“Mais il n’y a rien à voir,” he said, and repeated the sentiment in several other languages.

“Let me pass if you please,” said M. Bouc.

Squeezing his rotundity past the obstructing passengers he entered the compartment, Poirot close behind him.

“I am glad you have come, Monsieur,” said the conductor with a sigh of relief. “Everyone has been trying to enter. The American lady – such screams as she gave – ma foi, I thought she too had been murdered! I came at a run, and there she was screaming like a mad woman; and she cried out that she must fetch you, and she departed screeching at the top of her voice and telling everybody whose carriage she passed what had occurred.”

He added, with a gesture of the hand: “Itis in there, Monsieur. I have not touched it.”

Hanging on the handle of the door that gave access to the next compartment was a large-checked rubber sponge-bag. Below it on the floor, just where it had fallen from Mrs. Hubbard’s hand, was a straight-bladed dagger – a cheap affair, sham Oriental with an embossed hilt and a tapering blade. The blade was stained with patches of what looked like rust.

Poirot picked it up delicately.

“Yes,” he murmured. “There is no mistake. Here is our missing weapon all right – eh, doctor?”

The doctor examined it.

“You need not be so careful,” said Poirot. “There will be no fingerprints on it save those of Mrs. Hubbard.” Constantine’s examination did not take long.

“It is the weapon all right,” he said. “It would account for any of the wounds.”

“I implore you, my friend, do not say that!” The doctor looked astonished.

“Already we are heavily overburdened by coincidence. Two people decided to stab M. Ratchett last night. It is too much of a good thing that both of them should select the same weapon.”

“As, to that, the coincidence is not perhaps so great as it seems,” said the doctor. “Thousands of these sham Eastern daggers are made and shipped to the bazaars of Constantinople.”

“You console me a little, but only a little,” said Poirot.

He looked thoughtfully at the door in front of him, then, lifting off the sponge-bag, he tried the handle. The door did not budge. About a foot above the handle was the door bolt. Poirot drew it back and tried again, but still the door remained fast.

“We locked it from the other side, you remember,” said the doctor.

“That is true,” said Poirot absently. He seemed to be thinking about something else. His brow was furrowed as though in perplexity.

“It agrees, does it not?” said M. Bouc. “The man passes through this carriage. As he shuts the communicating door behind him he feels the sponge-bag. A thought comes to him and he quickly slips the blood-stained knife inside. Then, all unwitting that he has awakened Mrs. Hubbard, he slips out through the other door into the corridor.”

“As you say,” murmured Poirot. “That is how it must have happened.” But the puzzled look did not leave his face.

“But what is it?” demanded M. Bouc. “There is something, is there not, that does not satisfy you?”

Poirot darted a quick took at him.

“The same point does not strike you? No, evidently not. Well, it is a small matter.”

The conductor looked into the carriage. “The American lady is coming back.”

Dr. Constantine looked rather guilty. He had, he felt, treated Mrs. Hubbard rather cavalierly. But she had no reproaches for him. Her energies were concentrated on another matter.

“I’m going to say one thing right out,” she said breathlessly as she arrived in the doorway. “I’m not going on any longer in this compartment! Why, I wouldn’t sleep in it to-night if you paid me a million dollars.”

“But, Madame–”

“I know what you are going to say, and I’m telling you right now that I won’t do any such thing! Why, I’d rather sit up all night in the corridor.” She began to cry. “Oh, if my daughter could only know – if she could see me now, why–”

Poirot interrupted firmly.

“You misunderstand, Madame. Your demand is most reasonable. Your baggage shall be changed at once to another compartment.”

Mrs. Hubbard lowered her handkerchief. “is that so? Oh! I feel better right away. But surely it’s all full, unless one of the gentlemen–”

M. Bouc spoke.

“Your baggage, Madame, shall be moved out of this coach altogether. You shall have a compartment in the next coach, which was put on at Belgrade.”

