Chapter Twenty Five.Makes Plain a Woman’s Fear.“Tell me,” I said at last, full of sympathy for her in her dire unhappiness, “tell me, Tibbie, about this man Rumbold.”For some moments she was silent. Her pale lips trembled.“What is there to tell?” she exclaimed hoarsely. “There was nothing extraordinary in our meeting. We met at a country house, as I met a hundred other men. Together we passed some idle summer days, and at last discovered that we loved each other.”“Well?”“Well—that is all,” she answered in a strange, bitter voice. “It is all at an end now.”“I never recollect meeting him,” I remarked, reflectively.“No—you never have,” she said. “But please do not let us discuss him further,” she urged. “The memories of it all are too painful. I was a fool!”“A fool for loving him?” I asked, for so platonic were our relations that I could speak to her with the same frankness as her own brother.“For loving him!” she echoed, looking straight at me. “No—no. I was a fool because I allowed myself to be misled, and believed what I was told without demanding proof.”“Why do you fear the man who found you in Glasgow?”“Ah! That is quite another matter,” she exclaimed quickly. “I warn you to be careful of John Parham. A word from me would place him under arrest; but, alas! I dare not speak. They have successfully closed my lips!”Was she referring, I wondered, to that house with the fatal stairs?“He is married, I suppose?”“Yes—and his wife is in utter ignorance of who and what he is. She lives at Sydenham, and believes him to be something in the City. I know the poor woman quite well.”It was upon the tip of my tongue to make inquiry about Miss O’Hara, but by so doing I saw I should admit having acted the spy. I longed to put some leading questions to her concerning the dead unknown in Charlton Wood, but in view of Eric’s terrible denunciation how could I?Where was Eric? I asked her, but she declared that she was in ignorance.“Some time ago,” she said, “I heard that he was in Paris. He left England suddenly, I believe.”“Why?”“The real reason I don’t know. I only know from a friend who saw him one day sitting before acaféin the Boulevard des Italiens.”“Your friend did not speak to him?” I inquired quickly.“No.”“Then it might have been a mistake. The person might, I mean, have merely resembled Eric Domville. Was your informant an intimate friend?”“A friend—and also an enemy.”“Ah! Many of us have friends of that sort!” I remarked, whereat she sighed, recollecting, no doubt, the many friends who had played her false.The wild, irresponsible worldliness, the thoughtless vices of the smart woman, the slangy conversation and the loudness of voice that was one of the hall-marks of her go-ahead circle, had now all given place to a quietness of manner and a thoughtful seriousness that utterly amazed me. In her peril, whatever it was, the stern realities of life had risen before her. She no longer looked at men and things through rose-coloured spectacles, she frankly admitted to me, but now saw the grim seriousness of life around her.Dull drab Camberwell had been to her an object-lesson, showing her that there were other peoples and other spheres beside that gay world around Grosvenor Square, or bridge parties at country houses. Yet she had, alas! learned the lesson too late. Misfortune had fallen upon her, and now she was crushed, hopeless, actually seriously contemplating suicide.This latter fact caused me the most intense anxiety.Apparently her interview with Arthur Rumbold’s mother had caused her to decide to take her life. The fact of Parham having found her in Glasgow was, of course, a seriouscontretemps, but the real reason of her decision to die was the outcome of her meeting with Mrs Rumbold.What had passed between the two women? Was their meeting at Fort William a pre-arranged one, or was it accidental? It must have been pre-arranged, or she would scarcely have gone in the opposite direction to that of which she left word for me.The situation was now growing more serious every moment. As we stood together there I asked her to release me from my imposture as her husband, but at the mere suggestion she cried,—“Ah! no, Wilfrid! You surely will not desert me now—just at the moment when I most need your protection.”“But in what way can this pretence of our marriage assist you?”“It does—it will,” she assured me. “You do not know the truth, or my motive would be quite plain to you. I have trusted you, and I still trust in you that you will not desert or betray me.”“Betray you? Why, Tibbie, what are you saying?” I asked, surprised. Could I betray her? I admired her, but I did not love her. How could I love her when I recollected the awful charge against her?“Do you suspect that I would play you false, as some of your friends have done?” I asked, looking steadily into her fine eyes.“No, no; forgive me, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed earnestly, returning my gaze. “I sometimes don’t know what I am saying. I only mean that—you will not leave me.”“And yet you asked me to go back to London only a few minutes ago!” I said in a voice of reproach.“I think I’m mad!” she cried. “This mystery is so puzzling, so inscrutable, and so full of horror that it is driving me insane.”“Then to you also it is a mystery!” I cried, utterly amazed at her words. “I thought you were fully aware of the whole truth.”“I only wish I knew it. If so, I might perhaps escape my enemies. But they are much too ingenious. They have laid their plans far too well.”She referred, I supposed, to the way in which those scoundrels had forced money from her by threats. She was surely not alone in her terrible thraldom. The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. When secrets cannot be discovered, cunning traps are set for the unwary, and many an honest man and woman is at this moment at the mercy of unscrupulous villains, compelled to pay in order to hush up some affair of which they are in reality entirely innocent. No one is safe. From the poor squalid homes of Whitechapel to the big mansions of Belgravia, from garish City offices to the snug villadom of Norwood, from fickle Finchley to weary Wandsworth, the blackmailer takes his toll, while it is calculated that nearly half the suicides reported annually in London are of those who take their own lives rather than face exposure. The “unsound mind” verdict in many instances merely covers the grim fact that the pockets of the victim have been drained dry by those human vampires who, dressed smugly and passing as gentlemen, rub shoulders with us in society of every grade.I looked at Sybil, and wondered what was the strange secret which she had been compelled to hush up. Those letters I had filched from the dead man were all sufficient proof that she was a victim. But what was the story? Would she ever tell me? I looked at her sweet, beautiful face, and wondered. We moved on again, slowly skirting the picturesque lake. She would not allow me to release myself from my bond, declaring that I must still pose as William Morton, compositor.“But everyone knows we are not married,” I said. “Mrs Rumbold, for instance!”“Not everyone. There are some who believe it, or they would not hesitate to attack me,” was her vague and mysterious response.“For my own part, Tibbie, I think we’ve carried the masquerade on quite long enough. I’m beginning to fear that Jack, or some of his friends, may discover us. Your description is circulated by the police, remember; besides, my prolonged absence has already been commented upon by your people. Jack and Wydcombe have been to my rooms half a dozen times, so Budd says.”“No. They will not discover us,” she exclaimed, quite confidently.“But walking here openly, and travelling up and down the country is really inviting recognition,” I declared. “You were recognised, you’ll remember, in Carlisle, and again in Glasgow. To-morrow you may be seen by one of your friends who will wire to Jack. And if we are found together—what then?”“What then?” she echoed. “Why, I should be found with the man who is my best—my only friend.”“But a scandal would be created. You can’t afford to risk that, you know.”“No,” she answered slowly in a low, hard voice, “I suppose you are right, I can’t. Neither can you, for the matter of that. Yes,” she added, with a deep sigh, “it would be far better for me, as well as for you, if I were dead.”I did not reply. What could I say? She seemed filled by a dark foreboding of evil, and her thoughts now naturally reverted to the action over which she had perhaps for weeks or months been brooding.I had endeavoured to assist her for the sake of our passionate idyllic love of long ago, but all was in vain, I said. I recognised that sooner or later she must be discovered, and the blow—the exposure of her terrible crime—must fall. And then?She had killed the man who had held her in thraldom. That was an undoubted fact. Eric had fully explained it, and could testify to the deed, although he would, I knew, never appear as witness against her. The unknown blackguard scorning her defiance had goaded her to a frenzy of madness, and she had taken her revenge upon the cowardly scoundrel.Could she be blamed? In taking a life she had committed a crime before God and man, most certainly. The crime of murder can never be pardoned, yet in such circumstances surely the reader will bear with me for regarding her action with some slight degree of leniency—with what our French neighbours would call extenuating circumstances.And the more so when I recollected what the dead unknown had written to his accomplice in Manchester. The fellow had laid a plot, but he had failed. The woman alone, unprotected and desperate, had defended herself, and he had fallen dead by her hand.In my innermost heart I decided that he deserved the death.Why Ellice Winsloe had recognised the body was plain enough now. The two men were friends—and enemies of Sybil Burnet.I clenched my fingers when I thought of the dangerous man who was still posing as the chum of young Lord Scarcliff, and I vowed that I would live to avenge the wrong done to the poor trembling girl at my side.She burst into hot tears again when I declared that it would be better for us to return again to the obscurity of Camberwell.“Yes,” she sobbed. “Act as you think best, Wilfrid. I am entirely in your hands. I am yours, indeed, for you saved my life on—on that night when I fled from Ryhall.”We turned into the town again through Gallowgate when she had dried her eyes, and had lunch at a small eating-house in New Bridge Street, she afterwards returning to her hotel to pack, for we had decided to take the afternoon train up to King’s Cross.She was to meet me at the station at half-past three, and just before that hour, while idling up and down Neville Street awaiting the arrival of her cab, of a sudden I saw the figure of a man in a dark travelling ulster and soft felt hat emerge from the station and cross the road to Grainger Street West.He was hurrying along, but in an instant something about his figure and gait struck me as familiar; therefore, walking quickly after him at an angle before he could enter Grainger Street, I caught a glimpse of his countenance.It was John Parham! And he was going in the direction of the Douglas Hotel.He had again tracked her down with an intention which I knew, alas! too well could only be a distinctly evil one.
“Tell me,” I said at last, full of sympathy for her in her dire unhappiness, “tell me, Tibbie, about this man Rumbold.”
For some moments she was silent. Her pale lips trembled.
