Something in his tone flicked the other man on the raw. He asked angrily, "What the devil do you mean?"
Poirot replied with an air of engaging frankness: "I was wondering, Mr Pennington, whether Linnet Ridgeway's sudden marriage caused any - consternation, in your office?"
"Consternation?"
"That was the word I used."
"What the hell are you driving at?"
"Something quite simple. Are Linnet Doyle's affairs in the perfect order they should be?"
Pennington rose to his feet.
"That's enough. I'm through." He made for the door.
"But you will answer my question first?"
Pennington snapped, "They're in perfect order."
"You were not so alarmed when the news of Linnet Ridgeway's marriage reached you that you rushed over to Europe by the first boat and staged an apparently fortuitous meeting in Egypt."
Pennington came back toward them. He had himself under control once more.
"What you are saying is absolute balderdash! I didn't even know that Linnet was married till I met her in Cairo. I was utterly astonished. Her letter must have missed me by a day in New York. It was forwarded and I got it about a week later."
"You came over by the Carmanic, I think you said."
"That's right."
"And the letter reached New York after the Carmanic sailed?"
"How many times have I got to repeat it?"
"It is strange," said Poirot.
"What's strange?"
"That on your luggage there are no labels of the Carmanic. The only recent labels of transatlantic sailing are the Normandie. The Normandie, I remember, sailed two days after the Carmanic."
For a moment the other was at a loss. His eyes wavered.
Colonel Race weighed in with telling effect.
"Come now, Mr Pennington," he said. "We've several reasons for believing that you came over on the Normandie and not by the Carmanic, as you said. In that case, you received Mrs Doyle's letter before you left New York. It's no good denying it, for it's the easiest thing in the world to check up the steamship companies."
Andrew Pennington felt absent-mindedly for a chair and sat down. His face was impassive - a poker face. Behind that mask his agile brain looked ahead to the next move.
"I'll have to hand it to you, gentlemen. You've been too smart for me. But I had my reasons for acting as I did."
"No doubt." Race's tone was curt.
"If I give them to you, it must be understood I do so in confidence."
"I think you can trust us to behave fittingly. Naturally I cannot give assurances blindly."
"Well -" Pennington sighed. "I'll come clean. There was some monkey business going on in England. It worried me. I couldn't do much about it by letter. The only thing was to come over and see for myself."
"What do you mean by monkey business?"
"I'd good reason to believe that Linnet was being swindled."
"By whom?"
"Her British lawyer. Now that's not the kind of accusation you can fling around anyhow. I made up my mind to come over right away and see into matters myself."
"That does great credit to your vigilance, I am sure. But why the little deception about not having received the letter?"
"Well, I ask you -" Pennington spread out his hands. "You can't butt in on a honeymoon couple without more or less coming down to brass tacks and giving your reasons. I thought it best to make the meeting accidental. Besides, I didn't know anything about the husband. He might have been mixed up in the racket for all I knew."
"In fact all your actions were actuated by pure disinterestedness," said Colonel Race drily.
"You've said it, Colonel."
There was a pause. Race glanced at Poirot. The little man leant forward.
"Monsieur Pennington, we do not believe a word of your story -"
"The hell you don't! And what the hell do you believe?"
"We believe that Linnet Ridgeway's unexpected marriage put you in a financial quandary. That you came over post haste to try and find some way out of the mess you were in - that is to say, some way of gaining time. That, with that end in view, you endeavoured to obtain Madame Doyle's signature to certain documents - and failed. That on the journey up the Nile, when walking along the cliff top at Abu Simbel, you dislodged a boulder which fell and only very narrowly missed its object -"
"You're crazy."
"We believe that the same kind of circumstances occurred on the return journey. That is to say, an opportunity presented itself of putting Madame Doyle out of the way at a moment when her death would be almost certainly ascribed to the action of another person. We not only believe, but know, that it was your revolver which killed a woman who was about to reveal to us the name of the person who she had reason to believe killed both Linnet Doyle and the, maid Louise -"
"Hell!" The forcible ejaculation broke forth and interrupted Poirot's stream of eloquence. "What are you getting at? Are you crazy? What motive had I to kill Linnet? I wouldn't get her money; that goes to her husband. Why don't you pick on him? He's the one to benefit - not me."
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