The Blue Cross
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green
glittering ribbon of sea, 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—nor wished to be. There
was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast
between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official
gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale
grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with
a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and
ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and
suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette
with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about
him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a
loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police
card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful
intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the
head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of
the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make
the greatest arrest of the century.
Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries
had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to
Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was
conjectured that he would take some advantage of the
unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress,
then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as
some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of
course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be
certain about Flambeau.
It is many years now since this colossus of crime
suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he
ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a
great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of
course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and
international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily
paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one
extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon
of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales
were told of his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned
the juge d'instruction upside down and stood him on his
head, "to clear his mind"; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli
with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say
that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed
in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes
were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But
each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a
story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy
Company in London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no
milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by
the simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside
people's doors to the doors of his own customers. It was he
who had kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence
with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was intercepted, by
the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages
infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A
sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his
experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the
numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert
one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he
invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners
in quiet suburbs 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 a monkey. Hence
the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was
perfectly aware that his adventures would not end when he
had found him.
But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin's
ideas were still 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 quick eye had caught a tall
apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall
duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all
along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised
Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe.
About the people on the boat he had already satisfied
himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on the
journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There was
a short railway official travelling up to the terminus,
three fairly short market gardeners picked up two stations
afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small
Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up
from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case,
Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest
was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a
face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as
empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels,
which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic
Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation
many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles
disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of
France, and could have no love for priests. But he could
have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in
anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly
fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the
right end of his return ticket. He explained with a
moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he
had to be careful, because he had something made of real
silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels.
His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly
simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest
arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and
came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin
even had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the
silver by telling everybody about it. But to whomever he
talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone else; he
looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or
female, who was well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four
inches above it.
He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite
conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal
so far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his
position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit
another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets
of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares
beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a
quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an
accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at
once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in
the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One
of the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a
dais; and the line of this side was broken by one of
London's admirable accidents—a restaurant that looked as if
it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive
object, with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds
of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above the
street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight
of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door
almost as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor
window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the
yellow-white blinds and considered them long.
The most incredible thing about miracles is that they
happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the
staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the
landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate
shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these
things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in
the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite
accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a
sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element
of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic
may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the
paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French
intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was
not "a thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of
modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine
because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a
plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes,
that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding
logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French
electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they
electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism
so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because
Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of
reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of
motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of
reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first
principles. Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau
had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all,
he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common
to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a
naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method
of his own.
In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such
cases, when he could not follow the train of the reasonable,
he coldly and carefully followed the train of the
unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places—banks,
police stations, rendezvous—he systematically went to the
wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down
every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish,
went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the
way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said
that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one
had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just
the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the
pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the
pursued. Somewhere a man 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 the quietude
and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective's
rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at
random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by
the window, asked for a cup of black coffee.
It was half-way through the morning, and he had not
breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood
about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a
poached egg to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake
some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time
about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once
by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire;
once by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by
getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that
might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as
good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully
realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative
artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour
smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put
it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.
He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had
come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant
for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered
why they should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there
were any more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two
salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some speciality
in the condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was
sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with a
refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other
traces of that singular artistic taste which puts 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-papered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful
and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.
When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat
blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was not
without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour)
asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was up to the
high reputation of the hotel. The result was that the waiter
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 you as a jest?"
The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly
assured him that the establishment had certainly no such
intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up
the sugar-basin and looked at it; he picked up the
salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing more and
more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and
hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the
proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and
then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.
Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a
rush of words.
"I zink," he stuttered eagerly, "I zink it is those two
clergy-men."
"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 be some singular Italian metaphor.
"Yes, yes," said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at
the dark splash on the white paper; "threw it over there on
the wall."
Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to
his rescue with fuller reports.
"Yes, sir," he said, "it's quite true, though I don't
suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two
clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as
the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet,
respectable people; one of them paid the bill and went out;
the other, who seemed a slower coach altogether, was some
minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at
last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he
deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half
emptied, and threw the soup slap on the wall. I was in the
back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only
rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop
empty. It don't do any particular damage, but it was
confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in the
street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they
went round the next corner into Carstairs Street."
The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in
hand. He had already decided that in the universal darkness
of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that
pointed; and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and
clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging
round into the other street.
It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his
eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by
him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The
shop was a popular greengrocer and fruiterer's, an array of
goods set out in the open air and plainly ticketed with
their names and prices. In the two most prominent
compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts
respectively. On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard,
on which was written in bold, blue chalk, "Best tangerine
oranges, two a penny." On the oranges was the equally clear
and exact description, "Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb." M.
Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met
this highly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat
recently. He drew the attention of the red-faced fruiterer,
who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to
this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said
nothing, but sharply put each card into its proper place.
The detective, leaning elegantly on his walking-cane,
continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, "Pray
excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should
like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and
the association of ideas."
The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace;
but he continued gaily, swinging his cane, "Why," he
pursued, "why are two tickets wrongly placed in a
greengrocer's shop like a shovel hat that has come to London
for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what
is the mystical association which connects the idea of nuts
marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall
and the other short?"
The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a
snail's; he really 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'll knock
their silly 'eads off, parsons or no parsons, if they upset
my apples again."
"Indeed?" asked the detective, with great sympathy. "Did
they upset your apples?"
"One of 'em did," said the heated shopman; "rolled 'em
all over the street. 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," replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On
the other side of the 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 arst me, one of 'em was drunk. He stood in the middle
of the road that bewildered that—"
"Which way did they go?" snapped Valentin.
"They took one of them yellow buses over there," answered
the man; "them that go to Hampstead."
Valentin produced his official card and said very
rapidly: "Call up two of your men to come with me in
pursuit," and crossed the road with such contagious energy
that the ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile
obedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was
joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a man in
plain clothes.
"Well, sir," began the former, with smiling importance,
"and what may—?"
Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. "I'll tell you
on the top of that omnibus," he said, and was darting and
dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three
sank panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the
inspector said: "We could go four times as quick in a taxi."
"Quite true," replied their leader placidly, "if we only
had an idea of where we were going."
"Well, where are you going?" asked the other, staring.
Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then,
removing his cigarette, he said: "If you know what a man's
doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what
he's doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when
he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he
saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our
eyes skinned for a queer thing."
"What sort of queer thing do you mean?" asked the
inspector.
"Any sort of queer thing," answered Valentin, and
relapsed into obstinate silence.
The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what
seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not
explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent
and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a
silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hours crept
long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of
the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length
after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those
journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last
he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds
he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London
died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then
was unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and
blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen
separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But
though the winter twilight was already threatening the road
ahead of them, the Parisian detective still sat silent and
watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by on
either side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind,
the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave
something like a jump as Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand
on each man's shoulder, and shouted to the driver to stop.
They tumbled down the steps into the road without
realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked
round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly
pointing his finger towards a window on the left side of the
road. It was a large window, forming part of the long facade
of a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part
reserved for respectable dining, and labelled "Restaurant."
This window, like all the rest 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 the broken window."
"What window? What cue?" asked his principal assistant.
"Why, what proof is 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, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it
has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don't
you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else
go home to bed?" He banged his way into the restaurant,
followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a
late luncheon at a little table, and looked at the star of
smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very
informative to them even then.
"Got your window broken, I see," said Valentin to the
waiter as he paid the bill.
"Yes, sir," answered the attendant, bending busily over
the change, to which Valentin silently added an enormous
tip. The waiter straightened himself 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 those foreign parsons that are running about. They had a
cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it
and went out. The other was just going out to join him when
I looked at my change again and found he'd paid me more than
three times too much. 'Here,' I says to the chap who 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. But now I saw I'd put 14s., as plain as paint."
"Well?" cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning
eyes, "and then?"
"The parson at the door he says all serene, 'Sorry to
confuse your accounts, but it'll pay for the window.' 'What
window?' I says. 'The one I'm going to break,' he says, and
smashed that blessed pane with his umbrella."
All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the
inspector said under his breath, "Are we after escaped
lunatics?" The waiter went on with some relish for the
ridiculous story:
"I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn't do
anything. The man marched 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 as quickly 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 seemed built out of the blank backs of
everything and everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was
not easy even for the London policemen to guess in what
exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however,
was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some
part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window
broke the blue twilight like a bull's-eye lantern; and
Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish
sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in;
he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with
entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a
certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he
did not need one.
An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded
his elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but
when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue
uniform of the inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.
"Oh," she said, "if you've come about that parcel, I've
sent it off already."
"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 real confession of eagerness, "for Heaven's sake
tell us what happened exactly."
"Well," said the woman a little doubtfully, "the
clergymen came in about half an hour ago and bought some
peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the
Heath. But a second after, one of them runs back into the
shop and says, 'Have I left a parcel!' Well, I looked
everywhere and couldn't see one; so he says, 'Never mind;
but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,'
and he left me the address and a shilling for my trouble.
And sure enough, though I thought I'd looked everywhere, I
found he'd left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it to the
place he said. I can't remember the address now; it was
somewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so
important, I thought 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 come right out on the open." Valentin sprang out of
the shop and began to run. The other detectives followed him
at a reluctant trot.
The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by
shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void
common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening
still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green
sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet
distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to
pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was
left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge
of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the
Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this region had
not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on
benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in
one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened
around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the
slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the
thing which he sought.
Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was
one especially black which did not break—a group of two
figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as
insects, Valentin could see that one of them was much
smaller than the other. Though the other had a student's
stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man
was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went
forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By the time he had
substantially diminished the distance and magnified the two
black figures as in a vast microscope, he had perceived
something else; something which startled him, and yet which
he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there
could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It
was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure
of Essex whom he had warned about his brown paper parcels.
Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally
and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries
that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up
a silver cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable
value, to show some of the foreign priests at the congress.
This undoubtedly was the "silver with blue stones"; and
Father Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the
train. Now there was nothing wonderful about the fact that
what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also found out;
Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing
wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire
cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural
thing in all natural history. And most certainly there was
nothing wonderful about the fact that Flambeau should have
it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the man with
the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom
anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was not
surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another
priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime
seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the
priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for
condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin
thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had
led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the
smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a
blue-and-silver cross from a priest from Essex to do with
chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling
nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and breaking
them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet
somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed
(which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but
nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the
criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.
The two figures that they followed were crawling like
black flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They
were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not
notice where they were going; but they were certainly going
to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their
pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the
undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind
clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in deep grass.
By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close
enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion,
but no word could be distinguished except the word "reason"
recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice.
Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of
thickets, the detectives actually lost the two figures they
were following. They did not find the trail again for an
agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a
great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and
desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet
neglected spot was an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this
seat sat the two priests still in serious speech together.
The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the darkening
horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from
peacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached
themselves more and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning
to his followers, Valentin contrived to creep up behind the
big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence,
heard the words of the strange priests for the first time.
After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was
gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two
English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an
errand no saner than seeking figs on its thistles. For the
two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with
learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of
theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply,
with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the
other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even
worthy to look at them. But no more innocently clerical
conversation could have been heard in any white Italian
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 the heavens being incorruptible."
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
"Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason;
but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel
that there may well be wonderful universes above us where
reason is utterly unreasonable?"
"No," said the other priest; "reason is always
reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland
of things. I know that people charge the Church with
lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on
earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on
earth, the Church 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 in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of
escaping from the laws of truth."
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with
silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the
English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic
guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild
old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate
answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was
again Father Brown who was speaking:
"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest
star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were
single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad
botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant
with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a
single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that
frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the
reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under
cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a
notice-board, 'Thou shalt not steal.'"
Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and
crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as might be,
felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in
the very silence of the tall priest 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 think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher
than our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and
I for one can only bow my head."
Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the
faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:
"Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you?
We're all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a
straw doll."
The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange
violence to that shocking change of speech. But the guarder
of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest
section of the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat
foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not
understood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and sat rigid
with terror.
"Yes," said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in
the same still posture, "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 great robber 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 give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I
tell you why you won't give 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 the dusk, 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, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a
duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you've
got the duplicate and I've got the jewels. An old dodge,
Father Brown—a very old dodge."
"Yes," said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his
hair with the same strange vagueness of manner. "Yes, I've
heard of it before."
The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic
priest with a sort 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 man simply. "He was a penitent, you know. He had
lived prosperously for about 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 way of 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 brought you up to this bare part of the
heath?"
"No, no," said Brown with an air of apology. "You see, I
suspected you when we first met. It's that little bulge up
the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet."
"How in Tartarus," cried Flambeau, "did you ever hear of
the spiked bracelet?"
"Oh, one's little flock, you know!" said Father Brown,
arching his eyebrows rather blankly. "When I was a curate in
Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets.
So, as I suspected you from the first, 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 the
parcels. Then, don't you see, I changed them back again. And
then I left the right one behind."
"Left it behind?" repeated Flambeau, and for the first
time there was another note in his voice beside his triumph.
"Well, it was like this," said the little priest,
speaking in the same unaffected way. "I went back to that
sweet-shop and asked if I'd left a parcel, and gave them a
particular address if it turned up. Well, I knew I hadn't;
but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running
after me with that valuable parcel, they have sent it flying
to a friend of mine in Westminster." Then he added rather
sadly: "I learnt that, too, from a poor fellow in
Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at
railway stations, but he's in a monastery now. Oh, one gets
to know, you know," he added, rubbing his head again with
the same sort of desperate apology. "We can't help being
priests. People come and tell us these things."
Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner
pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper
and sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a
gigantic gesture, and cried:
"I don't believe you. I don't believe a bumpkin like you
could manage all that. I believe you've still got the stuff
on you, and if you don't give 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 by force. 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
strong policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did
they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of course!
How did I do it? Why, I'll tell you if you like! Lord bless
you, we have to know twenty such things when we work among
the criminal classes! Well, I wasn't sure you were a thief,
and it would never do to make a scandal against one of our
own clergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would
make you show yourself. A man generally makes a small scene
if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn't, he has some
reason for keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and
you kept quiet. A man generally objects if his bill is three
times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing
unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it."
The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a
tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was stunned
with the utmost curiosity.
"Well," went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity,
"as you wouldn't leave any tracks for the police, of course
somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to
do something that would get us talked about 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
will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather
wonder you didn't stop 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. I couldn't have countered it even with
the Spots myself; I'm not strong enough 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, agreeably surprised. "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 clerical opponent.
"Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said.
"Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing
but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware
of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, 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 policemen came out from under the twilight trees.
Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. 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 priest blinked about for his umbrella.
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, and a
face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a
table in the entrance hall—a hall hung with weapons.
Valentin's house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as
its master. It was an old house, with high walls and tall
poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but the oddity—and
perhaps the police value—of its architecture was this: that
there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front
door, which was 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 was no 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 sworn to kill.
As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had
telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in
truth, making some last arrangements about executions and
such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly
repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision.
Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about
their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and
largely over European—policial methods, his great influence
had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and
the purification of prisons. He was one of the great
humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only thing wrong
with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.
When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black
clothes and the red rosette—an elegant figure, his dark
beard already streaked with grey. He went straight through
his house to his study, which opened on the grounds behind.
The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully
locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few
seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A
sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of
a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual
in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific
natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous
problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least,
he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his
guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his
drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain
that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw
all the other pillars of the little party; he saw Lord
Galloway, the English Ambassador—a choleric old man with a
russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the
Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with
silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her
daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with
an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess
of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her
two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr.
Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed
brown beard, and a forehead barred with those parallel
wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness, since
they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw
Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he had recently met
in England. He saw—perhaps with more interest than any of
these—a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways
without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who
now advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. This was
Commandant O'Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He was a
slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven,
dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in an
officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and
successful suicides, he had an air at once dashing and
melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in
boyhood had known the Galloways—especially Margaret Graham.
He had left his country after some crash of debts, and now
expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by
swinging about in 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 each other, their distinguished host was not
specially interested in them. No one of them at least was in
his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting,
for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose
friendship he had secured during some of his great detective
tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting
Julius K. Brayne, that multi-millionaire whose colossal and
even crushing endowments of small religions have occasioned
so much easy sport and easier solemnity for the American and
English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr.
Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist;
but he was ready to pour money into any intellectual vessel,
so long as it was an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was
to wait for the American Shakespeare—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 as a dinner bell. He had this great quality,
which very few of us can claim, that his presence was as big
as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall,
clad in complete evening black, without so much relief as a
watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and well brushed
back like a German's; his face was red, fierce and cherubic,
with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that
otherwise infantile visage with an effect theatrical and
even Mephistophelean. Not long, however, did that salon
merely stare at the celebrated American; his lateness had
already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with all
speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.
Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual
enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of
that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied; and
she had not done so, she had decorously gone in with Dr.
Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and
almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but
when, over the cigars, three of the younger men—Simon the
doctor, Brown the priest, and the detrimental O'Brien, the
exile in a foreign uniform—all melted away to mix with the
ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the English
diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung
every sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien
might be signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt
to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the
hoary Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin,
the grizzled Frenchman who believed in none. They could
argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him.
After a time this "progressive" logomachy had reached a
crisis of tedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the
drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six
or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched, didactic
voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest,
followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a
curse, were probably arguing about "science and religion."
But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one
thing—he saw what was not there. He saw that Commandant
O'Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was absent too.
Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from
the dining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His
notion of protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian
n'er-do-weel had become something central and even mad in
his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where
was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet his daughter,
who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a
second enigma. If she had been with O'Brien, where was
O'Brien! If she had not been with O'Brien, where had she
been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion he
groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and
eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to the
garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and
rolled away all the 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 study door; a glint of
moonlit silver on his facings picked him out as Commandant
O'Brien.
He vanished through the French windows into the house,
leaving Lord Galloway in an indescribable temper, at once
virulent and vague. The blue-and-silver garden, like a scene
in a theatre, seemed to taunt him with all that tyrannic
tenderness against which his worldly authority was at war.
The length and grace of the Irishman's stride enraged him as
if he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight
maddened him. He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of
troubadours, a Watteau fairyland; and, willing to shake off
such amorous imbecilities by speech, he stepped briskly
after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or
stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation
and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the
moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight—an
elderly English diplomatist running hard and crying or
bellowing as he ran.
His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door,
the beaming glasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard
the nobleman's first clear words. Lord Galloway was crying:
"A corpse in the grass—a blood-stained corpse." O'Brien at
last had gone utterly out of his mind.
"We must tell Valentin at once," said the doctor, when
the other had brokenly described all that he had dared to
examine. "It is fortunate that he is here;" and even as he
spoke the great detective entered the study, attracted by
the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical
transformation; he had come with the common concern of a
host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was
ill. When he was told the gory fact, he turned with all his
gravity instantly bright and businesslike; 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 one comes and settles in my own
back-yard. But where is the place?" They crossed the lawn
less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the
river; but under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they
found the body sunken in deep grass—the body of a very tall
and broad-shouldered man. He lay face downwards, so they
could only see that his big shoulders 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 wet seaweed.
A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen
face.
"At least," said Simon, with a deep and singular
intonation, "he is none of our party."
"Examine him, doctor," cried Valentin rather sharply. "He
may not be dead."
The doctor bent down. "He is not quite cold, but I am
afraid he is dead enough," he answered. "Just help me to
lift him up."
They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and
all doubts as to his being really dead were settled at once
and frightfully. The head fell away. It had been entirely
sundered from the body; whoever had cut his throat had
managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin was
slightly shocked. "He must have been as strong as a
gorilla," he muttered.
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—a face of a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a
distant touch of a Chinese emperor. All present seemed to
look at it with the coldest eye of ignorance. Nothing else
could be noted about the man except that, as they had lifted
his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam of a
shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon
said, the man had never been of their party. But he might
very well have been trying to join it, for he had come
dressed for such an occasion.
Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined
with his closest professional attention the grass and ground
for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was
assisted less skillfully by the doctor, and quite vaguely by
the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellings except
a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths,
which Valentin lifted for an instant's examination and then
tossed away.
"Twigs," he said gravely; "twigs, and a total stranger
with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn."
There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the
unnerved Galloway called 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 in the moonlit haze; looked for an
instant like a goblin, but turned out to be 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 you know."
Valentin's black brows had come together somewhat
crossly, as they did on principle at the sight of the
cassock. But he was far too just a man to deny the relevance
of the remark. "You are right," he said. "Before we find out
how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he
came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be
done without prejudice to my position and duty, we shall all
agree that certain distinguished names might well be kept
out of this. There are ladies, gentlemen, and there is a
foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down as a crime, then
it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can use
my own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so
public that I can afford to be private. Please Heaven, I
will clear everyone of my own 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 tomorrow at noon;
there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to
find my man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential
man. Tell him to leave 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 remain with the
body."
When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was
obeyed like a bugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury
and routed out Ivan, the public detective's private
detective. Galloway went to the drawing-room and told the
terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time the
company assembled there the ladies were already startled and
already soothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good
atheist stood at the head and foot of the dead man
motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their
two philosophies of death.
Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the
moustaches, came out of the house like a cannon ball, and
came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his
master. His livid face was quite lively with the glow of
this domestic detective story, and it was with almost
unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's permission
to examine the remains.
"Yes; look, if you like, Ivan," said Valentin, "but don't
be long. We must go in and thrash this out in the house."
Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.
"Why," he gasped, "it's—no, it isn't; it can't be. Do you
know this man, sir?"
"No," said Valentin indifferently; "we had better go
inside."
Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the
study, and then all made their way to the drawing-room.
The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even
without hesitation; but his eye was the iron eye of a judge
at assize. He made a few rapid notes upon 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. Neil O'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking
in the garden when the corpse 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. I am not sure."
The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before
anyone could stir or speak Valentin went on with the same
soldierly swiftness of exposition.
"Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in
the garden, his head cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you
have examined it. Do you think 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 the pale doctor.
"Have you any thought," resumed Valentin, "of a tool with
which it could be done?"
"Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't,"
said the doctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not easy
to hack a neck through even clumsily, and this was a very
clean cut. It could be done with a battle-axe or an old
headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword."
"But, good heavens!" cried the Duchess, almost in
hysterics, "there aren't any two-handed swords and
battle-axes round here."
Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him.
"Tell me," he said, still writing rapidly, "could it have
been done with a long French cavalry sabre?"
A low knocking came at the door, which, for some
unreasonable reason, curdled everyone's blood like the
knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen silence Dr. Simon
managed to say: "A sabre—yes, I suppose it could."
"Thank you," said Valentin. "Come in, Ivan."
The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in
Commandant Neil O'Brien, whom he had found at last pacing
the garden again.
The Irish officer stood up disordered and defiant on the
threshold. "What do you want with me?" he cried.
"Please sit down," said Valentin in pleasant, level
tones. "Why, you aren't wearing your sword. Where is it?"
"I left it on the library table," said O'Brien, his
brogue deepening in his disturbed mood. "It was a nuisance,
it was getting—"
"Ivan," said Valentin, "please go and get the
Commandant's sword from the library." Then, as the servant
vanished, "Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden
just before he found the corpse. What were you doing in the
garden?"
The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair.
"Oh," he cried in pure Irish, "admirin' the moon. Communing
with Nature, me bhoy."
A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it
came again that trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan
reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard. "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 inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer.
The Duchess's weak exclamations had long ago died away. Lord
Galloway's swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered.
The voice that came was quite unexpected.
"I think I can tell you," cried Lady Margaret, in that
clear, quivering voice with which a courageous woman speaks
publicly. "I can tell you what 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 family circumstances I
could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry
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 thing like this."
Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was
intimidating her in what he imagined to be an undertone.
"Hold your tongue, Maggie," he said in a thunderous whisper.
"Why should you shield the fellow? Where's his sword?
Where's his confounded cavalry—"
He stopped because of the singular stare with which his
daughter was regarding him, a look that was indeed a lurid
magnet for the whole group.
"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 was innocent 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—who must at
least have known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your
own daughter—"
Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the
touch of those satanic tragedies that have been between
lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the
Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irish adventurer, like
old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of
formless historical memories of murdered husbands and
poisonous paramours.
In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice
said: "Was it a very long cigar?"
The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look
round to see who had spoken.
"I mean," said little Father Brown, from the corner of
the room, "I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It
seems nearly as long as a walking-stick."
Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as
irritation in Valentin's face as he lifted his head.
"Quite right," he remarked sharply. "Ivan, go and see
about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once."
The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin
addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.
"Lady Margaret," he said, "we all feel, I am sure, both
gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above your
lower dignity and explaining the Commandant's conduct. But
there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met
you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was
only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and
the Commandant still walking there."
"You have to remember," replied Margaret, with a faint
irony in her voice, "that I had just refused him, so we
should scarcely have come back arm in arm. He is a
gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind—and so 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 hat and coat are gone, too, and I'll tell you
something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any
traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too."
"What do you mean?" asked Valentin.
"I'll show you," said his servant, and reappeared with a
flashing naked cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the
point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a
thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan went on quite quietly:
"I found this," he said, "flung among the bushes fifty
yards up the road to 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, and then turned a respectful face
to O'Brien. "Commandant," he said, "we trust you will always
produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination.
Meanwhile," he added, slapping the steel back in the ringing
scabbard, "let me return you your sword."
At the military symbolism of the action the audience
could hardly refrain from applause.
For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the
turning-point of existence. By the time he was wandering in
the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning
the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen from
him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord
Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology.
Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at
least, and had perhaps given him something better than an
apology, as they drifted among the old flowerbeds before
breakfast. The whole company was more lighthearted and
humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the
load of suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying
off to Paris with the strange millionaire—a man they hardly
knew. The devil was cast out of the house—he had cast
himself out.
Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw
himself on a garden seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly
scientific person at once resumed it. He did not get much
talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were on pleasanter
things.
"I can't say it interests me much," said the Irishman
frankly, "especially as it seems pretty plain now.
Apparently Brayne hated this stranger for some reason; lured
him into the garden, and killed him with my 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 his
pocket. 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; "like high walls within walls. Don't mistake me. I
don't doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves
that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why should
a man kill another man with a great hulking sabre, when he
can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in
his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or
outcry? Does a man commonly see another come up waving a
scimitar and offer no remarks? Third difficulty: A servant
watched the front door all the evening; and a rat cannot get
into Valentin's garden anywhere. How did the dead man get
into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same
conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?"
"And the fifth," said Neil, with eyes fixed on the
English priest who was coming slowly up the path.
"Is a trifle, I suppose," said the doctor, "but I think
an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been slashed,
I supposed the assassin had struck more than once. But on
examination I found many cuts across the truncated section;
in other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did
Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring his
body in the moonlight?"
"Horrible!" said O'Brien, and shuddered.
The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were
talking, and had waited, with characteristic shyness, till
they had finished. Then he said 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 his glasses.
"Yes, I'm sorry," said Father Brown mildly. "There's been
another murder, you know."
Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.
"And, what's stranger still," continued the priest, with
his dull eye on the rhododendrons, "it's the same disgusting
sort; it's another beheading. They found the second head
actually bleeding into the river, a few 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 he added: "They want you to come to the
library and see it."
Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the
inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed
all this secretive carnage; where were these extravagant
amputations going to stop? First one head was hacked off,
and then another; in this case (he told himself bitterly) it
was not true that two heads were better than one. As he
crossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking
coincidence. Upon Valentin'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 it was only a
Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every week
showed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes and
writhing features just after execution; for Valentin was an
anti-clerical of some note. But O'Brien was an Irishman,
with a kind of chastity even in his sins; and his gorge rose
against that great brutality of the intellect which belongs
only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from the
grotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures
in the newspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the
Revolution. He saw the whole city as one ugly energy, from
the sanguinary sketch lying on Valentin'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 from under 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 of a long,
slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains,
looking enormous in the twilight. The big black figure and
yellow face of the man found in the garden confronted them
essentially unchanged. The second head, which had been
fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay
streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin's men were still
seeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was
supposed to be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to
share O'Brien's sensibilities in the least, went up to the
second head and examined it with his blinking care. It was
little more than a mop of wet white hair, fringed with
silver fire in the red and level morning light; the face,
which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal
type, had been much battered against trees or stones as it
tossed in the water.
"Good morning, Commandant O'Brien," said Valentin, with
quiet cordiality. "You have heard of Brayne's last
experiment in butchery, I suppose?"
Father Brown was still bending over the head with white
hair, and he said, 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 his pockets. "Killed in the same way as the other.
