The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (best ereader for comics .txt) 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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"Tell me all there is to be told," he said. "I could help you. I want to help you."
She looked up at him.
"Why do you want to help me?" she asked simply.
He was tongue-tied for a second.
"Because I love you," he said, and his voice shook.
It did not seem to him that he was talking. The words came of their own volition. He had no more intention of telling her he loved her, indeed he had no more idea that he did love her, than Whiteside would have had. Yet he knew he spoke the truth and that a power greater than he had framed the words and put them on his lips.
The effect on the girl seemed extraordinary to him. She did not shrink back, she did not look surprised. She showed no astonishment whatever. She just brought her eyes back to the table and said: "Oh!"
That calm, almost uncannily calm acceptance of a fact which Tarling had not dared to breathe to himself, was the second shock of the evening.
It was as though she had known it all along. He was on his knees by her side and his arm was about her shoulders, even before his brain had willed the act.
"My girl, my girl," he said gently. "Won't you please tell me?"
Her head was still bent and her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible.
"Tell you what?" she asked.
"What you know of this business," he said. "Don't you realise how every new development brings you more and more under suspicion?"
"What business do you mean?"
He hesitated.
"The murder of Thornton Lyne? I know nothing of that."
She made no response to that tender arm of his, but sat rigid. Something in her attitude chilled him and he dropped her hand and rose. When she looked up she saw that his face was white and set. He walked to the door and unlocked it.
"I'm not going to ask you any more," he said quietly. "You know best why you came to me to-night—I suppose you followed me and took a room. I heard somebody going upstairs soon after I arrived."
She nodded.
"Do you want—this?" she asked and pointed to the wallet on the table.
"Take it away with you."
She got up to her feet unsteadily and swayed toward him. In a second he was by her side, his arms about her. She made no resistance, but rather he felt a yielding towards him which he had missed before. Her pale face was upturned to his and he stooped and kissed her.
"Odette! Odette!" he whispered. "Don't you realise that I love you and would give my life to save you from unhappiness? Won't you tell me everything, please?"
"No, no, no," she murmured with a little catch in her voice. "Please don't ask me! I am afraid. Oh, I am afraid!"
He crushed her in his arms, his cheek against hers, his lips tingling with the caress of her hair.
"But there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing," he said eagerly. "If you were as guilty as hell, I would save you! If you are shielding somebody I would shield them because I love you, Odette!"
"No, no!" she cried and pushed him back, both her little hands pressing against his chest. "Don't ask me, don't ask me——"
"Ask me!"
Tarling swung round. There was a man standing in the doorway, in the act of closing the door behind him.
"Milburgh!" he said between his teeth.
"Milburgh!" smiled the other mockingly. "I am sorry to interrupt this beautiful scene, but the occasion is a desperate one and I cannot afford to stand on ceremony, Mr. Tarling."
Tarling put the girl from him and looked at the smirking manager. One comprehensive glance the detective gave him, noted the cycling clips and the splashes of mud on his trousers, and understood.
"So you were the cyclist, eh?" he said.
"That's right," said Milburgh, "it is an exercise to which I am very partial."
"What do you want?" asked Tarling, alert and watchful.
"I want you to carry out your promise, Mr. Tarling," said Milburgh smoothly.
Tarling stared at him.
"My promise," he said, "what promise?"
"To protect, not only the evil-doer, but those who have compromised themselves in an effort to shield the evil-doer from his or her own wicked act."
Tarling started.
"Do you mean to say——" he said hoarsely. "Do you mean to accuse——?"
"I accuse nobody," said Milburgh with a wide sweep of his hands. "I merely suggest that both Miss Rider and myself are in very serious trouble and that you have it in your power to get us safely out of this country to one where extradition laws cannot follow."
Tarling took one step towards him and Milburgh shrank back.
"Do you accuse Miss Rider of complicity in this murder?" he demanded.
Milburgh smiled, but it was an uneasy smile.
"I make no accusation," he said, "and as to the murder?" he shrugged his shoulders. "You will understand better when you read the contents of that wallet which I was endeavouring to remove to a place of safety."
Tarling picked up the wallet from the table and looked at it.
"I shall see the contents of this wallet to-morrow," he said. "Locks will present very little difficulty—"
"You can read the contents to-night," said Milburgh smoothly, and pulled from his pocket a chain, at the end of which dangled a small bunch of keys. "Here is the key," he said. "Unlock and read to-night."
Tarling took the key in his hand, inserted it in first one tiny lock and then in the other. The catches snapped open and he threw back the flap. Then a hand snatched the portfolio from him and he turned to see the girl's quivering face and read the terror in her eyes.
"No, no!" she cried, almost beside herself, "no, for God's sake, no!"
Tarling stepped back. He saw the malicious little smile on Milburgh's face and could have struck him down.
"Miss Rider does not wish me to see what is in this case," he said.
"And for an excellent reason," sneered Milburgh.
"Here!"
It was the girl's voice, surprisingly clear and steady. Her shaking hands held the paper she had taken from the wallet and she thrust it toward the detective.
"There is a reason," she said in a low voice. "But it is not the reason you suggest."
Milburgh had gone too far. Tarling saw his face lengthen and the look of apprehension in his cold blue eyes. Then, without further hesitation, he opened the paper and read.
