The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) π
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- Author: Edgar Wallace
Read book online Β«The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) πΒ». Author - Edgar Wallace
"So you hate Miss Rider, do you?" asked Milburgh.
"Hate her!"
The little fellow almost shouted the words, his face purple, his eyes starting from his head, his two hands twisted convulsively.
"I thought I'd finished her last night," he began, and stopped.
The words had no significance for Mr. Milburgh, since he had seen no newspapers that day.
"Listen," Sam went on. "Have you ever loved anybody?"
Mr. Milburgh was silent. To him Odette Rider was nothing, but about the woman Odette Rider had called mother and the woman he called wife, circled the one precious sentiment in his life.
"Yes, I think I have," he said after a pause. "Why?"
"Well, you know how I feel, don't you?" said Sam Stay huskily. "You know how I want to get the better of this party who brought him down. She lured him onβlured him onβoh, my God!" He buried his face in his hands and swayed from side to side.
Mr. Milburgh looked round in some apprehension. No one was in sight.
Odette would be the principal witness against him and this man hated her. He had small cause for loving her. She was the one witness that the Crown could produce, now that he had destroyed the documentary evidence of his crime. What case would they have against him if they stood him in the dock at the Old Bailey, if Odette Rider were not forthcoming to testify against him?
He thought the matter over cold-bloodedly, as a merchant might consider some commercial proposition which is put before him. He had learnt that Odette Rider was in London in a nursing home, as the result of a set of curious circumstances.
He had called up Lyne's Store that morning on the telephone to discover whether there had been any inquiries for him and had heard from his chief assistant that a number of articles of clothing had been ordered to be sent to this address for Miss Rider's use. He had wondered what had caused her collapse, and concluded that it was the result of the strain to which the girl had been subjected in that remarkable interview which she and he had had with Tarling at Hertford on the night before.
"Suppose you met Miss Rider?" he said. "What could you do?"
Sam Stay showed his teeth in a grin.
"Well, anyway, you're not likely to meet her for some time. She is in a nursing home," said Milburgh, "and the nursing home," he went on deliberately, "is at 304, Cavendish Place."
"304, Cavendish Place," repeated Sam. "That's near Regent Street, isn't it?"
"I don't know where it is," said Mr. Milburgh. "She is at 304, Cavendish Place, so that it is very unlikely that you will meet her for some time."
He rose to his feet, and he saw the man was shaking from head to foot like a man in the grip of ague.
"304, Cavendish Place," he repeated, and without another word turned his back on Mr. Milburgh and slunk away.
That worthy gentleman looked after him and shook his head, and then rising, turned and walked in the other direction. It was just as easy to take a ticket for the Continent at Waterloo station as it was at Charing Cross. In many ways it was safer.
CHAPTER XXXII THE DIARY OF THORNTON LYNETarling should have been sleeping. Every bone and sinew in him ached for rest. His head was sunk over a table in his flat. Lyne's diaries stood in two piles on the table, the bigger pile that which he had read, the lesser being those which Tarling had yet to examine.
The diaries had been blank books containing no printed date lines. In some cases one book would cover a period of two or three years, in other cases three or four books would be taken up by the record of a few months. The pile on the left grew, and the pile on the right became smaller, until there was only one bookβa diary newer than the others which had been fastened by two brass locks, but had been opened by the Scotland Yard experts.
Tarling took up this volume and turned the leaves. As he had expected, it was the current diaryβthat on which Thornton Lyne had been engaged at the time of his murder. Tarling opened the book in a spirit of disappointment. The earlier books had yielded nothing save a revelation of the writer's egotism. He had read Lyne's account of the happenings in Shanghai, but after all that was nothing fresh, and added little to the sum of the detective's knowledge.
He did not anticipate that the last volume would yield any more promising return for his study. Nevertheless, he read it carefully, and presently drawing a writing pad toward him, he began to note down excerpts from the diary. There was the story, told in temperate language and with surprising mildness, of Odette Rider's rejection of Thornton Lyne's advances. It was a curiously uninteresting record, until he came to a date following the release of Sam Stay from gaol, and here Thornton Lyne enlarged upon the subject of his "humiliation."
"Stay is out of prison," the entry ran. "It is pathetic to see how this man adores me. I almost wish sometimes that I could keep him out of gaol; but if I did so, and converted him into a dull, respectable person, I should miss these delicious experiences which his worship affords. It is good to bask in the bright sunlight of his adoration! I talked to him of Odette. A strange matter to discuss with a lout, but he was so wonderful a listener! I exaggerated, the temptation was great. How he loathed her by the time I was through ... he actually put forward a plan to 'spoil her looks,' as he put it. He had been working in the same prison gang as a man who was undergoing a term of penal servitude for 'doing in' his girl that way ... vitriol was used, and Sam suggested that he should do the work.... I was horrified, but it gave me an idea. He says he can give me a key that will open any door. Suppose I went ... in the dark? And I could leave a clue behind. What clue? Here is a thought. Suppose I left something unmistakably Chinese? Tarling had evidently been friendly with the girl ... something Chinese might place him under suspicion...."
