I laughed.

‘You-humble!’

‘It is so. Except-I confess it-that I am a little proud of my moustaches. Nowhere in London have I observed anything to compare with them.’

‘You are quite safe,’ I said dryly. ‘You won’t. So you are not going to risk judgment on Carlotta Adams?’

‘Elle est artiste!’ said Poirot simply. ‘That covers nearly all, does it not?’ 

‘Anyway, you don’t consider that she walks through life in peril?’

‘We all do that, my friend,’ said Poirot gravely. ‘Misfortune may always be waiting to rush out upon us. But as to your question, Miss Adams, I think, will succeed. She is shrewd and she is something more. You observed without doubt that she is a Jewess?’

I had not. But now that he mentioned it, I saw the faint traces of Semitic ancestry. Poirot nodded.

‘It makes for success-that. Though there is still one avenue of danger-since it is of danger we are talking.’

‘You mean?’

‘Love of money. Love of money might lead such a one from the prudent and cautious path.’

‘It might do that to all of us,’ I said.

‘That is true, but at any rate you or I would see the danger involved. We could weigh the pros and cons. If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow.’

I laughed at his serious manner.

‘Esmeralda, the gipsy queen, is in good form,’ I remarked teasingly.

‘The psychology of character is interesting,’ returned Poirot unmoved. ‘One cannot be interested in crime without being interested in psychology. It is not the mere act of killing, it is what liesbehind it that appeals to the expert. You follow me, Hastings?’ 

I said that I followed him perfectly.

‘I have noticed that when we work on a case together, you are always urging me on to physical action, Hastings. You wish me to measure footprints, to analyse cigarette-ash, to prostrate myself on my stomach for the examination of detail. You never realize that by lying back in an arm-chair with the eyes closed one can come nearer to the solution of any problem. One sees then with the eyes of the mind.’