Chapter Twenty Nine.
Lifts the Veil
The man under arrest was not, as I had expected, John Parham – but Eric Domville!
I stood glaring at him, utterly staggered.
Then I sprang forward to greet him – to welcome him as one returned from the grave, but next instant drew back. His face was changed – the expression upon it was that of terror – and of guilt!
“You are arrested,” continued Pickering, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, adding that phrase of patter which is spoken each time a person is taken into custody, “and I warn you that whatever statement you may now make will be taken down in writing and used in evidence against you at your trial.”
“I have no statement to make. I can do that later,” faltered the unhappy man whom I had, until that moment, regarded as my warmest friend.
The revelation struck me of a heap. At first I was unable to realise that I was awake, and in my right senses, yet there Domville stood, with a detective on either side of him, crushed and resistless. He had not even denied the truth of Pickering’s awful allegation.
Certainly in no man had I been more deceived them in him. I had given him hospitality; I had confided my secrets in him because we had been friends ever since our youth. Indeed, he had assisted me to shield Sybil, and yet the police had charged him with implication in the grim tragedies that had undoubtedly been enacted within those silent walls where we now stood.
“Is this true, Domville?” I cried at last, when I found tongue. “Speak.”
“True!” he echoed, with a strange, sickly smile, but in a low, hoarse tone. “The police are fools. Let them do as they like. They’ll soon find out that they’ve got hold of the wrong man. You surely know me well enough, Wilfrid, not to believe these fellows without proof.”
“Yes,” I cried, “I do, Eric. I believe you are innocent, and I’ll help you to prove it.”
Pickering smiled, saying, “At present, Mr Hughes, we must send this gentleman round to the station. We may discuss his innocence later on.” Then turning to Edwards he said in quick, peremptory tones, “Get a cab, you and Marvin, and take him round to the station. Then come back here. Tell Inspector Nicholls that I’ll charge him myself when I come round.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the man, and ten minutes later the prisoner and the two detectives drove off in a four-wheeled cab.
“Pardon me, Mr Hughes,” said Pickering, after he had gone, “but is it not injudicious to presuppose that man’s innocence, especially when guilt is so plainly written on his face? Some men’s faces are to us as open as the columns of a newspaper. That man’s is. He is guilty – he is one of the gang. What proof have you that he is not?”
“He is my friend,” I protested.
“And may he not be a criminal at the same time? Of many of our friends we are utterly unaware what lives they lead in secret. Charles Peace, the daring burglar, as you will probably remember, taught in a Sunday-school. Therefore, never judge a man by his outward profession, either of friendship or of piety.”
“But I heard the villains threaten him in that upstairs room,” I exclaimed. “He was in peril of his life.”
“Because they had quarrelled – perhaps over the distribution of the spoils. Criminals more often than not quarrel over that, and in revenge give each other away to us. No, Mr Hughes, before you jump to any conclusion in this matter just wait a bit, wait, I mean, till we’ve concluded our inquiries. Depend upon it a very different complexion will soon be placed upon the whole affair.”
Edwards and Marvin returned half an hour after wards.
“He made no statement,” Edwards said. “He’s one of ’em, that’s certain.”
“Why?” I asked. “How are you so positive?”
“Well, sir, we can generally pretty well tell, you know. He was a bit too resigned to be innocent.”
Through the whole night, until the cold grey of the wintry dawn, we sat in the back sitting-room, with one single bull’s-eye lantern turned on, awaiting the arrival of any of the others who might make a midnight visit there. I, of course, knew the addresses of both Parham and Winsloe, and had given them to Pickering; but he preferred that night to wait, and if possible arrest them actually in that house of doom.
Just as the faint dawn began to show through the chinks of the closed shutters, and Pickering was giving his men instructions before returning to the station, we distinctly heard another key rattle in the latch.
We were all on the alert in an instant.
“We’ll let him go upstairs if that’s his intention,” whispered the inspector with satisfaction.
