One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Part 7

There was nothing more to be gleaned at the Glengowrie Court Hotel except the negative fact that Miss Sainsbury Seale had not seemed excited or worried in any way when she went out, and it would appear that she had definitely intended to return since on pa.s.sing her friend Mrs Bolitho in the hall, she had called out: 'After dinner I will show you that Patience I was telling you about.'

Moreover, it was the custom at the Glengowrie Court to give notice in the dining-room if you intended to be out for a meal. Miss Sainsbury Seale had not done so. Therefore it seemed clear that she had intended returning for dinner which was served from seven-thirty to eight-thirty. But she had not returned. She had walked out into the Cromwell Road and disappeared. j.a.pp and Poirot called at the address in West Hampstead which had headed the letter found. It was a pleasant house and the Adams were pleasant people with a large family. They had lived in India for many years and spoke warmly of Miss Sainsbury Seale. But they could not help. They had not seen her lately, not for a month, not in fact since they came back from their Easter holidays. She had been staying then at a hotel near Russell Square. Mrs Adams gave Poirot the address of it and also the address of some other Anglo-Indian friends of Miss Sainsbury Seale's who lived in Streatham.

But the two men drew a blank in both places. Miss Sainsbury Seale had stayed at the hotel in question, but they remembered very little about her and nothing that could be of any help. She was a nice quiet lady and had lived abroad. The people in Streatham were no help either. They had not seen Miss Sainsbury Seale since February.

There remained the possibility of an accident, but that possibility was dispelled too. No hospital had admitted any casualty answering to the description given.

Miss Sainsbury Seale had disappeared into s.p.a.ce.

VI.

On the following morning, Poirot went to the Holborn Palace Hotel and asked for Mr Howard Raikes. By this time it would hardly have surprised him to hear that Mr Howard Raikes, too, had stepped out one evening and had never returned.

Mr Howard Raikes, however, was still at the Holborn Palace and was said to be breakfasting. The apparition of Hercule Poirot at the breakfast table seemed to give Mr Howard Raikes doubtful pleasure.

Though not looking so murderous as in Poirot's disordered recollection of him, his scowl was still formidable-he stared at his uninvited guest and said ungraciously: 'What the h.e.l.l?'

'You permit?'

Hercule Poirot drew a chair from another table.

Mr Raikes said: 'Don't mind me! Sit down and make yourself at home!'

Poirot smiling availed himself of the permission.

Mr Raikes said ungraciously: 'Well, what do you want?'

'Do you remember me at all, Mr Raikes?'

'Never set eyes on you in my life.'

'There you are wrong. You sat in the same room with me for at least five minutes not more than three days ago.'

'I can't remember every one I meet at some G.o.d-d.a.m.ned party or other.'

'It was not a party,' said Poirot. 'It was a dentist's waiting-room.'

Some swift emotion flashed into the young man's eyes and died again at once. His manner changed. It was no longer impatient and casual. It became suddenly wary. He looked across at Poirot and said: 'Well!'

Poirot studied him carefully before replying. He felt, quite positively, that this was indeed a dangerous young man. A lean hungry face, an aggressive jaw, the eyes of a fanatic. It was a face, though, that women might find attractive. He was untidily, even shabbily dressed, and he ate with a careless voraciousness that was, so the man watching him thought, significant. Poirot summed him up to himself.

'It is a wolf with ideas...'

Raikes said harshly: 'What the h.e.l.l do you mean-coming here like this?'

'My visit is disagreeable to you?'

'I don't even know who you are.'

'I apologize.'

Dexterously Poirot whipped out his card case. He extracted a card and pa.s.sed it across the table. Again that emotion that he could not quite define showed upon Mr Raikes' lean face. It was not fear-it was more aggressive than fear. After it, quite unquestionably, came anger. He tossed the card back.

'So that's who you are, is it? I've heard of you.'

'Most people have,' said Hercule Poirot modestly.

'You're a private d.i.c.k, aren't you? The expensive kind. The kind people hire when money is no object-when it's worth paying anything in order to save their miserable skins!'

'If you do not drink your coffee,' said Hercule Poirot, 'it will get cold.'

He spoke kindly and with authority.

Raikes stared at him.

'Say, just what kind of an insect are you?'

'The coffee in this country is very bad anyway-' said Poirot.

'I'll say it is,' agreed Mr Raikes with fervour.

'But if you allow it to get cold it is practically undrinkable.'

The young man leant forward.

'What are you getting at? What's the big idea in coming round here?'

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

'I wanted to-see you.'

'Oh yes?' said Mr Raikes sceptically.

His eyes narrowed.

'If it's the money you're after, you've come to the wrong man! The people I'm in with can't afford to buy what they want. Better go back to the man who pays your salary.'

Poirot said, sighing: 'n.o.body has paid me anything-yet.'

'You're telling me,' said Mr Raikes.

'It is the truth,' said Hercule Poirot. 'I am wasting a good deal of valuable time for no recompense whatsoever. Simply, shall we say, to a.s.suage my curiosity.'

'And I suppose,' said Mr Raikes, 'you were just a.s.suaging your curiosity at that darned dentist's the other day.'

Poirot shook his head. He said: 'You seem to overlook the most ordinary reason for being in a dentist's waiting-room-which is that one is waiting to have one's teeth attended to.'

'So that's what you were doing?' Mr Raikes' tone expressed contemptuous unbelief. 'Waiting to have your teeth seen to?'

'Certainly.'

'You'll excuse me if I say I don't believe it.'

