A
975,712


Universit of
Michija í
1817
ART ES SCIENTIA ERITAS









A
975,712


CHE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN


BY THE SAME AUTHOR
MANALIVE
HERETICS
ORTHODOXY
THE FLYING INN
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
THE BALL AND THE CROSS
THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL
THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN


THE WISDOM OF
FATHER BROWN
BY
GILBERT KO'CHESTERTON
AUTHOR OP
“THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN”,
"THE FLYING INN,” ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY














THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN


BY THE SAME AUTHOR
MANALIVE
HERETICS
ORTHODOXY
THE FLYING INN
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
THE BALL AND THE CROSS
THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL
THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN


THE WISDOM OF
FATHER BROWN
BY
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
AUTHOR OF
"THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN”,
"THE FLYING INN,” ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY


Grad
Undergraduate
Library
PR
4453
COPYRIGHT, 1912, 1913 BY
THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
JOHN LANE COMPANY
W8
1914
b.hr


dergraduate
Library
troto Buhr
7 28-99
TO
LUCIAN OLDERSHAW


'V


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
.
.
.
9
·
I. THE ABSENCE OF Mr. Glass . .
✓ II. The Paradise OF THIEVES .
(III. THE DUEL OF Dr. Hirsch . .
VIV. THE MAN IN THE Passage . .
V. THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE .
VI. THE HEAD OF CÆSAR . . .
V VII. THE PURPLE WIG . . . .
V VIII. THE PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
·
.
.
.
.
.
·
·
IX. THE GOD OF THE Gongs . . . .
X. THE SALAD OF COLONEL Cray . .
XI. THE STRANGE CRIME OF John BOULNOIS
XII. THE FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN .
.
.
.
.
. 253
. 276
. 302


Y


THE WISDOM OF
FATHER BROWN
i
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 Scar-
borough, 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 un-
like the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be
supposed that Dr. Hood's apartments excluded lux-
ury, or even poetry. These things were there, in
their place; but one felt that they were never al-
lowed 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
9


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWtf
three kinds of spirit, all of a liqueur excellence,
stood always on this table of luxury; but the fanci-
ful 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 intangi-
bility 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 sus-
tained the frail and even fairylike instruments of
chemistry or mechanics.
Dr. Orion 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 criminolo-
gist library. He was clad in an artist's velvet, but
with none of an artist's negligence; his hair was
10


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
heavily shot with grey, but growing thick and
healthy; his face was lean, but sanguine and expec-
tant. Everything about him and his room indicated
something at once rigid and restless, like that great
Northern Sea by which (on pure principles of hy-
giene) 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 shape-
less little figure, which seemed to find its own hat
and umbrella as unmanageable as a mass of lug-
gage. 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 re-
strained 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 breath-
less geniality which characterises a corpulent char-
woman who has just managed to stuff herself into
an omnibus. It is a rich confusion of social self-
congratulation and bodily disarray. His hat tum-
II


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
bled to the carpet, his heavy umbrella slipped be-
tween his knees with a thud; he reached after the
one and ducked after the other, but with an unim-
paired smile on his round face spoke simultaneously
as follows:
"My name is Brown. Pray excuse me. I 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
12


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 consult-
ing physician.
"Mr. Brown," he said gravely, "it is quite four-
teen 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 ques-
tion 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 Re-
public and the King of England—no, better: four-
teen 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
13


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 strag-
gly 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 daugh-
ter, 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.
14


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
"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 cour-
ier. He seems to have quite a pocketful of money,
but nobody knows what his trade is. Mrs. Mac-
Nab, 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 de-
clares his privacy is temporary and justified, and
promises to explain before the wedding. That is
all that anyone knows for certain, but Mrs. Mac-
Nab 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 al-
ways 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 back window. The col-
loquy seemed to end in a quarrel: Todhunter dashed
15


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 mysti-
fication, but I really think Mrs. MacNab prefers her
own original tale: that the Other Man (or what-
ever 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 mon-
strosities 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 tee-
totaller; he is tirelessly kind with the younger chil-
dren, and can keep them amused for a day on end;
and, last and most urgent of all, he has made him-
self equally popular with the eldest daughter, who
is ready to go to church with him to-morrow."
A man warmly concerned with any large theories
has always a relish for applying them to any triv-
iality. 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 flow-
16


