What I learnt staggered me. It told us the awful truth.

We turned and faced each other, looking into each other’s eyes without uttering a word.

The problem was, we saw, far more intricate and amazing than we had ever dreamed.

Yes, there, spread before us, was the dead man’s secret!

Chapter Five.

Which Puzzles both of us.

Holding our breath in our eagerness, we turned over the letters and hastily scanned them through, save where the writing was obliterated by those dark stains.

They were a revelation to us both. They told a story which utterly amazed us.

Within the flat circular locket were engraved the words: “From Sybil—August 14th,” but there was no year. It was a love token which the unknown had worn around his neck, a beautiful miniature signed by one of the most fashionable modern miniaturists.

The letters were, for the most part, in a woman’s large, rather sprawling hand, which I at once recognised as Sybil’s, and signed either by her Christian name or by her initials, “S.B.”

The first we read was written on the notepaper of Hethe Hall, in Cumberland, a country house near Keswick, where she often visited. Undated, it ran:—

“I do wish, Ralph, you would be more careful. Your actions every day betray the truth, and I fear somebody may suspect. You know how carefully I am watched and how my every action is noted. Every hour I live in dread. Think what exposure would mean to me. I shall walk down to Braithwaite Station to-morrow evening about 5:30. Do not write to me, as I fear Mason may get hold of one of your letters. She is so very curious. If you are free to-morrow evening perhaps I shall meet you ‘accidentally.’ But I do warn you to be careful for my sake. Till to morrow.—S.”

What was meant by the “truth?” Was that ill-dressed, low-born fellow actually her secret lover? The love token showed that such was actually the case. Yet who was he?

Another note, written hurriedly upon a plain sheet of common notepaper, was as follows:—

“I 

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