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diff --git a/old/wifrb11.txt b/old/wifrb11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b19ec4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wifrb11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8101 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Wisdom of Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton +#3 in our series by G. K. Chesterton + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Wisdom of Father Brown + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: February, 1995 [EBook #223] +[This file was last updated on July 7, 2004] + +Edition: 11 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN *** + + + + +This etext was proofread by Martin Ward. + +If you find an error in this edition, please contact Martin Ward, +Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk + + + + + + + + G. K. CHESTERTON + + + THE WISDOM + OF FATHER BROWN + + + To + + LUCIAN OLDERSHAW + + + + CONTENTS + + +1. The Absence of Mr Glass +2. The Paradise of Thieves +3. The Duel of Dr Hirsch +4. The Man in the Passage +5. The Mistake of the Machine +6. The Head of Caesar +7. The Purple Wig +8. The Perishing of the Pendragons +9. The God of the Gongs +10. The Salad of Colonel Cray +11. The Strange Crime of John Boulnois +12. The Fairy Tale of Father Brown + + + + ONE + + + The Absence of Mr Glass + + +THE consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist +and specialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front +at Scarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french windows, +which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble. +In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a blue-green dado: +for the chambers themselves were ruled throughout by a terrible tidiness +not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be supposed +that Dr Hood's apartments excluded luxury, or even poetry. +These things were there, in their place; but one felt that +they were never allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: +there stood upon a special table eight or ten boxes of the best cigars; +but they were built upon a plan so that the strongest were always +nearest the wall and the mildest nearest the window. A tantalus +containing three kinds of spirit, all of a liqueur excellence, +stood always on this table of luxury; but the fanciful have asserted +that the whisky, brandy, and rum seemed always to stand at the same level. +Poetry was there: the left-hand corner of the room was lined with +as complete a set of English classics as the right hand could show +of English and foreign physiologists. But if one took a volume +of Chaucer or Shelley from that rank, its absence irritated the mind +like a gap in a man's front teeth. One could not say the books +were never read; probably they were, but there was a sense of their +being chained to their places, like the Bibles in the old churches. +Dr Hood treated his private book-shelf as if it were a public library. +And if this strict scientific intangibility steeped even the shelves +laden with lyrics and ballads and the tables laden with drink and tobacco, +it goes without saying that yet more of such heathen holiness +protected the other shelves that held the specialist's library, +and the other tables that sustained the frail and even fairylike +instruments of chemistry or mechanics. + + Dr Hood paced the length of his string of apartments, bounded-- +as the boys' geographies say--on the east by the North Sea and on the west +by the serried ranks of his sociological and criminologist library. +He was clad in an artist's velvet, but with none of an artist's negligence; +his hair was heavily shot with grey, but growing thick and healthy; +his face was lean, but sanguine and expectant. Everything about him +and his room indicated something at once rigid and restless, +like that great northern sea by which (on pure principles of hygiene) +he had built his home. + + Fate, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and +introduced into those long, strict, sea-flanked apartments +one who was perhaps the most startling opposite of them and their master. +In answer to a curt but civil summons, the door opened inwards +and there shambled into the room a shapeless little figure, +which seemed to find its own hat and umbrella as unmanageable as +a mass of luggage. The umbrella was a black and prosaic bundle +long past repair; the hat was a broad-curved black hat, clerical +but not common in England; the man was the very embodiment of all +that is homely and helpless. + + The doctor regarded the new-comer with a restrained astonishment, +not unlike that he would have shown if some huge but obviously +harmless sea-beast had crawled into his room. The new-comer +regarded the doctor with that beaming but breathless geniality +which characterizes a corpulent charwoman who has just managed +to stuff herself into an omnibus. It is a rich confusion of +social self-congratulation and bodily disarray. His hat tumbled +to the carpet, his heavy umbrella slipped between his knees with a thud; +he reached after the one and ducked after the other, but with +an unimpaired smile on his round face spoke simultaneously as follows: + + "My name is Brown. Pray excuse me. I've come about +that business of the MacNabs. I have heard, you often help people +out of such troubles. Pray excuse me if I am wrong." + + By this time he had sprawlingly recovered the hat, and made +an odd little bobbing bow over it, as if setting everything quite right. + + "I hardly understand you," replied the scientist, with +a cold intensity of manner. "I fear you have mistaken the chambers. +I am Dr Hood, and my work is almost entirely literary and educational. +It is true that I have sometimes been consulted by the police +in cases of peculiar difficulty and importance, but--" + + "Oh, this is of the greatest importance," broke in the little man +called Brown. "Why, her mother won't let them get engaged." +And he leaned back in his chair in radiant rationality. + + The brows of Dr Hood were drawn down darkly, but the eyes +under them were bright with something that might be anger or +might be amusement. "And still," he said, "I do not quite understand." + + "You see, they want to get married," said the man with the +clerical hat. "Maggie MacNab and young Todhunter want to get married. +Now, what can be more important than that?" + + The great Orion Hood's scientific triumphs had deprived him +of many things--some said of his health, others of his God; +but they had not wholly despoiled him of his sense of the absurd. +At the last plea of the ingenuous priest a chuckle broke out of him +from inside, and he threw himself into an arm-chair in an ironical attitude +of the consulting physician. + + "Mr Brown," he said gravely, "it is quite fourteen and a half years +since I was personally asked to test a personal problem: then it was +the case of an attempt to poison the French President at +a Lord Mayor's Banquet. It is now, I understand, a question of whether +some friend of yours called Maggie is a suitable fiancee for some friend +of hers called Todhunter. Well, Mr Brown, I am a sportsman. +I will take it on. I will give the MacNab family my best advice, +as good as I gave the French Republic and the King of England--no, better: +fourteen years better. I have nothing else to do this afternoon. +Tell me your story." + + The little clergyman called Brown thanked him with +unquestionable warmth, but still with a queer kind of simplicity. +It was rather as if he were thanking a stranger in a smoking-room +for some trouble in passing the matches, than as if he were (as he was) +practically thanking the Curator of Kew Gardens for coming with him +into a field to find a four-leaved clover. With scarcely a semi-colon +after his hearty thanks, the little man began his recital: + + "I told you my name was Brown; well, that's the fact, +and I'm the priest of the little Catholic Church I dare say you've seen +beyond those straggly streets, where the town ends towards the north. +In the last and straggliest of those streets which runs along the sea +like a sea-wall there is a very honest but rather sharp-tempered +member of my flock, a widow called MacNab. She has one daughter, +and she lets lodgings, and between her and the daughter, +and between her and the lodgers--well, I dare say there is a great deal +to be said on both sides. At present she has only one lodger, +the young man called Todhunter; but he has given more trouble +than all the rest, for he wants to marry the young woman of the house." + + "And the young woman of the house," asked Dr Hood, with huge and +silent amusement, "what does she want?" + + "Why, she wants to marry him," cried Father Brown, sitting up eagerly. +"That is just the awful complication." + + "It is indeed a hideous enigma," said Dr Hood. + + "This young James Todhunter," continued the cleric, +"is a very decent man so far as I know; but then nobody knows very much. +He is a bright, brownish little fellow, agile like a monkey, +clean-shaven like an actor, and obliging like a born courtier. +He seems to have quite a pocketful of money, but nobody knows what +his trade is. Mrs MacNab, therefore (being of a pessimistic turn), +is quite sure it is something dreadful, and probably connected with dynamite. +The dynamite must be of a shy and noiseless sort, for the poor fellow +only shuts himself up for several hours of the day and studies something +behind a locked door. He declares his privacy is temporary and justified, +and promises to explain before the wedding. That is all that anyone knows +for certain, but Mrs MacNab will tell you a great deal more than +even she is certain of. You know how the tales grow like grass on +such a patch of ignorance as that. There are tales of two voices +heard talking in the room; though, when the door is opened, +Todhunter is always found alone. There are tales of a mysterious +tall man in a silk hat, who once came out of the sea-mists and +apparently out of the sea, stepping softly across the sandy fields and +through the small back garden at twilight, till he was heard +talking to the lodger at his open window. The colloquy seemed to end +in a quarrel. Todhunter dashed down his window with violence, +and the man in the high hat melted into the sea-fog again. +This story is told by the family with the fiercest mystification; +but I really think Mrs MacNab prefers her own original tale: +that the Other Man (or whatever it is) crawls out every night from the +big box in the corner, which is kept locked all day. You see, +therefore, how this sealed door of Todhunter's is treated as the gate +of all the fancies and monstrosities of the `Thousand and One Nights'. +And yet there is the little fellow in his respectable black jacket, +as punctual and innocent as a parlour clock. He pays his rent to the tick; +he is practically a teetotaller; he is tirelessly kind with +the younger children, and can keep them amused for a day on end; and, +last and most urgent of all, he has made himself equally popular with +the eldest daughter, who is ready to go to church with him tomorrow." + + A man warmly concerned with any large theories has always +a relish for applying them to any triviality. The great specialist +having condescended to the priest's simplicity, condescended expansively. +He settled himself with comfort in his arm-chair and began to talk in +the tone of a somewhat absent-minded lecturer: + + "Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to +the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead +in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble +may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. +To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, +destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter +or the return of birds in spring. Now the root fact in all history is Race. +Race produces religion; Race produces legal and ethical wars. +There is no stronger case than that of the wild, unworldly and +perishing stock which we commonly call the Celts, of whom your friends +the MacNabs are specimens. Small, swarthy, and of this dreamy and +drifting blood, they accept easily the superstitious explanation of +any incidents, just as they still accept (you will excuse me for saying) +that superstitious explanation of all incidents which you +and your Church represent. It is not remarkable that such people, +with the sea moaning behind them and the Church (excuse me again) +droning in front of them, should put fantastic features into what are +probably plain events. You, with your small parochial responsibilities, +see only this particular Mrs MacNab, terrified with this particular tale +of two voices and a tall man out of the sea. But the man with +the scientific imagination sees, as it were, the whole clans of MacNab +scattered over the whole world, in its ultimate average as uniform +as a tribe of birds. He sees thousands of Mrs MacNabs, +in thousands of houses, dropping their little drop of morbidity +in the tea-cups of their friends; he sees--" + + Before the scientist could conclude his sentence, another and +more impatient summons sounded from without; someone with swishing skirts +was marshalled hurriedly down the corridor, and the door opened on +a young girl, decently dressed but disordered and red-hot with haste. +She had sea-blown blonde hair, and would have been entirely beautiful +if her cheek-bones had not been, in the Scotch manner, a little +high in relief as well as in colour. Her apology was almost as abrupt +as a command. + + "I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir," she said, "but I had to follow +Father Brown at once; it's nothing less than life or death." + + Father Brown began to get to his feet in some disorder. +"Why, what has happened, Maggie?" he said. + + "James has been murdered, for all I can make out," +answered the girl, still breathing hard from her rush. "That man Glass +has been with him again; I heard them talking through the door quite plain. +Two separate voices: for James speaks low, with a burr, +and the other voice was high and quavery." + + "That man Glass?" repeated the priest in some perplexity. + + "I know his name is Glass," answered the girl, in great impatience. +"I heard it through the door. They were quarrelling--about money, +I think--for I heard James say again and again, `That's right, Mr Glass,' +or `No, Mr Glass,' and then, `Two or three, Mr Glass.' But we're talking +too much; you must come at once, and there may be time yet." + + "But time for what?" asked Dr Hood, who had been studying +the young lady with marked interest. "What is there about Mr Glass +and his money troubles that should impel such urgency?" + + "I tried to break down the door and couldn't," answered the girl shortly, +"Then I ran to the back-yard, and managed to climb on to the window-sill +that looks into the room. It was an dim, and seemed to be empty, +but I swear I saw James lying huddled up in a corner, as if he were +drugged or strangled." + + "This is very serious," said Father Brown, gathering his errant hat +and umbrella and standing up; "in point of fact I was just putting +your case before this gentleman, and his view--" + + "Has been largely altered," said the scientist gravely. +"I do not think this young lady is so Celtic as I had supposed. +As I have nothing else to do, I will put on my hat and stroll +down town with you." + + In a few minutes all three were approaching the dreary tail of +the MacNabs' street: the girl with the stern and breathless stride +of the mountaineer, the criminologist with a lounging grace (which was +not without a certain leopard-like swiftness), and the priest at an +energetic trot entirely devoid of distinction. The aspect of this +edge of the town was not entirely without justification for +the doctor's hints about desolate moods and environments. +The scattered houses stood farther and farther apart in a broken string +along the seashore; the afternoon was closing with a premature and +partly lurid twilight; the sea was of an inky purple and murmuring ominously. +In the scrappy back garden of the MacNabs which ran down towards the sand, +two black, barren-looking trees stood up like demon hands held up +in astonishment, and as Mrs MacNab ran down the street to meet them +with lean hands similarly spread, and her fierce face in shadow, +she was a little like a demon herself. The doctor and the priest +made scant reply to her shrill reiterations of her daughter's story, +with more disturbing details of her own, to the divided vows of vengeance +against Mr Glass for murdering, and against Mr Todhunter for being murdered, +or against the latter for having dared to want to marry her daughter, +and for not having lived to do it. They passed through the narrow passage +in the front of the house until they came to the lodger's door at the back, +and there Dr Hood, with the trick of an old detective, put his shoulder +sharply to the panel and burst in the door. + + It opened on a scene of silent catastrophe. No one seeing it, +even for a flash, could doubt that the room had been the theatre +of some thrilling collision between two, or perhaps more, persons. +Playing-cards lay littered across the table or fluttered about +the floor as if a game had been interrupted. Two wine glasses stood +ready for wine on a side-table, but a third lay smashed +in a star of crystal upon the carpet. A few feet from it lay +what looked like a long knife or short sword, straight, +but with an ornamental and pictured handle, its dull blade just caught +a grey glint from the dreary window behind, which showed the black trees +against the leaden level of the sea. Towards the opposite corner +of the room was rolled a gentleman's silk top hat, as if it had +just been knocked off his head; so much so, indeed, that one almost looked +to see it still rolling. And in the corner behind it, thrown like a sack +of potatoes, but corded like a railway trunk, lay Mr James Todhunter, +with a scarf across his mouth, and six or seven ropes knotted round +his elbows and ankles. His brown eyes were alive and shifted alertly. + + Dr Orion Hood paused for one instant on the doormat and drank in +the whole scene of voiceless violence. Then he stepped swiftly +across the carpet, picked up the tall silk hat, and gravely put it +upon the head of the yet pinioned Todhunter. It was so much too large +for him that it almost slipped down on to his shoulders. + + "Mr Glass's hat," said the doctor, returning with it and peering +into the inside with a pocket lens. "How to explain the absence +of Mr Glass and the presence of Mr Glass's hat? For Mr Glass is not a +careless man with his clothes. That hat is of a stylish shape and +systematically brushed and burnished, though not very new. +An old dandy, I should think." + + "But, good heavens!" called out Miss MacNab, "aren't you going to +untie the man first?" + + "I say `old' with intention, though not with certainty" +continued the expositor; "my reason for it might seem a little far-fetched. +The hair of human beings falls out in very varying degrees, +but almost always falls out slightly, and with the lens I should see +the tiny hairs in a hat recently worn. It has none, which leads me +to guess that Mr Glass is bald. Now when this is taken with +the high-pitched and querulous voice which Miss MacNab described +so vividly (patience, my dear lady, patience), when we take +the hairless head together with the tone common in senile anger, +I should think we may deduce some advance in years. Nevertheless, +he was probably vigorous, and he was almost certainly tall. +I might rely in some degree on the story of his previous appearance +at the window, as a tall man in a silk hat, but I think I have +more exact indication. This wineglass has been smashed all over the place, +but one of its splinters lies on the high bracket beside the mantelpiece. +No such fragment could have fallen there if the vessel had been smashed +in the hand of a comparatively short man like Mr Todhunter." + + "By the way," said Father Brown, "might it not be as well +to untie Mr Todhunter?" + + "Our lesson from the drinking-vessels does not end here," +proceeded the specialist. "I may say at once that it is possible +that the man Glass was bald or nervous through dissipation rather than age. +Mr Todhunter, as has been remarked, is a quiet thrifty gentleman, +essentially an abstainer. These cards and wine-cups are no part +of his normal habit; they have been produced for a particular companion. +But, as it happens, we may go farther. Mr Todhunter may or may not +possess this wine-service, but there is no appearance of his +possessing any wine. What, then, were these vessels to contain? +I would at once suggest some brandy or whisky, perhaps of a luxurious sort, +from a flask in the pocket of Mr Glass. We have thus something like +a picture of the man, or at least of the type: tall, elderly, fashionable, +but somewhat frayed, certainly fond of play and strong waters, +perhaps rather too fond of them. Mr Glass is a gentleman not unknown +on the fringes of society." + + "Look here," cried the young woman, "if you don't let me pass to +untie him I'll run outside and scream for the police." + + "I should not advise you, Miss MacNab," said Dr Hood gravely, +"to be in any hurry to fetch the police. Father Brown, +I seriously ask you to compose your flock, for their sakes, not for mine. +Well, we have seen something of the figure and quality of Mr Glass; +what are the chief facts known of Mr Todhunter? They are substantially three: +that he is economical, that he is more or less wealthy, and that +he has a secret. Now, surely it is obvious that there are +the three chief marks of the kind of man who is blackmailed. +And surely it is equally obvious that the faded finery, +the profligate habits, and the shrill irritation of Mr Glass +are the unmistakable marks of the kind of man who blackmails him. +We have the two typical figures of a tragedy of hush money: +on the one hand, the respectable man with a mystery; on the other, +the West-end vulture with a scent for a mystery. These two men +have met here today and have quarrelled, using blows and a bare weapon." + + "Are you going to take those ropes off?" asked the girl stubbornly. + + Dr Hood replaced the silk hat carefully on the side table, +and went across to the captive. He studied him intently, +even moving him a little and half-turning him round by the shoulders, +but he only answered: + + "No; I think these ropes will do very well till your friends +the police bring the handcuffs." + + Father Brown, who had been looking dully at the carpet, +lifted his round face and said: "What do you mean?" + + The man of science had picked up the peculiar dagger-sword +from the carpet and was examining it intently as he answered: + + "Because you find Mr Todhunter tied up," he said, "you all jump +to the conclusion that Mr Glass had tied him up; and then, I suppose, +escaped. There are four objections to this: First, why should a gentleman +so dressy as our friend Glass leave his hat behind him, if he left +of his own free will? Second," he continued, moving towards the window, +"this is the only exit, and it is locked on the inside. Third, this +blade here has a tiny touch of blood at the point, but there is +no wound on Mr Todhunter. Mr Glass took that wound away with him, +dead or alive. Add to all this primary probability. +It is much more likely that the blackmailed person would try to kill +his incubus, rather than that the blackmailer would try to kill +the goose that lays his golden egg. There, I think, we have +a pretty complete story." + + "But the ropes?" inquired the priest, whose eyes had remained +open with a rather vacant admiration. + + "Ah, the ropes," said the expert with a singular intonation. +"Miss MacNab very much wanted to know why I did not set Mr Todhunter +free from his ropes. Well, I will tell her. I did not do it because +Mr Todhunter can set himself free from them at any minute he chooses." + + "What?" cried the audience on quite different notes of astonishment. + + "I have looked at all the knots on Mr Todhunter," reiterated Hood +quietly. "I happen to know something about knots; they are quite +a branch of criminal science. Every one of those knots he has +made himself and could loosen himself; not one of them would have been made +by an enemy really trying to pinion him. The whole of this affair +of the ropes is a clever fake, to make us think him the victim of +the struggle instead of the wretched Glass, whose corpse may be hidden +in the garden or stuffed up the chimney." + + There was a rather depressed silence; the room was darkening, +the sea-blighted boughs of the garden trees looked leaner and +blacker than ever, yet they seemed to have come nearer to the window. +One could almost fancy they were sea-monsters like krakens or cuttlefish, +writhing polypi who had crawled up from the sea to see the end +of this tragedy, even as he, the villain and victim of it, +the terrible man in the tall hat, had once crawled up from the sea. +For the whole air was dense with the morbidity of blackmail, which is +the most morbid of human things, because it is a crime concealing a crime; +a black plaster on a blacker wound. + + The face of the little Catholic priest, which was commonly complacent +and even comic, had suddenly become knotted with a curious frown. +It was not the blank curiosity of his first innocence. It was rather +that creative curiosity which comes when a man has the beginnings of +an idea. "Say it again, please," he said in a simple, bothered manner; +"do you mean that Todhunter can tie himself up all alone and +untie himself all alone?" + + "That is what I mean," said the doctor. + + "Jerusalem!" ejaculated Brown suddenly, "I wonder if it could +possibly be that!" + + He scuttled across the room rather like a rabbit, and peered with +quite a new impulsiveness into the partially-covered face of the captive. +Then he turned his own rather fatuous face to the company. +"Yes, that's it!" he cried in a certain excitement. "Can't you see it +in the man's face? Why, look at his eyes!" + + Both the Professor and the girl followed the direction of his glance. +And though the broad black scarf completely masked the lower half +of Todhunter's visage, they did grow conscious of something struggling +and intense about the upper part of it. + + "His eyes do look queer," cried the young woman, strongly moved. +"You brutes; I believe it's hurting him!" + + "Not that, I think," said Dr Hood; "the eyes have certainly +a singular expression. But I should interpret those transverse +wrinkles as expressing rather such slight psychological abnormality--" + + "Oh, bosh!" cried Father Brown: "can't you see he's laughing?" + + "Laughing!" repeated the doctor, with a start; "but what on earth +can he be laughing at?" + + "Well," replied the Reverend Brown apologetically, +"not to put too fine a point on it, I think he is laughing at you. +And indeed, I'm a little inclined to laugh at myself, now I know about it." + + "Now you know about what?" asked Hood, in some exasperation. + + "Now I know," replied the priest, "the profession of Mr Todhunter." + + He shuffled about the room, looking at one object after another +with what seemed to be a vacant stare, and then invariably bursting +into an equally vacant laugh, a highly irritating process for those +who had to watch it. He laughed very much over the hat, +still more uproariously over the broken glass, but the blood on +the sword point sent him into mortal convulsions of amusement. +Then he turned to the fuming specialist. + + "Dr Hood," he cried enthusiastically, "you are a great poet! +You have called an uncreated being out of the void. How much more godlike +that is than if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! +Indeed, the mere facts are rather commonplace and comic by comparison." + + "I have no notion what you are talking about," said Dr Hood +rather haughtily; "my facts are all inevitable, though necessarily incomplete. +A place may be permitted to intuition, perhaps (or poetry if you +prefer the term), but only because the corresponding details cannot +as yet be ascertained. In the absence of Mr Glass--" + + "That's it, that's it," said the little priest, nodding quite eagerly, +"that's the first idea to get fixed; the absence of Mr Glass. +He is so extremely absent. I suppose," he added reflectively, +"that there was never anybody so absent as Mr Glass." + + "Do you mean he is absent from the town?" demanded the doctor. + + "I mean he is absent from everywhere," answered Father Brown; +"he is absent from the Nature of Things, so to speak." + + "Do you seriously mean," said the specialist with a smile, +"that there is no such person?" + + The priest made a sign of assent. "It does seem a pity," he said. + + Orion Hood broke into a contemptuous laugh. "Well," he said, +"before we go on to the hundred and one other evidences, let us take +the first proof we found; the first fact we fell over when we fell +into this room. If there is no Mr Glass, whose hat is this?" + + "It is Mr Todhunter's," replied Father Brown. + + "But it doesn't fit him," cried Hood impatiently. "He couldn't +possibly wear it!" + + Father Brown shook his head with ineffable mildness. +"I never said he could wear it," he answered. "I said it was his hat. +Or, if you insist on a shade of difference, a hat that is his." + + "And what is the shade of difference?" asked the criminologist +with a slight sneer. + + "My good sir," cried the mild little man, with his first movement +akin to impatience, "if you will walk down the street to the nearest +hatter's shop, you will see that there is, in common speech, +a difference between a man's hat and the hats that are his." + + "But a hatter," protested Hood, "can get money out of his +stock of new hats. What could Todhunter get out of this one old hat?" + + "Rabbits," replied Father Brown promptly. + + "What?" cried Dr Hood. + + "Rabbits, ribbons, sweetmeats, goldfish, rolls of coloured paper," +said the reverend gentleman with rapidity. "Didn't you see it all +when you found out the faked ropes? It's just the same with the sword. +Mr Todhunter hasn't got a scratch on him, as you say; but he's got +a scratch in him, if you follow me." + + "Do you mean inside Mr Todhunter's clothes?" inquired +Mrs MacNab sternly. + + "I do not mean inside Mr Todhunter's clothes," said Father Brown. +"I mean inside Mr Todhunter." + + "Well, what in the name of Bedlam do you mean?" + + "Mr Todhunter," explained Father Brown placidly, "is learning +to be a professional conjurer, as well as juggler, ventriloquist, +and expert in the rope trick. The conjuring explains the hat. +It is without traces of hair, not because it is worn by +the prematurely bald Mr Glass, but because it has never been worn +by anybody. The juggling explains the three glasses, which Todhunter +was teaching himself to throw up and catch in rotation. +But, being only at the stage of practice, he smashed one glass +against the ceiling. And the juggling also explains the sword, +which it was Mr Todhunter's professional pride and duty to swallow. +But, again, being at the stage of practice, he very slightly grazed +the inside of his throat with the weapon. Hence he has a wound +inside him, which I am sure (from the expression on his face) +is not a serious one. He was also practising the trick of +a release from ropes, like the Davenport Brothers, and he was just about +to free himself when we all burst into the room. The cards, of course, +are for card tricks, and they are scattered on the floor because +he had just been practising one of those dodges of sending them +flying through the air. He merely kept his trade secret, +because he had to keep his tricks secret, like any other conjurer. +But the mere fact of an idler in a top hat having once looked in +at his back window, and been driven away by him with great indignation, +was enough to set us all on a wrong track of romance, and make us imagine +his whole life overshadowed by the silk-hatted spectre of Mr Glass." + + "But What about the two voices?" asked Maggie, staring. + + "Have you never heard a ventriloquist?" asked Father Brown. +"Don't you know they speak first in their natural voice, and then +answer themselves in just that shrill, squeaky, unnatural voice +that you heard?" + + There was a long silence, and Dr Hood regarded the little man +who had spoken with a dark and attentive smile. "You are certainly +a very ingenious person," he said; "it could not have been done better +in a book. But there is just one part of Mr Glass you have not succeeded +in explaining away, and that is his name. Miss MacNab distinctly +heard him so addressed by Mr Todhunter." + + The Rev. Mr Brown broke into a rather childish giggle. +"Well, that," he said, "that's the silliest part of the whole silly story. +When our juggling friend here threw up the three glasses in turn, +he counted them aloud as he caught them, and also commented aloud +when he failed to catch them. What he really said was: `One, two +and three--missed a glass one, two--missed a glass.' And so on." + + There was a second of stillness in the room, and then everyone +with one accord burst out laughing. As they did so the figure +in the corner complacently uncoiled all the ropes and let them fall +with a flourish. Then, advancing into the middle of the room with a bow, +he produced from his pocket a big bill printed in blue and red, +which announced that ZALADIN, the World's Greatest Conjurer, +Contortionist, Ventriloquist and Human Kangaroo would be ready +with an entirely new series of Tricks at the Empire Pavilion, +Scarborough, on Monday next at eight o'clock precisely. + + + + TWO + + + The Paradise of Thieves + + +THE great Muscari, most original of the young Tuscan poets, +walked swiftly into his favourite restaurant, which overlooked +the Mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon +and orange trees. Waiters in white aprons were already laying out +on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; +and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched +the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante; +his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, +and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him +a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a troubadour had still +a definite social office, like a bishop. He went as near as +his century permitted to walking the world literally like Don Juan, +with rapier and guitar. + + For he never travelled without a case of swords, with which +he had fought many brilliant duels, or without a corresponding case +for his mandolin, with which he had actually serenaded Miss Ethel Harrogate, +the highly conventional daughter of a Yorkshire banker on a holiday. +Yet he was neither a charlatan nor a child; but a hot, logical Latin +who liked a certain thing and was it. His poetry was as straightforward +as anyone else's prose. He desired fame or wine or the beauty of women +with a torrid directness inconceivable among the cloudy ideals +or cloudy compromises of the north; to vaguer races his intensity +smelt of danger or even crime. Like fire or the sea, he was too simple +to be trusted. + + The banker and his beautiful English daughter were staying +at the hotel attached to Muscari's restaurant; that was why it was +his favourite restaurant. A glance flashed around the room +told him at once, however, that the English party had not descended. +The restaurant was glittering, but still comparatively empty. +Two priests were talking at a table in a corner, but Muscari +(an ardent Catholic) took no more notice of them than of a couple of crows. +But from a yet farther seat, partly concealed behind a dwarf tree +golden with oranges, there rose and advanced towards the poet a person +whose costume was the most aggressively opposite to his own. + + This figure was clad in tweeds of a piebald check, with a pink tie, +a sharp collar and protuberant yellow boots. He contrived, +in the true tradition of 'Arry at Margate, to look at once startling +and commonplace. But as the Cockney apparition drew nearer, +Muscari was astounded to observe that the head was distinctly +different from the body. It was an Italian head: fuzzy, swarthy and +very vivacious, that rose abruptly out of the standing collar +like cardboard and the comic pink tie. In fact it was a head he knew. +He recognized it, above all the dire erection of English holiday array, +as the face of an old but forgotten friend name Ezza. This youth +had been a prodigy at college, and European fame was promised him +when he was barely fifteen; but when he appeared in the world he failed, +first publicly as a dramatist and a demagogue, and then privately +for years on end as an actor, a traveller, a commission agent +or a journalist. Muscari had known him last behind the footlights; +he was but too well attuned to the excitements of that profession, +and it was believed that some moral calamity had swallowed him up. + + "Ezza!" cried the poet, rising and shaking hands in +a pleasant astonishment. "Well, I've seen you in many costumes +in the green room; but I never expected to see you dressed up +as an Englishman." + + "This," answered Ezza gravely, "is not the costume of an Englishman, +but of the Italian of the future." + + "In that case," remarked Muscari, "I confess I prefer +the Italian of the past." + + "That is your old mistake, Muscari," said the man in tweeds, +shaking his head; "and the mistake of Italy. In the sixteenth century +we Tuscans made the morning: we had the newest steel, the newest carving, +the newest chemistry. Why should we not now have the newest factories, +the newest motors, the newest finance--the newest clothes?" + + "Because they are not worth having," answered Muscari. +"You cannot make Italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. +Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by +the new elaborate roads." + + "Well, to me Marconi, or D'Annunzio, is the star of Italy" +said the other. "That is why I have become a Futurist--and a courier." + + "A courier!" cried Muscari, laughing. "Is that the last of your +list of trades? And whom are you conducting?" + + "Oh, a man of the name of Harrogate, and his family, I believe." + + "Not the banker in this hotel?" inquired the poet, +with some eagerness. + + "That's the man," answered the courier. + + "Does it pay well?" asked the troubadour innocently. + + "It will pay me," said Ezza, with a very enigmatic smile. +"But I am a rather curious sort of courier." Then, as if +changing the subject, he said abruptly: "He has a daughter--and a son." + + "The daughter is divine," affirmed Muscari, "the father and son are, +I suppose, human. But granted his harmless qualities doesn't that banker +strike you as a splendid instance of my argument? Harrogate has millions +in his safes, and I have--the hole in my pocket. But you daren't say-- +you can't say--that he's cleverer than I, or bolder than I, or even +more energetic. He's not clever, he's got eyes like blue buttons; +he's not energetic, he moves from chair to chair like a paralytic. +He's a conscientious, kindly old blockhead; but he's got money simply +because he collects money, as a boy collects stamps. +You're too strong-minded for business, Ezza. You won't get on. +To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough +to want it." + + "I'm stupid enough for that," said Ezza gloomily. "But I should +suggest a suspension of your critique of the banker, for here he comes." + + Mr Harrogate, the great financier, did indeed enter the room, +but nobody looked at him. He was a massive elderly man with +a boiled blue eye and faded grey-sandy moustaches; but for +his heavy stoop he might have been a colonel. He carried several +unopened letters in his hand. His son Frank was a really fine lad, +curly-haired, sun-burnt and strenuous; but nobody looked at him either. +All eyes, as usual, were riveted, for the moment at least, +upon Ethel Harrogate, whose golden Greek head and colour of the dawn +seemed set purposely above that sapphire sea, like a goddess's. +The poet Muscari drew a deep breath as if he were drinking something, +as indeed he was. He was drinking the Classic; which his fathers made. +Ezza studied her with a gaze equally intense and far more baffling. + + Miss Harrogate was specially radiant and ready for conversation +on this occasion; and her family had fallen into the easier +Continental habit, allowing the stranger Muscari and even +the courier Ezza to share their table and their talk. In Ethel Harrogate +conventionality crowned itself with a perfection and splendour of its own. +Proud of her father's prosperity, fond of fashionable pleasures, +a fond daughter but an arrant flirt, she was all these things with +a sort of golden good-nature that made her very pride pleasing +and her worldly respectability a fresh and hearty thing. + + They were in an eddy of excitement about some alleged peril +in the mountain path they were to attempt that week. The danger was +not from rock and avalanche, but from something yet more romantic. +Ethel had been earnestly assured that brigands, the true cut-throats +of the modern legend, still haunted that ridge and held that pass +of the Apennines. + + "They say," she cried, with the awful relish of a schoolgirl, +"that all that country isn't ruled by the King of Italy, but by +the King of Thieves. Who is the King of Thieves?" + + "A great man," replied Muscari, "worthy to rank with +your own Robin Hood, signorina. Montano, the King of Thieves, +was first heard of in the mountains some ten years ago, when people +said brigands were extinct. But his wild authority spread with +the swiftness of a silent revolution. Men found his fierce proclamations +nailed in every mountain village; his sentinels, gun in hand, +in every mountain ravine. Six times the Italian Government +tried to dislodge him, and was defeated in six pitched battles +as if by Napoleon." + + "Now that sort of thing," observed the banker weightily, +"would never be allowed in England; perhaps, after all, we had better +choose another route. But the courier thought it perfectly safe." + + "It is perfectly safe," said the courier contemptuously. +"I have been over it twenty times. There may have been some old +jailbird called a King in the time of our grandmothers; +but he belongs to history if not to fable. Brigandage is utterly +stamped out." + + "It can never be utterly stamped out," Muscari answered; +"because armed revolt is a recreation natural to southerners. +Our peasants are like their mountains, rich in grace and green gaiety, +but with the fires beneath. There is a point of human despair where +the northern poor take to drink--and our own poor take to daggers." + + "A poet is privileged," replied Ezza, with a sneer. +"If Signor Muscari were English he would still be looking +for highwaymen in Wandsworth. Believe me, there is no more danger +of being captured in Italy than of being scalped in Boston." + + "Then you propose to attempt it?" asked Mr Harrogate, frowning. + + "Oh, it sounds rather dreadful," cried the girl, turning her +glorious eyes on Muscari. "Do you really think the pass is dangerous?" + + Muscari threw back his black mane. "I know it is dangerous:" +he said. "I am crossing it tomorrow." + + The young Harrogate was left behind for a moment emptying a glass of +white wine and lighting a cigarette, as the beauty retired with the banker, +the courier and the poet, distributing peals of silvery satire. +At about the same instant the two priests in the corner rose; +the taller, a white-haired Italian, taking his leave. The shorter priest +turned and walked towards the banker's son, and the latter was astonished +to realize that though a Roman priest the man was an Englishman. +He vaguely remembered meeting him at the social crushes of some of +his Catholic friends. But the man spoke before his memories could +collect themselves. + + "Mr Frank Harrogate, I think," he said. "I have had an introduction, +but I do not mean to presume on it. The odd thing I have to say +will come far better from a stranger. Mr Harrogate, I say one word and go: +take care of your sister in her great sorrow." + + Even for Frank's truly fraternal indifference the radiance +and derision of his sister still seemed to sparkle and ring; +he could hear her laughter still from the garden of the hotel, +and he stared at his sombre adviser in puzzledom. + + "Do you mean the brigands?" he asked; and then, remembering +a vague fear of his own, "or can you be thinking of Muscari?" + + "One is never thinking of the real sorrow," said the strange priest. +"One can only be kind when it comes." + + And he passed promptly from the room, leaving the other almost +with his mouth open. + + A day or two afterwards a coach containing the company was +really crawling and staggering up the spurs of the menacing mountain range. +Between Ezza's cheery denial of the danger and Muscari's boisterous +defiance of it, the financial family were firm in their original purpose; +and Muscari made his mountain journey coincide with theirs. +A more surprising feature was the appearance at the coast-town station +of the little priest of the restaurant; he alleged merely +that business led him also to cross the mountains of the midland. +But young Harrogate could not but connect his presence with +the mystical fears and warnings of yesterday. + + The coach was a kind of commodious wagonette, invented by +the modernist talent of the courier, who dominated the expedition +with his scientific activity and breezy wit. The theory of danger from +thieves was banished from thought and speech; though so far conceded +in formal act that some slight protection was employed. The courier +and the young banker carried loaded revolvers, and Muscari +(with much boyish gratification) buckled on a kind of cutlass +under his black cloak. + + He had planted his person at a flying leap next to +the lovely Englishwoman; on the other side of her sat the priest, +whose name was Brown and who was fortunately a silent individual; +the courier and the father and son were on the banc behind. +Muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the peril, +and his talk to Ethel might well have made her think him a maniac. +But there was something in the crazy and gorgeous ascent, +amid crags like peaks loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged +her spirit up alone with his into purple preposterous heavens +with wheeling suns. The white road climbed like a white cat; +it spanned sunless chasms like a tight-rope; it was flung round +far-off headlands like a lasso. + + And yet, however high they went, the desert still blossomed +like the rose. The fields were burnished in sun and wind +with the colour of kingfisher and parrot and humming-bird, +the hues of a hundred flowering flowers. There are no lovelier meadows +and woodlands than the English, no nobler crests or chasms than +those of Snowdon and Glencoe. But Ethel Harrogate had never before +seen the southern parks tilted on the splintered northern peaks; +the gorge of Glencoe laden with the fruits of Kent. There was nothing here +of that chill and desolation that in Britain one associates with +high and wild scenery. It was rather like a mosaic palace, +rent with earthquakes; or like a Dutch tulip garden blown to the stars +with dynamite. + + "It's like Kew Gardens on Beachy Head," said Ethel. + + "It is our secret," answered he, "the secret of the volcano; +that is also the secret of the revolution--that a thing can be violent +and yet fruitful." + + "You are rather violent yourself," and she smiled at him. + + "And yet rather fruitless," he admitted; "if I die tonight +I die unmarried and a fool." + + "It is not my fault if you have come," she said after +a difficult silence. + + "It is never your fault," answered Muscari; "it was not your fault +that Troy fell." + + As they spoke they came under overwhelming cliffs that spread +almost like wings above a corner of peculiar peril. Shocked by the +big shadow on the narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. +The driver leapt to the earth to hold their heads, and they +became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his full height-- +the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. +It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach +heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes +over the cliff. Muscari threw an arm round Ethel, who clung to him, +and shouted aloud. It was for such moments that he lived. + + At the moment when the gorgeous mountain walls went round +the poet's head like a purple windmill a thing happened which was +superficially even more startling. The elderly and lethargic banker +sprang erect in the coach and leapt over the precipice before +the tilted vehicle could take him there. In the first flash +it looked as wild as suicide; but in the second it was as sensible as +a safe investment. The Yorkshireman had evidently more promptitude, +as well as more sagacity, than Muscari had given him credit for; +for he landed in a lap of land which might have been specially padded +with turf and clover to receive him. As it happened, indeed, +the whole company were equally lucky, if less dignified in their +form of ejection. Immediately under this abrupt turn of the road +was a grassy and flowery hollow like a sunken meadow; a sort of +green velvet pocket in the long, green, trailing garments of the hills. +Into this they were all tipped or tumbled with little damage, +save that their smallest baggage and even the contents of their pockets +were scattered in the grass around them. The wrecked coach still +hung above, entangled in the tough hedge, and the horses plunged +painfully down the slope. The first to sit up was the little priest, +who scratched his head with a face of foolish wonder. Frank Harrogate +heard him say to himself: "Now why on earth have we fallen just here?" + + He blinked at the litter around him, and recovered his own +very clumsy umbrella. Beyond it lay the broad sombrero fallen from +the head of Muscari, and beside it a sealed business letter which, +after a glance at the address, he returned to the elder Harrogate. +On the other side of him the grass partly hid Miss Ethel's sunshade, +and just beyond it lay a curious little glass bottle hardly two inches long. +The priest picked it up; in a quick, unobtrusive manner he uncorked +and sniffed it, and his heavy face turned the colour of clay. + + "Heaven deliver us!" he muttered; "it can't be hers! +Has her sorrow come on her already?" He slipped it into his own +waistcoat pocket. "I