THE FINGER PRINTS Tarling, his hands thrust into his pockets, his chin dropped, his shoulders bent, slowly walked the broad pavement of the Edgware Road on his way from the girl's hotel to his flat.

He dismissed with good reason the not unimportant fact that he himself was suspect.

He, a comparatively unknown detective from Shanghai was by reason of his relationship to Thornton Lyne, and even more so because his own revolver had been found on the scene of the tragedy, the object of some suspicion on the part of the higher authorities who certainly would not pooh-pooh the suggestion that he was innocent of any association with the crime because he happened to be engaged in the case.
He knew that the whole complex machinery of Scotland Yard was working, and working at top speed, to implicate him in the tragedy.

Silent and invisible though that work may be, it would nevertheless be sure.

He smiled a little, and shrugged himself from the category of the suspected.
First and most important of the suspects was Odette Rider.