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

lunatic knew where Odette Rider was staying which made Tarling sweat.

"Where is Mr. Whiteside?" he asked.

"He has gone to Cambours Restaurant to meet somebody, sir," said the sergeant.

The somebody was one of Milburgh's satellites at Lyne's Store. Tarling must see him without delay. The inspector had control of all the official arrangements connected with the case, and it would be necessary to consult him before he could place detectives to watch the nursing home in Cavendish Place.

He found a cab and drove to Cambours, which was in Soho, and was fortunate enough to discover Whiteside in the act of leaving.

"I didn't get much from that fellow," Whiteside began, when Tarling handed him the letter.

The Scotland Yard man read it through without comment and handed it back.

"Of course he hasn't committed suicide. It's the last thing in the world that men of the Milburgh type ever think about seriously. He is a cold-blooded villain. Imagine him sitting down to write calmly about his wife's murderer!"

"What do you think of the other matter—the threat against Odette?"

Whiteside nodded.

"There may be something in it," he said. "Certainly we cannot take risks. Has anything been heard of Stay?"

Tarling told the story of the stolen taxicab.

"We'll have him," said Whiteside confidently. "He'll have no pals, and without pals in the motor business it is practically impossible to get a car away."

He got into Tarling's cab, and a few minutes later they were at the nursing home.

The matron came to them, a sedate, motherly lady.

"I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour of the night," said Tarling, sensing her disapproval. "But information has come to me this evening which renders it necessary that Miss Rider should be guarded."

"Guarded?" said the matron in surprise. "I don't quite understand you, Mr. Tarling. I had come down to give you rather a blowing up about Miss Rider. You know she is absolutely unfit to go out. I thought I made that clear to you when you were here this morning?"

"Go out?" said the puzzled Tarling. "What do you mean? She is not going out."

It was the matron's turn to be surprised.

"But you sent for her half an hour ago," she said.

"I sent for her?" said Tarling, turning pale. "Tell me, please, what has happened?"

"About half an hour ago, or it may be a little longer," said the matron, "a cabman came to the door and told me that he had been sent by the authorities to fetch Miss Rider at once—she was wanted in connection with her mother's murder."

Something in Tarling's face betrayed his emotion.

"Did you not send for her?" she asked in alarm.

Tarling shook his head.

"What was the man like who called?" he asked:

"A very ordinary-looking man, rather under-sized and ill-looking—it was the taxi-driver."

"You have no idea which way they went?"

"No," replied the matron. "I very much objected to Miss Rider going at all, but when I gave her the message, which apparently had come from you, she insisted upon going."

Tarling groaned. Odette Rider was in the power of a maniac who hated her, who had killed her mother and had cherished a plan for disfiguring the beauty of the girl whom he believed had betrayed his beloved master.

Without any further words he turned and left the waiting-room, followed by Whiteside.

"It's hopeless," he said, when they were outside, "hopeless, hopeless! My God! How terrible! I dare not think of it. If Milburgh is alive he shall suffer."

He gave directions to the cab-driver and followed Whiteside into the cab.

"I'm going back to my flat to pick up Ling Chu," he said. "I can't afford to lose any help he may be able to give us."

Whiteside was pardonably piqued.

"I don't know if your Ling Chu will be able to do very much in the way of trailing a taxicab through London." And then, recognising something of the other's distress, he said more gently, "Though I agree with you that every help we can get we shall need."

On their arrival at the Bond Street flat, Tarling opened the door and went upstairs, followed by the other. The flat was in darkness—an extraordinary circumstance, for it was an understood thing that Ling Chu should not leave the house whilst his master was out. And Ling Chu had undoubtedly left. The dining-room was empty. The first thing Tarling saw, when he turned on the light, was a strip of rice paper on which the ink was scarcely dry. Just half a dozen Chinese characters and no more.

"If you return before I, learn that I go to find the little-little woman," read Tarling in astonishment.

"Then he knows she's gone! Thank God for that!" he said. "I wonder——"

He stopped. He thought he had heard a low moan, and catching the eye of Whiteside, he saw that the Scotland Yard man had detected the same sound.

"Sounds like somebody groaning," he said. "Listen!"

He bent his head and waited, and presently it came again.

In two strides Tarling was at the door of Ling Chu's sleeping place, but it was locked. He stooped to the key-hole and listened, and again heard the moan. With a thrust of his shoulder he had broken the door open and dashed in.

The sight that met his eyes was a remarkable one. There was a man lying on the bed, stripped to the waist. His hands and his legs were bound and a white cloth covered his face. But what Tarling saw before all else was that across the centre of the broad chest were four little red lines, which Tarling recognised. They were "persuaders," by which native Chinese policemen secretly extract confessions from unwilling criminals—light cuts with a sharp knife on the surface of the skin, and after——

He looked around for the "torture bottle," but it was not in sight.

"Who is this?" he asked, and lifted the cloth from the man's face.

It was Milburgh.

CHAPTER XXXIII LING CHU—TORTURER

Much had happened to Mr. Milburgh between the time of his discovery lying bound and helpless and showing evidence that he had been in the hands of a Chinese torturer and the moment he left Sam Stay. He had read of the murder, and had been shocked, and, in his way, grieved.