Found within a few yards of the other. And sliced by the
same weapon which we know he carried away."
"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 off his own head? I don't know."
O'Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears;
but the doctor sprang forward with impetuous practicality
and pushed back the wet white hair.
"Oh, there's no doubt it's Brayne," said the priest
quietly. "He had exactly that chip in the left ear."
The detective, who had been regarding the priest with
steady and glittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and
said sharply: "You seem to know a lot about him, Father
Brown."
"I do," said the little man simply. "I've been about with
him for some weeks. He was thinking of joining our church."
The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he
strode towards the priest with clenched hands. "And,
perhaps," he cried, with a blasting sneer, "perhaps he was
also thinking of leaving all his money to your church."
"Perhaps he was," said Brown stolidly; "it is possible."
"In that case," cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile,
"you may indeed know a great deal about him. About his life
and about his—"
Commandant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. "Drop
that slanderous rubbish, Valentin," he said, "or there may
be more swords yet."
But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the
priest) had already recovered himself. "Well," he said
shortly, "people's private opinions can wait. You gentlemen
are still bound by your promise to stay; you must enforce it
on yourselves—and on each other. Ivan here will tell you
anything more you want to know; I must get to business and
write to the authorities. We can't keep this quiet any
longer. I shall be writing in my study if there is any more
news."
"Is there any more news, Ivan?" asked Dr. Simon, as the
chief of police strode out of the room.
"Only one more thing, I think, sir," said Ivan, wrinkling
up his grey old face, "but that's important, too, in its
way. There's that old buffer you found on the lawn," and he
pointed without pretence of reverence at the big black body
with the yellow head. "We've found out who he is, anyhow."
"Indeed!" cried the astonished doctor, "and who is he?"
"His name was Arnold Becker," said the under-detective,
"though he went by many aliases. He was a wandering sort of
scamp, and is known to have been in America; so that was
where Brayne got his knife into him. We didn't have much to
do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany.
We've communicated, of course, with the German police. But,
oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis
Becker, whom we had a great deal to do with. In fact, we
found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well,
it's a rum thing, gentlemen, but when I saw that fellow flat
on the lawn I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn't
seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes, I'd have
sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, of
course, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and
following up the clue—"
The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason
that nobody was listening to him. The Commandant and the
doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung
stiffly to his feet, and was holding his temples 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 paraphrase any page in
Aquinas once. Will my head split—or will it see? I see
half—I only see half."
He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of
rigid torture of thought or prayer, while the other three
could only go on staring at this last prodigy of their wild
twelve hours.
When Father Brown's hands fell they showed a face quite
fresh and serious, like a child's. He heaved a huge sigh,
and said: "Let us get this said and done with as quickly as
possible. Look here, this will be the quickest way to
convince you all of the truth." He turned to the doctor.
"Dr. Simon," he said, "you have a strong head-piece, and I
heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions
about this business. Well, if you will ask them again, I
will answer them."
Simon's pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and
wonder, but he answered at once. "Well, the first question,
you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy
sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?"
"A man cannot behead with a bodkin," said Brown calmly,
"and for this murder 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 looked on the scene of death. "No one saw the
point of the twigs. Why should they lie on that lawn (look
at it) so far from any tree? They were not snapped off; they
were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some
tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch in
mid-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 my next 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 any strange man in the garden."
There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost
childish laughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of
Brown's remark moved Ivan to open taunts.
"Oh!" he cried; "then we didn't lug a great fat corpse on
to a sofa last night? 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 the nest question, doctor?"
"I fancy you're ill," exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; "but
I'll ask the next 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 of the 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 a garden, or he doesn't," he cried.
"Not always," said Father Brown.
Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. "I have no time
to spare on such senseless talk," he cried angrily. "If you
can't understand a man being on one side of a wall or the
other, I won't trouble you further."
"Doctor," said the cleric very gently, "we have always
got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old
friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question."
The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and
said briefly: "The head and shoulders were cut about in a
queer way. It seemed to be done after death."
"Yes," said the motionless priest, "it was done so as to
make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood that you
did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that
the head belonged to the body."
The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are
made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt the
chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that
man's unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his
first fathers seemed saying in his ear: "Keep out of the
monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit.
Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads."
Yet, while these shameful symbolic shapes passed across the
ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect
was quite alert, and was watching the odd priest as closely
and incredulously as all the rest.
Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against
the window, with his face in dense shadow; but even in that
shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he
spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no Gaelic souls on
earth.
"Gentlemen," he said, "you did not find the strange body
of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body
in the garden. In face of Dr. Simon's rationalism, I still
affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!"
(pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) "you
never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this
man?"
He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the
unknown, and put in its 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 and flung the sword far over the wall. But he
was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head
over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head
to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you
all imagined a totally new man."
"Clap on another head!" said O'Brien staring. "What other
head? Heads don't grow on garden bushes, do they?"
"No," said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his
boots; "there is only one place where they grow. They grow
in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the chief of
police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before
the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you
tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad
for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you never see in
that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad! He would do
anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition
of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved for it, and
now he has murdered for it. Brayne's crazy millions had
hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did
little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a
whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics,
was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing.
Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and
pugnacious Church of France; he would support six
Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was
already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at
the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did
it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit
his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on
some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official
box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord
Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him
out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used
twigs and a sabre for illustration, and—"
Ivan of the Scar sprang up. "You lunatic," he yelled;
"you'll go to my master now, if I take you by—"
"Why, I was going there," said Brown heavily; "I must ask
him to confess, and all that."
Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or
sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of
Valentin's study.
The great detective sat at his desk apparently too
occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a
moment, and then something in the look of that upright and
elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch
and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills
at Valentin's elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his
chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than
the pride of Cato.
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 not black. If (supposing
that you have the star-defying audacity to address such a
being) you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does
it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter. You will then
retire crushed. But you will leave behind you a mystery as
yet unsolved and a tale worth telling.
If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you
were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named
Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the
most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that
upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel,
where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul,
merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is
perhaps a little proud of this wild and wonderful guess of
his, and it is possible that he might refer to it. But since
it is immeasurably unlikely that you will ever rise high
enough in the social world to find "The Twelve True
Fishermen," or that you will ever sink low enough among
slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will
never hear the story at all unless you hear it from me.
The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held
their annual dinners was an institution such as can only
exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad
on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product—an
"exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing
which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning
people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become
cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers.
They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy
and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in
overcoming them. If there were a fashionable hotel in London
which no man could enter who was under six foot, society
would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it.
If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere
caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday
afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The
Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a
square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a very
inconvenient one. But its very inconveniences were
considered as walls protecting a particular class. One
inconvenience, in particular, was held to be of vital
importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four
people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner
table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to
the air on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most
exquisite old gardens in London. Thus it happened that even
the twenty-four seats at this table could only be enjoyed in
warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet more
difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of
the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a
million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. Of
course he combined with this limitation in the scope of his
enterprise the most careful polish in its performance. The
wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and
the demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed
mood of the English upper class. The proprietor knew all his
waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only
fifteen of them all told. It was much easier to become a
Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel.
Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness,
as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there was
generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.
The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have
consented to dine anywhere 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 club was even
dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual
dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their
treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially
the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as
it were, the insignia of the society, 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 laid out
for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most
magnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a
vast number of ceremonies and observances, but it had no
history and no object; that was where it was so very
aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be
one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were already a certain
sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been in
existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its
vice-president was 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 anything about it, and may even speculate
as to how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown
came to find himself in that golden galley. As far as that
is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is
in the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks
into the most refined retreats with the dreadful information
that all men are brothers, and wherever this leveller went
on his pale horse it was Father Brown's trade to follow. One
of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a
paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer,
marvelling mildly at such superstitions, had consented to
send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter
confessed to Father Brown we are not concerned, for the
excellent reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but
apparently it involved him in writing out a note or
statement for the conveying of some message or the righting
of some wrong. Father Brown, therefore, with a meek
impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham
Palace, asked to be provided with a room and writing
materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man, and
had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any
difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one
unusual stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck
of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any
borderland or anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people
waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance. There
were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be
as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as
to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one's own
family. Moreover, the priest's appearance was second-rate
and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse 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, the disgrace.
When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you
pass down a short passage decorated with a few dingy but
important pictures, and come to the main vestibule and
lounge which opens on your right into passages leading to
the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage
pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel.
Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass
office, which abuts upon the lounge—a house within a house,
so to speak, like the old hotel bar which probably once
occupied its place.
In this office sat the representative of the proprietor
(nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could
help it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the
servants' quarters, was the gentlemen's cloak room, the last
boundary of the gentlemen's domain. But between the office
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 him sixpence. It is a mark of the
magnificent tolerance of Mr. Lever that he permitted this
holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by a mere
priest, scribbling away on a piece of paper. The story which
Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better
story than this one, only it will never be known. I can
merely state that it was very nearly as long, and that the
last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting
and absorbing.
For it was by the time that he had reached these that the
priest began a little to allow his thoughts to wander and
his animal senses, which were commonly keen, to awaken. The
time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his own
forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps the
gathering 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 he
became conscious of the thing he found what it was: only the
ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel
was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the
darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had
listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got to his feet and
listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then
he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not
merely listening, but listening and thinking also.
The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as
one might hear in any hotel; and yet, taken as a whole,
there was something very strange about them. There were no
other footsteps. It was always a very silent house, for the
few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments,
and the well-trained waiters were told to be almost
invisible until they were wanted. One could not conceive any
place where there was less reason to apprehend anything
irregular. But these footsteps were so odd that one could
not decide to call them regular or irregular. Father Brown
followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like
a man trying to learn a tune on the piano.
First, there came a long rush of rapid little steps, such
as a light man might make in winning a walking race. At a
certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow,
swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter of the steps, but
occupying about the same time. The moment the last echoing
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 was certainly the same pair of boots, partly
because (as has been said) there were no other boots about,
and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak
in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help
asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question
his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump.
He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on earth
should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should he
walk in order to run? Yet no other description would cover
the antics of this invisible pair of legs. The man was
either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in
order to walk very slow down the other half; or he was
walking very slow at one end to have the rapture of walking
fast at the other. Neither suggestion seemed to make much
sense. His brain was growing darker and darker, like his
room.
Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of
his cell seemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he began to
see as in a kind of vision the fantastic feet capering along
the corridor in unnatural or symbolic attitudes. Was it a
heathen religious dance? Or some entirely new kind of
scientific exercise? Father Brown began to ask himself with
more exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow
step first: it certainly was not the step of the proprietor.
Men of his type walk with a rapid waddle, or they sit still.
It could not be any servant or messenger waiting for
directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer orders (in
an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly
drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous
scenes, they stand or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that
heavy yet springy step, with a kind of careless emphasis,
not specially noisy, yet not caring what noise it made,
belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It was a
gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never
worked for his living.
Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed
to the quicker one, and ran past the door as feverishly as a
rat. The listener remarked that 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 associated in his
mind with secrecy, but with something else—something that he
could not remember. He was maddened by one of those
half-memories that make a man feel half-witted. Surely he
had heard that strange, swift walking somewhere. Suddenly he
sprang to his feet with a new idea in his head, and walked
to the door. His room had no direct outlet on the passage,
but let on one side into the glass office, and on the other
into the cloak room beyond. He tried the door into the
office, and found it locked. Then he looked at the window,
now a square pane full of purple cloud cleft by livid
sunset, and for an instant he smelt evil as a dog smells
rats.
The rational part of him (whether the wiser or not)
regained its supremacy. He remembered that the proprietor
had told him that he should lock the door, and would come
later to release him. He told himself that twenty things he
had not thought of might explain the eccentric sounds
outside; he reminded himself that there was just enough
light left to finish his own proper work. Bringing his paper
to the window so as to catch the last stormy evening light,
he resolutely plunged once more into the almost completed
record. He had written for about twenty minutes, 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 had walked, with levity indeed and lightning quickness,
but he had walked. This time he ran. One could hear the
swift, soft, bounding steps coming along the corridor, like
the pads of a fleeing and leaping panther. Whoever was
coming was a very strong, active man, in still yet tearing
excitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the office
like a sort of whispering whirlwind, it suddenly changed
again to the old slow, swaggering stamp.
Father Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the
office door to be locked, went at once into the cloak room
on the other side. The attendant of this place was
temporarily absent, probably because the only guests were at
dinner and his office was a sinecure. After groping through
a grey forest of overcoats, he found that the dim cloak room
opened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of
counter or half-door, like most of the counters across which
we have all handed umbrellas and received tickets. There was
a light immediately above the semicircular arch of this
opening. It threw little illumination on Father Brown
himself, who seemed a mere dark outline against the dim
sunset window behind him. But it threw an almost theatrical
light on the man who stood outside the cloak room in the
corridor.
He was an elegant man in very plain evening dress; tall,
but with an air of not taking up much room; one felt that he
could have slid along like a 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
humoured and confident; a critic could only say that his
black coat was a shade below his figure and manners, and
even bulged and bagged in an odd way. The moment he caught
sight of Brown's black silhouette against the sunset, he
tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called out
with amiable authority: "I want my hat and coat, please; I
find I have to go away at once."
Father Brown took the paper without a word, and
obediently went to look for 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 strange gentleman 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 a sovereign, and caught up his coat.
Father Brown's figure remained quite dark and still; but
in that instant he had lost his head. His head was always
most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put
two and two together and made four million. Often the
Catholic Church (which is wedded to common sense) did not
approve of it. Often he did not approve of it himself. But
it was real inspiration—important at rare crises—when
whosoever shall lose his head the same shall save it.
"I think, sir," he said civilly, "that you have some
silver in your pocket."
The tall gentleman stared. "Hang it," he cried, "if I
choose to give you gold, why should you complain?"
"Because silver is sometimes more valuable than gold,"
said the priest mildly; "that is, in large quantities."
The stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked
still more curiously up the passage towards the main
entrance. Then he looked back at Brown again, and then he
looked very carefully at the window beyond Brown's head,
still coloured with the after-glow of the storm. Then he
seemed to make up his mind. He put one hand on the counter,
vaulted over as easily as an acrobat and towered above the
priest, putting one tremendous hand upon his collar.
"Stand still," he said, in a hacking whisper. "I don't
want to threaten you, but—"
"I do want to threaten you," said Father Brown, in a
voice like a rolling drum, "I want to threaten you with the
worm that dieth not, and the 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 hear your confession."
The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then
staggered back into a chair.
The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True
Fishermen had proceeded with placid success. I do not
possess a copy of the menu; and if I did it would not convey
anything to anybody. It was written in a sort of
super-French employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible to
Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club that the hors
d'oeuvres should be various and manifold to the point of
madness. They were taken seriously because they were
avowedly useless extras, like the whole dinner and the whole
club. There was also a tradition that the soup course should
be light and unpretending—a sort of simple and austere vigil
for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that
strange, slight talk which governs the British Empire, which
governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an
ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it. Cabinet
ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian
names with a sort of bored benignity. The Radical Chancellor
of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to
be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor
poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader,
whom all Liberals were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was
discussed and, on the whole, praised—as a Liberal. It seemed
somehow that politicians were very important. And yet,
anything seemed important about them except their politics.
Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who
still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all
that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done
anything—not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was
not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and
there was an end of it. No party could ignore him, and if he
had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have been
put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was a
young and rising politician. That is to say, he was a
pleasant youth, with flat, fair hair and a freckled face,
with moderate intelligence and enormous estates. In public
his appearances were always successful and his 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
that this was no time for trifling, and was called able. In
private, in a club of his own class, he was simply quite
pleasantly frank and silly, like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley,
never having been in politics, treated them a little more
seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by
phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a
Liberal and a Conservative. He himself was a Conservative,
even in private life. He had a roll of grey hair over the
back of his collar, like certain old-fashioned statesmen,
and seen from behind he looked like the man 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 terrace in the most luxurious style of
all, being ranged along the inner side of the table, with no
one opposite, commanding an uninterrupted view of the
garden, the colours of which were still vivid, though
evening was closing in somewhat luridly for the time of
year. The chairman sat in the centre of the line, and the
vice-president at the right-hand end of it. When the twelve
guests first trooped into their seats it was the custom (for
some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to stand
lining the wall like troops presenting arms to the king,
while the fat proprietor stood and bowed to the club with
radiant surprise, as if he had never heard of them before.
But before the first chink of knife and fork this army of
retainers had vanished, only the one or two required to
collect and distribute the plates darting about in deathly
silence. Mr. Lever, the proprietor, of course had
disappeared in convulsions of courtesy long before. It would
be exaggerative, indeed irreverent, to say that he ever
positively appeared again. But when the important course,
the fish course, was being brought on, there was—how shall I
put it?—a vivid shadow, a projection of his personality,
which told that he was hovering near. The sacred fish course
consisted (to the eyes of the vulgar) in a sort of monstrous
pudding, about the size and shape of a wedding cake, in
which some considerable number of interesting fishes had
finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. The
Twelve True Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives
and fish forks, and approached it as gravely as if every
inch of the pudding cost as 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 was only when
his plate was nearly empty that the young duke made the
ritual remark: "They can't do this anywhere but here."
"Nowhere," said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning
to the speaker and nodding his venerable head a number of
times. "Nowhere, assuredly, except here. It was represented
to me that at the Cafe Anglais—"
Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by
the removal of his plate, but he recaptured the valuable
thread of his thoughts. "It was represented to me that the
same could be done at the Cafe Anglais. Nothing like it,
sir," he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like a hanging
judge. "Nothing like it."
"Overrated place," said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking
(by the look of him) for the first time for some months.
"Oh, I don't know," said the Duke of Chester, who was an
optimist, "it's jolly good for some things. You can't beat
it at—"
A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped
dead. His stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those
vague and kindly gentlemen were so used to the utter
smoothness of the unseen machinery which surrounded and
supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything
unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I
would feel if the inanimate world disobeyed—if a chair ran
away from us.
The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there
deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is
wholly the product of our time. It is the combination of
modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern abyss
between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic
aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning
with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A
genuine democrat would have asked him, with comrade-like
clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these
modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them,
either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone
wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot
embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they
dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing,
whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter, after
standing for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned
round and ran madly out of the room.
When he reappeared in the room, or rather in the doorway,
it was in company with another waiter, with whom he
whispered and gesticulated with southern fierceness. Then
the first waiter went away, leaving the second waiter, and
reappeared with a third waiter. By the time a fourth waiter
had joined this hurried synod, Mr. Audley felt it necessary
to break the silence in the interests of Tact. He used a
very loud cough, instead of a presidential hammer, and said:
"Splendid work young Moocher's doing in Burmah. Now, no
other nation in the world could have—"
A fifth waiter had sped towards him like an arrow, and
was whispering in his ear: "So sorry. Important! Might the
proprietor speak to you?"
The chairman turned in disorder, and with a dazed stare
saw Mr. Lever coming towards them with his lumbering
quickness. The gait of the good proprietor was indeed his
usual gait, but his face was by no means usual. Generally it
was a genial copper-brown; now it was a sickly yellow.
"You will pardon me, Mr. Audley," he said, with asthmatic
breathlessness. "I have great apprehensions. Your
fish-plates, they are cleared 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 who took 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 away the plates, and he find them
already away."
Mr. Audley still looked rather too bewildered to be
really the man the empire wants; none of the company could
say anything except the man of wood—Colonel Pound—who seemed
galvanised into an unnatural life. He rose rigidly from his
chair, leaving all the rest sitting, screwed his eyeglass
into his eye, and spoke in a raucous undertone as if he had
half-forgotten how to speak. "Do you mean," he said, "that
somebody has stolen our silver fish service?"
The proprietor repeated the open-handed gesture with even
greater helplessness and in a flash all the men at the table
were on their feet.
"Are all your waiters here?" demanded the colonel, in his
low, harsh accent.
"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 I come in; they look so queer standing
up against the wall."
"But surely one cannot exactly remember," began Mr.
Audley, with heavy hesitation.
"I remember exactly, I tell you," cried the duke
excitedly. "There never have been more than fifteen waiters
at this place, and there were no more than fifteen tonight,
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. For one 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 looked for a second at his soul, and
saw it as a small dried pea. One of them—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 a few weird seconds they had really felt as if
the fifteenth waiter might be the ghost of the dead man
upstairs. They had been dumb under that oppression, for
ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like beggars. But the
remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous;
broke it abruptly and with a brutal reaction. The colonel
flung over his chair and strode to the door. "If there was a
fifteenth man here, friends," he said, "that fifteenth
fellow was a thief. Down at once to the front and back doors
and secure everything; then we'll talk. The twenty-four
pearls of the club are worth recovering."
Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it
was gentlemanly to be in such a hurry about anything; but,
seeing the duke dash down the stairs with youthful energy,
he followed with a more mature motion.
At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and
declared that he had found the pile of fish plates on a
sideboard, with no trace of the silver.
The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled
helter-skelter down the passages divided into two groups.
Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front
room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound, with the
chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted
down the corridor leading to the servants' quarters, as the
more likely line of escape. As they did so they passed the
dim alcove or cavern of the cloak room, and saw a short,
black-coated figure, presumably an attendant, 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 back of 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 the form of 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, that the short, black-clad man was
dressed like a clergyman; and, second, that the window of
the room behind him was burst, as if someone had passed
violently through. "Valuable things to deposit in a cloak
room, aren't they?" remarked the clergyman, with cheerful
composure.
"Did—did you steal those things?" stammered Mr. Audley,
with staring eyes.
"If I did," said the cleric pleasantly, "at least I am
bringing them back again."
"But you didn't," said Colonel Pound, still staring at
the broken window.
"To make a clean breast of it, I didn't," said the other,
with some humour. 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 know something of his fighting weight, and a great
deal about his spiritual difficulties. I formed the physical
estimate when he was trying to throttle me, and the moral
estimate when he repented."
"Oh, I say—repented!" cried young Chester, with a sort of
crow of laughter.
Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind
him. "Odd, isn't it," he said, "that a thief and a vagabond
should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain
hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? But
there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my
province. If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact,
there are your knives and forks. You are The Twelve True
Fishers, and there are all 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, "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible
line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of
the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon
the thread."
There was a long silence. All the other men present
drifted away to carry the recovered silver to their
comrades, or to consult the proprietor about the queer
condition of affairs. But the grim-faced colonel still sat
sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legs and
biting his dark moustache.
At last he said quietly to the priest: "He must have been
a clever fellow, but I think I know a cleverer."
"He was a clever fellow," answered the other, "but I am
not quite sure of what other you mean."
"I mean you," said the colonel, with a short laugh. "I
don't want to get the fellow jailed; make yourself easy
about that. But I'd give a good many silver forks to know
exactly how you fell into this affair, and how you got the
stuff out of him. I reckon you're the most up-to-date devil
of 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's identity, or his own story, of
course; but there's no particular reason why I shouldn't
tell you of the mere outside facts which I found out for
myself."
He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and
sat beside Colonel Pound, kicking his short legs like a
little boy on a gate. He began to tell the story as easily
as if he were telling it to an old friend by a Christmas
fire.
"You see, colonel," he said, "I was shut up in that small
room there doing some writing, when I heard a pair of feet
in this passage doing a dance that was as queer as the dance
of death. First came quick, funny little 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 in rotation; first the run and then the walk, and then
the run again. I wondered at first idly and then wildly why
a man should act these two parts at once. One walk I knew;
it was just like yours, colonel. It was the walk of a
well-fed gentleman waiting for something, who strolls about
rather because he is physically alert than because he is
mentally impatient. I knew that I knew the other walk, too,
but I could not remember what it was. What wild creature had
I met on my travels that tore along on tiptoe in that
extraordinary style? Then I heard a clink of plates
somewhere; and the answer stood up as plain as St. Peter's.
It was the walk of a waiter—that walk with the body slanted
forward, the eyes looking down, the ball of the toe spurning
away the ground, the coat tails and napkin flying. Then I
thought for a minute and a half more. And I believe I saw
the manner of the crime, as clearly as if I were going to
commit it."
Colonel Pound looked at him keenly, but the speaker's
mild grey eyes were fixed upon the ceiling with almost empty
wistfulness.
"A crime," he said slowly, "is like any other work of
art. Don't look surprised; crimes are by no means the only
works of art that come from an infernal workshop. But every
work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable
mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much
the fulfilment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us
say, the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the flowers of
the mad girl, the fantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of
the ghost and the grin of the skull are all oddities in a
sort of tangled wreath round one plain tragic figure of a
man in black. Well, this also," he said, getting slowly down
from his seat with a smile, "this also is the plain tragedy
of a man in black. Yes," he went on, seeing the colonel look
up in some wonder, "the whole of this tale turns on a black
coat. In this, as in Hamlet, 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 and
melted into air. But every clever crime is founded
ultimately on some one quite simple fact—some fact that is
not itself mysterious. The mystification comes in covering
it up, in leading men's thoughts away from it. This large
and subtle and (in the ordinary course) most profitable
crime, was built on the plain fact that a gentleman's
evening dress is the same as a waiter's. All the rest was
acting, and thundering good acting, too."
"Still," said the colonel, getting up and frowning at his
boots, "I am not sure that I understand."
"Colonel," said Father Brown, "I tell you that this
archangel of impudence who stole your forks walked up and
down this passage twenty times in the blaze of all the
lamps, in the glare of all the eyes. He did not go and hide
in dim corners where suspicion might have searched for him.
He kept constantly on the move in the lighted corridors, and
everywhere that he went he seemed to be there by right.
Don't ask me what he was like; you have seen him yourself
six or seven times tonight. You were waiting with all the
other grand people in the reception room at the end of the
passage there, with the terrace just beyond. Whenever he
came among you gentlemen, he came in the lightning style of
a waiter, with bent head, flapping napkin and flying feet.
He shot out on to the terrace, did something to the table
cloth, and shot back again towards the office and the
waiters' quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of
the office clerk and the waiters he had become another man
in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He
strolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence
which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new
thing to them that a swell from the dinner party should pace
all parts of the house like an animal at the Zoo; they know
that nothing marks the Smart Set more than a habit of
walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary
of walking down that particular passage he would wheel round
and pace back past the office; in the shadow of the arch
just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went
hurrying forward again among the Twelve Fishermen, an
obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a
chance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate
walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest
tricks. In the proprietor's private quarters he called out
breezily for a syphon of soda water, saying he was thirsty.
He said genially that he would carry it himself, and he did;
he carried it quickly and correctly through the thick of
you, a waiter with an obvious errand. Of course, it could
not have been kept up long, but it only had to be kept up
till the end of the fish course.
"His worst moment was when the waiters stood in a row;
but even then he contrived to lean against the wall just
round the corner in such a way that for that important
instant the waiters thought him a gentleman, while the
gentlemen thought him a waiter. The rest went like winking.
If any waiter caught him away from the table, that waiter
caught a languid aristocrat. He had only to time himself two
minutes before the fish was cleared, become a swift servant,
and clear it himself. He put the plates down on a sideboard,
stuffed the silver in his breast pocket, giving it a bulgy
look, and ran like a hare (I heard him coming) till he came
to the cloak room. There he had only to be a plutocrat
again—a plutocrat called away suddenly on business. He had
only to give his ticket to the cloak-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 story ends."
"And the interesting story begins," muttered Pound. "I
think I understand his professional trick. But I don't seem
to have got hold of yours."
"I must be going," said Father Brown.
They walked together along the passage to the entrance
hall, where they saw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of
Chester, who was bounding buoyantly along towards them.
"Come along, Pound," he cried breathlessly. "I've been
looking for you everywhere. The dinner's going again in
spanking style, and old Audley has got to make a speech in
honour of the forks being saved. We want to start some new
ceremony, don't you know, to commemorate the occasion. I
say, you really got the goods back, what do you suggest?"
"Why," said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain
sardonic approval, "I should suggest that henceforward we
wear green coats, instead of black. One never knows what
mistakes may arise when one looks so like a waiter."
"Oh, hang it all!" said the young man, "a gentleman never
looks like a waiter."
"Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose," said Colonel
Pound, with the same lowering laughter on his face.
"Reverend sir, your friend must have been very smart to act
the gentleman."
Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the
neck, for the night was stormy, and took his commonplace
umbrella from the stand.
"Yes," he said; "it must be very hard work to be a
gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought that
it may be almost as laborious to be a waiter."
And saying "Good evening," he pushed open the heavy doors
of that palace of pleasures. The golden gates closed behind
him, and he went at a brisk walk through the damp, dark
streets in search of a penny omnibus.
