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"Oh," I said. "I see."
"Of course you see. The trouble with you is that you are mentally lazy. You like to play games and
guess. You do not like to work with your head. What is the essential element of X's technique? Is it not
that the crime, when committed, is complete? That is to say, there is a motive for the crime, there is an
opportunity, there is means and there is, last and most important, the guilty person all ready for the
dock."
At once I grasped the essential point and realized what a fool I had been not to see it sooner.
"I see," I said. "I've got to look round for somebody who - who answers to those requirements - the
potential victim."
Poirot leaned back with a sigh.
"Enfin! I am very tired. Send Curtiss to me. You understand your job now. You are active, you can get
about, you can follow people about, talk to them, spy upon them unobserved -" (I nearly uttered an
indignant protest, but quelled it. It was too old an argument.) "You can listen to conversations, you have
knees that will still bend and permit you to kneel and look through keyholes -"
"I will not look through keyholes," I interrupted hotly.
Poirot closed his eyes.
"Very well, then. You will not look through keyholes. You will remain the English gentleman and
someone will be killed. It does not matter, that. Honour comes first with an Englishman. Your honour is
more important than somebody else's life. Bien! It is understood."
"No, but dash it all, Poirot -"
Poirot said coldly:
"Send Curtiss to me. Go away. You are obstinate and extremely stupid and I wish that there were
someone else whom I could trust, but I suppose I shall have to put up with you and your absurd ideas of
fair play. Since you cannot use your grey cells as you do not possess them, at any rate use your eyes,
your ears and your nose if need be in so far as the dictates of honour allow."
II
It was on the following day that I ventured to broach an idea which had come into my mind more than
once. I did so a little dubiously, for one never knows how Poirot may react!
I said:
"I've been thinking, Poirot. I know I'm not much of a fellow. You've said I'm stupid. Well, in a way it's
true. And I'm only half the man I was. Since Cinders' death -"
I stopped. Poirot made a gruff noise indicative of sympathy.
I went on:
"But there is a man here who could help us - just the kind of man we need. Brains, imagination,
resource - used to making decisions and a man of wide experience. I'm talking of Boyd Carrington. He's
the man we want, Poirot. Take him into your confidence. Put the whole thing before him."
Poirot opened his eyes and said with immense decision:
"Certainly not."
"But why not? You can't deny that he's clever - a good deal cleverer than I am."
"That," said Poirot with biting sarcasm, "would be easy. But dismiss the idea from your mind, Hastings.
We take no one into our confidence. That is understood - hein? You comprehend, I forbid you to speak
of this matter."
"All right, if you say so, but really Boyd Carrington -"
"Ah ta ta! Boyd Carrington. Why are you so obsessed with Boyd Carrington? What is be, after all? A
big man who is pompous and pleased with himself because people have called him 'Your Excellency.' A
man with - yes, a certain amount of tact and charm of manner. But he is not so wonderful, your Boyd
Carrington. He repeats himself, he tells the same story twice - and what is more, his memory is so bad
that he tells back to you the story that you have told to him (A man of outstanding ability? Not at all. An
old bore - a windbag - enfin - the stuffed shirt!"
"Oh," I said as enlightenment came to me.
It was quite true that Boyd Carrington's memory was not good. And he had actually been guilty of a
gaffe which I now saw had annoyed Poirot a good deal. Poirot had told him a story of his police days in
Belgium, and only a couple of days afterwards, when several of us were assembled in the garden, Boyd
Carrington had in bland forgetfulness told the same story back again to Poirot, prefacing it with the
remark: "I remember the Chef de la Sûrété in Paris telling me -"
I now perceived that this had rankled!
Tactfully, I said no more and withdrew.
III
I wandered downstairs and out into the garden. There was no one about and I scrolled through a grove
of trees and up to a grassy knoll which was surmounted by a somewhat earwiggy summerhouse in an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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