The Big Four
robes. He directed operations. By his orders I was hustled back through
the cellar and tunnel into the original house I had entered. There they
took me into a ground floor room. The windows were shuttered, but one
could see through the cracks into the street. An old ragged man was
shuffling along the opposite side of the road, and when I saw him make
a sign to the window, I understood that he was one of the gang on watch.
"It is well," said my Chinese friend. "Hercule Poirot has fallen into
the trap. He approaches now--and alone except for the boy who guides
him. Now, Captain Hastings, you have still one more part to play.
Unless you show yourself he will not enter the house. When he arrives
opposite, you must go out on the step and beckon him in."
"What?" I cried, revolted.
"You play that part alone. Remember the price of failure. If Hercule
Poirot suspects anything is amiss and does not enter the house, your
wife dies by the Seventy lingering Deaths! Ah! Here he is."
With a beating heart, and a feeling of deathly sickness, I looked
through the crack in the shutters. In the figure walking along the
opposite side of the street I recognised my friend at once, though his
coat collar was turned up and an immense yellow muffler hid the bottom
part of his face. But there was no mistaking that walk, and the poise
of that egg-shaped head.
It was Poirot, coming to my aid in all good faith, suspecting nothing
amiss. By his side ran a typical London urchin, grimy of face and
ragged of apparel.
Poirot paused, looking across at the house, whilst the boy spoke to him
eagerly and pointed. It was the time for me to act. I went out in the
hall. At a sign from the tall Chinaman, one of the servants unlatched
the door.
"Remember the price of failure," said my enemy in a low voice.
I was outside on the steps. I beckoned to Poirot. He hastened across.
"Aha! So all is well with you, my friend. I was beginning to be
anxious. You managed to get inside? Is the house empty, then?"
"Yes," I said, in a voice I strove to make natural. "There must be a
secret way out of it somewhere. Come in and let us look for it."
I stepped back across the threshold. In all innocence Poirot prepared
to follow me.
And then something seemed to snap in my head. I saw only too clearly
the part I was playing--the part of Judas.
"Back, Poirot!" I cried. "Back for your life. It's a trap. Never mind
me. Get away at once."
Even as I spoke--or rather shouted my warning hands gripped me like a
vice. One of the Chinese servants sprang past me to grab Poirot.
I saw the latter spring back, his arm raised, then suddenly a dense
volume of smoke was rising round me, choking me--killing me--
I felt myself falling--suffocating--this was death--
* * * * *
I came to myself slowly and painfully--all my senses dazed. The first
thing I saw was Poirot's face. He was sitting opposite me watching me
with an anxious face. He gave a cry of joy when he saw me looking at
him.
"Ah, you revive--you return to yourself. All is well! My friend--my
poor friend!"
"Where am I?" I said painfully.
"Where? But _chez vous_!"
I looked round me. True enough, I was in the old familiar surroundings.
And in the grate were the identical four knobs of coal I had carefully
spilt there.
Poirot had followed my glance.
"But yes, that was a famous idea of yours--that and the books. See
you, if they should say to me any time. 'That friend of yours, that
Hastings, he has not the great brain, is it not so?' I shall reply to
them: 'You are in error.' It was an idea magnificent and superb that
occurred to you there."
"You understood their meaning then?"
"Am I an imbecile? Of course I understood. It gave me just the warning
I needed, and the time to mature my plans. Somehow or other the Big
Four had carried you off. With what object? Clearly not for your
_beaux yeux_--equally clearly not because they feared you and
wanted to get you out of the way. No, their object was plain. You would
be used as a decoy to get the great Hercule Poirot into their clutches.
I have long been prepared for something of the kind. I make my little
preparations, and presently, sure enough, the messenger arrives--such
an innocent little street urchin. Me, I swallow everything, and hasten
away with him, and, very fortunately, they permit you to come out on
the doorstep. That was my one fear, that I should have to dispose of
them before I had reached the place where you were concealed, and that
I should have to search for you--perhaps in vain--afterwards."
"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 organisation of this kind, with ramifications
all over the world, might easily strike at us through that 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!"
14. 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 on to 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 unpleasant half-hour. Closer investigation
confirmed the impression that it had made on me the night before. The
silks on the walls and divan and the carpets on the floors were of
exquisite workmanship. Although I know very little about Chinese art, I
could appreciate that every article in the room was perfect of its kind.
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, and 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 brain power, 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