had not foreseen, namely, how to allay the suspicions of my man, Budd, when he found me going out in the cheap clothes and hat I had purchased at an outfitter’s in the Lambeth Road on the previous night.

On getting up I dressed myself in them, and then examined myself in the glass. I cut a figure that was, in my eyes, ridiculous. The suit bore a stiff air and odour of newness that was tantalising, yet I saw no way of altering it, save by pressing out the creases, and with that object I called Budd, who first looked me up and down, and then regarded me as though I had taken leave of my senses.

“Is that a new suit, sir?” he asked, scrutinising it.

“Yes, Budd,” I replied. “Now, you see what it is. I want to appear like a working-man,” I added confidentially. “The truth is I’m watching somebody, though, of course, you’ll say nothing.”

“Of course not, sir,” he answered discreetly, for he was a reliable servant.

Then I took counsel with him how to take off the palpable newness of the clothes, and he, like the clever valet he was, took them out, and after a while returned with them greatly improved.

So when dressed in a cheap cotton shirt, a dark red tie, a suit of dark grey tweed, and a drab cap, I at last looked the typical working-man from South London wearing his best clothes.

With Budd’s ready assistance I slipped out of my chambers into Bolton Street, and half an hour later arrived by omnibus at the obscure hotel where Tibbie awaited me.

When she saw me she smiled merrily; and when we were alone together in the Waterloo Bridge Road she burst out laughing, saying,—

“What an interesting pair we really do make. Your get-up is delightful, Wilfrid. You look a real compositor. But just put your cap a little on one side—it’s more graceful. What does Budd say?”

“He first thought I’d taken leave of my senses; but I’ve allayed all his suspicions.”

And so we went jauntily on along the wide road to the Obelisk and then up the London Road, where the costermongers’ barrows were ranged and hoarse-voiced men were crying their cheap wares to thrifty housewives.

All was strange to her. She knew nothing of working London, and viewed everything with keen interest. I could not help smiling at her demure little figure in the cheap black dress.

At the bottom of the London Road we entered a tram and went as far as Camberwell Gate, the neighbourhood where she had decided to establish herself as Mrs William Morton.

Leaving the main road we turned down a long, dreary street of uniform smoke-blackened houses with deep areas in search of a card showing “apartments to let furnished,” and at last discovering one, we ascended the steps with considerable trepidation and knocked.

“You talk to them,” I whispered. “You want three rooms furnished,” and next second the door opened and we were face to face with a big, red-faced woman whose bloated countenance was certainly due to the undue consumption of alcohol—probably that spirit so dear to the lower class feminine palate—Old Tom.

Sybil explained that we were in search of apartments, and we were conducted up to the second floor and shown three dirty, badly-furnished rooms, the very sight of which was depressing.

Tibbie’s gaze met mine, and then she inquired the price.

“Of course, you’d want the use of the kitchen. That’s downstairs,” replied the woman.

“Oh! there’s no kitchen, I see,” Tibbie remarked quickly, seizing that defect as a means of escape from the miserable place. “I’m afraid then they won’t suit us. My husband is always so very particular about having the kitchen on the same floor.”

And then with many regrets we withdrew, and found ourselves once more out upon the pavement.

House after house we visited, some very poor but clean, others dirty, neglected and malodorous. Surely there are no more dismal dwelling-places in England than furnished lodgings in South London. Through the Boyson and Albany Roads, through Villa Street and Faraday Street we searched, but discovered no place where Tibbie could possibly live. Tousled-haired women were mostly the landladies, evil-faced scowling creatures who drank gin, and talked with that nasal twang so essentially the dialect of once-rural Camberwell.

At last in Neate Street, a quiet thoroughfare lying between the Camberwell and Old Kent Roads, we saw a card in the parlour window of a small house lying back from the street behind a strip of smoke-dried garden. On inquiry the landlady, a clean, hard-working, middle-aged woman, took us upstairs, and there we found three cheaply-furnished rooms with tiny kitchen all bearing the hall-mark of the hire system.

The woman, who seemed a respectable person, told us that she had been a parlour-maid in the employ of a lady at Kensington, and her husband was foreman in a mineral-water factory in the neighbourhood.

Tibbie was struck with the woman’s homely manner. She was from Devonshire, and the way she spoke of her own village showed her to be a true lover of the country.

“My husband, Mr Morton, is a compositor on a newspaper in Fleet Street and is always away at nights,” Tibbie explained. “We’ve been married nearly a year. I, too, was in service—a lady’s-maid.”

“Ah! I thought you ’ad been,” replied the landlady, whose name was Williams. “You speak so refined.”

So after re-examining the rooms Tibbie seated herself in the wicker armchair of the little parlour, and leaning back suggested that we should engage the apartments.

To this I, of course, agreed, and having given Mrs Williams half a sovereign as deposit, we left promising to take possession with our personal belongings—that same evening.

Outside, Tibbie expressed herself well pleased.

“I rather like that woman. She’s honest and genuine, I’m sure,” she declared. “Now I must buy a second-hand trunk and some clothes suited to my station as your humble and obedient wife,” she laughed.

So we went through into the Old Kent Road, and there purchased two big old travelling trunks, into which we afterwards placed the parcels which she had purchased at a cheap draper’s. Then, just before dusk, we returned to our new abode and entered into possession. We had tea together, prepared for us by Mrs Williams.

“You really make a model husband, Wilfrid,” she laughed when we were alone, holding her cup in her hand. “I suppose you’ll have to go to work very soon. I wonder what time compositors go to work at night?”

“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” I declared. “I must find out. I suppose about seven or eight. But,” I added, “I hope you will be comfortable, and that you won’t be too dull.”

“I shall work,” she said. “I’ll keep the rooms clean and dusted, and when I’ve got nothing to do there’s always needlework.”

“We must pretend to be very frugal, you know,” I urged. “A compositor’s wages are not high.”

“Of course. Leave that to me. You’ll have to buy some more clothes. A Sunday suit, for instance, and a pair of squeaky boots.”

She had made no mention of the affair in Charlton Wood, but on the excuse that she might be lonely when I had left her, she had bought both the morning and evening papers, although as yet she had not glanced at them.

Besides posing as William Morton I had much else to do, and many inquiries to make. I intended to lose no time in ascertaining who was the man living on Sydenham Hill, and whether he had any acquaintance with the dead unknown.

