Vintage Murder Mysteries - Ultimate Anthology. Эдгар Аллан По

no obligation for me to take the police into my confidence. Throughout the case I have acted, not for them, but for your father. Justice overtook him at last, but no one need ever know that he and Georges Conneau were one and the same.”

      There were, of course, various points in the case that remained puzzling to the police, but Poirot explained things in so plausible a fashion that all query about them was gradually stilled.

      Shortly after we got back to London, I noticed a magnificent model of a foxhound adorning Poirot’s mantelpiece. In answer to my inquiring glance, Poirot nodded.

      “Mais, oui! I got my 500 francs! Is he not a splendid fellow? I call him Giraud!”

      A few days later Jack Renauld came to see us with a resolute expression on his face.

      “M. Poirot, I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m sailing for South America almost immediately. My father had large interests over the continent, and I mean to start a new life out there.”

      “You go alone, M. Jack?”

      “My mother comes with me—and I shall keep Stonor on as my secretary. He likes out of-the-way parts of the world.”

      “No one else goes with you?”

      Jack flushed.

      “You mean—?”

      “A girl who loves you very dearly—who has been willing to lay down her life for you.”

      “How could I ask her?” muttered the boy. “After all that has happened, could I go to her and—oh, what sort of a lame story could I tell?”

      “Les femmes—they have a wonderful genius for manufacturing crutches for stories like that.”

      “Yes, but—I’ve been such a damned fool!”

      “So have all of us, at one time and another,” observed Poirot philosophically.

      But Jack’s face had hardened.

      “There’s something else. I’m my father’s son. Would any one marry me, knowing that?”

      “You are your father’s son, you say. Hastings here will tell you that I believe in heredity—”

      “Well, then—”

      “Wait. I know a woman, a woman of courage and endurance, capable of great love, of supreme self-sacrifice—”

      The boy looked up. His eyes softened.

      “My mother!”

      “Yes. You are your mother’s son as well as your father’s. Go then to Mademoiselle Bella. Tell her everything. Keep nothing back—and see what she will say!”

      Jack looked irresolute.

      “Go to her as a boy no longer, but a man—a man bowed by the fate of the Past, and the fate of Today, but looking forward to a new and wonderful life. Ask her to share it with you. You may not realize it, but your love for each other has been tested in the fire and not found wanting. You have both been willing to lay down your lives for each other.”

      And what of Captain Arthur Hastings, humble chronicler of these pages?

      There is some talk of his joining the Renaulds on a ranch across the seas, but for the end of this story I prefer to go back to a morning in the garden of the Villa Geneviève.

      “I can’t call you Bella,” I said, “since it isn’t your name. And Dulcie seems so unfamiliar. So it’s got to be Cinderella. Cinderella married the Prince, you remember. I’m not a Prince, but—”

      She interrupted me.

      “Cinderella warned him, I’m sure! You see, she couldn’t promise to turn into a princess. She was only a little scullion after all—”

      “It’s the Prince’s turn to interrupt,” I interpolated. “Do you know what he said?”

      “No?”

      “ ‘Hell!’ said the Prince—and kissed her!”

      And I suited the action to the word.

      The Kidnapped Prime Minister

       Table of Contents

      I.

      NOW that war and the problems of war are things of the past, I think I may safely venture to reveal to the world the part which my friend Poirot played in a moment of national crisis. The secret has been well guarded. Not a whisper of it reached the Press. But now that the need for secrecy has gone by, I feel it is only just that England should know the debt it owes to my quaint little friend, whose marvellous brain so ably averted a great catastrophe.

      One evening after dinner—I will not particularise the date; it suffices to say that it was at the time when "Peace by negotiation" was the parrot-cry of England's enemies—my friend and I were sitting in his rooms. After being invalided out of the Army I had been given a recruiting job, and it had become my custom to drop in on Poirot in the evenings after dinner and talk with him of any cases of interest that he might have on hand.

      I was attempting to discuss with him the sensational news of that day—no less than an attempted assassination of Mr. David MacAdam, England's Prime Minister. The account in the papers had evidently been carefully censored. No details were given, save that the Prime Minister had had a marvellous escape, the bullet just grazing his cheek.

      I considered that our police must have been shamefully careless for such an outrage to be possible. I could well understand that the German agents in England would be willing to risk much for such an achievement. "Fighting Mac," as his own party had nicknamed him, had strenuously and unequivocally combated the Pacifist influence which was becoming so prevalent.

      He was more than England's Prime Minister—he was England; and to have removed him from his sphere of influence would have been a crushing and paralysing blow to Britain.

      Poirot was busy mopping a grey suit with a minute sponge. Never was there a dandy such as Hercule Poirot. Neatness and order were his passion. Now, with the odour of benzine filling the air, he was quite unable to give me his full attention.

      "In a little minute I am with you, my friend. I have all but finished. The spot of grease—he is not good—I remove him—so!" He waved his sponge.

      I smiled as I lit another cigarette.

      "Anything interesting on?" I inquired, after a minute or two.

      "I assist a—how do you call it?—charlady to find her husband. A difficult affair, needing the tact. For I have a little idea that when he is found he will not be pleased. What would you? For my part, I sympathise with him. He was a man of discrimination to lose himself."

      I laughed.

      "At last! The spot of grease, he is gone! I am at your disposal."

      "I was asking you what you thought of this attempt to assassinate MacAdam?"

      "Enfantillage!" replied Poirot promptly. "One can hardly take it seriously. To fire with the rifle—never does it succeed. It is a device of the past."

      "It was very near succeeding this time," I reminded him.

      Poirot shook his head impatiently. He was about to reply when the landlady thrust her head round the door and informed him that there were two gentlemen below who wanted to see him.

      "They won't give their names, Sir, but they says as it's very important."

      "Let them mount," said Poirot, carefully folding his grey trousers.

      In a few minutes the two visitors were ushered in, and my heart gave a leap as in the foremost I recognised no less a personage than Lord Estair, Leader