father brown was in no mood for adventures. he had lately fallen ill with over-work, and when he began to recover, his friend flambeau had taken him on a cruise in a small yacht with sir cecil fanshaw, a young cornish squire and an enthusiast for cornish coast scenery. but brown was still rather weak; he was no very happy sailor; and though he was never of the sort that either grumbles or breaks down, his spirits did not rise above patience and civility. when the other two men praised the ragged violet sunset or the ragged volcanic crags, he agreed with them. when flambeau pointed out a rock shaped like a dragon, he looked at it and thought it very like a dragon. when fanshaw more excitedly indicated a rock that was like merlin, he looked at it, and signified assent. when flambeau asked whether this rocky gate of the twisted river was not the gate of fairyland, he said “yes.” he heard the most important things and the most trivial with the same tasteless absorption. he heard that the coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship’s cat was asleep. he heard that fanshaw couldn’t find his cigar-holder anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle “both eyes bright, she’s all right; one eye winks, down she sinks.” he heard flambeau say to fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open and be spry. and he heard fanshaw say to flambeau that, oddly enough, it didn’t mean this: it meant that while they saw two of the coast lights, one near and the other distant, exactly side by side, they were in the right river-channel; but that if one light was hidden behind the other, they were going on the rocks. he heard fanshaw add that his country was full of such quaint fables and idioms; it was the very home of romance; he even pitted this part of cornwall against devonshire, as a claimant to the laurels of elizabethan seamanship. according to him there had been captains among these coves and islets compared with whom drake was practically a landsman. he heard flambeau laugh, and ask if, perhaps, the adventurous title of “westward ho!” only meant that all devonshire men wished they were living in cornwall. he heard fanshaw say there was no need to be silly; that not only had cornish captains been heroes, but that they were heroes still: that near that very spot there was an old admiral, now retired, who was scarred by thrilling voyages full of adventures; and who had in his youth found the last group of eight pacific islands that was added to the chart of the world. this cecil fanshaw was, in person, of the kind that commonly urges such crude but pleasing enthusiasms; a very young man, light-haired, high-coloured, with an eager profile; with a boyish bravado of spirits, but an almost girlish delicacy of tint and type. the big shoulders, black brows and black mousquetaire swagger of flambeau were a great contrast.
all these trivialities brown heard and saw; but heard them as a tired man hears a tune in the railway wheels, or saw them as a sick man sees the pattern of his wall-paper. no one can calculate the turns of mood in convalescence: but father brown’s depression must have had a great deal to do with his mere unfamiliarity with the sea. for as the river mouth narrowed like the neck of a bottle, and the water grew calmer and the air warmer and more earthly, he seemed to wake up and take notice like a baby. they had reached that phase just after sunset when air and water both look bright, but earth and all its growing things look almost black by comparison. about this particular evening, however, there was something exceptional. it was one of those rare atmospheres in which a smoked-glass slide seems to have been slid away from between us and nature; so that even dark colours on that day look more gorgeous than bright colours on cloudier days. the trampled earth of the river-banks and the peaty stain in the pools did not look drab but glowing umber, and the dark woods astir in the breeze did not look, as usual, dim blue with mere depth of distance, but more like wind-tumbled masses of some vivid violet blossom. this magic clearness and intensity in the colours was further forced on brown’s slowly reviving senses by something romantic and even secret in the very form of the landscape.
the river was still well wide and deep enough for a pleasure boat so small as theirs; but the curves of the country-side suggested that it was closing in on either hand; the woods seemed to be making broken and flying attempts at bridge-building—as if the boat were passing from the romance of a valley to the romance of a hollow and so to the supreme romance of a tunnel. beyond this mere look of things there was little for brown’s freshening fancy to feed on; he saw no human beings, except some gipsies trailing along the river bank, with faggots and osiers cut in the forest; and one sight no longer unconventional, but in such remote parts still uncommon: a dark-haired lady, bare-headed, and paddling her own canoe. if father brown ever attached any importance to either of these, he certainly forgot them at the next turn of the river which brought in sight a singular object.
