“Anyone else?”
“Chap called Yougouian was suspected of being in with them. He’s a dealer. Headquarters in Stamboul but he has a shop in Paris. Nothing proved against him—but he’s a slippery customer.”
Poirot sighed. He looked at his little notebook. In it was written: America, Australia, Italy, France, Turkey. . . .
He murmured:
“I’ll put a girdle round the earth—”
“Pardon?” said Inspector Wagstaffe.
“I was observing,” said Hercule Poirot, “that a world tour seems indicated.”
III
It was the habit of Hercule Poirot to discuss his cases with his capable valet, George. That is to say, Hercule Poirot would let drop certain observations to which George would reply with the worldly wisdom which he had acquired in the course of his career as a gentleman’s gentleman.
“If you were faced, George,” said Poirot, “with the necessity of conducting investigations in five different parts of the globe, how would you set about it?”
“Well, sir, air travel is very quick, though some say as it upsets the stomach. I couldn’t say myself.”
“One asks oneself,” said Hercule Poirot, “what would Hercules have done?”
“You mean the bicycle chap, sir?”
“Or,” pursued Hercule Poirot, “one simply asks, what did he do? And the answer, George, is that he travelled energetically. But he was forced in the end to obtain information—as some say—from Prometheus—others from Nereus.”
“Indeed, sir?” said George. “I never heard of either of those gentlemen. Are they travel agencies, sir?”
Hercule Poirot, enjoying the sound of his own voice, went on:
“My client, Emery Power, understands only one thing—action! But it is useless to dispense energy by unnecessary action. There is a golden rule in life, George, never do anything yourself that others can do for you.
“Especially,” added Hercule Poirot, rising and going to the bookshelf, “when expense is no object!”
He took from the shelf a file labelled with the letter D and opened it at the words “Detective Agencies—Reliable.”
“The modern Prometheus,” he murmured. “Be so obliging, George, as to copy out for me certain names and addresses. Messrs Hankerton, New York. Messrs Laden and Bosher, Sydney. Signor Giovanni Mezzi, Rome. M. Nahum, Stamboul. Messrs Roget et Franconard, Paris.”
He paused while George finished this. Then he said:
“And now be so kind as to look up the trains for Liverpool.”
“Yes, sir, you are going to Liverpool, sir?”
“I am afraid so. It is possible, George, that I may have to go even further. But not just yet.”
IV
It was three months later that Hercule Poirot stood on a rocky point and surveyed the Atlantic Ocean. Gulls rose and swooped down again with long melancholy cries. The air was soft and damp.
Hercule Poirot had the feeling, not uncommon in those who come to Inishgowlen for the first time, that he had reached the end of the world. He had never in his life imagined anything so remote, so desolate, so abandoned. It had beauty, a melancholy, haunted beauty, the beauty of a remote and incredible past. Here, in the west of Ireland, the Romans had never marched, tramp, tramp, tramp; had never fortified a camp; had never built a well-ordered, sensible, useful road. It was a land where common sense and an orderly way of life were unknown.
Hercule Poirot looked down at the tips of his patent-leather shoes and sighed. He felt forlorn and very much alone. The standards by which he lived were here not appreciated.
His eyes swept slowly up and down the desolate coast line, then once more out to sea. Somewhere out there, so tradition had it, were the Isles of the Blest, the Land of Youth. . . .
He murmured to himself:
“The Apple Tree, the Singing and the Gold . . .”
And suddenly, Hercule Poirot was himself again—the spell was broken, he was once more in harmony with his patent-leather shoes and natty, dark grey gent’s suiting.
Not very far away he had heard the toll of a bell. He understood that bell. It was a sound he had been familiar with from early youth.
He set off briskly along the cliff. In about ten minutes he came in sight of the building on the cliff. A high wall surrounded it and a great wooden door studded with nails was set in the wall. Hercule Poirot came to this door and knocked. There was a vast iron knocker. Then he cautiously pulled at a rusty chain and a shrill little bell tinkled briskly inside the door.
