Chapter Nine.
Strictly in Secret
Thursday night was wet and dismal in London as I stood outside the underground railway station at King’s Cross at eight o’clock, keeping my appointment with the Honourable Sybil.
There was a good deal of traffic and bustle in the Pentonville Road; the shops were still open, and the working-class population, notwithstanding the rain, were out with their baskets, making their purchases after their day’s labour.
At that spot in the evening one sees a veritable panorama of London life, its humours and its tragedies, for there five of the great arteries of traffic converge, while every two minutes the subterranean railway belches forth its hurrying, breathless crowds to swell the number of passers-by.
The station front towards the King’s Cross Road is somewhat in the shadow, and there I stood in patience and in wonder.
What Eric and had discovered in Winsloe’s kitbag had rendered the mystery the more tantalising, it being a cheap carte-de-visite photograph of the dead stranger – a picture which showed him in a dark tweed suit and golf-cap stuck slightly askew, as many young men of the working-class wear their caps.
We were both greatly puzzled. How came the portrait in Ellice’s possession? And why, if he were not in fear of some secret being divulged, did he not identify the stranger?
Again I recollected well how Sybil had declared her intention to marry Ellice. For what reason? Was it in order to prevent her own secret being exposed?
We had replaced the photograph – which, unfortunately, bore no photographer’s name – re-locked the bag, and left the room utterly confounded.
During the two days that followed both of us had watched Winsloe carefully, and had seen his ill-concealed anxiety lest the dead man should be identified by Jack. Once or twice, as was but natural, at table or in the billiard-room, Scarcliff had referred to the strange affair and declared, —
“I’m sure I’ve seen the poor chap before, but where, I can’t for the life of me recollect.”
The face was constantly puzzling him, and thus Winsloe remained anxious and agitated.
In order to watch and learn what I could, I remained Jack’s guest until after the inquest. The inquiry was duly held at the Spread Eagle at Midhurst, with the usual twelve respectable tradesmen as Jurymen, and created great excitement in the little town. Ellice went out shooting with Wydcombe on that day, while Jack, Eric and myself drove over to hear the evidence.
There was very little to hear. The affair was still a complete mystery. According to the two doctors who had made the examination the stranger had been shot through the heart about eight hours prior to his discovery – murdered by an unknown hand, for although the police had made a strict search the weapon had not been discovered.
The fact that not a scrap of anything remained to lead to the dead man’s identity puzzled the police, more especially the absence of the tab from the back of the coat. The two detectives from London sat beside us and listened to the evidence with dissatisfaction. Booth made his statement, and then the inquiry was formally adjourned.
There was nothing else. Both police and public were puzzled and the coroner remarked to the jury that he hoped when they next met some information would be forthcoming which might lead to the stranger’s identity.
We drove back in the dog-cart, and on the way Jack turned to me, saying, —
“I’d give worlds to know the real truth of that affair. I’m quite positive I’ve seen the face somewhere, but where, I can’t fix.”
“That’s a pity,” Eric remarked. “One day, however, it’ll come to you, and when it does we may hope to discover the guilty person.”
That night in the billiard-room Winsloe asked us what had taken place at the inquest, endeavouring to put his question unconcernedly. Eric and I could, however, see how anxious he was.
“Nobody knows yet who he is,” Jack answered, as he chalked his cue preparatory to making a shot. “The police have discovered nothing – except that a woman was seen coming from the wood just about four o’clock.”
“A woman!” I cried, staring at him. “Who said so? It was not given in evidence.”
“No,” he replied. “Booth told me just as we came out that somebody had said so, but that he did not give it in evidence, as he considered it wiser to say nothing.”
I held my breath.
“Who was the woman?” asked Winsloe, apparently as surprised as myself.
“He didn’t tell me. In fact, I don’t think she was recognised. If she had been, he would, of course, have interrogated her by this time.”
Ellice Winsloe was silent. I saw as he stood back in the shadow from the table that his brows had contracted and that he was pensive and puzzled. And yet upstairs in his bag he had a portrait of the dead man, and was, therefore, well aware of his identity.