THE ABSENCE OF MB. GLASS
ers are dyinj; a particular pebble may never be
wetted with the tidt, but the tide is co ning in. To
the scientific eye all human history is a series of col-
lective 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 remark-
able 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 par-
ticular 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 clan of MacNabs scattered over
the whole world, in its ultimate average as uniform
as a tribe of birds. He sees thousands of Mrs. Mac-
Nabs, in thousands of houses, dropping their little
17


THE WIS/DOM OF FATHER BROWN
drop of morbidity in the tea-cups of their friends;
he sees 7
Before the scientist could conclude his sentence,
another and more impatient summons sounded from
without; someone with swishing skirts was mar-
shalled hurriedly down the corridor, and the door
opened on a young girl, decently dressed but dis-
ordered and red-hot with haste. She had sea-blown
blonde hair, and would have been entirely beautiful
if her cheekbones had not been, in the Scotch man-
ner, 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,
18


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 and
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 round to
the back-yard, and managed to climb on to the win-
dow-sill that looks into the room. It was all 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, gath-
ering his errant hat and umbrella and standing up;
"in point of fact, I was just putting your case be-
fore 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 the
town with you."
In a few minutes all three were approaching the
dreary tail of the MacNabs' street; the girl with the
19


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 dis-
tinction. 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 twi-
light; the sea was of an inky purple and murmur-
ing 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. Mac-
Nab 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 dis-
turbing 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 passages in the
front of the house until they came to the lodger's
door at the back, and there Dr. Hood, with the trick
20


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 col-
lision between two, or perhaps more, persons.
Playing-cards lay littered across the table or flut-
tered about the floor as if a game had been inter-
rupted. 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 han-
dle; 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 gen-
tleman'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
door mat and drank in the whole scene of voiceless
violence. Then he stepped swiftly across the car-
31


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
pet, 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. This hat is of a
stylish shape and systematically brushed and bur-
nished, 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 cer-
tainty," 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 de-
duce some advance in years. Nevertheless, he was
probably vigorous, and he was almost certainly tall.
22


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 wine-glass has been smashed all over the place,
but one of its splinters lies on the high bracket be-
side 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. Tod-
hunter."
"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. Tod-
hunter 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, cer-
23


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
tainly fond of play and strong waters, and perhaps
rather too fond of them. Mr. Glass is a gentleman
not unkown 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 com-
pose 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 man
who is blackmailed. And surely it is equally ob-
vious that the faded finery, the profligate habits and
the shrill irritation of Mr. Glass are the unmistak-
able 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 to-day and have quarrelled, using blows
and a bare weapon."
"Are you going to take those ropes off?" asked
the girl stubbornly.
24


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 win-
dow, "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 proba-
bility. 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
25


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
his golden eggs. 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 in quite different
notes of astonishment.
"I have looked at all the knots on Mr. Tod-
hunter," 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 him-
self; 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 gar-
den 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
26


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
crakens or cuttlefish, writhing polypi who had
crawled up from the sea to see the end of this trag-
edy, even as he, the villain and victim of it, the ter-
rible man in the tall hat, had once crawled up from
the sea. For the whole air was dense with the mor-
bidity 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 sud-
denly 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 1" ejaculated Brown suddenly, "I won-
der 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
27


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
direction of his glance. And though the broad black
scarf completely masked the lower half of Tod-
hunter's visage, they did grow conscious of some-
thing struggling and intense about the upper part
of it.
"His eyes do look queer," cried the young wom-
an, 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 apologeti-
cally, "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
28


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 god-like that is than
if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! In-
deed, 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 cor-
responding 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?" de-
manded the doctor.
"I mean he is absent from everywhere," answered
Father Brown; "he is absent from the Nature of
Things, so to speak."
29


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 Brown.
"But it doesn't fit him," cried Hood impatiently.
"He couldn't possibly wear it!"
Father Brown shook his head with ineffable mild-
ness. "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 where 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 Tod-
hunter get out of this one old hat?"
30


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
"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. Todhun-
ter."
"Well, what in the name of Bedlam do you
mean?"
"Mr. Todhunter," explained Father Brown plac-
idly, "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 with-
out traces of hair, not because it is worn by the pre-
maturely bald Mr. Glass, but because it had 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
3i


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ex-
pression of 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 fly-
ing 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 ro-
mance, and make us imagine his whole life over-
shadowed 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 at-
tentive smile. "You are certainly a very ingenious
32


THE ABSENCE OF MR. GLASS
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 every one 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 flour-
ish. 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, Con-
tortionist, 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.


