Part 42 (2/2)
”You're worried, Guildea,” the Father said. ”Seriously worried.”
”Yes, I am. This business is beginning to tell on me a good deal.”
”Your belief in the presence of something here continues then?”
”Oh, dear, yes. There's no sort of doubt about the matter. The night I went across the road into the Park something got into the house, though what the devil it is I can't yet find out. But now, before we go down to dinner, I'll just tell you something about that proof I promised you.
You remember?”
”Naturally.”
”Can't you imagine what it might be.”
Father Murchison moved his head to express a negative reply.
”Look about the room,” said Guildea. ”What do you see?”
The Father glanced round the room, slowly and carefully.
”Nothing unusual. You do not mean to tell me there is any appearance of----”
”Oh, no, no, there's no conventional, white-robed, cloud-like figure.
Bless my soul, no! I haven't fallen so low as that.”
He spoke with considerable irritation.
”Look again.”
Father Murchison looked at him, turned in the direction of his fixed eyes and saw the grey parrot clambering in its cage, slowly and persistently.
”What?” he said, quickly. ”Will the proof come from there?”
The Professor nodded.
”I believe so,” he said. ”Now let's go down to dinner. I want some food badly.”
They descended to the dining-room. While they ate and Pitting waited upon them, the Professor talked about birds, their habits, their curiosities, their fears and their powers of imitation. He had evidently studied this subject with the thoroughness that was characteristic of him in all that he did.
”Parrots,” he said presently, ”are extraordinarily observant. It is a pity that their means of reproducing what they see are so limited. If it were not so, I have little doubt that their echo of gesture would be as remarkable as their echo of voice often is.”
”But hands are missing.”
”Yes. They do many things with their heads, however. I once knew an old woman near Goring on the Thames. She was afflicted with the palsy. She held her head perpetually sideways and it trembled, moving from right to left. Her sailor son brought her home a parrot from one of his voyages.
It used to reproduce the old woman's palsied movement of the head exactly. Those grey parrots are always on the watch.”
Guildea said the last sentence slowly and deliberately, glancing sharply over his wine at Father Murchison, and, when he had spoken it, a sudden light of comprehension dawned in the Priest's mind. He opened his lips to make a swift remark. Guildea turned his bright eyes towards Pitting, who at the moment was tenderly bearing a cheese meringue from the lift that connected the dining-room with the lower regions. The Father closed his lips again. But presently, when the butler had placed some apples on the table, had meticulously arranged the decanters, brushed away the crumbs and evaporated, he said, quickly,
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