"Your friend, Eric Domville."
"Eric!" I gasped, starting forward. "Why, he told me that you had
killed him. He described in detail how he had been an eye-witness of
your crime!"
"Ah, of course!" she said, bitterly. "In order to throw suspicion off
himself. But I swear to you, before Heaven, that it was he who killed
Arthur Rumbold--they killed him because they knew he had discovered the
truth concerning the house in Clipstone Street. Among Vickers's effects
Arthur had found certain letters which had given him the clue to the
awful truth. Your friend Domville was, you will remember, often absent
for long periods in Africa. But I now have reason for knowing that he
lived in Paris with Vickers as agent of the gang, and sometimes up in
Manchester, where he passed as Charles Denton. Some of his absences
from his friends, too, were due to certain periods of imprisonment which
he had, from time to time, served. He was not the real Eric Domville,
the African traveller, for the latter has his home in Cape Town, and had
not been in London for twelve years or so."
"Sybil," I faltered, "what you have just revealed to me places an
entirely new complexion upon the astounding affair. I see now how
cleverly Domville planned to cast the guilt of Arthur Rumbold's death
upon you. I found upon him the letters you had written to Vickers, and
naturally concluded that the dead man was a scoundrel and a blackmailer.
Besides, he wore your miniature and there was in my mind no question
that you had loved him. Therefore I took counsel with Domville, and we
agreed to keep your secret. Ah!" I cried, "how cleverly I was
deceived! I ought to have detected that he was not my old friend Eric.
That man was possessed of the devil's cunning! But tell me, why did you
fly that night--why did you ask me to pose as your husband?"
"For the simple reason that, appalled by the vengeance that they had
dealt out to poor Arthur, I sought to escape them. Domville might
accuse me of the murder in the wood, or Vickers might give my secret to
the Prefect of Paris Police. In either case I would be in deadly peril.
I saw one way out of the latter--which seemed to me the secret mode by
which they would eventually attack me--and that was to make pretence
that I had a husband--that I had hidden myself and married a
working-man."
"Why? How did that safeguard you?"
"Because I had discovered that by marriage a woman follows her husband's
nationality, so that if I married you I should at once become a British
subject, and beyond the influence of French law," was her frank answer.
"Don't you remember that while we were in the north two men called at
Neate Street, made inquiries about us, and went away satisfied. They
were agents of the French Police, and from what Mrs Williams told them
they believed that you were my husband, therefore they went away,
hesitating to apply for my arrest. So you see Vickers actually carried
out his threat. Since the day after poor Arthur was killed Vickers has
been in Germany to dispose of a quantity of stolen jewellery, therefore
Domville had no opportunity of telling him the truth that you were
posing as my husband, while your friend on his part deemed it to their
interests to allow us both to remain in fear and in hiding. Of course I
had no knowledge that Domville was aware of your having assumed the
character of William Morton, and our position has all along been
rendered the more perilous on that account. For us, however, it was
most fortunate that Vickers has been abroad and that Domville kept his
knowledge to himself. By your aid, Wilfrid, I was saved from those
French agents, but now that the secret of Clipstone Street is out I fear
that they may discover I am not married, and return. If they do," she
sighed, "if they do, then I must stand in a criminal dock, and bear the
scandal that these villains have heaped upon me in order to hold me as
their unwilling accomplice. Ah! Wilfrid!" she gasped, terrified, "I
shudder when I think of the awful doom of those unfortunate ones about
whom I once gave secret information so innocently. It is horrible--
horrible," and she covered her drawn, haggard countenance with her slim,
white hands.
"Never shall I forget that moment when poor Arthur Rumbold fell dead at
my feet--shot down mercilessly because he was in the act of revealing to
me the terrible truth," she cried. "The memory of that ghastly moment
lives ever within me--the dead face still stares at me, and I never seem
able to get away from it. He had an intuition that his enemies, having
found out that he had discovered the grim secret of the house in
Clipstone Street, were following him with the intention of killing him
in secret. They had obtained his photograph, and intended that he
should die. Therefore, knowing that he was followed he had come,
ill-dressed and disguised, by a circuitous route to Charlton Wood.
Naturally the police, when they found him dead, believed him to be a
tramp, while I, of course, was in hourly terror that the letters he had
secured from Vickers's rooms and my miniature, which I knew he wore,
would be found upon him, and thus connect me with the crime. In
breathless dread I existed for days and days, and never knew until now
that you had secured them prior to the arrival of the police."
