With the aid of Japp and some of his men we conducted a most thorough search of the apartment. I had cherished high hopes that we would find documents of importance. A list, perhaps, of some of the more important agents of the Big Four, or cipher notes of some of their plans, but we discovered nothing of the kind. The only papers we found in the whole place were the notes which the Chinaman had consulted whilst he was dictating the letter to Poirot. These consisted of a very complete record of each of our careers, an estimate of our characters, and suggestions about the weaknesses through which we might best be attacked.
Poirot was most childishly delighted with this discovery. Personally I could not see that it was of any value whatever, especially as whoever compiled the notes was ludicrously mistaken in some of his opinions. I pointed this out to my friend when we were back in our rooms.
“My dear Poirot,” I said, “you know now what the enemy thinks of us. He appears to have a grossly exaggerated idea of your brainpower, and to have absurdly underrated mine, but I do not see how we are better off for knowing this.”
Poirot chuckled in rather an offensive way.
“You do not see, Hastings, no? But surely now we can prepare ourselves for some of their methods of attack now that we are warned of some of our faults. For instance, my friend, we know that you should think before you act. Again, if you meet a red-haired young woman in trouble you should eye her—what you say—askance, is it not?”
Their notes had contained some absurd references to my supposed impulsiveness, and had suggested that I was susceptible to the charms of young women with hair of a certain shade. I thought Poirot’s reference to be in the worst of taste, but fortunately I was able to counter him.
“And what about you?” I demanded. “Are you going to try to cure your ‘overweening vanity?’ Your ‘finicky tidiness?’ ”
I was quoting, and I could see that he was not pleased with my retort.
“Oh, without doubt, Hastings, in some things they deceive themselves—tant mieux! They will learn in due time. Meanwhile we have learnt something, and to know is to be prepared.”
This last was a favourite axiom of his lately; so much so that I had begun to hate the sound of it.
“We know something, Hastings,” he continued. “Yes, we know something—and that is to the good—but we do not know nearly enough. We must know more.”
“In what way?”
Poirot settled himself back in his chair, straightened a box of matches which I had thrown carelessly down on the table, and assumed an attitude that I knew only too well. I saw that he was prepared to hold forth at some length.
“See you, Hastings, we have to contend against four adversaries; that is, against four different personalities. With Number One we have never come into personal contact—we know him, as it were, only by the impress of his mind—and in passing, Hastings, I will tell you that I begin to understand that mind very well—a mind most subtle and Oriental—every scheme and plot that we have encountered has emanated from the brain of Li Chang Yen. Number Two and Number Three are so powerful, so high up, that they are for the present immune from our attacks. Nevertheless what is their safeguard is, by a perverse chance, our safeguard also. They are so much in the limelight that their movements must be carefully ordered. And so we come to the last member of the gang—we come to the man known as Number Four.”
Poirot’s voice altered a little, as it always did when speaking of this particular individual.
“Number Two and Number Three are able to succeed, to go on their way unscathed, owing to their notoriety and their assured position. Number Four succeeds for the opposite reason—he succeeds by the way of obscurity. Who is he? Nobody knows. What does he look like? Again nobody knows. How many times have we seen him, you and I? Five times, is it not? And could either of us say truthfully that we could be sure of recognizing him again?”
I was forced to shake my head, as I ran back in my mind over those five different people who, incredible as it seemed, were one and the same man. The burly lunatic asylum keeper, the man in the buttoned-up overcoat in Paris, James, the footman, the quiet young medical man in the Yellow Jasmine case, and the Russian professor. In no way did any two of these people resemble each other.
“No,” I said hopelessly. “We’ve nothing to go by whatsoever.”
Poirot smiled.
“Do not, I pray of you, give way to such enthusiastic despair. We know one or two things.”
“What kind of things?” I asked sceptically.
“We know that he is a man of medium height, and of medium or fair colouring. If he were a tall man of swarthy complexion he could never have passed himself off as the fair, stocky doctor. It is child’s play, of course, to put on an additional inch or so for the part of James, or the Professor. In the same way he must have a short, straight nose. Additions can be built onto a nose by skilful makeup, but a large nose cannot be successfully reduced at a moment’s notice. Then again, he must be a fairly young man, certainly not over thirty-five. You see, we are getting somewhere. A man between thirty and thirty-five, of medium height and colouring, an adept in the art of makeup, and with very few or any teeth of his
