But he had seen the face — big and white and vengeful. It was glimpse and guesswork, but he was satisfied that he knew his man.
He ran in the direction he thought the would-be assassin must have taken, but the fog was patchy and he misjudged. He heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and ran towards them, only to find that it was a policeman attracted by the sound of shots.
The officer had met nobody.
“He must have gone the other way,” said Tarling, and raced off in pursuit, without, however, coming up with his attacker.
Slowly he retraced his footsteps to where he had left the policeman searching the pavement for same clue which would identify the assailant of the night.
The constable was using a small electric lamp which he had taken from his pocket.
“Nothing here, sir,” he said. “Only this bit of red paper.”
Tarling took the small square of paper from the man’s hand and examined it under the light of the lamp — a red square on which were written four words in Chinese: “He brought this trouble upon himself.”
It was the same inscription as had been found neatly folded in the waistcoat pocket of Thornton Lyne that morning he was discovered lying starkly dead.
XIV. The Search of Milburgh’s Cottage
Mr. Milburgh had a little house in one of the industrial streets of Camden Town. It was a street made up for the most part of blank walls, pierced at intervals with great gates, through which one could procure at times a view of gaunt factories and smoky-looking chimney-stacks.
Mr. Milburgh’s house was the only residence in the road, if one excepted the quarters of caretakers and managers, and it was agreed by all who saw his tiny demesne, that Mr. Milburgh had a good landlord.
The “house” was a detached cottage in about half an acre of ground, a one-storey building, monopolising the space which might have been occupied by factory extension. Both the factory to the right and the left had made generous offers to acquire the ground, but Mr. Milburgh’s landlord had been adamant. There were people who suggested that Mr. Milburgh’s landlord was Mr. Milburgh himself. But how could that be? Mr. Milburgh’s salary was something under £400 a year, and the cottage site was worth at least £4,000.
Canvey Cottage, as it was called, stood back from the road, behind a lawn, innocent of flowers, and the lawn itself was protected from intrusion by high iron railings which Mr. Milburgh’s landlord had had erected at considerable cost. To reach the house it was necessary to pass through an iron gate and traverse a stone-flagged path to the door of the cottage.
On the night when Tarling of Scotland Yard was the victim of a murderous assault, Mr. Milburgh unlocked the gate and passed through, locking and double-locking the gate behind him. He was alone, and, as was his wont, he was whistling a sad little refrain which had neither beginning nor end. He walked slowly up the stone pathway, unlocked the door of his cottage, and stood only a moment on the doorstep to survey the growing thickness of the night, before he closed and bolted the door and switched on the electric light.
He was in a tiny hallway, plainly but nicely furnished. The note of luxury was struck by the Zohn etchings which hung on the wall, and which Mr. Milburgh stopped to regard approvingly. He hung up his coat and hat, slipped off the galoshes he was wearing (for it was wet underfoot), and, passing through a door which opened from the passage, came to his living room. The same simple note of furniture and decoration was observable here. The furniture was good, the carpet under his feet thick and luxurious. He snicked down another switch and an electric radiator glowed in the fireplace. Then he sat down at the big table, which was the most conspicuous article of furniture in the room. It was practically covered with orderly little piles of paper, most of them encircled with rubber bands. He did not attempt to touch or read them, but sat looking moodily at his blottingpad, preoccupied and absent.
Presently he rose with a little grunt, and, crossing the room, unlocked a very commonplace and old-fashioned cupboard, the top of which served as a sideboard. From the cupboard he took a dozen little books and carried them to the table. They were of uniform size and each bore the figures of a year. They appeared to be, and indeed were, diaries, but they were not Mr. Milburgh’s diaries. One day he chanced to go into Thornton Lyne’s room at the Stores and had seen these books arrayed on a steel shelf of Lyne’s private safe. The proprietor’s room overlooked the ground floor of the Stores, and Thornton Lyne at the time was visible to his manager, and could not under any circumstances surprise him, so Mr. Milburgh had taken out one volume and read, with more than ordinary interest, the somewhat frank and expansive diary which Thornton Lyne had kept.
He had only read a few pages on that occasion, but later he had an opportunity of perusing the whole year’s record, and had absorbed a great deal of information which might have been useful to him in the future, had not Thornton Lyne met his untimely end at the hands of an unknown murderer.
On the day when Thornton Lyne’s body was discovered in Hyde Park with a woman’s nightdress wrapped around the wound in his breast, Mr. Milburgh had, for reasons of expediency and assisted by a duplicate key of Lyne’s safe, removed those diaries to a safer place. They contained a great deal that was unpleasant for Mr. Milburgh, particularly the current diary, for Thornton Lyne had set down not only his experiences, but his daily happenings, his thoughts, poetical and otherwise, and had stated very exactly and in libellous terms his suspicions of his manager.
The diary provided Mr. Milburgh with a great deal of very interesting reading matter, and now he turned to the page where he had left off the night before and continued his study. It was a page easy to find, because he had thrust between the leaves a thin envelope of foreign make containing certain slips of paper, and as he took out his improvised book mark a thought seemed to strike him, and he felt carefully in his pocket. He did not discover the thing for which he was searching, and with a smile he laid the envelope carefully on the table, and went on at the point where his studies had been interrupted.
“Lunched at the London Hotel and dozed away the afternoon. Weather fearfully hot. Had arranged to make a call upon a distant cousin — a man named Tarling — who is in the police force at Shanghai, but too much of a fag. Spent evening at Chu Han’s dancing hall. Got very friendly with a pretty little Chinese girl who spoke pigeon English. Am seeing her tomorrow at Ling Foo’s. She is called ‘The Little Narcissus.’ I called her ‘My Little Daffodil’—”
Mr. Milburgh stopped in his reading.
“Little Daffodil!” he repeated, then looked at the ceiling and pinched his thick lips. “Little Daffodil!” he said again, and a big smile dawned on his face.
He was still engaged in reading when a bell shrilled in the hall. He rose to his feet and stood listening and the bell rang again. He switched off the light, pulled aside the thick curtain which hid the window, and peered out through the fog. He could just distinguish in the light of the street lamp two or three men standing at the gate. He replaced the curtain, turned up the light again, took the books in his arms and disappeared with them into the corridor. The room at the back was his bedroom, and into this he went, making no response to the repeated jingle of the bell for fully five minutes.
At the end of that time he reappeared, but now he was in his pyjamas, over which he wore a heavy dressing-gown. He unlocked the door, and shuffled in his slippers down the stone pathway to the gate.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Tarling. You know me,” said a voice.
“Mr. Tarling?” said Milburgh