"It does--it will," she a.s.sured me. "You do not know the truth, or my motive would be quite plain to you. I have trusted you, and I still trust in you that you will not desert or betray me."
"Betray you? Why, Tibbie, what are you saying?" I asked, surprised.
Could I betray her? I admired her, but I did not love her. How could I love her when I recollected the awful charge against her?
"Do you suspect that I would play you false, as some of your friends have done?" I asked, looking steadily into her fine eyes.
"No, no; forgive me, Wilfrid," she exclaimed earnestly, returning my gaze. "I sometimes don"t know what I am saying. I only mean that--you will not leave me."
"And yet you asked me to go back to London only a few minutes ago!" I said in a voice of reproach.
"I think I"m mad!" she cried. "This mystery is so puzzling, so inscrutable, and so full of horror that it is driving me insane."
"Then to you also it is a mystery!" I cried, utterly amazed at her words. "I thought you were fully aware of the whole truth."
"I only wish I knew it. If so, I might perhaps escape my enemies. But they are much too ingenious. They have laid their plans far too well."
She referred, I supposed, to the way in which those scoundrels had forced money from her by threats. She was surely not alone in her terrible thraldom. The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. When secrets cannot be discovered, cunning traps are set for the unwary, and many an honest man and woman is at this moment at the mercy of unscrupulous villains, compelled to pay in order to hush up some affair of which they are in reality entirely innocent. No one is safe. From the poor squalid homes of Whitechapel to the big mansions of Belgravia, from garish City offices to the snug villadom of Norwood, from fickle Finchley to weary Wandsworth, the blackmailer takes his toll, while it is calculated that nearly half the suicides reported annually in London are of those who take their own lives rather than face exposure. The "unsound mind" verdict in many instances merely covers the grim fact that the pockets of the victim have been drained dry by those human vampires who, dressed smugly and pa.s.sing as gentlemen, rub shoulders with us in society of every grade.
I looked at Sybil, and wondered what was the strange secret which she had been compelled to hush up. Those letters I had filched from the dead man were all sufficient proof that she was a victim. But what was the story? Would she ever tell me? I looked at her sweet, beautiful face, and wondered. We moved on again, slowly skirting the picturesque lake. She would not allow me to release myself from my bond, declaring that I must still pose as William Morton, compositor.
"But everyone knows we are not married," I said. "Mrs Rumbold, for instance!"
"Not everyone. There are some who believe it, or they would not hesitate to attack me," was her vague and mysterious response.
"For my own part, Tibbie, I think we"ve carried the masquerade on quite long enough. I"m beginning to fear that Jack, or some of his friends, may discover us. Your description is circulated by the police, remember; besides, my prolonged absence has already been commented upon by your people. Jack and Wydcombe have been to my rooms half a dozen times, so Budd says."
"No. They will not discover us," she exclaimed, quite confidently.
"But walking here openly, and travelling up and down the country is really inviting recognition," I declared. "You were recognised, you"ll remember, in Carlisle, and again in Glasgow. To-morrow you may be seen by one of your friends who will wire to Jack. And if we are found together--what then?"
"What then?" she echoed. "Why, I should be found with the man who is my best--my only friend."
"But a scandal would be created. You can"t afford to risk that, you know."
"No," she answered slowly in a low, hard voice, "I suppose you are right, I can"t. Neither can you, for the matter of that. Yes," she added, with a deep sigh, "it would be far better for me, as well as for you, if I were dead."
I did not reply. What could I say? She seemed filled by a dark foreboding of evil, and her thoughts now naturally reverted to the action over which she had perhaps for weeks or months been brooding.
I had endeavoured to a.s.sist her for the sake of our pa.s.sionate idyllic love of long ago, but all was in vain, I said. I recognised that sooner or later she must be discovered, and the blow--the exposure of her terrible crime--must fall. And then?
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 G.o.d and man, most certainly. The crime of murder can never be pardoned, yet in such circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances.
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 pa.s.sed 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."