Mr. Milburgh drew a long sigh. Of course, he remembered now. Sam Stay had been removed to a lunatic asylum, and he was dimly conscious of the fact that the man had escaped. It was not a pleasant experience, talking with an escaped lunatic. It might, however, be a profitable one. Mr. Milburgh was a man who let very few opportunities slip. What could he make out of this, he wondered? Again Sam Stay supplied the clue.
“I’m going to settle with that girl—” He stopped and closed his lips tightly, and looked with a cunning little smile at Milburgh. “I didn’t say anything, did I?” he asked with a queer little chuckle. “I didn’t say anything that would give me away, did I?”
“No, my friend,” said Mr. Milburgh, still in the character of the benevolent pastor. “To what girl do you refer?”
The face of Sam Stay twisted into a malignant smile.
“There’s only one girl,” he said between his teeth, “and I’ll get her. I’ll settle with her! I’ve got something here—” he felt in his pocket in a vague, aimless way. “I thought I had it, I’ve carried it about so long; but I’ve got it somewhere, I know I have!”
“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 on — lured him on — oh, 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 coldbloodedly, 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.
XXXII. The Diary of Thornton Lyne
Tarling 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 book — a 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 diary — that 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