“And in China?” he asked. “He moves there too?”

The other nodded in emphatic assent.

“There,” he said, “although I can produce no proof that would count in a court of law, I speak from my own knowledge. I know personally every man who counts for anything in China today, and this I can tell you: the men who loom most largely in the public eye are men of little or no personality. They are marionettes who dance to the wires pulled by a master hand, and that hand is Li Chang Yen’s. His is the controlling brain of the East today. We don’t understand the East⁠—we never shall; but Li Chang Yen is its moving spirit. Not that he comes out into the limelight⁠—oh, not at all; he never moves from his palace in Peking. But he pulls strings⁠—that’s it, pulls strings⁠—and things happen far away.”

“And there is no one to oppose him?” asked Poirot.

Mr. Ingles leant forward in his chair.