Poirot Investigates
at each, but at every halt his radiant assurance was more and more
restored.
He whispered something to Norman, to which the latter replied:
“Yes, if you turn off to the left, you will find them waiting by
the bridge.”
We turned up a side road, and in the failing light I discerned a
second car, waiting by the side of the road. It contained two men
in plain clothes. Poirot got down and spoke to them, and then we
started off in a northerly direction, the other car following close
behind.
We drove for some time, our objective being obviously one of the
northern suburbs of London. Finally, we drove up to the front door
of a tall house, standing a little back from the road in its own
grounds.
Norman and I were left with the car. Poirot and one of the
detectives went up to the door and rang. A neat parlourmaid opened
it. The detective spoke.
“I am a police officer, and I have a warrant to search this house.”
The girl gave a little scream, and a tall, handsome woman of
middle-age appeared behind her in the hall.
“Shut the door, Edith. They are burglars, I expect.”
But Poirot swiftly inserted his foot in the door, and at the same
moment blew a whistle. Instantly the other detectives ran up, and
poured into the house, shutting the door behind them.
Norman and I spent about five minutes cursing our forced inactivity.
Finally the door reopened, and the men emerged, escorting three
prisoners—a woman and two men. The woman, and one of the men, were
taken to the second car. The other man was placed in our car by
Poirot himself.
“I must go with the others, my friend. But have great care of this
gentleman. You do not know him, no? _Eh bien_, let me present to
you, Monsieur O’Murphy!”
O’Murphy! I _gaped_ at him open-mouthed as we started again. He
was not handcuffed, but I did not fancy he would try to escape. He
sat there staring in front of him as though dazed. Anyway, Norman
and I would be more than a match for him.
To my surprise, we still kept a northerly route. We were not
returning to London, then! I was much puzzled. Suddenly, as the
car slowed down, I recognized that we were close to Hendon
Aerodrome. Immediately I grasped Poirot’s idea. He proposed to
reach France by aeroplane.
It was a sporting idea, but, on the face of it, impracticable. A
telegram would be far quicker. Time was everything. He must leave
the personal glory of rescuing the Prime Minister to others.
As we drew up, Major Norman jumped out, and a plain-clothes man
took his place. He conferred with Poirot for a few minutes, and
then went off briskly.
I, too, jumped out, and caught Poirot by the arm.
“I congratulate you, old fellow! They have told you the hiding-place?
But, look here, you must wire to France at once. You’ll be too late
if you go yourself.”
Poirot looked at me curiously for a minute or two.
“Unfortunately, my friend, there are some things that cannot be
sent by telegram.”
• • • • • • •
At that moment Major Norman returned, accompanied by a young
officer in the uniform of the Flying Corps.
“This is Captain Lyall, who will fly you over to France. He can
start at once.”
“Wrap up warmly, sir,” said the young pilot. “I can lend you a
coat, if you like.”
Poirot was consulting his enormous watch. He murmured to himself:
“Yes, there is time—just time.” Then he looked up, and bowed
politely to the young officer. “I thank you, monsieur. But it is
not I who am your passenger. It is this gentleman here.”
He moved a little aside as he spoke, and a figure came forward out
of the darkness. It was the second male prisoner who had gone in
the other car, and as the light fell on his face, I gave a gasp of
surprise.
_It was the Prime Minister!_
• • • • • • •
“For Heaven’s sake, tell me all about it,” I cried impatiently, as
Poirot, Norman, and I motored back to London. “How in the world
did they manage to smuggle him back to England?”
“There was no need to smuggle him back,” replied Poirot dryly. “The
Prime Minister has never left England. He was kidnapped on his way
from Windsor to London.”
“What?”
“I will make all clear. The Prime Minister was in his car, his
secretary beside him. Suddenly a pad of chloroform is clapped on
his face——”
“But by whom?”
“By the clever linguistic Captain Daniels. As soon as the Prime
Minister is unconscious, Daniels picks up the speaking-tube, and
directs O’Murphy to turn to the right, which the chauffeur, quite
unsuspicious, does. A few yards down that unfrequented road, a
large car is standing, apparently broken down. Its driver signals
to O’Murphy to stop. O’Murphy slows up. The stranger approaches.
Daniels leans out of the window, and, probably with the aid of an
instantaneous anæsthetic, such as ethylchloride, the chloroform
trick is repeated. In a few seconds, the two helpless men are
dragged out and transferred to the other car, and a pair of
substitutes take their places.”
“Impossible!”
“_Pas du tout!_ Have you not seen music-hall turns imitating
celebrities with marvellous accuracy? Nothing is easier than to
personate a public character. The Prime Minister of England is far
easier to understudy than Mr. John Smith of Clapham, say. As for
O’Murphy’s ‘double,’ no one was going to take much notice of him
until after the departure of the Prime Minister, and by then he
would have made himself scarce. He drives straight from Charing
Cross to the meeting-place of his friends. He goes in as O’Murphy,
he emerges as some one quite different. O’Murphy has disappeared,
leaving a conveniently suspicious trail behind him.”
“But the man who personated the Prime Minister was seen by every
one!”
“He was not seen by anyone who knew him privately or intimately.
