In this office sat the representative of the proprietor (nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could help it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants’ quarters, was the gentlemen’s cloak room, the last boundary of the gentlemen’s domain.  But between the office and the cloak room was a small private room without other outlet, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or declining to lend him sixpence.  It is a mark of the magnificent tolerance of Mr. Lever that he permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by a mere priest, scribbling away on a piece of paper.  The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known.  I can merely state that it was very nearly as long, and that the last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting and absorbing.

For it was by the time that he had reached these that the priest began a little to allow his thoughts to wander and his animal senses, which were commonly keen, to awaken.  The time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his own forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps the gathering gloom, as occasionally happens, sharpened the sense of sound.  As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a recurrent noise outside, just as one sometimes thinks to the tune of a railway train.  When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was:  only the ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter.  Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound.  After he had listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got to his feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side.  Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merely listening, but listening and thinking also.

The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as one might hear in any hotel; and yet, taken as a whole, there was something very strange about them.  There were no other footsteps.  It was always a very silent house, for the few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments, and the well-trained waiters were told to be almost invisible until they were wanted.  One could not conceive any place where there was less reason to apprehend anything irregular.  But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call them regular or irregular.  Father Brown followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like a man trying to learn a tune on the piano.