But there was nothing to be done. I wrote as bidden. My captor took the note from me, read it, then nodded his head approvingly and handed it to one of the silent attendants who disappeared with it behind one of the silken hangings on the wall which masked a doorway.
With a smile the man opposite me picked up a cable form and wrote. He handed it to me.
It read: “Release the white bird with all despatch.”
I gave a sigh of relief.
“You will send it at once?” I urged.
He smiled, and shook his head.
“When M. Hercule Poirot is in my hands it shall be sent. Not until then.”
“But you promised—”
“If this device fails, I may have need of our white bird—to persuade you to further efforts.”
I grew white with anger.
“My God! If you—”
He waved a long, slim yellow hand.
“Be reassured, I do not think it will fail. And the moment M. Poirot is in our hands, I will keep my oath.”
“If you play me false—”
“I have sworn it by my honoured ancestors. Have no fear. Rest here awhile. My servants will see to your needs whilst I am absent.”
I was left alone in this strange underground nest of luxury. The second Chinese attendant had reappeared. One of them brought food and drink and offered it to me, but I waved them aside. I was sick—sick—at heart—
And then suddenly the master reappeared, tall and stately in his silken 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 recognized 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 pose 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 into 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 low 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. “Singlehanded.”
“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!”