Chapter 18

In Queen Victoria Street

Mr James Ryder was rather surprised when a card bearing the name of M. Hercule Poirot wasbrought to him.

He knew that the name was familiar, but for the moment he could not remember why. Then hesaid to himself:

‘Oh, that fellow!’ and told the clerk to show the visitor in.

M. Hercule Poirot was looking very jaunty¹. In one hand he carried a cane², he had a flower in hisbuttonhole.

‘You will forgive my troubling you, I trust,’ said Poirot. ‘It is this affair of the death of MadameGiselle.’

‘Yes?’ said Mr Ryder. ‘Well, what about it? Sit down, won’t you? Have a cigar?’

‘I thank you, no. I smoke my own cigarettes. Perhaps you will accept one?’

Ryder regarded Poirot’s tiny cigarettes with a somewhat dubious³ eye.

‘Think I’ll have one of my own, if it’s all the same to you. Might swallow one of those bymistake.’ He laughed heartily⁴.

‘The inspector⁵ was round here a few days ago,’ said Mr Ryder when he had induced his lighterto work. ‘Nosey, that’s what those fellows are. Can’t mind their own business.’

‘They have, I suppose, to get information,’ said Poirot mildly.

‘They needn’t be so damned offensive about it,’ said Mr Ryder bitterly. ‘A man’s got hisfeelings—and his business reputation to think about.’

‘You are, perhaps, a little over-sensitive.’

‘I’m in a delicate position, I am,’ said Mr Ryder. ‘Sitting where I did, just in front of her—well,it looks fishy⁶, I suppose. I can’t help where I sat. If I’d known that woman was going to bemurdered I wouldn’t have come by that plane at all. I don’t know, though, perhaps I would.’

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Has good come out of evil?’ asked Poirot, smiling.

‘It’s funny your saying that. It has, and it hasn’t, in a manner of speaking. I mean I’ve had a lotof worry. I’ve been badgered. Things have been insinuated⁷. And why me? That’s what I say. Whydon’t they go and worry that Dr Hubbard—Bryant, I mean. Doctors are the people who can gethold of high-falutin’ undetectable poisons. How’d I get hold of snake juice? I ask you!’

‘You were saying,’ said Poirot, ‘that although you had been put to a lot of inconvenience—?’

‘Ah, yes, there was a bright side to the picture. I don’t mind telling you I cleaned up a tidy littlesum from the papers. Eyewitness⁸ stuff—though there was more of the reporter’s imagination thanof my eyesight; but that’s neither here nor there.’

‘It is interesting,’ said Poirot, ‘how a crime affects the lives of people who are quite outside it.

Take yourself, for example—you make suddenly a quite unexpected sum of money—a sum ofmoney perhaps particularly welcome at the moment.’

‘Money’s always welcome,’ said Mr Ryder.

He eyed Poirot sharply.

‘Sometimes the need of it is imperative⁹. For that reason men embezzle—they make fraudulententries—’ He waved his hands. ‘All sorts of complications arise.’

‘Well, don’t let’s get gloomy about it,’ said Mr Ryder.

‘True. Why dwell on the dark side of the picture? This money was grateful to you—since youfailed to raise a loan in Paris—’

‘How the devil did you know that?’ asked Mr Ryder angrily.

Hercule Poirot smiled.

‘At any rate it is true.’

‘It’s true enough, but I don’t particularly want it to get about.’

‘I will be discretion¹⁰ itself, I assure you.’

‘It’s odd,’ mused¹¹ Mr Ryder, ‘how small a sum will sometimes put a man in Queer Street. Just asmall sum of ready money to tide him over a crisis—and if he can’t get hold of that infinitesimalsum, to hell with his credit. Yes, it’s damned odd. Money’s odd. Credit’s odd. Come to that, life isodd!’

‘Very true.’

‘By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘It is a little delicate. It has come to my ears—in the course of my profession, you understand—that in spite of your denials you did have dealings with this woman Giselle.’

‘Who says so? It’s a lie! I never saw the woman.’

‘Dear me, that is very curious!’

‘Curious! It’s damned libel.’

Poirot looked at him thoughtfully.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I must look into the matter.’

‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?’

Poirot shook his head.

‘Do not enrage¹² yourself; there must be—a mistake.’

‘I should think there was. Catch me getting myself mixed up with these high-toned Societymoneylenders. Society woman with gambling¹³ debts—that’s their sort.’

Poirot rose.

‘I must apologize for having been misinformed.’ He paused at the door. ‘By the way, just as amatter of curiosity, what made you call Dr Bryant Dr Hubbard just now?’

‘Blessed if I know. Let me see—Oh, yes, I think it must have been the flute¹⁴. The nursery rhyme,you know. Old Mother Hubbard’s dog—But when she came back he was playing the flute. Oddthing how you mix up names.’

‘Ah, yes, the flute…These things interest me, you understand, psychologically.’

Mr Ryder snorted at the word psychologically. It savoured to him of what he called that tom-fool business psychoanalysis.

He looked at Poirot with suspicion.

 

点击收听单词发音