“Your friends at least seem highly dangerous persons,” I said, smiling. “I’ve been undecided, since discovering that my grave was already prepared, whether to go to Scotland Yard and reveal the whole game.”
“No!” she cried in quick apprehension. “No, don’t do that. It could serve no end, and would only implicate certain innocent persons—myself included.”
“But how could you be implicated?”
“Was I not at the bank when the cheque was cashed?”
“Yes. Why were you there?” I asked.
But she only excused herself from replying to my question.
“Ah!” she cried wildly a moment later, clutching my arm convulsively, “you do not know my horrible position—you cannot dream what I have suffered, or how much I have sacrificed.”
I saw that she was now terribly in earnest, and, by the quick rising and falling of the lace upon her bodice, I knew that she was stirred by a great emotion. She had refused to allow me to stand her friend because she feared what the result might be. And yet, had she not rescued me from the serpent’s fang?
“Sylvia,” I cried, “Sylvia—for I feel that I must call you by your Christian name—let us forget it all. The trap set by those blackguards was most ingenious, and in innocence I fell into it. I should have lost my life—except for you. You were present in that house of death. They told me you were there—they showed me your picture, and, to add to my horror, said that you, their betrayer, were to share the same fate as myself.”