Aylmer half started from his chair with an enthusiasm of eager assent.
“By God! you are right,” he cried. “A refined intellectual face! That is the face of John Strake.”
Then he raised himself and stood looking at the priest with a curious concentration. “If you will wait here a little while,” he said, “I will show you something.”
He went back through the central door, closing it after him; going, the priest presumed, to the old sideboard or possibly to his bedroom. Father Brown remained seated, gazing abstractedly at the carpet, where a faint red glimmer shone from the glass in the doorway. Once it seemed to brighten like a ruby and then darkened again, as if the sun of that stormy day had passed from cloud to cloud. Nothing moved except the aquatic creatures which floated to and fro in the dim green bowl. Father Brown was thinking hard.
A minute or two afterwards he got up and slipped quietly to the alcove of the telephone, where he rang up his friend Dr. Boyne, at the official headquarters. “I wanted to tell you about Aylmer and his affairs,” he said quietly. “It’s a queer story, but I rather think there’s something in it. If I were you I’d send some men up here straight away; four or five men, I think, and surround the house. If anything does happen there’ll probably be something startling in the way of an escape.”
Then he went back and sat down again, staring at the dark carpet, which again glowed blood-red with the light from the glass door. Something in that filtered light set his mind drifting on certain borderlands of thought, with the first white daybreak before the coming of colour, and all that mystery which is alternately veiled and revealed in the symbol of windows and of doors.
An inhuman howl in a human voice came from beyond the closed doors, almost simultaneously with the noise of firing. Before the echoes of the shot had died away the door was violently flung open and his host staggered into the room, the dressing-gown half torn from his shoulder and the long pistol smoking in his hand. He seemed to be shaking in every limb, yet he was shaken in part with an unnatural laughter.
“Glory be to the White Magic!” he cried; “Glory be to the silver bullet! The hellhound has hunted once too often, and my brothers are avenged at last.”
He sank into a chair and the pistol slid from his hand and fell on the floor. Father Brown darted past him, slipped through the glass door and went down the passage. As he did so he put his hand on the handle of the bedroom door, as if half intending to enter; then he stooped a moment, as if examining something; and then he ran to the outer door and opened it.
On the field of snow, which had been so blank a little while before, lay one black object. At the first glance it looked a little like an enormous bat. A second glance showed that it was, after all, a human figure; fallen on its face, the whole head covered by a broad black hat having something of a Latin-American look; while the appearance of black-wings came from the two flaps or loose sleeves of a very vast black cloak spread out, perhaps by accident, to their utmost length on either side. Both the hands were hidden, though Father Brown thought he could detect the position of one of them, and saw close to it, under the edge of the cloak, the glimmer of some metallic weapon. The main effect, however, was curiously like that of the simple extravagances of heraldry; like a black eagle displayed on a white ground. But by walking round it and peering under the hat the priest got a glimpse of the face, which was indeed what his host had called refined and intellectual; even sceptical and austere: the face of John Strake.
“Well, I’m jiggered,” muttered Father Brown. “It really does look like some vast vampire that has swooped down like a bird.”
“How else could he have come?” came a voice from the doorway, and Father Brown looked up to see Aylmer once more standing there.
“Couldn’t he have walked?” replied Father Brown evasively.
Aylmer stretched out his arm and swept the white landscape with a gesture.
“Look at the snow,” he said in a deep voice that had a sort of roll and thrill in it. “Is not the snow unspotted—pure as the white magic you yourself called it? Is there a speck on it for miles, save that one foul black blot that has fallen there? There are no footprints, but a few of yours and mine; there are none approaching the house from anywhere.”
Then he looked at the little priest for a moment with a concentrated and curious expression, and said:
“I will tell you something else. That cloak he flies with is too long to walk with. He was not a very tall man, and it would trail behind him like a royal train. Stretch it out over his body, if you like, and see.”
“What happened to you both?” asked Father Brown abruptly.
“It was too swift to describe,” answered Aylmer. “I had looked out of the door and was turning back when there came a kind of rushing of wind all around me, as if I were being buffeted by a wheel revolving in midair. I spun round somehow and fired blindly; and then I saw nothing but what you see now. But I am morally certain you wouldn’t see it, if I had not had a silver shot in my gun. It would have been a different body lying there in the snow.”
“By the way,” remarked Father Brown, “shall we leave it lying there in the snow? Or would you like it taken
