is a fellow who badly wants your help; he's
perpetually being haunted and threatened by an invisible enemy--a
scoundrel whom nobody has even seen." As Angus proceeded to tell the
whole tale of Smythe and Welkin, beginning with Laura's story, and
going on with his own, the supernatural laugh at the corner of two empty
streets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty room, Flambeau
grew more and more vividly concerned, and the little priest seemed to be
left out of it, like a piece of furniture. When it came to the scribbled
stamp-paper pasted on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to fill the
room with his huge shoulders.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I think you had better tell me the rest
on the nearest road to this man's house. It strikes me, somehow, that
there is no time to be lost."

"Delighted," said Angus, rising also, "though he's safe enough for the
present, for I've set four men to watch the only hole to his burrow."

They turned out into the street, the small priest trundling after them
with the docility of a small dog. He merely said, in a cheerful way,
like one making conversation, "How quick the snow gets thick on the
ground."

As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered with silver,
Angus finished his story; and by the time they reached the crescent with
the towering flats, he had leisure to turn his attention to the four
sentinels. The chestnut seller, both before and after receiving a
sovereign, swore stubbornly that he had watched the door and seen no
visitor enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had had
experience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn't so
green as to expect suspicious characters to look suspicious; he looked
out for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when all
three men gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood
smiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more final still.

"I've got a right to ask any man, duke or dustman, what he wants in
these flats," said the genial and gold-laced giant, "and I'll swear
there's been nobody to ask since this gentleman went away."

The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking modestly at the
pavement, here ventured to say meekly, "Has nobody been up and down
stairs, then, since the snow began to fall? It began while we were all
round at Flambeau's."

"Nobody's been in here, sir, you can take it from me," said the
official, with beaming auth