Again the newcomer had the same difficulty with the latch, but at length the door opened, letting in a flood of grey light into the hall, and then closed again. We had drawn back behind the half-closed door of the room wherein we had kept our night vigil, and standing there scarcely daring to breathe, we watched a dark-haired young man in a brown tweed suit ascend the stairs. He wore a thick travelling coat, a flat cloth cap, and carried a well-worn brown handbag. Evidently he had just come off a night journey, for he sighed wearily as humming to himself he ascended those fatal stairs.
Fortunately we had removed the settle back to its place, but on arrival on the first landing we heard him halt and pull a creaking lever somewhere – the mechanism by which the six stairs were held fast and secure. Then he went on up to the top and entered that well-furnished little sitting-room.
For ten minutes we allowed him to remain there undisturbed – “Just to allow him to settle himself,” as Pickering whispered grimly. Then one by one the officers crept noiselessly up until we had assembled on the landing outside the closed door.
Then, of a sudden, Pickering drew his revolver, threw open the door, and the sleek-haired newcomer was revealed.
He fell back as though he had received a blow.
“We are police officers,” explained Pickering, “and I arrest you.”
Then we saw that from his bag he had taken out a suit of clothes and some linen, which were flung upon a chair, while upon the table were two packets of German bank-notes, amounting to a considerable sum. A third packet he still held in his hand, for he had been in the act of counting them when surprised.
His dark eyes met mine, and the fellow started.
“I know you!” he cried to me. “You are not a detective at any rate. You are Wilfrid Hughes.”
“I have, I regret, not the pleasure of your acquaintance,” was my quick answer, somewhat surprised at his declaration.
“That woman has betrayed us – that woman, Sybil Burnet,” he cried angrily, his eyes flashing at us. “She shall pay for this – by heaven, she shall! She defied me, but I have not yet said my last word. Arrest me to-day, and to-morrow she will be arrested also,” he laughed, triumphantly.
“My name’s Ralph Vickers – if you must know,” he said to Pickering in reply to a question.
“And you’re just back from Germany – eh? Arrived by the night mail via the Hook of Holland.”
“Well, what of that?”
“And you’ve been to Germany to dispose of stolen property, and this money is the price you received for it. Am I not correct?”
“Find out,” was the smooth-haired young man’s insulting response.
“Take him to the station, Edwards, and ask Inspector Nicholls to step round here with two plain-clothes men. I’ll wait for him. Search the prisoner, and I’ll charge him – when I come round.”
And the young man, without a word, was conducted down the stairs. Then the inspector began counting the German notes rapidly, taking a note of the number in each of the packets secured by pins.
“We’ve done a good night’s work, I think, Mr Hughes,” he said afterwards, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. “Thanks to you we’re on the track of one of the biggest criminal conspiracies that London has known for years. But,” he added, “who’s the woman that fellow mentioned – Sybil Burnet? He seems to know something against her – alleges that she’s also a member of the gang. I think we’d better arrest her, or in any case keep her under observation, for the instant she hears of the arrests she’ll, of course, fly.”
I held my breath, and I think I must have turned pale at this unforeseen result of my information against the malefactors. I recollected the affair in Charlton Wood. What could I reply?
“It is true, Inspector Pickering, that I am acquainted with Miss Sybil Burnet, but I have reason for being confident of her innocence.”
“As you are confident of the innocence of your friend Domville – eh?” he asked dubiously with a sarcastic smile.
“Well,” I said, desperately, “I am going now, at once, to see her. And if you leave the matter in my hands and promise that I shall not be followed, I, on my part, will promise that later she shall reply to any questions you may put to her.”
He was only half-convinced.
“You take a great responsibility upon yourself, Mr Hughes,” he remarked. “Why are you so anxious that this woman’s whereabouts should not be known?”
“To avoid a scandal,” I said. “She is a gentlewoman.”
Pickering smiled again.
“Well, Mr Hughes,” he said with great reluctance, “that man Vickers has made a direct charge against her, and it must be investigated, as you quite understand, whether she be a gentlewoman or not. But I leave you to question her, on the understanding that you prevent her from warning the other two men still at liberty – Parham and Winsloe. Probably they will come here to-day to meet Vickers on his return from Germany – at any rate, we shall be here in waiting for them.”
