possibly be that!"

He scuttled across the room rather like a rabbit, and peered with
quite a new impulsiveness into the partially-covered face of the captive.
Then he turned his own rather fatuous face to the company.
"Yes, that's it!" he cried in a certain excitement. "Can't you see it
in the man's face? Why, look at his eyes!"

Both the Professor and the girl followed the direction of his glance.
And though the broad black scarf completely masked the lower half
of Todhunter's visage, they did grow conscious of something struggling
and intense about the upper part of it.

"His eyes do look queer," cried the young woman, strongly moved.
"You brutes; I believe it's hurting him!"

"Not that, I think," said Dr Hood; "the eyes have certainly
a singular expression. But I should interpret those transverse
wrinkles as expressing rather such slight psychological abnormality--"

"Oh, bosh!" cried Father Brown: "can't you see he's laughing?"

"Laughing!" repeated the doctor, with a start; "but what on earth
can he be laughing at?"

"Well," replied the Reverend Brown apologetically,
"not to put too fine a point on it, I think he is laughing at you.
And indeed, I'm a little inclined to laugh at myself, now I know about it."

"Now you know about what?" asked Hood, in some exasperation.