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.