For quite an hour we were alone in the rather cosy little parlour, the blind down and the gas lit. The furniture was indeed a strange contrast to that at Ryhall, yet the couple of wicker armchairs were decidedly comfortable, and the fire gave out a pleasant warmth as we sat near it.

“Ours is a curious position, Wilfrid, isn’t it?” she whispered at last, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.

“What would the world think if they knew the truth?”

“If they knew the truth,” she said, seriously, “they would admire you for your self-sacrifice in assisting a helpless woman. Yet it is really very amusing,” and Tibbie, so well known and popular in the smart set of London, leaned back and smiled.

I was about to refer to the mystery of her flight, yet I hesitated. There was time for that, I thought, when she was more settled in her hiding-place.

It was certainly a novel experience to pose as the husband of Tibbie—the gay, merry, vivacious Tibbie Burnet, who was the life and soul of the go-ahead set in which she moved, and as we sat chatting we had many a good laugh over the ludicrous situation in which we found ourselves.

“You’ll have to pretend, in any case, to be very fond of me,” she laughed.

“I suppose I ought to call you ‘dear’ sometimes,” I remarked humorously.

“Yes, dear,” she responded, with the final word accentuated. “And I shall call you William—my dear Willie.”

“And what am I to call you?”

“Oh! Molly would be a good name. Yes. Call me Molly,” and she held her new wedding ring before my eyes with a tantalising laugh.

“We shall have to be very careful to keep up the fiction,” I said. “These people will, no doubt, watch us at first.”

“I shall soon make friends of Mrs Williams,” she said. “Leave that to me. I can be circumspect enough when occasion requires. But—oh—I’d so love to smoke a cigarette.”

“A cigarette!” I cried, horrified; “women don’t smoke in this neighbourhood. Whatever you do, don’t smoke when I’m not here, they’ll smell it at once.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “The ideas of the poor people are quite different to ours, aren’t they?” she reflected.

At that moment there was a tap at the door, and the landlady begged leave to introduce her husband, a rather tall, well-set-up man with a closely-cropped dark beard.

He greeted me pleasantly, and expressed a hope that we should be comfortable.

“The missis will do all she can for Mrs Morton, I’m sure,” she said. “I hear you’re on night-work.”

“Yes, unfortunately,” I said, “our work is mostly at night, you know—getting ready the next day’s paper.”

He was affable from the first, and apparently entirely unsuspicious, for he sent his wife downstairs for a jug of ale, and I was compelled to take a glass with him in order to cement our acquaintanceship, after which he and his wife discreetly withdrew with, I hope, the opinion that we were “a very nice, quiet couple.”

At eight o’clock I took leave of Tibbie after we had had a supper of cold meat. She rather missed her dinner, but assured me that she would soon get used to dining in the middle of the day. Then, after seeing that she was quite comfortable, and that the locks on the doors acted, I shook hands with her.

“Good-bye, Willie dear,” she laughed. “Come home early, won’t you?”

“Of course,” I replied, echoing her laugh, and then as William Morton I went out to my work.

Walking through Trafalgar Road I found myself in the Old Kent Road, and presently hailing a hansom I drove as far as Piccadilly Circus, where I alighted and went on foot to my rooms.

As I entered Eric Domville came to the door of my sitting-room to meet me. He had been awaiting my return.

I saw from his face that something had occurred.

“Why, Eric—you?” I gasped. “What has happened?”

He placed his forefinger to his lips, indicative of silence, and glanced behind me along the hall to the room wherein Budd had disappeared. Then, when I had passed into my own cosy den, he closed the door carefully.

“Yes,” he said, in a low, strained voice, “something has happened, old fellow—something serious. I’ve discovered a fact that puts an entirely new complexion upon the affair. You are both in gravest peril. Listen, and I’ll explain.”

