Yet, why should he have this sign of the 'Cheerful Hearts' in his pocket on the night he was murdered ?" "Master," said the Chinaman, "why should he have been murdered ?" Tarling's lips curled in a half smile.
"By which I suppose you mean that one question is as difficult to answer as the other," he said.

"All right, Ling Chu, that will do." His principal anxiety for the moment was not this, or any other clue which had been offered, but the discovery of Odette Rider's present hiding-place.

Again and again he turned the problem over in his mind.

At every point he was baffled by the wild improbability of the facts that he had discovered.

Why should Odette Rider be content to accept a servile position in Lyne's Stores when her mother was living in luxury at Hertford?
Who was her father--that mysterious father who appeared and disappeared at Hertford, and what part did he play in the crime?
And if she was innocent, why had she disappeared so completely and in circumstances so suspicious?
And what did Sam Stay know?
The man's hatred of the girl was uncanny.