this kind.”

 

I felt myself getting hotter and hotter, and more and more incoherent, as I

floundered through the above speech.

 

Poirot sprang from his chair. I had a moment’s terror that he was going to

embrace me French fashion, but mercifully he refrained.

 

“But this is magnificent—you have then written down your impressions of the case

as you went along?”

 

I nodded.

 

“_Epatant!_” cried Poirot. “Let me see them—this instant.”

 

I was not quite prepared for such a sudden demand. I racked my brains to

remember certain details.

 

“I hope you won’t mind,” I stammered. “I may have been a little—er—_personal_

now and then.”

 

“Oh! I comprehend perfectly; you have referred to me as comic—as, perhaps,

ridiculous now and then? It matters not at all. Hastings, he also was not always

polite. Me, I have the mind above such trivialities.”