think I'm justified," he said, "till I know +a little more." + + He gazed painfully at the girl, at that moment being raised out of +the flowers by Muscari, who was saying: "We have fallen into heaven; +it is a sign. Mortals climb up and they fall down; but it is only +gods and goddesses who can fall upwards." + + And indeed she rose out of the sea of colours so beautiful and +happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted. +"After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's +one of Muscari's melodramatic tricks." + + Muscari set the lady lightly on her feet, made her an absurdly +theatrical bow, and then, drawing his cutlass, hacked hard at +the taut reins of the horses, so that they scrambled to their feet +and stood in the grass trembling. When he had done so, +a most remarkable thing occurred. A very quiet man, very poorly dressed +and extremely sunburnt, came out of the bushes and took hold of +the horses' heads. He had a queer-shaped knife, very broad and crooked, +buckled on his belt; there was nothing else remarkable about him, +except his sudden and silent appearance. The poet asked him who he was, +and he did not answer. + + Looking around him at the confused and startled group in the hollow, +Muscari then perceived that another tanned and tattered man, +with a short gun under his arm, was looking at them from +the ledge just below, leaning his elbows on the edge of the turf. +Then he looked up at the road from which they had fallen and saw, +looking down on them, the muzzles of four other carbines and +four other brown faces with bright but quite motionless eyes. + + "The brigands!" cried Muscari, with a kind of monstrous gaiety. +"This was a trap. Ezza, if you will oblige me by shooting the +coachman first, we can cut our way out yet. There are only six of them." + + "The coachman," said Ezza, who was standing grimly with his hands +in his pockets, "happens to be a servant of Mr Harrogate's." + + "Then shoot him all the more," cried the poet impatiently; +"he was bribed to upset his master. Then put the lady in the middle, +and we will break the line up there--with a rush." + + And, wading in wild grass and flowers, he advanced fearlessly +on the four carbines; but finding that no one followed except +young Harrogate, he turned, brandishing his cutlass to wave the others on. +He beheld the courier still standing slightly astride in the centre of +the grassy ring, his hands in his pockets; and his lean, ironical +Italian face seemed to grow longer and longer in the evening light. + + "You thought, Muscari, I was the failure among our schoolfellows," +he said, "and you thought you were the success. But I have succeeded +more than you and fill a bigger place in history. I have been +acting epics while you have been writing them." + + "Come on, I tell you!" thundered Muscari from above. +"Will you stand there talking nonsense about yourself with a woman +to save and three strong men to help you? What do you call yourself?" + + "I call myself Montano," cried the strange courier in a voice +equally loud and full. "I am the King of Thieves, and I welcome you all +to my summer palace." + + And even as he spoke five more silent men with weapons ready +came out of the bushes, and looked towards him for their orders. +One of them held a large paper in his hand. + + "This pretty little nest where we are all picnicking," +went on the courier-brigand, with the same easy yet sinister smile, +"is, together with some caves underneath it, known by the name of +the Paradise of Thieves. It is my principal stronghold on these hills; +for (as you have doubtless noticed) the eyrie is invisible both from +the road above and from the valley below. It is something better +than impregnable; it is unnoticeable. Here I mostly live, and here +I shall certainly die, if the gendarmes ever track me here. +I am not the kind of criminal that `reserves his defence,' +but the better kind that reserves his last bullet." + + All were staring at him thunderstruck and still, except Father Brown, +who heaved a huge sigh as of relief and fingered the little phial +in his pocket. "Thank God!" he muttered; "that's much more probable. +The poison belongs to this robber-chief, of course. He carries it +so that he may never be captured, like Cato." + + The King of Thieves was, however, continuing his address with +the same kind of dangerous politeness. "It only remains for me," +he said, "to explain to my guests the social conditions upon which +I have the pleasure of entertaining them. I need not expound +the quaint old ritual of ransom, which it is incumbent upon me +to keep up; and even this only applies to a part of the company. +The Reverend Father Brown and the celebrated Signor Muscari +I shall release tomorrow at dawn and escort to my outposts. +Poets and priests, if you will pardon my simplicity of speech, +never have any money. And so (since it is impossible to get anything +out of them), let us, seize the opportunity to show our admiration for +classic literature and our reverence for Holy Church." + + He paused with an unpleasing smile; and Father Brown +blinked repeatedly at him, and seemed suddenly to be listening +with great attention. The brigand captain took the large paper from +the attendant brigand and, glancing over it, continued: +"My other intentions are clearly set forth in this public document, +which I will hand round in a moment; and which after that will be +posted on a tree by every village in the valley, and every cross-road +in the hills. I will not weary you with the verbalism, since you +will be able to check it; the substance of my proclamation is this: +I announce first that I have captured the English millionaire, +the colossus of finance, Mr Samuel Harrogate. I next announce +that I have found on his person notes and bonds for two thousand pounds, +which he has given up to me. Now since it would be really immoral +to announce such a thing to a credulous public if it had not occurred, +I suggest it should occur without further delay. I suggest that +Mr Harrogate senior should now give me the two thousand pounds +in his pocket." + + The banker looked at him under lowering brows, red-faced and sulky, +but seemingly cowed. That leap from the failing carriage seemed +to have used up his last virility. He had held back in a hang-dog style +when his son and Muscari had made a bold movement to break out of +the brigand trap. And now his red and trembling hand went reluctantly +to his breast-pocket, and passed a bundle of papers and envelopes +to the brigand. + + "Excellent!" cried that outlaw gaily; "so far we are all cosy. +I resume the points of my proclamation, so soon to be published +to all Italy. The third item is that of ransom. I am asking +from the friends of the Harrogate family a ransom of three thousand pounds, +which I am sure is almost insulting to that family in its moderate estimate +of their importance. Who would not pay triple this sum for another day's +association with such a domestic circle? I will not conceal from you +that the document ends with certain legal phrases about +the unpleasant things that may happen if the money is not paid; +but meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you that +I am comfortably off here for accommodation, wine and cigars, +and bid you for the present a sportsman-like welcome to the luxuries +of the Paradise of Thieves." + + All the time that he had been speaking, the dubious-looking men +with carbines and dirty slouch hats had been gathering silently +in such preponderating numbers that even Muscari was compelled +to recognize his sally with the sword as hopeless. He glanced around him; +but the girl had already gone over to soothe and comfort her father, +for her natural affection for his person was as strong or stronger than +her somewhat snobbish pride in his success. Muscari, with the illogicality +of a lover, admired this filial devotion, and yet was irritated by it. +He slapped his sword back in the scabbard and went and flung himself +somewhat sulkily on one of the green banks. The priest sat down +within a yard or two, and Muscari turned his aquiline nose on him +in an instantaneous irritation. + + "Well," said the poet tartly, "do people still think me too romantic? +Are there, I wonder, any brigands left in the mountains?" + + "There may be," said Father Brown agnostically. + + "What do you mean?" asked the other sharply. + + "I mean I am puzzled," replied the priest. "I am puzzled about +Ezza or Montano, or whatever his name is. He seems to me much more +inexplicable as a brigand even than he was as a courier." + + "But in what way?" persisted his companion. "Santa Maria! +I should have thought the brigand was plain enough." + + "I find three curious difficulties," said the priest in a quiet voice. +"I should like to have your opinion on them. First of all +I must tell you I was lunching in that restaurant at the seaside. +As four of you left the room, you and Miss Harrogate went ahead, +talking and laughing; the banker and the courier came behind, +speaking sparely and rather low. But I could not help hearing Ezza +say these words--`Well, let her have a little fun; you know the blow +may smash her any minute.' Mr Harrogate answered nothing; +so the words must have had some meaning. On the impulse of the moment +I warned her brother that she might be in peril; I said nothing +of its nature, for I did not know. But if it meant this capture +in the hills, the thing is nonsense. Why should the brigand-courier +warn his patron, even by a hint, when it was his whole purpose to lure him +into the mountain-mousetrap? It could not have meant that. +But if not, what is this disaster, known both to courier and banker, +which hangs over Miss Harrogate's head?" + + "Disaster to Miss Harrogate!" ejaculated the poet, sitting up +with some ferocity. "Explain yourself; go on." + + "All my riddles, however, revolve round our bandit chief," +resumed the priest reflectively. "And here is the second of them. +Why did he put so prominently in his demand for ransom the fact that +he had taken two thousand pounds from his victim on the spot? +It had no faintest tendency to evoke the ransom. Quite the other way, +in fact. Harrogate's friends would be far likelier to fear for his fate +if they thought the thieves were poor and desperate. Yet the spoliation +on the spot was emphasized and even put first in the demand. +Why should Ezza Montano want so specially to tell all Europe that +he had picked the pocket before he levied the blackmail?" + + "I cannot imagine," said Muscari, rubbing up his black hair +for once with an unaffected gesture. "You may think you enlighten me, +but you are leading me deeper in the dark. What may be the third +objection to the King of the Thieves?" "The third objection," +said Father Brown, still in meditation, "is this bank we are sitting on. +Why does our brigand-courier call this his chief fortress and +the Paradise of Thieves? It is certainly a soft spot to fall on +and a sweet spot to look at. It is also quite true, as he says, +that it is invisible from valley and peak, and is therefore a hiding-place. +But it is not a fortress. It never could be a fortress. +I think it would be the worst fortress in the world. For it is actually +commanded from above by the common high-road across the mountains-- +the very place where the police would most probably pass. +Why, five shabby short guns held us helpless here about half an hour ago. +The quarter of a company of any kind of soldiers could have blown us +over the precipice. Whatever is the meaning of this odd little nook +of grass and flowers, it is not an entrenched position. +It is something else; it has some other strange sort of importance; +some value that I do not understand. It is more like an accidental theatre +or a natural green-room; it is like the scene for some romantic comedy; +it is like...." + + As the little priest's words lengthened and lost themselves +in a dull and dreamy sincerity, Muscari, whose animal senses were alert +and impatient, heard a new noise in the mountains. Even for him +the sound was as yet very small and faint; but he could have sworn +the evening breeze bore with it something like the pulsation of +horses' hoofs and a distant hallooing. + + At the same moment, and long before the vibration had touched +the less-experienced English ears, Montano the brigand ran up +the bank above them and stood in the broken hedge, steadying himself +against a tree and peering down the road. He was a strange figure +as he stood there, for he had assumed a flapped fantastic hat and +swinging baldric and cutlass in his capacity of bandit king, +but the bright prosaic tweed of the courier showed through in patches +all over him. + + The next moment he turned his olive, sneering face and made +a movement with his hand. The brigands scattered at the signal, +not in confusion, but in what was evidently a kind of guerrilla discipline. +Instead of occupying the road along the ridge, they sprinkled themselves +along the side of it behind the trees and the hedge, as if watching unseen +for an enemy. The noise beyond grew stronger, beginning to shake +the mountain road, and a voice could be clearly heard calling out orders. +The brigands swayed and huddled, cursing and whispering, +and the evening air was full of little metallic noises as they +cocked their pistols, or loosened their knives, or trailed their scabbards +over the stones. Then the noises from both quarters seemed to meet +on the road above; branches broke, horses neighed, men cried out. + + "A rescue!" cried Muscari, springing to his feet and waving his hat; +"the gendarmes are on them! Now for freedom and a blow for it! +Now to be rebels against robbers! Come, don't let us leave everything +to the police; that is so dreadfully modern. Fall on the rear +of these ruffians. The gendarmes are rescuing us; come, friends, +let us rescue the gendarmes!" + + And throwing his hat over the trees, he drew his cutlass once more +and began to escalade the slope up to the road. Frank Harrogate +jumped up and ran across to help him, revolver in hand, but was astounded +to hear himself imperatively recalled by the raucous voice of his father, +who seemed to be in great agitation. + + "I won't have it," said the banker in a choking voice; +"I command you not to interfere." + + "But, father," said Frank very warmly, "an Italian gentleman has +led the way. You wouldn't have it said that the English hung back." + + "It is useless," said the older man, who was trembling violently, +"it is useless. We must submit to our lot." + + Father Brown looked at the banker; then he put his hand instinctively +as if on his heart, but really on the little bottle of poison; +and a great light came into his face like the light of the revelation +of death. + + Muscari meanwhile, without waiting for support, had crested the bank +up to the road, and struck the brigand king heavily on the shoulder, +causing him to stagger and swing round. Montano also had +his cutlass unsheathed, and Muscari, without further speech, +sent a slash at his head which he was compelled to catch and parry. +But even as the two short blades crossed and clashed the King of Thieves +deliberately dropped his point and laughed. + + "What's the good, old man?" he said in spirited Italian slang; +"this damned farce will soon be over." + + "What do you mean, you shuffler?" panted the fire-eating poet. +"Is your courage a sham as well as your honesty?" + + "Everything about me is a sham," responded the ex-courier +in complete good humour. "I am an actor; and if I ever had +a private character, I have forgotten it. I am no more a genuine brigand +than I am a genuine courier. I am only a bundle of masks, +and you can't fight a duel with that." And he laughed with boyish pleasure +and fell into his old straddling attitude, with his back to the skirmish +up the road. + + Darkness was deepening under the mountain walls, and it was not easy +to discern much of the progress of the struggle, save that tall men +were pushing their horses' muzzles through a clinging crowd of brigands, +who seemed more inclined to harass and hustle the invaders +than to kill them. It was more like a town crowd preventing +the passage of the police than anything the poet had ever pictured +as the last stand of doomed and outlawed men of blood. Just as he was +rolling his eyes in bewilderment he felt a touch on his elbow, +and found the odd little priest standing there like a small Noah +with a large hat, and requesting the favour of a word or two. + + "Signor Muscari," said the cleric, "in this queer crisis +personalities may be pardoned. I may tell you without offence +of a way in which you will do more good than by helping the gendarmes, +who are bound to break through in any case. You will permit me +the impertinent intimacy, but do you care about that girl? +Care enough to marry her and make her a good husband, I mean?" + + "Yes," said the poet quite simply. + + "Does she care about you?" + + "I think so," was the equally grave reply. + + "Then go over there and offer yourself," said the priest: +"offer her everything you can; offer her heaven and earth +if you've got them. The time is short." + + "Why?" asked the astonished man of letters. + + "Because," said Father Brown, "her Doom is coming up the road." + + "Nothing is coming up the road," argued Muscari, "except the rescue." + + "Well, you go over there," said his adviser, "and be ready +to rescue her from the rescue." + + Almost as he spoke the hedges were broken all along the ridge +by a rush of the escaping brigands. They dived into bushes +and thick grass like defeated men pursued; and the great cocked hats +of the mounted gendarmerie were seen passing along above the broken hedge. +Another order was given; there was a noise of dismounting, +and a tall officer with cocked hat, a grey imperial, and a paper in his hand +appeared in the gap that was the gate of the Paradise of Thieves. +There was a momentary silence, broken in an extraordinary way by the banker, +who cried out in a hoarse and strangled voice: "Robbed! I've been robbed!" + + "Why, that was hours ago," cried his son in astonishment: +"when you were robbed of two thousand pounds." + + "Not of two thousand pounds," said the financier, with an abrupt +and terrible composure, "only of a small bottle." + + The policeman with the grey imperial was striding across +the green hollow. Encountering the King of the Thieves in his path, +he clapped him on the shoulder with something between a caress +and a buffet and gave him a push that sent him staggering away. +"You'll get into trouble, too," he said, "if you play these tricks." + + Again to Muscari's artistic eye it seemed scarcely like +the capture of a great outlaw at bay. Passing on, the policeman halted +before the Harrogate group and said: "Samuel Harrogate, I arrest you +in the name of the law for embezzlement of the funds of the Hull and +Huddersfield Bank." + + The great banker nodded with an odd air of business assent, +seemed to reflect a moment, and before they could interpose took +a half turn and a step that brought him to the edge of the outer +mountain wall. Then, flinging up his hands, he leapt exactly as he leapt +out of the coach. But this time he did not fall into a little meadow +just beneath; he fell a thousand feet below, to become a wreck of bones +in the valley. + + The anger of the Italian policeman, which he expressed volubly +to Father Brown, was largely mixed with admiration. "It was like him +to escape us at last," he said. "He was a great brigand if you like. +This last trick of his I believe to be absolutely unprecedented. +He fled with the company's money to Italy, and actually got himself +captured by sham brigands in his own pay, so as to explain both the +disappearance of the money and the disappearance of himself. +That demand for ransom was really taken seriously by most of the police. +But for years he's been doing things as good as that, quite as good +as that. He will be a serious loss to his family." + + Muscari was leading away the unhappy daughter, who held hard to him, +as she did for many a year after. But even in that tragic wreck +he could not help having a smile and a hand of half-mocking friendship +for the indefensible Ezza Montano. "And where are you going next?" +he asked him over his shoulder. + + "Birmingham," answered the actor, puffing a cigarette. +"Didn't I tell you I was a Futurist? I really do believe in those things +if I believe in anything. Change, bustle and new things every morning. +I am going to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Huddersfield, +Glasgow, Chicago--in short, to enlightened, energetic, civilized society!" + + "In short," said Muscari, "to the real Paradise of Thieves." + + + + THREE + + The Duel of Dr Hirsch + + +M. MAURICE BRUN and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit +Champs Elysee with a kind of vivacious respectability. +They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards +that did not seem to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion +which makes real hair look like artificial. M. Brun had +a dark wedge of beard apparently affixed under his lower lip. +M. Armagnac, by way of a change, had two beards; one sticking out +from each corner of his emphatic chin. They were both young. +They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook +but great mobility of exposition. They were both pupils of +the great Dr Hirsch, scientist, publicist and moralist. + + M. Brun had become prominent by his proposal that the common +expression "Adieu" should be obliterated from all the French classics, +and a slight fine imposed for its use in private life. "Then," he said, +"the very name of your imagined God will have echoed for the last time +in the ear of man." M. Armagnac specialized rather in a resistance +to militarism, and wished the chorus of the Marseillaise altered from +"Aux armes, citoyens" to "Aux greves, citoyens". But his antimilitarism +was of a peculiar and Gallic sort. An eminent and very wealthy +English Quaker, who had come to see him to arrange for the disarmament +of the whole planet, was rather distressed by Armagnac's proposal +that (by way of beginning) the soldiers should shoot their officers. + + And indeed it was in this regard that the two men differed most +from their leader and father in philosophy. Dr Hirsch, +though born in France and covered with the most triumphant favours +of French education, was temperamentally of another type--mild, dreamy, +humane; and, despite his sceptical system, not devoid of transcendentalism. +He was, in short, more like a German than a Frenchman; and much as they +admired him, something in the subconsciousness of these Gauls was +irritated at his pleading for peace in so peaceful a manner. +To their party throughout Europe, however, Paul Hirsch was +a saint of science. His large and daring cosmic theories +advertised his austere life and innocent, if somewhat frigid, morality; +he held something of the position of Darwin doubled with the position +of Tolstoy. But he was neither an anarchist nor an antipatriot; +his views on disarmament were moderate and evolutionary-- +the Republican Government put considerable confidence in him +as to various chemical improvements. He had lately even discovered +a noiseless explosive, the secret of which the Government was +carefully guarding. + + His house stood in a handsome street near the Elysee-- +a street which in that strong summer seemed almost as full of foliage +as the park itself; a row of chestnuts shattered the sunshine, +interrupted only in one place where a large cafe ran out into the street. +Almost opposite to this were the white and green blinds of +the great scientist's house, an iron balcony, also painted green, +running along in front of the first-floor windows. Beneath this was +the entrance into a kind of court, gay with shrubs and tiles, +into which the two Frenchmen passed in animated talk. + + The door was opened to them by the doctor's old servant, Simon, +who might very well have passed for a doctor himself, having a strict +suit of black, spectacles, grey hair, and a confidential manner. +In fact, he was a far more presentable man of science than his master, +Dr Hirsch, who was a forked radish of a fellow, with just enough +bulb of a head to make his body insignificant. With all the gravity +of a great physician handling a prescription, Simon handed a letter +to M. Armagnac. That gentleman ripped it up with a racial impatience, +and rapidly read the following: + + I cannot come down to speak to you. There is a man in this house +whom I refuse to meet. He is a Chauvinist officer, Dubosc. +He is sitting on the stairs. He has been kicking the furniture about +in all the other rooms; I have locked myself in my study, +opposite that cafe. If you love me, go over to the cafe and wait +at one of the tables outside. I will try to send him over to you. +I want you to answer him and deal with him. I cannot meet him myself. +I cannot: I will not. + + There is going to be another Dreyfus case. + + P. HIRSCH + + + + M. Armagnac looked at M. Brun. M. Brun borrowed the letter, +read it, and looked at M. Armagnac. Then both betook themselves briskly +to one of the little tables under the chestnuts opposite, +where they procured two tall glasses of horrible green absinthe, +which they could drink apparently in any weather and at any time. +Otherwise the cafe seemed empty, except for one soldier drinking coffee +at one table, and at another a large man drinking a small syrup and +a priest drinking nothing. + + Maurice Brun cleared his throat and said: "Of course we must help +the master in every way, but--" + + There was an abrupt silence, and Armagnac said: "He may have +excellent reasons for not meeting the man himself, but--" + + Before either could complete a sentence, it was evident that +the invader had been expelled from the house opposite. The shrubs under +the archway swayed and burst apart, as that unwelcome guest was +shot out of them like a cannon-ball. + + He was a sturdy figure in a small and tilted Tyrolean felt hat, +a figure that had indeed something generally Tyrolean about it. +The man's shoulders were big and broad, but his legs were neat and active +in knee-breeches and knitted stockings. His face was brown like a nut; +he had very bright and restless brown eyes; his dark hair was brushed back +stiffly in front and cropped close behind, outlining a square and +powerful skull; and he had a huge black moustache like the horns of a bison. +Such a substantial head is generally based on a bull neck; but this was +hidden by a big coloured scarf, swathed round up the man's ears +and falling in front inside his jacket like a sort of fancy waistcoat. +It was a scarf of strong dead colours, dark red and old gold and purple, +probably of Oriental fabrication. Altogether the man had something +a shade barbaric about him; more like a Hungarian squire than +an ordinary French officer. His French, however, was obviously +that of a native; and his French patriotism was so impulsive +as to be slightly absurd. His first act when he burst out of the archway +was to call in a clarion voice down the street: "Are there any +Frenchmen here?" as if he were calling for Christians in Mecca. + + Armagnac and Brun instantly stood up; but they were too late. +Men were already running from the street corners; there was a small +but ever-clustering crowd. With the prompt French instinct for +the politics of the street, the man with the black moustache had already +run across to a corner of the cafe, sprung on one of the tables, +and seizing a branch of chestnut to steady himself, shouted +as Camille Desmoulins once shouted when he scattered the oak-leaves +among the populace. + + "Frenchmen!" he volleyed; "I cannot speak! God help me, that is why +I am speaking! The fellows in their filthy parliaments who learn +to speak also learn to be silent--silent as that spy cowering +in the house opposite! Silent as he is when I beat on his bedroom door! +Silent as he is now, though he hears my voice across this street +and shakes where he sits! Oh, they can be silent eloquently-- +the politicians! But the time has come when we that cannot speak +must speak. You are betrayed to the Prussians. Betrayed at this moment. +Betrayed by that man. I am Jules Dubosc, Colonel of Artillery, Belfort. +We caught a German spy in the Vosges yesterday, and a paper was found +on him--a paper I hold in my hand. Oh, they tried to hush it up; +but I took it direct to the man who wrote it--the man in that house! +It is in his hand. It is signed with his initials. It is a direction +for finding the secret of this new Noiseless Powder. Hirsch invented it; +Hirsch wrote this note about it. This note is in German, and was found +in a German's pocket. `Tell the man the formula for powder is in +grey envelope in first drawer to the left of Secretary's desk, +War Office, in red ink. He must be careful. P.H.'" + + He rattled short sentences like a quick-firing gun, but he was plainly +the sort of man who is either mad or right. The mass of the crowd +was Nationalist, and already in threatening uproar; and a minority +of equally angry Intellectuals, led by Armagnac and Brun, only made +the majority more militant. + + "If this is a military secret," shouted Brun, "why do you yell +about it in the street?" + + "I will tell you why I do!" roared Dubosc above the roaring crowd. +"I went to this man in straight and civil style. If he had any explanation +it could have been given in complete confidence. He refuses to explain. +He refers me to two strangers in a cafe as to two flunkeys. +He has thrown me out of the house, but I am going back into it, +with the people of Paris behind me!" + + A shout seemed to shake the very facade of mansions and +two stones flew, one breaking a window above the balcony. +The indignant Colonel plunged once more under the archway and was heard +crying and thundering inside. Every instant the human sea grew wider +and wider; it surged up against the rails and steps of the traitor's house; +it was already certain that the place would be burst into like +the Bastille, when the broken french window opened and Dr Hirsch came out +on the balcony. For an instant the fury half turned to laughter; +for he was an absurd figure in such a scene. His long bare neck and +sloping shoulders were the shape of a champagne bottle, but that was +the only festive thing about him. His coat hung on him as on a peg; +he wore his carrot-coloured hair long and weedy; his cheeks and chin +were fully fringed with one of those irritating beards that begin +far from the mouth. He was very pale, and he wore blue spectacles. + + Livid as he was, he spoke with a sort of prim decision, +so that the mob fell silent in the middle of his third sentence. + + "...only two things to say to you now. The first is to my foes, +the second to my friends. To my foes I say: It is true I will not +meet M. Dubosc, though he is storming outside this very room. +It is true I have asked two other men to confront him for me. +And I will tell you why! Because I will not and must not see him-- +because it would be against all rules of dignity and honour to see him. +Before I am triumphantly cleared before a court, there is +another arbitration this gentleman owes me as a gentleman, +and in referring him to my seconds I am strictly--" + + Armagnac and Brun were waving their hats wildly, and even +the Doctor's enemies roared applause at this unexpected defiance. +Once more a few sentences were inaudible, but they could hear him say: +"To my friends--I myself should always prefer weapons purely intellectual, +and to these an evolved humanity will certainly confine itself. +But our own most precious truth is the fundamental force of matter +and heredity. My books are successful; my theories are unrefuted; +but I suffer in politics from a prejudice almost physical in the French. +I cannot speak like Clemenceau and Deroulede, for their words are like +echoes of their pistols. The French ask for a duellist as the English +ask for a sportsman. Well, I give my proofs: I will pay +this barbaric bribe, and then go back to reason for the rest of my life." + + Two men were instantly found in the crowd itself to offer +their services to Colonel Dubosc, who came out presently, satisfied. +One was the common soldier with the coffee, who said simply: +"I will act for you, sir. I am the Duc de Valognes." The other was +the big man, whom his friend the priest sought at first to dissuade; +and then walked away alone. + + In the early evening a light dinner was spread at the back of +the Cafe Charlemagne. Though unroofed by any glass or gilt plaster, +the guests were nearly all under a delicate and irregular roof of leaves; +for the ornamental trees stood so thick around and among the tables +as to give something of the dimness and the dazzle of a small orchard. +At one of the central tables a very stumpy little priest sat +in complete solitude, and applied himself to a pile of whitebait +with the gravest sort of enjoyment. His daily living being very plain, +he had a peculiar taste for sudden and isolated luxuries; he was +an abstemious epicure. He did not lift his eyes from his plate, +round which red pepper, lemons, brown bread and butter, etc., +were rigidly ranked, until a tall shadow fell across the table, +and his friend Flambeau sat down opposite. Flambeau was gloomy. + + "I'm afraid I must chuck this business," said he heavily. +"I'm all on the side of the French soldiers like Dubosc, +and I'm all against the French atheists like Hirsch; but it seems to me +in this case we've made a mistake. The Duke and I thought it as well +to investigate the charge, and I must say I'm glad we did." + + "Is the paper a forgery, then?" asked the priest + + "That's just the odd thing," replied Flambeau. "It's exactly like +Hirsch's writing, and nobody can point out any mistake in it. +But it wasn't written by Hirsch. If he's a French patriot +he didn't write it, because it gives information to Germany. +And if he's a German spy he didn't write it, well--because it doesn't +give information to Germany." + + "You mean the information is wrong?" asked Father Brown. + + "Wrong," replied the other, "and wrong exactly where Dr Hirsch +would have been right--about the hiding-place of his own secret formula +in his own official department. By favour of Hirsch and the authorities, +the Duke and I have actually been allowed to inspect the secret drawer +at the War Office where the Hirsch formula is kept. We are the only people +who have ever known it, except the inventor himself and the Minister +for War; but the Minister permitted it to save Hirsch from fighting. +After that we really can't support Dubosc if his revelation +is a mare's nest." + + "And it is?" asked Father Brown. + + "It is," said his friend gloomily. "It is a clumsy forgery +by somebody who knew nothing of the real hiding-place. It says the paper +is in the cupboard on the right of the Secretary's desk. As a fact +the cupboard with the secret drawer is some way to the left of the desk. +It says the grey envelope contains a long document written in red ink. +It isn't written in red ink, but in ordinary black ink. +It's manifestly absurd to say that Hirsch can have made a mistake +about a paper that nobody knew of but himself; or can have tried +to help a foreign thief by telling him to fumble in the wrong drawer. +I think we must chuck it up and apologize to old Carrots." + + Father Brown seemed to cogitate; he lifted a little whitebait +on his fork. "You are sure the grey envelope was in the left cupboard?" +he asked. + + "Positive," replied Flambeau. "The grey envelope-- +it was a white envelope really--was--" + + Father Brown put down the small silver fish and the fork and +stared across at his companion. "What?" he asked, in an altered voice. + + "Well, what?" repeated Flambeau, eating heartily. + + "It was not grey," said the priest. "Flambeau, you frighten me." + + "What the deuce are you frightened of?" + + "I'm frightened of a white envelope," said the other seriously, +"If it had only just been grey! Hang it all, it might as well +have been grey. But if it was white, the whole business is black. +The Doctor has been dabbling in some of the old brimstone after all." + + "But I tell you he couldn't have written such a note!" +cried Flambeau. "The note is utterly wrong about the facts. +And innocent or guilty, Dr Hirsch knew all about the facts." + + "The man who wrote that note knew all about the facts," +said his clerical companion soberly. "He could never have +got 'em so wrong without knowing about 'em. You have to know +an awful lot to be wrong on every subject--like the devil." + + "Do you mean--?" + + "I mean a man telling lies on chance would have told some of the truth," +said his friend firmly. "Suppose someone sent you to find a house +with a green door and a blue blind, with a front garden but no back garden, +with a dog but no cat, and where they drank coffee but not tea. +You would say if you found no such house that it was all made up. +But I say no. I say if you found a house where the door was blue and +the blind green, where there was a back garden and no front garden, +where cats were common and dogs instantly shot, where tea was drunk +in quarts and coffee forbidden--then you would know you had +found the house. The man must have known that particular house +to be so accurately inaccurate." + + "But what could it mean?" demanded the diner opposite. + + "I can't conceive," said Brown; "I don't understand this Hirsch +affair at all. As long as it was only the left drawer instead of +the right, and red ink instead of black, I thought it must be the +chance blunders of a forger, as you say. But three is a mystical number; +it finishes things. It finishes this. That the direction about +the drawer, the colour of ink, the colour of envelope, should none of +them be right by accident, that can't be a coincidence. It wasn't." + + "What was it, then? Treason?" asked Flambeau, resuming his dinner. + + "I don't know that either," answered Brown, with a face +of blank bewilderment. "The only thing I can think of.... +Well, I never understood that Dreyfus case. I can always grasp +moral evidence easier than the other sorts. I go by a man's eyes and voice, +don't you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what +subjects he chooses--and avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. +Not by the horrible things imputed both ways; I know (though it's not +modern to say so) that human nature in the highest places is still capable +of being Cenci or Borgia. No--, what puzzled me was the sincerity +of both parties. I don't mean the political parties; the rank and file +are always roughly honest, and often duped. I mean the persons +of the play. I mean the conspirators, if they were conspirators. +I mean the traitor, if he was a traitor. I mean the men who must have +known the truth. Now Dreyfus went on like a man who knew he was +a wronged man. And yet the French statesmen and soldiers went on +as if they knew he wasn't a wronged man but simply a wrong 'un. +I don't mean they behaved well; I mean they behaved as if they were sure. +I can't describe these things; I know what I mean." + + "I wish I did," said his friend. "And what has it to do +with old Hirsch?" + + "Suppose a person in a position of trust," went on the priest, +"began to give the enemy information because it was false information. +Suppose he even thought he was saving his country by misleading the foreigner. +Suppose this brought him into spy circles, and little loans were made to him, +and little ties tied on to him. Suppose he kept up his contradictory +position in a confused way by never telling the foreign spies the truth, +but letting it more and more be guessed. The better part of him +(what was left of it) would still say: `I have not helped the enemy; +I said it was the left drawer.' The meaner part of him would already +be saying: `But they may have the sense to see that means the right.' +I think it is psychologically possible--in an enlightened age, you know." + + "It may be psychologically possible," answered Flambeau, +"and it certainly would explain Dreyfus being certain he was wronged +and his judges being sure he was guilty. But it won't wash historically, +because Dreyfus's document (if it was his document) was literally correct." + + "I wasn't thinking of Dreyfus," said Father Brown. + + Silence had sunk around them with the emptying of the tables; +it was already late, though the sunlight still clung to everything, +as if accidentally entangled in the trees. In the stillness Flambeau +shifted his seat sharply--making an isolated and echoing noise-- +and threw his elbow over the angle of it. "Well," he said, rather harshly, +"if Hirsch is not better than a timid treason-monger..." + + "You mustn't be too hard on them," said Father Brown gently. +"It's not entirely their fault; but they have no instincts. +I mean those things that make a woman refuse to dance with a man +or a man to touch an investment. They've been taught that +it's all a matter of degree." + + "Anyhow," cried Flambeau impatiently, "he's not a patch +on my principal; and I shall go through with it. Old Dubosc may be +a bit mad, but he's a sort of patriot after all." + + Father Brown continued to consume whitebait. + + Something in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau's +fierce black eyes to ramble over his companion afresh. "What's the matter +with you?" Flambeau demanded. "Dubosc's all right in that way. +You don't doubt him?" + + "My friend," said the small priest, laying down his knife and fork +in a kind of cold despair, "I doubt everything. Everything, I mean, +that has happened today. I doubt the whole story, though it has been +acted before my face. I doubt every sight that my eyes have seen +since morning. There is something in this business quite different +from the ordinary police mystery where one man is more or less lying +and the other man more or less telling the truth. Here both men.... +Well! I've told you the only theory I can think of that could +satisfy anybody. It doesn't satisfy me." + + "Nor me either," replied Flambeau frowning, while the other +went on eating fish with an air of entire resignation. "If all you +can suggest is that notion of a message conveyed by contraries, +I call it uncommonly clever, but...well, what would you call it?" + + "I should call it thin," said the priest promptly. +"I should call it uncommonly thin. But that's the queer thing +about the whole business. The lie is like a schoolboy's. +There are only three versions, Dubosc's and Hirsch's and that fancy of mine. +Either that note was written by a French officer to ruin a French official; +or it was written by the French official to help German officers; +or it was written by the French official to mislead German officers. +Very well. You'd expect a secret paper passing between such people, +officials or officers, to look quite different from that. +You'd expect, probably a cipher, certainly abbreviations; +most certainly scientific and strictly professional terms. +But this thing's elaborately simple, like a penny dreadful: +`In the purple grotto you will find the golden casket.' It looks as if... +as if it were meant to be seen through at once." + + Almost before they could take it in a short figure in French uniform +had walked up to their table like the wind, and sat down +with a sort of thump. + + "I have extraordinary news," said the Duc de Valognes. +"I have just come from this Colonel of ours. He is packing up +to leave the country, and he asks us to make his excuses sur le terrain." + + "What?" cried Flambeau, with an incredulity quite frightful-- +"apologize?" + + "Yes," said the Duke gruffly; "then and there--before everybody-- +when the swords are drawn. And you and I have to do it while +he is leaving the country." + + "But what can this mean?" cried Flambeau. "He can't be afraid of +that little Hirsch! Confound it!" he cried, in a kind of rational rage; +"nobody could be afraid of Hirsch!" + + "I believe it's some plot!" snapped Valognes--"some plot of +the Jews and Freemasons. It's meant to work up glory for Hirsch..." + + The face of Father Brown was commonplace, but curiously contented; +it could shine with ignorance as well as with knowledge. +But there was always one flash when the foolish mask fell, +and the wise mask fitted itself in its place; and Flambeau, +who knew his friend, knew that his friend had suddenly understood. +Brown said nothing, but finished his plate of fish. + + "Where did you last see our precious Colonel?" asked Flambeau, +irritably. + + "He's round at the Hotel Saint Louis by the Elysee, +where we drove with him. He's packing up, I tell you." + + "Will he be there still, do you think?" asked Flambeau, +frowning at the table. + + "I don't think he can get away yet," replied the Duke; +"he's packing to go a long journey..." + + "No," said Father Brown, quite simply, but suddenly standing up, +"for a very short journey. For one of the shortest, in fact. +But we may still be in time to catch him if we go there in a motor-cab." + + Nothing more could be got out of him until the cab swept +round the corner by the Hotel Saint Louis, where they got out, +and he led the party up a side lane already in deep shadow with +the growing dusk. Once, when the Duke impatiently asked whether +Hirsch was guilty of treason or not, he answered rather absently: +"No; only of ambition--like Caesar." Then he somewhat inconsequently added: +"He lives a very lonely life; he has had to do everything for himself." + + "Well, if he's ambitious, he ought to be satisfied now," +said Flambeau rather bitterly. "All Paris will cheer him +now our cursed Colonel has turned tail." + + "Don't talk so loud," said Father Brown, lowering his voice, +"your cursed Colonel is just in front." + + The other two started and shrank farther back into the shadow +of the wall, for the sturdy figure of their runaway principal +could indeed be seen shuffling along in the twilight in front, +a bag in each hand. He looked much the same as when they first saw him, +except that he had changed his picturesque mountaineering knickers +for a conventional pair of trousers. It was clear he was already +escaping from the hotel. + + The lane down which they followed him was one of those that +seem to be at the back of things, and look like the wrong side +of the stage scenery. A colourless, continuous wall ran down +one flank of it, interrupted at intervals by dull-hued and +dirt-stained doors, all shut fast and featureless save for +the chalk scribbles of some passing gamin. The tops of trees, +mostly rather depressing evergreens, showed at intervals over +the top of the wall, and beyond them in the grey and purple gloaming +could be seen the back of some long terrace of tall Parisian houses, +really comparatively close, but somehow looking as inaccessible +as a range of marble mountains. On the other side of the lane ran +the high gilt railings of a gloomy park. + + Flambeau was looking round him in rather a weird way. +"Do you know," he said, "there is something about this place that--" + + "Hullo!" called out the Duke sharply; "that fellow's disappeared. +Vanished, like a blasted fairy!" + + "He has a key," explained their clerical friend. "He's only gone +into one of these garden doors," and as he spoke they heard one of +the dull wooden doors close again with a click in front of them. + + Flambeau strode up to the door thus shut almost in his face, +and stood in front of it for a moment, biting his black moustache +in a fury of curiosity. Then he threw up his long arms and +swung himself aloft like a monkey and stood on the top of the wall, +his enormous figure dark against the purple sky, like the dark tree-tops. + + The Duke looked at the priest. "Dubosc's escape is +more elaborate than we thought," he said; "but I suppose he is +escaping from France." + + "He is escaping from everywhere," answered Father Brown. + + Valognes's eyes brightened, but his voice sank. "Do you mean +suicide?" he asked. + + "You will not find his body," replied the other. + + A kind of cry came from Flambeau on the wall above. +"My God," he exclaimed in French, "I know what this place is now! +Why, it's the back of the street where old Hirsch lives. I thought +I could recognize the back of a house as well as the back of a man." + + "And Dubosc's gone in there!" cried the Duke, smiting his hip. +"Why, they'll meet after all!" And with sudden Gallic vivacity +he hopped up on the wall beside Flambeau and sat there positively +kicking his legs with excitement. The priest alone remained below, +leaning against the wall, with his back to the whole theatre of events, +and looking wistfully across to the park palings and the twinkling, +twilit trees. + + The Duke, however stimulated, had the instincts of an aristocrat, +and desired rather to stare at the house than to spy on it; +but Flambeau, who had the instincts of a burglar (and a detective), +had already swung himself from the wall into the fork of a straggling tree +from which he could crawl quite close to the only illuminated window +in the back of the high dark house. A red blind had been pulled down +over the light, but pulled crookedly, so that it gaped on one side, +and by risking his neck along a branch that looked as treacherous +as a twig, Flambeau could just see Colonel Dubosc walking about +in a brilliantly-lighted and luxurious bedroom. But close as Flambeau was +to the house, he heard the words of his colleagues by the wall, +and repeated them in a low voice. + + "Yes, they will meet now after all!" + + "They will never meet," said Father Brown. "Hirsch was right +when he said that in such an affair the principals must not meet. +Have you read a queer psychological story by Henry James, +of two persons who so perpetually missed meeting each other by accident +that they began to feel quite frightened of each other, and to think +it was fate? This is something of the kind, but more curious." + + "There are people in Paris who will cure them of such morbid fancies," +said Valognes vindictively. "They will jolly well have to meet +if we capture them and force them to fight." + + "They will not meet on the Day of Judgement," said the priest. +"If God Almighty held the truncheon of the lists, if St Michael +blew the trumpet for the swords to cross--even then, if one of them +stood ready, the other would not come." + + "Oh, what does all this mysticism mean?" cried the Duc de Valognes, +impatiently; "why on earth shouldn't they meet like other people?" + + "They are the opposite of each other," said Father Brown, +with a queer kind of smile. "They