ould find no crack in his
great skull to get in by. Well, John was to come and see us act this
evening, but just as we were starting he said he wouldn't; he had got an
interesting book and a cigar. I told this to Sir Claude, and it was his
death-blow. The monomaniac suddenly saw despair. He stabbed himself,
crying out like a devil that Boulnois was slaying him; he lies there
in the garden dead of his own jealousy to produce jealousy, and John is
sitting in the dining-room reading a book."

There was another silence, and then the little priest said: "There is
only one weak point, Mrs Boulnois, in all your very vivid account. Your
husband is not sitting in the dining-room reading a book. That American
reporter told me he had been to your house, and your butler told him Mr
Boulnois had gone to Pendragon Park after all."

Her bright eyes widened to an almost electric glare; and yet it seemed
rather bewilderment than confusion or fear. "Why, what can you
mean?" she cried. "All the servants were out of the house, seeing the
theatricals. And we don't keep a butler, thank goodness!"

Father Brown started and spun half round like an absurd teetotum. "What,
what?" he cried seeming galvanized into sudden life. "Look here--I
say--can I make your husband hear if I go to the house?"

"Oh, the servants will be back by now," she said, wondering.

"Right, right!" rejoined the cleric energetically, and set off scuttling
up the path towards the Park gates. He turned once to say: "Better get
hold of that Yankee, or 'Crime of John Boulnois' will be all over the
Republic in large letters."

"You don't understand," said Mrs Boulnois. "He wouldn't mind. I don't
think he imagines that America really is a place."

When Father Brown reached the house with the beehive and the drowsy dog,
a small and neat maid-servant showed him into the dining-room, where
Boulnois sat reading by a shaded lamp, exactly as his wife described
him. A decanter of port and a wineglass were at his elbow; and the
instant the priest entered he noted the long ash stand out unbroken on
his cigar.

"He has been here for half an hour at least," thought Father Brown. In
fact, he had the air of sitting where he had sat when his dinner was
cleared away.

"Don't get up, Mr Boulnois," said the priest in his pleasant, prosaic
way. "I shan't interrupt you a moment. I fear I break in on some of your
scientific studies."

"No," said Boulnois; "I was reading 'The Bloody Thum