"Ah Ling," said Poirot, "are you sorry your master is dead?"

"I welly sorry. He good master."

"You know who kill him?"

"I not know. I tell pleeceman if I know."

The questions and answers went on. With the same

impassive face. Ah Ling described how he had made the

curry. The cook had had nothing to do with it, he

declared, no hand had touched it but his own. I wondered if he saw where his admission was leading him. He

stuck to it too, that the window to the garden was bolted that evening. If it was open in the morning, his master

must have opened it himself. At last Poirot dismissed

him.

"That will do, Ah Ling." Just as the Chinaman had got to the door, Poirot recalled him. "And you know

THE BIG FOUR 101

nothing, you say, of the Yellow Jasmine?"

"No, what should I know?"

"Nor yet of the sign that was written underneath it?" Poirot leant forward as he spoke, and quickly traced

something on the dust of a little table. I was near

enough to see it before he rubbed it out. A down stroke, a line at right angles, and then a second line down which completed a big 4. The effect on the Chinaman was electrical. For one moment his face was a mask of terror.

Then, as suddenly, it was impassive again, and repeating his grave disclaimer, he withdrew.

Japp departed in search of young Paynter, and Poirot

and I were left alone together.

"The Big Four, Hastings," cried Poirot. "Once again, the Big Four. Paynter was a great traveller. In his book there was doubtless some vital information concerning the doings of Number One, Li Chang Yen, the

head and brains of the Big Four."

"But who--how--"

"Hush, here they come."

Gerald Paynter was an amiable, rather weak-looking

young man. He had a soft brown beard, and a peculiar

flowing tie. He answered Poirot's questions readily

enough.

"I dined out with some neighbours of ours, the

Wycherlys," he explained. "What time did I get home?

Oh, about eleven. I had a latch-key, you know. All the

servants had gone to bed, and I naturally thought my

uncle had done the same. As a matter of fact, I did think I caught sight of that soft-footed Chinese beggar Ah

Ling just whisking round the corner of the hall, but I

fancy I was mistaken."

"When did you last see your uncle, Mr. Paynter? I

mean before you came to live with him."

"Oh! not since I was a kid of ten. He and his brother 102 Agatha Christie

(my father) quarrelled, you know."

"But he found you again with very little trouble, did he not? In spite of all the years that had passed?"

"Yes, it was quite a bit of luck my seeing the lawyer's advertisement."

Poirot asked no more questions.

Our next move was to visit Dr. Quentin. His story was

substantially the same as he had told at the inquest, and he had little to add to it. He received us in his surgery, having just come to the end of his consulting patients.