loom most largely in the public eye are men of little or no personality. They are marionettes who dance to the wires pulled by a master hand, and that hand is Li Chang Yen's. His is the controlling brain of the East today. We don't understand the East--we never shall; but Li Chang Yen is its moving spirit. Not that he comes out into the limelight--oh, not at all; he never moves from his palace in Pekin. But he pulls strings--that's it, pulls strings--and things happen far away.""And is there no one to oppose him?" asked Poirot. Mr. Ingles leant forward in his chair. "Four men have tried in the last four years," he said slowly; "men of character, and honesty, and brain power. Any one of them might in time have interfered with his plans." He paused. "Well?" I queried. "Well, they are dead. One wrote an article, and mentioned Li Chang Yen's name in connection with the riots in Pekin, and within two days he was stabbed in the street. His murderer was never caught. The offences of the other two were similar. In a speech or an article, or in conversation, each linked Li Chang Yen's name with rioting or revolution, and within a week of his indiscretion each was dead. One was poisoned; one died of cholera, an isolated case--not part of an epidemic; and one was found dead in his bed. The cause of the last death was never determined, but I was told by a doctor who saw the corpse that it was burnt and shrivelled as though a wave of electrical energy of incredible power had passed through it." "And Li Chang Yen?" inquired Poirot. "Naturally nothing is traced to him, but there are signs, eh?" Mr. Ingles shrugged. "Oh, signs--yes, certainly. And once I found a man who would talk, a brilliant young Chinese chemist who was a protégé of Li Chang Yen's. He came to me one day, this chemist, and I could see that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He hinted to me of experiments on which he'd been engaged in Li Chang Yen's palace under the mandarin's direction--experiments on coolies in which the most revolting disregard for human life and suffering had been shown. His nerve had completely broken, and he was in the most pitiable state of terror. I put him to bed in a top room of my own house, intending to question him the next day--and that, of course, was stupid of me." "How did they get him?" demanded Poirot. "That I shall never know. I woke that night to find my house in flames, and was lucky to escape with my life. Investigation showed that a fire of amazing intensity had broken out on the top floor, and the remains of my young chemist friend were charred to a cinder." I could see from the earnestness with which he had been speaking that Mr. Ingles was a man mounted on his hobby horse, and evidently he, too, realized that he had been carried away, for he 

 Prev. P 13/149 next