The Flying Stars
"The most beautiful crime I ever committed," Flambeau
would say in his highly moral old age, "was also, by a
singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at
Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide
crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which
I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for
a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires
should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while
Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves
unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the
Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean
of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I
wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green
lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in
France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked
peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get
his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped
poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods
the mighty spirit of Millet.
"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery,
cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles
Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near
Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house
with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on
the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you
know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens's
style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I
repented the same evening."
Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the
inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the
outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from
the outside that the stranger must study it. From this
standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the
front doors of the house with the stable opened on the
garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with
bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She
had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was
beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs
that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur.
But for the attractive face she might have been a small
toddling bear.
The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and
already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds,
filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses.
On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an
alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden
behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds
(for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate
it), passed unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into
a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave
an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at
the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically
bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.
"Oh, don't jump, Mr. Crook," she called out in some
alarm; "it's much too high."
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 almost alien complexion. This
showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red
tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take
any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the
girl's alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to
the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken
his legs.
"I think I was meant to be a burglar," he said placidly,
"and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn't happened
to be born in that nice house 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 the wall, I can't see that it's wrong to climb over
it."
"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 the right 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 a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and
nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a
pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird
and stood throbbing.
"Hullo, hullo!" said the young man with the red tie,
"here's somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn't
know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as
this."
"Oh, that's my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always
comes on Boxing Day."
Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously
betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:
"He is very kind."
John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City
magnate; and it was not his fault if the City magnate had
not heard of him; for in certain articles in The Clarion or
The New Age Sir Leopold had been dealt with austerely. But
he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the
motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large, neat
chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat
manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them
they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to
unpack him, like some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs
enough to stock a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the
forest, and scarves of all the colours of the rainbow were
unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something
resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but
foreign-looking old gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard
and a beaming smile, who rubbed his big fur gloves together.
Long before this revelation was complete the two big
doors of the porch had opened in the middle, and Colonel
Adams (father of the furry young lady) had come out himself
to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a tall, sunburnt,
and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a fez,
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 and rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer,
with a yellow beard, by name James Blount. With him also was
the more insignificant figure of the priest from the
neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel's late wife had
been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such
cases, had been trained to follow her. Everything seemed
undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name,
which was Brown; yet the colonel had always found something
companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such
family gatherings.
In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample
room even for Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps.
Porch and vestibule, indeed, were unduly large in proportion
to the house, and formed, as it were, a big room with the
front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase at
the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung
the colonel's sword, the process was completed and the
company, including the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir
Leopold Fischer. That venerable financier, however, still
seemed struggling with portions of his well-lined attire,
and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat
pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be
his Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an
unaffected vain-glory that had something disarming about it
he held out the case before them all; it flew open at a
touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a crystal
fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange
velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds
that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them.
Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the
astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration
and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole
group.
"I'll put 'em back now, my dear," said Fischer, returning
the case to the tails of his coat. "I had to be careful of
'em coming down. They're the three great African diamonds
called 'The Flying Stars,' because they'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 have
kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the
road here. It was quite possible."
"Quite natural, I should say," growled the man in the red
tie. "I shouldn't blame 'em if they had taken 'em. When they
ask for bread, and you don't even give them a stone, I think
they might take the stone for themselves."
"I won't have you talking like that," cried the girl, who
was in a curious glow. "You've only talked like that since
you became a horrid what's-his-name. You know what I mean.
What do you call a man who wants to embrace the
chimney-sweep?"
"A saint," said Father Brown.
"I think," said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile,
"that Ruby means a 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 who preserves jam. Neither, I assure
you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social
evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who
wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid
for it."
"But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low
voice, "to own your own soot."
Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even
respect. "Does one want to own soot?" he asked.
"One might," answered Brown, with speculation in his eye.
"I've heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six
children happy at Christmas when 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 in applause, and the astonished financier his (in some
considerable deprecation), when a knock sounded at the
double front doors. The priest opened them, and they showed
again the front garden of evergreens, monkey-tree and all,
now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet sunset. The
scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back
scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant
figure standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a
frayed coat, evidently a common messenger. "Any of you
gentlemen Mr. Blount?" he asked, and held forward a letter
doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and stopped in his shout of
assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident astonishment 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 cheery colonial conventions; "but would it upset
you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on
business? In point of fact it's Florian, that famous French
acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out West (he
was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have
business for 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 not refined. I like the jolly old
pantomime where a man sits on his top hat."
"Not on mine, please," said Sir Leopold Fischer, with
dignity.
"Well, well," observed Crook, airily, "don't let's
quarrel. There are lower jokes than sitting on a top hat."
Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory
opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led
Fischer to say, in his most sarcastic, magisterial manner:
"No doubt you have found something much 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
barbarian benevolence, "don't let's spoil a jolly evening.
What I say is, let's do something for the company tonight.
Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if you don't like
those—but something of the sort. Why couldn't we have a
proper old English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. I
saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it's
blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to
the old country only last year, and I find the thing's
extinct. Nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want
a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they
give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or
something. Blue Beard's more in my line, and him I like best
when he turned into the pantaloon."
"I'm all for making a policeman into sausages," said John
Crook. "It's a better definition of Socialism than some
recently given. But surely the get-up would be too big a
business."
"Not a scrap," cried Blount, quite carried away. "A
harlequinade's the quickest thing we can do, for two
reasons. First, one can gag to any degree; and, second, all
the objects are household things—tables and towel-horses and
washing baskets, and things like that."
"That's true," admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and
walking about. "But I'm afraid I can't have my policeman's
uniform? Haven't killed a policeman lately."
Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his
thigh. "Yes, we can!" he cried. "I've got Florian's address
here, and he knows every costumier in London. I'll phone him
to bring a police dress when he comes." And he went bounding
away to the telephone.
"Oh, it's glorious, godfather," cried Ruby, almost
dancing. "I'll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon."
The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen
solemnity. "I think, my dear," he said, "you must get
someone else for pantaloon."
"I will be pantaloon, if you like," said Colonel Adams,
taking his cigar out 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 shall be clown; he's a journalist and
knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin, that only
wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian 'phones
he's bringing the police costume; he's changing on the way.
We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on
those broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These
front doors can be the back scene, either open or shut.
Shut, you see an English interior. Open, a moonlit garden.
It all goes by magic." And snatching a chance piece of
billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall
floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to
mark the line of the footlights.
How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time
remained a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of
recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a
house; and youth was in that house that night, though not
all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it
flamed. As always happens, the invention grew wilder and
wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois
conventions from which it had to create. The columbine
looked charming in an outstanding skirt that strangely
resembled the large lamp-shade in the drawing-room. The
clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from
the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who
remained (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 he might cover himself
with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have
done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste
jewels 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 his excitement; he was like a
schoolboy. He put a paper donkey's head unexpectedly on
Father Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some
private manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to put
the paper donkey's tail to the coat-tails of Sir Leopold
Fischer. This, however, was frowned down. "Uncle is too
absurd," cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she had
seriously placed a string of sausages. "Why is he so wild?"
"He is harlequin to your columbine," said Crook. "I am
only the clown who makes the old jokes."
"I wish you were the harlequin," she said, and left the
string of sausages swinging.
Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the
scenes, and had even evoked applause by his transformation
of a pillow into a pantomime baby, went round to the front
and sat among the audience with all the solemn expectation
of a child at his first matinee. The spectators were few,
relations, one or two local friends, and the servants; Sir
Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still
fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little
cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic
authorities whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was
utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it
a rage of improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the
clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was inspired
tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the
world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an
instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was
supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost
everything else, the author (so far as there was an author),
the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and,
above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the
outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume
at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd
and appropriate.
The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when
the two front doors at the back of the scene flew open,
showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more
prominently the famous professional guest; the great
Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano
played the constabulary chorus in the "Pirates of Penzance,"
but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every
gesture of the great comic actor was an admirable though
restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police.
The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet;
the pianist playing "Where did you get that hat?" he faced
about in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the
leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a
few bars of "Then we had another one"). Then the harlequin
rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell on top
of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the
strange actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man,
of which the fame still lingers round Putney. It was almost
impossible to believe that a living person could appear so
limp.
The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or
twisted or tossed him like an Indian club; all the time to
the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the piano. When
the harlequin heaved the comic constable heavily 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 most convincing thud, the lunatic at the
instrument struck into a jingling measure with some words
which are still believed to have been, "I sent a letter to
my love and on the way I dropped it."
At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown's view
was obscured altogether; for the City magnate in front of
him rose to his full height and thrust his hands savagely
into all his pockets. Then he sat down nervously, still
fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed
seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights;
then he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and
then he burst in silence out of the room.
The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the
absurd but not inelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over
his splendidly unconscious foe. With real though rude art,
the harlequin danced slowly backwards out of the door into
the garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The
vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had been too
glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and
silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The
audience was closing in with 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 dispelled by a solemn comicality in the scene of the
study. There sat Colonel Adams, still unaffectedly dressed
as a pantaloon, with the knobbed whalebone nodding above his
brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered
a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against the
mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.
"This is a very painful matter, Father Brown," said
Adams. "The truth is, those diamonds we all saw this
afternoon seem to have vanished from my friend's tail-coat
pocket. And as you—"
"As I," supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin,
"was sitting just behind him—"
"Nothing of the sort shall be suggested," said Colonel
Adams, with a firm look at Fischer, which rather implied
that some such thing had been suggested. "I only ask you to
give me the assistance that any gentleman might give."
"Which is turning out his pockets," said Father Brown,
and proceeded to do so, displaying seven and sixpence, a
return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a small breviary,
and a stick of chocolate.
The colonel looked at him long, and then said, "Do you
know, I should like to see the inside of your head more than
the inside of your pockets. My daughter is one of your
people, I know; well, she has lately—" and he stopped.
"She has lately," cried out old Fischer, "opened her
father's house to a cut-throat Socialist, who says openly he
would steal anything from a richer man. This is the end of
it. Here is the richer man—and none the richer."
"If you want the inside of my head you can have it," said
Brown rather wearily. "What it's worth you can say
afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused
pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds 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 no more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We
ought to look at once to the one man we don't know. The
fellow acting the policeman—Florian. Where is he exactly at
this minute, I wonder."
The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An
interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the
priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon
returned and said, with staccato gravity, "The policeman is
still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down
six times; he is still lying there."
Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a
look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to
creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely
obvious answer.
"Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?"
"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 in quite unusual excitement. "Come on! We've got to
go and look at that policeman!"
They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking
rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering
quite contentedly), and Father 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 only struggled with it for instants during the
rest of his speech. "Gentlemen," he gasped, "there's not
much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this
great French actor who played the policeman—this clever
corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw
about—he was—" 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 sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that
midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of
the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the
moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible
romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden
trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much
romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if
clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at
every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he
swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this
garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only
stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree
and has unmistakably 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 laurels and, confident of escape, listens to the
little figure below.
"You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever
to come from Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a
week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in a mood to ask
questions. It was cleverer to have marked down the Flying
Stars and the very day of Fischer's coming. But there's no
cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing the
stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done
it by sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that
pretence of putting a paper donkey's tail to Fischer's coat.
But in the rest you eclipsed yourself."
The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger
as if hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he
is staring at the man below.
"Oh, yes," says the man below, "I know all about it. I
know you not only forced the pantomime, but put it to a
double use. You were going to steal the stones quietly; news
came by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a
capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very
night. A common thief would have been thankful for the
warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the
clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage
jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin's
the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The
worthy officer started from Putney police station to find
you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this
world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to
the stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be
kicked, clubbed, stunned and drugged by the dancing
harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most
respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything
better. And now, by the way, you might give me back those
diamonds."
The green branch on which the glittering figure swung,
rustled as if in astonishment; but the voice went on:
"I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you
to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and
humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men
may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been
able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and
down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man
kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like
you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and
ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an
anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a
greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and
despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement
sincerely enough; now he's sponging on a half-starved sister
for endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild
society in a sort of chivalry; now he's paying blackmail to
the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the
great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a
madhouse, screaming with fear of the "narks" and receivers
that had betrayed him and 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 up in
your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the
tree-tops will be very bare."
Everything continued still, as if the small man below
held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and
he went on:
"Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of
doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean
tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a
good deal against him already; you are separating him from
the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner
things than that before you die."
Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf.
The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up
again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver
bird.
The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by
Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious
triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even
told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he
could respect those whose creed required them to be
cloistered and ignorant of this world.
The Invisible Man
In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden
Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner's, glowed like
the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like
the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours
and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing
on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats.
Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many
gutter-snipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those
red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost
better than chocolate itself; and the huge white
wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote and
satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to
eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the
youth of the neighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve.
But this corner was also attractive to youth at a later
stage; and a young man, not less than twenty-four, was
staring into the same shop window. To him, also, the shop
was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to be
explained by chocolates; which, however, he was far from
despising.
He was a tall, burly, red-haired young man, with a
resolute face but a listless manner. He carried under his
arm a flat, grey portfolio of black-and-white sketches,
which he had sold with more or less success to publishers
ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinherited
him for Socialism, because of a lecture which he had
delivered against that economic theory. His name was John
Turnbull Angus.
Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner's
shop to the back room, which was a sort of pastry-cook
restaurant, merely raising his 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, dark eyes; and after the
ordinary interval she followed him into the inner room to
take his order.
His order was evidently a usual one. "I want, please," he
said with precision, "one halfpenny bun and a small cup of
black coffee." An instant before the girl could turn away he
added, "Also, I want you to marry me."
The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly and said,
"Those are jokes 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 the halfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one
pays for it. It is indigestible, like the bun. It hurts."
The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off
him, but seemed to be studying him with almost tragic
exactitude. At the end of her scrutiny she had something
like the shadow of a smile, and she sat down in a chair.
"Don't you think," observed Angus, absently, "that it's
rather cruel to eat these halfpenny buns? They might grow up
into penny buns. I shall give 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 at last she swung round again with an air
of resolution she was bewildered to observe that the young
man was carefully laying out on the table various objects
from the shop-window. They included a pyramid of highly
coloured sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two
decanters containing that mysterious port and sherry which
are peculiar to pastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat
arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of
white sugared cake which had been the huge ornament 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 to me 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 of sugar.
"The wedding-cake, Mrs. Angus," he said.
The girl marched to that article, removed it with some
clatter, and put it back in the shop window; she then
returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table,
regarded the young man not unfavourably but with
considerable 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 graver behind the smile.
"Mr. Angus," she said steadily, "before there is a minute
more of this nonsense I must tell you something about myself
as shortly as I can.'"
"Delighted," replied Angus gravely. "You might tell me
something about myself, too, while you are about it."
"Oh, do hold your tongue and listen," she said. "It's
nothing that I'm ashamed 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 of mine and yet is my
nightmare?"
"In that case," said the man seriously, "I should suggest
that you bring back 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 Christian air about this one confectioner's shop."
"Ludbury is a sleepy, grassy little hole in the Eastern
Counties, and the only kind of people who ever came to the
'Red Fish' were occasional commercial travellers, and for
the rest, the most awful people you can see, only you've
never seen them. I mean little, loungy men, who had just
enough to live on and had nothing to do but lean about in
bar-rooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just
too good for them. Even these wretched young rotters were
not very common at our house; but there were two of them
that were a lot too common—common in every sort of way. They
both lived on money of their own, and were wearisomely 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 each of them had a slight deformity; the sort of
thing that some yokels laugh at. It wasn't exactly a
deformity either; it was more an oddity. One of them was a
surprisingly small man, something like a dwarf, or at least
like a jockey. He was not at all jockeyish to look at,
though; he had a round black head and a well-trimmed black
beard, bright eyes like a bird's; he jingled money in his
pockets; he jangled a great gold watch chain; and he never
turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to
be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was
curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be the
slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen
matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or
cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His
name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see 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 he alarmed me much more than poor little Smythe. He
was very tall and slight, and light-haired; his nose had a
high bridge, and he might almost have been handsome in a
spectral sort of way; but he had one of the most appalling
squints I have ever seen or heard of. When he looked
straight at you, you didn't know where you were yourself,
let alone what he was looking at. I fancy this sort of
disfigurement embittered the poor chap a little; for while
Smythe was ready to show off his monkey tricks anywhere,
James Welkin (that was the squinting man's name) never did
anything except soak in our bar parlour, and go for great
walks by himself in the flat, grey country all round. All
the same, I think Smythe, too, was a little sensitive about
being so small, though he carried it off more smartly. And
so it was that I was really puzzled, as well as startled,
and very sorry, when they both offered to marry me in the
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 of their thinking I refused them for
the real reason, which was that they were so impossibly
ugly. So I made up some gas of another sort, about never
meaning to marry anyone who hadn't carved his way in the
world. I said it was a point of principle with me not to
live on money that was just inherited like theirs. Two days
after I had talked in this well-meaning sort of way, the
whole trouble began. The first thing I heard was that both
of them had gone off to seek their fortunes, as if they 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 were rather 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 walking with Welkin to London; but Welkin
was such a good walker that the little man dropped out of
it, and took a rest by the roadside. He happened to be
picked up by some travelling show, and, partly because he
was nearly a dwarf, and partly because he was really a
clever little wretch, he got on quite well in the show
business, and was soon sent up to the Aquarium, to do some
tricks that I forget. 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 mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight
twist of laughter as she resumed, "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 doing all
the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing:
'Press a Button—A Butler who Never Drinks.' 'Turn a
Handle—Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.' You must have seen
the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they
are making pots of money; and they are making it all for
that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can't help
feeling pleased the poor little chap has fallen on his feet;
but the plain fact is, I'm in terror of his turning up any
minute and telling me he'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 you are a witch. Yes, you are quite right. I
have not seen a line of the other man's writing; and I have
no more notion than the dead of what or where he is. But it
is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is all about my
path. It is he who has half driven me mad. Indeed, I think
he has driven me mad; for I have felt him where he could not
have been, and I have heard his voice when he could not have
spoken."
"Well, my dear," said the young man, cheerfully, "if he
were Satan himself, he is done for now you have told
somebody. One goes mad all alone, old girl. But when was it
you fancied you felt and heard our squinting friend?"
"I heard James Welkin laugh as plainly as I hear you
speak," said the girl, steadily. "There was nobody there,
for I stood just outside the shop at the corner, and could
see down both streets at once. I had forgotten how he
laughed, though his laugh was as odd as his squint. I had
not thought of him for nearly a year. But it's a solemn
truth that a few seconds later the first letter came from
his rival."
"Did you ever make the spectre speak or squeak, or
anything?" asked Angus, 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 Smythe announcing his success. Just
then, I heard Welkin say, 'He shan't have you, though.' It
was quite plain, as if he were in the room. It is awful, I
think I must be mad."
"If you really were mad," said the young man, "you would
think you must be sane. But certainly there seems to me to
be something a little rum about this unseen gentleman. Two
heads are better than one—I spare you allusions to any other
organs and really, if you would allow me, as a sturdy,
practical man, to bring back the wedding-cake out of the
window—"
Even as he spoke, there was a sort of steely shriek in
the street outside, and a small motor, driven at devilish
speed, shot up to the door of the shop and stuck there. In
the same flash of time a small man in a shiny top hat stood
stamping in the outer room.
Angus, who had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from
motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul
by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting
the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to
confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very
dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard
carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the
neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the
man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls
out of banana skins and match-boxes; Isidore Smythe, who
made millions out of undrinking butlers and unflirting
housemaids of metal. For a moment the two men, instinctively
understanding each other's air of possession, looked at each
other with that curious cold generosity which is the soul of
rivalry.
Mr. Smythe, however, made no allusion to the ultimate
ground of their antagonism, but said simply and explosively,
"Has Miss Hope seen that thing on the window?"
"On the window?" repeated the staring Angus.
"There's no time to explain other things," said the small
millionaire shortly. "There's some tomfoolery going on here
that has to be investigated."
He pointed his polished walking-stick at the window,
recently depleted by the bridal preparations of Mr. Angus;
and that gentleman was astonished to see along the front of
the glass a long strip of paper pasted, which had certainly
not been on the window when he looked through it some time
before. Following the energetic Smythe outside into the
street, he found that some yard and a half of stamp paper
had been carefully gummed along the glass outside, and on
this was written in straggly characters, "If you marry
Smythe, he will die."
"Laura," said Angus, putting his big red head into the
shop, "you're not mad."
"It's the writing of that fellow Welkin," said Smythe
gruffly. "I haven't seen him for years, but he's always
bothering me. Five times in the last fortnight he's had
threatening letters left at my flat, and I can'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 been seen, 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 were having tea. Well, sir, I can assure you I
appreciate your common sense in dealing so directly with the
matter. We can talk about other things afterwards. The
fellow cannot be very far off yet, for I swear there was no
paper there when I went last to the window, ten or fifteen
minutes ago. On the other hand, he's too far off to be
chased, as we don't even know the direction. If you'll take
my advice, Mr. Smythe, you'll put this at once in the hands
of some energetic inquiry man, private rather than public. I
know an extremely clever fellow, who has set up in business
five minutes from here in your car. His name's Flambeau, and
though his youth was a bit stormy, he's a strictly honest
man now, and his brains are worth money. He lives in Lucknow
Mansions, Hampstead."
"That is odd," said the little man, arching his black
eyebrows. "I live, myself, in Himylaya Mansions, round the
corner. Perhaps you might care to come with me; I can go to
my rooms and sort out these queer Welkin documents, while
you run round and get your friend the detective."
"You are very good," said Angus politely. "Well, the
sooner we act the better."
Both men, with a queer kind of impromptu fairness, took
the same sort of formal farewell of the lady, and both
jumped into the brisk little car. As Smythe took the handles
and they turned the great corner of the street, Angus was
amused to see a gigantesque poster of "Smythe's Silent
Service," with a picture of a huge headless iron doll,
carrying a saucepan 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 advertisements, and
partly for real convenience. Honestly, and all above board,
those big clockwork dolls of mine do bring your coals or
claret or a timetable quicker than any live servants I'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 those threatening letters at my flat."
The man's motor was small and swift like himself; in
fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own
invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who
believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and
flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of
road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the
white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon
ascending spirals, as they say in the modern religions. For,
indeed, they were cresting a corner of London which is
almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite so
picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special
tower of flats they sought, rose above them all to almost
Egyptian height, gilt by the level sunset. The change, as
they turned the corner and entered the crescent known as
Himylaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of a window;
for they found that pile of flats sitting above London as
above a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the
other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure
more like a steep hedge or dyke than 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 car swept
round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall
of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end
of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking
slowly. These were the only human shapes in that high
suburban solitude; but he had an irrational sense that they
expressed the speechless poetry of London. He felt as if
they were figures in a story.
The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet,
and shot out its owner like a bomb shell. He was immediately
inquiring of a tall commissionaire in shining braid, and a
short porter in shirt sleeves, whether anybody or anything
had been seeking his apartments. He was assured that nobody
and nothing had passed these officials since his last
inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus
were shot up 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 show you those Welkin letters. Then you might run
round the corner and fetch your friend." He pressed a button
concealed in the wall, and the door opened of itself.
It opened on a long, commodious ante-room, of which the
only arresting features, ordinarily speaking, were the rows
of tall half-human mechanical figures that stood up on both
sides like tailors' dummies. Like tailors' dummies they were
headless; and like tailors' dummies they had a handsome
unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and a
pigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this,
they were not much more like a human figure than any
automatic machine at a station that is about the human
height. They had two great hooks like arms, for carrying
trays; and they were painted pea-green, or vermilion, or
black for convenience of distinction; in every other way
they were only automatic machines and nobody would have
looked twice at them. On this occasion, at least, nobody
did. For between the two rows of these domestic dummies lay
something more interesting than most of the mechanics of the
world. It was a white, tattered scrap of paper scrawled with
red ink; and the agile inventor had snatched it up almost as
soon as the door flew open. He handed it to Angus without a
word. The red ink on it actually was not dry, and the
message ran, "If you have been to see her today, I shall
kill you."
There was a short silence, and then Isidore Smythe said
quietly, "Would you like a little whiskey? 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 round at once to fetch him."
"Right you are," said the other, with admirable
cheerfulness. "Bring him round here as quick as you can."
But as Angus closed the front door behind him he saw
Smythe push back a button, and one of the clockwork images
glided from its place and slid along a groove in the floor
carrying a tray with syphon and decanter. There did seem
something a trifle weird about leaving the little man alone
among those dead servants, who were coming to life as the
door closed.
Six steps down from Smythe's landing the man in shirt
sleeves was doing something with a pail. Angus stopped to
extract a promise, fortified with a prospective bribe, that
he would remain in that place until the return with the
detective, and would keep count of any kind of stranger
coming up those stairs. Dashing down to the front hall he
then laid similar charges of vigilance on the commissionaire
at the front door, from whom he learned the simplifying
circumstances that there was no back door. Not content with
this, he captured the floating policeman and induced him to
stand opposite the entrance and watch it; and finally paused
an instant for a pennyworth of chestnuts, and an inquiry as
to the probable length of the merchant's stay in the
neighbourhood.
The chestnut seller, turning up the collar of his coat,
told him he should probably be moving shortly, as he thought
it was going to snow. Indeed, the evening was growing grey
and bitter, but Angus, with all his eloquence, proceeded to
nail the chestnut man to his post.
"Keep yourself warm on your own chestnuts," he said
earnestly. "Eat up your whole stock; I'll make it worth your
while. I'll give you a sovereign if you'll wait here till I
come back, and then tell me whether any man, woman, or child
has gone into that house where the commissionaire 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 all four of them be Mr. Welkin's accomplices."
Lucknow Mansions were, so to speak, on a lower platform
of that hill of houses, of which Himylaya Mansions might be
called the peak. Mr. Flambeau's semi-official flat was on
the ground floor, and presented in every way a marked
contrast to the American machinery and cold hotel-like
luxury of the flat of the Silent Service. Flambeau, who was
a friend of Angus, received him in a rococo artistic den
behind his office, of which the ornaments were sabres,
harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine,
savage cooking-pots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small
dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who looked particularly
out of place.
"This is my friend Father Brown," said Flambeau. "I've
often wanted you to meet him. Splendid weather, this; a
little cold for Southerners like me."
"Yes, I think it will keep clear," said Angus, sitting
down on a violet-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 of chestnuts, began to drift across the darkening
windowpane.
"Well," said Angus heavily. "I'm afraid I've come on
business, and rather jumpy business at that. The fact is,
Flambeau, within a stone's throw of your house is a fellow
who badly wants your help; he's perpetually being haunted
and threatened by an invisible enemy—a scoundrel whom nobody
has even seen." As Angus proceeded to tell the whole tale of
Smythe and Welkin, beginning with Laura's story, and going
on with his own, the supernatural laugh at the corner of two
empty streets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty
room, Flambeau grew more and more vividly concerned, and the
little priest seemed to be left out of it, like a piece of
furniture. When it came to the scribbled stamp-paper pasted
on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to fill the room with
his huge shoulders.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I think you had better
tell me the rest on the nearest road to this man's house. It
strikes me, somehow, that there is no time to be lost."
"Delighted," said Angus, rising also, "though he's safe
enough for the present, 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 them with the docility of a small dog. He
merely said, in a cheerful way, like one making
conversation, "How quick the snow gets thick on the ground."
As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered
with silver, Angus finished his story; and by the time they
reached the crescent with the towering flats, he had leisure
to turn his attention to the four sentinels. The chestnut
seller, both before and after receiving a sovereign, swore
stubbornly that he had watched the door and seen no visitor
enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had
had experience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in
rags; he wasn't so green as to expect suspicious characters
to look suspicious; he looked out for anybody, and, so help
him, there had been nobody. And when all three men gathered
round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood smiling
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 these flats," said the genial and gold-laced
giant, "and I'll swear there's been nobody to ask since this
gentleman went away."
The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking
modestly at the pavement, here ventured to say meekly, "Has
nobody been up and down stairs, then, since the snow began
to fall? It began while we were all round at Flambeau's."
"Nobody's been in here, sir, you can take it from me,"
said the official, with beaming authority.
"Then I wonder what that is?" said the priest, and stared
at the ground blankly like a fish.
The others all looked down also; and Flambeau used a
fierce exclamation and a French gesture. For it was
unquestionably true that down the middle of the entrance
guarded by the man in gold lace, actually between the
arrogant, stretched legs of that colossus, ran a stringy
pattern of grey footprints stamped upon the white snow.
"God!" cried Angus involuntarily, "the Invisible Man!"
