and threw his elbow over the angle of it. "Well," he said, rather harshly,
"if Hirsch is not better than a timid treason-monger..."

"You mustn't be too hard on them," said Father Brown gently.
"It's not entirely their fault; but they have no instincts.
I mean those things that make a woman refuse to dance with a man
or a man to touch an investment. They've been taught that
it's all a matter of degree."

"Anyhow," cried Flambeau impatiently, "he's not a patch
on my principal; and I shall go through with it. Old Dubosc may be
a bit mad, but he's a sort of patriot after all."

Father Brown continued to consume whitebait.

Something in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau's
fierce black eyes to ramble over his companion afresh. "What's the matter
with you?" Flambeau demanded. "Dubosc's all right in that way.
You don't doubt him?"

"My friend," said the small priest, laying down his knife and fork
in a kind of cold despair, "I doubt everything. Everything, I mean,
that has happened today. I doubt the whole story, though it has been
acted before my face. I doubt every sight that my eyes have seen
since morning. There is something in this business quite different
from the ordinary police mystery where one man is more or less lying
and the other man more or less telling the truth. Here both men....
Well! I've told you the only theory I can think of that could
satisfy anybody. It doesn't satisfy me."