“I quite understand, sir. But what about the doctor?”
“He doesn’t matter. The person whom I wish to believe in my absence does not know the doctor. I shall remain indoors for a day or two. Mind nobody knows I’m here.”
“I shall take good care of that, sir,” was the man’s reply; and I knew that I could trust him.
I scribbled a line to Inspector Pickering explaining my inability to make the statement on account of my injured head, but promising to call in a few days. I urged him not to send to me, as my chambers were probably watched. This note I sent by express messenger.
Then thoroughly exhausted I dropped off to sleep.
It was evening when I awoke, but Eric had not made his appearance. I was now thoroughly alarmed. Who were the men whom he had defied in that house of mystery?
He always carried a revolver, and was a dead shot; but what is a weapon against such black treachery as that to which I had been subjected? He was fearless, and would fight to the last; yet after my experience in that house I was apprehensive lest he should, like myself, have fallen a victim.
Many a man and woman disappears in this roaring metropolis of ours and is never again heard of; many an undiscovered crime takes place within a stone’s-throw of the great London thoroughfares; and many a death-cry is unheard in the hum of traffic and unheeded in the bustle of our everyday life. The London sewers hold many a secret, and the London chimneys have smoked with the cremated remains of many an innocent victim.
I wrote to Tibbie an affectionate letter explaining that my absence was due to the fact that I had fallen and met with a slight accident to the head, and signed it “Willie” in order that, if necessary, she might show it to her landlady. It was strange to write to her with so much affection when inwardly I was aware of her terrible secret. Yet had I not promised to save her? Had I not given her that foolish pledge which had been the cause of all my exciting adventures and my narrow escape from death?
Night came. I sat alone in the armchair before the fire listening for my old friend’s footstep, but all in vain. Something had happened, but what the something was I feared to contemplate.