Chapter Twenty Two. Is an Echo from Charlton Wood.

My bitterest regret was that I had not been able to follow Parham and trace him to the house of doom, but at the moment of his disappearance I had been unable to emerge from my hiding-place, otherwise the girl O’Hara would have seen me. Perhaps, indeed, she might have recognised me. So, by sheer force of adverse circumstances, I was compelled to remain there and see the trio escape under my very nose.

I had learnt one important fact, however, namely, that a deep conspiracy was afoot against Sybil.

It was beyond comprehension how Tibbie, daughter of the noble and patrician house of Scarcliff, could be so intimately associated with what appealed to me to be a daring gang of malefactors. The treatment I had received at their hands showed me their utter unscrupulousness. I wondered whether what the police suspected was really true, that others had lost their lives in that house wherein I had so nearly lost mine. What was the story of Tibbie’s association with them—a romance no doubt, that had had its tragic ending in the death of the unknown in Charlton Wood.

To me, it seemed plain that he was a member of the gang, for had he not their secret cipher upon him, and did not both Winsloe and Parham possess his photograph?

I recollected the receipt for a registered letter which I had found among the letters in the dead man’s pocket, and next morning told Budd to go and unlock the drawer in my writing-table and bring it to me. He did so, and I saw that the receipt was for a letter handed in at the post-office at Blandford in Dorset, addressed to: “Charles Denton, 16b Bolton Road, Pendleton, Manchester.”

I turned over the receipt in my hand, wondering whether the slip of paper would reveal anything to me. Then, after some reflection, I resolved to break my journey in Manchester on my return to Tibbie in Carlisle, and ascertain who was this man to whom the dead unknown had sent a letter registered.

Next afternoon I passed through Salford in a tram-car, along by Peel Park, and up the Broad Street to Pendleton, alighting at the junction of those two thoroughfares, the one leading to aristocratic Eccles and Patricroft, and the other out to bustling Bolton.

The Bolton road is one over which much heavy traffic passes, and is lined with small houses, a working-class district, for there are many mills and factories in the vicinity. I found the house of which I was in search, a small, rather clean-looking place, and as I passed a homely-looking woman was taking in the milk from the milkman.

Without hesitation I stopped, and addressing her, exclaimed,—

“Excuse me, mum, but do you happen to know a Mr Charles Denton?”

The woman scanned me quickly with some suspicion, I thought, but noticing, I supposed, that although a working-man I seemed highly respectable, replied bluntly, in a pronounced Lancashire dialect,—

“Yes, I do. What may you want with him?”

“I want to see him on some important business,” was my vague reply. “Is he at home?”

“No, he ain’t,” was the woman’s response. “Mr Denton lodges with me, but ’e’s up in London just now, and ’e’s been there this four months.”

“In London!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, but I don’t know his address. When he goes away ’e never leaves it. He’s lodged with me this two years, but I don’t think ’e’s been here more than six months altogether the whole time.”

“Then you have a lot of letters for him, I suppose?”

“Yes, quite a lot,” answered the good woman. The letter sent by the dead man might be among them!

“It was about a letter that I wanted to see Mr Denton—about a registered letter. I’ve come from London on purpose.”

“From London!” ejaculated the woman, a stout, good-humoured person.

“Yes. I wonder whether you’d mind me looking at the letters, if it is among them I’d know he had not received it. The fact is,” I added in confidence, “there’s a big lawsuit pending, and if he hasn’t got the letter then the other side can’t take any action against him.”

“Then you’re on his side?” she asked shrewdly.

“Of course I am. I came down to explain matters to him. If I can ascertain that he didn’t get the letter then that’s all I want. I’m a stranger, I know,” I added, “but as it is in Mr Denton’s interest I don’t think you’ll refuse.”

She hesitated, saying she thought she ought to ask her husband when he returned from the mill. But by assuring her of her lodger’s peril, and that I had to catch the six-thirty train back to London, I at last induced her to admit me to the house, and there in the small, clean, front parlour which was given over to her lodger when he was there, she took a quantity of letters from a cupboard and placed them before me.

Among the accumulated correspondence were quite a number of registered letters, and several little packets which most likely contained articles of value.

While I chatted with the woman with affected carelessness, pretending to be on very friendly terms with her lodger, I quickly fixed upon the letter in question, a registered envelope directed in a man’s educated hand, and bearing the Blandford post-mark.

In order, however, to divert her attention, I took up another letter, declaring that to be the important one, and that the fact of his not having received it was sufficient to prevent the action being brought.

“I’m very glad of that,” she declared in satisfaction. “Mr Denton is such a quiet gentleman. When he’s here he hardly ever goes out, but sits here reading and writing all day.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “he’s very studious—always was—but a very excellent friend. One of the very best.”

