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Title: The Innocence of Father Brown
Author: Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1874-1936)
Date of first publication: 1911
Edition used as base for this ebook:London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney: Cassell, 1947[The Father Brown Stories(single-volume edition of the five Father Brown books)]
Date first posted: 30 July 2012
Date last updated: 30 July 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #971
This ebook was produced by:Barbara Watson, Mary Meehan, Mark Akrigg& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Teamat http://www.pgdpcanada.net
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD.
London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney
THIS BOOK IS PRODUCED IN COMPLETE
CONFORMITY WITH THE AUTHORIZED
ECONOMY STANDARDS
First Published 1929
Second Impression January 1931
This edition, re-set to include
"The Scandal of Father Brown"
First Published 1947
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
EBENEZER BAYLIS AND SON, LTD., THE
TRINITY PRESS, WORCESTER, AND LONDON
F. 1046
CONTENTS
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
1. | The Blue Cross | 9 |
2. | The Secret Garden | 23 |
3. | The Queer Feet | 39 |
4. | The Flying Stars | 54 |
5. | The Invisible Man | 64 |
6. | The Honour of Israel Gow | 77 |
7. | The Wrong Shape | 89 |
8. | The Sins of Prince Saradine | 103 |
9. | The Hammer of God | 118 |
10. | The Eye of Apollo | 131 |
11. | The Sign of the Broken Sword | 143 |
12. | The Three Tools of Death | 157 |
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
To
WALDO AND MILDRED D'AVIGDOR
I
THE BLUE CROSS
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon ofsea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies,among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous—norwished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slightcontrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the officialgravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, awhite waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. Hislean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard thatlooked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking acigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about himto indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver,that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hatcovered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this wasValentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famousinvestigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London tomake the greatest arrest of the century.
Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked thegreat criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hookof Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage ofthe unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then takingplace in London. Probably he would travel as some minor clerk orsecretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not becertain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.
It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceasedkeeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said afterthe death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in hisbest days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure asstatuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning thedaily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of oneextraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of giganticstature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of hisoutbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d'instructionupside down and stood him on his head, "to clear his mind"; how he randown the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to himto say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed insuch bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes were chieflythose of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts wasalmost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he who ranthe great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London, with no dairies, no cows, nocarts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served bythe simple operation of moving the little milk-cans outside people'sdoors to the doors of his own customers. It was he who had kept up anunaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose wholeletter-bag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographinghis messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. Asweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is saidhe once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of nightmerely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that heinvented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in quietsuburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it.Lastly he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure,he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like amonkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, wasperfectly well aware that his adventures would not end when he had foundhim.
But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin's ideas werestill in process of settlement.
There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise,could not cover, and that was his singular height. If Valentin's quickeye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerablytall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along histrain there was nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more thana cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he hadalready satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on thejourney limited themselves with certainty to six. There was a shortrailway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly shortmarket-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widowlady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholicpriest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the lastcase, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was somuch the essence of those Eastern flats: he had a face as round and dullas a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he hadseveral brown-paper parcels which he was quite incapable of collecting.The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their localstagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like molesdisinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France, andcould have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, andthis one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabbyumbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to knowwhich was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with amoon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to becareful, because he had something made of real silver "with blue stones"in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatnesswith saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till thepriest arrived (somehow) at Stratford with all his parcels, and cameback for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the goodnature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling everybodyabout it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open forsomeone else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male orfemale, who was well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four inches aboveit.
He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously securethat he had not missed the criminal so far. He then went to ScotlandYard to regularize his position and arrange for help in case of need; hethen lit another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets ofLondon. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, hepaused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typicalof London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses roundlooked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery inthe centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the foursides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of thisside was broken by one of London's admirable accidents—a restaurantthat looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonablyattractive object, with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds oflemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above the street, and inthe usual patchwork way of London, a flight of steps from the street ranup to meet the front door almost as a fire-escape might run up to afirst-floor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of theyellow-white blinds and considered them long.
The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A fewclouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one humaneye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in theexact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen boththese things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in theinstant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentallymurder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. Inshort, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which peoplereckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been wellexpressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligenceis intelligence specially and solely. He was not "a thinking machine";for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. Amachine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was athinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderfulsuccesses, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by ploddinglogic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify theworld not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out atruism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. Butexactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits ofreason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring withoutpetrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoningwithout strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong firstprinciples. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in Londonat all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to atall toastmaster at the Hôtel Métropole. In such a naked state ofnescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.
In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when hecould not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefullyfollowed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the rightplaces—banks, police-stations, rendezvous—he systematically went tothe wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every culde sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round everycrescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazycourse quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was theworst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because therewas just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuermight be the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere aman must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop.Something about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about thequietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective'srare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went upthe steps, and sitting down by the window, asked for a cup of blackcoffee.
It was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; theslight litter of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind himof his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceededmusingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all thetime about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by apair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having topay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look througha telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought hisdetective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fullyrealized the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; thedetective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted hiscoffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had putsalt in it.
He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it wascertainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for sugar as achampagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they should keep salt init. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox vessels. Yes, therewere two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some speciality inthe condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then helooked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to seeif there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste whichputs the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin.Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-paperedwalls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang thebell for the waiter.
When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed atthat early hour, the detective (who was not without an appreciation ofthe simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if itwas up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result was that thewaiter yawned suddenly and woke up.
"Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?"inquired Valentin. "Does changing the salt and sugar never pall on youas a jest?"
The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him thatthe establishment had certainly no such intention; it must be a mostcurious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and looked at it; hepicked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing more andmore bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and hurrying away,returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor alsoexamined the sugar-basin and then the salt-cellar; the proprietor alsolooked bewildered.
Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of words.
"I zink," he stuttered eagerly, "I zink it is those two clergymen."
"What two clergymen?"
"The two clergymen," said the waiter, "that threw soup at the wall."
"Threw soup at the wall?" repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must besome Italian metaphor.
"Yes, yes," said the attendant excitedly, and pointing at the darksplash on the white paper; "threw it over there on the wall."
Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue withfuller reports.
"Yes, sir," he said, "it's quite true, though I don't suppose it hasanything to do with the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and dranksoup here very early, as soon as the shutters were taken down. They wereboth very quiet, respectable people; one of them paid the bill and wentout; the other, who seemed a slower coach altogether, was some minuteslonger getting his things together. But he went at last. Only, theinstant before he stepped into the street he deliberately picked up hiscup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on thewall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I couldonly rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. Itdidn't do any particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and Itried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; Ionly noticed they went round the corner into Carstairs Street."
The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He hadalready decided that in the universal darkness of his mind he could onlyfollow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was oddenough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors behind him, he wassoon swinging round into the other street.
It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool andquick. Something in a shop-front went by him like a mere flash; yet hewent back to look at it. The shop was a popular greengrocer andfruiterer's, an array of goods set out in the open air and plainlyticketed with their names and prices. In the two most prominentcompartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On theheap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold,blue chalk, "Best tangerine oranges, two a penny." On the oranges wasthe equally clear and exact description, "Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb."M. Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met thishighly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drewthe attention of the red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rathersullenly up and down the street, to this inaccuracy in hisadvertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each cardinto its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on hiswalking-cane, continued to scrutinize the shop. At last he said: "Prayexcuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to askyou a question in experimental psychology and the association of ideas."
The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but hecontinued gaily, swinging his cane. "Why," he pursued, "why are twotickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer's shop like a shovel hat thathas come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myselfclear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea of nutsmarked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the othershort?"
The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail's; hereally seemed for an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger.At last he stammered angrily: "I don't know what you 'ave to do with it,but if you're one of their friends, you can tell 'em from me that I'llknock their silly 'eads off, parsons or no parsons, if they upset myapples again."
"Indeed?" asked the detective, with great sympathy. "Did they upset yourapples?"
"One of 'em did," said the heated shopman; "rolled 'em all over thestreet. I'd 'ave caught the fool but for havin' to pick 'em up."
"Which way did these parsons go?" asked Valentin.
"Up that second road on the left-hand side, and then across the square,"said the other promptly.
"Thanks," said Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side ofthe second square he found a policeman, and said: "This is urgent,constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel hats?"
The policeman began to chuckle heavily. "I 'ave, sir; and if you arstme, one of 'em was drunk. He stood in the middle of the road thatbewildered that——"
"Which way did they go?" snapped Valentin.
"They took one of them yellow buses over there," answered the man; "themthat go to Hampstead."
Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly: "Call up twoof your men to come with me in pursuit," and crossed the road with suchcontagious energy that the ponderous policeman was moved to almost agileobedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was joined on theopposite pavement by an inspector and a man in plain clothes.
"Well, sir," began the former, with smiling importance, "and whatmay——?"
Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. "I'll tell you on the top ofthat omnibus," he said, and was darting and dodging across the tangle ofthe traffic. When all three sank panting on the top seats of the yellowvehicle, the inspector said: "We could go four times as quick in ataxi."
"Quite true," replied their leader placidly, "if we only had an idea ofwhere we were going."
"Well, where are you going?" asked the other, staring.
Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing hiscigarette, he said: "If you know what a man's doing, get in front ofhim; but if you want to guess what he's doing, keep behind him. Straywhen he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you maysee what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep oureyes skinned for a queer thing."
"What sort of a queer thing do you mean?" asked the inspector.
"Any sort of queer thing," answered Valentin, and relapsed intoobstinate silence.
The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed likehours on end; the great detective would not explain further, and perhapshis assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps,also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hourscrept long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of theNorth London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length likean infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a manperpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of theuniverse, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of TufnellPark. London died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and thenwas unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and blatant hotels.It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar cities all justtouching each other. But though the winter twilight was alreadythreatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective still satsilent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by oneither side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind, the policemenwere nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump asValentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man's shoulder, and shoutedto the driver to stop.
They tumbled down the steps into the road without realizing why they hadbeen dislodged; when they looked round for enlightenment they foundValentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards a window on the leftside of the road. It was a large window, forming part of the long façadeof a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part reserved forrespectable dining, and labelled "Restaurant." This window, like all therest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass,but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.
"Our cue at last," cried Valentin, waving his stick; "the place with thebroken window."
"What window? What cue?" asked his principal assistant. "Why, what proofis there that this has anything to do with them?"
Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.
"Proof!" he cried. "Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, ofcourse, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do withthem. But what else can we do? Don't you see we must either follow onewild possibility or else go home to bed?" He banged his way into therestaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at alate luncheon at a little table, and looking at the star of smashedglass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them eventhen.
"Got your window broken, I see," said Valentin to the waiter, as he paidhis bill.
"Yes, sir," answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, towhich Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The waiter straightenedhimself with mild but unmistakable animation.
"Ah, yes, sir," he said. "Very odd thing, that, sir."
"Indeed? Tell us about it," said the detective with careless curiosity.
"Well, two gents in black came in," said the waiter; "two of thoseforeign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap and quietlittle lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other wasjust going out to join him when I looked at my change again and foundhe'd paid me more than three times too much. 'Here,' I says to the chapwho was nearly out of the door, 'you've paid too much.' 'Oh,' he says,very cool, 'have we?' 'Yes,' I says, and picks up the bill to show him.Well, that was a knock-out."
"What do you mean?" asked his interlocutor.
"Well, I'd have sworn on seven Bibles that I'd put 4s. on that bill. Butnow I saw I'd put 14s., as plain as paint."
"Well?" cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes, "andthen?"
"The parson at the door he says, all serene, 'Sorry to confuse youraccounts, but it'll pay for the window.' 'What window?' I says. 'The oneI'm going to break,' he says, and smashed that blessed pane with hisumbrella."
All the inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under hisbreath: "Are we after escaped lunatics?" The waiter went on with somerelish for the ridiculous story:
"I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn't do anything. The manmarched out of the place and joined his friend just round the corner.Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn't catch them,though I ran round the bars to do it."
"Bullock Street," said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare asquickly as the strange couple he pursued.
Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels;streets with few lights and even with few windows; streets that seemedbuilt out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk wasdeepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess inwhat exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however, waspretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of HampsteadHeath. Abruptly one bulging and gas-lit window broke the blue twilightlike a bull's-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before alittle garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in;he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravityand bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearlypreparing an opening; but he did not need one.
An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegantappearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she saw the doorbehind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyesseemed to wake up.
"Oh," she said, "if you've come about that parcel, I've sent it offalready."
"Parcel!" repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.
"I mean the parcel the gentleman left—the clergyman gentleman."
"For goodness' sake," said Valentin, leaning forward with his first realconfession of eagerness, "for Heaven's sake tell us what happenedexactly."
"Well," said the woman, a little doubtfully, "the clergymen came inabout half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and talked a bit, andthen went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runsback into the shop and says, 'Have I left a parcel?' Well, I lookedeverywhere and couldn't see one; so he says, 'Never mind; but if itshould turn up, please post it to this address,' and he left me theaddress and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thoughtI'd looked everywhere, I found he'd left a brown-paper parcel, so Iposted it to the place he said. I can't remember the address now; it wassomewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, Ithought perhaps the police had come about it."
"So they have," said Valentin shortly. "Is Hampstead Heath near here?"
"Straight on for fifteen minutes," said the woman, "and you'll comeright out on the open." Valentin sprang out of the shop and began torun. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.
The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that whenthey came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they werestartled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome ofpeacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the darkviolet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pickout in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of thedaylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and thatpopular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makerswho roam this region had not wholly dispersed: a few couples satshapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shriekedin one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened aroundthe sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and lookingacross the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.
Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especiallyblack which did not break—a group of two figures clerically clad.Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one ofthem was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student'sstoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was wellover six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling hisstick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished thedistance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, hehad perceived something else; something which startled him, and yetwhich he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there couldbe no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend ofthe Harwich train, the stumpy little curé of Essex whom he had warnedabout his brown-paper parcels.
Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationallyenough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a FatherBrown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a relicof considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at thecongress. This undoubtedly was the "silver with blue stones"; and FatherBrown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there wasnothing wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found outFlambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also therewas nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphirecross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in allnatural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful aboutthe fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a sillysheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort ofman whom anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was notsurprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, couldlead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; andwhile the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almostdespised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But whenValentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that hadled him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme orreason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from apriest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wallpaper? What had it todo with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first andbreaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yetsomehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which wasseldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed thecriminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not graspthe clue.
The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies acrossthe huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently sunk inconversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but theywere certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath.As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignifiedattitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and evento crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities thehunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of thediscussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word "reason"recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once, over anabrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectivesactually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find thetrail again for an agonizing ten minutes, and then it led round the browof a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and desolatesunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot wasan old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still inserious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to thedarkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly frompeacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves moreand more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentincontrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing therein deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests for the firsttime.
After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by adevilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English policemen to thewastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs onthistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests,piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas oftheology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his roundface turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his headbowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no moreinnocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any whiteItalian cloister or black Spanish cathedral.
The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown's sentences,which ended: "... what they really meant in the Middle Ages by theheavens being incorruptible."
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
"Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can lookat those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well bewonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?"
"No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in thelast limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people chargethe Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone onearth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, theChurch affirms that God Himself is bound by reason."
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe——?"
"Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply inhis seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws oftruth."
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his finger-nails with silent fury.He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom hehad brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to themetaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lostthe equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listenedagain it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look atthose stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds andsapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please.Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon isa blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that allthat frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reasonand justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out ofpearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou shalt not steal.'"
Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouchingattitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled by the onegreat folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tallpriest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak,he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:
"Well, I still think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than ourreason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can onlybow my head."
Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade hisattitude or voice, he added:
"Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We're all alonehere, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll."
The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange violence tothat shocking change of speech. But the guarder of the relic only seemedto turn his head by the smallest section of the compass. He seemed stillto have a somewhat foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had notunderstood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and sat rigid with terror.
"Yes," said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the same stillposture, "yes, I am Flambeau."
Then, after a pause, he said:
"Come, will you give me that cross?"
"No," said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound.
Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions. The greatrobber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but long.
"No," he cried; "you won't give it me, you proud prelate. You won't giveit me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I tell you why you won'tgive it me? Because I've got it already in my own breast-pocket."
The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face in thedusk, and said, with the timid eagerness of "The Private Secretary":
"Are—are you sure?"
Flambeau yelled with delight.
"Really, you're as good as a three-act farce," he cried. "Yes, youturnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of theright parcel, and now, my friend, you've got the duplicate, and I've gotthe jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown—a very old dodge."
"Yes," said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with thesame strange vagueness of manner. "Yes, I've heard of it before."
The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with asort of sudden interest.
"You have heard of it?" he asked. "Where have you heard of it?"
"Well, I mustn't tell you his name, of course," said the little mansimply. "He was a penitent, you know. He had lived prosperously forabout twenty years entirely on duplicate brown-paper parcels. And so,you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap's wayof doing it at once."
"Began to suspect me?" repeated the outlaw with increased intensity."Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just because I broughtyou up to this bare part of the heath?"
"No, no," said Brown with an air of apology. "You see, I suspected youwhen we first met. It's that little bulge up the sleeve where you peoplehave the spiked bracelet."
"How in Tartarus," cried Flambeau, "did you ever hear of the spikedbracelet?"
"Oh, one's little flock, you know!" said Father Brown, arching hiseyebrows rather blankly. "When I was a curate in Hartlepool, there werethree of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I suspected you from thefirst, don't you see, I made sure that the cross should go safe, anyhow.I'm afraid I watched you, you know. So at last I saw you change theparcels. Then, don't you see, I changed them back again. And then I leftthe right one behind."
"Left it behind?" repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there wasanother note in his voice beside his triumph.
"Well, it was like this," said the little priest, speaking in the sameunaffected way. "I went back to that sweet-shop and asked if I'd left aparcel, and gave them a particular address if it turned up. Well, I knewI hadn't; but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running afterme with that valuable parcel, they have sent it flying to a friend ofmine in Westminster." Then he added rather sadly: "I learnt that, too,from a poor fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags hestole at railway stations, but he's in a monastery now. Oh, one gets toknow, you know," he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort ofdesperate apology. "We can't help being priests. People come and tell usthese things."
Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner pocket and rent itin pieces. There was nothing but paper and sticks of lead inside it. Hesprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and cried:
"I don't believe you. I don't believe a bumpkin like you could manageall that. I believe you've still got the stuff on you, and if you don'tgive it up—why, we're all alone, and I'll take it by force!"
"No," said Father Brown simply, and stood up also; "you won't take it byforce. First, because I really haven't still got it. And, second,because we are not alone."
Flambeau stopped in his stride forward.
"Behind that tree," said Father Brown, pointing, "are two strongpolicemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they come here, doyou ask? Why, I brought them, of course! How did I do it? Why, I'll tellyou if you like! Lord bless you, we have to know twenty such things whenwe work among the criminal classes! Well, I wasn't sure you were athief, and it would never do to make a scandal against one of our ownclergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would make you showyourself. A man generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in hiscoffee; if he doesn't, he has some reason for keeping quiet. I changedthe salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if hisbill is three times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive forpassing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it."
The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he washeld back as by a spell; he was stunned with the utmost curiosity.
"Well," went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, "as you wouldn'tleave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had to. At everyplace we went to, I took care to do something that would get us talkedabout for the rest of the day. I didn't do much harm—a splashed wall,spilt apples, a broken window; but I saved the cross, as the cross willalways be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn'tstop it with the Donkey's Whistle."
"With the what?" asked Flambeau.
"I'm glad you've never heard of it," said the priest, making a face."It's a foul thing. I'm sure you're too good a man for a Whistler. Icouldn't have countered it even with the Spots myself; I'm not strongenough in the legs."
"What on earth are you talking about?" asked the other.
"Well, I did think you'd know the Spots," said Father Brown, agreeablysurprised. "Oh, you can't have gone so very wrong yet!"
"How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau.
The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clericalopponent.
"Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has it neverstruck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sinsis not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter offact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."
"What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.
"You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."
And even as he turned away to collect his property, the three policemencame out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an artist and asportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow.
"Do not bow to me, mon ami," said Valentin, with silver clearness."Let us both bow to our master."
And they both stood an instant uncovered, while the little Essex priestblinked about for his umbrella.
II
THE SECRET GARDEN
Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner,and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however,reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar anda face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table inthe entrance hall—a hall hung with weapons. Valentin's house wasperhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house,with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but theoddity—and perhaps the police value—of its architecture was this: thatthere was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, whichwas guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate,and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there wasno exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall,smooth unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden,perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had swornto kill.
As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he wasdetained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some lastarrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though theseduties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them withprecision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild abouttheir punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and largelyover European—police methods, his great influence had been honourablyused for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons. Hewas one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the onlything wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.
When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and thered rosette—an elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked withgrey. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened onthe grounds behind. The garden door of it was open, and after he hadcarefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a fewseconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon wasfighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentinregarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures ashis. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of themost tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, atleast, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late and that his guestshad already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when heentered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was notthere, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party: hesaw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador—a choleric old man with arusset face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. He sawLady Galloway, slim and thread-like, with silver hair and a facesensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, apale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. Hesaw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with herher two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, atypical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and aforehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty ofsuperciliousness, since they come through constantly elevating theeyebrows. He saw Father Brown of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he had recentlymet in England. He saw—perhaps with more interest than any of those—atall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways without receivingany very hearty acknowledgment, and who now advanced alone to pay hisrespects to his host. This was Commandant O'Brien, of the French ForeignLegion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven,dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and as seemed natural in an officer of thatfamous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he hadan air at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irishgentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways—especially MargaretGraham. He had left his country after some crash of debts, and nowexpressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging aboutin uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador's family,Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.
But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in eachother, their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. Noone of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentinwas expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whosefriendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours andtriumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, thatmulti-millionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of smallreligions have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity forthe American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr.Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon, or a Christian Scientist; but he wasready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it was anuntried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the AmericanShakespeare—a hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman,but thought that Luke P. Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more "progressive"than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought "progressive."He thought Valentin "progressive," thereby doing him a grave injustice.
The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive asa dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us canclaim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a hugefellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, withoutso much relief as a watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and wellbrushed back like a German's; his face was red, fierce and cherubic,with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwiseinfantile visage with an effect theatrical and even Mephistophelean. Notlong, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American;his lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent withall speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway upon his arm.
Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So longas Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien herfather was quite satisfied; and she had not done so; she had decorouslygone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless andalmost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over thecigars, three of the younger men—Simon the doctor, Brown the priest,and the detrimental O'Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform—all meltedaway to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then theEnglish diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung everysixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien might besignalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. Hewas left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed inall religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed innone. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him.After a time this "progressive" logomachy had reached a crisis oftedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He losthis way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heardthe high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voiceof the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought witha curse, were probably arguing about "science and religion." But theinstant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing—he saw whatwas not there. He saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that LadyMargaret was absent, too.
Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from thedining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His notion ofprotecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian ne'er-do-weel had becomesomething central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the backof the house, where was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet hisdaughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a secondenigma. If she had been with O'Brien, where was O'Brien? If she had notbeen with O'Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile andpassionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of themansion, and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to thegarden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away allthe storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden.A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the studydoor; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out asCommandant O'Brien.
He vanished through the french windows into the house, leaving LordGalloway in an indescribable temper, at once virulent and vague. Theblue-and-silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt himwith all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authoritywas at war. The length and grace of the Irishman's stride enraged him asif he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him. Hewas trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteaufairyland; and, willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities byspeech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped oversome tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritationand then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and thetall poplars looked at an unusual sight—an elderly English diplomatistrunning hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.
His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beamingglasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard the nobleman's firstclear words. Lord Galloway was crying: "A corpse in the grass—ablood-stained corpse." O'Brien at least had gone utterly from his mind.
"We must tell Valentin at once," said the doctor, when the other hadbrokenly described all that he had dared to examine. "It is fortunatethat he is here"; and even as he spoke the great detective entered thestudy, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typicaltransformation; he had come with the common concern of a host and agentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was toldthe gory fact, he turned with all his gravity instantly bright andbusiness-like; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his business.
"Strange, gentlemen," he said, as they hurried out into the garden,"that I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now onecomes and settles in my own backyard. But where is the place?" Theycrossed the lawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise fromthe river; but under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found thebody sunken in deep grass—the body of a very tall and broad-shoulderedman. He lay face downwards, so they could only see that his bigshoulders were clad in black cloth, and that his big head was bald,except for a wisp or two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wetseaweed. A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.
"At least," said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, "he is noneof our party."
"Examine him, doctor," cried Valentin rather sharply. "He may not bedead."
The doctor bent down. "He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is deadenough," he answered. "Just help me to lift him up."
They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts as tohis being really dead were settled at once and frightfully. The headfell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever had cuthis throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin wasslightly shocked. "He must have been as strong as a gorilla," hemuttered.
Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr.Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw,but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face,at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids—theface of a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a distant touch of aChinese emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eyeof ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, asthey had lifted his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam ofa shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said, theman had never been of their party. But he might very well have beentrying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.
Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closestprofessional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards roundthe body, in which he was assisted less skilfully by the doctor, andquite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellingsexcept a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, whichValentin lifted for an instant's examination, and then tossed away.
"Twigs," he said gravely; "twigs, and a total stranger with his head cutoff; that is all there is on this lawn."
There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Gallowaycalled out sharply:
"Who's that? Who's that over there by the garden wall?"
A small figure with a foolishly large head drew waveringly near them inthe moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out tobe the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.
"I say," he said meekly, "there are no gates to this garden, do youknow."
Valentin's black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they didon principle at the sight of the cassock. But he was far too just a manto deny the relevance of the remark. "You are right," he said. "Beforewe find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how hecame to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be done withoutprejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certaindistinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies,gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down asa crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can usemy own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that Ican afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear every one of myown guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen,upon your honour, you will none of you leave the house till to-morrow atnoon; there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to findmy man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him toleave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway,you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened,and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remainwith the body."
When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like abugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and routed out Ivan, thepublic detective's private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-roomand told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time thecompany assembled there the ladies were already startled and alreadysoothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at thehead and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolicstatues of their two philosophies of death.
Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came out ofthe house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn toValentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively withthe glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almostunpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's permission to examinethe remains.
"Yes; look, if you like, Ivan," said Valentin, "but don't be long. Wemust go in and thrash this out in the house."
Ivan lifted his head, and then almost let it drop.
"Why," he gasped, "it's—no, it isn't; it can't be. Do you know thisman, sir?"
"No," said Valentin indifferently; "we had better go inside."
Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and thenall made their way to the drawing-room.
The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even with hesitation; buthis eye was the iron eye of a judge at assize. He made a few rapid notesupon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: "Is everybody here?"
"Not Mr. Brayne," said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.
"No," said Lord Galloway, in a hoarse, harsh voice. "And not Mr. NeilO'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when thecorpse was still warm."
"Ivan," said the detective, "go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr.Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room;Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. Iam not sure."
The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone couldstir or speak Valentin went on with the same soldierly swiftness ofexposition.
"Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, hishead cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do youthink that to cut a man's throat like that would need great force? Or,perhaps, only a very sharp knife?"
"I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all," said thepale doctor.
"Have you any thought," resumed Valentin, "of a tool with which it couldbe done?"
"Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't," said thedoctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not easy to hack a neck througheven clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with abattle-axe or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword."
"But, good heavens!" cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics; "therearen't any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here."
Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. "Tell me," hesaid, still writing rapidly, "could it have been done with a long Frenchcavalry sabre?"
A low knocking came at the door, which for some unreasonable reason,curdled everyone's blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid thatfrozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: "A sabre—yes, I suppose itcould."
"Thank you," said Valentin. "Come in, Ivan."
The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in Commandant NeilO'Brien, whom he had found at last pacing the garden again.
The Irish officer stood disordered and defiant on the threshold. "Whatdo you want with me?" he cried.
"Please sit down," said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. "Why, youaren't wearing your sword! Where is it?"
"I left it on the library table," said O'Brien, his brogue deepening inhis disturbed mood. "It was a nuisance, it was getting——"
"Ivan," said Valentin: "please go and get the Commandant's sword fromthe library." Then, as the servant vanished: "Lord Galloway says he sawyou leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were youdoing in the garden?"
The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. "Oh," he cried inpure Irish; "admirin' the moon. Communing with Nature, me boy."
A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came again thattrivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steelscabbard. "This is all I can find," he said.
"Put it on the table," said Valentin, without looking up.
There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of inhumansilence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess's weakexclamations had long ago died away. Lord Galloway's swollen hatred wassatisfied and even sobered. The voice that came was quite unexpected.
"I think I can tell you," cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quiveringvoice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly. "I can tell youwhat Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence.He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my familycircumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a littleangry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder,"she added, with rather a wan smile, "if he will care at all for it now.For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did a thinglike this."
Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was intimidating her inwhat he imagined to be an undertone. "Hold your tongue, Maggie," he saidin a thunderous whisper. "Why should you shield the fellow? Where's hissword? Where's his confounded cavalry——"
He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter wasregarding him, a look that was indeed a lurid magnet for the wholegroup.
"You old fool!" she said, in a low voice without pretence of piety;"what do you suppose you are trying to prove? I tell you this man wasinnocent while with me. But if he wasn't innocent, he was still with me.If he murdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seen—whomust at least have known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your owndaughter——"
Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of thosesatanic tragedies that have been between lovers before now. They saw theproud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irishadventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence wasfull of formless historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonousparamours.
In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: "Was it avery long cigar?"
The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to seewho had spoken.
"I mean," said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room. "I meanthat cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as awalking-stick."
Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation inValentin's face as he lifted his head.
"Quite right," he remarked sharply. "Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayneagain, and bring him here at once."
The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed thegirl with an entirely new earnestness.
"Lady Margaret," he said, "we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude andadmiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity andexplaining the Commandant's conduct. But there is a hiatus still. LordGalloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to thedrawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found thegarden and the Commandant still walking there."
"You have to remember," replied Margaret, with a faint irony in hervoice, "that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have comeback arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind—andso got charged with murder."
"In those few moments," said Valentin gravely, "he might really——"
The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but Mr. Brayne has left the house."
"Left!" cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.
"Gone. Scooted. Evaporated," replied Ivan, in humorous French. "His hatand coat are gone, too; and I'll tell you something to cap it all. I ranoutside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a bigtrace, too."
"What do you mean?" asked Valentin.
"I'll show you," said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing nakedcavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone inthe room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivanwent on quite quietly:
"I found this," he said, "flung among the bushes fifty yards up the roadto Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr.Brayne threw it when he ran away."
There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre,examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, andthen turned a respectful face to O'Brien. "Commandant," he said, "wetrust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for policeexamination. Meanwhile," he added, slapping the steel back in theringing scabbard, "let me return you your sword."
At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardlyrefrain from applause.
For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turning-point ofexistence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden againin the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mienhad fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. LordGalloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaretwas something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhapsgiven him something better than an apology, as they drifted among theold flower-beds before breakfast. The whole company was morelight-hearted and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained,the load of suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off toParis with the strange millionaire—a man they hardly knew. The devilwas cast out of the house—he had cast himself out.
Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw himself on a gardenseat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumed it.He did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were onpleasanter things.
"I can't say it interests me much," said the Irishman frankly,"especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brayne hated thisstranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him withmy sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went.By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in hispocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne's, and that seems to clinch it.I don't see any difficulties about the business."
"There are five colossal difficulties," said the doctor quietly; "likehigh walls within walls. Don't mistake me. I don't doubt that Brayne didit; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. Firstdifficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great hulkingsabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it backin his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Doesa man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer noremarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front door all theevening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin's garden anywhere. How didthe dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the sameconditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?"
"And the fifth," said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest, whowas coming slowly up the path.
"Is a trifle, I suppose," said the doctor, "but I think an odd one. WhenI first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin hadstruck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across thetruncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head wasoff. Did Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring hisbody in the moonlight?"
"Horrible!" said O'Brien, and shuddered.
