The Daffodil Mystery. Wallace Edgar
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you see," he said in conclusion, "that you ought to be on your guard. I suggest to you that you see a solicitor and put the matter in his hands. You need not move against Mr. Lyne, but it would strengthen your position tremendously if you had already detailed the scheme to some person in authority."
"Thank you very, very much, Mr. Tarling," she said warmly, and looked up into his face with a smile so sweet, so pathetic, so helpless, that Tarling's heart melted towards her.
"And if you don't want a solicitor," he said, "you can depend upon me. I will help you if any trouble arises."
"You don't know how grateful I am to you, Mr. Tarling, I didn't receive you very graciously!"
"If you will forgive my saying so, you would have been a fool to have received me in any other way," he said.
She held out both hands to him: he took them, and there were tears in her eyes. Presently she composed herself, and led him into her little drawing-room.
"Of course, I've lost my job," she laughed, "but I've had several offers, one of which I shall accept. I am going to have the rest of the week to myself and to take a holiday."
Tarling stopped her with a gesture. His ears were superhumanly sensitive.
"Are you expecting a visitor?" he asked softly.
"No," said the girl in surprise.
"Do you share this flat with somebody?"
"I have a woman who sleeps here," she said. "She is out for the evening."
"Has she a key?"
The girl shook her head.
The man rose, and Odette marvelled how one so tall could move so swiftly, and without so much as a sound, across the uncarpeted hallway. He reached the door, turned the knob of the patent lock and jerked it open. A man was standing on the mat and he jumped back at the unexpectedness of Tarling's appearance. The stranger was a cadaverous-looking man, in a brand-new suit of clothes, evidently ready-made, but he still wore on his face the curious yellow tinge which is the special mark of the recently liberated gaol-bird.
"Beg pardon," he stammered, "but is this No. 87?"
Tarling shot out a hand, and gripping him by the coat, drew the helpless man towards him.
"Hullo, what are you trying to do? What's this you have?"
He wrenched something from the man's hand. It was not a key but a flat-toothed instrument of strange construction.
"Come in," said Tarling, and jerked his prisoner into the hall.
A swift turning back of his prisoner's coat pinioned him, and then with dexterousness and in silence he proceeded to search. From two pockets he took a dozen jewelled rings, each bearing the tiny tag of Lyne's Store.
"Hullo!" said Tarling sarcastically, "are these intended as a loving gift from Mr. Lyne to Miss Rider?"
The man was speechless with rage. If looks could kill, Tarling would have died.
"A clumsy trick," said Tarling, shaking his head mournfully. "Now go back to your boss, Mr. Thornton Lyne, and tell him that I am ashamed of an intelligent man adopting so crude a method," and with a kick he dismissed Sam Stay to the outer darkness.
The girl, who had been a frightened spectator of the scene, turned her eyes imploringly upon the detective.
"What does it mean?" she pleaded. "I feel so frightened. What did that man want?"
"You need not be afraid of that man, or any other man," said Tarling briskly. "I'm sorry you were scared."
He succeeded in calming her by the time her servant had returned and then took his leave.
"Remember, I have given you my telephone number and you will call me up if there is any trouble. Particularly," he said emphatically, "if there is any trouble to-morrow."
But there was no trouble on the following day, though at three o'clock in the afternoon she called him up.
"I am going away to stay in the country," she said. "I got scared last night."
"Come and see me when you get back," said Tarling, who had found it difficult to dismiss the girl from his mind. "I am going to see Lyne to-morrow. By the way, the person who called last night is a protégé of Mr. Thornton Lyne's, a man who is devoted to him body and soul, and he's the fellow we've got to look after. By Jove! It almost gives me an interest in life!"
He heard the faint laugh of the girl.
"Must I be butchered to make a detective's holiday?" she mocked, and he grinned sympathetically.
"Any way, I'll see Lyne to-morrow," he said.
The interview which Jack Tarling projected was destined never to take place.
On the following morning, an early worker taking a short cut through Hyde Park, found the body of a man lying by the side of a carriage drive. He was fully dressed save that his coat and waistcoat had been removed. Wound about his body was a woman's silk night-dress stained with blood. The hands of the figure were crossed on the breast and upon them lay a handful of daffodils.
At eleven o'clock that morning the evening newspapers burst forth with the intelligence that the body had been identified as that of Thornton Lyne, and that he had been shot through the heart.
CHAPTER V
FOUND IN LYNE'S POCKET
"The London police are confronted with a new mystery, which has features so remarkable, that it would not be an exaggeration to describe this crime as the Murder Mystery of the Century. A well-known figure in London Society, Mr. Thornton Lyne, head of an important commercial organisation, a poet of no mean quality, and a millionaire renowned for his philanthropic activities, was found dead in Hyde Park in the early hours of this morning, in circumstances which admit of no doubt that he was most brutally murdered.
"At half-past five, Thomas Savage, a bricklayer's labourer employed by the Cubitt Town Construction Company, was making his way across Hyde Park en route to his work. He had crossed the main drive which runs parallel with the Bayswater Road, when his attention was attracted to a figure lying on the grass near to the sidewalk. He made his way to the spot and discovered a man, who had obviously been dead for some hours. The body had neither coat nor waistcoat, but about the breast, on which his two hands were laid, was a silk garment tightly wound about the body, and obviously designed to stanch a wound on the left side above the heart.
"The extraordinary feature is that the murderer must not only have composed the body, but had laid upon its breast a handful of daffodils. The police were immediately summoned and the body was removed. The police theory is that the murder was not committed in Hyde Park, but the unfortunate gentleman was killed elsewhere and his body conveyed to the Park in his own motor-car, which was found abandoned a hundred yards from the scene of the discovery. We understand that the police are working upon a very important clue, and an arrest is imminent."
Mr. J. O. Tarling, late of the Shanghai Detective Service, read the short account in the evening newspaper, and was unusually thoughtful.
Lyne murdered! It was an extraordinary coincidence that he had been brought into touch with this young man only a few days before.
Tarling knew nothing of Lyne's private life, though from his own knowledge of the man during his short stay in Shanghai, he guessed that that life was not wholly blameless. He had been too busy in China to bother his head about the vagaries of a tourist, but he remembered dimly some sort of scandal which had attached to the visitor's name, and puzzled his head to recall all the circumstances.
He put down the newspaper with a little grimace indicative of regret. If he had only been attached to Scotland Yard, what a case this would have been for him! Here was a mystery which promised unusual interest.
His mind wandered to the girl, Odette Rider. What would she think of it? She would be shocked, he thought—horrified. It hurt him to feel that she might be indirectly, even remotely associated with such a public scandal, and he realised with a sudden sense of dismay that nothing was less unlikely than that her name would be mentioned as one who had quarrelled with the dead man.
"Pshaw!"