you a mystery as yet unsolved and a tale worth telling.

If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were
to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown,
and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of
his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best
stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime and,
perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a
passage. He is perhaps a little proud of this wild and wonderful
guess of his, and it is possible that he might refer to it. But
since it is immeasurably unlikely that you will ever rise high
enough in the social world to find "The Twelve True Fishermen," or
that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to
find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at all
unless you hear it from me.

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their
annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an
oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners.
It was that topsy-turvy product--an "exclusive" commercial
enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting
people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a
plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious
than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that
their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in
overcoming them. If there were a fashionable hotel in London
which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would
meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there
were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its
proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be