"You didn't cotton to him much, did you, Mr. Vandam?"
Mr. Vandam's long yellow face seemed to grow longer as it grew more sinister, while he smiled and answered quietly:
"If it comes to these coincidences, it was you, I think, who said that a wind from the West would blow away out big men like thistledown."
"I know I said it would," said the Westerner, with candour; "but all the same, how the devil could it?"
The silence was broken by Fenner saying with an abruptness amounting to violence:
"There"s only one thing to say about this affair. It simply hasn't happened. It can't have happened."
"Oh, yes," said Father Brown out of the corner, "it has happened all right."
They all jumped; for the truth was they had all forgotten the insignificant little man who had originally induced them to open the door. And the recovery of memory went with a sharp reversal of mood; it came back to them with a rush that they had all dismissed him as a superstitious dreamer for even hinting at the very thing that had since happened before their eyes.
"Snakes!" cried the impetuous Westerner, like one speaking before he could stop himself. "Suppose there were something in it, after all!"
"I must confess," said Fenner, frowning at the
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