man."

"Clap on another head!" said O'Brien staring. "What other
head? Heads don't grow on garden bushes, do they?"

"No," said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots;
"there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket
of the guillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide
Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my
friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces.
Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is
honesty. But did you never see in that cold, grey eye of his that
he is mad! He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls
the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved
for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne's crazy millions
had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did
little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a
whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was
drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne
would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of
France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The
Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the
fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the
millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of
detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed
head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in
his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that
Lord Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him
out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs
and a sabre for illustration, and--"