What might not this terrible exposure mean to Sybil?
Chapter Thirty.
In which Sybil Speaks
Sybil saw me from the window as I walked up Neate Street at ten o’clock that morning. Then, letting myself in with the latchkey, I ascended the stairs, finding her as usual, fresh and dainty, although she was engaged in the prosaic operation of dusting the room.
“Why, Wilfrid!” she gasped, “what’s the matter? You’re not well, surely!” she cried in anxiety, coming forward towards me.
I threw my cap upon the couch, and halting upon the hearthrug, said in a low, serious voice, —
“Sybil, I think I may speak to you plainly, without preamble. I want to ask you a simple question. Who is Ralph Vickers?”
The light died out of her face in an instant. She went pale and her white lips trembled at mention of that name.
She was silent. She made no response. The blow that she had so long dreaded had fallen!
“Tell me, Sybil,” I urged in a low, kindly tone. “Who is this man?”
“Ah! no, Wilfrid!” she gasped at last, her face cast down as though in shame. “Don’t ask that. How – how can I, of all women, tell you?”
“But you must,” I said firmly. “All is known. The brutal devilish conspiracy of those men Parham, Winsloe and Vickers is exposed.”
“Exposed! Then they know about that – about that awful house in Clipstone Street?” she gasped, her eyes starting from her head in abject terror.
“The horrible truth has been discovered. The police went to the house last night.”
“The police!”
“Yes, and Vickers, who is under arrest, has denounced you as one of their accomplices. Tell me,” I cried hoarsely, “tell me, Sybil, the real honest truth.”
“I knew he would denounce me,” she cried bitterly. “He has been my bitterest enemy from the very first. To that man I owe all my sorrow and degradation. He and his friends are fiends – veritable fiends in human shape – vampires who have sucked the blood of the innocent, and cast them away in secret in that dark house in Clipstone Street without mercy and without compunction. He carried out his threat once, and denounced me, but he did not succeed in effecting my ruin. And now, when arrested he has told the police what – what, Wilfrid, is, alas! the truth.”
“The truth!” I gasped, drawing away from her in horror. “The truth, Sybil. Then you are really guilty,” I wailed. “Ah! Heaven – I believed you were innocent!”
She stood swaying to and fro, then staggering unevenly to the table, gripped it to save herself from falling.
Her countenance was bloodless and downcast.
“I – I thought to hide my secret from you, of all men,” she faltered. “I feared that if you knew all you would hate and despise me, therefore my lips were sealed by fear of those men on the one hand, and on the other because I still strove to retain you as my friend and protector. I have remained silent, allowing you to form your own conclusions – nay,” she added bitterly, “allowing you to place yourself in a position of great personal peril, for I knew how they entrapped you in that awful place, and how they believed you dead like the others.” And she paused, her nervous fingers twisting the cheap jet brooch at her throat.
“But you will tell me now,” I urged quickly, “you will tell me the truth, Sybil.”
“Yes – yes. I will confess everything,” she exclaimed with an effort. “Surely there is no woman so sad and unhappy in all London as I am at this moment – as I have been these past two years! It commenced long ago, but I’ll relate it all as clearly and briefly as I can. You know how, in order to finish my education, I was sent to Madame Perrin’s at Versailles. Well, on one of my journeys home for the summer holiday I met in the train between the Gare du Nord and Calais an extremely agreeable young Englishman, resident in Paris, who spoke to me, and afterwards gave me his card, expressing a hope that when I returned to Versailles I should manage to meet him again. A sweetheart in secret is always an attraction to the schoolgirl, and surely I was no exception. With the connivance of three other girls, whom I let into my secret, I contrived to meet him often in the narrow, unfrequented Allée des Sabotiers that runs down to La Croix, and wrote him letters of girlish affection. This continued for nearly a year, when one evening, about a month before I left Madame Perrin’s for ever, I met him for a few moments close behind the school in the Rue du Parc de Clagny, and he surprised me by remarking that my uncle was Vice-Admiral Hellard, a high official at the Admiralty in London, or Second Sea-Lord as he was called, I believe. He asked me to do him a great favour when I returned to London, and take a little present of a dozen Bohemian liqueur glasses to deliver into his, the Admiral’s hand, personally. This I, of course, consented to do, and a few weeks later I found him at the Gare du Nord on my departure. Calling me aside, he handed me a little box about a foot long, and six inches deep, whispering that probably the Admiral would acknowledge the receipt of the gift, and therefore he would be in London a week later, meet me, and receive my uncle’s reply. But he urged me to give the present into the hands of no person other than the Admiral himself. He was most particular on that point.
