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used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and – ”

      Ivan of the Scar sprang up. “You lunatic,” he yelled; “you'll go to my master now, if I take you by – 1”

      “Why, I was going there,” said Brown heavily; “I must ask him to confess, and all that.”

      Pushing the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin's study.

      The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their noisy entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin's elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato[57][58].

      The Queer Feet

      If you meet a member of that select club, “ The Twelve True Fishermen,” entering the Vernon Hotel for the annual club dinner, you will observe, as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and not black. If you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter.

      If you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the greatest luck of his life, he would probably reply that his best luck was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had prevented a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. But since it is very unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find “ The Twelve True Fishermen,” or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at all unless you hear it from me.

      The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution which can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners[59]. It was that topsy-turvy product. That is, it was a thing which paid[60] not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia[61]. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one. But its inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, was of vital importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London, so even the twenty-four seats could only be enjoyed in warm weather. The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. But this limitation of his enterprise in size matched the perfect performance. The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the manners of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them. It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there was generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

      The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have agreed to dine anywhere but in such a place; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of demonstrating all their treasures, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were[62], the symbol of the society, being made of silver in the form of a fish, and each decorated with one large pearl. These were always laid out for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most magnificent in that magnificent meal. The society had a lot of ceremonies, but it had no history and no object; it was just so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers. It had been in existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-president was the Duke of Chester.

      Therefore, the reader may wonder how I came to know anything about it, and how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown came to find himself in that institution. As far as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. As it happened, one of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer had agreed to send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to Father Brown we are not concerned[63], for the reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but he was obliged to write out some note or statement. So Father Brown, with a meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be given a room and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man who disliked any difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusual stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance. There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one's own family. Moreover, the priest's appearance was second-rate and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse of him might speed up a crisis in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a smart plan[64]. When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage, and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass office, in which sat the representative of the proprietor, and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants' quarters, was the gentlemen's cloak room. But between the office and the cloak room was a small private room without other exit, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or refusing to lend him sixpence. On that occasion, Mr. Lever permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour used by the priest. The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known.

      The time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his little room was without a light. As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a regular noise outside. When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was: just the ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had listened for a few seconds, he got to his feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merely listening, but listening and thinking also.

      There was something very strange about the footsteps. There were no other steps. It was a very silent house, for the guests went at once to their own apartments, and the well-trained waiters were told to be invisible until they were wanted. Nothing irregular could happen there. But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call them regular or irregular.

      First, there came rapid little steps, such as a light man might make in winning a walking race. At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp. The moment the last stamp had died away, the run of light, hurrying feet would come again, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? The man was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in order

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