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lobsterish face into the room.  Come along, Cray, he cried.  Your lunch is
just coming in. And the bells are ringing for those who want to go to church.
Cray slipped upstairs to change; Dr. Oman and Miss Watson betook themselves
solemnly down the street, with a string of other churchgoers; but Father Brown
noticed that the doctor twice looked back and scrutinized the house; and even
came back to the corner of the street to look at it again.
The priest looked puzzled.  He can t have been at the dustbin, he muttered.
 Not in those clothes. Or was he there earlier today?
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Father Brown, touching other people, was as sensitive as a barometer; but
today he seemed about as sensitive as a rhinoceros. By no social law, rigid or
implied, could he be supposed to linger round the lunch of the Anglo-Indian
friends; but he lingered, covering his position with torrents of amusing but
quite needless conversation. He was the more puzzling because he did not seem
to want any lunch. As one after another of the most exquisitely balanced
kedgerees of curries, accompanied with their appropriate vintages, were laid
before the other two, he only repeated that it was one of his fast-days, and
munched a piece of bread and sipped and then left untasted a tumbler of cold
water. His talk, however, was exuberant.
 I ll tell you what I ll do for you, he cried ,  I ll mix you a salad! I
can t eat it, but I ll mix it like an angel! You ve got a lettuce there.
 Unfortunately it s the only thing we have got, answered the good-humored
Major.  You must remember that mustard, vinegar, oil and so on vanished with
the cruet and the burglar.
 I know, replied Brown, rather vaguely.  That s what I ve always been afraid
would happen. That s why I always carry a cruet-stand about with me. I m so
fond of salads.
And to the amazement of the two men he took a pepper pot out of his waistcoat
pocket and put it on the table.
 I wonder why the burglar wanted mustard, too, he went on, taking a
mustard-pot from another pocket.  A mustard plaster, I suppose. And
vinegar  and producing that condiment  haven t I heard something about
vinegar and brown paper? As for oil, which I think I put in my left 
His garrulity was an instant arrested; for lifting his eyes, he saw what no
one else saw the black figure of Dr. Oman standing on the sunlit lawn and
looking steadily into the room. Before he could quite recover himself Cray had
cloven in.
 You re an astounding card, he said, staring.  I shall come and hear your
sermons, if they re as amusing as your manners. His voice changed a little,
and he leaned back in his chair.
 Oh, there are sermons in a cruet-stand, too, said Father Brown, quite
gravely.  Have you heard of faith like a grain of mustard-seed; or charity
that anoints with oil? And as for vinegar, can any soldiers forget that
solitary soldier, who, when the sun was darkened 
Colonel Cray leaned forward a little and clutched the tablecloth.
Father Brown, who was making the salad, tipped two spoonfuls of the mustard
into the tumbler of water beside him; stood up and said in a new, loud and
sudden voice  Drink that!
At the same moment the motionless doctor in the garden came running, and
bursting open a window cried:  Am I wanted? Has he been poisoned?
 Pretty near, said Brown, with the shadow of a smile; for the emetic had
very suddenly taken effect. And Cray lay in a deck chair, gasping as for life,
but alive.
Major Putnam had sprung up, his purple face mottled.  A crime! he cried
hoarsely.  I will go for the police!
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The priest could hear him dragging down his palm-leaf hat from the peg and
tumbling out of the front door; he heard the garden gate slam. But he only
stood looking at Cray; and after a silence said quietly:
 I shall not talk to you much; but I will tell you what you want to know.
There is no curse on you. The Temple of the Monkey was either a coincidence or
a part of the trick; the trick was the trick of a white man. There is only one
weapon that will bring blood with that mere feathery touch: a razor held by a
white man. There is one way of making a common room full of invisible, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]