Yet the man had been frank, straightforward, patently honest.

He had even placed himself in Tarling's power by his confession of his murderous intention.
Tarling could reconstruct the scene after the Chinaman had left.

Milburgh stumbling in in the dark, striking a match and discovering a wall plug had been pulled away, reconnecting the lamp, and seeing to his amazement a murderous-looking pistol on the desk.

It was possible that Milburgh, finding the pistol, had been deceived into believing that he had overlooked it on his previous search.
But what had happened to the weapon between the moment that Ling Chu left it on Thornton Lyne's private desk and when it was discovered in the work-basket of Odette Rider in the flat at Carrymore Mansions?
And what had Milburgh been doing in the store by himself so late at night?
And more particularly, what had he been doing in Thornton Lyne's private room?
It was unlikely that Lyne would leave his desk unlocked, and the only inference to be drawn was that Milburgh had unlocked it himself with the object of searching its contents.
And the _Hong_?
Those sinister little squares of red paper with the Chinese characters, one of which had been found in Thornton Lyne's pocket?
The explanation of their presence in Thornton Lyne's desk was simple.

He had been a globetrotter and had collected curios, and it was only natural that he should collect these slips of paper, which were on sale in most of the big Chinese towns as a souvenir of the predatory methods of the "Cheerful Hearts." His conversation with Ling Chu would have to be reported to Scotland Yard, and that august institution would draw its own conclusions.