"It's quite possible," said Tarling coolly, "and even probable. Now, I'm going to be very straightforward with you, Mr. Milburgh. I suspect you know a great deal more about this murder than you have told us, and that you had ever so much more reason for wishing Mr. Lyne was dead than you are prepared to admit at this moment. Wait," he said, as the other opened his mouth to speak. "I am telling you candidly that the object of my first visit to these Stores was to investigate happenings which looked very black against you. It was hardly so much the work of a detective as an accountant," he said, "but Mr. Lyne thought that I should be able to discover who was robbing the firm."
"And did you?" asked Milburgh coolly. There was the ghost of a smile still upon his face, but defiance shone in his pale eyes.
"I did not, because I went no further in the matter after you had expressed your agreement with Mr. Lyne that the firm had been robbed by Odette Rider."
He saw the man change colour, and pushed home his advantage.
"I am not going to inquire too closely into your reasons for attempting to ruin an innocent girl," he said sternly. "That is a matter for your own conscience. But I tell you, Mr. Milburgh, that if you are innocent—both of the robbery and of the murder—then I've never met a guilty person in my life."
"What do you mean?" asked the man loudly. "Do you dare to accuse me——?"
"I accuse you of nothing more than this," said Tarling, "that I am perfectly satisfied that you have been robbing the firm for years. I am equally satisfied that, even if you did not kill Mr. Lyne, you at least know who did."
"You're mad," sneered Milburgh, but his face was white. "Supposing it were true that I had robbed the firm, why should I want to kill Mr. Thornton Lyne? The mere fact of his death would have brought an examination into the accounts."
This was a convincing argument—the more so as it was an argument which Tarling himself had employed.
"As to your absurd and melodramatic charges of robbing the firm," Milburgh went on, "the books are now in the hands of an eminent firm of chartered accountants, who can give the lie to any such statement as you have made."