Without another word he turned and dashed up the stairs,
with Flambeau following; but Father Brown still stood
looking about him in the snow-clad street as if he had lost
interest in his query.
Flambeau was plainly in a mood to break down the door
with his big shoulders; but the Scotchman, with more reason,
if less intuition, fumbled about on the frame of the door
till he found the invisible button; and the door swung
slowly open.
It showed substantially the same serried interior; the
hall had grown darker, though it was still struck here and
there with the last crimson shafts of sunset, and one or two
of the headless machines had been moved from their places
for this or that purpose, and stood here and there about the
twilit place. The green and red of their coats were all
darkened in the dusk; and their likeness to human shapes
slightly increased by their very shapelessness. But in the
middle of them all, exactly where the paper with the red ink
had lain, there lay something that looked like red ink spilt
out of its bottle. But it was not red ink.
With a French combination of reason and violence Flambeau
simply said "Murder!" and, plunging into the flat, had
explored, every corner and cupboard of it in five minutes.
But if he expected to find a corpse he found none. Isidore
Smythe was not in the place, either dead or alive. After the
most tearing search the two men met each other in the outer
hall, with streaming faces and staring eyes. "My friend,"
said Flambeau, talking French in his excitement, "not only
is your murderer invisible, but he makes invisible also the
murdered man."
Angus looked round at the dim room full of dummies, and
in some Celtic corner of his Scotch soul a shudder started.
One of the life-size dolls stood immediately overshadowing
the blood stain, summoned, perhaps, by the slain man an
instant before he fell. One of the high-shouldered hooks
that served the thing for arms, was a little lifted, and
Angus had suddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe's own
iron child had struck him down. Matter had rebelled, and
these machines had killed their master. But even so, what
had they done with him?
"Eaten him?" said the nightmare at his ear; and he
sickened for an instant at the idea of rent, human remains
absorbed and crushed into all that acephalous clockwork.
He recovered his mental health by an emphatic effort, and
said to Flambeau, "Well, there it is. The poor fellow has
evaporated like a cloud and left a red streak on the floor.
The tale does not belong to this world."
"There is only one thing to be done," said Flambeau,
"whether it belongs to this world or the other. I must go
down and talk to my friend."
They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again
asseverated that he had let no intruder pass, down to the
commissionaire and the hovering chestnut man, who rigidly
reasserted their own watchfulness. But when Angus looked
round for his fourth confirmation he could not see it, and
called out with some nervousness, "Where is the policeman?"
"I beg your pardon," said Father Brown; "that is my
fault. I just sent him down the road to investigate
something—that I just thought worth investigating."
"Well, we want him back pretty soon," said Angus
abruptly, "for the wretched 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 is more in your department than mine. No friend
or foe has entered the house, but Smythe is gone, as if
stolen by the fairies. If that is not supernatural, I—"
As he spoke they were all checked by an unusual sight;
the big blue policeman came round the corner of the
crescent, running. He came straight up to Brown.
"You're right, sir," he panted, "they've just found poor
Mr. Smythe's body in the canal down below."
Angus put his hand wildly to his head. "Did he run down
and drown himself?" he asked.
"He never came down, I'll swear," said the constable,
"and he wasn't drowned 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 they found a light brown sack."
"Why a light brown sack?" asked Angus, astonished.
"Because if it was any other coloured sack, the case must
begin over again," said Father Brown; "but if it was a light
brown sack, why, the case is finished."
"I am pleased to hear it," said Angus with hearty irony.
"It hasn't begun, so far as I am concerned."
"You must tell us all about it," said Flambeau with a
strange heavy simplicity, like a child.
Unconsciously they were walking with quickening steps
down the long sweep of road on the other side of the high
crescent, Father Brown leading briskly, though in silence.
At last he said with an almost touching vagueness, "Well,
I'm afraid you'll think it so prosy. We always begin at the
abstract end of things, and you can't begin this story
anywhere else.
"Have you ever noticed this—that people never answer what
you say? They answer what you mean—or what they think you
mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house,
'Is anybody staying with you?' the lady doesn't answer 'Yes;
the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,'
though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler
behind her chair. She says 'There is nobody staying with
us,' meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a
doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, 'Who is staying in
the house?' then the lady will remember the butler, the
parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like that;
you never get a question answered literally, even when you
get it answered truly. When those four quite honest men said
that no man had gone into the Mansions, they did not really
mean that no man had gone into them. They meant no man whom
they could suspect of being your man. A man did go into the
house, and did come out of it, but they never 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 a man thinking his way. "Of course you can't
think of such a man, until you do think of him. That's where
his cleverness comes in. But I came to think of him through
two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angus told 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 that couldn't be true. Don't get
annoyed," he added hastily, noting a sudden movement of the
Scotchman's head; "she thought they were true. A person
can't be quite alone in a street a second before she
receives a letter. She can't be quite alone in a street when
she starts reading a letter just received. There must be
somebody 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 must have brought her the letter."
"Do you really mean to say," asked Flambeau, with energy,
"that Welkin carried 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 this fellow? What does he look like? What is the
usual get-up of a mentally invisible man?"
"He is dressed rather handsomely in red, blue and gold,"
replied the priest promptly with precision, "and in this
striking, and even showy, costume he entered Himylaya
Mansions under eight human eyes; he killed Smythe in cold
blood, and came down into the street again carrying the dead
body in his arms—"
"Reverend sir," cried Angus, standing still, "are you
raving mad, or am I?"
"You are not mad," said Brown, "only a little
unobservant. You have not noticed such a man as this, for
example."
He took three quick strides forward, and put his hand on
the shoulder of an ordinary passing postman who had bustled
by them unnoticed under the shade of the trees.
"Nobody ever notices postmen somehow," he said
thoughtfully; "yet they have passions like other men, and
even carry large bags where a small corpse can be stowed
quite easily."
The postman, instead of turning naturally, had ducked and
tumbled against the garden fence. He was a lean fair-bearded
man of very ordinary 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, having many things to attend to. John Turnbull Angus
went back to the lady at the shop, with whom that imprudent
young man contrives to be extremely comfortable. But Father
Brown walked those snow-covered hills under the stars for
many hours with a murderer, and what they said to each other
will never be known.
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 valley and beheld the strange castle of
Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a
blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising
in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of
the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of
the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the
pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by
comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens. This
note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy
from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of
those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow
which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than
on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a
double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of
blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the
Calvinist.
The priest had snatched a day from his business at
Glasgow to meet his friend Flambeau, the amateur detective,
who was at Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer
investigating the life and death of the late Earl of
Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative
of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had
made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their
nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in that
labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that
palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen of Scots.
The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the
result of their 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
Glengyle Castle; and with the Victorian era one would have
thought that all eccentricities were exhausted. The last
Glengyle, however, satisfied his tribal tradition by doing
the only thing that was left for him to do; he disappeared.
I do not mean that he went abroad; by all accounts he was
still in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name
was in the church register and the big red Peerage, nobody
ever saw him under the sun.
If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant,
something between a groom and a gardener. He was so deaf
that the more business-like assumed him to be dumb; while
the more penetrating declared him to be half-witted. A
gaunt, red-haired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin, but
quite blank blue eyes, he went by the name of Israel Gow,
and was the one silent servant on that deserted estate. But
the energy with which he dug potatoes, and the regularity
with which he disappeared into the kitchen gave people an
impression that he was providing for the meals of a
superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed in
the castle. If society needed any further proof that he was
there, the servant persistently asserted that he was not at
home. One morning the provost and the minister (for the
Glengyles were Presbyterian) were summoned to the castle.
There they found that the gardener, groom and cook had added
to his many professions that of an undertaker, and had
nailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how
little further inquiry this odd fact was passed, did not as
yet very plainly appear; for the thing had never been
legally investigated till Flambeau had gone north two or
three days before. By then the body of Lord Glengyle (if it
was the body) had lain for some time in the little
churchyard on the hill.
As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came
under the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and
the whole air damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of
the green-gold sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man
in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder.
The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when
Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he
thought it natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch
peasant; he knew the respectability which might well feel it
necessary to wear "blacks" for an official inquiry; he knew
also the economy that would not lose an hour's digging for
that. Even the man's start and suspicious stare as the
priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and
jealousy of such a type.
The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had
with him a lean man with iron-grey hair and papers in his
hand: Inspector Craven from Scotland Yard. The entrance hall
was mostly stripped and empty; but the pale, sneering faces
of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked down out of
black periwigs and blackening canvas.
Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found
that the allies had been seated at a long oak table, of
which their end was covered with scribbled papers, flanked
with whisky and cigars. Through the whole of its remaining
length it was occupied by detached objects arranged at
intervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects
could be. One looked like a small heap of glittering broken
glass. Another looked like a 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 sat down, jerking his head briefly in the
direction of the brown dust and the crystalline fragments.
"Not a geological museum," replied Flambeau; "say a
psychological museum."
"Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective
laughing, "don't let's begin with such long words."
"Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau
with friendly surprise. "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 out one thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a
maniac."
The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade
passed the window, dimly outlined against the darkening sky.
Father Brown stared passively at it and answered:
"I can understand there must have been something odd
about the man, or he wouldn't have buried himself alive—nor
been in such a hurry to bury himself dead. But what makes
you think it was lunacy?"
"Well," said Flambeau, "you just listen to the list of
things Mr. Craven has 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
your oddities?"
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 trace of a candlestick."
In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind,
Brown went along the table to where a bundle of wax candles
lay among the other scrappy exhibits. As he did so he bent
accidentally over the heap of red-brown dust; 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 in the neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful
night air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long
flame like a banner. And on every side of the castle they
could hear the miles and miles of black pine wood seething
like a black sea around a rock.
"I will read the inventory," began Craven gravely,
picking up one of the papers, "the inventory of what we
found loose and unexplained in the castle. You are to
understand that the place generally was dismantled and
neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited
in a simple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who
was not the servant Gow. The list is as follows:
"First item. A very considerable hoard of precious
stones, nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without
any setting whatever. Of course, it is natural that the
Ogilvies should have family jewels; but those are exactly
the jewels that are almost always set in particular articles
of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs
loose in their pockets, like coppers.
"Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in
a horn, or even 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 take the trouble to
look in a pocket or lift a lid.
"Third item. Here and there about the house curious
little heaps of minute pieces of metal, some like steel
springs and some in the form of microscopic wheels. As if
they had gutted some mechanical toy.
"Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in
bottle necks because there is nothing else to stick them in.
Now I wish you to note how very much queerer all this is
than anything we anticipated. For the central riddle we are
prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there was
something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to
find out whether he really lived here, whether he really
died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who did his
burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the
worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution
you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or
suppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master
is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant is
buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy
you like, and you still have not explained a candle without
a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of good family
should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core of the
tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are
mysterious. By no stretch of fancy can the human mind
connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose
clockwork."
"I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This
Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was an
enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to re-enact
literally the family life of the last Bourbons. He had snuff
because it was the eighteenth century luxury; 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 a perfectly extraordinary notion!" cried Flambeau. "Do
you really think that is the truth?"
"I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown,
"only you said that nobody could connect snuff and diamonds
and clockwork and candles. I give you that connection
off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure, lies deeper."
He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the
wind in the turrets. Then he said, "The late Earl of
Glengyle was a thief. He lived a second and darker life as a
desperate housebreaker. He did not have any candlesticks
because he only used these candles cut short in the little
lantern he carried. The snuff he employed as the fiercest
French criminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in
dense masses in the face of a captor or pursuer. But the
final proof is in the curious coincidence of the diamonds
and the small steel wheels. Surely that makes everything
plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are the only
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 the windowpane behind them, as if in parody of
a burglar, but they did not turn round. Their eyes were
fastened on Father Brown.
"Diamonds and small wheels," repeated Craven ruminating.
"Is that all that 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, or thought he had found,
precious stones on his estate. Somebody had bamboozled him
with those loose brilliants, saying they were found in the
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 of a few shepherds or rude fellows on
these hills. Snuff is the one great luxury of such Scotch
shepherds; it's the one thing with which you can bribe 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 the dull truth at last?"
"Oh, no," said Father Brown.
As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a
long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly
impassive face, went on:
"I only suggested that because you said one could not
plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles with
bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe;
ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. 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 down the long table.
"Items five, six, seven, etc.," he said, "and certainly
more varied than instructive. A curious collection, not of
lead pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils. A
senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rather splintered.
It might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn't
any crime. The only other things are a few old missals and
little Catholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I
suppose, from the Middle Ages—their family pride being
stronger than their Puritanism. We only put them in the
museum because they seem curiously cut about and defaced."
The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of
clouds across Glengyle and threw the long room into darkness
as Father Brown picked up the little illuminated pages to
examine them. He spoke before the drift of 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 have got a legal warrant, haven't you, to go
up and examine that grave? The sooner we do it the better,
and get to the bottom of this horrible affair. 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 or loose pebbles, that might be there for a
hundred reasons. There is only one reason I know of for this
being done; and the reason goes down to the roots of the
world. These religious pictures are not just dirtied or torn
or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or
bigotry, by children or by Protestants. These have been
treated very carefully—and very queerly. In every place
where the great ornamented name of God comes in the old
illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. The only
other thing that has been removed is the halo round the head
of the Child Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant
and our spade and our 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 rise slightly in the roar of the gale. "I mean
that the great devil of the universe 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 is black
magic somewhere at the bottom of this."
"Black magic," repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he
was too enlightened a man not to know of such things; "but
what can these other things mean?"
"Oh, something damnable, I suppose," replied Brown
impatiently. "How should I know? How can I guess all their
mazes down below? Perhaps you can make a torture out of
snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust after wax and steel
filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead
pencils! 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 a blast of the night wind nearly flung
them on their faces in the garden. Nevertheless they had
obeyed him like automata; for Craven found a hatchet in his
hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau was carrying
the heavy spade of the strange gardener; Father Brown was
carrying 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 under that stress of wind it seemed laborious
and long. Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as
they mounted the slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now
all aslope one way under the wind. And that universal
gesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that
wind were whistling about some unpeopled and purposeless
planet. Through all that infinite growth of grey-blue
forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient sorrow that is
in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy that the
voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were
cries of the lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had
gone roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never
find their way back to heaven.
"You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone,
"Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot.
In fact, they're a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric
times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That," he added
genially, "is why they jumped at the Puritan theology."
"My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury,
"what does all that snuff mean?"
"My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness,
"there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism.
Now, devil-worship is a perfectly genuine religion."
They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of
the few bald spots that stood clear of the crashing and
roaring pine forest. A mean enclosure, partly timber and
partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tell them the border
of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven had come
to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau had planted his
spade point downwards and leaned on it, they were both
almost as shaken as the shaky 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 of thistledown broke under
the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumped slightly as if
it had been an arrow.
Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the
whistling grass into the 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 the truth. What are you afraid of?"
"I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau.
The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing
voice that was meant to be conversational and cheery. "I
wonder why he really did hide himself 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 a leper?"
"I don't imagine it," said Flambeau.
He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then
said in a choked voice, "I'm afraid of his not being the
right shape."
"Nor was that piece of paper, you know," said Father
Brown quietly, "and we survived even that piece of paper."
Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had
shouldered away the choking grey clouds that clung to the
hills like smoke and revealed grey fields of faint starlight
before he cleared the shape of a rude timber coffin, and
somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven stepped forward
with his axe; a thistle-top touched him, and he flinched.
Then he took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with
an energy like Flambeau's till the lid was torn off, and all
that was there lay glimmering in the grey starlight.
"Bones," said Craven; and then he added, "but it is a
man," as if that were something unexpected.
"Is he," asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and
down, "is he all right?"
"Seems so," said the officer huskily, bending over the
obscure and decaying skeleton in the box. "Wait a minute."
A vast heave went over Flambeau's huge figure. "And now I
come to think of 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 think it's the black,
brainless repetition; all these forests, and over all an
ancient 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 a leap of startled concern.
"No head!" he repeated. "No head?" as if he had almost
expected some other deficiency.
Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle,
of a headless youth hiding himself in the castle, of a
headless man pacing those ancient halls or that gorgeous
garden, passed in panorama through their minds. But even in
that stiffened instant the tale took no root in them and
seemed to have no reason in it. They stood listening to the
loud woods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like
exhausted animals. Thought seemed to be something enormous
that had suddenly slipped out of their grasp.
"There are three headless men," said Father Brown,
"standing round this open grave."
The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak,
and left it open like a yokel, while a long scream of wind
tore the sky; then he looked at the axe in his hands as if
it did not belong to him, and dropped it.
"Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice
he used very seldom, "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 the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that
every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for
it is an act of faith and it is a food. And we need a
sacrament, if only a natural one. Something has fallen on us
that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing that
can fall on them."
Craven's parted lips came together to say, "What do you
mean?"
The priest had 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 step very rare with him, and when they reached
the castle again he threw himself upon sleep with the
simplicity of a dog.
Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up
earlier than anyone else except the silent gardener; and was
found smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his
speechless labours in the kitchen garden. Towards daybreak
the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains, and the day
came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed even to
have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he
planted his spade 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 potatoes amazingly. Still,"
he added, with a dispassionate charity, "he has his faults;
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 really very doubtful about that potato."
"And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's
hobby.
"I'm doubtful about it," said the other, "because old Gow
was doubtful about it himself. He put his spade in
methodically in every place but just this. There must be a
mighty fine potato just here."
Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it
into the place. He turned up, under a load of soil,
something that did not look like a potato, but rather like a
monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struck the spade with
a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned up at
them.
"The Earl of Glengyle," said Brown sadly, and looked down
heavily at the skull.
Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade
from Flambeau, and, saying "We must hide it again," clamped
the skull down in the earth. Then he leaned his little body
and huge head on the great handle of the spade, that stood
up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes were empty and his
forehead full of wrinkles. "If one could only conceive," he
muttered, "the meaning of this last monstrosity." And
leaning on the large spade handle, he buried his brows in
his hands, as men do in church.
All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and
silver; the birds were chattering in the tiny garden trees;
so loud it seemed as if the trees themselves were talking.
But the three men were silent enough.
"Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last
boisterously. "My brain and 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 an intolerance quite unusual with him. "Oh, tut,
tut, tut, tut!" he cried. "All that is as plain as a
pikestaff. I understood the snuff and clockwork, and so on,
when I first opened my eyes this morning. And since then
I've had it out with old Gow, the gardener, who is neither
so deaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There's nothing amiss
about the loose items. I was wrong about the torn mass-book,
too; there's no harm in that. But it's this last business.
Desecrating graves and stealing dead men's heads—surely
there's harm in that? Surely there's black magic still in
that? That doesn't fit in to the quite simple story of the
snuff and the candles." And, striding about again, he smoked
moodily.
"My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must
be careful with me and remember I was once a criminal. The
great advantage of that estate was that I always made up the
story myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. This
detective business of waiting about is too much for my
French impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have
done things at the instant; I always fought duels the next
morning; I always paid bills on 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 on the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes,
the exact picture of an idiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!"
he kept saying. "Lord, what a turnip!" Then, in a somewhat
groggy kind of way, he began to laugh.
"The dentist!" he repeated. "Six hours in the spiritual
abyss, and all because I never thought of the dentist! Such
a simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we
have passed a night in hell; but now the sun is risen, the
birds are singing, and the radiant form of the dentist
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 to dance 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 more, then faced them with gravity.
"This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is
the story of a strange 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 savage living 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 the Glengyles sought for wealth; it was also true
that they literally gathered gold; they had a huge
collection of ornaments and utensils in that metal. They
were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn. In the
light of that fact, run through all the things we found in
the castle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles
without their gold candlesticks; snuff without the gold
snuff-boxes; pencil-leads without the gold pencil-cases; a
walking stick without its gold top; clockwork without 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 real gold; these also were taken away."
The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in
the strengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau
lit a cigarette as his friend went on.
"Were taken away," continued Father Brown; "were taken
away—but not stolen. Thieves would never have left this
mystery. Thieves would have taken the gold snuff-boxes,
snuff and all; the gold pencil-cases, lead and all. We have
to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, but certainly
a conscience. I found that mad moralist this morning in the
kitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.
"The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a
good man ever born at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took
the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of
his ancestors, from which, somehow, he generalised a
dishonesty of all men. More especially he distrusted
philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could find
one man who took his exact rights he should have all the
gold of Glengyle. 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 village brought 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
he turned over his change he found the new farthing still
there and a sovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas
of sneering speculation. Either way, the boy would show the
greasy greed of the species. Either he would vanish, a thief
stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with it virtuously,
a snob seeking a reward. In the middle of that night Lord
Glengyle was knocked up out of his bed—for he lived
alone—and forced to open the door to the deaf idiot. The
idiot brought with him, not the sovereign, but exactly
nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings in
change.
"Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the
mad lord's brain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that
had long sought an honest man, and at last had found one. He
made a new will, which I have seen. He took the literal
youth into his huge, neglected house, and trained him up as
his solitary servant and—after an odd manner—his heir. And
whatever that queer creature understands, he understood
absolutely his lord's two fixed ideas: first, that the
letter of right is everything; and second, that he himself
was to have the gold of Glengyle. So far, that is all; and
that is simple. He has stripped the house of gold, and taken
not a grain that was not gold; not so much as a grain of
snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination,
fully satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I
understood; but I could not understand this skull business.
I was really uneasy about that human head buried among the
potatoes. It distressed me—till Flambeau said the word.
"It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the
grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth."
And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning,
he saw that strange being, the just miser, digging at the
desecrated grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out
in the mountain wind; the sober top hat on his head.
The Wrong Shape
Certain of the great roads going north out of London
continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and
interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the
building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of
shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a
famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a
nursery garden, and then 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 house which will
probably catch his eye, though he may not be able to explain
its attraction. It is a long, low house, running parallel
with the road, painted mostly white and pale green, with a
veranda and sun-blinds, and porches capped with those quaint
sort of cupolas like wooden umbrellas that one sees in some
old-fashioned houses. In fact, it is an old-fashioned house,
very English and very suburban in the good old wealthy
Clapham sense. And yet the house has a look of having been
built chiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white
paint and sun-blinds one thinks vaguely of pugarees and even
of palm trees. I cannot trace the 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 the story—the story of
the strange things that did really happen in it in the
Whitsuntide of the year 18—:
Anyone passing the house on the Thursday before
Whit-Sunday at about half-past four p.m. would have seen the
front door open, and Father Brown, of the small church of
St. Mungo, come out smoking a large pipe in company with a
very tall French friend of his called Flambeau, who was
smoking a very small cigarette. These persons may or may not
be of interest to the reader, but the truth is that they
were not the only interesting things that were displayed
when the front door of the white-and-green house was opened.
There are further peculiarities about this house, which must
be described to start with, not only that the reader may
understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realise
what 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 long cross piece and a very short tail piece.
The long cross piece was the frontage that ran along in face
of the street, with the front door in the middle; it was two
stories high, and contained nearly all the important rooms.
The short tail piece, which ran out at the back immediately
opposite the front door, was one story high, and consisted
only of two long rooms, the one leading into the other. The
first of these two rooms was the study in which the
celebrated Mr. Quinton wrote his wild Oriental poems and
romances. The farther room was a glass conservatory full of
tropical blossoms of quite unique and almost monstrous
beauty, and on such afternoons as these glowing with
gorgeous sunlight. Thus when the hall door was open, many a
passer-by literally stopped to stare and gasp; for he looked
down a perspective of rich apartments to something really
like a transformation scene in a fairy play: purple clouds
and golden suns and crimson stars that were at once
scorchingly vivid and yet transparent and far away.
Leonard Quinton, the poet, had himself most carefully
arranged this effect; and it is doubtful whether he so
perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems. For
he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged
his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of form—even of
good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly
to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or
blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen
into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to
teach. He had attempted, not perhaps with complete artistic
success, but with acknowledged imagination and invention, to
compose epics and love stories reflecting the riot of
violent and even cruel colour; tales of tropical heavens of
burning gold or blood-red copper; of eastern heroes who rode
with twelve-turbaned mitres upon elephants painted purple or
peacock green; of gigantic jewels that a hundred negroes
could not carry, but which burned with ancient and
strange-hued fires.
In short (to put the matter from the more common point of
view), he dealt much in eastern heavens, rather worse than
most western hells; in eastern monarchs, whom we might
possibly call maniacs; and in eastern jewels which a Bond
Street jeweller (if the hundred staggering negroes brought
them into his shop) might possibly not regard as genuine.
Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one; and even his
morbidity appeared more in his life than in his work. In
temperament he was weak and waspish, and his health had
suffered heavily from oriental experiments with opium. His
wife—a handsome, hard-working, and, indeed, over-worked
woman objected to the opium, but objected much more to a
live Indian hermit in white and yellow robes, whom her
husband insisted on entertaining for months together, a
Virgil to guide his spirit through the heavens and the hells
of the east.
It was out of this artistic household that Father Brown
and his friend stepped on to the door-step; and to judge
from their faces, they stepped out of it with much relief.
Flambeau had known Quinton in wild student days in Paris,
and they had renewed the acquaintance for a week-end; but
apart from Flambeau's more responsible developments of late,
he did not get on well with the poet now. Choking oneself
with opium and writing little erotic verses on vellum was
not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil. As
the two paused on the door-step, before taking a turn in the
garden, the front garden gate was thrown open with violence,
and a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his head
tumbled up the steps in his eagerness. He was a
dissipated-looking youth with a gorgeous red necktie all
awry, as if he had slept in it, and he kept fidgeting and
lashing about with one of those little jointed canes.
"I say," he said breathlessly, "I want to see old
Quinton. I must see him. 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 at present."
The young man, who seemed not to be perfectly sober,
stumbled into the hall; 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. In fact, you mustn't on any account.
Nobody must see him; I've just given him his sleeping
draught."
"No, but look here, old chap," said the youth in the red
tie, trying affectionately to capture the doctor by the
lapels of his coat. "Look here. 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 other two. He was a
bull-necked, good-tempered little man with a small
moustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an impression
of capacity.
The young man in the billycock, who did not seem to be
gifted with any tact in dealing with people beyond the
general idea of clutching hold of their coats, stood outside
the door, as dazed as if he had been thrown out bodily, and
silently watched the other three walk away together through
the garden.
"That was a sound, spanking lie I told just now,"
remarked the medical man, laughing. "In point of fact, poor
Quinton doesn't have his sleeping draught for nearly half an
hour. But I'm not going to have him bothered with that
little beast, who only wants to borrow money that he
wouldn't pay 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 cleared off," went on the doctor, "and then I'll go in
to Quinton with the medicine. Atkinson can't get in, because
I locked the door."
"In that case, Dr. Harris," said Flambeau, "we might as
well walk round at the back by the end of the conservatory.
There's no entrance to it that way, but it's worth seeing,
even from the outside."
"Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient," laughed
the doctor, "for he prefers to lie on an ottoman right at
the end of the conservatory amid all those blood-red
poinsettias; it would give me the creeps. But what are you
doing?"
Father Brown had stopped for a moment, and picked up out
of the long grass, where it had almost been wholly hidden, a
queer, crooked Oriental knife, 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 all sorts of Chinese knickknacks about the place. Or
perhaps it belongs to that mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps
on a string."
"What Hindoo?" asked Father Brown, still staring at the
dagger in his hand.
"Oh, some Indian conjuror," said the doctor lightly; "a
fraud, of course."
"You don't believe in magic?" asked Father Brown, without
looking up.
"O crickey! magic!" said the doctor.
"It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming
voice; "the colours 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 feel that about Eastern art? The colours are
intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and
bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in
a Turkey carpet."
"Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing.
"They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know;
but I know they stand for evil words," went on the priest,
his voice growing lower and lower. "The lines go wrong on
purpose—like serpents doubling to escape."
"What the devil are you talking about?" said the doctor
with a loud laugh.
Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. "The Father
sometimes gets this mystic's cloud on him," he said; "but I
give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it
except when there was some evil quite near."
"Oh, rats!" said the scientist.
"Why, look at it," cried Father Brown, holding out the
crooked knife at arm's length, as if it were some glittering
snake. "Don't you see it is the 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 does not
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 had better be taken back to its owner. Haven't
we come to the end of this confounded conservatory yet? This
house is the wrong shape, if you like."
"You don't understand," said Father Brown, shaking his
head. "The shape of this house is quaint—it is even
laughable. But there is nothing wrong about it."
As they spoke they came round the curve of glass that
ended the conservatory, an uninterrupted curve, for there
was neither door nor window by which to enter at that end.
