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They were not long engaged in their game of blind-man's buff, when the necessity of trusting to the touch came abruptly to an end as if the handkerchief had been suddenly jerked from their eyes. The change was caused by a light streaming in through a side gallery into which they had strayed. It was at first dim and distant, but soon shone upon them with the brilliance of a flambeau.
He took a childish pleasure, as a younger brother might, in the formidable sword-stick which Flambeau always flung as he walked, and which now stood upright beside his tall mug of Munich. Nay, in his sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the knobbed and clumsy head of his own shabby umbrella, with some faint memories of the ogre's club in a coloured toy-book.
"Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy, seldom encumbered his march with captives," explained the narrator. "He released everybody in most cases. He released everybody in this case." "Everybody but the general," said the tall man. "Everybody," said the priest. Flambeau knit his black brows. "I don't grasp it all yet," he said.
An enormous chafing-dish, filled with burning charcoal, stood near the centre, and in a deep iron pan was placed a keg of oil, a hole having been driven into its head, through which a sort of hempen wick had been introduced; it flared and blazed like an overgrown flambeau, throwing a warm and glowing light over the entire of the wild yet well-filled apartment.
But three is a mystical number; it finishes things. It finishes this. That the direction about the drawer, the colour of ink, the colour of envelope, should none of them be right by accident, that can't be a coincidence. It wasn't." "What was it, then? Treason?" asked Flambeau, resuming his dinner. "I don't know that either," answered Brown, with a face of blank bewilderment.
What are you hunting for in all these crypts and effigies?" "I am only looking for one word," said Father Brown. "A word that isn't there." "Well," asked Flambeau; "are you going to tell me anything about it?" "I must divide it into two parts," remarked the priest. "First there is what everybody knows; and then there is what I know. Now, what everybody knows is short and plain enough.
Royce was an Irishman by birth; and that casual kind of Catholic that never remembers his religion until he is really in a hole. But Royce's request might have been less promptly complied with if one of the official detectives had not been a friend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau; and it was impossible to be a friend of Flambeau without hearing numberless stories about Father Brown.
"Oh, don't talk in these parables," cried Flambeau impatiently. "Can't you put it simply in words of one syllable?" "Yes," answered Brown, with his eye on the hose. "'Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye blinks, down she sinks."
"There was only one in his head," said his companion, "but there was another bullet-hole in the sash." Father Brown's smooth brow became suddenly constricted. "Was the other bullet found?" he demanded. Flambeau started a little. "I don't think I remember," he said. "Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" cried Brown, frowning more and more, with a quite unusual concentration of curiosity.
"The sun was the cruellest of all the gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?" "As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs," answered Flambeau, "that a man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man were really healthy he could stare at the sun."
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