of two things about him—that he was a stranger to the neighborhood, and that

whatever his object in going to Fernly, there was no great secrecy about it,

since he twice asked the way there.”

 

“Yes,” I said, “I see that.”

 

“Now I have made it my business to find out more about this man. He had a drink

at the Three Boars, I learn, and the barmaid there says that he spoke with an

American accent and mentioned having just come over from the States. Did it

strike you that he had an American accent?”

 

“Yes, I think he had,” I said, after a minute or two, during which I cast my

mind back; “but a very slight one.”

 

“_Précisément._ There is also this which, you will remember, I picked up in the

summer-house?”

 

He held out to me the little quill. I looked at it curiously. Then a memory of

something I had read stirred in me.

 

Poirot, who had been watching my face, nodded.

 

“Yes, heroin ‘snow.’ Drug-takers carry it like this, and sniff it up the nose.”

 

“Diamorphine hydrochloride,” I murmured mechanically.