"Not of two thousand pounds," said the financier, with an abrupt
and terrible composure, "only of a small bottle."

The policeman with the grey imperial was striding across
the green hollow. Encountering the King of the Thieves in his path,
he clapped him on the shoulder with something between a caress
and a buffet and gave him a push that sent him staggering away.
"You'll get into trouble, too," he said, "if you play these tricks."

Again to Muscari's artistic eye it seemed scarcely like
the capture of a great outlaw at bay. Passing on, the policeman halted
before the Harrogate group and said: "Samuel Harrogate, I arrest you
in the name of the law for embezzlement of the funds of the Hull and
Huddersfield Bank."

The great banker nodded with an odd air of business assent,
seemed to reflect a moment, and before they could interpose took
a half turn and a step that brought him to the edge of the outer
mountain wall. Then, flinging up his hands, he leapt exactly as he leapt
out of the coach. But this time he did not fall into a little meadow
just beneath; he fell a thousand feet below, to become a wreck of bones
in the valley.

The anger of the Italian policeman, which he expressed volubly
to Father Brown, was largely mixed with admiration. "It was like him
to escape us at last," he said. "He was a great brigand if you like.
This last trick of his I believe to be absolutely unprecedented.
He fled with the company's money to Italy, and actually got himself
captured by sham brigands in his own pay, so as to explain both the