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 a café in 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 serious contretemps, 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.