contradict each other. +They cancel out, so to speak." + + He continued to gaze at the darkening trees opposite, but Valognes +turned his head sharply at a suppressed exclamation from Flambeau. +That investigator, peering into the lighted room, had just seen +the Colonel, after a pace or two, proceed to take his coat off. +Flambeau's first thought was that this really looked like a fight; +but he soon dropped the thought for another. The solidity and +squareness of Dubosc's chest and shoulders was all a powerful piece +of padding and came off with his coat. In his shirt and trousers +he was a comparatively slim gentleman, who walked across the bedroom to +the bathroom with no more pugnacious purpose than that of washing himself. +He bent over a basin, dried his dripping hands and face on a towel, +and turned again so that the strong light fell on his face. +His brown complexion had gone, his big black moustache had gone; +he--was clean-shaven and very pate. Nothing remained of the Colonel +but his bright, hawk-like, brown eyes. Under the wall Father Brown +was going on in heavy meditation, as if to himself. + + "It is all just like what I was saying to Flambeau. +These opposites won't do. They don't work. They don't fight. +If it's white instead of black, and solid instead of liquid, +and so on all along the line--then there's something wrong, Monsieur, +there's something wrong. One of these men is fair and the other dark, +one stout and the other slim, one strong and the other weak. +One has a moustache and no beard, so you can't see his mouth; +the other has a beard and no moustache, so you can't see his chin. +One has hair cropped to his skull, but a scarf to hide his neck; +the other has low shirt-collars, but long hair to bide his skull. +It's all too neat and correct, Monsieur, and there's something wrong. +Things made so opposite are things that cannot quarrel. +Wherever the one sticks out the other sinks in. Like a face and a mask, +like a lock and a key..." + + Flambeau was peering into the house with a visage as white as a sheet. +The occupant of the room was standing with his back to him, +but in front of a looking-glass, and had already fitted round his face +a sort of framework of rank red hair, hanging disordered from the head and +clinging round the jaws and chin while leaving the mocking mouth uncovered. +Seen thus in the glass the white face looked like the face of Judas +laughing horribly and surrounded by capering flames of hell. +For a spasm Flambeau saw the fierce, red-brown eyes dancing, +then they were covered with a pair of blue spectacles. Slipping on +a loose black coat, the figure vanished towards the front of the house. +A few moments later a roar of popular applause from the street beyond +announced that Dr Hirsch had once more appeared upon the balcony. + + + + + FOUR + + + The Man in the Passage + + +TWO men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage +running along the side of the Apollo Theatre in the Adelphi. +The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous, +opalescent and empty. The passage was comparatively long and dark, +so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at the other end. +Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline; +for they were both men of striking appearance and they hated each other. + + The covered passage opened at one end on one of the steep streets +of the Adelphi, and at the other on a terrace overlooking +the sunset-coloured river. One side of the passage was a blank wall, +for the building it supported was an old unsuccessful theatre restaurant, +now shut up. The other side of the passage contained two doors, +one at each end. Neither was what was commonly called the stage door; +they were a sort of special and private stage doors used by +very special performers, and in this case by the star actor +and actress in the Shakespearean performance of the day. +Persons of that eminence often like to have such private exits +and entrances, for meeting friends or avoiding them. + + The two men in question were certainly two such friends, +men who evidently knew the doors and counted on their opening, +for each approached the door at the upper end with equal coolness +and confidence. Not, however, with equal speed; but the man +who walked fast was the man from the other end of the tunnel, +so they both arrived before the secret stage door almost at +the same instant. They saluted each other with civility, +and waited a moment before one of them, the sharper walker +who seemed to have the shorter patience, knocked at the door. + + In this and everything else each man was opposite and neither +could be called inferior. As private persons both were handsome, +capable and popular. As public persons, both were in the first public rank. +But everything about them, from their glory to their good looks, +was of a diverse and incomparable kind. Sir Wilson Seymour was +the kind of man whose importance is known to everybody who knows. +The more you mixed with the innermost ring in every polity or profession, +the more often you met Sir Wilson Seymour. He was the one intelligent man +on twenty unintelligent committees--on every sort of subject, +from the reform of the Royal Academy to the project of bimetallism +for Greater Britain. In the Arts especially he was omnipotent. +He was so unique that nobody could quite decide whether he was +a great aristocrat who had taken up Art, or a great artist whom +the aristocrats had taken up. But you could not meet him for five minutes +without realizing that you had really been ruled by him all your life. + + His appearance was "distinguished" in exactly the same sense; +it was at once conventional and unique. Fashion could have found no fault +with his high silk hat--, yet it was unlike anyone else's hat-- +a little higher, perhaps, and adding something to his natural height. +His tall, slender figure had a slight stoop yet it looked +the reverse of feeble. His hair was silver-grey, but he did not look old; +it was worn longer than the common yet he did not look effeminate; +it was curly but it did not look curled. His carefully pointed beard +made him look more manly and militant than otherwise, as it does in those +old admirals of Velazquez with whose dark portraits his house was hung. +His grey gloves were a shade bluer, his silver-knobbed cane a shade longer +than scores of such gloves and canes flapped and flourished about +the theatres and the restaurants. + + The other man was not so tall, yet would have struck nobody as short, +but merely as strong and handsome. His hair also was curly, +but fair and cropped close to a strong, massive head--the sort of head +you break a door with, as Chaucer said of the Miller's. +His military moustache and the carriage of his shoulders +showed him a soldier, but he had a pair of those peculiar frank +and piercing blue eyes which are more common in sailors. +His face was somewhat square, his jaw was square, his shoulders +were square, even his jacket was square. Indeed, in the wild school +of caricature then current, Mr Max Beerbohm had represented him as +a proposition in the fourth book of Euclid. + + For he also was a public man, though with quite another +sort of success. You did not have to be in the best society +to have heard of Captain Cutler, of the siege of Hong-Kong, +and the great march across China. You could not get away from +hearing of him wherever you were; his portrait was on every other postcard; +his maps and battles in every other illustrated paper; songs in his honour +in every other music-hall turn or on every other barrel-organ. +His fame, though probably more temporary, was ten times more wide, +popular and spontaneous than the other man's. In thousands of +English homes he appeared enormous above England, like Nelson. +Yet he had infinitely less power in England than Sir Wilson Seymour. + + The door was opened to them by an aged servant or "dresser", +whose broken-down face and figure and black shabby coat and trousers +contrasted queerly with the glittering interior of the great actress's +dressing-room. It was fitted and filled with looking-glasses +at every angle of refraction, so that they looked like the hundred facets +of one huge diamond--if one could get inside a diamond. +The other features of luxury, a few flowers, a few coloured cushions, +a few scraps of stage costume, were multiplied by all the mirrors into +the madness of the Arabian Nights, and danced and changed places +perpetually as the shuffling attendant shifted a mirror outwards +or shot one back against the wall. + + They both spoke to the dingy dresser by name, calling him Parkinson, +and asking for the lady as Miss Aurora Rome. Parkinson said she was +in the other room, but he would go and tell her. A shade crossed the brow +of both visitors; for the other room was the private room of +the great actor with whom Miss Aurora was performing, and she was +of the kind that does not inflame admiration without inflaming jealousy. +In about half a minute, however, the inner door opened, and she entered +as she always did, even in private life, so that the very silence +seemed to be a roar of applause, and one well-deserved. +She was clad in a somewhat strange garb of peacock green and +peacock blue satins, that gleamed like blue and green metals, +such as delight children and aesthetes, and her heavy, hot brown hair +framed one of those magic faces which are dangerous to all men, +but especially to boys and to men growing grey. In company with +her male colleague, the great American actor, Isidore Bruno, +she was producing a particularly poetical and fantastic interpretation +of Midsummer Night's Dream: in which the artistic prominence was given +to Oberon and Titania, or in other words to Bruno and herself. +Set in dreamy and exquisite scenery, and moving in mystical dances, +the green costume, like burnished beetle-wings, expressed all the +elusive individuality of an elfin queen. But when personally confronted +in what was still broad daylight, a man looked only at the woman's face. + + She greeted both men with the beaming and baffling smile +which kept so many males at the same just dangerous distance from her. +She accepted some flowers from Cutler, which were as tropical and expensive +as his victories; and another sort of present from Sir Wilson Seymour, +offered later on and more nonchalantly by that gentleman. +For it was against his breeding to show eagerness, and against his +conventional unconventionality to give anything so obvious as flowers. +He had picked up a trifle, he said, which was rather a curiosity, +it was an ancient Greek dagger of the Mycenaean Epoch, and might well +have been worn in the time of Theseus and Hippolyta. It was made of brass +like all the Heroic weapons, but, oddly enough, sharp enough +to prick anyone still. He had really been attracted to it by +the leaf-like shape; it was as perfect as a Greek vase. +If it was of any interest to Miss Rome or could come in anywhere +in the play, he hoped she would-- + + The inner door burst open and a big figure appeared, who was +more of a contrast to the explanatory Seymour than even Captain Cutler. +Nearly six-foot-six, and of more than theatrical thews and muscles, +Isidore Bruno, in the gorgeous leopard skin and golden-brown garments +of Oberon, looked like a barbaric god. He leaned on a sort of +hunting-spear, which across a theatre looked a slight, silvery wand, +but which in the small and comparatively crowded room looked as plain as +a pike-staff--and as menacing. His vivid black eyes rolled volcanically, +his bronzed face, handsome as it was, showed at that moment +a combination of high cheekbones with set white teeth, which recalled +certain American conjectures about his origin in the Southern plantations. + + "Aurora," he began, in that deep voice like a drum of passion +that had moved so many audiences, "will you--" + + He stopped indecisively because a sixth figure had suddenly +presented itself just inside the doorway--a figure so incongruous +in the scene as to be almost comic. It was a very short man in +the black uniform of the Roman secular clergy, and looking +(especially in such a presence as Bruno's and Aurora's) rather like +the wooden Noah out of an ark. He did not, however, seem conscious +of any contrast, but said with dull civility: "I believe Miss Rome +sent for me." + + A shrewd observer might have remarked that the emotional temperature +rather rose at so unemotional an interruption. The detachment of +a professional celibate seemed to reveal to the others that they +stood round the woman as a ring of amorous rivals; just as a stranger +coming in with frost on his coat will reveal that a room is like a furnace. +The presence of the one man who did not care about her +increased Miss Rome's sense that everybody else was in love with her, +and each in a somewhat dangerous way: the actor with all the appetite +of a savage and a spoilt child; the soldier with all the simple selfishness +of a man of will rather than mind; Sir Wilson with that daily hardening +concentration with which old Hedonists take to a hobby; nay, +even the abject Parkinson, who had known her before her triumphs, +and who followed her about the room with eyes or feet, +with the dumb fascination of a dog. + + A shrewd person might also have noted a yet odder thing. +The man like a black wooden Noah (who was not wholly without shrewdness) +noted it with a considerable but contained amusement. It was evident +that the great Aurora, though by no means indifferent to the admiration +of the other sex, wanted at this moment to get rid of all the men +who admired her and be left alone with the man who did not-- +did not admire her in that sense at least; for the little priest +did admire and even enjoy the firm feminine diplomacy with which +she set about her task. There was, perhaps, only one thing +that Aurora Rome was clever about, and that was one half of humanity-- +the other half. The little priest watched, like a Napoleonic campaign, +the swift precision of her policy for expelling all while banishing none. +Bruno, the big actor, was so babyish that it was easy to send him off +in brute sulks, banging the door. Cutler, the British officer, +was pachydermatous to ideas, but punctilious about behaviour. +He would ignore all hints, but he would die rather than +ignore a definite commission from a lady. As to old Seymour, +he had to be treated differently; he had to be left to the last. +The only way to move him was to appeal to him in confidence as an old +friend, to let him into the secret of the clearance. The priest did +really admire Miss Rome as she achieved all these three objects +in one selected action. + + She went across to Captain Cutler and said in her sweetest manner: +"I shall value all these flowers, because they must be your +favourite flowers. But they won't be complete, you know, +without my favourite flower. Do go over to that shop round the corner +and get me some lilies-of-the-valley, and then it will be quite lovely." + + The first object of her diplomacy, the exit of the enraged Bruno, +was at once achieved. He had already handed his spear in a lordly style, +like a sceptre, to the piteous Parkinson, and was about to assume +one of the cushioned seats like a throne. But at this open appeal to +his rival there glowed in his opal eyeballs all the sensitive insolence +of the slave; he knotted his enormous brown fists for an instant, +and then, dashing open the door, disappeared into his own apartments beyond. +But meanwhile Miss Rome's experiment in mobilizing the British Army +had not succeeded so simply as seemed probable. Cutler had indeed +risen stiffly and suddenly, and walked towards the door, hatless, +as if at a word of command. But perhaps there was something +ostentatiously elegant about the languid figure of Seymour leaning against +one of the looking-glasses that brought him up short at the entrance, +turning his head this way and that like a bewildered bulldog. + + "I must show this stupid man where to go," said Aurora +in a whisper to Seymour, and ran out to the threshold to speed +the parting guest. + + Seymour seemed to be listening, elegant and unconscious +as was his posture, and he seemed relieved when he heard the lady call out +some last instructions to the Captain, and then turn sharply +and run laughing down the passage towards the other end, +the end on the terrace above the Thames. Yet a second or two after +Seymour's brow darkened again. A man in his position has so many rivals, +and he remembered that at the other end of the passage was +the corresponding entrance to Bruno's private room. He did not +lose his dignity; he said some civil words to Father Brown +about the revival of Byzantine architecture in the Westminster Cathedral, +and then, quite naturally, strolled out himself into the upper end +of the passage. Father Brown and Parkinson were left alone, +and they were neither of them men with a taste for superfluous conversation. +The dresser went round the room, pulling out looking-glasses +and pushing them in again, his dingy dark coat and trousers looking +all the more dismal since he was still holding the festive fairy spear +of King Oberon. Every time he pulled out the frame of a new glass, +a new black figure of Father Brown appeared; the absurd glass chamber +was full of Father Browns, upside down in the air like angels, +turning somersaults like acrobats, turning their backs to everybody +like very rude persons. + + Father Brown seemed quite unconscious of this cloud of witnesses, +but followed Parkinson with an idly attentive eye till he took himself +and his absurd spear into the farther room of Bruno. Then he abandoned +himself to such abstract meditations as always amused him-- +calculating the angles of the mirrors, the angles of each refraction, +the angle at which each must fit into the wall...when he heard +a strong but strangled cry. + + He sprang to his feet and stood rigidly listening. +At the same instant Sir Wilson Seymour burst back into the room, +white as ivory. "Who's that man in the passage?" he cried. +"Where's that dagger of mine?" + + Before Father Brown could turn in his heavy boots Seymour was +plunging about the room looking for the weapon. And before he could +possibly find that weapon or any other, a brisk running of feet +broke upon the pavement outside, and the square face of Cutler +was thrust into the same doorway. He was still grotesquely grasping +a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley. "What's this?" he cried. +"What's that creature down the passage? Is this some of your tricks?" + + "My tricks!" hissed his pale rival, and made a stride towards him. + + In the instant of time in which all this happened Father Brown +stepped out into the top of the passage, looked down it, +and at once walked briskly towards what he saw. + + At this the other two men dropped their quarrel and darted after him, +Cutler calling out: "What are you doing? Who are you?" + + "My name is Brown," said the priest sadly, as he bent over something +and straightened himself again. "Miss Rome sent for me, +and I came as quickly as I could. I have come too late." + + The three men looked down, and in one of them at least +the life died in that late light of afternoon. It ran along +the passage like a path of gold, and in the midst of it Aurora Rome lay +lustrous in her robes of green and gold, with her dead face +turned upwards. Her dress was torn away as in a struggle, +leaving the right shoulder bare, but the wound from which +the blood was welling was on the other side. The brass dagger +lay flat and gleaming a yard or so away. + + There was a blank stillness for a measurable time, so that +they could hear far off a flower-girl's laugh outside Charing Cross, +and someone whistling furiously for a taxicab in one of the streets +off the Strand. Then the Captain, with a movement so sudden that it +might have been passion or play-acting, took Sir Wilson Seymour by the +throat. + + Seymour looked at him steadily without either fight or fear. +"You need not kill me," he said in a voice quite cold; "I shall do +that on my own account." + + The Captain's hand hesitated and dropped; and the other added +with the same icy candour: "If I find I haven't the nerve +to do it with that dagger I can do it in a month with drink." + + "Drink isn't good enough for me," replied Cutler, "but I'll have +blood for this before I die. Not yours--but I think I know whose." + + And before the others could appreciate his intention +he snatched up the dagger, sprang at the other door at the lower end +of the passage, burst it open, bolt and all, and confronted Bruno +in his dressing-room. As he did so, old Parkinson tottered +in his wavering way out of the door and caught sight of the corpse +lying in the passage. He moved shakily towards it; looked at it weakly +with a working face; then moved shakily back into the dressing-room again, +and sat down suddenly on one of the richly cushioned chairs. +Father Brown instantly ran across to him, taking no notice of Cutler +and the colossal actor, though the room already rang with their blows +and they began to struggle for the dagger. Seymour, who retained some +practical sense, was whistling for the police at the end of the passage. + + When the police arrived it was to tear the two men +from an almost ape-like grapple; and, after a few formal inquiries, +to arrest Isidore Bruno upon a charge of murder, brought against him +by his furious opponent. The idea that the great national hero of the hour +had arrested a wrongdoer with his own hand doubtless had its weight +with the police, who are not without elements of the journalist. +They treated Cutler with a certain solemn attention, and pointed out +that he had got a slight slash on the hand. Even as Cutler +bore him back across tilted chair and table, Bruno had twisted +the dagger out of his grasp and disabled him just below the wrist. +The injury was really slight, but till he was removed from the room +the half-savage prisoner stared at the running blood with a steady smile. + + "Looks a cannibal sort of chap, don't he?" said the constable +confidentially to Cutler. + + Cutler made no answer, but said sharply a moment after: +"We must attend to the...the death..." and his voice escaped +from articulation. + + "The two deaths," came in the voice of the priest from +the farther side of the room. "This poor fellow was gone +when I got across to him." And he stood looking down at old Parkinson, +who sat in a black huddle on the gorgeous chair. He also had +paid his tribute, not without eloquence, to the woman who had died. + + The silence was first broken by Cutler, who seemed not untouched +by a rough tenderness. "I wish I was him," he said huskily. +"I remember he used to watch her wherever she walked more than--anybody. +She was his air, and he's dried up. He's just dead." + + "We are all dead," said Seymour in a strange voice, +looking down the road. + + They took leave of Father Brown at the corner of the road, +with some random apologies for any rudeness they might have shown. +Both their faces were tragic, but also cryptic. + + The mind of the little priest was always a rabbit-warren +of wild thoughts that jumped too quickly for him to catch them. +Like the white tail of a rabbit he had the vanishing thought that +he was certain of their grief, but not so certain of their innocence. + + "We had better all be going," said Seymour heavily; "we have done +all we can to help." + + "Will you understand my motives," asked Father Brown quietly, +"if I say you have done all you can to hurt?" + + They both started as if guiltily, and Cutler said sharply: +"To hurt whom?" + + "To hurt yourselves," answered the priest. "I would not +add to your troubles if it weren't common justice to warn you. +You've done nearly everything you could do to hang yourselves, +if this actor should be acquitted. They'll be sure to subpoena me; +I shall be bound to say that after the cry was heard each of you +rushed into the room in a wild state and began quarrelling about a dagger. +As far as my words on oath can go, you might either of you have done it. +You hurt yourselves with that; and then Captain Cutler must have +hurt himself with the dagger." + + "Hurt myself!" exclaimed the Captain, with contempt. +"A silly little scratch." + + "Which drew blood," replied the priest, nodding. "We know there's +blood on the brass now. And so we shall never know whether there was +blood on it before." + + There was a silence; and then Seymour said, with an emphasis +quite alien to his daily accent: "But I saw a man in the passage." + + "I know you did," answered the cleric Brown with a face of wood, +"so did Captain Cutler. That's what seems so improbable." + + Before either could make sufficient sense of it even to answer, +Father Brown had politely excused himself and gone stumping +up the road with his stumpy old umbrella. + + As modern newspapers are conducted, the most honest +and most important news is the police news. If it be true that +in the twentieth century more space is given to murder than to politics, +it is for the excellent reason that murder is a more serious subject. +But even this would hardly explain the enormous omnipresence and +widely distributed detail of "The Bruno Case," or "The Passage Mystery," +in the Press of London and the provinces. So vast was the excitement +that for some weeks the Press really told the truth; and the reports +of examination and cross-examination, if interminable, +even if intolerable are at least reliable. The true reason, +of course, was the coincidence of persons. The victim was +a popular actress; the accused was a popular actor; and the accused +had been caught red-handed, as it were, by the most popular soldier +of the patriotic season. In those extraordinary circumstances +the Press was paralysed into probity and accuracy; and the rest of this +somewhat singular business can practically be recorded from reports +of Bruno's trial. + + The trial was presided over by Mr Justice Monkhouse, +one of those who are jeered at as humorous judges, but who are generally +much more serious than the serious judges, for their levity comes from +a living impatience of professional solemnity; while the serious judge +is really filled with frivolity, because he is filled with vanity. +All the chief actors being of a worldly importance, the barristers +were well balanced; the prosecutor for the Crown was Sir Walter Cowdray, +a heavy, but weighty advocate of the sort that knows how to seem +English and trustworthy, and how to be rhetorical with reluctance. +The prisoner was defended by Mr Patrick Butler, K.C., who was mistaken +for a mere flaneur by those who misunderstood the Irish character-- +and those who had not been examined by him. The medical evidence +involved no contradictions, the doctor, whom Seymour had summoned +on the spot, agreeing with the eminent surgeon who had later +examined the body. Aurora Rome had been stabbed with some sharp instrument +such as a knife or dagger; some instrument, at least, of which +the blade was short. The wound was just over the heart, and she had +died instantly. When the doctor first saw her she could hardly +have been dead for twenty minutes. Therefore when Father Brown +found her she could hardly have been dead for three. + + Some official detective evidence followed, chiefly concerned with +the presence or absence of any proof of a struggle; the only suggestion +of this was the tearing of the dress at the shoulder, and this did not seem +to fit in particularly well with the direction and finality of the blow. +When these details had been supplied, though not explained, +the first of the important witnesses was called. + + Sir Wilson Seymour gave evidence as he did everything else +that he did at all--not only well, but perfectly. Though himself +much more of a public man than the judge, he conveyed exactly +the fine shade of self-effacement before the King's justice; +and though everyone looked at him as they would at the Prime Minister +or the Archbishop of Canterbury, they could have said nothing +of his part in it but that it was that of a private gentleman, +with an accent on the noun. He was also refreshingly lucid, +as he was on the committees. He had been calling on Miss Rome +at the theatre; he had met Captain Cutler there; they had been joined +for a short time by the accused, who had then returned to his +own dressing-room; they had then been joined by a Roman Catholic priest, +who asked for the deceased lady and said his name was Brown. +Miss Rome had then gone just outside the theatre to the entrance +of the passage, in order to point out to Captain Cutler a flower-shop +at which he was to buy her some more flowers; and the witness +had remained in the room, exchanging a few words with the priest. +He had then distinctly heard the deceased, having sent the Captain +on his errand, turn round laughing and run down the passage +towards its other end, where was the prisoner's dressing-room. +In idle curiosity as to the rapid movement of his friends, +he had strolled out to the head of the passage himself and looked down it +towards the prisoner's door. Did he see anything in the passage? +Yes; he saw something in the passage. + + Sir Walter Cowdray allowed an impressive interval, +during which the witness looked down, and for all his usual composure +seemed to have more than his usual pallor. Then the barrister said +in a lower voice, which seemed at once sympathetic and creepy: +"Did you see it distinctly?" + + Sir Wilson Seymour, however moved, had his excellent brains +in full working-order. "Very distinctly as regards its outline, +but quite indistinctly, indeed not at all, as regards the details +inside the outline. The passage is of such length that anyone in +the middle of it appears quite black against the light at the other end." +The witness lowered his steady eyes once more and added: +"I had noticed the fact before, when Captain Cutler first entered it." +There was another silence, and the judge leaned forward and made a note. + + "Well," said Sir Walter patiently, "what was the outline like? +Was it, for instance, like the figure of the murdered woman?" + + "Not in the least," answered Seymour quietly. + + "What did it look like to you?" + + "It looked to me," replied the witness, "like a tall man." + + Everyone in court kept his eyes riveted on his pen, +or his umbrella-handle, or his book, or his boots or whatever +he happened to be looking at. They seemed to be holding their eyes +away from the prisoner by main force; but they felt his figure in the dock, +and they felt it as gigantic. Tall as Bruno was to the eye, +he seemed to swell taller and taller when an eyes had been +torn away from him. + + Cowdray was resuming his seat with his solemn face, +smoothing his black silk robes, and white silk whiskers. +Sir Wilson was leaving the witness-box, after a few final particulars +to which there were many other witnesses, when the counsel for the defence +sprang up and stopped him. + + "I shall only detain you a moment," said Mr Butler, +who was a rustic-looking person with red eyebrows and an expression +of partial slumber. "Will you tell his lordship how you knew +it was a man?" + + A faint, refined smile seemed to pass over Seymour's features. +"I'm afraid it is the vulgar test of trousers," he said. +"When I saw daylight between the long legs I was sure it was a man, +after all." + + Butler's sleepy eyes opened as suddenly as some silent explosion. +"After all!" he repeated slowly. "So you did think at first +it was a woman?" + + Seymour looked troubled for the first time. "It is hardly +a point of fact," he said, "but if his lordship would like me +to answer for my impression, of course I shall do so. There was something +about the thing that was not exactly a woman and yet was not quite a man; +somehow the curves were different. And it had something that looked like +long hair." + + "Thank you," said Mr Butler, K.C., and sat down suddenly, +as if he had got what he wanted. + + Captain Cutler was a far less plausible and composed witness +than Sir Wilson, but his account of the opening incidents was +solidly the same. He described the return of Bruno to his dressing-room, +the dispatching of himself to buy a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, +his return to the upper end of the passage, the thing he saw +in the passage, his suspicion of Seymour, and his struggle with Bruno. +But he could give little artistic assistance about the black figure +that he and Seymour had seen. Asked about its outline, he said he +was no art critic--with a somewhat too obvious sneer at Seymour. +Asked if it was a man or a woman, he said it looked more like a beast-- +with a too obvious snarl at the prisoner. But the man was plainly shaken +with sorrow and sincere anger, and Cowdray quickly excused him +from confirming facts that were already fairly clear. + + The defending counsel also was again brief in his cross-examination; +although (as was his custom) even in being brief, he seemed to take +a long time about it. "You used a rather remarkable expression," he said, +looking at Cutler sleepily. "What do you mean by saying that +it looked more like a beast than a man or a woman?" + + Cutler seemed seriously agitated. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have +said that," he said; "but when the brute has huge humped shoulders +like a chimpanzee, and bristles sticking out of its head like a pig--" + + Mr Butler cut short his curious impatience in the middle. +"Never mind whether its hair was like a pig's," he said, +"was it like a woman's?" + + "A woman's!" cried the soldier. "Great Scott, no!" + + "The last witness said it was," commented the counsel, +with unscrupulous swiftness. "And did the figure have any of those +serpentine and semi-feminine curves to which eloquent allusion +has been made? No? No feminine curves? The figure, if I understand you, +was rather heavy and square than otherwise?" + + "He may have been bending forward," said Cutler, in a hoarse +and rather faint voice. + + "Or again, he may not," said Mr Butler, and sat down suddenly +for the second time. + + The third, witness called by Sir Walter Cowdray was +the little Catholic clergyman, so little, compared with the others, +that his head seemed hardly to come above the box, so that it was like +cross-examining a child. But unfortunately Sir Walter had somehow +got it into his head (mostly by some ramifications of his family's religion) +that Father Brown was on the side of the prisoner, because the prisoner +was wicked and foreign and even partly black. Therefore he +took Father Brown up sharply whenever that proud pontiff tried +to explain anything; and told him to answer yes or no, and tell +the plain facts without any jesuitry. When Father Brown began, +in his simplicity, to say who he thought the man in the passage was, +the barrister told him that he did not want his theories. + + "A black shape was seen in the passage. And you say you saw +the black shape. Well, what shape was it?" + + Father Brown blinked as under rebuke; but he had long known +the literal nature of obedience. "The shape," he said, "was short +and thick, but had two sharp, black projections curved upwards +on each side of the head or top, rather like horns, and--" + + "Oh! the devil with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, +sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the devil come +to eat Protestants." + + "No," said the priest dispassionately; "I know who it was." + + Those in court had been wrought up to an irrational, +but real sense of some monstrosity. They had forgotten the figure +in the dock and thought only of the figure in the passage. +And the figure in the passage, described by three capable +and respectable men who had all seen it, was a shifting nightmare: +one called it a woman, and the other a beast, and the other a devil.... + + The judge was looking at Father Brown with level and piercing eyes. +"You are a most extraordinary witness," he said; "but there is something +about you that makes me think you are trying to tell the truth. +Well, who was the man you saw in the passage?" + + "He was myself," said Father Brown. + + Butler, K.C., sprang to his feet in an extraordinary stillness, +and said quite calmly: "Your lordship will allow me to cross-examine?" +And then, without stopping, he shot at Brown the apparently +disconnected question: "You have heard about this dagger; +you know the experts say the crime was committed with a short blade?" + + "A short blade," assented Brown, nodding solemnly like an owl, +"but a very long hilt." + + Before the audience could quite dismiss the idea that the priest +had really seen himself doing murder with a short dagger with a long hilt +(which seemed somehow to make it more horrible), he had himself +hurried on to explain. + + "I mean daggers aren't the only things with short blades. +Spears have short blades. And spears catch at the end of the steel +just like daggers, if they're that sort of fancy spear they had +in theatres; like the spear poor old Parkinson killed his wife with, +just when she'd sent for me to settle their family troubles-- +and I came just too late, God forgive me! But he died penitent-- +he just died of being penitent. He couldn't bear what he'd done." + + The general impression in court was that the little priest, +who was gobbling away, had literally gone mad in the box. +But the judge still looked at him with bright and steady eyes of interest; +and the counsel for the defence went on with his questions unperturbed. + + "If Parkinson did it with that pantomime spear," said Butler, +"he must have thrust from four yards away. How do you account for +signs of struggle, like the dress dragged off the shoulder?" He had +slipped into treating his mere witness as an expert; but no one +noticed it now. + + "The poor lady's dress was torn," said the witness, +"because it was caught in a panel that slid to just behind her. +She struggled to free herself, and as she did so Parkinson came out +of the prisoner's room and lunged with the spear." + + "A panel?" repeated the barrister in a curious voice. + + "It was a looking-glass on the other side," explained Father Brown. +"When I was in the dressing-room I noticed that some of them +could probably be slid out into the passage." + + There was another vast and unnatural silence, and this time +it was the judge who spoke. "So you really mean that when you +looked down that passage, the man you saw was yourself--in a mirror?" + + "Yes, my lord; that was what I was trying to say," said Brown, +"but they asked me for the shape; and our hats have corners +just like horns, and so I--" + + The judge leaned forward, his old eyes yet more brilliant, +and said in specially distinct tones: "Do you really mean to say that +when Sir Wilson Seymour saw that wild what-you-call-him with curves +and a woman's hair and a man's trousers, what he saw was +Sir Wilson Seymour?" + + "Yes, my lord," said Father Brown. + + "And you mean to say that when Captain Cutler saw that chimpanzee +with humped shoulders and hog's bristles, he simply saw himself?" + + "Yes, my lord." + + The judge leaned back in his chair with a luxuriance in which +it was hard to separate the cynicism and the admiration. +"And can you tell us why," he asked, "you should know your own figure +in a looking-glass, when two such distinguished men don't?" + + Father Brown blinked even more painfully than before; +then he stammered: "Really, my lord, I don't know unless it's because +I don't look at it so often." + + + + + FIVE + + + The Mistake of the Machine + + +FLAMBEAU and his friend the priest were sitting in the Temple Gardens +about sunset; and their neighbourhood or some such accidental influence +had turned their talk to matters of legal process. From the problem +of the licence in cross-examination, their talk strayed to Roman and +mediaeval torture, to the examining magistrate in France and +the Third Degree in America. + + "I've been reading," said Flambeau, "of this new psychometric method +they talk about so much, especially in America. You know what I mean; +they put a pulsometer on a man's wrist and judge by how his heart goes +at the pronunciation of certain words. What do you think of it?" + + "I think it very interesting," replied Father Brown; +"it reminds me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages that blood +would flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it." + + "Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think +the two methods equally valuable?" + + "I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, +fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons +than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; +blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it +as a sign that I am to shed it." + + "The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed +by some of the greatest American men of science." + + "What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, +"and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! +Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? +Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman +is in love with him if she blushes. That's a test from +the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; +and a jolly rotten test, too." + + "But surely," insisted Flambeau, "it might point pretty straight +at something or other." + + "There's a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight," +answered the other. "What is it? Why, the other end of the stick +always points the opposite way. It depends whether you +get hold of the stick by the right end. I saw the thing done once +and I've never believed in it since." And he proceeded to tell +the story of his disillusionment. + + It happened nearly twenty years before, when he was chaplain +to his co-religionists in a prison in Chicago--where the Irish population +displayed a capacity both for crime and penitence which kept him +tolerably busy. The official second-in-command under the Governor +was an ex-detective named Greywood Usher, a cadaverous, careful-spoken +Yankee philosopher, occasionally varying a very rigid visage +with an odd apologetic grimace. He liked Father Brown in +a slightly patronizing way; and Father Brown liked him, +though he heartily disliked his theories. His theories were +extremely complicated and were held with extreme simplicity. + + One evening he had sent for the priest, who, according to his custom, +took a seat in silence at a table piled and littered with papers, +and waited. The official selected from the papers a scrap of +newspaper cutting, which he handed across to the cleric, +who read it gravely. It appeared to be an extract from one of +the pinkest of American Society papers, and ran as follows: + + "Society's brightest widower is once more on the Freak Dinner stunt. +All our exclusive citizens will recall the Perambulator Parade Dinner, +in which Last-Trick Todd, at his palatial home at Pilgrim's Pond, +caused so many of our prominent debutantes to look even younger +than their years. Equally elegant and more miscellaneous and +large-hearted in social outlook was Last-Trick's show the year previous, +the popular Cannibal Crush Lunch, at which the confections handed round +were sarcastically moulded in the forms of human arms and legs, +and during which more than one of our gayest mental gymnasts was heard +offering to eat his partner. The witticism which will inspire +this evening is as yet in Mr Todd's pretty reticent intellect, +or locked in the jewelled bosoms of our city's gayest leaders; +but there is talk of a pretty parody of the simple manners and customs +at the other end of Society's scale. This would be all the more telling, +as hospitable Todd is entertaining in Lord Falconroy, the famous traveller, +a true-blooded aristocrat fresh from England's oak-groves. +Lord Falconroy's travels began before his ancient feudal title +was resurrected, he was in the Republic in his youth, and fashion murmurs +a sly reason for his return. Miss Etta Todd is one of our +deep-souled New Yorkers, and comes into an income of nearly +twelve hundred million dollars." + + "Well," asked Usher, "does that interest you?" + + "Why, words rather fail me," answered Father Brown. +"I cannot think at this moment of anything in this world that would +interest me less. And, unless the just anger of the Republic is +at last going to electrocute journalists for writing like that, +I don't quite see why it should interest you either." + + "Ah!" said Mr Usher dryly, and handing across another +scrap of newspaper. "Well, does that interest you?" + + The paragraph was headed "Savage Murder of a Warder. +Convict Escapes," and ran: "Just before dawn this morning +a shout for help was heard in the Convict Settlement at Sequah +in this State. The authorities, hurrying in the direction of the cry, +found the corpse of the warder who patrols the top of the north wall +of the prison, the steepest and most difficult exit, for which one man +has always been found sufficient. The unfortunate officer had, +however, been hurled from the high wall, his brains beaten out +as with a club, and his gun was missing. Further inquiries showed that +one of the cells was empty; it had been occupied by a rather sullen ruffian +giving his name as Oscar Rian. He was only temporarily detained +for some comparatively trivial assault; but he gave everyone the impression +of a man with a black past and a dangerous future. Finally, +when daylight had fully revealed the scene of murder, it was found +that he had written on the wall above the body a fragmentary sentence, +apparently with a finger dipped in blood: `This was self-defence and +he had the gun. I meant no harm to him or any man but one. +I am keeping the bullet for Pilgrim's Pond--O.R.' A man must have used +most fiendish treachery or most savage and amazing bodily daring +to have stormed such a wall in spite of an armed man." + + "Well, the literary style is somewhat improved," admitted the priest +cheerfully, "but still I don't see what I can do for you. +I should cut a poor figure, with my short legs, running about this State +after an athletic assassin of that sort. I doubt whether +anybody could find him. The convict settlement at Sequah +is thirty miles from here; the country between is wild and tangled enough, +and the country beyond, where he will surely have the sense to go, +is a perfect no-man's land tumbling away to the prairies. +He may be in any hole or up any tree." + + "He isn't in any hole," said the governor; "he isn't up any tree." + + "Why, how do you know?" asked Father Brown, blinking. + + "Would you like to speak to him?" inquired Usher. + + Father Brown opened his innocent eyes wide. "He is here?" +he exclaimed. "Why, how did your men get hold of him?" + + "I got hold of him myself," drawled the American, rising and +lazily stretching his lanky legs before the fire. "I got hold of him +with the crooked end of a walking-stick. Don't look so surprised. +I really did. You know I sometimes take a turn in the country lanes +outside this dismal place; well, I was walking early this evening +up a steep lane with dark hedges and grey-looking ploughed fields +on both sides; and a young moon was up and silvering the road. +By the light of it I saw a man running across the field towards the road; +running with his body bent and at a good mile-race trot. +He appeared to be much exhausted; but when he came to the thick black hedge +he went through it as if it were made of spiders' webs; --or rather +(for I heard the strong branches breaking and snapping like bayonets) +as if he himself were made of stone. In the instant in which +he appeared up against the moon, crossing the road, I slung my hooked cane +at his legs, tripping him and bringing him down. Then I blew my whistle +long and loud, and our fellows came running up to secure him." + + "It would have been rather awkward," remarked Brown, +"if you had found he was a popular athlete practising a mile race." + + "He was not," said Usher grimly. "We soon found out who he was; +but I had guessed it with the first glint of the moon on him." + + "You thought it was the runaway convict," observed the priest simply, +"because you had read in the newspaper cutting that morning that +a convict had run away." + + "I had somewhat better grounds," replied the governor coolly. +"I pass over the first as too simple to be emphasized-- +I mean that fashionable athletes do not run across ploughed fields +or scratch their eyes out in bramble hedges. Nor do they run +all doubled up like a crouching dog. There were more decisive details +to a fairly well-trained eye. The man was clad in coarse +and ragged clothes, but they were something more than merely +coarse and ragged. They were so ill-fitting as to be quite grotesque; +even as he appeared in black outline against the moonrise, +the coat-collar in which his head was buried made him look +like a hunchback, and the long loose sleeves looked as if he had no hands. +It at once occurred to me that he had somehow managed to change +his convict clothes for some confederate's clothes which did not fit him. +Second, there was a pretty stiff wind against which he was running; +so that I must have seen the streaky look of blowing hair, if the hair +had not been very short. Then I remembered that beyond these +ploughed fields he was crossing lay Pilgrim's Pond, for which +(you will remember) the convict was keeping his bullet; +and I sent my walking-stick flying." + + "A brilliant piece of rapid deduction," said Father Brown; +"but had he got a gun?" + + As Usher stopped abruptly in his walk the priest added apologetically: +"I've been told a bullet is not half so useful without it." + + "He had no gun," said the other gravely; "but that was doubtless +due to some very natural mischance or change of plans. Probably the +same policy that made him change the clothes made him drop the gun; +he began to repent the coat he had left behind him in the blood +of his victim." + + "Well, that is possible enough," answered the priest. + + "And it's hardly worth speculating on," said Usher, +turning to some other papers, "for we know it's the man by this time." + + His clerical friend asked faintly: "But how?" And Greywood Usher +threw down the newspapers and took up the two press-cuttings again. + + "Well, since you are so obstinate," he said, "let's begin +at the beginning. You will notice that these two cuttings have only +one thing in common, which is the mention of Pilgrim's Pond, +the estate, as you know, of the millionaire Ireton Todd. +You also know that he is a remarkable character; one of those +that rose on