Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie [98]
Anthony shook his head gently.
‘I’m sorry for you, Lemoine. You’re really a very able fellow. But, all the same, you’re going to lose the trick. I’m about to play my trump card.’
He stepped across the room and rang the bell. Tredwell answered it.
‘A gentlemen arrived with me this evening, Tredwell.’
‘Yes, sir, a foreign gentleman.’
‘Quite so. Will you kindly ask him to join us here as soon as possible?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Tredwell withdrew.
‘Entry of the trump card, the mysterious Monsieur X,’ remarked Anthony. ‘Who is he? Can anyone guess?’
‘Putting two and two together,’ said Herman Isaacstein, ‘what with your mysterious hints this morning, and your attitude this afternoon, I should say there was no doubt about it. Somehow or other you’ve managed to get hold of Prince Nicholas of Herzoslovakia.’
‘You think the same, Baron?’
‘I do. Unless yet another impostor you have put forward. But that I will not believe. With me, your dealings most honourable have been.’
‘Thank you, Baron. I shan’t forget those words. So you are all agreed?’
His eyes swept round the circle of waiting faces. Only Lemoine did not respond, but kept his eyes fixed sullenly on the table.
Anthony’s quick ears had caught the sound of footsteps outside in the hall.
‘And yet, you know,’ he said with a queer smile, ‘you’re all wrong!’
He crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open.
A man stood on the threshold–a man with a neat black beard, eyeglasses, and a foppish appearance slightly marred by a bandage round the head.
‘Allow me to present to you the real Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté.’
There was a rush and a scuffle, and then the nasal tones of Mr Hiram Fish rose bland and reassuring from the window:
‘No, you don’t, sonny–not this way. I have been stationed here this whole evening for the particular purpose of preventing your escape. You will observe that I have you covered well and good with this gun of mine. I came over to get you, and I’ve got you–but you sure are some lad!’
Chapter 29
Further Explanations
‘You owe us an explanation, I think, Mr Cade,’ said Herman Isaacstein, somewhat later in the evening.
‘There’s nothing much to explain,’ said Anthony modestly. ‘I went to Dover and Fish followed me under the impression that I was King Victor. We found a mysterious stranger imprisoned there, and as soon as we heard his story we knew where we were. The same idea again, you see. The real man kidnapped, and the false one–in this case King Victor himself–takes his place. But it seems that Battle here always thought there was something fishy about his French colleague, and wired to Paris for his fingerprints and other means of identification.’
‘Ah!’ cried the Baron. ‘The fingerprints. The Bertillon measurements that that scoundrel talked about?’
‘It was a clever idea,’ said Anthony. ‘I admired it so much that I felt forced to play it up. Besides, my doing so puzzled the false Lemoine enormously. You see, as soon as I had given the tip about the “rows” and where the jewel really was, he was keen to pass on the news to his accomplice, and at the same time to keep us all in that room. The note was really to Mademoiselle Brun. He told Tredwell to deliver it at once, and Tredwell did so by taking it upstairs to the schoolroom. Lemoine accused me of being King Victor, by that means creating a diversion and preventing anyone from leaving the room. By the time all that had been cleared up and we adjourned to the library to look for the stone, he flattered himself that the stone would be no longer there to find!’
George cleared his throat.
‘I must say, Mr Cade,’ he said pompously, ‘that I consider your action in that matter highly reprehensible. If the slightest hitch had occurred in your plans, one of our national possessions might have disappeared beyond the hope of recovery. It was foolhardy, Mr Cade, reprehensibly foolhardy.’
‘I guess you haven’t tumbled to the little idea, Mr Lomax,’ said the drawling voice of Mr Fish. ‘That historic diamond was