首相绑架案 9

Nine,THE DISAPPEARANCE ¹ OF MR.?DAVENHEIM,Poirot and I were expecting our old friend Inspector ² Japp of Scotland Yard to tea. We were sittinground the tea-table awaiting his arrival. Poirot had just finished carefully straightening the cupsand saucers which our landlady ³ was in the habit of throwing, rather than placing, on the table. Hehad also breathed heavily on the metal teapot, and polished it with a silk handkerchief. The kettlewas on the boil, and a small enamel ⁴ saucepan beside it contained some thick, sweet chocolatewhich was more to Poirot’s palate than what he described as “your English poison. ”,A sharp “rat-tat
” sounded below, and a few minutes afterwards Japp entered briskly.,“Hope I’m not late,” he said as he greeted us. “To tell the truth, I was yarning ⁶ with Miller ⁷, theman who’s in charge of the Davenheim case. ”,I pricked ⁸ up my ears. For the last three days the papers had been full of the strangedisappearance of Mr.?Davenheim, senior partner of Davenheim and Salmon ⁹, the well- knownbankers and financiers. On Saturday last he had walked out of his house, and had never been seensince. I looked forward to extracting some interesting details from Japp.,Poirot moved a plate of bread and butter the eighth of an inch, and said sharply:,“Be exact, my friend. What do you mean by ‘disappear?’ To which class of disappearance areyou referring?
”,“Are disappearances ¹⁰ classified and labelled, then?” I laughed.,Japp smiled also. Poirot frowned at both of us.,“But certainly they are! They fall into three categories: First, and most common, thevoluntary disappearance. Second, the much abused ‘loss of memory’ case—rare, but occasionallygenuine. Third, murder, and a more or less successful disposal of the body. Do you refer to allthree as impossible of execution? ”,Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语 。,The inspector was interested in everything pertaining to the school.视察员对有关学校的一切都感兴趣
。