eyes saw a vision from the past.

A woman of full and flamboyant form; her

luxuriant henna red hair crowned with a

small plastron of straw to which was

attached a positive platoon of brilliantly

421

feathered little birds. Exotic-looking furs

dripped from her shoulders.

Her crimson mouth opened wide, her

rich, foreign voice echoed resoundingly.

She had good lungs.

"It is!" she screamed. "But it is! Mon

cher Hercule Poirot! We must meet again!

I insist V

But Fate itself is not more inexorable

than the behaviour of two escalators moving

in an inverse direction. Steadily, remorselessly,

Hercule Poirot was borne upward, and the Countess Vera Rossakoff was borne downwards.

Twisting himself sideways, leaning over

the balustrade, Poirot cried despairingly:

"Chere Madame--where can I find

you ?"

Her reply came to him faintly from the

depths. It was unexpected, yet seemed at

the moment strangely apposite.

"Zw Hell...."

Hercule Poirot blinked. He blinked

again. Suddenly he rocked on his feet.

Unawares he had reached the top--and

had neglected to step off properly. The

crowd spread out round him. A little to

one side a dense crowd was pressing on

422

to the downward escalator. Should he

join them? Had that been the Countess's

meaning ? No doubt that travelling in the

bowels of the earth at the rush hour was Hell. If that had been the Countess's meaning, he could not agree with her

more. . . .

Resolutely Poirot crossed over, sandwiched

himself into the descending crowd

and was borne back into the depths. At the

foot of the escalator no sign of the Countess.

Poirot was left with a choice of blue, amber, etc. lights to follow. Was the Countess patronising the Bakerloo

or the Piccadilly line? Poirot visited

each platform in turn. He was swept

about amongst surging crowds boarding

or leaving trains, but nowhere did he espy

that flamboyant Russian figure, the Countess

Vera Rossakoff.

Weary, battered, and infinitely

chagrined, Hercule Poirot once more

ascended to ground level and stepped out

into the hubbub of Piccadilly Circus. He

reached home in a mood of pleasurable excitement.

It is the misfortune of small precise

men to hanker after large and flamboyant

LOH28423

women. Poirot had never been able to rid

himself of the fatal fascination the Countess

held for him. Though it was something like

twenty years since he had seen her last the

magic still held. Granted that her makeup

now resembled a scene-painter's sunset, with the woman under the make-up well hidden from sight, to Hercule Poirot she

still represented the sumptuous and the

alluring. The little bourgeois was still

thrilled by the aristocrat. The memory of

the adroit way she stole jewellery roused

the old admiration. He remembered the

magnificent aplomb with which she had

admitted the fact when taxed with it. A

woman in a thousand--in a million!

And he had met her again --and lost her!

"In Hell," she had said. Surely his ears

had not deceived him ? She had said that ?