‘Thanks. Do you know, I think I will. Five o’clock?’

‘Better ring up first,’ I said, ‘and make sure before coming round.’

‘All right. I will. Thanks, Hastings. You see, I think it might – just might – be very important.’

I nodded and turned again to where Mrs Widburn was dispensing honied words and limp handshakes. 

My duty done, I was turning away when a hand was slipped through my arm.

‘Don’t cut me,’ said a merry voice.

It was Jenny Driver – looking extremely chic, by the way.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Where have you sprung from?’

‘I was lunching at the next table to you.’

‘I didn’t see you. How is business?’

‘Booming, thank you.’

‘The soup plates going well?’

‘Soup plates, as you rudely call them, are going very well. When everybody has got thoroughly laden up with them, there’s going to be dirty work done. Something like a blister with a feather attached is going to be worn bang in the middle of the forehead.’

‘Unscrupulous,’ I said.

‘Not at all. Somebody must come to the rescue of the ostriches. They’re all on the dole.’

She laughed and moved away.

‘Good-bye. I’m taking an afternoon off from business. Going for a spin in the country.’

‘And very nice too,’ I said approvingly. ‘It’s stifling in London today.’

I myself walked leisurely through the park. I reached home about four o’clock. Poirot had not yet come in. It was twenty minutes to five when he returned. He was twinkling and clearly in a good humour. 

‘I see, Holmes,’ I remarked, ‘that you have tracked the ambassadorial boots.’

‘It was a case of cocaine smuggling. Very ingenious. For the last hour I have been in a ladies’ beauty parlour. There was a girl there with auburn hair who would have captured your susceptible heart at once.’

Poirot always has the impression that I am particularly susceptible to auburn hair. I do not bother to argue about it.

The telephone rang.

‘That’s probably Donald Ross,’ I said as I went across to the instrument.

‘Donald Ross?’

‘Yes, the young man we met at Chiswick. He wants to see you about something.’

I took down the receiver.

‘Hello. Captain Hastings speaking.’

It was Ross.

‘Oh! is that you, Hastings? Has M. Poirot come in?’

‘Yes, he’s here now. Do you want to speak to him or are you coming round?’

‘It’s nothing much. I can tell him just as well over the telephone.’

‘Right. Hold on.’

Poirot came forward and took the receiver. I was so close that I could hear, faintly, Ross’s voice. 

‘Is that M. Poirot?’ The voice sounded eager-excited.

‘Yes, it is I.’

‘Look here, I don’t want to bother you, but there’s something that seems to me a bit odd. It’s in connection with Lord Edgware’s death.’

I saw Poirot’s figure go taut.

‘Continue, continue.’

‘It may seem just nonsense to you–’

‘No, no. Tell me, all the same.’

‘It was Paris set me off. You see–’ Very faintly I heard a bell trilling.

‘Half a second,’ said Ross.

There was the sound of the receiver being laid down.

We waited. Poirot at the mouthpiece. I was standing beside him.

I say – we waited…

Two minutes passed…three minutes – four minutes – five minutes.

Poirot shifted his feet uneasily. He glanced up at the clock.

Then he moved the hook up and down and spoke to the Exchange. He turned to me.

‘The receiver is still off at the other end, but there is no reply. They cannot get an answer. Quick, Hastings, look up Ross’s address in the telephone book. We must go there at once.’

Chapter 26. Paris?

A few minutes later we were jumping into a taxi.

Poirot’s face was very grave.

‘I am afraid, Hastings,’ he said. ‘I am afraid.’

‘You don’t mean–’ I said and stopped.

‘We are up against somebody who has already struck twice – that person will not hesitate to strike again. He is twisting and turning like a rat, fighting for his life. Ross is a danger. Then Ross will be eliminated.’

‘Was what he had to tell so important?’ I asked doubtfully. ‘He did not seem to think so.’

‘Then he was wrong. Evidently what he had to tell was of supreme importance.’

‘But how could anyone know?’

‘He spoke to you, you say. There, at Claridge’s. With people all round. Madness – utter madness. Ah! why did you not bring him back with you – guard him – let no one near him till I had heard what he had to say.’ 

‘I never thought – I never dreamt–’ I stammered.

Poirot made a quick gesture.

‘Do not blame yourself – how could you know? I – I would have known. The murderer, see you, Hastings, is as cunning as a tiger and as relentless. Ah! shall we never arrive?’

We were there at last. Ross lived in a maisonette on the first floor of a house in a big square in Kensington. A card stuck on a little slot by the door-bell gave us the information. The hall door was open. Inside was a big flight of stairs.

‘So easy to come in. None to see,’ murmured Poirot as he sprang up the stairs.

On the first floor was a kind of partition and a narrow door with a Yale lock. Ross’s card was stuck in the centre of the door.

We paused there. Everywhere there was dead silence.

I pushed the door – to my surprise it yielded.

We entered.

There was a narrow hall and an open door one side, another in front of us opening into what was evidently the sitting-room.

Into this sitting-room we went. It was the divided half of a big front drawing-room. It was cheaply but comfortably furnished and it was empty. On a small table was the telephone, the receiver stood down beside the instrument. 

Poirot took a swift step forward, looked round, then shook his head.

‘Not here. Come, Hastings.’

We retraced our steps and, going into the hall, we passed through the other door. The room was a tiny dining-room. At one side of the table, fallen sideways from a chair and sprawled across the table, was Ross.

Poirot bent over him.

He straightened up – his face was white.

‘He’s dead. Stabbed at the base of the skull.’

For long afterwards the events of that afternoon remained like a nightmare in my mind. I could not rid myself of a dreadful feeling of responsibility.

Much later, that evening, when we were alone together, I stammered out to Poirot my bitter self-reproachings. He responded quickly.

‘No, no, do not blame yourself. How could you have suspected? The good God has not given you a suspicious nature to begin with.’

‘You would have suspected?’

‘That is different. All my life, you see, I have tracked down murderers. I know how, each time, the impulse to kill becomes stronger, till, at last, for a trivial cause–’ He broke off.

He had been very quiet ever since our ghastly discovery. All through the arrival of the police, the questioning of the other people in the house, the hundred and one details of the dreadful routine following upon a murder, Poirot had remained aloof – strangely quiet – a far-away speculative look in his eyes. Now, as he broke off his sentence, that same far-away speculative look returned.

‘We have no time to waste in regrets, Hastings,’ he said quietly. ‘No time to say “If” – The poor young man who is dead had something to tell us. And we know now that that something must have been of great importance – otherwise he would not have been killed. Since he can no longer tell us – we have got to guess. We have got to guess – with only one little clue to guide us.’

‘Paris,’ I said.

‘Yes, Paris.’ He got up and began to stroll up and down.

‘There have been several mentions of Paris in this business, but unluckily in different connections. There is the word Paris engraved in the gold box. Paris in November last. Miss Adams was there then – perhaps Ross was there also. Was there someone else there whom Ross knew? Whom he saw with Miss Adams under somewhat peculiar circumstances?’