III
Jane Olivera came running along the path. Her hair streamlined back behind her. Her eyes were wide with fear. She gasped: 'Howard?'
Howard Raikes said lightly:
'Hullo, Jane. I've just been saving your uncle's life.'
'Oh!' She stopped. 'You have?'
'Your arrival certainly seems to have been very opportune, Mr. – er -' Blunt hesitated.
'This is Howard Raikes, Uncle Alistair. He's a friend of mine.'
Blunt looked at Raikes – he smiled.
'Oh!' he said. 'So you are Jane's young man! I must thank you.'
With a puffing noise as of a steam engine at high pressure Julia Olivera appeared on the scene. She panted out.
'I heard a shot. Is Alistair – Why -' She stared blankly at Howard Raikes. 'You? Why, why, how dare you?'
Jane said in an icy voice:
'Howard has just saved Uncle Alistair's life, mother.'
'What?
'This man tried to shoot Uncle Alistair and Howard grabbed him and took the pistol away from him.'
Frank Carter said violently:
'You're bloody liars, all of you.'
Mrs. Olivera, her jaw dropping, said blankly:
'Oh!' It took her a minute or two to readjust her poise.
She turned first to Blunt.
'My dear Alistair! How awful! Thank God you're safe. But it must have been a frightful shock. I feel quite faint myself. I wonder – do you think I could have just a little brandy?'
Blunt said quickly:
'Of course. Come back to the house.'
She took his arm, leaning on it heavily.
Blunt looked over his shoulder at Poirot and Howard Raikes.
'Can you bring that fellow along?' he asked. 'We'll ring up the police and hand him over.'
Frank Carter opened his mouth, but no words came. He was dead white, and his knees were wilting.
Howard Raikes hauled him along with an unsympathetic hand.
'Come on, you,' he said.
Frank Carter murmured hoarsely and unconvincingly:
'It's all a lie…'
Howard Raikes looked at Poirot.
'You've got precious little to say for yourself for a high-toned sleuth! Why don't you throw your weight about a bit?'
'I am reflecting, Mr. Raikes.'
'I guess you'll need to reflect! I should say you'll lose your job over this! It isn't thanks to you that Alistair Blunt is still alive at this minute.'
'This is your second good deed of the kind, is it not, Mr. Raikes?'
'What the hell do you mean?'
'It was only yesterday, was it not, that you caught and held the man whom you believed to have shot at Mr. Blunt and the Prime Minister?'
Howard Raikes said:
'Er – yes. I seem to be making a kind of habit of it.'
'But there is a difference,' Hercule Poirot pointed out. 'Yesterday, the man you caught and held was not the man who fired the shot in question. You made a mistake.'
Frank Carter said sullenly:
'He's made a mistake now.'
'Quiet, you,' said Raikes.
Hercule Poirot murmured to himself:
'I wonder -'
IV
Dressing for dinner, adjusting his tie to an exact symmetry, Hercule Poirot frowned at his reflection in the mirror.
He was dissatisfied – but he would have been at a loss to explain why. For the case, as he owned to himself, was so very clear. Frank Carter had indeed been caught red-handed.
It was not as though he had any particular belief in, or liking for, Frank Carter. Carter, he thought dispassionately, was definitely what the English call a 'wrong 'un.'
He was an unpleasant young bully of the kind that appeals to women, so that they are reluctant to believe the worst however plain the evidence.
And Carter's whole story was weak in the extreme.
This tale of having been approached by agents of the 'Secret Service' – and offered a plummy job. To take the post of gardener and report on the conversations and actions of the other gardeners. It was a story that was disproved easily enough – there was no foundation for it.
A particularly weak invention – the kind of thing, Poirot reflected, that a man like Carter would invent.
And on Carter's side, there was nothing at all to be said. He could offer no alternative explanation, except that somebody else must have shot off the revolver. He kept repeating that. It was a frame-up. No, there was nothing to be said for Carter except, perhaps, that it seemed an odd coincidence that Howard Raikes should have been present two days running at the moment when a bullet had just missed Alistair Blunt.
But presumably there wasn't anything in that. Raikes certainly hadn't fired the shot in Downing Street. And his presence down here was fully accounted for – he had come down to be near his girl.
No, there was nothing definitely improbable in his story.
It had turned out, of course, very fortunately for Howard Raikes. When a man has just saved you from a bullet, you cannot forbid him the house. The least you can do is to show friendliness and extend hospitality. Mrs. Olivera didn't like it, obviously, but even she saw that there was nothing to be done about it.
Jane's undesirable young man had got his foot in and he meant to keep it there!
Poirot watched him speculatively during the evening.
He was playing his part with a good deal of astuteness. He did not air any subversive views, he kept off politics. He told amusing stories of his hitchhikes and tramps in wild places.
'He is no longer the wolf,' thought Poirot. 'No, he has put on the sheep's clothing. But underneath? I wonder…'
As Poirot was preparing for bed that night, there was a rap on the door. Poirot called, 'Come in,' and Howard Raikes entered.
He laughed at Poirot's expression.
'Surprised to see me? I've had my eye on you all evening. I didn't like the way you were looking. Kind of thoughtful.'
'Why should that worry you, my friend?'
'I don't know why, but it did. I thought maybe that you were finding certain things just a bit hard to swallow.'
'Eh bien? And if so?'