The first line took away his breath.
"THE CONFESSION OF ODETTE RIDER."
"Good God!" he muttered and read on. There were only half a dozen lines and they were in the firm caligraphy of the girl.
"I, Odette Rider, hereby confess that for three years I have been robbing the firm of Lyne's Stores, Limited, and during that period have taken the sum of £25,000."
Tarling dropped the paper and caught the girl as she fainted.
CHAPTER XXV MILBURGH'S LAST BLUFFMilburgh had gone too far. He had hoped to carry through this scene without the actual disclosure of the confession. In his shrewd, clever way he had realised before Tarling himself, that the detective from Shanghai, this heir to the Lyne millions, had fallen under the spell of the girl's beauty, and all his conjectures had been confirmed by the scene he had witnessed, no less than by the conversation he had overheard before the door was opened.
He was seeking immunity and safety. The man was in a panic, though this Tarling did not realise, and was making his last desperate throw for the life that he loved, that life of ease and comfort to secure which he had risked so much.
Milburgh had lived in terror that Odette Rider would betray him, and because of his panicky fear that she had told all to the detective that night he brought her back to London from Ashford, he had dared attempt to silence the man whom he believed was the recipient of the girl's confidence.
Those shots in the foggy night which had nearly ended the career of Jack Tarling had their explanation in Milburgh's terror of exposure. One person in the world, one living person, could place him in the felon's dock, and if she betrayed him——
Tarling had carried the girl to a couch and had laid her down. He went quickly into his bedroom, switching on the light, to get a glass of water. It was Milburgh's opportunity. A little fire was burning in the sitting-room. Swiftly he picked the confession from the floor and thrust it into his pocket.
On a little table stood a writing cabinet. From this he took a sheet of the hotel paper, crumpled it up and thrust it into the fire. It was blazing when Tarling returned.
"What are you doing?" he asked, halting by the side of the couch.
"I am burning the young lady's confession," said Milburgh calmly. "I do not think it is desirable in the interests——"
"Wait," said Tarling calmly.
He lowered the girl's head and sprinkled some of the water on her face, and she opened her eyes with a little shudder.
Tarling left her for a second and walked to the fire. The paper was burnt save a scrap of the edge that had not caught, and this he lifted gingerly, looked at it for a moment, then cast his eyes round the room. He saw that the stationery cabinet had been disturbed and laughed. It was neither a pleasant nor an amused laugh.
"That's the idea, eh?" he said, walked to the door, closed it and stood with his back to it.
"Now, Milburgh, you can give me that confession you've got in your pocket."
"I've burnt it, Mr. Tarling."
"You're a liar," said Tarling calmly. "You knew very well I wouldn't let you go out of this room with that confession in your pocket and you tried to bluff me by burning a sheet of writing-paper. I want that confession."
"I assure you——" began Milburgh.
"I want that confession," said Tarling, and with a sickly smile. Milburgh put his hand in his pocket and drew out the crumpled sheet.
"Now, if you are anxious to see it burn," said Tarling, "you will have an opportunity."
He read the statement again and put it into the fire, watched it until it was reduced to ashes, then beat the ashes down with a poker.
"That's that," said Tarling cheerfully.
"I suppose you know what you've done," said Milburgh. "You've destroyed evidence which you, as an officer of the law——"
"Cut that out," replied Tarling shortly.
For the second time that night he unlocked the door and flung it wide open.
"Milburgh, you can go. I know where I can find you when I want you," he said.
"You'll be sorry for this," said Milburgh.
"Not half as sorry as you'll be by the time I'm through with you," retorted Tarling.
"I shall go straight to Scotland Yard," fumed the man, white with passion.
"Do, by all means," said the detective coolly, "and be good enough to ask them to detain you until I come."
With this shot he closed the door upon the retreating man.
The girl was sitting now on the edge of the sofa, her brave eyes surveying the man who loved her.
"What have you done?" she asked.
"I've destroyed that precious confession of yours," said Tarling cheerfully. "It occurred to me in the space of time it took to get from you to my wash-stand, that that confession may have been made under pressure. I am right, aren't I?"
She nodded.
"Now, you wait there a little while I make myself presentable and I'll take you home."
"Take me home?" said the startled girl. "Not to mother, no, no. She mustn't ever know."
"On the contrary, she must know. I don't know what it is she mustn't know," said Tarling with a little smile, "but there has been a great deal too much mystery already, and it is not going to continue."
She rose and walked to the fireplace, her elbows on the mantelpiece, and her head back.
"I'll tell you all I can. Perhaps you're right," she said. "There has been too much mystery. You asked me once who was Milburgh."
She turned and half-faced him.
"I won't ask you that question any more," he said quietly, "I know!"
"You know?"
"Yes, Milburgh is your mother's second husband."
Her eyes opened.
"How did you find out that?"
"I guessed that," he smiled, "and she keeps her name Rider at Milburgh's request. He asked her not to reveal the fact that she was married again. Isn't that so?"
She nodded.
"Mother met him about seven years ago. We were at Harrogate at the time. You see, mother had a little money, and I think Mr. Milburgh thought it was much more than it actually was. He was a very agreeable man and told mother that he had a big business in the city. Mother believes that
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