Our first step was to engage the services of an artist in “makeup.” He was a little man, with a quaint birdlike turn of the head, not unlike Poirot’s own. He considered me some time in silence, and then fell to work. When I looked at myself in the glass half an hour afterwards, I was amazed. Special shoes caused me to stand at least two inches taller, and the coat I wore was arranged so as to give me a long, lank, weedy look. My eyebrows had been cunningly altered, giving a totally different expression to my face, I wore pads in my cheeks, and the deep tan of my face was a thing of the past. My moustache had gone, and a gold tooth was prominent on one side of my mouth.
“Your name,” said Poirot, “is Arthur Neville. God guard you, my friend—for I fear that you go into perilous places.”
It was with a beating heart that I presented myself at the Savoy, at an hour named by Mr. Ryland, and asked to see the great man.
After being kept waiting a minute or two, I was shown upstairs to his suite.
Ryland was sitting at a table. Spread out in front of him was a letter which I could see out of the tail of my eye was in the Home Secretary’s handwriting. It was my first sight of the American millionaire, and, in spite of myself, I was impressed. He was tall and lean, with a jutting out chin and slightly hooked nose. His eyes glittered cold and grey behind penthouse brows. He had thick grizzled hair, and a long black cigar (without which, I learned later, he was never seen) protruded rakishly from the corner of his mouth.
“Siddown,” he grunted.
I sat. He tapped the letter in front of him.
“According to this piece here, you’re the goods all right, and I don’t need to look further. Say, are you well up in the social matters?”
I said that I thought I could satisfy him in that respect.
“I mean to say, if I have a lot of dooks and earls and viscounts and suchlike down to the country place I’ve gotten, you’ll be able to sort them out all right and put them where they should be round the dining table?”
“Oh! quite easily,” I replied, smiling.
We exchanged a few more preliminaries, and then I found myself engaged. What Mr. Ryland wanted was a secretary conversant with English society, as he already had an American secretary and a stenographer with him.
Two days later I went down to Hatton Chase, the seat of the Duke of Loamshire, which the American millionaire had rented for a period of six months.
My duties gave me no difficulty whatever. At one period of my life I had been private secretary to a busy member of Parliament, so I was not called upon to assume a role unfamiliar to me. Mr. Ryland usually entertained a large party over the weekend, but the middle of the week was comparatively quiet. I saw very little of Mr. Appleby, the American secretary, but he seemed a pleasant, normal young American, very efficient in his work. Of Miss Martin, the stenographer, I saw rather more. She was a pretty girl of about twenty-three or four, with auburn hair and brown eyes that could look mischievous enough upon occasion, though they were usually cast demurely down. I had an idea that she both disliked and distrusted her employer, though, of course, she was careful never to hint at anything of the kind, but the time came when I was unexpectedly taken into her confidence.
I had, of course, carefully scrutinized all the members of the household. One or two of the servants had been newly engaged, one of the footmen, I think, and some of the housemaids. The butler, the house keeper, and the chef were the duke’s own staff, who had consented to remain on in the establishment. The housemaids I dismissed as unimportant; I scrutinized James, the second footman, very carefully; but it was clear that he was an underfootman and an underfootman only. He had, indeed, been engaged by the butler. A person of whom I was far more suspicious was Deaves, Ryland’s valet, whom he had brought over from New York with him. An Englishman by birth, with an irreproachable manner, I yet harboured vague suspicions about him.
I had been at Hatton Chase three weeks and not an incident of any kind had arisen which I could lay my finger on in support of our theory. There was no trace of the activities of the Big Four. Mr. Ryland was a man of overpowering force and personality, but I was coming to believe that Poirot had made a mistake when he associated him with that dread organization. I even heard him mention Poirot in a casual way at dinner one night.
“Wonderful little man, they say. But he’s a quitter. How do I know? I put him on a deal, and he turned me down the last minute. I’m not taking any more of your Monsieur Hercule Poirot.”
It was at moments such as these that I felt my cheek pads most wearisome!
And then Miss Martin told me a rather curious story. Ryland had gone to London for the day, taking Appleby with him. Miss Martin and I were strolling together in the garden after tea. I liked the girl very much, she was so unaffected and so natural. I could see that there was something on her mind, and at last out it came.
“Do you know, Major Neville,” she said, “I am really thinking of resigning my post here.”
I looked somewhat astonished, and she went on hurriedly.
“Oh! I know it’s a wonderful job to have got, in a way. I suppose most people would think me a fool to throw it up. But I can’t stand abuse, Major Neville. To be sworn at like a trooper is more than I can bear. No gentleman would do such a thing.”
“Has Ryland been swearing at you?”
She nodded.
“Of course, he’s always rather irritable and short-tempered. That one expects. It’s all in the day’s work. But to fly into such an absolute fury—over nothing at all. He really looked as though he could have murdered me! And, as I say, over nothing at all!”
“Tell me about it?” I said, keenly interested.