Now that we reflected we agreed that we really knew very little of Ellice Winsloe. He was Jack’s friend rather than ours. The son of a Cornishman whose income was derived from his interest in certain tin mines, he had, on his father’s death, been left well off. Jack had known him at Magdalen, but had lost sight of him for some years, when of a sudden they met again one night while at supper at the Savoy, and their old friendship had been renewed. Ellice, it appeared, was well known in a certain set in town, and up to the present moment we had both voted him as a good all-round sportsman, a good fellow and a gentleman. But this secret knowledge which he refused to betray, and his evident fear lest the dead man be identified, aroused our serious suspicions.
“I wonder,” suggested Eric, when we were alone in my room on the night of the inquest, “I wonder whether Ellice was in hiding in those bushes watching us search the body? Do you know, the idea has been in my mind all day,” he added.
“If he was, then we are placed in a very awkward position,” I said. “He may make a statement to the police.”
“No. I don’t think he’ll do that. If he did he would betray his own knowledge,” was my friend’s answer.
The next day passed uneventfully, and beyond the general surprise at Tibbie’s continued absence there was nothing unusual in the household at Ryhall Place.
Late that night Mason returned, saying that her mistress had driven the car to the Bath Hotel, at Bournemouth, and put it into the garage. Three hours later she left the hotel to go for a walk, but did not return. After she had gone the maid had, it seemed, found a letter in which her mistress ordered her to remain there until Wednesday, and telling her that if she did not return then she was to go back to Ryhall and send the chauffeur to Bournemouth for the car.
Mason, used to Tibbie’s erratic ways, thought little of it. Her mistress travelled a great deal, had a very large circle of friends, and besides, was entirely unconventional and knew well how to take care of herself. Therefore the maid had remained until midday on Wednesday and then returned to Ryhall.
“I’m getting a little anxious about Tibbie,” remarked old Lady Scarcliff in the drawing-room that evening. “This kind of thing is not at all proper – flying about the country alone.”
Jack laughed.
“No good worrying about Tibbie, mater. She’ll turn up all right to-morrow, or you’ll get a wire from her. You remember that time she met the Hursts in Nice and went off yachting with them down the Mediterranean, and we didn’t know where she was for three weeks. And then she calmly said she’d quite forgotten to tell us where she was going.”
“Ah, I remember,” said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I liked immensely. “I do wish she would consider my feelings a little more.”
With that the subject dropped.
Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.
As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully as the wife of a compositor with forty shillings a week?
Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a lady?
I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back after the day’s toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road, and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the fugitive.
“Tibbie!” I cried. “Then you’ve really come, after all?”
“Of course,” was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. “When I make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can’t talk here, can we?”
A hansom was passing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile, —
“Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?”
“My wife!” I echoed. “By Jove, yes. I forgot that,” and I recollected the strange game I was playing.
“Don’t Mason’s things fit me well? She’s just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they’d come in useful.”
I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.
“It’s really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.
“Yes. I’ve decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady’s-maid, and that we’ve been married nearly a year. Recollect that – in order to tell the same story. Where’s the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray’s Inn Road.
“If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you’d be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.
“No. What is it?” I asked.
“Well – only – only that I wish you were my real husband,” she answered frankly. “If you were, then I should fear nothing. But it cannot be – I know that.”
“What do you fear, Tibbie?” I asked, very seriously. “Tell me – do tell me.”
“I – I can’t – I can’t now,” was her nervous response in a harder voice, turning her gaze away from mine. “If I did, you would withdraw your help – you would not dare to risk your own reputation and mine, as you are now doing, just because we are old boy-and-girl friends.”
On we went through the streaming downpour along Chancery Lane and the Strand, the driver lowering the window, for the rain and mud were beating into our faces.
“Well,” I said, “and what do you suggest doing?”
“To-night I must disappear. I shall sleep in some obscure hotel across the water, and to-morrow you must call for me, and we’ll go together to fix upon our future ‘home.’” Then she inquired eagerly what impression her absence had produced at Ryhall, and I told her.
