“How unscrupulous you are, Mother!”
Events after dinner were not without their amusing side to a student of human nature.
The socialistic young man (who turned out to be Mr. Ferguson as deduced) retired to the smoking room, scorning the assemblage of passengers in the observation saloon on the top deck.
Miss Van Schuyler duly secured the best and most undraughty position there by advancing firmly on a table at which Mrs. Otterbourne was sitting and saying, “You’ll excuse me, I am sure, but I think my knitting was left here!”
Fixed by a hypnotic eye, the turban rose and gave ground. Miss Van Schuyler established herself and her suite. Mrs. Otterbourne sat down nearby and hazarded various remarks, which were met with such chilling politeness that she soon gave up. Miss Van Schuyler then sat in glorious isolation. The Doyles sat with the Allertons. Dr. Bessner retained the quiet Mr. Fanthorp as a companion. Jacqueline de Bellefort sat by herself with a book. Rosalie Otterbourne was restless. Mrs. Allerton spoke to her once or twice and tried to draw her into their group, but the girl responded ungraciously.
M. Hercule Poirot spent his evening listening to an account of Mrs. Otterbourne’s mission as a writer.
On his way to his cabin that night he encountered Jacqueline de Bellefort. She was leaning over the rail and, as she turned her head, he was struck by the look of acute misery on her face. There was now no insouciance, no malicious defiance, no dark flaming triumph.
“Good night, Mademoiselle.”
“Good night, Monsieur Poirot.” She hesitated, then said: “You were surprised to find me here?”
“I was not so much surprised as sorry—very sorry….”
He spoke gravely.
“You mean sorry—for me?”
“That is what I meant. You have chosen, Mademoiselle, the dangerous course…As we here in this boat have embarked on a journey, so you too have embarked on your own private journey—a journey on a swift moving river, between dangerous rocks, and heading for who knows what currents of disaster….”
“Why do you say this?”
“Because it is true…You have cut the bonds that moored you to safety. I doubt now if you could turn back if you would.”
She said very slowly: “That is true….”
Then she flung her head back.
“Ah, well—one must follow one’s star, wherever it leads.”
“Beware, Mademoiselle, that it is not a false star….”
She laughed and mimicked the parrot cry of the donkey boys:
“That very bad star, sir! That star fall down….”
He was just dropping off to sleep when the murmur of voices awoke him. It was Simon Doyle’s voice he heard, repeating the same words he had used when the steamer left Shellal.
“We’ve got to go through with it now….”
“Yes,” thought Hercule Poirot to himself, “we have got to go through with it now….”
He was not happy.
Nine
I
The steamer arrived early next morning at Ez-Zebua.
Cornelia Robson, her face beaming, a large flapping hat on her head, was one of the first to hurry on shore. Cornelia was not good at snubbing people. She was of an amiable disposition and disposed to like all her fellow creatures.
The sight of Hercule Poirot, in a white suit, pink shirt, large black bow tie and a white topee, did not make her wince as the aristocratic Miss Van Schuyler would assuredly have winced. As they walked together up an avenue of sphinxes, she responded readily to his conventional opening, “Your companions are not coming ashore to view the temple?”