{"product_id":"2940013052475","title":"The Wisdom of Father Brown","description":"CONTENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     1.  The Absence of Mr Glass\u003cbr\u003e     2.  The Paradise of Thieves\u003cbr\u003e     3.  The Duel of Dr Hirsch\u003cbr\u003e     4.  The Man in the Passage\u003cbr\u003e     5.  The Mistake of the Machine\u003cbr\u003e     6.  The Head of Caesar\u003cbr\u003e     7.  The Purple Wig\u003cbr\u003e     8.  The Perishing of the Pendragons\u003cbr\u003e     9.  The God of the Gongs\u003cbr\u003e     10. The Salad of Colonel Cray\u003cbr\u003e     11. The Strange Crime of John Boulnois\u003cbr\u003e     12. The Fairy Tale of Father Brown\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eONE -- The Absence of Mr Glass\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and\u003cbr\u003especialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front at\u003cbr\u003eScarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french windows,\u003cbr\u003ewhich showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green\u003cbr\u003emarble. In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a\u003cbr\u003eblue-green dado: for the chambers themselves were ruled throughout by a\u003cbr\u003eterrible tidiness not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must\u003cbr\u003enot be supposed that Dr Hood's apartments excluded luxury, or even\u003cbr\u003epoetry. These things were there, in their place; but one felt that they\u003cbr\u003ewere never allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: there stood\u003cbr\u003eupon a special table eight or ten boxes of the best cigars; but they\u003cbr\u003ewere built upon a plan so that the strongest were always nearest the\u003cbr\u003ewall and the mildest nearest the window. A tantalus containing three\u003cbr\u003ekinds of spirit, all of a liqueur excellence, stood always on this table\u003cbr\u003eof luxury; but the fanciful have asserted that the whisky, brandy, and\u003cbr\u003erum seemed always to stand at the same level. Poetry was there: the\u003cbr\u003eleft-hand corner of the room was lined with as complete a set of\u003cbr\u003eEnglish classics as the right hand could show of English and foreign\u003cbr\u003ephysiologists. But if one took a volume of Chaucer or Shelley from that\u003cbr\u003erank, its absence irritated the mind like a gap in a man's front teeth.\u003cbr\u003eOne could not say the books were never read; probably they were, but\u003cbr\u003ethere was a sense of their being chained to their places, like the\u003cbr\u003eBibles in the old churches. Dr Hood treated his private book-shelf as\u003cbr\u003eif it were a public library. And if this strict scientific intangibility\u003cbr\u003esteeped even the shelves laden with lyrics and ballads and the tables\u003cbr\u003eladen with drink and tobacco, it goes without saying that yet more\u003cbr\u003eof such heathen holiness protected the other shelves that held the\u003cbr\u003especialist's library, and the other tables that sustained the frail and\u003cbr\u003eeven fairylike instruments of chemistry or mechanics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr Hood paced the length of his string of apartments, bounded--as the\u003cbr\u003eboys' geographies say--on the east by the North Sea and on the west by\u003cbr\u003ethe serried ranks of his sociological and criminologist library. He was\u003cbr\u003eclad in an artist's velvet, but with none of an artist's negligence; his\u003cbr\u003ehair was heavily shot with grey, but growing thick and healthy; his face\u003cbr\u003ewas lean, but sanguine and expectant. Everything about him and his room\u003cbr\u003eindicated something at once rigid and restless, like that great northern\u003cbr\u003esea by which (on pure principles of hygiene) he had built his home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFate, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and introduced into\u003cbr\u003ethose long, strict, sea-flanked apartments one who was perhaps the most\u003cbr\u003estartling opposite of them and their master. In answer to a curt but\u003cbr\u003ecivil summons, the door opened inwards and there shambled into the room\u003cbr\u003ea shapeless little figure, which seemed to find its own hat and umbrella\u003cbr\u003eas unmanageable as a mass of luggage. The umbrella was a black and\u003cbr\u003eprosaic bundle long past repair; the hat was a broad-curved black hat,\u003cbr\u003eclerical but not common in England; the man was the very embodiment of\u003cbr\u003eall that is homely and helpless.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47082108715248,"sku":"2940013052475","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013052475_p0.jpg?v=1763576108","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013052475","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}