“But why did not Bethune inform the police instead of acting so suspiciously?” I queried in doubt.
“Because he feared to compromise me. He swore he would not speak until I gave him permission. This I could not give until assured of my own immunity from arrest.”
“How would this disclosure compromise you?”
“In the first place, I was present when the murder was committed. Secondly, you will remember you entered Jack’s chambers by stealth on the following night and found the body removed.”
“Yes,” I said quickly. “He locked one of the rooms and would not allow me to enter.”
“Because I was in that room, Stuart,” she explained. “I had again called upon him to ask his advice, not knowing how to act. Suddenly you entered, and to conceal me became imperative.”
“But the body was also concealed there, was it not?”
“No, it had been removed to Gloucester Square early in the morning following the murder, after which Jack, in accordance with his promise to shield me, fled from England in order that suspicion might fall upon himself. If he had at once caused the arrest of the murderer I should have been compromised. But Markwick denounced Jack to Mabel, who, of course, already guessed the truth, and very soon your friend was amazed to find circumstantial evidence woven around him in a most serious and amazing manner.”
“But I had all along been aware of his innocence,” Dora interrupted, sick at heart for her friend’s misery. “Sybil had told me.”
“Yes,” continued the woman I loved, turning to her. “Even when the police were hunting for him I feared to speak, knowing that by so doing I must implicate myself, and that the part I had innocently played in the dynamite affair and in the subsequent fraud would inevitably be disclosed. Once,” she continued, again turning to me, “once I sent my maid Ashcombe to you to ascertain secretly how you fared, but you were out, and as it was imperative that she should leave that night for Paris to prosecute some inquiries, she failed to see you and you therefore remained in ignorance.”