The Daffodil Mystery | Page 6

shall," said Tarling. "I
only know that I will not be concerned with what is called in the United
States of America a 'frame up.'"
"Frame up?" repeated the other.
"A frame up. I dare say you know what it means--I will put the matter
more plainly and within your understanding. For some reason or other
you have a sudden grudge against a member of your staff. I read your
face, Mr. Lyne, and the weakness of your chin and the appetite of your
mouth suggest to me that you are not over scrupulous with the women
who are in your charge. I guess rather than know that you have been
turned down with a dull, sickening thud by a decent girl, and in your
mortification you are attempting to invent a charge which has no
substance and no foundation.

"Mr. Milburgh," he turned to the other, and again Mr. Milburgh ceased
to smile, "has his own reasons for complying with your wishes. He is
your subordinate, and moreover, the side threat of penal servitude for
him if he refuses has carried some weight."
Thornton Lyne's face was distorted with fury.
"I will take care that your behaviour is widely advertised," he said.
"You have brought a most monstrous charge against me, and I shall
proceed against you for slander. The truth is that you are not equal to
the job I intended giving you and you are finding an excuse for getting
out."
"The truth is," replied Tarling, biting off the end of a cigar he had taken
from his pocket, "that my reputation is too good to be risked in
associating with such a dirty business as yours. I hate to be rude, and I
hate just as much to throw away good money. But I can't take good
money for bad work, Mr. Lyne, and if you will be advised by me, you
will drop this stupid scheme for vengeance which your hurt vanity has
suggested--it is the clumsiest kind of frame up that was ever
invented--and also you will go and apologise to the young lady, whom,
I have no doubt, you have grossly insulted."
He beckoned to his Chinese satellite and walked leisurely to the door.
Incoherent with rage, shaking in every limb with a weak man's sense of
his own impotence, Lyne watched him until the door was half-closed,
then, springing forward with a strangled cry, he wrenched the door
open and leapt at the detective.
Two hands gripped his arm and lifting him bodily back into the room,
pushed him down into a chair. A not unkindly face blinked down at
him, a face relieved from utter solemnity by the tiny laughter lines
about the eyes.
"Mr. Lyne," said the mocking voice of Tarling, "you are setting an
awful example to the criminal classes. It is a good job your convict
friend is in gaol."

Without another word he left the room.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN WHO LOVED LYNE
Two days later Thornton Lyne sat in his big limousine which was
drawn up on the edge of Wandsworth Common, facing the gates of the
gaol.
Poet and poseur he was, the strangest combination ever seen in man.
Thornton Lyne was a store-keeper, a Bachelor of Arts, the winner of
the Mangate Science Prize and the author of a slim volume. The quality
of the poetry therein was not very great--but it was undoubtedly a slim
volume printed in queerly ornate type with old-fashioned esses and
wide margins. He was a store-keeper because store-keeping supplied
him with caviare and peaches, a handsome little two-seater, a
six-cylinder limousine for state occasions, a country house and a flat in
town, the decorations of which ran to a figure which would have
purchased many stores of humbler pretensions than Lyne's Serve First
Emporium.
To the elder Lyne, Joseph Emanuel of that family, the inception and
prosperity of Lyne's Serve First Emporium was due. He had devised a
sale system which ensured every customer being attended to the
moment he or she entered one of the many departments which made up
the splendid whole of the emporium. It was a system based upon the
age-old principle of keeping efficient reserves within call.
Thornton Lyne succeeded to the business at a moment when his slim
volume had placed him in the category of the gloriously misunderstood.
Because such reviewers as had noticed his book wrote of his "poetry"
using inverted commas to advertise their scorn, and because nobody
bought the volume despite its slimness, he became the idol of men and
women who also wrote that which nobody read, and in consequence
developed souls with the celerity that a small boy develops
stomachache.

For nothing in the wide world was more certain to the gloriously
misunderstood than this: the test of excellence