The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and hadwaited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then hesaid awkwardly:
"I say, I'm sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!"
"News?" repeated Simon, and stared at him rather painfully through hisglasses.
"Yes, I'm sorry," said Father Brown mildly. "There's been anothermurder, you know."
Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.
"And, what's stranger still," continued the priest, with his dull eyeson the rhododendrons, "it's the same disgusting sort; it's anotherbeheading. They found the second head actually bleeding in the river, afew yards along Brayne's road to Paris; so they suppose that he——"
"Great Heaven!" cried O'Brien. "Is Brayne a monomaniac?"
"There are American vendettas," said the priest impassively. Then headded: "They want you to come to the library and see it."
Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feelingdecidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage;where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one headwas hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himselfbitterly) it was not true that two heads were better than one. As hecrossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. UponValentin's table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head;and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him itwas only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every weekshowed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes and writhingfeatures just after execution; for Valentin was an anti-clerical of somenote. But O'Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in hissins; and his gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellectwhich belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from thegrotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in thenewspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the Revolution. He sawthe whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying onValentin's table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles,the great devil grins on Notre Dame.
The library was long, low, and dark; what light entered it shot fromunder low blinds and had still some of the ruddy tinge of morning.Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end ofa long, slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, lookingenormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of theman found in the garden confronted them essentially unchanged. Thesecond head, which had been fished from among the river reeds thatmorning, lay streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin's men were stillseeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposed tobe afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O'Brien'ssensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined itwith his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of wet, whitehair, fringed with silver fire in the red and level morning light; theface, which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal type, hadbeen much battered against trees or stones as it tossed in the water.
"Good morning, Commandant O'Brien," said Valentin, with quietcordiality. "You have heard of Brayne's last experiment in butchery, Isuppose?"
Father Brown was still bending over the head with white hair, and hesaid, without looking up:
"I suppose it is quite certain that Brayne cut off this head, too."
"Well, it seems common sense," said Valentin, with his hands in hispockets. "Killed in the same way as the other. Found within a few yardsof the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carriedaway."
"Yes, yes; I know," replied Father Brown, submissively. "Yet, you know,I doubt whether Brayne could have cut off this head."
"Why not?" inquired Dr. Simon, with a rational stare.
"Well, doctor," said the priest, looking up blinking, "can a man cut offhis own head? I don't know."
O'Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears; but the doctorsprang forward with impetuous practicality and pushed back the wet,white hair.
"Oh, there's no doubt it's Brayne," said the priest quietly. "He hadexactly that chip in the left ear."
The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady andglittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply: "You seemto know a lot about him, Father Brown."
"I do," said the little man simply. "I've been about with him for someweeks. He was thinking of joining our church."
The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towardsthe priest with clenched hands. "And, perhaps," he cried, with ablasting sneer: "perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his moneyto your church."
"Perhaps he was," said Brown stolidly; "it is possible."
"In that case," cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile: "you may indeedknow a great deal about him. About his life and about his——"
Commandant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. "Drop that slanderousrubbish, Valentin," he said: "or there may be more swords yet."
But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the priest) had alreadyrecovered himself. "Well," he said shortly: "people's private opinionscan wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; youmust enforce it on yourselves—and on each other. Ivan here will tellyou anything more you want to know; I must get to business and write tothe authorities. We can't keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writingin my study if there is any more news."
"Is there any more news, Ivan?" asked Dr. Simon, as the chief of policestrode out of the room.
"Only one more thing, I think, sir," said Ivan, wrinkling up his greyold face; "but that's important, too, in its way. There's that oldbuffer you found on the lawn," and he pointed without pretence ofreverence at the big black body with the yellow head. "We've found outwho he is, anyhow."
"Indeed!" cried the astonished doctor; "and who is he?"
"His name was Arnold Becker," said the under-detective, "though he wentby many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to havebeen in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. Wedidn't have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly inGermany. We've communicated, of course, with the German police. But,oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker, whomwe had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary toguillotine him only yesterday. Well, it's a rum thing, gentlemen, butwhen I saw that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of mylife. If I hadn't seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes, I'dhave sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, ofcourse, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and following up theclue——"
The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason that nobody waslistening to him. The Commandant and the doctor were both staring atFather Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding histemples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain.
"Stop, stop, stop!" he cried; "stop talking a minute, for I see half.Will God give me strength? Will my brain make the one jump and see all?Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphraseany page in Aquinas once. Will my head split—or will it see? I seehalf—I only see half."
He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of rigid torture ofthought or prayer, while the other three could only go on staring atthis last prodigy of their wild twelve hours.
When Father Brown's hands fell they showed a face quite fresh andserious, like a child's. He heaved a huge sigh, and said: "Let us getthis said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this will bethe quickest way to convince you all of the truth." He turned to thedoctor. "Dr. Simon," he said, "you have a strong head-piece, and I heardyou this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business.Well, if you will now ask them again, I will answer them."
Simon's pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but heanswered at once. "Well, the first question, you know, is why a manshould kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill witha bodkin?"
"A man cannot behead with a bodkin," said Brown, calmly, "and for thismurder beheading was absolutely necessary."
"Why?" asked O'Brien, with interest.
"And the next question?" asked Father Brown.
"Well, why didn't the man cry out or anything?" asked the doctor;"sabres in gardens are certainly unusual."
"Twigs," said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which lookedon the scene of death. "No one saw the point of the twigs. Why shouldthey lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were notsnapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy withsome tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch inmid-air, or what not. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result,a silent slash, and the head fell."
"Well," said the doctor slowly, "that seems plausible enough. But mynext two questions will stump anyone."
The priest still stood looking critically out of the window and waited.
"You know how all the garden was sealed up like an air-tight chamber,"went on the doctor. "Well, how did the strange man get into the garden?"
Without turning round, the little priest answered: "There never was anystrange man in the garden."
There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost childishlaughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of Brown's remark moved Ivanto open taunts.
"Oh!" he cried; "then we didn't lug a great fat corpse on to a sofa lastnight? He hadn't got into the garden, I suppose?"
"Got into the garden?" repeated Brown reflectively. "No, not entirely."
"Hang it all," cried Simon, "a man gets into a garden, or he doesn't."
"Not necessarily," said the priest, with a faint smile. "What is thenext question, doctor?"
"I fancy you're ill," exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; "but I'll ask thenext question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?"
"He didn't get out of the garden," said the priest, still looking out ofthe window.
"Didn't get out of the garden?" exploded Simon.
"Not completely," said Father Brown.
Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. "A man gets out of agarden, or he doesn't," he cried.
"Not always," said Father Brown.
Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. "I have no time to spare onsuch senseless talk," he cried angrily. "If you can't understand a manbeing on one side of the wall or the other, I won't trouble youfurther."
"Doctor," said the cleric very gently, "we have always got on verypleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop andtell me your fifth question."
The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: "Thehead and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be doneafter death."
"Yes," said the motionless priest, "it was done so as to make you assumeexactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done tomake you take for granted that the head belonged to the body."
The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, movedhorribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all thehorse-men and fish-women that man's unnatural fancy has begotten. Avoice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: "Keep outof the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoidthe evil garden where died the man with two heads." Yet, while theseshameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irishsoul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching theodd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.
Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window withhis face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it waspale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there wereno Gaelic souls on earth.
"Gentlemen," he said; "you did not find the strange body of Becker inthe garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face ofDr. Simon's rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partlypresent. Look here!" (pointing to the black bulk of the mysteriouscorpse); "you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see thisman?"
He rapidly rolled away the bald-yellow head of the unknown, and put inits place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified,unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.
"The murderer," went on Brown quietly, "hacked off his enemy's head andflung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling thesword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only toclap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a privateinquest) you all imagined a totally new man."
"Clap on another head!" said O'Brien, staring. "What other head? Headsdon't grow on garden bushes, do they?"
"No," said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; "there isonly one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of theguillotine, beside which the Chief of Police, Aristide Valentin, wasstanding not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minutemore before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if beingmad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you ever see in that cold,grey eye of his that he is mad? He would do anything, anything, tobreak what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for itand starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne's crazymillions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they didlittle to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper thatBrayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; andthat was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into theimpoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support sixNationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was alreadybalanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolvedto destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect thegreatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted thesevered head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it homein his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that LordGalloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into thesealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre forillustration, and——"
Ivan of the Scar sprang up. "You lunatic," he yelled; "you'll go to mymaster now, if I take you by——"
"Why, I was going there," said Brown heavily; "I must ask him toconfess, and all that."
Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, theyrushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin's study.
The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to heartheir turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something inthe look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forwardsuddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box ofpills at Valentin's elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; andon the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.
III
THE QUEER FEET
If you meet a member of that select club, "The Twelve True Fishermen,"entering the Vernon Hotel for the annual club dinner, you will observe,as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and notblack. If (supposing that you have the star-defying audacity to addresssuch a being) you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does itto avoid being mistaken for a waiter. You will then retire crushed. Butyou will leave behind you a mystery as yet unsolved and a tale worthtelling.
If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet amild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to askhim what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he wouldprobably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the VernonHotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merelyby listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is perhaps a littleproud of this wild and wonderful guess of his, and it is possible thathe might refer to it. But since it is immeasurably unlikely that youwill ever rise high enough in the social world to find "The Twelve TrueFishermen," or that you will ever sink low enough among slums andcriminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story atall unless you hear it from me.
The Vernon Hotel, at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annualdinners, was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchicalsociety which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was thattopsy-turvy product—an "exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, itwas a thing which paid, not by attracting people, but actually byturning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen becomecunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. Theypositively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clientsmay spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were afashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under sixfoot, society would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine init. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of itsproprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded onThursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in thecorner of a square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a veryinconvenient one. But its very inconveniences were considered as wallsprotecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, washeld to be of vital importance: the fact that practically onlytwenty-four people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinnertable was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on asort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens inLondon. Thus it happened that even the twenty-four seats at this tablecould only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yetmore difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of the hotelwas a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by makingit difficult to get into. Of course he combined with this limitation inthe scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance.The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and thedemeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of theEnglish upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like thefingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them all told. It wasmuch easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter inthat hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness,as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there was generally atleast one waiter to every gentleman who dined.
The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dineanywhere but in such a place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy;and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other clubwas even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annualdinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures,as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set offish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of thesociety, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish,and each loaded at the hilt with one large pearl. These were always laidout for the fish course, and the fish course was always the mostmagnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a vast number ofceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; thatwas where it was so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anythingin order to be one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were already acertain sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been inexistence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-presidentwas the Duke of Chester.
If I have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel,the reader may feel a natural wonder as to how I came to know anythingabout it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as myfriend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden gallery. As faras that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is inthe world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the mostrefined retreats with the dreadful information that all men arebrothers, and wherever this leveller went on his pale horse it wasFather Brown's trade to follow. One of the waiters, an Italian, had beenstruck down with a paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewishemployer, marvelling mildly at such superstitions, had consented to sendfor the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to FatherBrown we are not concerned, for the excellent reason that the clerickept it to himself; but apparently it involved him in writing out a noteor statement for the conveying of some message or the righting of somewrong. Father Brown, therefore, with a meek impudence which he wouldhave shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be provided with aroom and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kindman, and had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of anydifficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusualstranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on somethingjust cleaned. There was never any borderland or ante-room in the VernonHotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance.There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be asstartling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to find a newbrother taking breakfast or tea in one's own family. Moreover, thepriest's appearance was second-rate and his clothes muddy; a mereglimpse of him afar off might precipitate a crisis in the club. Mr.Lever at last hit on a plan to cover, since he might not obliterate, thedisgrace. When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you passdown a short passage decorated with a few dingy but important pictures,and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right intopassages leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similarpassage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediatelyon your left hand is the corner of a glass office, which abuts upon thelounge—a house within a house, so to speak, like the old hotel barwhich probably once occupied its place.
In this office sat the representative of the proprietor (nobody in thisplace ever appeared in person if he could help it), and just beyond theoffice, on the way to the servants' quarters, was the gentlemen'scloak-room, the last boundary of the gentlemen's domain. But between theoffice and the cloak-room was a small private room without other outlet,sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters,such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or declining to lend himsixpence. It is a mark of the magnificent tolerance of Mr. Lever that hepermitted this holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by amere priest, scribbling away on a piece of paper. The story which FatherBrown was writing down was very likely a much better story than thisone, only it will never be known. I can merely state that it was verynearly as long, and that the last two or three paragraphs of it were theleast exciting and absorbing.
For it was by the time he had reached these that the priest began alittle to allow his thoughts to wander and his animal senses, which werecommonly keen, to awaken. The time of darkness and dinner was drawingon; his own forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps thegathering gloom, as occasionally happens, sharpened the sense of sound.As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document,he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a recurrent noise outside,just as one sometimes thinks to the tune of a railway train. When hebecame conscious of the thing he found what it was: only the ordinarypatter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikelymatter. Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened tothe sound. After he had listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got tohis feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Thenhe sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merelylistening, but listening and thinking also.
The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as one might hear inany hotel; and yet, taken as a whole, there was something very strangeabout them. There were no other footsteps. It was always a very silenthouse, for the few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments,and the well-trained waiters were told to be almost invisible until theywere wanted. One could not conceive any place where there was lessreason to apprehend anything irregular. But these footsteps were so oddthat one could not decide to call them regular or irregular. FatherBrown followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like a mantrying to learn a tune on the piano.
First, there came a long rush of rapid little steps, such as a light manmight make in winning a walking race. At a certain point they stoppedand changed to a sort of slow-swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter ofthe steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the lastechoing stamp had died away would come again the run or ripple of light,hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It wascertainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said)there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small butunmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head thatcannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial questionhis head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seenmen run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order towalk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? Yet no otherdescription would cover the antics of this invisible pair of legs. Theman was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in orderto walk very slow down the other half; or he was walking very slow atone end to have the rapture of walking fast at the other. Neithersuggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker anddarker, like his room.
Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of his cellseemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he began to see as in a kind ofvision the fantastic feet capering along the corridor in unnatural orsymbolic attitudes. Was it a heathen religious dance? Or some entirelynew kind of scientific exercise? Father Brown began to ask himself withmore exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow step first; itcertainly was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk witha rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be any servant ormessenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorerorders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightlydrunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they standor sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with akind of careless emphasis, not specially noisy, yet not caring whatnoise it made, belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It wasa gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never worked forhis living.
Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed to the quickerone, and ran past the door as feverishly as a rat. The listener remarkedthat though this step was much swifter it was also much more noiseless,almost as if the man were walking on tiptoe. Yet it was not associatedin his mind with secrecy, but with something else—something that hecould not remember. He was maddened by one of those half-memories thatmake a man feel half-witted. Surely he had heard that strange, swiftwalking somewhere. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a new idea in hishead, and walked to the door. His room had no direct outlet on thepassage, but led on one side into the glass office, and on the otherinto the cloak-room beyond. He tried the door into the office, and foundit locked. Then he looked at the window, now a square pane full ofpurple cloud cleft by livid sunset, and for an instant he smelt evil asa dog smells rats.
The rational part of him (whether the wiser or not) regained itssupremacy. He remembered that the proprietor had told him that he shouldlock the door, and would come later to release him. He told himself thattwenty things he had not thought of might explain the eccentric soundsoutside; he reminded himself that there was just enough light left tofinish his own proper work. Bringing his paper to the window so as tocatch the last stormy evening light, he resolutely plunged once moreinto the almost completed record. He had written for about twentyminutes, bending closer and closer to his paper in the lessening light;then suddenly he sat upright. He had heard the strange feet once more.
This time they had a third oddity. Previously the unknown man hadwalked, with levity indeed and lightning quickness, but he had walked.This time he ran. One could hear the swift, soft, bounding steps comingalong the corridor, like the pads of a fleeing and leaping panther.Whoever was coming was a very strong, active man, in still yet tearingexcitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the office like a sortof whispering whirlwind, it suddenly changed again to the old slow,swaggering stamp.
Father Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the office door to belocked, went at once into the cloak-room on the other side. Theattendant of this place was temporarily absent, probably because theonly guests were at dinner, and his office was a sinecure. After gropingthrough a grey forest of overcoats, he found that the dim cloak-roomopened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of counter orhalf-door, like most of the counters across which we have all handedumbrellas and received tickets. There was a light immediately above thesemi-circular arch of this opening. It threw little illumination onFather Brown himself, who seemed a mere dark outline against the dimsunset window behind him. But it threw an almost theatrical light on theman who stood outside the cloakroom in the corridor.
He was an elegant man in very plain evening-dress; tall, but with an airof not taking up much room; one felt that he could have slid along likea shadow where many smaller men would have been obvious and obstructive.His face, now flung back in the lamplight, was swarthy and vivacious,the face of a foreigner. His figure was good, his manners good-humouredand confident; a critic could only say that his black coat was a shadebelow his figure and manners, and even bulged and bagged in an odd way.The moment he caught sight of Brown's black silhouette against thesunset, he tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called outwith amiable authority: "I want my hat and coat, please; I find I haveto go away at once."
Father Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to lookfor the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life.He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strangegentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said, laughing:"I haven't got any silver; you can keep this." And he threw down half asovereign, and caught up his coat.
Father Brown's figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instanthe had lost his head. His head was always most valuable when he had lostit. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.Often the Catholic Church (which is wedded to common sense) did notapprove of it. Often he did not approve of it himself. But it was a realinspiration—important at rare crises—when whosoever shall lose hishead the same shall save it.
"I think, sir," he said civilly, "that you have some silver in yourpocket."
The tall gentleman stared. "Hang it," he cried. "If I give you gold, whyshould you complain?"
"Because silver is sometimes more valuable than gold," said the priestmildly; "that is, in large quantities."
The stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked still morecuriously up the passage towards the main entrance. Then he looked backat Brown again, and then he looked very carefully at the window beyondBrown's head, still coloured with the after-glow of the storm. Then heseemed to make up his mind. He put one hand on the counter, vaulted overas easily as an acrobat and towered above the priest, putting onetremendous hand upon his collar.
"Stand still," he said, in a hacking whisper. "I don't want to threatenyou, but—"
"I do want to threaten you," said Father Brown, in a voice like arolling drum. "I want to threaten you with the worm that dieth not, andthe fire that is not quenched."
"You're a rum sort of cloak-room clerk," said the other.
"I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau," said Brown, "and I am ready to hearyour confession."
The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back intoa chair.
The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen hadproceeded with placid success. I do not possess a copy of the menu; andif I did it would not convey anything to anybody. It was written in asort of super-French employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible toFrenchmen. There was a tradition in the club that the hors d'œuvresshould be various and manifold to the point of madness. They were takenseriously because they were avowedly useless extras, like the wholedinner and the whole club. There was also a tradition that the soupcourse should be light and unpretending—a sort of simple and austerevigil for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange,slight talk which governs the British Empire, which governs it insecret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even ifhe could overhear it. Cabinet Ministers on both sides were alluded to bytheir christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The RadicalChancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed tobe cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or hissaddle in the hunting-field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals weresupposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole,praised—as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were veryimportant. And yet, anything seemed important about them except theirpolitics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man whostill wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all thatphantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anything—not evenanything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. Hewas simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party couldignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly wouldhave been put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was ayoung and rising politician. That is to say, he was a pleasant youth,with flat, fair hair and a freckled face, with moderate intelligence andenormous estates. In public his appearances were always successful andhis principle was simple enough. When he thought of a joke he made it,and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said thatthis was no time for trifling, and was called able. In private, in aclub of his own class, he was simply quite pleasantly frank and silly,like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treatedthem a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the companyby phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberaland a Conservative. He, himself, was a Conservative, even in privatelife. He had a roll of grey hair over the back of his collar likecertain old-fashioned statesmen, and seen from behind he looked like theman the empire wants. Seen from the front he looked like a mild,self-indulgent bachelor, with rooms in the Albany—which he was.
As has been remarked, there were twenty-four seats at the terrace table,and only twelve members of the club. Thus they could occupy the terracein the most luxurious style of all, being ranged along the inner side ofthe table, with no one opposite, commanding an uninterrupted view of thegarden, the colours of which were still vivid, though evening wasclosing in somewhat luridly for the time of year. The chairman sat inthe centre of the line, and the vice-president at the right-hand end ofit. When the twelve guests first trooped into their seats it was thecustom (for some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to standlining the wall like troops presenting arms to the king, while the fatproprietor stood and bowed to the club with radiant surprise, as if hehad never heard of them before. But before the first chink of knife andfork this army of retainers had vanished, only the one or two requiredto collect and distribute the plates darting about in deathly silence.Mr. Lever, the proprietor, of course had disappeared in convulsions ofcourtesy long before. It would be exaggerative, indeed irreverent, tosay that he ever positively appeared again. But when the importantcourse, the fish course, was being brought on, there was—how shall Iput it?—a vivid shadow, a projection of his personality, which toldthat he was hovering near. The sacred fish course consisted (to the eyesof the vulgar) in a sort of monstrous pudding, about the size and shapeof a wedding cake, in which some considerable number of interestingfishes had finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. TheTwelve True Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives and fishforks, and approached it as gravely as if every inch of the pudding costas much as the silver fork it was eaten with. So it did, for all I know.This course was dealt with in eager and devouring silence; and it wasonly when his plate was nearly empty that the young duke made the ritualremark: "They can't do this anywhere but here."
"Nowhere," said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning to the speakerand nodding his venerable head a number of times. "Nowhere, assuredly,except here. It was represented to me that at the Café Anglais——"
Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by the removal ofhis plate, but he recaptured the valuable thread of his thoughts. "Itwas represented to me that the same could be done at the Café Anglais.Nothing like it, sir," he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like ahanging judge. "Nothing like it."
"Overrated place," said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking (by the lookof him) for the first time for some months.
"Oh, I don't know," said the Duke of Chester, who was an optimist, "it'sjolly good for some things. You can't beat it at——"
A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. Hisstoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those vague and kindlygentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinerywhich surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anythingunexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I would feel ifthe inanimate world disobeyed—if a chair ran away from us.
The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on everyface at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time.It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modernabyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historicaristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with emptybottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat wouldhave asked him, with a comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devilhe was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man nearto them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrongwith the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did notwant to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. Theywanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter,after standing for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned roundand ran madly out of the room.
When he reappeared in the room, or rather in the doorway, it was incompany with another waiter, with whom he whispered and gesticulatedwith southern fierceness. Then the first waiter went away, leaving thesecond waiter, and reappeared with a third waiter. By the time a fourthwaiter had joined this hurried synod, Mr. Audley felt it necessary tobreak the silence in the interests of Tact. He used a very loud cough,instead of the presidential hammer, and said: "Splendid work youngMoocher's doing in Burmah. Now, no other nation in the world couldhave——"
A fifth waiter had sped towards him like an arrow, and was whispering inhis ear: "So sorry. Important! Might the proprietor speak to you?"
The chairman turned in disorder, and with a dazed stare saw Mr. Levercoming towards them with his lumbering quickness. The gait of the goodproprietor was indeed his usual gait, but his face was by no meansusual. Generally it was a genial copper-brown; now it was a sicklyyellow.
"You will pardon me, Mr. Audley," he said, with asthmaticbreathlessness. "I have great apprehensions. Your fish-plates, they arecleared away with the knife and fork on them!"
"Well, I hope so," said the chairman, with some warmth.
"You see him?" panted the excited hotel keeper; "you see the waiter whotook them away? You know him?"
"Know the waiter?" answered Mr. Audley indignantly. "Certainly not!"
Mr. Lever opened his hands with a gesture of agony. "I never send him,"he said. "I know not when or why he come. I send my waiter to take awaythe plates, and he find them already away."
Mr. Audley still looked rather too bewildered to be really the man theempire wants; none of the company could say anything except the man ofwood—Colonel Pound—who seemed galvanized into an unnatural life. Herose rigidly from his chair, leaving all the rest sitting, screwed hiseyeglass into his eye, and spoke in a raucous undertone as if he hadhalf-forgotten how to speak. "Do you mean," he said, "that somebody hasstolen our silver fish service?"
The proprietor repeated the open-handed gesture with even greaterhelplessness; and in a flash all the men at the table were on theirfeet.
"Are all your waiters here?" demanded the colonel, in his low, harshaccent.
"Yes; they're all here. I noticed it myself," cried the young duke,pushing his boyish face into the inmost ring. "Always count 'em as Icome in; they look so queer standing up against the wall."
"But surely one cannot exactly remember," began Mr. Audley, with heavyhesitation.
"I remember exactly, I tell you," cried the duke excitedly. "There neverhave been more than fifteen waiters at this place, and there were nomore than fifteen to-night, I'll swear; no more and no less."
The proprietor turned upon him, quaking in a kind of palsy of surprise."You say—you say," he stammered, "that you see all my fifteen waiters?"
"As usual," assented the duke. "What is the matter with that?"
"Nothing," said Lever, with a deepening accent, "only you did not. Forone of zem is dead upstairs."
There was a shocking stillness for an instant in that room. It may be(so supernatural is the word death) that each of those idle men lookedfor a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea. One ofthem—the duke, I think—even said with the idiotic kindness of wealth:"Is there anything we can do?"
"He has had a priest," said the Jew, not untouched.
Then, as to the clang of doom, they awoke to their own position. For afew weird seconds they had really felt as if the fifteenth waiter mightbe the ghost of the dead man upstairs. They had been dumb under thatoppression, for ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like beggars. Butthe remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous; brokeit abruptly and with a brutal reaction. The colonel flung over his chairand strode to the door. "If there was a fifteenth man here, friends," hesaid, "that fifteenth fellow was a thief. Down at once to the front andback doors and secure everything; then we'll talk. The twenty-fourpearls are worth recovering."
Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it was gentlemanlyto be in such a hurry about anything; but, seeing the duke dash down thestairs with youthful energy, he followed with a more mature motion.
At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and declared thathe had found the pile of fish plates on a sideboard, with no trace ofthe silver.
The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled helter-skelter down thepassages divided into two groups. Most of the Fishermen followed theproprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound,with the Chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others, darteddown the corridor leading to the servants' quarters, as the more likelyline of escape. As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern ofthe cloak-room, and saw a short, black-coated figure, presumably anattendant, standing a little way back in the shadow of it.
"Hallo there!" called out the duke. "Have you seen anyone pass?"
The short figure did not answer the question directly, but merely said:"Perhaps I have got what you are looking for, gentlemen."
They paused, wavering and wondering, while he quietly went to the backof the cloak-room, and came back with both hands full of shining silver,which he laid out on the counter as calmly as a salesman. It took formof a dozen quaintly shaped forks and knives.
"You—you—" began the colonel, quite thrown off his balance at last.Then he peered into the dim little room and saw two things: first, thatthe short, black-clad man was dressed like a clergyman; and, second,that the window of the room behind him was burst, as if someone hadpassed violently through.
"Valuable things to deposit in a cloak-room, aren't they?" remarked theclergyman, with cheerful composure.
"Did—did you steal those things?" stammered Mr. Audley, with staringeyes.
"If I did," said the cleric pleasantly, "at least I am bringing themback again."
"But you didn't," said Colonel Pound, still staring at the brokenwindow.
"To make a clean breast of it, I didn't," said the other, with somehumour. And he seated himself quite gravely on a stool.
"But you know who did," said the colonel.
"I don't know his real name," said the priest placidly; "but I knowsomething of his fighting weight, and a great deal about his spiritualdifficulties. I formed the physical estimate when he was trying tothrottle me, and the moral estimate when he repented."
"Oh, I say—repented!" cried young Chester, with a sort of crow oflaughter.
Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. "Odd, isn'tit," he said, "that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so manywho are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit forGod or man? But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little uponmy province. If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there areyour knives and forks. You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there areall your silver fish. But He has made me a fisher of men."
"Did you catch this man?" asked the colonel, frowning.
Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. "Yes," he said, "Icaught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is longenough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bringhim back with a twitch upon the thread."
There was a long silence. All the other men present drifted away tocarry the recovered silver to their comrades, or to consult theproprietor about the queer condition of affairs. But the grim-facedcolonel still sat sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legsand biting his dark moustache.
At last he said quietly to the priest: "He must have been a cleverfellow, but I think I know a cleverer."
"He was a clever fellow," answered the other, "but I am not quite sureof what other you mean."
"I mean you," said the colonel, with a short laugh. "I don't want to getthe fellow jailed; make yourself easy about that. But I'd give a goodmany silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair, and howyou got the stuff out of him. I reckon you're the most up-to-date devilof the present company."
Father Brown seemed rather to like the saturnine candour of the soldier."Well," he said, smiling, "I mustn't tell you anything of the man'sidentity, or his own story, of course; but there's no particular reasonwhy I shouldn't tell you of the mere outside facts which I found out formyself."
He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and sat besideColonel Pound, kicking his short legs like a little boy on a gate. Hebegan to tell the story as easily as if he were telling it to an oldfriend by a Christmas fire.
"You see, colonel," he said, "I was shut up in that small room theredoing some writing, when I heard a pair of feet in this passage doing adance that was as queer as the dance of death. First came quick, funnylittle steps, like a man walking on tiptoe for a wager; then came slow,careless, creaking steps, as of a big man walking about with a cigar.But they were both made by the same feet, I swear, and they came inrotation; first the run and then the walk, and then the run again. Iwondered at first idly, and then wildly why a man should act these twoparts at once. One walk I knew; it was just like yours, colonel. It wasthe walk of a well-fed gentleman waiting for something, who strollsabout rather because he is physically alert than because he is mentallyimpatient. I knew that I knew the other walk, too, but I could notremember what it was. What wild creature had I met on my travels thattore along on tiptoe in that extraordinary style? Then I heard a clinkof plates somewhere; and the answer stood up as plain as St. Peter's. Itwas the walk of a waiter—that walk with the body slanted forward, theeyes looking down, the ball of the toe spurning away the ground, thecoat tails and napkin flying. Then I thought for a minute and a halfmore. And I believe I saw the manner of the crime, as clearly as if Iwere going to commit it."
Colonel Pound looked at him keenly, but the speaker's mild grey eyeswere fixed upon the ceiling with almost empty wistfulness.
"A crime," he said slowly, "is like any other work of art. Don't looksurprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come froman infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has oneindispensable mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, howevermuch the fulfilment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us say,the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the flowers of the mad girl, thefantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the grin of theskull are all oddities in a sort of tangled wreath round one plaintragic figure of a man in black. Well, this also," he said, gettingslowly down from his seat with a smile, "this also is the plain tragedyof a man in black. Yes," he went on, seeing the colonel look up in somewonder, "the whole of this tale turns on a black coat. In this, as inHamlet, there are the rococo excrescences—yourselves, let us say.There is the dead waiter, who was there when he could not be there.There is the invisible hand that swept your table clear of silver andmelted into air. But every clever crime is founded ultimately on someone quite simple fact—some fact that is not itself mysterious. Themystification comes in covering it up, in leading men's thoughts awayfrom it. This large and subtle and (in the ordinary course) mostprofitable crime, was built on the plain fact that a gentleman's eveningdress is the same as a waiter's. All the rest was acting, and thunderinggood acting, too."
"Still," said the colonel, getting up and frowning at his boots. "I amnot sure that I understand."
"Colonel," said Father Brown, "I tell you that this archangel ofimpudence who stole your forks walked up and down this passage twentytimes in the blaze of all the lamps, in the glare of all the eyes. Hedid not go and hide in dim corners where suspicion might have searchedfor him. He kept constantly on the move in the lighted corridors, andeverywhere that he went he seemed to be there by right. Don't ask mewhat he was like; you have seen him yourself six or seven timesto-night. You were waiting with all the other grand people in thereception room at the end of the passage there, with the terrace justbeyond. Whenever he came among you gentlemen, he came in the lightningstyle of a waiter, with bent head, flapping napkin and flying feet. Heshot out on to the terrace, did something to the table-cloth, and shotback again towards the office and the waiters' quarters. By the time hehad come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had becomeanother man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. Hestrolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence which theyhave all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swellfrom the dinner party should pace all parts of the house like an animalat the Zoo; they know that nothing marks the Smart Set more than a habitof walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of walkingdown that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past theoffice; in the shadow of the arch just beyond he was altered as by ablast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the TwelveFishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at achance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate walkinggentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In theproprietor's private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon ofsoda water, saying he was thirsty. He said genially that he would carryit himself, and he did; he carried it quickly and correctly through thethick of you, a waiter with an obvious errand. Of course, it could nothave been kept up long, but it only had to be kept up till the end ofthe fish course.