the water seemed to widen and split, being cloven by the dark wedge of a fish-shaped and wooded islet. with the rate at which they went, the islet seemed to swim towards them like a ship; a ship with a very high prow—or, to speak more strictly, a very high funnel. for at the extreme point nearest them stood up an odd-looking building, unlike anything they could remember or connect with any purpose. it was not specially high, but it was too high for its breadth to be called anything but a tower. yet it appeared to be built entirely of wood, and that in a most unequal and eccentric way. some of the planks and beams were of good, seasoned oak; some of such wood cut raw and recent; some again of white pinewood, and a great deal more of the same sort of wood painted black with tar. these black beams were set crooked or crisscross at all kinds of angles, giving the whole a most patchy and puzzling appearance. there were one or two windows, which appeared to be coloured and leaded in an old-fashioned but more elaborate style. the travellers looked at it with that paradoxical feeling we have when something reminds us of something, and yet we are certain it is something very different.
father brown, even when he was mystified, was clever in analysing his own mystification. and he found himself reflecting that the oddity seemed to consist in a particular shape cut out in an incongruous material; as if one saw a top-hat made of tin, or a frock-coat cut out of tartan. he was sure he had seen timbers of different tints arranged like that somewhere, but never in such architectural proportions. the next moment a glimpse through the dark trees told him all he wanted to know and he laughed. through a gap in the foliage there appeared for a moment one of those old wooden houses, faced with black beams, which are still to be found here and there in england, but which most of us see imitated in some show called “old london” or “shakespeare’s england’. it was in view only long enough for the priest to see that, however old-fashioned, it was a comfortable and well-kept country-house, with flower-beds in front of it. it had none of the piebald and crazy look of the tower that seemed made out of its refuse.
“what on earth’s this?” said flambeau, who was still staring at the tower.
fanshaw’s eyes were shining, and he spoke triumphantly. “aha! you’ve not seen a place quite like this before, i fancy; that’s why i’ve brought you here, my friend. now you shall see whether i exaggerate about the mariners of cornwall. this place belongs to old pendragon, whom we call the admiral; though he retired before getting the rank. the spirit of raleigh and hawkins is a memory with the devon folk; it’s a modern fact with the pendragons. if queen elizabeth were to rise from the grave and come up this river in a gilded barge, she would be received by the admiral in a house exactly such as she was accustomed to, in every corner and casement, in every panel on the wall or plate on the table. and she would find an english captain still talking fiercely of fresh lands to be found in little ships, as much as if she had dined with drake.”
“she’d find a rum sort of thing in the garden,” said father brown, “which would not please her renaissance eye. that elizabethan domestic architecture is charming in its way; but it’s against the very nature of it to break out into turrets.”
“and yet,” answered fanshaw, “that’s the most romantic and elizabethan part of the business. it was built by the pendragons in the very days of the spanish wars; and though it’s needed patching and even rebuilding for another reason, it’s always been rebuilt in the old way. the story goes that the lady of sir peter pendragon built it in this place and to this height, because from the top you can just see the corner where vessels turn into the river mouth; and she wished to be the first to see her husband’s ship, as he sailed home from the spanish main.”
“for what other reason,” asked father brown, “do you mean that it has been rebuilt?”
“oh, there’s a strange story about that, too,” said the young squire with relish. “you are really in a land of strange stories. king arthur was here and merlin and the fairies before him. the story goes that sir peter pendragon, who (i fear) had some of the faults of the pirates as well as the virtues of the sailor, was bringing home three spanish gentlemen in honourable captivity, intending to escort them to elizabeth’s court. but he was a man of flaming and tigerish temper, and coming to high words with one of them, he caught him by the throat and flung him by accident or design, into the sea. a second spaniard, who was the brother of the first, instantly drew his sword and flew at pendragon, and after a short but furious combat in which both got three wounds in as many minutes, pendragon drove his blade through the other’s body and the second spaniard was accounted for. as it happened the ship had already turned into the river mouth and was close to comparatively shallow water. the third spaniard sprang over the side of the ship, struck out for the shore, and was soon near enough to it to stand up to his waist in water. and turning again to face the ship, and holding up both arms to heaven—like a prophet calling plagues upon a wicked city—he called out to pendragon in a piercing and terrible voice, that he at least was yet living, that he would go on living, that he would live for ever; and that generation after generation the house of pendragon should never see him or his, but should know by very certain signs that he and his vengeance were alive. with that he dived under the wave, and was either drowned or swam so long under water that no hair of his head was seen afterwards.”
