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 Allee 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 _debut_ 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!