"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 antic.i.p.ate 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-cla.s.s 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts.

Another week pa.s.sed, 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 rea.s.suring 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.

I told everybody that I worked in Fleet Street, but never satisfied them as to which office employed me. There were hundreds of compositors living in the neighbourhood, and if I made a false statement it would at once be detected. With Williams I was friendly, and we often had a gla.s.s together and a pipe.

Our life in Camberwell was surely the strangest ever led by man and woman. Before those who knew us I was compelled to call her "Molly,"

while she addressed me as "Willie," just as though I were her husband.

A thousand times I asked her the real reason of that masquerade, but she steadfastly declined to tell me.

"You may be able to save me," was all the information she would vouchsafe.

Darkness fell early, for it was early in February, and each night I stole forth from the Caledonian Hotel on my tour of vigilance. The hotel people did not think it strange that I was a working-man. It was a quiet, comfortable place. I paid well, and was friendly with the hall-porter.

With the faithful Budd's a.s.sistance--for he was friendly with Winsloe's valet--I knew almost as much of the fellow's movements as he did himself. I dogged his footsteps everywhere. Once he went down to Sydenham Hill, called upon Mrs Parham, and remained there about an hour while I waited outside in the quiet suburban road. When he emerged he was carrying a square parcel packed in brown paper, and this he conveyed back to Victoria, and afterwards took a cab to his own chambers.

He had not been there more than a quarter of an hour, when along King Street came a figure that I at once recognised as that of the man I most wanted to meet--John Parham himself.

I drew back and crossed the road, watching him enter Winsloe's chambers, of which he apparently had a latchkey.

Then I waited, for I meant, at all hazards, to track the fellow to his hiding-place, and to discover the true ident.i.ty of the house where I had been so ingeniously entrapped.

At last he emerged carrying the square packet which his friend had obtained at Sydenham, and behind him also came Winsloe. They walked across St James's Square and up York Street to the Trocadero, where, after having a drink together, they parted, Winsloe going along Coventry Street, while his companion, with the packet in his hand, remained on the pavement in Shaftesbury Avenue, apparently undecided which direction to take.

I was standing in the doorway of the Cafe Monico opposite, watching him keenly, and saw that he was evidently well known at the Trocadero, for the gold-laced hall-porter saluted him and wished him good-evening.

A few moments later he got into a cab and drove away, while in a few seconds I had entered another cab and was following him. We went up Shaftesbury Avenue, turning into Dean Street and thus reaching Oxford Street opposite Rathbone Place, where he alighted, looked around as though to satisfy himself that he was not followed, and walked on at a rapid pace up Rathbone Place, afterwards turning into many smaller thoroughfares with which I was unacquainted. Once he turned, and I feared that he had detected me, therefore I crossed the road and ascended the steps of a house, where I pretended to ring the door-bell.

He glanced back again, and finding that he was not being followed increased his pace and turned the corner. I was after him in an instant, and still followed him at a respectable distance until after he had turned several corners and was walking up a quiet, rather ill-lit street of dark old-fashioned houses, he glanced up and down and then suddenly disappeared into one of the door-ways. My quick eyes noted the house and then, five minutes afterwards, I walked quickly past the place.

In a moment I recognised the doorway as that of the house with the fatal stairs!

Returning, on the opposite side of the road, I saw that the place was in total darkness, yet outwardly it was in no way different to its neighbours, with the usual flight of steps leading to the front door, the deep bas.e.m.e.nt, and the high iron railings still bearing before the door the old extinguishers used by the ink-men in the early days of last century. I recognised the house by those extinguishers. The blinds had not been lowered, therefore I conjectured that the place was unoccupied.

The street was, I found, called Clipstone Street, and it lay between Cleveland Street and Great Portland Street, in quite a different direction than that in which I had imagined it to be.

After a quarter of an hour Parham emerged without his parcel, closed the door behind him, and walked on to Portland Place, where, from the stand outside the Langham, he took a cab to Lyric Chambers, in Whitcomb Street, opposite Leicester Square, where I discovered he had his abode.

My heart beat wildly, for I knew that I was now on the verge of a discovery. I had gained knowledge that placed the a.s.sa.s.sins of Eric Domville in my hands.

I lost not a moment. At the Tottenham Court Road Police Station I was fortunate in finding Inspector Pickering on duty, and he at once recognised me as the hero of that strange subterranean adventure.

As soon as I told him I had discovered the mysterious house he was, in an instant, on the alert, and calling two plain-clothes men announced his intention of going with me at once to Clipstone Street to make investigations.

"Better take some tools with you, Edwards, to open the door, and a lantern, each of you," he said to them. Then turning to me, he added,--

"If what we suspect is true, sir, there's been some funny goings-on in that house. But we shall see."

He took a revolver from his desk and placed it in his pocket, and afterwards exchanged his uniform coat for a dark tweed jacket in order not to attract attention in the neighbourhood.

Then we all four went forth to ascertain the truth.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE HOUSE OF DOOM.

On arrival at Clipstone Street our first inquiry was to ascertain whether the place was inhabited.

While we waited around the corner in Great Portland Street, one of Pickering's men approached and rang the bell, but though he repeated the summons several times, there was no response. Then, with easy agility, he climbed over the railings and disappeared into the area.