“But who was the man who fired the fatal shot?” I demanded breathlessly.
She refused to answer!
Chapter Thirty One.
Contains the Conclusion.
I repeated my question, looking straight into her face.
“Your friend, Eric Domville.”
“Eric!” I gasped, starting forward. “Why, he told me that you had killed him. He described in detail how he had been an eye-witness of your crime!”
“Ah, of course!” she said, bitterly. “In order to throw suspicion off himself. But I swear to you, before Heaven, that it was he who killed Arthur Rumbold—they killed him because they knew he had discovered the truth concerning the house in Clipstone Street. Among Vickers’s effects Arthur had found certain letters which had given him the clue to the awful truth. Your friend Domville was, you will remember, often absent for long periods in Africa. But I now have reason for knowing that he lived in Paris with Vickers as agent of the gang, and sometimes up in Manchester, where he passed as Charles Denton. Some of his absences from his friends, too, were due to certain periods of imprisonment which he had, from time to time, served. He was not the real Eric Domville, the African traveller, for the latter has his home in Cape Town, and had not been in London for twelve years or so.”