Chapter Nine.
Strictly in Secret.
Thursday night was wet and dismal in London as I stood outside the underground railway station at King’s Cross at eight o’clock, keeping my appointment with the Honourable Sybil.
There was a good deal of traffic and bustle in the Pentonville Road; the shops were still open, and the working-class population, notwithstanding the rain, were out with their baskets, making their purchases after their day’s labour.
At that spot in the evening one sees a veritable panorama of London life, its humours and its tragedies, for there five of the great arteries of traffic converge, while every two minutes the subterranean railway belches forth its hurrying, breathless crowds to swell the number of passers-by.
The station front towards the King’s Cross Road is somewhat in the shadow, and there I stood in patience and in wonder.
What Eric and had discovered in Winsloe’s kitbag had rendered the mystery the more tantalising, it being a cheap carte-de-visite photograph of the dead stranger—a picture which showed him in a dark tweed suit and golf-cap stuck slightly askew, as many young men of the working-class wear their caps.
We were both greatly puzzled. How came the portrait in Ellice’s possession? And why, if he were not in fear of some secret being divulged, did he not identify the stranger?
Again I recollected well how Sybil had declared her intention to marry Ellice. For what reason? Was it in order to prevent her own secret being exposed?