laying for the old man; and the long and the short of it is, that we'd be very grateful for a little advice in the matter. Everybody knows your great reputation, Father Brown, and the secretary asked me to see if you'd mind coming straight out to the Merton house at once."
"Oh, I see," said Father Brown, on whom the meaning of this apparent kidnapping began to dawn at last. "But really I don't see that 1 can do any more than you can. You're on the spot and must have a hundred times more data for a scientific conclusion than a chance visitor."
"Yes," said Mr. Drage dryly, "our conclusions are much too scientific to be true. I reckon if anything hit a man like Titus P. Trant, it just came out of the sky without waiting for any scientific explanation. What they call a bolt from the blue."
"You can't possibly mean," cried Wain, "that it was supernatural!"
But it was by no means easy at any time to discover what Mr. Drage could possibly mean; except that if he said somebody was a real smart man, he very probably meant he was a fool. Mr. Drage maintained an Oriental immobility until the car stopped, a little while after, at what was obviously their destination. It was rather a singular place. They had been driving through a thinly-wooded country that opened into a wide plain, and just in front of them was a building consisting of a single
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