CHAPTER XXVIII
THE THUMB-PRINT
It was ten o'clock in the morning, and Whiteside and Tarling were sittingon a sofa in their shirt-sleeves, sipping their coffee. Tarling washaggard and weary, in contrast to the dapper inspector of police. Thoughthe latter had been aroused from his bed in the early hours of themorning, he at least had enjoyed a good night's sleep.
They sat in the room in which Mrs. Rider had been murdered, and the rustybrown stains on the floor where Tarling had found her were eloquent ofthe tragedy.
They sat sipping their coffee, neither man talking, and they maintainedthis silence for several minutes, each man following his own train ofthought. Tarling for reasons of his own had not revealed his ownadventure and he had told the other nothing of the mysterious individual(who he was, he pretty well guessed) whom he had chased through thegrounds.
Presently Whiteside lit a cigarette and threw the match in the grate, andTarling roused himself from his reverie with a jerk.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Whiteside shook his head.
"If there had been property taken, it would have had a simpleexplanation. But nothing has gone. Poor girl!"
Tarling nodded.
"Terrible!" he said. "The doctor had to drug her before he could get herto go."
"Where is she?" asked Whiteside
"I sent her on an ambulance to a nursing-home in London," said Tarlingshortly. "This is awful, Whiteside."
"It's pretty bad," said the detective-inspector, scratching his chin."The young lady could supply no information?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing. She had gone up to see her mother and hadleft the door ajar, intending to return by the same way after she hadinterviewed Mrs. Rider. As a matter of fact, she was let out by the frontdoor. Somebody was watching and apparently thought that she was comingout by the way she went in, waited for a time, and then as she did notreappear, followed her into the building."
"And that somebody was Milburgh?" said Whiteside.
Tarling made no reply. He had his own views and for the moment was notprepared to argue.
"It was obviously Milburgh," said Whiteside. "He comes to you in thenight--we know that he is in Hertford. We know, too, that he tried toassassinate you because he thought the girl had betrayed him and you hadunearthed his secret. He must have killed his wife, who probably knowsmuch more about the murder than the daughter."
Tarling looked at his watch.
"Ling Chu should be here by now," he said.
"Oh, you sent for Ling Chu, did you?" said Whiteside in surprise. "Ithought that you'd given up that idea."
"I 'phoned again a couple of hours ago," said Tarling.
"H'm!" said Whiteside. "Do you think that he knows anything about this?"
Tarling shook his head.
"I believe the story he told me. Of course, when I made the report toScotland Yard I did not expect that you people would be as credulous asI am, but I know the man. He has never lied to me."
"Murder is a pretty serious business," said Whiteside. "If a man didn'tlie to save his neck, he wouldn't lie at all."
There was the sound of a motor below, and Tarling walked to the window.
"Here is Ling Chu," he said, and a few minutes later the Chinaman camenoiselessly into the room.
Tarling greeted him with a curt nod, and without any preliminary told thestory of the crime. He spoke in English--he had not employed Chinesesince he discovered that Ling Chu understood English quite as well as heunderstood Cantonese, and Whiteside was able from time to time tointerject a word, or correct some little slip on Tarling's part. TheChinaman listened without comment and when Tarling had finished he madeone of his queer jerky bows and went out of the room.
"Here are the letters," said Whiteside, after the man had gone.
Two neat piles of letters were arranged on Mrs. Rider's desk, and Tarlingdrew up a chair.
"This is the lot?" he said.
"Yes," said Whiteside. "I've been searching the house since eight o'clockand I can find no others. Those on the right are all from Milburgh.You'll find they're simply signed with an initial--a characteristic ofhis--but they bear his town address."
"You've looked through them?" asked Tarling
"Read 'em all," replied the other. "There's nothing at all incriminatingin any of them. They're what I would call bread and butter letters,dealing with little investments which Milburgh has made in his wife'sname--or rather, in the name of Mrs. Rider. It's easy to see from thesehow deeply the poor woman was involved without her knowing that she wasmixing herself up in a great conspiracy."
Tarling assented. One by one he took the letters from their envelopes,read them and replaced them. He was half-way through the pile when hestopped and carried a letter to the window.
"Listen to this," he said:
"Forgive the smudge, but I am in an awful hurry, and I have got my fingers inky through the overturning of an ink bottle."
"Nothing startling in that," said Whiteside with a smile.
"Nothing at all," admitted Tarling. "But it happens that our friend hasleft a very good and useful thumb-print. At least, it looks too big for afinger-print."
"Let me see it," said Whiteside, springing up.
He went to the other's side and looked over his shoulder at the letter inhis hand, and whistled. He turned a glowing face upon Tarling and grippedhis chief by the shoulder.
"We've got him!" he said exultantly. "We've got him as surely as if wehad him in the pen!"
"What do you mean?" asked Tarling.
"I'll swear to that thumb-print," replied Whiteside. "It's identical withthe blood mark which was left on Miss Rider's bureau on the night of themurder!"
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," said Whiteside, speaking quickly. "Do you see that whorl?Look at those lineations! They're the same. I have the originalphotograph in my pocket somewhere." He searched his pocket-book andbrought out a photograph of a thumb-print considerably enlarged.
"Compare them!" cried Whiteside in triumph. "Line for line, ridge forridge, and furrow for furrow, it is Milburgh's thumb-print and Milburghis my man!"
He took up his coat and slipped it on.
"Where are you going?"
"Back to London," said Whiteside grimly, "to secure a warrant for thearrest of George Milburgh, the man who killed Thornton Lyne, the man whomurdered his wife--the blackest villain at large in the world to-day!"