“Well,” she continued in a low voice, almost as though she were speaking to herself, “three days later I called at Albert Gate, saw my uncle alone, and handed him the little box, which he seemed much surprised at receiving, and which he took into an adjoining room and opened. When he returned to me he was greatly excited, and asked me if I was aware what the box contained. I told him that they were a set of liqueur glasses. He smiled. Then he asked me who gave it to me, and I told him a young gentleman whom I knew slightly, and that if there was any reply I would hand it to him myself. ‘You shall have the reply for him to-morrow, Sybil,’ was the old man’s answer. ‘I can only say that you’ve brought me the most valuable present that I’ve ever received in all my life.’ My curiosity was at once aroused, and I asked to see the glasses, but he refused, saying that they did not concern me. Two days later I returned, and he handed me a sealed letter addressed to ‘Ralph Vickers, Esquire,’ and – ”
“Vickers!” I gasped. “The sleek-haired fellow who was arrested this morning?”
“The same,” she answered hoarsely. “He was the man who met me in Paris, and into whose unscrupulous hands and those of his associates I so innocently fell. A few days after receiving the note from the Admiral, Vickers was, I found, in London, and late one evening I slipped out of the house to the corner of Berkeley Square, and there delivered the Admiral’s reply into his hands. He remained in England, but somehow – why I really can’t tell – I began to suspect that his mode of life was not altogether honest. Perhaps it was because one day the Admiral, who came to stay with us at Ryhall, was very inquisitive about him, and added that he sincerely hoped I had broken off the acquaintanceship. At any rate, although I sometimes met him I no longer entertained any affection for him. My girlish idol was, indeed, broken sadly when just as I made my début in society he began to write letters compelling me to meet him, and commenced to seek information from me concerning the habits and movements of certain people whom I met in our set in London. Well,” she sighed, “this went on for about a year. I hated him now, for I had detected how false he was. Yet moving with Cynthia in the gay set I saw that I could never afford to allow the fellow to disclose those foolish letters I had written to him. At this juncture, while I was staying up in Durham, came a note which placed Ralph Vickers in his true light – that of a blackguard. In guarded language he explained that he had, previous to making my acquaintance, done three years in prison, and that as he was now without funds I must obtain money for him – indeed, pay him in order to keep the secret of those letters – the secret that I had loved a gaol-bird! In reply, however, I openly defied him. In response he came up to Durham, and I was compelled to meet him in secret. The object of his visit was truly a brutal one. Finding that I resisted his demands, he revealed to me the contents of that box which I had conveyed to my uncle. It had contained a French naval secret – a copy of the secret plans and specifications of the new French submarine boat then being built at Brest, for which the British Admiralty had paid him three thousand pounds, a draft for this amount being contained in my uncle’s sealed letter. He had, he acknowledged, obtained the plans from a French naval lieutenant, and the pair had divided the proceeds. He was a spy, as well as a blackmailer. I asked what this had to do with me, whereupon he revealed to me an appalling fact, which utterly stunned me. Till then, I was in total ignorance of how entirely and completely I had fallen beneath his unscrupulous influence. But when he explained I saw in an instant that my future was hopeless; that escape was impossible. I was bound irrevocably to him and to his blackguardly accomplices.”
“And what did he reveal?” I inquired anxiously, as her terrified eyes met mine.
