“And my boots,” he wailed. “Regard them, Hastings. My boots, of the neat patent leather, usually so smart and shining. See, the sand is inside them, which is painful, and outside them, which outrages the eyesight. Also the heat, it causes my moustaches to become limp⁠—but limp!”

“Look at the Sphinx,” I urged. “Even I can feel the mystery and the charm it exhales.”

Poirot looked at it discontentedly.

“It has not the air happy,” he declared. “How could it, half-buried in sand in that untidy fashion. Ah, this cursed sand!”

“Come, now, there’s a lot of sand in Belgium,” I reminded him, mindful of a holiday spent at Knocke-sur-mer in the midst of “ les dunes impeccables ” as the guidebook had phrased it.