ridge,
and garden and glass roof were darkened with driving rain. Father Brown
seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it close
to his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held
it up against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared at
them for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.

Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown's
voice said out of the dark: "Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape."

"What do you mean?" asked Doctor Harris, with a frowning stare.

"It isn't square," answered Brown. "It has a sort of edge snipped off at
the corner. What does it mean?"

"How the deuce should I know?" growled the doctor. "Shall we move this
poor chap, do you think? He's quite dead."

"No," answered the priest; "we must leave him as he lies and send for
the police." But he was still scrutinising the paper.

As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and picked
up a small pair of nail scissors. "Ah," he said, with a sort of relief,
"this is what he did it with. But yet--" And he knitted his brows.

"Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper," said the doctor
emphatically. "It was a fad of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut all
his paper like that," as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper still
unused on another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and held
up a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.

"Quite so," he said. "And here I see the corners that were snipped off."
And to the indignation of his colleague he began to count them.

"That's all right," he said, with an apologetic smile. "Twenty-three
sheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off them. And as I see you are
impatient we will rejoin the others."

"Who is to tell his wife?" asked Dr. Harris. "Will you go and tell her
now, while I send a servant for the police?"

"As you will," said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to the
hall door.

Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed
nothing less than his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he
had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of the
steps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his
billycock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite directions along
the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau's almost paternal
custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by