Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.
“ Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”
“ Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”
The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”
They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.
“ Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”
There was a start
