friend
put away the pocket-book), he said softly:

"If you've got ten minutes, I wish you'd follow that man with the false
nose."

Flambeau looked up in surprise; but the girl with the red hair also
looked up, and with something that was stronger than astonishment. She
was simply and even loosely dressed in light brown sacking stuff;
but she was a lady, and even, on a second glance, a rather needlessly
haughty one. "The man with the false nose!" repeated Flambeau. "Who's
he?"

"I haven't a notion," answered Father Brown. "I want you to find out;
I ask it as a favour. He went down there"--and he jerked his thumb over
his shoulder in one of his undistinguished gestures--"and can't have
passed three lamp-posts yet. I only want to know the direction."

Flambeau gazed at his friend for some time, with an expression between
perplexity and amusement; and then, rising from the table; squeezed his
huge form out of the little door of the dwarf tavern, and melted into
the twilight.

Father Brown took a small book out of his pocket and began to read
steadily; he betrayed no consciousness of the fact that the red-haired
lady had left her own table and sat down opposite him. At last she
leaned over and said in a low, strong voice: "Why do you say that? How
do you know it's false?"

He lifted his rather heavy eyelids, which fluttered in considerable
embarrassment. Then his dubious eye roamed again to the white lettering
on the glass front of the public-house. The young woman's eyes followed
his, and rested there also, but in pure puzzledom.

"No," said Father Brown, answering her thoughts. "It doesn't say 'Sela',
like the thing in the Psalms; I read it like that myself when I was
wool-gathering just now; it says 'Ales.'"

"Well?" inquired the staring young lady. "What does it matter what it
says?"

His ruminating eye roved to the girl's light canvas sleeve, round the
wrist of which ran a very slight thread of artistic pattern, just enough
to distinguish it from a working-dress of a common woman and make it
more like the working-dress of a lady art-student. He seemed to find
much food for thought in this; but his reply was very slow and hesitant.
"You see, madam," he said, "from outside the place looks--well, it is a
perfectly decent place--but ladies like you don't--don't generally think
so. They never go into such places from choice, except--"

"Well?" she repeated.

"Except an unfortunate few who don't go in to drink