For a time she remained serious and thoughtful. Her countenance had changed.
“Then Mason came back, as I ordered her?”
“Yes,” I answered, “but won’t she miss those things of hers you are now wearing?”
“No. Because they were in a trunk that she had packed ready to send up to town. She won’t discover they’ve gone for some weeks, I feel sure.”
She described her night run from Chichester to Bournemouth, how she had escaped from Mason, taken train direct up to Birmingham, remained that night at the Grand, then went on to Leicester, where she had spent a day, arriving in London that evening at seven o’clock. In Bull Street, Birmingham, she had been recognised by a friend, the wife of an alderman, and had some difficulty in explaining why she was there alone.
Our present position was not without its embarrassments. I looked at the pretty woman who was about to pose as my wife, and asked, —
“And what name shall we adopt? Have you thought of one?”
“No. Let’s see,” she said. “How about Morton – Mr and Mrs William Morton?”
“All right, then after to-morrow I shall be known as William Morton, compositor?”
“And I shall be your very loving and devoted wife,” she laughed, her eyes dancing. “In any case, life in Camberwell will be an entirely new experience.”
“Yes,” I said. “I only hope we sha’n’t be discovered. I must be careful – for I shall be compelled to lead a double life. I may be followed one day.”
“Yes, but it is for my sake, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed, placing her small trembling hand upon my arm. “Remember that by doing this you are saving my life. Had it not been for you I should have been dead three days ago. My life is entirely in your hands. I am in deadly peril,” she added, in a low, desperate whisper. “You have promised to save me – and you will, Wilfrid – I know you will!”
And she gripped my arm tightly, and looked into my face.
Notwithstanding her assumed gaiety of manner, she was in terror.
Was that dead, white face still haunting her – the face of the stranger who had, in secret, fallen by her hand?
Chapter Ten.
Explains Certain Important Facts
That night she remained at a small quiet hotel near Waterloo Station, a place patronised by third-class passengers from the West of England, and at ten o’clock next morning I called for her.
To disguise oneself as a working-man is no easy matter. I had experienced one difficulty which I had not foreseen, namely, how to allay the suspicions of my man, Budd, when he found me going out in the cheap clothes and hat I had purchased at an outfitter’s in the Lambeth Road on the previous night.
On getting up I dressed myself in them, and then examined myself in the glass. I cut a figure that was, in my eyes, ridiculous. The suit bore a stiff air and odour of newness that was tantalising, yet I saw no way of altering it, save by pressing out the creases, and with that object I called Budd, who first looked me up and down, and then regarded me as though I had taken leave of my senses.
“Is that a new suit, sir?” he asked, scrutinising it.
“Yes, Budd,” I replied. “Now, you see what it is. I want to appear like a working-man,” I added confidentially. “The truth is I’m watching somebody, though, of course, you’ll say nothing.”
“Of course not, sir,” he answered discreetly, for he was a reliable servant.
Then I took counsel with him how to take off the palpable newness of the clothes, and he, like the clever valet he was, took them out, and after a while returned with them greatly improved.
So when dressed in a cheap cotton shirt, a dark red tie, a suit of dark grey tweed, and a drab cap, I at last looked the typical working-man from South London wearing his best clothes.
With Budd’s ready assistance I slipped out of my chambers into Bolton Street, and half an hour later arrived by omnibus at the obscure hotel where Tibbie awaited me.
When she saw me she smiled merrily; and when we were alone together in the Waterloo Bridge Road she burst out laughing, saying, —
“What an interesting pair we really do make. Your get-up is delightful, Wilfrid. You look a real compositor. But just put your cap a little on one side – it’s more graceful. What does Budd say?”
“He first thought I’d taken leave of my senses; but I’ve allayed all his suspicions.”
And so we went jauntily on along the wide road to the Obelisk and then up the London Road, where the costermongers’ barrows were ranged and hoarse-voiced men were crying their cheap wares to thrifty housewives.
All was strange to her. She knew nothing of working London, and viewed everything with keen interest. I could not help smiling at her demure little figure in the cheap black dress.
