The Daffodil Mystery - Edgar Wallace (best books to read for women TXT) 📗

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 up.

"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."