“As you know, I open all Mr. Ryland’s letters. Some I hand on to Mr. Appleby, others I deal with myself, but I do all the preliminary sorting. Now there are certain letters that come, written on blue paper, and with a tiny 4 marked on the corner—I beg your pardon, did you speak?”
I had been unable to repress a stifled exclamation, but I hurriedly shook my head, and begged her to continue.
“Well, as I was saying, these letters come, and there are strict orders that they are never to be opened, but to be handed over to Mr. Ryland intact. And, of course, I always do so. But there was an unusually heavy mail yesterday morning, and I was opening these letters in a terrific hurry. By mistake I opened one of these letters. As soon as I saw what I had done, I took it to Mr. Ryland and explained. To my utter amazement he flew into the most awful rage. As I tell you, I was quite frightened.”
“What was there in the letter, I wonder, to upset him so?”
“Absolutely nothing—that’s just the curious part of it. I had read it before I discovered my mistake. It was quite short. I can still remember it word for word, and there was nothing in it that could possibly upset anyone.
“You can repeat it, you say?” I encouraged her.
“Yes.” She paused a minute and then repeated slowly, whilst I noted down the words unobtrusively, the following:
Dear Sir—The essential thing now, I should say, is to see the property. If you insist on the quarry being included, then seventeen thousand seems reasonable. 11 per cent commission too much, 4 percent is ample.
Yours truly,
Arthur Leversham
Miss Martin went on:
“Evidently about some property Mr. Ryland was thinking of buying. But really, I do feel that a man who can get into a rage over such a trifle is, well, dangerous. What do you think I ought to do, Major Neville? You’ve more experience of the world than I have.”
I soothed the girl down, pointed out to her that Mr. Ryland had probably been suffering from the enemy of his race—dyspepsia. In the end I sent her away quite comforted. But I was not so easily satisfied myself. When the girl had gone, and I was alone, I took out my notebook, and ran over the letter which I had jotted down. What did it mean—this apparently innocent-sounding missive? Did it concern some business deal which Ryland was undertaking, and was he anx
ious that no details about it should leak out until it was carried through? That was a possible explanation. But I remembered the small figure 4 with which the envelopes were marked, and I felt that, at last, I was on the track of the thing we were seeking.
I puzzled over the letter all that evening, and most of the next day—and then suddenly the solution came to me. It was so simple, too. The figure 4 was the clue. Read every fourth word in the letter, and an entirely different message appeared. “Essential should see you quarry seventeen eleven four.”
The solution of the figures was easy. Seventeen stood for the seventeenth of October—which was tomorrow, eleven was the time, and four was the signature—either referring to the mysterious Number Four himself—or else it was the “trademark,” so to speak, of the Big Four. The quarry was also intelligible. There was a big disused quarry on the estate about half a mile from the house—a lonely spot, ideal for a secret meeting.
For a moment or two I was tempted to run the show myself. It would be such a feather in my cap, for once, to have the pleasure of crowing over Poirot.
But in the end I overcame the temptation. This was a big business—I had no right to play a lone hand, and perhaps jeopardize our chances of success. For the first time, we had stolen a march upon our enemies. We must make good this time—and, disguise the fact as I might, Poirot had the better brain of the two.
I wrote off posthaste to him, laying the facts before him, and explaining how urgent it was that we should overhear what went on at the interview. If he liked to leave it to me, well and good, but I gave him detailed instructions how to reach the quarry from the station in case he should deem it wise to be present himself.
I took the letter down to the village and posted it myself. I had been able to communicate with Poirot throughout my stay, but we agreed that he should not attempt to communicate with me in case my letters should be tampered with.
I was in a glow of excitement the following evening. No guests were staying in the house, and I was busy with Mr. Ryland in his study all the evening. I had foreseen that this would be the case, which was why I had no hope of being able to meet Poirot at the station. I was, however, confident that I would be dismissed well before eleven o’clock.
Sure enough, just after ten-thirty, Mr. Ryland glanced at the clock, and announced that he was “through.” I took the hint and retired discreetly. I went upstairs as though going to bed, but slipped quietly down a side staircase and let myself out into the garden, having taken the precaution to don a dark overcoat to hide my white shirtfront.
I had gone some way down the garden when I chanced to look over my shoulder. Mr. Ryland was just stepping out from his study window into the garden. He was starting to keep the appointment. I redoubled my pace, so as to get a clear start. I arrived at the quarry somewhat out of breath. There seemed no one about, and I crawled into a thick tangle of bushes and awaited developments.
Ten minutes later, just on the stroke of eleven, Ryland stalked up, his hat over his eyes and the inevitable cigar in his mouth. He gave a quick look round, and then plunged into the hollows of the quarry below. Presently I heard a low murmur of voices come up to me. Evidently the other man—or men—whoever they were, had arrived first at the rendezvous. I crawled cautiously out of the bushes, and inch by inch, using the utmost precaution against noise, I wormed myself down the steep path. Only a boulder now separated me from the talking men. Secure in the blackness, I peeped round the edge of it and found myself facing the muzzle of a black, murderous-looking automatic!