"Hullo!" said Tarling sarcastically, "are these intended as a loving gift from Mr. Lyne to Miss Rider?" The man was speechless with rage. If looks could kill, Tarling would have died. "A clumsy trick," said Tarling, shaking his head mournfully. "Now go back to your boss, Mr. Thornton Lyne, and tell him that I am ashamed of an intelligent man adopting so crude a method," and with a kick he dismissed Sam Stay to the outer darkness. The girl, who had been a frightened spectator of the scene, turned her eyes imploringly upon the detective. "What does it mean?" she pleaded. "I feel so frightened. What did that man want?" "You need not be afraid of that man, or any other man," said Tarling briskly. "I'm sorry you were scared." He succeeded in calming her by the time her servant had returned and then took his leave. "Remember, I have given you my telephone number and you will call me up if there is any trouble. Particularly," he said emphatically, "if there is any trouble to-morrow." But there was no trouble on the following day, though at three o'clock in the afternoon she called him up. "I am going away to stay in the country," she said. "I got scared last night." "Come and see me when you get back," said Tarling, who had found it difficult to dismiss the girl from his mind. "I am going to see Lyne to-morrow. By the way, the person who called last night is a protege of Mr. Thornton Lyne's, a man who is devoted to him body and soul, and he's the fellow we've got to look after. By Jove! It almost gives me an interest in life!" He heard the faint laugh of the girl. "Must I be butchered to make a detective's holiday?" she mocked, and he grinned sympathetically. "Any way, I'll see Lyne to-morrow," he said. The interview which Jack Tarling projected was destined never to take place. On the following morning, an early worker taking a short cut through Hyde Park, found the body of a man lying by the side of a carriage drive. He was fully dressed save that his coat and waistcoat had been removed. Wound about his body was a woman's silk night-dress stained with blood. The hands of the figure were crossed on the breast and upon them lay a handful of daffodils. At eleven o'clock that morning the evening newspapers burst forth with the intelligence that the body had been identified as that of Thornton Lyne, and that he had been shot through the heart. CHAPTER V FOUND IN LYNE'S POCKET "The London police are confronted with a new mystery, which has features so remarkable, that it would not be an exaggeration to describe this crime as the Murder Mystery of the Century. A well-known figure in London Society, Mr. Thornton Lyne, head of an important commercial organisation, a poet of no mean quality, and a millionaire renowned for his philanthropic activities, was found dead in Hyde Park in the early hours of this morning, in circumstances which admit of no doubt that he was most brutally murdered.