"His worst moment was when the waiters stood in a row; but even then hecontrived to lean against the wall just around the corner in such a waythat for that important instant the waiters thought him a gentleman,while the gentlemen thought him a waiter. The rest went like winking. Ifany waiter caught him away from the table, that waiter caught a languidaristocrat. He had only to time himself two minutes before the fish wascleared, become a swift servant, and clear it himself. He put the platesdown on a sideboard, stuffed the silver in his breast pocket, giving ita bulgy look, and ran like a hare (I heard him coming) till he came tothe cloak-room. There he had only to be a plutocrat again—a plutocratcalled away suddenly on business. He had only to give his ticket to thecloak-room attendant, and go out again elegantly as he had come in.Only—only I happened to be the cloak-room attendant."
"What did you do to him?" cried the colonel, with unusual intensity."What did he tell you?"
"I beg your pardon," said the priest immovably, "that is where the storyends."
"And the interesting story begins," muttered Pound. "I think Iunderstand his professional trick. But I don't seem to have got hold ofyours."
"I must be going," said Father Brown.
They walked together along the passage to the entrance hall, where theysaw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of Chester, who was boundingbuoyantly along towards them.
"Come along, Pound," he cried breathlessly. "I've been looking for youeverywhere. The dinner's going again in spanking style, and old Audleyhas got to make a speech in honour of the forks being saved. We want tostart some new ceremony, don't you know, to commemorate the occasion. Isay, you really got the goods back, what do you suggest?"
"Why," said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval. "Ishould suggest that henceforward we wear green coats instead of black.One never knows what mistakes may arise when one looks so like awaiter."
"Oh, hang it all!" said the young man, "a gentleman never looks like awaiter."
"Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose," said Colonel Pound, with thesame lowering laughter on his face. "Reverend sir, your friend must havebeen very smart to act the gentleman."
Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the neck, for thenight was stormy, and took his commonplace umbrella from the stand.
"Yes," he said; "it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, doyou know, I have sometimes thought that it may be almost as laborious tobe a waiter."
And saying "Good evening," he pushed open the heavy doors of that palaceof pleasures. The golden gates closed behind him, and he went at a briskwalk through the damp, dark streets in search of a penny omnibus.
IV
THE FLYING STARS
"The most beautiful crime I ever committed," Flambeau would say in hishighly moral old age, "was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. Itwas committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted toprovide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which Ifound myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe,as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in longrooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should ratherfind themselves unexpectedly penniless among the light and screens ofthe Café Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of hisriches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to framehim, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of somecathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a richand wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to gethis indignant head relieved against a grey line of dipped poplars, andthose solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit ofMillet.
"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, Englishmiddle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good oldmiddle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriagedrive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name onthe two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know thespecies. I really think my imitation of Dickens's style was dexterousand literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening."
Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and evenfrom the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectlyincomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger muststudy it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun whenthe front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden withthe monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birdson the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave browneyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up inbrown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. Butfor the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.
The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a rubylight was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, withthe ghosts of the dead roses. On the one side of the house stood thestable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the largergarden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (forthe fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passedunobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantationof evergreen behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real orritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld itfantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.
"Oh don't jump, Mr. Crook," she called out in some alarm; "it's much toohigh."
The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall,angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush,intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almostalien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore anaggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed totake any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl'salarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground besideher, where he might very well have broken his legs.
"I think I was meant to be a burglar," he said placidly, "and I have nodoubt I should have been if I hadn't happened to be born in that nicehouse next door. I can't see any harm in it, anyhow."
"How can you say such things?" she remonstrated.
"Well," said the young man, "if you're born on the wrong side of thewall, I can't see that it's wrong to climb over."
"I never know what you will say or do next," she said.
"I don't often know myself," replied Mr. Crook; "but then I am on theright side of the wall now."
"And which is the right side of the wall?" asked the young lady,smiling.
"Whichever side you are on," said the young man named Crook.
As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden amotor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car ofsplendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to thefront doors like a bird and stood throbbing.
"Hullo, hullo!" said the young man with the red tie; "here's somebodyborn on the right side, anyhow. I didn't know, Miss Adams, that yourSanta Claus was so modern as this."
"Oh, that's my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on BoxingDay."
Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack ofenthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:
"He is very kind."
John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and itwas not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for incertain articles in The Clarion or The New Age Sir Leopold had beendealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched theunloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large,neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neatmanservant in grey got out from the back, and between them theydeposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like somevery carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs ofall the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of therainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed somethingresembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-lookingold gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, whorubbed his big fur gloves together.
Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porchhad opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry younglady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was atall, sunburnt and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like afez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt.With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big andrather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by nameJames Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of thepriest from the neighbouring Roman church; for the colonel's late wifehad been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, hadbeen trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about thepriest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel hadalways found something companionable about him, and frequently asked himto such family gatherings.
In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even forSir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed,were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, abig room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircaseat the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung thecolonel's sword, the process was completed and the company, includingthe saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerablefinancier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of hiswell-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coatpocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be hisChristmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vainglorythat had something disarming about it he held out the case before themall; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if acrystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvetlay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to setthe very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolentlyand drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grimadmiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the wholegroup.
"I'll put 'em back now, my dear," said Fischer, returning the case tothe tails of his coat. "I had to be careful of 'em coming down. They'rethe three great African diamonds called 'The Flying Stars,' becausethey've been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track;but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly havekept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. Itwas quite possible."
"Quite natural, I should say," growled the man in the red tie. "Ishouldn't blame 'em if they had taken 'em. When they ask for bread, andyou don't even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone forthemselves."
"I won't have you talking like that," cried the girl, who was in acurious glow. "You've only talked like that since you became a horridwhat's-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wantsto embrace the chimney-sweep?"
"A saint," said Father Brown.
"I think," said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, "that Ruby meansa Socialist."
"A Radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook,with some impatience; "and a Conservative does not mean a man whopreserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man whodesires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a manwho wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid forit."
"But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low voice, "to ownyour own soot."
Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. "Does onewant to own soot?" he asked.
"One might," answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. "I've heardthat gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmaswhen the conjuror didn't come, entirely with soot—applied externally."
"Oh, splendid," cried Ruby. "Oh, I wish you'd do it to this company."
The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice inapplause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerabledeprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priestopened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens,monkey-tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violetsunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a backscene in a play, that they forgot for a moment the insignificant figurestanding in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat,evidently a common messenger. "Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?" heasked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, andstopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evidentastonishment, he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared,and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.
"I'm sick at being such a nuisance, colonel," he said, with the cheerycolonial convention; "but would it upset you if an old acquaintancecalled on me here to-night on business? In point of fact it's Florian,that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago outWest (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have businessfor me, though I hardly guess what."
"Of course, of course," replied the colonel carelessly. "My dear chap,any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition."
"He'll black his face, if that's what you mean," cried Blount, laughing."I don't doubt he'd black everyone else's eyes. I don't care; I'm notrefined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his tophat."
"Not on mine, please," said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.
"Well, well," observed Crook, airily, "don't let's quarrel. There arelower jokes than sitting on a top hat."
Dislike of the red-tied youth, both of his predatory opinions andevident intimacy with the pretty god-child, led Fischer to say, in hismost sarcastic, magisterial manner: "No doubt you have found somethingmuch lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?"
"Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance," said the Socialist.
"Now, now, now," cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarianbenevolence, "don't let's spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let's dosomething for the company to-night. Not blacking faces or sitting onhats, if you don't like those—but something of the sort. Why couldn'twe have a proper old English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. Isaw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it's blazed in mybrain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country onlylast year, and I find the thing's extinct. Nothing but a lot ofsnivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made intosausages, and they give me princesses moralizing by moonlight, BlueBirds, or something. Blue Beard's more in my line, and him I liked bestwhen he turned into the pantaloon."
"I'm all for making a policeman into sausages," said John Crook. "It's abetter definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely theget-up would be too big a business."
"Not a scrap," cried Blount, quite carried away. "A harlequinade's thequickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to anydegree; and, second, all the objects are household things—tables andtowel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that."
"That's true," admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about. "ButI'm afraid I can't have my policeman's uniform! Haven't killed apoliceman lately."
Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. "Yes, wecan!" he cried. "I've got Florian's address here, and he knows everycostumier in London. I'll 'phone him to bring a police dress when hecomes." And he went bounding away to the telephone.
"Oh, it's glorious, godfather," cried Ruby, almost dancing. "I'll becolumbine and you shall be pantaloon."
The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. "Ithink, my dear," he said, "you must get someone else for pantaloon."
"I will be pantaloon, if you like," said Colonel Adams, taking his cigarout of his mouth, and speaking for the first and last time.
"You ought to have a statue," cried the Canadian, as he came back,radiant, from the telephone. "There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shallbe clown; he's a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can beharlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friendFlorian 'phones he's bringing the police costume; he's changing on theway. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on thosebroad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors can bethe back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English interior.Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic." And snatching a chancepiece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hallfloor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark theline of the footlights.
How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained ariddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness andindustry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in thathouse that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces andhearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grewwilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeoisconventions from which it had to create. The columbine looked charmingin an outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade inthe drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white withflour from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, whoremained (like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin,already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty,prevented from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that hemight cover himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he wouldcertainly have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime pastejewels she had worn at a fancy-dress party as the Queen of Diamonds.Indeed, her uncle, James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in hisexcitement; he was like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey's headunexpectedly on Father Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found someprivate manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paperdonkey's tail to the coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however,was frowned down. "Uncle is too absurd," cried Ruby to Crook, roundwhose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of sausages. "Why ishe so wild?"
"He is harlequin to your columbine," said Crook. "I am only the clown whomakes the old jokes."
"I wish you were the harlequin," she said, and left the string ofsausages swinging.
Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes, andhad even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into apantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience withall the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinée. Thespectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and theservants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and stillfur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little clericbehind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authoritieswhether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet notcontemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which camechiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he wasinspired to-night with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world,that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particularexpression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but hewas really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was anauthor), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, aboveall, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance hewould hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out somepopular music equally absurd and appropriate.
The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two frontdoors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlitgarden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; thegreat Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano playedthe constabulary chorus in the Pirates of Penzance, but it was drownedin the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actorwas an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner ofthe police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet;the pianist playing "Where did you get that hat?" he faced about inadmirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit himagain (the pianist suggesting a few bars of "Then we had another one").Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fellon top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strangeactor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the famestill lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that aliving person could appear so limp.
The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossedhim like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicroustunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constableheavily off the floor the clown played "I arise from dreams of thee."When he shuffled him across his back, "With my bundle on my shoulder,"and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a mostconvincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jinglingmeasure with some words which are still believed to have been, "I sent aletter to my love and on the way I dropped it."
At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown's view was obscuredaltogether; for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full heightand thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat downnervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant itseemed seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights; thenhe turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst insilence out of the room.
The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but notinelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconsciousfoe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwardsout of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight andstillness. The vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had beentoo glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and silveryas it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing inwith a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched,and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel's study.
He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelledby a solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat ColonelAdams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbedwhalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enoughto have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning againstthe mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.
"This is a very painful matter, Father Brown," said Adams. "The truthis, those diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished frommy friend's tail-coat pocket. And as you——"
"As I," supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, "was sitting justbehind him——"
"Nothing of the sort shall be suggested," said Colonel Adams, with afirm look at Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing hadbeen suggested. "I only ask you to give me the assistance that anygentleman might give."
"Which is turning out his pockets," said Father Brown, and proceeded todo so, displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silvercrucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.
The colonel looked at him long and then said: "Do you know, I shouldlike to see the inside of your head more than the inside of yourpockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she haslately——" and he stopped.
"She has lately," cried out old Fischer, "opened her father's house to acut-throat Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from aricher man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer man—and none thericher."
"If you want the inside of my head you can have it," said Father Brownrather wearily. "What it's worth you can say afterwards. But the firstthing I find in that disused pocket is this; that men who mean to stealdiamonds don't talk Socialism. They are more likely," he added demurely,"to denounce it."
Both the others shifted sharply, and the priest went on:
"You see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would nomore steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the oneman we don't know. The fellow acting the policeman—Florian. Where is heexactly at this minute, I wonder?"
The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interludeensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and thepriest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, withstaccato gravity: "The policeman is still lying on the stage. Thecurtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there."
Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blankmental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep back in his grey eyes,and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.
"Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?"
"My wife!" replied the staring soldier, "she died this year two months.Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her."
The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. "Come on!" he cried inquite unusual excitement. "Come on! We've got to go and look at thatpoliceman!"
They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past thecolumbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), andFather Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.
"Chloroform," he said as he rose; "I only guessed it just now."
There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly:"Please say seriously what all this means."
Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and onlystruggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech."Gentlemen," he gasped, "there's not much time to talk. I must run afterthe criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman—thisclever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about—hewas——" His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.
"He was?" called Fischer inquiringly.
"A real policeman," said Father Brown, and ran away, into the dark.
There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden,in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphiresky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of thesouth. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo ofthe night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almostirresponsibly romantic picture; and among the top branches of the gardentrees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic asimpossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten millionmoons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inchof him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the shorttree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and onlystops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and hasunmistakably called up to him.
"Well, Flambeau," says the voice, "you really look like a Flying Star;but that always means a Falling Star at last."
The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurelsand, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below.
"You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come fromCanada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adamsdied when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to havemarked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer's coming. Butthere's no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing thestones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by sleightof hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting a paperdonkey's tail to Fischer's coat. But in the rest you eclipsed yourself."
The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as ifhypnotized, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at theman below.
"Oh, yes," says the man below, "I know all about it. I know you not onlyforced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going tosteal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you werealready suspected, and a capable police-officer was coming to rout youup that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for thewarning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notionof hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you sawthat if the dress were a harlequin's the appearance of a policeman wouldbe quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putneypolice-station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever setin this world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to thestage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed,stunned and drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughterfrom all the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never doanything better. And now, by the way, you might give me back thosediamonds."
The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if inastonishment; but the voice went on:
"I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up thislife. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancythey will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, butno man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goesdown and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man killsand lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be anhonest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped with slime.Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of thepoor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used anddespised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough;now he's sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies andsodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he'spaying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon wasthe great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a mad-house,screaming with fear of the 'narks' and receivers that had betrayed himand hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you,Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey.But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit upin your tree forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-topswill be very bare."
Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other inthe tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:
"Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothingmean, but you are doing something mean to-night. You are leavingsuspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you areseparating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you willdo meaner things than that before you die."
Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small manstooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage ofthe tree was emptied of its silver bird.
The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, ofall people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, inhis height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himselfhad broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them tobe cloistered and ignorant of this world.
V
THE INVISIBLE MAN
In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shopat the corner, a confectioner's, glowed like the butt of a cigar. Oneshould rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the lightwas of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors anddancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats. Againstthis one fiery glass were glued the noses of many gutter-snipes, for thechocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metalliccolours which are almost better than chocolate itself; and the hugewhite wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote andsatisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Suchrainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of theneighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. But this corner was alsoattractive to youth at a later stage; and a young man, not less thantwenty-four, was staring into the same shop window. To him, also, theshop was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to beexplained by chocolates; which, however, he was far from despising.
He was a tall, burly, red-haired young man, with a resolute face but alistless manner. He carried under his arm a flat, grey portfolio ofblack-and-white sketches which he had sold with more or less success topublishers ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinheritedhim for Socialism, because of a lecture which he had delivered againstthat economic theory. His name was John Turnbull Angus.
Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner's shop into theback room, which was a sort of pastry-cook restaurant, merely raisinghis hat to the young lady who was serving there. She was a dark,elegant, alert girl in black, with a high colour and very quick, darkeyes; and after the ordinary interval she followed him into the innerroom to take his order.
His order was evidently a usual one. "I want, please," he said withprecision, "one halfpenny bun and a small cup of black coffee." Aninstant before the girl could turn away he added, "Also, I want you tomarry me."
The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly, and said: "Those arejokes I don't allow."
The red-haired young man lifted grey eyes of an unexpected gravity.
"Really and truly," he said, "it's as serious—as serious as thehalfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one pays for it. It isindigestible, like the bun. It hurts."
The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off him, but seemed tobe studying him with almost tragic exactitude. At the end of herscrutiny she had something like the shadow of a smile, and she sat downin a chair.
"Don't you think," observed Angus, absently, "that it's rather cruel toeat these halfpenny buns? They might grow up into penny buns. I shallgive up these brutal sports when we are married."
The dark young lady rose from her chair and walked to the window,evidently in a state of strong but not unsympathetic cogitation. When atlast she swung round again with an air of resolution, she was bewilderedto observe that the young man was carefully laying out on the tablevarious objects from the shop-window. They included a pyramid of highlycoloured sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two decanterscontaining that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar topastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat arrangement he had carefullylet down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the hugeornament of the window.
"What on earth are you doing?" she asked.
"Duty, my dear Laura," he began.
"Oh, for the Lord's sake, stop a minute," she cried, "and don't talk tome in that way. I mean what is all that?"
"A ceremonial meal, Miss Hope."
"And what is that?" she asked impatiently, pointing to the mountain ofsugar.
"The wedding-cake, Mrs. Angus," he said.
The girl marched to that article, removed it with some clatter, and putit back in the shop-window; she then returned, and, putting her elegantelbows on the table, regarded the young man not unfavourably, but withconsiderable exasperation.
"You don't give me any time to think," she said.
"I'm not such a fool," he answered; "that's my Christian humility."
She was still looking at him; but she had grown considerably graverbehind the smile.
"Mr. Angus," she said steadily, "before there is a minute more of thisnonsense I must tell you something about myself as shortly as I can."
"Delighted," replied Angus gravely. "You might tell me something aboutmyself, too, while you are about it."
"Oh, do hold your tongue and listen," she said. "It's nothing that I'mashamed of, and it isn't even anything that I'm specially sorry about.But what would you say if there were something that is no business ofmine and yet is my nightmare?"
"In that case," said the man seriously, "I should suggest that you bringback the cake."
"Well, you must listen to the story first," said Laura, persistently."To begin with, I must tell you that my father owned the inn called the'Red Fish' at Ludbury, and I used to serve people in the bar."
"I have often wondered," he said, "why there was a kind of a Christianair about this one confectioner's shop."
"Ludbury is a sleepy, grassy little hole in the Eastern Counties, andthe only kind of people who ever came to the 'Red Fish' were occasionalcommercial travellers, and for the rest, the most awful people you cansee, only you've never seen them. I mean little, loungy men, who hadjust enough to live on, and had nothing to do but lean about inbar-rooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just too good forthem. Even these wretched young rotters were not very common at ourhouse; but there were two of them that were a lot too common—common inevery sort of way. They both lived on money of their own, and werewearisomely idle and over-dressed. But yet I was a bit sorry for them,because I half believe they slunk into our little empty bar because eachof them had a slight deformity; the sort of thing that some yokels laughat. It wasn't exactly a deformity either; it was more an oddity. One ofthem was a surprisingly small man, something like a dwarf, or at leastlike a jockey. He was not at all jockeyish to look at, though, he had around black head and a well-trimmed black beard, bright eyes like abird's; he jingled money in his pockets; he jangled a great gold watchchain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like agentleman to be one. He was no fool, though, though a futile idler; hewas curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be theslightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches setfire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or somesuch thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I cansee him still, with his little dark face, just coming up to the counter,making a jumping kangaroo out of five cigars.
"The other fellow was more silent and more ordinary; but somehow healarmed me much more than poor little Smythe. He was very tall andslight, and light-haired; his nose had a high bridge, and he mightalmost have been handsome in a spectral sort of way; but he had one ofthe most appalling squints I have ever seen or heard of. When he lookedstraight at you, you didn't know where you were yourself, let alone whathe was looking at. I fancy this sort of disfigurement embittered thepoor chap a little; for while Smythe was ready to show off his monkeytricks anywhere, James Welkin (that was the squinting man's name) neverdid anything except soak in our bar parlour, and go for great walks byhimself in the flat, grey country all round. All the same, I thinkSmythe, too, was a little sensitive about being so small, though hecarried it off more smartly. And so it was that I was really puzzled, aswell as startled, and very sorry, when they both offered to marry me inthe same week.
"Well, I did what I've since thought was perhaps a silly thing. But,after all, these freaks were my friends in a way; and I had a horror oftheir thinking I refused them for the real reason, which was that theywere so impossibly ugly. So I made up some gas of another sort, aboutnever meaning to marry anyone who hadn't carved his way in the world. Isaid it was a point of principle with me not to live on money that wasjust inherited like theirs. Two days after I had talked in thiswell-meaning sort of way, the whole trouble began. The first thing Iheard was that both of them had gone off to seek their fortunes, as ifthey were in some silly fairy tale.
"Well, I've never seen either of them from that day to this. But I've,had two letters from the little man called Smythe, and really they wererather exciting."
"Ever heard of the other man?" asked Angus.
"No, he never wrote," said the girl, after an instant's hesitation."Smythe's first letter was simply to say that he had started out walkingwith Welkin to London; but Welkin was such a good walker that the littleman dropped out of it, and took a rest by the roadside. He happened tobe picked up by some travelling show, and, partly because he was nearlya dwarf, and partly because he was really a clever little wretch, he goton quite well in the show business, and was soon sent up to theAquarium, to do some tricks that I forgot. That was his first letter.His second was much more of a startler, and I only got it last week."
The man called Angus emptied his coffee-cup and regarded her with mildand patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight twist of laughter as sheresumed: "I suppose you've seen on the hoardings all about this'Smythe's Silent Service'? Or you must be the only person that hasn't.Oh, I don't know much about it, it's some clockwork invention for doingall the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: 'Press abutton—A Butler who Never Drinks.' 'Turn a handle—Ten Housemaids whoNever Flirt.' You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whateverthese machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are makingit all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can't helpfeeling pleased the poor little chap has fallen on his feet; but theplain fact is, I'm in terror of his turning up any minute and telling mehe's carved his way in the world—as he certainly has."
"And the other man?" repeated Angus with a sort of obstinate quietude.
Laura Hope got to her feet suddenly. "My friend," she said: "I think youare a witch. Yes, you are quite right. I have not seen a line of theother man's writing; and I have no more notion than the dead of what orwhere he is. But it is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is allabout my path. It is he who has half driven me mad. Indeed, I think hehas driven me mad; for I have felt him where he could not have been, andI have heard his voice when he could not have spoken."
"Well, my dear," said the young man, cheerfully, "if he were Satanhimself, he is done for now you have told somebody. One goes mad allalone, old girl. But when was it you fancied you felt and heard oursquinting friend?"
"I heard James Welkin laugh as plainly as I hear you speak," said thegirl, steadily. "There was nobody there, for I stood just outside theshop at the corner, and could see down both streets at once. I hadforgotten how he laughed, though his laugh was as odd as his squint. Ihad not thought of him for nearly a year. But it's a solemn truth that afew seconds later the first letter came from his rival."
"Did you ever make the spectre speak or squeak, or anything?" askedAngus, with some interest.
Laura suddenly shuddered, and then said with an unshaken voice: "Yes.Just when I had finished reading the second letter from Isidore Smytheannouncing his success, just then, I heard Welkin say: 'He shan't haveyou, though.' It was quite plain, as if he were in the room. It isawful; I think I must be mad."
"If you really were mad," said the young man, "you would think you mustbe sane. But certainly there seems to me to be something a little rumabout this unseen gentleman. Two heads are better than one—I spare youallusions to any other organs—and really, if you would allow me, as asturdy, practical man, to bring back the wedding-cake out of thewindow——"
Even as he spoke, there was a sort of steely shriek in the streetoutside, and a small motor, driven at devilish speed, shot up to thedoor of the shop and stuck there. In the same flash of time a small manin a shiny top hat stood stamping in the outer room.
Angus, who had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from motives of mentalhygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of theinner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quitesufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This verydapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carriedinsolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervousfingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: IsidoreSmythe, who made dolls out of banana skins and matchboxes: IsidoreSmythe, who made millions out of undrinking butlers and unflirtinghousemaids of metal. For a moment the two men, instinctivelyunderstanding each other's air of possession, looked at each other withthat curious cold generosity which is the soul of rivalry.
Mr. Smythe, however, made no allusion to the ultimate ground of theirantagonism, but said simply and explosively: "Has Miss Hope seen thatthing on the window?"
"On the window?" repeated the staring Angus.
"There's no time to explain other things," said the small millionaireshortly. "There's some tomfoolery going on here that has to beinvestigated."
He pointed his polished walking-stick at the window, recently depletedby the bridal preparations of Mr. Angus; and that gentleman wasastonished to see along the front of the glass a long strip of paperpasted, which had certainly not been on the window when he had lookedthrough it some time before. Following the energetic Smythe outside intothe street, he found that some yard and a half of stamp paper had beencarefully gummed along the glass outside, and on this was written instraggly characters: "If you marry Smythe, he will die."
"Laura," said Angus, putting his big red head into the shop, "you're notmad."
"It's the writing of that fellow Welkin," said Smythe gruffly. "Ihaven't seen him for years, but he's always bothering me. Five times inthe last fortnight he's had threatening letters left at my flat, and Ican't even find out who leaves them, let alone if it is Welkin himself.The porter of the flats swears that no suspicious characters have beenseen, and here he has pasted up a sort of dado on a public shop window,while the people in the shop——"
"Quite so," said Angus modestly, "while the people in the shop werehaving tea. Well, sir, I can assure you I appreciate your common sensein dealing so directly with the matter. We can talk about other thingsafterwards. The fellow cannot be very far off yet, for I swear there wasno paper there when I went last to the window, ten or fifteen minutesago. On the other hand, he's too far off to be chased, as we don't evenknow the direction. If you'll take my advice, Mr. Smythe, you'll putthis at once in the hands of some energetic inquiry man, private ratherthan public. I know an extremely clever fellow, who has set up inbusiness five minutes from here in your car. His name's Flambeau, andthough his youth was a bit stormy, he's a strictly honest man now, andhis brains are worth money. He lives in Lucknow Mansions, Hampstead."
"That is odd," said the little man, arching his black eyebrows. "I livemyself in Himalaya Mansions round the corner. Perhaps you might care tocome with me; I can go to my rooms and sort out these queer Welkindocuments, while you run round and get your friend the detective."
"You are very good," said Angus politely. "Well, the sooner we act thebetter."
Both men, with a queer kind of impromptu fairness, took the same sort offormal farewell of the lady, and both jumped into the brisk little car.As Smythe took the wheel and they turned the great corner of the street,Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of "Smythe's SilentService," with a picture of a huge headless iron doll, carrying asaucepan with the legend, "A Cook Who is Never Cross."
"I use them in my own flat," said the little black-bearded man,laughing, "partly for advertisement, and partly for real convenience.Honestly, and all above board, those big clockwork dolls of mine dobring you coals or claret or a time-table quicker than any live servantsI've ever known, if you know which knob to press. But I'll never deny,between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too."
"Indeed?" said Angus; "is there something they can't do?"
"Yes," replied Smythe coolly; "they can't tell me who left thosethreatening letters at my flat."
The man's motor was small and swift like himself; in fact, like hisdomestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertisingquack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of somethingtiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves ofroad in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curvescame sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they sayin the modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner ofLondon which is almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite sopicturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flatsthey sought, rose above them all to almost Egyptian height, gilt by thelevel sunset. The change, as they turned the corner and entered thecrescent known as Himalaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of awindow; for they found that pile of flats sitting above London as abovea green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of thegravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dykethan a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water,a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the carswept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of aman selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve,Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were the onlyhuman shapes in that high suburban solitude; but he had an irrationalsense that they expressed the speechless poetry of London. He felt as ifthey were figures in a story.
The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet, and shot outits owner like a bomb shell. He was immediately inquiring of a tallcommissionaire in shining braid, and a short porter in shirt sleeves,whether anybody or anything had been seeking his apartments. He wasassured that nobody and nothing had passed these officials since hislast inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus were shotup in the lift like a rocket, till they reached the top floor.
"Just come in for a minute," said the breathless Smythe. "I want to showyou those Welkin letters. Then you might run round the corner and fetchyour friend." He pressed a button concealed in the wall, and the dooropened of itself.
It opened on a long, commodious ante-room, of which the only arrestingfeatures, ordinarily speaking, were the rows of tall half-humanmechanical figures that stood up on both sides like tailors' dummies.Like tailors' dummies they were headless; and like tailors' dummies theyhad a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and apigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were notmuch more like a human figure than any automatic machine at a stationthat is about the human height. They had two great hooks like arms, forcarrying trays; and they were painted pea-green, or vermilion, or blackfor convenience of distinction; in every other way they were onlyautomatic machines and nobody would have looked twice at them. On thisoccasion, at least, nobody did. For between the two rows of thesedomestic dummies lay something more interesting than most of themechanics of the world. It was a white, tattered scrap of paper scrawledwith red ink; and the agile inventor had snatched it up almost as soonas the door flew open. He handed it to Angus without a word. The red inkon it actually was not dry, and the message ran: "If you have been tosee her to-day, I shall kill you."
There was a short silence, and then Isidore Smythe said quietly: "Wouldyou like a little whisky? I rather feel as if I should."
"Thank you; I should like a little Flambeau," said Angus, gloomily."This business seems to me to be getting rather grave. I'm going roundat once to fetch him."
"Right you are," said the other, with admirable cheerfulness. "Bring himround here as quick as you can."
But as Angus closed the front door behind him he saw Smythe push back abutton, and one of the clockwork images glided from its place and slidalong a groove in the floor carrying a tray with syphon and decanter.There did seem something a trifle weird about leaving the little manalone among those dead servants, who were coming to life as the doorclosed.
Six steps down from Smythe's landing the man in shirt sleeves was doingsomething with a pail. Angus stopped to extract a promise, fortifiedwith a prospective bribe, that he would remain in that place until thereturn with the detective, and would keep count of any kind of strangercoming up those stairs. Dashing down to the front hall he then laidsimilar charges of vigilance on the commissionaire at the front door,from whom he learned the simplifying circumstance that there was no backdoor. Not content with this, he captured the floating policeman andinduced him to stand opposite the entrance and watch it; and finallypaused an instant for a pennyworth of chestnuts, and an inquiry as tothe probable length of the merchant's stay in the neighbourhood.
The chestnut seller, turning up the collar of his coat, told him heshould probably be moving shortly, as he thought it was going to snow.Indeed, the evening was growing grey and bitter, but Angus, with all hiseloquence, proceeded to nail the chestnut man to his post.
"Keep yourself warm on your own chestnuts," he said earnestly. "Eat upyour whole stock; I'll make it worth your while. I'll give you asovereign if you'll wait here till I come back, and then tell me whetherany man, woman, or child has gone into that house where thecommissionaire is standing."
He then walked away smartly, with a last look at the besieged tower.
"I've made a ring round that room, anyhow," he said. "They can't allfour of them be Mr. Welkin's accomplices."
Lucknow Mansions were, so to speak, on a lower platform of that hill ofhouses, of which Himalaya Mansions might be called the peak. Mr.Flambeau's semi-official flat was on the ground floor, and presented inevery way a marked contrast to the American machinery and coldhotel-like luxury of the flat of the Silent Service. Flambeau, who was afriend of Angus, received him in a rococo artistic den behind hisoffice, of which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Easterncuriosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage cooking-pots, a plumyPersian cat, and a small dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who lookedparticularly out of place.
"This is my friend, Father Brown," said Flambeau. "I've often wanted youto meet him. Splendid weather, this; a little cold for Southerners likeme."