“What is there to tell?” she exclaimed hoarsely. “There was nothing extraordinary in our meeting. We met at a country house, as I met a hundred other men. Together we passed some idle summer days, and at last discovered that we loved each other.”
“Well?”
“Well—that is all,” she answered in a strange, bitter voice. “It is all at an end now.”
“I never recollect meeting him,” I remarked, reflectively.
“No—you never have,” she said. “But please do not let us discuss him further,” she urged. “The memories of it all are too painful. I was a fool!”
“A fool for loving him?” I asked, for so platonic were our relations that I could speak to her with the same frankness as her own brother.
“For loving him!” she echoed, looking straight at me. “No—no. I was a fool because I allowed myself to be misled, and believed what I was told without demanding proof.”
“Why do you fear the man who found you in Glasgow?”
“Ah! That is quite another matter,” she exclaimed quickly. “I warn you to be careful of John Parham. A word from me would place him under arrest; but, alas! I dare not speak. They have successfully closed my lips!”
Was she referring, I wondered, to that house with the fatal stairs?
“He is married, I suppose?”
“Yes—and his wife is in utter ignorance of who and what he is. She lives at Sydenham, and believes him to be something in the City. I know the poor woman quite well.”
It was upon the tip of my tongue to make inquiry about Miss O’Hara, but by so doing I saw I should admit having acted the spy. I longed to put some leading questions to her concerning the dead unknown in Charlton Wood, but in view of Eric’s terrible denunciation how could I?
Where was Eric? I asked her, but she declared that she was in ignorance.
“Some time ago,” she said, “I heard that he was in Paris. He left England suddenly, I believe.”
“Why?”
“The real reason I don’t know. I only know from a friend who saw him one day sitting before acaféin the Boulevard des Italiens.”
“Your friend did not speak to him?” I inquired quickly.
“No.”
“Then it might have been a mistake. The person might, I mean, have merely resembled Eric Domville. Was your informant an intimate friend?”
“A friend—and also an enemy.”
“Ah! Many of us have friends of that sort!” I remarked, whereat she sighed, recollecting, no doubt, the many friends who had played her false.
The wild, irresponsible worldliness, the thoughtless vices of the smart woman, the slangy conversation and the loudness of voice that was one of the hall-marks of her go-ahead circle, had now all given place to a quietness of manner and a thoughtful seriousness that utterly amazed me. In her peril, whatever it was, the stern realities of life had risen before her. She no longer looked at men and things through rose-coloured spectacles, she frankly admitted to me, but now saw the grim seriousness of life around her.
Dull drab Camberwell had been to her an object-lesson, showing her that there were other peoples and other spheres beside that gay world around Grosvenor Square, or bridge parties at country houses. Yet she had, alas! learned the lesson too late. Misfortune had fallen upon her, and now she was crushed, hopeless, actually seriously contemplating suicide.
This latter fact caused me the most intense anxiety.
Apparently her interview with Arthur Rumbold’s mother had caused her to decide to take her life. The fact of Parham having found her in Glasgow was, of course, a seriouscontretemps, but the real reason of her decision to die was the outcome of her meeting with Mrs Rumbold.
What had passed between the two women? Was their meeting at Fort William a pre-arranged one, or was it accidental? It must have been pre-arranged, or she would scarcely have gone in the opposite direction to that of which she left word for me.
The situation was now growing more serious every moment. As we stood together there I asked her to release me from my imposture as her husband, but at the mere suggestion she cried,—
“Ah! no, Wilfrid! You surely will not desert me now—just at the moment when I most need your protection.”
“But in what way can this pretence of our marriage assist you?”
“It does—it will,” she assured me. “You do not know the truth, or my motive would be quite plain to you. I have trusted you, and I still trust in you that you will not desert or betray me.”
“Betray you? Why, Tibbie, what are you saying?” I asked, surprised. Could I betray her? I admired her, but I did not love her. How could I love her when I recollected the awful charge against her?
“Do you suspect that I would play you false, as some of your friends have done?” I asked, looking steadily into her fine eyes.
“No, no; forgive me, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed earnestly, returning my gaze. “I sometimes don’t know what I am saying. I only mean that—you will not leave me.”
“And yet you asked me to go back to London only a few minutes ago!” I said in a voice of reproach.
“I think I’m mad!” she cried. “This mystery is so puzzling, so inscrutable, and so full of horror that it is driving me insane.”
“Then to you also it is a mystery!” I cried, utterly amazed at her words. “I thought you were fully aware of the whole truth.”
“I only wish I knew it. If so, I might perhaps escape my enemies. But they are much too ingenious. They have laid their plans far too well.”
She referred, I supposed, to the way in which those scoundrels had forced money from her by threats. She was surely not alone in her terrible thraldom. The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. When secrets cannot be discovered, cunning traps are set for the unwary, and many an honest man and woman is at this moment at the mercy of unscrupulous villains, compelled to pay in order to hush up some affair of which they are in reality entirely innocent. No one is safe. From the poor squalid homes of Whitechapel to the big mansions of Belgravia, from garish City offices to the snug villadom of Norwood, from fickle Finchley to weary Wandsworth, the blackmailer takes his toll, while it is calculated that nearly half the suicides reported annually in London are of those who take their own lives rather than face exposure. The “unsound mind” verdict in many instances merely covers the grim fact that the pockets of the victim have been drained dry by those human vampires who, dressed smugly and passing as gentlemen, rub shoulders with us in society of every grade.
I looked at Sybil, and wondered what was the strange secret which she had been compelled to hush up. Those letters I had filched from the dead man were all sufficient proof that she was a victim. But what was the story? Would she ever tell me? I looked at her sweet, beautiful face, and wondered. We moved on again, slowly skirting the picturesque lake. She would not allow me to release myself from my bond, declaring that I must still pose as William Morton, compositor.
“But everyone knows we are not married,” I said. “Mrs Rumbold, for instance!”
“Not everyone. There are some who believe it, or they would not hesitate to attack me,” was her vague and mysterious response.
“For my own part, Tibbie, I think we’ve carried the masquerade on quite long enough. I’m beginning to fear that Jack, or some of his friends, may discover us. Your description is circulated by the police, remember; besides, my prolonged absence has already been commented upon by your people. Jack and Wydcombe have been to my rooms half a dozen times, so Budd says.”
“No. They will not discover us,” she exclaimed, quite confidently.
“But walking here openly, and travelling up and down the country is really inviting recognition,” I declared. “You were recognised, you’ll remember, in Carlisle, and again in Glasgow. To-morrow you may be seen by one of your friends who will wire to Jack. And if we are found together—what then?”
“What then?” she echoed. “Why, I should be found with the man who is my best—my only friend.”
“But a scandal would be created. You can’t afford to risk that, you know.”
“No,” she answered slowly in a low, hard voice, “I suppose you are right, I can’t. Neither can you, for the matter of that. Yes,” she added, with a deep sigh, “it would be far better for me, as well as for you, if I were dead.”
I did not reply. What could I say? She seemed filled by a dark foreboding of evil, and her thoughts now naturally reverted to the action over which she had perhaps for weeks or months been brooding.
I had endeavoured to assist her for the sake of our passionate idyllic love of long ago, but all was in vain, I said. I recognised that sooner or later she must be discovered, and the blow—the exposure of her terrible crime—must fall. And then?
She had killed the man who had held her in thraldom. That was an undoubted fact. Eric had fully explained it, and could testify to the deed, although he would, I knew, never appear as witness against her. The unknown blackguard scorning her defiance had goaded her to a frenzy of madness, and she had taken her revenge upon the cowardly scoundrel.
Could she be blamed? In taking a life she had committed a crime before God and man, most certainly. The crime of murder can never be pardoned, yet in such circumstances surely the reader will bear with me for regarding her action with some slight degree of leniency—with what our French neighbours would call extenuating circumstances.
And the more so when I recollected what the dead unknown had written to his accomplice in Manchester. The fellow had laid a plot, but he had failed. The woman alone, unprotected and desperate, had defended herself, and he had fallen dead by her hand.
In my innermost heart I decided that he deserved the death.
Why Ellice Winsloe had recognised the body was plain enough now. The two men were friends—and enemies of Sybil Burnet.
I clenched my fingers when I thought of the dangerous man who was still posing as the chum of young Lord Scarcliff, and I vowed that I would live to avenge the wrong done to the poor trembling girl at my side.
She burst into hot tears again when I declared that it would be better for us to return again to the obscurity of Camberwell.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Act as you think best, Wilfrid. I am entirely in your hands. I am yours, indeed, for you saved my life on—on that night when I fled from Ryhall.”
We turned into the town again through Gallowgate when she had dried her eyes, and had lunch at a small eating-house in New Bridge Street, she afterwards returning to her hotel to pack, for we had decided to take the afternoon train up to King’s Cross.
She was to meet me at the station at half-past three, and just before that hour, while idling up and down Neville Street awaiting the arrival of her cab, of a sudden I saw the figure of a man in a dark travelling ulster and soft felt hat emerge from the station and cross the road to Grainger Street West.
He was hurrying along, but in an instant something about his figure and gait struck me as familiar; therefore, walking quickly after him at an angle before he could enter Grainger Street, I caught a glimpse of his countenance.
It was John Parham! And he was going in the direction of the Douglas Hotel.
He had again tracked her down with an intention which I knew, alas! too well could only be a distinctly evil one.
