Besides,' he added, `you met the fellow here. He was your lover, and you've rid yourself of him. You see how the circumstantial evidence against you stands. Go. And you'd better leave Ryhall as soon as you can.' Then he disappeared into the thicket while I stood half dazed, staring at the body of the man lying stark and dead before me." "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." "Sybil," I faltered, "what you have just revealed to me places an entirely new complexion upon the astounding affair. I see now how cleverly Domville planned to cast the guilt of Arthur Rumbold's death upon you. I found upon him the letters you had written to Vickers, and naturally concluded that the dead man was a scoundrel and a blackmailer. Besides, he wore your miniature and there was in my mind no question that you had loved him. Therefore I took counsel with Domville, and we agreed to keep your secret. Ah!" I cried, "how cleverly I was deceived! I ought to have detected that he was not my old friend Eric. That man was possessed of the devil's cunning! But tell me, why did you fly that night--why did you ask me to pose as your husband?" "For the simple reason that, appalled by the vengeance that they had dealt out to poor Arthur, I sought to escape them. Domville might accuse me of the murder in the wood, or Vickers might give my secret to the Prefect of Paris Police. In either case I would be in deadly peril. I saw one way out of the latter--which seemed to me the secret mode by which they would eventually attack me--and that was to make pretence that I had a husband--that I had hidden myself and married a working-man." "Why? How did that safeguard you?"