"Yes, I think it will keep clear," said Angus, sitting down on aviolet-striped Eastern ottoman.
"No," said the priest quietly; "it has begun to snow."
And indeed, as he spoke, the first few flakes, foreseen by the man ofchestnuts, began to drift across the darkening window-pane.
"Well," said Angus heavily. "I'm afraid I've come on business, andrather jumpy business at that. The fact is, Flambeau, within a stone'sthrow of your house is a fellow who badly wants your help; he'sperpetually being haunted and threatened by an invisible enemy—ascoundrel whom nobody has even seen." As Angus proceeded to tell thewhole tale of Smythe and Welkin beginning with Laura's story, and goingon with his own, the supernatural laugh at the corner of two emptystreets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty room, Flambeaugrew more and more vividly concerned, and the little priest seemed to beleft out of it, like a piece of furniture. When it came to the scribbledstamp-paper pasted on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to fill theroom with his huge shoulders.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I think you had better tell me the reston the nearest road to this man's house. It strikes me, somehow, thatthere is no time to be lost."
"Delighted," said Angus, rising also, "though he's safe enough for thepresent, for I've set four men to watch the only hole to his burrow."
They turned out into the street, the small priest trundling after themwith the docility of a small dog. He merely said, in a cheerful way,like one making conversation: "How quick the snow gets thick on theground."
As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered with silver,Angus finished his story; and by the time they reached the crescent withthe towering flats, he had leisure to turn his attention to the foursentinels. The chestnut seller, both before and after receiving asovereign, swore stubbornly that he had watched the door and seen novisitor enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had hadexperience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn't sogreen as to expect suspicious characters to look suspicious; he lookedout for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when allthree men gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stoodsmiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more final still.
"I've got a right to ask any man, duke or dustman, what he wants in theseflats," said the genial and gold-laced giant, "and I'll swear there'sbeen nobody to ask since this gentleman went away."
The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking modestly at thepavement, here ventured to say meekly: "Has nobody been up and downstairs, then, since the snow began to fall? It began while we were allround at Flambeau's."
"Nobody's been in here, sir, you can take it from me," said theofficial, with beaming authority.
"Then I wonder what that is?" said the priest, and stared at the groundblankly like a fish.
The others all looked down also; and Flambeau used a fierce exclamationand a French gesture. For it was unquestionably true that down themiddle of the entrance guarded by the man in gold lace, actually betweenthe arrogant, stretched legs of that colossus, ran a stringy pattern ofgrey footprints stamped upon the white snow.
"God!" cried Angus involuntarily; "the Invisible Man!"
Without another word he turned and dashed up the stairs, with Flambeaufollowing; but Father Brown still stood looking about him in thesnow-clad street as if he had lost interest in his query.
Flambeau was plainly in a mood to break down the door with his bigshoulder; but the Scotsman, with more reason, if less intuition, fumbledabout on the frame of the door till he found the invisible button; andthe door swung slowly open.
It showed substantially the same serried interior; the hall had growndarker, though it was still struck here and there with the last crimsonshafts of sunset, and one or two of the headless machines had been movedfrom their places for this or that purpose, and stood here and thereabout the twilit place. The green and red of their coats were alldarkened in the dusk, and their likeness to human shapes slightlyincreased by their very shapelessness. But in the middle of them all,exactly where the paper with the red ink had lain, there lay somethingthat looked very like red ink spilled out of its bottle. But it was notred ink.
With a French combination of reason and violence Flambeau simply said"Murder!" and, plunging into the flat, had explored every corner andcupboard of it in five minutes. But if he expected to find a corpse hefound none. Isidore Smythe simply was not in the place, either dead oralive. After the most tearing search the two men met each other in theouter hall with streaming faces and staring eyes. "My friend," saidFlambeau, talking French in his excitement, "not only is your murdererinvisible, but he makes invisible also the murdered man."
Angus looked round at the dim room full of dummies, and in some Celticcorner of his Scotch soul a shudder started. One of the life-size dollsstood immediately overshadowing the blood stain, summoned, perhaps, bythe slain man an instant before he fell. One of the high-shoulderedhooks that served the thing for arms, was a little lifted and Angus hadsuddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe's own iron child had struckhim down. Matter had rebelled, and these machines had killed theirmaster. But even so, what had they done with him?
"Eaten him?" said the nightmare at his ear; and he sickened for aninstant at the idea of rent, human remains absorbed and crushed into allthat acephalous clockwork.
He recovered his mental health by an emphatic effort, and said toFlambeau: "Well, there it is. The poor fellow has evaporated like acloud and left a red streak on the floor. The tale does not belong tothis world."
"There is only one thing to be done," said Flambeau, "whether it belongsto this world or the other, I must go down and talk to my friend."
They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again asseveratedthat he had let no intruder pass, down to the commissionaire and thehovering chestnut man, who rightly reasserted their own watchfulness.But when Angus looked round for his fourth confirmation he could not seeit, and called out with some nervousness: "Where is the policeman?"
"I beg your pardon," said Father Brown; "that is my fault. I just senthim down the road to investigate something—that I just thought worthinvestigating."
"Well, we want him back pretty soon," said Angus abruptly, "for thewretched man upstairs has not only been murdered, but wiped out."
"How?" asked the priest.
"Father," said Flambeau, after a pause, "upon my soul I believe it ismore in your department than mine. No friend or foe has entered thehouse, but Smythe is gone, as if stolen by the fairies. If that is notsupernatural, I——"
As he spoke they were all checked by an unusual sight; the big bluepoliceman came round the corner of the crescent running. He camestraight up to Brown.
"You're right, sir," he panted, "they've just found poor Mr. Smythe'sbody in the canal down below."
Angus put his hand wildly to his head. "Did he run down and drownhimself?" he asked.
"He never came down, I'll swear," said the constable, "and he wasn'tdrowned either, for he died of a great stab over the heart."
"And yet you saw no one enter?" said Flambeau in a grave voice.
"Let us walk down the road a little," said the priest.
As they reached the other end of the crescent he observed abruptly:"Stupid of me! I forgot to ask the policeman something. I wonder if theyfound a light brown sack."
"Why a light brown sack?" asked Angus, astonished.
"Because if it was any other coloured sack, the case must begin overagain," said Father Brown; "but if it was a light brown sack, why, thecase is finished."
"I am pleased to hear it," said Angus with hearty irony. "It hasn'tbegun, so far as I am concerned."
"You must tell us all about it," said Flambeau, with a strange heavysimplicity, like a child.
Unconsciously they were walking with quickening steps down the longsweep of road on the other side of the high crescent, Father Brownleading briskly, though in silence. At last he said with an almosttouching vagueness: "Well, I'm afraid you'll think it so prosy. Wealways begin at the abstract end of things, and you can't begin thisstory anywhere else.
"Have you ever noticed this—that people never answer what you say? Theyanswer what you mean—or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady saysto another in a country house, 'Is anybody staying with you?' the ladydoesn't answer 'Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlour-maid,and so on,' though the parlour-maid may be in the room, or the butlerbehind her chair. She says: 'There is nobody staying with us,' meaningnobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into anepidemic asks, 'Who is staying in the house?' then the lady willremember the butler, the parlour-maid, and the rest. All language isused like that; you never get a question answered literally, even whenyou get it answered truly. When those four quite honest men said that noman had gone into the Mansions, they did not really mean that no manhad gone into them. They meant no man whom they could suspect of beingyour man. A man did go into the house, and did come out of it, but theynever noticed him."
"An invisible man?" inquired Angus, raising his red eyebrows.
"A mentally invisible man," said Father Brown.
A minute or two after he resumed in the same unassuming voice, like aman thinking his way. "Of course, you can't think of such a man, untilyou do think of him. That's where his cleverness comes in. But I came tothink of him through two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angustold us. First, there was the fact that this Welkin went for long walks.And then there was the vast lot of stamp paper on the window. And then,most of all, there were the two things the young lady said—things thatcouldn't be true. Don't get annoyed," he added hastily, noting a suddenmovement of the Scotsman's head; "she thought they were true all right,but they couldn't be true. A person can't be quite alone in a street asecond before she receives a letter. She can't be quite alone in astreet when she starts reading a letter just received. There must besomebody pretty near her; he must be mentally invisible."
"Why must there be somebody near her?" asked Angus.
"Because," said Father Brown: "barring carrier-pigeons, somebody musthave brought her the letter."
"Do you really mean to say," asked Flambeau, with energy, "that Welkincarried his rival's letters to his lady?"
"Yes," said the priest. "Welkin carried his rival's letters to his lady.You see, he had to."
"Oh, I can't stand much more of this," exploded Flambeau. "Who is thisfellow? What does he look like. What is the usual get-up of a mentallyinvisible man?"
"He is dressed rather handsomely in red, blue and gold," replied thepriest promptly with decision, "and in this striking, and even showycostume he entered Himalaya Mansions under eight human eyes; he killedSmythe in cold blood, and came down into the street again carrying thedead body in his arms——"
"Reverend sir," cried Angus, standing still, "are you raving mad, or amI?"
"You are not mad," said Brown, "only a little unobservant. You have notnoticed such a man as this, for example."
He took three quick strides forward, and put his hand on the shoulder ofan ordinary passing postman who had bustled by them unnoticed under theshade of the trees.
"Nobody ever notices postmen, somehow," he said thoughtfully; "yet theyhave passions like other men, and even carry large bags where a smallcorpse can be stowed quite easily."
The postman, instead of turning naturally, had ducked and tumbledagainst the garden fence. He was a lean fair-bearded man of veryordinary appearance, but as he turned an alarmed face over his shoulder,all three men were fixed with an almost fiendish squint.
Flambeau went back to his sabres, purple rugs and Persian cat, havingmany things to attend to. John Turnbull Angus went back to the lady atthe shop, with whom that imprudent young man contrives to be extremelycomfortable. But Father Brown walked those snow-covered hills under thestars for many hours with a murderer, and what they said to each otherwill never be known.
VI
THE HONOUR OF ISRAEL GOW
A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown,wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valleyand beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of theglen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of theworld. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the mannerof the old French-Scottish châteaux, it reminded an Englishman of thesinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods thatrocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black asnumberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepydevilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on theplace one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrowwhich lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any otherof the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poisoncalled heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense ofdoom in the Calvinist.
The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to meet hisfriend Flambeau, the amateur detective, who was at Glengyle Castle withanother more formal officer investigating the life and death of the lateEarl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative ofa race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made themterrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in thesixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, inchamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up aroundMary Queen of Scots.
The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the result oftheir machinations candidly:
"As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies."
For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in GlengyleCastle; and with the Victorian era one would have thought that alleccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle, however, satisfied histribal tradition by doing the only thing that was left for him to do; hedisappeared. I do not mean that he went abroad; by all accounts he wasstill in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name was in thechurch register and the big red Peerage, nobody ever saw him under thesun.
If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant, something between agroom and a gardener. He was so deaf that the more business-like assumedhim to be dumb; while the more penetrating declared him to behalf-witted. A gaunt, red-haired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin,but quite black blue eyes, he went by the name of Israel Gow, and wasthe one silent servant on that deserted estate. But the energy withwhich he dug potatoes, and the regularity with which he disappeared intothe kitchen gave people an impression that he was providing for themeals of a superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed inthe castle. If society needed any further proof that he was there, theservant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One morning theprovost and the minister (for the Glengyles were Presbyterian) weresummoned to the castle. There they found that the gardener, groom andcook had added to his many professions that of an undertaker, and hadnailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how littlefurther inquiry this odd fact was passed, did not as yet very plainlyappear; for the thing had never been legally investigated till Flambeauhad gone north two or three days before. By then the body of LordGlengyle (if it was the body) had lain for some time in the littlechurchyard on the hill.
As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under the shadowof the château, the clouds were thick and the whole air damp andthundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he saw ablack human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spadeover his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton;but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thoughtit natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew therespectability which might well feel it necessary to wear "blacks" foran official inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose anhour's digging for that. Even the man's start and suspicious stare asthe priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and jealousyof such a type.
The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with him a leanman with iron-grey hair and papers in his hand: Inspector Craven fromScotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly stripped and empty; but thepale, sneering faces of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked downout of the black periwigs and blackening canvas.
Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the allieshad been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was covered withscribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole ofits remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged atintervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects could be. Onelooked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked likea high heap of brown dust. A third appeared to be a plain stick of wood.
"You seem to have a sort of geological museum here," he said, as he satdown, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the brown dust andthe crystalline fragments.
"Not a geological museum," replied Flambeau; "say a psychologicalmuseum."
"Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective, laughing, "don'tlet's begin with such long words."
"Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau with friendlysurprise. "Psychology means being off your chump."
"Still I hardly follow," replied the official.
"Well," said Flambeau, with decision; "I mean that we've only found outone thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a maniac."
The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed the windowdimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father Brown stared passivelyat it and answered:
"I can understand there must have been something odd about the man, orhe wouldn't have buried himself alive—nor been in such a hurry to buryhimself dead. But what makes you think it was lunacy?"
"Well," said Flambeau; "you just listen to the list of things Mr. Cravenhas found in the house."
"We must get a candle," said Craven, suddenly. "A storm is getting up,and it's too dark to read."
"Have you found any candles," asked Brown smiling, "among youroddities?"
Flambeau raised a grave face, and fixed his dark eyes on his friend.
"That is curious, too," he said. "Twenty-five candles, and not a traceof a candlestick."
In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown went alongthe table to where a bundle of wax candles lay among the other scrappyexhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally over the heap of red-browndust; and a sharp sneeze cracked the silence.
"Hullo!" he said; "snuff!"
He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it inthe neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night air, blowing throughthe crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every sideof the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine woodseething like a black sea around a rock.
"I will read the inventory," began Craven gravely, picking up one of thepapers, "the inventory of what we found loose and unexplained in thecastle. You are to understand that the place generally was dismantledand neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in asimple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who was not theservant Gow. The list is as follows:
"First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly alldiamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Ofcourse, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; butthose are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particulararticles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loosein their pockets, like coppers.
"Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, oreven a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on the sideboard,on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not takethe trouble to look in a pocket or lift a lid.
"Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps ofminute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some in the form ofmicroscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.
"Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottlenecksbecause there is nothing else to stick them in. Now I wish you to notehow very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For thecentral riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that therewas something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find outwhether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether thatred-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with hisdying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramaticsolution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, orsuppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressedup as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master;invent what Wilkie Collins's tragedy you like, and you still have notexplained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman ofgood family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core of thetale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By nostretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamondsand wax and loose clockwork."
"I think I see the connexion," said the priest. "This Glengyle was madagainst the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancienrégime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of thelast Bourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth centuryluxury; wax candles, because they were the eighteenth century lighting;the mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI;the diamonds are for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette."
Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. "What aperfectly extraordinary notion!" cried Flambeau. "Do you really thinkthat is the truth?"
"I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown, "only you saidthat nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork and candles.I give you that connexion off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure, liesdeeper."
He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in theturrets. Then he said: "The late Earl of Glengyle was a thief. He liveda second and darker life as a desperate house-breaker. He did not haveany candlesticks because he only used these candles cut short in thelantern he carried. The snuff he employed as the fiercest Frenchcriminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in dense masses in theface of a captor or pursuer. But the final proof is in the curiouscoincidence of the diamonds and the small steel wheels. Surely thatmakes everything plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are theonly two instruments with which you can cut out a pane of glass."
The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast against thewindow-pane behind them, as if in parody of a burglar, but they did notturn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father Brown.
"Diamonds and small wheels," repeated Craven ruminating. "Is that allthat makes you think it the true explanation?"
"I don't think it the true explanation," replied the priest placidly;"but you said that nobody could connect the four things. The true tale,of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle had found, orthought he had found, precious stones on his estate. Somebody hadbamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying they were found inthe castle caverns. The little wheels are some diamond-cutting affair.He had to do the thing very roughly and in a small way, with the help ofa few shepherds or rude fellows on these hills. Snuff is the one greatluxury of such Scotch shepherds; it's the one thing with which you canbribe them. They didn't have candlesticks because they didn't want them;they held the candles in their hands when they explored the caves."
"Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we got to thedull truth at last?"
"Oh, no," said Father Brown.
As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as ofmockery, Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, went on:
"I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connectsnuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten falsephilosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit GlengyleCastle. But we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe.But are there no other exhibits?"
Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled downthe long table.
"Items five, six, seven, etc.," he said, "are certainly more varied thaninstructive. A curious collection, not of lead pencils, but of the leadout of lead pencils. A senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rathersplintered. It might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn'tany crime. The only other things are a few old missals and littleCatholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the MiddleAges—their family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. We onlyput them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about anddefaced."
The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds acrossGlengyle and threw the long room into darkness as Father Brown picked upthe little illuminated pages to examine them. He spoke before the driftof darkness had passed; but it was the voice of an utterly new man.
"Mr. Craven," said he, talking like a man ten years younger: "you havegot a legal warrant, haven't you, to go up and examine that grave? Thesooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom of this horribleaffair. If I were you I should start now."
"Now," repeated the astonished detective, "and why now?"
"Because this is serious," answered Brown; "this is not spilt snuff orloose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons. There is onlyone reason I know of for this being done; and the reason goes down tothe roots of the world. These religious pictures are not just dirtied ortorn or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or bigotry, bychildren or by Protestants. These have been treated very carefully—andvery queerly. In every place where the great ornamented name of Godcomes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. Theonly other thing that has been removed is the halo round the head of theChild Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant and our spade andour hatchet, and go up and break open that coffin."
"What do you mean?" demanded the London officer.
"I mean," answered the little priest, and his voice seemed to riseslightly in the roar of the gale. "I mean that the great devil of theuniverse may be sitting on the top tower of this castle at this moment,as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring like the Apocalypse. There isblack magic somewhere at the bottom of this."
"Black magic," repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was tooenlightened a man not to know of such things; "but what can these otherthings mean?"
"Oh, something damnable, I suppose," replied Brown impatiently. "Howshould I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below? Perhaps youcan make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust afterwax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of leadpencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to the grave."
His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him till ablast of the night wind nearly flung them on their faces in the garden.Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for Craven found ahatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau wascarrying the heavy spade of the strange gardener; Father Brown wascarrying the little gilt book from which had been torn the name of God.
The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short; only underthe stress of wind it seemed laborious and long. Far as the eye couldsee, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyondseas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universalgesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that wind werewhistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all thatinfinite growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancientsorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy thatthe voices from the underworld of unfathomable foliage were cries of thelost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in thatirrational forest, and who will never find their way back to heaven.
"You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch people beforeScotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they're a curious lotstill. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshippeddemons. That," he added genially, "is why they jumped at the Puritantheology."
"My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, "what does allthat stuff mean?"
"My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is one markof all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectlygenuine religion."
They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the few baldspots that stood clear of the crashing and roaring pine forest. A meanenclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tellthem the border of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven hadcome to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau had planted his spadepoint downwards and leaned on it, they were both almost as shaken as theshaky wood and wire. At the foot of the grave grew great tall thistles,grey and silver in their decay. Once or twice, when a ball ofthistledown broke under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumpedslightly as if it had been an arrow.
Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling grass intothe wet clay below. Then he seemed to stop and lean on it as on a staff.
"Go on," said the priest very gently. "We are only trying to find thetruth. What are you afraid of?"
"I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau.
The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice that wasmeant to be conversational and cheery. "I wonder why he really did hidehimself like that. Something nasty, I suppose; was he a leper?"
"Something worse than that," said Flambeau.
"And what do you imagine," asked the other, "would be worse than aleper?"
"I don't imagine it," said Flambeau.
He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in a chokedvoice: "I'm afraid of his not being the right shape."
"Nor was that piece of paper, you know," said Father Brown quietly, "andwe survived even that piece of paper."
Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had shouldered awaythe choking grey clouds that clung to the hills like smoke and revealedgrey fields of faint starlight before he cleared the shape of a rudetimber coffin, and somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven steppedforward with his axe; a thistle-top touched him, and he flinched. Thenhe took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy likeFlambeau's till the lid was torn off, and all that was there layglimmering in the grey starlight.
"Bones," said Craven; and then he added, "but it is a man," as if thatwere something unexpected.
"Is he," asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and down, "is heall right?"
"Seems so," said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure anddecaying skeleton in the box. "Wait a minute."
A vast heave went over Flambeau's huge figure. "And now I come to thinkof it," he cried, "why in the name of madness shouldn't he be all right?What is it gets hold of a man on these cursed cold mountains? I thinkit's the black, brainless repetition; all these forests, and over all aancient horror of unconsciousness. It's like the dream of an atheist.Pine-trees and more pine-trees and millions more pine-trees——"
"God!" cried the man by the coffin; "but he hasn't got a head."
While the others stood rigid the priest, for the first time, showed aleap of startled concern.
"No head!" he repeated. "No head?" as if he had almost expected someother deficiency.
Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a headlessyouth hiding himself in the castle, of a headless man pacing thoseancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in panorama through theirminds. But even in that stiffened instant the tale took no root in themand seemed to have no reason in it. They stood listening to the loudwoods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like exhausted animals.Thought seemed to be something enormous that had suddenly slipped out oftheir grasp.
"There are three headless men," said Father Brown: "standing round thisopen grave."
The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and left itopen like a yokel, while a long scream of wind tore the sky; then helooked at the axe in his hands as if it did not belong to him, anddropped it.
"Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used veryseldom, "what are we to do?"
His friend's reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun going off.
"Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end of theways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleepsbelieves in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it isa food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something hasfallen on us that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing thatcan fall on them."
Craven's parted lips came together to say: "What do you mean?"
The priest turned his face to the castle as he answered:
"We have found the truth; and the truth makes no sense."
He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and reckless stepvery rare with him, and when they reached the castle again he threwhimself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.
Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier thananyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a big pipeand watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchengarden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains,and the day came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed even tohave been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he planted hisspade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast,shifted along the lines of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen."He's a valuable man, that," said Father Brown. "He does the potatoesamazingly. Still," he added with a dispassionate charity, "he has hisfaults; which of us hasn't? He doesn't dig this bank quite regularly.There, for instance," and he stamped suddenly on one spot. "I'm reallyvery doubtful about that potato."
"And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's new hobby.
"I'm doubtful about it," said the other, "because old Gow was doubtfulabout it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place butjust this. There must be a mighty fine potato just there."
Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place. Heturned up, under a load of soil, something that did not look like apotato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struckthe spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned upat them.
"The Earl of Glengyle," said Brown sadly, and looked down heavily at theskull.
Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau,and, saying: "We must hide it again," clamped the skull down in theearth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handleof the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes wereempty and his forehead full of wrinkles. "If one could only conceive,"he muttered, "the meaning of this last monstrosity." And leaning on thelarge spade handle, he buried his brows in his hands, as men do inchurch.
All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; thebirds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so loud it seemed as ifthe trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.
"Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last boisterously. "My brainand this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it. Snuff,spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical boxes—what——"
Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade handle with anintolerance quite unusual with him. "Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!" he cried."All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I understood the snuff andclockwork, and so on, when I first opened my eyes this morning. Andsince then I've had it out with old Gow, the gardener, who is neither sodeaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There's something amiss about theloose items. I was wrong about the torn mass-book, too; there's no harmin that. But it's this last business. Desecrating graves and stealingdead men's heads—surely there's harm in that? Surely there's blackmagic still in that? That doesn't fit in to the quite simple story ofthe snuff and the candles." And, striding about again, he smokedmoodily.
"My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must be carefulwith me and remember I was once a criminal. The great advantage of thatestate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quickas I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for myFrench impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things atthe instant; I always fought duels the next morning; I always paid billson the nail; I never even put off a visit to the dentist——"
Father Brown's pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three pieces onthe gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact picture of anidiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!" he kept saying. "Lord, what aturnip!" Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he began to laugh.
"The dentist!" he repeated. "Six hours in the spiritual abyss, and allbecause I never thought of the dentist! Such a simple, such a beautifuland peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but nowthe sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of thedentist consoles the world."
"I will get some sense out of this," cried Flambeau, striding forward,"if I use the tortures of the Inquisition."
Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition todance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite piteously, like a child:"Oh, let me be silly a little. You don't know how unhappy I have been.And now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all.Only a little lunacy, perhaps—and who minds that?"
He spun round once, then faced them with gravity.
"This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is the story of astrange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth,perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savageliving logic that has been the religion of this race.
"That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle——
"'As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies'——
was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that theGlengyles sought for wealth; it was also true that they literallygathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments and utensils inthat metal. They were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn. Inthe light of that fact, run through all the things we found in thecastle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles without their goldcandlesticks; snuff without the gold snuff-boxes; pencil-leads withoutthe gold pencil-cases; a walking-stick without its gold top; clockworkwithout the gold clocks—or rather watches. And, mad as it sounds,because the halos and the name of God in the old missals were of realgold, these also were taken away."
The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in thestrengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau lit a cigaretteas his friend went on.
"Were taken away," continued Father Brown; "were taken away—but notstolen. Thieves would never have left this mystery. Thieves would havetaken the gold snuff-boxes, snuff and all; the gold pencil-cases, leadand all. We have to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, butcertainly a conscience. I found that mad moralist this morning in thekitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.
"The late Archbishop Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man everborn at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took the turn of themisanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which,somehow, he generalized a dishonesty of all men. More especially hedistrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could findone man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold ofGlengyle. Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up,without the smallest expectation of its being answered. One day,however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant villagebrought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry,gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but when heturned over his change he found the new farthing still there and asovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation.Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species. Eitherhe would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with itvirtuously, a snob seeking a reward. In the middle of the night LordGlengyle was knocked up out of his bed—for he lived alone—and forcedto open the door to the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, not thesovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pencethree-farthings in change.
"Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold on the mad lord'sbrain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that had long sought anhonest man, and at last had found one. He made a new will, which I haveseen. He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, andtrained him up as his solitary servant and—after an odd manner—hisheir. And whatever that queer creature understands, he understoodabsolutely his lord's two fixed ideas: first, that the letter of rightis everything; and second, that he himself was to have the gold ofGlengyle. So far, that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped thehouse of gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much as agrain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fullysatisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I understood; but Icould not understand this skull business. I was really uneasy about thathuman head buried among the potatoes. It distressed me—till Flambeausaid the word.
"It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the grave, when hehas taken the gold out of the tooth."
And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw thatstrange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated grave, theplaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober tophat on his head.
VII
THE WRONG SHAPE
Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far intothe country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street,with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be agroup of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famouspublic-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, andthen one large private house, and then another field and another inn,and so on. If anyone walks along one of these roads he will pass a housewhich will probably catch his eye, though he may not be able to explainits attraction. It is a long, low house, running parallel with the road,painted mostly white and pale green, with a veranda and sun-blinds, andporches capped with those quaint sort of cupolas like wooden umbrellasthat one sees in some old-fashioned houses. In fact, it is anold-fashioned house, very English and very suburban in the good oldwealthy Clapham sense. And yet the house has a look of having been builtchiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white paint and sun-blindsone thinks vaguely of pugarees and even of palm trees. I cannot tracethe feeling to its root; perhaps the place was built by an Anglo-Indian.
Anyone passing this house, I say, would be namelessly fascinated by it;would feel that it was a place about which some story was to be told.And he would have been right, as you shall shortly hear. For this is thestory—the story of the strange things that did really happen in it inthe Whitsuntide of the year 18—:
Anyone passing the house on the Thursday before Whit-Sunday at abouthalf-past four p.m. would have seen the front door open, and FatherBrown, of the small church of St. Mungo, come out smoking a large pipein company with a very tall French friend of his called Flambeau, whowas smoking a very small cigarette. These persons may or may not be ofinterest to the reader, but the truth is that they were not the onlyinteresting things that were displayed when the front door of thewhite-and-green house was opened. There are further peculiarities aboutthis house, which must be described to start with, not only that thereader may understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realizewhat it was that the opening of the door revealed.
The whole house was built upon the plan of a T, but a T with a very longcross piece and a very short tail piece. The long cross piece was thefrontage that ran along in face of the street, with the front door inthe middle; it was two stories high, and contained nearly all theimportant rooms. The short tail piece, which ran out at the backimmediately opposite the front door, was one story high, and consistedonly of two long rooms, the one leading into the other. The first ofthese two rooms was the study in which the celebrated Mr. Quinton wrotehis wild Oriental poems and romances. The farther room was a glassconservatory full of tropical blossoms of quite unique and almostmonstrous beauty, and on such afternoons as these was glowing withgorgeous sunlight. Thus when the hall door was open, many a passer-byliterally stopped to stare and gasp; for he looked down a perspective ofrich apartments to something really like a transformation scene in afairy play: purple clouds and golden suns and crimson stars that were atonce scorchingly vivid and yet transparent and far away.
Leonard Quinton, the poet, had himself most carefully arranged thiseffect; and it is doubtful whether he so perfectly expressed hispersonality in any of his poems. For he was a man who drank and bathedin colours, who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect ofform—even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius sowholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets orblinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into afortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach. He had attempted,not perhaps with complete artistic success, but with acknowledgedimagination and invention, to compose epics and love stories reflectingthe riot of violent and even cruel colour; tales of tropical heavens ofburning gold or blood-red copper; of eastern heroes who rode withtwelve-turbaned mitres upon elephants painted purple or peacock green;of gigantic jewels that a hundred negroes could not carry, but whichburned with ancient and strange-hued fires.
In short (to put the matter from the more common point of view), hedealt much in eastern heavens, rather worse than most western hells; ineastern monarchs, whom we might possibly call maniacs; and in easternjewels which a Bond Street jeweller (if the hundred staggering negroesbrought them into his shop) might possibly not regard as genuine.Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one; and even his morbidity appearedmore in his life than in his work. In temperament he was weak andwaspish, and his health had suffered heavily from oriental experimentswith opium. His wife—a handsome, hard-working, and, indeed, over-workedwoman—objected to the opium, but objected much more to a live Indianhermit in white and yellow robes, whom her husband had insisted onentertaining for months together, a Virgil to guide his spirit throughthe heavens and the hells of the east.
It was out of this artistic household that Father Brown and his friendstepped on to the door-step; and to judge from their faces, they steppedout of it with much relief. Flambeau had known Quinton in wild studentdays in Paris, and they had renewed the acquaintance for a week-end; butapart from Flambeau's more responsible developments of late, he did notget on well with the poet now. Choking oneself with opium and writinglittle erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentlemanshould go to the devil. As the two paused on the doorstep, before takinga turn in the garden, the front garden gate was thrown open withviolence, and a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his headtumbled up the steps in his eagerness. He was a dissipated-looking youthwith a gorgeous red necktie all awry, as if he had slept in it, and hekept fidgeting and lashing about with one of those little jointed canes.
"I say," he said breathlessly, "I want to see old Quinton. I must seehim. Has he gone?"
"Mr. Quinton is in, I believe," said Father Brown, cleaning his pipe,"but I do not know if you can see him. The doctor is with him atpresent."
The young man, who seemed not to be perfectly sober, stumbled into thehall; and at the same moment the doctor came out of Quinton's study,shutting the door and beginning to put on his gloves.
"See Mr. Quinton?" said the doctor coolly. "No, I'm afraid you can't. Infact, you mustn't on any account. Nobody must see him; I've just givenhim his sleeping draught."
"No, but look here, old chap," said the youth in the red tie, tryingaffectionately to capture the doctor by the lapels of his coat. "Lookhere. I'm simply sewn up, I tell you. I——"
"It's no good, Mr. Atkinson," said the doctor, forcing him to fall back;"when you can alter the effects of a drug I'll alter my decision," and,settling on his hat, he stepped out into the sunlight with the othertwo. He was a bull-necked, good-tempered little man with a smallmoustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an impression ofcapability.
The young man in the billycock, who did not seem to be gifted with anytact in dealing with people beyond the general idea of clutching hold oftheir coats, stood outside the door, as dazed as if he had been thrownout bodily, and silently watched the other three walk away togetherthrough the garden.
