“Another piece of luck. Our friend Number Four (who certainly composed that ingenious letter) permitted himself a little jest at my moustaches, which rendered it extremely easy for me to adjust my respirator under the guise of a yellow muffler.”
“I remember,” I cried eagerly, and then with the word “remember” all the ghastly horror that I had temporarily forgotten came back to me. Cinderella —
I fell back with a groan.
I must have lost consciousness again for a minute or two. I awoke to find Poirot forcing some brandy between my lips.
“What is it, mon ami ? But what is it—then? Tell me.” Word by word, I got the thing told, shuddering as I did so. Poirot uttered a cry.
“My friend! My friend! But what you must have suffered! And I who knew nothing of all this! But reassure yourself! All is well!”
“You will find her, you mean? But she is in South America. And by the time we get there—long before, she will be dead—and God knows how and in what horrible way she will have died.”
“No, no, you do not understand. She is safe and well. She has never been in their hands for one instant.”
“But I got a cable from Bronsen?”
“No, no, you did not. You may have got a cable from South America signed Bronsen—that is a very different matter. Tell me, has it never occurred to you that an organization of this kind, with ramifications all over the world, might easily strike at us through the little girl, Cinderella, whom you love so well?”
“No, never,” I replied.