“there’s that girl in the canoe again,” said flambeau irrelevantly, for good-looking young women would call him off any topic. “she seems bothered by the queer tower just as we were.”
indeed, the black-haired young lady was letting her canoe float slowly and silently past the strange islet; and was looking intently up at the strange tower, with a strong glow of curiosity on her oval and olive face.
“never mind girls,” said fanshaw impatiently, “there are plenty of them in the world, but not many things like the pendragon tower. as you may easily suppose, plenty of superstitions and scandals have followed in the track of the spaniard’s curse; and no doubt, as you would put it, any accident happening to this cornish family would be connected with it by rural credulity. but it is perfectly true that this tower has been burnt down two or three times; and the family can’t be called lucky, for more than two, i think, of the admiral’s near kin have perished by shipwreck; and one at least, to my own knowledge, on practically the same spot where sir peter threw the spaniard overboard.”
“what a pity!” exclaimed flambeau. “she’s going.”
“when did your friend the admiral tell you this family history?” asked father brown, as the girl in the canoe paddled off, without showing the least intention of extending her interest from the tower to the yacht, which fanshaw had already caused to lie alongside the island.
“many years ago,” replied fanshaw; “he hasn’t been to sea for some time now, though he is as keen on it as ever. i believe there’s a family compact or something. well, here’s the landing stage; let’s come ashore and see the old boy.”
they followed him on to the island, just under the tower, and father brown, whether from the mere touch of dry land, or the interest of something on the other bank of the river (which he stared at very hard for some seconds), seemed singularly improved in briskness. they entered a wooded avenue between two fences of thin greyish wood, such as often enclose parks or gardens, and over the top of which the dark trees tossed to and fro like black and purple plumes upon the hearse of a giant. the tower, as they left it behind, looked all the quainter, because such entrances are usually flanked by two towers; and this one looked lopsided. but for this, the avenue had the usual appearance of the entrance to a gentleman’s grounds; and, being so curved that the house was now out of sight, somehow looked a much larger park than any plantation on such an island could really be. father brown was, perhaps, a little fanciful in his fatigue, but he almost thought the whole place must be growing larger, as things do in a nightmare. anyhow, a mystical monotony was the only character of their march, until fanshaw suddenly stopped, and pointed to something sticking out through the grey fence—something that looked at first rather like the imprisoned horn of some beast. closer observation showed that it was a slightly curved blade of metal that shone faintly in the fading light.
flambeau, who like all frenchmen had been a soldier, bent over it and said in a startled voice: “why, it’s a sabre! i believe i know the sort, heavy and curved, but shorter than the cavalry; they used to have them in artillery and the—”
as he spoke the blade plucked itself out of the crack it had made and came down again with a more ponderous slash, splitting the fissiparous fence to the bottom with a rending noise. then it was pulled out again, flashed above the fence some feet further along, and again split it halfway down with the first stroke; and after waggling a little to extricate itself (accompanied with curses in the darkness) split it down to the ground with a second. then a kick of devilish energy sent the whole loosened square of thin wood flying into the pathway, and a great gap of dark coppice gaped in the paling.
fanshaw peered into the dark opening and uttered an exclamation of astonishment. “my dear admiral!” he exclaimed, “do you—er—do you generally cut out a new front door whenever you want to go for a walk?”
the voice in the gloom swore again, and then broke into a jolly laugh. “no,” it said; “i’ve really got to cut down this fence somehow; it’s spoiling all the plants, and no one else here can do it. but i’ll only carve another bit off the front door, and then come out and welcome you.”
and sure enough, he heaved up his weapon once more, and, hacking twice, brought down another and similar strip of fence, making the opening about fourteen feet wide in all. then through this larger forest gateway he came out into the evening light, with a chip of grey wood sticking to his sword-blade.
he momentarily fulfilled all fanshaw’s fable of an old piratical admiral; though the details seemed afterwards to decompose into accidents. for instance, he wore a broad-brimmed hat as protection against the sun; but the front flap of it was turned up straight to the sky, and the two corners pulled down lower than the ears, so that it stood across his forehead in a crescent like the old cocked hat worn by nelson. he wore an ordinary dark-blue jacket, with nothing special about the buttons, but the combination of it with white linen trousers somehow had a sailorish look. he was tall and loose, and walked with a sort of swagger, which was not a sailor’s roll, and yet somehow suggested it; and he held in his hand a short sabre which was like a navy cutlass, but about twice as big. under the bridge of the hat his eagle face looked eager, all the more because it was not only clean-shaven, but without eyebrows. it seemed almost as if all the hair had come off his face from his thrusting it through a throng of elements. his eyes were prominent and piercing. his colour was curiously attractive, while partly tropical; it reminded one vaguely of a blood-orange. that is, that while it was ruddy and sanguine, there was a yellow in it that was in no way sickly, but seemed rather to glow like gold apples of the hesperides—father brown thought he had never seen a figure so expressive of all the romances about the countries of the sun.
when fanshaw had presented his two friends to their host he fell again into a tone of rallying the latter about his wreckage of the fence and his apparent rage of profanity. the admiral pooh-poohed it at first as a piece of necessary but annoying garden work; but at length the ring of real energy came back into his laughter, and he cried with a mixture of impatience and good humour:
“well, perhaps i do go at it a bit rabidly, and feel a kind of pleasure in smashing anything. so would you if your only pleasure was in cruising about to find some new cannibal islands, and you had to stick on this muddy little rockery in a sort of rustic pond. when i remember how i’ve cut down a mile and a half of green poisonous jungle with an old cutlass half as sharp as this; and then remember i must stop here and chop this matchwood, because of some confounded old bargain scribbled in a family bible, why, i—”
he swung up the heavy steel again; and this time sundered the wall of wood from top to bottom at one stroke.
“i feel like that,” he said laughing, but furiously flinging the sword some yards down the path, “and now let’s go up to the house; you must have some dinner.”
the semicircle of lawn in front of the house was varied by three circular garden beds, one of red tulips, a second of yellow tulips, and the third of some white, waxen-looking blossoms that the visitors did not know and presumed to be exotic. a heavy, hairy and rather sullen-looking gardener was hanging up a heavy coil of garden hose. the corners of the expiring sunset which seemed to cling about the corners of the house gave glimpses here and there of the colours of remoter flowerbeds; and in a treeless space on one side of the house opening upon the river stood a tall brass tripod on which was tilted a big brass telescope. just outside the steps of the porch stood a little painted green garden table, as if someone had just had tea there. the entrance was flanked with two of those half-featured lumps of stone with holes for eyes that are said to be south sea idols; and on the brown oak beam across the doorway were some confused carvings that looked almost as barbaric.
as they passed indoors, the little cleric hopped suddenly on to the table, and standing on it peered unaffectedly through his spectacles at the mouldings in the oak. admiral pendragon looked very much astonished, though not particularly annoyed; while fanshaw was so amused with what looked like a performing pigmy on his little stand, that he could not control his laughter. but father brown was not likely to notice either the laughter or the astonishment.
he was gazing at three carved symbols, which, though very worn and obscure, seemed still to convey some sense to him. the first seemed to be the outline of some tower or other building, crowned with what looked like curly-pointed ribbons. the second was clearer: an old elizabethan galley with decorative waves beneath it, but interrupted in the middle by a curious jagged rock, which was either a fault in the wood or some conventional representation of the water coming in. the third represented the upper half of a human figure, ending in an escalloped line like the waves; the face was rubbed and featureless, and both arms were held very stiffly up in the air.
“well,” muttered father brown, blinking, “here is the legend of the spaniard plain enough. here he is holding up his arms and cursing in the sea; and here are the two curses: the wrecked ship and the burning of pendragon tower.”
pendragon shook his head with a kind of venerable amusement. “and how many other things might it not be?” he said. “don’t you know that that sort of half-man, like a half-lion or half-stag, is quite common in heraldry? might not that line through the ship be one of those parti-per-pale lines, indented, i think they call it? and though the third thing isn’t so very heraldic, it would be more heraldic to suppose it a tower crowned with laurel than with fire; and it looks just as like it.”
“but it seems rather odd,” said flambeau, “that it should exactly confirm the old legend.”
“ah,” replied the sceptical traveller, “but you don’t know how much of the old legend may have been made up from the old figures. besides, it isn’t the only old legend. fanshaw, here, who is fond of such things, will tell you there are other versions of the tale, and much more horrible ones. one story credits my unfortunate ancestor with having had the spaniard cut in two; and that will fit the pretty picture also. another obligingly credits our family with the possession of a tower full of snakes and explains those little, wriggly things in that way. and a third theory supposes the crooked line on the ship to be a conventionalized thunderbolt; but that alone, if seriously examined, would show what a very little way these unhappy coincidences really go.”
“why, how do you mean?” asked fanshaw.
“it so happens,” replied his host coolly, “that there was no thunder and lightning at all in the two or three shipwrecks i know of in our family.”
“oh!” said father brown, and jumped down from the little table.
there was another silence in which they heard the continuous murmur of the river; then fanshaw said, in a doubtful and perhaps disappointed tone: “then you don’t think there is anything in the tales of the tower in flames?”
“there are the tales, of course,” said the admiral, shrugging his shoulders; “and some of them, i don’t deny, on evidence as decent as one ever gets for such things. someone saw a blaze hereabout, don’t you know, as he walked home through a wood; someone keeping sheep on the uplands inland thought he saw a flame hovering over pendragon tower. well, a damp dab of mud like this confounded island seems the last place where one would think of fires.”
“what is that fire over there?” asked father brown with a gentle suddenness, pointing to the woods on the left river-bank. they were all thrown a little off their balance, and the more fanciful fanshaw had even some difficulty in recovering his, as they saw a long, thin stream of blue smoke ascending silently into the end of the evening light.
then pendragon broke into a scornful laugh again. “gipsies!” he said; “they’ve been camping about here for about a week. gentlemen, you want your dinner,” and he turned as if to enter the house.
but the antiquarian superstition in fanshaw was still quivering, and he said hastily: “but, admiral, what’s that hissing noise quite near the island? it’s very like fire.”
“it’s more like what it is,” said the admiral, laughing as he led the way; “it’s only some canoe going by.”
almost as he spoke, the butler, a lean man in black, with very black hair and a very long, yellow face, appeared in the doorway and told him that dinner was served.
the dining-room was as nautical as the cabin of a ship; but its note was rather that of the modern than the elizabethan captain. there were, indeed, three antiquated cutlasses in a trophy over the fireplace, and one brown sixteenth-century map with tritons and little ships dotted about a curly sea. but such things were less prominent on the white panelling than some cases of quaint-coloured south american birds, very scientifically stuffed, fantastic shells from the pacific, and several instruments so rude and queer in shape that savages might have used them either to kill their enemies or to cook them. but the alien colour culminated in the fact that, besides the butler, the admiral’s only servants were two negroes, somewhat quaintly clad in tight uniforms of yellow. the priest’s instinctive trick of analysing his own impressions told him that the colour and the little neat coat-tails of these bipeds had suggested the word “canary,” and so by a mere pun connected them with southward travel. towards the end of the dinner they took their yellow clothes and black faces out of the room, leaving only the black clothes and yellow face of the butler.