"That was a sound, spanking lie I told just now," remarked the medicalman, laughing. "In point of fact, poor Quinton doesn't have his sleepingdraught for nearly half an hour. But I'm not going to have him botheredwith that little beast, who only wants to borrow money that he wouldn'tpay back if he could. He's a dirty little scamp, though he is Mrs.Quinton's brother, and she's as fine a woman as ever walked."
"Yes," said Father Brown. "She's a good woman."
"So I propose to hang about the garden till the creature has clearedoff," went on the doctor, "and then I'll go in to Quinton with themedicine. Atkinson can't get in, because I locked the door."
"In that case, Dr. Harris," said Flambeau, "we might as well walk roundat the back by the end of the conservatory. There's no entrance to itthat way but it's worth seeing, even from the outside."
"Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient," laughed the doctor, "forhe prefers to lie on an ottoman right at the end of the conservatoryamid all those blood-red poinsettias; it would give me the creeps. Butwhat are you doing?"
Father Brown had stopped for a moment, and picked up out of the longgrass, where it had almost been wholly hidden, a queer, crooked Orientalknife, inlaid exquisitely in coloured stones and metals.
"What is this?" asked Father Brown, regarding it with some disfavour.
"Oh, Quinton's, I suppose," said Dr. Harris carelessly; "he has allsorts of Chinese knick-knacks about the place. Or perhaps it belongs tothe mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps on a string."
"What Hindoo?" asked Father Brown, still staring at the dagger in hishand.
"Oh, some Indian conjurer," said the doctor lightly; "a fraud, ofcourse."
"You don't believe in magic?" asked Father Brown without looking up.
"Oh crikey! magic!" said the doctor.
"It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; "thecolours 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 feelthat about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but theshapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wickedthings in a Turkey carpet."
"Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing.
"They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know; but I knowthey stand for evil words," went on the priest, his voice growing lowerand lower. "The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling toescape."
"What the devil are you talking about?" said the doctor with a loudlaugh.
Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. "The Father sometimes gets thismystic's cloud on him," he said; "but I give you fair warning that Ihave never known him have it except when there was some evil quitenear."
"Oh, rats!" said the scientist.
"Why, look at it," cried Father Brown, holding out the crooked knife atarm's length, as if it were some glittering snake. "Don't you see it isthe wrong shape? Don't you see that it has no hearty and plain purpose?It does not point like a spear. It does not sweep like a scythe. It doesnot look like a weapon. It looks like an instrument of torture."
"Well, as you don't seem to like it," said the jolly Harris, "it hadbetter be taken back to its owner. Haven't we come to the end of thisconfounded conservatory yet? This house is the wrong shape, if youlike."
"You don't understand," said Father Brown, shaking his head. "The shapeof this house is quaint—it is even laughable. But there is nothingwrong about it."
As they spoke they came round the curve of glass that ended theconservatory, an uninterrupted curve, for there was neither door norwindow by which to enter at that end. The glass, however, was clear, andthe sun still bright, though beginning to set; and they could see notonly the flamboyant blossoms inside, but the frail figure of the poet ina brown velvet coat lying languidly on the sofa, having, apparently,fallen half asleep over a book. He was a pale, slight man, with loose,chestnut hair and a fringe of beard that was the paradox of his face,for the beard made him look less manly. These traits were well known toall three of them; but even had it not been so, it may be doubtedwhether they would have looked at Quinton just then. Their eyes wereriveted on another object.
Exactly in their path, immediately outside the round end of the glassbuilding, was standing a tall man, whose drapery fell to his feet infaultless white, and whose bare, brown skull, face, and neck gleamed inthe setting sun like splendid bronze. He was looking through the glassat the sleeper, and he was more motionless than a mountain.
"Who is that?" cried Father Brown, stepping back with a hissing intakeof his breath.
"Oh, it is only that Hindoo humbug," growled Harris; "but I don't knowwhat the deuce he's doing here."
"It looks like hypnotism," said Flambeau, biting his black moustache.
"Why are you unmedical fellows always talking bosh about hypnotism?"cried the doctor. "It looks a deal more like burglary."
"Well, we will speak to it, at any rate," said Flambeau, who was alwaysfor action. One long stride took him to the place where the Indianstood. Bowing from his great height, which overtopped even theOriental's, he said with placid impudence:
"Good evening, sir. Do you want anything?"
Quite slowly, like a great ship turning into a harbour, the great yellowface turned, and looked at last over its white shoulder. They werestartled to see that its yellow eyelids were quite sealed, as in sleep."Thank you," said the face in excellent English. "I want nothing." Then,half opening the lids, so as to show a slit of opalescent eyeball, herepeated, "I want nothing." Then he opened his eyes wide with astartling stare, said, "I want nothing," and went rustling away into therapidly darkening garden.
"The Christian is more modest," muttered Father Brown; "he wantssomething."
"What on earth was he doing?" asked Flambeau, knitting his black browsand lowering his voice.
"I should like to talk to you later," said Father Brown.
The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening,and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blackeragainst it. They turned round the end of the conservatory, and walked insilence down the other side to get round to the front door. As they wentthey seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird, in the deepercorner between the study and the main building; and again they saw thewhite-robed fakir slide out of the shadow, and slip round towards thefront door. To their surprise, however, he had not been alone. Theyfound themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish theirbewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy goldenhair and square pale face, advancing on them out of the twilight. Shelooked a little stern, but was entirely courteous.
"Good evening, Dr. Harris," was all she said.
"Good evening, Mrs. Quinton," said the little doctor heartily. "I amjust going to give your husband his sleeping draught."
"Yes," she said in a clear voice. "I think it is quite time." And shesmiled at them, and went sweeping into the house.
"That woman's over-driven," said Father Brown; "that's the kind of womanthat does her duty for twenty years, and then does something dreadful."
The little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye ofinterest. "Did you ever study medicine?" he asked.
"You have to know something of the mind as well as the body," answeredthe priest; "we have to know something of the body as well as the mind."
"Well," said the doctor, "I think I'll go and give Quinton his stuff."
They had turned the corner of the front façade, and were approaching thefront doorway. As they turned into it they saw the man in the white robefor the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that itseemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the studyopposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was locked.
Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction tothemselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on theimpossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, andthen stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he hadalready forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging about, hummingand poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor's face had a spasm ofdisgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: "I mustlock the door again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out againin two minutes."
He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, justbalking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. Theyoung man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked ata Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sortof daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was openedagain. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the dooropen for an instant, and called out: "Oh, I say, Quinton, I want——"
From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, insomething between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter.
"Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I'm writing asong about peacocks."
Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through theaperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singulardexterity.
"So that's settled," said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, heled the way out into the garden.
"Poor Leonard can get a little peace now," he added to Father Brown;"he's locked in all by himself for an hour or two."
"Yes," answered the priest; "and his voice sounded jolly enough when weleft him." Then he looked gravely round the garden, and saw the loosefigure of Atkinson standing and jingling the half-sovereign in hispocket, and beyond, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indiansitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass with his face turned towardsthe setting sun. Then he said abruptly: "Where is Mrs. Quinton?"
"She has gone up to her room," said the doctor. "That is her shadow onthe blind."
Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinized a dark outline at thegas-lit window.
"Yes," he said, "that is her shadow," and he walked a yard or two andthrew himself upon a garden seat.
Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of those energeticpeople who live naturally on their legs. He walked away, smoking, intothe twilight, and the two friends were left together.
"My father," said Flambeau in French, "what is the matter with you?"
Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute then he said;"Superstition is irreligious, but there is something in the air of thisplace. I think it's that Indian—at least, partly."
He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of the Indian, whostill sat rigid as if in prayer. At first sight he seemed motionless,but as Father Brown watched him he saw that the man swayed ever soslightly with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayedever so slightly in the little wind that was creeping up the dim gardenpaths and shuffling the fallen leaves a little.
The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a storm, but theycould still see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson wasleaning against a tree, with a listless face; Quinton's wife was stillat her window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of theconservatory; they could see his cigar like a will-o'-the-wisp; and thefakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him beganto rock and almost to roar. Storm was certainly coming.
"When that Indian spoke to us," went on Brown in a conversationalundertone, "I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all hisuniverse. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first hesaid, 'I want nothing,' it meant only that he was impenetrable, thatAsia does not give itself away. Then he said again, 'I want nothing,'and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like acosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when hesaid the third time, 'I want nothing,' he said it with blazing eyes. AndI knew that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desireand his home; that he was weary for nothing as for wine; thatannihilation, the mere destruction of everything or anything——"
Two drops of rain fell; and for some reason Flambeau started and lookedup, as if they had stung him. And the same instant the doctor down bythe end of the conservatory began running towards them, calling outsomething as he ran.
As he came among them like a bombshell the restless Atkinson happened tobe taking a turn nearer to the house front; and the doctor clutched himby the collar in a convulsive grip. "Foul play!" he cried; "what haveyou been doing to him, you dog?"
The priest had sprung erect, and had the voice of steel of a soldier incommand.
"No fighting," he cried coolly; "we are enough to hold anyone we wantto. What is the matter, doctor?"
"Things are not right with Quinton," said the doctor, quite white. "Icould just see him through the glass, and I don't like the way he'slying. It's not as I left him, anyhow."
"Let us go in to him," said Father Brown shortly. "You can leave Mr.Atkinson alone. I have had him in sight since we heard Quinton's voice."
"I will stop here and watch him," said Flambeau hurriedly. "You go inand see."
The doctor and the priest flew to the study door, unlocked it, and fellinto the room. In doing so they nearly fell over the large mahoganytable in the centre at which the poet usually wrote; for the place waslit only by a small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of thistable lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on purpose. Thedoctor snatched it up, glanced at it, handed it to Father Brown, andcrying, "Good God, look at that!" plunged towards the glass room beyond,where the terrible tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson memoryof the sunset.
Father Brown read the words three times before he put down the paper.The words were: "I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!" They were inthe quite inimitable, not to say illegible, handwriting of LeonardQuinton.
Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, strode towardsthe conservatory, only to meet his medical friend coming back with aface of assurance and collapse. "He's done it," said Harris.
They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty of cactus andazalea and found Leonard Quinton, poet and romancer, with his headhanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground.Inside his left side was thrust the queer dagger that they had picked upin the garden, and his limp hand still rested on the hilt.
Outside, the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge,and garden and glass roof were darkening with driving rain. Father Brownseemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it closeto his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he heldit up against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared atthem for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.
Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown'svoice said out of the dark: "Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape."
"What do you mean?" asked Doctor Harris, with a frowning stare.
"It isn't square," answered Brown. "It has a sort of edge snipped off atthe corner. What does it mean?"
"How the deuce should I know?" growled the doctor. "Shall we move thispoor chap, do you think? He's quite dead."
"No," answered the priest; "we must leave him as he lies and send forthe police." But he was still scrutinizing the paper.
As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and pickedup a small pair of nail scissors. "Ah," he said with a sort of relief;"this is what he did it with. But yet——" And he knitted his brows.
"Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper," said the doctoremphatically "It was a fad of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut allhis paper like that," as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper stillunused on another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and heldup a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.
"Quite so," he said. "And here I see the corners that were snipped off."And to the indignation of his colleague he began to count them.
"That's all right," he said, with an apologetic smile. "Twenty-threesheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off them. And as I see you areimpatient we will rejoin the others."
"Who is to tell his wife?" asked Dr. Harris. "Will you go and tell hernow, while I send a servant for the police?"
"As you will," said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to thehall door.
Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showednothing less than his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he hadlong been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of thesteps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, hisbillycock hat and walking-cane sent flying in opposite directions alongthe path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau's almost paternalcustody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means asmooth game to play with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch'sabdication.
Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, whenthe priest patted him easily on the shoulder.
"Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend," he said. "Beg a mutual pardonand say 'Good night.' We need not detain him any longer." Then, asAtkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick andwent towards the garden gate, Father Brown said in a more serious voice:"Where is that Indian?"
They all three (for the doctor had joined them) turned involuntarilytowards the dim grassy bank amid the tossing trees, purple withtwilight, where they had last seen the brown man swaying in his strangeprayers. The Indian was gone.
"Confound him," said the doctor, stamping furiously. "Now I know that itwas that nigger that did it."
"I thought you didn't believe in magic," said Father Brown quietly.
"No more I did," said the doctor, rolling his eyes. "I only know that Iloathed that yellow devil when I thought he was a sham wizard. And Ishall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one."
"Well, his having escaped is nothing," said Flambeau. "For we could haveproved nothing and done nothing against him. One hardly goes to theparish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft ofauto-suggestion."
Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went tobreak the news to the wife of the dead man.
When he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic; but whatpassed between them in that interview was never known, even when all wasknown.
Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to seehis friend reappear so soon at his elbow; but Brown took no notice andmerely drew the doctor apart. "You have sent for the police, haven'tyou?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Harris. "They ought to be here in ten minutes."
"Will you do me a favour?" said the priest quietly. "The truth is, Imake a collection of these curious stories, which often contain, as inthe case of our Hindoo friend, elements which can hardly be put into apolice report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for myprivate use. Yours is a clever trade," he said, looking at the doctorgravely and steadily in the face. "I sometimes think that you know somedetails of this matter which you have not thought fit to mention. Mineis a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat anything you writefor me in strict confidence. But write the whole."
The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a littleon one side, looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said:"All right," and went into the study, closing the door behind him.
"Flambeau," said Father Brown, "there is a long seat there under theveranda, where we can smoke, out of the rain. You are my only friend inthe world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you."
They established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; FatherBrown, against his common habit, accepted a good cigar and smoked itsteadily in silence, while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof ofthe veranda.
"My friend," he said at length, "this is a very queer case. A very queercase."
"I should think it was," said Flambeau, with something like a shudder.
"You call it queer, and I call it queer," said the other, "and yet wemean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up twodifferent ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mysteryin the sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty aboutmiracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple becauseit is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil)instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now you mean thatthis business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it iswitchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that itwas not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by whatsurrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of men. But forthe present my point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think, thenit is marvellous; but it is not mysterious—that is, it is notcomplicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner issimple. Now, the manner of this business has been the reverse ofsimple."
The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again,and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder. Father Brown letfall the ash of his cigar and went on:
"There has been in this incident," he said, "a twisted, ugly, complexquality that does not belong to the straight bolts either of heaven orhell. As one knows the crooked track of a snail, I know the crookedtrack of a man."
The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut upagain, and the priest went on:
"Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that pieceof paper. It was crookeder than the dagger that killed him."
"You mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his suicide," saidFlambeau.
"I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, 'I die by my own hand,'"answered Father Brown. "The shape of that paper, my friend, was thewrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I have seen it in this wickedworld."
"It only had a corner snipped off," said Flambeau, "and I understandthat all Quinton's paper was cut that way."
"It was a very odd way," said the other, "and a very bad way, to mytaste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton—God receive hissoul!—was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was anartist, with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hardto read, was bold and beautiful. I can't prove what I say; I can't proveanything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he couldnever have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he hadwanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or binding up,or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with thescissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrongshape. Like this. Don't you remember?"
And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, makingirregular squares so rapidly that Flambeau really seemed to see them asfiery hieroglyphics upon the darkness—hieroglyphics such as his friendhad spoken of, which are undecipherable, yet can have no good meaning.
"But," said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again andleaned back, staring at the roof. "Suppose somebody else did use thescissors. Why should somebody else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper,make Quinton commit suicide?"
Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the room, but he tookhis cigar out of his mouth and said: "Quinton never did commit suicide."
Flambeau stared at him. "Why, confound it all," he cried; "then why didhe confess to suicide?"
The priest leaned forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, lookedat the ground, and said in a low distinct voice: "He never did confessto suicide."
Flambeau laid his cigar down. "You mean," he said, "that the writing wasforged?"
"No," said Father Brown; "Quinton wrote it all right."
"Well, there you are," said the aggravated Flambeau; "Quinton wrote: 'Idie by my own hand,' with his own hand on a plain piece of paper."
"Of the wrong shape," said the priest calmly.
"Oh, the shape be damned!" cried Flambeau. "What has the shape to dowith it?"
"There were twenty-three snipped papers," resumed Brown unmoved, "andonly twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had beendestroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggestanything to you?"
A light dawned on Flambeau's face, and he said: "There was somethingelse written by Quinton, some other words. 'They will tell you I die bymy own hand,' or 'Do not believe that——'"
"Hotter, as the children say," said his friend. "But the piece washardly half an inch across; there was no room for one word, let alonefive. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the manwith hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him?"
"I can think of nothing," said Flambeau at last.
"What about quotation marks?" said the priest, and flung his cigar farinto the darkness like a shooting star.
All words had left the other man's mouth, and Father Brown, said, likeone going back to fundamentals:
"Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romanceabout wizardry and hypnotism. He——"
At this moment the door opened briskly behind them and the doctor cameout with his hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest's hands.
"That's the document you wanted," he said, "and I must be getting home.Good night."
"Good night," said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to thegate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fellupon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope and read thefollowing words:
"Dear Father Brown,—Vicisti, Galilæe! Otherwise, damn your eyes,which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that there issomething in all that stuff of yours after all?
"I am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and in allnatural functions and instincts, whether men called them moral orimmoral. Long before I became a doctor, when I was a schoolboy keepingmice and spiders, I believed that to be a good animal is the best thingin the world. But just now I am shaken; I have believed in Nature; butit seems as if Nature could betray a man. Can there be anything in yourbosh? I am really getting morbid.
"I loved Quinton's wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature told meto, and it's love that makes the world go round. I also thought, quitesincerely, that she would be happier with a clean animal like me thanwith that tormenting little lunatic. What was there wrong in that? I wasonly facing facts, like a man of science. She would have been happier.
"According to my own creed I was quite free to kill Quinton, which wasthe best thing for everybody, even himself. But as a healthy animal Ihad no notion of killing myself. I resolved, therefore, that I wouldnever do it until I saw a chance that would leave me scot free. I sawthat chance this morning.
"I have been three times, all told, into Quinton's study to-day. Thefirst time I went in he would talk about nothing but the weird tale,called 'The Curse of a Saint,' which he was writing, which was all abouthow some Indian hermit made an English colonel kill himself by thinkingabout him. He showed me the last sheets, and even read me the lastparagraph, which was something like this: 'The conqueror of the Punjab,a mere yellow skeleton, but still gigantic, managed to lift himself onhis elbow and gasp in his nephew's ear: "I die by my own hand, yet I diemurdered!"' It so happened, by one chance out of a hundred, that thoselast words were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left theroom, and went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightfulopportunity.
"We walked round the house, and two more things happened in my favour.You suspected an Indian, and you found a dagger which the Indian mightmost probably use. Taking the opportunity to stuff it in my pocket Iwent back to Quinton's study, locked the door, and gave him his sleepingdraught. He was against answering Atkinson at all, but I urged him tocall out and quiet the fellow, because I wanted a clear proof thatQuinton was alive when I left the room for the second time. Quinton laydown in the conservatory, and I came through the study. I am a quick manwith my hands, and in a minute and a half I had done what I wanted todo. I had emptied all the first part of Quinton's romance into thefireplace, where it burnt to ashes. Then I saw that the quotation markswouldn't do, so I snipped them off, and to make it seem likelier,snipped the whole quire to match. Then I came out with the knowledgethat Quinton's confession of suicide lay on the front table, whileQuinton lay alive, but asleep, in the conservatory beyond.
"The last act was a desperate one; you can guess it: I pretended to haveseen Quinton dead and rushed to his room. I delayed you with the paper;and, being a quick man with my hands, killed Quinton while you werelooking at his confession of suicide. He was half-asleep, being drugged,and I put his own hand on the knife and drove it into his body. Theknife was of so queer a shape that no one but an operator could havecalculated the angle that would reach his heart. I wonder if you noticedthis.
"When I had done it the extraordinary thing happened. Nature desertedme. I felt ill. I felt just as if I had done something wrong. I think mybrain is breaking up; I feel some sort of desperate pleasure in thinkingI have told the thing to somebody; that I shall not have to be alonewith it if I marry and have children. What is the matter with me?...Madness ... or can one have remorse, just as if one were in Byron'spoems! I cannot write any more.——James Erskine Harris."
Father Brown carefully folded up the letter and put it in his breastpocket just as there came a loud peal at the gate bell, and the wetwaterproofs of several policeman gleamed in the road outside.
VIII
THE SINS OF PRINCE SARADINE
When Flambeau took his month's holiday from his office in Westminster hetook it in a small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of itstime as a rowing-boat. He took it, moreover, on little rivers in theEastern counties, rivers so small that the boat looked like a magic boatsailing on land through meadows and cornfields. The vessel was justcomfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, andFlambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophyconsidered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to fouressentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers,if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case heshould faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die. With thislight luggage he crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending toreach the Broads at last, but meanwhile delighting in the over-hanginggardens and meadows, the mirrored mansions or villages, lingering tofish in the pools and corners, and in some sense hugging the shore.
Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like atrue philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, whichhe took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, butjust so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when hehad been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he hadoften received wild communications of approval, denunciation or evenlove; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply ofa visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back ofthe card was written in French and in green ink: "If you ever retire andbecome respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have metall the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting onedetective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in Frenchhistory." On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion,"Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk."
He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining thathe had been a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In hisyouth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; theescapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung tomen's minds became of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of theinsulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice inSicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recentyears seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. Butwhen Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrity andsettled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprisevisit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether he shouldfind the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently smalland forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than heexpected.
They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grassesand short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to themearly, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light.To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a largelemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above theirheads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright.Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfinand adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods. Standingup thus against the large low moon the daisies really seemed to be giantdaisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded themof the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficedto sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make themgaze upwards at the grass.
"By Jove!" said Flambeau; "it's like being in fairyland."
Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. Hismovement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare,what was the matter.
"The people who wrote the mediæval ballads," answered the priest, "knewmore about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen infairyland."
"Oh bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such aninnocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come.We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood."
"All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong toenter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."
They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of thesky and the pale gold of the moon grew fainter and fainter, and fadedinto that vast colourless cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn.When the first faint stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizonfrom end to end they were broken by the black bulk of a town or villagewhich sat on the river just ahead of them. It was already an easytwilight, in which all things were visible, when they came under thehanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet. The houses, withtheir long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at theriver, like huge grey and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawnhad already turned to working daylight before they saw any livingcreature on the wharves and bridges of that silent town. Eventually theysaw a very placid and prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a faceas round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around thelow arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By animpulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in theswaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island orReed House. The prosperous man's smile grew slightly more expansive, andhe simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeauwent ahead without further speech.
The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy andsilent reaches of river; but before the search had become monotonousthey had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silenceof a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrestedthem. For in the middle of this wider piece of water, fringed on everyside with rushes, lay a long, low islet along which ran a long, lowhouse or bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane. Theupstanding rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow, thesloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwisethe long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morningbreeze rustled the reeds round the island and sang in the strange ribbedhouse as in a giant pan-pipe.
"By George!" cried Flambeau; "here is the place, after all! Here is ReedIsland if ever there was one. Here is Reed House, if it is anywhere. Ibelieve that fat man with whiskers was a fairy."
"Perhaps," remarked Father Brown impartially. "If he was, he was a badfairy."
But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore inthe rattling reeds, and they stood on the long, quaint islet beside theold and silent house.
The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the onlylanding-stage; the main entrance was on the other side, and looked downthe long island garden. The visitors approached it, therefore, by asmall path running round nearly three sides of the house, close underthe low eaves. Through three different windows on three different sidesthey looked in on the same long, well-lit room, panelled in light wood,with a large number of looking-glasses, and laid out as for an elegantlunch. The front door, when they came round to it at last, was flankedby two turquoise-blue flower-pots. It was opened by a butler of thedrearier type—long, lean, grey and listless—who murmured that PrinceSaradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the housebeing kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card withthe scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face ofthis depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy thathe suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be hereany minute," he said, "and would be distressed to have just missed anygentleman he had invited. We have orders always to keep a little coldlunch for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to beoffered."
Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assentedgracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously intothe long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable aboutit, except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows withmany long, low oblongs of looking-glass, which gave a singular air oflightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow likelunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind hung in thecorners: one a large grey photograph of a very young man in uniform,another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeauwhether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortlyin the negative; it was the prince's younger brother, Captain StephenSaradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenlyand lose all taste for conversation.
After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs, theguests were introduced to the garden, the library, and thehousekeeper—a dark handsome lady, of no little majesty, and rather likea plutonic Madonna. It appeared that she and the butler were the onlysurvivors of the prince's original foreign ménage, all the otherservants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by thehousekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, but shespoke with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt thatAnthony was a Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, thebutler, also had a faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue andtraining English as are many of the most polished men-servants of thecosmopolitan nobility.
Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminoussadness. Hours passed in it like days. The long, well-windowed roomswere full of daylight, but it seemed a dead daylight. And through allother incidental noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or thepassing feet of servants, they could hear on all sides of the house themelancholy noise of the river.
"We have taken a wrong turning and come to a wrong place," said FatherBrown, looking out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silverflood. "Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right personin the wrong place."
Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic littleman, and in those few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeperinto the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had thatknack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and sayingscarcely a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances allthat in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was naturallyuncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost animal affection forhis master, who, he said, had been very badly treated. The Chiefoffender seemed to be his highness's brother, whose name alone wouldlengthen the old man's lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into asneer. Captain Stephen was a ne'er-do-well, apparently, and had drainedhis benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly fromfashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul,the butler, would say, and Paul was obviously a partisan.
The Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brownfancied, somewhat less content. Her tone about her master was faintlyacid, though not without a certain awe. Flambeau and his friend werestanding in the room of the looking-glasses examining the red sketch ofthe two boys when the housekeeper swept in swiftly on some domesticerrand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering, glass-panelled placethat anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors at once; andFather Brown, without turning round, stopped in the middle of a sentenceof family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to thepicture, was already saying in a loud voice: "The brothers Saradine, Isuppose. They both look innocent enough. It would be hard to say whichis the good brother and which the bad." Then realizing the lady'spresence, he turned the conversation with some triviality, and strolledout into the garden. But Father Brown still gazed steadily at the redcrayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at Father Brown.
She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darklywith a curious and painful wonder—as of one doubtful of a stranger'sidentity or purpose. Whether the little priest's coat and creed touchedsome southern memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knewmore than he did, she said to him in a low voice, as to a fellowplotter: "He is right enough in one way, your friend. He says it wouldbe hard to pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be hard, itwould be mighty hard, to pick out the good one."
"I don't understand you," said Father Brown, and began to move away.
The woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort ofsavage stoop, like a bull lowering his horns.
"There isn't a good one," she hissed. "There was badness enough in thecaptain taking all that money, but I don't think there was much goodnessin the prince giving it. The captain's not the only man with somethingagainst him."
A light dawned on the cleric's averted face, and his mouth formedsilently the word "blackmail." Even as he did so the woman turned anabrupt white face over her shoulder and almost fell. The door had openedsoundlessly and the pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. By theweird trick of the reflecting walls, it seemed as if five Pauls hadentered by five doors simultaneously.
"His Highness," he said, "has just arrived."
In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside the firstwindow, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted stage. An instant laterhe passed at the second window, and the many mirrors repainted insuccessive frames the same eagle profile and marching figure. He waserect and alert, but his hair was white and his complexion of an oddivory yellow. He had that short, curved Roman nose which generally goeswith long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly masked bymoustache and imperial. The moustache was much darker than the beard,giving an effect slightly theatrical, and he was dressed up to the samedashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellowwaistcoat and yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked.When he came round to the front door they heard the stiff Paul open it,and heard the new arrival say cheerfully: "Well, you see I have come."The stiff Mr. Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for a fewminutes their conversation could not be heard. Then the butler said:"Everything is at your disposal"; and the glove-flapping Prince Saradinecame gaily into the room to greet them. They beheld once more thatspectral scene—five princes entering a room with five doors.
The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the table and offeredhis hand quite cordially.
"Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau," he said. "Know you very wellby reputation, if that's not an indiscreet remark."
"Not at all," answered Flambeau, laughing. "I am not sensitive. Very fewreputations are gained by unsullied virtue."
The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the retort had anypersonal point; then he laughed also and offered chairs to everyone,including himself.
"Pleasant little place this, I think," he said with a detached air. "Notmuch to do, I fear; but the fishing is really good."
The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare of a baby, washaunted by some fancy that escaped definition. He looked at the grey,carefully curled hair, yellow-white visage, and slim, somewhat foppishfigure. These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononcé,like the outfit of a figure behind the footlights. The nameless interestlay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown wastormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. The manlooked like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he remembered themirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychological effect of thatmultiplication of human masks.
Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between his guestswith great gaiety and tact. Finding the detective of a sporting turn andeager to employ his holiday, he guided Flambeau and Flambeau's boat downto the best fishing spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoe intwenty minutes to join Father Brown in the library and plunge equallypolitely into the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to knowa great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these notthe most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly theslang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motleysocieties, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gamblinghells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. FatherBrown knew that the once celebrated Saradine had spent his last fewyears in almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that thetravels were so disreputable or so amusing.
Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world, Prince Saradineradiated, to such sensitive observers as the priest, a certainatmosphere of the restless and even the unreliable. His face wasfastidious, but his eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like aman shaken by drink or drugs; and he neither had, nor professed to have,his hand on the helm of household affairs. All these were left to thetwo old servants, especially to the butler, who was plainly the centralpillar of the house. Mr. Paul indeed, was not so much a butler as a sortof steward, or even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost asmuch pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and heconsulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly—ratheras if he were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mereshadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait onlyon the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers whichhad half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder.Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain hecould not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretiveabout Saradine that made the tale by no means incredible.
When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and themirrors yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowybanks, and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon hisdwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evilfairyland crossed the priest's mind again like a grey cloud. "I wishFlambeau were back," he muttered.
"Do you believe in doom?" asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.
"No," answered his guest. "I believe in Doomsday."
The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singularmanner, his face in shadow against the sunset. "What do you mean?" heasked.
"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," answeredFather Brown. "The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything;they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will comeon the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."
The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowedface the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought explodedsilently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine'sblend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince——Was he perfectlysane? He was repeating, "The wrong person—the wrong person," many moretimes than was natural in a social exclamation.
Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors beforehim he could see the silent door standing open, and the silent Mr. Paulstanding in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.
"I thought it better to announce at once," he said, with the same stiffrespectfulness as of an old family lawyer, "a boat rowed by six men hascome to the landing-stage, and there's a gentleman sitting in thestern."
"A boat!" repeated the prince; "a gentleman?" and he rose to his feet.
There was a startled silence punctuated only by the odd noise of thebird in the sedge; and then, before anyone could speak again, a new faceand figure passed in profile round the three sunlit windows, as theprince had passed an hour or two before. But except for the accidentthat both outlines were aquiline, they had little in common. Instead ofthe new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of antiquated orforeign shape; under it was a young and very solemn face, clean shaven,blue about its resolute chin, and carrying a faint suggestion of theyoung Napoleon. The association was assisted by something old and oddabout the whole get-up, as of a man who had never troubled to change thefashions of his fathers. He had a shabby blue frock coat, a red,soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of coarse white trousers commonamong the early Victorians, but strangely incongruous to-day. From allthis old clothes-shop his olive face stood out strangely young andmonstrously sincere.
"The deuce!" said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his white hat he wentto the front door himself, flinging it open on the sunset garden.
By that time the new-comer and his followers were drawn up on the lawnlike a small stage army. The six boatmen had pulled the boat well up onshore, and were guarding it almost menacingly holding their oars erectlike spears. They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. Butone of them stood forward beside the olive-faced young man in the redwaistcoat, and carried a large black case of unfamiliar form.
"Your name," said the young man, "is Saradine?"
Saradine assented rather negligently.
The new-comer had dull, dog-like brown eyes, as different as possiblefrom the restless and glittering grey eyes of the prince. But once againFather Brown was tortured with a sense of having seen somewhere areplica of the face; and once again he remembered the repetitions of theglass-panelled room, and put down the coincidence to that. "Confoundthis crystal palace!" he muttered. "One sees everything too many times.It's like a dream."
