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‘It is really insupportable,’ he murmured, ‘that every hen lays an egg of a different size! What symmetry can there be on the breakfast table?
‘Let us look at the case with method. What have we for and against these two men? Take O’Murphy first. Against: that his conduct in leaving the main road was suspicious; that he is an Irishman from County Clare;
‘The cat,’ declaimed Poirot, ‘was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. It is still regarded as a symbol of good luck if a black cat crosses your path.
‘The Lost Mine’ was first published in The Sketch, 21 November 1923. I laid down my bank book with a sigh. ‘It is a curious thing,’ I observed, ‘but my overdraft never seems to grow any less.’ ‘And it perturbs you not? Me, if I had an overdraft, never should I close my eyes all night,’ declared Poirot. ‘You deal in comfortable balances, I suppose!’ I retorted. ‘Four hundred and forty-four pounds, four and fourpence,’ said Poirot with some complacency. ‘A neat figure, is it not?’
And you’re wrong about Langton. That chap wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ ‘The lives of flies are not my concern,’ said Poirot placidly. ‘And although you say Monsieur Langton would not take the life of one, yet you forget that he is even now preparing to take the lives of several thousand wasps.’
‘One should always speak with absolute accuracy.
Six people at an evening party, in a room with a big Spanish chest against the wall, six people, five of them talking, eating a buffet supper, putting records on the gramophone, dancing, and the sixth dead, in the Spanish chest …
But really, M. Poirot, what would one be if one wasn’t alive?’ ‘Dead,’ said Poirot.
Hercule Poirot, swaying to and fro in the tube train, thrown now against one body, now against another, thought to himself that there were too many people in the world!
Nevertheless he was fully conscious now that twenty years is twenty years. Countess Rossakoff might not uncharitably have been described as a ruin. But she was at least a spectacular ruin.