II
THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
The great Muscari, most original of the young Tus-
can poets, walked swiftly into his favourite restau-
rant, 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 sat-
isfaction 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 of his mandolin, with
which he had actually serenaded Miss Ethel Harro-
34


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
gate, the highly-conventional daughter of a York-
shire 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 res-
taurant; that was why it was his favourite restau-
rant. A glance flashed round the room told him at
once, however, that the English party had not de-
scended. 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 con-
cealed behind a dwarf tree golden with oranges,
there rose and advanced towards the poet a person
whose costume was the most aggressive opposite to
his own.
This figure was clad in tweeds of a piebald check,
with a pink tie, a sharp collar and protuberant yel-
low boots. He contrived, in the true tradition of
'Any at Margate, to look at once startling and
35


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 recognised it, above all the dire
erection of English holiday array, as the face of an
old but forgotten friend named 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 pub-
licly as a dramatist and a demagogue, and then pri-
vately 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 profes-
sion, 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 ex-
pected to see you dressed up as an Englishman."
"This," answered Ezza gravely, "is not the cos-
tume of an Englishman, but of the Italian of the
future."
"In that case," remarked Muscari, "I confess I
prefer the Italian of the past."
36


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
"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 and the newest clothes?”
“Because they are not worth having," answered
Muscari. “You cannot make Italians really pro-
gressive; 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, not 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 inno-
cently.
"It will pay me,” said Ezza, with a very enig-
matic smile. "But I am a rather curious sort of
37


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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, sunburnt and
strenuous; but nobody looked at him either. All

38


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 Mus-
cari drew a deep breath as if he were drinking some-
thing; 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, allow-
ing the stranger Muscari and even the courier Ezza
to share their table and their talk. In Ethel Harro-
gate conventionality crowned itself with a perfec-
tion and splendour of its own. Proud of her father's
prosperity, fond of her 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 at-
tempt that week. The danger was not from rock
and avalanche, but from something yet more ro-
mantic. Ethel had been earnestly assured that
brigands, the true cutthroats of the modern legend,
still haunted that ridge and held that pass of the
Apennines.
39


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 moun-
tains 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 vil-
lage; 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; per-
haps after all we had better choose another route.
But the courier thought it perfectly safe."
"It is perfectly safe," said the courier contemptu-
ously; "I have been over it twenty times. There
may have been some old jail-bird 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 reaction nat-
ural to southerners. Our peasants are like the moun-
tains, rich in grace and green gaiety, but with the
40


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 to-mor-
row."
The young Harrogate was left behind for a mo-
ment, 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 realise that though a Roman priest the
man was an Englishman. He vaguely remembered
meeting the priest at the social crushes of some of
41


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWK
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
42


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 protec-
tion was employed. The courier and the young
banker carried loaded revolvers, and Muscari (with
much boyish gratification) buckled on a kind of cut-
lass 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 along with his into purple preposterous
43


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 head-
lands 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 Glen-
coe. 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 pal-
ace, 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
to-night I die unmarried and a fool."
44


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
"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 he spoke they came under overwhelming cliffs
that spread almost like wings above a corner of pe-
culiar 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 York-
shireman 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
45


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
have been specially padded with turf and clover to
receive him. As it happened, indeed, the whole com-
pany 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 recov-
ered his own very clumsy umbrella. Beyond it lay
the broad sombrero fallen from the head of Mus-
cari, 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 grass bottle hardly two inches
long. The priest picked it up; in a quick, unob-
trusive manner he uncorked and sniffed it, and his
heavy face turned the colour of clay.
46


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
"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 re-
markable 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 remark-
able about him, except his sudden and silent appear-
ance. The poet asked him who he was, and he did
not answer.
Looking around him at the confused and startled
47


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ad-
vanced 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.
48