Chapter Eleven.Shows a Woman’s Weakness.Eric, standing with his back to the mantelshelf, revealed to me a fact that was both extraordinary and startling.“After you’d left Ryhall yesterday,” he said, “I was walking across the park to meet Cynthia, who’d gone out to pay a visit to that thin old parson’s wife over at Waltham, when, quite unexpectedly, I came across Ellice standing talking to a rather badly-dressed young woman. She was in shabby black, with a brown straw hat trimmed with violets, and an old fur tippet around her neck. They were under a tree a little aside from the by-path that leads across to Waltham, and were speaking excitedly. I was walking on the grass and they did not hear me approach. Suddenly she made some statement which caused him to hesitate and think. Then he gave her some money hurriedly from his pocket, and after a further conversation they parted, she proceeding towards the high road, while Winsloe went in the direction of the house. I followed at a respectable distance, and that afternoon, when we assembled in the hall for tea, he announced that he had been suddenly recalled to town. In this I suspected something, so when he left by the seven-thirty-five express I followed him here.”“Well?” I asked, looking straight into his face.“Well, he’s in search of Tibbie.”“Of Tibbie! What does he know?”“That woman who met him in the park told him something. She probably knew of your appointment.”“Why?”“Because this morning he went to Harker’s Hotel in Waterloo Road, and inquired for her. But you had very fortunately taken her away.”“Then if he knows of our appointment he will certainly follow me!” I said, in utter amazement.“Most certainly he will. You recognise the grave peril of the situation?”“I do,” I said, for I saw that Sybil must at once be seriously compromised. “But who could have known our secret? Who was the woman?”“I’ve never seen her before. She’s an entire stranger. But that she is aware of Tibbie’s movements is beyond doubt. You were evidently seen together when you met last night—or how would he know that she slept at Harker’s Hotel?”I was silent. I saw the very serious danger that now lay before us. Yet why was this man in search of Tibbie? He had proposed to her, she had said, and had been refused.I recalled to my companion the fact of the photograph of the dead man being found in his bag.“Yes,” Eric said. “He has recognised the victim but has some secret motive in remaining silent. Is it, I wonder, a motive of revenge?”“Against whom?”For a few moments he did not speak. Then he answered—“Against Tibbie.”I pursed my lips, for I discerned his meaning. Was it possible that Ellice Winsloe knew the truth?“Therefore, what are we to do? What do you suggest?” I asked.“You must not risk going to see Sybil to-morrow. Where is she?”I briefly explained all that we had done that day, and how and where she had gone into hiding.“Then you must send her an express letter in the morning. We must not go to see her. You are certainly watched.”“But think of her,” I said. “I am posing as her husband, and she will require my presence there to-morrow in order to complete the fiction.”“It’s too risky—far too risky,” Eric declared, shaking his head dubiously.“The only way is for you to keep watch upon Winsloe,” I suggested, “and warn me of his movements.”“But the woman—the woman who met him by appointment in the park? She may be in his employ as spy.”“Did Mason overhear anything that night when Sybil came to my room, I wonder,” I said.“Never mind how they got to know,” he exclaimed. “I tell you that you mustn’t go near Tibbie. It’s far too dangerous at this moment.”His words caused me considerable apprehension. How could I leave Sybil there alone? Would not Mrs Williams and her husband think it very strange? No. She had craved my assistance, and I had promised it. Therefore, at all risks I intended to fulfil my promise.To allay Eric’s fears, however, I pretended to agree with him, and made him promise to still keep watch upon Winsloe. Eric was my guest whenever in London; therefore I ordered Budd to prepare his room, and after a snack over at the club we sat smoking and talking until far into the night.Next morning my companion was early astir. He was in fear of Winsloe ascertaining the whereabouts of Sybil, and went forth to keep watch upon him, promising to return again that same evening. Winsloe had well-furnished rooms in King Street, St. James’s Square, was one of a go-ahead set of men about town, and a member of several of the gayest clubs frequented by thejeunesse dorée.It was both risky and difficult for me to get down to Neate Street, Camberwell, in my dress as a printer; yet against Eric’s advice I succeeded, travelling by a circuitous route to South Bermondsey Station and along the Rotherhithe New Road, in reaching Mr Williams’ a little after eleven o’clock.Sybil, looking fresh and neat, was eagerly awaiting me at the window, and when I entered the room she flew across to me, saying in a voice loud enough for the landlady to overhear,—“Oh! Willie, how very late you are. Been working overtime, I suppose?”“Yes, dear,” was my response; and we grinned at each other as we closed the door.“The time passes here awfully slowly,” she declared in a low voice. “I thought you were never coming. I shall have to get a few books to read.”“I was delayed,” I said, taking off my cloth cap and flinging it upon the sofa. “I found Eric Domville awaiting me. He came up from Ryhall to-day and told me some strange news.”“Strange news!” she gasped, turning deathly pale and clutching at the back of a chair in order to steady herself. “What—what news?”The truth was instantly plain. Her fear was that the mystery of the unknown had been discovered.I had quite inadvertently struck terror into her heart, for upon her countenance was that same haunted look as on that night when she had left Ryhall in secret.“What Eric has told me concerns Ellice Winsloe,” I said, much surprised, and yet allowing her agitation to pass unnoticed.“Ellice Winsloe. Is he—has he come to London?” she gasped, staring at me and starting.“Yes, and more. He knows that you slept the night before last at Harker’s. He called to see you an hour after we had left yesterday.”“He knows!” she cried in a low, terrified voice.“Ellice knows that I was there! Then he has followed me—he—he means to carry out his threat!”“What threat?”“Ah, no. I—I’m mad, Wilfrid. I—I don’t know what I’m saying!” she cried, pushing her hair from her brow with both her hands and pacing up and down the room. “But you will help me—won’t you?” she implored, halting before me and looking me straight in the face.“Help you—of course,” I said. “But I confess I can’t understand. This man only proposed marriage to you a fortnight ago.”“I know. I know. And I refused him. Ah! Wilfrid. I would rather kill myself than marry that man!”“Then you know something concerning him that is not in his favour?”“I know a great deal. I often wonder why Jack and he are such intimate friends.”“He’s rich, you said, and Lady Scarcliff approved of him.”“That is so,” she answered thoughtfully. “But the mater is ignorant of it all. Ah! if I only dare tell you. It would astound and stagger you.”“He is in search of you, that’s very clear,” I said, hoping to induce her to tell me something further.“But he must not find me,” she declared. “The day he discovers me I shall take my life,” she added in a hard, desperate voice.“Why? Do you fear him?”She made no answer, but her chin sank upon her breast.“Then tell me the truth, Tibbie,” I said. “He tried to compel you to marry him because he held some secret of yours that you do not wish to be known. Am I not right?”She nodded in the affirmative, and I saw that tears were in her fine eyes.What was the secret, I wondered? Was it the existence of that low-born lover, a photograph of whom he had carried in his bag? Did he hold over her a threat of exposure because he had become seized by a desire that she should be his wife? Many a woman has been forced into an odious marriage in order to preserve her secret.I looked into her pale haggard face and wondered. How beautiful she was in her terror and distress. She was in fear of that man, whose life was, when viewed in the plain light of day, somewhat mysterious. But what did she fear? Who was the man who had fallen by her hand?We had arranged that Mrs Williams should cook for us, and presently she came smilingly to lay the table, simply, but cleanly. Thus, our conversation was interrupted, but when alone again I returned to the subject, and she said, with a serious look,—“Wilfrid, he must not discover me. If he does—if he does, then all is at an end. Even you cannot save me.”“But I fear I may be followed here,” I said. “He knew that we met last night, or he would not have been aware that you slept at Harker’s. He, or someone employed by him, is watching me. I must remain away from you.”“Yes,” she remarked. “I quite foresee the danger, yet I shall be very lonely. And besides, what can I say to Mrs Williams?”“We’ll have to make an excuse that I’ve been sent into the country to work,” I said. “If I come daily here I’m quite certain Winsloe will discover you. This knowledge of his regarding our meeting the day before yesterday makes me suspicious.”“You are right,” she declared sadly. “He has means of knowing everything. No secret seems safe from that man, Wilfrid. I sometimes think—sometimes I think that—” and she hesitated.“That what?”But she did not reply. She was standing at the window gazing fixedly down into the grey, dismal street. The words she had uttered mechanically, just as though she were speaking to herself.“You told me, Tibbie, that if I pretended to be your husband that I might save you,” I remarked presently.“And so you may, providing Ellice Winsloe does not discover me. If he does—then all is useless—quite useless. I shall have compromised myself and placed you in an invidious position, all to no purpose.”“But by discretion—by my remaining away from you, and only coming here by stealth when I know that Winsloe is not watchful, I may still remain your husband in the eyes of these people.”“Yes, yes, Wilfrid,” she said eagerly, placing her nervous hand upon my shoulder and looking deeply into my eyes. “That is the only way. I must live here alone—in hiding. They must not find me. Let us have patience—patience always—and we may foil that man’s evil intentions. Ah! If you knew everything you would pity me. But you do not. You believe that I hold some guilty secret. Yes,” she added hoarsely, “it is a guilty secret, and how can I sufficiently thank you for trusting me as blindly as you do? I am very unworthy. You are the best friend, Wilfrid, that woman ever had. Can you wonder at the suggestion I made to you in the Long Gallery the other day?” Then she hesitated, still looking me straight in the face. “But you have forgiven me,” she went on with a sigh. “I thought that you loved me still—yes—I was very foolish. All women are so sometimes—all women who are terrified and unhappy, as I am!”And the tears again stood in her eyes as she bowed her beautiful head before me.

