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The Incredulity of Father Brown "I can't understand your attitude about all this. Father Brown," he said. "You act as if you had already solved the problem in some way of your own."

The priest shook his head mournfully. "Not a bit of it," he answered. "I must be very stupid, but I'm quite stuck; stuck about the most practical point of all. It's a queer business; so simple up to a point and then Let me have a look at that photograph, will you?"

He held it close to his screwed, short-sighted eyes for a moment, and then said, "Have you got a magnifying glass?"

Payne produced one, and the priest looked through it intently for some time and then said, "Look at the title of that book at the edge of the bookshelf beside the frame; it's The History of Pope Joan. Now, I wonder yes, by George; and the one above is something or other of Iceland. Lord! what a queer way to find it out! What a dolt and donkey I was not to notice it when I was there!"

"But what have you found out?" asked Payne impatiently.

"The last link," said Father Brown, "and I'm not stuck any longer. Yes, I think I know how that unhappy story went from first to last now."

"But why?" insisted the other.

"Why, because," said the priest with a smile,