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 your-
self?"
"I call myself Montano," cried the strange cour-
ier 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 picnick-
ing," 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 strong-
hold 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
49


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 bet-
ter 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 polite-
ness. "It only remains for me," he said, "to ex-
plain to my guests the social conditions upon which
I have the pleasnre 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 Rev-
erend Father Brown and the celebrated Signor
Muscari I shall release to-morrow 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."
50


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
He paused with an unpleasing smile; and Father
Brown blinked repeatedly at him, and seemed sud-
denly to be listening with great attention. The
brigand captain took the large paper from the at-
tendant brigand and, glancing it over, continued:
"My other intentions are clearly set forth in this
public document, which I will hand round in a mo-
ment; 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 verbal-
ism, since you will be able to check it; the sub-
stance 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 falling 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.
Si


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
And now his red and trembling hand went reluc-
tantly 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 proclama-
tion, 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 in-
sulting 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 do-
mestic 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 sportsmanlike welcome to the lux-
uries of the Paradise of Thieves."
All the time that he had been speaking the du-
bious-looking men with carbines and dirty slouch
hats had been gathering silently in such prepon-
derating numbers that even Muscari was compelled
to recognise 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
52


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
or stronger than her somewhat snobbish pride in
his success. Muscari, with the illogicality of a
lover, admired this filial devotion and yet was irri-
tated 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 eye and nose on him in an instantaneous
irritation.
"Well," said the poet tartly, "do people still think
me too romantic? Are there, I wonder, any brig-
ands 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 opin-
ion 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
53


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
sised 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 lead-
ing 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 fort-
ress. 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 prob-
ably 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 flow-
ers, it is not an entrenched position. It is some-
thing else; it has some other strange sort of im-
55


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
portance; 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, Mus-
cari, 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 halloing.
At the same moment, and long before the vibra-
tion 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 as-
sumed 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 guerilla disci-
pline. Instead of occupying the road along the
ridge, they sprinkled themselves along the side of
56


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 or-
ders. 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 quar-
ters 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 mod-
ern. Fall on the rear of these ruffians. The gen-
darmes 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 re-
called 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."
57


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"But, father," said Frank very warmly, "an Ital-
ian 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 sub-
mit 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."
fWhat 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
\
58


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
an actor; and if I ever had a private character, I
have forgotten it. I am no more a genuine brig-
and 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' nozzles 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 pas-
sage 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, aud requesting the
favour of a word or two.
"Signor Muscari," said the clerk, "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 per-
mit me the impertinent intimacy; but do you care
59


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Mus-
cari, "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 de-
feated 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 a 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
60


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
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 thou-
sand pounds."
"Not of two thousand pounds," said the finan-
cier, with an abrupt and terrible composure, "only
of a small bottle."
The policeman with the grey imperial was strid-
ing across the green hollow. Encountering the
King of 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 stagger-
ing 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
61


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ab-
solutely unprecedented. He fled with the com-
pany'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 daugh-
ter, 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 cig-
arette. "Didn't I tell you I was a Futurist? I
really do believe in those things if I believe in any-
thing. Change, bustle and new things every morn-
ing. I am going to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds,
62


THE PARADISE OF THIEVES
Hull, Huddersfield, Glasgow, Chicago-in short,
to enlightened, energetic, civilised society!"
"In short,” said Muscari, "to the real Paradise
of Thieves.”


Ill
THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
M. Maurice Brun and M. Armand Armagnac
were crossing the sunlit Champs filysees 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. Armag-
nac, by way of a change, had two beards; one stick-
ing out from each corner of his emphatic chin.
They were both young. They were both atheists,
with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mo-
bility 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 specialised rather in a resistance to
64


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
militarism, and wished the chorus of the Marseil-
laise altered from "Aux armes, citoyens" to "Aux
greves, citoyens." But his anti-militarism 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 scepti-
cal system, not devoid of transcendentalism. He
was, in short, more like a German than a French-
man; 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 dar-
ing 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 disarma-
ment were moderate and evolutionary—the Repub-
65


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
lican 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
filysee—a street which in that strong summer
seemed almost as full of foliage as the park itself;
a row of chestnuts shattered the sunshine, inter-
rupted only in one place where a large cafe ran out
into the street. Almost opposite to this were the
white bulk 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 man-
ner. 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,
he handed a letter to M. Armagnac. That gentle-
66