Chapter Twenty Six.Takes me a Step Further.We were back again in Neate Street, Camberwell.In Newcastle we had a very narrow escape. As Parham had walked towards the hotel, Sybil had fortunately passed him in a closed cab. On her arrival at the station she was in entire ignorance of the fellow’s presence, and as the train was already in waiting we entered and were quickly on our way to London, wondering by what means Parham could possibly have known of her whereabouts.Was she watched? Was some secret agent, of whom we were in ignorance, keeping constant observations upon us and reporting our movements to the enemy? That theory was Sybil’s.“Those men are utterly unscrupulous,” she declared as we sat together in the little upstairs room in Camberwell. “No secret is safe from them, and their spies are far better watchers than the most skilled detectives of Scotland Yard.”At that moment Mrs Williams entered, delighted to see us back again, for when we had left, Tibbie had, at my suggestion, paid rent for the rooms for a month in advance and explained that we were returning.“Two gentlemen came to inquire for you a week ago, Mr Morton,” she exclaimed, addressing me. “They first asked whether Mrs Morton was at home, and I explained that she was away. They then inquired for you, and appeared to be most inquisitive.”“Inquisitive? About what?” asked my pseudo wife.“Oh! all about your private affairs, mum. But I told them I didn’t know anything, of course. One of the men was a foreigner.”“What did they ask you?” I inquired in some alarm.“Oh, how long you’d been with me, where you worked, how long you’d been married—and all that. Most impudent, I call it. Especially as they were strangers.”“How did you know they were strangers?”“Because they took the photograph of my poor brother Harry to be yours—so they couldn’t have known you.”“Impostors, I expect,” I remarked, in order to allay the good woman’s suspicions. “No doubt they were trying to get some information from you in order to use it for their own purposes. Perhaps to use my wife’s name, or mine, as an introduction somewhere.”“Well, they didn’t get much change out of me, I can tell you,” she laughed. “I told them I didn’t know them and very soon showed them the door. I don’t like foreigners. When I asked them to leave their names they looked at each other and appeared confused. They asked where you were, and I told them you were in Ireland.”“That’s right,” I said, smiling. “If they want me they can come here again and find me.”Then, after the landlady had gone downstairs, I asked Tibbie her opinion.“Did I not tell you that inquiries would be made to ascertain whether I were married?” she said. “The woman evidently satisfied them, for she has no suspicion of the true state of affairs.”“Then you are safe?”“Safe only for the present. I may be in increased peril to-morrow.”“And how long do you anticipate this danger to last?” I asked her seriously, as she sat there gazing into the meagre fire.“Last! Until my life’s end,” she answered very sadly. Then turning her wonderful eyes to mine she added, “I know you cannot sacrifice your life for me in this way much longer, Wilfrid. Therefore it must end. Yet life, after all, is very sweet. When I am alone I constantly look back upon my past and recognise how wasted it has been; how I discarded the benefits of Providence and how from the first, when I came out, I was dazzled by the glitter, gaiety, and extravagance of our circle. It has all ended now, and I actually believe I am a changed woman. But it is, alas! too late—too late.”Those words of hers concealed some extraordinary romance—the romance of a broken heart. She admitted as much. Why were these men so persistently hunting her down if they were in no fear of her? It could only be some desperate vendetta—perhaps a life for a life!What she had said was correct. Mine was now a most invidious position, for while posing as William Morton, I was unable to go to Bolton Street or even call upon Scarcliff or Wydcombe for fear that Winsloe and his accomplices should learn that I was still alive. Therefore I was compelled to return to the Caledonian Hotel in the Adelphi, where Budd met me in secret each evening with my letters and necessaries.Another week thus went by. The greater part of the day I usually spent with Tibbie in that dull little room in Neate Street, and sometimes, when the weather was fine, we went to get a breath of air in Greenwich Park or to Lewisham or Dulwich, those resorts of the working-class of South London. At night, ostensibly going to work, I left her and spent hours and hours carefully watching the movements of Ellice Winsloe.To Lord Wydcombe’s, in Curzon Street, I followed him on several occasions, for he had suddenly become very intimate with Wydcombe it appeared, and while I stood on the pavement outside that house I knew so well my thoughts wandered back to those brilliant festivities which Cynthia so often gave. One night, after Winsloe had dined there, I saw the brougham come round, and he and Cynthia drove off to the theatre, followed by Jack and Wydcombe in a hansom. On another afternoon I followed Winsloe to the Scarcliffs in Grosvenor Place, and later on saw him laughing with old Lady Scarcliff at the drawing-room window that overlooked Hyde Park Corner. He presented a sleek, well-to-do appearance, essentially that of a gentleman. His frock coat was immaculate, his overcoat of the latest cut, and his silk hat always ironed to the highest perfection of glossiness.Tibbie, of course, knew nothing of my patient watchfulness. I never went near my chambers, therefore Ellice and Parham certainly believed me dead, while as to Domville’s hiding in Paris, I confess I doubted the truth of the statement of Tibbie’s friend. If the poor fellow still lived he would most certainly have written to me. No! He was dead—without a doubt. He had fallen a victim in that grim house of doom.Again and again I tried to find the gruesome place, but in vain. Not a street nor an alley in the neighbourhood of Regent Street I left unexplored, yet for the life of me I could not again recognise the house. The only plan, I decided, was to follow Parham, who would one day go there, without a doubt.I called on Mrs Parham at Sydenham Hill, and found that her husband was still absent—in India, she believed. Miss O’Hara, however, remained with her. What connection had the girl with those malefactors? I tried to discern. At all events, she knew their cipher, and they also feared her, as shown by their actions on that dark night in Dean’s Yard.My own idea was that Parham was still away in the country. Or, if he were in London, he never went near Winsloe. The police were in search of him, as admitted by the inspector at Sydenham, therefore he might at any moment be arrested. But before he fell into the hands of the police I was determined to fathom the secret of that house of mystery wherein I had so nearly lost my life.For Tibbie’s personal safety I was now in constant and deep anxiety. They were desperate and would hesitate at nothing in order to secure their own ends. The ingenuity of the plot to seize her in Dean’s Yard was sufficient evidence of that. Fortunately, however, Tibbie had not seen my cipher advertisements.Another week passed, and my pretended wife had quite settled down again amid her humble surroundings. It amused me sometimes to see the girl, of whose beauty half London had raved, with the sleeves of her cotton blouse turned up, making a pudding, or kneeling before the grate and applying blacklead with a brush. I, too, helped her to do the housework, and more than once scrubbed down the table or cleaned the windows. Frequently we worked in all seriousness, but at times we were compelled to laugh at each other’s unusual occupation.And when I looked steadily into those fine, wide-open eyes, I wondered what great secret was hidden there.Time after time I tried to learn more of Arthur Rumbold, but she would tell me nothing.In fear that the fact of her disappearance might find its way into the papers, she wrote another reassuring letter to her mother, telling her that she was well and that one day ere long she would return. This I sent to a friend, a college chum, who was wintering in Cairo, and it was posted from there. Jack naturally sent out a man to Egypt to try and find her; and in the meantime we allayed all fears that she had met with foul play.Days and weeks went on. In the security of those obscure apartments in Neate Street, that mean thoroughfare which by day resounded with the cries of itinerant costermongers, and at evening was the playground of crowds of children, Sybil remained patient, yet anxious. Mrs Williams—who, by the way, had a habit of speaking of her husband as her “old man”—was a kind, motherly soul, who did her best to keep her company during my absences, and who performed little services for her without thought of payment or reward. The occupation of compositor accounted not only for my absence each night during the week, but on Sunday nights also—to prepare Monday morning’s paper, I explained.I told everybody that I worked in Fleet Street, but never satisfied them as to which office employed me. There were hundreds of compositors living in the neighbourhood, and if I made a false statement it would at once be detected. With Williams I was friendly, and we often had a glass together and a pipe.Our life in Camberwell was surely the strangest ever led by man and woman. Before those who knew us I was compelled to call her “Molly,” while she addressed me as “Willie,” just as though I were her husband.A thousand times I asked her the real reason of that masquerade, but she steadfastly declined to tell me.“You may be able to save me,” was all the information she would vouchsafe.Darkness fell early, for it was early in February, and each night I stole forth from the Caledonian Hotel on my tour of vigilance. The hotel people did not think it strange that I was a working-man. It was a quiet, comfortable place. I paid well, and was friendly with the hall-porter.With the faithful Budd’s assistance—for he was friendly with Winsloe’s valet—I knew almost as much of the fellow’s movements as he did himself. I dogged his footsteps everywhere. Once he went down to Sydenham Hill, called upon Mrs Parham, and remained there about an hour while I waited outside in the quiet suburban road. When he emerged he was carrying a square parcel packed in brown paper, and this he conveyed back to Victoria, and afterwards took a cab to his own chambers.He had not been there more than a quarter of an hour, when along King Street came a figure that I at once recognised as that of the man I most wanted to meet—John Parham himself.I drew back and crossed the road, watching him enter Winsloe’s chambers, of which he apparently had a latchkey.Then I waited, for I meant, at all hazards, to track the fellow to his hiding-place, and to discover the true identity of the house where I had been so ingeniously entrapped.At last he emerged carrying the square packet which his friend had obtained at Sydenham, and behind him also came Winsloe. They walked across St. James’s Square and up York Street to the Trocadero, where, after having a drink together, they parted, Winsloe going along Coventry Street, while his companion, with the packet in his hand, remained on the pavement in Shaftesbury Avenue, apparently undecided which direction to take.I was standing in the doorway of the Café Monico opposite, watching him keenly, and saw that he was evidently well known at the Trocadero, for the gold-laced hall-porter saluted him and wished him good-evening.A few moments later he got into a cab and drove away, while in a few seconds I had entered another cab and was following him. We went up Shaftesbury Avenue, turning into Dean Street and thus reaching Oxford Street opposite Rathbone Place, where he alighted, looked around as though to satisfy himself that he was not followed, and walked on at a rapid pace up Rathbone Place, afterwards turning into many smaller thoroughfares with which I was unacquainted. Once he turned, and I feared that he had detected me, therefore I crossed the road and ascended the steps of a house, where I pretended to ring the door-bell.He glanced back again, and finding that he was not being followed increased his pace and turned the corner. I was after him in an instant, and still followed him at a respectable distance until after he had turned several corners and was walking up a quiet, rather ill-lit street of dark old-fashioned houses, he glanced up and down and then suddenly disappeared into one of the door-ways. My quick eyes noted the house and then, five minutes afterwards, I walked quickly past the place.In a moment I recognised the doorway as that of the house with the fatal stairs!Returning, on the opposite side of the road, I saw that the place was in total darkness, yet outwardly it was in no way different to its neighbours, with the usual flight of steps leading to the front door, the deep basement, and the high iron railings still bearing before the door the old extinguishers used by the ink-men in the early days of last century. I recognised the house by those extinguishers. The blinds had not been lowered, therefore I conjectured that the place was unoccupied.The street was, I found, called Clipstone Street, and it lay between Cleveland Street and Great Portland Street, in quite a different direction than that in which I had imagined it to be.After a quarter of an hour Parham emerged without his parcel, closed the door behind him, and walked on to Portland Place, where, from the stand outside the Langham, he took a cab to Lyric Chambers, in Whitcomb Street, opposite Leicester Square, where I discovered he had his abode.My heart beat wildly, for I knew that I was now on the verge of a discovery. I had gained knowledge that placed the assassins of Eric Domville in my hands.I lost not a moment. At the Tottenham Court Road Police Station I was fortunate in finding Inspector Pickering on duty, and he at once recognised me as the hero of that strange subterranean adventure.As soon as I told him I had discovered the mysterious house he was, in an instant, on the alert, and calling two plain-clothes men announced his intention of going with me at once to Clipstone Street to make investigations.“Better take some tools with you, Edwards, to open the door, and a lantern, each of you,” he said to them. Then turning to me, he added,—“If what we suspect is true, sir, there’s been some funny goings-on in that house. But we shall see.”He took a revolver from his desk and placed it in his pocket, and afterwards exchanged his uniform coat for a dark tweed jacket in order not to attract attention in the neighbourhood.Then we all four went forth to ascertain the truth.