stepping-stones--" + + "Of our dead selves to higher things," assented his companion. +"Yes; I know that. Petroleum, I think." + + "Anyhow," said Usher, "Last-Trick Todd counts for a great deal +in this rum affair." + + He stretched himself once more before the fire and continued talking +in his expansive, radiantly explanatory style. + + "To begin with, on the face of it, there is no mystery here at all. +It is not mysterious, it is not even odd, that a jailbird should +take his gun to Pilgrim's Pond. Our people aren't like the English, +who will forgive a man for being rich if he throws away money +on hospitals or horses. Last-Trick Todd has made himself big +by his own considerable abilities; and there's no doubt that +many of those on whom he has shown his abilities would like to +show theirs on him with a shot-gun. Todd might easily get dropped +by some man he'd never even heard of; some labourer he'd locked out, +or some clerk in a business he'd busted. Last-Trick is a man +of mental endowments and a high public character; but in this country +the relations of employers and employed are considerably strained. + + "That's how the whole thing looks supposing this Rian +made for Pilgrim's Pond to kill Todd. So it looked to me, +till another little discovery woke up what I have of the detective in me. +When I had my prisoner safe, I picked up my cane again and strolled down +the two or three turns of country road that brought me to one of +the side entrances of Todd's grounds, the one nearest to the pool +or lake after which the place is named. It was some two hours ago, +about seven by this time; the moonlight was more luminous, +and I could see the long white streaks of it lying on the mysterious mere +with its grey, greasy, half-liquid shores in which they say +our fathers used to make witches walk until they sank. +I'd forgotten the exact tale; but you know the place I mean; +it lies north of Todd's house towards the wilderness, and has two queer +wrinkled trees, so dismal that they look more like huge fungoids +than decent foliage. As I stood peering at this misty pool, +I fancied I saw the faint figure of a man moving from the house towards it, +but it was all too dim and distant for one to be certain of the fact, +and still less of the details. Besides, my attention was very sharply +arrested by something much closer. I crouched behind the fence +which ran not more than two hundred yards from one wing of +the great mansion, and which was fortunately split in places, +as if specially for the application of a cautious eye. A door had opened +in the dark bulk of the left wing, and a figure appeared black against +the illuminated interior--a muffled figure bending forward, +evidently peering out into the night. It closed the door behind it, +and I saw it was carrying a lantern, which threw a patch of imperfect light +on the dress and figure of the wearer. It seemed to be +the figure of a woman, wrapped up in a ragged cloak and +evidently disguised to avoid notice; there was something very strange +both about the rags and the furtiveness in a person coming out of +those rooms lined with gold. She took cautiously the curved garden path +which brought her within half a hundred yards of me--, then she stood up +for an instant on the terrace of turf that looks towards the slimy lake, +and holding her flaming lantern above her head she deliberately swung it +three times to and fro as for a signal. As she swung it the second time +a flicker of its light fell for a moment on her own face, +a face that I knew. She was unnaturally pale, and her head was bundled +in her borrowed plebeian shawl; but I am certain it was Etta Todd, +the millionaire's daughter. + + "She retraced her steps in equal secrecy and the door +closed behind her again. I was about to climb the fence and follow, +when I realized that the detective fever that had lured me +into the adventure was rather undignified; and that in a more +authoritative capacity I already held all the cards in my hand. +I was just turning away when a new noise broke on the night. +A window was thrown up in one of the upper floors, but just round +the corner of the house so that I could not see it; and a voice +of terrible distinctness was heard shouting across the dark garden +to know where Lord Falconroy was, for he was missing from every room +in the house. There was no mistaking that voice. I have +heard it on many a political platform or meeting of directors; +it was Ireton Todd himself. Some of the others seemed to have gone +to the lower windows or on to the steps, and were calling up to him +that Falconroy had gone for a stroll down to the Pilgrim's Pond +an hour before, and could not be traced since. Then Todd cried +`Mighty Murder!' and shut down the window violently; and I could hear him +plunging down the stairs inside. Repossessing myself of my former +and wiser purpose, I whipped out of the way of the general search +that must follow; and returned here not later than eight o'clock. + + "I now ask you to recall that little Society paragraph +which seemed to you so painfully lacking in interest. If the convict +was not keeping the shot for Todd, as he evidently wasn't, +it is most likely that he was keeping it for Lord Falconroy; +and it looks as if he had delivered the goods. No more handy place +to shoot a man than in the curious geological surroundings of that pool, +where a body thrown down would sink through thick slime to a depth +practically unknown. Let us suppose, then, that our friend +with the cropped hair came to kill Falconroy and not Todd. +But, as I have pointed out, there are many reasons why people in America +might want to kill Todd. There is no reason why anybody in America +should want to kill an English lord newly landed, except for the one reason +mentioned in the pink paper--that the lord is paying his attentions +to the millionaire's daughter. Our crop-haired friend, +despite his ill-fitting clothes, must be an aspiring lover. + + "I know the notion will seem to you jarring and even comic; +but that's because you are English. It sounds to you like saying +the Archbishop of Canterbury's daughter will be married in +St George's, Hanover Square, to a crossing-sweeper on ticket-of-leave. +You don't do justice to the climbing and aspiring power of our +more remarkable citizens. You see a good-looking grey-haired man +in evening-dress with a sort of authority about him, you know he is +a pillar of the State, and you fancy he had a father. You are in error. +You do not realize that a comparatively few years ago he may have been +in a tenement or (quite likely) in a jail. You don't allow for our +national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our most influential citizens +have not only risen recently, but risen comparatively late in life. +Todd's daughter was fully eighteen when her father first made his pile; +so there isn't really anything impossible in her having a hanger-on +in low life; or even in her hanging on to him, as I think +she must be doing, to judge by the lantern business. If so, +the hand that held the lantern may not be unconnected with the hand +that held the gun. This case, sir, will make a noise." + + "Well," said the priest patiently, "and what did you do next?" + + "I reckon you'll be shocked," replied Greywood Usher, +"as I know you don't cotton to the march of science in these matters. +I am given a good deal of discretion here, and perhaps take a little more +than I'm given; and I thought it was an excellent opportunity to test +that Psychometric Machine I told you about. Now, in my opinion, +that machine can't lie." + + "No machine can lie," said Father Brown; "nor can it tell the truth." + + "It did in this case, as I'll show you," went on Usher positively. +"I sat the man in the ill-fitting clothes in a comfortable chair, +and simply wrote words on a blackboard; and the machine simply +recorded the variations of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. +The trick is to introduce some word connected with the supposed crime +in a list of words connected with something quite different, +yet a list in which it occurs quite naturally. Thus I wrote `heron' and +`eagle' and `owl', and when I wrote `falcon' he was tremendously agitated; +and when I began to make an `r' at the end of the word, +that machine just bounded. Who else in this republic has any reason +to jump at the name of a newly-arrived Englishman like Falconroy +except the man who's shot him? Isn't that better evidence than +a lot of gabble from witnesses--if the evidence of a reliable machine?" + + "You always forget," observed his companion, "that the reliable machine +always has to be worked by an unreliable machine." + + "Why, what do you mean?" asked the detective. + + "I mean Man," said Father Brown, "the most unreliable machine +I know of. I don't want to be rude; and I don't think you will consider +Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself. +You say you observed his manner; but how do you know you observed it right? +You say the words have to come in a natural way; but how do you know +that you did it naturally? How do you know, if you come to that, +that he did not observe your manner? Who is to prove that you were not +tremendously agitated? There was no machine tied on to your pulse." + + "I tell you," cried the American in the utmost excitement, +"I was as cool as a cucumber." + + "Criminals also can be as cool as cucumbers," said Brown +with a smile. "And almost as cool as you." + + "Well, this one wasn't," said Usher, throwing the papers about. +"Oh, you make me tired!" + + "I'm sorry," said the other. "I only point out what seems +a reasonable possibility. If you could tell by his manner when +the word that might hang him had come, why shouldn't he tell +from your manner that the word that might hang him was coming? +I should ask for more than words myself before I hanged anybody." + + Usher smote the table and rose in a sort of angry triumph. + + "And that," he cried, "is just what I'm going to give you. +I tried the machine first just in order to test the thing in other ways +afterwards and the machine, sir, is right." + + He paused a moment and resumed with less excitement. +"I rather want to insist, if it comes to that, that so far +I had very little to go on except the scientific experiment. +There was really nothing against the man at all. His clothes were +ill-fitting, as I've said, but they were rather better, if anything, +than those of the submerged class to which he evidently belonged. +Moreover, under all the stains of his plunging through ploughed fields +or bursting through dusty hedges, the man was comparatively clean. +This might mean, of course, that he had only just broken prison; +but it reminded me more of the desperate decency of the comparatively +respectable poor. His demeanour was, I am bound to confess, +quite in accordance with theirs. He was silent and dignified as they are; +he seemed to have a big, but buried, grievance, as they do. +He professed total ignorance of the crime and the whole question; +and showed nothing but a sullen impatience for something sensible +that might come to take him out of his meaningless scrape. +He asked me more than once if he could telephone for a lawyer +who had helped him a long time ago in a trade dispute, and in every sense +acted as you would expect an innocent man to act. There was nothing +against him in the world except that little finger on the dial +that pointed to the change of his pulse. + + "Then, sir, the machine was on its trial; and the machine was right. +By the time I came with him out of the private room into the vestibule +where all sorts of other people were awaiting examination, +I think he had already more or less made up his mind to clear things up +by something like a confession. He turned to me and began to say +in a low voice: `Oh, I can't stick this any more. If you must know +all about me--' + + "At the same instant one of the poor women sitting on the long bench +stood up, screaming aloud and pointing at him with her finger. +I have never in my life heard anything more demoniacally distinct. +Her lean finger seemed to pick him out as if it were a pea-shooter. +Though the word was a mere howl, every syllable was as clear +as a separate stroke on the clock. + + "`Drugger Davis!' she shouted. `They've got Drugger Davis!' + + "Among the wretched women, mostly thieves and streetwalkers, +twenty faces were turned, gaping with glee and hate. If I had never +heard the words, I should have known by the very shock upon his features +that the so-called Oscar Rian had heard his real name. But I'm not quite +so ignorant, you may be surprised to hear. Drugger Davis was +one of the most terrible and depraved criminals that ever +baffled our police. It is certain he had done murder more than once +long before his last exploit with the warder. But he was never entirely +fixed for it, curiously enough because he did it in the same manner +as those milder--or meaner--crimes for which he was fixed pretty often. +He was a handsome, well-bred-looking brute, as he still is, to some extent; +and he used mostly to go about with barmaids or shop-girls and do them +out of their money. Very often, though, he went a good deal farther; +and they were found drugged with cigarettes or chocolates and +their whole property missing. Then came one case where the girl +was found dead; but deliberation could not quite be proved, and, +what was more practical still, the criminal could not be found. +I heard a rumour of his having reappeared somewhere in the opposite +character this time, lending money instead of borrowing it; +but still to such poor widows as he might personally fascinate, +but still with the same bad result for them. Well, there is +your innocent man, and there is his innocent record. Even, since then, +four criminals and three warders have identified him and confirmed the story. +Now what have you got to say to my poor little machine after that? +Hasn't the machine done for him? Or do you prefer to say that the woman +and I have done for him?" + + "As to what you've done for him," replied Father Brown, +rising and shaking himself in a floppy way, "you've saved him from +the electrical chair. I don't think they can kill Drugger Davis +on that old vague story of the poison; and as for the convict +who killed the warder, I suppose it's obvious that you haven't got him. +Mr Davis is innocent of that crime, at any rate." + + "What do you mean?" demanded the other. "Why should he be +innocent of that crime?" + + "Why, bless us all!" cried the small man in one of his rare +moments of animation, "why, because he's guilty of the other crimes! +I don't know what you people are made of. You seem to think that +all sins are kept together in a bag. You talk as if a miser on Monday +were always a spendthrift on Tuesday. You tell me this man you have here +spent weeks and months wheedling needy women out of small sums of money; +that he used a drug at the best, and a poison at the worst; +that he turned up afterwards as the lowest kind of moneylender, +and cheated most poor people in the same patient and pacific style. +Let it be granted--let us admit, for the sake of argument, +that he did all this. If that is so, I will tell you what he didn't do. +He didn't storm a spiked wall against a man with a loaded gun. +He didn't write on the wall with his own hand, to say he had done it. +He didn't stop to state that his justification was self-defence. +He didn't explain that he had no quarrel with the poor warder. +He didn't name the house of the rich man to which he was going with the gun. +He didn't write his own, initials in a man's blood. Saints alive! +Can't you see the whole character is different, in good and evil? +Why, you don't seem to be like I am a bit. One would think +you'd never had any vices of your own." + + The amazed American had already parted his lips in protest +when the door of his private and official room was hammered +and rattled in an unceremonious way to which he was totally unaccustomed. + + The door flew open. The moment before Greywood Usher had been +coming to the conclusion that Father Brown might possibly be mad. +The moment after he began to think he was mad himself. +There burst and fell into his private room a man in the filthiest rags, +with a greasy squash hat still askew on his head, and a shabby green shade +shoved up from one of his eyes, both of which were glaring like a tiger's. +The rest of his face was almost undiscoverable, being masked with +a matted beard and whiskers through which the nose could barely +thrust itself, and further buried in a squalid red scarf or handkerchief. +Mr Usher prided himself on having seen most of the roughest specimens +in the State, but he thought he had never seen such a baboon dressed +as a scarecrow as this. But, above all, he had never in all his +placid scientific existence heard a man like that speak to him first. + + "See here, old man Usher," shouted the being in the red handkerchief, +"I'm getting tired. Don't you try any of your hide-and-seek on me; +I don't get fooled any. Leave go of my guests, and I'll let up +on the fancy clockwork. Keep him here for a split instant and you'll +feel pretty mean. I reckon I'm not a man with no pull." + + The eminent Usher was regarding the bellowing monster +with an amazement which had dried up all other sentiments. +The mere shock to his eyes had rendered his ears, almost useless. +At last he rang a bell with a hand of violence. While the bell was +still strong and pealing, the voice of Father Brown fell soft but distinct. + + "I have a suggestion to make," he said, "but it seems +a little confusing. I don't know this gentleman--but-- +but I think I know him. Now, you know him--you know him quite well-- +but you don't know him--naturally. Sounds paradoxical, I know." + + "I reckon the Cosmos is cracked," said Usher, and fell asprawl +in his round office chair. + + "Now, see here," vociferated the stranger, striking the table, +but speaking in a voice that was all the more mysterious +because it was comparatively mild and rational though still resounding. +"I won't let you in. I want--" + + "Who in hell are you?" yelled Usher, suddenly sitting up straight. + + "I think the gentleman's name is Todd," said the priest. + + Then he picked up the pink slip of newspaper. + + "I fear you don't read the Society papers properly," he said, +and began to read out in a monotonous voice, "`Or locked in +the jewelled bosoms of our city's gayest leaders; but there is talk +of a pretty parody of the manners and customs of the other end +of Society's scale.' There's been a big Slum Dinner up at +Pilgrim's Pond tonight; and a man, one of the guests, disappeared. +Mr Ireton Todd is a good host, and has tracked him here, +without even waiting to take off his fancy-dress." + + "What man do you mean?" + + "I mean the man with comically ill-fitting clothes you saw +running across the ploughed field. Hadn't you better go and +investigate him? He will be rather impatient to get back to his champagne, +from which he ran away in such a hurry, when the convict with the gun +hove in sight." + + "Do you seriously mean--" began the official. + + "Why, look here, Mr Usher," said Father Brown quietly, +"you said the machine couldn't make a mistake; and in one sense it didn't. +But the other machine did; the machine that worked it. +You assumed that the man in rags jumped at the name of Lord Falconroy, +because he was Lord Falconroy's murderer. He jumped at the name +of Lord Falconroy because he is Lord Falconroy." + + "Then why the blazes didn't he say so?" demanded the staring Usher. + + "He felt his plight and recent panic were hardly patrician," +replied the priest, "so he tried to keep the name back at first. +But he was just going to tell it you, when"--and Father Brown looked +down at his boots--"when a woman found another name for him." + + "But you can't be so mad as to say," said Greywood Usher, +very white, "that Lord Falconroy was Drugger Davis." + + The priest looked at him very earnestly, but with a baffling +and undecipherable face. + + "I am not saying anything about it," he said. "I leave +all the rest to you. Your pink paper says that the title +was recently revived for him; but those papers are very unreliable. +It says he was in the States in youth; but the whole story seems +very strange. Davis and Falconroy are both pretty considerable cowards, +but so are lots of other men. I would not hang a dog on my own opinion +about this. But I think," he went on softly and reflectively, +"I think you Americans are too modest. I think you idealize +the English aristocracy--even in assuming it to be so aristocratic. +You see a good-looking Englishman in evening-dress; you know +he's in the House of Lords; and you fancy he has a father. +You don't allow for our national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our +most influential noblemen have not only risen recently, but--" + + "Oh, stop it!" cried Greywood Usher, wringing one lean hand +in impatience against a shade of irony in the other's face. + + "Don't stay talking to this lunatic!" cried Todd brutally. +"Take me to my friend." + + Next morning Father Brown appeared with the same demure expression, +carrying yet another piece of pink newspaper. + + "I'm afraid you neglect the fashionable press rather," he said, +"but this cutting may interest you." + + Usher read the headlines, "Last-Trick's Strayed Revellers: +Mirthful Incident near Pilgrim's Pond." The paragraph went on: +"A laughable occurrence took place outside Wilkinson's Motor Garage +last night. A policeman on duty had his attention drawn by larrikins +to a man in prison dress who was stepping with considerable coolness +into the steering-seat of a pretty high-toned Panhard; he was accompanied +by a girl wrapped in a ragged shawl. On the police interfering, +the young woman threw back the shawl, and all recognized +Millionaire Todd's daughter, who had just come from the Slum Freak Dinner +at the Pond, where all the choicest guests were in a similar deshabille. +She and the gentleman who had donned prison uniform were going for +the customary joy-ride." + + Under the pink slip Mr Usher found a strip of a later paper, +headed, "Astounding Escape of Millionaire's Daughter with Convict. +She had Arranged Freak Dinner. Now Safe in--" + + Mr Greenwood Usher lifted his eyes, but Father Brown was gone. + + + + + SIX + + + The Head of Caesar + + +THERE is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue +of tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. +The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as +the side of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, +lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature +in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity. +The pilgrim walking down it begins to think he will never come to +a break or a corner; but there is one exception--a very small one, +but hailed by the pilgrim almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews +between two of the tall mansions, a mere slit like the crack of a door +by comparison with the street, but just large enough to permit +a pigmy ale-house or eating-house, still allowed by the rich to their +stable-servants, to stand in the angle. There is something cheery in its +very dinginess, and something free and elfin in its very insignificance. +At the feet of those grey stone giants it looks like a lighted house +of dwarfs. + + Anyone passing the place during a certain autumn evening, +itself almost fairylike, might have seen a hand pull aside +the red half-blind which (along with some large white lettering) +half hid the interior from the street, and a face peer out not unlike +a rather innocent goblin's. It was, in fact, the face of one with +the harmless human name of Brown, formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, +and now working in London. His friend, Flambeau, a semi-official +investigator, was sitting opposite him, making his last notes of a case +he had cleared up in the neighbourhood. They were sitting at a small table, +close up to the window, when the priest pulled the curtain back +and looked out. He waited till a stranger in the street had +passed the window, to let the curtain fall into its place again. +Then his round eyes rolled to the large white lettering on the window +above his head, and then strayed to the next table, at which sat only +a navvy with beer and cheese, and a young girl with red hair and +a glass of milk. Then (seeing his friend put away the pocket-book), +he said softly: + + "If you've got ten minutes, I wish you'd follow that man with +the false nose." + + Flambeau looked up in surprise; but the girl with the red hair +also looked up, and with something that was stronger than astonishment. +She was simply and even loosely dressed in light brown sacking stuff; +but she was a lady, and even, on a second glance, a rather needlessly +haughty one. "The man with the false nose!" repeated Flambeau. +"Who's he?" + + "I haven't a notion," answered Father Brown. "I want you +to find out; I ask it as a favour. He went down there"--and he jerked +his thumb over his shoulder in one of his undistinguished gestures-- +"and can't have passed three lamp-posts yet. I only want to know +the direction." + + Flambeau gazed at his friend for some time, with an expression +between perplexity and amusement; and then, rising from the table; +squeezed his huge form out of the little door of the dwarf tavern, +and melted into the twilight. + + Father Brown took a small book out of his pocket and began +to read steadily; he betrayed no consciousness of the fact that +the red-haired lady had left her own table and sat down opposite him. +At last she leaned over and said in a low, strong voice: +"Why do you say that? How do you know it's false?" + + He lifted his rather heavy eyelids, which fluttered in +considerable embarrassment. Then his dubious eye roamed again to +the white lettering on the glass front of the public-house. +The young woman's eyes followed his, and rested there also, +but in pure puzzledom. + + "No," said Father Brown, answering her thoughts. "It doesn't say +`Sela', like the thing in the Psalms; I read it like that myself when +I was wool-gathering just now; it says `Ales.'" + + "Well?" inquired the staring young lady. "What does it matter +what it says?" + + His ruminating eye roved to the girl's light canvas sleeve, +round the wrist of which ran a very slight thread of artistic pattern, +just enough to distinguish it from a working-dress of a common woman +and make it more like the working-dress of a lady art-student. +He seemed to find much food for thought in this; but his reply was +very slow and hesitant. "You see, madam," he said, "from outside +the place looks--well, it is a perfectly decent place--but ladies +like you don't--don't generally think so. They never go into such places +from choice, except--" + + "Well?" she repeated. + + "Except an unfortunate few who don't go in to drink milk." + + "You are a most singular person," said the young lady. +"What is your object in all this?" + + "Not to trouble you about it," he replied, very gently. +"Only to arm myself with knowledge enough to help you, if ever +you freely ask my help." + + "But why should I need help?" + + He continued his dreamy monologue. "You couldn't have come in +to see protegees, humble friends, that sort of thing, or you'd have +gone through into the parlour...and you couldn't have come in because +you were ill, or you'd have spoken to the woman of the place, +who's obviously respectable...besides, you don't look ill in that way, +but only unhappy.... This street is the only original long lane +that has no turning; and the houses on both sides are shut up.... +I could only suppose that you'd seen somebody coming whom you didn't want +to meet; and found the public-house was the only shelter in this +wilderness of stone.... I don't think I went beyond the licence of +a stranger in glancing at the only man who passed immediately after.... +And as I thought he looked like the wrong sort...and you looked like +the right sort.... I held myself ready to help if he annoyed you; +that is all. As for my friend, he'll be back soon; and he certainly +can't find out anything by stumping down a road like this.... +I didn't think he could." + + "Then why did you send him out?" she cried, leaning forward with +yet warmer curiosity. She had the proud, impetuous face that goes +with reddish colouring, and a Roman nose, as it did in Marie Antoinette. + + He looked at her steadily for the first time, and said: +"Because I hoped you would speak to me." + + She looked back at him for some time with a heated face, +in which there hung a red shadow of anger; then, despite her anxieties, +humour broke out of her eyes and the corners of her mouth, +and she answered almost grimly: "Well, if you're so keen on +my conversation, perhaps you'll answer my question." After a pause +she added: "I had the honour to ask you why you thought the man's nose +was false." + + "The wax always spots like that just a little in this weather," +answered Father Brown with entire simplicity, + + "But it's such a crooked nose," remonstrated the red-haired girl. + + The priest smiled in his turn. "I don't say it's the sort of nose +one would wear out of mere foppery," he admitted. "This man, I think, +wears it because his real nose is so much nicer." + + "But why?" she insisted. + + "What is the nursery-rhyme?" observed Brown absent-mindedly. +"There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile.... That man, +I fancy, has gone a very crooked road--by following his nose." + + "Why, what's he done?" she demanded, rather shakily. + + "I don't want to force your confidence by a hair," said Father Brown, +very quietly. "But I think you could tell me more about that than +I can tell you." + + The girl sprang to her feet and stood quite quietly, but with +clenched hands, like one about to stride away; then her hands +loosened slowly, and she sat down again. "You are more of a mystery +than all the others," she said desperately, "but I feel there might be +a heart in your mystery." + + "What we all dread most," said the priest in a low voice, +"is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare." +"I will tell you everything," said the red-haired girl doggedly, +"except why I am telling you; and that I don't know." + + She picked at the darned table-cloth and went on: "You look as if +you knew what isn't snobbery as well as what is; and when I say that +ours is a good old family, you'll understand it is a necessary part of +the story; indeed, my chief danger is in my brother's high-and-dry notions, +noblesse oblige and all that. Well, my name is Christabel Carstairs; +and my father was that Colonel Carstairs you've probably heard of, +who made the famous Carstairs Collection of Roman coins. +I could never describe my father to you; the nearest I can say is +that he was very like a Roman coin himself. He was as handsome and +as genuine and as valuable and as metallic and as out-of-date. +He was prouder of his Collection than of his coat-of-arms-- +nobody could say more than that. His extraordinary character +came out most in his will. He had two sons and one daughter. +He quarrelled with one son, my brother Giles, and sent him +to Australia on a small allowance. He then made a will leaving +the Carstairs Collection, actually with a yet smaller allowance, +to my brother Arthur. He meant it as a reward, as the highest honour +he could offer, in acknowledgement of Arthur's loyalty and rectitude +and the distinctions he had already gained in mathematics and economics +at Cambridge. He left me practically all his pretty large fortune; +and I am sure he meant it in contempt. + + "Arthur, you may say, might well complain of this; but Arthur +is my father over again. Though he had some differences with my +father in early youth, no sooner had he taken over the Collection +than he became like a pagan priest dedicated to a temple. +He mixed up these Roman halfpence with the honour of the Carstairs +family in the same stiff, idolatrous way as his father before him. +He acted as if Roman money must be guarded by all the Roman virtues. +He took no pleasures; he spent nothing on himself; he lived for +the Collection. Often he would not trouble to dress for his simple meals; +but pattered about among the corded brown-paper parcels (which no one else +was allowed to touch) in an old brown dressing-gown. With its rope +and tassel and his pale, thin, refined face, it made him look like +an old ascetic monk. Every now and then, though, he would appear +dressed like a decidedly fashionable gentleman; but that was only when +he went up to the London sales or shops to make an addition to +the Carstairs Collection. + + "Now, if you've known any young people, you won't be shocked +if I say that I got into rather a low frame of mind with all this; +the frame of mind in which one begins to say that the Ancient Romans +were all very well in their way. I'm not like my brother Arthur; +I can't help enjoying enjoyment. I got a lot of romance and rubbish +where I got my red hair, from the other side of the family. +Poor Giles was the same; and I think the atmosphere of coins +might count in excuse for him; though he really did wrong and nearly +went to prison. But he didn't behave any worse than I did; +as you shall hear. + + "I come now to the silly part of the story. I think a man +as clever as you can guess the sort of thing that would begin +to relieve the monotony for an unruly girl of seventeen placed in such +a position. But I am so rattled with more dreadful things that I can +hardly read my own feeling; and don't know whether I despise it now +as a flirtation or bear it as a broken heart. We lived then at +a little seaside watering-place in South Wales, and a retired sea-captain +living a few doors off had a son about five years older than myself, +who had been a friend of Giles before he went to the Colonies. +His name does not affect my tale; but I tell you it was Philip Hawker, +because I am telling you everything. We used to go shrimping together, +and said and thought we were in love with each other; at least +he certainly said he was, and I certainly thought I was. +If I tell you he had bronzed curly hair and a falconish sort of face, +bronzed by the sea also, it's not for his sake, I assure you, +but for the story; for it was the cause of a very curious coincidence. + + "One summer afternoon, when I had promised to go shrimping +along the sands with Philip, I was waiting rather impatiently +in the front drawing-room, watching Arthur handle some packets of coins +he had just purchased and slowly shunt them, one or two at a time, +into his own dark study and museum which was at the back of the house. +As soon as I heard the heavy door close on him finally, I made a bolt +for my shrimping-net and tam-o'-shanter and was just going to slip out, +when I saw that my brother had left behind him one coin that lay +gleaming on the long bench by the window. It was a bronze coin, +and the colour, combined with the exact curve of the Roman nose +and something in the very lift of the long, wiry neck, made the head +of Caesar on it the almost precise portrait of Philip Hawker. +Then I suddenly remembered Giles telling Philip of a coin that was +like him, and Philip wishing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild, +foolish thoughts with which my head went round; I felt as if I had +had a gift from the fairies. It seemed to me that if I could only +run away with this, and give it to Philip like a wild sort of wedding-ring, +it would be a bond between us for ever; I felt a thousand such things +at once. Then there yawned under me, like the pit, the enormous, +awful notion of what I was doing; above all, the unbearable thought, +which was like touching hot iron, of what Arthur would think of it. +A Carstairs a thief; and a thief of the Carstairs treasure! +I believe my brother could see me burned like a witch for such a thing, +But then, the very thought of such fanatical cruelty heightened +my old hatred of his dingy old antiquarian fussiness and my longing +for the youth and liberty that called to me from the sea. +Outside was strong sunlight with a wind; and a yellow head of some +broom or gorse in the garden rapped against the glass of the window. +I thought of that living and growing gold calling to me from all +the heaths of the world--and then of that dead, dull gold and bronze +and brass of my brother's growing dustier and dustier as life went by. +Nature and the Carstairs Collection had come to grips at last. + + "Nature is older than the Carstairs Collection. As I ran +down the streets to the sea, the coin clenched tight in my fist, +I felt all the Roman Empire on my back as well as the Carstairs pedigree. +It was not only the old lion argent that was roaring in my ear, +but all the eagles of the Caesars seemed flapping and screaming +in pursuit of me. And yet my heart rose higher and higher like +a child's kite, until I came over the loose, dry sand-hills and to +the flat, wet sands, where Philip stood already up to his ankles +in the shallow shining water, some hundred yards out to sea. +There was a great red sunset; and the long stretch of low water, +hardly rising over the ankle for half a mile, was like a lake +of ruby flame. It was not till I had torn off my shoes and stockings +and waded to where he stood, which was well away from the dry land, +that I turned and looked round. We were quite alone in a circle +of sea-water and wet sand, and I gave him the head of Caesar. + + "At the very instant I had a shock of fancy: that a man far away +on the sand-hills was looking at me intently. I must have felt +immediately after that it was a mere leap of unreasonable nerves; +for the man was only a dark dot in the distance, and I could only just see +that he was standing quite still and gazing, with his head a little +on one side. There was no earthly logical evidence that he was +looking at me; he might have been looking at a ship, or the sunset, +or the sea-gulls, or at any of the people who still strayed here and there +on the shore between us. Nevertheless, whatever my start sprang from +was prophetic; for, as I gazed, he started walking briskly in a bee-line +towards us across the wide wet sands. As he drew nearer and nearer +I saw that he was dark and bearded, and that his eyes were marked with +dark spectacles. He was dressed poorly but respectably in black, +from the old black top hat on his head to the solid black boots +on his feet. In spite of these he walked straight into the sea +without a flash of hesitation, and came on at me with the steadiness +of a travelling bullet. + + "I can't tell you the sense of monstrosity and miracle I had +when he thus silently burst the barrier between land and water. +It was as if he had walked straight off a cliff and still marched +steadily in mid-air. It was as if a house had flown up into the sky +or a man's head had fallen off. He was only wetting his boots; +but he seemed to be a demon disregarding a law of Nature. If he had +hesitated an instant at the water's edge it would have been nothing. +As it was, he seemed to look so much at me alone as not to notice the ocean. +Philip was some yards away with his back to me, bending over his net. +The stranger came on till he stood within two yards of me, the water +washing half-way up to his knees. Then he said, with a clearly modulated +and rather mincing articulation: `Would it discommode you to contribute +elsewhere a coin with a somewhat different superscription?' + + "With one exception there was nothing definably abnormal about him. +His tinted glasses were not really opaque, but of a blue kind common enough, +nor were the eyes behind them shifty, but regarded me steadily. +His dark beard was not really long or wild--, but he looked rather hairy, +because the beard began very high up in his face, just under +the cheek-bones. His complexion was neither sallow nor livid, +but on the contrary rather clear and youthful; yet this gave +a pink-and-white wax look which somehow (I don't know why) rather +increased the horror. The only oddity one could fix was that his nose, +which was otherwise of a good shape, was just slightly turned sideways +at the tip; as if, when it was soft, it had been tapped on one side +with a toy hammer. The thing was hardly a deformity; yet I cannot +tell you what a living nightmare it was to me. As he stood there +in the sunset-stained water he affected me as some hellish sea-monster +just risen roaring out of a sea like blood. I don't know why +a touch on the nose should affect my imagination so much. +I think it seemed as if he could move his nose like a finger. +And as if he had just that moment moved it. + + "`Any little assistance,' he continued with the same queer, +priggish accent, `that may obviate the necessity of my communicating +with the family.' + + "Then it rushed over me that I was being blackmailed for +the theft of the bronze piece; and all my merely superstitious fears +and doubts were swallowed up in one overpowering, practical question. +How could he have found out? I had stolen the thing suddenly and on impulse; +I was certainly alone; for I always made sure of being unobserved +when I slipped out to see Philip in this way. I had not, +to all appearance, been followed in the street; and if I had, +they could not `X-ray' the coin in my closed hand. The man standing +on the sand-hills could no more have seen what I gave Philip than +shoot a fly in one eye, like the man in the fairy-tale. + + "`Philip,' I cried helplessly, `ask this man what he wants.' + + "When Philip lifted his head at last from mending his net +he looked rather red, as if sulky or ashamed; but it may have been +only the exertion of stooping and the red evening light; I may have +only had another of the morbid fancies that seemed to be dancing about me. +He merely said gruffly to the man: `You clear out of this.' +And, motioning me to follow, set off wading shoreward without paying +further attention to him. He stepped on to a stone breakwater that +ran out from among the roots of the sand-hills, and so struck homeward, +perhaps thinking our incubus would find it less easy to walk on such +rough stones, green and slippery with seaweed, than we, who were young +and used to it. But my persecutor walked as daintily as he talked; +and he still followed me, picking his way and picking his phrases. +I heard his delicate, detestable voice appealing to me over my shoulder, +until at last, when we had crested the sand-hills, Philip's patience +(which was by no means so conspicuous on most occasions) seemed to snap. +He turned suddenly, saying, `Go back. I can't talk to you now.' +And as the man hovered and opened his mouth, Philip struck him a buffet +on it that sent him flying from the top of the tallest sand-hill +to the bottom. I saw him crawling out below, covered with sand. + + "This stroke comforted me somehow, though it might well increase +my peril; but Philip showed none of his usual elation at his own prowess. +Though as affectionate as ever, he still seemed cast down; and before +I could ask him anything fully, he parted with me at his own gate, +with two remarks that struck me as strange. He said that, +all things considered, I ought to put the coin back in the Collection; +but that he himself would keep it `for the present'. And then he added +quite suddenly and irrelevantly: `You know Giles is back from Australia?'" + + The door of the tavern opened and the gigantic shadow of +the investigator Flambeau fell across the table. Father Brown +presented him to the lady in his own slight, persuasive style of speech, +mentioning his knowledge and sympathy in such cases; and almost +without knowing, the girl was soon reiterating her story to two listeners. +But Flambeau, as he bowed and sat down, handed the priest a small slip +of paper. Brown accepted it with some surprise and read on it: +"Cab to Wagga Wagga, 379, Mafeking Avenue, Putney." The girl was going +on with her story. + + "I went up the steep street to my own house with my head in a whirl; +it had not begun to clear when I came to the doorstep, on which +I found a milk-can--and the man with the twisted nose. The milk-can +told me the servants were all out; for, of course, Arthur, +browsing about in his brown dressing-gown in a brown study, +would not hear or answer a bell. Thus there was no one to help me +in the house, except my brother, whose help must be my ruin. +In desperation I thrust two shillings into the horrid thing's hand, +and told him to call again in a few days, when I had thought it out. +He went off sulking, but more sheepishly than I had expected-- +perhaps he had been shaken by his fall--and I watched the star of sand +splashed on his back receding down the road with a horrid vindictive +pleasure. He turned a corner some six houses down. + + "Then I let myself in, made myself some tea, and tried to +think it out. I sat at the drawing-room window looking on to the garden, +which still glowed with the last full evening light. But I was too +distracted and dreamy to look at the lawns and flower-pots and flower-beds +with any concentration. So I took the shock the more sharply because +I'd seen it so slowly. + + "The man or monster I'd sent away was standing quite still +in the middle of the garden. Oh, we've all read a lot about +pale-faced phantoms in the dark; but this was more dreadful +than anything of that kind could ever be. Because, though he cast +a long evening shadow, he still stood in warm sunlight. And because +his face was not pale, but had that waxen bloom still upon it +that belongs to a barber's dummy. He stood quite still, with his face +towards me; and I can't tell you how horrid he looked among the tulips +and all those tall, gaudy, almost hothouse-looking flowers. +It looked as if we'd stuck up a waxwork instead of a statue in +the centre of our garden. + + "Yet almost the instant he saw me move in the window he turned +and ran out of the garden by the back gate, which stood open and +by which he had undoubtedly entered. This renewed timidity on his part +was so different from the impudence with which he had walked into the sea, +that I felt vaguely comforted. I fancied, perhaps, that he feared +confronting Arthur more than I knew. Anyhow, I settled down at last, +and had a quiet dinner alone (for it was against the rules to +disturb Arthur when he was rearranging the museum), and, my thoughts, +a little released, fled to Philip and lost themselves, I suppose. +Anyhow, I was looking blankly, but rather pleasantly than otherwise, +at another window, uncurtained, but by this time black as a slate +with the final night-fall. It seemed to me that something like a snail +was on the outside of the window-pane. But when I stared harder, +it was more like a man's thumb pressed on the pane; it had that curled look +that a thumb has. With my fear and courage re-awakened together, +I rushed at the window and then recoiled with a strangled scream +that any man but Arthur must have heard. + + "For it was not a thumb, any more than it was a snail. +It was the tip of a crooked nose, crushed against the glass; +it looked white with the pressure; and the staring face and eyes +behind it were at first invisible and afterwards grey like a ghost. +I slammed the shutters together somehow, rushed up to my room and +locked myself in. But, even as I passed, I could swear I saw +a second black window with something on it that was like a snail. + + "It might be best to go to Arthur after all. If the thing +was crawling close all around the house like a cat, it might have +purposes worse even than blackmail. My brother might cast me out +and curse me for ever, but he was a gentleman, and would defend me +on the spot. After ten minutes' curious thinking, I went down, +knocked on the door and then went in: to see the last and worst sight. + + "My brother's chair was empty, and he was obviously out. +But the man with the crooked nose was sitting waiting for his return, +with his hat still insolently on his head, and actually reading +one of my brother's books under my brother's lamp. His face was composed +and occupied, but his nose-tip still had the air of being the most mobile +part of his face, as if it had just turned from left to right like +an elephant's proboscis. I had thought him poisonous enough while +he was pursuing and watching me; but I think his unconsciousness +of my presence was more frightful still. + + "I think I screamed loud and long; but that doesn't matter. +What I did next does matter: I gave him all the money I had, +including a good deal in paper which, though it was mine, I dare say +I had no right to touch. He went off at last, with hateful, +tactful regrets all in long words; and I sat down, feeling ruined +in every sense. And yet I was saved that very night by a pure accident. +Arthur had gone off suddenly to London, as he so often did, for bargains; +and returned, late but radiant, having nearly secured a treasure +that was an added splendour even to the family Collection. +He was so resplendent that I was almost emboldened to confess +the abstraction of the lesser gem--, but he bore down all other topics +with his over-powering projects. Because the bargain might still +misfire any moment, he insisted on my packing at once and going up +with him to lodgings he had already taken in Fulham, to be near +the curio-shop in question. Thus in spite of myself, I fled from my foe +almost in the dead of night--but from Philip also.... My brother +was often at the South Kensington Museum, and, in order to make +some sort of secondary life for myself, I paid for a few lessons +at the Art Schools. I was coming back from them this evening, +when I saw the abomination of desolation walking alive down +the long straight street and the rest is as this gentleman has said. + + "I've got only one thing to say. I don't deserve to be helped; +and I don't question or complain of my punishment; it is just, +it ought to have happened. But I still question, with bursting brains, +how it can have happened. Am I punished by miracle? or how can anyone but +Philip and myself know I gave him a tiny coin in the middle of the sea?" + + "It is an extraordinary problem," admitted Flambeau. + + "Not so extraordinary as the answer," remarked Father Brown +rather gloomily. "Miss Carstairs, will you be at home if we call +at your Fulham place in an hour and a half hence?" + + The girl looked at him, and then rose and put her gloves on. +"Yes," she said, "I'll be there"; and almost instantly left the place. + + That night the detective and the priest were still talking +of the matter as they