ks
that had adorned the gardens, but much longer, running almost the whole
length of the frontage. Presumably, it was placed so that visitors might
sit there and look at the sea, but one hardly expected to find anyone
doing it in such weather.

Nevertheless, just in front of the extreme end of the iron seat stood
a small round restaurant table, and on this stood a small bottle of
Chablis and a plate of almonds and raisins. Behind the table and on the
seat sat a dark-haired young man, bareheaded, and gazing at the sea in a
state of almost astonishing immobility.

But though he might have been a waxwork when they were within four yards
of him, he jumped up like a jack-in-the-box when they came within three,
and said in a deferential, though not undignified, manner: "Will you
step inside, gentlemen? I have no staff at present, but I can get you
anything simple myself."

"Much obliged," said Flambeau. "So you are the proprietor?"

"Yes," said the dark man, dropping back a little into his motionless
manner. "My waiters are all Italians, you see, and I thought it only
fair they should see their countryman beat the black, if he really can
do it. You know the great fight between Malvoli and Nigger Ned is coming
off after all?"

"I'm afraid we can't wait to trouble your hospitality seriously," said
Father Brown. "But my friend would be glad of a glass of sherry, I'm
sure, to keep out the cold and drink success to the Latin champion."

Flambeau did not understand the sherry, but he did not object to it in
the least. He could only say amiably: "Oh, thank you very much."

"Sherry, sir--certainly," said their host, turning to his hostel.
"Excuse me if I detain you a few minutes. As I told you, I have no
staff--" And he went towards the black windows of his shuttered and
unlighted inn.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," began Flambeau, but the man turned to
reassure him.

"I have the keys," he said. "I could find my way in the dark."

"I didn't mean--" began Father Brown.

He was interrupted by a bellowing human voice that came out of the
bowels of the uninhabited hotel. It thundered some foreign name loudly
but inaudibly, and the hotel proprietor moved more sharply towards it
than he had done for Flambeau's sherry. As instant evidence proved, the
proprietor had told, then and after, nothing but the literal truth. But
both Flambeau and Father Brown have often confessed that, in all their
(often outrageous) adventures, not