We were back again in Neate Street, Camberwell.
In Newcastle we had a very narrow escape. As Parham had walked towards the hotel, Sybil had fortunately passed him in a closed cab. On her arrival at the station she was in entire ignorance of the fellow’s presence, and as the train was already in waiting we entered and were quickly on our way to London, wondering by what means Parham could possibly have known of her whereabouts.
Was she watched? Was some secret agent, of whom we were in ignorance, keeping constant observations upon us and reporting our movements to the enemy? That theory was Sybil’s.
“Those men are utterly unscrupulous,” she declared as we sat together in the little upstairs room in Camberwell. “No secret is safe from them, and their spies are far better watchers than the most skilled detectives of Scotland Yard.”
At that moment Mrs Williams entered, delighted to see us back again, for when we had left, Tibbie had, at my suggestion, paid rent for the rooms for a month in advance and explained that we were returning.
“Two gentlemen came to inquire for you a week ago, Mr Morton,” she exclaimed, addressing me. “They first asked whether Mrs Morton was at home, and I explained that she was away. They then inquired for you, and appeared to be most inquisitive.”
“Inquisitive? About what?” asked my pseudo wife.
“Oh! all about your private affairs, mum. But I told them I didn’t know anything, of course. One of the men was a foreigner.”
“What did they ask you?” I inquired in some alarm.
“Oh, how long you’d been with me, where you worked, how long you’d been married—and all that. Most impudent, I call it. Especially as they were strangers.”
“How did you know they were strangers?”
“Because they took the photograph of my poor brother Harry to be yours—so they couldn’t have known you.”
“Impostors, I expect,” I remarked, in order to allay the good woman’s suspicions. “No doubt they were trying to get some information from you in order to use it for their own purposes. Perhaps to use my wife’s name, or mine, as an introduction somewhere.”
“Well, they didn’t get much change out of me, I can tell you,” she laughed. “I told them I didn’t know them and very soon showed them the door. I don’t like foreigners. When I asked them to leave their names they looked at each other and appeared confused. They asked where you were, and I told them you were in Ireland.”
“That’s right,” I said, smiling. “If they want me they can come here again and find me.”
Then, after the landlady had gone downstairs, I asked Tibbie her opinion.
“Did I not tell you that inquiries would be made to ascertain whether I were married?” she said. “The woman evidently satisfied them, for she has no suspicion of the true state of affairs.”
“Then you are safe?”
“Safe only for the present. I may be in increased peril to-morrow.”
“And how long do you anticipate this danger to last?” I asked her seriously, as she sat there gazing into the meagre fire.
“Last! Until my life’s end,” she answered very sadly. Then turning her wonderful eyes to mine she added, “I know you cannot sacrifice your life for me in this way much longer, Wilfrid. Therefore it must end. Yet life, after all, is very sweet. When I am alone I constantly look back upon my past and recognise how wasted it has been; how I discarded the benefits of Providence and how from the first, when I came out, I was dazzled by the glitter, gaiety, and extravagance of our circle. It has all ended now, and I actually believe I am a changed woman. But it is, alas! too late—too late.”
Those words of hers concealed some extraordinary romance—the romance of a broken heart. She admitted as much. Why were these men so persistently hunting her down if they were in no fear of her? It could only be some desperate vendetta—perhaps a life for a life!
What she had said was correct. Mine was now a most invidious position, for while posing as William Morton, I was unable to go to Bolton Street or even call upon Scarcliff or Wydcombe for fear that Winsloe and his accomplices should learn that I was still alive. Therefore I was compelled to return to the Caledonian Hotel in the Adelphi, where Budd met me in secret each evening with my letters and necessaries.
Another week thus went by. The greater part of the day I usually spent with Tibbie in that dull little room in Neate Street, and sometimes, when the weather was fine, we went to get a breath of air in Greenwich Park or to Lewisham or Dulwich, those resorts of the working-class of South London. At night, ostensibly going to work, I left her and spent hours and hours carefully watching the movements of Ellice Winsloe.
To Lord Wydcombe’s, in Curzon Street, I followed him on several occasions, for he had suddenly become very intimate with Wydcombe it appeared, and while I stood on the pavement outside that house I knew so well my thoughts wandered back to those brilliant festivities which Cynthia so often gave. One night, after Winsloe had dined there, I saw the brougham come round, and he and Cynthia drove off to the theatre, followed by Jack and Wydcombe in a hansom. On another afternoon I followed Winsloe to the Scarcliffs in Grosvenor Place, and later on saw him laughing with old Lady Scarcliff at the drawing-room window that overlooked Hyde Park Corner. He presented a sleek, well-to-do appearance, essentially that of a gentleman. His frock coat was immaculate, his overcoat of the latest cut, and his silk hat always ironed to the highest perfection of glossiness.
Tibbie, of course, knew nothing of my patient watchfulness. I never went near my chambers, therefore Ellice and Parham certainly believed me dead, while as to Domville’s hiding in Paris, I confess I doubted the truth of the statement of Tibbie’s friend. If the poor fellow still lived he would most certainly have written to me. No! He was dead—without a doubt. He had fallen a victim in that grim house of doom.
Again and again I tried to find the gruesome place, but in vain. Not a street nor an alley in the neighbourhood of Regent Street I left unexplored, yet for the life of me I could not again recognise the house. The only plan, I decided, was to follow Parham, who would one day go there, without a doubt.
I called on Mrs Parham at Sydenham Hill, and found that her husband was still absent—in India, she believed. Miss O’Hara, however, remained with her. What connection had the girl with those malefactors? I tried to discern. At all events, she knew their cipher, and they also feared her, as shown by their actions on that dark night in Dean’s Yard.
My own idea was that Parham was still away in the country. Or, if he were in London, he never went near Winsloe. The police were in search of him, as admitted by the inspector at Sydenham, therefore he might at any moment be arrested. But before he fell into the hands of the police I was determined to fathom the secret of that house of mystery wherein I had so nearly lost my life.
For Tibbie’s personal safety I was now in constant and deep anxiety. They were desperate and would hesitate at nothing in order to secure their own ends. The ingenuity of the plot to seize her in Dean’s Yard was sufficient evidence of that. Fortunately, however, Tibbie had not seen my cipher advertisements.
Another week passed, and my pretended wife had quite settled down again amid her humble surroundings. It amused me sometimes to see the girl, of whose beauty half London had raved, with the sleeves of her cotton blouse turned up, making a pudding, or kneeling before the grate and applying blacklead with a brush. I, too, helped her to do the housework, and more than once scrubbed down the table or cleaned the windows. Frequently we worked in all seriousness, but at times we were compelled to laugh at each other’s unusual occupation.
And when I looked steadily into those fine, wide-open eyes, I wondered what great secret was hidden there.
Time after time I tried to learn more of Arthur Rumbold, but she would tell me nothing.
In fear that the fact of her disappearance might find its way into the papers, she wrote another reassuring letter to her mother, telling her that she was well and that one day ere long she would return. This I sent to a friend, a college chum, who was wintering in Cairo, and it was posted from there. Jack naturally sent out a man to Egypt to try and find her; and in the meantime we allayed all fears that she had met with foul play.
Days and weeks went on. In the security of those obscure apartments in Neate Street, that mean thoroughfare which by day resounded with the cries of itinerant costermongers, and at evening was the playground of crowds of children, Sybil remained patient, yet anxious. Mrs Williams—who, by the way, had a habit of speaking of her husband as her “old man”—was a kind, motherly soul, who did her best to keep her company during my absences, and who performed little services for her without thought of payment or reward. The occupation of compositor accounted not only for my absence each night during the week, but on Sunday nights also—to prepare Monday morning’s paper, I explained.
