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 her? It was a pretty thin story to make her swallow—all that about a dead child.”

“The countess has a great deal more perspicacity than you have, my dear Hastings. She was taken in at first by my disguise; but she soon saw through it. When she said, ‘You are very clever, M. Achille Poirot,’ I knew that she had guessed the truth. It was then or never to play my trump card.”

“All that rigmarole about bringing the dead to life?”

“Exactly—but then, you see, I had the child all along.”

“What?”

“But yes! You know my motto—Be prepared. As soon as I found that the Countess Rossakoff was mixed up with the Big Four, I had every possible inquiry made as to her antecedents. I learnt that she had had a child who was reported to have been killed, and I also found that there were discrepancies in the story which led me to wonder whether it might not, after all, be alive. In the end, I succeeded in tracing the boy, and by paying out a big sum I obtained possession of the child’s person. The poor little fellow was nearly dead of starvation. I placed him in a safe place, with kindly people, and took a snapshot of him in his new