The Incredulity of Father Brown
arrow had evidently entered and looked out. The garden with its flat flower-beds lay far below like a delicately coloured map of the world. The whole vista seemed so vast and empty, the tower seemed set so far up in the sky that as he stared out a strange phrase came back to his memory.
"A bolt from the blue," he said. "What was that somebody said about a bolt from the blue and death coming out of the sky? Look how far away everything looks; it seems extraordinary that an arrow could come so far, unless it were an arrow from heaven."
Wilton had returned, but did not reply, and the priest went on as in soliloquy.
"One thinks of aviation. We must ask young Wain . . . about aviation."
"There's a lot of it round here," said the secretary.
"Case of very old or very new weapons," observed Father Brown. "Some would be quite familiar to his old uncle, I suppose; we must ask him about arrows. This looks rather like a Red Indian arrow. I don't know where the Red Indian shot it from; but you remember the story the old man told. I said it had a moral."
"If it had a moral," said Wilton warmly, "it was only that a real Red Indian might shoot a thing farther than you'd fancy. It's nonsense your suggesting a parallel."
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