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Rh your master was dead; and you were just preparing to make a bolt of it when the good Betsy made her terrible discovery.”

The man stared at Poirot with a dropped jaw.

“Come now, is it not so? I tell you solemnly—on my word of honour—that to be frank now is your only chance.”

“I’ll risk it,” said the man suddenly. “It was just as you say. I came in, and went straight to the master—and there he was, dead on the floor and blood all round. Then I got the wind up proper. They’d ferret out my record, and for a certainty they’d say it was me as had done him in. My only thought was to get away—at once—before he was found”

“And the jade figures?”

The man hesitated.

“You see”

“You took them by a kind of reversion to instinct, as it were? You had heard your master say that they were valuable, and you felt you might as well go the whole hog. That, I understand. Now, answer me this. Was it the second time that you went into the room that you took the figures?”

“I didn’t go in a second time. Once was enough for me.”

“You are sure of that?”