I followed his gaze to the mantelpiece. The clock had stopped at four o’clock.
“ Mon ami , someone 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 grey 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: