“Absurd!”
“At any rate you will admit that my questions about your personal relationships with the members of this house party are not totally irrelevant.”
“Oh, perhaps—perhaps. You asked me about Julia Carrington. There’s really not very much to say. I’ve never taken to her very much, and I don’t think she cares for me. She’s one of these restless, nervy women, recklessly extravagant and mad about cards. She’s old-fashioned enough, I think, to despise me as being a self-made man.”
Poirot said:
“I looked you up in Who’s Who before I came down. You were the head of a famous engineering firm and you are yourself a first-class engineer.”
“There’s certainly nothing I don’t know about the practical side. I’ve worked my way up from the bottom.”
Lord Mayfield spoke rather grimly.
“Oh la la!” cried Poirot. “I have been a fool—but a fool!”
The other stared at him.
“I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?”
“It is that a portion of the puzzle has become clear to me. Something I did not see before . . . But it all fits in. Yes—it fits in with beautiful precision.”
Lord Mayfield looked at him in somewhat astonished inquiry.
But with a slight smile Poirot shook his head.
“No, no, not now. I must arrange my ideas a little more clearly.”
He rose.
“Goodnight, Lord Mayfield. I think I know where those plans are.”
Lord Mayfield cried out:
“You know? Then let us get hold of them at once!”
Poirot shook his head.
“No, no, that would not do. Precipitancy would be fatal. But leave it all to Hercule Poirot.”
He went out of the room. Lord Mayfield raised his shoulders in contempt.
“Man’s a mountebank,” he muttered. Then, putting away his papers and turning out the lights, he, too, made his way up to bed.
Six
“If there’s been a burglary, why the devil doesn’t old Mayfield send for the police?” demanded Reggie Carrington.
He pushed his chair slightly back from the breakfast table.
He was the last down. His host, Mrs. Macatta and Sir George had finished their breakfasts some time before. His mother and Mrs. Vanderlyn were breakfasting in bed.
Sir George, repeating his statement on the lines agreed upon between Lord Mayfield and Hercule Poirot, had a feeling that he was not managing it as well as he might have done.
“To send for a queer foreigner like this seems very odd to me,” said Reggie. “What has been taken, Father?”
“I don’t know exactly, my boy.”
Reggie got up. He looked rather nervy and on edge this morning.