I told everybody that I worked in Fleet Street, but never satisfied them as to which office employed me. There were hundreds of compositors living in the neighbourhood, and if I made a false statement it would at once be detected. With Williams I was friendly, and we often had a glass together and a pipe.
Our life in Camberwell was surely the strangest ever led by man and woman. Before those who knew us I was compelled to call her “Molly,” while she addressed me as “Willie,” just as though I were her husband.
A thousand times I asked her the real reason of that masquerade, but she steadfastly declined to tell me.
“You may be able to save me,” was all the information she would vouchsafe.
Darkness fell early, for it was early in February, and each night I stole forth from the Caledonian Hotel on my tour of vigilance. The hotel people did not think it strange that I was a working-man. It was a quiet, comfortable place. I paid well, and was friendly with the hall-porter.
With the faithful Budd’s assistance—for he was friendly with Winsloe’s valet—I knew almost as much of the fellow’s movements as he did himself. I dogged his footsteps everywhere. Once he went down to Sydenham Hill, called upon Mrs Parham, and remained there about an hour while I waited outside in the quiet suburban road. When he emerged he was carrying a square parcel packed in brown paper, and this he conveyed back to Victoria, and afterwards took a cab to his own chambers.
He had not been there more than a quarter of an hour, when along King Street came a figure that I at once recognised as that of the man I most wanted to meet—John Parham himself.
I drew back and crossed the road, watching him enter Winsloe’s chambers, of which he apparently had a latchkey.
Then I waited, for I meant, at all hazards, to track the fellow to his hiding-place, and to discover the true identity of the house where I had been so ingeniously entrapped.
At last he emerged carrying the square packet which his friend had obtained at Sydenham, and behind him also came Winsloe. They walked across St. James’s Square and up York Street to the Trocadero, where, after having a drink together, they parted, Winsloe going along Coventry Street, while his companion, with the packet in his hand, remained on the pavement in Shaftesbury Avenue, apparently undecided which direction to take.
I was standing in the doorway of the Café Monico opposite, watching him keenly, and saw that he was evidently well known at the Trocadero, for the gold-laced hall-porter saluted him and wished him good-evening.
A few moments later he got into a cab and drove away, while in a few seconds I had entered another cab and was following him. We went up Shaftesbury Avenue, turning into Dean Street and thus reaching Oxford Street opposite Rathbone Place, where he alighted, looked around as though to satisfy himself that he was not followed, and walked on at a rapid pace up Rathbone Place, afterwards turning into many smaller thoroughfares with which I was unacquainted. Once he turned, and I feared that he had detected me, therefore I crossed the road and ascended the steps of a house, where I pretended to ring the door-bell.
He glanced back again, and finding that he was not being followed increased his pace and turned the corner. I was after him in an instant, and still followed him at a respectable distance until after he had turned several corners and was walking up a quiet, rather ill-lit street of dark old-fashioned houses, he glanced up and down and then suddenly disappeared into one of the door-ways. My quick eyes noted the house and then, five minutes afterwards, I walked quickly past the place.
In a moment I recognised the doorway as that of the house with the fatal stairs!
Returning, on the opposite side of the road, I saw that the place was in total darkness, yet outwardly it was in no way different to its neighbours, with the usual flight of steps leading to the front door, the deep basement, and the high iron railings still bearing before the door the old extinguishers used by the ink-men in the early days of last century. I recognised the house by those extinguishers. The blinds had not been lowered, therefore I conjectured that the place was unoccupied.
The street was, I found, called Clipstone Street, and it lay between Cleveland Street and Great Portland Street, in quite a different direction than that in which I had imagined it to be.
After a quarter of an hour Parham emerged without his parcel, closed the door behind him, and walked on to Portland Place, where, from the stand outside the Langham, he took a cab to Lyric Chambers, in Whitcomb Street, opposite Leicester Square, where I discovered he had his abode.
My heart beat wildly, for I knew that I was now on the verge of a discovery. I had gained knowledge that placed the assassins of Eric Domville in my hands.
I lost not a moment. At the Tottenham Court Road Police Station I was fortunate in finding Inspector Pickering on duty, and he at once recognised me as the hero of that strange subterranean adventure.
As soon as I told him I had discovered the mysterious house he was, in an instant, on the alert, and calling two plain-clothes men announced his intention of going with me at once to Clipstone Street to make investigations.
“Better take some tools with you, Edwards, to open the door, and a lantern, each of you,” he said to them. Then turning to me, he added,—
“If what we suspect is true, sir, there’s been some funny goings-on in that house. But we shall see.”
He took a revolver from his desk and placed it in his pocket, and afterwards exchanged his uniform coat for a dark tweed jacket in order not to attract attention in the neighbourhood.
Then we all four went forth to ascertain the truth.
Chapter Twenty Seven.The House of Doom.On arrival at Clipstone Street our first inquiry was to ascertain whether the place was inhabited.While we waited around the corner in Great Portland Street, one of Pickering’s men approached and rang the bell, but though he repeated the summons several times, there was no response. Then, with easy agility, he climbed over the railings and disappeared into the area.Leaving the second man to give us warning if we were noticed, Pickering and myself sauntered along to the house.It was nearly eleven o’clock, and there were few passers-by, yet we did not wish to be discovered, for our investigations were to be made strictly in secret, prior to the police taking action.Was I acting judiciously, I wondered? Would the revelation I had made reflect upon Sybil herself? Would those men who used that house hurl against her a terrible and relentless vendetta?Whether wisely or unwisely, however, I had instituted the inquiry, and could not now draw back.The inspector himself took the small bag containing a serviceable-looking housebreaker’s jemmy and other tools, and as we came to the area handed it down to the man below. Then both of us scrambled over the locked gate and descended the steps to the basement door by which it had been decided to enter.The plain-clothes man was something of a mechanic, I could see, for he was soon at work upon the lock, yet although he tried for a full quarter of an hour to open the door, it resisted all his efforts.“It’s bolted,” he declared at last, wiping the perspiration from his brow. “We must try the front door. That’s no doubt only on the latch. If we force this they’ll know we’ve been here, while if we force the latch we can put that right again before we leave.”“Very well, Edwards,” was the inspector’s reply. “Go up alone and do it. It won’t do for us both to be up with you. Force the latch, and let us trust to luck to be able to put it right again. We’ll have to lay a trap here—of that I feel sure.”The man ascended to the door above us, but scarcely had he done so when we heard the hoarse cry of “Star—extrar spe-shall!” from the further end of the street—the pre-arranged signal warning us of someone approaching.Edwards therefore slipped down the steps and walked in the opposite direction until the two men who had entered the street had passed. Then Edwards sprang up the steps again, and after trying the lock with a number of keys we suddenly heard a low crack, and then there was silence.“All right,” he whispered to us over the railings, and a minute later we were standing inside the dark hall of the house wherein I had so nearly lost my life. Edwards closed the door behind us noiselessly, and we were compelled to grope forward in the pitch darkness, for the inspector deemed it wise to draw down the blinds before lighting our lanterns, for fear our movements should attract notice from without.Edwards entered the front room on the right, stumbling over some furniture, and pulled down the dark holland blind, while a moment later a rapping on the front door announced the arrival of the man who had been watching to cover our movements.The policemen’s lanterns, when lit, revealed an old-fashioned room furnished solidly in leather—a dining-room, though there were no evidences of it having been recently used. Behind it, entered by folding doors, was another sitting-room with heavy well-worn furniture covered with old-fashioned horsehair. In the room was a modern roll-top writing-table, the drawers of which Pickering reserved for future investigation.“Be careful of the stairs,” I said, as Edwards started to ascend them. “The dangerous ones are nearly at the top of the second storey. There’s no danger on the first floor.”“All right, sir,” replied the man. “I’ll be wary, you bet!” and we climbed to the first floor, the rooms of which, to our surprise, were all empty, devoid of any furniture save two or three broken chairs. In one room was a cupboard, which, however, was locked.Again we turned to the stairs, Edwards and his companion ascending each stair slowly and trying the one higher with their hands. They were covered with new carpet of art green, different to the first flight, which were covered in red.When a little more than half-way up to the top landing, Edwards suddenly exclaimed,—“Here it is, sir!” and instantly we ascended to his side.Kneeling on the stairs, he pressed his hands on the step above, whereupon that portion of the stairway up to the landing swung forward upon a hinge, disclosing a black abyss beneath.I looked into it and shuddered. Even Pickering himself could not restrain an expression of surprise and horror when he realised how cunningly planned was that death-trap. The first six stairs from the top seemed to hang upon hinges from the landing. Therefore with the weight of a person upon them they would fall forward and pitch the unfortunate victim backwards before he could grasp the handrail, causing him to fall into the pit below.“Well,” remarked Pickering, amazed, as he pushed open the stairs and peered into the dark blackness below, “of all the devilish contrivances I’ve ever seen in my twenty-one years’ experience in London, this is one of the most simple and yet the most ingenious and most fatal?”“No doubt there’s a secret way to render the stairs secure,” I remarked.“No doubt, but as we don’t know it, Edwards, one of you had better go down and get something to lay over the stairs—a piece of board, a table—anything that’s long enough. We don’t want to be pitched down there ourselves.”“No, sir,” remarked Edwards’ companion, whose name was Marvin. “I wouldn’t like to be, for one. But I daresay lots of ’em have gone down there at times.”“Most probably,” snapped the inspector, dismissing the man at once to get the board.