Eric, standing with his back to the mantelshelf, revealed to me a fact that was both extraordinary and startling.

“After you’d left Ryhall yesterday,” he said, “I was walking across the park to meet Cynthia, who’d gone out to pay a visit to that thin old parson’s wife over at Waltham, when, quite unexpectedly, I came across Ellice standing talking to a rather badly-dressed young woman. She was in shabby black, with a brown straw hat trimmed with violets, and an old fur tippet around her neck. They were under a tree a little aside from the by-path that leads across to Waltham, and were speaking excitedly. I was walking on the grass and they did not hear me approach. Suddenly she made some statement which caused him to hesitate and think. Then he gave her some money hurriedly from his pocket, and after a further conversation they parted, she proceeding towards the high road, while Winsloe went in the direction of the house. I followed at a respectable distance, and that afternoon, when we assembled in the hall for tea, he announced that he had been suddenly recalled to town. In this I suspected something, so when he left by the seven-thirty-five express I followed him here.”

“Well?” I asked, looking straight into his face.

“Well, he’s in search of Tibbie.”

“Of Tibbie! What does he know?”

“That woman who met him in the park told him something. She probably knew of your appointment.”

“Why?”

“Because this morning he went to Harker’s Hotel in Waterloo Road, and inquired for her. But you had very fortunately taken her away.”

“Then if he knows of our appointment he will certainly follow me!” I said, in utter amazement.

“Most certainly he will. You recognise the grave peril of the situation?”

“I do,” I said, for I saw that Sybil must at once be seriously compromised. “But who could have known our secret? Who was the woman?”

“I’ve never seen her before. She’s an entire stranger. But that she is aware of Tibbie’s movements is beyond doubt. You were evidently seen together when you met last night—or how would he know that she slept at Harker’s Hotel?”

I was silent. I saw the very serious danger that now lay before us. Yet why was this man in search of Tibbie? He had proposed to her, she had said, and had been refused.

I recalled to my companion the fact of the photograph of the dead man being found in his bag.

“Yes,” Eric said. “He has recognised the victim but has some secret motive in remaining silent. Is it, I wonder, a motive of revenge?”

“Against whom?”

For a few moments he did not speak. Then he answered—

“Against Tibbie.”

I pursed my lips, for I discerned his meaning. Was it possible that Ellice Winsloe knew the truth?

“Therefore, what are we to do? What do you suggest?” I asked.

“You must not risk going to see Sybil to-morrow. Where is she?”

I briefly explained all that we had done that day, and how and where she had gone into hiding.

“Then you must send her an express letter in the morning. We must not go to see her. You are certainly watched.”

“But think of her,” I said. “I am posing as her husband, and she will require my presence there to-morrow in order to complete the fiction.”

“It’s too risky—far too risky,” Eric declared, shaking his head dubiously.

“The only way is for you to keep watch upon Winsloe,” I suggested, “and warn me of his movements.”

“But the woman—the woman who met him by appointment in the park? She may be in his employ as spy.”

“Did Mason overhear anything that night when Sybil came to my room, I wonder,” I said.

“Never mind how they got to know,” he exclaimed. “I tell you that you mustn’t go near Tibbie. It’s far too dangerous at this moment.”

His words caused me considerable apprehension. How could I leave Sybil there alone? Would not Mrs Williams and her husband think it very strange? No. She had craved my assistance, and I had promised it. Therefore, at all risks I intended to fulfil my promise.

To allay Eric’s fears, however, I pretended to agree with him, and made him promise to still keep watch upon Winsloe. Eric was my guest whenever in London; therefore I ordered Budd to prepare his room, and after a snack over at the club we sat smoking and talking until far into the night.

Next morning my companion was early astir. He was in fear of Winsloe ascertaining the whereabouts of Sybil, and went forth to keep watch upon him, promising to return again that same evening. Winsloe had well-furnished rooms in King Street, St. James’s Square, was one of a go-ahead set of men about town, and a member of several of the gayest clubs frequented by thejeunesse dorée.

It was both risky and difficult for me to get down to Neate Street, Camberwell, in my dress as a printer; yet against Eric’s advice I succeeded, travelling by a circuitous route to South Bermondsey Station and along the Rotherhithe New Road, in reaching Mr Williams’ a little after eleven o’clock.

Sybil, looking fresh and neat, was eagerly awaiting me at the window, and when I entered the room she flew across to me, saying in a voice loud enough for the landlady to overhear,—

“Oh! Willie, how very late you are. Been working overtime, I suppose?”

“Yes, dear,” was my response; and we grinned at each other as we closed the door.

“The time passes here awfully slowly,” she declared in a low voice. “I thought you were never coming. I shall have to get a few books to read.”

“I was delayed,” I said, taking off my cloth cap and flinging it upon the sofa. “I found Eric Domville awaiting me. He came up from Ryhall to-day and told me some strange news.”

“Strange news!” she gasped, turning deathly pale and clutching at the back of a chair in order to steady herself. “What—what news?”

The truth was instantly plain. Her fear was that the mystery of the unknown had been discovered.

I had quite inadvertently struck terror into her heart, for upon her countenance was that same haunted look as on that night when she had left Ryhall in secret.

“What Eric has told me concerns Ellice Winsloe,” I said, much surprised, and yet allowing her agitation to pass unnoticed.

“Ellice Winsloe. Is he—has he come to London?” she gasped, staring at me and starting.

“Yes, and more. He knows that you slept the night before last at Harker’s. He called to see you an hour after we had left yesterday.”

“He knows!” she cried in a low, terrified voice.

“Ellice knows that I was there! Then he has followed me—he—he means to carry out his threat!”

“What threat?”

“Ah, no. I—I’m mad, Wilfrid. I—I don’t know what I’m saying!” she cried, pushing her hair from her brow with both her hands and pacing up and down the room. “But you will help me—won’t you?” she implored, halting before me and looking me straight in the face.

“Help you—of course,” I said. “But I confess I can’t understand. This man only proposed marriage to you a fortnight ago.”

“I know. I know. And I refused him. Ah! Wilfrid. I would rather kill myself than marry that man!”

