re
difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of the hotel was
a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it
difficult to get into. Of course he combined with this limitation in the
scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance.
The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the
demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the
English upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the
fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them all told. It was
much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in
that hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness,
as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there was generally at
least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dine
anywhere but in such a place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy;
and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club
was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual
dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures,
as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set
of fish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the
society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish,
and each loaded at the hilt with one large pearl. These were always
laid out for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most
magnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a vast number
of ceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; that
was where it was so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anything
in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were already a
certain sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been in
existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-president
was the Duke of Chester.

If I have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel,
the reader may feel a natural wonder as to how I came to know anything
about it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as my
friend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden galley. As far
as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is in
the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the most
refined retreats with the dreadful information that all men are