‘A coal fire,’ he mused to himself, ‘was always shapeless and haphazard! Never did it achieve the symmetry.’

The telephone bell rang. Poirot rose, glancing at his watch as he did so. The time was close on half past eleven. He wondered who was ringing him up at this hour. It might, of course, be a wrong number.

‘And it might,’ he murmured to himself with a whimsical smile, ‘be a millionaire newspaper proprietor, found dead in the library of his country house, with a spotted orchid clasped in his left hand and a page torn from a cookbook pinned to his breast.’

Smiling at the pleasing conceit, he lifted the receiver.

Immediately a voice spoke–a soft husky woman’s voice with a kind of desperate urgency about it.

‘Is that M. Hercule Poirot? Is that M. Hercule Poirot?’

‘Hercule Poirot speaks.’

‘M. Poirot–can you come at once–at once–I’m in danger–in great danger–I know it…’

Poirot said sharply:

‘Who are you? Where are you speaking from?’

The voice came more faintly but with an even greater urgency.

‘At once…it’s life or death…the Jardin des Cygnes…at once…table with yellow irises…’

There was a pause–a queer kind of gasp–the line went dead.

Hercule Poirot hung up. His face was puzzled. He murmured between his teeth:

‘There is something here very curious.’

II

In the doorway of the Jardin des Cygnes, fat Luigi hurried forward.

‘Buona sera, M. Poirot. You desire a table–yes?’

‘No, no, my good Luigi. I seek here for some friends. I will look round–perhaps they are not here yet. Ah, let me see, that table there in the corner with the yellow irises–a little question by the way, if it is not indiscreet. On all the other tables there are tulips–pink tulips–why on that one table do you have yellow irises?’

Luigi shrugged his expressive shoulders.

‘A command, Monsieur! A special order! Without doubt, the favourite flowers of one of the ladies. That table it is the table of Mr Barton Russell–an American–immensely rich.’

‘Aha, one must study the whims of the ladies, must one not, Luigi?’

‘Monsieur has said it,’ said Luigi.

‘I see at that table an acquaintance of mine. I must go and speak to him.’

Poirot skirted his way delicately round the dancing floor on which couples were revolving. The table in question was set for six, but it had at the moment only one occupant, a young man who was thoughtfully, and it seemed pessimistically, drinking champagne.

He was not at all the person that Poirot had expected to see. It seemed impossible to associate the idea of danger or melodrama with any party of which Tony Chapell was a member.

Poirot paused delicately by the table.

‘Ah, it is, is it not, my friend Anthony Chapell?’