She glanced through it.
‘Yes. Oh, how can I ever thank you! You are a wonderful, wonderful man. Where was it hidden?’
Poirot told her.
‘How very clever of you!’ She took up the small box from the table. ‘I shall keep this as a souvenir.’
‘I had hoped, milady, that you would permit me to keep it—also as a souvenir.’
‘I hope to send you a better souvenir than that—on my wedding-day. You shall not find me ungrateful, M. Poirot.’
‘The pleasure of doing you a service will be more to me than a cheque—so you permit that I retain the box.’
‘Oh no, M. Poirot, I simply must have that,’ she cried laughingly.
She stretched out her hand, but Poirot was before her. His hand closed over it.
‘I think not.’ His voice had changed.
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice seemed to have grown sharper.
‘At any rate, permit me to abstract its further contents. You observed that the original cavity has been reduced by half. In the top half, the compromising letter; in the bottom—’
He made a nimble gesture, then held out his hand. On the palm were four large glittering stones, and two big milky white pearls.
‘The jewels stolen in Bond Street the other day, I rather fancy,’ murmured Poirot. ‘Japp will tell us.’
To my utter amazement, Japp himself stepped out from Poirot’s bedroom.
‘An old friend of yours, I believe,’ said Poirot politely to Lady Millicent.
‘Nabbed, by the Lord!’ said Lady Millicent, with a complete change of manner. ‘You nippy old devil!’ She looked at Poirot with almost affectionate awe.
‘Well, Gertie, my dear,’ said Japp, ‘the game’s up this time, I fancy. Fancy seeing you again so soon! We’ve got your pal, too, the gentleman who called here the other day calling himself Lavington. As for Lavington himself, alias Croker, alias Reed, I wonder which of the gang it was who stuck a knife into him the other day in Holland? Thought he’d got the goods with him, didn’t you? And he hadn’t. He double-crossed you properly—hid ’em in his own house. You had two fellows looking for them, and then you tackled M. Poirot here, and by a piece of amazing luck he found them.’
‘You do like talking, don’t you?’ said the late Lady Millicent. ‘Easy there, now. I’ll go quietly. You can’t say that I’m not the perfect lady. Ta-ta, all!’
‘The shoes were wrong,’ said Poirot dreamily, while I was still too stupefied to speak. ‘I have made my little observations of your English nation, and a lady, a born lady, is always particular about her shoes. She may have shabby clothes, but she will be well shod. Now, this Lady Millicent had smart, expensive clothes, and cheap shoes. It was not likely that either you or I should have seen the real Lady Millicent; she has been very little in London, and this girl had a certain superficial resemblance which would pass well enough. As I say, the shoes first awakened my suspicions, and then her story—and her veil—were a little melodramatic, eh? The Chinese box with a bogus compromising letter in the top must have been known to all the gang, but the log of wood was the late Mr Lavington’s idea. Eh, par example, Hastings, I hope you will not again wound my feelings as you did yesterday by saying that I am unknown to the criminal classes. Ma foi, they even employ me when they themselves fail!’
Problem at Sea
I
‘Colonel Clapperton!’ said General Forbes.
He said it with an effect midway between a snort and a sniff.
Miss Ellie Henderson leaned forward, a strand of her soft grey hair blowing across her face. Her eyes, dark and snapping, gleamed with a wicked pleasure.
‘Such a soldierly-looking man!’ she said with malicious intent, and smoothed back the lock of hair to await the result.
‘Soldierly!’ exploded General Forbes. He tugged at his military moustache and his face became bright red.
‘In the Guards, wasn’the?’murmured Miss Henderson, completing her work.
‘Guards? Guards? Pack of nonsense. Fellow was on the music hall stage! Fact! Joined up and was out in France counting tins of plum and apple. Huns dropped a stray bomb and he went home with a flesh wound in the arm. Somehow or other got into Lady Carrington’s hospital.’