The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
Poirot and I were expecting our old friend Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard to tea. We were sitting round the tea-table awaiting his arrival. Poirot had just finished carefully straightening the cups and saucers which our landlady was in the habit of throwing, rather than placing, on the table. He had also breathed heavily on the metal teapot, and polished it with a silk handkerchief. The kettle was on the boil, and a small enamel saucepan beside it contained some thick, sweet chocolate which was more to Poirot’s palate than what he described as “your English poison.” A sharp “rat-tat” sounded below, and a few minutes afterwards Japp entered briskly.
“Hope I’m not late,” he said as he greeted us. “To tell the truth, I was yarning with Miller, the man who’s in charge of the Davenheim case.”
I pricked up my ears. For the last three days the papers had been full of the strange disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, senior partner of Davenheim and Salmon, the well-known bankers and financiers. On Saturday last he had walked out of his house, and had never been seen since. I looked forward to extracting some interesting details from Japp.
“I should have thought,” I remarked, “that it would be almost impossible for anyone to ‘disappear’ nowadays.”
Poirot moved a plate of bread and butter the eighth of an inch, and said sharply:
“Be exact, my friend. What do you mean by ‘disappear’? To which class of disappearance are you referring?”
“Are disappearances classified and labelled, then?” I laughed.
Japp smiled also. Poirot frowned at us both.
“But certainly they are! They fall into three categories: First, and most common, the voluntary disappearance. Second, the much abused ‘loss of memory’ case—rare, but occasionally genuine. Third, murder, and a more or less successful disposal of the body. Do you refer to all three as impossible of execution?”
“Very nearly so, I should think. You might lose your own memory, but someone would be sure to recognize you—especially in the case of a well-known man like Davenheim. Then ‘bodies’ can’t be made to vanish into thin air. Sooner or later they turn up, concealed in lonely places, or in trunks. Murder will out. In the same way, the absconding clerk, or the domestic defaulter, is bound to be run down in these days of wireless telegraphy. He can be headed off from foreign countries; ports and railway stations are watched; and, as for concealment in this country, his features and appearance will be known to everyone who reads a daily newspaper. He’s up against civilization.”
“Mon ami,” said Poirot, “you make one error. You do not allow for the fact that a man who had decided to make away with another man—or with himself in a figurative sense—might be that rare machine, a man of method. He might bring intelligence, talent, a careful calculation of detail to the task; and then I do not see why he should not be successful in baffling the police force.”
“But not you, I suppose?” said Japp good-humouredly, winking at me. “He couldn’t baffle you, eh, Monsieur Poirot?”
Poirot endeavoured, with a marked lack of success, to look modest. “Me, also! Why not? It is true that I approach such problems with an exact science, a mathematical precision, which seems, alas, only too rare in the new generation of detectives!”
Japp grinned more widely.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Miller, the man who’s on this case, is a smart chap. You may be very sure he won’t overlook a footprint, or a cigar-ash, or a crumb even. He’s got eyes that see everything.”
“So, mon ami,” said Poirot, “has the London sparrow. But all the same, I should not ask the little brown bird to solve the problem of Mr. Davenheim.”
“Come now, monsieur, you’re not going to run down the value of details as clues?”
“By no means. These things are all good in their way. The danger is they may assume undue importance. Most details are insignificant; one or two are vital. It is the brain, the little grey cells”—he tapped his forehead—“on which one must rely. The senses mislead. One must seek the truth within—not without.”
“You don’t mean to say, Monsieur Poirot, that you would undertake to solve a case without moving from your chair, do you?”
“That is exactly what I do mean—granted the facts were placed before me. I regard myself as a consulting specialist.”
Japp slapped his knee. “Hanged if I don’t take you at your word. Bet you a fiver that you can’t lay your hand—or rather tell me where to lay my hand—on Mr. Davenheim, dead or alive, before a week is out.”
Poirot considered. “Eh bien, mon ami, I