At the bottom of the London Road we entered a tram and went as far as Camberwell Gate, the neighbourhood where she had decided to establish herself as Mrs William Morton.
Leaving the main road we turned down a long, dreary street of uniform smoke-blackened houses with deep areas in search of a card showing “apartments to let furnished,” and at last discovering one, we ascended the steps with considerable trepidation and knocked.
“You talk to them,” I whispered. “You want three rooms furnished,” and next second the door opened and we were face to face with a big, red-faced woman whose bloated countenance was certainly due to the undue consumption of alcohol – probably that spirit so dear to the lower class feminine palate – Old Tom.
Sybil explained that we were in search of apartments, and we were conducted up to the second floor and shown three dirty, badly-furnished rooms, the very sight of which was depressing.
Tibbie’s gaze met mine, and then she inquired the price.
“Of course, you’d want the use of the kitchen. That’s downstairs,” replied the woman.
“Oh! there’s no kitchen, I see,” Tibbie remarked quickly, seizing that defect as a means of escape from the miserable place. “I’m afraid then they won’t suit us. My husband is always so very particular about having the kitchen on the same floor.”
And then with many regrets we withdrew, and found ourselves once more out upon the pavement.
House after house we visited, some very poor but clean, others dirty, neglected and malodorous. Surely there are no more dismal dwelling-places in England than furnished lodgings in South London. Through the Boyson and Albany Roads, through Villa Street and Faraday Street we searched, but discovered no place where Tibbie could possibly live. Tousled-haired women were mostly the landladies, evil-faced scowling creatures who drank gin, and talked with that nasal twang so essentially the dialect of once-rural Camberwell.
At last in Neate Street, a quiet thoroughfare lying between the Camberwell and Old Kent Roads, we saw a card in the parlour window of a small house lying back from the street behind a strip of smoke-dried garden. On inquiry the landlady, a clean, hard-working, middle-aged woman, took us upstairs, and there we found three cheaply-furnished rooms with tiny kitchen all bearing the hall-mark of the hire system.
The woman, who seemed a respectable person, told us that she had been a parlour-maid in the employ of a lady at Kensington, and her husband was foreman in a mineral-water factory in the neighbourhood.
Tibbie was struck with the woman’s homely manner. She was from Devonshire, and the way she spoke of her own village showed her to be a true lover of the country.
“My husband, Mr Morton, is a compositor on a newspaper in Fleet Street and is always away at nights,” Tibbie explained. “We’ve been married nearly a year. I, too, was in service – a lady’s-maid.”
“Ah! I thought you ’ad been,” replied the landlady, whose name was Williams. “You speak so refined.”
So after re-examining the rooms Tibbie seated herself in the wicker armchair of the little parlour, and leaning back suggested that we should engage the apartments.
To this I, of course, agreed, and having given Mrs Williams half a sovereign as deposit, we left promising to take possession with our personal belongings – that same evening.
Outside, Tibbie expressed herself well pleased.
“I rather like that woman. She’s honest and genuine, I’m sure,” she declared. “Now I must buy a second-hand trunk and some clothes suited to my station as your humble and obedient wife,” she laughed.
So we went through into the Old Kent Road, and there purchased two big old travelling trunks, into which we afterwards placed the parcels which she had purchased at a cheap draper’s. Then, just before dusk, we returned to our new abode and entered into possession. We had tea together, prepared for us by Mrs Williams.
“You really make a model husband, Wilfrid,” she laughed when we were alone, holding her cup in her hand. “I suppose you’ll have to go to work very soon. I wonder what time compositors go to work at night?”
“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” I declared. “I must find out. I suppose about seven or eight. But,” I added, “I hope you will be comfortable, and that you won’t be too dull.”
“I shall work,” she said. “I’ll keep the rooms clean and dusted, and when I’ve got nothing to do there’s always needlework.”
“We must pretend to be very frugal, you know,” I urged. “A compositor’s wages are not high.”
“Of course. Leave that to me. You’ll have to buy some more clothes. A Sunday suit, for instance, and a pair of squeaky boots.”
