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The Incredulity of Father Brown desks and tables were rapidly turning grey. As if the twilight itself irritated him, Fenner touched the switch and the scene sprang into the startling distinctness of electric light.

"As you said just now," said Vandam grimly, "there's no shot from down there could bit him, even if there was a shot in the gun. But even if he was hit with a bullet he wouldn't have just burst like a bubble."

The secretary, who was paler than ever, glanced irritably at the bilious visage of the millionaire.

"What's got you started on those morbid notions? Who's talking about bullets and bubbles? Why shouldn't he be alive?"

"Why not indeed?" replied Vandam smoothly. "If you'll tell me where he is, I'll tell you how he got there."

After a pause the secretary muttered, rather sulkily, "I suppose you're right. We're right up against the very thing we were talking about. It'd be a queer thing if you or I ever came to think there was anything in cursing. But who could have harmed Wynd shut up in here?"

Mr. Alboin, of Oklahoma, had been standing rather astraddle in the middle of the room, his white, hairy halo as well as his round eyes seeming to radiate astonishment. At this point he said, abstractedly, with something of the irrelevant impudence of an enfant terrible: