“Because I am compelled to do so,” was her frank, outspoken answer.
I longed to ask right out who was the man Nello—brief for Lionel—the man to whom she sent a secret message of trust.
We were passing St. John’s Churchyard towards North Street, and had been discussing the advisability of her taking a furnished room in one of the respectable houses in Roundhay Road, where we had seen “Apartments to let: Furnished,” when, catching her countenance, I suddenly said,—
“Eric has disappeared. He left Bolton Street some days ago, and I’ve heard nothing of him. I’m getting very anxious.”
“Eric!” she echoed. “Well, he’s hardly the kind of a man to disappear, is he? I’ve often heard from his friends that he goes away abroad frequently and forgets to write. Perhaps he’s abroad now.”
She did not tell me that he was in Paris, the statement which she made in secret to the man she called Nello.
I discussed the subject further, but she steadfastly refused to admit that she knew of his whereabouts. By her attitude I was much mystified.
Neither the Sussex Constabulary nor the Scarcliffs themselves entertained the slightest suspicion that the sudden departure of the Honourable Sybil from Ryhall had any connection with the mysterious affair in Charlton Wood. I had made careful inquiry when I had visited old Lady Scarcliff at Grosvenor Street, and young Lady Wydcombe, visits which I had purposely made in town in order to allay any suspicion that I was aware of Tibbie’s place of hiding.
The whole family were, of course, extremely anxious, and I was compelled to play a double game, pretending to make every inquiry in those quarters in London where she was so well known. I had even invented stories as to her having been seen at Oddenino’s at supper, with two other ladies, and accompanied by both ladies on the departure platform at St. Pancras, stories concocted with a dual purpose, to reassure Jack and his mother that she was well, and also to mislead those who were so eagerly in search of her.
As we walked side by side through that busy centre of commercial life, all of which was so strange to her, I expressed regret that she could tell me nothing further.