She smiled faintly.

"But also I am here on a matter of

business. I have been looking, Madame, for a long time for a certain maid of yours

--her name was Nita."

"Nita ?"

She stared at him. Her eyes were large

and startled. She said:

"What do you know about --Nita ?

"I will tell you."

He told her of the evening when his car

had broken down and of Ted Williamson

standing there twisting his cap between his

fingers and stammering out his love and

his pain. She listened with close attention.

She said when he had finished:

"It is touching, that --yes, it is touching.

..."

Hercule Poirot nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It is a tale of Arcady, is it not ? What can you tell me, Madame, of

this girl ?"

Katrina Samoushenka sighed.

"I had a maid--Juanita. She was

lovely, yes --gay, light of heart. It hap128

pened to her what happens so often to

those the gods favour. She died young."

They had been Poirot's own words - final words --irrevocable words--Now he heard them again--and yet he persisted.

He asked:

"She is dead ?"

"Yes, she is dead."

Hercule Poirot was silent a minute, then

he said:

"Yet there is one thing I do not quite

understand. I asked Sir George Sanderfield

about this maid of yours and he

seemed afraid. Why was that ?"

There was a faint expression of disgust

on the dancer's face.

"You just said a maid of mine. He

thought you meant Marie --the girl who

came to me after Juanita left. She tried to

blackmail him, I believe, over something

that she found out about him. She was an

odious girl--inquisitive, always prying

into letters and locked drawers."

Poirot murmured:

"Then that explains that."

He paused a minute, then he went on, still persistent:

"Juanita^s other name was Valetta and

129

she died of an operation for appendicitis in

Pisa. Is that correct ?"

He noted the hesitation, hardly perceptible

but nevertheless there, before the

dancer bowed her head.

"Yes, that is right. ..."

Poirot said meditatively:

"And yet --there is still a little point - her people spoke of her, not as Juanita but as Bianca."

Katrina shrugged her thin shoulders.

She said: "Bianca --Juanita, does it matter ?

I suppose her real name was Bianca but she

thought the name of Juanita was more

romantic and so chose to call herself by it."

"Ah, you think that?" He paused and

then, his voice changing, he said: "For me,

there is another explanation."

"What is it ?"

Poirot leaned forward. He said:

"The girl that Ted Williamson saw had

hair that he described as being like wings

of gold."

He leaned still a little further forward.

His finger just touched the two springing

waves of Katrina's hair.

"Wings of gold, horns of gold ? It is as

you look at it, it is whether one sees you as

130

devil or as angel! You might be either. Or are they perhaps only the golden horns of the stricken deer ?"