policeman," said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden,
in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire
sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the
south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo
of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost
irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden
trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as
impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million
moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch
of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short
tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only
stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has
unmistakably called up to him.

"Well, Flambeau," says the voice, "you really look like a Flying Star;
but that always means a Falling Star at last."

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels
and, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below.

"You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from
Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams
died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to
have marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer's coming.
But there's no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing
the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by
sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting
a paper donkey's tail to Fischer's coat. But in the rest you eclipsed
yourself."

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if
hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the
man below.

"Oh, yes," says the man below, "I know all about it. I know you not
only forced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going
to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were
already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you
up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the
warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion
of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw
that if the dress were a harlequin's the appearance of a police