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
man ripped it up with a racial impatience, and rap-
idly 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 bor-
rowed the letter, read it, and looked at M. Arma-
gnac. 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 cof-
fee at one table, and at another a large man drink-
ing a small syrup and a priest drinking nothing.
Maurice Brun cleared his throat and said, "Of
67


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 arch-
way 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 some-
thing generally Tyrolean about it. The man's
shoulders were big and broad, but his legs were
neat and active in knee-breeches and knitted stock-
ings. 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 be-
hind, 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 col-
oured scarf, swathed round up to 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, prob-
ably of Oriental fabrication. Altogether the man
had something a shade barbaric about him; more
68


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
like a Hungarian squire than an ordinary French
officer. His French, however, was obviously that
of a native; and his French patriotism was so im-
pulsive 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-clus-
tering 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, sprang on one of the tables, and seizing
a branch of chestnut to steady himself, shouted as
Camille Desmoulins once shouted when he scat-
tered 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
69


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
betrayed to the Prussians. Betrayed at this mo-
ment. Betrayed by that man. I am Jules Dubosc,
Colonel of artillery, Belfort. We caught a Ger-
man 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 Noise-
less 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 Na-
tionalist, 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 re-


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
fuses 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 win-
dow 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 win-
dow opened and Dr. Hirsch came out on the bal-
cony. For an instant the fury half turned to laugh-
ter; 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
7i


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
first is to my foes, the second to my friends. To
my foes I say: It is true I will not meet M. Du-
bosc, 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 ap-
plause 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 suc-
cessful; my theories are unrefuted; but I suffer in
politics from a prejudice almost physical in the
French. I cannot speak like Clemenceau and De-
roulede, for their words are like echoes of their
pistols. The French ask for a duellist as the Eng-
lish 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."
72


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
Two men were instantly found in the crowd
itself to offer their services to Colonel Dubosc, who
came out presently, satisfied. One was the com-
mon soldier with the coffee, who said simply, "I
will act for you, sir. I am the Due 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 en-
joyment. His daily living being very plain, he
had a peculiar taste for sudden and isolated luxu-
ries; 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. Flam-
beau was gloomy.
"I'm afraid I must chuck this business," said he
heavily; "I'm all on the side of the French soldiers
73


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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—be-
cause it doesn't give information to Germany."
"You mean the information is wrong?" asked
Father Brown.
"Wrong," replied the other, "and wrong ex-
actly where Doctor 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 Min-
ister 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.
74


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
"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 con-
tains 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 apologise 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 en-
velope—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!
75


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 brim-
stone, 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, Doctor
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 know-
ing 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
76


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 under-
stand this Hirsch affair at all. As long as it was
only left drawer instead of right, and red ink in-
stead 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 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 evi-
dence 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 puz-
77


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
zled me was the sincerity of both parties. I don't
mean the political parties; the rank and file are al-
ways 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 contra-
dictory 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, T have not helped the
enemy; I said it was the left drawer.' The meaner
part of him would already be saying, 'But they may
78


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 docu-
ment) 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 sun-
light 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
79


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 solid 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 to-day. 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 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
80


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 Due 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—"apologise?"
"Yes," said the Duke gruffly, "then and there—
before everybody—when the swords are drawn.
81


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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
Élysée, 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 sud-
denly standing up, "for a very short journey. For
82


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 an-
swered rather absently, "No; only of ambition—like
Caesar." Then he somewhat inconsequently added,
"He lives a very lonely life; he has had to do every-
thing 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, lower-
ing 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 shuf-
fling 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
83


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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
Élysée, where we drove with him. He's packing up,
I tell you."
"Will he be there si 1, do y
asked
Flambeau, frowning
tabl
"I don't think h et a
Duke; "he's pack
"No," said
denly stand

ра


cts
the
the


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Pa-
risian houses, really comparatively close, but some-
how 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 fel-
low'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,
84


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 recognise the back of a house as well as the
back of a man."
"And Dubosc's gore 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 twin-
kling, twilight 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
85


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
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, Flam-
beau 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 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 Judgment,"
said the priest. "If God Almighty held the trunch-
86


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
eon of the lists, if Saint 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 Due 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 oppo-
site, but Valognes turned his head sharply at a sup-
pressed exclamation from Flambeau. That investi-
gator, 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 mous-
tache had gone; he was clean-shaven and very pale.
87


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Flam-
beau. 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 hide 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
88


THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
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 danc-
ing, 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.


