Free One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie

Poirot whipped out his card case. He extracted a card and passed it across the table. Again that emotion that he could not quite define showed upon Mr. Raikes' lean face. It was not fear - it was more aggressive than fear. After it, quite unquestionably, came anger.
    He tossed the card back.
    “So that's who you are, is it? I've heard of you.”
    “Most people have,” said Hercule Poirot modestly.
    “You're a private dick, aren't you? The expensive kind. The kind people hire when money is no object - when it's worth paying anything in order to save their miserable skins!”
    “If you do not drink your coffee,” said Hercule Poirot, “it will get cold.”
    He spoke kindly and with authority.
    Raikes stared at him.
    “Say, just what kind of an insect are you?”
    “The coffee in this country is very bad anyway -” said Poirot.
    “I'll say it is,” agreed Mr. Raikes with fervor.
    “But if you allow it to get cold it is practically undrinkable.”
    The young man leaned forward.
    “What are you getting at? What's the big idea in coming round here?”
    Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
    “I wanted to - see you.”
    “Oh, yes?” said Mr. Raikes sceptically.
    His eyes narrowed.
    “If it's money you're after, you've come to the wrong man! The people I'm in with can't afford to buy what they want. Better go back to the man who pays you your salary.”
    Poirot said, sighing:
    “Nobody has paid me anything - yet.”
    “You're telling me,” said Mr. Raikes.
    “It is the truth,” said Hercule Poirot. “I am wasting a good deal of valuable time for no recompense whatsoever. Simply, shall we say, to assuage my curiosity.”
    “And I suppose,” said Mr. Raikes, “you were just assuaging your curiosity at that darned dentist's the other day.”
    Poirot shook his head. He said:
    “You seem to overlook the most ordinary reason for being in a dentist's waiting room - which is that one is waiting to have one's teeth attended to.”
    “So that's what you were doing?” Mr. Raikes' tone expressed contemptuous unbelief. “Waiting to have your teeth seen to?”
    “Certainly.”
    “You'll excuse me if I say I don't believe it.”
    “May I ask then, Mr. Raikes, what you were doing there?”
    Mr. Raikes grinned suddenly. He said:
    “Got you there! I was waiting to have my teeth seen to also.”
    “You had perhaps the toothache?”
    “That's right, big boy.”
    “But all the same, you went away without having your teeth attended to?”
    “What if I did? That's my business.”
    He paused - then he said, with a quick savagery of tone,
    “Oh, what the hell's the use of all this slick talking? You were there to look after your big shot. Well, he's all right, isn't he? Nothing happened to your precious Mr. Alistair Blunt. You've nothing on me.”
    Poirot said:
    “Where did you go when you went so abruptly out of the waiting room?”
    “Left the house, of course.”
    “Ah!” Poirot looked up at the ceiling. “But nobody saw you leave, Mr. Raikes.”
    “Does that matter?”
    “It might. Somebody died in that house not long afterwards, remember.”
    Raikes said carelessly:
    “Oh, you mean the dentist fellow.”
    Poirot's tone was hard as he said:
    “Yes, I mean the dentist fellow.”
    Raikes stared. He said:
    “You trying to pin that on me? Is that the game? Well, you can't do it. I've just read the account of the inquest yesterday. The poor devil shot himself because he'd made a mistake with a local anaesthetic and one of his patients died.”
    Poirot went on unmoved:
    “Can you prove that you left the house when you say you did? Is there anyone who can say definitely where you were between twelve and one?”
    The other's eyes narrowed.
    “So you are trying to pin it on me? I suppose Blunt put you up to this?”
    Poirot sighed. He said:
    “You will pardon me, but it seems an obsession with you - this persistent harping on Mr. Alistair Blunt. I am not employed by him, I never have been employed by him. I am