“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life.  There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade.  Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.  That road goes down and down.  The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it.  Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime.  Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised.  Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas.  Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he’s paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London.  Captain Barillon was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed him and hunted him down.  I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey.  But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau.  You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.”

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on: 

“Your downward steps have begun.  You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight.  You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him.  But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf.  The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this world.

The Invisible Man

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar.  One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats.  Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many gutter-snipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which