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The Incredulity of Father Brown shuddered suddenly, as if caught in an icy draught of air. "Never mind about them; they've got nothing to do with this, believe me. Do you think that poor, wild Irishman of mine, who ran raving down the street, who blurted out half of it when he first saw my face, and ran away for fear he should blurt out more, do you think Satan confides any secrets to him? I admit he joined in a plot, probably in a plot with two other men worse than himself; but for all that, he was just in an everlasting rage when he rushed down the lane and let off his pistol and his curse."

"But what on earth does all this mean?" demanded Vandam. "Letting off a toy pistol and a twopenny curse wouldn't do what was done, except by a miracle. It wouldn't make Wynd disappear like a fairy. It wouldn't make him reappear a quarter of a mile away with a rope round his neck."

"No," said Father Brown sharply, "but what would it do?"

"And still I don't follow you," said the millionaire gravely.

"I say, what would it do?" repeated the priest; showing, for the first time, a sort of animation verging on annoyance. "You keep on repeating that a blank pistol-shot wouldn't do this and wouldn't do that; that if that was all, the murder wouldn't happen or the miracle wouldn't happen. It doesn't seem to occur to you to ask what would