The Incredulity of Father Brown
haired secretary sharply. "He has given orders that he is not to be disturbed for half an hour."
"You folks down East are all against being disturbed," said the breezy Mr. Alboin, "but I calculate there's a big breeze getting up in the West that will have to disturb you. He's been figuring out how much money must go to this and that stuffy old religion; but I tell you any scheme that leaves out the new Great Spirit movement in Texas and Oklahoma, is leaving out the religion of the future."
"Oh; I've sized up those religions of the future," said the millionaire, contemptuously. "I've been through them with a tooth-comb and they're as mangy as yellow dogs. There was that woman called herself Sophia: ought to have called herself Sapphira, I reckon. Just a plum fraud. Strings tied to all the tables and tambourines. Then there were the Invisible Life bunch; said they could vanish when they liked, and they did vanish, too, and a hundred thousand of my dollars vanished with them. I knew Jupiter Jesus out in Denver; saw him for weeks on end; and he was just a common crook. So was the Patagonian Prophet; you bet he's made a bolt for Patagonia. No, I'm through with all that; from now on I only believe what I see. I believe they call it being an atheist."
"I guess you got me wrong," said the man from Oklahoma, almost eagerly. "I guess I'm as much of an atheist as you are. No supernatural or super-
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