A small panel in the door was pushed aside and showed a face. It was a suspicious face, framed in starched white. There was a distinct moustache on the upper lip, but the voice was the voice of a woman, it was the voice of what Hercule Poirot called a femme formidable.
It demanded his business.
“Is this the Convent of St. Mary and All Angels?”
The formidable woman said with asperity:
“And what else would it be?”
Hercule Poirot did not attempt to answer that. He said to the dragon:
“I would like to see the Mother Superior.”
The dragon was unwilling, but in the end she yielded. Bars were drawn back, the door opened and Hercule Poirot was conducted to a small bare room where visitors to the Convent were received.
Presently a nun glided in, her rosary swinging at her waist.
Hercule Poirot was a Catholic by birth. He understood the atmosphere in which he found himself.
“I apologize for troubling you, ma mère,” he said, “but you have here, I think, a religieuse who was, in the world, Kate Casey.”
The Mother Superior bowed her head. She said:
“That is so. Sister Mary Ursula in religion.”
Hercule Poirot said: “There is a certain wrong that needs righting. I believe that Sister Mary Ursula could help me. She has information that might be invaluable.”
The Mother Superior shook her head. Her face was placid, her voice calm and remote. She said:
“Sister Mary Ursula cannot help you.”
“But I assure you—”
He broke off. The Mother Superior said:
“Sister Mary Ursula died two months ago.”
V
In the saloon bar of Jimmy Donovan’s Hotel, Hercule Poirot sat uncomfortably against the wall. The hotel did not come up to his ideas of what a hotel should be. His bed was broken—so were two of the window panes in his room—thereby admitting that night air which Hercule Poirot distrusted so much. The hot water brought him had been tepid and the meal he had eaten was producing curious and painful sensations in his inside.
There were five men in the bar and they were all talking politics. For the most part Hercule Poirot could not understand what they said. In any case, he did not much care.
Presently he found one of the men sitting beside him. This was a man of slightly different class to the others. He had the stamp of the seedy townsman upon him.
He said with immense dignity:
“I tell you, sir. I tell you—Pegeen’s Pride hasn’t got a chance, not a chance . . . bound to finish right down the course—right down the course. You take my tip . . . everybody ought to take my tip. Know who I am, shir, do you know, I shay? Atlas, thatsh who I am—Atlas of the Dublin Sun . . . been tipping winnersh all the season . . . Didn’t I give Larry’s Girl? Twenty-five to one—twenty-five to one. Follow Atlas and you can’t go wrong.”
Hercule Poirot regarded him with a strange reverence. He said, and his voice trembled:
“Mon Dieu, it is an omen!”
VI
It was some hours later. The moon showed from time to time, peeping out coquettishly from behind the clouds. Poirot and his new friend had walked some miles. The former was limping. The idea crossed his mind that there were, after all, other shoes—more suitable to country walking than patent leather. Actually George had respectfully conveyed as much. “A nice pair of brogues,” was what George had said.
Herc
ule Poirot had not cared for the idea. He liked his feet to look neat and well-shod. But now, tramping along this stony path, he realized that there were other shoes. . . .
His companion said suddenly:
“Is it the way the Priest would be after me for this? I’ll not have a mortal sin upon my conscience.”
Hercule Poirot said: “You are only restoring to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”
They had come to the wall of the Convent. Atlas prepared to do his part.
A groan burst from him and he exclaimed in low, poignant tones that he was destroyed entirely!
Hercule Poirot spoke with authority.
“Be quiet. It is not the weight of the world that you have to support—only the weight of Hercule Poirot.”
VII
Atlas was turning over two new five pound notes.
He said hopefully:
“Maybe I’ll not remember in the morning the way I earned this. I’m after worrying that Father O’Reilly will be after me.”
“Forget everything, my friend. Tomorrow the world is yours.”
