Whiteside looked at his superior questioningly, and Tarling nodded. A few seconds later the handcuffs had been removed, and Mr. Milburgh was soothing his chafed wrists. The psychologist who attempted to analyse the condition of mind in which Tarling found himself would be faced with a difficult task. He had come to the flat beside himself with anxiety at the disappearance of Odette Rider. He had intended dashing into his rooms and out again, though what he intended doing thereafter he had no idea. The knowledge that Ling Chu was on the track of the kidnapper had served as an opiate to his jagged nerves; otherwise he could not have stayed and listened to the statement Milburgh was preparing to make. Now and again it came back to him, like a twinge of pain, that Odette Rider was in danger; and he wanted to have done with this business, to bundle Milburgh into a prison cell, and devote the whole of his energies to tracing her. Such a twinge came to him now as he watched the stout figure at the table. "Before you start," he said, "tell me this: What information did you give to Ling Chu which led him to leave you?" "I told him about Miss Rider," said Milburgh, "and I advanced a theory--it was only a theory--as to what had happened to her." "I see," said Tarling. "Now tell your story and tell it quickly, my friend, and try to keep to the truth. Who murdered Thornton Lyne?" Milburgh twisted his head slowly towards him and smiled. "If you could explain how the body was taken from Odette Rider's flat," he said slowly, "and left in Hyde Park, I could answer you immediately. For to this minute, I believe that Thornton Lyne was killed by Odette Rider." Tarling drew a long breath. "That is a lie," he said. Mr. Milburgh was in no way put out. "Very well," he said. "Now, perhaps you will be kind enough to listen to my story." CHAPTER XXXV MILBURGH'S STORY "I do not intend," said Mr. Milburgh in his best oracular manner, "describing all the events which preceded the death of the late Thornton Lyne. Nor will I go to any length to deal with his well-known and even notorious character. He was not a good employer; he was suspicious, unjust, and in many ways mean. Mr. Lyne was, I admit, suspicious of me. He was under the impression that I had robbed the firm of very considerable sums of money--a suspicion which I in turn had long suspected, and had confirmed by a little conversation which I overheard on the first day I had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Tarling." Tarling remembered that fatal day when Milburgh had come into the office at the moment that Lyne was expressing his views very freely about his subordinate.