The glass, however, was clear, and the sun still bright,
though beginning to set; and they could see not only the
flamboyant blossoms inside, but the frail figure of the poet
in a 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 to all three
of them; but even had it not been so, it may be doubted
whether they would have looked at Quinton just then. Their
eyes were riveted on another object.
Exactly in their path, immediately outside the round end
of the glass building, was standing a tall man, whose
drapery fell to his feet in faultless white, and whose bare,
brown skull, face, and neck gleamed in the setting sun like
splendid bronze. He was looking through the glass at the
sleeper, and he was more motionless than a mountain.
"Who is that?" cried Father Brown, stepping back with a
hissing intake of his breath.
"Oh, it is only that Hindoo humbug," growled Harris; "but
I don't know what 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 always for action. One long stride took him to the
place where the Indian stood. Bowing from his great height,
which overtopped even the Oriental'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 yellow face turned, and looked at last over its
white shoulder. They were startled 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, he repeated, "I want nothing." Then he opened his
eyes wide with a startling stare, said, "I want nothing,"
and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening garden.
"The Christian is more modest," muttered Father Brown;
"he wants something."
"What on earth was he doing?" asked Flambeau, knitting
his black brows and 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 blacker against it. They turned
round the end of the conservatory, and walked in silence
down the other side to get round to the front door. As they
went they seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird,
in the deeper corner between the study and the main
building; and again they saw the white-robed fakir slide out
of the shadow, and slip round towards the front door. To
their surprise, however, he had not been alone. They found
themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish their
bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her
heavy golden hair and square pale face, advancing on them
out of the twilight. She looked 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 am just going to give your husband his sleeping
draught."
"Yes," she said in a clear voice. "I think it is quite
time." And she smiled at them, and went sweeping into the
house.
"That woman's over-driven," said Father Brown; "that's
the kind of woman that does her duty for twenty years, and
then does something dreadful."
The little doctor looked at him for the first time with
an eye of interest. "Did you ever study medicine?" he asked.
"You have to know something of the mind as well as the
body," answered the 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 facade, and were
approaching the front doorway. As they turned into it they
saw the man in the white robe for the third time. He came so
straight towards the front door that it seemed quite
incredible that he had not just come out of the study
opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was
locked.
Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird
contradiction to themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to
waste his thoughts on the impossible. He permitted the
omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then stepped
briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had
already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging
about, humming and poking things with his knobby cane. The
doctor's face had a spasm of disgust and decision, and he
whispered rapidly to his companion: "I must lock the door
again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out again in
two minutes."
He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind
him, just balking a blundering charge from the young man in
the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a
hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the
wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed
the door. In about four minutes the door was opened again.
Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the
door open 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, in something 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 a song about peacocks."
Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying
through the aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward,
caught it with singular dexterity.
"So that's settled," said the doctor, and, locking the
door savagely, he led 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 we left him." Then he looked gravely round the
garden, and saw the loose figure of Atkinson standing and
jingling the half-sovereign in his pocket, and beyond, in
the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian sitting bolt
upright upon a bank of grass with his face turned towards
the setting sun. Then he said abruptly: "Where is Mrs.
Quinton!"
"She has gone up to her room," said the doctor. "That is
her shadow on the blind."
Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinised a dark
outline at the gas-lit window.
"Yes," he said, "that is her shadow," and he walked a
yard or two and threw himself upon a garden seat.
Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of
those energetic people who live naturally on their legs. He
walked away, smoking, into the 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 this place. I think it's that
Indian—at least, partly."
He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of
the Indian, who still 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 so slightly with a rhythmic
movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayed ever so slightly
in the wind that was creeping up the dim garden paths and
shuffling the fallen leaves a little.
The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a
storm, but they could still see all the figures in their
various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a
listless face; Quinton's wife was still at her window; the
doctor had gone strolling round the end of the conservatory;
they could see his cigar like a will-o'-the-wisp; and the
fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above
him began to rock and almost to roar. Storm was certainly
coming.
"When that Indian spoke to us," went on Brown in a
conversational undertone, "I had a sort of vision, a vision
of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing
three times. When first he said 'I want nothing,' it meant
only that he was impenetrable, that Asia 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 a
cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins.
And when he said the third time, 'I want nothing,' he said
it with blazing eyes. And I knew that he meant literally
what he said; that nothing was his desire and his home; that
he was weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation, the
mere destruction of everything or anything—"
Two drops of rain fell; and for some reason Flambeau
started and looked up, as if they had stung him. And the
same instant the doctor down by the end of the conservatory
began running towards them, calling out something as he ran.
As he came among them like a bombshell the restless
Atkinson happened to be taking a turn nearer to the house
front; and the doctor clutched him by the collar in a
convulsive grip. "Foul play!" he cried; "what have you been
doing to him, you dog?"
The priest had sprung erect, and had the voice of steel
of a soldier in command.
"No fighting," he cried coolly; "we are enough to hold
anyone we want to. What is the matter, doctor?"
"Things are not right with Quinton," said the doctor,
quite white. "I could just see him through the glass, and I
don't like the way he's lying. 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 in and see."
The doctor and the priest flew to the study door,
unlocked it, and fell into the room. In doing so they nearly
fell over the large mahogany table in the centre at which
the poet usually wrote; for the place was lit only by a
small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of this table
lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on
purpose. The doctor snatched it up, glanced at it, handed it
to Father Brown, and crying, "Good God, look at that!"
plunged toward the glass room beyond, where the terrible
tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson memory of 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 in the quite inimitable, not to say
illegible, handwriting of Leonard Quinton.
Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand,
strode towards the conservatory, only to meet his medical
friend coming back with a face of assurance and collapse.
"He's done it," said Harris.
They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty
of cactus and azalea and found Leonard Quinton, poet and
romancer, with his head hanging downward off his ottoman and
his red curls sweeping the ground. Into his left side was
thrust the queer dagger that they had picked up in 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 darkened with
driving rain. Father Brown seemed to be studying the paper
more than the corpse; he held it close to his eyes; and
seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held it up
against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared
at them for an instant so white that the paper looked black
against it.
Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder
Father Brown's voice 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 at the corner. What does it mean?"
"How the deuce should I know?" growled the doctor. "Shall
we move this poor chap, do you think? He's quite dead."
"No," answered the priest; "we must leave him as he lies
and send for the police." But he was still scrutinising the
paper.
As they went back through the study he stopped by the
table and picked up 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
doctor emphatically. "It was a fad of his. He had hundreds
of them. He cut all his paper like that," as he pointed to a
stack of sermon paper still unused on another and smaller
table. Father Brown went up to it and held up 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-three sheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off
them. And as I see you are impatient we will rejoin the
others."
"Who is to tell his wife?" asked Dr. Harris. "Will you go
and tell her now, while I send a servant for the police?"
"As you will," said Father Brown indifferently. And he
went out to the hall door.
Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque
sort. It showed nothing less than his big friend Flambeau in
an attitude to which he had long been unaccustomed, while
upon the pathway at the bottom of the steps was sprawling
with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his
billycock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite
directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of
Flambeau's almost paternal custody, and had endeavoured to
knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play
with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch's
abdication.
Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him
once more, when the priest patted him easily on the
shoulder.
"Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend," he said. "Beg
a mutual pardon and say 'Good night.' We need not detain him
any longer." Then, as Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and
gathered his hat and stick and went 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
involuntarily towards the dim grassy bank amid the tossing
trees purple with twilight, where they had last seen the
brown man swaying in his strange prayers. The Indian was
gone.
"Confound him," cried the doctor, stamping furiously.
"Now I know that it was 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 I loathed that yellow devil when I thought he
was a sham wizard. And I shall loathe him more if I come to
think he was a real one."
"Well, his having escaped is nothing," said Flambeau.
"For we could have proved nothing and done nothing against
him. One hardly goes to the parish constable with a story of
suicide imposed by witchcraft or auto-suggestion."
Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house,
and now went to break the news to the wife of the dead man.
When he came out again he looked a little pale and
tragic, but what passed between them in that interview was
never known, even when all was known.
Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was
surprised to see his friend reappear so soon at his elbow;
but Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor apart.
"You have sent for the police, haven't you?" 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, I make a collection of these curious stories,
which often contain, as in the case of our Hindoo friend,
elements which can hardly be put into a police report. Now,
I want you to write out a report of this case for my private
use. Yours is a clever trade," he said, looking the doctor
gravely and steadily in the face. "I sometimes think that
you know some details of this matter which you have not
thought fit to mention. Mine is a confidential trade like
yours, and I will treat anything you write for me in strict
confidence. But write the whole."
The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his
head a little on 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 the veranda, where we can smoke out of the rain.
You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to
you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you."
They established themselves comfortably in the veranda
seat; Father Brown, against his common habit, accepted a
good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence, while the rain
shrieked and rattled on the roof of the veranda.
"My friend," he said at length, "this is a very queer
case. A very queer case."
"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 we mean quite opposite things. The modern mind
always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the sense of
what is marvellous, and mystery in the sense of what is
complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A
miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because
it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or
the devil) instead of indirectly through nature or human
wills. Now, you mean that this business is marvellous
because it is miraculous, because it is witchcraft worked by
a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was not
spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what
surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of
men. But for the present my point is this: If it was pure
magic, as you think, then it is marvellous; but it is not
mysterious—that is, it is not complicated. The quality of a
miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple. Now, the
manner of this business has been the reverse of simple."
The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be
swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of faint
thunder. Father Brown let fall the ash of his cigar and went
on:
"There has been in this incident," he said, "a twisted,
ugly, complex quality that does not belong to the straight
bolts either of heaven or hell. As one knows the crooked
track of a snail, I know the crooked track of a man."
The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink,
the sky shut up again, and the priest went on:
"Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the
shape of that piece of paper. It was crookeder than the
dagger that killed him."
"You mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his
suicide," said Flambeau.
"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 the wrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I
have seen it in this wicked world."
"It only had a corner snipped off," said Flambeau, "and I
understand that all Quinton's paper was cut that way."
"It was a very odd way," said the other, "and a very bad
way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this
Quinton—God receive his soul!—was perhaps a bit of a cur in
some ways, but he really was an artist, with the pencil as
well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was
bold and beautiful. I can't prove what I say; I can't prove
anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction
that he could never have cut that mean little piece off a
sheet of paper. If he had wanted 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 the scissors. Do you
remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong
shape. Like this. Don't you remember?"
And he waved his burning cigar before him in the
darkness, making irregular squares so rapidly that Flambeau
really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the
darkness—hieroglyphics such as his friend had spoken of,
which are undecipherable, yet can have no good meaning.
"But," said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his
mouth again and leaned back, staring at the roof, "suppose
somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody
else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper, make Quinton
commit suicide?"
Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the
roof, but he took his cigar out of his mouth and said:
"Quinton never did commit suicide."
Flambeau stared at him. "Why, confound it all," he cried,
"then why did he confess to suicide?"
The priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his
knees, looked at the ground, and said, in a low, distinct
voice: "He never did confess to suicide."
Flambeau laid his cigar down. "You mean," he said, "that
the writing was forged?"
"No," said Father Brown. "Quinton wrote it all right."
"Well, there you are," said the aggravated Flambeau;
"Quinton wrote, 'I die 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 do with it?"
"There were twenty-three snipped papers," resumed Brown
unmoved, "and only twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore
one of the pieces had been destroyed, probably that from the
written paper. Does that suggest anything to you?"
A light dawned on Flambeau's face, and he said: "There
was something else written by Quinton, some other words.
'They will tell you I die by my own hand,' or 'Do not
believe that—'"
"Hotter, as the children say," said his friend. "But the
piece was hardly half an inch across; there was no room for
one word, let alone five. Can you think of anything hardly
bigger than a comma which the man with 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 far into the darkness like a shooting star.
All words had left the other man's mouth, and Father
Brown said, like one going back to fundamentals:
"Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an
Oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism. He—"
At this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and
the doctor came out 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 the gate. He had left the front door open, so
that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of
this Brown opened the envelope and read the following words:
DEAR FATHER BROWN,—Vicisti Galilee. Otherwise, damn your
eyes, which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that
there is something in all that stuff of yours after all?
I am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and
in all natural functions and instincts, whether men called them
moral or immoral. Long before I became a doctor, when I was a
schoolboy keeping mice and spiders, I believed that to be a good
animal is the best thing in the world. But just now I am shaken;
I have believed in Nature; but it seems as if Nature could betray
a man. Can there be anything in your bosh? I am really getting
morbid.
I loved Quinton's wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature
told me to, and it's love that makes the world go round. I also
thought quite sincerely that she would be happier with a clean
animal like me than with that tormenting little lunatic. What was
there wrong in that? I was only 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 was the best thing for everybody, even himself. But as a
healthy animal I had no notion of killing myself. I resolved,
therefore, that I would never do it until I saw a chance that
would leave me scot free. I saw that chance this morning.
I have been three times, all told, into Quinton's study today.
The first time I went in he would talk about nothing but the weird
tale, called "The Cure of a Saint," which he was writing, which
was all about how some Indian hermit made an English colonel kill
himself by thinking about him. He showed me the last sheets, and
even read me the last paragraph, which was something like this:
"The conqueror of the Punjab, a mere yellow skeleton, but still
gigantic, managed to lift himself on his elbow and gasp in his
nephew's ear: 'I die by my own hand, yet I die murdered!'" It so
happened by one chance out of a hundred, that those last words
were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room,
and went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightful
opportunity.
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 might most probably use. Taking the opportunity to stuff
it in my pocket I went back to Quinton's study, locked the door,
and gave him his sleeping draught. He was against answering
Atkinson at all, but I urged him to call out and quiet the fellow,
because I wanted a clear proof that Quinton was alive when I left
the room for the second time. Quinton lay down in the conservatory,
and I came through the study. I am a quick man with my hands, and
in a minute and a half I had done what I wanted to do. I had
emptied all the first part of Quinton's romance into the fireplace,
where it burnt to ashes. Then I saw that the quotation marks
wouldn'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
knowledge that Quinton's confession of suicide lay on the front
table, while Quinton lay alive but asleep in the conservatory
beyond.
The last act was a desperate one; you can guess it: I pretended
to have seen 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 were looking 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. The knife was of so queer a
shape that no one but an operator could have calculated the angle
that would reach his heart. I wonder if you noticed this.
When I had done it, the extraordinary thing happened. Nature
deserted me. I felt ill. I felt just as if I had done something
wrong. I think my brain is breaking up; I feel some sort of
desperate pleasure in thinking I have told the thing to somebody;
that I shall not have to be alone with 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's poems! I cannot
write any more.
James Erskine Harris.
Father Brown carefully folded up the letter, and put it
in his breast pocket just as there came a loud peal at the
gate bell, and the wet waterproofs of several policemen
gleamed in the road outside.
The Sins of Prince Saradine
When Flambeau took his month's holiday from his office in
Westminster he took it in a small sailing-boat, so small
that it passed much of its time as a rowing-boat. He took
it, moreover, in little rivers in the Eastern counties,
rivers so small that the boat looked like a magic boat,
sailing on land through meadows and cornfields. The vessel
was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for
necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as
his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced
themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon,
if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should
want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he
should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should
die. With this light luggage he crawled down the little
Norfolk rivers, intending to reach the Broads at last, but
meanwhile delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows,
the mirrored mansions or villages, lingering to fish 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 a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He
had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously
that its success would crown the holiday, but just so
lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when
he had been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in
Paris, he had often received wild communications of
approval, denunciation, or even love; but one had, somehow,
stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of a visiting-card,
in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back of the
card was written in French and in green ink: "If you ever
retire and become respectable, come and see me. I want to
meet you, for I have met all the other great men of my time.
That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the
other was the most splendid scene in French history." 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 that he had been a brilliant and fashionable
figure in southern Italy. In his youth, it was said, he had
eloped with a married woman of high rank; the escapade was
scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to
men's minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged
suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung
himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in
Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have
been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when
Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European
celebrity and settled in England, it occurred to him that he
might pay a surprise visit to this eminent exile in the
Norfolk Broads. Whether he should find the place he had no
idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small and forgotten.
But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he
expected.
They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled
in high grasses and short pollarded trees. Sleep, after
heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a
corresponding accident they awoke before it was light. To
speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for
a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of
high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid
violet-blue, nocturnal but bright. Both men had
simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin and
adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods.
Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies
really seemed to be giant daisies, the dandelions to be
giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them of the dado of a
nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficed to
sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make
them gaze 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. His movement was so abrupt that his friend asked
him, with a mild stare, what was the matter.
"The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads," answered
the priest, "knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't
only nice things that happen in fairyland."
"Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen
under such an innocent 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 to enter fairyland. I only said it was always
dangerous."
They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing
violet of the sky and the pale gold of the moon grew fainter
and fainter, and faded into that vast colourless cosmos that
precedes the colours of the dawn. When the first faint
stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizon from end
to end they were broken by the black bulk of a town or
village which sat on the river just ahead of them. It was
already an easy twilight, in which all things were visible,
when they came under the hanging roofs and bridges of this
riverside hamlet. The houses, with their long, low, stooping
roofs, seemed to come down to drink at the river, like huge
grey and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawn had
already turned to working daylight before they saw any
living creature on the wharves and bridges of that silent
town. Eventually they saw a very placid and prosperous man
in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently
sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around the low arc of
it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By an
impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height
in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew
Reed Island or Reed House. The prosperous man's smile grew
slightly more expansive, and he simply pointed up the river
towards the next bend of it. Flambeau went ahead without
further speech.
The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many
such reedy and silent reaches of river; but before the
search had become monotonous they had swung round a
specially sharp angle and come into the silence of a sort of
pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrested
them. For in the middle of this wider piece of water,
fringed on every side with rushes, lay a long, low islet,
along which ran a long, low house or bungalow built of
bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane. The upstanding
rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow, the
sloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown,
otherwise the long house was a thing of repetition and
monotony. The early morning breeze rustled the reeds round
the island and sang in the strange ribbed house as in a
giant pan-pipe.
"By George!" cried Flambeau; "here is the place, after
all! Here is Reed Island, if ever there was one. Here is
Reed House, if it is anywhere. I believe that fat man with
whiskers was a fairy."
"Perhaps," remarked Father Brown impartially. "If he was,
he was a bad fairy."
But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his
boat ashore in the rattling reeds, and they stood in the
long, quaint islet beside the odd and silent house.
The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river
and the only landing-stage; the main entrance was on the
other side, and looked down the long island garden. The
visitors approached it, therefore, by a small path running
round nearly three sides of the house, close under the low
eaves. Through three different windows on three different
sides they 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 elegant lunch. The
front door, when they came round to it at last, was flanked
by two turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler
of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless—who
murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but
was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and
his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of
green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of
the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky
courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain.
"His Highness may be here any minute," he said, "and would
be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had
invited. We have orders always to keep a little cold lunch
for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to
be offered."
Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau
assented gracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered
him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled room.
There was nothing very notable about it, except the rather
unusual alternation of many long, low windows with many
long, low oblongs of looking-glass, which gave a singular
air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was
somehow like lunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a
quiet kind hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph
of a very young man in uniform, another a red chalk sketch
of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeau whether the
soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly
in the negative; it was the prince's younger brother,
Captain Stephen Saradine, he said. And with that the old man
seemed to dry up suddenly and lose all taste for
conversation.
After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and
liqueurs, the guests were introduced to the garden, the
library, and the housekeeper—a dark, handsome lady, of no
little majesty, and rather like a plutonic Madonna. It
appeared that she and the butler were the only survivors of
the prince's original foreign menage the other servants now
in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by the
housekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs.
Anthony, but she spoke with a slight Italian accent, and
Flambeau did not doubt that Anthony was a Norfolk version of
some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, the butler, also had a
faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue and training
English, as are many of the most polished men-servants of
the cosmopolitan nobility.
Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a
curious luminous sadness. Hours passed in it like days. The
long, well-windowed rooms were full of daylight, but it
seemed a dead daylight. And through all other incidental
noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or the
passing feet of servants, they could hear on all sides of
the house the melancholy noise of the river.
"We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong
place," said Father Brown, looking out of the window at the
grey-green sedges and the silver flood. "Never mind; one can
sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong
place."
Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly
sympathetic little man, and in those few but endless hours
he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed House
than his professional friend. He had that knack of friendly
silence which is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely
a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances all
that in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was
naturally uncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost
animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been very
badly treated. The chief offender seemed to be his
highness's brother, whose name alone would lengthen the old
man's lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer.
Captain Stephen was a ne'er-do-weel, apparently, and had
drained his benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands;
forced him to fly from fashionable 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 Brown fancied, somewhat less content. Her tone
about her master was faintly acid; though not without a
certain awe. Flambeau and his friend were standing in the
room of the looking-glasses examining the red sketch of the
two boys, when the housekeeper swept in swiftly on some
domestic errand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering,
glass-panelled place that anyone entering was reflected in
four or five mirrors at once; and Father Brown, without
turning round, stopped in the middle of a sentence of family
criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to the
picture, was already saying in a loud voice, "The brothers
Saradine, I suppose. They both look innocent enough. It
would be hard to say which is the good brother and which the
bad." Then, realising the lady's presence, he turned the
conversation with some triviality, and strolled out into the
garden. But Father Brown still gazed steadily at the red
crayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at
Father Brown.
She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face
glowed darkly with a curious and painful wonder—as of one
doubtful of a stranger's identity or purpose. Whether the
little priest's coat and creed touched some southern
memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knew more
than he did, she said to him in a low voice as to a fellow
plotter, "He is right enough in one way, your friend. He
says it would be hard to pick out the good and bad brothers.
Oh, it would be hard, it would 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 of savage stoop, like a bull lowering his
horns.
"There isn't a good one," she hissed. "There was badness
enough in the captain taking all that money, but I don't
think there was much goodness in the prince giving it. The
captain's not the only one with something against him."
A light dawned on the cleric's averted face, and his
mouth formed silently the word "blackmail." Even as he did
so the woman turned an abrupt white face over her shoulder
and almost fell. The door had opened soundlessly and the
pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. By the weird
trick of the reflecting walls, it seemed as if five Pauls
had entered by five doors simultaneously.
"His Highness," he said, "has just arrived."
In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside
the first window, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted
stage. An instant later he passed at the second window and
the many mirrors repainted in successive frames the same
eagle profile and marching figure. He was erect and alert,
but his hair was white and his complexion of an odd ivory
yellow. He had that short, curved Roman nose which generally
goes with long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly
masked by moustache and imperial. The moustache was much
darker than the beard, giving an effect slightly theatrical,
and he was dressed up to the same dashing part, having a
white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellow waistcoat 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 few minutes their
conversation could not be heard. Then the butler said,
"Everything is at your disposal;" and the glove-flapping
Prince Saradine came gaily into the room to greet them. They
beheld once more that spectral scene—five princes entering a
room with five doors.
The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the
table and offered his hand quite cordially.
"Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau," he said.
"Knowing you very well by reputation, if that's not an
indiscreet remark."
"Not at all," answered Flambeau, laughing. "I am not
sensitive. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied
virtue."
The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the
retort had any personal point; then he laughed also and
offered chairs to everyone, including himself.
"Pleasant little place, this, I think," he said with a
detached air. "Not much to do, I fear; but the fishing is
really good."
The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare
of a baby, was haunted by some fancy that escaped
definition. He looked at the grey, carefully curled hair,
yellow white visage, and slim, somewhat foppish figure.
These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononcé,
like the outfit of a figure behind the footlights. The
nameless interest lay in something else, in the very
framework of the face; Brown was tormented with a half
memory of having seen it somewhere before. The man looked
like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he suddenly
remembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some
psychological effect of that multiplication of human masks.
Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between
his guests with great gaiety and tact. Finding the detective
of a sporting turn and eager to employ his holiday, he
guided Flambeau and Flambeau's boat down to the best fishing
spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoe in twenty
minutes to join Father Brown in the library and plunge
equally politely into the priest's more philosophic
pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the
fishing and the books, though of these not the most
edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the
slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and
very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories
were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian
bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the
once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in
almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that the
travels were so disreputable or so amusing.
Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world,
Prince Saradine radiated to such sensitive observers as the
priest, a certain atmosphere of the restless and even the
unreliable. His face was fastidious, but his eye was wild;
he had little nervous tricks, like a man 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 the
two old servants, especially to the butler, who was plainly
the central pillar of the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not
so much a butler as a sort of steward or, even, chamberlain;
he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his
master; he was feared by all the servants; and he consulted
with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly—rather
as if he were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper
was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to
efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard
no more of those volcanic whispers which had half told him
of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder. Whether
the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain,
he could not be certain, but there was something insecure
and secretive about Saradine that made the tale by no means
incredible.
When they went once more into the long hall with the
windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over
the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in
the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum. The same
singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed
the priest's mind again like a little grey cloud. "I wish
Flambeau 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
singular manner, his face in shadow against the sunset.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the
tapestry," answered Father Brown. "The things that happen
here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something
somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the
real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong
person."
The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in
his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and
shrewd thought exploded silently in the other's mind. Was
there another meaning in Saradine's blend of brilliancy and
abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was
repeating, "The wrong person—the wrong person," many more
times than was natural in a social exclamation.
Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the
mirrors before him he could see the silent door standing
open, and the silent Mr. Paul standing in it, with his usual
pallid impassiveness.
"I thought it better to announce at once," he said, with
the same stiff respectfulness as of an old family lawyer, "a
boat rowed by six men has come to the landing-stage, and
there's a gentleman sitting in the stern."
"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 the bird in the sedge; and then, before anyone
could speak again, a new face and figure passed in profile
round the three sunlit windows, as the prince had passed an
hour or two before. But except for the accident that both
outlines were aquiline, they had little in common. Instead
of the new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of
antiquated or foreign shape; under it was a young and very
solemn face, clean shaven, blue about its resolute chin, and
carrying a faint suggestion of the young Napoleon. The
association was assisted by something old and odd about the
whole get-up, as of a man who had never troubled to change
the fashions of his fathers. He had a shabby blue frock
coat, a red, soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of
coarse white trousers common among the early Victorians, but
strangely incongruous today. From all this old clothes-shop
his olive face stood out strangely young and monstrously
sincere.
"The deuce!" said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his
white hat he went to 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 lawn like a small stage army. The six boatmen had
pulled the boat well up on shore, and were guarding it
almost menacingly, holding their oars erect like spears.
They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. But
one of them stood forward beside the olive-faced young man
in the red waistcoat, 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 possible from the restless and glittering grey eyes of
the prince. But once again Father Brown was tortured with a
sense of having seen somewhere a replica of the face; and
once again he remembered the repetitions of the
glass-panelled room, and put down the coincidence to that.
"Confound this 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 that my name is Antonelli."
"Antonelli," repeated the prince languidly. "Somehow I
remember the name."
"Permit me to present myself," said the young Italian.
With his left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned
top-hat; with his right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing
a crack across the face that the white top hat rolled down
the steps and one of the blue flower-pots rocked upon its
pedestal.
The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward;
he sprang at his enemy's throat and almost bore him
backwards to the grass. But his enemy extricated himself
with a singularly inappropriate air of hurried politeness.
"That is all right," he said, panting and in halting
English. "I have insulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco,
open the case."
The man beside him with the earrings and the big black
case proceeded to unlock it. He took out of it two long
Italian rapiers, with splendid steel hilts and blades, which
he planted point downwards in the lawn. The strange young
man standing facing the entrance with his yellow and
vindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like
two crosses in a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers
behind, gave it all an odd appearance of being some barbaric
court of justice. But everything else was unchanged, so
sudden had been the interruption. The sunset gold still
glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as
announcing some small but dreadful destiny.
"Prince Saradine," said the man called Antonelli, "when I
was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and stole
my mother; my father was the more fortunate. You did not
kill him fairly, as I am going to kill you. You and my
wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass in Sicily,
flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could
imitate you if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I
have followed you all over the world, and you have always
fled from me. But this is the end of the world—and of you. I
have you now, and I give you the chance you never gave my
father. Choose one of those swords."
Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to
hesitate a moment, but his ears were still singing with the
blow, and he sprang forward and snatched at one of the
hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward, striving to
compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presence
made matters worse. Saradine was a French freemason and a
fierce atheist, and a priest moved him by the law of
contraries. And for the other man neither priest nor layman
moved him at all. This young man with the Bonaparte face and
the brown eyes was something far sterner than a puritan—a
pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of the earth;
a man of the stone age—a man of stone.
