The Murder on the Links Page #4

								


"I fancy Browning was referring to something more romantic than sea sickness, though."

"Because he was an Englishman, an Islander to whom la Manche was nothing. Oh, you English! With nous autres it is different. Figure to yourself that a lady of my acquaintance at the beginning of the war fled to Ostend. There she had a terrible crisis of the nerves. Impossible to escape further except by crossing the sea! And she had a horror--mais une horreur!--of the sea!  What was she to do? Daily les Boches were drawing nearer. Imagine to yourself the terrible situation!"

"What did she do?" I inquired curiously.

"Fortunately her husband was homme pratique. He was also very calm, the crises of the nerves, they affected him not. Il l'a emportée simplement! Naturally when she reached England she was prostrate, but she still breathed."

Poirot shook his head seriously. I composed my face as best I could.

Suddenly he stiffened and pointed a dramatic finger at the toast rack.

"Ah, par exemple, c'est trop fort!" he cried.

"What is it?"

"This piece of toast. You remark him not?" He whipped the offender out of the rack, and held it up for me to examine.

"Is it square? No. Is it a triangle? Again no. Is it even round? No. Is it of any shape remotely pleasing to the eye? What symmetry have we here? None."

"It's cut from a cottage loaf," I explained soothingly.

Poirot threw me a withering glance.

"What an intelligence has my friend Hastings!" he exclaimed sarcastically. "Comprehend you not that I have forbidden such a loaf--a loaf haphazard and shapeless, that no baker should permit himself to bake!"

I endeavoured to distract his mind.

"Anything interesting come by the post?"

Poirot shook his head with a dissatisfied air.

"I have not yet examined my letters, but nothing of interest arrives nowadays. The great criminals, the criminals of method, they do not exist. The cases I have been employed upon lately were banal to the last degree. In verity I am reduced to recovering lost lap-dogs for fashionable ladies! The last problem that presented any interest was that intricate little affair of the Yardly diamond, and that was--how many months ago, my friend?"

He shook his head despondently, and I roared with laughter.

"Cheer up, Poirot, the luck will change. Open your letters. For all you know, there may be a great Case looming on the horizon."

Poirot smiled, and taking up the neat little letter opener with which he opened his correspondence he slit the tops of the several envelopes that lay by his plate.

"A bill. Another bill. It is that I grow extravagant in my old age. Aha! a note from Japp."

"Yes?" pricked up my ears. The Scotland Yard Inspector had more than once introduced us to an interesting case.

"He merely thanks me (in his fashion) for a little point in the Aberystwyth Case on which I was able to set him right. I am delighted to have been of service to him."
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