“Then they have escaped!” I cried. “Tell me how they managed it!”
“It appears that on leaving the Manor, and descending into the secret way, they found that you had removed the planks that bridged the well. They returned to the Manor only to discover that you had also closed down the exit securely.”
“What did they do then?”
“Well, for a time there seemed no solution of the problem until Mr. Bennett, more ingenious than the rest, suggested that they should dig a hole straight upwards from the roof of the passage. This they did, and in half an hour emerged in the centre of a cornfield!”
“By Jove!” I cried, laughing. “I never thought of that! Then they are all four back in London again?”
“I think so. It seems as though they have, like you, given up all hope of making any discovery.”
“Yes,” I said, with a sigh, “we are, unfortunately, no nearer the truth than we were when we started.” My eye fell upon the mantelshelf, and I noticed that in place of the portrait of the dead man there was now a photograph of a well-known actor. She had removed it, and had probably placed the picture among her most treasured possessions.
This thought pained me. It was on the tip of my tongue to refer to it, but I feared to give her annoyance.
I openly declare that I now thought far more of my sweet and winsome love than I did of that sordid treasure. The first-named was a living reality, the soft-voiced woman who was my all-in-all; but the latter was nothing more than a mere phantom, as fortune is so very often.
While my friends still discussed the ways and means of solving the problem I thought only of her, for I loved her with all my heart and with all my soul. How I wished she would set my troubled thoughts at rest regarding the poor fellow who had been done to death at Kilburn, yet when I recollected the reason of her secrecy I saw that she was held silent for fear of consequences. Hers was a secret—but surely not a guilty one.