The Incredulity of Father Brown
compelling gesture, pointing your eyes and minds in the direction of the unknown destroyer below. Or perhaps something else happened, or somebody else passed by."
"Wilson, the servant," grunted Alboin, "went down the hallway to wait on the bench, but I guess he didn't distract us much."
"You never know how much," replied Vair; "it might have been that or more likely your eyes following some gesture of the priest as he told his tale of magic. It was in one of those black flashes that Mr. Warren Wynd slipped out of his door and went to his death. That is the most probable explanation. It is an illustration of the new discovery. The mind is not a continuous line, but rather a dotted line."
"Very dotted," said Fenner feebly. "Not to say dotty."
"You don't really believe," asked Vair, "that your employer was shut up in a room like a box?"
"It's better than believing that I ought to be shut up in a room like a padded cell," answered Fenner. "That's what I complain of in your suggestions, professor. I'd as soon believe in a priest who believes in a miracle, as disbelieve in any man having any right to believe in a fact. The priest tells me that a man can appeal to a God I know nothing about to avenge him by the laws of some higher justice that I know nothing about. There's
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