Lyne, and that he had been shot through the heart.

CHAPTER V

FOUND IN LYNE'S POCKET

"The London police are confronted with a new mystery, which has features
so remarkable, that it would not be an exaggeration to describe this
crime as the Murder Mystery of the Century. A well-known figure in London
Society, Mr. Thornton Lyne, head of an important commercial organisation,
a poet of no mean quality, and a millionaire renowned for his
philanthropic activities, was found dead in Hyde Park in the early hours
of this morning, in circumstances which admit of no doubt that he was
most brutally murdered.

"At half-past five, Thomas Savage, a bricklayer's labourer employed by
the Cubitt Town Construction Company, was making his way across Hyde Park
_en route_ to his work. He had crossed the main drive which runs parallel
with the Bayswater Road, when his attention was attracted to a figure
lying on the grass near to the sidewalk. He made his way to the spot and
discovered a man, who had obviously been dead for some hours. The body
had neither coat nor waistcoat, but about the breast, on which his two
hands were laid, was a silk garment tightly wound about the body, and
obviously designed to stanch a wound on the left side above the heart.

"The extraordinary feature is that the murderer must not only have
composed the body, but had laid upon its breast a handful of daffodils.
The police were immediately summoned and the body was removed. The police
theory is that the murder was not committed in Hyde Park, but the
unfortunate gentleman was killed elsewhere and his body conveyed to the
Park in his own motor-car, which was found abandoned a hundred yards from
the scene of the discovery. We understand that the police are working
upon a very important clue, and an arrest is imminent."

Mr. J. O. Tarling, late of the Shanghai Detective Service, read the short
account in the evening newspaper, and was unusually thoughtful.

Lyne murdered! It was an extraordinary coincidence that he had been
brought into touch with this young man only a few days before.

Tarling knew nothing of Lyne's private life, though from his own
knowledge of the man during his short stay in Shanghai, he guessed that
that life was not wholly blameless. He had been too busy in China to
bother his head about the vagaries of a tourist, but he remembered dimly
some sort of scandal which had attached to the visitor's name, and
puzzled his head to recal