Crawford said abruptly, "Somebody tried to poison me last night. Got into this room somehow and put cyanide in a bottle of cognac Abe and I were drinking out of earlier in the evening."
Isobel stared at him. Her eyes went from him to Abe and back. "But ... but, why?"
Crawford ran his hand back over his wiry hair in puzzlement. "I ... I don't know. That's what's driving me batty. I can't figure out why anybody would want to kill me."
"I can," Abe said bluntly. "And that interview we just had with Sven Zetterberg just bears me out."
"Zetterberg," Isobel said, surprised. "Is he in Africa?"
Crawford nodded to her question but his eyes were on Abe.
Abe put his hands behind his head and said to the ceiling, "Zetterberg just gave Homer's team the assignment of bringing in El Hassan."
"El Hassan? But you boys told us all in Timbuktu that there was no El Hassan. You invented him and then the rest of us, more or less spontaneously, though unknowingly, took up the falsification and spread your work."
"That's right," Crawford said, still looking at Abe.
"But didn't you tell Sven Zetterberg?" Isobel demanded. "He's too big a man to play jokes upon."