carved smile on
his face, of copper flesh and ivory teeth; but I think the most hateful
thing about him was that he was in European dress. I was prepared, I
think, for shrouded priests or naked fakirs. But this seemed to say that
the devilry was over all the earth. As indeed I found it to be.

"'If you had only seen the Monkey's Feet,' he said, smiling steadily,
and without other preface, 'we should have been very gentle--you would
only be tortured and die. If you had seen the Monkey's Face, still we
should be very moderate, very tolerant--you would only be tortured and
live. But as you have seen the Monkey's Tail, we must pronounce the
worst sentence, which is--Go Free.'

"When he said the words I heard the elaborate iron latch with which I
had struggled, automatically unlock itself: and then, far down the dark
passages I had passed, I heard the heavy street-door shifting its own
bolts backwards.

"'It is vain to ask for mercy; you must go free,' said the smiling man.
'Henceforth a hair shall slay you like a sword, and a breath shall bite
you like an adder; weapons shall come against you out of nowhere; and
you shall die many times.' And with that he was swallowed once more in
the wall behind; and I went out into the street."

Cray paused; and Father Brown unaffectedly sat down on the lawn and
began to pick daisies.

Then the soldier continued: "Putnam, of course, with his jolly common
sense, pooh-poohed all my fears; and from that time dates his doubt of
my mental balance. Well, I'll simply tell you, in the fewest words, the
three things that have happened since; and you shall judge which of us
is right.

"The first happened in an Indian village on the edge of the jungle,
but hundreds of miles from the temple, or town, or type of tribes and
customs where the curse had been put on me. I woke in black midnight,
and lay thinking of nothing in particular, when I felt a faint tickling
thing, like a thread or a hair, trailed across my throat. I shrank back
out of its way, and could not help thinking of the words in the temple.
But when I got up and sought lights and a mirror, the line across my
neck was a line of blood.

"The second happened in a lodging in Port Said, later, on our journey
home together. It was a jumble of tavern and curiosity-shop; and though
there was nothing there remotely suggesting the cult of the Monkey, it
is, of course, possible that some of its images or talismans were in
such a place. It