And Daniels shielded him from contact with anyone as much as
possible. Moreover, his face was bandaged up, and anything unusual
in his manner would be put down to the fact that he was suffering
from shock as a result of the attempt upon his life. Mr. MacAdam
has a weak throat, and always spares his voice as much as possible
before any great speech. The deception was perfectly easy to keep
up as far as France. There it would be impracticable and
impossible—so the Prime Minister disappears. The police of this
country hurry across the Channel, and no one bothers to go into
the details of the first attack. To sustain the illusion that the
abduction has taken place in France, Daniels is gagged and
chloroformed in a convincing manner.”
“And the man who has enacted the part of the Prime Minister?”
“Rids himself of his disguise. He and the bogus chauffeur may be
arrested as suspicious characters, but no one will dream of
suspecting their real part in the drama, and they will eventually
be released for lack of evidence.”
“And the real Prime Minister?”
“He and O’Murphy were driven straight to the house of ‘Mrs.
Everard,’ at Hampstead, Daniels’ so-called ‘aunt.’ In reality, she
is Frau Bertha Ebenthal, and the police have been looking for her
for some time. It is a valuable little present that I have made to
them—to say nothing of Daniels! Ah, it was a clever plan, but he
did not reckon on the cleverness of Hercule Poirot!”
I think my friend might well be excused his moment of vanity.
“When did you first begin to suspect the truth of the matter?”
“When I began to work the right way—from _within_! I could not make
that shooting affair fit in—but when I saw that the net result of
it was that _the Prime Minister went to France with his face bound
up_ I began to comprehend! And when I visited all the cottage
hospitals between Windsor and London, and found that no one
answering to my description had had his face bound up and dressed
that morning, I was sure! After that, it was child’s-play for a
mind like mine!”
• • • • • • •
The following morning, Poirot showed me a telegram he had just
received. It had no place of origin, and was unsigned. It ran:
“In time.”
Later in the day the evening papers published an account of the
Allied Conference. They laid particular stress on the magnificent
ovation accorded to Mr. David MacAdam, whose inspiring speech had
produced a deep and lasting impression.
IX
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
Poirot and I were expecting our old friend Inspector Japp of
Scotland Yard to tea. We were sitting round the tea-table awaiting
his arrival. Poirot had just finished carefully straightening the
cups and saucers which our landlady was in the habit of throwing,
rather than placing, on the table. He had also breathed heavily on
the metal teapot, and polished it with a silk handkerchief. The
kettle was on the boil, and a small enamel saucepan beside it
contained some thick, sweet chocolate which was more to Poirot’s
palate than what he described as “your English poison.” A sharp
“rat-tat” sounded below, and a few minutes afterwards Japp entered
briskly.
“Hope I’m not late,” he said as he greeted us. “To tell the truth,
I was yarning with Miller, the man who’s in charge of the Davenheim
case.”
I pricked up my ears. For the last three days the papers had been
full of the strange disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, senior partner
of Davenheim and Salmon, the well-known bankers and financiers. On
Saturday last he had walked out of his house, and had never been
seen since. I looked forward to extracting some interesting details
from Japp.
“I should have thought,” I remarked, “that it would be almost
impossible for anyone to ‘disappear’ nowadays.”
Poirot moved a plate of bread and butter the eighth of an inch,
and said sharply:
“Be exact, my friend. What do you mean by ‘disappear’? To which
class of disappearance are you referring?”
“Are disappearances classified and labelled, then?” I laughed.
Japp smiled also. Poirot frowned at us both.
“But certainly they are! They fall into three categories: First,
and most common, the voluntary disappearance. Second, the much
abused ‘loss of memory’ case—rare, but occasionally genuine. Third,
murder, and a more or less successful disposal of the body. Do you
refer to all three as impossible of execution?”
“Very nearly so, I should think. You might lose your own memory,
but some one would be sure to recognize you—especially in the case
of a well-known man like Davenheim. Then ‘bodies’ can’t be made to
vanish into thin air. Sooner or later they turn up, concealed in
lonely places, or in trunks. Murder will out. In the same way, the
absconding clerk, or the domestic defaulter, is bound to be run
down in these days of wireless telegraphy. He can be headed off
from foreign countries; ports and railway stations are watched;
and, as for concealment in this country, his features and appearance
will be known to every one who reads a daily newspaper. He’s up
against civilization.”
“_Mon ami_,” said Poirot, “you make one error. You do not allow
for the fact that a man who had decided to make away with another
man—or with himself in a figurative sense—might be that rare
machine, a man of method. He might bring intelligence, talent, a
careful calculation of detail to the task; and then I do not see
why he should not be successful in baffling the police force.”
“But not _you_, I suppose?” said Japp good-humouredly, winking at
me. “He couldn’t baffle _you_, eh, Monsieur Poirot?”
Poirot endeavoured, with a marked lack of success, to look modest.
“Me, also! Why not? It is true that I approach such problems with
an exact science, a mathematical precision, which seems, alas, only
too rare in the new generation of detectives!”
Japp grinned more widely.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Miller, the man who’s on this case, is
a smart chap. You may be very sure he won’t overlook a footprint,