“Then you know something concerning him that is not in his favour?”

“I know a great deal. I often wonder why Jack and he are such intimate friends.”

“He’s rich, you said, and Lady Scarcliff approved of him.”

“That is so,” she answered thoughtfully. “But the mater is ignorant of it all. Ah! if I only dare tell you. It would astound and stagger you.”

“He is in search of you, that’s very clear,” I said, hoping to induce her to tell me something further.

“But he must not find me,” she declared. “The day he discovers me I shall take my life,” she added in a hard, desperate voice.

“Why? Do you fear him?”

She made no answer, but her chin sank upon her breast.

“Then tell me the truth, Tibbie,” I said. “He tried to compel you to marry him because he held some secret of yours that you do not wish to be known. Am I not right?”

She nodded in the affirmative, and I saw that tears were in her fine eyes.

What was the secret, I wondered? Was it the existence of that low-born lover, a photograph of whom he had carried in his bag? Did he hold over her a threat of exposure because he had become seized by a desire that she should be his wife? Many a woman has been forced into an odious marriage in order to preserve her secret.

I looked into her pale haggard face and wondered. How beautiful she was in her terror and distress. She was in fear of that man, whose life was, when viewed in the plain light of day, somewhat mysterious. But what did she fear? Who was the man who had fallen by her hand?

We had arranged that Mrs Williams should cook for us, and presently she came smilingly to lay the table, simply, but cleanly. Thus, our conversation was interrupted, but when alone again I returned to the subject, and she said, with a serious look,—

“Wilfrid, he must not discover me. If he does—if he does, then all is at an end. Even you cannot save me.”

“But I fear I may be followed here,” I said. “He knew that we met last night, or he would not have been aware that you slept at Harker’s. He, or someone employed by him, is watching me. I must remain away from you.”

“Yes,” she remarked. “I quite foresee the danger, yet I shall be very lonely. And besides, what can I say to Mrs Williams?”

“We’ll have to make an excuse that I’ve been sent into the country to work,” I said. “If I come daily here I’m quite certain Winsloe will discover you. This knowledge of his regarding our meeting the day before yesterday makes me suspicious.”

“You are right,” she declared sadly. “He has means of knowing everything. No secret seems safe from that man, Wilfrid. I sometimes think—sometimes I think that—” and she hesitated.

“That what?”

But she did not reply. She was standing at the window gazing fixedly down into the grey, dismal street. The words she had uttered mechanically, just as though she were speaking to herself.

“You told me, Tibbie, that if I pretended to be your husband that I might save you,” I remarked presently.

“And so you may, providing Ellice Winsloe does not discover me. If he does—then all is useless—quite useless. I shall have compromised myself and placed you in an invidious position, all to no purpose.”

“But by discretion—by my remaining away from you, and only coming here by stealth when I know that Winsloe is not watchful, I may still remain your husband in the eyes of these people.”

“Yes, yes, Wilfrid,” she said eagerly, placing her nervous hand upon my shoulder and looking deeply into my eyes. “That is the only way. I must live here alone—in hiding. They must not find me. Let us have patience—patience always—and we may foil that man’s evil intentions. Ah! If you knew everything you would pity me. But you do not. You believe that I hold some guilty secret. Yes,” she added hoarsely, “it is a guilty secret, and how can I sufficiently thank you for trusting me as blindly as you do? I am very unworthy. You are the best friend, Wilfrid, that woman ever had. Can you wonder at the suggestion I made to you in the Long Gallery the other day?” Then she hesitated, still looking me straight in the face. “But you have forgiven me,” she went on with a sigh. “I thought that you loved me still—yes—I was very foolish. All women are so sometimes—all women who are terrified and unhappy, as I am!”

And the tears again stood in her eyes as she bowed her beautiful head before me.

