THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY

CONTENTS


I. AN OFFER REJECTED

II. THE HUNTER DECLINES HIS QUARRY

III. THE MAN WHO LOVED LYNE

IV. MURDER

V. FOUND IN LYNE'S POCKET

VI. THE MOTHER OF ODETTE RIDER

VII. THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

VIII. THE SILENCING OF SAM STAY

IX. WHERE THE FLOWERS CAME FROM

X. THE WOMAN AT ASHFORD

XI. "THORNTON LYNE IS DEAD"

XII. THE HOSPITAL BOOK

XIII. TWO SHOTS IN THE NIGHT

XIV. THE SEARCH OF MILBURGH'S COTTAGE

XV. THE OWNER OF THE PISTOL

XVI. THE HEIR

XVII. THE MISSING REVOLVER

XVIII. THE FINGER PRINTS

XIX. LING CHU TELLS THE TRUTH

XX. MR. MILBURGH SEES IT THROUGH

XXI. COVERING THE TRAIL

XXII. THE HEAVY WALLET

XXIII. THE NIGHT VISITOR

XXIV. THE CONFESSION OF ODETTE RIDER

XXV. MILBURGH'S LAST BLUFF

XXVI. IN MRS. RIDER'S ROOM

XXVII. THE LAUGH IN THE NIGHT

XXVIII. THE THUMB-PRINT

XXIX. THE THEORY OF LING CHU

XXX. WHO KILLED MRS. RIDER

XXXI. SAM STAY TURNS UP

XXXII. THE DIARY OF THORNTON LYNE

XXXIII. LING CHU--TORTURER

XXXIV. THE ARREST

XXXV. MILBURGH'S STORY

XXXVI. AT HIGHGATE CEMETERY

XXXVII. LING CHU RETURNS

CHAPTER THE LAST. THE STATEMENT OF SAM STAY




THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY




CHAPTER I

AN OFFER REJECTED


"I am afraid I don't understand you, Mr. Lyne."

Odette Rider looked gravely at the young man who lolled against his open
desk. Her clear skin was tinted with the faintest pink, and there was in
the sober depths of those grey eyes of hers a light which would have
warned a man less satisfied with his own genius and power of persuasion
than Thornton Lyne.

He was not looking at her face. His eyes were running approvingly over
her perfect figure, noting the straightness of the back, the fine poise
of the head, the shapeliness of the slender hands.

He pushed back his long black hair from his forehead and smiled. It
pleased him to believe that his face was cast in an intellectual mould,
and that the somewhat unhealthy pastiness of his skin might be described
as the "pallor of thought."

Presently he looked away from her through the big bay window which
overlooked the crowded floor of Lyne's Stores.

He had had this office built in the entresol and the big windows had been
put in so that he might at any time overlook the most important
department which it was his good fortune to control.