drew near the Fulham house, a tenement +strangely mean even for a temporary residence of the Carstairs family. + + "Of course the superficial, on reflection," said Flambeau, +"would think first of this Australian brother who's been +in trouble before, who's come back so suddenly and who's just the man +to have shabby confederates. But I can't see how he can +come into the thing by any process of thought, unless..." + + "Well?" asked his companion patiently. + + Flambeau lowered his voice. "Unless the girl's lover comes in, +too, and he would be the blacker villain. The Australian chap +did know that Hawker wanted the coin. But I can't see how on earth +he could know that Hawker had got it, unless Hawker signalled to him +or his representative across the shore." + + "That is true," assented the priest, with respect. + + "Have you noted another thing?" went on Flambeau eagerly. +"this Hawker hears his love insulted, but doesn't strike till he's got +to the soft sand-hills, where he can be victor in a mere sham-fight. +If he'd struck amid rocks and sea, he might have hurt his ally." + + "That is true again," said Father Brown, nodding. + + "And now, take it from the start. It lies between few people, +but at least three. You want one person for suicide; two people +for murder; but at least three people for blackmail" + + "Why?" asked the priest softly. + + "Well, obviously," cried his friend, "there must be one to be exposed; +one to threaten exposure; and one at least whom exposure would horrify." + + After a long ruminant pause, the priest said: "You miss a logical step. +Three persons are needed as ideas. Only two are needed as agents." + + "What can you mean?" asked the other. + + "Why shouldn't a blackmailer," asked Brown, in a low voice, +"threaten his victim with himself? Suppose a wife became +a rigid teetotaller in order to frighten her husband into concealing +his pub-frequenting, and then wrote him blackmailing letters +in another hand, threatening to tell his wife! Why shouldn't it work? +Suppose a father forbade a son to gamble and then, following him +in a good disguise, threatened the boy with his own sham +paternal strictness! Suppose--but, here we are, my friend." + + "My God!" cried Flambeau; "you don't mean--" + + An active figure ran down the steps of the house and showed +under the golden lamplight the unmistakable head that resembled +the Roman coin. "Miss Carstairs," said Hawker without ceremony, +"wouldn't go in till you came." + + "Well," observed Brown confidently, "don't you think it's +the best thing she can do to stop outside--with you to look after her? +You see, I rather guess you have guessed it all yourself." + + "Yes," said the young man, in an undertone, "I guessed +on the sands and now I know; that was why I let him fall soft." + + Taking a latchkey from the girl and the coin from Hawker, +Flambeau let himself and his friend into the empty house and passed +into the outer parlour. It was empty of all occupants but one. +The man whom Father Brown had seen pass the tavern was standing +against the wall as if at bay; unchanged, save that he had taken off +his black coat and was wearing a brown dressing-gown. + + "We have come," said Father Brown politely, "to give back +this coin to its owner." And he handed it to the man with the nose. + + Flambeau's eyes rolled. "Is this man a coin-collector?" he asked. + + "This man is Mr Arthur Carstairs," said the priest positively, +"and he is a coin-collector of a somewhat singular kind." + + The man changed colour so horribly that the crooked nose +stood out on his face like a separate and comic thing. He spoke, +nevertheless, with a sort of despairing dignity. "You shall see, +then," he said, "that I have not lost all the family qualities." +And he turned suddenly and strode into an inner room, slamming the door. + + "Stop him!" shouted Father Brown, bounding and half falling +over a chair; and, after a wrench or two, Flambeau had the door open. +But it was too late. In dead silence Flambeau strode across +and telephoned for doctor and police. + + An empty medicine bottle lay on the floor. Across the table +the body of the man in the brown dressing-gown lay amid his burst +and gaping brown-paper parcels; out of which poured and rolled, +not Roman, but very modern English coins. + + The priest held up the bronze head of Caesar. "This," he said, +"was all that was left of the Carstairs Collection." + + After a silence he went on, with more than common gentleness: +"It was a cruel will his wicked father made, and you see he did +resent it a little. He hated the Roman money he had, and grew fonder +of the real money denied him. He not only sold the Collection +bit by bit, but sank bit by bit to the basest ways of making money-- +even to blackmailing his own family in a disguise. He blackmailed +his brother from Australia for his little forgotten crime (that is why +he took the cab to Wagga Wagga in Putney), he blackmailed his sister +for the theft he alone could have noticed. And that, by the way, +is why she had that supernatural guess when he was away on the sand-dunes. +Mere figure and gait, however distant, are more likely to remind us +of somebody than a well-made-up face quite close." + + There was another silence. "Well," growled the detective, +"and so this great numismatist and coin-collector was nothing but +a vulgar miser." + + "Is there so great a difference?" asked Father Brown, in the same +strange, indulgent tone. "What is there wrong about a miser that is +not often as wrong about a collector? What is wrong, except... +thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image; thou shalt not +bow down to them nor serve them, for I...but we must go and see how +the poor young people are getting on." + + "I think," said Flambeau, "that in spite of everything, +they are probably getting on very well." + + + + + SEVEN + + + The Purple Wig + + +MR EDWARD NUTT, the industrious editor of the Daily Reformer, +sat at his desk, opening letters and marking proofs to the merry tune +of a typewriter, worked by a vigorous young lady. + + He was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirt-sleeves; his movements +were resolute, his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, +rather babyish blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look +that rather contradicted all this. Nor indeed was the expression +altogether misleading. It might truly be said of him, as for many +journalists in authority, that his most familiar emotion was one of +continuous fear; fear of libel actions, fear of lost advertisements, +fear of misprints, fear of the sack. + + His life was a series of distracted compromises between +the proprietor of the paper (and of him), who was a senile soap-boiler +with three ineradicable mistakes in his mind, and the very able staff +he had collected to run the paper; some of whom were brilliant +and experienced men and (what was even worse) sincere enthusiasts +for the political policy of the paper. + + A letter from one of these lay immediately before him, +and rapid and resolute as he was, he seemed almost to hesitate +before opening it. He took up a strip of proof instead, ran down it +with a blue eye, and a blue pencil, altered the word "adultery" +to the word "impropriety," and the word "Jew" to the word "Alien," +rang a bell and sent it flying upstairs. + + Then, with a more thoughtful eye, he ripped open the letter from his +more distinguished contributor, which bore a postmark of Devonshire, +and read as follows: + + DEAR NUTT,--As I see you're working Spooks and Dooks at the same time, +what about an article on that rum business of the Eyres of Exmoor; +or as the old women call it down here, the Devil's Ear of Eyre? +The head of the family, you know, is the Duke of Exmoor; he is one of +the few really stiff old Tory aristocrats left, a sound old crusted tyrant +it is quite in our line to make trouble about. And I think I'm +on the track of a story that will make trouble. + + Of course I don't believe in the old legend about James I; +and as for you, you don't believe in anything, not even in journalism. +The legend, you'll probably remember, was about the blackest business +in English history--the poisoning of Overbury by that witch's cat +Frances Howard, and the quite mysterious terror which forced the King +to pardon the murderers. There was a lot of alleged witchcraft +mixed up with it; and the story goes that a man-servant listening +at the keyhole heard the truth in a talk between the King and Carr; +and the bodily ear with which he heard grew large and monstrous +as by magic, so awful was the secret. And though he had to be loaded +with lands and gold and made an ancestor of dukes, the elf-shaped ear +is still recurrent in the family. Well, you don't believe in black magic; +and if you did, you couldn't use it for copy. If a miracle happened +in your office, you'd have to hush it up, now so many bishops +are agnostics. But that is not the point The point is that +there really is something queer about Exmoor and his family; +something quite natural, I dare say, but quite abnormal. +And the Ear is in it somehow, I fancy; either a symbol or a delusion +or disease or something. Another tradition says that Cavaliers +just after James I began to wear their hair long only to cover +the ear of the first Lord Exmoor. This also is no doubt fanciful. + + The reason I point it out to you is this: It seems to me that +we make a mistake in attacking aristocracy entirely for its champagne +and diamonds. Most men rather admire the nobs for having a good time, +but I think we surrender too much when we admit that aristocracy +has made even the aristocrats happy. I suggest a series of articles +pointing out how dreary, how inhuman, how downright diabolist, +is the very smell and atmosphere of some of these great houses. +There are plenty of instances; but you couldn't begin with a better one +than the Ear of the Eyres. By the end of the week I think I can +get you the truth about it.--Yours ever, FRANCIS FINN. + + Mr Nutt reflected a moment, staring at his left boot; +then he called out in a strong, loud and entirely lifeless voice, +in which every syllable sounded alike: "Miss Barlow, take down +a letter to Mr Finn, please." + + DEAR FINN,--I think it would do; copy should reach us second post +Saturday.--Yours, E. NUTT. + + This elaborate epistle he articulated as if it were all one word; +and Miss Barlow rattled it down as if it were all one word. +Then he took up another strip of proof and a blue pencil, +and altered the word "supernatural" to the word "marvellous", +and the expression "shoot down" to the expression "repress". + + In such happy, healthful activities did Mr Nutt disport himself, +until the ensuing Saturday found him at the same desk, dictating to +the same typist, and using the same blue pencil on the first instalment +of Mr Finn's revelations. The opening was a sound piece of slashing +invective about the evil secrets of princes, and despair in the high places +of the earth. Though written violently, it was in excellent English; +but the editor, as usual, had given to somebody else the task +of breaking it up into sub-headings, which were of a spicier sort, +as "Peeress and Poisons", and "The Eerie Ear", "The Eyres in their Eyrie", +and so on through a hundred happy changes. Then followed the legend +of the Ear, amplified from Finn's first letter, and then the substance +of his later discoveries, as follows: + + + I know it is the practice of journalists to put the end of the story +at the beginning and call it a headline. I know that journalism +largely consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew +that Lord Jones was alive. Your present correspondent thinks that this, +like many other journalistic customs, is bad journalism; and that +the Daily Reformer has to set a better example in such things. +He proposes to tell his story as it occurred, step by step. +He will use the real names of the parties, who in most cases are ready +to confirm his testimony. As for the headlines, the sensational +proclamations--they will come at the end. + + I was walking along a public path that threads through +a private Devonshire orchard and seems to point towards Devonshire cider, +when I came suddenly upon just such a place as the path suggested. +It was a long, low inn, consisting really of a cottage and two barns; +thatched all over with the thatch that looks like brown and grey hair +grown before history. But outside the door was a sign which +called it the Blue Dragon; and under the sign was one of those long +rustic tables that used to stand outside most of the free English inns, +before teetotallers and brewers between them destroyed freedom. +And at this table sat three gentlemen, who might have lived +a hundred years ago. + + Now that I know them all better, there is no difficulty +about disentangling the impressions; but just then they looked like +three very solid ghosts. The dominant figure, both because he was +bigger in all three dimensions, and because he sat centrally +in the length of the table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed +completely in black, with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, +but a rather bald and rather bothered brow. Looking at him again, +more strictly, I could not exactly say what it was that gave me +the sense of antiquity, except the antique cut of his white +clerical necktie and the barred wrinkles across his brow. + + It was even less easy to fix the impression in the case of +the man at the right end of the table, who, to say truth, +was as commonplace a person as could be seen anywhere, with a round, +brown-haired head and a round snub nose, but also clad in clerical black, +of a stricter cut. It was only when I saw his broad curved hat lying +on the table beside him that I realized why I connected him with +anything ancient. He was a Roman Catholic priest. + + Perhaps the third man, at the other end of the table, +had really more to do with it than the rest, though he was both +slighter in physical presence and more inconsiderate in his dress. +His lank limbs were clad, I might also say clutched, in very tight +grey sleeves and pantaloons; he had a long, sallow, aquiline face +which seemed somehow all the more saturnine because his lantern jaws +were imprisoned in his collar and neck-cloth more in the style of +the old stock; and his hair (which ought to have been dark brown) +was of an odd dim, russet colour which, in conjunction with +his yellow face, looked rather purple than red. The unobtrusive +yet unusual colour was all the more notable because his hair was +almost unnaturally healthy and curling, and he wore it full. +But, after all analysis, I incline to think that what gave me +my first old-fashioned impression was simply a set of tall, +old-fashioned wine-glasses, one or two lemons and two churchwarden pipes. +And also, perhaps, the old-world errand on which I had come. + + Being a hardened reporter, and it being apparently a public inn, +I did not need to summon much of my impudence to sit down at +the long table and order some cider. The big man in black seemed +very learned, especially about local antiquities; the small man in black, +though he talked much less, surprised me with a yet wider culture. +So we got on very well together; but the third man, the old gentleman +in the tight pantaloons, seemed rather distant and haughty, +until I slid into the subject of the Duke of Exmoor and his ancestry. + + I thought the subject seemed to embarrass the other two a little; +but it broke the spell of the third man's silence most successfully. +Speaking with restraint and with the accent of a highly educated gentleman, +and puffing at intervals at his long churchwarden pipe, he proceeded +to tell me some of the most horrible stories I have ever heard in my life: +how one of the Eyres in the former ages had hanged his own father; +and another had his wife scourged at the cart tail through the village; +and another had set fire to a church full of children, and so on. + + Some of the tales, indeed, are not fit for public print--, +such as the story of the Scarlet Nuns, the abominable story of +the Spotted Dog, or the thing that was done in the quarry. +And all this red roll of impieties came from his thin, genteel lips +rather primly than otherwise, as he sat sipping the wine out of +his tall, thin glass. + + I could see that the big man opposite me was trying, +if anything, to stop him; but he evidently held the old gentleman +in considerable respect, and could not venture to do so at all abruptly. +And the little priest at the other end of the-table, though free from +any such air of embarrassment, looked steadily at the table, +and seemed to listen to the recital with great pain--as well as he might. + + "You don't seem," I said to the narrator, "to be very fond of +the Exmoor pedigree." + + He looked at me a moment, his lips still prim, but whitening +and tightening; then he deliberately broke his long pipe and glass +on the table and stood up, the very picture of a perfect gentleman +with the framing temper of a fiend. + + "These gentlemen," he said, "will tell you whether I have cause +to like it. The curse of the Eyres of old has lain heavy on this country, +and many have suffered from it. They know there are none who have +suffered from it as I have." And with that he crushed a piece of +the fallen glass under his heel, and strode away among the green twilight +of the twinkling apple-trees. + + "That is an extraordinary old gentleman," I said to the other two; +"do you happen to know what the Exmoor family has done to him? Who is he?" + + The big man in black was staring at me with the wild air of +a baffled bull; he did not at first seem to take it in. Then he said +at last, "Don't you know who he is?" + + I reaffirmed my ignorance, and there was another silence; +then the little priest said, still looking at the table, "That is +the Duke of Exmoor." + + Then, before I could collect my scattered senses, he added +equally quietly, but with an air of regularizing things: +"My friend here is Doctor Mull, the Duke's librarian. My name is Brown." + + "But," I stammered, "if that is the Duke, why does he damn all +the old dukes like that?" + + "He seems really to believe," answered the priest called Brown, +"that they have left a curse on him." Then he added, with some irrelevance, +"That's why he wears a wig." + + It was a few moments before his meaning dawned on me. +"You don't mean that fable about the fantastic ear?" I demanded. +"I've heard of it, of course, but surely it must be a superstitious yarn +spun out of something much simpler. I've sometimes thought it was +a wild version of one of those mutilation stories. They used to crop +criminals' ears in the sixteenth century." + + "I hardly think it was that," answered the little man thoughtfully, +"but it is not outside ordinary science or natural law for a family +to have some deformity frequently reappearing--such as one ear bigger +than the other." + + The big librarian had buried his big bald brow in his big red hands, +like a man trying to think out his duty. "No," he groaned. +"You do the man a wrong after all. Understand, I've no reason +to defend him, or even keep faith with him. He has been a tyrant to me +as to everybody else. Don't fancy because you see him sitting here +that he isn't a great lord in the worst sense of the word. +He would fetch a man a mile to ring a bell a yard off--if it would +summon another man three miles to fetch a matchbox three yards off. +He must have a footman to carry his walking-stick; a body servant +to hold up his opera-glasses--" + + "But not a valet to brush his clothes," cut in the priest, +with a curious dryness, "for the valet would want to brush his wig, too." + + The librarian turned to him and seemed to forget my presence; +he was strongly moved and, I think, a little heated with wine. +"I don't know how you know it, Father Brown," he said, "but you are right. +He lets the whole world do everything for him--except dress him. +And that he insists on doing in a literal solitude like a desert. +Anybody is kicked out of the house without a character who is +so much as found near his dressing-room door. + + "He seems a pleasant old party," I remarked. + + "No," replied Dr Mull quite simply; "and yet that is just what +I mean by saying you are unjust to him after all. Gentlemen, the Duke +does really feel the bitterness about the curse that he uttered just now. +He does, with sincere shame and terror, hide under that purple wig +something he thinks it would blast the sons of man to see. +I know it is so; and I know it is not a mere natural disfigurement, +like a criminal mutilation, or a hereditary disproportion in the features. +I know it is worse than that; because a man told me who was present +at a scene that no man could invent, where a stronger man than +any of us tried to defy the secret, and was scared away from it." + + I opened my mouth to speak, but Mull went on in oblivion of me, +speaking out of the cavern of his hands. "I don't mind telling you, +Father, because it's really more defending the poor Duke than +giving him away. Didn't you ever hear of the time when he +very nearly lost all the estates?" + + The priest shook his head; and the librarian proceeded to +tell the tale as he had heard it from his predecessor in the same post, +who had been his patron and instructor, and whom he seemed to trust +implicitly. Up to a certain point it was a common enough tale +of the decline of a great family's fortunes--the tale of a family lawyer. +His lawyer, however, had the sense to cheat honestly, if the expression +explains itself. Instead of using funds he held in trust, +he took advantage of the Duke's carelessness to put the family in +a financial hole, in which it might be necessary for the Duke to +let him hold them in reality. + + The lawyer's name was Isaac Green, but the Duke always called him +Elisha; presumably in reference to the fact that he was quite bald, +though certainly not more than thirty. He had risen very rapidly, +but from very dirty beginnings; being first a "nark" or informer, +and then a money-lender: but as solicitor to the Eyres he had the sense, +as I say, to keep technically straight until he was ready to deal +the final blow. The blow fell at dinner; and the old librarian said +he should never forget the very look of the lampshades and the decanters, +as the little lawyer, with a steady smile, proposed to the great landlord +that they should halve the estates between them. The sequel certainly +could not be overlooked; for the Duke, in dead silence, smashed +a decanter on the man's bald head as suddenly as I had seen him smash +the glass that day in the orchard. It left a red triangular scar +on the scalp, and the lawyer's eyes altered, but not his smile. + + He rose tottering to his feet, and struck back as such men do strike. +"I am glad of that," he said, "for now I can take the whole estate. +The law will give it to me." + + Exmoor, it seems, was white as ashes, but his eyes still blazed. +"The law will give it you," he said; "but you will not take it.... +Why not? Why? because it would mean the crack of doom for me, +and if you take it I shall take off my wig.... Why, you pitiful +plucked fowl, anyone can see your bare head. But no man shall +see mine and live." + + Well, you may say what you like and make it mean what you like. +But Mull swears it is the solemn fact that the lawyer, after shaking +his knotted fists in the air for an instant, simply ran from the room +and never reappeared in the countryside; and since then Exmoor has been +feared more for a warlock than even for a landlord and a magistrate. + + Now Dr Mull told his story with rather wild theatrical gestures, +and with a passion I think at least partisan. I was quite conscious +of the possibility that the whole was the extravagance of +an old braggart and gossip. But before I end this half of my discoveries, +I think it due to Dr Mull to record that my two first inquiries +have confirmed his story. I learned from an old apothecary in the village +that there was a bald man in evening dress, giving the name of Green, +who came to him one night to have a three-cornered cut on his forehead +plastered. And I learnt from the legal records and old newspapers +that there was a lawsuit threatened, and at least begun, by one Green +against the Duke of Exmoor. + + + Mr Nutt, of the Daily Reformer, wrote some highly incongruous +words across the top of the copy, made some highly mysterious marks +down the side of it, and called to Miss Barlow in the same loud, +monotonous voice: "Take down a letter to Mr Finn." + + DEAR FINN,--Your copy will do, but I have had to headline it a bit; +and our public would never stand a Romanist priest in the story-- +you must keep your eye on the suburbs. I've altered him to Mr Brown, +a Spiritualist. + + Yours, + + E. NUTT. + + + A day or two afterward found the active and judicious editor +examining, with blue eyes that seemed to grow rounder and rounder, +the second instalment of Mr Finn's tale of mysteries in high life. +It began with the words: + + + I have made an astounding discovery. I freely confess it is +quite different from anything I expected to discover, and will give +a much more practical shock to the public. I venture to say, +without any vanity, that the words I now write will be read all over Europe, +and certainly all over America and the Colonies. And yet I heard +all I have to tell before I left this same little wooden table in this +same little wood of apple-trees. + + I owe it all to the small priest Brown; he is an extraordinary man. +The big librarian had left the table, perhaps ashamed of his long tongue, +perhaps anxious about the storm in which his mysterious master +had vanished: anyway, he betook himself heavily in the Duke's tracks +through the trees. Father Brown had picked up one of the lemons and +was eyeing it with an odd pleasure. + + "What a lovely colour a lemon is!" he said. "There's one thing +I don't like about the Duke's wig--the colour." + + "I don't think I understand," I answered. + + "I dare say he's got good reason to cover his ears, like King Midas," +went on the priest, with a cheerful simplicity which somehow seemed +rather flippant under the circumstances. "I can quite understand +that it's nicer to cover them with hair than with brass plates or +leather flaps. But if he wants to use hair, why doesn't he make it +look like hair? There never was hair of that colour in this world. +It looks more like a sunset-cloud coming through the wood. +Why doesn't he conceal the family curse better, if he's really +so ashamed of it? Shall I tell you? It's because he isn't ashamed of it. +He's proud of it" + + "It's an ugly wig to be proud of--and an ugly story," I said. + + "Consider," replied this curious little man, "how you yourself +really feel about such things. I don't suggest you're either +more snobbish or more morbid than the rest of us: but don't you feel +in a vague way that a genuine old family curse is rather a fine thing +to have? Would you be ashamed, wouldn't you be a little proud, +if the heir of the Glamis horror called you his friend? or if Byron's +family had confided, to you only, the evil adventures of their race? +Don't be too hard on the aristocrats themselves if their heads are +as weak as ours would be, and they are snobs about their own sorrows." + + "By Jove!" I cried; "and that's true enough. My own mother's family +had a banshee; and, now I come to think of it, it has comforted me +in many a cold hour." + + "And think," he went on, "of that stream of blood and poison +that spurted from his thin lips the instant you so much as mentioned +his ancestors. Why should he show every stranger over such +a Chamber of Horrors unless he is proud of it? He doesn't conceal his wig, +he doesn't conceal his blood, he doesn't conceal his family curse, +he doesn't conceal the family crimes--but--" + + The little man's voice changed so suddenly, he shut his hand +so sharply, and his eyes so rapidly grew rounder and brighter +like a waking owl's, that it had all the abruptness of a small explosion +on the table. + + "But," he ended, "he does really conceal his toilet." + + It somehow completed the thrill of my fanciful nerves that +at that instant the Duke appeared again silently among the glimmering trees, +with his soft foot and sunset-hued hair, coming round the corner of +the house in company with his librarian. Before he came within earshot, +Father Brown had added quite composedly, "Why does he really hide +the secret of what he does with the purple wig? Because it isn't +the sort of secret we suppose." + + The Duke came round the corner and resumed his seat at the head +of the table with all his native dignity. The embarrassment of +the librarian left him hovering on his hind legs, like a huge bear. +The Duke addressed the priest with great seriousness. "Father Brown," +he said, "Doctor Mull informs me that you have come here to make a request. +I no longer profess an observance of the religion of my fathers; +but for their sakes, and for the sake of the days when we met before, +I am very willing to hear you. But I presume you would rather +be heard in private." + + Whatever I retain of the gentleman made me stand up. +Whatever I have attained of the journalist made me stand still. +Before this paralysis could pass, the priest had made a momentarily +detaining motion. "If," he said, "your Grace will permit me +my real petition, or if I retain any right to advise you, I would urge +that as many people as possible should be present. All over this country +I have found hundreds, even of my own faith and flock, whose imaginations +are poisoned by the spell which I implore you to break. I wish we could +have all Devonshire here to see you do it." + + "To see me do what?" asked the Duke, arching his eyebrows. + + "To see you take off your wig," said Father Brown. + + The Duke's face did not move; but he looked at his petitioner +with a glassy stare which was the most awful expression I have ever seen +on a human face. I could see the librarian's great legs wavering +under him like the shadows of stems in a pool; and I could not banish +from my own brain the fancy that the trees all around us were +filling softly in the silence with devils instead of birds. + + "I spare you," said the Duke in a voice of inhuman pity. +"I refuse. If I gave you the faintest hint of the load of horror +I have to bear alone, you would lie shrieking at these feet of mine +and begging to know no more. I will spare you the hint. +You shall not spell the first letter of what is written on +the altar of the Unknown God." + + "I know the Unknown God," said the little priest, with an +unconscious grandeur of certitude that stood up like a granite tower. +"I know his name; it is Satan. The true God was made flesh +and dwelt among us. And I say to you, wherever you find men ruled +merely by mystery, it is the mystery of iniquity. If the devil +tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. +If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think +some truth unbearable, bear it. I entreat your Grace to end +this nightmare now and here at this table." + + "If I did," said the Duke in a low voice, "you and all you believe, +and all by which alone you live, would be the first to shrivel and perish. +You would have an instant to know the great Nothing before you died." + + "The Cross of Christ be between me and harm," said Father Brown. +"Take off your wig." + + I was leaning over the table in ungovernable excitement; +in listening to this extraordinary duel half a thought had +come into my head. "Your Grace," I cried, "I call your bluff. +Take off that wig or I will knock it off." + + I suppose I can be prosecuted for assault, but I am very glad +I did it. When he said, in the same voice of stone, "I refuse," +I simply sprang on him. For three long instants he strained against me +as if he had all hell to help him; but I forced his head until +the hairy cap fell off it. I admit that, whilst wrestling, +I shut my eyes as it fell. + + I was awakened by a cry from Mull, who was also by this time +at the Duke's side. His head and mine were both bending over +the bald head of the wigless Duke. Then the silence was snapped +by the librarian exclaiming: "What can it mean? Why, the man had +nothing to hide. His ears are just like everybody else's." + + "Yes," said Father Brown, "that is what he had to hide." + + The priest walked straight up to him, but strangely enough +did not even glance at his ears. He stared with an almost comical +seriousness at his bald forehead, and pointed to a three-cornered +cicatrice, long healed, but still discernible. "Mr Green, I think." +he said politely, "and he did get the whole estate after all." + + And now let me tell the readers of the Daily Reformer +what I think the most remarkable thing in the whole affair. +This transformation scene, which will seem to you as wild and purple +as a Persian fairy-tale, has been (except for my technical assault) +strictly legal and constitutional from its first beginnings. +This man with the odd scar and the ordinary ears is not an impostor. +Though (in one sense) he wears another man's wig and claims +another man's ear, he has not stolen another man's coronet. +He really is the one and only Duke of Exmoor. What happened was this. +The old Duke really had a slight malformation of the ear, which really +was more or less hereditary. He really was morbid about it; +and it is likely enough that he did invoke it as a kind of curse +in the violent scene (which undoubtedly happened) in which he struck +Green with the decanter. But the contest ended very differently. +Green pressed his claim and got the estates; the dispossessed nobleman +shot himself and died without issue. After a decent interval +the beautiful English Government revived the "extinct" peerage of Exmoor, +and bestowed it, as is usual, on the most important person, +the person who had got the property. + + This man used the old feudal fables--properly, in his snobbish soul, +really envied and admired them. So that thousands of poor English people +trembled before a mysterious chieftain with an ancient destiny and +a diadem of evil stars--when they are really trembling before +a guttersnipe who was a pettifogger and a pawnbroker not twelve years ago. +I think it very typical of the real case against our aristocracy as it is, +and as it will be till God sends us braver men. + + + Mr Nutt put down the manuscript and called out with unusual +sharpness: "Miss Barlow, please take down a letter to Mr Finn." + + DEAR FINN,--You must be mad; we can't touch this. I wanted vampires +and the bad old days and aristocracy hand-in-hand with superstition. +They like that But you must know the Exmoors would never forgive this. +And what would our people say then, I should like to know! Why, Sir Simon +is one of Exmoor's greatest pals; and it would ruin that cousin of +the Eyres that's standing for us at Bradford. Besides, old Soap-Suds +was sick enough at not getting his peerage last year; he'd sack me by wire +if I lost him it with such lunacy as this. And what about Duffey? +He's doing us some rattling articles on "The Heel of the Norman." +And how can he write about Normans if the man's only a solicitor? +Do be reasonable.--Yours, E. NUTT. + + As Miss Barlow rattled away cheerfully, he crumpled up the copy +and tossed it into the waste-paper basket; but not before he had, +automatically and by force of habit, altered the word "God" +to the word "circumstances." + + + + EIGHT + + + The Perishing of the Pendragons + + +FATHER BROWN was in no mood for adventures. He had lately fallen ill +with over-work, and when he began to recover, his friend Flambeau +had taken him on a cruise in a small yacht with Sir Cecil Fanshaw, +a young Cornish squire and an enthusiast for Cornish coast scenery. +But Brown was still rather weak; he was no very happy sailor; +and though he was never of the sort that either grumbles or breaks down, +his spirits did not rise above patience and civility. When the other +two men praised the ragged violet sunset or the ragged volcanic crags, +he agreed with them. When Flambeau pointed out a rock shaped +like a dragon, he looked at it and thought it very like a dragon. +When Fanshaw more excitedly indicated a rock that was like Merlin, +he looked at it, and signified assent. When Flambeau asked whether +this rocky gate of the twisted river was not the gate of Fairyland, +he said "Yes." He heard the most important things and the most trivial +with the same tasteless absorption. He heard that the coast was death +to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship's cat was asleep. +He heard that Fanshaw couldn't find his cigar-holder anywhere; +he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle "Both eyes bright, +she's all right; one eye winks, down she sinks." He heard Flambeau +say to Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes +open and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say to Flambeau that, +oddly enough, it didn't mean this: it meant that while they +saw two of the coast lights, one near and the other distant, +exactly side by side, they were in the right river-channel; +but that if one light was hidden behind the other, they were going +on the rocks. He heard Fanshaw add that his country was full of +such quaint fables and idioms; it was the very home of romance; +he even pitted this part of Cornwall against Devonshire, as a claimant +to the laurels of Elizabethan seamanship. According to him +there had been captains among these coves and islets compared with whom +Drake was practically a landsman. He heard Flambeau laugh, and ask if, +perhaps, the adventurous title of "Westward Ho!" only meant that +all Devonshire men wished they were living in Cornwall. He heard Fanshaw +say there was no need to be silly; that not only had Cornish captains +been heroes, but that they were heroes still: that near that very spot +there was an old admiral, now retired, who was scarred by thrilling voyages +full of adventures; and who had in his youth found the last group +of eight Pacific Islands that was added to the chart of the world. +This Cecil Fanshaw was, in person, of the kind that commonly urges +such crude but pleasing enthusiasms; a very young man, light-haired, +high-coloured, with an eager profile; with a boyish bravado of spirits, +but an almost girlish delicacy of tint and type. The big shoulders, +black brows and black mousquetaire swagger of Flambeau +were a great contrast. + + All these trivialities Brown heard and saw; but heard them +as a tired man hears a tune in the railway wheels, or saw them +as a sick man sees the pattern of his wall-paper. No one can calculate +the turns of mood in convalescence: but Father Brown's depression +must have had a great deal to do with his mere unfamiliarity with the sea. +For as the river mouth narrowed like the neck of a bottle, +and the water grew calmer and the air warmer and more earthly, +he seemed to wake up and take notice like a baby. They had reached +that phase just after sunset when air and water both look bright, +but earth and all its growing things look almost black by comparison. +About this particular evening, however, there was something exceptional. +It was one of those rare atmospheres in which a smoked-glass slide +seems to have been slid away from between us and Nature; so that even +dark colours on that day look more gorgeous than bright colours +on cloudier days. The trampled earth of the river-banks and +the peaty stain in the pools did not look drab but glowing umber, +and the dark woods astir in the breeze did not look, as usual, dim blue +with mere depth of distance, but more like wind-tumbled masses of some +vivid violet blossom. This magic clearness and intensity in the colours +was further forced on Brown's slowly reviving senses by something +romantic and even secret in the very form of the landscape. + + The river was still well wide and deep enough for a pleasure boat +so small as theirs; but the curves of the country-side suggested +that it was closing in on either hand; the woods seemed to be making +broken and flying attempts at bridge-building--as if the boat +were passing from the romance of a valley to the romance of a hollow +and so to the supreme romance of a tunnel. Beyond this mere +look of things there was little for Brown's freshening fancy to feed on; +he saw no human beings, except some gipsies trailing along the river bank, +with faggots and osiers cut in the forest; and one sight +no longer unconventional, but in such remote parts still uncommon: +a dark-haired lady, bare-headed, and paddling her own canoe. +If Father Brown ever attached any importance to either of these, +he certainly forgot them at the next turn of the river which +brought in sight a singular object. + + The water seemed to widen and split, being cloven by the dark wedge +of a fish-shaped and wooded islet. With the rate at which they went, +the islet seemed to swim towards them like a ship; a ship with +a very high prow--or, to speak more strictly, a very high funnel. +For at the extreme point nearest them stood up an odd-looking building, +unlike anything they could remember or connect with any purpose. +It was not specially high, but it was too high for its breadth +to be called anything but a tower. Yet it appeared to be built +entirely of wood, and that in a most unequal and eccentric way. +Some of the planks and beams were of good, seasoned oak; some of +such wood cut raw and recent; some again of white pinewood, +and a great deal more of the same sort of wood painted black with tar. +These black beams were set crooked or crisscross at all kinds of angles, +giving the whole a most patchy and puzzling appearance. +There were one or two windows, which appeared to be coloured and +leaded in an old-fashioned but more elaborate style. The travellers +looked at it with that paradoxical feeling we have when something +reminds us of something, and yet we are certain it is something +very different. + + Father Brown, even when he was mystified, was clever in analysing +his own mystification. And he found himself reflecting that +the oddity seemed to consist in a particular shape cut out in +an incongruous material; as if one saw a top-hat made of tin, +or a frock-coat cut out of tartan. He was sure he had seen timbers +of different tints arranged like that somewhere, but never +in such architectural proportions. The next moment a glimpse +through the dark trees told him all he wanted to know and he laughed. +Through a gap in the foliage there appeared for a moment one of those +old wooden houses, faced with black beams, which are still to be found +here and there in England, but which most of us see imitated +in some show called "Old London" or "Shakespeare's England'. +It was in view only long enough for the priest to see that, +however old-fashioned, it was a comfortable and well-kept country-house, +with flower-beds in front of it. It had none of the piebald and crazy +look of the tower that seemed made out of its refuse. + + "What on earth's this?" said Flambeau, who was still staring +at the tower. + + Fanshaw's eyes were shining, and he spoke triumphantly. +"Aha! you've not seen a place quite like this before, I fancy; +that's why I've brought you here, my friend. Now you shall see +whether I exaggerate about the mariners of Cornwall. This place belongs +to Old Pendragon, whom we call the Admiral; though he retired +before getting the rank. The spirit of Raleigh and Hawkins is a memory +with the Devon folk; it's a modern fact with the Pendragons. +If Queen Elizabeth were to rise from the grave and come up this river +in a gilded barge, she would be received by the Admiral in a house +exactly such as she was accustomed to, in every corner and casement, +in every panel on the wall or plate on the table. And she would find +an English Captain still talking fiercely of fresh lands to be found +in little ships, as much as if she had dined with Drake." + + "She'd find a rum sort of thing in the garden," said Father Brown, +"which would not please her Renaissance eye. That Elizabethan domestic +architecture is charming in its way; but it's against the very nature +of it to break out into turrets." + + "And yet," answered Fanshaw, "that's the most romantic and +Elizabethan part of the business. It was built by the Pendragons +in the very days of the Spanish wars; and though it's needed patching +and even rebuilding for another reason, it's always been rebuilt +in the old way. The story goes that the lady of Sir Peter Pendragon +built it in this place and to this height, because from the top +you can just see the corner where vessels turn into the river mouth; +and she wished to be the first to see her husband's ship, +as he sailed home from the Spanish Main." + + "For what other reason," asked Father Brown, "do you mean that +it has been rebuilt?" + + "Oh, there's a strange story about that, too," said the young squire +with relish. "You are really in a land of strange stories. +King Arthur was here and Merlin and the fairies before him. +The story goes that Sir Peter Pendragon, who (I fear) had some of +the faults of the pirates as well as the virtues of the sailor, +was bringing home three Spanish gentlemen in honourable captivity, +intending to escort them to Elizabeth's court. But he was a man +of flaming and tigerish temper, and coming to high words with one of them, +he caught him by the throat and flung him by accident or design, +into the sea. A second Spaniard, who was the brother of the first, +instantly drew his sword and flew at Pendragon, and after a short but +furious combat in which both got three wounds in as many minutes, +Pendragon drove his blade through the other's body and the second Spaniard +was accounted for. As it happened the ship had already turned +into the river mouth and was close to comparatively shallow water. +The third Spaniard sprang over the side of the ship, struck out +for the shore, and was soon near enough to it to stand up to his waist +in water. And turning again to face the ship, and holding up both +arms to Heaven--like a prophet calling plagues upon a wicked city-- +he called out to Pendragon in a piercing and terrible voice, +that he at least was yet living, that he would go on living, +that he would live for ever; and that generation after generation +the house of Pendragon should never see him or his, but should know +by very certain signs that he and his vengeance were alive. +With that he dived under the wave, and was either drowned or swam +so long under water that no hair of his head was seen afterwards." + + "There's that girl in the canoe again," said Flambeau irrelevantly, +for good-looking young women would call him off any topic. +"She seems bothered by the queer tower just as we were." + + Indeed, the black-haired young lady was letting her canoe float +slowly and silently past the strange islet; and was looking intently up +at the strange tower, with a strong glow of curiosity on her oval +and olive face. + + "Never mind girls," said Fanshaw impatiently, "there are plenty +of them in the world, but not many things like the Pendragon Tower. +As you may easily suppose, plenty of superstitions and scandals +have followed in the track of the Spaniard's curse; and no doubt, +as you would put it, any accident happening to this Cornish family +would be connected with it by rural credulity. But it is perfectly true +that this tower has been burnt down two or three times; and the family +can't be called lucky, for more than two, I think, of the Admiral's +near kin have perished by shipwreck; and one at least, to my own knowledge, +on practically the same spot where Sir Peter threw the Spaniard overboard." + + "What a pity!" exclaimed Flambeau. "She's going." + + "When did your friend the Admiral tell you this family history?" +asked Father Brown, as the girl in the canoe paddled off, +without showing the least intention of extending her interest from +the tower to the yacht, which Fanshaw had already caused to lie +alongside the island. + + "Many years ago," replied Fanshaw; "he hasn't been to sea for +some time now, though he is as keen on it as ever. I believe there's +a family compact or something. Well, here's the landing stage; +let's come ashore and see the old boy." + + They followed him on to the island, just under the tower, +and Father Brown, whether from the mere touch of dry land, or the interest +of something on the other bank of the river (which he stared at +very hard for some seconds), seemed singularly improved in briskness. +They entered a wooded avenue between two fences of thin greyish wood, +such as often enclose parks or gardens, and over the top of which +the dark trees tossed to and fro like black and purple plumes upon +the hearse of a giant. The tower, as they left it behind, +looked all the quainter, because such entrances are usually flanked +by two towers; and this one looked lopsided. But for this, the avenue +had the usual appearance of the entrance to a gentleman's grounds; +and, being so curved that the house was now out of sight, +somehow looked a much larger park than any plantation on such an island +could really be. Father Brown was, perhaps, a little fanciful +in his fatigue, but he almost thought the whole place must be +growing larger, as things do in a nightmare. Anyhow, a mystical monotony +was the only character of their march, until Fanshaw suddenly stopped, +and pointed to something sticking out through the grey fence-- +something that looked at first rather like the imprisoned horn +of some beast. Closer observation showed that it was +a slightly curved blade of metal that shone faintly in the fading light. + + Flambeau, who like all Frenchmen had been a soldier, bent over it +and said in a startled voice: "Why, it's a sabre! I believe +I know the sort, heavy and curved, but shorter than the cavalry; +they used to have them in artillery and the--" + + As he spoke the blade plucked itself out of the crack it had made +and came down again with a more ponderous slash, splitting +the fissiparous fence to the bottom with a rending noise. +Then it was pulled out again, flashed above the fence some feet +further along, and again split it halfway down with the first stroke; +and after waggling a little to extricate itself (accompanied with +curses in the darkness) split it down to the ground with a second. +Then a kick of devilish energy sent the whole loosened square +of thin wood flying into the pathway, and a great gap of dark coppice +gaped in the paling. + + Fanshaw peered into the dark opening and uttered an exclamation +of astonishment. "My dear Admiral!" he exclaimed, "do you--er-- +do you generally cut out a new front door whenever you want to +go for a walk?" + + The voice in the gloom swore again, and then broke into a jolly laugh. +"No," it said; "I've really got to cut down this fence somehow; +it's spoiling all the plants, and no one else here can do it. +But I'll only carve another bit off the front door, and then come out +and welcome you." + + And sure enough, he heaved up his weapon once more, and, +hacking twice, brought down another and similar strip of fence, +making the opening about fourteen feet wide in all. Then through this +larger forest gateway he came out into the evening light, +with a chip of grey wood sticking to his sword-blade. + + He momentarily fulfilled all Fanshaw's fable of an old piratical +Admiral; though the details seemed afterwards to decompose into accidents. +For instance, he wore a broad-brimmed hat as protection against the sun; +but the front flap of it was turned up straight to the sky, and the +two corners pulled down lower than the ears, so that it stood across +his forehead in a crescent like the old cocked hat worn by Nelson. +He wore an ordinary dark-blue jacket, with nothing special about +the buttons, but the combination of it with white linen trousers +somehow had a sailorish look. He was tall and loose, and walked with +a sort of swagger, which was not a sailor's roll, and yet somehow +suggested it; and he held in his hand a short sabre which was like +a navy cutlass, but about twice as big. Under the bridge of the hat +his eagle face looked eager, all the more because it was not only +clean-shaven, but without eyebrows. It seemed almost as if all +the hair had come off his face from his thrusting it through +a throng of elements. His eyes were prominent and piercing. +His colour was curiously attractive, while partly tropical; +it reminded one vaguely of a blood-orange. That is, that while it was +ruddy and sanguine, there was a yellow in it that was in no way sickly, +but seemed rather to glow like gold apples of the Hesperides-- +Father Brown thought he had never seen a figure so expressive +of all the romances about the countries of the Sun. + + When Fanshaw had presented his two friends to their host +he fell again into a tone of rallying the latter about his wreckage +of the fence and his apparent rage of profanity. The Admiral pooh-poohed +it at first as a piece of necessary but annoying garden work; +but at length the ring of real energy came back into his laughter, +and he cried with a mixture of impatience and good humour: + + "Well, perhaps I do go at it a bit rabidly, and feel +a kind of pleasure in smashing anything. So would you if your +only pleasure was in cruising about to find some new Cannibal Islands, +and you had to stick on this muddy little rockery in a sort of rustic pond. +When I remember how I've cut down a mile and a half of green poisonous +jungle with an old cutlass half as sharp as this; and then remember +I must stop here and chop this matchwood, because of some confounded +old bargain scribbled in a family Bible, why, I--" + + He swung up the heavy steel again; and this time sundered +the wall of wood from top to bottom at one stroke. + + "I feel like that," he said laughing, but furiously flinging +the sword some yards down the path, "and now let's go up to the house; +you must have some dinner." + + The semicircle of lawn in front of the house was varied by +three circular garden beds, one of red tulips, a second of +yellow tulips, and the third of some white, waxen-looking blossoms +that the visitors did not know and presumed to be exotic. +A heavy, hairy and rather sullen-looking gardener was hanging up +a heavy coil of garden hose. The corners of the expiring sunset +which seemed to cling about the corners of the house gave glimpses +here and there of the colours of remoter flowerbeds; and in +a treeless space on one side of the house opening upon the river +stood a tall brass tripod on which was tilted a big brass telescope. +Just outside the steps of the porch stood a little painted +green garden table, as if someone had just had tea there. +The entrance was flanked with two of those half-featured lumps of stone +with holes for eyes that are said to be South Sea idols; and on +the brown oak beam across the doorway were some confused carvings +that looked almost as barbaric. + + As they passed indoors, the little cleric hopped suddenly +on to the table, and standing on it peered unaffectedly +through his spectacles at the mouldings in the oak. Admiral Pendragon +looked very much astonished, though not particularly annoyed; +while Fanshaw was so amused with what looked like a performing pigmy +on his little stand, that he could not control his laughter. +But Father Brown was not likely to notice either the laughter +or the astonishment. + + He was gazing at three carved symbols, which, though very worn +and obscure, seemed still to convey some sense to him. The first +seemed to be the outline of some tower or other building, crowned with +what looked like curly-pointed ribbons. The second was clearer: +an old Elizabethan galley with decorative waves beneath it, +but interrupted in the middle by a curious jagged rock, which was either +a fault in the wood or some conventional representation of the water +coming in. The third represented the upper half of a human figure, +ending in an escalloped line like the waves; the face was rubbed +and featureless, and both arms were held very stiffly up in the air. + + "Well," muttered Father Brown, blinking, "here is the legend +of the Spaniard plain enough. Here he is holding up his arms +and cursing in the sea; and here are the two curses: the wrecked ship +and the burning of Pendragon Tower." + + Pendragon shook his head with a kind of venerable amusement. +"And how many other things might it not be?" he said. "Don't you know +that that sort of half-man, like a half-lion or half-stag, +is quite common in heraldry? Might not that line through the ship +be one of those parti-per-pale lines, indented, I think they call it? +And though the third thing isn't so very heraldic, it would be +more heraldic to suppose it a tower crowned with laurel than with fire; +and it looks just as like it." + + "But it seems rather odd," said Flambeau, "that it should +exactly confirm the old legend." + + "Ah," replied the sceptical traveller, "but you don't know +how much of the old legend may have been made up from the old figures. +Besides, it isn't the only old legend. Fanshaw, here, who is +fond of such things, will tell you there are other versions of the tale, +and much more horrible ones. One story credits my unfortunate ancestor +with having had the Spaniard cut in two; and that will fit +the pretty picture also. Another obligingly credits our family +with the possession of a tower full of snakes and explains those little, +wriggly things in that way. And a third theory supposes the crooked line +on the ship to be a conventionalized thunderbolt; but that alone, +if seriously examined, would show what a very little way these +unhappy coincidences really go." + + "Why, how do you mean?" asked Fanshaw. + + "It so happens," replied his host coolly, "that there was +no thunder and lightning at all in the two or three shipwrecks +I know of in our family." + + "Oh!" said Father Brown, and jumped down from the little table. + + There was another silence in which they heard the continuous murmur +of the river; then Fanshaw said, in a doubtful and perhaps +disappointed tone: "Then you don't think there is anything in the +tales of the tower in flames?" + + "There are the tales, of course," said the Admiral, +shrugging his shoulders; "and some of them, I don't deny, +on evidence as decent as one ever gets for such things. +Someone saw a blaze hereabout, don't you know, as he walked home +through a wood; someone keeping sheep on the uplands inland thought +he saw a flame hovering over Pendragon Tower. Well, a damp dab of mud +like this confounded island seems the last place where one would +think of fires." + + "What is that fire over there?" asked Father Brown with +a gentle suddenness, pointing to the woods on the left river-bank. +They were all thrown a little off their balance, and the more fanciful +Fanshaw had even some difficulty in recovering his, as they saw a long, +thin stream of blue smoke ascending silently into the end of +the evening light. + + Then Pendragon broke into a scornful laugh again. "Gipsies!" +he said; "they've been camping about here for about a week. +Gentlemen, you want your dinner," and he turned as if to enter the house. + + But the antiquarian superstition in Fanshaw was still quivering, +and he said hastily: "But, Admiral, what's that hissing noise +quite near the island? It's very like fire." + + "It's more like what it is," said the Admiral, laughing as he +led the way; "it's only some canoe going by." + + Almost as he spoke, the butler, a lean man in black, +with very black hair and a very long, yellow face, appeared in the doorway +and told him that dinner was served. + + The dining-room was as nautical as the cabin of a ship; +but its note was rather that of the modern than the Elizabethan captain. +There were, indeed, three antiquated cutlasses in a trophy over +the fireplace, and one brown sixteenth-century map with Tritons +and little ships dotted about a curly sea. But such things were +less prominent on the white panelling than some cases of quaint-coloured +South American birds, very scientifically stuffed, fantastic shells +from the Pacific, and several instruments so rude and queer in shape +that savages might have used them either to kill their enemies or +to cook them. But the alien colour culminated in the fact that, +besides the butler, the Admiral's only servants were two negroes, +somewhat quaintly clad in tight uniforms of yellow. The priest's +instinctive trick of analysing his own impressions told him that +the colour and the little neat coat-tails of these bipeds had suggested +the word "Canary," and so by a mere pun connected them with +southward travel. Towards the end of the dinner they took their +yellow clothes and black faces out of the room, leaving only +the black clothes and yellow face of the butler. + + "I'm rather sorry you take this so lightly," said Fanshaw to the host; +"for the truth is, I've brought these friends of mine with the idea +of their helping you, as they know a good deal of these things. +Don't you really believe in the family story at all?" + + "I don't believe in anything," answered Pendragon very briskly, +with a bright eye cocked at a red tropical bird. "I'm a man of science." + + Rather to Flambeau's surprise, his clerical friend, +who seemed to have entirely woken up, took up the digression and +talked natural history with his host with a flow of words and +much unexpected information, until the dessert and decanters were +set down and the last of the servants vanished. Then he said, +without altering his tone. + + "Please don't think me impertinent, Admiral Pendragon. I don't +ask for curiosity, but really for my guidance and your convenience. +Have I made a bad shot if I guess you don't want these old things +talked of before your butler?" + + The Admiral lifted the hairless arches over his eyes and exclaimed: +"Well, I don't know where you got it, but the truth is I can't stand +the fellow, though I've no excuse for discharging a family servant. +Fanshaw, with his fairy tales, would say my blood moved against men +with that black, Spanish-looking hair." + + Flambeau struck the table with his heavy fist. "By Jove!" he cried; +"and so had that girl!" + + "I hope it'll all end tonight," continued the Admiral, +"when my nephew comes back safe from his ship. You looked surprised. +You won't understand, I suppose, unless I tell you the story. +You see, my father had two sons; I remained a bachelor, +but my elder brother married, and had a son who became a sailor +like all the rest of us, and will inherit the proper estate. +Well, my father was a strange man; he somehow combined Fanshaw's +superstition with a good deal of my scepticism--they were always +fighting in him; and after my first voyages, he developed a notion +which he thought somehow would settle finally whether the curse +was truth or trash. If all the Pendragons sailed about anyhow, +he thought there would be too much chance of natural catastrophes +to prove anything. But if we went to sea one at a time in strict order +of succession to the property, he thought it might show whether any +connected fate followed the family as a family. It was a silly notion, +I think, and I quarrelled with my father pretty heartily; for I was +an ambitious man and was left to the last, coming, by succession, +after my own nephew." + + "And your father and brother," said the priest, very gently, +"died at sea, I fear." + + "Yes," groaned the Admiral; "by one of those brutal accidents +on which are built all the lying mythologies of mankind, +they were both shipwrecked. My father, coming up this coast +out of the Atlantic, was washed up on these Cornish rocks. +My brother's ship was sunk, no one knows where, on the voyage home +from Tasmania. His body was never found. I tell you it was +from perfectly natural mishap; lots of other people besides Pendragons +were drowned; and both disasters are discussed in a normal way +by navigators. But, of course, it set this forest of superstition on fire; +and men saw the flaming tower everywhere. That's why I say it will +be all right when Walter returns. The girl he's engaged to was +coming today; but I was so afraid of some chance delay frightening her +that I wired her not to come till she heard from me. But he's practically +sure to be here some time tonight, and then it'll all end in smoke-- +tobacco smoke. We'll crack that old lie when we crack a bottle +of this wine." + + "Very good wine," said Father Brown, gravely lifting his glass, +"but, as you see, a very bad wine-bibber. I most sincerely +beg your pardon": for he had spilt a small spot of wine on +the table-cloth. He drank and put down the glass with a composed face; +but his hand had started at the exact moment when he became conscious +of a face looking in through the garden window just behind the Admiral-- +the face of a woman, swarthy, with southern hair and eyes, and young, +but like a mask of tragedy. + + After a pause the priest spoke again in his mild manner. +"Admiral," he said, "will you do me a favour? Let me, and my friends +if they like, stop in that tower of yours just for tonight? +Do you know that in my business you're an exorcist almost before +anything else?" + + Pendragon sprang to his feet and paced swiftly to and fro +across the window, from which the face had instantly vanished. +"I tell you there is nothing in it," he cried, with ringing violence. +"There is one thing I know about this matter. You may call me an atheist. +I am an atheist." Here he swung round and fixed Father Brown with a face +of frightful concentration. "This business is perfectly natural. +There is no curse in it at all." + + Father Brown smiled. "In that case," he said, "there can't be +any objection to my sleeping in your delightful summer-house." + + "The idea is utterly ridiculous," replied the Admiral, +beating a tattoo on the back of his chair. + + "Please forgive me for everything," said Brown in his most +sympathetic tone, "including spilling the wine. But it seems to me +you are not quite so easy about the flaming tower as you try to be." + + Admiral Pendragon sat down again as abruptly as he had risen; +but he sat quite still, and when he spoke again it was in a lower voice. +"You do it at your own peril," he said; "but wouldn't you be an atheist +to keep sane in all this devilry?" + + Some three hours afterwards Fanshaw, Flambeau and the priest +were still dawdling about the garden in the dark; and it began to dawn +on the other two that Father Brown had no intention of going to bed +either in the tower or the house. + + "I think the lawn wants weeding," said he dreamily. +"If I could find a spud or something I'd do it myself." + + They followed him, laughing and half remonstrating; but he replied +with the utmost solemnity, explaining to them, in a maddening little sermon, +that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others. +He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, +with which he began energetically to brush the fallen leaves off the grass. + + "Always some little thing to be done," he said with +idiotic cheerfulness; "as George Herbert says: `Who sweeps +an Admiral's garden in Cornwall as for Thy laws makes that and +the action fine.' And now," he added, suddenly slinging the broom away, +"Let's go and water the flowers." + + With the same mixed emotions they watched him uncoil some +considerable lengths of the large garden hose, saying with an air of +wistful discrimination: "The red tulips before the yellow, I think. +Look a bit dry, don't you think?" + + He turned the little tap on the instrument, and the water shot out +straight and solid as a long rod of steel. + + "Look out, Samson," cried Flambeau; "why, you've cut off +the tulip's head." + + Father Brown stood ruefully contemplating the decapitated plant. + + "Mine does seem to be a rather kill or cure sort of watering," +he admitted, scratching his head. "I suppose it's a pity I didn't +find the spud. You should have seen me with the spud! Talking of tools, +you've got that swordstick, Flambeau, you always carry? That's right; +and Sir Cecil could have that sword the Admiral threw away +by the fence here. How grey everything looks!" + + "The mist's rising from the river," said the staring Flambeau. + + Almost as he spoke the huge figure of the hairy gardener appeared +on a higher ridge of the trenched and terraced lawn, hailing them with +a brandished rake and a horribly bellowing voice. "Put down that hose," +he shouted; "put down that hose and go to your--" + + "I am fearfully clumsy," replied the reverend gentleman weakly; +"do you know, I upset some wine at dinner." He made a wavering +half-turn of apology towards the gardener, with the hose still spouting +in his hand. The gardener caught the cold crash of the water +full in his face like the crash of a cannon-ball; staggered, +slipped and went sprawling with his boots in the air. + + "How very dreadful!" said Father Brown, looking round in +a sort of wonder. "Why, I've hit a man!" + + He stood with his head forward for a moment as if +looking or listening; and then set off at a trot towards the tower, +still trailing the hose behind him. The tower was quite close, +but its outline was curiously dim. + + "Your river mist," he said, "has a rum smell." + + "By the Lord it has," cried Fanshaw, who was very white. +"But you can't mean--" + + "I mean," said Father Brown, "that one of the Admiral's scientific +predictions is coming true tonight. This story is going to end in smoke." + + As he spoke a most beautiful rose-red light seemed to burst +into blossom like a gigantic rose; but accompanied with a crackling +and rattling noise that was like the laughter of devils. + + "My God! what is this?" cried Sir Cecil Fanshaw. + + "The sign of the flaming tower," said Father Brown, and sent +the driving water from his hose into the heart of the red patch. + + "Lucky we hadn't gone to bed!" ejaculated Fanshaw. "I suppose +it can't spread to the house." + + "You may remember," said the priest quietly, "that the wooden fence +that might have carried it was cut away." + + Flambeau turned electrified eyes upon his friend, but Fanshaw +only said rather absently: "Well, nobody can be killed, anyhow." + + "This is rather a curious kind of tower," observed Father Brown, +"when it takes to killing people, it always kills people +who are somewhere else." + + At the same instant the monstrous figure of the gardener with +the streaming beard stood again on the green ridge against the sky, +waving others to come on; but now waving not a rake but a cutlass. +Behind him came the two negroes, also with the old crooked cutlasses +out of the trophy. But in the blood-red glare, with their black faces +and yellow figures, they looked like devils carrying instruments of torture. +In the dim garden behind them a distant voice was heard calling out +brief directions. When the priest heard the voice, a terrible change +came over his countenance. + + But he remained composed; and never took his eye off +the patch of flame which had begun by spreading, but now seemed +to shrink a little as it hissed under the torch of the long silver spear +of water. He kept his finger along the nozzle of the pipe to ensure the aim, +and attended to no other business, knowing only by the noise and +that semi-conscious corner of the eye, the exciting incidents that +began to tumble themselves about the island garden. He gave two brief +directions to his friends. One was: "Knock these fellows down somehow +and tie them up, whoever they are; there's rope down by those faggots. +They want to take away my nice hose." The other was: "As soon as you +get a chance, call out to that canoeing girl; she's over on the bank +with the gipsies. Ask her if they could get some buckets across +and fill them from the river." Then he closed his mouth and continued +to water the new red flower as ruthlessly as he had watered the red tulip. + + He never turned his head to look at the strange fight that +followed between the foes and friends of the mysterious fire. +He almost felt the island shake when Flambeau collided with +the huge gardener; he merely imagined how it would whirl round them +as they wrestled. He heard the crashing fall; and his friend's +gasp of triumph as he dashed on to the first negro; and the cries +of both the blacks as Flambeau and Fanshaw bound them. +Flambeau's enormous strength more than redressed the odds in the fight, +especially as the fourth man still hovered near the house, +only a shadow and a voice. He heard also the water broken by +the paddles of a canoe; the girl's voice giving orders, +the voices of gipsies answering and coming nearer, the plumping and +sucking noise of empty buckets plunged into a full stream; and finally +the sound of many feet around the fire. But all this was less to him +than the fact that the red rent, which had lately once more increased, +had once more slightly diminished. + + Then came a cry that very nearly made him turn his head. +Flambeau and Fanshaw, now reinforced by some of the gipsies, +had rushed after the mysterious man by the house; and he heard from +the other end of the garden the Frenchman's cry of horror and astonishment. +It was echoed by a howl not to be called human, as the being broke +from their hold and ran along the garden. Three times at least +it raced round the whole island, in a way that was as horrible as +the chase of a lunatic, both in the cries of the pursued and the ropes +carried by the pursuers; but was more horrible still, because it somehow +suggested one of the chasing games of children in a garden. +Then, finding them closing in on every side, the figure sprang upon +one of the higher river banks and disappeared with a splash +into the dark and driving river. + + "You can do no more, I fear," said Brown in a voice cold with pain. +"He has been washed down to the rocks by now, where he has sent +so many others. He knew the use of a family legend." + + "Oh, don't talk in these parables," cried Flambeau impatiently. +"Can't you put it simply in words of one syllable?" + + "Yes," answered Brown, with his eye on the hose. "`Both eyes bright, +she's all right; one eye blinks, down she sinks.'" + + The fire hissed and shrieked more and more, like a strangled thing, +as it grew narrower and narrower under the flood from the pipe and buckets, +but Father Brown still kept his eye on it as he went on speaking: + + "I thought of asking this young lady, if it were morning yet, +to look through that telescope at the river mouth and the river. +She might have seen something to interest her: the sign of the ship, +or Mr Walter Pendragon coming home, and perhaps even the sign of +the half-man, for though he is certainly safe by now, he may very well +have waded ashore. He has been within a shave of another shipwreck; +and would never have escaped it, if the lady hadn't had the sense +to suspect the old Admiral's telegram and come down to watch him. +Don't let's talk about the old Admiral. Don't let's talk about anything. +It's enough to say that whenever this tower, with its pitch and resin-wood, +really caught fire, the spark on the horizon always looked like +the twin light to the coast light-house." + + "And that," said Flambeau, "is how the father and brother died. +The wicked uncle of the legends very nearly got his estate after all." + + Father Brown did not answer; indeed, he did not speak again, +save for civilities, till they were all safe round a cigar-box in +the cabin of the yacht. He saw that the frustrated fire was extinguished; +and then refused to linger, though he actually heard young Pendragon, +escorted by an enthusiastic crowd, come tramping up the river bank; +and might (had he been moved by romantic curiosities) have received +the combined thanks of the man from the ship and the girl from the canoe. +But his fatigue had fallen on him once more, and he only started once, +when Flambeau abruptly told him he had dropped cigar-ash on his trousers. + + "That's no cigar-ash," he said rather wearily. "That's from the fire, +but you don't think so because you're all smoking cigars. +That's just the way I got my first faint suspicion about the chart." + + "Do you mean Pendragon's chart of his Pacific Islands?" asked Fanshaw. + + "You thought it was a chart of the Pacific Islands," answered Brown. +"Put a feather with a fossil and a bit of coral and everyone will +think it's a specimen. Put the same feather with a ribbon and +an artificial flower and everyone will think it's for a lady's hat. +Put the same feather with an ink-bottle, a book and a stack +of writing-paper, and most men will swear they've seen a quill pen. +So you saw that map among tropic birds and shells and thought it was +a map of Pacific Islands. It was the map of this river." + + "But how do you know?" asked Fanshaw. + + "I saw the rock you thought was like a dragon, and the one +like Merlin, and--" + + "You seem to have noticed a lot as we came in," cried Fanshaw. +"We thought you were rather abstracted." + + "I was sea-sick," said Father Brown simply. "I felt simply horrible. +But feeling horrible has nothing to do with not seeing things." +And he closed his eyes. + + "Do you think most men would have seen that?" asked Flambeau. +He received no answer: Father Brown was asleep. + + + + + NINE + + + The God of the Gongs + + +IT was one of those chilly and empty afternoons in early winter, +when the daylight is silver rather than gold and pewter rather than silver. +If it was dreary in a hundred bleak offices and yawning drawing-rooms, +it was drearier still along the edges of the flat Essex coast, +where the monotony was the more inhuman for being broken +at very long intervals by a lamp-post that looked less civilized +than a tree, or a tree that looked more ugly than a lamp-post. +A light fall of snow had half-melted into a few strips, also looking leaden +rather than silver, when it had been fixed again by the seal of frost; +no fresh snow had fallen, but a ribbon of the old snow ran along +the very margin of the coast, so as to parallel the pale ribbon of the foam. + + The line of the sea looked frozen in the very vividness of +its violet-blue, like the vein of a frozen finger. For miles and miles, +forward and back, there was no breathing soul, save two pedestrians, +walking at a brisk pace, though one had much longer legs and took +much longer strides than the other. + + It did not seem a very appropriate place or time for a holiday, +but Father Brown had few holidays, and had to take them when he could, +and he always preferred, if possible, to take them in company with +his old friend Flambeau, ex-criminal and ex-detective. The priest had +had a fancy for visiting his old parish at Cobhole, and was going +north-eastward along the coast. + + After walking a mile or two farther, they found that the shore was +beginning to be formally embanked, so as to form something like a parade; +the ugly lamp-posts became less few and far between and more ornamental, +though quite equally ugly. Half a mile farther on Father Brown +was puzzled first by little labyrinths of flowerless flower-pots, +covered with the low, flat, quiet-coloured plants that look less like +a garden than a tessellated pavement, between weak curly paths studded +with seats with curly backs. He faintly sniffed the atmosphere of +a certain sort of seaside town that he did not specially care about, +and, looking ahead along the parade by the sea, he saw something that +put the matter beyond a doubt. In the grey distance the big bandstand +of a watering-place stood up like a giant mushroom with six legs. + + "I suppose," said Father Brown, turning up his coat-collar +and drawing a woollen scarf rather closer round his neck, +"that we are approaching a pleasure resort." + + "I fear," answered Flambeau, "a pleasure resort to which +few people just now have the pleasure of resorting. They try to +revive these places in the winter, but it never succeeds except with +Brighton and the old ones. This must be Seawood, I think-- +Lord Pooley's experiment; he had the Sicilian Singers down at Christmas, +and there's talk about holding one of the great glove-fights here. +But they'll have to chuck the rotten place into the sea; +it's as dreary as a lost railway-carriage." + + They had come under the big bandstand, and the priest was +looking up at it with a curiosity that had something rather odd about it, +his head a little on one side, like a bird's. It was the conventional, +rather tawdry kind of erection for its purpose: a flattened dome +or canopy, gilt here and there, and lifted on six slender pillars +of painted wood, the whole being raised about five feet above the parade +on a round wooden platform like a drum. But there was something +fantastic about the snow combined with something artificial about +the gold that haunted Flambeau as well as his friend with +some association he could not capture, but which he knew was at once +artistic and alien. + + "I've got it," he said at last. "It's Japanese. It's like +those fanciful Japanese prints, where the snow on the mountain +looks like sugar, and the gilt on the pagodas is like gilt on gingerbread. +It looks just like a little pagan temple." + + "Yes," said Father Brown. "Let's have a look at the god." +And with an agility hardly to be expected of him, he hopped up +on to the raised platform. + + "Oh, very well," said Flambeau, laughing; and the next instant +his own towering figure was visible on that quaint elevation. + + Slight as was the difference of height, it gave in those level wastes +a sense of seeing yet farther and farther across land and sea. +Inland the little wintry gardens faded into a confused grey copse; +beyond that, in the distance, were long low barns of a lonely farmhouse, +and beyond that nothing but the long East Anglian plains. +Seawards there was no sail or sign of life save a few seagulls: +and even they looked like the last snowflakes, and seemed to float +rather than fly. + + Flambeau turned abruptly at an exclamation behind him. +It seemed to come from lower down than might have been expected, +and to be addressed to his heels rather than his head. He instantly +held out his hand, but he could hardly help laughing at what he saw. +For some reason or other the platform had given way under Father Brown, +and the unfortunate little man had dropped through to the level +of the parade. He was just tall enough, or short enough, +for his head alone to stick out of the hole in the broken wood, +looking like St John the Baptist's head on a charger. The face wore +a disconcerted expression, as did, perhaps, that of St John the Baptist. + + In a moment he began to laugh a little. "This wood must be rotten," +said Flambeau. "Though it seems odd it should bear me, and you go through +the weak place. Let me help you out." + + But the little priest was looking rather curiously at the corners +and edges of the wood alleged to be rotten, and there was a sort of trouble +on his brow. + + "Come along," cried Flambeau impatiently, still with his big +brown hand extended. "Don't you want to get out?" + + The priest was holding a splinter of the broken wood between +his finger and thumb, and did not immediately reply. At last he said +thoughtfully: "Want to get out? Why, no. I rather think I want +to get in." And he dived into the darkness under the wooden floor +so abruptly as to knock off his big curved clerical hat and leave it +lying on the boards above, without any clerical head in it. + + Flambeau looked once more inland and out to sea, and once more +could see nothing but seas as wintry as the snow, and snows as level +as the sea. + + There came a scurrying noise behind him, and the little priest +came scrambling out of the hole faster than he had fallen in. +His face was no longer disconcerted, but rather resolute, and, +perhaps only through the reflections of the snow, a trifle paler than usual. + + + "Well?" asked his tall friend. "Have you found the god +of the temple?" + + "No," answered Father Brown. "I have found what was sometimes +more important. The Sacrifice." + + "What the devil do you mean?" cried Flambeau, quite alarmed. + + Father Brown did not answer. He was staring, with a knot +in his forehead, at the landscape; and he suddenly pointed at it. +"What's that house over there?" he asked. + + Following his finger, Flambeau saw for the first time the corners +of a building nearer than the farmhouse, but screened for the most part +with a fringe of trees. It was not a large building, and stood well back +from the shore--, but a glint of ornament on it suggested that it was +part of the same watering-place scheme of decoration as the bandstand, +the little gardens and the curly-backed iron seats. + + Father Brown jumped off the bandstand, his friend following; +and as they walked in the direction indicated the trees fell away +to right and left, and they saw a small, rather flashy hotel, +such as is common in resorts--the hotel of the Saloon Bar rather than +the Bar Parlour. Almost the whole frontage was of gilt plaster and +figured glass, and between that grey seascape and the grey, +witch-like trees, its gimcrack quality had something spectral +in its melancholy. They both felt vaguely that if any food or drink +were offered at such a hostelry, it would be the paste-board ham +and empty mug of the pantomime. + + In this, however, they were not altogether confirmed. As they drew +nearer and nearer to the place they saw in front of the buffet, +which was apparently closed, one of the iron garden-seats with curly backs +that had adorned the gardens, but much longer, running almost +the whole length of the frontage. Presumably, it was placed so that +visitors might sit there and look at the sea, but one hardly expected +to find anyone doing it in such weather. + + Nevertheless, just in front of the extreme end of the iron seat +stood a small round restaurant table, and on this stood +a small bottle of Chablis and a plate of almonds and raisins. +Behind the table and on the seat sat a dark-haired young man, +bareheaded, and gazing at the sea in a state of almost +astonishing immobility. + + But though he might have been a waxwork when they were within +four yards of him, he jumped up like a jack-in-the-box when they +came within three, and said in a deferential, though not undignified, +manner: "Will you step inside, gentlemen? I have no staff at present, +but I can get you anything simple myself." + + "Much obliged," said Flambeau. "So you are the proprietor?" + + "Yes," said the dark man, dropping back a little into +his motionless manner. "My waiters are all Italians, you see, +and I thought it only fair they should see their countryman beat the black, +if he really can do it. You know the great fight between Malvoli and +Nigger Ned is coming off after all?" + + "I'm afraid we can't wait to trouble your hospitality seriously," +said Father Brown. "But my friend would be glad of a glass of sherry, +I'm sure, to keep out the cold and drink success to the Latin champion." + + Flambeau did not understand the sherry, but he did not object to it +in the least. He could only say amiably: "Oh, thank you very much." + + "Sherry, sir--certainly," said their host, turning to his hostel. +"Excuse me if I detain you a few minutes. As I told you, +I have no staff--" And he went towards the black windows of +his shuttered and unlighted inn. + + "Oh, it doesn't really matter," began Flambeau, but the man +turned to reassure him. + + "I have the keys," he said. "I could find my way in the dark." + + "I didn't mean--" began Father Brown. + + He was interrupted by a bellowing human voice that came +out of the bowels of the uninhabited hotel. It thundered +some foreign name loudly but inaudibly, and the hotel proprietor +moved more sharply towards it than he had done for Flambeau's sherry. +As instant evidence proved, the proprietor had told, then and after, +nothing but the literal truth. But both Flambeau and Father Brown +have often confessed that, in all their (often outrageous) adventures, +nothing had so chilled their blood as that voice of an ogre, +sounding suddenly out of a silent and empty inn. + + "My cook!" cried the proprietor hastily. "I had forgotten my cook. +He will be starting presently. Sherry, sir?" + + And, sure enough, there appeared in the doorway a big white bulk +with white cap and white apron, as befits a cook, but with +the needless emphasis of a black face. Flambeau had often heard +that negroes made good cooks. But somehow something in the contrast +of colour and caste increased his surprise that the hotel proprietor +should answer the call of the cook, and not the cook the call +of the proprietor. But he reflected that head cooks are proverbially +arrogant; and, besides, the host had come back with the sherry, +and that was the great thing. + + "I rather wonder," said Father Brown, "that there are so few people +about the beach, when this big fight is coming on after all. +We only met one man for miles." + + The hotel proprietor shrugged his shoulders. "They come from +the other end of the town, you see--from the station, three miles from here. +They are only interested in the sport, and will stop in hotels +for the night only. After all, it is hardly weather for +basking on the shore." + + "Or on the seat," said Flambeau, and pointed to the little table. + + "I have to keep a look-out," said the man with the motionless face. +He was a quiet, well-featured fellow, rather sallow; his dark clothes +had nothing distinctive about them, except that his black necktie +was worn rather high, like a stock, and secured by a gold pin +with some grotesque head to it. Nor was there anything notable +in the face, except something that was probably a mere nervous trick-- +a habit of opening one eye more narrowly than the other, +giving the impression that the other was larger, or was, +perhaps, artificial. + + The silence that ensued was broken by their host saying quietly: +"Whereabouts did you meet the one man on your march?" + + "Curiously enough," answered the priest, "close by here-- +just by that bandstand." + + Flambeau, who had sat on the long iron seat to finish his sherry, +put it down and rose to his feet, staring at his friend in amazement. +He opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again. + + "Curious," said the dark-haired man thoughtfully. "What was he like?" + + "It was rather dark when I saw him," began Father Brown, +"but he was--" + + As has been said, the hotel-keeper can be proved to have told +the precise truth. His phrase that the cook was starting presently +was fulfilled to the letter, for the cook came out, pulling his gloves on, +even as they spoke. + + But he was a very different figure from the confused mass +of white and black that had appeared for an instant in the doorway. +He was buttoned and buckled up to his bursting eyeballs in the most +brilliant fashion. A tall black hat was tilted on his broad black head-- +a hat of the sort that the French wit has compared to eight mirrors. +But somehow the black man was like the black hat. He also was black, +and yet his glossy skin flung back the light at eight angles or more. +It is needless to say that he wore white spats and a white slip inside +his waistcoat. The red flower stood up in his buttonhole aggressively, +as if it had suddenly grown there. And in the way he carried his cane +in one hand and his cigar in the other there was a certain attitude-- +an attitude we must always remember when we talk of racial prejudices: +something innocent and insolent--the cake walk. + + "Sometimes," said Flambeau, looking after him, "I'm not surprised +that they lynch them." + + "I am never surprised," said Father Brown, "at any work of hell. +But as I was saying," he resumed, as the negro, still ostentatiously +pulling on his yellow gloves, betook himself briskly towards +the watering-place, a queer music-hall figure against that grey and +frosty scene--"as I was saying, I couldn't describe the man very minutely, +but he had a flourish and old-fashioned whiskers and moustachios, +dark or dyed, as in the pictures of foreign financiers, round his neck +was wrapped a long purple scarf that thrashed out in the wind as he walked. +It was fixed at the throat rather in the way that nurses +fix children's comforters with a safety-pin. Only this," +added the priest, gazing placidly out to sea, "was not a safety-pin." + + The man sitting on the long iron bench was also gazing placidly +out to sea. Now he was once more in repose. Flambeau felt quite certain +that one of his eyes was naturally larger than the other. +Both were now well opened, and he could almost fancy the left eye +grew larger as he gazed. + + "It was a very long gold pin, and had the carved head of a monkey +or some such thing," continued the cleric; "and it was fixed +in a rather odd way--he wore pince-nez and a broad black--" + + The motionless man continued to gaze at the sea, and the eyes in +his head might have belonged to two different men. Then he made +a movement of blinding swiftness. + + Father Brown had his back to him, and in that flash might have +fallen dead on his face. Flambeau had no weapon, but his large +brown hands were resting on the end of the long iron seat. +His shoulders abruptly altered their shape, and he heaved +the whole huge thing high over his head, like a headsman's axe +about to fall. The mere height of the thing, as he held it vertical, +looked like a long iron ladder by which he was inviting men to climb +towards the stars. But the long shadow, in the level evening light, +looked like a giant brandishing the Eiffel Tower. It was the shock +of that shadow, before the shock of the iron crash, that made the stranger +quail and dodge, and then dart into his inn, leaving the flat and +shining dagger he had dropped exactly where it had fallen. + + "We must get away from here instantly," cried Flambeau, +flinging the huge seat away with furious indifference on the beach. +He caught the little priest by the elbow and ran him down +a grey perspective of barren back garden, at the end of which there +was a closed back garden door. Flambeau bent over it an instant +in violent silence, and then said: "The door is locked." + + As he spoke a black feather from one of the ornamental firs fell, +brushing the brim of his hat. It startled him more than the small +and distant detonation that had come just before. Then came another +distant detonation, and the door he was trying to open shook +under the bullet buried in it. Flambeau's shoulders again filled out +and altered suddenly. Three hinges and a lock burst at the same instant, +and he went out into the empty path behind, carrying the great garden door +with him, as Samson carried the gates of Gaza. + + Then he flung the garden door over the garden wall, just as +a third shot picked up a spurt of snow and dust behind his heel. +Without ceremony he snatched up the little priest, slung him astraddle +on his shoulders, and went racing towards Seawood as fast as +his long legs could carry him. It was not until nearly two miles +farther on that he set his small companion down. It had hardly been +a dignified escape, in spite of the classic model of Anchises, +but Father Brown's face only wore a broad grin. + + "Well," said Flambeau, after an impatient silence, as they resumed +their more conventional tramp through the streets on the edge of the town, +where no outrage need be feared, "I don't know what all this means, +but I take it I may trust my own eyes that you never met the man +you have so accurately described." + + "I did meet him in a way," Brown said, biting his finger +rather nervously--"I did really. And it was too dark to see him properly, +because it was under that bandstand affair. But I'm afraid I didn't +describe him so very accurately after all, for his pince-nez +was broken under him, and the long gold pin wasn't stuck through +his purple scarf but through his heart." + + "And I suppose," said the other in a lower voice, "that glass-eyed guy +had something to do with it." + + "I had hoped he had only a little," answered Brown +in a rather troubled voice, "and I may have been wrong in what I did. +I acted on impulse. But I fear this business has deep roots and dark." + + They walked on through some streets in silence. The yellow lamps +were beginning to be lit in the cold blue twilight, and they were +evidently approaching the more central parts of the town. +Highly coloured bills announcing the glove-fight between Nigger Ned +and Malvoli were slapped about the walls. + + "Well," said Flambeau, "I never murdered anyone, even in +my criminal days, but I can almost sympathize with anyone doing it +in such a dreary place. Of all God-forsaken dustbins of Nature, +I think the most heart-breaking are places like that bandstand, +that were meant to be festive and are forlorn. I can fancy a morbid man +feeling he must kill his rival in the solitude and irony of such a scene. +I remember once taking a tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, +thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on +a vast circle of land, and over me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, +tier above tier of seats, as huge as a Roman amphitheatre and as empty +as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed in heaven over it. It was +the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no one would ever +be happy there again." + + "It's odd you should mention Epsom," said the priest. +"Do you remember what was called the Sutton Mystery, because two +suspected men--ice-cream men, I think--happened to live at Sutton? +They were eventually released. A man was found strangled, it was said, +on the Downs round that part. As a fact, I know (from an Irish policeman +who is a friend of mine) that he was found close up to the Epsom +Grand Stand--in fact, only hidden by one of the lower doors being +pushed back." + + "That is queer," assented Flambeau. "But it rather confirms +my view that such pleasure places look awfully lonely out of season, +or the man wouldn't have been murdered there." + + "I'm not so sure he--" began Brown, and stopped. + + "Not so sure he was murdered?" queried his companion. + + "Not so sure he was murdered out of the season," answered +the little priest, with simplicity. "Don't you think there's something +rather tricky about this solitude, Flambeau? Do you feel sure +a wise murderer would always want the spot to be lonely? +It's very, very seldom a man is quite alone. And, short of that, +the more alone he is, the more certain he is to be seen. +No; I think there must be some other--Why, here we are at +the Pavilion or Palace, or whatever they call it." + + They had emerged on a small square, brilliantly lighted, +of which the principal building was gay with gilding, gaudy with posters, +and flanked with two giant photographs of Malvoli and Nigger Ned. + + "Hallo!" cried Flambeau in great surprise, as his clerical friend +stumped straight up the broad steps. "I didn't know pugilism was +your latest hobby. Are you going to see the fight?" + + "I don't think there will be any fight," replied Father Brown. + + They passed rapidly through ante-rooms and inner rooms; +they passed through the hall of combat itself, raised, roped, +and padded with innumerable seats and boxes, and still the cleric did +not look round or pause till he came to a clerk at a desk outside +a door marked "Committee". There he stopped and asked to see Lord Pooley. + + The attendant observed that his lordship was very busy, +as the fight was coming on soon, but Father Brown had a good-tempered +tedium of reiteration for which the official mind is generally not prepared. +In a few moments the rather baffled Flambeau found himself in the presence +of a man who was still shouting directions to another man going out of +the room. "Be careful, you know, about the ropes after the fourth-- +Well, and what do you want, I wonder!" + + Lord Pooley was a gentleman, and, like most of the few remaining +to our race, was worried--especially about money. He was half grey +and half flaxen, and he had the eyes of fever and a high-bridged, +frost-bitten nose. + + "Only a word," said Father Brown. "I have come to prevent +a man being killed." + + Lord Pooley bounded off his chair as if a spring had +flung him from it. "I'm damned if I'll stand any more of this!" +he cried. "You and your committees and parsons and petitions! +Weren't there parsons in the old days, when they fought without gloves? +Now they're fighting with the regulation gloves, and there's not +the rag of a possibility of either of the boxers being killed." + + "I didn't mean either of the boxers," said the little priest. + + "Well, well, well!" said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour. +"Who's going to be killed? The referee?" + + "I don't know who's going to be killed," replied Father Brown, +with a reflective stare. "If I did I shouldn't have to +spoil your pleasure. I could simply get him to escape. +I never could see anything wrong about prize-fights. As it is, +I must ask you to announce that the fight is off for the present." + + "Anything else?" jeered the gentleman with feverish eyes. +"And what do you say to the two thousand people who have come to see it?" + + "I say there will be one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine +of them left alive when they