Clarke sat quite still for a minute, then he said:
“Rouge, impair, manque!—you win, M. Poirot! But it was worth trying!”
With an incredibly rapid motion he whipped out a small automatic from his pocket and held it to his head.
I gave a cry and involuntarily flinched as I waited for the report.
But no report came—the hammer clicked harmlessly.
Clarke stared at it in astonishment and uttered an oath.
“No, Mr. Clarke,” said Poirot. “You may have noticed I had a new manservant today—a friend of mine—an expert sneak thief. He removed your pistol from your pocket, unloaded it, and returned it, all without you being aware of the fact.”
“You unutterable little jackanapes of a foreigner!” cried Clarke, purple with rage.
“Yes, yes, that is how you feel. No, Mr. Clarke, no easy death for you. You told Mr. Cust that you had had near escapes from drowning. You know what that means—that you were born for another fate.”
“You—”
Words failed him. His face was livid. His fists clenched menacingly.
Two detectives from Scotland Yard emerged from the next room. One of them was Crome. He advanced and uttered his time-honoured formula: “I warn you that anything you say may be used as evidence.”
“He has said quite enough,” said Poirot, and he added to Clarke: “You are very full of an insular superiority, but for myself I consider your crime not an English crime at all—not aboveboard—not sporting—”
Thirty-five
FINALE
I
I am sorry to relate that as the door closed behind Franklin Clarke I laughed hysterically.
Poirot looked at me in mild surprise.
“It’s because you told him his crime was not sporting,” I gasped.
“It was quite true. It was abominable—not so much the murder of his brother—but the cruelty that condemned an unfortunate man to a living death. To catch a fox and put him in a box and never let him go! That is not le sport!”
Megan Barnard gave a deep sigh.
“I can’t believe it—I can’t. Is it true?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. The nightmare is over.”
She looked at him and her colour deepened.
Poirot turned to Fraser.
“Mademoiselle Megan, all along, was haunted by a fear that it was you who had committed the second crime.”
Donald Fraser said quietly:
“I fancied so myself at one time.”
“Because of your dream?” He drew a little nearer to the young man and dropped his voice confidentially. “Your dream has a very natural explanation. It is that you find that already the image of one sister fades in your memory and that its place is taken by the other sister. Mademoiselle Megan replaces her sister in your heart, but since you cannot bear to think of yourself being unfaithful so soon to the dead, you strive to stifle the thought, to kill it! That is the explanation of the dream.”
Fraser’s eyes went towards Megan.