The Wisdom of Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton [drm ebook reader .TXT] 📗

sunk, no one knows where, on the voyage home from Tasmania. His body was never found. I tell you it was from perfectly natural mishap; lots of other people besides Pendragons were drowned; and both disasters are discussed in a normal way by navigators. But, of course, it set this forest of superstition on fire; and men saw the flaming tower everywhere. That’s why I say it will be all right when Walter returns. The girl he’s engaged to was coming today; but I was so afraid of some chance delay frightening her that I wired her not to come till she heard from me. But he’s practically sure to be here some time tonight, and then it’ll all end in smoke—tobacco smoke. We’ll crack that old lie when we crack a bottle of this wine.”

“Very good wine,” said Father Brown, gravely lifting his glass, “but, as you see, a very bad wine-bibber. I most sincerely beg your pardon”: for he had spilt a small spot of wine on the table-cloth. He drank and put down the glass with a composed face; but his hand had started at the exact moment when he became conscious of a face looking in through the garden window just behind the Admiral—the face of a woman, swarthy, with southern hair and eyes, and young, but like a mask of tragedy.

After a pause the priest spoke again in his mild manner. “Admiral,” he said, “will you do me a favour? Let me, and my friends if they like, stop in that tower of yours just for tonight? Do you know that in my business you’re an exorcist almost before anything else?”

Pendragon sprang to his feet and paced swiftly to and fro across the window, from which the face had instantly vanished. “I tell you there is nothing in it,” he cried, with ringing violence. “There is one thing I know about this matter. You may call me an atheist. I am an atheist.” Here he swung round and fixed Father Brown with a face of frightful concentration. “This business is perfectly natural. There is no curse in it at all.”

Father Brown smiled. “In that case,” he said, “there can’t be any objection to my sleeping in your delightful summer-house.”

“The idea is utterly ridiculous,” replied the Admiral, beating a tattoo on the back of his chair.

“Please forgive me for everything,” said Brown in his most sympathetic tone, “including spilling the wine. But it seems to me you are not quite so easy about the flaming tower as you try to be.”

Admiral Pendragon sat down again as abruptly as he had risen; but he sat quite still, and when he spoke again it was in a lower voice. “You do it at your own peril,” he said; “but wouldn’t you be an atheist to keep sane in all this devilry?”

Some three hours afterwards Fanshaw, Flambeau and the priest were still dawdling about the garden in the dark; and it began to dawn on the other two that Father Brown had no intention of going to bed either in the tower or the house.

“I think the lawn wants weeding,” said he dreamily. “If I could find a spud or something I’d do it myself.”

They followed him, laughing and half remonstrating; but he replied with the utmost solemnity, explaining to them, in a maddening little sermon, that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others. He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, with which he began energetically to brush the fallen leaves off the grass.

“Always some little thing to be done,” he said with idiotic cheerfulness; “as George Herbert says: ‘Who sweeps an Admiral’s garden in Cornwall as for Thy laws makes that and the action fine.’ And now,” he added, suddenly slinging the broom away, “Let’s go and water the flowers.”

With the same mixed emotions they watched him uncoil some considerable lengths of the large garden hose, saying with an air of wistful discrimination: “The red tulips before the yellow, I think. Look a bit dry, don’t you think?”

He turned the little tap on the instrument, and the water shot out straight and solid as a long rod of steel.

“Look out, Samson,” cried Flambeau; “why, you’ve cut off the tulip’s head.”

Father Brown stood ruefully contemplating the decapitated plant.

“Mine does seem to be a rather kill or cure sort of watering,” he admitted, scratching his head. “I suppose it’s a pity I didn’t find the spud. You should have seen me with the spud! Talking of tools, you’ve got that swordstick, Flambeau, you always carry? That’s right; and Sir Cecil could have that sword the Admiral threw away by the fence here. How grey everything looks!”

“The mist’s rising from the river,” said the staring Flambeau.

Almost as he spoke the huge figure of the hairy gardener appeared on a higher ridge of the trenched and terraced lawn, hailing them with a brandished rake and a horribly bellowing voice. “Put down that hose,” he shouted; “put down that hose and go to your—”

“I am fearfully clumsy,” replied the reverend gentleman weakly; “do you know, I upset some wine at dinner.” He made a wavering half-turn of apology towards the gardener, with the hose still spouting in his hand. The gardener caught the cold crash of the water full in his face like the crash of a cannon-ball; staggered, slipped and went sprawling with his boots in the air.

“How very dreadful!” said Father Brown, looking round in a sort of wonder. “Why, I’ve hit a man!”

He stood with his head forward for a moment as if looking or listening; and then set off at a trot towards the tower, still trailing the hose behind him. The tower was quite close, but its outline was curiously dim.

“Your river mist,” he said, “has a rum smell.”

“By the Lord it has,” cried Fanshaw, who was very white. “But you can’t mean—”

“I mean,” said Father Brown, “that one of the Admiral’s scientific predictions is coming true tonight. This story is going to end in smoke.”

As he spoke a most beautiful rose-red light seemed to burst into blossom like a gigantic rose; but accompanied with a crackling and rattling noise that was like the laughter of devils.

“My God! what is this?” cried Sir Cecil Fanshaw.

“The sign of the flaming tower,” said Father Brown, and sent the driving water from his hose into the heart of the red patch.

“Lucky we hadn’t gone to bed!” ejaculated Fanshaw. “I suppose it can’t spread to the house.”

“You may remember,” said the priest quietly, “that the wooden fence that might have carried it was cut away.”

Flambeau turned electrified eyes upon his friend, but Fanshaw only said rather absently: “Well, nobody can be killed, anyhow.”

“This is rather a curious kind of tower,” observed Father Brown, “when it takes to killing people, it always kills people who are somewhere else.”

At the same instant the monstrous figure of the gardener with the streaming beard stood