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.