ave behind you a mystery as yet unsolved and a tale worth
telling.

If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet
a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask
him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would
probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon
Hotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely
by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is perhaps a little
proud of this wild and wonderful guess of his, and it is possible that
he might refer to it. But since it is immeasurably unlikely that you
will ever rise high enough in the social world to find "The Twelve
True Fishermen," or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and
criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at
all unless you hear it from me.

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual
dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical
society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that
topsy-turvy product--an "exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, it
was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning
people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning
enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively
create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend
money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were a fashionable
hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society
would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there
were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor
was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday
afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a
square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient
one. But its very inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a
particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, was held to be of
vital importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four people
could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner table was the
celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on a sort of
veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London.
Thus it happened that even the twenty-four seats at this table could
only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet mo