“Proceed, Madame. You comprehend, I am still in the dark.”
“It’s these letters.” Miss Marvell unclasped her handbag, and drew out three envelopes which she handed to Poirot.
The latter scrutinized them closely.
“Cheap paper—the name and address carefully printed. Let us see the inside.” He drew out the enclosure.
I had joined him, and was leaning over his shoulder. The writing consisted of a single sentence, carefully printed like the envelope. It ran as follows:
“The great diamond which is the left eye of the god must return whence it came.”
The second letter was couched in precisely the same terms, but the third was more explicit:
“You have been warned. You have not obeyed. Now the diamond will be taken from you. At the full of the moon, the two diamonds which are the left and right eye of the god shall return. So it is written.”
“The first letter I treated as a joke,” explained Miss Marvell. “When I got the second, I began to wonder. The third one came yesterday, and it seemed to me that, after all, the matter might be more serious than I had imagined.”
“I see they did not come by post, these letters.”