Once clear of the quarry he embraced me with vigour.
"You are alive—you are unhurt. It is magnificent. Often have I blamed myself for letting you go."
"I'm perfectly all right," I said, disengaging myself. "But I'm just a bit fogged. You tumbled to their little scheme, did you?"
"But I was waiting for it! For what else did I permit you to go there? Your false name, your disguise, not for a moment was it intended to deceive!"
"What?" I cried. "You never told me."
"As I have frequently told you, Hastings, you have a nature so beautiful and so honest that unless you are yourself deceived, it is impossible for you to deceive others. Good, then, you are spotted from the first, and they do what I had counted on their doing—a mathematical certainty to any one who uses his gray cells properly—use you as a decoy. They set the girl on—By the way, mon ami, as an interesting fact psychologically, has she got red hair?"
"If you mean Miss Martin," I said coldly. "Her hair is a delicate shade of auburn, but—"
"They are épatant—these people! They have even studied your psychology. Oh! yes, my friend, Miss Martin was in the plot—very much so. She repeats the letter to you, together with her tale of Mr. Ryland's wrath, you write it down, you puzzle your brains—the cipher is nicely arranged, difficult, but not too difficult—you solve it, and you send for me."
"But what they do not know is that I am waiting for just this very thing to happen. I go post haste to Japp and arrange things. And so, as you see, all is triumph!"
I was not particularly pleased with Poirot, and I told him so. We went back to London on a milk train in the early hours of the morning, and a most uncomfortable journey it was.