“Bring up the jemmy as well,” he added, over the banisters. “We may want it.”A few minutes later the two men brought up a long oak settle from the hall, and bridging the fatal gulf, held it in position, while we passed over, not, however, without difficulty, as the incline was so great. Then when we were over we held it while they also scrambled up.To the left was a closed door—the room from which had come the sound of Eric’s voice on that fatal night. I recognised it in a moment, for it was pale green, picked out in a darker shade.I opened it, and Pickering shone his lamp within. The blinds were up, but Edwards rushed and pulled them down. Then, on glancing round, I saw it was a pretty well-furnished room, another sitting-room, quite different from those below, as it was decorated in modern taste, with furniture covered with pale yellow silk and comfortable easy chairs, as though its owner were fond of luxury. The odour of stale cigars still hung in the curtains. Perhaps it was the vampire’s den, a place where he could at all events be safe from intrusion with those fatal stairs between him and the street.I explained my theory to the inspector, and he was inclined to agree with me.Upon the floor lay a copy of an evening paper nearly a month old, while the London dust over everything told us that at least it had not been occupied recently.In that room poor Eric had defied his captors. I looked eagerly around for any traces of him. Yes. My eye fell upon one object—a silver cigarette-case that I had given him two years ago!The tell-tale object was lying upon the mantelshelf unheeded, tossed there, perhaps, on the night of the crime.I handed it to Pickering and told him the truth.“A very valuable piece of evidence, sir,” was the inspector’s reply, placing it in his pocket. “We shall get at the bottom of the affair now, depend upon it. The only thing is, we mustn’t act too eagerly. We must have them all—or none; that’s my opinion.”Then, with his two men, he methodically searched the room, they carefully replacing everything as they found it in a manner which showed them to be expert investigators of crime. Indeed, while Pickering was an inspector of police, the two men were sergeants of the branch of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the station. They examined quite a heterogeneous collection of things—the usual things one finds in a man’s rooms. From a drawer in a kind of sideboard I took out a quantity of letters, beneath which I found a woman’s necklace, a magnificent antique thing in diamonds and emeralds, which had apparently been hurriedly concealed there, and perhaps forgotten.Pickering took it in his hand and examined it close to his lamp.“Real, without a doubt, and a costly one, too! Been taken off some rich woman, perhaps. See! the snap has been broken. Perhaps they are afraid to get rid of it at once, so are keeping it. For the present let’s put it back.”As I replaced it I saw in the corner of the drawer a ring—a gold one with an engraved amethyst. This I at once recognised as poor Eric’s signet ring! Concealed among papers, pamphlets, string, medicine bottles and other odds and ends, were other articles of jewellery mostly costly, as well as several beautiful ropes of pearls.Were they, we wondered, the spoils of the dead? What had been the fate of Eric Domville? Had he been entrapped there, despoiled, as others had been, and then allowed to descend those fatal stairs to his doom?That was Pickering’s opinion, just as it was mine.I longed to be allowed time to inspect the few letters beneath which the emerald necklace had been concealed, but Pickering urged me on, saying that we had yet much to do before morning.So we entered the other rooms leading from the landing, but all were disappointing—all save one.The door was opposite that wherein Eric had faced his enemies, and when we opened it we saw that it was a dirty faded place which had once been a bedroom, but there was now neither bedstead nor bedding. Upon the floor was an old drab threadbare carpet, in the centre of which was a large dark stain.“Look!” I cried, pointing to it and bending to examine it more closely.“Yes, I see,” remarked the inspector, directing his lamp full upon it. “That’s blood, sir—blood without the least doubt!”“Blood!” I gasped. “Then Domville was probably invited in here and struck down by those fiends—the brutes!”Edwards went on his knees, and by the aid of his lamp examined the stain more carefully, touching it with his fingers.“It’s hardly quite dry, even now,” he remarked. “It’s soaked right in—through the boards, probably.”I stood appalled at the sight of that gruesome evidence of a crime. I was not familiar with such revolting sights, as were my companions.How, I wondered, had Eric been struck down? What motive had Sybil’s friend in reporting that he was alive and in Paris, when he was not?Pickering, in the meanwhile, made a tour of the room. From a chair that had recently been broken he concluded that the person attacked had defended himself with it desperately, while there was a great rent in one of the dirty lace curtains that hung at the window, and it was slightly blood-stained, as though it had got caught in the struggle.The last room we examined, which lay at the rear of the house, presented another peculiar feature, inasmuch as it was entirely bare save a table, a chair and a meagre bed, and it showed signs of rather recent occupation. Beside the grate was a cooking-pot, while on the table a dirty plate, a jug and a knife showed that its occupant had cooked his own food.Pickering made a tour of the place, throwing the light of his lantern into every corner, examining the plate and taking up some articles of man’s clothing that lay in confusion upon the bed. Then suddenly he stopped, exclaiming,—“Why, somebody’s been kept a prisoner here! Look at the bars before the window, and see, the door is covered with sheet-iron and strengthened. The bolts, too, show that whoever was put in here couldn’t escape. This place is a prison, that’s evident,” and taking up a piece of hard, stale bread from the table he added, “and this is the remains of the prisoner’s last meal. Where is he now, I wonder?”“Down below,” suggested the detective Edwards.“I fear so,” the inspector said, and taking me to the window showed me how it only looked out upon the roof of the next house and in such a position that the shouts of anyone confined there would never be heard.“They probably kept their victims here to extort money, and then when they had drained them dry they gave them their liberty. They went downstairs,” he added grimly, “but they never gained the street.”
On arrival at Clipstone Street our first inquiry was to ascertain whether the place was inhabited.
While we waited around the corner in Great Portland Street, one of Pickering’s men approached and rang the bell, but though he repeated the summons several times, there was no response. Then, with easy agility, he climbed over the railings and disappeared into the area.
Leaving the second man to give us warning if we were noticed, Pickering and myself sauntered along to the house.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and there were few passers-by, yet we did not wish to be discovered, for our investigations were to be made strictly in secret, prior to the police taking action.
Was I acting judiciously, I wondered? Would the revelation I had made reflect upon Sybil herself? Would those men who used that house hurl against her a terrible and relentless vendetta?
Whether wisely or unwisely, however, I had instituted the inquiry, and could not now draw back.
The inspector himself took the small bag containing a serviceable-looking housebreaker’s jemmy and other tools, and as we came to the area handed it down to the man below. Then both of us scrambled over the locked gate and descended the steps to the basement door by which it had been decided to enter.
The plain-clothes man was something of a mechanic, I could see, for he was soon at work upon the lock, yet although he tried for a full quarter of an hour to open the door, it resisted all his efforts.
“It’s bolted,” he declared at last, wiping the perspiration from his brow. “We must try the front door. That’s no doubt only on the latch. If we force this they’ll know we’ve been here, while if we force the latch we can put that right again before we leave.”
“Very well, Edwards,” was the inspector’s reply. “Go up alone and do it. It won’t do for us both to be up with you. Force the latch, and let us trust to luck to be able to put it right again. We’ll have to lay a trap here—of that I feel sure.”
The man ascended to the door above us, but scarcely had he done so when we heard the hoarse cry of “Star—extrar spe-shall!” from the further end of the street—the pre-arranged signal warning us of someone approaching.
Edwards therefore slipped down the steps and walked in the opposite direction until the two men who had entered the street had passed. Then Edwards sprang up the steps again, and after trying the lock with a number of keys we suddenly heard a low crack, and then there was silence.
“All right,” he whispered to us over the railings, and a minute later we were standing inside the dark hall of the house wherein I had so nearly lost my life. Edwards closed the door behind us noiselessly, and we were compelled to grope forward in the pitch darkness, for the inspector deemed it wise to draw down the blinds before lighting our lanterns, for fear our movements should attract notice from without.
Edwards entered the front room on the right, stumbling over some furniture, and pulled down the dark holland blind, while a moment later a rapping on the front door announced the arrival of the man who had been watching to cover our movements.
The policemen’s lanterns, when lit, revealed an old-fashioned room furnished solidly in leather—a dining-room, though there were no evidences of it having been recently used. Behind it, entered by folding doors, was another sitting-room with heavy well-worn furniture covered with old-fashioned horsehair. In the room was a modern roll-top writing-table, the drawers of which Pickering reserved for future investigation.
“Be careful of the stairs,” I said, as Edwards started to ascend them. “The dangerous ones are nearly at the top of the second storey. There’s no danger on the first floor.”
“All right, sir,” replied the man. “I’ll be wary, you bet!” and we climbed to the first floor, the rooms of which, to our surprise, were all empty, devoid of any furniture save two or three broken chairs. In one room was a cupboard, which, however, was locked.
Again we turned to the stairs, Edwards and his companion ascending each stair slowly and trying the one higher with their hands. They were covered with new carpet of art green, different to the first flight, which were covered in red.
When a little more than half-way up to the top landing, Edwards suddenly exclaimed,—
“Here it is, sir!” and instantly we ascended to his side.
Kneeling on the stairs, he pressed his hands on the step above, whereupon that portion of the stairway up to the landing swung forward upon a hinge, disclosing a black abyss beneath.
I looked into it and shuddered. Even Pickering himself could not restrain an expression of surprise and horror when he realised how cunningly planned was that death-trap. The first six stairs from the top seemed to hang upon hinges from the landing. Therefore with the weight of a person upon them they would fall forward and pitch the unfortunate victim backwards before he could grasp the handrail, causing him to fall into the pit below.
“Well,” remarked Pickering, amazed, as he pushed open the stairs and peered into the dark blackness below, “of all the devilish contrivances I’ve ever seen in my twenty-one years’ experience in London, this is one of the most simple and yet the most ingenious and most fatal?”
“No doubt there’s a secret way to render the stairs secure,” I remarked.
“No doubt, but as we don’t know it, Edwards, one of you had better go down and get something to lay over the stairs—a piece of board, a table—anything that’s long enough. We don’t want to be pitched down there ourselves.”