One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and
Father Brown ran back into the house. He found, however,
that all the under servants had been given a holiday ashore
by the autocrat Paul, and that only the sombre Mrs. Anthony
moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the moment she
turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the
riddles of the house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of
Antonelli were the heavy brown 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 the prince will be killed. Where is Mr. Paul?"
"He is at the landing-stage," said the woman faintly. "He
is—he is—signalling for help."
"Mrs. Anthony," said Father Brown seriously, "there is no
time for nonsense. My friend has his boat down the river
fishing. Your son's boat is guarded by your son's men. There
is only this one canoe; what is Mr. Paul doing with it?"
"Santa Maria! I do not know," she said; and swooned all
her length on the 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 the little island. But the canoe was
already in mid-stream, and old Paul was pulling and pushing
it up the river with an energy incredible at his years.
"I will save my master," he cried, his eyes blazing
maniacally. "I will save him yet!"
Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as
it struggled up-stream and pray that the old man might waken
the little town in time.
"A duel is bad enough," he muttered, rubbing up his rough
dust-coloured hair, "but there's something wrong about this
duel, even as a duel. I feel it in my bones. But what can it
be?"
As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of
sunset, he heard from the other end of the island garden a
small but unmistakable sound—the cold concussion of steel.
He turned his head.
Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet,
on a strip of turf beyond the last rank of roses, the
duellists had already crossed swords. Evening above them was
a dome of virgin gold, and, distant as they were, every
detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats, but
the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red
waistcoat and white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the
level light like the colours of the dancing clockwork dolls.
The two swords sparkled from point to pommel like two
diamond pins. There was something frightful in the two
figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like two
butterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.
Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs
going like a wheel. But when he came to the field of combat
he found he was born too late and too early—too late to stop
the strife, under the shadow of the grim Sicilians leaning
on their oars, and too early to anticipate any disastrous
issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched,
the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical
confidence, the Sicilian using his with a murderous care.
Few finer fencing matches can ever have been seen in crowded
amphitheatres than that which tinkled and sparkled on that
forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fight was
balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting
priest; by all common probability Paul must soon come back
with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau
came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically
speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of
Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the
police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that
lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as
on a rock in the Pacific.
Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers
quickened to a rattle, the prince's arms flew up, and the
point shot out behind between his shoulder-blades. He went
over with a great whirling movement, almost like one
throwing the half of a boy's cart-wheel. The sword flew from
his hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant
river. And he himself sank with so earth-shaking a
subsidence that he broke a big rose-tree with his body and
shook up into the sky a cloud of red earth—like the smoke of
some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had made blood-offering
to the ghost of his father.
The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but
only to make too sure that it was a corpse. As he was still
trying some last hopeless tests he heard for the first time
voices from farther up the river, and saw a police boat
shoot up to the landing-stage, with constables and other
important people, including the excited Paul. The little
priest rose with a distinctly dubious grimace.
"Now, why on earth," he muttered, "why on earth couldn't
he have come before?"
Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an
invasion of townsfolk and police, and the latter had put
their hands on the victorious duellist, ritually reminding
him that anything he said might be used against him.
"I shall not say anything," said the monomaniac, with a
wonderful and peaceful face. "I shall never say anything
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 but certain 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 of the man of blood, the carrying away of the
corpse after its examination by the doctor, rather as one
watches the break-up of some ugly dream; he was motionless,
like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and address as a
witness, but declined their offer of a boat to the shore,
and remained alone in the island garden, gazing at the
broken rose bush and the whole green theatre of that swift
and inexplicable tragedy. The light died along the river;
mist rose in the marshy banks; a few belated birds flitted
fitfully across.
Stuck stubbornly in his sub-consciousness (which was an
unusually lively one) was an unspeakable certainty that
there was something still unexplained. This sense that had
clung to him all day could not be fully explained by his
fancy about "looking-glass land." Somehow he had not seen
the real story, but some game or masque. And yet people do
not get hanged or run through the body for the sake of a
charade.
As he sat on the steps of the landing-stage ruminating he
grew conscious of the tall, dark streak of a sail coming
silently down the shining river, and sprang to his feet with
such a backrush of feeling that he almost wept.
"Flambeau!" he cried, and shook his friend by both hands
again and again, much to the astonishment of that sportsman,
as he came on shore with his fishing tackle. "Flambeau," he
said, "so you're not killed?"
"Killed!" repeated the angler in great astonishment. "And
why should I be killed?"
"Oh, because nearly everybody else is," said his
companion rather wildly. "Saradine got murdered, and
Antonelli wants to be hanged, and his mother's fainted, and
I, for one, don't know whether I'm in this world or the
next. But, thank God, you're in the same one." And he took
the bewildered Flambeau's arm.
As they turned from the landing-stage they came under the
eaves of the low bamboo house, and looked in through one of
the windows, as they had done on their first arrival. They
beheld a lamp-lit interior well calculated to arrest their
eyes. The table in the long dining-room had been laid for
dinner when Saradine's destroyer had fallen like a stormbolt
on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress,
for Mrs. Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the
table, while at the head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo,
eating and drinking of the best, his bleared, bluish eyes
standing queerly out of his face, his gaunt 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, but really to steal your master's dinner while
he lies murdered in the garden—"
"I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant
life," replied the strange old gentleman placidly; "this
dinner is one of the few things I have not stolen. This
dinner and this house and garden happen to 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 were shot, and put in at the window a pale
face like a turnip.
"You are what?" he repeated in a shrill voice.
"Paul, Prince Saradine, A vos ordres," said the venerable
person politely, lifting a glass of sherry. "I live here
very quietly, being a domestic kind of fellow; and for the
sake of modesty I am called Mr. Paul, to distinguish me from
my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. He died, I hear,
recently—in the garden. Of course, it is not my fault if
enemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to the
regrettable irregularity of his life. He was not a domestic
character."
He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the
opposite wall just above the bowed and sombre head of the
woman. They saw plainly the family likeness that had haunted
them in the dead man. Then his old shoulders began to heave
and shake a little, as if he were choking, but his 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 from this 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 from the island, and they went down-stream in the
dark, warming themselves with two big cigars that glowed
like crimson ships' lanterns. Father Brown took his cigar
out of his mouth and said:
"I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all,
it's a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise
man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than
one."
"I do not follow that," answered Flambeau.
"Oh, it's really simple," rejoined his friend. "Simple,
though anything but innocent. Both the Saradines were
scamps, but the prince, the elder, was the sort of scamp
that gets to the top, and the younger, the captain, was the
sort that sinks to the bottom. This squalid officer fell
from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold
upon his brother, the prince. Obviously it was for no light
matter, for Prince Paul Saradine was frankly 'fast,' and had
no reputation to lose as to the mere sins of society. In
plain fact, it was a hanging matter, and Stephen literally
had a rope round his brother's neck. He had somehow
discovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could
prove that Paul murdered old Antonelli in the mountains. The
captain raked in the hush money heavily for ten years, until
even the prince's splendid fortune began to look a little
foolish.
"But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his
blood-sucking brother. He knew that the son of Antonelli, a
mere child at the time of the murder, had been trained in
savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived only to avenge his
father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen's legal
proof), but with the old weapons of vendetta. The boy had
practised arms with a deadly perfection, and about the time
that he was old enough to use 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 to place like
a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon his
trail. 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 silence Stephen. The more he gave to silence
Stephen the less chance there was of finally escaping
Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself a great man—a
genius like Napoleon.
"Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered
suddenly to both of them. He gave way like a Japanese
wrestler, and his foes fell prostrate before him. He gave up
the race round the world, and he gave up his address to
young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to his brother.
He sent Stephen money enough for smart clothes and easy
travel, with a letter saying roughly: 'This is all I have
left. You have cleaned me out. I still have a little house
in Norfolk, with servants and a cellar, and if you want more
from me you must take that. Come and take possession if you
like, and I will live there quietly as your friend or agent
or anything.' He knew that the Sicilian had never seen the
Saradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they
were somewhat alike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then
he shaved his own face and waited. The trap worked. The
unhappy captain, in his new clothes, entered the house in
triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian's sword.
"There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human
nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never
expecting the virtues of mankind. 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 the
victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a
hedge, and so die without speech. It was a bad minute for
Prince Paul when Antonelli's chivalry proposed a formal
duel, with all its possible explanations. It was then that I
found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes. He was
fleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should
learn who he was.
"But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the
adventurer and he knew the fanatic. It was quite probable
that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through
his mere histrionic pleasure in playing a part, his lust for
clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal's trust in
luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli,
the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without
telling tales of his family. Paul hung about on the river
till he knew the fight was over. Then he roused the town,
brought the police, saw his two vanquished enemies taken
away forever, and sat down smiling to his dinner."
"Laughing, God help us!" said Flambeau with a strong
shudder. "Do they get such ideas from Satan?"
"He 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 the faint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled
with green ink.
"Don't you remember his original invitation to you?" he
asked, "and the compliment to your criminal exploit? 'That
trick of yours,' he says, 'of getting one detective to
arrest the other'? He has just copied your trick. With an
enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of the way
and let them collide and kill each other."
Flambeau tore Prince Saradine's card from the priest's
hands and rent it savagely in small pieces.
"There's the last of that old skull and crossbones," he
said as he scattered 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; a faint and vibrant colour as of morning
changed the sky, and the moon behind 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, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of
orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them
that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed their
little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward
down the winding river to happier places and the homes of
harmless men.
The Hammer of God
The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill
so steep that the tall spire of its church seemed only like
the peak of a small mountain. At the foot of the church
stood a smithy, generally red with fires and always littered
with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite to this, over a
rude cross of cobbled paths, was "The Blue Boar," the only
inn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting
of a leaden and 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 some austere
exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the
Hon. Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means
devout, and was sitting in evening dress on the bench
outside "The Blue Boar," drinking what the philosophic
observer was free to regard either as his last glass on
Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. The colonel was not
particular.
The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families
really dating from the Middle Ages, and their pennon had
actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to
suppose that such houses stand high in chivalric tradition.
Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live
not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had been
Mohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria.
But like more than one of the really ancient houses, they
had rotted in the last two centuries into mere drunkards and
dandy degenerates, till there had even come a whisper of
insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human about
the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic
resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the
hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal,
elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would
have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes
were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They
were a little too close together. He had very long yellow
moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from
nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his face.
Over his evening clothes he wore a curious pale yellow coat
that looked more like a very light dressing gown than an
overcoat, and on the back of his head was stuck an
extraordinary broad-brimmed hat of a bright green colour,
evidently some oriental curiosity caught up at random. He
was proud of appearing in such incongruous attires—proud of
the fact that he always made them look congruous.
His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the
elegance, but he was 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 his religion; but there
were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who was a
Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic architecture
rather than of God, and that his haunting of the church like
a ghost was only another and purer turn of the almost morbid
thirst for beauty which sent his brother raging after women
and wine. This charge was doubtful, while the man's
practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was
mostly an ignorant misunderstanding of the love of solitude
and secret prayer, and was founded on his being often found
kneeling, not before the altar, but in peculiar places, in
the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry. He was at the
moment about to enter the church through the yard of the
smithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he saw his
brother's cavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On
the hypothesis that the colonel was interested in the church
he did not waste any speculations. There only remained the
blacksmith's shop, and though the blacksmith was a Puritan
and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some
scandals about a beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He
flung a suspicious look across the shed, and the colonel
stood up laughing to speak to him.
"Good morning, Wilfred," he said. "Like a good landlord I
am watching sleeplessly over my people. I am going to call
on the blacksmith."
Wilfred looked at the ground, and said: "The blacksmith
is out. He is over at Greenford."
"I know," answered the other with silent laughter; "that
is why I am calling on him."
"Norman," said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in
the road, "are you 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 God might strike you in the street?"
"I beg your pardon," said the colonel; "I see your hobby
is folk-lore."
"I know your hobby is blasphemy," retorted the religious
man, stung in the one live place of his nature. "But if you
do not fear God, you have good 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 miles round," said the clergyman sternly. "I know
you are no coward or weakling, but he could throw you over
the wall."
This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by
mouth and nostril darkened and deepened. For a moment he
stood with the heavy sneer on his face. But in an instant
Colonel Bohun had recovered his own cruel good humour and
laughed, showing two dog-like front teeth under his yellow
moustache. "In that case, my dear Wilfred," he said quite
carelessly, "it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come
out partially in armour."
And he took off the queer round hat covered with green,
showing that it was lined within with steel. Wilfred
recognised it indeed as a light Japanese or Chinese helmet
torn down from a trophy that hung in the old family hall.
"It was the first hat to hand," explained his brother
airily; "always the nearest hat—and the nearest woman."
"The blacksmith is away at Greenford," said Wilfred
quietly; "the time of 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. He was anxious to forget such
grossness in the cool twilight of his tall Gothic cloisters;
but on that morning it was fated that his still round of
religious exercises should be everywhere arrested by small
shocks. As he entered the church, hitherto always empty at
that hour, a kneeling figure rose hastily to its feet and
came towards the full daylight of the doorway. When the
curate saw it he stood still with surprise. For the early
worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew
of the blacksmith, one who neither would nor could care for
the church or for anything else. He was always called "Mad
Joe," and seemed to have no other name; he was a dark,
strong, slouching lad, with a heavy white face, dark
straight hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed the
priest, his moon-calf countenance gave no hint of what he
had been doing or thinking of. He had never been known to
pray before. What sort of prayers was he saying now?
Extraordinary prayers surely.
Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see
the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see his
dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular
jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel throwing
pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious
appearance of trying to hit it.
This ugly sunlit picture of the stupidity and cruelty of
the earth sent the ascetic finally to his prayers for
purification and new thoughts. He went up to a pew in the
gallery, which brought him under a coloured window which he
loved and always quieted his spirit; a blue window with an
angel carrying lilies. There he began to think less about
the half-wit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He
began to think less of his evil brother, pacing like a lean
lion in his horrible hunger. He sank deeper and deeper into
those cold and sweet colours of silver blossoms and sapphire
sky.
In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by
Gibbs, the village cobbler, who had been sent for him in
some haste. He got to his feet with promptitude, for he knew
that no small matter would have brought Gibbs into such a
place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages, an
atheist, and his appearance in church was a shade more
extraordinary than Mad Joe's. It was a morning of
theological enigmas.
"What is it?" asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but
putting out a trembling hand for his hat.
The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was
quite startlingly respectful, and even, as it were, huskily
sympathetic.
"You must excuse me, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper,
"but we didn't think it right not to let you know at once.
I'm afraid a rather dreadful thing has happened, sir. I'm
afraid your brother—"
Wilfred clenched his frail hands. "What devilry has he
done now?" he cried in voluntary 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 better come down, sir."
The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding
stair which brought them out at an entrance rather higher
than the street. Bohun saw the tragedy in one glance, flat
underneath him like a plan. In the yard of the smithy were
standing five or six men mostly in black, one in an
inspector's uniform. They included the doctor, the
Presbyterian minister, and the priest from the Roman
Catholic chapel, to which the blacksmith's wife belonged.
The latter was speaking to her, indeed, very rapidly, in an
undertone, as she, a magnificent woman with red-gold hair,
was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups,
and just clear of the main heap of hammers, lay a man in
evening dress, spread-eagled and flat on his face. From the
height above Wilfred could have sworn to every item of his
costume and appearance, down to the Bohun 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 he scarcely took any notice. He could only
stammer out: "My brother is dead. What does it mean? What is
this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappy silence; and
then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered:
"Plenty of horror, 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 forty miles round that could have struck such a blow
as that, and he's the man that 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 to corroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about
the nature of the blow, sir; it is an incredible blow. Mr.
Gibbs says that only one man in this district could have
done it. I should have said myself that nobody could have
done 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 fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull
was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were
driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud
wall. It was the hand of a giant."
He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his
glasses; then he added: "The thing has one advantage—that it
clears most people of suspicion at one stroke. If you or I
or any normally made man in the country were accused of this
crime, we should be acquitted as an infant would be
acquitted of stealing the Nelson column."
"That's what I say," repeated the cobbler obstinately;
"there's only one man 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
colourless voice, 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 stubbly brown hair and a round and stolid face. But
if he had been as splendid as Apollo no one would have
looked at him at that moment. Everyone turned round and
peered at the pathway which wound across the plain below,
along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and
with a hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a
bony and gigantic man, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a
dark chin beard. He was walking and talking quietly with two
other men; and though he was never specially cheerful, he
seemed quite at his ease.
"My God!" cried the atheistic cobbler, "and there's the
hammer he did it with."
"No," said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a
sandy moustache, speaking for the first time. "There's the
hammer he did it with over there by the church wall. We have
left it and the body exactly as they are."
All glanced round and the short priest went across and
looked down in silence at the tool where it lay. It was one
of the smallest and the lightest of the hammers, and would
not have caught the eye among the rest; but on the iron edge
of it were blood and yellow hair.
After a silence the short priest spoke without looking
up, and there was a new note in his dull voice. "Mr. Gibbs
was hardly right," he said, "in saying that there is no
mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so big 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 with Simeon Barnes?"
"Leave him alone," said the priest quietly. "He is coming
here of himself. I know those two men with him. They are
very good fellows from Greenford, and they have come over
about the Presbyterian chapel."
Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of
the church, and strode into his own yard. Then he stood
there quite still, and the hammer fell from his hand. The
inspector, who had preserved impenetrable propriety,
immediately went up to him.
"I won't ask you, Mr. Barnes," he said, "whether you know
anything about what 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 of arresting you in
the King's name for the murder of Colonel Norman Bohun."
"You are not bound to say anything," said the cobbler in
officious excitement. "They've got to prove everything. They
haven't proved yet that 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 of the detective stories. I was the colonel's
medical man, and I knew his body better than he did. He had
very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. The second and
third fingers were the same length. Oh, that's the colonel
right enough."
As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the
iron eyes of the motionless blacksmith followed them and
rested there also.
"Is Colonel Bohun dead?" said the smith quite calmly.
"Then he's damned."
"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 a fanatic.
"It's well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because
the world's law favours you," he said; "but God guards His
own in His pocket, as you shall see this day."
Then he pointed to the colonel and said: "When did this
dog die in his sins?"
"Moderate your language," said the doctor.
"Moderate the Bible's language, and I'll moderate mine.
When did he die?"
"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 slightest objection to being arrested. It is you who may
object to arresting me. I don't mind leaving the court
without a stain on my character. You do mind perhaps leaving
the court with a bad set-back in your career."
The solid inspector for the first time looked at the
blacksmith with a lively eye; as did everybody else, except
the short, strange priest, who was still looking down at the
little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.
"There are two men standing outside this shop," went on
the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity, "good tradesmen in
Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me
from before midnight till daybreak and long after in the
committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits all night,
we save souls so fast. In Greenford itself twenty people
could swear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen,
Mr. Inspector, I would let you walk on to your downfall. But
as a Christian man I feel bound to give you your chance, and
ask you whether you will hear my alibi now or in court."
The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and
said, "Of course I should be glad to clear you altogether
now."
The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and
easy stride, and returned to his two friends from Greenford,
who were indeed friends of nearly everyone present. Each of
them said a few words which no one ever thought of
disbelieving. When they had spoken, the innocence of Simeon
stood up as solid as the great church above them.
One of those silences struck the group which are more
strange and insufferable than any speech. Madly, in order to
make conversation, the curate 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 with ten larger hammers lying about?"
Then he lowered his voice in the curate's ear and said:
"Only the kind of person that can't lift a large hammer. It
is not a question of force or courage between the sexes.
It's a question of lifting power in the shoulders. A bold
woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer and never
turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle with a heavy one."
Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of
hypnotised horror, while Father Brown listened with his head
a little on one side, really interested and attentive. The
doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:
"Why do these idiots always assume that the only person
who hates the wife's lover is the wife's husband? Nine times
out of ten the person who most hates the wife's lover is the
wife. Who knows what insolence or treachery 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 her splendid face. But the eyes were fixed on
the corpse with an electric glare that had in it something
of idiocy.
The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving
away all desire to know; but Father Brown, dusting off his
sleeve some ashes blown from the furnace, spoke in his
indifferent way.
"You are like so many doctors," he said; "your mental
science is really suggestive. It is your physical science
that is utterly impossible. I agree that the woman wants to
kill the co-respondent much more than the petitioner does.
And I agree that a woman will always pick up a small hammer
instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physical
impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man's
skull out flat like that." Then he added reflectively, after
a pause: "These people haven't grasped the whole of it. The
man was actually wearing an iron helmet, and the blow
scattered it like broken glass. Look at that woman. 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 stick to the main point. No man but an
idiot would pick up that little hammer if he could use a big
hammer."
With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun
went up to his head and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow
hair. After an instant they dropped, and he cried: "That was
the word I wanted; you have said the word."
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 at him with eyes arrested and riveted, and he
went on in a febrile and feminine agitation.
"I am a priest," he cried unsteadily, "and a priest
should be no shedder of blood. I—I mean that he should bring
no one to the gallows. And I thank God that I see the
criminal clearly now—because he is a criminal who 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 a wild but curiously happy smile. "When I went
into the church this morning I found a madman praying
there—that poor Joe, who has been wrong all his life. God
knows what he prayed; but with such strange folk it 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 saw poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother
was mocking him."
"By Jove!" cried the doctor, "this is talking at last.
But how do you explain—"
The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement
of his own glimpse of the truth. "Don't you see; don't you
see," he cried feverishly; "that is the only theory that
covers both the queer things, that answers both the riddles.
The two riddles are the little hammer and the big blow. The
smith might have struck the big blow, but would not have
chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the
little hammer, but she could not have struck the big blow.
But the madman might have done both. As for the little
hammer—why, he was mad and might have picked 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've got it."
Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long
and steadily as to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes
were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face.
When silence had fallen he said with marked respect: "Mr.
Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded which holds
water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think,
therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive
knowledge, that it is not the true one." And with that the
old little man walked away and stared again at the hammer.
"That fellow seems to know more than he ought to,"
whispered the doctor peevishly 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 the more official group containing the inspector
and the man he had arrested. Now, however, that their own
party had broken up, they heard voices from the others. The
priest looked up quietly and then looked down 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 hammer hasn't got wings that it
should come flying half a mile over hedges and fields."
The inspector laughed amicably and said: "No, I think you
can be considered out of it, though it's one of the rummiest
coincidences I ever saw. I can only ask you to give us all
the assistance you can in finding a man as big and strong as
yourself. By George! you might be useful, if only to hold
him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at the man?"
"I may have a guess," said the pale smith, "but it is not
at a man." Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards his
wife on the bench, he put his huge hand on her shoulder and
said: "Nor a woman either."
"What do you mean?" asked the inspector jocularly. "You
don't think cows use hammers, do you?"
"I think no thing of flesh held that hammer," said the
blacksmith in a stifled voice; "mortally speaking, I think
the man died alone."
Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him
with burning eyes.
"Do you mean to say, Barnes," came the sharp voice of the
cobbler, "that the hammer jumped up of itself and knocked
the man down?"
"Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger," cried Simeon;
"you clergymen who tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the
Lord smote Sennacherib. I believe that One who walks
invisible in every house defended the honour of mine, and
laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe the
force in that blow was just the force there is in
earthquakes, and no force less."
Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: "I told
Norman myself to beware of the thunderbolt."
"That agent is outside my jurisdiction," said the
inspector with a slight 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 and friendly 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 of the oldest in England. We take
some interest, you know," he added with a comical grimace,
"in old English churches."
Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his
strong point. But he nodded rather eagerly, being only too
ready to explain the Gothic splendours to someone more
likely to be sympathetic than the Presbyterian blacksmith or
the atheist cobbler.
"By all means," he said; "let us go in at this side." And
he led the way into the high side entrance at the top of the
flight of steps. Father Brown was mounting the first step to
follow him when he felt a hand on his 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 in this black business. May I ask if you are
going to keep them to yourself?"
"Why, doctor," answered the priest, smiling quite
pleasantly, "there is one very good reason why a man of my
trade should keep things to himself when he is not sure of
them, and that is that it is so constantly his duty to keep
them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you think I
have been discourteously reticent with you or anyone, I will
go to the extreme 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 own province. It is a matter of physical science.
The blacksmith is mistaken, not perhaps in saying that the
blow was divine, but certainly in saying that it came by a
miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, except in so far as man
is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked and yet
half-heroic heart. The force that smashed that skull was a
force well known to scientists—one of the most frequently
debated of the laws of 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 the blacksmith, though he believes in miracles,
talking scornfully of the impossible fairy tale that his
hammer had wings and flew half a mile across country?"
"Yes," said the doctor, "I remember that."
"Well," added Father Brown, with a broad smile, "that
fairy tale was the nearest thing to the real truth that has
been said today." And with that 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 him immediately to his favourite corner
of the church, that part of the gallery closest to the
carved roof and lit by the wonderful window with the angel.
The little Latin priest explored and admired everything
exhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the
time. When in the course of his investigation he found the
side exit and the winding 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 his clear 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 balcony outside the building, from which one
could see the illimitable plain in which their small hill
stood, wooded away to the purple horizon and dotted with
villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite small
beneath them, was the blacksmith's yard, where the inspector
still stood taking 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 building plunged outwards into the void with a
sickening swiftness akin to suicide. There is that element
of Titan energy in the architecture of the Middle Ages that,
from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seems to be
rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse.
This church was hewn out of ancient and silent stone,
bearded with old fungoids and stained with the nests of
birds. And yet, when they saw it from below, it sprang like
a fountain at the stars; and when they saw it, 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
terrible aspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and
disproportion, the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great
things small and small things great; a topsy-turvydom of
stone in the mid-air. Details of stone, enormous by their
proximity, were relieved against a pattern of fields and
farms, pygmy in their distance. A carved bird or beast at a
corner seemed like some vast walking or flying dragon
wasting the pastures and villages below. The whole
atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if men were upheld in
air amid the gyrating wings of colossal genii; and the whole
of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed
to sit upon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.
"I think there is something rather dangerous about
standing on these high places even to pray," said Father
Brown. "Heights were made to be looked 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 other priest.
"I scarcely understand you," remarked Bohun indistinctly.
"Look at that blacksmith, for instance," went on Father
Brown calmly; "a good man, but not a Christian—hard,
imperious, unforgiving. Well, his Scotch 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 with his pale grey eyes. "I knew a man," he said,
"who began by worshipping with others before the altar, but
who grew fond of high and lonely places to pray from,
corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And once in
one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to
turn under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he
fancied he was God. 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 white as they tightened on the parapet of stone.
"He thought it was given to him to judge the world and
strike down the sinner. He would never have had such a
thought if he had been kneeling with other men upon a floor.
But he saw all men walking about like insects. He saw one
especially strutting just below him, insolent and evident by
a bright green hat—a poisonous insect."
Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there
was no other sound till Father Brown went on.
"This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of
the most awful engines of nature; I mean gravitation, that
mad and quickening rush by which 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 to toss a
pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bullet
by the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer—even a
small hammer—"
Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father
Brown had him in 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 frightful eyes.
"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and
therefore have all devils in my heart. Listen to me," he
said after a short pause. "I know what you did—at least, I
can guess the great part of it. When you left your brother
you were racked with no unrighteous rage, to the extent even
that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill
him with his foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it
under your buttoned coat instead, and rushed into the
church. You pray wildly in many places, under the angel
window, upon the platform above, and a higher platform
still, from which you could see the colonel's Eastern hat
like the back of a green beetle crawling about. Then
something snapped in your soul, and you let God's
thunderbolt fall."
Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low
voice: "How did you know that his hat looked like a green
beetle?"
"Oh, that," said the other with the shadow of a smile,
"that was common sense. But hear me further. I say I know
all this; but no one else shall know it. The next step is
for you; I shall take no more steps; I will seal this with
the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are many
reasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to
you because you have not yet gone very far wrong, as
assassins go. You did not help to fix the crime on the smith
when it was easy; or on his wife, when that was easy. You
tried to fix it on the imbecile because you knew that he
could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my
business to find in assassins. And now come down into the
village, and go 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 into the sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun
carefully unlatched the wooden gate of the yard, and going
up to the inspector, said: "I wish to give myself up; I have
killed my brother."
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 more from its grey to its glittering
extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster,
and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very
tall and the other very short; they might even have been
fantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of
Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey,
for the short man was in clerical dress. 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
of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description
of the short man was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to St.
Francis Xavier's Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from
a Camberwell deathbed to see the new offices of his friend.
The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude,
and American also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery
of telephones and lifts. But it was barely finished and
still understaffed; only three tenants had moved in; the
office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also was the
office just below him; the two floors above that and the
three floors below were entirely bare. But the first glance
at the new tower of flats caught something much more
arresting. Save for a few relics of scaffolding, the one
glaring object was erected outside the office just above
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 three of the office windows.
