ilar deshabille. She and the
gentleman who had donned prison uniform were going for the customary
joy-ride."

Under the pink slip Mr Usher found a strip of a later paper, headed,
"Astounding Escape of Millionaire's Daughter with Convict. She had
Arranged Freak Dinner. Now Safe in--"

Mr Greenwood Usher lifted his eyes, but Father Brown was gone.

SIX -- The Head of Caesar

THERE is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of
tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs.
The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as the side of
pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be
opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature in the grey facade
is its telescopic length and changeless continuity. The pilgrim walking
down it begins to think he will never come to a break or a corner; but
there is one exception--a very small one, but hailed by the pilgrim
almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews between two of the tall
mansions, a mere slit like the crack of a door by comparison with
the street, but just large enough to permit a pigmy ale-house or
eating-house, still allowed by the rich to their stable-servants, to
stand in the angle. There is something cheery in its very dinginess,
and something free and elfin in its very insignificance. At the feet of
those grey stone giants it looks like a lighted house of dwarfs.

Anyone passing the place during a certain autumn evening, itself almost
fairylike, might have seen a hand pull aside the red half-blind which
(along with some large white lettering) half hid the interior from the
street, and a face peer out not unlike a rather innocent goblin's. It
was, in fact, the face of one with the harmless human name of Brown,
formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, and now working in London. His
friend, Flambeau, a semi-official investigator, was sitting opposite
him, making his last notes of a case he had cleared up in the
neighbourhood. They were sitting at a small table, close up to the
window, when the priest pulled the curtain back and looked out. He
waited till a stranger in the street had passed the window, to let the
curtain fall into its place again. Then his round eyes rolled to the
large white lettering on the window above his head, and then strayed to
the next table, at which sat only a navvy with beer and cheese, and a
young girl with red hair and a glass of milk. Then (seeing his