"What is it, mon amil But what is it--then? Tell

me." Word by word, I got the thing told, shuddering as I did so. Poirot uttered a cry.

"My friend! My friend! But what you must have suffered!

And I who knew nothing of all this! But reassure

yourself .'All is well!"

"You will find her, you mean? But she is in South

America. And by the time we get there--long before,

she will be dead--and God knows how and in what horrible way she will have died."

"No, no, you do not understand. She is safe and well. She has never been in their hands for one instant."

"But I got a cable from Bronsen?"

"No, no, you did not. You may have got a cable from South America signed Bronsen--that is a very different

matter. Tell me, has it never occurred to you that an

organisation of this kind, with ramifications all over the world, might easily strike at us through that little girl, Cinderella, whom you love so well?"

"No, never," I replied.

"Well, it did to me. I said nothing to you because I did not want to upset you unnecessarily--but I took

measures of my own. Your wife's letters all seem to

have been written from the ranch, but in reality she has been in a place of safety devised by me for over three

months."

I looked at him for a long time.

"You are sure of that?"

"Parbleu! I know it. They tortured you with a lie!" I turned my head aside. Poirot put his hand on my

shoulder. There was something in his voice that I had

never heard there before.

"You like not that I should embrace you or display

the emotion, I know well. I will be very British. I will say nothing—but nothing at all. Only this—that in this

last adventure of ours, the honours are all with you, and happy is the man who has such a friend as I have!"

The Peroxide Blonde

I was very disappointed with the results of Poirot's

bomb attack on the premises in Chinatown. To begin

with, the leader of the gang had escaped. When Japp's

men rushed up in response to Poirot's whistle they

found four Chinamen unconscious in the hall, but the

man who had threatened me with death was not among

them. I remembered afterwards that when I was forced

out on to the doorstep, to decoy Poirot into the house,

this man had kept well in the background. Presumably

he was out of the danger zone of the gas bomb, and

made good his escape by one of the many exits which we

afterwards discovered.

From the four who remained in our hands we learnt

nothing. The fullest investigation by the police failed to bring to light anything to connect them with the Big

Four. They were ordinary low-class residents of the district, and they professed bland ignorance of the name Li

Chang Yen. A Chinese gentleman had hired them for