"What on earth is that?" asked Father Brown, and stood
still. "Oh, a new religion," said Flambeau, laughing; "one
of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you
never had any. Rather like Christian Science, I should
think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon (I
don't know what his name is, except that it can't be that)
has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady
typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug
on top. He calls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he
worships the sun."
"Let him look out," said Father Brown. "The sun was the
cruellest of all the gods. But what does that monstrous eye
mean?"
"As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs," answered
Flambeau, "that a man can endure anything if his mind is
quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the
open eye; for they say that if a man were really healthy he
could stare at the sun."
"If a man were really healthy," said Father Brown, "he
would not bother to stare at it."
"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion,"
went on Flambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that it
can cure all physical diseases."
"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father
Brown, with a serious 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 than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a
lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as
anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and new religions of
a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. But
humanity was always in his line, especially when it was
good-looking; moreover, the ladies downstairs were
characters in their way. The office was kept by two sisters,
both slight and dark, one of them tall and striking. She had
a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those
women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the
clean-cut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way
through life. She had eyes of startling brilliancy, but it
was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds; and her
straight, slim figure was a shade too stiff for its grace.
Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little
greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore a
business-like black, with little masculine cuffs and
collars. There are thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies
in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay
rather in their real than their apparent position.
For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress
of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth; she
had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid
fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman) had driven her to
what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She
had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that there would
have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her
masterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would
say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she
had put into her business, the nucleus of a model
typewriting emporium; part of it was distributed in various
leagues and causes for the advancement of such work among
women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this
slightly prosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she
followed her leader with a dog-like affection which was
somehow more attractive, with its touch of tragedy, than the
hard, high spirits of the elder. For Pauline Stacey had
nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny its
existence.
Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused
Flambeau very much on the first occasion of his entering the
flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall
waiting for the lift-boy, who generally conducts strangers
to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falcon of a girl
had openly refused to endure such official delay. She said
sharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not
dependent on boys—or men either. Though her flat was only
three floors above, she managed in the few seconds of ascent
to give Flambeau a great many of her fundamental views in an
off-hand manner; they were to the general effect that she
was a modern working woman and loved modern working
machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger
against those who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the
return of romance. Everyone, she said, ought to be able to
manage machines, just as she could manage the lift. She
seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeau opening the
lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his own
apartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the
memory of such spit-fire self-dependence.
She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort;
the gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even
destructive.
Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting
business, and found she had just flung a pair of spectacles
belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and
stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of an ethical
tirade about the "sickly medical notions" and the morbid
admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She
dared her sister to bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish
into the place again. She asked if she was expected to wear
wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes; and as she spoke
her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.
Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could
not refrain from asking Miss Pauline (with direct French
logic) why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign of
weakness than a lift, and why, if science might help us in
the one effort, it might not help us in the other.
"That is so different," said Pauline Stacey, loftily.
"Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the
force of man—yes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too!
We shall take our turn at these great engines that devour
distance and defy time. That is high and splendid—that is
really science. But these nasty props and plasters the
doctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery.
Doctors stick on legs and arms as if we were born cripples
and sick slaves. But I was free-born, Mr. Flambeau! People
only think they need these things because they have been
trained in fear instead of being trained in power and
courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare
at the sun, and so they can't do it without blinking. But
why among the stars should there be one star I may not see?
The sun is not my master, and I will 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, partly because it threw her a little
off her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor he
drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: "So she
has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his
golden eye." 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 and below him was close and increasing. The man
who called himself Kalon was a magnificent creature, worthy,
in a physical sense, to be the pontiff of Apollo. He was
nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much better
looking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane
flung back like a lion's. In structure he was the blonde
beast of Nietzsche, but all this animal beauty was
heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and
spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxon
kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also
saints. And this despite the cockney incongruity of his
surroundings; the fact that he had 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,
and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like
the advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could
not take away from the man called Kalon the vivid oppression
and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When all
was said, a man in the presence of this quack did feel in
the presence of a great man. Even in the loose jacket-suit
of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office he
was a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in
the white vestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in
which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid
that the laughter of the street people sometimes died
suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new
sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face
of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord:
once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of
noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly
from the towers of Parliament 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 Phoebus, and plunged into the porch of the tall building
without even looking for his clerical friend to follow. But
Father Brown, whether from a professional interest in ritual
or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery, stopped and
stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper, just as he
might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon
the Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and
uplifted hands, and the sound of his strangely penetrating
voice could be heard all the way down the busy street
uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middle of
it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is
doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth; it is
substantially certain that he 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 startling
difference between even these two far divided men. Father
Brown could not look at anything without blinking; but the
priest of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without a
quiver of the eyelid.
"O sun," cried the prophet, "O star that art too great to
be allowed among the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly
in that secret spot that is called space. White Father of
all white unwearied things, white flames and white flowers
and white peaks. Father, who art more innocent than all thy
most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into the
peace of which—"
A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was
cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people
rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed
out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The
sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to
fill half the street with bad news—bad news that was all the
worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained
still after the crash of commotion: the fair priest of
Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ
below him.
At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau
appeared in the doorway of the mansions and dominated the
little mob. Talking at the top of his voice like a fog-horn,
he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon; and as he
turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his friend
Father Brown dipped in insignificantly after him. Even as he
ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the
magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest still
calling on the happy god who is the friend of fountains and
flowers.
Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people
standing round the enclosed space into which the lift
commonly descended. But the lift had not descended.
Something else had descended; something that ought to have
come by a lift.
For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it;
had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful
woman who denied the existence of tragedy. He had never had
the slightest doubt that it was Pauline Stacey; and, though
he had sent for a doctor, he had not the slightest doubt
that she was dead.
He could not remember for certain whether he had liked
her or disliked her; there was so much both to like and
dislike. But she had been a person to him, and the
unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbed him with all
the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty
face and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness
which is all the bitterness of death. In an instant like a
bolt from the blue, like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that
beautiful and defiant body had been dashed down the open
well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was it suicide?
With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it
murder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to
murder anybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant
to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked where was
that fellow Kalon. A voice, habitually heavy, quiet and
full, assured him that Kalon for the last fifteen minutes
had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god. When
Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown,
he turned 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 have half 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 it utterly empty, and then dashed up to his
own. Having entered that, he abruptly returned with a new
and white face to his friend.
"Her sister," he said, with an unpleasant seriousness,
"her sister seems to have gone out for a walk."
Father Brown nodded. "Or, she may have gone up to the
office of that sun man," he said. "If I were you I should
just verify that, and then let us all talk it over in your
office. No," he added suddenly, as if remembering something,
"shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in
their office downstairs."
Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father
downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys, where that
impenetrable pastor took a large red-leather chair in the
very entrance, from which he could see the stairs and
landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In about
four minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only
in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of
the dead woman—evidently she had been upstairs in the
temporary temple of Apollo; the second was the priest of
Apollo himself, his litany finished, sweeping down the empty
stairs in utter magnificence—something in his white robes,
beard and parted hair had the look of Dore'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 touched with grey, walked straight to her own
desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere
action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacey
was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regarded
her for some time with an odd little smile, and then,
without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to
somebody else.
"Prophet," he said, presumably addressing Kalon, "I wish
you would tell me a lot about your religion."
"I shall be proud to do it," said Kalon, inclining his
still crowned head, "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 must be partly his fault. But, for
all that, we can make some difference between a man who
insults his quite clear conscience and a man with a
conscience more or less clouded with sophistries. Now, do
you really think that murder is wrong at all?"
"Is this an accusation?" asked Kalon very quietly.
"No," answered Brown, equally gently, "it is the speech
for the defence."
In the long and startled stillness of the room the
prophet of Apollo slowly rose; and really it was like the
rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light and
life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily
have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed to hang
the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture
seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the
little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a
fault and an intrusion, a round, black blot upon some
splendour of Hellas.
"We meet at last, Caiaphas," said the prophet. "Your
church and mine are the only realities on this earth. I
adore the sun, and you the darkening of 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 and
creed. All your church is but a black police; you are only
spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of
guilt, whether by treachery or torture. You would convict
men of crime, I would convict them of innocence. You would
convince them of sin, I would convince them of virtue.
"Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow
away your baseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly
could you understand how little I care whether you can
convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible
hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child's toy-book
to a man once grown up. You said you were offering the
speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland
of this life that I will offer you the speech for the
prosecution. There is but one thing that can be said against
me in this matter, and I will say it myself. The woman that
is dead was my love and my bride; not after such manner as
your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sterner
than you will ever understand. She and I walked another
world from yours, and trod palaces of crystal while you were
plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I
know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy
that where there has been love there must soon be hatred; so
there you have the first point made for the prosecution. 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 this very morning, before she died, she wrote at that
table a will leaving me and my new church half a million.
Come, where are the handcuffs? Do you suppose I care what
foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be
like waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will
only be going to her in a headlong car."
He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator,
and Flambeau and Joan Stacey stared at him in amazed
admiration. Father Brown's face seemed to express nothing
but extreme distress; he looked at the ground with one
wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sun
leaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed:
"In a few words I have put before you the whole case
against me—the only possible case against me. In fewer words
still I will blow it to pieces, so that not a trace of it
remains. As to whether I have committed this crime, the
truth is in one sentence: I could not have committed this
crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor to the ground at
five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into the
witness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony
of my own rooms above from just before the stroke of noon to
a quarter-past—the usual period of my public prayers. My
clerk (a respectable youth from Clapham, with no sort of
connection with me) will swear that he sat in my outer
office all the morning, and that no communication passed
through. He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes
before the hour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the
accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony
all that time. No one ever had so complete an alibi; I could
subpoena half Westminster. I think you had better put the
handcuffs away again. The case is at an end.
"But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic
suspicion remain in the air, I will tell you all you want to
know. I believe I do know how my unhappy friend came by her
death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my faith
and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannot lock me
up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths
that certain adepts and illuminati have in history attained
the power of levitation—that is, of being self-sustained
upon the empty air. It is but a part of that general
conquest of matter which is the main element in our occult
wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious
temper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself
somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has
often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that
if one's will were strong enough, one could float down as
harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some
ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her
will, or faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant,
and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There
is the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think,
very presumptuous and wicked, but certainly not criminal or
in any way connected with me. In the short-hand of the
police-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall
always call it heroic failure for the advance of science and
the slow scaling of heaven."
It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown
vanquished. He still sat looking at the ground, with a
painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was
impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet's winged
words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional
suspecter of men overwhelmed by a prouder and purer spirit
of natural liberty and health. At last he said, blinking as
if in bodily distress: "Well, if that is so, sir, you need
do no more than take the testamentary paper you 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 actually saw 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 the corner of the matting.
"Yes," said Kalon calmly.
"Ah! it has been open ever since," said the other, and
resumed his silent study of the mat.
"There is a paper over here," said the grim Miss Joan, in
a somewhat singular 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 sour smile on her
face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, and
Flambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.
Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that
loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through. But
Flambeau took it out of 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 "I give and bequeath
all of which I die possessed" the writing abruptly stopped
with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name
of any legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated
testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at 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 Joan Stacey, his blue eyes
standing from his head.
"What monkey tricks have you been playing here?" he
cried. "That's not all Pauline wrote."
They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new
voice, with a Yankee shrillness in it; all his grandeur and
good English had fallen from him like a cloak.
"That is the only thing on her desk," said Joan, and
confronted him steadily with the same smile of evil favour.
Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and
cataracts of incredulous words. There was something shocking
about the dropping of his mask; it was like a man's real
face falling off.
"See here!" he cried in broad American, when he was
breathless with cursing, "I may be an adventurer, but I
guess you're a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here's your death
explained, and without any levitation. The poor 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 before she can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the
handcuffs after all."
"As you have truly remarked," replied Joan, with ugly
calm, "your clerk is a very respectable young man, who knows
the nature of an oath; and he will swear in any court that I
was up in your office arranging some typewriting work for
five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell.
Mr. Flambeau will tell you that he found me there."
There was a silence.
"Why, then," cried Flambeau, "Pauline was alone when she
fell, and it was suicide!"
"She was alone when she fell," said Father Brown, "but it
was not suicide."
"Then how did she die?" asked Flambeau impatiently.
"She was murdered."
"But she was 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 old dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his round
forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow;
his voice was colourless and sad.
"What I want to know," cried Kalon, with an oath, "is
when the police are coming for this bloody and wicked
sister. She's killed her flesh and blood; she's robbed me of
half a million that was just as sacredly mine as—"
"Come, come, prophet," interrupted Flambeau, with a kind
of sneer; "remember that all this world is a cloudland."
The hierophant of the sun-god made an effort to climb
back on his pedestal. "It is not the mere money," he cried,
"though that would equip the cause throughout the world. It
is also my beloved one's wishes. To Pauline all this was
holy. In Pauline's eyes—"
Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair
fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale, yet he
seemed fired with a hope; his eyes shone.
"That's it!" he cried in a clear voice. "That's the way
to begin. In Pauline's eyes—"
The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an
almost mad disorder. "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 prompted feels lighter after
confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, go on—in
Pauline's eyes—"
"Let me go, you devil!" thundered Kalon, struggling like
a giant in bonds. "Who are you, you cursed spy, to weave
your spiders' webs round me, and peep and peer? Let me go."
"Shall I stop him?" asked Flambeau, bounding towards the
exit, for Kalon had already thrown the door wide open.
"No; let him pass," said Father Brown, with a strange
deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the
universe. "Let Cain pass by, for he belongs to God."
There was a long-drawn silence in the room when he had
left it, which was to Flambeau's fierce wits one long agony
of interrogation. Miss Joan Stacey very coolly tidied up the
papers on her desk.
"Father," said Flambeau at last, "it is my duty, not my
curiosity only—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
very different weight—and by very different criminals."
Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her
papers, proceeded to lock up her drawer. Father Brown went
on, noticing her as little as she noticed him.
"The two crimes," he observed, "were committed against
the same weakness of the same person, in a struggle for her
money. The author of the larger crime found himself thwarted
by the smaller crime; the author of the smaller crime got
the money."
"Oh, don't go on like a lecturer," groaned Flambeau; "put
it in a few words."
"I can put it in one word," answered his friend.
Miss Joan Stacey skewered her business-like black hat on
to her head with a business-like black frown before a little
mirror, and, as the conversation proceeded, took her handbag
and umbrella in an unhurried style, and left the room.
"The truth is one word, and a short one," said Father
Brown. "Pauline Stacey was blind."
"Blind!" repeated Flambeau, and rose slowly to his whole
huge stature.
"She was subject to it by blood," Brown proceeded. "Her
sister would have started eyeglasses if Pauline would have
let her; but it was her special philosophy or fad that one
must not encourage such diseases by yielding to them. She
would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispel it by
will. So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but
the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious
prophet, or whatever he calls himself, who taught her to
stare at the hot sun with the naked eye. It was called
accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new pagans would only be old
pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagans knew
that mere naked Nature-worship must have a cruel side. They
knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind."
There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and
even broken voice. "Whether or no that devil deliberately
made her blind, there is no doubt that he deliberately
killed her through her blindness. The very simplicity of the
crime is sickening. You know he and she went up and down in
those lifts without official help; you know also how
smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the
lift to the girl's landing, and saw her, through the open
door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had
promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he had the
lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was
ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to
his 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 lover and lift were to receive her, and
stepped—"
"Don't!" cried Flambeau.
"He ought to have got half a million by pressing that
button," continued the little father, in the colourless
voice in which he talked of such horrors. "But that went
smash. It went smash because there happened to be another
person who also wanted the money, and who also knew the
secret about poor Pauline's sight. There was one thing about
that will that I think nobody noticed: although it was
unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacey and
some servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses.
Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later,
with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore,
Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real
witnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure
she had wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had
wanted her not to sign at all.
"People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but
this was specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her
strong will and memory she could still write almost as well
as if she saw; but she could not tell when her pen needed
dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens were carefully filled
by her sister—all except this fountain pen. This was
carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink
held out for a few lines and then failed altogether. And the
prophet lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one
of the most brutal and brilliant murders in human history
for nothing."
Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official
police ascending the stairs. He turned and said: "You must
have followed everything devilish 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 out about Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew
Kalon was the criminal before 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 done it, even before I knew what he had done."
"But why?"
"These pagan stoics," said Brown reflectively, "always
fail by their strength. There came a crash and a scream down
the street, and the priest of Apollo did not start or look
round. I did not know what it was. But I knew that he was
expecting it."
The Sign of the Broken Sword
The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its
million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like
slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered
ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted
countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The
black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like
bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell
of incalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the
church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it
were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland. It
was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But,
on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.
It rose abruptly out of the ashen wastes of forest in a
sort of hump or shoulder of green turf that looked grey in
the starlight. Most of the graves were on a slant, and the
path leading up to the church was as steep as a staircase.
On the top of the hill, in the one flat and prominent place,
was the monument for which the place was famous. It
contrasted strangely with the featureless graves all round,
for it was the work of one of the greatest sculptors of
modern Europe; and yet his fame was at once forgotten in the
fame of the man whose image he had made. It showed, by
touches of the small silver pencil of starlight, the massive
metal figure of a soldier recumbent, the strong hands sealed
in an everlasting worship, the great head pillowed upon a
gun. The venerable face was bearded, or rather whiskered, in
the old, heavy Colonel Newcome fashion. The uniform, though
suggested with the few strokes of simplicity, was that of
modern war. By his right side lay a sword, of which the tip
was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. On glowing
summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and
cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they
felt the vast forest land with its one dumpy dome of
churchyard and church as a place oddly dumb and neglected.
In this freezing darkness of mid-winter one would think he
might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in the
stillness of those stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, and
two dim figures dressed in black climbed up the little path
to the tomb.
So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could
have been traced about them except that while they both wore
black, one man was enormously big, and the other (perhaps by
contrast) almost startlingly small. 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, perhaps no
living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might
well have wondered if they were human themselves. In any
case, the beginning of their conversation might have seemed
strange. After the first silence the 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 wise man hide a leaf?"
And the other answered: "In the forest."
There was another stillness, and then the tall man
resumed: "Do you mean that when a wise man has to hide a
real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?"
"No, no," said the little man with a laugh, "we will let
bygones be bygones."
He stamped his cold feet for a second or two, and then
said: "I'm not thinking of that at all, but of something
else; something rather peculiar. Just strike a match, will
you?"
The big man fumbled in his pocket, and soon a scratch and
a flare painted gold the whole flat side of the monument. On
it was cut in black letters the well-known words which so
many Americans had reverently read: "Sacred to the Memory of
General Sir Arthur St. Clare, Hero and Martyr, who Always
Vanquished his Enemies and Always Spared Them, and Was
Treacherously Slain by Them At Last. May God in Whom he
Trusted both Reward and Revenge him."
The match burnt the big man's fingers, blackened, and
dropped. He was about to strike another, but his small
companion stopped him. "That's all right, Flambeau, old man;
I saw what I wanted. Or, rather, I didn't see what I didn't
want. And now we must walk a mile and a half along the road
to the next inn, and I will try to tell you all about it.
For Heaven knows a man should have a fire and ale when he
dares tell such a story."
They descended the precipitous path, they relatched the
rusty gate, and set off at a stamping, ringing walk down the
frozen forest road. They had gone a full quarter of a mile
before the smaller man spoke again. He said: "Yes; the wise
man hides a pebble on the beach. But what does he do if
there is no beach? Do you know anything of that great St.
Clare trouble?"
"I know nothing about English generals, Father Brown,"
answered the large man, laughing, "though a little about
English policemen. I only know that you have dragged me a
precious long dance to all the shrines of this fellow,
whoever he is. One would think he got buried in six
different places. I've seen a memorial to General St. Clare
in Westminster Abbey. I've seen a ramping equestrian statue
of General St. Clare on the Embankment. I've seen a
medallion of St. Clare in the street he was born in, and
another in the street he lived in; and now you drag me after
dark to his coffin in the village churchyard. I am beginning
to be a bit tired of his magnificent personality, especially
as I don't in the least know who he was. What are you
hunting for in all these crypts and effigies?"
"I am only looking for one word," said Father Brown. "A
word that isn't there."
"Well," asked Flambeau; "are you going to tell me
anything about it?"
"I must divide it into two parts," remarked the priest.
"First there is what everybody knows; and then there is what
I know. Now, what everybody knows is short and plain enough.
It is also entirely wrong."
"Right you are," said the big man called Flambeau
cheerfully. "Let's begin at the wrong end. Let's begin with
what everybody knows, which isn'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 to this: The public knows that
Arthur St. Clare was a great and successful English general.
It knows that after splendid yet careful campaigns both in
India and Africa he was in command against Brazil when the
great Brazilian patriot Olivier issued his ultimatum. It
knows that on that occasion St. Clare with a very small
force attacked Olivier with a very large one, and was
captured after heroic resistance. And it knows that after
his capture, and to the abhorrence of the civilised world,
St. Clare was hanged on the nearest tree. He was found
swinging there after the 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 it goes."
"Well, I think it goes far enough!" said Flambeau; "but
if the popular story is true, what is the mystery?"
They had passed many hundreds of grey and ghostly trees
before the little priest answered. Then he bit his finger
reflectively and said: "Why, the mystery is a mystery of
psychology. Or, rather, it is a mystery of two psychologies.
In that Brazilian business two of the most famous men of
modern history acted flat against their characters. Mind
you, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroes—the old thing,
and no mistake; it was like the fight between Hector and
Achilles. Now, what would you say to an affair in which
Achilles was timid and Hector was treacherous?"
"Go on," said the large man impatiently as the other bit
his finger again.
"Sir Arthur St. Clare was a soldier of the old religious
type—the type that saved us during the Mutiny," continued
Brown. "He was always more for duty than for dash; and with
all his personal courage was decidedly a prudent commander,
particularly indignant at any needless waste of soldiers.
Yet in this last battle he attempted something that a baby
could see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it
was as wild as wind; just as one need not be a strategist to
keep out of the way of a motor-bus. Well, that is the first
mystery; what had become of the English general's head? The
second riddle is, what had become of the Brazilian general's
heart? President Olivier might be called a visionary or a
nuisance; but even his enemies admitted that he was
magnanimous to the point of knight errantry. Almost every
other prisoner he had ever captured had been set free or
even loaded with benefits. Men who had really wronged him
came away touched by his simplicity and sweetness. Why the
deuce should he diabolically revenge himself only once in
his life; and that 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 like an idiot for no reason.
One of the best men in the world acted like a fiend for no
reason. That's the long and the short of it; and I leave it
to you, my boy."
"No, you don't," said the other with a snort. "I leave it
to you; and you jolly well tell me all about it."
"Well," resumed Father Brown, "it's not fair to say that
the public impression is just what I've said, without adding
that two things have happened since. I can't say they threw
a new light; for nobody can make sense of them. But they
threw a new kind of darkness; they threw the darkness in new
directions. The first was this. The family physician of the
St. Clares quarrelled with that family, and began publishing
a violent series of articles, in which he said that the late
general was a religious maniac; but as far as the tale went,
this seemed to mean little more than a religious man.
"Anyhow, the story fizzled out. Everyone knew, of course,
that St. Clare had some of the eccentricities of puritan
piety. The second incident was much more arresting. In the
luckless and unsupported regiment which made that rash
attempt at the Black River there was a certain Captain
Keith, who was at that time engaged to St. Clare's daughter,
and who afterwards married her. He was one of those who were
captured by Olivier, and, like all the rest except the
general, appears to have been bounteously treated and
promptly set free. Some twenty years afterwards this man,
then Lieutenant-Colonel Keith, published a sort of
autobiography called 'A British Officer in Burmah and
Brazil.' In the place where the reader looks eagerly for
some account of the mystery of St. Clare's disaster may be
found the following words: 'Everywhere else in this book I
have narrated things exactly as they occurred, holding as I
do the old-fashioned opinion that the glory of England is
old enough to take care of itself. The exception I shall
make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and
my reasons, though private, are honourable and compelling. I
will, however, add this in justice to the memories of two
distinguished men. General St. Clare has been accused of
incapacity on this occasion; I can at least testify that
this action, properly understood, was one of the most
brilliant and sagacious of his life. President Olivier by
similar report is charged with savage injustice. I think it
due to the honour of an enemy to say that he acted on this
occasion with even more than his characteristic good
feeling. To put the matter popularly, I can assure my
countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool nor
Olivier such a brute as he looked. This is all I have to
say; nor shall any earthly consideration induce me to add a
word to it.'"
A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to
show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and by
its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory
of Captain Keith's text from a scrap of printed paper. As he
folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau threw up
his hand with a French gesture.
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," he cried excitedly. "I believe
I can guess it at the first go."
He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull
neck forward, like a man winning a walking race. The little
priest, amused and interested, had some trouble in trotting
beside him. Just before them the trees fell back a little to
left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear,
moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the
wall of another wood. The entrance to the farther forest
looked small and round, like the black hole of a remote
railway tunnel. But it was within some 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 your
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; and his 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 final
collapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary
suicide would blazon the very idea he dreaded. As the
campaign approached the clouds came thicker on his brain;
and at last in a mad moment he sacrificed his public duty to
his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fall by
the first shot. When he found that he had only attained
capture and discredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst,
and he broke his own sword and hanged himself."
He stared firmly at the grey facade of forest in front of
him, with the one black gap in it, like the mouth of the
grave, into which their path plunged. Perhaps something
menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowed reinforced his
vivid vision of the tragedy, for he shuddered.
"A horrid story," he said.
"A horrid story," repeated the priest with bent head.
"But not the real story."
Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and
cried: "Oh, I wish 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 despair are innocent enough. There
are worse things, Flambeau."
Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and
from where he stood one black tree-bough curved across it
exactly like a devil's horn.
"Father—father," cried Flambeau with the French gesture
and stepping yet more rapidly forward, "do you mean it was
worse than that?"
"Worse than that," said Paul like a grave echo. And they
plunged into the black cloister of the woodland, which ran
by them in a dim tapestry of trunks, like one of the dark
corridors in a dream.
They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood,
and felt close about them foliage that they could not see,
when the priest said again:
"Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But
what does he do if 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 the dark saying got a little on his nerves; "will
you tell me this story or not? What other evidence is there
to go on?"
"There are three more bits of evidence," said the other,
"that I have dug up in holes and corners; and I will give
them in logical rather than chronological order. First of
all, of course, our authority for the issue and event of the
battle is in Olivier's own dispatches, which are lucid
enough. He was entrenched with two or three regiments on the
heights that swept down to the Black River, on the other
side of which was lower and more marshy ground. Beyond this
again was gently rising country, on which was the first
English outpost, supported by others which lay, however,
considerably in its rear. The British forces as a whole were
greatly superior in numbers; but this particular regiment
was just far enough from its base to make Olivier consider
the project of crossing the river to cut it off. By sunset,
however, he had decided to retain his own position, which
was a specially strong one. At daybreak next morning he was
thunderstruck to see that this stray handful of English,
entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselves
across the river, half by a bridge to the right, and the
other half by a ford higher up, and were massed upon the
marshy bank below him.
"That they should attempt an attack with such numbers
against such a position was incredible enough; but Olivier
noticed something yet more extraordinary. For instead of
attempting to seize more solid ground, this mad regiment,
having put the river in its rear by one wild charge, did
nothing 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. Yet they never broke; and
Olivier's curt account ends with a strong tribute of
admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. 'Our
line then advanced finally,' writes Olivier, 'and drove them
into the river; we captured General St. Clare himself and
several other officers. The colonel and the major had both
fallen in the battle. I cannot resist saying that few finer
sights can have been seen in history than the last stand of
this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up the
rifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us
on horseback bareheaded and with a broken sword.' On what
happened to the general afterwards 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 it will not take long to tell. I found at last
in an almshouse down in the Lincolnshire Fens an old soldier
who not only was wounded at the Black River, but had
actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when he
died. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull
of an Irishman; and it would seem that he died almost as
much of rage as of bullets. He, at any rate, was not
responsible for that ridiculous raid; it must have been
imposed on him by the general. His last edifying words,
according to my informant, were these: 'And there goes the
damned old donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I
wish it was his head.' You will remark that everyone seems
to have noticed this detail about the broken sword blade,
though most people regard it somewhat more reverently than
did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for the third
fragment."
Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and
the speaker paused a little for breath before he went on.
