Page:The Big Four (Christie).pdf/19

Rh The man did not seem to understand, and merely repeated in exactly the same tone:—

“M. Hercule Poirot, 14 Farraway Street.”

Poirot tried him with several questions. Sometimes the man did not answer at all; sometimes he repeated the same phrase. Poirot made a sign to me to ring up on the telephone.

“Get Dr. Ridgeway to come round.”

The doctor was in luckily; and as his house was only just round the corner, few minutes elapsed before he came bustling in.

“What’s all this, eh?”

Poirot gave a brief explanation, and the doctor started examining our strange visitor, who seemed quite unconscious of his presence or ours.

“H’m!” said Dr. Ridgeway, when he had finished. “Curious case.”

“Brain fever?” I suggested.

The doctor immediately snorted with contempt.

“Brain fever! Brain fever! No such thing as brain fever. An invention of novelists. No; the man’s had a shock of some kind. He’s come here under the force of a persistent idea—to find M. Hercule Poirot, 14 Farraway Street—and he repeats those words mechanically without in the least knowing what they mean.”