“Don’t!” cried Flambeau.

“He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button,” continued the little father, in the colourless voice in which he talked of such horrors.  “But that went smash.  It went smash because there happened to be another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew the secret about poor Pauline’s sight.  There was one thing about that will that I think nobody noticed:  although it was unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses.  Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms.  Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real witnesses.  Why?  I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at all.

“People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this was specially natural to Pauline.  By habit and her strong will and memory she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could not tell when her pen needed dipping.  Therefore, her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sister—­all except this fountain pen.  This was carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held out for a few lines and then failed altogether.  And the prophet lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal and brilliant murders in human history for nothing.”

Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascending the stairs.  He turned and said:  “You must have followed everything devilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes.”

Father Brown gave a sort of start.

“Oh! to him,” he said.  “No; I had to follow rather close to find out about Miss Joan and the fountain pen.  But I knew Kalon was the criminal before I came into the front door.”

“You must be joking!” cried Flambeau.

“I’m quite serious,” answered the priest.  “I tell you I knew he had done it, even before I knew what he had done.”

“But why?”

“These pagan stoics,” said Brown reflectively, “always fail by their strength.  There came a crash and a scream down the street, and the priest of Apollo did not start or look round.  I did not know what it was.  But I knew that he was expecting it.”

The Sign of the Broken Sword

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver.  In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice.  All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost.  The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold.  Even the square stone tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland.  It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard.  But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.