Chapter Twelve.In the House of the Parhams.That evening, when I returned to Bolton Street, I found Eric awaiting me.Unseen, he had followed Winsloe to various places during the afternoon, but his movements were in no way suspicious. At Harker’s Hotel he had, it appeared, lost all trace of Sybil, and had probably employed a private detective to watch my movements.The adjourned inquest had been held at Midhurst, for in theGlobethere appeared a four-line paragraph saying that in the case of an unknown man found shot in Charlton Wood, a verdict of wilful murder had been returned, and the matter had been left in the hands of the police. A village tragedy attracts but little notice in London, and all the papers dismissed it in a paragraph of practically the same wording.That night we dined with two friends at the Trocadero, and next morning I set forth again upon my inquiries, leaving Eric to act as he thought best. My only promise to him was not to go near my pseudo wife.My first visit was to the pawnbroker’s in the Fulham Road, to whom I presented the vouchers I had found upon the dead man, and received on redeeming them a cheap silver Geneva watch and heavy antique gold ring, in which a single ruby was set.“You don’t recollect the gentleman who pledged these, I suppose?” I asked of the assistant.The young man, a smart, shrewd fellow, reflected a moment, and answered,—“Well, yes, I do remember something of him. We had an argument about the ring. He wanted five pounds on it, and I wouldn’t give it.”“What kind of fellow was he?” I asked, explaining that I had bought the tickets from a third person.“Oh, youngish—with a short brown beard. Evidently a gentleman who was hard up. We get lots of them in here.”A brown beard! Had he shaved and disguised himself before his interview with Tibbie?“Tall?” I asked.“No. Not very.”The description did not answer to that of the dead unknown.“A stranger?”“Quite. I’d never seen him before. But the truth is I recollect him because that ruby there is a valuable one. I had my doubts at the moment as to its genuineness, and as there were a lot of people waiting I had no time to examine it. So I lent him only a couple o’ quid on it.”“Then it’s worth more?”“Yes. If you bought the ticket cheap you’ve got a bargain. The guv’nor here would give you eighty quid for it, and be pleased.”I looked at it, and saw that it was a very fine stone. To me it seemed evident that the man who had pawned the watch and ring was not the man who had lost his life in Charlton Wood.“You think he was a gentleman?”“Well, he spoke like one, and seemed very much afraid of being seen. He hesitated when I asked him his name, so I wrote down the usual one—Green.”“And the address?”“I put that in also.”So finding I could discover nothing further, I carried away both watch and ring to add to the strange collection of objects which the dead man’s pockets had contained.Close to the corner of Park Lane I came face to face with Winsloe, dressed sprucely as usual in silk hat and frock coat, and he at once stopped and offered me his hand. Then, after greeting me, he turned on his heel and walked by my side, saying,—“I’m just strolling back to the Burlington. I’ll come with you.”“You left the Scarcliffs earlier than you expected, didn’t you?” I remarked.“Yes. I had some business in town,” was his brief response.“I see from the papers that they’ve discovered nothing regarding that affair in Charlton Wood.”“No,” he remarked in a mechanical tone. “And I don’t expect they ever will. The assassin, whoever he was, got away without leaving a trace,” and then he cleverly diverted our conversation into a different channel.I feared to discuss it further. The man was Sybil’s enemy, and therefore mine. He evidently knew that we had met on that evening of her arrival in London, and was actively at work to trace her.Indeed, when I afterwards reflected, I saw that in all probability he had watched me that morning, and had purposely encountered me.To each other we were outwardly still extremely friendly. Indeed I invited him to my rooms that evening to smoke, and he accepted, for he had a motive in so doing, while I, on my part, had resolved to watch him carefully.I lunched at the Bachelors’, and though anxious to go and see Sybil, I was compelled to content myself with sending her a telegram, saying that I had been ordered by my foreman to go up to Manchester in connection with some new linotype machinery, and must therefore be absent two or three days. I sent the message so that she might show it to Mrs Williams.Soon after four o’clock I set forth upon another expedition, namely, by train from Victoria to Upper Sydenham Station. The autumn dusk was falling when I turned into Sydenham Hill, the wide winding road of large detached houses leading from Forest Hill up to the Crystal Palace. Essentially the residence of the wealthy City man, and an eminently respectable district, the houses stand in their own grounds with big old trees around, commanding fine views of South London. I was in search of Keymer, and being directed by a postman, found it a little way higher up than the turning known as Rock Hill, a large old-fashioned red brick place, with fine old elms standing in the grounds. An oak fence divided it from the footway, and as I passed I saw that the pink-shaded electric lamps in the drawing-room were alight, while at the grand piano was sitting a neat female figure in black.A servant in a smart French cap was letting down the Venetian blinds, and as I watched through the gate I saw that the lady had stopped playing and turned upon the stool to speak to her.At the same instant the figure of a man stole across the room, a tall, shadowy figure, and came up behind the woman, causing her to start from her seat, while at that moment the blind was lowered, and the artistic interior was suddenly shut out from my view.One thing caused me to remain there in wonder. Perhaps my eyes had deceived me, but I could not help thinking that when that vague male figure crossed the room the woman started up with a look of terror. From where I stood I could not see distinctly, yet I felt certain that the person who had entered was unwelcome and unexpected.The other blinds had already been lowered, for it was now nearly dark, and beneath the wide portico a light shone above the door. The grounds were well kept, and the greenhouse beside the drawing-room showed careful attention, while on the gravelled drive were the wheel-marks of carriages. Mr John Parham was evidently well off, in all probability a City man, like most of his neighbours. I sauntered past, wondering by what means I could ascertain something about him.The doleful sound of the muffin-bell rang in the distance, and far up the road I saw the lamplighter going his round, the street lamps springing up from the darkness at regular intervals. I went towards him, and stopping him, made inquiries regarding the tenant of Keymer.“’E’s a very nice gentleman, sir,” replied the man. “Always gives good Christmas-boxes.”“Married?”“Yes, sir. But ’e has no children. They keep a carriage—one o’ them there open ones.”“Now I want to know something about him,” I said, slipping a coin into the man’s hand. “Do you happen to know anybody who could tell me?”The man looked at me suspiciously, and asked,—“Pardon me, sir, but you’re a detective, p’r’aps?”“No,” I laughed. “Not at all. It is merely private curiosity—over—well, over a little matter of business. I’m a business man—not a policeman.”“Well,” he said, “there’s ’Arry Laking, what keeps the gate of the Crystal Palace grounds in Palace Park Road. ’E’s their cook’s brother. ’E’d tell you something, for ’e often goes there when the family are out.”“Where’s Palace Park Road?”“Go up to the front of the Palace and keep round to the left till you come to the gate. It’s almost the other side of the grounds.”I acted upon his suggestion, and after walking some distance I came to the turnstile in the wall dividing the Palace grounds from the road, and there I found a middle-aged man in uniform idling over the evening paper, for that gate was little used, save by season-ticket holders.On inquiry I discovered that he was the man of whom I was in search, and after a little judicious greasing of the palm I induced him to tell me what he knew of his sister’s master and mistress.“Mr Parham is a wholesale jeweller in the city,” he said. “He often goes abroad for weeks at a time to buy. His wife is young, but Annie tells me she leads a very lonely life. They’re a wealthy, but an unhappy pair, that’s my opinion. Yet they know all the best people in Sydenham, and Mr Parham gives grand at-homes and dinner-parties.”“She’s unhappy, you say,” I ventured, recollecting the curious scene I had witnessed at the instant of lowering the blinds.“Yes. Annie has overheard their quarrels. The master, she says, has such a hold over the mistress that she dare not call her soul her own. There was a scene between them about three weeks ago. They quarrelled at the dinner-table, and Mrs Parham left the room, went upstairs, wrote a letter and tried to commit suicide by drinking some sublimate. Her maid got hold of the letter, and then succeeded in saving her mistress’s life, for fortunately the solution wasn’t strong enough. But it made her very ill, and she was in bed a week, while her husband took himself off, and never inquired after her. The servants all pity poor little Mrs Parham, and say that her husband’s a brute to her. There was another terrible row once, when her brother called and overheard Mr Parham threaten her in the next room. They say that the two men came to blows, and that he gave Parham a thorough good hiding, which he richly deserved. Mrs Parham’s brother is not a fellow to be trifled with, they say, for Parham had to plead for his life. Afterwards, the beaten dog vowed vengeance, and the poor wife had a terrible time of it.”“A rather unhappy household,” I remarked.“Very. Annie tells me a lot. She wouldn’t stay there—nor would any of the servants—only the wages are so good.”I saw that the man knew more than he cared to divulge. He was no friend of Parham’s, and was certainly on the side of the ill-used wife.“Is Parham young or old?”“Not very old—fat, fairish, rather bald, with a round face and a long nose. Mrs Parham is quite young, about twenty-six, and people call her good-lookin’, but myself I’m no judge o’ women. I’ve my missus, and she’s the best-lookin’ of ’em all in my eyes. Of course, Mrs Parham dresses smartly, and drives in a fine carriage. She comes to the Saturday concerts sometimes.”“You don’t like Parham,” I said. “Come, tell the truth.”“No, I don’t,” he declared, after a slight hesitation. “He’s a wrong ’un—I know that. Only, of course, that’s strictly between you and me,” he added in confidence.“I’d like to know your sister,” I said, quite frankly. “I’ll make it worth her while if she’ll ask me in and let me see the house. She might do it when her mistress is out.”He shook his head dubiously.“I don’t think she’d let a stranger see inside, sir.”“Well, there’s no harm in trying. Will you take me and introduce me?” I asked. “Take me this evening. When do you go off duty?”“In about half an hour.”“Then we’ll walk down there and call,” I suggested. “Here’s my card,” and I handed him the card of a barrister friend of mine which bore an address in the Temple.He hesitated, but when he found another half-sovereign in his palm he consented, not, however, without a good deal of curiosity as to my real object.What he had told me regarding the Parhams, in addition to that strange scene I had witnessed from the roadway, aroused my suspicion. I somehow felt confident that there was some connection between this man who ill-treated his wife so brutally and the unfortunate victim of the tragedy in rural Sussex I waited in a neighbouring bar until Laking came off duty, and then we walked together down Sydenham Hill to the house called Keymer.My companion entered by the tradesmen’s lych-gate, and going up to the kitchen door, rapped at it, whereupon a big buxom woman in an apron opened it, and recognising him, gasped,—“Oh! ’Arry, I’m so glad you’ve come! They told you about it, I suppose?”“About what? I don’t know anything,” he replied, surprised at her white, scared face and the terrified look of one of the maids who stood behind her.“Then go into the drawin’-room and look! It’s awful. There’s a curse on this ’ouse. Go and see for yourself.”Startled, he hurried quickly through the kitchen and along the big, well-furnished hall, I following closely behind him, eager and bewildered.And what we saw was amazing.

