“It will certainly be advisable for you to tell us all you know,” said Poirot drily.
“You’d have said a mouthful if there was anything I did know.
But I don’t.
I know nothing at all – just as I said.
But I ought to know something.
That’s what makes me sore.
I ought to.”
“Please explain, Mr. Hardman.”
Mr. Hardman sighed, removed the chewing gum, and dived into a pocket.
At the same time his whole personality seemed to undergo a change.
He became less of a stage character and more of a real person.
The resonant nasal tones of his voice became modified.
“That passport’s a bit of bluff,” he said. “That’s who I really am.”
Poirot scrutinised the card flipped across to him. M. Bouc peered over his shoulder.
Poirot knew the name as that of one of the best-known and most reputable private detective agencies in New York.
“Now, Mr. Hardman,” he said, “let us hear the meaning of this.”
“Sure.
Things came about this way.
I’d come over to Europe trailing a couple of crooks – nothing to do with this business.
The chase ended in Stamboul.
I wired the Chief and got his instructions to return, and I would have been making my tracks back to little old New York when I got this.”
He pushed across a letter.
THE TOKATLIAN HOTEL
Dear Sir: You have been pointed out to me as an operative of the McNeil Detective Agency.
Kindly report at my suite at four o’clock this afternoon.
S. E. RATCHETT
“Eh bien?”
“I reported at the time stated, and Mr. Ratchett put me wise to the situation. He showed me a couple of letters he’d got.”
“He was alarmed?”
“Pretended not to be, but he was rattled, all right.
He put up a proposition to me. I was to travel by the same train as he did to Parrus and see that nobody got him.
Well, gentlemen, I did travel by the same train, and in spite of me, somebody did get him.
I certainly feel sore about it.
It doesn’t look any too good for me.”
“Did he give you any indication of the line you were to take?”
“Sure.
He had it all taped out.
It was his idea that I should travel in the compartment alongside his. Well, that blew up right at the start.
The only place I could get was berth No. 16, and I had a job getting that.
I guess the conductor likes to keep that compartment up his sleeve.
But that’s neither here nor there.
When I looked all round the situation, it seemed to me that No. 16 was a pretty good strategic position.
There was only the dining-car in front of the Stamboul sleeping-car, and the door onto the platform at the front end was barred at night. The only way a thug could come was through the rear-end door to the platform, or along the train from the rear, and in either case he’d have to pass right by my compartment.”
“You had no idea, I suppose, of the identity of the possible assailant?”
“Well, I knew what he looked like.
Mr. Ratchett described him to me.”
“What?” All three men leaned forward eagerly.
Hardman went on. “A small man – dark – with a womanish kind of voice. That’s what the old man said.
Said, too, that he didn’t think it would be the first night out, More likely the second or third.”
“He knew something,” said M. Bouc.