Whatsoever a Man Soweth

She had killed the man who had held her in thraldom. That was an undoubted fact. Eric had fully explained it, and could testify to the deed, although he would, I knew, never appear as witness against her. The unknown blackguard scorning her defiance had goaded her to a frenzy of madness, and she had taken her revenge upon the cowardly scoundrel.

Could she be blamed? In taking a life she had committed a crime before God and man, most certainly. The crime of murder can never be pardoned, yet in such circumstances surely the reader will bear with me for regarding her action with some slight degree of leniency – with what our French neighbours would call extenuating circumstances.

And the more so when I recollected what the dead unknown had written to his accomplice in Manchester. The fellow had laid a plot, but he had failed. The woman alone, unprotected and desperate, had defended herself, and he had fallen dead by her hand.

In my innermost heart I decided that he deserved the death.

Why Ellice Winsloe had recognised the body was plain enough now. The two men were friends – and enemies of Sybil Burnet.

I clenched my fingers when I thought of the dangerous man who was still posing as the chum of young Lord Scarcliff, and I vowed that I would live to avenge the wrong done to the poor trembling girl at my side.

She burst into hot tears again when I declared that it would be better for us to return again to the obscurity of Camberwell.

“Yes,” she sobbed. “Act as you think best, Wilfrid. I am entirely in your hands. I am yours, indeed, for you saved my life on – on that night when I fled from Ryhall.”

We turned into the town again through Gallowgate when she had dried her eyes, and had lunch at a small eating-house in New Bridge Street, she afterwards returning to her hotel to pack, for we had decided to take the afternoon train up to King’s Cross.

She was to meet me at the station at half-past three, and just before that hour, while idling up and down Neville Street awaiting the arrival of her cab, of a sudden I saw the figure of a man in a dark travelling ulster and soft felt hat emerge from the station and cross the road to Grainger Street West.

He was hurrying along, but in an instant something about his figure and gait struck me as familiar; therefore, walking quickly after him at an angle before he could enter Grainger Street, I caught a glimpse of his countenance.

It was John Parham! And he was going in the direction of the Douglas Hotel.

He had again tracked her down with an intention which I knew, alas! too well could only be a distinctly evil one.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Takes me a Step Further

We were back again in Neate Street, Camberwell.

In Newcastle we had a very narrow escape. As Parham had walked towards the hotel, Sybil had fortunately passed him in a closed cab. On her arrival at the station she was in entire ignorance of the fellow’s presence, and as the train was already in waiting we entered and were quickly on our way to London, wondering by what means Parham could possibly have known of her whereabouts.

Was she watched? Was some secret agent, of whom we were in ignorance, keeping constant observations upon us and reporting our movements to the enemy? That theory was Sybil’s.

“Those men are utterly unscrupulous,” she declared as we sat together in the little upstairs room in Camberwell. “No secret is safe from them, and their spies are far better watchers than the most skilled detectives of Scotland Yard.”

At that moment Mrs Williams entered, delighted to see us back again, for when we had left, Tibbie had, at my suggestion, paid rent for the rooms for a month in advance and explained that we were returning.

“Two gentlemen came to inquire for you a week ago, Mr Morton,” she exclaimed, addressing me. “They first asked whether Mrs Morton was at home, and I explained that she was away. They then inquired for you, and appeared to be most inquisitive.”

“Inquisitive? About what?” asked my pseudo wife.

“Oh! all about your private affairs, mum. But I told them I didn’t know anything, of course. One of the men was a foreigner.”

“What did they ask you?” I inquired in some alarm.

“Oh, how long you’d been with me, where you worked, how long you’d been married – and all that. Most impudent, I call it. Especially as they were strangers.”

“How did you know they were strangers?”

“Because they took the photograph of my poor brother Harry to be yours – so they couldn’t have known you.”

“Impostors, I expect,” I remarked, in order to allay the good woman’s suspicions. “No doubt they were trying to get some information from you in order to use it for their own purposes. Perhaps to use my wife’s name, or mine, as an introduction somewhere.”

“Well, they didn’t get much change out of me, I can tell you,” she laughed. “I told them I didn’t know them and very soon showed them the door. I don’t like foreigners. When I asked them to leave their names they looked at each other and appeared confused. They asked where you were, and I told them you were in Ireland.”

“That’s right,” I said, smiling. “If they want me they can come here again and find me.”

Then, after the landlady had gone downstairs, I asked Tibbie her opinion.

“Did I not tell you that inquiries would be made to ascertain whether I were married?” she said. “The woman evidently satisfied them, for she has no suspicion of the true state of affairs.”

“Then you are safe?”

“Safe only for the present. I may be in increased peril to-morrow.”

“And how long do you anticipate this danger to last?” I asked her seriously, as she sat there gazing into the meagre fire.

