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Blake’s eyes twinkled. “Heard this one?”
    Poirot’s laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.
    Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humour.
    Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig.
    A pig. This little pig went to market ….
    What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake? A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous, contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to market—and fetched the full market price….
    But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhaps—but otherwise a well made, well set up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Crale’sdeath. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving less….
    Poirot murmured as a mere catch-phrase:
    â€œYou comprehend my position.”
    â€œNo, really, you know, I’m hanged if I do.” The stockbroker sat upright again, his glance was once more shrewd. “Why you? You’re not a writer?”
    â€œNot precisely—no. Actually I am a detective.”
    The modesty of this remark had probably not been equalled before in Poirot’s conversation.
    â€œOf course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!”
    But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously.
    To his cronies he would have said:
    â€œQuaint little mountebank. Oh well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women all right.”
    And although that derisive patronizing attitude was exactly the one which Hercule Poirot had aimed at inducing, nevertheless he found himself annoyed by it.
    This man, this successful man of affairs, was unimpressed by Hercule Poirot! It was a scandal.
    â€œI am gratified,” said Poirot untruly, “that I am so well known to you. My success, let me tell you, has been founded on the psychology—the eternal why? of human behaviour. That, Mr. Blake, is what interests the world in crime today. It used to be romance. Famous crimes were retold from one angle only—the love story connected with them. Nowadays it is very different. People read with interest that Dr. Crippen murdered his wife because she was a big bouncing woman and he was little and insignificant and therefore she made him feel inferior. They read of some famous woman criminal that she killed because she’d been snubbed by her father when she was three years old. It is, as I say, the why of crime that interests nowadays.”
    Philip Blake said, with a slight yawn:
    â€œThe why of most crimes is obvious enough, I should say. Usually money.”
    Poirot cried:
    â€œAh, but my dear sir, the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point!”
    â€œAnd that’s where you come in?”
    â€œAnd that, as you say, is where I come in! It is proposed to rewrite the stories of certain bygone crimes—from the psychological angle. Psychology in crime, it is my speciality. I have accepted the commission.”
    Philip Blake grinned.
    â€œPretty lucrative, I suppose?”
    â€œI hope so—I certainly hope so.”
    â€œCongratulations. Now, perhaps, you’ll tell me where I come in?”
    â€œMost certainly. The Crale case, Monsieur.”
    Phillip Blake did not look startled. But he looked thoughtful. He said:
    â€œYes, of course, the Crale case….”
    Hercule Poirot said anxiously:
    â€œIt is not displeasing to you, Mr. Blake?”
    â€œOh, as to that.” Philip Blake shrugged his shoulders. “It’s no use resenting a