The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [104]
whisper.
“I’m ’ere, guv’nor. Time for me to do my stuff?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“There’s a nawful lot of coppers about!”
“That is all right. They’ve been told about you.”
“I ’ope they won’t interfere, that’s all?”
“They will not interfere. You’re sure you can accomplish what you have set out to do? The animal in question is both large and fierce.”
“ ’E won’t be fierce to me,” said the little man confidently. “Not with what I’ve got ’ere! Any dog’ll follow me to Hell for it!”
“In this case,” murmured Hercule Poirot, “he has to follow you out of Hell!”
VI
In the small hours of the morning the telephone rang. Poirot picked up the receiver.
Japp’s voice said:
“You asked me to ring you.”
“Yes, indeed. Eh bien?”
“No dope—we got the emeralds.”
“Where?”
“In Professor Liskeard’s pocket.”
“Professor Liskeard?”
“Surprises you, too? Frankly I don’t know what to think! He looked as astonished as a baby, stared at them, said he hadn’t
the faintest idea how they got in his pocket, and dammit I believe he was speaking the truth! Varesco could have slipped them into his pocket easily enough in the black out. I can’t see a man like old Liskeard being mixed up in this sort of business. He belongs to all these high-falutin’ societies, why he’s even connected with the British Museum! The only thing he ever spends money on is books, and musty old secondhand books at that. No, he doesn’t fit. I’m beginning to think we’re wrong about the whole thing—there never has been any dope in that Club.”
“Oh, yes there has, my friend, it was there tonight. Tell me, did no one come out through your secret way?”
“Yes, Prince Henry of Scandenberg and his equerry—he only arrived in England yesterday. Vitamian Evans, the Cabinet Minister (devil of a job being a Labor Minister, you have to be so careful! Nobody minds a Tory politician spending money on riotous living because the taxpayers think it’s his own money—but when it’s a Labor man the public feel it’s their money he’s spending! And so it is in a manner of speaking.) Lady Beatrice Viner was the last—she’s getting married the day after tomorrow to the priggish young Duke of Leominster. I don’t believe any of that lot were mixed up in this.”
“You believe rightly. Nevertheless, the dope was in the Club and someone took it out of the Club.”
“Who did?”
“I did, mon ami,” said Poirot softly.
He replaced the receiver, cutting off Japp’s spluttering noises, as a bell trilled out. He went and opened the front door. The Countess Rossakoff sailed in.
“If it were not that we are, alas, too old, how compromising this would be!” she exclaimed. “You see, I have come as you told me to do in your note. There is, I think, a policeman behind me, but he can stay in the street. And now, my friend, what
is it?”
Poirot gallantly relieved her of her fox furs.
“Why did you put those emeralds in Professor Liskeard’s pocket?” he demanded. “Ce n’est pas gentille, ce que vous avez fait là!”
The Countess’s eyes opened wide.
“Naturally, it was in your pocket I meant to put the emeralds!”
“Oh, in my pocket?”
“Certainly. I cross hurriedly to the table where you usually sit—but the lights they are out and I suppose by inadvertence I put them in the Professor’s pocket.”
“And why did you wish to put stolen emeralds in my pocket?”
“It seemed to me—I had to think quickly, you understand—the best thing to do!”
“Really, Vera, you are impayable!”
“But, dear friend, consider! The police arrive, the lights go out (our little private arrangement for the patrons who must not be embarrassed) and a hand takes my bag off the table. I snatch it back, but I feel through the velvet something hard inside. I slip my hand in, I find what I know by touch to be jewels and I comprehend at once who has put them there!”
“Oh you do?”
“Of course I do! It is that salaud! It is that lizard, that monster, that double-faced, double-crossing,