2
HE 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
CHAPTER THE
LAST. THE STATEMENT OF SAM STAY
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.
Now and again, as he saw, a head would be turned in his direction, and he knew that the attention of all the girls was concentrated upon the little scene,