“No, sir,” remarked Edwards’ companion, whose name was Marvin. “I wouldn’t like to be, for one. But I daresay lots of ’em have gone down there at times.”
“Most probably,” snapped the inspector, dismissing the man at once to get the board.
“Bring up the jemmy as well,” he added, over the banisters. “We may want it.”
A few minutes later the two men brought up a long oak settle from the hall, and bridging the fatal gulf, held it in position, while we passed over, not, however, without difficulty, as the incline was so great. Then when we were over we held it while they also scrambled up.
To the left was a closed door—the room from which had come the sound of Eric’s voice on that fatal night. I recognised it in a moment, for it was pale green, picked out in a darker shade.
I opened it, and Pickering shone his lamp within. The blinds were up, but Edwards rushed and pulled them down. Then, on glancing round, I saw it was a pretty well-furnished room, another sitting-room, quite different from those below, as it was decorated in modern taste, with furniture covered with pale yellow silk and comfortable easy chairs, as though its owner were fond of luxury. The odour of stale cigars still hung in the curtains. Perhaps it was the vampire’s den, a place where he could at all events be safe from intrusion with those fatal stairs between him and the street.
I explained my theory to the inspector, and he was inclined to agree with me.
Upon the floor lay a copy of an evening paper nearly a month old, while the London dust over everything told us that at least it had not been occupied recently.
In that room poor Eric had defied his captors. I looked eagerly around for any traces of him. Yes. My eye fell upon one object—a silver cigarette-case that I had given him two years ago!
The tell-tale object was lying upon the mantelshelf unheeded, tossed there, perhaps, on the night of the crime.
I handed it to Pickering and told him the truth.
“A very valuable piece of evidence, sir,” was the inspector’s reply, placing it in his pocket. “We shall get at the bottom of the affair now, depend upon it. The only thing is, we mustn’t act too eagerly. We must have them all—or none; that’s my opinion.”
Then, with his two men, he methodically searched the room, they carefully replacing everything as they found it in a manner which showed them to be expert investigators of crime. Indeed, while Pickering was an inspector of police, the two men were sergeants of the branch of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the station. They examined quite a heterogeneous collection of things—the usual things one finds in a man’s rooms. From a drawer in a kind of sideboard I took out a quantity of letters, beneath which I found a woman’s necklace, a magnificent antique thing in diamonds and emeralds, which had apparently been hurriedly concealed there, and perhaps forgotten.
Pickering took it in his hand and examined it close to his lamp.
“Real, without a doubt, and a costly one, too! Been taken off some rich woman, perhaps. See! the snap has been broken. Perhaps they are afraid to get rid of it at once, so are keeping it. For the present let’s put it back.”
As I replaced it I saw in the corner of the drawer a ring—a gold one with an engraved amethyst. This I at once recognised as poor Eric’s signet ring! Concealed among papers, pamphlets, string, medicine bottles and other odds and ends, were other articles of jewellery mostly costly, as well as several beautiful ropes of pearls.
Were they, we wondered, the spoils of the dead? What had been the fate of Eric Domville? Had he been entrapped there, despoiled, as others had been, and then allowed to descend those fatal stairs to his doom?
That was Pickering’s opinion, just as it was mine.
I longed to be allowed time to inspect the few letters beneath which the emerald necklace had been concealed, but Pickering urged me on, saying that we had yet much to do before morning.
So we entered the other rooms leading from the landing, but all were disappointing—all save one.
The door was opposite that wherein Eric had faced his enemies, and when we opened it we saw that it was a dirty faded place which had once been a bedroom, but there was now neither bedstead nor bedding. Upon the floor was an old drab threadbare carpet, in the centre of which was a large dark stain.
“Look!” I cried, pointing to it and bending to examine it more closely.
“Yes, I see,” remarked the inspector, directing his lamp full upon it. “That’s blood, sir—blood without the least doubt!”
“Blood!” I gasped. “Then Domville was probably invited in here and struck down by those fiends—the brutes!”
Edwards went on his knees, and by the aid of his lamp examined the stain more carefully, touching it with his fingers.
“It’s hardly quite dry, even now,” he remarked. “It’s soaked right in—through the boards, probably.”
I stood appalled at the sight of that gruesome evidence of a crime. I was not familiar with such revolting sights, as were my companions.
How, I wondered, had Eric been struck down? What motive had Sybil’s friend in reporting that he was alive and in Paris, when he was not?
Pickering, in the meanwhile, made a tour of the room. From a chair that had recently been broken he concluded that the person attacked had defended himself with it desperately, while there was a great rent in one of the dirty lace curtains that hung at the window, and it was slightly blood-stained, as though it had got caught in the struggle.
The last room we examined, which lay at the rear of the house, presented another peculiar feature, inasmuch as it was entirely bare save a table, a chair and a meagre bed, and it showed signs of rather recent occupation. Beside the grate was a cooking-pot, while on the table a dirty plate, a jug and a knife showed that its occupant had cooked his own food.
Pickering made a tour of the place, throwing the light of his lantern into every corner, examining the plate and taking up some articles of man’s clothing that lay in confusion upon the bed. Then suddenly he stopped, exclaiming,—
“Why, somebody’s been kept a prisoner here! Look at the bars before the window, and see, the door is covered with sheet-iron and strengthened. The bolts, too, show that whoever was put in here couldn’t escape. This place is a prison, that’s evident,” and taking up a piece of hard, stale bread from the table he added, “and this is the remains of the prisoner’s last meal. Where is he now, I wonder?”
“Down below,” suggested the detective Edwards.
“I fear so,” the inspector said, and taking me to the window showed me how it only looked out upon the roof of the next house and in such a position that the shouts of anyone confined there would never be heard.
“They probably kept their victims here to extort money, and then when they had drained them dry they gave them their liberty. They went downstairs,” he added grimly, “but they never gained the street.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.Brings us Face to Face.Pickering was essentially a man of action.“We must go down that hole and explore,” he said determinedly. “We must know the whole of the secrets of this place before we go further. Edwards, just slip round to the station and get that rope-ladder we used in the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be too short. And bring P.C. Horton with you. Tell him to take his revolver. Look sharp.”“Very well, sir,” replied the man, who clambered over the settle and down the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise we halted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of his friends.Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied his enemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constable drew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained from the house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and within found a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced it open, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied with pink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity of negotiable foreign securities—mostly French.“The proceeds of some robbery, most certainly,” declared Pickering, examining one after the other and inquiring of me their true character, he being ignorant of French.“I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City,” I remarked after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value was about twenty thousand pounds.“Yes. We’ll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There’s evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes, that you’ve been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!” the inspector added with a smile, “we ourselves couldn’t have done better—indeed, we couldn’t have done as well as you did.”“I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend Domville,” I said. “I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He was in this room, I’ll swear to that. I’d know his voice among ten thousand.”“We shall see,” remarked the officer, confidently. “First let us explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin will arrest them. We’ll take Edwards down with us.”While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it, Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters. Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I opened written upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: “Harewolde Abbey, Herefordshire.” It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet! Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:—“Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier. I hope this information will satisfy you.—S.”Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull South London street.Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as their secret agent in society?The suggestion held me stupefied.At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable in plain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. He carried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope—which Pickering incidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notable Hampstead burglar—together with another lantern, a ball of string and a length of stout rope.Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering, Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew the settle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole to move forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosing the black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, the stairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring or a counter-balancing weight beneath.This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome by inserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keeping them open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of the banisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin tried its strength.“I’ll go down first, sir,” volunteered Edwards. “You’ve got the lantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?”So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrown across to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project of subterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon the string, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge of the stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lamp after him.We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern but little save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of the ladder, like a pendulum.“Great Moses!” we heard him ejaculate in amazement.Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must have reached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra length of rope which Pickering had attached.“All right, sir!” came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitch darkness. “It’s a jolly funny place down here, an’ no mistake. Will you come down? I’m releasing the lantern. Send down another, please. We’ll want it.”Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin’s bull’s-eye to it, and let it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by the length of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to a much younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.“If you’d like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me,” he exclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. “Horton, hold your light over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrest them quickly.”“Very well, sir,” answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeper down until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presence there.“All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful,” he cried up presently, his voice sounding far away. “You’ll have to slide down the rope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you’ll be all right.”I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then with the light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemed large and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well with black slimy walls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth.Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was the inspector’s encouraging voice, crying, “All right. Now then, take the rope in your legs and slip straight down.”I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy cold stream, which swept and gurgled about me.Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining upon the dark subterranean flood.“Is this the place you remember?” asked the inspector, shining his bull’s-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind of circular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. From the right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by the opposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost to its keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flat stones—a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.“This isn’t the place where I found myself,” I said, much surprised.“No, I suppose not,” remarked the inspector. “This is fresh water, from a spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there’s probably a communication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept down there and out into the main sewer at once—like a good many others who have come down here. It’s an awful death-trap. Look up there,” and he shone his lamp above my head.“Don’t you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall—and driven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago in this damp.”“Well?” I said, not quite following him.“That’s been put there so that the victims, in falling from the great height, should strike against it and be rendered unconscious before reaching the water. Look. There’s a bit of white stuff on it now—like silk from a lady’s evening dress!”And sure enough I saw at the end of that iron bar a piece of white stuff fluttering in the draught, the grim relic of some unfortunate woman who had gone unconsciously to her death! The dank, gruesome place horrified me. Its terrible secrets held all three of us appalled. Even Pickering himself shuddered.“To explore further is quite impossible,” he said. “That culvert leads into the main sewer, so we must leave its exploration to the sewermen. Lots of springs, of course, fall into the sewers, but the exact spots of their origin are unknown. They were found and connected when the sewers were constructed, and that’s all. My own opinion,” he added, “is that this place was originally the well of an ancient house, and that the blackguards discovered it in the cellar, explored it, ascertained that anything placed in it would be sucked down into that culvert, and then they opened up a way right through to the stairs.”The inspector’s theory appeared to me to be a sound one.I expressed fear of the rising of the water with the automatic flushing of the sewers, but he pointed out that where we stood must be on a slightly higher level, judging from the way the water rushed away down the culvert, while on the side of the well there was no recent mark of higher water, thus bearing out his idea of a spring.Edwards swarmed up the rope and managed to detach the piece of silk from the iron bar. When he handed it to us we saw that though faded and dirty it had been a piece of rich brocade, pale blue upon a cream ground, while attached was a tiny edging of pale blue chiffon—from a woman’s corsage, Pickering declared it to be—perhaps a scrap of the dress of the owner of that emerald necklet up above!After a minute inspection of the grim ancient walls which rose from a channel of rock worn smooth by the action of the waters of ages, Pickering swarmed up the dangling rope, gained the ladder and climbed back again, an example which I quickly followed, although my legs were so chilled to the bone by the icy water that at first I found considerable difficulty in ascending.Having gained the landing and been followed by Edwards, we drew up the ladder, removed the settle, allowed the fatal stairs to close again, and then bridged it over as before.While we had been below Horton, who was a practised carpenter, had mended the latch of the front door, so that there should be no suspicion of our entry. We all clambered across the settle, descended the stairs to the basement, and were soon engaged in searching the downstairs rooms and cellar. We had found that the communication between the head of the well and the top of the house was a roughly-constructed shaft of boards when, of a sudden, while standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs we were startled by hearing the sharp click of a key in the lock of the front door above.In an instant we were silent, and stood together breathless and listening. The dark slide slipped across the bull’s-eye.It was truly an exciting moment.Pickering, followed by Edwards and Marvin, crept noiselessly up the stairs, and while the person entering apparently had some difficulty with the lock they waited in the darkness.I stood behind the inspector, my heart beating quickly, listening intently. It was an exciting moment standing ready in the pitch blackness of that silent house of doom.The latch caught, probably on account of its recent disarrangement, but at last the key lifted it, the door opened, somebody entered the hall, and quietly re-closed the door.Next instant Pickering sprang from his hiding-place, crying,—“I arrest you on suspicion of being implicated in certain cases of wilful murder committed in this house!”Horton at that same moment flashed his lamp full upon the face of the person who had entered there so stealthily, and who, startled by the dread accusation, stood glaring like some wild animal brought to bay, but motionless as though turned to stone.The lamp-flash revealed a white, haggard countenance. I saw it; I recognised it!A loud cry of horror and amazement escaped me. Was I dreaming? No. It was no dream, but a stern, living reality—a truth that bewildered and staggered me utterly—a grim, awful truth which deprived me of the power of speech.
