Whatsoever a Man Soweth

Pickering smiled again.

“Well, Mr Hughes,” he said with great reluctance, “that man Vickers has made a direct charge against her, and it must be investigated, as you quite understand, whether she be a gentlewoman or not. But I leave you to question her, on the understanding that you prevent her from warning the other two men still at liberty – Parham and Winsloe. Probably they will come here to-day to meet Vickers on his return from Germany – at any rate, we shall be here in waiting for them.”

What might not this terrible exposure mean to Sybil?

Chapter Thirty.

In which Sybil Speaks

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 Allée 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 début 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!

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 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.”