"The clock, Hastings, look at the clock."
I followed his gaze to the mantelpiece.
The clock had stopped at four o'clock.
"Mon ami, some one has tampered with it.
It had still three days to run.
It is an eight-day clock, you comprehend?"
"But what should they want to do that for?
Some idea of a false scent by making the crime appear to have taken place at four o'clock?"
"No, no; rearrange your ideas, mon ami.
Exercise your little gray cells.
You are Mayerling.
You hear something, perhaps - and you know well enough that your doom is sealed.
You have just time to leave a sign.
Four o'clock, Hastings.
Number Four, the destroyer.
Ah! an idea!"
He rushed into the other room and seized the telephone.
He asked for Hanwell.
"You are the Asylum, yes?
I understand there has been an escape today?
What is that you say?
A little moment, if you please. Will you repeat that?
Ah! parfaitement."
He hung up the receiver, and turned to me.
"You heard, Hastings?
There has been no escape."
"But the man who came - the keeper?" I said.
"I wonder - I very much wonder."
"You mean -?"
"Number Four - the destroyer."
I gazed at Poirot dumbfounded.
A minute or two after, on recovering my voice, I said:
"We shall know him again, anywhere, that's one thing.
He was a man of very pronounced personality."
"Was he, mon ami?
I think not.
He was burly and bluff and red-faced, with a thick moustache and a hoarse voice.
He will be none of those things by this time, and for the rest, he has nondescript eyes, nondescript ears, and a perfect set of false teeth.
Identification is not such an easy matter as you seem to think.
Next time -"
"You think there will be a next time?" I interrupted.
Poirot's face grew very grave.
"It is a duel to the death, won ami.
You and I on the one side, the Big Four on the other.
They have won the first trick; but they have failed in their plan to get me out of the way, and in the future they have to reckon with Hercule Poirot!"
Chapter 3 WE HEAR MORE ABOUT LI CHANG YEN
For a day or two after our visit from the fake Asylum attendant I was in some hopes that he might return, and I refused to leave the flat even for a moment.
As far as I could see, he had no reason to suspect that we had penetrated his disguise.
He might, I thought, return and try to remove the body, but Poirot scoffed at my reasoning.
"Mon ami," he said, "if you wish you may wait in to put salt on the little bird's tail, but for me I do not waste my time so."