ho also wanted the money, and who also knew the
secret about poor Pauline's sight. There was one thing about that will
that I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and without
signature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had already
signed it as witnesses. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could
finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms.
Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real
witnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wanted
Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at
all.

"People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this was
specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and memory
she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could not
tell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens were
carefully filled by her sister--all except this fountain pen. This was
carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held out
for a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lost
five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal and
brilliant murders in human history for nothing."

Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascending
the stairs. He turned and said: "You must have followed everything
devilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes."

Father Brown gave a sort of start.

"Oh! to him," he said. "No; I had to follow rather close to find out
about Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew Kalon was the criminal
before I came into the front door."

"You must be joking!" cried Flambeau.

"I'm quite serious," answered the priest. "I tell you I knew he had done
it, even before I knew what he had done."

"But why?"

"These pagan stoics," said Brown reflectively, "always fail by their
strength. There came a crash and a scream down the street, and the
priest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what it
was. But I knew that he was expecting it."

The Sign of the Broken Sword

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers
silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak
and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely
tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The
black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless,
black caverns of that Scandinav