Then he continued in the same 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-known figure both here and on the
Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knew him myself, a
yellow-faced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For various
private reasons I had permission to see the documents he had
left; he was 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. Clare business, except five or six
common exercise books filled with the diary of some English
soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by the
Brazilians on one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped
abruptly the night before the battle.
"But the account of that last day in the poor fellow's
life was certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it's
too dark to read it here, and I will give you a resume. The
first part of that entry is full of jokes, evidently flung
about among the men, about somebody called the Vulture. It
does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one of
themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly
spoken of as one of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he
were some local go-between and non-combatant; perhaps a
guide or a journalist. He has been closeted with old Colonel
Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major. Indeed,
the major is somewhat prominent in this soldier's narrative;
a lean, dark-haired man, apparently, of the name of Murray—a
north of Ireland man and a Puritan. There are continual
jests about the contrast between this Ulsterman's austerity
and the conviviality of Colonel Clancy. There is also some
joke about the Vulture wearing bright-coloured clothes.
"But all these levities are scattered by what may well be
called the note of a bugle. Behind the English camp and
almost parallel to the river ran one of the few great roads
of that district. Westward the road curved round towards the
river, which it crossed by the bridge before mentioned. To
the east the road swept backwards into the wilds, and some
two miles along it was the next English outpost. From this
direction there came along the road that evening a glitter
and clatter of light cavalry, in which even the simple
diarist could recognise with astonishment the general with
his staff. He rode the great white horse which you have seen
so often in illustrated papers and Academy pictures; and you
may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merely
ceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but,
springing from the saddle immediately, mixed with the group
of officers, and fell into emphatic though confidential
speech. What struck our friend the diarist most was his
special disposition to discuss matters with Major Murray;
but, indeed, such a selection, so long as it was not marked,
was in no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy;
they were men who 'read their Bibles'; they were both the
old Evangelical type of officer. However this may be, it is
certain that when the general mounted again he was still
talking earnestly to Murray; and that as he walked his horse
slowly down the road towards the river, the tall Ulsterman
still walked by his bridle rein in earnest debate. The
soldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump
of trees where the road turned towards the river. The
colonel had gone back to his tent, and the men to their
pickets; the man with the diary lingered for another four
minutes, and saw a marvellous sight.
"The great white horse which had marched slowly down the
road, as it had marched in so many processions, flew back,
galloping up the road towards them as if it were mad to win
a race. At first they thought it had run away with the man
on its back; but they soon saw that the general, a fine
rider, was himself urging it to full speed. Horse and man
swept up to them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the
reeling charger, the general turned on them a face like
flame, and called for the colonel like the trumpet that
wakes the dead.
"I conceive that all the earthquake events of that
catastrophe tumbled on top of each other rather like lumber
in the minds of men such as our friend with the diary. With
the dazed excitement of a dream, they found themselves
falling—literally falling—into their ranks, and learned that
an attack was to be led at once across the river. The
general and the major, it was said, had found out something
at the bridge, and there was only just time to strike for
life. The major had gone back at once to call up the reserve
along the road behind; it was doubtful if even with that
prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they must
pass the stream that night, and seize the heights by
morning. It is with the very stir and throb of that romantic
nocturnal march that the diary suddenly ends."
Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path
grew smaller, steeper, and more twisted, till they felt as
if they were ascending a winding staircase. The priest's
voice came from above out of the darkness.
"There was one other little and enormous thing. When the
general urged them to their chivalric charge he half drew
his sword from the scabbard; and then, as if ashamed of such
melodrama, thrust it back again. The sword again, you see."
A half-light broke through the network of boughs above
them, flinging the ghost of a net about their feet; for they
were mounting again to the faint luminosity of the naked
night. Flambeau felt truth all round him as 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
other dispassionately; "but in this affair one falls over
the blessed sword everywhere."
"Well, what is there in that?" growled Flambeau; "it was
a twopence coloured sort of incident; the old man's blade
breaking in his last battle. 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 you haven't
dragged me through this Polar expedition merely because two
men with an eye for a picture saw St. Clare's broken sword."
"No," cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a
pistol shot; "but who 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 might look in the sun; and his friend went on,
for the first time with eagerness:
"Flambeau," he cried, "I cannot prove it, even after
hunting through the tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add
just one more tiny fact that tips the whole thing over. The
colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the first struck by
a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to close
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 pray where is the other piece?"
"I can tell you," said the priest promptly. "In the
northeast corner of the 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 marble monument on top of it; a monument to the
heroic Major Murray, who fell fighting gloriously at the
famous Battle of the Black River."
Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. "You
mean," he cried hoarsely, "that General St. Clare hated
Murray, and murdered him on the field of battle because—"
"You are still full of good and pure thoughts," said the
other. "It was worse 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 said again:
"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 to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest."
There was still no reply, and the priest added still more
mildly and quietly:
"And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a
field of dead bodies to hide it in."
Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of
delay in time or space; but Father Brown went on as if he
were continuing the last sentence:
"Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man
who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with him.
When will people understand that it is useless for a man to
read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible?
A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his
Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his,
and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old
Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that
might mean; and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant about it. It
might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic
sun in an Oriental society, and soaking himself without
sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read
the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found
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 the good of a man being honest in his worship of
dishonesty?
"In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man
went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed
shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady
eyes that he did it to the glory of the Lord. My own
theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord?
Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door
after door in hell, and always into smaller and smaller
chambers. This is the real case against crime, that a man
does not become wilder and wilder, but only meaner and
meaner. St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties of
bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by
the time of the Battle of the Black River he had fallen from
world to world to that place 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 puddle sealed with ice that shone in the moon. "Do you
remember whom Dante put in the last circle of ice?"
"The traitors," said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he
looked around at the inhuman landscape of trees, with
taunting and almost obscene outlines, he could almost fancy
he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of a voice
was, indeed, a Virgil leading him through a land of eternal
sins.
The voice went on: "Olivier, as you know, was quixotic,
and would not permit a secret service and spies. The thing,
however, was done, like many other things, behind his back.
It was managed by my old friend Espado; he was the
bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the Vulture.
Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt his
way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on
its one corrupt man—please God!—and that man at the top. St.
Clare was in foul need of money, and mountains of it. The
discredited family doctor was threatening those
extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and were
broken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in
Park Lane; things done by an English Evangelist that smelt
like human sacrifice and 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 snapped the last thread,
whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in from the
enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the
Vulture as well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major
from Ulster had guessed the hideous truth; and when they
walked slowly together down that road towards the bridge
Murray was telling the general that he must resign
instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The general
temporised with him till they came to the fringe of tropic
trees by the bridge; and there by the singing river and the
sunlit palms (for I can see the picture) the general drew
his sabre and plunged it through the body of the major."
The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost,
with cruel black shapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau
fancied that he saw beyond it faintly the edge of an aureole
that was not starlight and moonlight, but some fire such as
is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its close.
"St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed.
Never, I'll swear, was he so lucid and so strong as when
poor Murray lay a cold lump at his feet. Never in all his
triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was the great man so
great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. He
looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw
the point he had planted between his victim's shoulders had
broken off in the body. He saw quite calmly, as through a
club windowpane, all that must follow. He saw that men must
find the unaccountable corpse; must extract the
unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable
broken sword—or absence of sword. He had killed, but not
silenced. But his imperious intellect rose against the
facer; there was one way yet. He could make the corpse less
unaccountable. He could create a hill of corpses to cover
this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred English soldiers
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 his stride; but he seemed merely
absorbed in his tale.
"Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such
the genius of their commander, that if they had at once
attacked the hill, even their mad march might have met some
luck. But the evil mind that played with them like pawns had
other aims and reasons. They must remain in the marshes by
the bridge at least till British corpses should be a common
sight there. Then for the last grand scene; the
silver-haired soldier-saint would give up his shattered
sword to save further slaughter. Oh, it was well organised
for an impromptu. But I think (I cannot prove), I think that
it was while they stuck there in the bloody mire that
someone doubted—and someone guessed."
He was mute a moment, and then said: "There is a voice
from nowhere that tells me the man who guessed was the
lover... the man to wed the old man's child."
"But what about Olivier and the hanging?" asked Flambeau.
"Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy,
seldom encumbered his march with captives," explained the
narrator. "He released everybody in most cases. He released
everybody in this case."
"Everybody but the general," said the tall man.
"Everybody," said the priest.
Flambeau knit his black brows. "I don't grasp it all
yet," he said.
"There is another picture, Flambeau," said Brown in his
more mystical undertone. "I can't prove it; but I can do
more—I can see it. There is a camp breaking up on the bare,
torrid hills at morning, and Brazilian uniforms massed in
blocks and columns to march. There is the red shirt and long
black beard of Olivier, which blows as he stands, his
broad-brimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the
great enemy he is setting free—the simple, snow-headed
English veteran, who thanks him in the name of his men. The
English remnant stand behind at attention; beside them are
stores and vehicles for the retreat. The drums roll; the
Brazilians are moving; the English are still like statues.
So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy have
faded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their
postures all at once, like dead men coming to life; they
turn their fifty faces upon the general—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 English hand that put the rope round St. Clare's neck; I
believe the hand that put the ring on his daughter's finger.
They were English hands that dragged him up to the tree of
shame; the hands of men that had adored him and followed him
to victory. And they were English souls (God pardon and
endure us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign
sun on the green gallows of palm, and prayed in their hatred
that he might drop off it into hell."
As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the
strong scarlet light of a red-curtained English inn. It
stood sideways in the road, as if standing aside in the
amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stood open with
invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the
hum and laughter of humanity happy for a night.
"I need not tell you more," said Father Brown. "They
tried him in the wilderness and destroyed him; and then, for
the honour of England and of his daughter, they took an oath
to seal up for ever the story of the traitor's purse and the
assassin's sword blade. Perhaps—Heaven help them—they tried
to forget it. Let us try to forget it, anyhow; here is our
inn."
"With all my heart," said Flambeau, and was just striding
into the bright, 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 the square wooden sign that overhung the road. It
showed dimly the crude shape of a sabre hilt and a shortened
blade; and was inscribed in false archaic lettering, "The
Sign of the Broken Sword."
"Were you not prepared?" asked Father Brown gently. "He
is the god of this country; half the inns and parks and
streets are named after him and his story."
"I thought we had done with the leper," cried Flambeau,
and spat on the road.
"You will never have done with him in England," said the
priest, looking down, "while brass is strong and stone
abides. His marble statues will erect the souls of proud,
innocent boys for centuries, his village tomb will smell of
loyalty as of lilies. Millions who never knew him shall love
him like a father—this man whom the last few that knew him
dealt with like dung. He shall be a saint; and the truth
shall never be told of him, because I have made up my mind
at last. There is so much good and evil in breaking secrets,
that I put my conduct to a test. All these newspapers will
perish; the anti-Brazil boom is already over; Olivier is
already honoured everywhere. But I told myself that if
anywhere, by name, in metal or marble that will endure like
the pyramids, Colonel Clancy, or Captain Keith, or President
Olivier, or any innocent man was wrongly blamed, then I
would speak. If it were only that St. Clare was wrongly
praised, I would be silent. And I will."
They plunged into the red-curtained tavern, which was not
only cosy, but even luxurious inside. On a table stood a
silver model of the tomb of St. Clare, the silver head
bowed, the silver sword broken. On the walls were coloured
photographs of the same scene, and of the system of
wagonettes that took tourists to see it. They sat down on
the comfortable padded benches.
"Come, it's cold," cried Father Brown; "let's have some
wine or beer."
"Or brandy," said Flambeau.
The Three Tools of Death
Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better
than most of us, that every man is dignified when he is
dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was
knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong had
been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about
secret violence in connection with so entirely entertaining
and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was
entertaining to the point of 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 on dealing with it in the brightest possible
style. His political and social speeches were cataracts of
anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his bodily health was of a
bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt
with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that
immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark
of the prosperous total abstainer.
The established story of his conversion was familiar on
the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been,
when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch
whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he
modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard,
cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless
dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to
believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid
as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt,
the most seriously merry of all the sons of men.
He had lived on the rural skirt of Hampstead in a
handsome house, high but not broad, a modern and prosaic
tower. The narrowest of its narrow sides overhung the steep
green bank of a railway, and was shaken by passing trains.
Sir Aaron Armstrong, as he boisterously explained, had no
nerves. But if the train had often given a shock to the
house, that morning the tables were turned, and it was the
house that gave a shock to the train.
The engine slowed down and stopped just beyond that point
where an angle of the house impinged upon the sharp slope of
turf. The arrest of most mechanical things must be slow; but
the living cause of this had been very rapid. A man clad
completely in black, even (it was remembered) to the
dreadful detail of black gloves, appeared on the ridge above
the engine, and waved his black hands like some sable
windmill. This in itself would hardly have stopped even a
lingering train. But there came out of him a cry which was
talked of afterwards as something utterly unnatural and new.
It was one of those shouts that are horridly distinct even
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 he had heard only the dreadful and definite
accent and not the word.
The train once arrested, the most superficial stare could
take in many features of the tragedy. The man in black on
the green bank was Sir Aaron Armstrong's man-servant Magnus.
The baronet in his optimism had often laughed at the black
gloves of this dismal attendant; but no one was likely to
laugh at him just now.
So soon as an inquirer or two had stepped off the line
and across the smoky hedge, they saw, rolled down almost to
the bottom of the bank, the body of an old man in a yellow
dressing-gown with a very vivid scarlet lining. A scrap of
rope seemed caught about his leg, entangled presumably in a
struggle. There was a smear or so of blood, though very
little; but the body was bent or broken into a posture
impossible to any living thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong.
A few more bewildered moments brought out a big fair-bearded
man, whom some travellers could salute as the dead man's
secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemian
society and even famous in the Bohemian arts. In a manner
more vague, but even more convincing, he echoed the agony of
the servant. By the time the third figure of that household,
Alice Armstrong, daughter of the dead man, had come already
tottering and waving into the garden, the engine-driver had
put a stop to his stoppage. The whistle had blown and the
train had panted on to get help from the next station.
Father Brown had been thus rapidly summoned at the
request of Patrick Royce, the big ex-Bohemian secretary.
Royce was an Irishman by birth; and that casual kind of
Catholic that never remembers his religion until he is
really in a hole. But Royce's request might have been less
promptly complied with if one of the official detectives had
not been a friend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau;
and it was impossible to be a friend of Flambeau without
hearing numberless stories about Father Brown. Hence, while
the young detective (whose name was Merton) led the little
priest across the fields to the railway, their talk was more
confidential than could be expected between two total
strangers.
"As far as I can see," said Mr. Merton candidly, "there
is no sense to be made of it at all. There is nobody one can
suspect. Magnus is a solemn old fool; far too much of a fool
to be an assassin. Royce has been the baronet's best friend
for years; and his daughter undoubtedly adored him. Besides,
it's all too absurd. Who would kill such a cheery old chap
as Armstrong? Who could dip his hands in the gore of an
after-dinner speaker? It would be like killing Father
Christmas."
"Yes, it was a cheery house," assented Father Brown. "It
was a cheery house while he was alive. Do you think it will
be cheery now he is dead?"
Merton started a little and regarded his companion with
an enlivened eye. "Now he is dead?" he repeated.
"Yes," continued the priest stolidly, "he was cheerful.
But did he communicate his cheerfulness? Frankly, was anyone
else in the house cheerful but he?"
A window in Merton's mind let in that strange light of
surprise in which we see for the first time things we have
known all along. He had often been 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. The
rooms were very high and very cold; the decoration mean and
provincial; the draughty corridors were lit by electricity
that was bleaker than moonlight. And though the old man's
scarlet face and silver beard had blazed like a bonfire in
each room or passage in turn, it did not leave any warmth
behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort in the place
was partly due to the very vitality and exuberance of its
owner; he needed no stoves or lamps, he would say, but
carried his own warmth with him. But when Merton recalled
the other inmates, he was compelled to confess that they
also were as shadows of their lord. The moody man-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 salted with grey like the tweeds, and the
broad forehead was barred with premature wrinkles. He was
good-natured enough also, but it was a sad sort of
good-nature, almost a heart-broken sort—he had the general
air of being some sort of failure in life. As for
Armstrong's daughter, it was almost incredible that she was
his daughter; she was so pallid in colour and sensitive in
outline. She was graceful, but there was a quiver 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 of the passing trains.
"You see," said Father Brown, blinking modestly, "I'm not
sure that the Armstrong cheerfulness is so very cheerful—for
other people. You say that nobody could kill such a happy
old man, but I'm not sure; ne nos inducas in tentationem. If
ever I murdered somebody," he added quite simply, "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't think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness
without humour is a very trying 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 Armstrong house, Father Brown said
suddenly, like a man throwing away a troublesome thought
rather than offering it seriously: "Of course, drink is
neither good nor bad in itself. But I can't help sometimes
feeling that men like Armstrong want an occasional glass of
wine to sadden them."
Merton's official superior, a grizzled and capable
detective named Gilder, was standing on the green bank
waiting for the coroner, talking to Patrick Royce, whose big
shoulders and bristly beard and hair towered above him. This
was the more noticeable because Royce walked always with a
sort of powerful stoop, and seemed to be going about his
small clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled
style, like a buffalo drawing a go-cart.
He raised his head with unusual pleasure at the sight of
the priest, and took him a few paces apart. Meanwhile Merton
was addressing the older detective respectfully indeed, but
not without a certain boyish impatience.
"Well, Mr. Gilder, have you got much farther with the
mystery?"
"There is no mystery," replied Gilder, as he looked under
dreamy eyelids at 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 for Mr. Royce's parson the whole
thing came out. You know that pasty-faced servant 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 had gone too. Rather a cool criminal, don't
you think, to escape by the very train that went off for the
police?"
"You're pretty sure, I suppose," remarked the young man,
"that he really did kill his master?"
"Yes, my son, I'm pretty sure," replied Gilder drily,
"for the trifling reason that he has gone off with twenty
thousand pounds in papers that were in his master's desk.
No, the only thing worth calling a difficulty is 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 have found it awkward to carry it away, unless the
weapon was too small to be noticed."
"Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed," said the
priest, with an odd little giggle.
Gilder looked round at this wild remark, and rather
sternly asked Brown what 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's club, a great green
club, too big to be seen, and which we call the earth. 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 facade
of the house and blinked hopelessly up. Following his eyes,
they saw that right at the top of this otherwise blind back
quarter of the building, an attic window stood open.
"Don't you see," he explained, pointing a little
awkwardly like a child, "he was thrown down from there?"
Gilder frowningly scrutinised the window, and then said:
"Well, it is certainly possible. But I don't see why you are
so sure about it."
Brown opened his grey eyes wide. "Why," he said, "there's
a bit of rope round the dead man's leg. Don't you see that
other bit of rope up there caught at the corner of the
window?"
At that height the thing looked like the faintest
particle of dust or hair, but the shrewd old investigator
was satisfied. "You're quite right, 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 of the line on their left, and, stopping,
disgorged another group of policemen, in whose midst was the
hangdog visage of Magnus, the absconded servant.
"By Jove! they've got him," cried Gilder, and stepped
forward with quite a 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 and said: "No." Then he added: "At least, not
here."
"Which is the inspector, please?" asked the man called
Magnus.
When he spoke everyone instantly understood how this
voice had stopped a train. He was a dull-looking man with
flat black hair, a colourless face, and a faint suggestion
of the East in the level slits in his eyes and mouth. His
blood and name, indeed, had remained dubious, ever since Sir
Aaron had "rescued" him from a waitership in a London
restaurant, and (as some said) from more infamous things.
But his voice was as vivid as his face was dead. Whether
through exactitude in a foreign language, or in deference to
his master (who had been somewhat deaf), Magnus's tones had
a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the whole
group quite 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 said I 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 pretty dangerous."
"Well, sir," said the sergeant, with the same odd look of
wonder, "I don'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 an approaching train seemed oddly to echo the
mockery.
"We arrested him," replied the sergeant gravely, "just as
he was coming out of the police station at Highgate, where
he had deposited all his master's money in the care of
Inspector Robinson."
Gilder looked at the man-servant in utter amazement. "Why
on earth did you do that?" he asked of Magnus.
"To keep it safe from the criminal, of course," replied
that person placidly.
"Surely," said Gilder, "Sir Aaron's money might have been
safely left with Sir Aaron's family."
The tail of his sentence was drowned in the roar of the
train as it went rocking and clanking; but through all the
hell of noises to which that unhappy house was periodically
subject, they could hear the syllables of Magnus's answer,
in all their bell-like distinctness: "I have no reason to
feel confidence in Sir Aaron's family."
All the motionless men had the ghostly sensation of the
presence of some new person; and Merton was scarcely
surprised when he looked up and saw the pale face of
Armstrong's daughter over Father Brown's shoulder. She was
still young and beautiful in a silvery style, but her hair
was of so dusty and hueless a brown that in some shadows it
seemed to have turned totally grey.
"Be careful what you say," said Royce gruffly, "you'll
frighten Miss Armstrong."
"I hope so," said the man with the clear voice.
As the woman winced and everyone else wondered, he went
on: "I am somewhat used to Miss Armstrong's tremors. I have
seen her trembling off and on for years. And some said she
was shaking with cold and some she was shaking with fear,
but I know she was shaking with hate and wicked anger—fiends
that have had their feast this morning. She would have been
away by now with her lover and all the money but for me.
Ever since my poor old master prevented her from marrying
that tipsy blackguard—"
"Stop," said Gilder very sternly. "We have nothing to do
with your family fancies or suspicions. Unless you have some
practical evidence, your mere opinions—"
"Oh! I'll give you practical evidence," cut in Magnus, in
his hacking accent. "You'll have to subpoena me, Mr.
Inspector, and I shall have to tell the truth. And the truth
is this: An instant after the old man was pitched bleeding
out of the window, I ran into the attic, and found his
daughter 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 his tail-pocket a long
horn-hilted knife with a red smear on it, and handed it
politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back again, and his
slits of eyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese
sneer.
Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of
him; and he muttered to Gilder: "Surely you would take Miss
Armstrong's word against his?"
Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh
that it looked somehow as if he had just washed it. "Yes,"
he said, radiating innocence, "but is Miss Armstrong's word
against his?"
The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry;
everyone looked at her. Her figure was rigid as if
paralysed; only her face within its frame of faint brown
hair was alive with an appalling surprise. She stood like
one of a sudden lassooed and throttled.
"This man," said Mr. Gilder gravely, "actually says that
you were found grasping a knife, insensible, after the
murder."
"He says the truth," answered Alice.
The next fact of which they were conscious was that
Patrick Royce strode with his great stooping head into their
ring and uttered the singular words: "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's bland 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 to the rest it seemed as if
all reason had broken up and the universe were turning into
a brainless harlequinade.
"None of that, Mr. Royce," Gilder had called out
authoritatively. "I shall 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 that outraged person was already sitting up and
wiping a little blood off a substantially uninjured face, he
only said shortly: "What do you mean?"
"It is quite true, as this fellow says," explained Royce,
"that Miss Armstrong fainted with a knife in her hand. But
she had not snatched the knife 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 a low voice: "After it all, I am still glad
you are brave."
"Come upstairs," said Patrick Royce heavily, "and I will
show you the whole cursed thing."
The attic, which was the secretary's private place (and
rather a small cell for so large a hermit), had indeed all
the vestiges of a violent drama. Near the centre of the
floor lay a large revolver as if flung away; nearer to the
left was rolled a whisky bottle, open but not quite empty.
The cloth of the little table lay dragged and trampled, and
a length of cord, like that found on the corpse, was cast
wildly across the windowsill. Two vases were smashed on the
mantelpiece and one on the carpet.
"I was drunk," said Royce; and this simplicity in the
prematurely battered man somehow had the pathos of the first
sin of a baby.
"You all know about me," he continued huskily; "everybody
knows how my story began, and it may as well end like that
too. I was called a clever man once, and might have been a
happy one; Armstrong saved the remains of a brain and body
from the taverns, and was always kind to me in 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 form your own conclusions, and you won't want me to go
into details. That is my whisky bottle half emptied in the
corner; that is my revolver quite emptied on the carpet. It
was the rope from my box that was found on the corpse, and
it was from my window the corpse was thrown. You need not
set detectives to grub up my tragedy; it is a common enough
weed in this world. I give myself to the gallows; and, by
God, that is enough!"
At a sufficiently delicate sign, the police gathered
round the large man to lead him away; but their
unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered by the remarkable
appearance of Father Brown, who was on his hands and knees
on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind of
undignified prayers. Being a person utterly insensible to
the social figure he cut, he remained in this posture, but
turned a bright round face up at the company, presenting the
appearance of a quadruped with a very 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 finding too many; there's the knife to
stab, and the rope to strangle, and the pistol to shoot; and
after all he broke his neck by falling out of a window! It
won't do. It's not economical." And he shook his head at the
ground as a horse does grazing.
Inspector Gilder had opened his mouth with serious
intentions, but before he could speak the grotesque figure
on the floor had gone on quite volubly.
"And now three quite impossible things. First, these
holes in the carpet, where the six bullets have gone in. Why
on earth should anybody fire at the carpet? A drunken man
lets fly at his enemy's head, the thing that's grinning at
him. He doesn't pick a quarrel with his feet, or lay siege
to his slippers. And then there's the rope"—and having done
with the carpet the speaker lifted his hands and put them in
his pocket, but continued unaffectedly on his knees—"in what
conceivable intoxication would anybody try to put a rope
round a man's neck and finally 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, the whisky bottle.
You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle, and
then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one
half and leaving the other. That is the very last thing a
dipsomaniac would do."
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the
self-accused murderer 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 to you alone for a moment?"
This request forced the communicative cleric out of the
gangway, and before he could speak in the next room, the
girl was talking with strange incisiveness.
"You are a clever man," she said, "and you are trying to
save Patrick, I know. But it's no use. The core of all this
is black, and the more things you find out the more there
will be against the miserable man I love."
"Why?" asked Brown, looking at her steadily.
"Because," she answered equally steadily, "I saw him
commit the crime myself."
"Ah!" said the unmoved Brown, "and what did he do?"
"I was in this room next to them," she explained; "both
doors were closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I
had never heard on earth, roaring 'Hell, hell, hell,' again
and again, and then the two doors shook with the first
explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the thing banged
before I got the two doors open and found the room full of
smoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick's
hand; and I saw him fire the last murderous volley with my
own eyes. Then he leapt on my father, who was clinging in
terror to the window-sill, and, grappling, tried to strangle
him with the rope, which he threw over his head, but which
slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then it
tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a
maniac. I snatched a knife from the mat, and, rushing
between them, managed to cut 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 into the next room, where he found Gilder and
Merton alone with Patrick Royce, who sat in a chair,
handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector submissively:
"Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and
might he take off those funny cuffs for a minute?"
"He is a very powerful man," said Merton in an undertone.
"Why do you want them taken off?"
"Why, I thought," replied the priest humbly, "that
perhaps I might have the very great honour of shaking hands
with him."
Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: "Won't
you tell them about it, sir?"
The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the
priest turned impatiently.
"Then I will," he said. "Private lives are more important
than public reputations. I am going to save the living, and
let the dead bury their dead."
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 one death. I tell you now that they were not
weapons, and were not used to cause death. All those grisly
tools, the noose, the bloody knife, the exploding pistol,
were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not used 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 of Cheerfulness—"
"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 views grew
cold; behind that merry mask was the empty mind of the
atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public level, he
fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned long ago.
But there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere
teetotaler: that he pictures and expects that psychological
inferno from which he has warned others. It leapt upon poor
Armstrong prematurely, and by this morning 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 for
death, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had
scattered round him death in many shapes—a running noose and
his friend's revolver and a knife. Royce entered
accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife on the
mat behind him, snatched up the revolver, and having no time
to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor.
The suicide saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for
the window. The rescuer did the only thing he could—ran
after him with the rope and tried to tie him hand and foot.
Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and
misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father
free. At first she only slashed poor Royce's knuckles, from
which has come all the little blood in this affair. But, of
course, you noticed that he left blood, but no wound, on
that servant's face? Only before the poor woman swooned, she
did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through
that window into eternity."
There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic
noises of Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce,
to whom he said: "I think I should have told the truth, sir.
You and the young lady are worth more than Armstrong's
obituary notices."
"Confound Armstrong's notices," cried Royce roughly.
"Don't you see it was because she mustn't know?"
"Mustn't know what?" asked Merton.
"Why, that she killed her father, you fool!" roared the
other. "He'd have been 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 his hat. "I rather think I should tell her.
Even the most murderous blunders don't poison life like
sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier now. I've
got to go back to the Deaf School."
As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from
Highgate stopped 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 sorry I can't stop for the inquiry."