"If you are Prince Saradine," said the young man, "I may tell you thatmy name is Antonelli."
"Antonelli," repeated the prince languidly. "Somehow I remember thename."
"Permit me to present myself," said the young Italian.
With his left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned top hat; withhis right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across the facethat the white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blueflower-pots rocked upon its pedestal.
The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward; he sprang athis enemy's throat and almost bore him backwards to the grass. But hisenemy extricated himself with a singularly inappropriate air of hurriedpoliteness.
"That is all right," he said, panting and in halting English. "I haveinsulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco, open the case."
The man beside him with the earrings and the big black case proceeded tounlock it. He took out of it two long Italian rapiers, with splendidsteel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn.The strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow andvindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like crosses ina cemetery, and the line of the ranked rowers behind, gave it all an oddappearance of being some barbaric court of justice. But everything elsewas unchanged, so sudden had been the interruption. The sunset goldstill glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as announcingsome small but dreadful destiny.
"Prince Saradine," said the man called Antonelli; "when I was an infantin the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father wasthe more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to killyou. You and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass inSicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could imitateyou if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you allover the world, and you have always fled from me. But this is the end ofthe world—and of you. I have you now, and I give you the chance younever gave my father. Choose one of those swords."
Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to hesitate a moment, buthis ears were still singing with the blow, and he sprang forward andsnatched at one of the hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward,striving to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presencemade matters worse. Saradine was a French Freemason and a fierceatheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for theother man neither priest nor layman moved him at all. This young manwith the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was something far sternerthan a puritan—a pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of theearth; a man of the stone age—a man of stone.
One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ranback into the house. He found, however, that all the under-servants hadbeen given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only thesombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the momentshe turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the riddles ofthe house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the heavybrown eyes of Mrs. Anthony, and in a flash he saw half the story.
"Your son is outside," he said, without wasting words; "either he or theprince will be killed. Where is Mr. Paul?"
"He is at the landing-stage," said the woman faintly. "He is—heis—signalling for help."
"Mrs. Anthony," said Father Brown seriously, "there is no time fornonsense. My friend has his boat down the river, fishing. Your son'sboat is guarded by your son's men. There is only this one canoe; what isMr. Paul doing with it?"
"Santa Maria! I do not know," she said; and swooned all her length onthe matted floor.
Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her,shouted for help, and then rushed down to the landing-stage of thelittle island. But the canoe was already in mid-stream, and old Paul waspulling and pushing it up the river with an energy incredible at hisyears.
"I will save my master," he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally. "I willsave him yet!"
Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggledup-stream, and pray that the old man might waken the little town intime.
"A duel is bad enough," he muttered, rubbing up his rough dust-colouredhair, "but there's something wrong about this duel, even as a duel. Ifeel it in my bones. But what can it be?"
As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, he heardfrom the other end of the island garden a small but unmistakablesound—the cold concussion of steel. He turned his head.
Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip ofturf beyond the last rank of roses, the duellists had already crossedswords. Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant asthey were, every detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats,but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red waistcoatand white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like thecolours of the dancing clockwork dolls. The two swords sparkled frompoint to pommel like two diamond pins. There was something frightful inthe two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like twobutterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.
Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like awheel. But when he came to the field of combat he found he was both toolate and too early—too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of thegrim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate anydisastrous issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched,the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, theSicilian using his with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches canever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled andsparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fightwas balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest;by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police. Itwould be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, forFlambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there wasno sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or thepolice. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost islandin that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in thePacific.
Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to arattle, the prince's arms flew up, and the point shot out behind betweenhis shoulder-blades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almostlike one throwing the half of a boy's cart-wheel. The sword flew fromhis hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant river; and hehimself sank with so earth-shaking a subsidence that he broke a bigrose-tree with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of redearth—like the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had madeblood-offering to the ghost of his father.
The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse, but only to maketoo sure that it was a corpse. As he was still trying some last hopelesstests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, andsaw a police-boat shoot up to the landing-stage with constables andother important people, including the excited Paul. The little priestrose with a distinctly dubious grimace.
"Now, why on earth," he muttered, "why on earth couldn't he have comebefore?"
Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an invasion oftownsfolk and police, and the latter had put their hands on thevictorious duellist, ritually reminding him that anything he said mightbe used against him.
"I shall not say anything," said the monomaniac, with a wonderful andpeaceful face. "I shall never say anything any more. I am very happy,and I only want to be hanged."
Then he shut his mouth as they led him away, and it is the strange butcertain truth that he never opened it again in this world, except to say"Guilty" at his trial.
Father Brown had stared at the suddenly crowded garden, the arrest ofthe man of blood, the carrying away of the corpse after its examinationby the doctor, rather as one watches the break-up of some ugly dream; hewas motionless, like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and addressas a witness, but declined their offer of a boat to the shore, andremained alone in the island garden, gazing at the broken rose bush andthe whole green theatre of that swift and inexplicable tragedy. Thelight died along the river; mist rose in the marshy banks; a few belatedbirds flitted fitfully across.
Stuck stubbornly in his sub-consciousness (which was an unusually livelyone) was an unspeakable certainty that there was something stillunexplained. This sense that had clung to him all day could not be fullyexplained by his fancy about "looking-glass land." Somehow he had notseen the real story, but some game or masque. And yet people do not gethanged or run through the body for the sake of a charade.
As he sat on the steps of the landing-stage ruminating he grew consciousof the tall, dark streak of a sail coming silently down the shiningriver, and sprang to his feet with such a back-rush of feeling that healmost wept.
"Flambeau!" he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again andagain, much to the astonishment of that sportsman, as he came on shorewith his fishing tackle. "Flambeau," he said, "so you're not killed?"
"Killed!" repeated the angler in great astonishment. "And why should Ibe killed?"
"Oh, because nearly everybody else is," said his companion ratherwildly. "Saradine got murdered, and Antonelli wants to be hanged, andhis mother's fainted, and I, for one, don't know whether I'm in thisworld or the next. But, thank God, you're in the same one." And he tookthe bewildered Flambeau's arm.
As they turned from the landing-stage they came under the eaves of thelow bamboo house and looked in through one of the windows, as they haddone on their first arrival. They beheld a lamp-lit interior wellcalculated to arrest their eyes. The table in the long dining-room hadbeen laid for dinner when Saradine's destroyer had fallen like astorm-bolt on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress, forMrs. Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the table, while atthe head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo: eating and drinking ofthe best, his bleared, bluish eyes standing queerly out of his face, hisgaunt countenance inscrutable, but by no means devoid of satisfaction.
With a gesture of powerful impatience, Flambeau rattled at the window,wrenched it open, and put an indignant head into the lamp-lit room.
"Well!" he cried; "I can understand you may need some refreshment, butreally to steal your master's dinner while he lies murdered in thegarden——"
"I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant life," repliedthe strange old gentleman placidly; "this dinner is one of the fewthings I have not stolen. This dinner and this house and garden happento belong to me."
A thought flashed across Flambeau's face. "You mean to say," he began,"that the will of Prince Saradine——"
"I am Prince Saradine," said the old man, munching a salted almond.
Father Brown, who was looking at the birds outside, jumped as if he wereshot, and put in at the window a pale face like a turnip.
"You are what?" he repeated in a shrill voice.
"Paul Prince Saradine, à vos ordres," said the venerable personpolitely, lifting a glass of sherry. "I live here very quietly, being adomestic kind of fellow; and for the sake of modesty I am called Mr.Paul, to distinguish me from my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. Hedied, I hear, recently—in the garden. Of course, it is not my fault ifenemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to the regrettableirregularity of his life. He was not a domestic character."
He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the opposite walljust above the bowed and sombre head of the woman. They saw plainly thefamily likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his oldshoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, buthis face did not alter.
"My God!" cried Flambeau after a pause; "he's laughing!"
"Come away," said Father Brown, who was quite white. "Come away fromthis house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again."
Night had sunk on rushes and river by the time they had pushed off fromthe island, and they went down-stream in the dark, warming themselveswith two big cigars that glowed like crimson ships' lanterns. FatherBrown took his cigar out of his mouth and said:
"I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's aprimitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so hediscovered that two enemies are better than one."
"I do not follow that," answered Flambeau.
"Oh, it's really simple," rejoined his friend. "Simple, though anythingbut innocent. Both the Saradines were scamps: but the prince, the elder,was the sort of scamp that gets to the top; and the younger, thecaptain, was the sort that sinks to the bottom. This squallid officerfell from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold uponhis brother the prince. Obviously it was for no light matter, for PrincePaul Saradine was frankly 'fast,' and had no reputation to lose as tothe mere sins of society. In plain fact, it was a hanging matter, andStephen literally had a rope round his brother's neck. He had somehowdiscovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could prove thatPaul murdered old Antonelli in the mountains. The captain raked in thehush money heavily for ten years, until even the prince's splendidfortune began to look a little foolish.
"But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his blood-suckingbrother. He knew that the son of Antonelli, a mere child at the time ofthe murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived onlyto avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen's legalproof), but with the old weapons of vendatta. The boy had practised armswith a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough touse them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel.The fact is that he began to flee for his life, passing from place toplace like a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon histrail. That was Prince Paul's position, and by no means a pretty one.The more money he spent on eluding Antonelli the less he had to silenceStephen. The more he gave to silence Stephen the less chance there wasof finally escaping Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself agreat man—a genius like Napoleon.
"Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered suddenly toboth of them. He gave way, like a Japanese wrestler, and his foes fellprostrate before him. He gave up the race round the world, and he gaveup his address to young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to hisbrother. He sent Stephen money enough for smart clothes and easy travel,with a letter saying roughly: 'This is all I have left. You have cleanedme out. I still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and acellar, and if you want more from me you must take that. Come and takepossession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friend oragent or anything.' He knew that the Sicilian had never seen theSaradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were somewhatalike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then he shaved his own face andwaited. The trap worked. The unhappy captain, in his new clothes,entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian'ssword.
"There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evilspirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues ofmankind. He took it for granted that the Italian's blow, when it came,would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that thevictim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so diewithout speech. It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli'schivalry proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations. Itwas then that I found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes. He wasfleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn whohe was.
"But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer andhe knew the fanatic. It is quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer,would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing apart, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal's trustin luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli, thefanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales ofhis family. Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight wasover. Then he roused the town, brought police, saw his two vanquishedenemies taken away for ever, and sat down smiling to his dinner."
"Laughing, God help us!" said Flambeau with a strong shudder. "Do theyget such ideas from Satan?"
"He's got that idea from you," answered the priest.
"God forbid!" ejaculated Flambeau. "From me? What do you mean?"
The priest pulled a visiting-card from his pocket and held it up in thefaint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled with green ink.
"Don't you remember his original invitation to you?" he asked; "and thecompliment to your criminal exploit? 'That trick of yours,' he says, 'ofgetting one detective to arrest the other?' He has just copied yourtrick. With an enemy on each side of him he slipped swiftly out of theway and let them collide and kill each other."
Flambeau tore Prince Saradine's card from the priest's hands and rent itsavagely in small pieces.
"There's the last of that old skull and crossbones," he said as hescattered the pieces upon the dark and disappearing waves of the stream;"but I should think it would poison the fishes."
The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened; afaint and vibrant colour as of morning changed the sky, and the moonbehind the grasses grew paler. They drifted in silence.
"Father," said Flambeau suddenly, "do you think it was all a dream?"
The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, butremained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of orchards came to them throughthe darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment itswayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onwarddown the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.
IX
THE HAMMER OF GOD
The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steep thatthe tall spire of its church seemed only like the peak of a smallmountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red withfires and always littered with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite tothis, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was "The Blue Boar," the onlyinn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leadenand silver daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke;though one was beginning the day and the other finishing it. The Rev.and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to someaustere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon.Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sittingin evening-dress on the bench outside "The Blue Boar," drinking what thephilosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass onTuesday or his first on Wednesday. The colonel was not particular.
The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really datingfrom the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine. Butit is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high inchivalric traditions. Few except the poor preserve traditions.Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had beenMohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria. But, likemore than one of the really ancient houses, they had rotted in the lasttwo centuries into mere drunkards and dandy degenerates, till there hadeven come a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardlyhuman about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronicresolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideouscharity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hairstartlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blond and leonine, buthis blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. Theywere a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches: oneach side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneerseemed to cut into his face. Over his evening clothes he wore acuriously pale yellow coat that looked more like a very light dressinggown than an overcoat, and on the back of his head was stuck anextraordinary broad-brimmed hat of a bright green colour, evidently someoriental curiosity caught up at random. He was proud of appearing insuch incongruous attires—proud of the fact that he always made themlook congruous.
His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the elegance, but hewas buttoned up to the chin in black, and his face was clean-shaven,cultivated and a little nervous. He seemed to live for nothing but hisreligion; but there were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who wasa Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic architecture rather than ofGod, and that his haunting of the church like a ghost was only anotherand purer turn of the almost morbid thirst for beauty which sent hisbrother raging after women and wine. This charge was doubtful, while theman's practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was mostly anignorant misunderstanding of the love of solitude and secret prayer, andwas founded on his being often found kneeling, not before the altar, butin peculiar places, in the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry. Hewas at the moment about to enter the church through the yard of thesmithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he saw his brother'scavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On the hypothesis that thecolonel was interested in the church he did not waste any speculations.There only remained the blacksmith's shop, and though the blacksmith wasa Puritan and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some scandalsabout a beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He flung a suspicious lookacross the shed, and the colonel stood up laughing to speak to him.
"Good morning, Wilfred," he said. "Like a good landlord I am watchingsleeplessly over my people. I am going to call on the blacksmith."
Wilfred looked at the ground and said: "The blacksmith is out. He isover at Greenford."
"I know," answered the other with silent laughter; "that is why I amcalling on him."
"Norman," said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in the road, "areyou ever afraid of thunderbolts?"
"What do you mean?" asked the colonel. "Is your hobby meteorology?"
"I mean," said Wilfred, without looking up, "do you ever think that Godmight strike you in the street?"
"I beg your pardon," said the colonel; "I see your hobby is folklore."
"I know your hobby is blasphemy," retorted the religious man, stung inthe one live place of his nature. "But if you do not fear God, you havegood reason to fear man."
The elder raised his eyebrows politely. "Fear man?" he said.
"Barnes the blacksmith is the biggest and strongest man for forty milesround," said the clergyman sternly. "I know you are no coward orweakling, but he could throw you over the wall."
This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by mouth and nostrildarkened and deepened. For a moment he stood with the heavy sneer on hisface. But in an instant Colonel Bohun had recovered his own cruel goodhumour and laughed, showing two dog-like front teeth under his yellowmoustache. "In that case, my dear Wilfred," he said quite carelessly,"it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come out partially inarmour."
And he took off the queer round hat covered with green, showing that itwas lined within with steel. Wilfred recognized it indeed as a lightJapanese or Chinese helmet torn down from a trophy that hung in the oldfamily hall.
"It was the first to hand," explained his brother airily; "always thenearest hat—and the nearest woman."
"The blacksmith is away at Greenford," said Wilfred quietly; "the timeof his return is unsettled."
And with that he turned and went into the church with bowed head,crossing himself like one who wishes to be quit of an unclean spirit. Hewas anxious to forget such grossness in the cool twilight of his tallGothic cloisters; but on that morning it was fated that his still roundof religious exercises should be everywhere arrested by small shocks. Ashe entered the church, hitherto always empty at that hour, a kneelingfigure rose hastily to its feet and came towards the full daylight ofthe doorway. When the curate saw it he stood still with surprise. Forthe early worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew ofthe blacksmith, one who neither would nor could care for the church orfor anything else. He was always called "Mad Joe," and seemed to have noother name; he was a dark, strong, slouching lad, with a heavy whiteface, dark straight hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed thepriest, his moon-calf countenance gave no hint of what he had been doingor thinking of. He had never been known to pray before. What sort ofprayers was he saying now? Extraordinary prayers surely.
Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see the idiot goout into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail himwith a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was thecolonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the seriousappearance of trying to hit it.
This ugly sunlight picture of the stupidity and cruelty of the earthsent the ascetic finally to his prayers for purification and newthoughts. He went up to a pew in the gallery, which brought him under acoloured window which he loved and which always quieted his spirit; ablue window with an angel carrying lilies. There he began to think lessabout the half-wit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He beganto think less of his evil brother, pacing like a lean lion in hishorrible hunger. He sank deeper and deeper into those cold and sweetcolours of silver blossoms and sapphire sky.
In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by Gibbs, the villagecobbler, who had been sent for him in some haste. He got to his feetwith promptitude, for he knew that no small matter would have broughtGibbs into such a place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages, anatheist, and his appearance in church was a shade more extraordinarythan Mad Joe's. It was a morning of theological enigmas.
"What is it?" asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but putting out atrembling hand for his hat.
The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was quite startlinglyrespectful, and even, as it were, huskily sympathetic.
"You must excuse me, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper, "but we didn'tthink it right not to let you know at once. I'm afraid a rather dreadfulthing has happened, sir. I'm afraid your brother——"
Wilfred clenched his frail hands. "What devilry has he done now?" hecried in involuntary passion.
"Why, sir," said the cobbler, coughing, "I'm afraid he's done nothing,and won't do anything. I'm afraid he's done for. You had really bettercome down, sir."
The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding stair which broughtthem out at an entrance rather higher than the street. Bohun saw thetragedy in one glance, flat underneath him like a plan. In the yard ofthe smithy were standing five or six men, mostly in black, one in aninspector's uniform. They included the doctor, the Presbyterianminister, and the priest from the Roman Catholic chapel to which theblacksmith's wife belonged. The latter was speaking to her, indeed, veryrapidly, in an undertone, as she, a magnificent woman with red-goldhair, was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups, and justclear of the main heap of hammers, lay a man in evening dress,spread-eagled and flat on his face. From the height above Wilfred couldhave sworn to every item of his costume and appearance, down to theBohun rings upon his fingers; but the skull was only a hideous splash,like a star of blackness and blood.
Wilfred Bohun gave but one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard.The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but scarcely tookany notice. He could only stammer out: "My brother is dead. What does itmean? What is this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappy silence; andthen the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered: "Plenty ofhorror, sir," he said, "but not much mystery."
"What do you mean?" asked Wilfred, with a white face.
"It's plain enough," answered Gibbs. "There is only one man for fortymiles round that could have struck such a blow as that, and he's the manthat had most reason to."
"We must not prejudge anything," put in the doctor, a tall,black-bearded man, rather nervously; "but it is competent for me tocorroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about the nature of the blow, sir; it isan incredible blow. Mr. Gibbs says that only one man in this districtcould have done it. I should have said myself that nobody could havedone it."
A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate."I can hardly understand," he said.
"Mr. Bohun," said the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally failme. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like anegg-shell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the groundlike bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of a giant."
He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then headded: "The thing has one advantage—that it clears most people ofsuspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in thecountry were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infantwould be acquitted of stealing the Nelson Column."
"That's what I say," repeated the cobbler obstinately, "there's only oneman that could have done it, and he's the man that would have done it.Where's Simeon Barnes, the blacksmith?"
"He's over at Greenford," faltered the curate.
"More likely over in France," muttered the cobbler.
"No; he is in neither of those places," said a small and colourlessvoice, which came from the little Roman priest who had joined the group."As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment."
The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubblybrown hair and a round and stolid face. But if he had been as splendidas Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyoneturned round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plainbelow, along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and with ahammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and giganticman, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He waswalking and talking quietly with two other men; and though he was neverspecially cheerful, he seemed quite at his ease.
"My God!" cried the atheistic cobbler; "and there's the hammer he did itwith."
"No," said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a sandy moustachespeaking for the first time. "There's the hammer he did it with, overthere by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as theyare."
All glanced round, and the short priest went across and looked down insilence at the tool where it lay. It was one of the smallest and thelightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among therest; but on the iron edge of it were blood and yellow hair.
After a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there wasa new note in his dull voice. "Mr. Gibbs was hardly right," he said, "insaying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why sobig a man should attempt so big a blow with so little a hammer."
"Oh, never mind that," cried Gibbs, in a fever. "What are we to do withSimeon Barnes?"
"Leave him alone," said the priest quietly. "He is coming here ofhimself. I know these two men with him. They are very good fellows fromGreenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel."
Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church andstrode into his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and thehammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrablepropriety, immediately went up to him.
"I won't ask you, Mr. Barnes," he said, "whether you know anything aboutwhat has happened here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don't know,and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the form ofarresting you in the King's name for the murder of Colonel NormanBohun."
"You are not bound to say anything," said the cobbler in officiousexcitement. "They've got to prove everything. They haven't proved yetthat it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that."
"That won't wash," said the doctor aside to the priest. "That's out ofdetective stories. I was the colonel's medical man, and I knew his bodybetter than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. Thesecond and third fingers were the same in length. Oh, that's the colonelright enough."
As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of themotionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.
"Is Colonel Bohun dead?" said the smith quite calmly. "Then he'sdamned."
"Don't say anything! Oh, don't say anything," cried the atheist cobbler,dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system.For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.
The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of afanatic.
"It is well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world's lawfavours you," he said; "but God guards His own in His pocket, as youshall see this day."
Then he pointed to the colonel and said: "When did this dog die in hissins?"
"Moderate your language," said the doctor.
"Moderate the Bible's language, and I'll moderate mine. When did hedie?"
"I saw him alive at six o'clock this morning," stammered Wilfred Bohun.
"God is good," said the smith. "Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightestobjection to being arrested. It is you who may object to arresting me. Idon't mind leaving the court without a stain on my character. You domind, perhaps, leaving the court with a bad set-back in your career."
The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with alively eye—as did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, whowas still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadfulblow.
"There are two men standing outside this shop," went on the blacksmithwith ponderous lucidity, "good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know,who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till daybreak andlong after in the committee-room of our Revival Mission, which sits allnight, we save souls so fast. In Greenford itself twenty people couldswear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector, Iwould let you walk on to your downfall; but, as a Christian man, I feelbound to give you your chance and ask you whether you will hear my alibinow or in court."
The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed and said. "Of course Ishould be glad to clear you altogether now."
The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, andreturned to his two friends from Greenford, who were indeed friends ofnearly everyone present. Each of them said a few words which no one everthought of disbelieving. When they had spoken the innocence of Simeonstood up as solid as the great church above them.
One of those silences struck the group which are more strange andinsufferable than any speech. Madly, in order to make conversation, thecurate said to the Catholic priest:
"You seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown."
"Yes, I am," said Father Brown; "why is it such a small hammer?"
The doctor swung round on him.
"By George, that's true," he cried; "who would use a little hammer withten larger hammers lying about?"
Then he lowered his voice in the curate's ear and said: "Only the kindof person that can't lift a large hammer. It is not a question of forceor courage between the sexes. It's a question of lifting power in theshoulders. A bold woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer andnever turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle with a heavy one."
Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotized horror, whileFather Brown listened with his head a little on one side, reallyinterested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:
"Why do those idiots always assume that the only person who hates thewife's lover is the wife's husband? Nine times out of ten the person whomost hates the wife's lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence ortreachery he had shown her—look there?"
He made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench.She had lifted her head at last and the tears were drying on hersplendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electricglare that had in it something of idiocy.
The Rev. William Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desireto know; but Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown fromthe furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.
"You are like so many doctors," he said; "your mental science is reallysuggestive. It is your physical science that is utterly impossible. Iagree that the woman wants to kill the co-respondent much more than thepetitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a smallhammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physicalimpossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man's skull outflat like that." Then he added reflectively, after a pause: "Thesepeople haven't grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing aniron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at thatwoman. Look at her arms."
Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily:"Well, I may be wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stickto the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammerif he could use a big hammer."
With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to hishead and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant theydropped, and he cried: "That was the word I wanted; you have said theword."
Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: "The words you said were,'No man but an idiot would pick up the small hammer.'"
"Yes," said the doctor. "Well?"
"Well," said the curate, "no man but an idiot did." The rest stared athim with eyes arrested and riveted, and he went on in a febrile andfeminine agitation.
"I am a priest," he cried unsteadily, "and a priest should be no shedderof blood. I—I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. And Ithank God that I see the criminal clearly now—because he is a criminalwho cannot be brought to the gallows."
"You will not denounce him?" inquired the doctor.
"He would not be hanged if I did denounce him," answered Wilfred, with awild but curiously happy smile. "When I went into the church thismorning I found a madman praying there—that poor Joe, who has beenwrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with such strange folkit is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down.Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a man. When I last sawpoor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking him."
"By Jove!" cried the doctor, "this is talking at last. But how do youexplain——"
The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his ownglimpse of the truth. "Don't you see; don't you see," he criedfeverishly, "that is the only theory that covers both the queer things,that answers both the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer andthe big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow, but he would nothave chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the littlehammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman mighthave done both. As for the little hammer—why, he was mad and might havepicked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor,that a maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?"
The doctor drew a deep breath and then said: "By golly, I believe you'vegot it."
Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily asto prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite soinsignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he saidwith marked respect: "Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propoundedwhich holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think,therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, thatit is not the true one." And with that the odd little man walked awayand stared again at the hammer.
"That fellow seems to know more than he ought to," whispered the doctorpeevishly to Wilfred. "Those popish priests are deucedly sly."
"No, no," said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. "It was the lunatic.It was the lunatic."
The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from themore official group containing the inspector and the man he hadarrested. Now, however, that their own party had broken up, they heardvoices from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then lookeddown again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud voice:
"I hope I've convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I'm a strong man, as you say,but I couldn't have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammerhasn't any wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges andfields."
The inspector laughed amicably and said: "No; I think you can beconsidered out of it, though it's one of the rummiest coincidences Iever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can infinding a man as big and strong as yourself. By George! you might beuseful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at theman?"
"I may have a guess," said the pale smith, "but it is not at a man."Then, seeing the sacred eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he puthis huge hand on her shoulder and said: "Nor a woman either."
"What do you mean?" asked the inspector jocularly. "You don't think cowsuse hammers, do you?"
"I think no thing of flesh held that hammer," said the blacksmith in astifled voice; "mortally speaking, I think the man died alone."
Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burningeyes.
"Do you mean to say, Barnes," came the sharp voice of the cobbler, "thatthe hammer jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?"
"Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger," cried Simeon; "you clergymenwho tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. Ibelieve that One who walks invisible in every house defended the honourof mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe theforce in that blow was just the force there is in earthquakes, and noforce less."
Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: "I told Norman myselfto beware of the thunderbolt."
"That agent is outside my jurisdiction," said the inspector with aslight smile.
"You are not outside His," answered the smith; "see you to it." And,turning his broad back, he went into the house.
The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy andfriendly way with him. "Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,"he said. "May I look inside your church? I hear it's one the oldest inEngland. We take some interest, you know," he added with a comicalgrimace, "in old English churches."
Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. Buthe nodded rather eagerly, being only too ready to explain the Gothicsplendours to someone more likely to be sympathetic than thePresbyterian blacksmith or the atheist cobbler.
"By all means," he said; "let us go in at this side." And he led the wayinto the high side entrance at the top of the flight of steps, FatherBrown was mounting the first step to follow him when he felt a hand onhis shoulder, and turned to behold the dark, thin figure of the doctor,his face darker yet with suspicion.
"Sir," said the physician harshly, "you appear to know some secrets inthis black business. May I ask if you are going to keep them toyourself?"
"Why, doctor," answered the priest, smiling quite pleasantly, "there isone very good reason why a man of my trade would keep things to himselfwhen he is not sure of them, and that is that it is so constantly hisduty to keep them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you think Ihave been discourteously reticent with you or anyone, I will go to theextreme limit of my custom. I will give you two very large hints."
"Well, sir?" said the doctor gloomily.
"First," said Father Brown quietly, "the thing is quite in your ownprovince. It is a matter of physical science. The blacksmith ismistaken, not perhaps in saying that the blow was divine, but certainlyin saying that it came by a miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, exceptin so far as man is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked andyet half-heroic heart. The force that smashed that skull was a forcewell known to scientists—one of the most frequently debated of the lawsof nature."
The doctor, who was looking at him with frowning intentness, only said:"And the other hint?"
"The other hint is this," said the priest: "Do you remember theblacksmith, though he believes in miracles, talking scornfully of theimpossible fairy tale that his hammer had wings and flew half a mileacross country?"
"Yes," said the doctor, "I remember that."
"Well," added Father Brown, with a broad smile, "that fairy tale was thenearest thing to the real truth that has been said to-day." And withthat he turned his back and stumped up the steps after the curate.
The Reverend Wilfred, who had been waiting for him, pale and impatient,as if this little delay were the last straw for his nerves, led himimmediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of thegallery closest to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful window withthe angel. The little Latin priest explored and admired everythingexhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the time. Whenin the course of his investigation he found the side exit and thewinding stair down which Wilfred had rushed to find his brother dead,Father Brown ran not down but up, with the agility of a monkey, and hisclear voice came from an outer platform above.
"Come up here, Mr. Bohun," he called. "The air will do you good."
Bohun followed him, and came out on a kind of stone gallery or balconyoutside the building, from which one could see the illimitable plain inwhich their small hill stood, wooded away to the purple horizon anddotted with villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite smallbeneath them, was the blacksmith's yard, where the inspector still stoodtaking notes and the corpse still lay like a smashed fly.
"Might be the map of the world, mightn't it?" said Father Brown.
"Yes," said Bohun very gravely, and nodded his head.
Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the Gothic buildingplunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin tosuicide. There is that element of Titan energy in the architecture ofthe Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seemsto be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. Thischurch was hewn out of ancient and silent stone, bearded with oldfungoids and stained with the nests of birds. And yet, when they saw itfrom below, it sprang like a fountain at the stars; and when they sawit, as now, from above, it poured like a cataract into a voiceless pit.For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terribleaspect of the Gothic: the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion,the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great things small and smallthings great; a topsy-turvydom of stone in the mid-air. Details ofstone, enormous by their proximity, were relieved against a pattern offields and farms, pygmy in their distance. A carved bird or beast at acorner seemed like some vast walking or flying dragon wasting thepastures and villages below. The whole atmosphere was dizzy anddangerous, as if men were upheld in air amid the gyrating wings ofcolossal genii; and the whole of that old church, as tall and rich as acathedral, seemed to sit upon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.
"I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on thesehigh places even to pray," said Father Brown. "Heights were made to belooked at, not to be looked from."
"Do you mean that one may fall over," asked Wilfred.
"I mean that one's soul may fall if one's body doesn't," said the otherpriest.
"I scarcely understand you," remarked Bohun indistinctly.
"Look at that blacksmith, for instance," went on Father Brown calmly; "agood man, but not a Christian—hard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, hisScotch religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags,and learnt to look down on the world more than to look up at heaven.Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley;only small things from the peak."
"But he—he didn't do it," said Bohun tremulously.
"No," said the other in an odd voice; "we know he didn't do it."
After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain withhis pale grey eyes. "I knew a man," he said, "who began by worshippingwith others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonelyplaces to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. Andonce in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turnunder him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he wasGod. So that though he was a good man, he committed a great crime."
Wilfred's face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and whiteas they tightened on the parapet of stone.
"He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down thesinner. He would never have had such a thought if he had been kneelingwith other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about likeinsects. He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent andevident by a bright green hat—a poisonous insect."
Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no othersound till Father Brown went on.
"This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awfulengines of nature; I mean gravitation, that mad and quickening rush bywhich all earth's creatures fly back to her heart when released. See,the inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were totoss a pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bullet bythe time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer—even a smallhammer——"
Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had himin a minute by the collar.
"Not by that door," he said quite gently; "that door leads to hell."
Bohun staggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightfuleyes.
"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have alldevils in my heart. Listen to me," he said after a short pause. "I knowwhat you did—at least, I can guess the great part of it. When you leftyour brother you were racked with no unrighteous rage to the extent eventhat you snatched up the small hammer, half inclined to kill him withhis foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttonedcoat instead, and rushed into the church. You pray wildly in manyplaces, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and on a higherplatform still, from which you could see the colonel's Eastern hat likethe back of a green beetle crawling about. Then something snapped inyour soul, and you let God's thunderbolt fall."
Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voice: "How didyou know that his hat looked like a green beetle?"
"Oh, that," said the other with the shadow of a smile, "that was commonsense. But hear me further. I say I know all this; but no one else shallknow it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I willseal this with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are manyreasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to you becauseyou have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not helpto fix the crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, whenthat was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile, because you knewthat he could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is mybusiness to find in assassins. And now come down into the village, andgo your own way as free as the wind; for I have said my last word."
They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out intothe sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun carefully unlatched the woodengate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: "I wish to givemyself up; I have killed my brother."
X
THE EYE OF APOLLO
That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency,which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and morefrom its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenithover Westminster, and the two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One manwas very tall and the other very short; they might even have beenfantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of Parliament and thehumbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clericaldress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau,private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile offlats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the shortman was the Rev. J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier's Church,Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell deathbed to see the newoffices of his friend.
The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and Americanalso in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones and lifts.But it was barely finished and still understaffed: only three tenantshad moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also wasthe office just below him; the two floors above that and the threefloors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new towerof flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a few relics ofscaffolding, the one glaring object was erected outside the office justabove Flambeau's. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye,surrounded with rays of gold, and taking up as much room as two or threeoffice windows.
"What on earth is that?" asked Father Brown, and stood still.
"Oh, a new religion," said Flambeau, laughing; "one of those newreligions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any. Ratherlike Christian Science, I should think. The fact is that a fellowcalling himself Kalon (I don't know what his name is, except that itcan't be that) has taken the flat just above me. I have two ladytypewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug on top. Hecalls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he worships the sun."
"Let him look out," said Father Brown. "The sun was the cruellest of allthe gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?"
"As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs," answered Flambeau, "thata man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two greatsymbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man werereally healthy he could stare at the sun."
"If a man were really healthy," said Father Brown, "he would not botherto stare at it."
"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion," went onFlambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that it can cure allphysical diseases."
"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father Brown, with aserious curiosity.
"And what is the one spiritual disease?" asked Flambeau, smiling.
"Oh, thinking one is quite well," said his friend.
Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below him thanin the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable ofconceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and newreligions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. Buthumanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking;moreover, the ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The officewas kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall andstriking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one ofthose women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cutedge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She hadeyes of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel ratherthan of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stifffor its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, alittle greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore abusiness-like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There arethousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, butthe interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparentposition.
For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest andhalf a county, as well as great wealth; she had been brought up incastles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modernwoman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higherexistence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that therewould have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to hermasterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for useupon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business,the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributedin various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work amongwomen. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightlyprosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leaderwith a dog-like affection which was somehow more attractive—with itstouch of tragedy—than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For PaulineStacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny itsexistence.
Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much onthe first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outsidethe lift in the entrance-hall waiting for the lift-boy, who generallyconducts strangers to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falcon ofa girl had openly refused to endure such official delay. She saidsharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent onboys—or on men either. Though her flat was only three floors above, shemanaged in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a great many ofher fundamental views in an off-hand manner; they were to the generaleffect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern workingmachinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger againstthose who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance.Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines, just as shecould manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeauopening the lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his ownapartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of suchspit-fire self-dependence.
She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures ofher thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive. Once Flambeauentered her office on some typewriting business, and found she had justflung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle ofthe floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of anethical tirade about the "sickly medical notions" and the morbidadmission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She dared her sisterto bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. Sheasked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glasseyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.
Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain fromasking Miss Pauline (with direct French logic) why a pair of spectacleswas a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if sciencemight help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other.
"That is so different," said Pauline Stacey loftily. "Batteries andmotors and all those things are marks of the force of man—yes, Mr.Flambeau, and the force of women, too! We shall take our turn at thesegreat engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high andsplendid—that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters thedoctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick onlegs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I wasfree-born, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these thingsbecause they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in powerand courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare at thesun, and so they can't do it without blinking. But why among the starsshould there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and Iwill open my eyes and stare at him, whenever I choose."
"Your eyes," said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, "will dazzle the sun."He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partlybecause it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairsto his floor he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: "Soshe has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his goldeneye." For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon,he had heard of his special notion about sun-gazing.
He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above andbelow him was close and increasing. The man who called himself Kalon wasa magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiffof Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much betterlooking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung backlike a lion's. In structure he was the blond beast of Nietzsche, but allthis animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuineintellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxonkings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. And thisdespite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact that hehad an office half-way up a building in Victoria Street; that the clerk(a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room,between him and the corridor; that his name was on a brass plate, andthe gilt emblem of his creed hung above the street, like theadvertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away fromthe man called Kalon the vivid oppression and inspiration that came fromhis soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence of thisquack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loosejacket-suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office hewas a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the whitevestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily salutedthe sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the streetpeople sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the daythe new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face ofall Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once atdaybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it waswhile the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers ofParliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau,first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo.
Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phœbus, andplunged into the porch of the tall building without even looking for hisclerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a professionalinterest in ritual or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery,stopped and stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper, just as hemight have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon the Prophetwas already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands, and thesound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all the way downthe busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middleof it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disk. It is doubtful if hesaw anything or anyone on this earth; it is substantially certain thathe did not see a stunted, round-faced priest who, in the crowd below,looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startlingdifference between even these two far-divided men. Father Brown couldnot look at anything without blinking; but the priest of Apollo couldlook on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid.
"O sun," cried the prophet, "O star that art too great to be allowedamong the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret spotthat is called space. White father of all white unwearied things, whiteflames and white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocentthan all thy most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into thepeace of which——"
A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with astrident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of themansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they alldeafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed fora moment to fill half the street with bad news—bad news that was allthe worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained stillafter the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balconyabove, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.
At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in thedoorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the topof his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for asurgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance hisfriend Father Brown slipped in insignificantly after him. Even as heducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificentmelody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy godwho is the friend of fountains and flowers.
Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round theenclosed space into which the lift commonly descended. But the lift hadnot descended. Something else had descended; something that ought tohave come by a lift.
For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seen thebrained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied theexistence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it wasPauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not theslightest doubt that she was dead.
He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or dislikedher; there was so much both to like and dislike. But she had been aperson to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbedhim with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her prettyface and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness which is allthe bitterness of death. In an instant, like a bolt from the blue, likea thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had beendashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was itsuicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was itmurder? But who was there in those hardly-inhabited flats to murderanybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong andsuddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice,habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the lastfifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god.When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, heturned his swarthy face and said abruptly.
"Then, if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?"
"Perhaps," said the other, "we might go upstairs and find out. We havehalf an hour before the police will move."
Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons,Flambeau dashed up the stairs to the typewriting office, found itutterly empty, and dashed up to his own. Having entered that, hereturned with a new and white face to his friend.
"Her sister," he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, "her sister seemsto have gone out for a walk."
Father Brown nodded. "Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sunman," he said. "If I were you I should just verify that, and then let ustalk it over in your office. No," he added suddenly, as if rememberingsomething; "shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, intheir office downstairs."
Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to theempty flat of the Staceys, where that impenetrable pastor took a largered-leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see thestairs and landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In aboutfour minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only in theirsolemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the deadwoman—evidently she had been upstairs in the temporarytemple of Apollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself,his litany finished, sweeping down the empty stairs in uttermagnificence—something in his white robes, beard and parted hair hadthe look of Doré's Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third was Flambeau,black-browed and somewhat bewildered.
Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touchedwith grey, walked straight to her own desk and set out her papers with apractical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If MissJoan Stacey was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regardedher for some time with an odd little smile, and then, without taking hiseves off her, addressed himself to somebody else.
"Prophet," he said, presumably addressing Kalon, "I wish you would tellme a lot about your religion."
"I shall be proud to do it," said Kalon, inclining his still crownedhead, "but I am not sure that I understand."
"Why, it's like this," said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way."We are taught that if a man has really bad first principles, that mustbe partly his fault. But, for all that, we can make some differencebetween a man who insults his quite clear conscience more or lesscrowded with sophistries. Now, do you really think that murder is wrongat all?"
"Is this an accusation?" asked Kalon very quietly.
"No," answered Brown, equally gently, "it is the speech for thedefence."
In the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apolloslowly rose, and really it was like the rising of the sun. He filledthat room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt hecould as easily have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed tohang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture seemed toextend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of themodern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a round, black blotupon some splendour of Hellas.
"We meet at last, Caiaphas," said the prophet. "Your church and mine arethe only realities on this earth. I adore the sun, and you the darkeningof the sun; you are the priest of the dying, and I of the living God.Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of your coat andcreed. All your church is but a black police; you are only spies anddetectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether bytreachery or torture. You would convict men of crime, I would convictthem of innocence. You would convince them of sin, I would convince themof virtue.
"Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away yourbaseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly could you understand howlittle I care whether you can convict me or no. The things you calldisgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in achild's toybook to a man once grown up. You said you were offering thespeech for the defence. I care so little for the cloud-land of this lifethat I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but onething that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say itmyself. The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after suchmanner as your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sternerthan you will ever understand. She and I walked another world fromyours, and trod places of crystal while you were plodding throughtunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I know that policemen, theologicaland otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love there mustsoon be hatred; so there you have the first point made for theprosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not grudge it you.Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that thisvery morning, before she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving meand my new church half a million. Come, where are the handcuffs? Do yousuppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude willonly be like waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will onlybe going to her in a headlong car."
He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flambeau andJoan Stacey stared at him in an amazed admiration. Father Brown's faceseemed to express nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the groundwith one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sunleaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed:
"In a few words I have put before you the whole case against me——theonly possible case against me. In fewer words still I will blow it topieces, so that not a trace of it remains. As to whether I havecommitted this crime, the truth is in one sentence: I could not havecommitted this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor to the groundat five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into thewitness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony of my ownrooms above from just before the stroke of noon to a quarter-past—theusual period of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth fromClapham, with no sort of connexion with me) will swear that he sat in myouter office all the morning, and that no communication passed through.He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes before the hour, fifteenminutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I did not leave theoffice or the balcony all that time. No one ever had so complete analibi: I could subpœna half Westminster. I think you had better put thehandcuffs away again. The case is at an end.
"But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in theair, I will tell you all you want to know. I believe I do know how myunhappy friend came by her death. You can, if you choose, blame me forit, or my faith and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannot lockme up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths thatcertain adepts and illuminati have in history attained the power oflevitation—that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air. It isbut a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main elementin our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitioustemper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeperin the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we wentdown in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, onecould float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that insome ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, orfaith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law ofmatter had its horrible revenge. There is the whole story, gentlemen,very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainlynot criminal or in any way connected with me. In the shorthand of thepolice-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall always call itheroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling ofheaven."
It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. Hestill sat looking at the ground, with a painful and corrugated brow, asif in shame. It is impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet'swinged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspectorof men overwhelmed by a prouder and purer spirit of natural liberty andhealth. At last he said, blinking as if in bodily distress: "Well, ifthat is so, sir, you need do no more than take the testamentary paperyou spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left it."
"It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think," said Kalon,with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly."She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actuallysaw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room."
"Was her door open then?" asked the priest, with his eye on a corner ofthe matting.
"Yes," said Kalon calmly.
"Ah! it has been open ever since," said the other, and resumed hissilent study of the mat.
"There is a paper over here," said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhatsingular voice. She had passed over to her sister's desk by the doorway,and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a soursmile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, andFlambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.
Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that royalunconsciousness that had carried him through. But Flambeau took it outof the lady's hand and read it with the utmost amazement. It did,indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after the words "Igive and bequeath all of which I die possessed" the writing abruptlystopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name ofany legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this to his friend, who glancedat it and silently gave it to the priest of the sun.
An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies,had crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering over JoanStacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.
"What monkey tricks have you been playing here?" he cried. "That's notall Pauline wrote."
They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankeeshrillness in it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from himlike a cloak.
"That is the only thing on her desk," said Joan, and confronted himsteadily with the same smile of evil favour.
Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts ofincredulous words. There was something shocking about the dropping ofhis mask; it was like a man's real face falling off.
"See here!" he cried in broad American, when he was breathless withcursing; "I may be an adventurer, but I guess you're a murderess. Yes,gentlemen, here's your death explained, and without any levitation. Thepoor girl is writing a will in my favour; her cursed sister comes in,struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and throws her down beforeshe can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs after all."
"As you have truly remarked," replied Joan, with ugly calm, "your clerkis a very respectable young man, who knows the nature of an oath; and hewill swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging sometypewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after mysister fell. Mr. Flambeau will say he found me there."
There was a silence.
"Why, then," cried Flambeau, "Pauline was alone when she fell, and itwas suicide!"
"She was alone when she fell," said Father Brown, "but it was notsuicide."
"Then how did she die?" asked Flambeau impatiently.
"She was murdered."
"But she was all alone," objected the detective.
"She was murdered when she was all alone," answered the priest.
All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same olddejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his round forehead and anappearance of impersonal shame and sorrow; his voice was colourless andsad.
"What I want to know," cried Kalon, with an oath, "is when the policeare coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She's killed her flesh andblood; she's robbed me of half a million that was just as sacredly mineas——"
"Come, come, prophet," interrupted Flambeau, with a kind of sneer;"remember that all this world is a cloudbank."
The hierophant of the sun-god made an effort to climb back on to hispedestal. "It is not the mere money," he cried, "though that would equipthe cause throughout the world. It is also my beloved one's wishes. ToPauline all this was holy. In Pauline's eyes——"
Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flatbehind him. He was deathly pale, yet he seemed fired with a hope; hiseyes shone.
"That's it!" he cried in a clear voice. "That's the way to begin. InPauline's eyes——"
The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost maddisorder. "What do you mean? How dare you?" he cried repeatedly.
"In Pauline's eyes," repeated the priest, his own shining more and more."Go on—in God's name, go on. The foulest crime the fiends ever promptedfeels lighter after confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, goon—in Pauline's eyes——"
"Let me go, you devil!" thundered Kalon, struggling like a giant inbonds. "Who are you, you cursed spy, to weave your spiders' webs roundme, and peep and peer? Let me go."
"Shall I stop him?" asked Flambeau, bounding towards the exit, for Kalonhad already thrown the door wide open.
"No; let him pass," said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh thatseemed to come from the depths of the universe. "Let Cain pass by, forhe belongs to God."
There was a long-drawn silence in the room when he had left it, whichwas to Flambeau's fierce wits one long agony of interrogation. Miss JoanStacey very coolly tidied the papers on her desk.
"Father," said Flambeau at last, "it is my duty, not my curiosityonly—it is my duty to find out, if I can, who committed the crime."
"Which crime?" asked Father Brown.
"The one we are dealing with, of course," replied his impatient friend.
"We are dealing with two crimes," said Brown; "crimes of a verydifferent weight—and by very different criminals."
Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded tolock up her drawer. Father Brown went on, noticing her as little as shenoticed him.
"The two crimes," he observed, "were committed against the same weaknessof the same person, in a struggle for her money. The author of thelarger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime; the author ofthe smaller crime got the money."
"Oh, don't go on like a lecturer," groaned Flambeau; "put it in a fewwords."
"I can put it in one word," answered his friend.
Miss Joan Stacey skewered her business-like black hat on to her headwith a business-like black frown before a little mirror, and, as theconversation proceeded, took her handbag and umbrella in an unhurriedstyle, and left the room.
"The truth is in one word, and a short one," said Father Brown. "PaulineStacey was blind."
"Blind!" repeated Flambeau, and rose slowly to his whole huge stature.
"She was subject to it by blood," Brown proceeded. "Her sister wouldhave started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her; but it was herspecial philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases byyielding to them. She would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispelit by will. So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but theworst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, orwhatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun withthe naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new paganswould only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagansknew that mere naked Nature-worship has a cruel side. They knew that theeye of Apollo can blast and blind."
There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even brokenvoice: "Whether or no that devil deliberately made her blind, there isno doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The verysimplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up anddown in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothlyand silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl'slanding, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow,sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to hercheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come outwhen she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up tohis own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony,and was safely praying before the crowded street when the poor girl,having finished her work, ran gaily out to where her lover and lift wereto receive her, and stepped——"
"Don't!" cried Flambeau.
"He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button," continuedthe little father in the colourless voice in which he talked of suchhorrors; "but that went smash. It went smash because there happened tobe another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew thesecret about poor Pauline's sight. There was one thing about that willthat I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and without asignature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had alreadysigned it as witnesses. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline couldfinish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms.Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without realwitnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wantedPauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign atall.
"People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this wasspecially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and hermemory she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she couldnot tell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens werecarefully filled by her sister—all except this fountain pen. This wascarefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held outfor a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lost fivehundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal andbrilliant murders in human history for nothing."
Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascendingthe stairs. He turned and said: "You must have followed everythingdevilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes."
Father Brown gave a sort of start.
"Oh! to him," he said. "No; I had to follow rather close to find outabout Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew Kalon was the criminalbefore I came into the front door."
"You must be joking!" cried Flambeau.
"I'm quite serious," answered the priest. "I tell you I knew he had doneit, even before I knew what he had done."
"But why?"
"These pagan stoics," said Brown reflectively, "always fail by theirstrength. There came a crash and a scream down the street, and thepriest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what itwas; but I knew that he was expecting it."
XI
THE SIGN OF THE BROKEN SWORD
The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingerssilver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak andbrilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparselytenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. Theblack hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless,black caverns of that heartless Scandinavian hell, a hell ofincalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the church lookednorthern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric toweramong the sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone toexplore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worthexploring.
It rose abruptly out of the ashen wastes of forest in a sort of hump orshoulder of green turf that looked grey in the starlight. Most of thegraves were on a slant, and the path leading up to the church was assteep as a staircase. On the top of the hill, in the one flat andprominent place, was the monument for which the place was famous. Itcontrasted strangely with the featureless graves all round, for it wasthe work of one of the greatest sculptors of modern Europe; and yet hisfame was at once forgotten in the fame of the man whose image he hadmade. It showed, by touches of the small silver pencil of starlight, themassive metal figure of a soldier recumbent, the strong hands sealed inan everlasting worship, the great head pillowed upon a gun. Thevenerable face was bearded, or rather whiskered, in the old, heavyColonel Newcome fashion. The uniform, though suggested with the fewstrokes of simplicity, was that of modern war. By his right side lay asword, of which the tip was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. Onglowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and culturedsuburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they felt the vast forestland with its one dumpy dome of churchyard and church as a place oddlydumb and neglected. In this freezing darkness of mid-winter one wouldthink he might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in thestillness of those stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, and two dimfigures dressed in black climbed up the little path to the tomb.
So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could have been tracedabout them except that while they both wore black, one man wasenormously big, and the other (perhaps by contrast) almost startlinglysmall. They went up to the great graven tomb of the historic warrior,and stood for a few minutes staring at it. There was no human, perhapsno living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might well havewondered if they were human themselves. In any case, the beginning oftheir conversation might have seemed strange. After the first silencethe small man said to the other:
"Where does a wise man hide a pebble?"
And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach."
The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wiseman hide a leaf?"
And the other answered: "In the forest."
There was another stillness, and then the tall man resumed: "Do you meanthat when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known tohide it among sham ones?"
"No, no," said the little man with a laugh, "we will let bygones bebygones."
He stamped his cold feet for a second or two and then said: "I'm notthinking of that at all, but of something else; something ratherpeculiar. Just strike a match, will you?"
The big man fumbled in his pocket, and soon a scratch and a flarepainted gold the whole flat side of the monument. On it was cut in blackletters the well-known words which so many Americans had reverentlyread: "Sacred to the Memory of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, Hero andMartyr, who Always Vanquished his Enemies and Always Spared Them, andWas Treacherously Slain by Them at Last. May God in Whom he Trusted bothReward and Revenge him."
The match burnt the big man's fingers, blackened, and dropped. He wasabout to strike another, but his small companion stopped him. "That'sall right, Flambeau, old man; I saw what I wanted. Or, rather, I didn'tsee what I didn't want. And now we must walk a mile and a half along theroad to the next inn, and I will try to tell you all about it. ForHeaven knows a man should have fire and ale when he dares tell such astory."
They descended the precipitous path, they re-latched the rusty gate, andset off at a stamping, ringing walk down the frozen forest road. Theyhad gone a full quarter of a mile before the smaller man spoke again. Hesaid: "Yes; the wise man hides a pebble on the beach. But what does hedo if there is no beach? Do you know anything of the great St. Claretrouble?"
"I know nothing about English generals, Father Brown," answered thelarge man, laughing, "though a little about English policemen. I onlyknow that you have dragged me a precious long dance to all the shrinesof this fellow, whoever he is. One would think he got buried in sixdifferent places. I've seen a memorial to General St. Clare inWestminster Abbey; I've seen a ramping equestrian statue of General St.Clare on the Embankment; I've seen a medallion of General St. Clare inthe street he was born in; and another in the street he lived in; andnow you drag me after dark to his coffin in the village churchyard. I ambeginning to be a bit tired of his magnificent personality, especiallyas I don't in the least know who he was. What are you hunting for in allthese crypts and effigies?"
"I am only looking for one word," said Father Brown. "A word that isn'tthere."
"Well," asked Flambeau, "are you going to tell me anything about it?"
"I must divide it into two parts," remarked the priest. "First there iswhat everybody knows; and then there is what I know. Now, what everybodyknows is short and plain enough. It is also entirely wrong."
"Right you are," said the big man called Flambeau cheerfully. "Let'sbegin at the wrong end. Let's begin with what everybody knows, whichisn't true."
"If not wholly untrue, it is at least very inadequate," continued Brown;"for in point of fact, all that the public knows amounts precisely tothis: The public knows that Arthur St. Clare was a great and successfulEnglish general. It knows that after splendid yet careful campaigns bothin India and Africa he was in command against Brazil when the greatBrazilian patriot Olivier issued his ultimatum. It knows that on thatoccasion St. Clare with a very small force attacked Olivier with a verylarge one, and was captured after heroic resistance. And it knows thatafter his capture, and to the abhorrence of the civilized world St.Clare was hanged on the nearest tree. He was found swinging there afterthe Brazilians had retired, with his broken sword hung round his neck."
"And that popular story is untrue?" suggested Flambeau.
"No," said his friend quietly; "that story is quite true, so far as itgoes."
"Well, I think it goes far enough!" said Flambeau, "but if the popularstory is true, what is the mystery?"
They had passed many hundreds of grey and ghostly trees before thelittle priest answered. Then he bit his finger reflectively and said:"Why, the mystery is a mystery of psychology. Or, rather, it is amystery of two psychologies. In that Brazilian business two of the mostfamous men of modern history acted flat against their characters. Mindyou, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroes—the old thing, and nomistake; it was like the fight between Hector and Achilles. Now, whatwould you say to an affair in which Achilles was timid and Hector wastreacherous?"
"Go on," said the large man impatiently as the other bit his fingeragain.
"Sir Arthur St. Clare was a soldier of the old religious type—the typethat saved us during the Mutiny," continued Brown. "He was always morefor duty than for dash; and with all his personal courage was decidedlya prudent commander, particularly indignant at any needless waste ofsoldiers. Yet, in this last battle, he attempted something that a babycould see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it was as wildas wind; just as one need not be a strategist to keep out of the way ofa motor-bus. Well, that is the first mystery; what had become of theEnglish general's head? The second riddle is, what had become of theBrazilian general's heart? President Olivier might be called a visionaryor a nuisance; but even his enemies admitted that he was magnanimous tothe point of knight errantry. Almost every other prisoner he had evercaptured had been set free, or even loaded with benefits. Men who hadreally wronged him came away touched by his simplicity and sweetness.Why the deuce should he diabolically revenge himself only once in hislife; and then for the one particular blow that could not have hurt him?Well, there you have it. One of the wisest men in the world acted likean idiot for no reason. One of the best men in the world acted like afiend for no reason. That's the long and short of it; and I leave it toyou, my boy."
"No, you don't," said the other with a snort. "I leave it to you; andyou jolly well tell me all about it."
"Well," resumed Father Brown, "it's not fair to say that the publicimpression is just what I've said, without adding that two things havehappened since. I can't say they threw a new light, for nobody can makesense of them. But they threw a new kind of darkness, they threw thedarkness in new directions. The first was this. The family physician ofthe St. Clares quarrelled with that family and began publishing aviolent series of articles, in which he said that the late general was areligious maniac; but as far as the tale went, this seemed to meanlittle more than a religious man. Anyhow, the story fizzled out.Everyone knew, of course, that St. Clare had some of the eccentricitiesof puritan piety. The second incident was much more arresting. In theluckless and unsupported regiment which made that rash attempt at theBlack River there was a certain Captain Keith, who was at that timeengaged to St. Clare's daughter, and who afterwards married her. He wasone of those who were captured by Olivier, and, like all the rest exceptthe general, appears to have been bounteously treated and promptly setfree. Some twenty years afterwards this man, then Lieutenant-ColonelKeith, published a sort of autobiography called 'A British Officer inBurmah and Brazil.' In the place where the reader looks eagerly for someaccount of the mystery of St. Clare's disaster may be found thefollowing words: 'Everywhere else in this book I have narrated thingsexactly as they occurred, holding as I do the old-fashioned opinion thatthe glory of England is old enough to take care of itself. The exceptionI shall make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and myreasons, though private, are honourable and compelling. I will, however,add this in justice to the memories of two distinguished men. GeneralSt. Clare has been accused of incapacity on this occasion; I can atleast testify that this action, properly understood, was one of the mostbrilliant and sagacious of his life. President Olivier by similar reportis charged with savage injustice. I think it to the honour of an enemyto say that he acted on this occasion with even more than hischaracteristic good feeling. To put the matter popularly, I can assuremy countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool, nor Oliviersuch a brute as he looked. This is all I have to say; nor shall anyearthly consideration induce me to add a word.'"
A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through thetangle of twigs in front of them, and by its light the narrator had beenable to refresh his memory of Captain Keith's text from a scrap ofprinted paper. As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeauthrew up his hand with a French gesture.
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," he cried excitedly. "I believe I can guess itat the first go."
He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull neck forward likea man winning a walking race. The little priest, amused and interested,had some trouble in trotting beside him. Just before them the trees fellback a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across aclear, moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the wallof another wood. The entrance to the farther forest looked small andround, like the black hole of a remote railway tunnel. But it was withinsome hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before Flambeau spoke again.
"I've got it," he cried at last, slapping his thigh with his great hand."Four minutes' thinking, and I can tell you the whole story myself."
"All right," assented his friend. "You tell it."
Flambeau lifted his head, but lowered his voice. "General Sir Arthur St.Clare," he said, "came of a family in which madness was hereditary; andhis whole aim was to keep this from his daughter, and even, if possible,from his future son-in-law. Rightly or wrongly, he thought the finalcollapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary suicide wouldblazon the very idea he dreaded. As the campaign approached the cloudscame thicker on his brain, and at last in a mad moment he sacrificed hispublic duty to his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fallby the first shot. When he found that he had only attained capture anddiscredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst, and he broke his ownsword and hanged himself."
He stared firmly at the grey façade of forest in front of him, with theone black gap in it, like the mouth of the grave, into which their pathplunged. Perhaps something menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowedreinforced his vivid vision of the tragedy, for he shuddered.
"A horrid story," repeated the priest with bent head; "but not the realstory."
Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and cried: "Oh, Iwish it had been."
The tall Flambeau faced round and stared at him.
"Yours is a clean story," cried Father Brown, deeply moved. "A sweet,pure, honest story, as open and white as that moon. Madness and despairare innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau."
Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and from where hestood one black tree-bough curved across it exactly like a devil's horn.
"Father—Father," cried Flambeau with the French gesture and steppingyet more rapidly forward, "do you mean it was worse than that?"
"Worse than that," said the other like a grave echo. And they plungedinto the black cloister of the woodland, which ran by them in a dimtapestry of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream.
They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt closeabout them the foliage that they could not see, when the priest saidagain:
"Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he doif there is no forest?"
"Well—well," cried Flambeau irritably, "what does he do?"
"He grows a forest to hide it in," said the priest in an obscure voice."A fearful sin."
"Look here," cried his friend impatiently, for the dark wood and thedark sayings got a little on his nerves; "will you tell me this story ornot? What other evidence is there to go on?"
"There are three more bits of evidence," said the other, "that I havedug up in holes and corners, and I will give them in logical rather thanchronological order. First of all, of course, our authority for theissue and event of the battle is in Olivier's own despatches, which arelucid enough. He was entrenched with two or three regiments on theheights that swept down to the Black River, on the other side of whichwas lower and more marshy ground. Beyond this again was gently risingcountry, on which was the first English outpost, supported by otherswhich lay, however, considerably in its rear. The British forces as awhole were greatly superior in numbers; but this particular regiment wasjust far enough from its base to make Olivier consider the project ofcrossing the river to cut it off. By sunset, however, he had decided toretain his own position, which was a specially strong one. At daybreaknext morning he was thunderstruck to see that this stray handful ofEnglish, entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselvesacross the river, half by the bridge to the right, and the other half bya ford higher up, and were massed upon the marshy bank below him.
"That they should attempt an attack with such numbers against such aposition was incredible enough; but Olivier noticed something yet moreextraordinary. For instead of attempting to seize more solid ground,this mad regiment, having put the river in its rear by one charge, didnothing more, but stuck there in the mire like flies in treacle.Needless to say, the Brazilians blew great gaps in them with artillery,which they could only return with spirited but lessening rifle fire. Yetthey never broke; and Olivier's curt account ends with a strong tributeof admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. 'Our line thenadvanced finally,' writes Olivier, 'and drove them into the river; wecaptured General St. Clare himself and several other officers. Thecolonel and the major had both fallen in the battle. I cannot resistsaying that few finer sights can have been seen in history than the laststand of this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up therifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us on horsebackbare-headed and with a broken sword.' On what happened to the generalafterwards Olivier is as silent as Captain Keith."
"Well," grunted Flambeau, "get on to the next bit of evidence."
"The next evidence," said Father Brown, "took some time to find but itwill not take long to tell. I found at last, in an almshouse down in theLincolnshire Fens, an old soldier who not only was wounded at the BlackRiver, but had actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when hedied. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull of anIrishman; and it would seem that he died almost as much of rage as ofbullets. He, at any rate, was not responsible for that ridiculous raid;it must have been imposed on him by the general. His last edifyingwords, according to my informant, were these: 'And there goes the damnedold donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I wish it was hishead.' You will remark that everyone seems to have noticed this detailabout the broken sword blade, though most people regard it somewhat morereverently than did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for the thirdfragment."
Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and the speakerpaused a little for breath before he went on. Then he continued in thesame business-like tone:
"Only a month or two ago a certain Brazilian official died in England,having quarrelled with Olivier and left his country. He was a well-knownfigure both here and on the Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knewhim myself, a yellow-faced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For variousprivate reasons I had permission to see the documents he had left; hewas a Catholic, of course, and I had been with him towards the end.There was nothing of his that lit up any corner of the black St. Clarebusiness, except five or six common exercise books filled with the diaryof some English soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by theBrazilians on one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped abruptly thenight before the battle.
"But the account of that last day in the poor fellow's life wascertainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it's too dark to read ithere, and I will give you a résumé. The first part of that entry is fullof jokes, evidently flung about among the men, about somebody called theVulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one ofthemselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of asone of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he were some local go-betweenand non-combatant; perhaps a guide or a journalist. He has been closetedwith old Colonel Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major.Indeed, the major is somewhat prominent in this soldier's narrative; alean, dark-haired man, apparently, of the name of Murray—a north ofIreland man and a Puritan. There are continual jests about the contrastbetween this Ulsterman's austerity and the conviviality of ColonelClancy. There is also some joke about the Vulture wearingbright-coloured clothes.