“Last! Until my life’s end,” she answered very sadly. Then turning her wonderful eyes to mine she added, “I know you cannot sacrifice your life for me in this way much longer, Wilfrid. Therefore it must end. Yet life, after all, is very sweet. When I am alone I constantly look back upon my past and recognise how wasted it has been; how I discarded the benefits of Providence and how from the first, when I came out, I was dazzled by the glitter, gaiety, and extravagance of our circle. It has all ended now, and I actually believe I am a changed woman. But it is, alas! too late – too late.”

Those words of hers concealed some extraordinary romance – the romance of a broken heart. She admitted as much. Why were these men so persistently hunting her down if they were in no fear of her? It could only be some desperate vendetta – perhaps a life for a life!

What she had said was correct. Mine was now a most invidious position, for while posing as William Morton, I was unable to go to Bolton Street or even call upon Scarcliff or Wydcombe for fear that Winsloe and his accomplices should learn that I was still alive. Therefore I was compelled to return to the Caledonian Hotel in the Adelphi, where Budd met me in secret each evening with my letters and necessaries.

Another week thus went by. The greater part of the day I usually spent with Tibbie in that dull little room in Neate Street, and sometimes, when the weather was fine, we went to get a breath of air in Greenwich Park or to Lewisham or Dulwich, those resorts of the working-class of South London. At night, ostensibly going to work, I left her and spent hours and hours carefully watching the movements of Ellice Winsloe.

To Lord Wydcombe’s, in Curzon Street, I followed him on several occasions, for he had suddenly become very intimate with Wydcombe it appeared, and while I stood on the pavement outside that house I knew so well my thoughts wandered back to those brilliant festivities which Cynthia so often gave. One night, after Winsloe had dined there, I saw the brougham come round, and he and Cynthia drove off to the theatre, followed by Jack and Wydcombe in a hansom. On another afternoon I followed Winsloe to the Scarcliffs in Grosvenor Place, and later on saw him laughing with old Lady Scarcliff at the drawing-room window that overlooked Hyde Park Corner. He presented a sleek, well-to-do appearance, essentially that of a gentleman. His frock coat was immaculate, his overcoat of the latest cut, and his silk hat always ironed to the highest perfection of glossiness.

Tibbie, of course, knew nothing of my patient watchfulness. I never went near my chambers, therefore Ellice and Parham certainly believed me dead, while as to Domville’s hiding in Paris, I confess I doubted the truth of the statement of Tibbie’s friend. If the poor fellow still lived he would most certainly have written to me. No! He was dead – without a doubt. He had fallen a victim in that grim house of doom.

Again and again I tried to find the gruesome place, but in vain. Not a street nor an alley in the neighbourhood of Regent Street I left unexplored, yet for the life of me I could not again recognise the house. The only plan, I decided, was to follow Parham, who would one day go there, without a doubt.

I called on Mrs Parham at Sydenham Hill, and found that her husband was still absent – in India, she believed. Miss O’Hara, however, remained with her. What connection had the girl with those malefactors? I tried to discern. At all events, she knew their cipher, and they also feared her, as shown by their actions on that dark night in Dean’s Yard.

My own idea was that Parham was still away in the country. Or, if he were in London, he never went near Winsloe. The police were in search of him, as admitted by the inspector at Sydenham, therefore he might at any moment be arrested. But before he fell into the hands of the police I was determined to fathom the secret of that house of mystery wherein I had so nearly lost my life.

For Tibbie’s personal safety I was now in constant and deep anxiety. They were desperate and would hesitate at nothing in order to secure their own ends. The ingenuity of the plot to seize her in Dean’s Yard was sufficient evidence of that. Fortunately, however, Tibbie had not seen my cipher advertisements.

Another week passed, and my pretended wife had quite settled down again amid her humble surroundings. It amused me sometimes to see the girl, of whose beauty half London had raved, with the sleeves of her cotton blouse turned up, making a pudding, or kneeling before the grate and applying blacklead with a brush. I, too, helped her to do the housework, and more than once scrubbed down the table or cleaned the windows. Frequently we worked in all seriousness, but at times we were compelled to laugh at each other’s unusual occupation.

And when I looked steadily into those fine, wide-open eyes, I wondered what great secret was hidden there.

Time after time I tried to learn more of Arthur Rumbold, but she would tell me nothing.

In fear that the fact of her disappearance might find its way into the papers, she wrote another reassuring letter to her mother, telling her that she was well and that one day ere long she would return. This I sent to a friend, a college chum, who was wintering in Cairo, and it was posted from there. Jack naturally sent out a man to Egypt to try and find her; and in the meantime we allayed all fears that she had met with foul play.

Days and weeks went on. In the security of those obscure apartments in Neate Street, that mean thoroughfare which by day resounded with the cries of itinerant costermongers, and at evening was the playground of crowds of children, Sybil remained patient, yet anxious. Mrs Williams – who, by the way, had a habit of speaking of her husband as her “old man” – was a kind, motherly soul, who did her best to keep her company during my absences, and who performed little services for her without thought of payment or reward. The occupation of compositor accounted not only for my absence each night during the week, but on Sunday nights also – to prepare Monday morning’s paper, I explained.