"Ah, mon ami Hastings - mon ami Hastings..."

I bent my head and, as was his custom, he embraced me warmly.

"Mon ami Hastings!"

He leaned back, surveying me with his head a little on one side.

"Yes, just the same - the straight back, the broad shoulders, the grey of the hair - très distingué. You know, my friend, you have worn well. Les femmes, they still take an interest in you? Yes?"

"Really, Poirot," I protested. "Must you - "

"But I assure you, my friend, it is a test - it is the test. When the very young girls come and talk to you kindly, oh, so kindly - it is the end! 'The poor old man,' they say; 'we must be nice to him. It must be so awful to be like that.' But you, Hastings

- vous êtes encore jeune. For you there are still possibilities. That is right, twist your moustache, hunch your shoulders - I see it is as I say - you would not look so self-conscious otherwise."

I burst out laughing.

"You really are the limit, Poirot. And how are you yourself?"

"Me," said Poirot with a grimace. "I am a wreck. I am a ruin. I cannot walk. I am crippled and twisted. Mercifully I can still feed myself, but otherwise I have to be attended to like a baby. Put to bed, washed and dressed. Enfin, it is not amusing, that. Mercifully, though the outside decays, the core is still sound."

"Yes, indeed. The best heart in the world." "The heart? Perhaps. I was not referring to the heart. The brain, mon cher, is what I mean by the core. My brain, it still functions magnificently."

I could at least perceive clearly that no deterioration of the brain in the direction of modesty had taken place. "And you like it here?" I asked. Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

"It suffices. It is not, you comprehend, the Ritz. No, indeed. The room I was in when I first came here was both small and inadequately furnished. I moved to this one with no increase of price. Then, the cooking, it is English at its worst. Those Brussels sprouts so enormous, so hard, that the English like so much. The potatoes boiled and either hard or falling to pieces. The vegetables that taste of water, water, and again water. The complete absence of the salt and pepper in any dish -

" He paused expressively. "It sounds terrible," I said.

"I do not complain," said Poirot, and proceeded to do so. "And there is also the modernization, so called. The bathrooms, the taps everywhere, and what comes out of them? Lukewarm water, mon ami, at most hours of the day. And the towels, so thin, so meagre!"

"There is something to be said for the old days," I said thoughtfully. I remembered the clouds of steam which had gushed from the hot tap of the one bathroom Styles had originally possessed, one of those bathrooms in which an immense bath with mahogany sides had reposed proudly in the middle of the bathroom floor. Remembered, too, the immense bath towels, and the frequent shining brass cans of boiling hot water that stood in one's old-fashioned basin.