The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (best ereader for comics .txt) 📗

pleasure, then somebody asked a question in a whisper, and she answered—he could just hear her words:

"No darling, nobody."

Tarling held his breath and waited. Then, of a sudden, the light in the room was extinguished. Whoever had entered had turned out the light. He heard a soft footfall coming towards the window looking into the conservatory and the rattle of the blinds as they were lowered. Then the light went up again, but he could see nothing or hear nothing.

Who was Mrs. Rider's mysterious visitor? There was only one way to discover, but he waited a little longer—waited, in fact, until he heard the soft slam of a safe door closing—before he slipped again through the window and dropped to the ground.

The bicycle was, as he had expected, leaning against one of the pillars. He could see nothing, and did not dare flash his lamp, but his sensitive fingers ran over its lines, and he barely checked an exclamation of surprise. It was a lady's bicycle!

He waited a little while, then withdrew to a shrubbery opposite the door on the other side of the drive up which the cyclist had come. He had not long to wait before the door under the portico opened again and closed. Somebody jumped on to the bicycle as Tarling leaped from his place of concealment. He pressed the key of his electric lamp, but for some reason it did not act. He felt rather than heard a shiver of surprise from the person on the machine.

"I want you," said Tarling, and put out his hands.

He missed the rider by the fraction of an inch, but saw the machine swerve and heard the soft thud of something falling. A second later the machine and rider had disappeared in the pitch darkness.

He re-fixed his lamp. Pursuit, he knew, was useless without his lantern, and, cursing the maker thereof, he adjusted another battery, and put the light on the ground to see what it was that the fugitive had dropped. He thought he heard a smothered exclamation behind him and turned swiftly. But nobody came within the radius of his lamp. He must be getting nervy, he thought, and continued his inspection of the wallet.

It was a long, leather portfolio, about ten inches in length and five inches in depth, and it was strangely heavy. He picked it up, felt for the clasp, and found instead two tiny locks. He made another examination by the light of his lantern, an examination which was interrupted by a challenge from above.

"Who are you?"

It was Mrs. Rider's voice, and just then it was inconvenient for him to reveal himself. Without a word in answer, he switched off his light and slipped into the bushes, and, more as the result of instinct than judgment, regained the wall, at almost the exact spot he had crossed it.

The road was empty, and there was no sign of the cyclist. There was only one thing to do and that was to get back to town as quickly as possible and examine the contents of the wallet at his leisure. It was extraordinary heavy for its size, he was reminded of that fact by his sagging pocket.

The road back to Hertford seemed interminable and the clocks were chiming a quarter of eleven when he entered the station yard.

"Train to London, sir?" said the porter. "You've missed the last train to London by five minutes!"

CHAPTER XXIII THE NIGHT VISITOR

Tarling was less in a dilemma than in that condition of uncertainty which is produced by having no definite plans one way or the other. There was no immediate necessity for his return to town and his annoyance at finding the last train gone was due rather to a natural desire to sleep in his own bed, than to any other cause. He might have got a car from a local garage, and motored to London, if there had been any particular urgency, but, he told himself, he might as well spend the night in Hertford as in Bond Street.

If he had any leanings towards staying at Hertford it was because he was anxious to examine the contents of the wallet at his leisure. If he had any call to town it might be discovered in his anxiety as to what had happened to Odette Rider; whether she had returned to her hotel or was still marked "missing" by the police. He could, at any rate, get into communication with Scotland Yard and satisfy his mind on that point. He turned back from the station in search of lodgings. He was to find that it was not so easy to get rooms as he had imagined. The best hotel in the place was crowded out as a result of an agricultural convention which was being held in the town. He was sent on to another hotel, only to find that the same state of congestion existed, and finally after half an hour's search he found accommodation at a small commercial hotel which was surprisingly empty.

His first step was to get into communication with London and this was established without delay. Nothing had been heard of Odette Rider, and the only news of importance was that the ex-convict, Sam Stay, had escaped from the county lunatic asylum to which he had been removed.

Tarling went up to the commodious sitting-room. He was mildly interested in the news about Stay, for the man had been a disappointment. This criminal, whose love for Thornton Lyne had, as Tarling suspected rightly, been responsible for his mental collapse, might have supplied a great deal of information as to the events which led up to the day of the murder, and his dramatic breakdown had removed a witness who might have offered material assistance to the police.

Tarling closed the door of his sitting-room behind him, pulled the wallet from his pocket and laid it on the table. He tried first with his own keys to unfasten the flap but the locks defied him. The heaviness of the wallet surprised and piqued him, but he was soon to find an explanation for its extraordinary weight. He opened his pocket-knife and began to cut away the leather about the locks, and uttered an exclamation.

