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he cried. They are all at me here that the fellow was only after the
silver as if I shouldn t be only too pleased to think so! She s been at me,
and he tossed his tousled black head towards Audrey, but the other had no need
of the direction, she s been at me today about how cruel I was to shoot a
poor harmless house-breaker, and how I have the devil in me against poor
harmless natives. But I was a good-natured man once as good-natured as
Putnam.
After a pause he said: Look here, I ve never seen you before; but you shall
judge of the whole story. Old Putnam and I were friends in the same mess; but,
owing to some accidents on the Afghan border, I got my command much sooner
than most men; only we were both invalided home for a bit. I was engaged to
Audrey out there; and we all traveled back together. But on the journey back
things happened. Curious things. The result of them was that Putnam wants it
broken off, and even Audrey keeps it hanging on and I know what they mean. I
know what they think I am. So do you.
Well, these are the facts. The last day we were in an Indian city I asked
Putnam if I could get some Trichinopoli cigars, he directed me to a little
place opposite his lodgings. I have since found he was quite right; but
opposite is a dangerous word when one decent house stands opposite five or
six squalid ones; and I must have mistaken the door. It opened with
difficulty, and then only on darkness; but as I turned back, the door behind
me sank back and settled into its place with a noise as of innumerable bolts.
There was nothing to do but to walk forward; which I did through passage after
passage, pitch-dark. Then I came to a flight of steps, and then to a blind
door, secured by a latch of elaborate Eastern ironwork, which I could only
trace by touch, but which I loosened at last. I came out again upon gloom,
which was half turned into a greenish twilight by a multitude of small but
steady lamps below. They showed merely the feet or fringes of some huge and
empty architecture. Just in front of me was something that looked like a
mountain. I confess I nearly fell on the great stone platform on which I had
emerged, to realize that it was an idol. And worst of all, an idol with its
back to me.
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It was hardly half human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head, and
still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind and pointing,
like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the centre of the vast
stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, to guess at the hieroglyphic, not
without horror, when a more horrible thing happened. A door opened silently in
the temple wall behind me and a man came out, with a brown face and a black
coat. He had a carved smile on his face, of copper flesh and ivory teeth; but
I think the most hateful thing about him was that he was in European dress. I
was prepared, I think, for shrouded priests or naked fakirs. But this seemed
to say that the devilry was over all the earth. As indeed I found it to be.
If you had only seen the Monkey s Feet, he said, smiling steadily, and
without other preface, we should have been very gentle you would only be
tortured and die. If you had seen the Monkey s Face, still we should be very
moderate, very tolerant you would only be tortured and live. But as you have
seen the Monkey s Tail, we must pronounce the worst sentence. which is Go
Free.
When he said the words I heard the elaborate iron latch with which I had
struggled, automatically unlock itself: and then, far down the dark passages I
had passed, I heard the heavy street-door shifting its own bolts backwards.
It is vain to ask for mercy; you must go free, said the smiling man.
Henceforth a hair shall slay you like a sword, and a breath shall bite you
like an adder; weapons shall come against you out of nowhere; and you shall
die many times. And with that he was swallowed once more in the wall behind;
and I went out into the street.
Cray paused; and Father Brown unaffectedly sat down on the lawn and began to
pick daisies.
Then the soldier continued: Putnam, of course, with his jolly common sense,
pooh-poohed all my fears; and from that time dates his doubt of my mental
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