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what is that, mon ami ?’
    I told him of Mrs Rice’s version of the trouble with the motor.
    ‘ Tiens! C’est intéressant, ça . There is, of course, a type, vain, hysterical, that seeks to make itself interesting by having marvellous escapes from death and which will recount to you surprising histories that never happened! Yes, it is well known, that type there. Such people will even do themselves grave bodily injury to sustain the fiction.’
    ‘You don’t think that—’
    ‘That Mademoiselle Nick is of that type? No, indeed. You observed, Hastings, that we had great difficulty in convincing her of her danger. And right to the end she kept up the farce of a half-mocking disbelief. She isof her generation, that little one. All the same, it is interesting—what Madame Rice said. Why should she say it? Why say it even if it were true? It was unnecessary—almost gauche .’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true. She dragged it into the conversation neck and crop—for no earthly reason that I could see.’
    ‘That is curious. Yes, that is curious. The little facts that are curious, I like to see them appear. They are significant. They point the way.’
    ‘The way—where?’
    ‘You put your finger on the weak spot, my excellent Hastings. Where? Where indeed! Alas, we shall not know till we get there.’
    ‘Tell me, Poirot,’ I said. ‘Why did you insist on her getting this cousin to stay?’
    Poirot stopped and waved an excited forefinger at me.
    ‘Consider,’ he cried. ‘Consider for one little moment, Hastings. How we are handicapped! How are our hands tied! To hunt down a murderer after a crime has been committed— c’est tout simple! Or at least it is simple to one of my ability. The murderer has, so to speak, signed his name by committing the crime. But here there is no crime—and what is more we do not want a crime. To detect a crime before it has been committed—that is indeed of a rare difficulty.
    ‘What is our first aim? The safety of Mademoiselle. And that is not easy. No, it is not easy, Hastings. We cannot watch over her day and night—we cannot even send a policeman in big boots to watch over her. We cannot pass the night in a young lady’s sleeping chamber. The affair bristles with difficulties.
    ‘But we can do one thing. We can make it more difficult for our assassin. We can put Mademoiselle upon her guard and we can introduce a perfectly impartial witness. It will take a very clever man to get round those two circumstances.’
    He paused, and then said in an entirely different tone of voice:
    ‘But what I am afraid of, Hastings—’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘What I am afraid of is—that he is a very clever man. And I am not easy in my mind. No, I am not easy at all.’
    ‘Poirot,’ I said. ‘You’re making me feel quite nervous.’
    ‘So am I nervous. Listen, my friend, that paper, the St Loo Weekly Herald . It was open and folded back at—where do you think? A little paragraph which said, “ Among the guests staying at the Majestic Hotel are M. Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings .” Supposing—just supposing that someone had read that paragraph. They know my name—everyone knows my name—’
    ‘Miss Buckley didn’t,’ I said, with a grin.
    ‘She is a scatterbrain—she does not count. A serious man—a criminal—would know my name. And he would be afraid! He would wonder! He would ask himself questions. Three times he has attempted the life of Mademoiselle and now Hercule Poirot arrives in the neighbourhood. ‘Is that coincidence?” he would ask himself. And he would fear that it might not be coincidence. What would he do then?’
    ‘Lie low and hide his tracks,’ I suggested.
    ‘Yes—yes—or else—if he had real audacity, he would strike quickly —without loss of time. Before I had time to make inquiries— pouf , Mademoiselle is dead. That is what a man of audacity would do.’
    ‘But why do you think that somebody read that paragraph other than Miss