h his own hand on a plain piece of paper."

"Of the wrong shape," said the priest calmly.

"Oh, the shape be damned!" cried Flambeau. "What has the shape to do
with it?"

"There were twenty-three snipped papers," resumed Brown unmoved, "and
only twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had
been destroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggest
anything to you?"

A light dawned on Flambeau's face, and he said: "There was something
else written by Quinton, some other words. 'They will tell you I die by
my own hand,' or 'Do not believe that--'"

"Hotter, as the children say," said his friend. "But the piece was
hardly half an inch across; there was no room for one word, let alone
five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man
with hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him?"

"I can think of nothing," said Flambeau at last.

"What about quotation marks?" said the priest, and flung his cigar far
into the darkness like a shooting star.

All words had left the other man's mouth, and Father Brown said, like
one going back to fundamentals:

"Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance
about wizardry and hypnotism. He--"

At this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and the doctor came
out with his hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest's hands.

"That's the document you wanted," he said, "and I must be getting home.
Good night."

"Good night," said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the
gate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell
upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope and read the
following words:

DEAR FATHER BROWN,--Vicisti Galilee. Otherwise, damn your
eyes, which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that
there is something in all that stuff of yours after all?

I am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and
in all natural functions and instincts, whether men called them
moral or immoral. Long before I became a doctor, when I was a
schoolboy keeping mice and spiders, I believed that to be a good
animal is the best thing in the world. But just now I am shaken;
I have believed in Nature; but it seems as if Nature could betray
a man. Can there be anything in your bosh? I am really getting
morbid.

I loved Quinton's wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature