but all the eagles of the Caesars seemed flapping and screaming
in pursuit of me. And yet my heart rose higher and higher like

a child's kite, until I came over the loose, dry sand-hills and to
the flat, wet sands, where Philip stood already up to his ankles

in the shallow shining water, some hundred yards out to sea.
There was a great red sunset; and the long stretch of low water,

hardly rising over the ankle for half a mile, was like a lake
of ruby flame. It was not till I had torn off my shoes and stockings

and waded to where he stood, which was well away from the dry land,
that I turned and looked round. We were quite alone in a circle

of sea-water and wet sand, and I gave him the head of Caesar.
"At the very instant I had a shock of fancy: that a man far away

on the sand-hills was looking at me intently. I must have felt
immediately after that it was a mere leap of unreasonable nerves;

for the man was only a dark dot in the distance, and I could only just see
that he was standing quite still and gazing, with his head a little

on one side. There was no earthlylogical evidence that he was
looking at me; he might have been looking at a ship, or the sunset,

or the sea-gulls, or at any of the people who still strayed here and there
on the shore between us. Nevertheless, whatever my start sprang from

was prophetic; for, as I gazed, he started walking briskly in a bee-line
towards us across the wide wet sands. As he drew nearer and nearer

I saw that he was dark and bearded, and that his eyes were marked with
dark spectacles. He was dressed poorly but respectably in black,

from the old black top hat on his head to the solid black boots
on his feet. In spite of these he walked straight into the sea

without a flash of hesitation, and came on at me with the steadiness
of a travelling bullet.

"I can't tell you the sense of monstrosity and miracle I had
when he thus silently burst the barrier between land and water.

It was as if he had walked straight off a cliff and still marched
steadily in mid-air. It was as if a house had flown up into the sky

or a man's head had fallen off. He was only wetting his boots;
but he seemed to be a demon disregarding a law of Nature. If he had

hesitated an instant at the water's edge it would have been nothing.
As it was, he seemed to look so much at me alone as not to notice the ocean.

Philip was some yards away with his back to me, bending over his net.
The stranger came on till he stood within two yards of me, the water

washing half-way up to his knees. Then he said, with a clearly modulated
and rather mincing articulation: `Would it discommode you to contribute

elsewhere a coin with a somewhat different superscription?'
"With one exception there was nothing definably abnormal about him.

His tinted glasses were not really opaque, but of a blue kind common enough,
nor were the eyes behind them shifty, but regarded me steadily.

His dark beard was not really long or wild--, but he looked rather hairy,
because the beard began very high up in his face, just under

the cheek-bones. His complexion was neither sallow nor livid,
but on the contrary rather clear and youthful; yet this gave

a pink-and-white wax look which somehow (I don't know why) rather
increased the horror. The only oddity one could fix was that his nose,

which was otherwise of a good shape, was just slightly turned sideways
at the tip; as if, when it was soft, it had been tapped on one side

with a toy hammer. The thing was hardly a deformity; yet I cannot
tell you what a living nightmare it was to me. As he stood there

in the sunset-stained water he affected" target="_blank" title="a.做作的；假装的">affected me as some hellish sea-monster
just risen roaring out of a sea like blood. I don't know why

a touch on the nose should affect my imagination so much.
I think it seemed as if he could move his nose like a finger.

And as if he had just that moment moved it.
"`Any little assistance,' he continued with the same queer,

priggish accent, `that may obviate the necessity of my communicating
with the family.'

"Then it rushed over me that I was being blackmailed for
the theft of the bronze piece; and all my merely superstitious fears

and doubts were swallowed up in one overpowering, practical question.
How could he have found out? I had stolen the thing suddenly and on impulse;

I was certainly alone; for I always made sure of being unobserved
when I slipped out to see Philip in this way. I had not,

to all appearance, been followed in the street; and if I had,
they could not `X-ray' the coin in my closed hand. The man standing

on the sand-hills could no more have seen what I gave Philip than
shoot a fly in one eye, like the man in the fairy-tale.

"`Philip,' I cried helplessly, `ask this man what he wants.'
"When Philip lifted his head at last from mending his net

he looked rather red, as if sulky or ashamed; but it may have been
only the exertion of stooping and the red evening light; I may have

only had another of the morbid fancies that seemed to be dancing about me.
He merely said gruffly to the man: `You clear out of this.'

And, motioning me to follow, set off wading shoreward without paying
further attention to him. He stepped on to a stone breakwater that

ran out from among the roots of the sand-hills, and so struck homeward,
perhaps thinking our incubus would find it less easy to walk on such

rough stones, green and slippery with seaweed, than we, who were young
and used to it. But my persecutor walked as daintily as he talked;

and he still followed me, picking his way and picking his phrases.
I heard his delicate, detestable voice appealing to me over my shoulder,

until at last, when we had crested the sand-hills, Philip's patience
(which was by no means so conspicuous on most occasions) seemed to snap.

He turned suddenly, saying, `Go back. I can't talk to you now.'
And as the man hovered and opened his mouth, Philip struck him a buffet

on it that sent him flying from the top of the tallest sand-hill
to the bottom. I saw him crawling out below, covered with sand.

"This stroke comforted me somehow, though it might well increase
my peril; but Philip showed none of his usual elation at his own prowess.

Though as affectionate as ever, he still seemed cast down; and before
I could ask him anything fully, he parted with me at his own gate,

with two remarks that struck me as strange. He said that,
all things considered, I ought to put the coin back in the Collection;

but that he himself would keep it `for the present'. And then he added
quite suddenly and irrelevantly:, `You know Giles is back from Australia?'"

The door of the tavern opened and the gigantic shadow of
the investigator Flambeau fell across the table. Father Brown

presented him to the lady in his own slight, persuasive style of speech,
mentioning his knowledge and sympathy in such cases; and almost

without knowing, the girl was soon reiterating her story to two listeners.
But Flambeau, as he bowed and sat down, handed the priest a small slip

of paper. Brown accepted it with some surprise and read on it:
"Cab to Wagga Wagga, 379, Mafeking Avenue, Putney." The girl was going

on with her story.
"I went up the steep street to my own house with my head in a whirl;

it bad not begun to clear when I came to the doorstep, on which
I found a milk-can--and the man with the twisted nose. The milk-can

told me the servants were all out; for, of course, Arthur,
browsing about in his brown dressing-gown in a brown study,

would not hear or answer a bell. Thus there was no one to help me
in the house, except my brother, whose help must be my ruin.

In desperation I thrust two shillings into the horrid thing's hand,
and told him to call again in a few days, when I had thought it out.

He went off sulking, but more sheepishly than I had expected--
perhaps he had been shaken by his fall--and I watched the star of sand

splashed on his back receding down the road with a horrid vindictive
pleasure. He turned a corner some six houses down.

"Then I let myself in, made myself some tea, and tried to
think it out. I sat at the drawing-room window looking on to the garden,

which still glowed with the last full evening light. But I was too
distracted and dreamy to look at the lawns and flower-pots and flower-beds

with any concentration. So I took the shock the more sharply because
I'd seen it so slowly.

"The man or monster I'd sent away was standing quite still
in the middle of the garden. Oh, we've all read a lot about

pale-faced phantoms in the dark; but this was more dreadful