“Dispose of them, did you say?” I asked feebly. “Single-handed.”
“Oh, there is nothing very clever about that. If one is prepared in advance, all is simple—the motto of the Boy Scout, is it not? And a very fine one. Me, I was prepared. Not so long ago, I rendered a service to a very famous chemist, who did a lot of work in connection with poison gas during the war. He devised for me a little bomb—simple and easy to carry about—one has but to throw it and poof, the smoke—and then the unconsciousness. Immediately I blow a little whistle and straightway some of Japp’s clever fellows who were watching the house here long before the boy arrived, and who managed to follow us all the way to Limehouse, came flying up and took charge of the situation.”
“But how was it you weren’t unconscious too?”
“Another piece of luck. Our friend Number Four (who certainly composed that ingenious letter) permitted himself a little jest at my moustaches, which rendered it extremely easy for me to adjust my respirator under the guise of a yellow muffler.”
“I remember,” I cried eagerly, and then with the word “remember” all the ghastly horror that I had temporarily forgotten came back to me. Cinderella—
I fell back with a groan.
I must have lost consciousness again for a minute or two. I awoke to find Poirot forcing some brandy between my lips.
“What is it, mon ami? But what is it—then? Tell me.” Word by word, I got the thing told, shuddering as I did so. Poirot uttered a cry.
“My friend! My friend! But what you must have suffered! And I who knew nothing of all this! But reassure yourself! All is well!”
“You will find her, you mean? But she is in South America. And by the time we get there—long before, she will be dead—and God knows how and in what horrible way she will have died.”
“No, no, you do not understand. She is safe and well. She has never been in their hands for one instant.”
“But I got a cable from Bronsen?”
“No, no, you did not. You may have got a cable from South America signed Bronsen—that is a very different matter. Tell me, has it never occurred to you that an organization of this kind, with ramifications all over the world, might easily strike at us through the little girl, Cinderella, whom you love so well?”
“No, never,” I replied.
“Well, it did to me. I said nothing to you because I did not want to upset you unnecessarily—but I took measures of my own. Your wife’s letters all seem to have been written from the ranch, but in reality she has been in a place of safety devised by me for over three months.”
I looked at him for a long time.
“You are sure of that?”
“Parbleu! I know it. They tortured you with a lie!”
I turned my head aside. Poirot put his hand on my shoulder. There was something in his voice that I had never heard there before.
“You like not that I should embrace you or display the emotion, I know well. I will be very British. I will say nothing—but nothing at all. Only this—that in this last adventure of ours, the honours are all with you, and happy is the man who has such a friend as I have!”
XIV
The Peroxide Blonde
I was very disappointed with the results of Poirot’s bomb attack on the premises in Chinatown. To begin with, the leader of the gang had escaped. When Japp’s men rushed up in response to Poirot’s whistle they found four Chinamen unconscious in the hall, but the man who had threatened me with death was not among them. I remembered afterwards that when I was forced out onto the doorstep, to decoy Poirot into the house, this man had kept well in the background. Presumably he was out of the danger zone of the gas bomb, and made good his escape by one of the many exits which we afterwards discovered.
From the four who remained in our hands we learnt nothing. The fullest investigation by the police failed to bring to light anything to connect them with the Big Four. They were ordinary low-class residents of the district, and they professed bland ignorance of the name Li Chang Yen. A Chinese gentleman had hired them for service in the house by the waterside, and they knew nothing whatever of his private affairs.
By the next day I had, except for a slight headache, completely recovered from the effects of Poirot’s gas bomb. We went down together to Chinatown and searched the house from which I had been rescued. The premises consisted of two ramshackle houses joined together by an underground passage. The ground floors and the upper stories of each were unfurnished and deserted, the broken windows covered by decaying shutters. Japp had already been prying about in the cellars, and had discovered the secret of the entrance to the subterranean chamber where I had spent such an
