THE WRONG SHAPE
that mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps on a string."
"What Hindoo?" asked Father Brown, still staring at the dagger in his hand.
"Oh, some Indian conjurer," said the doctor lightly; "a fraud, of course."
"You don't believe in magic?" asked Father Brown, without looking up.
"O crickey! magic!" said the doctor.
"It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; "the colours are very beautiful. But it's the wrong shape."
"What for?" asked Flambeau, staring.
"For anything. It's the wrong shape in the abstract. Don't you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in a Turkey carpet."
"Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing.
"They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know; but I know they stand for evil words," went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. "The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling to escape."
"What the devil are you talking about?" said the doctor with a loud laugh.
Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. "The Father sometimes gets this mystic's cloud on him," he said; "but I give you fair warning that I
179