"You addressed in cipher a message in an advertisement to someone whom
you called `Nello,'" I said. "Who was he?"
"The man John Parham. He had always expressed pity for me. To the
others he was known as Nello, his real name being Lionel. I was
mistaken, however. He was no better than the others. The cipher they
had given to me in order that I could communicate with them in secret if
occasion demanded."
At six o'clock that same evening, after Sybil had returned to her
mother's house in Grosvenor Street, I entered the Tottenham Court Road
Police Station, and there found Pickering anxiously awaiting me.
"I wasn't far wrong, Mr Hughes," he exclaimed quickly. "Parham came to
Clipstone Street just before noon, and dropped into Nicholls' hands.
Winsloe somehow got wind of the affair, and has bolted--on his way to
the Continent, probably. We've circulated his description and hope to
get him. But he's a wily bird, it seems, from all accounts. Your
friend Domville was a pretty tough customer, too," he added.
"Why? I don't quite follow you."
"Well, when I got back here and went to his cell I found him stone dead.
He'd poisoned himself! Swallowed a strychnine pill."
"Because he was the murderer of Arthur Rumbold," I answered. "Miss
Burnet will later on explain everything."
"H'm," he grunted. "A pretty complicated bit of business, when all the
threads are gathered up."
There were still a few other matters to investigate, I pointed out, and
an hour later we went out to Sydenham Hill, and there saw Mrs Parham
and Miss O'Hara. When we told the poor lady of her husband's arrest,
and the charge against him, she fainted. Then, presently, when she came
to, she confessed that soon after her marriage she had had certain
suspicions aroused, for she discovered that her husband was wanted by
the French police for some offence committed in Bordeaux. The secret
cavity had been made in the drawing-room floor by him, and in it he kept
his private papers. Her own opinion was that the agents of French
police wanted to search there for certain evidence, the evidence of that
gruesome eye, no doubt, but knowing that no English magistrate would
grant them a search-warrant they resolved to make a raid on the place,
as though they were thieves. Though they overlooked the strange eye
which, with some ulterior motive Parham had preserved, they nevertheless
secured sufficient evidence to warrant them in applying for the man's
extradition for the murder of a banker at Bordeaux, which indeed the
French Consulate-General had done three weeks previously. Miss O'Hara,
it appeared, had accidentally discovered the cipher hidden behind a
heavy wardrobe in one of the bedrooms, and by its means had read my
messages and gone to Baker Street and to Dean's Yard out of sheer
curiosity.
Surely I need not dwell upon the boundless delight with which poor,
ill-judged and helpless Sybil was hailed on her return to Grosvenor
Street, or the sensation when that same evening in the drawing-room,
before her mother, Jack, Cynthia and Lord Wydcombe, she repeated the
whole of the strange circumstances, just as she had related them to me.
Jack was furious, for he saw how cleverly he had been fleeced by Ellice
Winsloe, while I, on my part, turned to the little love of my youth,
saying frankly,--
"As Tibbie seems to be still in fear that the French police may apply
for her extradition on account of the sale of the naval secret to our
Admiralty, she may be inclined to change her nationality in real
earnest. She can do this by marriage, easier than by letters of
naturalisation, and as we are man and wife and poor in the eyes of
Camberwell, so, if Tibbie consents, will we become the same in the eyes
of Society."
For answer she clung to me quickly with a cry of joy, and allowed me to
kiss away the tears from her dear face, while Jack clapped me heartily
upon the shoulder and said,--
"Wilfrid, old fellow! It's just as it should be. Tibbie's loved you
for years. Everybody who wasn't blind has seen that. You've saved her,
and you've a right to her."
And five minutes later my well-beloved and I were receiving the
congratulations of the whole family.
What else need I say?
To tell you that we are now living in our pretty rose-embowered home
near Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, which Lady Scarcliff bought and gave
to Tibbie as a wedding present, and that we are supremely happy in each
other's love is only to tell you what you already know. The smart set
know Tibbie no more, for she is content with her simple, healthful
country life. And she is all in all to me--my love.
Winsloe, who has been traced to Buenos Ayres, has not yet been arrested,
although Pickering is still confident of success, but Parham and Vickers
are now awaiting trial on the very serious charges of blackmail, robbery
and murder. Very little evidence was given before the magistrate at Bow
Street, but at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, London
will surely be startled by the sensational evidence which the police
will give concerning that grim dark house in Clipstone Street--the House
of Doom.
Death sentences await both prisoners, without a doubt.
"_Whatsoever a Man Soweth, that shall he also Reap_."
The End.