e mind."

"Well," said the doctor, "I think I'll go and give Quinton his stuff."

They had turned the corner of the front facade, and were approaching the
front doorway. As they turned into it they saw the man in the white robe
for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that
it seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study
opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was locked.

Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to
themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on the
impossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and
then stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had
already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging about, humming
and poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor's face had a spasm of
disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: "I must
lock the door again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out again
in two minutes."

He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, just
balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The
young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at
a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort
of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was opened
again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door
open for an instant, and called out: "Oh, I say, Quinton, I want--"

From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in
something between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter.

"Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I'm writing a
song about peacocks."

Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through the
aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singular
dexterity.

"So that's settled," said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, he
led the way out into the garden.

"Poor Leonard can get a little peace now," he added to Father Brown;
"he's locked in all by himself for an hour or two."

"Yes," answered the priest; "and his voice sounded jolly enough when we
left him." Then he looked gravely round the garden, and saw the loose
figure of Atkinson standing and jingling the half-sovereign in his
pocket, and beyond, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian
sitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass with his face turned towards
t