She had made no mention of the affair in Charlton Wood, but on the excuse that she might be lonely when I had left her, she had bought both the morning and evening papers, although as yet she had not glanced at them.
Besides posing as William Morton I had much else to do, and many inquiries to make. I intended to lose no time in ascertaining who was the man living on Sydenham Hill, and whether he had any acquaintance with the dead unknown.
For quite an hour we were alone in the rather cosy little parlour, the blind down and the gas lit. The furniture was indeed a strange contrast to that at Ryhall, yet the couple of wicker armchairs were decidedly comfortable, and the fire gave out a pleasant warmth as we sat near it.
“Ours is a curious position, Wilfrid, isn’t it?” she whispered at last, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.
“What would the world think if they knew the truth?”
“If they knew the truth,” she said, seriously, “they would admire you for your self-sacrifice in assisting a helpless woman. Yet it is really very amusing,” and Tibbie, so well known and popular in the smart set of London, leaned back and smiled.
I was about to refer to the mystery of her flight, yet I hesitated. There was time for that, I thought, when she was more settled in her hiding-place.
It was certainly a novel experience to pose as the husband of Tibbie – the gay, merry, vivacious Tibbie Burnet, who was the life and soul of the go-ahead set in which she moved, and as we sat chatting we had many a good laugh over the ludicrous situation in which we found ourselves.
“You’ll have to pretend, in any case, to be very fond of me,” she laughed.
“I suppose I ought to call you ‘dear’ sometimes,” I remarked humorously.
“Yes, dear,” she responded, with the final word accentuated. “And I shall call you William – my dear Willie.”
“And what am I to call you?”
“Oh! Molly would be a good name. Yes. Call me Molly,” and she held her new wedding ring before my eyes with a tantalising laugh.
“We shall have to be very careful to keep up the fiction,” I said. “These people will, no doubt, watch us at first.”
“I shall soon make friends of Mrs Williams,” she said. “Leave that to me. I can be circumspect enough when occasion requires. But – oh – I’d so love to smoke a cigarette.”
“A cigarette!” I cried, horrified; “women don’t smoke in this neighbourhood. Whatever you do, don’t smoke when I’m not here, they’ll smell it at once.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “The ideas of the poor people are quite different to ours, aren’t they?” she reflected.
At that moment there was a tap at the door, and the landlady begged leave to introduce her husband, a rather tall, well-set-up man with a closely-cropped dark beard.
He greeted me pleasantly, and expressed a hope that we should be comfortable.
“The missis will do all she can for Mrs Morton, I’m sure,” she said. “I hear you’re on night-work.”
“Yes, unfortunately,” I said, “our work is mostly at night, you know – getting ready the next day’s paper.”
He was affable from the first, and apparently entirely unsuspicious, for he sent his wife downstairs for a jug of ale, and I was compelled to take a glass with him in order to cement our acquaintanceship, after which he and his wife discreetly withdrew with, I hope, the opinion that we were “a very nice, quiet couple.”
At eight o’clock I took leave of Tibbie after we had had a supper of cold meat. She rather missed her dinner, but assured me that she would soon get used to dining in the middle of the day. Then, after seeing that she was quite comfortable, and that the locks on the doors acted, I shook hands with her.
“Good-bye, Willie dear,” she laughed. “Come home early, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I replied, echoing her laugh, and then as William Morton I went out to my work.
Walking through Trafalgar Road I found myself in the Old Kent Road, and presently hailing a hansom I drove as far as Piccadilly Circus, where I alighted and went on foot to my rooms.
As I entered Eric Domville came to the door of my sitting-room to meet me. He had been awaiting my return.
I saw from his face that something had occurred.
“Why, Eric – you?” I gasped. “What has happened?”
He placed his forefinger to his lips, indicative of silence, and glanced behind me along the hall to the room wherein Budd had disappeared. Then, when I had passed into my own cosy den, he closed the door carefully.
“Yes,” he said, in a low, strained voice, “something has happened, old fellow – something serious. I’ve discovered a fact that puts an entirely new complexion upon the affair. You are both in gravest peril. Listen, and I’ll explain.”