“A silent shot,” said Father Brown, in a low voice; “I was just wondering about those new inventions for silencing firearms. But this is a very old invention, and quite as silent.”
Then, after a moment, he added: “I’m afraid he is dead. What are you going to do?”
The pale secretary roused himself with abrupt resolution. “I’m going to press that button, of course,” he said, “and if that doesn’t do for Daniel Doom, I’m going to hunt him through the world till I find him.”
“Take care it doesn’t do for any of our friends,” observed Father Brown; “they can hardly be far off; we’d better call them.”
“That lot know all about the wall,” answered Wilton. “None of them will try to climb it, unless one of them … is in a great hurry.”
Father Brown went to the window by which the arrow had evidently entered and looked out. The garden, with its flat flowerbeds, lay far below like a delicately coloured map of the world. The whole vista seemed so vast and empty, the tower seemed set so far up in the sky that as he stared out a strange phrase came back to his memory.
“A bolt from the blue,” he said. “What was that somebody said about a bolt from the blue and death coming out of the sky? Look how far away everything looks; it seems extraordinary that an arrow could come so far, unless it were an arrow from heaven.”
Wilton had returned, but did not reply, and the priest went on as in soliloquy.
“One thinks of aviation. We must ask young Wain … about aviation.”
“There’s a lot of it round here,” said the secretary.
“Case of very old or very new weapons,” observed Father Brown. “Some would be quite familiar to his old uncle, I suppose; we must ask him about arrows. This looks rather like a Red Indian arrow. I don’t know where the Red Indian shot it from; but you remember the story the old man told. I said it had a moral.”
“If it had a moral,” said Wilton warmly, “it was only that a real Red Indian might shoot a thing farther than you’d fancy. It’s nonsense your suggesting a parallel.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the moral quite right,” said Father Brown.
Although the little priest appeared to melt into the millions of New York next day, without any apparent attempt to be anything but a number in a numbered street, he was, in fact, unobtrusively busy for the next fortnight with the commission that had been given him, for he was filled with profound fear about a possible miscarriage of justice. Without having any particular air of singling them out from his other new acquaintances, he found it easy to fall into talk with the two or three men recently involved in the mystery; and with old Hickory Crake especially he had a curious and interesting conversation. It took place on a seat in Central Park, where the veteran sat with his bony hands and hatchet face resting on the oddly-shaped head of a walking-stick of dark red wood, possibly modelled on a tomahawk.
“Well, it may be a long shot,” he said, wagging his head, “but I wouldn’t advise you to be too positive about how far an Indian arrow could go. I’ve known some bow-shots that seemed to go straighter than any bullets, and hit the mark to amazement, considering how long they had been travelling. Of course, you practically never hear now of a Red Indian with a bow and arrows, still less of a Red Indian hanging about here. But if by any chance there were one of the old Indian marksmen, with one of the old Indian bows, hiding in those trees hundred of yards beyond the Merton outer wall—why, then I wouldn’t put it past the noble savage to be able to send an arrow over the wall and into the top window of Merton’s house, no, nor into Merton, either. I’ve seen things quite as wonderful as that done in the old days.”
“No doubt,” said the priest, “you have done things quite as wonderful as well as seen them.”
Old Crake chuckled, and then said gruffly, “Oh, that’s all ancient history.”
“Some people have a way of studying ancient history,” the priest said. “I suppose we may take it there is nothing in your old record to make people talk unpleasantly about this affair.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Crake, his eyes shifting sharply for the first time in his red, wooden face, that was rather like the head of a tomahawk.
“Well, since you were so well acquainted with all the arts and crafts of the Redskin,” began Father Brown slowly.
Crake had had a hunched and almost shrunken appearance as he sat with his chin propped on its queer-shaped crutch. But the next instant he stood erect in the path like a fighting bravo with the crutch clutched like a cudgel.
“What?” he cried, in something like a raucous screech. “What the hell! Are you standing up to me to tell me I might happen to have murdered my own brother-in-law?”
From a dozen seats dotted about the path people looked towards the disputants as they stood facing each other in the middle of the path, the bald-headed energetic little man brandishing his outlandish stick like a club, and the black, dumpy figure of the little cleric
