that cleric kept it to himself; but apparently it involved him in
writing out a note or statement for the conveying of some message
or the righting of some wrong. Father Brown, therefore, with a
meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham
Palace, asked to be provided with a room and writing materials.
Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man, and had also that
bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene.
At the same time the presence of one unusual stranger in his hotel
that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned.
There was never any borderland or anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no
people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance.
There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would
be as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to
find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one's own family.
Moreover, the priest's appearance was second-rate and his clothes
muddy; a mere glimpse of him afar off might precipitate a crisis
in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a plan to cover, since he
might not obliterate, the disgrace. When you enter (as you never
will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage decorated
with a few dingy but important pictures, and come to the main
vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages
leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage
pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediately on
your left hand is the corner of a glass office, which abuts upon
the lounge--a house within a house, so to speak, like the old
hotel bar which probably once occupied its place.

In this office sat the representative of the proprietor
(nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could help
it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants'