"You can wait," he said with a sinister smile. "I will go first to the hospital and afterwards, if all is well, I will return for you."
He took a clean white towel from the dressing-table and laid it over his victim's face. Upon the towel he sprinkled the contents of a third bottle which he took from the cupboard, and Milburgh remembered no more until he looked up into the puzzled face of Tarling an hour later.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE ARREST
Tarling stooped down and released the cords which bound Milburgh to the couch. The stout man was white and shaking, and had to be lifted into a sitting position. He sat there on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, for five minutes, and the two men watched him curiously. Tarling had made a careful examination of the cuts on his chest, and was relieved to discover that Ling Chu—he did not doubt that the Chinaman was responsible for Milburgh's plight—had not yet employed that terrible torture which had so often brought Chinese criminals to the verge of madness.
Whiteside picked up the clothes which Ling Chu had so systematically stripped from the man's body, and placed them on the bed by Milburgh's side. Then Tarling beckoned the other into the outer room.
"What does it all mean?" asked Whiteside.
"It means," said Tarling grimly, "that my friend, Ling Chu, has been trying to discover the murderer of Thornton Lyne by methods peculiarly Chinese. Happily he was interrupted, probably as a result of Milburgh telling him that Miss Odette Rider had been spirited away."
He looked back to the drooping figure by the side of the bed.