sily 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 dieth not, and
the fire that is not quenched."

"You're a rum sort of cloak-room clerk," said the other.

"I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau," said Brown, "and I am ready to hear
your confession."

The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back into
a chair.

The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen had
proceeded with placid success. I do not possess a copy of the menu; and
if I did it would not convey anything to anybody. It was written in
a sort of super-French employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible to
Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club that the hors d'oeuvres
should be various and manifold to the point of madness. They were taken
seriously because they were avowedly useless extras, like the whole
dinner and the whole club. There was also a tradition that the soup
course should be light and unpretending--a sort of simple and austere
vigil for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange,
slight talk which governs the British Empire, which governs it in
secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if
he could overhear it. Cabinet ministers on both sides were alluded to
by their Christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The Radical
Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to
be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his
saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals
were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole,
praised--as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were very
important. And yet, anything seemed important about them except their
politics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who
still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all that
phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anything--not even
anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich.
He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party could
ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would
have been put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was a