Pickering was essentially a man of action.
“We must go down that hole and explore,” he said determinedly. “We must know the whole of the secrets of this place before we go further. Edwards, just slip round to the station and get that rope-ladder we used in the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be too short. And bring P.C. Horton with you. Tell him to take his revolver. Look sharp.”
“Very well, sir,” replied the man, who clambered over the settle and down the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.
Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise we halted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of his friends.
Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied his enemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constable drew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained from the house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.
Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and within found a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced it open, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied with pink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity of negotiable foreign securities—mostly French.
“The proceeds of some robbery, most certainly,” declared Pickering, examining one after the other and inquiring of me their true character, he being ignorant of French.
“I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City,” I remarked after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value was about twenty thousand pounds.
“Yes. We’ll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There’s evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes, that you’ve been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!” the inspector added with a smile, “we ourselves couldn’t have done better—indeed, we couldn’t have done as well as you did.”
“I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend Domville,” I said. “I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He was in this room, I’ll swear to that. I’d know his voice among ten thousand.”
“We shall see,” remarked the officer, confidently. “First let us explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin will arrest them. We’ll take Edwards down with us.”
While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it, Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters. Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I opened written upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: “Harewolde Abbey, Herefordshire.” It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet! Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:—
“Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier. I hope this information will satisfy you.—S.”
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull South London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as their secret agent in society?
The suggestion held me stupefied.
At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable in plain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. He carried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope—which Pickering incidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notable Hampstead burglar—together with another lantern, a ball of string and a length of stout rope.
Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering, Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew the settle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole to move forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosing the black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, the stairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring or a counter-balancing weight beneath.
This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome by inserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keeping them open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of the banisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin tried its strength.
“I’ll go down first, sir,” volunteered Edwards. “You’ve got the lantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?”
So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrown across to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project of subterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon the string, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge of the stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lamp after him.
We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern but little save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of the ladder, like a pendulum.
“Great Moses!” we heard him ejaculate in amazement.
Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must have reached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra length of rope which Pickering had attached.
“All right, sir!” came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitch darkness. “It’s a jolly funny place down here, an’ no mistake. Will you come down? I’m releasing the lantern. Send down another, please. We’ll want it.”
Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin’s bull’s-eye to it, and let it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by the length of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to a much younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.
“If you’d like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me,” he exclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. “Horton, hold your light over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrest them quickly.”
“Very well, sir,” answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeper down until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presence there.
“All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful,” he cried up presently, his voice sounding far away. “You’ll have to slide down the rope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you’ll be all right.”
I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then with the light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemed large and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well with black slimy walls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth.
Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was the inspector’s encouraging voice, crying, “All right. Now then, take the rope in your legs and slip straight down.”
I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy cold stream, which swept and gurgled about me.
Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining upon the dark subterranean flood.
“Is this the place you remember?” asked the inspector, shining his bull’s-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind of circular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. From the right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by the opposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost to its keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flat stones—a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.
“This isn’t the place where I found myself,” I said, much surprised.
“No, I suppose not,” remarked the inspector. “This is fresh water, from a spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there’s probably a communication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept down there and out into the main sewer at once—like a good many others who have come down here. It’s an awful death-trap. Look up there,” and he shone his lamp above my head.
“Don’t you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall—and driven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago in this damp.”
“Well?” I said, not quite following him.
“That’s been put there so that the victims, in falling from the great height, should strike against it and be rendered unconscious before reaching the water. Look. There’s a bit of white stuff on it now—like silk from a lady’s evening dress!”
And sure enough I saw at the end of that iron bar a piece of white stuff fluttering in the draught, the grim relic of some unfortunate woman who had gone unconsciously to her death! The dank, gruesome place horrified me. Its terrible secrets held all three of us appalled. Even Pickering himself shuddered.
“To explore further is quite impossible,” he said. “That culvert leads into the main sewer, so we must leave its exploration to the sewermen. Lots of springs, of course, fall into the sewers, but the exact spots of their origin are unknown. They were found and connected when the sewers were constructed, and that’s all. My own opinion,” he added, “is that this place was originally the well of an ancient house, and that the blackguards discovered it in the cellar, explored it, ascertained that anything placed in it would be sucked down into that culvert, and then they opened up a way right through to the stairs.”
The inspector’s theory appeared to me to be a sound one.
I expressed fear of the rising of the water with the automatic flushing of the sewers, but he pointed out that where we stood must be on a slightly higher level, judging from the way the water rushed away down the culvert, while on the side of the well there was no recent mark of higher water, thus bearing out his idea of a spring.
Edwards swarmed up the rope and managed to detach the piece of silk from the iron bar. When he handed it to us we saw that though faded and dirty it had been a piece of rich brocade, pale blue upon a cream ground, while attached was a tiny edging of pale blue chiffon—from a woman’s corsage, Pickering declared it to be—perhaps a scrap of the dress of the owner of that emerald necklet up above!
After a minute inspection of the grim ancient walls which rose from a channel of rock worn smooth by the action of the waters of ages, Pickering swarmed up the dangling rope, gained the ladder and climbed back again, an example which I quickly followed, although my legs were so chilled to the bone by the icy water that at first I found considerable difficulty in ascending.
Having gained the landing and been followed by Edwards, we drew up the ladder, removed the settle, allowed the fatal stairs to close again, and then bridged it over as before.
While we had been below Horton, who was a practised carpenter, had mended the latch of the front door, so that there should be no suspicion of our entry. We all clambered across the settle, descended the stairs to the basement, and were soon engaged in searching the downstairs rooms and cellar. We had found that the communication between the head of the well and the top of the house was a roughly-constructed shaft of boards when, of a sudden, while standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs we were startled by hearing the sharp click of a key in the lock of the front door above.
In an instant we were silent, and stood together breathless and listening. The dark slide slipped across the bull’s-eye.
It was truly an exciting moment.
Pickering, followed by Edwards and Marvin, crept noiselessly up the stairs, and while the person entering apparently had some difficulty with the lock they waited in the darkness.
I stood behind the inspector, my heart beating quickly, listening intently. It was an exciting moment standing ready in the pitch blackness of that silent house of doom.
The latch caught, probably on account of its recent disarrangement, but at last the key lifted it, the door opened, somebody entered the hall, and quietly re-closed the door.
Next instant Pickering sprang from his hiding-place, crying,—
“I arrest you on suspicion of being implicated in certain cases of wilful murder committed in this house!”
Horton at that same moment flashed his lamp full upon the face of the person who had entered there so stealthily, and who, startled by the dread accusation, stood glaring like some wild animal brought to bay, but motionless as though turned to stone.
The lamp-flash revealed a white, haggard countenance. I saw it; I recognised it!
A loud cry of horror and amazement escaped me. Was I dreaming? No. It was no dream, but a stern, living reality—a truth that bewildered and staggered me utterly—a grim, awful truth which deprived me of the power of speech.