“Tell me, Sybil,” I urged in a low, kindly tone. “Who is this man?”
“Ah! no, Wilfrid!” she gasped at last, her face cast down as though in shame. “Don’t ask that. How—how can I, of all women, tell you?”
“But you must,” I said firmly. “All is known. The brutal devilish conspiracy of those men Parham, Winsloe and Vickers is exposed.”
“Exposed! Then they know about that—about that awful house in Clipstone Street?” she gasped, her eyes starting from her head in abject terror.
“The horrible truth has been discovered. The police went to the house last night.”
“The police!”
“Yes, and Vickers, who is under arrest, has denounced you as one of their accomplices. Tell me,” I cried hoarsely, “tell me, Sybil, the real honest truth.”
“I knew he would denounce me,” she cried bitterly. “He has been my bitterest enemy from the very first. To that man I owe all my sorrow and degradation. He and his friends are fiends—veritable fiends in human shape—vampires who have sucked the blood of the innocent, and cast them away in secret in that dark house in Clipstone Street without mercy and without compunction. He carried out his threat once, and denounced me, but he did not succeed in effecting my ruin. And now, when arrested he has told the police what—what, Wilfrid, is, alas! the truth.”
“The truth!” I gasped, drawing away from her in horror. “The truth, Sybil. Then you are really guilty,” I wailed. “Ah! Heaven—I believed you were innocent!”
She stood swaying to and fro, then staggering unevenly to the table, gripped it to save herself from falling.