hed to keep it out of the papers. It
worried me just a little, for it suggested the possibility that there
might be further arrests to come.

After breakfast, I decided to go down to the village, and see if Poirot
had returned yet; but, before I could start, a well-known face blocked
one of the windows, and the well-known voice said:

"Bon jour, mon ami!"

"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."