Admiral threw away by the fence here.
How grey everything looks!"

"The mist's rising from the river," said the staring Flambeau.

Almost as he spoke the huge figure of the hairy gardener appeared on
a higher ridge of the trenched and terraced lawn, hailing them with a
brandished rake and a horribly bellowing voice. "Put down that hose," he
shouted; "put down that hose and go to your--"

"I am fearfully clumsy," replied the reverend gentleman weakly; "do
you know, I upset some wine at dinner." He made a wavering half-turn of
apology towards the gardener, with the hose still spouting in his hand.
The gardener caught the cold crash of the water full in his face like
the crash of a cannon-ball; staggered, slipped and went sprawling with
his boots in the air.

"How very dreadful!" said Father Brown, looking round in a sort of
wonder. "Why, I've hit a man!"

He stood with his head forward for a moment as if looking or listening;
and then set off at a trot towards the tower, still trailing the hose
behind him. The tower was quite close, but its outline was curiously
dim.

"Your river mist," he said, "has a rum smell."

"By the Lord it has," cried Fanshaw, who was very white. "But you can't
mean--"

"I mean," said Father Brown, "that one of the Admiral's scientific
predictions is coming true tonight. This story is going to end in
smoke."

As he spoke a most beautiful rose-red light seemed to burst into blossom
like a gigantic rose; but accompanied with a crackling and rattling
noise that was like the laughter of devils.

"My God! what is this?" cried Sir Cecil Fanshaw.

"The sign of the flaming tower," said Father Brown, and sent the driving
water from his hose into the heart of the red patch.

"Lucky we hadn't gone to bed!" ejaculated Fanshaw. "I suppose it can't
spread to the house."

"You may remember," said the priest quietly, "that the wooden fence that
might have carried it was cut away."

Flambeau turned electrified eyes upon his friend, but Fanshaw only said
rather absently: "Well, nobody can be killed, anyhow."

"This is rather a curious kind of tower," observed Father Brown, "when
it takes to killing people, it always kills people who are somewhere
else."

At the same instant the monstrous figure of the gardener with the
streaming beard stood again on the green ridge against the sky, waving
others to come on; but now waving not a rake but a cutlass. Behind him
came the two negroes, also with the