edge to his own ends.

But the telegram which was designed to bring Lyne to the flat was in
English and Ling Chu did not admit to a knowledge of that language. Here
again Tarling came to a dead end. Though he might trust the Chinaman with
his life, he was perfectly satisfied that this man would not reveal all
that he knew, and it was quite possible that Ling Chu spoke English as
well as he spoke his own native tongue and the four dialects of China.

"I give it up," said Tarling, half to himself and half aloud.

He was undecided as to whether he should wait for his subordinate's
return from Scotland Yard and tax him with the crime, or whether he
should let matters slide for a day or two and carry out his intention to
visit Odette Rider. He took that decision, leaving a note for the
Chinaman, and a quarter of an hour later got out of his taxi at the
door of the West Somerset Hotel.

Odette Rider was in (that he knew) and waiting for him. She looked pale
and her eyes were tired, as though she had slept little on the previous
night, but she greeted him with that half smile of hers.

"I've come to tell you that you are to be spared the ordeal of meeting
the third degree men of Scotland Yard," he said laughingly, and her eyes
spoke her relief.

"Haven't you been out this beautiful morning?" he asked innocently, and
this time she laughed aloud.

"What a hypocrite you are, Mr. Tarling!" she replied. "You know very well
I haven't been out, and you know too that there are three Scotland Yard
men watching this hotel who would accompany me in any constitutional I
took."

"How did you know that?" he asked without denying the charge.

"Because I've been out," she said naively and laughed again. "You aren't
so clever as I thought you were," she rallied him. "I quite expected
when I said I'd not been out, to hear you tell me just where I'd been,
how far I walked and just what I bought."

"Some green sewing silk, six handkerchiefs, and a tooth-brush," said
Tarling promptly and the girl stared at him in comic dismay.

"Why, of course, I ought to have known you better than that," she said.
"Then you do have watchers?"

"Watchers and talkers," said Tarling gaily. "I had a little interview
with the gentleman in the vestibule of the hotel and he supplied me with
quite a lot of information. Did he shadow you?"

She shook her head.

"I saw nobody," she confessed, "though I looked most carefully. Now what
are you going to do wi