“So my husband always says. We only wish he was here more.”

“I saw him in London about a month ago,” I remarked, in order to sustain the fiction.

How I longed to open that letter that lay so tantalisingly before me. But what could I do? Such a thing was not to be thought of. Therefore, I had to watch the woman gather the correspondence together and replace them in the cupboard.

I rose and thanked her, saying,—

“I’m delighted to think that Charlie will escape a very disagreeable affair. It’s fortunate he wasn’t here to receive that letter.”

“And I’m glad, too. When he returns I’ll tell him how you came here, and what you said. What name shall I give him?”

“Williams—Harry Williams,” I answered. “He will know.”

Then as I walked round to the window I examined the room quickly, but to my disappointment saw that there were no photographs. He might, I thought, keep the portraits of some of his friends upon the mantelshelf, as so many men do. Was this Denton one of the conspirators, I wondered? His absence without an address for four months caused me to suspect that he was.

Just as I had given her my assumed name, somebody knocked at the door, and she went to open it.

Next instant a thought flashed across to me. Should I take that letter? It was a theft—that I recognised, yet was it not in the interests of justice? By that communication I might be able to establish the dead man’s identity.

There was not a second to lose. I decided at once. I heard the woman open the door and speak to someone, then swift as thought I opened the cupboard, glanced at the packet of letters, and with quickly-beating heart took the one which bore the Blandford post-mark.

In a moment it was in my pocket. I re-closed the cupboard, and sprang to the opposite side of the room just as the good woman re-entered.

Then, with profuse thanks and leaving kind messages to the man of whom I spoke so familiarly as “Charlie,” I took my leave and hurried along the broad road into Salford, where I jumped upon a tram going to the Exchange.

I was in the train alone, in a third-class compartment, travelling north to Carlisle, before I dared to break open the letter.

When I did so I found within a scribbled note in cipher written on the paper of the Bear Hotel, at Devizes. After some difficulty, with the aid of the key which the writer had evidently used in penning it, I deciphered it as follows:—

“Dear Denton,—I saw you in the smoking-room of the Midland at Bradford, but for reasons which you know, I could not speak. I went out, and on my return you had gone. I searched, but could not find you. I wanted to tell you my opinion about Ellice and his friend. They are not playing a straight game. I know their intentions. They mean to give us away if they can. Sybil fears me, and will pay. I pretend to know a lot. Meet me in Chichester at the Dolphin next Sunday. I shall put up there, because I intend that she shall see me. Come and help me, for I shall have a good thing on, in which you can share. She can always raise money from her sister or her mother, so don’t fail to keep the appointment. Ellice has already touched a good deal of the Scarcliffs’ money from young Jack, and I now mean myself to have a bit. She’ll do anything to avoid scandal. It’s a soft thing—so come.—Yours,—

“R.W.”

The dead man was, as I had suspected, one of the gang, and he was a blackmailer. He had compelled her to meet him and had made demands which she had resisted. Yes—the letter was the letter of a barefaced scoundrel.

I clenched my hands and set my teeth.

Surely I had done right to endeavour to protect Sybil from such a band of ruffians. Once I had pitied the dead man, but now my sympathy was turned to hatred. He had written this letter to his friend Denton, suggesting that the latter should assist him in his nefarious scheme of blackmail.

He confessed that he “pretended” to know a lot. What did he pretend to know, I wondered? Ah! if only Sybil would speak—if only she would reveal to me the truth.

Yet, after all, how could she when that man, the fellow who had written that letter, had fallen by her hand?

The letter at least showed that her enemies had been and were still unscrupulous. Winsloe, even now, was ready to send her to her grave, just as I had been sent—because I had dared to come between the conspirators and their victim. And yet she trusted Nello—whoever the fellow was.

Who was the man Denton, I wondered? A friend of the mysterious “R.W.,” without a doubt, and a malefactor like himself.

I placed my finger within the linen-lined envelope, and to my surprise found a second piece of thin blue paper folded in half. Eagerly I opened it and saw that it was a letter written in plain English, in bad ink, and so faint that with difficulty I read the lines.

It was in the scoundrel’s handwriting—the same calligraphy as that upon the envelope.

I read the lines, and so extraordinary were they that I sat back upon the seat utterly bewildered.

What was written there complicated the affair more than ever. The problem admitted of no solution, for the mystery was by those written lines rendered deeper and more inscrutable than before.

Was Sybil, after all, playing me false?

I held my breath as the grave peril of the situation came vividly home to me.

Yes—I had trusted her; I had believed her.

She had fooled me!