“i’m rather sorry you take this so lightly,” said fanshaw to the host; “for the truth is, i’ve brought these friends of mine with the idea of their helping you, as they know a good deal of these things. don’t you really believe in the family story at all?”
“i don’t believe in anything,” answered pendragon very briskly, with a bright eye cocked at a red tropical bird. “i’m a man of science.”
rather to flambeau’s surprise, his clerical friend, who seemed to have entirely woken up, took up the digression and talked natural history with his host with a flow of words and much unexpected information, until the dessert and decanters were set down and the last of the servants vanished. then he said, without altering his tone.
“please don’t think me impertinent, admiral pendragon. i don’t ask for curiosity, but really for my guidance and your convenience. have i made a bad shot if i guess you don’t want these old things talked of before your butler?”
the admiral lifted the hairless arches over his eyes and exclaimed: “well, i don’t know where you got it, but the truth is i can’t stand the fellow, though i’ve no excuse for discharging a family servant. fanshaw, with his fairy tales, would say my blood moved against men with that black, spanish-looking hair.”
flambeau struck the table with his heavy fist. “by jove!” he cried; “and so had that girl!”
“i hope it’ll all end tonight,” continued the admiral, “when my nephew comes back safe from his ship. you looked surprised. you won’t understand, i suppose, unless i tell you the story. you see, my father had two sons; i remained a bachelor, but my elder brother married, and had a son who became a sailor like all the rest of us, and will inherit the proper estate. well, my father was a strange man; he somehow combined fanshaw’s superstition with a good deal of my scepticism—they were always fighting in him; and after my first voyages, he developed a notion which he thought somehow would settle finally whether the curse was truth or trash. if all the pendragons sailed about anyhow, he thought there would be too much chance of natural catastrophes to prove anything. but if we went to sea one at a time in strict order of succession to the property, he thought it might show whether any connected fate followed the family as a family. it was a silly notion, i think, and i quarrelled with my father pretty heartily; for i was an ambitious man and was left to the last, coming, by succession, after my own nephew.”
“and your father and brother,” said the priest, very gently, “died at sea, i fear.”
“yes,” groaned the admiral; “by one of those brutal accidents on which are built all the lying mythologies of mankind, they were both shipwrecked. my father, coming up this coast out of the atlantic, was washed up on these cornish rocks. my brother’s ship was 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 again on the green ridge against the sky, waving others to come on; but now waving not a rake but a cutlass. behind him came the two negroes, also with the old crooked cutlasses out of the trophy. but in the blood-red glare, with their black faces and yellow figures, they looked like devils carrying instruments of torture. in the dim garden behind them a distant voice was heard calling out brief directions. when the priest heard the voice, a terrible change came over his countenance.
but he remained composed; and never took his eye off the patch of flame which had begun by spreading, but now seemed to shrink a little as it hissed under the torch of the long silver spear of water. he kept his finger along the nozzle of the pipe to ensure the aim, and attended to no other business, knowing only by the noise and that semi-conscious corner of the eye, the exciting incidents that began to tumble themselves about the island garden. he gave two brief directions to his friends. one was: “knock these fellows down somehow and tie them up, whoever they are; there’s rope down by those faggots. they want to take away my nice hose.” the other was: “as soon as you get a chance, call out to that canoeing girl; she’s over on the bank with the gipsies. ask her if they could get some buckets across and fill them from the river.” then he closed his mouth and continued to water the new red flower as ruthlessly as he had watered the red tulip.
he never turned his head to look at the strange fight that followed between the foes and friends of the mysterious fire. he almost felt the island shake when flambeau collided with the huge gardener; he merely imagined how it would whirl round them as they wrestled. he heard the crashing fall; and his friend’s gasp of triumph as he dashed on to the first negro; and the cries of both the blacks as flambeau and fanshaw bound them. flambeau’s enormous strength more than redressed the odds in the fight, especially as the fourth man still hovered near the house, only a shadow and a voice. he heard also the water broken by the paddles of a canoe; the girl’s voice giving orders, the voices of gipsies answering and coming nearer, the plumping and sucking noise of empty buckets plunged into a full stream; and finally the sound of many feet around the fire. but all this was less to him than the fact that the red rent, which had lately once more increased, had once more slightly diminished.