It was not to save Odette Rider that he sent his note to Scotland Yard, but rather to avenge himself upon the man who had killed the only woman in the world who had touched his warped nature. Nor had he any intention of committing suicide. He had the passports which he had secured a year before in readiness for such a step (he had kept that clerical uniform of his by him all that time) and was ready at a moment's notice to leave the country.

His tickets were in his pocket, and when he despatched the district messenger to Scotland Yard he was on his way to Waterloo station to catch the Havre boat train. The police, he knew, would be watching the station, but he had no fear that they would discover beneath the benign exterior of a country clergyman, the wanted manager of Lyne's Store, even supposing that there was a warrant out for his arrest.

He was standing at a bookstall, purchasing literature to while away the hours of the journey, when he felt a hand laid on his arm and experienced a curious sinking sensation. He turned to look into a brown mask of a face he had seen before.

"Well, my man," he asked with a smile, "what can I do for you?"

He had asked the question in identical terms of Sam Stay—his brain told him that much, mechanically.

"You will come with me, Mr. Milburgh," said Ling Chu. "It will be better for you if you do not make any trouble."

"You are making a mistake."

"If I am making a mistake," said Ling Chu calmly, "you have only to tell that policeman that I have mistaken you for Milburgh, who is wanted by the police on a charge of murder, and I shall get into very serious trouble."

Milburgh's lips were quivering with fear and his face was a pasty grey.

"I will come," he said.

Ling Chu walked by his side, and they passed out of Waterloo station. The journey to Bond Street remained in Milburgh's memory like a horrible dream. He was not used to travelling on omnibuses, being something of a sybarite who spared nothing to ensure his own comfort. Ling Chu on the contrary had a penchant for buses and seemed to enjoy them.

No word was spoken until they reached the sitting-room of Tarling's flat. Milburgh expected to see the detective. He had already arrived at the conclusion that Ling Chu was but a messenger who had been sent by the man from Shanghai to bring him to his presence. But there was no sign of Tarling.

"Now, my friend, what do you want?" he asked. "It is true I am Mr. Milburgh, but when you say that I have committed murder you are telling a wicked lie."

He had gained some courage, because he had expected in the first place to be taken immediately to Scotland Yard and placed in custody. The fact that Tarling's flat lay at the end of the journey seemed to suggest that the situation was not as desperate as he had imagined.

Ling Chu, turning suddenly upon Milburgh, gripped him by the wrist, half-turning as he did so. Before Milburgh knew what was happening, he was lying on the floor, face downwards, with Ling Chu's knee in the small of his back. He felt something like a wire loop slipped about his wrists, and suffered an excruciating pain as the Chinaman tightened the connecting link of the native handcuff.

"Get up," said Ling Chu sternly, and, exerting a surprising strength, lifted the man to his feet.

"What are you going to do?" said Milburgh, his teeth chattering with fear.

There was no answer. Ling Chu gripped the man by one hand and opening the door with the other, pushed him into a room which was barely furnished. Against the wall there was an iron bed, and on to this the man was pushed, collapsing in a heap.

The Chinese thief-catcher went about his work in a scientific fashion. First he fastened and threaded a length of silk rope through one of the rails of the bed and into the slack of this he lifted Milburgh's head, so that he could not struggle except at the risk of being strangled.

Ling Chu turned him over, unfastened the handcuffs, and methodically bound first one wrist and then the other to the side of the bed.

"What are you going to do?" repeated Milburgh, but the Chinaman made no reply.

He produced from a belt beneath his blouse a wicked-looking knife, and the manager opened his mouth to shout. He was beside himself with terror, but any cause for fear had yet to come. The Chinaman stopped the cry by dropping a pillow on the man's face, and began deliberately to cut the clothing on the upper part of his body.

"If you cry out," he said calmly, "the people will think it is I who am singing! Chinamen have no music in their voices, and sometimes when I have sung my native songs, people have come up to discover who was suffering."

"You are acting illegally," breathed Milburgh, in a last attempt to save the situation. "For your crime you will suffer imprisonment"

"I shall be fortunate," said Ling Chu; "for prison is life. But you will hang at the end of a long rope."

He had lifted the pillow from Milburgh's face, and now that pallid man was following every movement of the Chinaman with a fearful eye. Presently Milburgh was stripped to the waist, and Ling Chu regarded his handiwork complacently.

He went to a cupboard in the wall, and took out a small brown bottle, which he placed on a table by the side of the bed. Then he himself sat upon the edge of the bed and spoke. His English was almost perfect, though now and again he hesitated in the choice of a word, and there were moments when he was a little stilted in his speech, and more than a little pedantic. He spoke slowly and with great deliberation.

"You do not know the Chinese people? You have not been or lived in China? When I say lived I do not mean staying for a week at a good hotel in one of the coast towns. Your Mr. Lyne lived in China in that way. It was not a successful residence."

"I know nothing about Mr. Lyne," interrupted Milburgh, sensing that Ling Chu in some way associated him with Thornton Lyne's misadventures.

"Good!" said Ling Chu, tapping the flat blade of his knife upon his palm. "If you had lived in China—in the real China—you might have a dim idea of our people and