Atlas murmured:
“And what’ll I put it on? There’s Working Lad, he’s a grand horse, a lovely horse he is! And there’s Sheila Boyne. 7 to 1 I’d get on her.”
He paused:
“Was it my fancy now or did I hear you mention the name of a heathen god? Hercules, you said, and glory be to God, there’s a Hercules running in the three-thirty tomorrow.”
“My friend,” said Hercule Poirot, “put your money on that horse. I tell you this, Hercules cannot fail.”
And it is certainly true that on the following day Mr. Rosslyn’s Hercules very unexpectedly won the Boynan Stakes, starting price 60 to 1.
VIII
Deftly Hercule Poirot unwrapped the neatly done-up parcel. First the brown paper, then the wadding, lastly the tissue paper.
On the desk in front of Emery Power he placed a gleaming golden cup. Chased on it was a tree bearing apples of green emeralds.
The financier drew a deep breath. He said:
“I congratulate you, M. Poirot.”
Hercule Poirot bowed.
Emery Power stretched out a hand. He touched the rim of the goblet, drawing his finger round it. He said in a deep voice:
“Mine!”
Hercule Poirot agreed.
“Yours!”
The other gave a sigh. He leaned back in his chair. He said in a businesslike voice:
“Where did you find it?”
Hercule Poirot said:
“I found it on an altar.”
Emery Power stared.
Poirot went on:
“Casey’s daughter was a nun. She was about to take her final vows at the time of her father’s death. She was an ignorant but devout girl. The cup was hidden in her father’s house in Liverpool. She took it to the Convent wanting, I think, to atone for her father’s sins. She gave it to be used to the glory of God. I do not think that the nuns themselves ever realized its value. They took it, probably, for a family heirloom. In their eyes it was a chalice and they used it as such.”
Emery Power said:
“An extraordinary story!” He added: “What made you think of going there?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps—a process of elimination. And then there was the extraordinary fact that no one had ever tried to dispose of the cup. That looked, you see, as though it were in a place where ordinary material values did not apply. I remembered that Patrick Casey’s daughter was a nun.”
Power said heartily:
“Well, as I said before, I congratulate you. Let me know your fee and I’ll write you a cheque.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“There is no fee.”
The other stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever read fairy stories when you were a child? The King in them would say: ‘Ask of me what you will?’ ”
“So you are asking something?”
“Yes, but not money. Merely a simple request.”
“Well, what is it? Do you want a tip for the markets?”
“That would be only money in another form. My request is much simpler than that.”
“What is it?”
Hercule Poirot laid his hands on the cup.
“Send this back to the Convent.”
There was a pause. Then Emery Power said:
“Are you quite mad?”
Hercule Poirot shook his head.
“No, I am not mad. See, I will show you something.”
He picked up the goblet. With his fingernail, he pressed hard into the open jaws of the snake that was coiled round the tree. Inside the cup a tiny portion of the gold chased interior slid aside leaving an aperture into the hollow handle.
Poirot said:
“You see? This was the drinking cup of the Borgia Pope. Through this little hole the poison passed into the drink. You have said yourself that the history of this cup is evil. Violence and blood and evil passions have accompanied its possession. Evil will perhaps come to you in your turn.”
“Superstition!”
“Possibly. But why were you so anxious to possess this thing? Not for its beauty. Not for its value. You have a hundred—a thousand perhaps—beautiful and rare things. You wanted it to sustain your pride. You were determined not to be beaten. Eh bien, you are not beaten. You win! The goblet is in your possession. But now, why not make a great—a supreme gesture? Send it back to where it has dwelt in peace for nearly ten years. Let the evil of it be purified there. It belonged to the Church once—let it return to the Church. Let it stand once more on the altar, purified and absolved as we hope that the souls of men shall be also purified and absolved from their sins.”
He leaned forward.
“Let me describe for you the place where I found it—the Garden of Peace, looking out over the Western Sea towards a forgotten Paradise of Youth and Eternal Beauty.”