The diary ended with the word "suspicion," an appropriate ending. Tarling read the passages again and again until he almost had them by heart. Then he closed the book and locked it away in his drawer.
He sat with his chin on his hand for half an hour. He was piecing together the puzzle which Thornton Lyne had made so much more simple. The mystery was clearing up. Thornton Lyne had gone to that flat not in response to the telegram, but with the object of compromising and possibly ruining the girl. He had gone with the little slip of paper inscribed with Chinese characters, intending to leave the Hong in a conspicuous place, that somebody else might be blamed for his infamy.
Milburgh had been in the flat for another purpose. The two men had met; there had been a quarrel; and Milburgh had fired the fatal shot. That part of the story solved the mystery of Thornton Lyne's list slippers and his Chinese characters; his very presence there was cleared up. He thought of Sam Stay's offer.
It came in a flash to Tarling that the man who had thrown the bottle of vitriol at him, who had said he had kept it for yearsβwas Sam Stay. Stay, with his scheme for blasting the woman who, he believed, had humiliated his beloved patron.
And now for Milburgh, the last link in the chain.
Tarling had arranged for the superintendent in charge of the Cannon Row Police Station to notify him if any news came through. The inspector's message did not arrive, and Tarling went down through Whitehall to hear the latest intelligence at first hand. That was to be precious little. As he was talking there arrived on the scene an agitated driver, the proprietor of a taxicab which had been lost. An ordinary case such as come the way of the London police almost every day. The cabman had taken a man and a woman to one of the West End theatres, and had been engaged to wait during the evening and pick them up when the performance was through. After setting down his fares, he had gone to a small eating-house for a bit of supper. When he came out the cab had disappeared.
"I know who done it," he said vehemently, "and if I had him here, I'd...."
"How do you know?"
"He looked in at the coffee-shop while I was eating my bit of food."
"What did he look like?" asked the station inspector.
"He was a man with a white face," said the victim, "I could pick him out of a thousand. And what's more, he had a brand-new pair of boots on."
Tarling had strolled away from the officer's desk whilst this conversation was in progress, but now he returned.
"Did he speak at all?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said the cabman. "I happened to ask him if he was looking for anybody, and he said no, and then went on to talk a lot of rubbish about a man who had been the best friend any poor chap could have had. My seat happened to be nearest the door, that's how I got into conversation with him. I thought he was off his nut."
"Yes, yes, go on," said Tarling impatiently. "What happened then?"
"Well, he went out," said the cabman, "and presently I heard a cab being cranked up. I thought it was one of the other driversβthere were several cabs outside. The eating-house is a place which cabmen use, and I didn't take very much notice until I came out and found my cab gone and the old devil I'd left in charge in a public-house drinking beer with the money this fellow had given him."
"Sounds like your man, sir," said the inspector, looking at Tarling.
"That's Sam Stay all right," he said, "but it's news to me that he could drive a taxi."
The inspector nodded.
"Oh, I know Sam Stay all right, sir. We've had him in here two or three times. He used to be a taxi-driverβdidn't you know that?"
Tarling did not know that. He had intended looking up Sam's record that day, but something had occurred to put the matter out of his mind.
"Well, he can't go far," he said. "You'll circulate the description of the cab, I suppose? He may be easier to find. He can't hide the cab as well as he can hide himself, and if he imagines that the possession of a car is going to help him to escape he's making a mistake."
Tarling was going back to Hertford that night, and had informed Ling Chu of his intention. He left Cannon Row Police Station, walked across the road to Scotland Yard, to confer with Whiteside, who had promised to meet him. He was pursuing independent inquiries and collecting details of evidence regarding the Hertford crime.
Whiteside was not in when Tarling called, and the sergeant on duty in the little office by the main door hurried forward.
"This came for you two hours ago, sir," he said "We thought you were in Hertford."
"This" was a letter addressed in pencil, and Mr. Milburgh had made no attempt to disguise his handwriting. Tarling tore open the envelope and read the contents:
"Dear Mr. Tarling," it began. "I have just read in the Evening Press, with the deepest sorrow and despair, the news that my dearly Beloved wife, Catherine Rider, has been foully murdered. How terrible to think that a few hours ago I was conversing with her assassin, as I believe Sam Stay to be, and had inadvertently given him information as to where Miss Rider was to be found! I beg of you that you will lose no time in saving her from the hands of this cruel madman, who seems to have only one idea, and that to avenge the death of the late Mr. Thornton Lyne. When this reaches you I shall be beyond the power of human vengeance, for I have determined to end a life which has held so much sorrow and disappointment.βM."
He was satisfied that Mr. Milburgh would not commit suicide, and the information was superfluous that Sam Stay had murdered Mrs. Rider. It was the knowledge that this vengeful
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