"I was just coming to see you," he said. "I thought your interview with the young lady would be longer. Just wait a moment, till I've paid the cabman—by-the-way, I saw your Chink servant and gather you sent him to the Yard on a spoof errand."
When he returned, he met Tarling's eye and grinned sympathetically.
"I know what's in your mind," he said frankly, "but really the Chief thinks it no more than an extraordinary coincidence. I suppose you made inquiries about your revolver?"
Tarling nodded.
"And can you discover how it came to be in the possession of——" he paused, "the murderer of Thornton Lyne?"
"I have a theory, half-formed, it is true, but still a theory," said Tarling. "In fact, it's hardly so much a theory as an hypothesis."
Whiteside grinned again.
"This hair-splitting in the matter of logical terms never did mean much in my young life," he said, "but I take it you have a hunch."
Without any more to-do, Tarling told the other of the discovery he had made in Ling Chu's box, the press cuttings, descriptive of the late Mr. Lyne's conduct in Shanghai and its tragic sequel.
Whiteside listened in silence.