'May I ask then, Mr Raikes, whatyou were doing there?'

Mr Raikes grinned suddenly. He said: 'Got you there! I was waiting to have my teeth seen to also.'

'You had perhaps the toothache?'

'That's right, big boy.'

'But all the same, you went away without having your teeth attended to?'

'What if I did? That's my business.'

He paused-then he said, with a quick savagery of tone: 'Oh, what the h.e.l.l's the use of all this slick talking? You were there to look after your big shot. Well, he's all right, isn't he? Nothing happened to your precious Mr Alistair Blunt. You've nothing on me.'

Poirot said: 'Where did you go when you went so abruptly out of the waiting-room?'

'Left the house, of course.'

'Ah!' Poirot looked up at the ceiling.

'But n.o.body saw you leave, Mr Raikes.'

'Does that matter?'

'It might. Somebody died in that house not long afterwards, remember.'

Raikes said carelessly: 'Oh, you mean the dentist fellow.'

Poirot's tone was hard as he said: 'Yes, I mean the dentist fellow.'

Raikes stared. He said: 'You trying to pin that on me? Is that the game? Well, you can't do it. I've just read the account of the inquest yesterday. The poor devil shot himself because he'd made a mistake with a local anaesthetic and one of his patients died.'

Poirot went on unmoved: 'Can you prove that you left the house when you say you did? Is there anyone who can say definitely where you were between twelve and one?'

The other's eyes narrowed.

'So youare trying to pin it on me? I suppose Blunt put you up to this?'

Poirot sighed. He said: 'You will pardon me, but it seems an obsession with you-this persistent harping on Mr Alistair Blunt. I am not employed by him, I never have been employed by him. I am concerned, not with his safety, but with the death of a man who did good work in his chosen profession.'

Raikes shook his head.

'Sorry,' he said, 'I don't believe you. You're Blunt's private d.i.c.k all right.' His face darkened as he leaned across the table. 'But you can't save him, you know. He's got to go-he and everything he stands for! There's got to be a new deal-the old corrupt system of finance has got to go-this cursed net of bankers all over the world like a spider's web. They've got to be swept away. I've nothing against Blunt personally-but he's the type of man I hate. He's mediocre-he's smug. He's the sort you can't move unless you use dynamite. He's the sort of man who says, "You can't disrupt the foundations of civilization." Can't you, though? Let him wait and see! He's an obstruction in the way of Progress and he's got to be removed. There's no room in the world today for men like Blunt-men who hark back to the past-men who want to live as their fathers lived or even as their grandfathers lived! You've got a lot of them here in England-crusted old diehards-useless, worn-out symbols of a decayed era. And, my G.o.d, they've got to go! There's got to be a new world. Do you get me-a new world, see?'

Poirot sighed and rose. He said: 'I see, Mr Raikes, that you are an idealist.'

'What if I am?'

'Too much of an idealist to care about the death of a dentist.'

Mr Raikes said scornfully: 'What does the death of one miserable dentist matter?'

Hercule Poirot said: 'It does not matter to you. It matters to me. That is the difference between us.'

VII.

Poirot arrived home to be informed by George that a lady was waiting to see him.

'She is-ahem-a little nervous, sir,' said George.

Since the lady had given no name Poirot was at liberty to guess. He guessed wrong, for the young woman who rose agitatedly from the sofa as he entered was the late Mr Morley's secretary, Miss Gladys Nevill.

'Oh, dear, M. Poirot. I amso sorry to worry you like this-and really I don't know how I had the courage to come-I'm afraid you'll think it very bold of me-and I'm sure I don't want to take up your time-I know what time means to a busy professional man-but really I have been so unhappy-only I dare say you will think it all a waste of time-'

Profiting by a long experience of the English people, Poirot suggested a cup of tea. Miss Nevill's reaction was all that could be hoped for.

'Well, really, M. Poirot, that'svery kind of you. Not that it's so very long since breakfast, but one can always do with a cup of tea, can't one?'

Poirot, who could always do without one, a.s.sented mendaciously. George was instructed to this effect, and in a miraculously short time Poirot and his visitor faced each other across a tea-tray.

'I must apologize to you,' said Miss Nevill, regaining her aplomb under the influence of the beverage, 'but as a matter of fact the inquest yesterday upset me a good deal.'

'I'm sure it must have done,' said Poirot kindly.

'There was no question of my giving evidence, or anything likethat . But I felt somebodyought to go with Miss Morley. Mr Reilly was there, of course-but I meant awoman . Besides, Miss Morley doesn'tlike Mr Reilly. So I thought it was my duty to go.'

'That was very kind of you,' said Poirot encouragingly.

'Oh, no, I just felt Ihad to. You see, I have worked for Mr Morley for quite a number of years now-and the whole thing was a great shock to me-and of course the inquest made it worse-'

'I'm afraid it must have done.'

Miss Nevill leaned forward earnestly.

'But it's all wrong, M. Poirot. It really is all wrong.'

'What is wrong, Mademoiselle?'

'Well, it just couldn't have happened-not the way they make out-giving a patient an overdose in injecting the gum, I mean.'

'You think not.'

'I'm sure about it. Occasionally patients do suffer ill effects, but that is because they are physiologically unfit subjects-their heart action isn't normal. But I'm sure that an overdose is a very rare thing. You see pract.i.tioners get so into the habit of giving the regulation amount that it is absolutely mechanical-they'd give the right dose automatically.'

Poirot nodded approvingly. He said: 'That is what I thought myself, yes.'