“Why, that’s splendid. I’m not an extra nervous woman, but to sleep in that compartment next door to a dead man!” She shivered. “It would drive me plumb crazy.”

“Michel,” called M. Bouc. “Move this baggage into a vacant compartment in the Athens-Paris coach.”

“Yes, Monsieur. The same one as this – the No. 3?”

“No,” said Poirot before his friend could reply. “I think it would be better for Madame to have a different number altogether. The No. 12, for instance.”

“Bien, Monsieur.”

The conductor seized the luggage. Mrs. Hubbard turned gratefully to Poirot.

“That’s very kind and delicate of you. I appreciate it, I assure you.”

“Do not mention it, Madame. We will come with you and see you comfortably installed.”

Mrs. Hubbard was escorted by the three men to her new home. She looked round her happily. “This is fine.”

“It suits you, Madame? It is, you see, exactly like the compartment you have left.”

“That’s so – only it faces the other way. But that doesn’t matter, for these trains go first one way and then the other. I said to my daughter, ‘I want a carriage facing the engine.’ and she said, ‘Why, Mamma, that’ll be no good to you, for if you go to sleep one way, when you wake up, the train’s going the other!’ And it was quite true what she said. Why, last evening we went into Belgrade one way and out the other.”

“At any rate, Madame, you are quite happy and contented now?”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. Here we are stuck in a snowdrift and nobody doing anything about it, and my boat sailing the day after to-morrow.”

“Madame,” said M. Bouc, “we are all in the same case – every one of us.”

“Well, that’s true,” admitted Mrs. Hubbard. “But nobody else has had a murderer walking right through her compartment in the middle of the night.

“What still puzzles me, Madame,” said Poirot, “is how the man got into your compartment if the communicating door was bolted as you say. You are sure that it was bolted?”

“Why, the Swedish lady tried it before my eyes.”

“Let us just reconstruct that little scene. You were lying in your bunk – so – and you could not see for yourself, you say?”

“No, because of the sponge-bag. Oh! my, I shall have to get a new sponge-bag. It makes me feel sick at my stomach to look at this one.”

Poirot picked up the sponge-bag and hung it on the handle of the communicating door into the next carriage.

“Précisément. I see,” he said. “The bolt is just underneath the handle – the sponge-bag masks it. You could not see from where you were lying whether the bolt was turned or not.”

“Why, that’s just what I’ve been telling you!”

“And the Swedish lady, Miss Ohlsson, stood so, between you and the door. She tried it and told you it was bolted.”

“That’s so.”

“All the same, Madame, she may have made an error. You see what I mean.” Poirot seemed anxious to explain. “The bolt is just a projection of metal – so. When it is turned to the right, the door is locked. When it is left straight, the door is unlocked. Possibly she merely tried the door, and as it was locked on the other side she may have assumed that it was locked on your side.”

“Well, I guess that would be rather stupid of her.”

“Madame, the most kind, the most amiable, are not always the cleverest.”

“That’s so, of course.”

“By the way, Madame, did you travel out to Smyrna this way?”

“No. I sailed right to Stamboul, and a friend of my daughter’s, Mr. Johnson (a perfectly lovely man, I’d like to have you know him), met me and showed me all round Stamboul. But it was a very disappointing city – all tumbling down; and as for those mosques, and putting on those great shuffling things over your shoes – where was I?”

“You were saying that Mr. Johnson met you.”

“That’s so, and he saw me on board a French Messageries boat for Smyrna, and my daughter’s husband was waiting right on the quay. What he’ll say when he hears about all this! My daughter said this would be just the safest, easiest way imaginable. ‘You just sit in your carriage,’ she said, ‘and you land right in Parrus, and there the American Express will meet you.’ And, oh, dear, what am I to do about cancelling my steamship passage? I ought to let them know. I can’t possibly make it now. This is just too terrible–”

Mrs. Hubbard showed signs of tears once more.

