“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 In-