So that was the reason for the heaviness of the pouch—it was only leather-covered! Beneath this cover was a lining of fine steel mail. The wallet was really a steel chain bag, the locks being welded to the chain and absolutely immovable. He threw the wallet back on the table with a laugh. He must restrain his curiosity until he got back to the Yard, where the experts would make short work of the best locks which were ever invented. Whilst he sat watching the thing upon the table and turning over in his mind the possibility of its contents, he heard footsteps pass his door and mount the stairway opposite which his sitting-room was situated. Visitors in the same plight as himself, he thought.

Somehow, being in a strange room amidst unfamiliar surroundings, gave the case a new aspect. It was an aspect of unreality. They were all so unreal, the characters in this strange drama.

Thornton Lyne seemed fantastic, and fantastic indeed was his end. Milburgh, with his perpetual smirk, his little stoop, his broad, fat face and half-bald head; Mrs. Rider, a pale ghost of a woman who flitted in and out of the story, or rather hovered about it, never seeming to intrude, yet never wholly separated from its tragic process; Ling Chu, imperturbable, bringing with him the atmosphere of that land of intrigue and mystery and motive, China. Odette Rider alone was real. She was life; warm, palpitating, wonderful.

Tarling frowned and rose stiffly from his chair. He despised himself a little for this weakness of his. Odette Rider! A woman still under suspicion of murder, a woman whom it was his duty, if she were guilty, to bring to the scaffold, and the thought of her turned him hot and cold!

He passed through to his bedroom which adjoined the sitting-room, put the wallet on a table by the side of his bed, locked the bedroom door, opened the windows and prepared himself, as best he could, for the night.

There was a train leaving Hertford at five in the morning and he had arranged to be called in time to catch it. He took off his boots, coat, vest, collar and tie, unbuckled his belt—he was one of those eccentrics to whom the braces of civilisation were anathema—and lay down on the outside of the bed, pulling the eiderdown over him. Sleep did not come to him readily. He turned from side to side, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Suppose there had been some mistake in the time of the accident at Ashford? Suppose the doctors were wrong and Thornton Lyne was murdered at an earlier hour? Suppose Odette Rider was in reality a cold-blooded——. He growled away the thought.

He heard the church clock strike the hour of two and waited impatiently for the quarter to chime—he had heard every quarter since he had retired to bed. But he did not hear that quarter. He must have fallen into an uneasy sleep for he began to dream. He dreamt he was in China again and had fallen into the hands of that baneful society, the "Cheerful Hearts." He was in a temple, lying on a great black slab of stone, bound hand and foot, and above him he saw the leader of the gang, knife in hand, peering down into his face with a malicious grin—and it was the face of Odette Rider! He saw the knife raised and woke sweating.

The church clock was booming three and a deep silence lay on the world. But there was somebody in his room. He knew that and lay motionless, peering out of half-closed eyes from one corner to the other. There was nobody to be seen, nothing to be heard, but his sixth sense told him that somebody was present. He reached out his hand carefully and silently to the table and searched for the wallet. It was gone!

Then he heard the creak of a board and it came from the direction of the door leading to the sitting-room. With one bound he was out of bed in time to see the door flung open and a figure slip through. He was after it in a second. The burglar might have escaped, but unexpectedly there was a crash and a cry. He had fallen over a chair and before he could rise Tarling was on him and had flung him back. He leapt to the door, it was open. He banged it close and turned the key.

"Now, let's have a look at you," said Tarling grimly and switched on the light.

He fell back against the door, his mouth open in amazement, for the intruder was Odette Rider, and in her hand she held the stolen wallet.

CHAPTER XXIV THE CONFESSION OF ODETTE RIDER

He could only gaze in stupified silence.

"You!" he said wonderingly.

The girl was pale and her eyes never left his face.

She nodded.

"Yes, it is I," she said in a low voice.

"You!" he said again and walked towards her.

He held out his hand and she gave him the wallet without a word.

"Sit down," he said kindly.

He thought she was going to faint.

"I hope I didn't hurt you? I hadn't the slightest idea——"

She shook her head.

"Oh, I'm not hurt," she said wearily, "not hurt in the way you mean."

She drew a chair to the table and dropped her face upon her hands and he stood by, embarrassed, almost terrified, by this unexpected development.

"So you were the visitor on the bicycle," he said at last. "I didn't suspect——"

It struck him at that moment that it was not an offence for Odette Rider to go up to her mother's house on a bicycle, or even to take away a wallet which was probably hers. If there was any crime at all, he had committed it in retaining something to which he had no right. She looked up at his words.

"I? On the bicycle?" she asked. "No, it was not I."

"Not you?"

She shook her head.

"I was in the grounds—I saw you using your lamp and I was quite close to you when you picked up the wallet," she said listlessly, "but I was not on the bicycle."

"Who was it?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"May I have that please?"

She held out her hand and he hesitated.

After all, he had no right or title to this curious purse. He compromised by putting it on the table and she did not attempt to take it.

"Odette," he said gently and walked round to her, laying his hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" she asked, without looking