Page:Chesterton - The Wisdom of Father Brown.djvu/187

THE PURPLE WIG said, 'for now I can take the whole estate. The law will give it to me.'

"Exmoor, it seems, was white as ashes, but his eyes still blazed. 'The law will give it you,' he said, 'but you will not take it. Why not? Why, because it would be the crack of doom for me; and if you take it I shall take off my wig.  Why, you pitiful plucked fowl, any one can see your bare head. But no man shall see mine and live.'

"Well, you may say what you like and make it mean what you like. But Mull swears it is the solemn fact that the lawyer, after shaking his knotted fists in the air for an instant, simply ran from the room and never reappeared in the country-side. And since then Exmoor has been feared more for a warlock than even for a landlord and a magistrate.

"Now Dr. Mull told his story with rather wild theatrical gestures, and with a passion I think at least partisan. I was quite conscious of the possibility that the whole was the extravagance of an old braggart and gossip. But before I end this half of my discoveries, I think it due to Dr. Mull to record that my two first inquiries have confirmed his story. I learned from an old apothecary in the village that there was a bald man in evening dress, giving the name of Green, who came to him one night to have a three-cornered cut on his forehead 173