The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [102]
“So you knew that?” said Poirot softly.
Her eyes met his and she smiled.
“Mon cher ami, I am not so simple as you seem to suppose!”
“Do you also deal in drugs here?”
“Ah, ça no!” The Countess spoke sharply. “That would be an abomination!”
Poirot looked at her for a moment or two, then he sighed.
“I believe you,” he said. “But in that case it is all the more necessary that you tell me who really owns this place.”
“I own it,” she snapped.
“On paper, yes. But there is someone behind you.”
“Do you know, mon ami, I find you altogether too curious? Is he not much too curious, Dou dou?”
Her voice dropped to a coo as she spoke the last words and she threw the duck bone from her plate to the big black hound who caught it with a ferocious snap of the jaws.
“What is it that you call that animal,” asked Poirot, diverted.
“C’est mon petit Dou dou!”
“But it is ridiculous, a name like that!”
“But he is adorable! He is a police dog! He can do anything—
anything—Wait!”
She rose, looked round her, and suddenly snatched up a plate with a large succulent steak which had just been deposited before a diner at a nearby table. She crossed to the marble niche and put the plate down in front of the dog, at the same time uttering a few words in Russian.
Cerberus gazed in front of him. The steak might not have existed.
“You see? And it is not just a matter of minutes! No, he will remain like that for hours if need be!”
Then she murmured a word and like lightning Cerberus bent his long neck and the steak disappeared as though by magic.
Vera Rossakoff flung her arms round the dog’s neck and embraced him passionately, rising on tiptoe to do so.
“See how gentle he can be!” she cried. “For me, for Alice, for his friends—they can do what they like! But one has but to give him the word and Presto! I can assure you he would tear a—police inspector, for instance—into little pieces! Yes, into little pieces!”
She burst out laughing.
“I would have but to say the word—”
Poirot interrupted hastily. He mistrusted the Countess’s sense of humour. Inspector Stevens might be in real danger.
“Professor Liskeard wants to speak to you.”
The professor was standing reproachfully at her elbow.
“You took my steak,” he complained. “Why did you take my steak? It was a good steak!”
IV
“Thursday night, old man,” said Japp. “That’s when the balloon goes up. It’s Andrews’ pigeon, of course—Narcotic Squad—but he’ll be delighted to have you horn in. No, thanks, I won’t have any of your fancy sirops. I have to take care of my stomach. Is that whisky I see over there? That’s more the ticket!”
Setting his glass down, he went on:
“We’ve solved the problem, I think. There’s another way out at the Club—and we’ve found it!”
“Where?”
“Behind the grill. Part of it swings round.”
“But surely you would see—”
“No, old boy. When the raid started, the lights went out—switched off at the main—and it took us a minute or two to get them turned on again. Nobody got out the front way because it was being watched, but it’s clear now that somebody could have nipped out by the secret way with the doings. We’ve been examining the house behind the Club—and that’s how we tumbled to the trick.”
“And you propose to do—what?”
Japp winked.
“Let it go according to plan—the police appear, the lights go out—and somebody’s waiting on the other side of that secret door to see who comes through. This time we’ve got ’em!”
“Why Thursday?”
Again Japp winked.
“We’ve got the Golconda pretty well taped now.