Street and I at once saw to whatdastardly use had been put the information regarding certain personswhich these men had forced from me. But as he was telling me the trutha man rushed wildly out from the trees and sprang between us threateningto kill him if he uttered another word. He naturally defied hisassailant, who in a moment drew a revolver and shot him dead before myeyes. Then turning to me the assassin said, calmly, `Of this affair youknow nothing, remember. Otherwise, you'll quickly find yourselfarrested for the affair in Paris. Besides,' he added, `you met thefellow here. He was your lover, and you've rid yourself of him. Yousee how the circumstantial evidence against you stands. Go. And you'dbetter leave Ryhall as soon as you can.' Then he disappeared into thethicket while I stood half dazed, staring at the body of the man lyingstark and dead before me."
"But who was the man who fired the fatal shot?" I demandedbreathlessly.
She refused to answer!
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
CONTAINS THE CONCLUSION.
I repeated my question, looking straight into her face.
"Your friend, Eric Domville."
"Eric!" I gasped, starting forward. "Why, he told me that you hadkilled him. He described in detail how he had been an eye-witness ofyour crime!"
"Ah, of course!" she said, bitterly. "In order to throw suspicion offhimself. But I swear to you, before Heaven, that it was he who killedArthur Rumbold--they killed him because they knew he had discovered thetruth concerning the house in Clipstone Street. Among Vickers's effectsArthur had found certain letters which had given him the clue to theawful truth. Your friend Domville was, you will remember, often absentfor long periods in Africa. But I now have reason for knowing that helived in Paris with Vickers as agent of the gang, and sometimes up inManchester, where he passed as Charles Denton. Some of his absencesfrom his friends, too, were due to certain periods of imprisonment whichhe 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 hadnot been in London for twelve years or so."
"Sybil," I faltered, "what you have just revealed to me places anentirely new complexion upon the astounding affair. I see now howcleverly Domville planned to cast the guilt of Arthur Rumbold's deathupon you. I found upon him the letters you had written to Vickers, andnaturally concluded that the dead man was a scoundrel and a blackmailer.Besides, he wore your miniature and there was in my mind no questionthat you had loved him. Therefore I took counsel with Domville, and weagreed to keep your secret. Ah!" I cried, "how cleverly I wasdeceived! 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 youfly that night--why did you ask me to pose as your husband?"
"For the simple reason that, appalled by the vengeance that they haddealt out to poor Arthur, I sought to escape them. Domville mightaccuse me of the murder in the wood, or Vickers might give my secret tothe 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 bywhich they would eventually attack me--and that was to make pretencethat I had a husband--that I had hidden myself and married aworking-man."
"Why? How did that safeguard you?"
"Because I had discovered that by marriage a woman follows her husband'snationality, so that if I married you I should at once become a Britishsubject, 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 atNeate Street, made inquiries about us, and went away satisfied. Theywere agents of the French Police, and from what Mrs Williams told themthey believed that you were my husband, therefore they went away,hesitating to apply for my arrest. So you see Vickers actually carriedout his threat. Since the day after poor Arthur was killed Vickers hasbeen in Germany to dispose of a quantity of stolen jewellery, thereforeDomville had no opportunity of telling him the truth that you wereposing as my husband, while your friend on his part deemed it to theirinterests to allow us both to remain in fear and in hiding. Of course Ihad no knowledge that Domville was aware of your having assumed thecharacter of William Morton, and our position has all along beenrendered the more perilous on that account. For us, however, it wasmost fortunate that Vickers has been abroad and that Domville kept hisknowledge to himself. By your aid, Wilfrid, I was saved from thoseFrench agents, but now that the secret of Clipstone Street is out I fearthat they may discover I am not married, and return. If they do," shesighed, "if they do, then I must stand in a criminal dock, and bear thescandal that these villains have heaped upon me in order to hold me astheir unwilling accomplice. Ah! Wilfrid!" she gasped, terrified, "Ishudder when I think of the awful doom of those unfortunate ones aboutwhom 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 atmy feet--shot down mercilessly because he was in the act of revealing tome the terrible truth," she cried. "The memory of that ghastly momentlives ever within me--the dead face still stares at me, and I never seemable to get away from it. He had an intuition that his enemies, havingfound out that he had discovered the grim secret of the house inClipstone Street, were following him with the intention of killing himin secret. They had obtained his photograph, and intended that heshould 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 atramp, while I, of course, was in hourly terror that the letters he hadsecured from Vickers's rooms and my miniature, which I knew he wore,would be found upon him, and thus connect me with the crime. Inbreathless dread I existed for days and days, and never knew until nowthat you had secured them prior to the arrival of the police."
"You addressed in cipher a message in an advertisement to someone whomyou called `Nello,'" I said. "Who was he?"
"The man John Parham. He had always expressed pity for me. To theothers he was known as Nello, his real name being Lionel. I wasmistaken, however. He was no better than the others. The cipher theyhad given to me in order that I could communicate with them in secret ifoccasion demanded."
At six o'clock that same evening, after Sybil had returned to hermother's house in Grosvenor Street, I entered the Tottenham Court RoadPolice Station, and there found Pickering anxiously awaiting me.
"I wasn't far wrong, Mr Hughes," he exclaimed quickly. "Parham came toClipstone Street just before noon, and dropped into Nicholls' hands.Winsloe somehow got wind of the affair, and has bolted--on his way tothe Continent, probably. We've circulated his description and hope toget him. But he's a wily bird, it seems, from all accounts. Yourfriend 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. "MissBurnet will later on explain everything."
"H'm," he grunted. "A pretty complicated bit of business, when all thethreads are gathered up."
There were still a few other matters to investigate, I pointed out, andan hour later we went out to Sydenham Hill, and there saw Mrs Parhamand 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 cameto, she confessed that soon after her marriage she had had certainsuspicions aroused, for she discovered that her husband was wanted bythe French police for some offence committed in Bordeaux. The secretcavity had been made in the drawing-room floor by him, and in it he kepthis private papers. Her own opinion was that the agents of Frenchpolice wanted to search there for certain evidence, the evidence of thatgruesome eye, no doubt, but knowing that no English magistrate wouldgrant them a search-warrant they resolved to make a raid on the place,as though they were thieves. Though t
hey overlooked the strange eyewhich, with some ulterior motive Parham had preserved, they neverthelesssecured sufficient evidence to warrant them in applying for the man'sextradition for the murder of a banker at Bordeaux, which indeed theFrench Consulate-General had done three weeks previously. Miss O'Hara,it appeared, had accidentally discovered the cipher hidden behind aheavy wardrobe in one of the bedrooms, and by its means had read mymessages and gone to Baker Street and to Dean's Yard out of sheercuriosity.
Surely I need not dwell upon the boundless delight with which poor,ill-judged and helpless Sybil was hailed on her return to GrosvenorStreet, or the sensation when that same evening in