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Title: The Wisdom of Father Brown Author: G.K. Chesterton * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: c00034.html Language: English Date first posted: 2002 Most recent update: December 2012 This eBook was produced by: Roy Glashan Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at /licence.html To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.auGO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE
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."
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.
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."
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."
"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.
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.
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