"Murdered with your pistol, eh?" asked the Commissioner. There was a little pause and then: "I suppose Lyne's estate will go to the Crown? He has no relations and no heir." "You're wrong there," said Tarling quietly. The Commissioner looked up in surprise. "Has he an heir?" he asked. "He has a cousin," said Tarling with a little smile, "a relationship close enough to qualify him for Lyne's millions, unfortunately." "Why unfortunately?" asked Mr. Cresswell. "Because I happen to be the heir," said Tarling. CHAPTER XVII THE MISSING REVOLVER Tarling walked out of Scotland Yard on to the sunlit Embankment, trouble in his face. He told himself that the case was getting beyond him and that it was only the case and its development which worried him. The queer little look which had dawned on the Commissioner's face when he learnt that the heir to the murdered Thornton Lyne's fortune was the detective who was investigating his murder, and that Tarling's revolver had been found in the room where the murder had been committed, aroused nothing but an inward chuckle. That suspicion should attach to him was, he told himself, poetic justice, for in his day he himself had suspected many men, innocent or partly innocent. He walked up the stairs to his room and found Ling Chu polishing the meagre stock of silver which Tarling possessed. Ling Chu was a thief-catcher and a great detective, but he had also taken upon himself the business of attending to Tarling's personal comfort. The detective spoke no word, out went straight to the cupboard where he kept his foreign kit. On a shelf in neat array and carefully folded, were the thin white drill suits he wore in the tropics. His sun helmet hung on a peg, and on the opposite wall was a revolver holster hanging by a strap. He lifted the holster. It was empty. He had had no doubts in his mind that the holster would be empty and closed the door with a troubled frown. "Ling Chu," he said quietly. "You speak me, Lieh Jen?" said the man, putting down the spoons and rubber he was handling. "Where is my revolver?" "It is gone, Lieh Jen," said the man calmly. "How long has it been gone?" "I miss him four days," said Ling Chu calmly; "Who took it?" demanded Tarling. "I miss him four days," said the man. There was an interval of silence, and Tarling nodded his head slowly. "Very good, Ling Chu," he said, "there is no more to be said." For all his outward calm, he was distressed in mind. Was it possible that anybody could have got into the room in Ling Chu's absence--he could only remember one occasion when they had been out together, and that was the night he had gone to the girl's flat and Ling Chu had shadowed him. What if Ling Chu----? He dismissed the thought as palpably absurd. What interest could Ling Chu have in the death of Lyne, whom he had only seen once, the day that Thornton Lyne had called Tarling into consultation at the Stores?