dence or a part of the trick; the trick was the trick of a white
man. There is only one weapon that will bring blood with that mere
feathery touch: a razor held by a white man. There is one way of making
a common room full of invisible, overpowering poison: turning on the
gas--the crime of a white man. And there is only one kind of club that
can be thrown out of a window, turn in mid-air and come back to the
window next to it: the Australian boomerang. You'll see some of them in
the Major's study."
With that he went outside and spoke for a moment to the doctor. The
moment after, Audrey Watson came rushing into the house and fell on
her knees beside Cray's chair. He could not hear what they said to each
other; but their faces moved with amazement, not unhappiness. The doctor
and the priest walked slowly towards the garden gate.
"I suppose the Major was in love with her, too," he said with a sigh;
and when the other nodded, observed: "You were very generous, doctor.
You did a fine thing. But what made you suspect?"
"A very small thing," said Oman; "but it kept me restless in church till
I came back to see that all was well. That book on his table was a work
on poisons; and was put down open at the place where it stated that
a certain Indian poison, though deadly and difficult to trace, was
particularly easily reversible by the use of the commonest emetics. I
suppose he read that at the last moment--"
"And remembered that there were emetics in the cruet-stand," said Father
Brown. "Exactly. He threw the cruet in the dustbin--where I found it,
along with other silver--for the sake of a burglary blind. But if you
look at that pepper-pot I put on the table, you'll see a small hole.
That's where Cray's bullet struck, shaking up the pepper and making the
criminal sneeze."
There was a silence. Then Dr Oman said grimly: "The Major is a long time
looking for the police."
"Or the police in looking for the Major?" said the priest. "Well,
good-bye."
ELEVEN -- The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
MR CALHOUN KIDD was a very young gentleman with a very old face, a face
dried up with its own eagerness, framed in blue-black hair and a black
butterfly tie. He was the emissary in England of the colossal American
daily called the Western Sun--also humorously described as the "Rising
Sunset". This was in allusion to a great journalistic declaration
(attributed to Mr Kidd himself) that "he guessed the sun would rise
in
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