Poirot, who had been fidgeting slightly, seized his opportunity.

“You have had a shock, Madame. The restaurant attendant shall be instructed to bring you along some tea and some biscuits.”

“I don’t know that I’m so set on tea,” said Mrs. Hubbard tearfully. “That’s more an English habit.”

“Coffee, then, Madame. You need some stimulant–”

“That cognac’s made my head feel mighty funny. I think I would like some coffee.”

“Excellent. You must revive your forces.”

“My, what a funny expression!”

“But first, Madame, a little matter of routine. You permit that I make a search of your baggage!”

“What for?”

“We are about to commence a search of all the passengers’ luggage. I do not want to remind you of an unpleasant experience, but your sponge-bag – remember.”

“Mercy! Perhaps you’d better! I just couldn’t bear to get any more surprises of that kind.”

The examination was quickly over. Mrs. Hubbard was travelling with the minimum of luggage – a hat-box, a cheap suitcase, and a well-burdened travelling bag. The contents of all three were simple and straightforward, and the examination would not have taken more than a couple of minutes had not Mrs. Hubbard delayed matters by insisting on due attention being paid to photographs of “my daughter” and of two rather ugly children – “my daughter’s children. Aren’t they cunning?”

15. The Evidence of the Passengers’ Luggage

Having delivered himself of various polite insincerities, and having told Mrs. Hubbard that he would order coffee to be brought to her, Poirot was able to take his leave accompanied by his two friends.

“Well, we have made a start and drawn, a blank,” observed M. Bouc. “Whom shall we attack next?”

“It would be simplest, I think, just to proceed along the train, carriage by carriage. That means that we start with No. 16 – the amiable Mr. Hardman.”

Mr. Hardman, who was smoking a cigar, welcomed them affably.

“Come right in, gentlemen. That is, if it’s humanly possible. It’s just a mite cramped in here for a party.”

M. Bouc explained the object of their visit, and the big detective nodded comprehendingly.

“That’s O.K. To tell the truth I’ve been wondering you didn’t get down to it sooner. Here are my keys, gentlemen, and if you like to search my pockets too, why, you’re welcome. Shall I reach the grips down for you?”

“The conductor will do that. Michel!”

The contents of Mr. Hardman’s two “grips” were soon examined and passed. They contained, perhaps, an undue proportion of spirituous liquor. Mr. Hardman winked.

“It’s not often they search your grips at the frontiers – not if you fix the conductor. I handed out a wad of Turkish notes right away, and there’s been no trouble so far.”

“And atParis?”

Mr. Hardman winked again. “By the time I get to Paris,” he said, “what’s left over of this little lot will go into a bottle labelled hairwash.”

“You are not a believer in Prohibition, Monsieur Hardman,” said M. Bouc with a smile.

“Well,” said Hardman, “I can’t say Prohibition has ever worried me any.”

“Ah!” said M. Bouc. “The speakeasy.” He pronounced the word with care, savouring it. “Your American terms are so quaint, so expressive,” he said.

“Me, I would much like to go to America,” said Poirot.

“You’d learn a few go-ahead methods over there,” said Hardman. “Europe needs waking up. She’s half asleep.”

“It is true that America is the country of progress,” agreed Poirot. “There is much that I admire about Americans. Only – I am perhaps old-fashioned – but me, I find the American women less charming than my own countrywomen. The French or the Belgian girl, coquettish, charming – I think there is no one to touch her.”

Hardman turned away to peer out at the snow for a minute.

“Perhaps you’re right, M. Poirot,” he said. “But I guess every nation likes its own girls best.” He blinked as though the snow hurt his eyes.

“Kind of dazzling, isn’t it?” he remarked. “Say, gentlemen, this business is getting on my nerves. Murder and the snow and all. And nothing doing. Just hanging about and killing time. I’d like to get busy after someone or something.”

“The true Western spirit of hustle,” said Poirot with a smile.