have seen it," said Father Brown. + + Lord Pooley looked at Flambeau. "Is your friend mad?" he asked. + + "Far from it," was the reply. + + "And look here," resumed Pooley in his restless way, +"it's worse than that. A whole pack of Italians have turned up +to back Malvoli--swarthy, savage fellows of some country, anyhow. +You know what these Mediterranean races are like. If I send out word +that it's off we shall have Malvoli storming in here at the head of +a whole Corsican clan." + + "My lord, it is a matter of life and death," said the priest. +"Ring your bell. Give your message. And see whether it is Malvoli +who answers." + + The nobleman struck the bell on the table with an odd air +of new curiosity. He said to the clerk who appeared almost instantly +in the doorway: "I have a serious announcement to make to the audience +shortly. Meanwhile, would you kindly tell the two champions that +the fight will have to be put off." + + The clerk stared for some seconds as if at a demon and vanished. + + "What authority have you for what you say?" asked Lord Pooley +abruptly. "Whom did you consult?" + + "I consulted a bandstand," said Father Brown, scratching his head. +"But, no, I'm wrong; I consulted a book, too. I picked it up +on a bookstall in London--very cheap, too." + + He had taken out of his pocket a small, stout, leather-bound volume, +and Flambeau, looking over his shoulder, could see that it was some +book of old travels, and had a leaf turned down for reference. + + "`The only form in which Voodoo--'" began Father Brown, reading aloud. + + "In which what?" inquired his lordship. + + "`In which Voodoo,'" repeated the reader, almost with relish, +"`is widely organized outside Jamaica itself is in the form known as +the Monkey, or the God of the Gongs, which is powerful in many parts of +the two American continents, especially among half-breeds, many of whom +look exactly like white men. It differs from most other forms +of devil-worship and human sacrifice in the fact that the blood +is not shed formally on the altar, but by a sort of assassination +among the crowd. The gongs beat with a deafening din as +the doors of the shrine open and the monkey-god is revealed; +almost the whole congregation rivet ecstatic eyes on him. But after--'" + + The door of the room was flung open, and the fashionable negro +stood framed in it, his eyeballs rolling, his silk hat still insolently +tilted on his head. "Huh!" he cried, showing his apish teeth. +"What this? Huh! Huh! You steal a coloured gentleman's prize-- +prize his already--yo' think yo' jes' save that white 'Talian trash--" + + "The matter is only deferred," said the nobleman quietly. +"I will be with you to explain in a minute or two." + + "Who you to--" shouted Nigger Ned, beginning to storm. + + "My name is Pooley," replied the other, with a creditable coolness. +"I am the organizing secretary, and I advise you just now +to leave the room." + + "Who this fellow?" demanded the dark champion, pointing to the +priest disdainfully. + + "My name is Brown," was the reply. "And I advise you just now +to leave the country." + + The prize-fighter stood glaring for a few seconds, and then, +rather to the surprise of Flambeau and the others, strode out, +sending the door to with a crash behind him. + + "Well," asked Father Brown rubbing his dusty hair up, +"what do you think of Leonardo da Vinci? A beautiful Italian head." + + "Look here," said Lord Pooley, "I've taken a considerable responsibility, +on your bare word. I think you ought to tell me more about this." + + "You are quite right, my lord," answered Brown. "And it won't take +long to tell." He put the little leather book in his overcoat pocket. +"I think we know all that this can tell us, but you shall look at it +to see if I'm right. That negro who has just swaggered out is one of +the most dangerous men on earth, for he has the brains of a European, +with the instincts of a cannibal. He has turned what was clean, +common-sense butchery among his fellow-barbarians into a very modern +and scientific secret society of assassins. He doesn't know I know it, +nor, for the matter of that, that I can't prove it." + + There was a silence, and the little man went on. + + "But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan +to make sure I'm alone with him?" + + Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he +looked at the little clergyman. He only said: "If you want to +murder somebody, I should advise it." + + Father Brown shook his head, like a murderer of much riper experience. +"So Flambeau said," he replied, with a sigh. "But consider. +The more a man feels lonely the less he can be sure he is alone. +It must mean empty spaces round him, and they are just what +make him obvious. Have you never seen one ploughman from the heights, +or one shepherd from the valleys? Have you never walked along a cliff, +and seen one man walking along the sands? Didn't you know when he's +killed a crab, and wouldn't you have known if it had been a creditor? +No! No! No! For an intelligent murderer, such as you or I might be, +it is an impossible plan to make sure that nobody is looking at you." + + "But what other plan is there?" + + "There is only one," said the priest. "To make sure +that everybody is looking at something else. A man is throttled +close by the big stand at Epsom. Anybody might have seen it done +while the stand stood empty--any tramp under the hedges or motorist +among the hills. But nobody would have seen it when the stand +was crowded and the whole ring roaring, when the favourite was +coming in first--or wasn't. The twisting of a neck-cloth, +the thrusting of a body behind a door could be done in an instant-- +so long as it was that instant. It was the same, of course," +he continued turning to Flambeau, "with that poor fellow +under the bandstand. He was dropped through the hole (it wasn't +an accidental hole) just at some very dramatic moment of the entertainment, +when the bow of some great violinist or the voice of some great singer +opened or came to its climax. And here, of course, when the knock-out +blow came--it would not be the only one. That is the little trick +Nigger Ned has adopted from his old God of Gongs." + + "By the way, Malvoli--" Pooley began. + + "Malvoli," said the priest, "has nothing to do with it. +I dare say he has some Italians with him, but our amiable friends +are not Italians. They are octoroons and African half-bloods +of various shades, but I fear we English think all foreigners +are much the same so long as they are dark and dirty. Also," +he added, with a smile, "I fear the English decline to draw +any fine distinction between the moral character produced by my religion +and that which blooms out of Voodoo." + + The blaze of the spring season had burst upon Seawood, +littering its foreshore with famines and bathing-machines, +with nomadic preachers and nigger minstrels, before the two friends +saw it again, and long before the storm of pursuit after the strange +secret society had died away. Almost on every hand the secret +of their purpose perished with them. The man of the hotel was found +drifting dead on the sea like so much seaweed; his right eye was +closed in peace, but his left eye was wide open, and glistened like glass +in the moon. Nigger Ned had been overtaken a mile or two away, +and murdered three policemen with his closed left hand. +The remaining officer was surprised--nay, pained--and the negro got away. +But this was enough to set all the English papers in a flame, +and for a month or two the main purpose of the British Empire was +to prevent the buck nigger (who was so in both senses) escaping by any +English port. Persons of a figure remotely reconcilable with his +were subjected to quite extraordinary inquisitions, made to scrub +their faces before going on board ship, as if each white complexion +were made up like a mask, of greasepaint. Every negro in England +was put under special regulations and made to report himself; +the outgoing ships would no more have taken a nigger than a basilisk. +For people had found out how fearful and vast and silent was +the force of the savage secret society, and by the time Flambeau and +Father Brown were leaning on the parade parapet in April, the Black Man +meant in England almost what he once meant in Scotland. + + "He must be still in England," observed Flambeau, "and horridly +well hidden, too. They must have found him at the ports if he had +only whitened his face." + + "You see, he is really a clever man," said Father Brown +apologetically. "And I'm sure he wouldn't whiten his face." + + "Well, but what would he do?" + + "I think," said Father Brown, "he would blacken his face." + + Flambeau, leaning motionless on the parapet, laughed and said: +"My dear fellow!" + + Father Brown, also leaning motionless on the parapet, moved one finger +for an instant into the direction of the soot-masked niggers singing +on the sands. + + + + + TEN + + + The Salad of Colonel Cray + + +FATHER BROWN was walking home from Mass on a white weird morning +when the mists were slowly lifting--one of those mornings when +the very element of light appears as something mysterious and new. +The scattered trees outlined themselves more and more out of the vapour, +as if they were first drawn in grey chalk and then in charcoal. +At yet more distant intervals appeared the houses upon the broken fringe +of the suburb; their outlines became clearer and clearer until +he recognized many in which he had chance acquaintances, and many more +the names of whose owners he knew. But all the windows and doors +were sealed; none of the people were of the sort that would be up +at such a time, or still less on such an errand. But as he passed under +the shadow of one handsome villa with verandas and wide ornate gardens, +he heard a noise that made him almost involuntarily stop. +It was the unmistakable noise of a pistol or carbine or some +light firearm discharged; but it was not this that puzzled him most. +The first full noise was immediately followed by a series of fainter noises-- +as he counted them, about six. He supposed it must be the echo; +but the odd thing was that the echo was not in the least like +the original sound. It was not like anything else that he could think of; +the three things nearest to it seemed to be the noise made by +siphons of soda-water, one of the many noises made by an animal, +and the noise made by a person attempting to conceal laughter. +None of which seemed to make much sense. + + Father Brown was made of two men. There was a man of action, +who was as modest as a primrose and as punctual as a clock; +who went his small round of duties and never dreamed of altering it. +There was also a man of reflection, who was much simpler but much stronger, +who could not easily be stopped; whose thought was always (in the only +intelligent sense of the words) free thought. He could not help, +even unconsciously, asking himself all the questions that +there were to be asked, and answering as many of them as he could; +all that went on like his breathing or circulation. But he never +consciously carried his actions outside the sphere of his own duty; +and in this case the two attitudes were aptly tested. He was just about +to resume his trudge in the twilight, telling himself it was no affair +of his, but instinctively twisting and untwisting twenty theories +about what the odd noises might mean. Then the grey sky-line +brightened into silver, and in the broadening light he realized +that he had been to the house which belonged to an Anglo-Indian Major +named Putnam; and that the Major had a native cook from Malta who was +of his communion. He also began to remember that pistol-shots +are sometimes serious things; accompanied with consequences with which +he was legitimately concerned. He turned back and went in +at the garden gate, making for the front door. + + Half-way down one side of the house stood out a projection +like a very low shed; it was, as he afterwards discovered, +a large dustbin. Round the corner of this came a figure, +at first a mere shadow in the haze, apparently bending and peering about. +Then, coming nearer, it solidified into a figure that was, indeed, +rather unusually solid. Major Putnam was a bald-headed, bull-necked man, +short and very broad, with one of those rather apoplectic faces +that are produced by a prolonged attempt to combine the oriental climate +with the occidental luxuries. But the face was a good-humoured one, +and even now, though evidently puzzled and inquisitive, wore a kind of +innocent grin. He had a large palm-leaf hat on the back of his head +(suggesting a halo that was by no means appropriate to the face), +but otherwise he was clad only in a very vivid suit of striped scarlet +and yellow pyjamas; which, though glowing enough to behold, must have been, +on a fresh morning, pretty chilly to wear. He had evidently +come out of his house in a hurry, and the priest was not surprised +when he called out without further ceremony: "Did you hear that noise?" + + "Yes," answered Father Brown; "I thought I had better look in, +in case anything was the matter." + + The Major looked at him rather queerly with his good-humoured +gooseberry eyes. "What do you think the noise was?" he asked. + + "It sounded like a gun or something," replied the other, +with some hesitation; "but it seemed to have a singular sort of echo." + + The Major was still looking at him quietly, but with protruding eyes, +when the front door was flung open, releasing a flood of gaslight +on the face of the fading mist; and another figure in pyjamas sprang +or tumbled out into the garden. The figure was much longer, leaner, +and more athletic; the pyjamas, though equally tropical, were +comparatively tasteful, being of white with a light lemon-yellow stripe. +The man was haggard, but handsome, more sunburned than the other; +he had an aquiline profile and rather deep-sunken eyes, and a slight air +of oddity arising from the combination of coal-black hair with +a much lighter moustache. All this Father Brown absorbed in detail +more at leisure. For the moment he only saw one thing about the man; +which was the revolver in his hand. + + "Cray!" exclaimed the Major, staring at him; "did you fire that shot?" + + "Yes, I did," retorted the black-haired gentleman hotly; +"and so would you in my place. If you were chased everywhere +by devils and nearly--" + + The Major seemed to intervene rather hurriedly. "This is my friend +Father Brown," he said. And then to Brown: "I don't know whether +you've met Colonel Cray of the Royal Artillery." + + "I have heard of him, of course," said the priest innocently. +"Did you--did you hit anything?" + + "I thought so," answered Cray with gravity. + + "Did he--" asked Major Putnam in a lowered voice, "did he fall +or cry out, or anything?" + + Colonel Cray was regarding his host with a strange and steady stare. +"I'll tell you exactly what he did," he said. "He sneezed." + + Father Brown's hand went half-way to his head, with the gesture +of a man remembering somebody's name. He knew now what it was +that was neither soda-water nor the snorting of a dog. + + "Well," ejaculated the staring Major, "I never heard before +that a service revolver was a thing to be sneezed at." + + "Nor I," said Father Brown faintly. "It's lucky you didn't +turn your artillery on him or you might have given him quite a bad cold." +Then, after a bewildered pause, he said: "Was it a burglar?" + + "Let us go inside," said Major Putnam, rather sharply, +and led the way into his house. + + The interior exhibited a paradox often to be marked in such +morning hours: that the rooms seemed brighter than the sky outside; +even after the Major had turned out the one gaslight in the front hall. +Father Brown was surprised to see the whole dining-table set out +as for a festive meal, with napkins in their rings, and wine-glasses +of some six unnecessary shapes set beside every plate. It was common enough, +at that time of the morning, to find the remains of a banquet over-night; +but to find it freshly spread so early was unusual. + + While he stood wavering in the hall Major Putnam rushed past him +and sent a raging eye over the whole oblong of the tablecloth. +At last he spoke, spluttering: "All the silver gone!" he gasped. +"Fish-knives and forks gone. Old cruet-stand gone. Even the old silver +cream-jug gone. And now, Father Brown, I am ready to answer your question +of whether it was a burglar." + + "They're simply a blind," said Cray stubbornly. "I know better +than you why people persecute this house; I know better than you why--" + + The Major patted him on the shoulder with a gesture almost peculiar +to the soothing of a sick child, and said: "It was a burglar. +Obviously it was a burglar." + + "A burglar with a bad cold," observed Father Brown, "that might +assist you to trace him in the neighbourhood." + + The Major shook his head in a sombre manner. "He must be far beyond +trace now, I fear," he said. + + Then, as the restless man with the revolver turned again towards +the door in the garden, he added in a husky, confidential voice: +"I doubt whether I should send for the police, for fear my friend here +has been a little too free with his bullets, and got on the wrong side +of the law. He's lived in very wild places; and, to be frank with you, +I think he sometimes fancies things." + + "I think you once told me," said Brown, "that he believes some +Indian secret society is pursuing him." + + Major Putnam nodded, but at the same time shrugged his shoulders. +"I suppose we'd better follow him outside," he said. "I don't want +any more--shall we say, sneezing?" + + They passed out into the morning light, which was now even tinged +with sunshine, and saw Colonel Cray's tall figure bent almost double, +minutely examining the condition of gravel and grass. While the Major +strolled unobtrusively towards him, the priest took an equally +indolent turn, which took him round the next corner of the house +to within a yard or two of the projecting dustbin. + + He stood regarding this dismal object for some minute and a half--, +then he stepped towards it, lifted the lid and put his head inside. +Dust and other discolouring matter shook upwards as he did so; +but Father Brown never observed his own appearance, whatever else +he observed. He remained thus for a measurable period, as if engaged +in some mysterious prayers. Then he came out again, with some ashes +on his hair, and walked unconcernedly away. + + By the time he came round to the garden door again he found +a group there which seemed to roll away morbidities as the sunlight +had already rolled away the mists. It was in no way rationally reassuring; +it was simply broadly comic, like a cluster of Dickens's characters. +Major Putnam had managed to slip inside and plunge into a proper shirt and +trousers, with a crimson cummerbund, and a light square jacket over all; +thus normally set off, his red festive face seemed bursting with +a commonplace cordiality. He was indeed emphatic, but then he was talking +to his cook--the swarthy son of Malta, whose lean, yellow and rather +careworn face contrasted quaintly with his snow-white cap and costume. +The cook might well be careworn, for cookery was the Major's hobby. +He was one of those amateurs who always know more than the professional. +The only other person he even admitted to be a judge of an omelette +was his friend Cray--and as Brown remembered this, he turned to look +for the other officer. In the new presence of daylight and people clothed +and in their right mind, the sight of him was rather a shock. +The taller and more elegant man was still in his night-garb, +with tousled black hair, and now crawling about the garden on his hands +and knees, still looking for traces of the burglar; and now and again, +to all appearance, striking the ground with his hand in anger at not +finding him. Seeing him thus quadrupedal in the grass, the priest +raised his eyebrows rather sadly; and for the first time guessed that +"fancies things" might be an euphemism. + + The third item in the group of the cook and the epicure was also +known to Father Brown; it was Audrey Watson, the Major's ward +and housekeeper; and at this moment, to judge by her apron, +tucked-up sleeves and resolute manner, much more the housekeeper +than the ward. + + "It serves you right," she was saying: "I always told you +not to have that old-fashioned cruet-stand." + + "I prefer it," said Putnam, placably. "I'm old-fashioned myself; +and the things keep together." + + "And vanish together, as you see," she retorted. "Well, if you are +not going to bother about the burglar, I shouldn't bother about the lunch. +It's Sunday, and we can't send for vinegar and all that in the town; +and you Indian gentlemen can't enjoy what you call a dinner without +a lot of hot things. I wish to goodness now you hadn't asked +Cousin Oliver to take me to the musical service. It isn't over +till half-past twelve, and the Colonel has to leave by then. +I don't believe you men can manage alone." + + "Oh yes, we can, my dear," said the Major, looking at her +very amiably. "Marco has all the sauces, and we've often +done ourselves well in very rough places, as you might know by now. +And it's time you had a treat, Audrey; you mustn't be a housekeeper +every hour of the day; and I know you want to hear the music." + + "I want to go to church," she said, with rather severe eyes. + + She was one of those handsome women who will always be handsome, +because the beauty is not in an air or a tint, but in the very structure +of the head and features. But though she was not yet middle-aged +and her auburn hair was of a Titianesque fullness in form and colour, +there was a look in her mouth and around her eyes which suggested that +some sorrows wasted her, as winds waste at last the edges of a Greek temple. +For indeed the little domestic difficulty of which she was now speaking +so decisively was rather comic than tragic. Father Brown gathered, +from the course of the conversation, that Cray, the other gourmet, +had to leave before the usual lunch-time; but that Putnam, his host, +not to be done out of a final feast with an old crony, had arranged +for a special dejeuner to be set out and consumed in the course of +the morning, while Audrey and other graver persons were at morning service. +She was going there under the escort of a relative and old friend of hers, +Dr Oliver Oman, who, though a scientific man of a somewhat bitter type, +was enthusiastic for music, and would go even to church to get it. +There was nothing in all this that could conceivably concern +the tragedy in Miss Watson's face; and by a half conscious instinct, +Father Brown turned again to the seeming lunatic grubbing about +in the grass. + + When he strolled across to him, the black, unbrushed head was +lifted abruptly, as if in some surprise at his continued presence. +And indeed, Father Brown, for reasons best known to himself, +had lingered much longer than politeness required; or even, +in the ordinary sense, permitted. + + "Well!" cried Cray, with wild eyes. "I suppose you think I'm mad, +like the rest?" + + "I have considered the thesis," answered the little man, composedly. +"And I incline to think you are not." + + "What do you mean?" snapped Cray quite savagely. + + "Real madmen," explained Father Brown, "always encourage their +own morbidity. They never strive against it. But you are trying +to find traces of the burglar; even when there aren't any. +You are struggling against it. You want what no madman ever wants." + + "And what is that?" + + "You want to be proved wrong," said Brown. + + During the last words Cray had sprung or staggered to his feet +and was regarding the cleric with agitated eyes. "By hell, +but that is a true word!" he cried. "They are all at me here +that the fellow was only after the silver--as if I shouldn't be +only too pleased to think so! She's been at me," and he tossed his tousled +black head towards Audrey, but the other had no need of the direction, +"she's been at me today about how cruel I was to shoot a poor harmless +house-breaker, and how I have the devil in me against poor harmless natives. +But I was a good-natured man once--as good-natured as Putnam." + + After a pause he said: "Look here, I've never seen you before; +but you shall judge of the whole story. Old Putnam and I were friends +in the same mess; but, owing to some accidents on the Afghan border, +I got my command much sooner than most men; only we were both +invalided home for a bit. I was engaged to Audrey out there; +and we all travelled back together. But on the journey back +things happened. Curious things. The result of them was +that Putnam wants it broken off, and even Audrey keeps it hanging on-- +and I know what they mean. I know what they think I am. So do you. + + "Well, these are the facts. The last day we were in +an Indian city I asked Putnam if I could get some Trichinopoli cigars, +he directed me to a little place opposite his lodgings. +I have since found he was quite right; but `opposite' is a dangerous word +when one decent house stands opposite five or six squalid ones; +and I must have mistaken the door. It opened with difficulty, +and then only on darkness; but as I turned back, the door behind me +sank back and settled into its place with a noise as of innumerable bolts. +There was nothing to do but to walk forward; which I did through +passage after passage, pitch-dark. Then I came to a flight of steps, +and then to a blind door, secured by a latch of elaborate Eastern ironwork, +which I could only trace by touch, but which I loosened at last. +I came out again upon gloom, which was half turned into +a greenish twilight by a multitude of small but steady lamps below. +They showed merely the feet or fringes of some huge and empty architecture. +Just in front of me was something that looked like a mountain. +I confess I nearly fell on the great stone platform on which I had emerged, +to realize that it was an idol. And worst of all, an idol with +its back to me. + + "It was hardly half human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head, +and still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind +and pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven +in the centre of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, +to guess at the hieroglyphic, not without horror, when a more horrible +thing happened. A door opened silently in the temple wall +behind me and a man came out, with a brown face and a black coat. +He had a carved smile on his face, of copper flesh and ivory teeth; +but I think the most hateful thing about him was that he was +in European dress. I was prepared, I think, for shrouded priests +or naked fakirs. But this seemed to say that the devilry was +over all the earth. As indeed I found it to be. + + "`If you had only seen the Monkey's Feet,' he said, smiling steadily, +and without other preface, `we should have been very gentle-- +you would only be tortured and die. If you had seen the Monkey's Face, +still we should be very moderate, very tolerant--you would only +be tortured and live. But as you have seen the Monkey's Tail, +we must pronounce the worst sentence, which is--Go Free.' + + "When he said the words I heard the elaborate iron latch with +which I had struggled, automatically unlock itself: and then, +far down the dark passages I had passed, I heard the heavy street-door +shifting its own bolts backwards. + + "`It is vain to ask for mercy; you must go free,' said +the smiling man. `Henceforth a hair shall slay you like a sword, +and a breath shall bite you like an adder; weapons shall come +against you out of nowhere; and you shall die many times.' +And with that he was swallowed once more in the wall behind; +and I went out into the street." + + Cray paused; and Father Brown unaffectedly sat down on the lawn +and began to pick daisies. + + Then the soldier continued: "Putnam, of course, with his +jolly common sense, pooh-poohed all my fears; and from that time +dates his doubt of my mental balance. Well, I'll simply tell you, +in the fewest words, the three things that have happened since; +and you shall judge which of us is right. + + "The first happened in an Indian village on the edge of the jungle, +but hundreds of miles from the temple, or town, or type of tribes +and customs where the curse had been put on me. I woke in black midnight, +and lay thinking of nothing in particular, when I felt a faint +tickling thing, like a thread or a hair, trailed across my throat. +I shrank back out of its way, and could not help thinking of the words +in the temple. But when I got up and sought lights and a mirror, +the line across my neck was a line of blood. + + "The second happened in a lodging in Port Said, later, +on our journey home together. It was a jumble of tavern +and curiosity-shop; and though there was nothing there remotely suggesting +the cult of the Monkey, it is, of course, possible that some of its +images or talismans were in such a place. Its curse was there, anyhow. +I woke again in the dark with a sensation that could not be put +in colder or more literal words than that a breath bit like an adder. +Existence was an agony of extinction; I dashed my head against walls +until I dashed it against a window; and fell rather than jumped +into the garden below. Putnam, poor fellow, who had called the other thing +a chance scratch, was bound to take seriously the fact of finding me +half insensible on the grass at dawn. But I fear it was my mental state +he took seriously; and not my story. + + "The third happened in Malta. We were in a fortress there; +and as it happened our bedrooms overlooked the open sea, which almost +came up to our window-sills, save for a flat white outer wall +as bare as the sea. I woke up again; but it was not dark. +There was a full moon, as I walked to the window; I could have seen a bird +on the bare battlement, or a sail on the horizon. What I did see +was a sort of stick or branch circling, self-supported, in the empty sky. +It flew straight in at my window and smashed the lamp beside the pillow +I had just quitted. It was one of those queer-shaped war-clubs +some Eastern tribes use. But it had come from no human hand." + + Father Brown threw away a daisy-chain he was making, +and rose with a wistful look. "Has Major Putnam," he asked, +"got any Eastern curios, idols, weapons and so on, from which +one might get a hint?" + + "Plenty of those, though not much use, I fear," replied Cray; +"but by all means come into his study." + + As they entered they passed Miss Watson buttoning her gloves for church, +and heard the voice of Putnam downstairs still giving a lecture on cookery +to the cook. In the Major's study and den of curios they came suddenly +on a third party, silk-hatted and dressed for the street, who was +poring over an open book on the smoking-table--a book which he dropped +rather guiltily, and turned. + + Cray introduced him civilly enough, as Dr Oman, but he showed +such disfavour in his very face that Brown guessed the two men, +whether Audrey knew it or not, were rivals. Nor was the priest +wholly unsympathetic with the prejudice. Dr Oman was a very well-dressed +gentleman indeed; well-featured, though almost dark enough for an Asiatic. +But Father Brown had to tell himself sharply that one should be in charity +even with those who wax their pointed beards, who have small gloved hands, +and who speak with perfectly modulated voices. + + Cray seemed to find something specially irritating in +the small prayer-book in Oman's dark-gloved hand. "I didn't know +that was in your line," he said rather rudely. + + Oman laughed mildly, but without offence. "This is more so, I know," +he said, laying his hand on the big book he had dropped, +"a dictionary of drugs and such things. But it's rather too large +to take to church." Then he closed the larger book, and there seemed +again the faintest touch of hurry and embarrassment. + + "I suppose," said the priest, who seemed anxious to change the subject, +"all these spears and things are from India?" + + "From everywhere," answered the doctor. "Putnam is an old soldier, +and has been in Mexico and Australia, and the Cannibal Islands +for all I know." + + "I hope it was not in the Cannibal Islands," said Brown, +"that he learnt the art of cookery." And he ran his eyes over +the stew-pots or other strange utensils on the wall. + + At this moment the jolly subject of their conversation +thrust his laughing, lobsterish face into the room. "Come along, Cray," +he cried. "Your lunch is just coming in. And the bells are ringing +for those who want to go to church." + + Cray slipped upstairs to change; Dr Oman and Miss Watson betook +themselves solemnly down the street, with a string of other churchgoers; +but Father Brown noticed that the doctor twice looked back +and scrutinized the house; and even came back to the corner of the street +to look at it again. + + The priest looked puzzled. "He can't have been at the dustbin," +he muttered. "Not in those clothes. Or was he there earlier today?" + + Father Brown, touching other people, was as sensitive as a barometer; +but today he seemed about as sensitive as a rhinoceros. By no social law, +rigid or implied, could he be supposed to linger round the lunch +of the Anglo-Indian friends; but he lingered, covering his position +with torrents of amusing but quite needless conversation. +He was the more puzzling because he did not seem to want any lunch. +As one after another of the most exquisitely balanced kedgerees of curries, +accompanied with their appropriate vintages, were laid before +the other two, he only repeated that it was one of his fast-days, +and munched a piece of bread and sipped and then left untasted +a tumbler of cold water. His talk, however, was exuberant. + + "I'll tell you what I'll do for you," he cried--, "I'll mix you +a salad! I can't eat it, but I'll mix it like an angel! +You've got a lettuce there." + + "Unfortunately it's the only thing we have got," answered +the good-humoured Major. "You must remember that mustard, vinegar, +oil and so on vanished with the cruet and the burglar." + + "I know," replied Brown, rather vaguely. "That's what I've always +been afraid would happen. That's why I always carry a cruet-stand +about with me. I'm so fond of salads." + + And to the amazement of the two men he took a pepper-pot out of +his waistcoat pocket and put it on the table. + + "I wonder why the burglar wanted mustard, too," he went on, +taking a mustard-pot from another pocket. "A mustard plaster, +I suppose. And vinegar"--and producing that condiment-- +"haven't I heard something about vinegar and brown paper? +As for oil, which I think I put in my left--" + + His garrulity was an instant arrested; for lifting his eyes, +he saw what no one else saw--the black figure of Dr Oman standing +on the sunlit lawn and looking steadily into the room. Before he could +quite recover himself Cray had cloven in. + + "You're an astounding card," he said, staring. "I shall come +and hear your sermons, if they're as amusing as your manners." +His voice changed a little, and he leaned back in his chair. + + "Oh, there are sermons in a cruet-stand, too," said Father Brown, +quite gravely. "Have you heard of faith like a grain of mustard-seed; +or charity that anoints with oil? And as for vinegar, can any soldiers +forget that solitary soldier, who, when the sun was darkened--" + + Colonel Cray leaned forward a little and clutched the tablecloth. + + Father Brown, who was making the salad, tipped two spoonfuls +of the mustard into the tumbler of water beside him; stood up and said +in a new, loud and sudden voice--"Drink that!" + + At the same moment the motionless doctor in the garden came running, +and bursting open a window cried: "Am I wanted? Has he been poisoned?" + + "Pretty near," said Brown, with the shadow of a smile; for +the emetic had very suddenly taken effect. And Cray lay in a deck-chair, +gasping as for life, but alive. + + Major Putnam had sprung up, his purple face mottled. "A crime!" +he cried hoarsely. "I will go for the police!" + + The priest could hear him dragging down his palm-leaf hat from the peg +and tumbling out of the front door; he heard the garden gate slam. +But he only stood looking at Cray; and after a silence said quietly: + + "I shall not talk to you much; but I will tell you what +you want to know. There is no curse on you. The Temple of the Monkey +was either a coincidence or a part of the trick; the trick was +the trick of a white man. There is only one weapon that will bring blood +with that mere feathery touch: a razor held by a white man. +There is one way of making a common room full of invisible, +overpowering poison: turning on the gas--the crime of a white man. +And there is only one kind of club that can be thrown out of a window, +turn in mid-air and come back to the window next to it: +the Australian boomerang. You'll see some of them in the Major's study." + + With that he went outside and spoke for a moment to the doctor. +The moment after, Audrey Watson came rushing into the house and +fell on her knees beside Cray's chair. He could not hear what they said +to each other; but their faces moved with amazement, not unhappiness. +The doctor and the priest walked slowly towards the garden gate. + + "I suppose the Major was in love with her, too," he said with a sigh; +and when the other nodded, observed: "You were very generous, doctor. +You did a fine thing. But what made you suspect?" + + "A very small thing," said Oman; "but it kept me restless in church +till I came back to see that all was well. That book on his table +was a work on poisons; and was put down open at the place where it stated +that a certain Indian poison, though deadly and difficult to trace, +was particularly easily reversible by the use of the commonest emetics. +I suppose he read that at the last moment--" + + "And remembered that there were emetics in the cruet-stand," +said Father Brown. "Exactly. He threw the cruet in the dustbin-- +where I found it, along with other silver--for the sake of +a burglary blind. But if you look at that pepper-pot I put on the table, +you'll see a small hole. That's where Cray's bullet struck, +shaking up the pepper and making the criminal sneeze." + + There was a silence. Then Dr Oman said grimly: "The Major is +a long time looking for the police." + + "Or the police in looking for the Major?" said the priest. +"Well, good-bye." + + + + + ELEVEN + + + The Strange Crime of John Boulnois + + +MR CALHOUN KIDD was a very young gentleman with a very old face, +a face dried up with its own eagerness, framed in blue-black hair +and a black butterfly tie. He was the emissary in England +of the colossal American daily called the Western Sun-- +also humorously described as the "Rising Sunset". This was in allusion +to a great journalistic declaration (attributed to Mr Kidd himself) +that "he guessed the sun would rise in the west yet, if American citizens +did a bit more hustling." Those, however, who mock American journalism +from the standpoint of somewhat mellower traditions forget +a certain paradox which partly redeems it. For while the journalism +of the States permits a pantomimic vulgarity long past anything English, +it also shows a real excitement about the most earnest mental problems, +of which English papers are innocent, or rather incapable. +The Sun was full of the most solemn matters treated in the most +farcical way. William James figured there as well as "Weary Willie," +and pragmatists alternated with pugilists in the long procession +of its portraits. + + Thus, when a very unobtrusive Oxford man named John Boulnois +wrote in a very unreadable review called the Natural Philosophy Quarterly +a series of articles on alleged weak points in Darwinian evolution, +it fluttered no corner of the English papers; though Boulnois's theory +(which was that of a comparatively stationary universe visited occasionally +by convulsions of change) had some rather faddy fashionableness at Oxford, +and got so far as to be named "Catastrophism". But many American papers +seized on the challenge as a great event; and the Sun threw +the shadow of Mr Boulnois quite gigantically across its pages. +By the paradox already noted, articles of valuable intelligence and +enthusiasm were presented with headlines apparently written +by an illiterate maniac, headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; +Critic Boulnois says He Jumps the Shocks"--or "Keep Catastrophic, +says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr Calhoun Kidd, of the Western Sun, +was bidden to take his butterfly tie and lugubrious visage down to +the little house outside Oxford where Thinker Boulnois lived +in happy ignorance of such a title. + + That fated philosopher had consented, in a somewhat dazed manner, +to receive the interviewer, and had named the hour of nine that evening. +The last of a summer sunset clung about Cumnor and the low wooded hills; +the romantic Yankee was both doubtful of his road and inquisitive +about his surroundings; and seeing the door of a genuine feudal +old-country inn, The Champion Arms, standing open, he went in +to make inquiries. + + In the bar parlour he rang the bell, and had to wait +some little time for a reply to it. The only other person present +was a lean man with close red hair and loose, horsey-looking clothes, +who was drinking very bad whisky, but smoking a very good cigar. +The whisky, of course, was the choice brand of The Champion Arms; +the cigar he had probably brought with him from London. +Nothing could be more different than his cynical negligence from +the dapper dryness of the young American; but something in his pencil +and open notebook, and perhaps in the expression of his alert blue eye, +caused Kidd to guess, correctly, that he was a brother journalist. + + "Could you do me the favour," asked Kidd, with the courtesy of +his nation, "of directing me to the Grey Cottage, where Mr Boulnois lives, +as I understand?" + + "It's a few yards down the road," said the red-haired man, +removing his cigar; "I shall be passing it myself in a minute, +but I'm going on to Pendragon Park to try and see the fun." + + "What is Pendragon Park?" asked Calhoun Kidd. + + "Sir Claude Champion's place--haven't you come down for that, too?" +asked the other pressman, looking up. "You're a journalist, aren't you?" + + "I have come to see Mr Boulnois," said Kidd. + + "I've come to see Mrs Boulnois," replied the other. +"But I shan't catch her at home." And he laughed rather unpleasantly. + + "Are you interested in Catastrophism?" asked the wondering Yankee. + + "I'm interested in catastrophes; and there are going to be some," +replied his companion gloomily. "Mine's a filthy trade, +and I never pretend it isn't." + + With that he spat on the floor; yet somehow in the very act and +instant one could realize that the man had been brought up as a gentleman. + + The American pressman considered him with more attention. +His face was pale and dissipated, with the promise of formidable passions +yet to be loosed; but it was a clever and sensitive face; his clothes +were coarse and careless, but he had a good seal ring on one of his long, +thin fingers. His name, which came out in the course of talk, +was James Dalroy; he was the son of a bankrupt Irish landlord, +and attached to a pink paper which he heartily despised, called +Smart Society, in the capacity of reporter and of something +painfully like a spy. + + Smart Society, I regret to say, felt none of that interest in +Boulnois on Darwin which was such a credit to the head and hearts of +the Western Sun. Dalroy had come down, it seemed, to snuff up +the scent of a scandal which might very well end in the Divorce Court, +but which was at present hovering between Grey Cottage and Pendragon Park. + + Sir Claude Champion was known to the readers of the Western Sun +as well as Mr Boulnois. So were the Pope and the Derby Winner; +but the idea of their intimate acquaintanceship would have struck Kidd +as equally incongruous. He had heard of (and written about, +nay, falsely pretended to know) Sir Claude Champion, as +"one of the brightest and wealthiest of England's Upper Ten"; +as the great sportsman who raced yachts round the world; +as the great traveller who wrote books about the Himalayas, +as the politician who swept constituencies with a startling sort of +Tory Democracy, and as the great dabbler in art, music, literature, +and, above all, acting. Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in +other than American eyes. There was something of the Renascence Prince +about his omnivorous culture and restless publicity--, he was not only +a great amateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that +antiquarian frivolity that we convey by the word "dilettante". + + That faultless falcon profile with purple-black Italian eye, +which had been snap-shotted so often both for Smart Society and +the Western Sun, gave everyone the impression of a man eaten by ambition +as by a fire, or even a disease. But though Kidd knew a great deal +about Sir Claude--a great deal more, in fact, than there was to know-- +it would never have crossed his wildest dreams to connect so showy +an aristocrat with the newly-unearthed founder of Catastrophism, +or to guess that Sir Claude Champion and John Boulnois could be +intimate friends. Such, according to Dalroy's account, +was nevertheless the fact. The two had hunted in couples at school +and college, and, though their social destinies had been very different +(for Champion was a great landlord and almost a millionaire, +while Boulnois was a poor scholar and, until just lately, +an unknown one), they still kept in very close touch with each other. +Indeed, Boulnois's cottage stood just outside the gates of Pendragon Park. + + But whether the two men could be friends much longer was becoming +a dark and ugly question. A year or two before, Boulnois had married +a beautiful and not unsuccessful actress, to whom he was devoted +in his own shy and ponderous style; and the proximity of the household +to Champion's had given that flighty celebrity opportunities for behaving +in a way that could not but cause painful and rather base excitement. +Sir Claude had carried the arts of publicity to perfection; +and he seemed to take a crazy pleasure in being equally ostentatious +in an intrigue that could do him no sort of honour. Footmen from +Pendragon were perpetually leaving bouquets for Mrs Boulnois; +carriages and motor-cars were perpetually calling at the cottage +for Mrs Boulnois; balls and masquerades perpetually filled the grounds +in which the baronet paraded Mrs Boulnois, like the Queen of +Love and Beauty at a tournament. That very evening, marked by Mr +Kidd for the exposition of Catastrophism, had been marked by +Sir Claude Champion for an open-air rendering of Romeo and Juliet, +in which he was to play Romeo to a Juliet it was needless to name. + + "I don't think it can go on without a smash," said the young man +with red hair, getting up and shaking himself. "Old Boulnois may be +squared--or he may be square. But if he's square he's thick-- +what you might call cubic. But I don't believe it's possible." + + "He is a man of grand intellectual powers," said Calhoun Kidd +in a deep voice. + + "Yes," answered Dalroy; "but even a man of grand intellectual powers +can't be such a blighted fool as all that. Must you be going on? +I shall be following myself in a minute or two." + + But Calhoun Kidd, having finished a milk and soda, betook himself +smartly up the road towards the Grey Cottage, leaving his cynical informant +to his whisky and tobacco. The last of the daylight had faded; +the skies were of a dark, green-grey, like slate, studded here and there +with a star, but lighter on the left side of the sky, with the promise +of a rising moon. + + The Grey Cottage, which stood entrenched, as it were, in a square +of stiff, high thorn-hedges, was so close under the pines and palisades +of the Park that Kidd at first mistook it for the Park Lodge. +Finding the name on the narrow wooden gate, however, and seeing +by his watch that the hour of the "Thinker's" appointment had just struck, +he went in and knocked at the front door. Inside the garden hedge, +he could see that the house, though unpretentious enough, was larger +and more luxurious than it looked at first, and was quite a different kind +of place from a porter's lodge. A dog-kennel and a beehive stood outside, +like symbols of old English country-life; the moon was rising behind +a plantation of prosperous pear trees, the dog that came out of the kennel +was reverend-looking and reluctant to bark; and the plain, elderly +man-servant who opened the door was brief but dignified. + + "Mr Boulnois asked me to offer his apologies, sir," he said, +"but he has been obliged to go out suddenly." + + "But see here, I had an appointment," said the interviewer, +with a rising voice. "Do you know where he went to?" + + "To Pendragon Park, sir," said the servant, rather sombrely, +and began to close the door. + + Kidd started a little. + + "Did he go with Mrs--with the rest of the party?" he asked +rather vaguely. + + "No, sir," said the man shortly; "he stayed behind, and then +went out alone." And he shut the door, brutally, but with an air of +duty not done. + + The American, that curious compound of impudence and sensitiveness, +was annoyed. He felt a strong desire to hustle them all along a bit +and teach them business habits; the hoary old dog and the grizzled, +heavy-faced old butler with his prehistoric shirt-front, and the drowsy +old moon, and above all the scatter-brained old philosopher who +couldn't keep an appointment. + + "If that's the way he goes on he deserves to lose his wife's +purest devotion," said Mr Calhoun Kidd. "But perhaps he's gone over +to make a row. In that case I reckon a man from the Western Sun +will be on the spot." + + And turning the corner by the open lodge-gates, he set off, +stumping up the long avenue of black pine-woods that pointed +in abrupt perspective towards the inner gardens of Pendragon Park. +The trees were as black and orderly as plumes upon a hearse; +there were still a few stars. He was a man with more literary +than direct natural associations; the word "Ravenswood" came into +his head repeatedly. It was partly the raven colour of the pine-woods; +but partly also an indescribable atmosphere almost described +in Scott's great tragedy; the smell of something that died +in the eighteenth century; the smell of dank gardens and broken urns, +of wrongs that will never now be righted; of something that is +none the less incurably sad because it is strangely unreal. + + More than once, as he went up that strange, black road +of tragic artifice, he stopped, startled, thinking he heard steps +in front of him. He could see nothing in front but the twin sombre +walls of pine and the wedge of starlit sky above them. At first +he thought he must have fancied it or been mocked by a mere echo of +his own tramp. But as he went on he was more and more inclined +to conclude, with the remains of his reason, that there really were +other feet upon the road. He thought hazily of ghosts; and was surprised +how swiftly he could see the image of an appropriate and local ghost, +one with a face as white as Pierrot's, but patched with black. +The apex of the triangle of dark-blue sky was growing brighter and bluer, +but he did not realize as yet that this was because he was coming +nearer to the lights of the great house and garden. He only felt +that the atmosphere was growing more intense, there was in the sadness +more violence and secrecy--more--he hesitated for the word, +and then said it with a jerk of laughter--Catastrophism. + + More pines, more pathway slid past him, and then he stood rooted +as by a blast of magic. It is vain to say that he felt as if he had +got into a dream; but this time he felt quite certain that he had +got into a book. For we human beings are used to inappropriate things; +we are accustomed to the clatter of the incongruous; it is a tune +to which we can go to sleep. If one appropriate thing happens, +it wakes us up like the pang of a perfect chord. Something happened +such as would have happened in such a place in a forgotten tale. + + Over the black pine-wood came flying and flashing in the moon +a naked sword--such a slender and sparkling rapier as may have +fought many an unjust duel in that ancient park. It fell on the pathway +far in front of him and lay there glistening like a large needle. +He ran like a hare and bent to look at it. Seen at close quarters +it had rather a showy look: the big red jewels in the hilt and guard +were a little dubious. But there were other red drops upon the blade +which were not dubious. + + He looked round wildly in the direction from which the dazzling missile +had come, and saw that at this point the sable facade of fir and pine +was interrupted by a smaller road at right angles; which, when he turned it, +brought him in full view of the long, lighted house, with a lake and +fountains in front of it. Nevertheless, he did not look at this, +having something more interesting to look at. + + Above him, at the angle of the steep green bank of the +terraced garden, was one of those small picturesque surprises +common in the old landscape gardening; a kind of small round hill or +dome of grass, like a giant mole-hill, ringed and crowned with +three concentric fences of roses, and having a sundial in the highest point +in the centre. Kidd could see the finger of the dial stand up dark +against the sky like the dorsal fin of a shark and the vain moonlight +clinging to that idle clock. But he saw something else clinging +to it also, for one wild moment--the figure of a man. + + Though he saw it there only for a moment, though it was outlandish +and incredible in costume, being clad from neck to heel in tight crimson, +with glints of gold, yet he knew in one flash of moonlight who it was. +That white face flung up to heaven, clean-shaven and so unnaturally young, +like Byron with a Roman nose, those black curls already grizzled-- +he had seen the thousand public portraits of Sir Claude Champion. +The wild red figure reeled an instant against the sundial; the next +it had rolled down the steep bank and lay at the American's feet, +faintly moving one arm. A gaudy, unnatural gold ornament on the arm +suddenly reminded Kidd of Romeo and Juliet; of course the tight crimson +suit was part of the play. But there was a long red stain down +the bank from which the man had rolled--that was no part of the play. +He had been run through the body. + + Mr Calhoun Kidd shouted and shouted again. Once more he seemed +to hear phantasmal footsteps, and started to find another figure +already near him. He knew the figure, and yet it terrified him. +The dissipated youth who had called himself Dalroy had a horribly quiet +way with him; if Boulnois failed to keep appointments that had been made, +Dalroy had a sinister air of keeping appointments that hadn't. +The moonlight discoloured everything, against Dalroy's red hair +his wan face looked not so much white as pale green. + + All this morbid impressionism must be Kidd's excuse for having +cried out, brutally and beyond all reason: "Did you do this, you devil?" + + James Dalroy smiled his unpleasing smile; but before he could speak, +the fallen figure made another movement of the arm, waving vaguely +towards the place where the sword fell; then came a moan, and then +it managed to speak. + + "Boulnois.... Boulnois, I say.... Boulnois did it... +jealous of me...he was jealous, he was, he was..." + + Kidd bent his head down to hear more, and just managed +to catch the words: + + "Boulnois...with my own sword...he threw it..." + + Again the failing hand waved towards the sword, and then fell rigid +with a thud. In Kidd rose from its depth all that acrid humour +that is the strange salt of the seriousness of his race. + + "See here," he said sharply and with command, "you must +fetch a doctor. This man's dead." + + "And a priest, too, I suppose," said Dalroy in an undecipherable manner. +"All these Champions are papists." + + The American knelt down by the body, felt the heart, propped up +the head and used some last efforts at restoration; but before +the other journalist reappeared, followed by a doctor and a priest, +he was already prepared to assert they were too late. + + "Were you too late also?" asked the doctor, a solid +prosperous-looking man, with conventional moustache and whiskers, +but a lively eye, which darted over Kidd dubiously. + + "In one sense," drawled the representative of the Sun. +"I was too late to save the man, but I guess I was in time to hear +something of importance. I heard the dead man denounce his assassin." + + "And who was the assassin?" asked the doctor, drawing his +eyebrows together. + + "Boulnois," said Calhoun Kidd, and whistled softly. + + The doctor stared at him gloomily with a reddening brow--, +but he did not contradict. Then the priest, a shorter figure +in the background, said mildly: "I understood that Mr Boulnois +was not coming to Pendragon Park this evening." + + "There again," said the Yankee grimly, "I may be in a position +to give the old country a fact or two. Yes, sir, John Boulnois +was going to stay in all this evening; he fixed up a real good appointment +there with me. But John Boulnois changed his mind; John Boulnois +left his home abruptly and all alone, and came over to this darned Park +an hour or so ago. His butler told me so. I think we hold what +the all-wise police call a clue--have you sent for them?" + + "Yes," said the doctor, "but we haven't alarmed anyone else yet." + + "Does Mrs Boulnois know?" asked James Dalroy, and again Kidd +was conscious of an irrational desire to hit him on his curling mouth. + + "I have not told her," said the doctor gruffly--, "but here come +the police." + + The little priest had stepped out into the main avenue, +and now returned with the fallen sword, which looked ludicrously large +and theatrical when attached to his dumpy figure, at once clerical +and commonplace. "Just before the police come," he said apologetically, +"has anyone got a light?" + + The Yankee journalist took an electric torch from his pocket, +and the priest held it close to the middle part of the blade, +which he examined with blinking care. Then, without glancing at +the point or pommel, he handed the long weapon to the doctor. + + "I fear I'm no use here," he said, with a brief sigh. +"I'll say good night to you, gentlemen." And he walked away +up the dark avenue towards the house, his hands clasped behind him +and his big head bent in cogitation. + + The rest of the group made increased haste towards the lodge-gates, +where an inspector and two constables could already be seen +in consultation with the lodge-keeper. But the little priest +only walked slower and slower in the dim cloister of pine, and at last +stopped dead, on the steps of the house. It was his silent way +of acknowledging an equally silent approach; for there came towards +him a presence that might have satisfied even Calhoun Kidd's demands +for a lovely and aristocratic ghost. It was a young woman +in silvery satins of a Renascence design; she had golden hair +in two long shining ropes, and a face so startingly pale between them +that she might have been chryselephantine--made, that is, like some +old Greek statues, out of ivory and gold. But her eyes were very bright, +and her voice, though low, was confident. + + "Father Brown?" she said. + + "Mrs Boulnois?" he replied gravely. Then he looked at her and +immediately said: "I see you know about Sir Claude." + + "How do you know I know?" she asked steadily. + + He did not answer the question, but asked another: "Have you +seen your husband?" + + "My husband is at home," she said. "He has nothing to do with this." + + Again he did not answer; and the woman drew nearer to him, +with a curiously intense expression on her face. + + "Shall I tell you something more?" she said, with a rather +fearful smile. "I don't think he did it, and you don't either." +Father Brown returned her gaze with a long, grave stare, and then nodded, +yet more gravely. + + "Father Brown," said the lady, "I am going to tell you all I know, +but I want you to do me a favour first. Will you tell me why +you haven't jumped to the conclusion of poor John's guilt, +as all the rest have done? Don't mind what you say: I--I know about +the gossip and the appearances that are against me." + + Father Brown looked honestly embarrassed, and passed his hand +across his forehead. "Two very little things," he said. +"At least, one's very trivial and the other very vague. +But such as they are, they don't fit in with Mr Boulnois +being the murderer." + + He turned his blank, round face up to the stars and +continued absentmindedly: "To take the vague idea first. +I attach a good deal of importance to vague ideas. All those things that +`aren't evidence' are what convince me. I think a moral impossibility +the biggest of all impossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, +but I think this crime of his, as generally conceived, something +very like a moral impossibility. Please do not think I mean that +Boulnois could not be so wicked. Anybody can be wicked--as wicked as +he chooses. We can direct our moral wills; but we can't generally change +our instinctive tastes and ways of doing things. Boulnois might +commit a murder, but not this murder. He would not snatch Romeo's sword +from its romantic scabbard; or slay his foe on the sundial as on +a kind of altar; or leave his body among the roses, or fling the sword +away among the pines. If Boulnois killed anyone he'd do it +quietly and heavily, as he'd do any other doubtful thing-- +take a tenth glass of port, or read a loose Greek poet. +No, the romantic setting is not like Boulnois. It's more like Champion." + + "Ah!" she said, and looked at him with eyes like diamonds. + + "And the trivial thing was this," said Brown. "There were +finger-prints on that sword; finger-prints can be detected quite +a time after they are made if they're on some polished surface +like glass or steel. These were on a polished surface. +They were half-way down the blade of the sword. Whose prints they were +I have no earthly clue; but why should anybody hold a sword half-way down? +It was a long sword, but length is an advantage in lunging at an enemy. +At least, at most enemies. At all enemies except one." + + "Except one," she repeated. + + "There is only one enemy," said Father Brown, "whom it is easier +to kill with a dagger than a sword." + + "I know," said the woman. "Oneself." + + There was a long silence, and then the priest said quietly +but abruptly: "Am I right, then? Did Sir Claude kill himself?" + + "Yes" she said, with a face like marble. "I saw him do it." + + "He died," said Father Brown, "for love of you?" + + An extraordinary expression flashed across her face, +very different from pity, modesty, remorse, or anything her companion +had expected: her voice became suddenly strong and full. +"I don't believe," she said, "he ever cared about me a rap. +He hated my husband." + + "Why?" asked the other, and turned his round face from the sky +to the lady. + + "He hated my husband because...it is so strange I hardly know +how to say it...because..." + + "Yes?" said Brown patiently. + + "Because my husband wouldn't hate him." + + Father Brown only nodded, and seemed still to be listening; +he differed from most detectives in fact and fiction in a small point-- +he never pretended not to understand when he understood perfectly well. + + Mrs Boulnois drew near once more with the same contained +glow of certainty. "My husband," she said, "is a great man. +Sir Claude Champion was not a great man: he was a celebrated and +successful man. My husband has never been celebrated or successful; +and it is the solemn truth that he has never dreamed of being so. +He no more expects to be famous for thinking than for smoking cigars. +On all that side he has a sort of splendid stupidity. He has never +grown up. He still liked Champion exactly as he liked him at school; +he admired him as he would admire a conjuring trick done at +the dinner-table. But he couldn't be got to conceive the notion of +envying Champion. And Champion wanted to be envied. He went mad +and killed himself for that." + + "Yes," said Father Brown; "I think I begin to understand." + + "Oh, don't you see?" she cried; "the whole picture is made for that-- +the place is planned for it. Champion put John in a little house +at his very door, like a dependant--to make him feel a failure. +He never felt it. He thinks no more about such things than-- +than an absent-minded lion. Champion would burst in on John's +shabbiest hours or homeliest meals with some dazzling present or +announcement or expedition that made it like the visit of Haroun Alraschid, +and John would accept or refuse amiably with one eye off, so to speak, +like one lazy schoolboy agreeing or disagreeing with another. +After five years of it John had not turned a hair; and Sir Claude Champion +was a monomaniac." + + "And Haman began to tell them," said Father Brown, +"of all the things wherein the king had honoured him; and he said: +`All these things profit me nothing while I see Mordecai the Jew +sitting in the gate.'" + + "The crisis came," Mrs Boulnois continued, "when I persuaded John +to let me take down some of his speculations and send them to a magazine. +They began to attract attention, especially in America, and one paper +wanted to interview him. When Champion (who was interviewed +nearly every day) heard of this late little crumb of success +falling to his unconscious rival, the last link snapped that held back +his devilish hatred. Then he began to lay that insane siege to my own +love and honour which has been the talk of the shire. You will ask me +why I allowed such atrocious attentions. I answer that I could not have +declined them except by explaining to my husband, and there are +some things the soul cannot do, as the body cannot fly. +Nobody could have explained to my husband. Nobody could do it now. +If you said to him in so many words, `Champion is stealing your wife,' +he would think the joke a little vulgar: that it could be anything +but a joke--that notion could find no crack in his great skull +to get in by. Well, John was to come and see us act this evening, +but just as we were starting he said he wouldn't; he had got +an interesting book and a cigar. I told this to Sir Claude, +and it was his death-blow. The monomaniac suddenly saw despair. +He stabbed himself, crying out like a devil that Boulnois was slaying him; +he lies there in the garden dead of his own jealousy to produce jealousy, +and John is sitting in the dining-room reading a book." + + There was another silence, and then the little priest said: +"There is only one weak point, Mrs Boulnois, in all your +very vivid account. Your husband is not sitting in the dining-room +reading a book. That American reporter told me he had been to your house, +and your butler told him Mr Boulnois had gone to Pendragon Park after all." + + Her bright eyes widened to an almost electric glare; +and yet it seemed rather bewilderment than confusion or fear. +"Why, what can you mean?" she cried. "All the servants were +out of the house, seeing the theatricals. And we don't keep a butler, +thank goodness!" + + Father Brown started and spun half round like an absurd teetotum. +"What, what?" he cried seeming galvanized into sudden life. +"Look here--I say--can I make your husband hear if I go to the house?" + + "Oh, the servants will be back by now," she said, wondering. + + "Right, right!" rejoined the cleric energetically, and set off +scuttling up the path towards the Park gates. He turned once to say: +"Better get hold of that Yankee, or `Crime of John Boulnois' will be +all over the Republic in large letters." + + "You don't understand," said Mrs Boulnois. "He wouldn't mind. +I don't think he imagines that America really is a place." + + When Father Brown reached the house with the beehive and +the drowsy dog, a small and neat maid-servant showed him into +the dining-room, where Boulnois sat reading by a shaded lamp, +exactly as his wife described him. A decanter of port and a wineglass +were at his elbow; and the instant the priest entered he noted +the long ash stand out unbroken on his cigar. + + "He has been here for half an hour at least," thought Father Brown. +In fact, he had the air of sitting where he had sat when his dinner +was cleared away. + + "Don't get up, Mr Boulnois," said the priest in his pleasant, +prosaic way. "I shan't interrupt you a moment. I fear I break in on +some of your scientific studies." + + "No," said Boulnois; "I was reading `The Bloody Thumb.'" +He said it with neither frown nor smile, and his visitor was conscious +of a certain deep and virile indifference in the man which his wife +had called greatness. He laid down a gory yellow "shocker" +without even feeling its incongruity enough to comment on it humorously. +John Boulnois was a big, slow-moving man with a massive head, +partly grey and partly bald, and blunt, burly features. +He was in shabby and very old-fashioned evening-dress, with a narrow +triangular opening of shirt-front: he had assumed it that evening +in his original purpose of going to see his wife act Juliet. + + "I won't keep you long from `The Bloody Thumb' or any other +catastrophic affairs," said Father Brown, smiling. "I only came +to ask you about the crime you committed this evening." + + Boulnois looked at him steadily, but a red bar began to show +across his broad brow; and he seemed like one discovering embarrassment +for the first time. + + "I know it was a strange crime," assented Brown in a low voice. +"Stranger than murder perhaps--to you. The little sins are sometimes +harder to confess than the big ones--but that's why it's so important +to confess them. Your crime is committed by every fashionable hostess +six times a week: and yet you find it sticks to your tongue like +a nameless atrocity." + + "It makes one feel," said the philosopher slowly, "such a +damned fool." + + "I know," assented the other, "but one often has to choose +between feeling a damned fool and being one." + + "I can't analyse myself well," went on Boulnois; "but sitting +in that chair with that story I was as happy as a schoolboy +on a half-holiday. It was security, eternity--I can't convey it... +the cigars were within reach...the matches were within reach... +the Thumb had four more appearances to...it was not only a peace, +but a plenitude. Then that bell rang, and I thought for one long, +mortal minute that I couldn't get out of that chair--literally, +physically, muscularly couldn't. Then I did it like a man +lifting the world, because I knew all the servants were out. +I opened the front door, and there was a little man with his mouth open +to speak and his notebook open to write in. I remembered the Yankee +interviewer I had forgotten. His hair was parted in the middle, +and I tell you that murder--" + + "I understand," said Father Brown. "I've seen him." + + "I didn't commit murder," continued the Catastrophist mildly, +"but only perjury. I said I had gone across to Pendragon Park +and shut the door in his face. That is my crime, Father Brown, +and I don't know what penance you would inflict for it." + + "I shan't inflict any penance," said the clerical gentleman, +collecting his heavy hat and umbrella with an air of some amusement; +"quite the contrary. I came here specially to let you off the little +penance which would otherwise have followed your little offence." + + "And what," asked Boulnois, smiling, "is the little penance +I have so luckily been let off?" + + "Being hanged," said Father Brown. + + + + TWELVE + + + The Fairy Tale of Father Brown + + +THE picturesque city and state of Heiligwaldenstein was one of those +toy kingdoms of which certain parts of the German Empire still consist. +It had come under the Prussian hegemony quite late in history-- +hardly fifty years before the fine summer day when Flambeau and +Father Brown found themselves sitting in its gardens and drinking its beer. +There had been not a little of war and wild justice there within +living memory, as soon will be shown. But in merely looking at it +one could not dismiss that impression of childishness which is +the most charming side of Germany--those little pantomime, +paternal monarchies in which a king seems as domestic as a cook. +The German soldiers by the innumerable sentry-boxes looked strangely like +German toys, and the clean-cut battlements of the castle, +gilded by the sunshine, looked the more like the gilt gingerbread. +For it was brilliant weather. The sky was as Prussian a blue as +Potsdam itself could require, but it was yet more like that lavish and +glowing use of the colour which a child extracts from a shilling paint-box. +Even the grey-ribbed trees looked young, for the pointed buds on them +were still pink, and in a pattern against the strong blue looked like +innumerable childish figures. + + Despite his prosaic appearance and generally practical walk of life, +Father Brown was not without a certain streak of romance in his composition, +though he generally kept his daydreams to himself, as many children do. +Amid the brisk, bright colours of such a day, and in the heraldic +framework of such a town, he did feel rather as if he had entered +a fairy tale. He took a childish pleasure, as a younger brother might, +in the formidable sword-stick which Flambeau always flung as he walked, +and which now stood upright beside his tall mug of Munich. +Nay, in his sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the +knobbed and clumsy head of his own shabby umbrella, with some +faint memories of the ogre's club in a coloured toy-book. +But he never composed anything in the form of fiction, unless it be +the tale that follows: + + "I wonder," he said, "whether one would have real adventures +in a place like this, if one put oneself in the way? It's a splendid +back-scene for them, but I always have a kind of feeling that they +would fight you with pasteboard sabres more than real, horrible swords." + + "You are mistaken," said his friend. "In this place they +not only fight with swords, but kill without swords. And there's +worse than that." + + "Why, what do you mean?" asked Father Brown. + + "Why," replied the other, "I should say this was the only place +in Europe where a man was ever shot without firearms." + + "Do you mean a bow and arrow?" asked Brown in some wonder. + + "I mean a bullet in the brain," replied Flambeau. +"Don't you know the story of the late Prince of this place? +It was one of the great police mysteries about twenty years ago. +You remember, of course, that this place was forcibly annexed +at the time of Bismarck's very earliest schemes of consolidation-- +forcibly, that is, but not at all easily. The empire (or what wanted +to be one) sent Prince Otto of Grossenmark to rule the place +in the Imperial interests. We saw his portrait in the gallery there-- +a handsome old gentleman if he'd had any hair or eyebrows, +and hadn't been wrinkled all over like a vulture; but he had +things to harass him, as I'll explain in a minute. He was a soldier +of distinguished skill and success, but he didn't have altogether +an easy job with this little place. He was defeated in several battles +by the celebrated Arnhold brothers--the three guerrilla patriots +to whom Swinburne wrote a poem, you remember: + + Wolves with the hair of the ermine, + Crows that are crowned and kings-- + These things be many as vermin, + Yet Three shall abide these things. + +Or something of that kind. Indeed, it is by no means certain +that the occupation would ever have been successful had not one of +the three brothers, Paul, despicably, but very decisively declined +to abide these things any longer, and, by surrendering all the secrets +of the insurrection, ensured its overthrow and his own ultimate promotion +to the post of chamberlain to Prince Otto. After this, Ludwig, +the one genuine hero among Mr Swinburne's heroes, was killed, +sword in hand, in the capture of the city; and the third, Heinrich, +who, though not a traitor, had always been tame and even timid +compared with his active brothers, retired into something like a hermitage, +became converted to a Christian quietism which was almost Quakerish, +and never mixed with men except to give nearly all he had to the poor. +They tell me that not long ago he could still be seen about +the neighbourhood occasionally, a man in a black cloak, nearly blind, +with very wild, white hair, but a face of astonishing softness." + + "I know," said Father Brown. "I saw him once." + + His friend looked at him in some surprise. "I didn't know +you'd been here before," he said. "Perhaps you know as much about it +as I do. Anyhow, that's the story of the Arnholds, and he was +the last survivor of them. Yes, and of all the men who played parts +in that drama." + + "You mean that the Prince, too, died long before?" + + "Died," repeated Flambeau, "and that's about as much as we can say. +You must understand that towards the end of his life he began +to have those tricks of the nerves not uncommon with tyrants. +He multiplied the ordinary daily and nightly guard round his castle +till there seemed to be more sentry-boxes than houses in the town, +and doubtful characters were shot without mercy. He lived almost entirely +in a little room that was in the very centre of the enormous labyrinth +of all the other rooms, and even in this he erected another sort of +central cabin or cupboard, lined with steel, like a safe or a battleship. +Some say that under the floor of this again was a secret hole in the earth, +no more than large enough to hold him, so that, in his anxiety +to avoid the grave, he was willing to go into a place pretty much like it. +But he went further yet. The populace had been supposed to be disarmed +ever since the suppression of the revolt, but Otto now insisted, +as governments very seldom insist, on an absolute and literal disarmament. +It was carried out, with extraordinary thoroughness and severity, +by very well-organized officials over a small and familiar area, and, +so far as human strength and science can be absolutely certain of anything, +Prince Otto was absolutely certain that nobody could introduce so much as +a toy pistol into Heiligwaldenstein." + + "Human science can never be quite certain of things like that," +said Father Brown, still looking at the red budding of the branches +over his head, "if only because of the difficulty about definition +and connotation. What is a weapon? People have been murdered +with the mildest domestic comforts; certainly with tea-kettles, +probably with tea-cosies. On the other hand, if you showed +an Ancient Briton a revolver, I doubt if he would know it was a weapon-- +until it was fired into him, of course. Perhaps somebody introduced +a firearm so new that it didn't even look like a firearm. +Perhaps it looked like a thimble or something. Was the bullet +at all peculiar?" + + "Not that I ever heard of," answered Flambeau; "but my information +is fragmentary, and only comes from my old friend Grimm. +He was a very able detective in the German service, and he tried +to arrest me; I arrested him instead, and we had many interesting chats. +He was in charge here of the inquiry about Prince Otto, but I forgot +to ask him anything about the bullet. According to Grimm, +what happened was this." He paused a moment to drain the greater part +of his dark lager at a draught, and then resumed: + + "On the evening in question, it seems, the Prince was expected +to appear in one of the outer rooms, because he had to receive +certain visitors whom he really wished to meet. They were geological +experts sent to investigate the old question of the alleged supply of gold +from the rocks round here, upon which (as it was said) the small city-state +had so long maintained its credit and been able to negotiate with +its neighbours even under the ceaseless bombardment of bigger armies. +Hitherto it had never been found by the most exacting inquiry +which could--" + + "Which could be quite certain of discovering a toy pistol," +said Father Brown with a smile. "But what about the brother who ratted? +Hadn't he anything to tell the Prince?" + + "He always asseverated that he did not know," replied Flambeau; +"that this was the one secret his brothers had not told him. +It is only right to say that it received some support from +fragmentary words--spoken by the great Ludwig in the hour of death, +when he looked at Heinrich but pointed at Paul, and said, +`You have not told him...' and was soon afterwards incapable of speech. +Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists +from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and +appropriate dress, for there are no men who like wearing their decorations +so much as the men of science--as anybody knows who has ever been to +a soiree of the Royal Society. It was a brilliant gathering, +but very late, and gradually the Chamberlain--you saw his portrait, too: +a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a meaningless sort of +smile underneath--the Chamberlain, I say, discovered there was +everything there except the Prince himself. He searched all the +outer salons; then, remembering the man's mad fits of fear, +hurried to the inmost chamber. That also was empty, but the steel turret +or cabin erected in the middle of it took some time to open. +When it did open it was empty, too. He went and looked into +the hole in the ground, which seemed deeper and somehow all the more +like a grave--that is his account, of course. And even as he did so +he heard a burst of cries and tumult in the long rooms +and corridors without. + + "First it was a distant din and thrill of something unthinkable +on the horizon of the crowd, even beyond the castle. Next it was +a wordless clamour startlingly close, and loud enough to be distinct +if each word had not killed the other. Next came words +of a terrible clearness, coming nearer, and next one man, +rushing into the room and telling the news as briefly as such news is told. + + "Otto, Prince of Heiligwaldenstein and Grossenmark, was lying +in the dews of the darkening twilight in the woods beyond the castle, +with his arms flung out and his face flung up to the moon. +The blood still pulsed from his shattered temple and jaw, +but it was the only part of him that moved like a living thing. +He was clad in his full white and yellow uniform, as to receive his +guests within, except that the sash or scarf had been unbound and lay +rather crumpled by his side. Before he could be lifted he was dead. +But, dead or alive, he was a riddle--he who had always hidden in +the inmost chamber out there in the wet woods, unarmed and alone." + + "Who found his body?" asked Father Brown. + + "Some girl attached to the Court named Hedwig von something or other," +replied his friend, "who had been out in the wood picking wild flowers." + + "Had she picked any?" asked the priest, staring rather vacantly +at the veil of the branches above him. + + "Yes," replied Flambeau. "I particularly remember that +the Chamberlain, or old Grimm or somebody, said how horrible it was, +when they came up at her call, to see a girl holding spring flowers +and bending over that--that bloody collapse. However, the main point is +that before help arrived he was dead, and the news, of course, +had to be carried back to the castle. The consternation it created was +something beyond even that natural in a Court at the fall of a potentate. +The foreign visitors, especially the mining experts, were in the wildest +doubt and excitement, as well as many important Prussian officials, +and it soon began to be clear that the scheme for finding the treasure +bulked much bigger in the business than people had supposed. +Experts and officials had been promised great prizes or +international advantages, and some even said that the Prince's +secret apartments and strong military protection were due less to fear +of the populace than to the pursuit of some private investigation of--" + + "Had the flowers got long stalks?" asked Father Brown. + + Flambeau stared at him. "What an odd person you are!" he said. +"That's exactly what old Grimm said. He said the ugliest part of it, +he thought--uglier than the blood and bullet--was that the flowers +were quite short, plucked close under the head." + + "Of course," said the priest, "when a grown up girl is really +picking flowers, she picks them with plenty of stalk. If she just +pulled their heads off, as a child does, it looks as if--" +And he hesitated. + + "Well?" inquired the other. + + "Well, it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, +to make an excuse for being there after--well, after she was there." + + "I know what you're driving at," said Flambeau rather gloomily. +"But that and every other suspicion breaks down on the one point-- +the want of a weapon. He could have been killed, as you say, +with lots of other things--even with his own military sash; +but we have to explain not how he was killed, but how he was shot. +And the fact is we can't. They had the girl most ruthlessly searched; +for, to tell the truth, she was a little suspect, though the niece +and ward of the wicked old Chamberlain, Paul Arnhold. But she was +very romantic, and was suspected of sympathy with the old revolutionary +enthusiasm in her family. All the same, however romantic you are, +you can't imagine a big bullet into a man's jaw or brain without using +a gun or pistol. And there was no pistol, though there were +two pistol shots. I leave it to you, my friend." + + "How do you know there were two shots?" asked the little priest. + + "There was only one in his head," said his companion, +"but there was another bullet-hole in the sash." + + Father Brown's smooth brow became suddenly constricted. +"Was the other bullet found?" he demanded. + + Flambeau started a little. "I don't think I remember," he said. + + "Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" cried Brown, frowning more and more, +with a quite unusual concentration of curiosity. "Don't think me rude. +Let me think this out for a moment." + + "All right," said Flambeau, laughing, and finished his beer. +A slight breeze stirred the budding trees and blew up into the sky +cloudlets of white and pink that seemed to make the sky bluer and +the whole coloured scene more quaint. They might have been cherubs +flying home to the casements of a sort of celestial nursery. +The oldest tower of the castle, the Dragon Tower, stood up as grotesque +as the ale-mug, but as homely. Only beyond the tower glimmered +the wood in which the man had lain dead. + + "What became of this Hedwig eventually?" asked the priest at last. + + "She is married to General Schwartz," said Flambeau. +"No doubt you've heard of his career, which was rather romantic. +He had distinguished himself even, before his exploits at Sadowa +and Gravelotte; in fact, he rose from the ranks, which is very unusual +even in the smallest of the German..." + + Father Brown sat up suddenly. + + "Rose from the ranks!" he cried, and made a mouth as if to whistle. +"Well, well, what a queer story! What a queer way of killing a man; +but I suppose it was the only one possible. But to think of hate +so patient--" + + "What do you mean?" demanded the other. "In what way did they +kill the man?" + + "They killed him with the sash," said Brown carefully; and then, +as Flambeau protested: "Yes, yes, I know about the bullet. +Perhaps I ought to say he died of having a sash. I know it doesn't sound +like having a disease." + + "I suppose," said Flambeau, "that you've got some notion +in your head, but it won't easily get the bullet out of his. +As I explained before, he might easily have been strangled. +But he was shot. By whom? By what?" + + "He was shot by his own orders," said the priest. + + "You mean he committed suicide?" + + "I didn't say by his own wish," replied Father Brown. +"I said by his own orders." + + "Well, anyhow, what is your theory?" + + Father Brown laughed. "I am only on my holiday," he said. +"I haven't got any theories. Only this place reminds me of fairy stories, +and, if you like, I'll tell you a story." + + The little pink clouds, that looked rather like sweet-stuff, +had floated up to crown the turrets of the gilt gingerbread castle, +and the pink baby fingers of the budding trees seemed spreading and +stretching to reach them; the blue sky began to take a bright violet +of evening, when Father Brown suddenly spoke again: + + "It was on a dismal night, with rain still dropping from the trees +and dew already clustering, that Prince Otto of Grossenmark stepped +hurriedly out of a side door of the castle and walked swiftly +into the wood. One of the innumerable sentries saluted him, +but he did not notice it. He had no wish to be specially noticed himself. +He was glad when the great trees, grey and already greasy with rain, +swallowed him up like a swamp. He had deliberately chosen +the least frequented side of his palace, but even that was more frequented +than he liked. But there was no particular chance of officious +or diplomatic pursuit, for his exit had been a sudden impulse. +All the full-dressed diplomatists he left behind were unimportant. +He had realized suddenly that he could do without them. + + "His great passion was not the much nobler dread of death, +but the strange desire of gold. For this legend of the gold he had +left Grossenmark and invaded Heiligwaldenstein. For this and only this +he had bought the traitor and butchered the hero, for this he had +long questioned and cross-questioned the false Chamberlain, +until he had come to the conclusion that, touching his ignorance, +the renegade really told the truth. For this he had, somewhat reluctantly, +paid and promised money on the chance of gaining the larger amount; +and for this he had stolen out of his palace like a thief in the rain, +for he had thought of another way to get the desire of his eyes, +and to get it cheap. + + "Away at the upper end of a rambling mountain path to which +he was making his way, among the pillared rocks along the ridge +that hangs above the town, stood the hermitage, hardly more than +a cavern fenced with thorn, in which the third of the great brethren +had long hidden himself from the world. He, thought Prince Otto, +could have no real reason for refusing to give up the gold. +He had known its place for years, and made no effort to find it, +even before his new ascetic creed had cut him off from property +or pleasures. True, he had been an enemy, but he now professed +a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his cause, +some appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere money secret +out of him. Otto was no coward, in spite of his network of military +precautions, and, in any case, his avarice was stronger than his fears. +Nor was there much cause for fear. Since he was certain there were +no private arms in the whole principality, he was a hundred times +more certain there were none in the Quaker's little hermitage on the hill, +where he lived on herbs, with two old rustic servants, and with +no other voice of man for year after year. Prince Otto looked down +with something of a grim smile at the bright, square labyrinths +of the lamp-lit city below him. For as far as the eye could see +there ran the rifles of his friends, and not one pinch of powder +for his enemies. Rifles ranked so close even to that mountain path +that a cry from him would bring the soldiers rushing up the hill, +to say nothing of the fact that the wood and ridge were patrolled +at regular intervals; rifles so far away, in the dim woods, +dwarfed by distance, beyond the river, that an enemy could not +slink into the town by any detour. And round the palace rifles +at the west door and the east door, at the north door and the south, +and all along the four facades linking them. He was safe. + + "It was all the more clear when he had crested the ridge +and found how naked was the nest of his old enemy. He found himself +on a small platform of rock, broken abruptly by the three corners +of precipice. Behind was the black cave, masked with green thorn, +so low that it was hard to believe that a man could enter it. +In front was the fall of the cliffs and the vast but cloudy +vision of the valley. On the small rock platform stood +an old bronze lectern or reading-stand, groaning under a great German Bible. +The bronze or copper of it had grown green with the eating airs +of that exalted place, and Otto had instantly the thought, +"Even if they had arms, they must be rusted by now." Moonrise had already +made a deathly dawn behind the crests and crags, and the rain had ceased. + + "Behind the lectern, and looking across the valley, +stood a very old man in a black robe that fell as straight as +the cliffs around him, but whose white hair and weak voice seemed alike +to waver in the wind. He was evidently reading some daily lesson +as part of his religious exercises. "They trust in their horses..." + + "`Sir,' said the Prince of Heiligwaldenstein, with quite unusual +courtesy, `I should like only one word with you.' + + "`...and in their chariots,' went on the old man weakly, +`but we will trust in the name of the Lord of Hosts....' +His last words were inaudible, but he closed the book reverently and, +being nearly blind, made a groping movement and gripped the reading-stand. +Instantly his two servants slipped out of the low-browed cavern +and supported him. They wore dull-black gowns like his own, +but they had not the frosty silver on the hair, nor the frost-bitten +refinement of the features. They were peasants, Croat or Magyar, +with broad, blunt visages and blinking eyes. For the first time +something troubled the Prince, but his courage and diplomatic sense +stood firm. + + "`I fear we have not met,' he said, `since that awful cannonade +in which your poor brother died.' + + "`All my brothers died,' said the old man, still looking +across the valley. Then, for one instant turning on Otto his drooping, +delicate features, and the wintry hair that seemed to drip +over his eyebrows like icicles, he added: `You see, I am dead, too.' + + "`I hope you'll understand,' said the Prince, controlling himself +almost to a point of conciliation, `that I do not come here to haunt you, +as a mere ghost of those great quarrels. We will not talk about +who was right or wrong in that, but at least there was one point +on which we were never wrong, because you were always right. +Whatever is to be said of the policy of your family, no one for one moment +imagines that you were moved by the mere gold; you have proved yourself +above the suspicion that...' + + "The old man in the black gown had hitherto continued to gaze at him +with watery blue eyes and a sort of weak wisdom in his face. +But when the word `gold' was said he held out his hand as if +in arrest of something, and turned away his face to the mountains. + + "`He has spoken of gold,' he said. `He has spoken of +things not lawful. Let him cease to speak.' + + "Otto had the vice of his Prussian type and tradition, +which is to regard success not as an incident but as a quality. +He conceived himself and his like as perpetually conquering peoples +who were perpetually being conquered. Consequently, he was ill acquainted +with the emotion of surprise, and ill prepared for the next movement, +which startled and stiffened him. He had opened his mouth +to answer the hermit, when the mouth was stopped and the voice +strangled by a strong, soft gag suddenly twisted round his head +like a tourniquet. It was fully forty seconds before he even realized +that the two Hungarian servants had done it, and that they had done it +with his own military scarf. + + "The old man went again weakly to his great brazen-supported Bible, +turned over the leaves, with a patience that had something horrible +about it, till he came to the Epistle of St James, and then began to read: +`The tongue is a little member, but--' + + "Something in the very voice made the Prince turn suddenly +and plunge down the mountain-path he had climbed. He was half-way towards +the gardens of the palace before he even tried to tear the strangling scarf +from his neck and jaws. He tried again and again, and it was impossible; +the men who had knotted that gag knew the difference between +what a man can do with his hands in front of him and what he can do +with his hands behind his head. His legs were free to leap like +an antelope on the mountains, his arms were free to use any gesture +or wave any signal, but he could not speak. A dumb devil was in him. + + "He had come close to the woods that walled in the castle +before he had quite realized what his wordless state meant +and was meant to mean. Once more he looked down grimly at the bright, +square labyrinths of the lamp-lit city below him, and he smiled no more. +He felt himself repeating the phrases of his former mood with +a murderous irony. Far as the eye could see ran the rifles +of his friends, every one of whom would shoot him dead +if he could not answer the challenge. Rifles were so near that +the wood and ridge could be patrolled at regular intervals; +therefore it was useless to hide in the wood till morning. +Rifles were ranked so far away that an enemy could not slink +into the town by any detour; therefore it was vain to return to the city +by any remote course. A cry from him would bring his soldiers +rushing up the hill. But from him no cry would come. + + "The moon had risen in strengthening silver, and the sky showed +in stripes of bright, nocturnal blue between the black stripes +of the pines about the castle. Flowers of some wide and feathery sort-- +for he had never noticed such things before--were at once luminous +and discoloured by the moonshine, and seemed indescribably fantastic +as they clustered, as if crawling about the roots of the trees. +Perhaps his reason had been suddenly unseated by the unnatural captivity +he carried with him, but in that wood he felt something +unfathomably German--the fairy tale. He knew with half his mind +that he was drawing near to the castle of an ogre--he had forgotten +that he was the ogre. He remembered asking his mother if bears lived +in the old park at home. He stooped to pick a flower, as if it were +a charm against enchantment. The stalk was stronger than he expected, +and broke with a slight snap. Carefully trying to place it in his scarf, +he heard the halloo, `Who goes there?' Then he remembered the scarf +was not in its usual place. + + "He tried to scream and was silent. The second challenge came; +and then a shot that shrieked as it came and then was stilled suddenly +by impact. Otto of Grossenmark lay very peacefully among the fairy +trees, and would do no more harm either with gold or steel; only the +silver pencil of the moon would pick out and trace here and there the +intricate ornament of his uniform, or the old wrinkles on his brow. +May God have mercy on his soul. + + "The sentry who had fired, according to the strict orders +of the garrison, naturally ran forward to find some trace of his quarry. +He was a private named Schwartz, since not unknown in his profession, +and what he found was a bald man in uniform, but with his face +so bandaged by a kind of mask made of his own military scarf +that nothing but open, dead eyes could be seen, glittering stonily +in the moonlight. The bullet had gone through the gag into the jaw; +that is why there was a shot-hole in the scarf, but only one shot. +Naturally, if not correctly, young Schwartz tore off the mysterious +silken mask and cast it on the grass; and then he saw whom he had slain. + + "We cannot be certain of the next phase. But I incline to believe +that there was a fairy tale, after all, in that little wood, +horrible as was its occasion. Whether the young lady named Hedwig +had any previous knowledge of the soldier she saved and eventually married, +or whether she came accidentally upon the accident and their intimacy +began that night, we shall probably never know. But we can know, +I fancy, that this Hedwig was a heroine, and deserved to marry a man +who became something of a hero. She did the bold and the wise thing. +She persuaded the sentry to go back to his post, in which place +there was nothing to connect him with the disaster; he was but one of +the most loyal and orderly of fifty such sentries within call. +She remained by the body and gave the alarm; and there was nothing +to connect her with the disaster either, since she had not got, +and could not have, any firearms. + + "Well," said Father Brown rising cheerfully "I hope they're happy." + + "Where are you going?" asked his friend. + + "I'm going to have another look at that portrait of the Chamberlain, +the Arnhold who betrayed his brethren," answered the priest. +"I wonder what part--I wonder if a man is less a traitor when he is +twice a traitor?" + + And he ruminated long before the portrait of a white-haired man +with black eyebrows and a pink, painted sort of smile that seemed +to contradict the black warning in his eyes. + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Wisdom of Father Brown, by G. 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