Dr Carelli, with raised eyebrows, crossed the room to sit on the stool. Edward Raynor and Lucia Amory found chairs for themselves, while Richard Amory chose to stand in front of the fireplace, looking puzzled. Caroline Amory and her niece Barbara occupied the settee.
When all were comfortably seated, Sir Claud moved the arm-chair to a position where he could most easily observe all the others. He sat.
The door on the left opened, and Tredwell entered. 'You rang, Sir Claud?'
'Yes, Tredwell. Did you call the number I gave you?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Was the answer satisfactory?'
'Perfectly satisfactory, sir.'
'And a car has gone to the station?'
'Yes, sir. A car has been ordered to meet the train.'
'Very well, Tredwell,' said Sir Claud. 'You may lock up now.'
'Yes, sir,' replied Tredwell, as he withdrew.
After the butler had closed the door behind him, the sound of a key turning in the lock could be heard.
'Claud,' Miss Amory exclaimed, 'what on earth does Tredwell think -?'
'Tredwell is acting on my instructions, Caroline,' Sir Claud interrupted sharply.
Richard Amory addressed his father. 'May we ask the meaning of all this?' he inquired coldly.
'I am about to explain,' replied Sir Claud. 'Please listen to me calmly, all of you. To begin with, as you now realize, those two doors -' he gestured towards the two doors on the hall side of the library – 'are locked on the outside. From my study next door, there is no way out except through this room. The French windows in this room are locked.' Swivelling around in his seat to Carelli, he explained, as though in parenthesis, 'Locked, in fact, by a patent device of my own, which my family knows of, but which they do not know how to immobilize.' Again addressing everyone, Sir Claud continued, 'This place is a rat-trap.' He looked at his watch. 'It is now ten minutes to nine. At a few minutes past nine, the rat-catcher will arrive.'
'The rat-catcher?' Richard Amory's face was a study in perplexity. 'What rat-catcher?'
'A detective,' explained the famous scientist drily as he sipped his coffee.
Chapter 5
Consternation greeted Sir Claud's announcement.
Lucia uttered a low cry, and her husband stared at her intently. Miss Amory gave a shriek, Barbara exclaimed 'Crikey!' and Edward Raynor contributed an ineffectual 'Oh, I say, Sir Claud!' Only Dr Carelli seemed unaffected.
Sir Claud settled in his arm-chair, holding his coffee-cup in his right hand and the saucer in his left. 'I seem to have made my little effect,' he observed with satisfaction.
Finishing his coffee, he set the cup and saucer down on the table with a grimace. 'The coffee is unusually bitter this evening,' he complained.
His sister's countenance registered a certain annoyance at the aspersion cast on the coffee, which she took as a direct criticism of her housekeeping. She was about to say something, when Richard Amory spoke. 'What detective?' he asked his father.
'His name is Hercule Poirot,' replied Sir Claud. 'He is a Belgian.'
'But why?' Richard persisted. 'Why did you send for him?'
'A leading question,' said his father, with an unpleasantly grim smile. 'Now we come to the point. For some time past, as most of you know, I have been engaged in atomic research. I have made a discovery of a new explosive. Its force is such that everything hitherto attempted in that line will be mere child's play beside it. Most of this you know already -'
Carelli got to his feet quickly. 'I did not know,' he exclaimed eagerly. 'I am much interested to hear of this.'
'Indeed, Dr Carelli?' Sir Claud invested the conventionally meaningless phrase with a curious significance, and Carelli, in some embarrassment, resumed his seat.
'As I was saying,' Sir Claud continued, 'the force of Amorite, as I call it, is such that where we have hitherto killed by thousands, we can now kill by hundreds of thousands.'
'How horrible,' exclaimed Lucia, with a shudder.
'My dear Lucia -' her father-in-law smiled thinly at her as he spoke – 'the truth is never horrible, only interesting.'
'But why -' asked Richard, 'are you telling us all this?'
'Because I have had occasion for some time to believe that a member of this household was attempting to steal the Amorite formula. I had asked Monsieur Poirot to join us tomorrow for the weekend, so that he could take the formula back to London with him on Monday, and deliver it personally to an official at the Ministry of Defence.'
'But, Claud, that's absurd. Indeed, it's highly offensive to all of us,' Caroline Amory expostulated. 'You can't seriously suspect -'
'I have not finished, Caroline,' her brother interrupted. 'And I assure you there is nothing absurd about what I am saying. I repeat, I had invited Hercule Poirot to join us tomorrow, but I have had to change my plans and ask Monsieur Poirot to hurry down here from London this evening. I have taken this step because -'
Sir Claud paused. When he resumed speaking, it was more slowly, and with a much more deliberate emphasis.
'Because,' he repeated, as his glance swept around the assembled company, 'the formula, written on an ordinary sheet of notepaper and enclosed in a long envelope, was stolen from the safe in my study sometime before dinner this evening. It was stolen by someone in this room!'
A chorus of shocked exclamations greeted the eminent scientist's announcement. Then everyone began to speak at once.
'Stolen formula?' Caroline Amory began.
'What? From the safe? Impossible!' Edward Raynor exclaimed.
The babble of voices did not include that of Dr Carelli, who remained seated, with a thoughtful expression on his face. The others, however, were silenced only when Sir Claud raised his voice and continued.
'I am in the habit of being certain of my facts,' he assured his hearers. 'At twenty minutes past seven exactly, I placed the formula in the safe. As I left the study, Raynor here entered it.'
Blushing either from embarrassment or from anger, the secretary began, 'Sir Claud, really, I must protest -'
Sir Claud raised a hand to silence him. 'Raynor remained in the study,' he went on, 'and was still there, working, when Dr Carelli appeared at the door. After greeting him, Raynor left Carelli alone in the study while he went to let Lucia know -'
'I protest – I -' Carelli began, but again Sir Claud raised his hand for silence, and continued his narrative. 'Raynor, however,' he said, 'did not get further than the door of this room, where he met my sister Caroline, with Barbara. The three of them remained in this room, and Dr Carelli joined them. Caroline and Barbara were the only two members of the party who did not enter the study.'
Barbara glanced at her aunt, and then addressed Sir Claud. 'I'm afraid your information about our movements isn't quite correct, Uncle Claud,' she said. 'I can't be excluded from your list of suspects. Do you remember, Aunt Caroline? You sent me into the study to look for a knitting needle you said you'd mislaid. You wondered if it might be in there.'
Ignoring his niece's interruption, the scientist continued. 'Richard came down next. He strolled into the study by himself and remained there for some minutes.'
'My God!' Richard exclaimed. 'Really, Father, you surely don't suspect that I'd steal your wretched formula, do you?'
Looking directly at his son, Sir Claud replied meaningfully, 'That piece of paper was worth a great deal of