He spoke on, describing in simple words the remote charm of Inishgowlen.
Emery Power sat back, one hand over his eyes. He said at last:
“I was born on the west coast of Ireland. I left there as a boy to go to America.”
Poirot said gently:
“I heard that.”
The financier sat up. His eyes were shrewd again. He said, and there was a faint smile on his lips:
“You are a strange man, M. Poirot. You shall have your way. Take the goblet to the Convent as a gift in my name. A pretty costly gift. Thirty thousand pounds—and what shall I get in exchange?”
Poirot said gravely:
“The nuns will say Masses for your soul.”
The rich man’s smile widened—a rapacious, hungry smile. He said:
“So, after all, it may be an investment! Perhaps, the best one I ever made. . . .”
IX
In the little parlour of the Convent, Hercule Poirot told his story and restored the chalice to the Mother Superior.
She murmured:
“Tell him we thank him and we will pray for him.”
Hercule Poirot said gently:
“He needs your prayers.”
“Is he then an unhappy man?”
Poirot said:
“So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.”
The nun said softly:
“Ah, a rich man. . . .”
Hercule Poirot said nothing—for he knew there was nothing to say. . . .
Fifty
THE CAPTURE OF CERBERUS
“The Capture of Cerberus” was first published in the Collins hardcover edition of The Labours of Hercules, September 1947.
Hercule Poirot, swaying to and fro in the tube train, thrown now against one body, now against another, thought to himself that there were too many people in the world! Certainly there were too many people in the Underground world of London at this particular moment (6:30 p.m.) of the evening. Heat,
noise, crowd, contiguity—the unwelcome pressure of hands, arms, bodies, shoulders! Hemmed in and pressed around by strangers—and on the whole (he thought distastefully) a plain and uninteresting lot of strangers! Humanity seen thus en masse was not attractive. How seldom did one see a face sparkling with intelligence, how seldom a femme bien mise! What was this passion that attacked women for knitting under the most unpropitious conditions? A woman did not look her best knitting; the absorption, the glassy eyes, the restless, busy fingers! One needed the agility of a wild cat, and the will-power of a Napoleon to manage to knit in a crowded tube, but women managed it! If they succeeded in obtaining a seat, out came a miserable little strip of shrimp pink and click, click went the pins!
No repose, thought Poirot, no feminine grace! His elderly soul revolted from the stress and hurry of the modern world. All these young women who surrounded him—so alike, so devoid of charm, so lacking in rich, alluring femininity! He demanded a more flamboyant appeal. Ah! to see a femme du monde, chic, sympathetic, spirituelle—a woman with ample curves, a woman ridiculously and extravagantly dressed! Once there had been such women. But now—now—
The train stopped at a station; people surged out, forcing Poirot back on to the points of knitting pins; surged in, squeezing him into even more sardinelike proximity with his fellow passengers. The train started off again, with a jerk, Poirot was thrown against a stout woman with knobbly parcels, said “Pardon!” bounced off again into a long angular man whose attaché case caught him in the small of the back. He said “Pardon!” again. He felt his moustaches becoming limp and uncurled. Quel enfer! Fortunately the next station was his!
It was also the station of what seemed to be about a hundred and fifty other people, since it happened to be Piccadilly Circus. Like a great tidal wave they flowed out on to the platform. Presently Poirot was again jammed tightly on an escalator being carried upwards towards the surface of the earth.
Up, thought Poirot, from the Infernal Regions . . . How exquisitely painful was a suitcase rammed into one’s knees from behind on an ascending escalator!
At that moment, a voice cried his name. Startled, he raised his eyes. On the opposite escalator, the one descending, his unbelieving eyes saw a vision from the past. A woman of full and flamboyant form; her luxuriant henna red hair crowned with a small plastron of straw to which was attached a positive platoon of brilliantly feathered little birds. Exotic-looking furs dripped from her shoulders.