"But all these levities are scattered by what may well be called thenote of a bugle. Behind the English camp, and almost parallel to theriver, ran one of the few great roads of that district. Westward theroad curved round towards the river, which it crossed by the bridgebefore mentioned. To the east the road swept backwards into the wilds,and some two miles along it was the next English outpost. From thisdirection there came along the road that evening a glitter and clatterof light cavalry, in which even the simple diarist could recognize withastonishment the general with his staff. He rode the great white horsewhich you have seen so often in illustrated papers and Academy pictures;and you may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merelyceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but, springingfrom the saddle immediately, mixed with the group of officers, and fellinto emphatic though confidential speech. What struck our friend thediarist most was his special disposition to discuss matters with MajorMurray; but, indeed, such a selection, so long as it was not marked, wasin no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy; they were menwho 'read their Bibles'; they were both the old Evangelical type ofofficer. However this may be, it is certain that when the generalmounted again he was still talking earnestly to Murray; and that as hewalked his horse slowly down the road towards the river, the tallUlsterman still walked by his bridle-rein in earnest debate. Thesoldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump of treeswhere the road turned towards the river. The colonel had gone back tohis tent, and the men to their pickets; the man with the diary lingeredfor another four minutes, and saw a marvellous sight.
"The great white horse which had marched slowly down the road, as it hadmarched in so many processions, flew back, galloping up the road towardsthem as if it were mad to win a race. At first they thought it had runaway with the man on its back; but they soon saw that the general, afine rider, was himself urging it to full speed. Horse and man swept upto them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the reeling charger, thegeneral turned on them a face like flame, and called the colonel likethe trumpet that wakes the dead.
"I conceive that all the earthquake events of that catastrophe tumbledon top of each other rather like lumber in the minds of men such as ourfriend with the diary. With the dazed excitement of a dream, they foundthemselves falling—literally falling—into their ranks, and learnedthat an attack was to be led at once across the river. The general andthe major, it was said, had found out something at the bridge, and therewas only just time to strike for life. The major had gone back at onceto call up the reserve along the road behind; it was doubtful if evenwith that prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they mustpass the stream that night, and seize the heights by morning. It is withthe very stir and throb of that romantic nocturnal march that the diarysuddenly ends."
Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path grew smaller,steeper, and more twisted, till they felt as if they were ascending awinding staircase. The priest's voice came from above out of thedarkness.
"There was one other little and enormous thing. When the general urgedthem to their chivalric charge he drew half his sword from the scabbard;and then, as if ashamed of such melodrama, thrust it back again. Thesword again, you see."
A half-light broke through the network of boughs above them, flingingthe ghost of a net about their feet; for they were mounting again to thefaint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round himas an atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain:"Well, what's the matter with the sword? Officers generally have swords,don't they?"
"They are not often mentioned in modern war," said the otherdispassionately; "but in this affair one falls over the blessed swordeverywhere."
"Well, what is there in that?" growled Flambeau; "it was a twopencecoloured sort of incident; the old man's blade breaking in his lastbattle. Anyone might bet the papers would get hold of it, as they have.On all these tombs and things it's shown broken at the point. I hope youhaven't dragged me through his Polar expedition merely because two menwith an eye for a picture saw St. Clare's broken sword."
"No," cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; "butwho saw his unbroken sword?"
"What do you mean?" cried the other, and stood still under the stars.They had come abruptly out of the grey gates of the wood.
"I say, who saw his unbroken sword?" repeated Father Brown obstinately."Not the writer of the diary, anyhow; the general sheathed it in time."
Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind mightlook in the sun; and his friend went on for the first time witheagerness:
"Flambeau," he cried, "I cannot prove it, even after hunting through thetombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add just one more tiny fact that tipsthe whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of thefirst struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came toclose quarters. But he saw St. Clare's sword broken. Why was it broken?How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle."
"Oh!" said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; "and praywhere is the other piece?"
"I can tell you," said the priest promptly. "In the north-east corner ofthe cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral at Belfast."
"Indeed?" inquired the other. "Have you looked for it?"
"I couldn't," replied Brown, with frank regret. "There's a great marblemonument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fellfighting gloriously at the famous Battle of the Black River."
Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanized into existence. "You mean," he criedhoarsely, "that General St. Clare hated Murray, and murdered him on thefield of battle because——"
"You are still full of good and pure thoughts," said the other. "It wasworse than that."
"Well," said the large man, "my stock of evil imagination is used up."
The priest seemed really doubtful where to begin, and at last he saidagain:
"Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest."
The other did not answer.
"If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished tohide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest."
There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly andquietly:
"And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of deadbodies to hide it in."
Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time orspace; but Father Brown went on as if he were continuing the lastsentence:
"Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read hisBible. That was what was the matter with him. When will peopleunderstand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he alsoreads everybody else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. AMormon reads his Bible and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist readshis and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an oldAnglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean;and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant about it. It might mean a manphysically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society,and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental book. Ofcourse, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, hefound in the Old Testament anything that he wanted—lust, tyranny,treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is thegood of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
"In each of the hot and secret countries to which that man went he kepta harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainlyhe would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of theLord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord?Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door after door inhell, and always into smaller and smaller chambers. This is the realcase against crime, that a man does not become wilder and wilder, butonly meaner and meaner. St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties ofbribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by the time ofthe battle of the Black River he had fallen from world to world to thatplace which Dante makes the lowest floor of the universe."
"What do you mean?" asked his friend again.
"I mean that," retorted the cleric, and suddenly pointed at a puddlesealed with ice that shone in the moon. "Do you remember whom Dante putin the last circle of ice?"
"The traitors," said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he looked round at theinhuman landscape of trees, with taunting and almost obscene outlines,he could almost fancy he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of avoice was, indeed, a Virgil leading him through a land of eternal sins.
The voice went on: "Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would notpermit a secret service and spies. The thing, however, was done, likemany other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friendEspado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called theVulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt hisway through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its onecorrupt man—please God!—and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foulneed of money, and mountains of it. The discredited family doctor wasthreatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and werebroken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane;things done by an English Evangelical that smelt like human sacrificeand hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter's dowry;for to him the fame of wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snappedthe last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in fromthe enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vultureas well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster hadguessed the hideous truth; and when they walked slowly together downthat road towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he mustresign instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The generaltemporized with him till they came to the fringe of tropic trees by thebridge; and there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I cansee the picture) the general drew his sabre and plunged it through thebody of the major."
The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel blackshapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond itfaintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight, butsome fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to itsclose.
"St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I'llswear, was he so lucid and so strong as when poor Murray lay a cold lumpat his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, wasthe great man so great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. Helooked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw the point hehad planted between his victim's shoulders had broken off in the body.He saw quite calmly as, through a club window-pane, all that mustfollow. He saw that men must find the unaccountable corpse; must extractthe unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable brokensword—or absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But hisimperious intellect rose against the facer—there was one way yet. Hecould make the corpse less unaccountable. He could create a hill ofcorpses to cover this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred Englishsoldiers were marching down to their death."
The warmer glow behind the black winter wood grew richer and brighter,and Flambeau strode on to reach it. Father Brown also quickened hisstride; but he seemed merely absorbed in his tale.
"Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such the genius oftheir commander, that if they had at once attacked the hill, even theirmad march might have met some luck. But the evil mind that played withthem like pawns had other aims and reasons. They must remain in themarshes by the bridge at least till British corpses should be a commonsight there. Then for the last grand scene: the silver-hairedsoldier-saint would give up his shattered sword to save furtherslaughter. Oh, it was well organized for an impromptu. But I think (Icannot prove), I think that it was while they stuck there in the bloodymire that someone doubted—and someone guessed."
He was mute a moment, and then said: "There is a voice from nowhere thattells me the man who guessed was the lover ... the man to wed the oldman's child."
"But what about Olivier and the hanging?" asked Flambeau.
"Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy, seldom encumberedhis march with captives," explained the narrator. "He released everybodyin most cases. He released everybody in this case."
"Everybody but the general," said the tall man.
"Everybody," said the priest.
Flambeau knitted his black brows. "I don't grasp it all yet," he said.
"There is another picture, Flambeau," said Brown in his more mysticalundertone. "I can't prove it; but I can do more—I can see it. There isa camp breaking up on the bare, torrid hills at morning, and Brazilianuniforms massed in blocks and columns to march. There is the red shirtand long black beard of Olivier, which blows as he stands, hisbroad-brimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the great enemyhe is setting free—the simple, snow-headed English veteran who thankshim in the name of his men. The English remnant stand behind atattention; beside them are stores and vehicles for the retreat. Thedrums roll; the Brazilians are moving; the English are still likestatues. So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy havefaded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their postures all atonce like dead men coming to life; they turn their fifty faces upon thegeneral—faces not to be forgotten."
Flambeau gave a great jump. "Ah," he cried. "You don't mean——"
"Yes," said Father Brown in a deep, moving voice. "It was an Englishhand that put the rope round St. Clare's neck; I believe the hand thatput the ring on his daughter's finger. They were English hands thatdragged him up to the tree of shame; the hands of men that had adoredhim and followed him to victory. And they were English souls (God pardonand endure us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign sun onthe green gallows of palm, and prayed in their hatred that he might dropoff it into hell."
As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the strong scarlet lightof a red-curtained English inn. It stood sideways in the road, as ifstanding aside in the amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stoodopen with invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the humand laughter of humanity happy for a night.
"I need not tell you more," said Father Brown. "They tried him in thewilderness and destroyed him; and then, for the honour of England and ofhis daughter, they took an oath to seal up for ever the story of thetraitor's purse and the assassin's sword blade. Perhaps—Heaven helpthem—they tried to forget it. Let us try to forget it, anyhow; here isour inn."
"With all my heart," said Flambeau, and was just striding into thebright, noisy bar when he stepped back and almost fell on the road.
"Look there, in the devil's name!" he cried, and pointed rigidly at thesquare wooden sign that overhung the road. It showed dimly the crudeshape of a sabre hilt and a shortened blade; and was inscribed in falsearchaic lettering, "The Sign of the Broken Sword."
"Were you not prepared?" asked Father Brown gently. "He is the god ofthis country; half the inns and parks and streets are named after himand his story."
"I thought we had done with the leper," cried Flambeau, and spat on theroad.
"You will never have done with him in England," said the priest, lookingdown, "while brass is strong and stone abides. His marble statues willerect the souls of proud, innocent boys for centuries, his village tombwill smell of loyalty as of lilies. Millions who never knew him shalllove him like a father—this man whom the last few that knew him dealtwith like dung. He shall be a saint; and the truth shall never be toldof him, because I have made up my mind at last. There is so much goodand evil in breaking secrets, that I put my conduct to a test. All thesenewspapers will perish; the anti-Brazil boom is already over; Olivier isalready honoured everywhere. But I told myself that if anywhere, byname, in metal or marble that will endure like the pyramids, ColonelClancy, or Captain Keith, or President Olivier, or any innocent man waswrongly blamed, then I would speak. If it were only that St. Clare waswrongly praised, I would be silent. And I will."
They plunged into the red-curtained tavern, which was not only cosy, buteven luxurious inside. On a table stood a silver model of the tomb ofSt. Clare, the silver head bowed, the silver sword broken. On the wallswere coloured photographs of the same scene, and of the system ofwagonettes that took tourists to see it. They sat down on thecomfortable padded benches.
"Come, it's cold," cried Father Brown; "let's have some wine or beer."
"Or brandy," said Flambeau.
XII
THE THREE TOOLS OF DEATH
Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of usthat every man is dignified when he is dead. But even he felt a pang ofincongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir AaronArmstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemlyabout secret violence in connexion with so entirely entertaining andpopular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the pointof being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary.It was like hearing that Sunny Jim had hanged himself; or that Mr.Pickwick had died in Hanwell. For though Sir Aaron was a philanthropist,and thus dealt with the darker side of our society, he prided himself ondealing with it in the brightest possible style. His political andsocial speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; hisbodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; andhe dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortalor even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperoustotal abstainer.
The established story of his conversion was familiar on the morepuritanic platforms and pulpits: how he had been, when only a boy, drawnaway from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out ofboth and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide whitebeard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles at the numberless dinnersand congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow,that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or aCalvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons ofmen.
He had lived on the rural skirt of Hampstead in a handsome house, highbut not broad, a modern and prosaic tower. The narrowest of its narrowsides overhung the steep green bank of a railway, and was shaken bypassing trains. Sir Aaron Armstrong, as he boisterously explained, hadno nerves. But if the train had often given a shock to the house, thatmorning the tables were turned, and it was the house that gave a shockto the train.
The engine slowed down and stopped just beyond that point where an angleof the house impinged upon the sharp slope of turf. The arrest of mostmechanical things must be slow; but the living cause of this had beenvery rapid. A man clad completely in black, even (it was remembered) tothe dreadful detail of black gloves, appeared on the ridge above theengine, and waved his black hands like some sable windmill. This initself would hardly have stopped even a lingering train. But there cameout of him a cry which was talked of afterwards as something utterlyunnatural and new. It was one of those shouts that are horribly distincteven when we cannot hear what is shouted. The word in this case was"Murder!"
But the engine-driver swears he would have pulled up just the same if hehad heard only the dreadful and definite accent and not the word.
The train once arrested, the most superficial stare could take in manyfeatures of the tragedy. The man in black on the green was Sir AaronArmstrong's man-servant, Magnus. The baronet in his optimism had oftenlaughed at the black gloves of this dismal attendant; but no one waslikely to laugh at him just now.
So soon as an inquirer or two had stepped off the line and across thesmoky hedge, they saw, rolled down almost to the bottom of the bank, thebody of an old man in a yellow dressing-gown with a very vivid scarletlining. A scrap of rope seemed caught about his leg, entangledpresumably in a struggle. There was a smear or so of blood, though verylittle; but the body was bent or broken into a posture impossible to anyliving thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong. A few more bewildered momentsbrought out a big fair-bearded man, whom some travellers could salute asthe dead man's secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemiansociety and even famous in the Bohemian arts. In a manner more vague,but even more convincing, he echoed the agony of the servant. By thetime the third figure of that household, Alice Armstrong, daughter ofthe dead man, had come already tottering and wavering into the garden,the engine-driver had put a stop to his stoppage. The whistle had blownand the train had panted on to get help from the next station.
Father Brown had been thus rapidly summoned at the request of PatrickRoyce, the big ex-Bohemian secretary. Royce was an Irishman by birth;and that casual kind of Catholic that never remembers his religion untilhe is really in a hole. But Royce's request might have been lesspromptly complied with if one of the official detectives had not been afriend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau; and it was impossible tobe a friend of Flambeau without hearing numberless stories about FatherBrown. Hence, while the young detective (whose name was Merton) led thelittle priest across the fields to the railway, their talk was moreconfidential than could be expected between two total strangers.
"As far as I can see," said Mr. Merton candidly, "there is no sense tobe made of it at all. There is nobody one can suspect. Magnus is asolemn old fool, far too much of a fool to be an assassin. Royce hasbeen the baronet's best friend for years; and his daughter undoubtedlyadored him. Besides, it's all too absurd. Who would kill such a cheeryold chap as Armstrong? Who could dip his hands in the gore of anafter-dinner speaker? It would be like killing Father Christmas."
"Yes, it was a cheery house," assented Father Brown. "It was a cheeryhouse while he was alive. Do you think it will be cheery now he isdead?"
Merton started a little and regarded his companion with an enlivenedeye. "Now he is dead?" he repeated.
"Yes," continued the priest stolidly; "he was cheerful. But did hecommunicate his cheerfulness? Frankly, was anyone else in the housecheerful but he?"
A window in Merton's mind let in that strange light of surprise in whichwe see for the first time things we have known all along. He had oftenbeen to the Armstrongs on little police jobs of the philanthropist; and,now he came to think of it, it was in itself a depressing house. Therooms were very high and very cold; the decoration mean and provincial;the draughty corridors were lit by electricity that was bleaker thanmoonlight. And though the old man's scarlet face and silver beard hadblazed like a bonfire in each room or passage in turn, it did not leaveany warmth behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort in the placewas partly due to the very vitality and exuberance of its owner; heneeded no stoves or lamps, he would say, but carried his own warmth withhim. But when Merton recalled the other inmates, he was compelled toconfess that they also were as shadows of their lord. The moodyman-servant, with his monstrous black gloves, was almost a nightmare;Royce, the secretary, was solid enough, a big bull of a man, in tweeds,with a short beard; but the straw-coloured beard was startlingly saltedwith grey like the tweeds, and the broad forehead was barred withpremature wrinkles. He was good-natured enough also, but it was a sadsort of good nature, almost a heart-broken sort—he had the general airof being some sort of failure in life. As for Armstrong's daughter, itwas almost incredible that she was his daughter: she was so pallid incolour and sensitive in outline. She was graceful, but there was aquiver in the very shape of her that was like the lines of an aspen.Merton had sometimes wondered if she had learnt to quail at the crash ofthe passing trains.
"You see," said Father Brown, blinking modestly, "I'm not sure that theArmstrong cheerfulness is so very cheerful—for other people. You saythat nobody could kill such a happy old man, but I'm not sure; ne nosinducas in tentationem. If ever I murdered somebody," he added quitesimply, "I dare say it might be an Optimist."
"Why?" cried Merton, amused; "do you think people dislike cheerfulness?"
"People like frequent laughter," answered Father Brown, "but I don'tthink they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a verytrying thing."
They walked some way in silence along the windy grassy bank by the rail,and just as they came under the far-flung shadow of the tall Armstronghouse, Father Brown said suddenly, like a man throwing away atroublesome thought rather than offering it seriously: "Of course, drinkis neither good nor bad in itself. But I can't help sometimes feelingthat men like Armstrong want an occasional glass of wine, to saddenthem."
Merton's official superior, a grizzled and capable detective namedGilder, was standing on the green bank waiting for the coroner, talkingto Patrick Royce, whose big shoulders and bristled beard and hairtowered above him. This was the more noticeable because Royce walkedalways with a sort of powerful stoop, and seemed to be going about hissmall clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled style, like abuffalo drawing a go-cart.
He raised his head with unusual pleasure at the sight of the priest, andtook him a few paces apart. Meanwhile Merton was addressing the olderdetective respectfully indeed, but not without a certain boyishimpatience.
"Well, Mr. Gilder, have you got much farther with the mystery?"
"There is no mystery," replied Gilder, as he looked under dreamy eyelidsat the rooks.
"Well, there is for me, at any rate," said Merton, smiling.
"It is simple enough, my boy," observed the senior investigator,stroking his grey, pointed beard. "Three minutes after you'd gone forMr. Royce's parson the whole thing came out. You know that pasty-facedservant in the black gloves who stopped the train?"
"I should know him anywhere. Somehow he rather gave me the creeps."
"Well," drawled Gilder, "when the train had gone on again, that man hadgone, too. Rather a cool criminal, don't you think, to escape by thevery train that went off for the police?"
"You're pretty sure, I suppose," remarked the young man, "that he reallydid kill his master?"
"Yes, my son; I'm pretty sure," replied Gilder drily; "for the triflingreason that he has gone off with twenty thousand pounds in papers thatwere in his master's desk. No; the only thing worth calling a difficultyis how he killed him. The skull seems broken as with some big weapon,but there's no weapon at all lying about, and the murderer would havefound it awkward to carry it away, unless the weapon was too small to benoticed."
"Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed," said the priest with anodd little giggle.
Gilder looked round at his wild remark, and rather sternly asked Brownwhat he meant.
"Silly way of putting it, I know," said Father Brown apologetically."Sounds like a fairy tale. But poor Armstrong was killed with a giant'sclub, a great green club, too big to be seen, and which we call theearth. He was broken against this green bank we are standing on."
"How do you mean?" asked the detective quickly.
Father Brown turned his moon face up to the narrow façade of the houseand blinked hopelessly up. Following his eyes, they saw that right atthe top of this otherwise blind back quarter of the building, an atticwindow stood open.
"Don't you see," he explained, pointing a little awkwardly like a child,"he was thrown down from there?"
Gilder frowningly scrutinized the window, and then said: "Well, it iscertainly possible. But I don't see why you are so sure about it."
Brown opened his grey eyes wide. "Why," he said, "there a bit of roperound the dead man's leg. Don't you see that other bit of rope up therecaught at the corner of the window?"
At that height the thing looked like the faintest particle of dust orhair, but the shrewd old investigator was satisfied. "You're quiteright, sir," he said to Father Brown; "that is certainly one to you."
Almost as he spoke a special train with one carriage took the curve ofthe line on their left, and, stopping, disgorged another group ofpolicemen, in whose midst was the hangdog visage of Magnus, theabsconded servant.
"By Jove! They've got him," cried Gilder, and stepped forward with quitea new alertness.
"Have you got the money?" he cried to the first policeman.
The man looked him in the face with a rather curious expression andsaid: "No." Then he added: "At least, not here."
"Which is the inspector, please?" asked the man called Magnus.
When he spoke everybody instantly understood how this voice had stoppeda train. He was a dull-looking man with flat black hair, a colourlessface, and a faint suggestion of the East in the level slits in his eyesand mouth. His blood and name, indeed, had remained dubious, ever sinceSir Aaron had "rescued" him from a waitership in a London restaurant,and (as some said) from more infamous things. But his voice was as vividas his face was dead. Whether through exactitude in a foreign language,or in deference to his master (who had been somewhat deaf), Magnus'stones had a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the whole groupquite jumped when he spoke.
"I always knew this would happen," he said aloud with brazen blandness."My poor old master made game of me for wearing black; but I always saidI should be ready for his funeral."
And he made a momentary movement with his two dark-gloved hands.
"Sergeant," said Inspector Gilder, eyeing the black hands with wrath,"aren't you putting the bracelets on this fellow? He looks prettydangerous."
"Well, sir," said the sergeant, with the same odd look of wonder, "Idon't know that we can."
"What do you mean?" asked the other sharply. "Haven't you arrested him?"
A faint scorn widened the slit-like mouth, and the whistle of anapproaching train seemed oddly to echo the mockery.
"We arrested him," replied the sergeant gravely, "just as he was comingout of the police-station at Highgate, where he had deposited all hismaster's money in the care of Inspector Robinson."
Gilder looked at the man-servant in utter amazement. "Why on earth didyou do that?" he asked of Magnus.
"To keep it safe from the criminal, of course," replied that personplacidly.
"Surely," said Gilder, "Sir Aaron's money might have been safely leftwith Sir Aaron's family."
The tail of his sentence was drowned in the roar of the train as it wentrocking and clanking; but through all the hell of noises to which thatunhappy house was periodically subject, they could hear the syllables ofMagnus's answer, in all their bell-like distinctness: "I have no reasonto feel confidence in Sir Aaron's family."
All the motionless men had the ghostly sensation of the presence of somenew person; and Merton was scarcely surprised when he looked up and sawthe pale face of Armstrong's daughter over Father Brown's shoulder. Shewas still young and beautiful in a silvery style, but her hair was of sodusty and hueless a brown that in some shadows it seemed to have turnedtotally grey.
"Be careful what you say," said Royce gruffly, "you'll frighten MissArmstrong."
"I hope so," said the man with the clear voice.
As the woman winced and everyone else wondered, he went on: "I amsomewhat used to Miss Armstrong's tremors. I have seen her trembling offand on for years. And some said she was shaking with cold, and some shewas shaking with fear; but I know she was shaking with hate and wickedanger—fiends that have had their feast this morning. She would havebeen away by now with her lover and all the money but for me. Ever sincemy poor old master prevented her from marrying that tipsyblackguard——"
"Stop," said Gilder very sternly; "we have nothing to do with yourfamily fancies or suspicions. Unless you have some practical evidence,your mere opinions——"
"Oh! I'll give you practical evidence," cut in Magnus, in his hackingaccent. "You'll have to subpœna me, Mr. Inspector, and I shall have totell the truth. And the truth is this: An instant after the old man waspitched bleeding out of the window, I ran into the attic, and found hisdaughter swooning on the floor with a red dagger still in her hand.Allow me to hand that also to the proper authorities." He took from histail-pocket a long horn-hilted knife with a red smear on it and handedit politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back again, and his slits ofeyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese sneer.
Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of him, and hemuttered to Gilder: "Surely you would take Miss Armstrong's word againsthis?"
Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh that it lookedsomehow as if he had just washed it. "Yes," he said, radiatinginnocence, "but is Miss Armstrong's word against his?"
The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry; everyone looked ather. Her figure was rigid as if paralysed; only her face within itsframe of faint brown hair was alive with an appalling surprise. Shestood like one of a sudden lassooed and throttled.
"This man," said Mr. Gilder gravely, "actually says that you were foundgrasping a knife, insensible, after the murder."
"He says the truth," answered Alice.
The next fact of which they were conscious was that Patrick Royce strodewith his great stooping head into their ring and uttered the singularwords: "Well, if I've got to go, I'll have a bit of pleasure first."
His huge shoulder heaved and he sent an iron fist smash into Magnus'sbland Mongolian visage, laying him on the lawn as flat as a starfish.Two or three of the police instantly put their hands on Royce; but tothe rest it seemed as if all reason had broken up and the universe wereturning into a brainless harlequinade.
"None of that, Mr. Royce," Gilder had called out authoritatively. "Ishall arrest you for assault."
"No you won't," answered the secretary in a voice like an iron gong;"you will arrest me for murder."
Gilder threw an alarmed glance at the man knocked down; but since thatoutraged person was already sitting up and wiping a little blood off asubstantially uninjured face, he only said shortly: "What do you mean?"
"It is quite true, as this fellow says," explained Royce, "that MissArmstrong fainted with a knife in her hand. But she had not snatched theknife to attack her father, but to defend him."
"To defend him," repeated Gilder gravely. "Against whom?"
"Against me," answered the secretary.
Alice looked at him with a complex and baffling face; then she said in alow voice: "After all, I am still glad you are brave."
"Come upstairs," said Patrick Royce heavily, "and I will show you thewhole cursed thing."
The attic, which was the secretary's private place (and rather a smallcell for so large a hermit), had indeed all the vestiges of a violentdrama. Near the centre of the floor lay a large revolver as if flungaway; nearer to the left was rolled a whisky bottle, open but not quiteempty. The cloth of the little table lay dragged and trampled, and alength of cord, like that found on the corpse, was cast wildly acrossthe window sill. Two vases were smashed on the mantelpiece, and one onthe carpet.
"I was drunk," said Royce. And this simplicity in the prematurelybattered man somehow had the pathos of the first sin of a baby.
"You all know about me," he continued huskily; "everybody knows how mystory began, and it may as well end like that, too. I was called aclever man once, and might have been a happy one; Armstrong saved theremains of a brain and body from the taverns, and was always kind to mein his own way, poor fellow! Only he wouldn't let me marry Alice here;and it will always be said that he was right enough. Well, you can formyour own conclusions, and you won't want me to go into details. That ismy whisky bottle half emptied in the corner; that is my revolver quiteemptied on the carpet. It was the rope from my box that was found on thecorpse, and it was from my window the corpse was thrown. You need notset detectives to grub up my tragedy; it is a common enough weed in thisworld. I give myself to the gallows; and, by God, that is enough!"
At a sufficiently delicate sign the police gathered round the large manto lead him away; but their unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered bythe remarkable appearance of Father Brown, who was on his hands andknees on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind ofundignified prayers. Being a person utterly insensible to the socialfigure he cut, he remained in this posture, but turned a bright roundface up at the company, presenting the appearance of a quadruped with avery comic human head.
"I say," he said good-naturedly, "this really won't do at all, you know.At the beginning you said we'd found no weapon. But now we're findingtoo many; there's the knife to stab, and the rope to strangle, and thepistol to shoot; and after all he broke his neck by falling out of awindow! It won't do. It's not economical." And he shook his head at theground as a horse does grazing.
Inspector Gilder had opened his mouth with serious intentions, butbefore he could speak the grotesque figure on the floor had gone onquite volubly.
"And now three quite impossible things: First, these holes in thecarpet, where the six bullets have gone in. Why on earth should anybodyfire at the carpet? A drunken man lets fly at his enemy's head, thething that's grinning at him. He doesn't pick a quarrel with his feet,or lay siege with his slippers. And then there's the rope"—and havingdone with the carpet the speaker lifted his hands and put them in hispockets, but continued unaffectedly on his knees—"in what conceivableintoxication would anybody try to put a rope round a man's neck andfinally put it round his leg? Royce, anyhow, was not so drunk as that,or he would be sleeping like a log by now. And, plainest of all, thewhisky bottle. You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle,then, having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half andleaving the other. That is the very last thing a dipsomaniac would do."
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the self-accusedmurderer in tones of limpid penitence: "I'm awfully sorry, my dear sir,but your tale is really rubbish."
"Sir," said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, "can I speak toyou alone for a moment?"
This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, andbefore he could speak in the next room, the girl was talking withstrange incisiveness.
"You are a clever man," she said, "and you are trying to save Patrick Iknow. But it's no use. The core of all this is black, and the morethings you find out the more there will be against the miserable man Ilove."
"Why?" asked Brown, looking at her steadily.
"Because," she answered equally steadily, "I saw him commit the crimemyself."
"Ah!" said the unmoved Brown; "and what did he do?"
"I was in this room next to them," she explained; "both doors wereclosed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard onearth, roaring 'Hell, hell, hell,' again and again, and then the twodoors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again thething banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full ofsmoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick's hand, and Isaw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapton my father, who was clinging in terror to the window-sill, and,grappling, tried to strangle him with the rope which he threw over hishead, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Thenit tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac.I snatched a knife from the mat and, rushing between them, managed tocut the rope before I fainted."
"I see," said Father Brown, with the same wooden civility. "Thank you."
As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly intothe next room, where he found Gilder and Merton alone with PatrickRoyce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspectorsubmissively:
"Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he takeoff those funny cuffs for a minute?"
"He is a very powerful man," said Merton in an undertone. "Why do youwant them taken off?"
"Why, I thought," replied the priest humbly, "that perhaps I might havethe very great honour of shaking hands with him."
Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: "Won't you tell themabout it, sir?"
The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the priest turnedimpatiently.
"Then I will," he said. "Private lives are more important than publicreputations. I am going to save the living, and let the dead bury theirdead."
He went to the fatal window and blinked out of it as he went on talking.
"I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only onedeath. I tell you now that they were not weapons, and were not used tocause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the bloody knife, theexploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were notused to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him."
"To save him!" repeated Gilder. "And from what?"
"From himself," said Father Brown. "He was a suicidal maniac."
"What?" cried Merton in an incredulous tone. "And the Religion ofCheerfulness——"
"It is a cruel religion," said the priest, looking out of the window."Why couldn't they let him weep a little, like his fathers before him?His plans stiffened, his great views grew cold; behind that merry maskwas the empty mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilariouspublic level, he fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned longago. But there is this horror about alcoholism in a single teetotaler:that he pictures and expects that psychological inferno from which hehas warned others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong prematurely, and by thismorning he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in hell,in so crazy a voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad fordeath, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had scattered round himdeath in many shapes—a running noose and his friend's revolver and aknife. Royce entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung theknife on the mat behind him, snatched up the revolver, and having notime to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. Thesuicide saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for the window. Therescuer did the only thing he could—ran after him with the rope andtried to tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ranin, and misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father free.At first she only slashed poor Royce's knuckles, from which has come allthe blood in this little affair. But, of course, you noticed that heleft blood, but no wound on that servant's face? Only before the poorwoman swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashingthrough that window into eternity."
There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises ofGilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce, to whom he said: "Ithink you should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady areworth more than Armstrong's obituary notices."
"Confound Armstrong's notices," cried Royce roughly. "Don't you see itwas because she mustn't know?"
"Mustn't know what?" asked Merton.
"Why, that she killed her father, you fool!" roared the other. "He'd havebeen alive now but for her. It might craze her to know that."
"No, I don't think it would," remarked Father Brown as he picked up hishat. "I rather think I should tell her. Even the most murderous blundersdon't poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happiernow. I've got to go back to the Deaf School."
As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from Highgatestopped him and said:
"The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin."
"I've got to get back to the Deaf School," said Father Brown. "I'm sorryI can't stop for the inquiry."
[Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.]
[End of The Innocence of Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton]