The

The Welcome back everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorn.

Today, a story from G.K. Chesterton from the collection

called The Secret of Father Brown. Today's story, the mirror of the magistrate. And now our story.

James Bagshaw and Wilfred Underhill were old friends, and were fond of rambling through the

streets at night,

talking interminably as they turned corner after corner in the silent and seemingly lifeless

labyrinth of the large suburb in which they lived. The former, a big, dark, good-humored man

with a strip of black mustache, was a professional police detective. The latter, a sharp-faced, sensitive-looking gentleman

with light hair, was an amateur interested in detection. It became as a shock to the readers of

the best scientific romance to learn that it was the policeman who was talking and the amateur

who was listening, even with a certain respect.

"'Ours is the only trade,' said Bagshaw,

"'in which the professional is always supposed to be wrong.

"'After all, people don't write stories "'in which hair-dressers can't cut hair

"'and have to be helped by a customer,

"'or in which a cabman can't drive a cab

"'until his fare explains to end the philosophy of cab driving.

For all that, I never deny that we often tend to get into a rut, or in other words, have the

disadvantages of going by a rule. Where the romancers are wrong is that they don't allow us even

the advantages of going by a rule. "'Surely,' said Underhill,

...