The

The Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Hagadorn.

Today, a father brown story from G.K. Chesterton called The Salad of Colonel Cray.

In this story, Father Brown solves a mysterious burglary, this time equipped with a

cruet of salad dressing in his cassock pocket to disprove the alleged curse of the temple of the

monkey, after which you could have suggested, let us pray. Father Brown was

walking home from Mass on a white, weird morning when the mists were slowly lifting, one of those

mornings when the very element of light appears as something mysterious and new. The scattered

trees outlined themselves more and more out of the vapor, as if they were

first drawn in gray chalk, and then in charcoal. At yet more distant intervals appeared the

houses upon the broken fringe of the suburb. Their outlines became clearer and clearer,

until he recognized many in which he had had chance acquaintances, and many more

the names of whose owners he knew. But all the windows and doors were sealed. None of the people

were of the sort that would be up at such a time, or still less on such an errand. But as he passed

under the shadow of one handsome villa with verandas and wide ornate gardens,

he heard a noise that made him almost involuntarily stop.

It was the unmistakable noise of a pistol or carbine, or some light firearm discharged,

but it was not this that puzzled him most.

The first full noise was immediately followed by a series of fainter noises, as he counted them,

about six.

He supposed it must be the echo, but the odd thing was that the echo was not in the least

...