then came a cry that very nearly made him turn his head. flambeau and fanshaw, now reinforced by some of the gipsies, had rushed after the mysterious man by the house; and he heard from the other end of the garden the frenchman’s cry of horror and astonishment. it was echoed by a howl not to be called human, as the being broke from their hold and ran along the garden. three times at least it raced round the whole island, in a way that was as horrible as the chase of a lunatic, both in the cries of the pursued and the ropes carried by the pursuers; but was more horrible still, because it somehow suggested one of the chasing games of children in a garden. then, finding them closing in on every side, the figure sprang upon one of the higher river banks and disappeared with a splash into the dark and driving river.
“you can do no more, i fear,” said brown in a voice cold with pain. “he has been washed down to the rocks by now, where he has sent so many others. he knew the use of a family legend.”
“oh, don’t talk in these parables,” cried flambeau impatiently. “can’t you put it simply in words of one syllable?”
“yes,” answered brown, with his eye on the hose. “‘both eyes bright, she’s all right; one eye blinks, down she sinks.’”
the fire hissed and shrieked more and more, like a strangled thing, as it grew narrower and narrower under the flood from the pipe and buckets, but father brown still kept his eye on it as he went on speaking:
“i thought of asking this young lady, if it were morning yet, to look through that telescope at the river mouth and the river. she might have seen something to interest her: the sign of the ship, or mr walter pendragon coming home, and perhaps even the sign of the half-man, for though he is certainly safe by now, he may very well have waded ashore. he has been within a shave of another shipwreck; and would never have escaped it, if the lady hadn’t had the sense to suspect the old admiral’s telegram and come down to watch him. don’t let’s talk about the old admiral. don’t let’s talk about anything. it’s enough to say that whenever this tower, with its pitch and resin-wood, really caught fire, the spark on the horizon always looked like the twin light to the coast light-house.”
“and that,” said flambeau, “is how the father and brother died. the wicked uncle of the legends very nearly got his estate after all.”
father brown did not answer; indeed, he did not speak again, save for civilities, till they were all safe round a cigar-box in the cabin of the yacht. he saw that the frustrated fire was extinguished; and then refused to linger, though he actually heard young pendragon, escorted by an enthusiastic crowd, come tramping up the river bank; and might (had he been moved by romantic curiosities) have received the combined thanks of the man from the ship and the girl from the canoe. but his fatigue had fallen on him once more, and he only started once, when flambeau abruptly told him he had dropped cigar-ash on his trousers.
“that’s no cigar-ash,” he said rather wearily. “that’s from the fire, but you don’t think so because you’re all smoking cigars. that’s just the way i got my first faint suspicion about the chart.”
“do you mean pendragon’s chart of his pacific islands?” asked fanshaw.
“you thought it was a chart of the pacific islands,” answered brown. “put a feather with a fossil and a bit of coral and everyone will think it’s a specimen. put the same feather with a ribbon and an artificial flower and everyone will think it’s for a lady’s hat. put the same feather with an ink-bottle, a book and a stack of writing-paper, and most men will swear they’ve seen a quill pen. so you saw that map among tropic birds and shells and thought it was a map of pacific islands. it was the map of this river.”
“but how do you know?” asked fanshaw.
“i saw the rock you thought was like a dragon, and the one like merlin, and—”
“you seem to have noticed a lot as we came in,” cried fanshaw. “we thought you were rather abstracted.”
“i was sea-sick,” said father brown simply. “i felt simply horrible. but feeling horrible has nothing to do with not seeing things.” and he closed his eyes.
“do you think most men would have seen that?” asked flambeau. he received no answer: father brown was asleep.
