true work, it is done from within. The little gray cells—remember always the little gray cells, mon ami!”
I slipped into my seat, and remarked idly, in answer to Poirot’s greeting, that an hour's sea passage from Calais to Dover could hardly be dignified by the epithet “terrible.”
Poirot waved his egg-spoon in vigorous refutation of my remark. “Du tout! If for an hour one experiences sensations and emotions of the most terrible, one has lived many hours! Does not one of your English poets say that time is counted, not by hours, but by heartbeats?”
“I fancy Browning was referring to something more romantic than seasickness, though.”
“Because he was an Englishman, an Islander to whom la Manche was nothing. Oh, you English! With nous autres it is different.”
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, Poirot,” 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 endeavored 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
7
