“Then, if that is so, why should they first try to shoot him?”

Poirot made a gesture of anger. “Ah, that is just what I do not understand! It is inexplicable⁠—stupid! They have all their arrangements made (and very good arrangements too!) for the abduction, and yet they imperil the whole affair by a melodramatic attack, worthy of a Cinema, and quite as unreal. It is almost impossible to believe in it, with its band of masked men, not twenty miles from London!”

“Perhaps they were two quite separate attempts which happened irrespective of each other,” I suggested.

“Ah, no, that would be too much of a coincidence! Then, further⁠—who is the traitor? There must have been a traitor⁠—in the first affair, anyway. But who was it⁠—Daniels or O’Murphy? It must have been one of the two, or why did the car leave the main road? We cannot suppose that the Prime Minister connived at his own assassination! Did O’Murphy take that turning of his own accord, or was it Daniels who told him to do so?”