Thirteen
When Hercule Poirot had taken his leave and departed, Jeremy Fullerton sat before his deskdrumming gently with his fingertips. His eyes, however, were far away—lost in thought.
He picked up a document in front of him and dropped his eyes down to it, but without focusinghis glance. The discreet¹ buzz of the house telephone caused him to pick up the receiver on hisdesk.
“Yes, Miss Miles?”
“Mr. Holden is here, sir.”
“Yes. Yes, his appointment, I believe was for nearly three quarters of an hour ago. Did he giveany reason for having been so late?…Yes, yes. I quite see. Rather the same excuse he gave lasttime. Will you tell him I’ve seen another client, and I am now too short of time. Make anappointment with him for next week, will you? We can’t have this sort of thing going on.”
“Yes, Mr. Fullerton.”
He replaced the receiver and sat looking thoughtfully down at the document in front of him. Hewas still not reading it. His mind was going over events of the past. Two years—close on twoyears ago—and that strange little man this morning with his patent leather shoes and his bigmoustaches, had brought it back to him, asking all those questions.
Now he was going over in his own mind a conversation of nearly two years ago.
He saw again, sitting in the chair opposite him, a girl, a short, stocky figure—the olive brownskin, the dark red generous mouth, the heavy cheekbones and the fierceness of the blue eyes thatlooked into his beneath the heavy, beetling² brows. A passionate³ face, a face full of vitality⁴, a facethat had known suffering—would probably always know suffering—but would never learn toaccept suffering. The kind of woman who would fight and protest until the end. Where was shenow, he wondered? Somehow or other she had managed—what had she managed exactly? Whohad helped her? Had anyone helped her? Somebody must have done so.
She was back again, he supposed, in some trouble-stricken spot in Central Europe where shehad come from, where she belonged, where she had had to go back to because there was no othercourse for her to take unless she was content to lose her liberty.
Jeremy Fullerton was an upholder of the law. He believed in the law, he was contemptuous ofmany of the

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