“He pointed out, with brutal frankness, that although in England the French law could not reach him, yet in my own case it was different. The French Government could apply for my arrest and extradition for selling a State secret, because, in the eyes of the French law, I was a French subject, I having been born at my father’s villa at Cannes, and had never taken out letters of naturalisation as a British subject. I saw his intention. If unable to raise money to supply his needs he would give information against me in Paris, and cause my arrest. He feared nothing for himself, he said, as he was a British-born subject. I alone would suffer. What could I do in face of such a terrible eventuality? He pointed out that although a person born of British parents abroad is under English law British, yet if wanted for a crime committed in the country of birth, the person may be arrested and extradited. I heard him to the end, and saw that I was helpless in his hands. He had entrapped me, and I was as a fly in a spider’s web. I saw my peril; therefore, in order to avoid scandal and arrest I was compelled to send him money from time to time. Moreover, he also compelled me to furnish secret information about persons whom I met in society, for what purpose I could only guess – blackmail. Gradually, I thus became a tool of Vickers and those fiends whom I felt were in association with him, although for some time the latter never betrayed themselves. This went on for nearly a couple of years until Ellice Winsloe proposed marriage to me. I was driven desperate, always wanting to reveal to you the truth and ask your advice, Wilfrid, and yet always in fear lest you should turn your back upon me as an associate of a gang of blackmailers. One autumn day, while motoring with Cynthia from London up to visit the Beebys at Grantham, and without a chauffeur, I had a tyre-burst near a place called Stretton, on the Great North Road, and a young man passing on a bicycle very kindly offered to change the cover for me. He was a rather good-looking young fellow and evidently a gentleman. A week later we met again at a party at Belton, when I discovered that his name was Arthur Rumbold, and that he was son of Canon Rumbold, of Lincoln, who held the living of Folkingham. He was a medical student at Guy’s, and home for the vacation. We met again and accidentally, at a dance in town; and although I am no more of a flirt than other girls, I confess that he attracted me. In fact, after a couple of months he fell desperately in love with me, when suddenly I discovered a most amazing and alarming fact, namely, that he actually occupied furnished rooms in the same house in Vincent Square, Westminster, where lodged Ralph Vickers. He knew the fellow well, he said, but was unaware, of course, of how he lived.
“Meanwhile,” she went on, her face slightly flushed by the effort of speaking, “Vickers was constantly pressing me for more money, threatening that if he did not get it he would hand me over to the French police. I was desperate, and at last one dark winter’s night, when walking with Arthur in one of the quiet streets in Kensington where we would not be recognised, I made a clean breast of my girlish foolishness and my present difficulties. He promised to at once help me, but it was three weeks afterwards when he wrote to me while I was at Ryhall, saying that he had searched the rooms of his fellow-lodger, had found my letters, and was bringing them to me. He had, he said, secretly watched Vickers, and found that he was in association with Parham, Winsloe and Domville in a great ruthless conspiracy of blackmail, and further that he had seen persons enter the house in Clipstone Street and never emerge again! Think of the effect this amazing statement had upon me. Winsloe and Domville were our guests at that moment, and the last-named was your most intimate friend. Three days previously I had received a letter from Vickers demanding that I should meet him in secret in the park, and I had replied making an evening appointment. Then, to Arthur I replied that I would meet him in the afternoon in Charlton Wood, a lonely spot where we had met before, telling him to bring the letters, and to explain everything to me. Well,” she said hoarsely, after a pause, “we met. He told me of his suspicion of that house in Clipstone Street and I at once saw to what dastardly use had been put the information regarding certain persons which these men had forced from me. But as he was telling me the truth a man rushed wildly out from the trees and sprang between us threatening to kill him if he uttered another word. He naturally defied his assailant, who in a moment drew a revolver and shot him dead before my eyes. Then turning to me the assassin said, calmly, ‘Of this affair you know nothing, remember. Otherwise, you’ll quickly find yourself arrested for the affair in Paris. Besides,’ he added, ‘you met the fellow here. He was your lover, and you’ve rid yourself of him. You see how the circumstantial evidence against you stands. Go. And you’d better leave Ryhall as soon as you can.’ Then he disappeared into the thicket while I stood half dazed, staring at the body of the man lying stark and dead before me.”
“But who was the man who fired the fatal shot?” I demanded breathlessly.
She refused to answer!