Free The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] by G.K. Chesterton Page A

light; then suddenly he
sat upright. He had heard the strange feet once more.
    This
time they had a third oddity. Previously the unknown man had walked, with levity
indeed and lightning quickness, but he had walked. This time he ran. One could
hear the swift, soft, bounding steps coming along the corridor, like the pads
of a fleeing and leaping panther. Whoever was coming was a very strong, active
man, in still yet tearing excitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the
office like a sort of whispering whirlwind, it suddenly changed again to the
old slow, swaggering stamp.
    Father
Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the office door to be locked, went at once
into the cloak room on the other side. The attendant of this place was temporarily
absent, probably because the only guests were at dinner and his office was a
sinecure. After groping through a grey forest of overcoats, he found that the
dim cloak room opened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of counter
or half-door, like most of the counters across which we have all handed
umbrellas and received tickets. There was a light immediately above the
semicircular arch of this opening. It threw little illumination on Father Brown
himself, who seemed a mere dark outline against the dim sunset window behind
him. But it threw an almost theatrical light on the man who stood outside the
cloak room in the corridor.
    He
was an elegant man in very plain evening dress; tall, but with an air of not taking
up much room; one felt that he could have slid along like a shadow where many
smaller men would have been obvious and obstructive. His face, now flung back
in the lamplight, was swarthy and vivacious, the face of a foreigner. His figure
was good, his manners good humoured and confident; a critic could only say that
his black coat was a shade below his figure and manners, and even bulged and
bagged in an odd way. The moment he caught sight of Brown’s black silhouette
against the sunset, he tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called
out with amiable authority: “I want my hat and coat, please; I find I have to
go away at once.”
    Father
Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it
was not the first menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid
it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange gentleman who had been feeling in his
waistcoat pocket, said laughing: “I haven’t got any silver; you can keep this.”
And he threw down half a sovereign, and caught up his coat.
    Father
Brown’s figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instant he had lost his
head. His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he
put two and two together and made four million. Often the Catholic Church
(which is wedded to common sense) did not approve of it. Often he did not
approve of it himself. But it was real inspiration — important at rare crises —
when whosoever shall lose his head the same shall save it.
    “ I
think, sir,” he said civilly, “that you have some silver in your pocket.”
    The
tall gentleman stared. “Hang it,” he cried, “if I choose to give you gold, why should
you complain?”
    “ Because
silver is sometimes more valuable than gold,” said the priest mildly; “that is,
in large quantities.”
    The
stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked still more curiously up the passage
towards the main entrance. Then he looked back at Brown again, and then he
looked very carefully at the window beyond Brown’s head, still coloured with the
after-glow of the storm. Then he seemed to make up his mind. He put one hand on
the counter, vaulted over as easily as an acrobat and towered above the priest,
putting one tremendous hand upon his collar.
    “ Stand
still,” he said, in a hacking whisper. “I don’t want to threaten you, but —”
    “ I
do want to threaten you,” said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum, “I
want to threaten you with the worm that