"It's Doyle. He's been shot. Miss de Bellefort shot him. He's in the saloon. Can you come?"
The stout doctor reacted promptly. He asked a few curt questions, pulled on his bedroom slippers and a dressing-gown, picked up a little case of necessaries and accompanied Fanthorp to the lounge.
Simon had managed to get the window beside him open. He was leaning his head against it, inhaling the air. His face was a ghastly colour. Dr Bessner came over to him.
"Ha? So? What have we here?"
A handkerchief sodden with blood lay on the carpet and on the carpet itself was a dark stain.
The doctor's examination was punctuated with Teutonic grunts and exclamations. "Yes, it is bad this... The bone is fractured. And a big loss of blood. Herr Fanthorp, you and I must get him to my cabin. So - like this. He cannot walk. We must carry him, thus."
As they lifted him Cornelia appeared in the doorway. Catching sight of her, the doctor uttered a grunt of satisfaction.
"Ach, it is you? Goot. Come with us. I have need of assistance. You will be better than my friend here. He looks a little pale already."
Fanthorp emitted a rather sickly smile.
"Shall I get Miss Bowers?" he asked.
Dr Bessner threw a considering glance over Cornelia.
"You will do very well, young lady," he announced. "You will not faint or be foolish, hein?"
"I can do what you tell me," said Cornelia eagerly.
Bessner nodded in a satisfied fashion.
The procession passed along the deck.
The next ten minutes was purely surgical and Mr Jim Fanthorp did not enjoy it at all. He felt secretly ashamed of the superior fortitude exhibited by Cornelia.
"So, that is the best I can do," announced Dr Bessner at last.
"You have been a hero, my friend." He patted Simon approvingly on the shoulder. Then he rolled up his sleeve and produced a hypodermic needle.
"And now I will give you something to make you sleep. Your wife, what about her?"
Simon said weakly: "She needn't know till the morning."
He went on: "I - you mustn't blame Jackie... It's been all my fault. I treated her disgracefully - poor kid - she didn't know what she was doing..."
Dr Bessner nodded comprehendingly.
"Yes, yes - I understand..."
"My fault -" Simon urged. His eyes went to Cornelia. "Someone - ought to - stay with her. She might - hurt herself -"
Dr Bessner injected the needle. Cornelia said, with quiet competence: "It's all right, Mr Doyle. Miss Bowers is going to stay with her all night..."
A grateful look flashed over Simon's face. His body relaxed. His eyes closed. Suddenly he jerked them open. "Fanthorp?"
"Yes, Doyle."
"The pistol... ought not to leave it... lying about. The boys will find it in the morning."
Fanthorp nodded. "Quite right. I'll go and get hold of it now."
He went out of the cabin and along the deck. Miss Bowers appeared at the door of Jacqueline's cabin.
"She'll be all right now," she announced. "I've given her a morphine injection."
"But you'll stay with her?"
"Oh, yes. Morphia excites some people. I shall stay all night."
Fanthorp went on to the lounge. Some three minutes later there was a tap on Bessner's cabin door.
"Dr Bessner?"
"Yes?" The stout man appeared. Fanthorp beckoned him out on the deck.
"Look here - I can't find that pistol."
"What is that?"
"The pistol. It dropped out of the girl's hand. She kicked it away and it went under a settee. It isn't under that settee now."
They stared at each other.
"But who can have taken it?"
Fanthorp shrugged his shoulders.
Bessner said: "It is curious, that. But I do not see what we can do about it."
Puzzled and vaguely alarmed, the two men separated.
Chapter 12
Hercule Poirot was just wiping the lather from his freshly shaved face when there was a quick tap on the door, and hard on top of it Colonel Race entered unceremoniously. He closed the door behind him.
He said: "Your instinct was quite correct. It's happened."
Poirot straightened up and asked sharply: "What has happened?"
"Linnet Doyle's dead - shot through the head last night."
Poirot was silent for a minute, two memories vividly before him - a girl in a garden at Assuan saying in a hard breathless voice, "I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger," and another more recent memory, the same voice saying, "One feels one can't go on - the kind of day when something breaks" - and that strange momentary flash of appeal in her eyes. What had been the matter with him not to respond to that appeal? He had been blind, deaf, stupid with his need for sleep.
Race went on: "I've got some slight official standing; they sent for me, put it in my hands. The boat's due to start in half an hour, but it will be delayed till I give the word. There's a possibility, of course, that the murderer came from the shore."
Poirot shook his head.
Race acquiesced in the gesture.
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