Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.
“Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”
“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”
The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”
They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.
“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”
There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say seriously what all this means.”
Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech. “Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman—this clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about—he was—” His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.
“He was?” called Fischer inquiringly.
“A real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.