"Poirot," I exclaimed, with relief, and seizing him by both hands, I dragged him
into the room. "I was never so glad to see anyone. Listen, I have said nothing to
anybody but John. Is that right?"
"My friend," replied Poirot, "I do not know what you are talking about."
"Dr. Bauerstein's arrest, of course," I answered impatiently.
"Is Bauerstein arrested, then?"
"Did you not know it?"
"Not the least in the world." But, pausing a moment, he added: "Still, it does not
surprise me. After all, we are only four miles from the coast."
"The coast?" I asked, puzzled. "What has that got to do with it?"
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
"Surely, it is obvious!"
"Not to me. No doubt I am very dense, but I cannot see what the proximity of the
coast has got to do with the murder of Mrs. Inglethorp."
"Nothing at all, of course," replied Poirot, smiling. "But we were speaking of the
arrest of Dr. Bauerstein."
"Well, he is arrested for the murder of Mrs. Inglethorp----"
"What?" cried Poirot, in apparently lively astonishment. "Dr. Bauerstein arrested
for the murder of Mrs. Inglethorp?"
"Yes."
"Impossible! That would be too good a farce! Who told you that, my friend?"
"Well, no one exactly told me," I confessed. "But he is arrested."
"Oh, yes, very likely. But for espionage, mon ami."
"Espionage?" I gasped.
"Precisely."
"Not for poisoning Mrs. Inglethorp?"
"Not unless our friend Japp has taken leave of his senses," replied Poirot
placidly.
"But--but I thought you thought so too?"
Poirot gave me one look, which conveyed a wondering pity, and his full sense of
the utter absurdity of such an idea.
"Do you mean to say," I asked, slowly adapting myself to the new idea, "that Dr.
Bauerstein is a spy?"
Poirot nodded.
"Have you never suspected it?"
"It never entered my head."
"It did not strike you as peculiar that a famous London doctor should bury himself
in a little village like this, and should be in the habit of walking about at all hours
of the night, fully dressed?"
"No," I confessed, "I never thought of such a thing."
"He is, of course, a German by birth," said Poirot thoughtfully, "though he has
practiced so long in this country that nobody thinks of him as anything but an
Englishman. He was naturalized about fifteen years ago. A very clever man--a
Jew, of course."
"The blackguard!" I cried indignantly.
