"Master," he said, "may not the white-faced man who is now dead have brought such a thing from Shanghai? He was a tourist, and tourists buy these foolish souvenirs."
Tarling nodded again.
"That is possible," he said. "I have already thought that such might have been the case. Yet, why should he have this sign of the 'Cheerful Hearts' in his pocket on the night he was murdered?"
"Master," said the Chinaman, "why should he have been murdered?"
Tarling's lips curled in a half smile.
"By which I suppose you mean that one question is as difficult to answer as the other," he said. "All right, Ling Chu, that will do."
His principal anxiety for the moment was not this, or any other clue which had been offered, but the discovery of Odette Rider's present hiding-place. Again and again he turned the problem over in his mind. At every point he was baffled by the wild improbability of the facts that he had discovered. Why should Odette Rider be content to accept a servile position in Lyne's Stores when her mother was living in luxury at Hertford? Who was her father—that mysterious father who appeared and disappeared at Hertford, and what part did he play in the crime? And if she was innocent, why had she disappeared so completely and in circumstances so suspicious? And what did Sam Stay know? The man's hatred of the girl was uncanny. At the mention of her name a veritable fountain of venom had bubbled up, and Tarling had sensed the abysmal depths of this man's hate and something of his boundless love for the dead man.
He turned impatiently on the couch and reached out his hand for his tea, when there came a soft tap at the door and Ling Chu slipped into the room.
"The Bright Man is here," he said, and in these words announced Whiteside, who brought into the room something of his alert, fresh personality which had earned him the pseudonym which Ling Chu had affixed.
"Well, Mr. Tarling," said the Inspector, taking out a little notebook, "I'm afraid I haven't done very much in the way of discovering the movements of Miss Rider, but so far as I can find out by inquiries made at Charing Cross booking office, several young ladies unattended have left for the Continent in the past few days."