That evening, when I returned to Bolton Street, I found Eric awaiting me.

Unseen, he had followed Winsloe to various places during the afternoon, but his movements were in no way suspicious. At Harker’s Hotel he had, it appeared, lost all trace of Sybil, and had probably employed a private detective to watch my movements.

The adjourned inquest had been held at Midhurst, for in theGlobethere appeared a four-line paragraph saying that in the case of an unknown man found shot in Charlton Wood, a verdict of wilful murder had been returned, and the matter had been left in the hands of the police. A village tragedy attracts but little notice in London, and all the papers dismissed it in a paragraph of practically the same wording.

That night we dined with two friends at the Trocadero, and next morning I set forth again upon my inquiries, leaving Eric to act as he thought best. My only promise to him was not to go near my pseudo wife.

My first visit was to the pawnbroker’s in the Fulham Road, to whom I presented the vouchers I had found upon the dead man, and received on redeeming them a cheap silver Geneva watch and heavy antique gold ring, in which a single ruby was set.

“You don’t recollect the gentleman who pledged these, I suppose?” I asked of the assistant.

The young man, a smart, shrewd fellow, reflected a moment, and answered,—

“Well, yes, I do remember something of him. We had an argument about the ring. He wanted five pounds on it, and I wouldn’t give it.”

“What kind of fellow was he?” I asked, explaining that I had bought the tickets from a third person.

“Oh, youngish—with a short brown beard. Evidently a gentleman who was hard up. We get lots of them in here.”

A brown beard! Had he shaved and disguised himself before his interview with Tibbie?

“Tall?” I asked.

“No. Not very.”

The description did not answer to that of the dead unknown.

“A stranger?”

“Quite. I’d never seen him before. But the truth is I recollect him because that ruby there is a valuable one. I had my doubts at the moment as to its genuineness, and as there were a lot of people waiting I had no time to examine it. So I lent him only a couple o’ quid on it.”

“Then it’s worth more?”

“Yes. If you bought the ticket cheap you’ve got a bargain. The guv’nor here would give you eighty quid for it, and be pleased.”

I looked at it, and saw that it was a very fine stone. To me it seemed evident that the man who had pawned the watch and ring was not the man who had lost his life in Charlton Wood.

“You think he was a gentleman?”

“Well, he spoke like one, and seemed very much afraid of being seen. He hesitated when I asked him his name, so I wrote down the usual one—Green.”

“And the address?”

“I put that in also.”

So finding I could discover nothing further, I carried away both watch and ring to add to the strange collection of objects which the dead man’s pockets had contained.

Close to the corner of Park Lane I came face to face with Winsloe, dressed sprucely as usual in silk hat and frock coat, and he at once stopped and offered me his hand. Then, after greeting me, he turned on his heel and walked by my side, saying,—

“I’m just strolling back to the Burlington. I’ll come with you.”

“You left the Scarcliffs earlier than you expected, didn’t you?” I remarked.

“Yes. I had some business in town,” was his brief response.

“I see from the papers that they’ve discovered nothing regarding that affair in Charlton Wood.”

“No,” he remarked in a mechanical tone. “And I don’t expect they ever will. The assassin, whoever he was, got away without leaving a trace,” and then he cleverly diverted our conversation into a different channel.

I feared to discuss it further. The man was Sybil’s enemy, and therefore mine. He evidently knew that we had met on that evening of her arrival in London, and was actively at work to trace her.

Indeed, when I afterwards reflected, I saw that in all probability he had watched me that morning, and had purposely encountered me.

To each other we were outwardly still extremely friendly. Indeed I invited him to my rooms that evening to smoke, and he accepted, for he had a motive in so doing, while I, on my part, had resolved to watch him carefully.

I lunched at the Bachelors’, and though anxious to go and see Sybil, I was compelled to content myself with sending her a telegram, saying that I had been ordered by my foreman to go up to Manchester in connection with some new linotype machinery, and must therefore be absent two or three days. I sent the message so that she might show it to Mrs Williams.

Soon after four o’clock I set forth upon another expedition, namely, by train from Victoria to Upper Sydenham Station. The autumn dusk was falling when I turned into Sydenham Hill, the wide winding road of large detached houses leading from Forest Hill up to the Crystal Palace. Essentially the residence of the wealthy City man, and an eminently respectable district, the houses stand in their own grounds with big old trees around, commanding fine views of South London. I was in search of Keymer, and being directed by a postman, found it a little way higher up than the turning known as Rock Hill, a large old-fashioned red brick place, with fine old elms standing in the grounds. An oak fence divided it from the footway, and as I passed I saw that the pink-shaded electric lamps in the drawing-room were alight, while at the grand piano was sitting a neat female figure in black.

A servant in a smart French cap was letting down the Venetian blinds, and as I watched through the gate I saw that the lady had stopped playing and turned upon the stool to speak to her.

At the same instant the figure of a man stole across the room, a tall, shadowy figure, and came up behind the woman, causing her to start from her seat, while at that moment the blind was lowered, and the artistic interior was suddenly shut out from my view.

One thing caused me to remain there in wonder. Perhaps my eyes had deceived me, but I could not help thinking that when that vague male figure crossed the room the woman started up with a look of terror. From where I stood I could not see distinctly, yet I felt certain that the person who had entered was unwelcome and unexpected.

The other blinds had already been lowered, for it was now nearly dark, and beneath the wide portico a light shone above the door. The grounds were well kept, and the greenhouse beside the drawing-room showed careful attention, while on the gravelled drive were the wheel-marks of carriages. Mr John Parham was evidently well off, in all probability a City man, like most of his neighbours. I sauntered past, wondering by what means I could ascertain something about him.

The doleful sound of the muffin-bell rang in the distance, and far up the road I saw the lamplighter going his round, the street lamps springing up from the darkness at regular intervals. I went towards him, and stopping him, made inquiries regarding the tenant of Keymer.

“’E’s a very nice gentleman, sir,” replied the man. “Always gives good Christmas-boxes.”

“Married?”

“Yes, sir. But ’e has no children. They keep a carriage—one o’ them there open ones.”

“Now I want to know something about him,” I said, slipping a coin into the man’s hand. “Do you happen to know anybody who could tell me?”

The man looked at me suspiciously, and asked,—“Pardon me, sir, but you’re a detective, p’r’aps?”

“No,” I laughed. “Not at all. It is merely private curiosity—over—well, over a little matter of business. I’m a business man—not a policeman.”

“Well,” he said, “there’s ’Arry Laking, what keeps the gate of the Crystal Palace grounds in Palace Park Road. ’E’s their cook’s brother. ’E’d tell you something, for ’e often goes there when the family are out.”

“Where’s Palace Park Road?”

“Go up to the front of the Palace and keep round to the left till you come to the gate. It’s almost the other side of the grounds.”

I acted upon his suggestion, and after walking some distance I came to the turnstile in the wall dividing the Palace grounds from the road, and there I found a middle-aged man in uniform idling over the evening paper, for that gate was little used, save by season-ticket holders.

On inquiry I discovered that he was the man of whom I was in search, and after a little judicious greasing of the palm I induced him to tell me what he knew of his sister’s master and mistress.

“Mr Parham is a wholesale jeweller in the city,” he said. “He often goes abroad for weeks at a time to buy. His wife is young, but Annie tells me she leads a very lonely life. They’re a wealthy, but an unhappy pair, that’s my opinion. Yet they know all the best people in Sydenham, and Mr Parham gives grand at-homes and dinner-parties.”

“She’s unhappy, you say,” I ventured, recollecting the curious scene I had witnessed at the instant of lowering the blinds.

“Yes. Annie has overheard their quarrels. The master, she says, has such a hold over the mistress that she dare not call her soul her own. There was a scene between them about three weeks ago. They quarrelled at the dinner-table, and Mrs Parham left the room, went upstairs, wrote a letter and tried to commit suicide by drinking some sublimate. Her maid got hold of the letter, and then succeeded in saving her mistress’s life, for fortunately the solution wasn’t strong enough. But it made her very ill, and she was in bed a week, while her husband took himself off, and never inquired after her. The servants all pity poor little Mrs Parham, and say that her husband’s a brute to her. There was another terrible row once, when her brother called and overheard Mr Parham threaten her in the next room. They say that the two men came to blows, and that he gave Parham a thorough good hiding, which he richly deserved. Mrs Parham’s brother is not a fellow to be trifled with, they say, for Parham had to plead for his life. Afterwards, the beaten dog vowed vengeance, and the poor wife had a terrible time of it.”

“A rather unhappy household,” I remarked.

“Very. Annie tells me a lot. She wouldn’t stay there—nor would any of the servants—only the wages are so good.”

I saw that the man knew more than he cared to divulge. He was no friend of Parham’s, and was certainly on the side of the ill-used wife.

“Is Parham young or old?”

“Not very old—fat, fairish, rather bald, with a round face and a long nose. Mrs Parham is quite young, about twenty-six, and people call her good-lookin’, but myself I’m no judge o’ women. I’ve my missus, and she’s the best-lookin’ of ’em all in my eyes. Of course, Mrs Parham dresses smartly, and drives in a fine carriage. She comes to the Saturday concerts sometimes.”

“You don’t like Parham,” I said. “Come, tell the truth.”

“No, I don’t,” he declared, after a slight hesitation. “He’s a wrong ’un—I know that. Only, of course, that’s strictly between you and me,” he added in confidence.

“I’d like to know your sister,” I said, quite frankly. “I’ll make it worth her while if she’ll ask me in and let me see the house. She might do it when her mistress is out.”

He shook his head dubiously.

“I don’t think she’d let a stranger see inside, sir.”

“Well, there’s no harm in trying. Will you take me and introduce me?” I asked. “Take me this evening. When do you go off duty?”

“In about half an hour.”

“Then we’ll walk down there and call,” I suggested. “Here’s my card,” and I handed him the card of a barrister friend of mine which bore an address in the Temple.

He hesitated, but when he found another half-sovereign in his palm he consented, not, however, without a good deal of curiosity as to my real object.

What he had told me regarding the Parhams, in addition to that strange scene I had witnessed from the roadway, aroused my suspicion. I somehow felt confident that there was some connection between this man who ill-treated his wife so brutally and the unfortunate victim of the tragedy in rural Sussex I waited in a neighbouring bar until Laking came off duty, and then we walked together down Sydenham Hill to the house called Keymer.

My companion entered by the tradesmen’s lych-gate, and going up to the kitchen door, rapped at it, whereupon a big buxom woman in an apron opened it, and recognising him, gasped,—

“Oh! ’Arry, I’m so glad you’ve come! They told you about it, I suppose?”

“About what? I don’t know anything,” he replied, surprised at her white, scared face and the terrified look of one of the maids who stood behind her.

“Then go into the drawin’-room and look! It’s awful. There’s a curse on this ’ouse. Go and see for yourself.”

Startled, he hurried quickly through the kitchen and along the big, well-furnished hall, I following closely behind him, eager and bewildered.

And what we saw was amazing.

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