IV
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 day-
light in the streets was large and luminous, opales-
cent 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. Neverthe-
less, each man knew the other, even in that inky out-
line, 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 the-
atre 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 Shake-
90


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
spearean 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 confi-
dence. 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 mo-
ment 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
91


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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
realising 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 nat-
ural 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 effemi-
nate; it was curly, but it did not look curled. His
carefully pointed beard made him look more manly
and militant rather than otherwise, as it does in
those old admirals of Velasquez 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 napped 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
92


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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 proposi-
tion 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 hear-
ing 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 tempo-
rary, was ten times more wide, popular, and spon-
taneous than the other man's. In thousands of
English homes he appeared enormous above Eng-
land, 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
93


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
and black shabby coat and trousers contrasted queer-
ly 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 mul-
tiplied by all the mirrors into the madness of the
Arabian Nights, and danced and changed places
perpetually as the shuffling attendant shifted a mir-
ror 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, how-
ever, 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
94


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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 col-
league, the great American actor, Isidore Bruno, she
was producing a particularly poetical and fantastic
interpretation of the 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 bur-
nished beetle-wings, expressed all the elusive indi-
viduality 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 Mycenean Epoch,
and might have been well worn in the time of The-
seus and Hippolyta. It was made of brass like all the
95


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
Heroic weapons, but, oddly enough, sharp enough to
prick anyone still. He had really been attracted to
it by the leaflike 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 ap-
peared, who was more of a contrast to the explana-
tory 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 pikestaff—and
as menacing. His vivid, black eyes rolled volcani-
cally, his bronzed face, handsome as it was, showed
at that moment a combination of high cheekbones
with set white teeth, which recalled certain Ameri-
can 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
96


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
comic. It was a very short man in the black uni-
form of the Roman secular clergy, and looking (es-
pecially 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 pres-
ence of the one man who did not care about her in-
creased 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 selfish-
ness 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 tri-
umphs, 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
97


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
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 pre-
cision 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 pachyderma-
tous 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
98


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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 al-
ready 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 mobilising the British
Army had not succeeded so simply as seemed prob-
able. Cutler had indeed risen stiffly and suddenly,
and walked towards the door, hatless, as if at a
word of command. But perhaps there was some-
thing 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 un-
99


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
conscious as was his posture, and he seemed relieved
when he heard the lady call out some last instruc-
tions 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 pas-
sage was the corresponding entrance to Bruno's pri-
vate room. He did not lose his dignity; he said
some civil words to Father Brown about the revival
of Byzantine architecture in the Westminster Ca-
thedral, and then, quite naturally, strolled out him-
self 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 superflu-
ous 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, turn-
ing their backs to everybody like very rude persons.
Father Brown seemed quite unconscious of this
cloud of witnesses, but followed Parkinson with an
100


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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 look-
ing 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 door-
way. 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 pas-
sage, looked down it, and at once walked briskly
towards what he saw.
IOI


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 strug-
gle, 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 ac-
count."
102


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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 Cut-
ler, "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 inten-
tion 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 dag-
ger. Seymour, who retained some practical sense,
was whistling for the police at the end of the pas-
sage.
When the police arrived it was to tear the two
men from an almost apelike grapple; and, after a
few formal inquiries, to arrest Isidore Bruno upon
a charge of murder, brought against him by his
103


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
—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 rude-
ness 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 every-
thing 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
105


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 hurt himself with the
dagger."
"Hurt myself!" exclaimed the Captain, with con-
tempt. "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
was given to murder than to politics, it was for the
excellent reason that murder is a more serious sub-
ject. But even this would hardly explain the enor-
mous omnipresence and widely distributed detail of
106


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
"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 examina-
tion and cross-examination, if interminable, even if
intolerable, are at least reliable. The true reason,
of course, was the coincidence of persons. The vic-
tim was a popular actress; the accused was a popu-
lar actor; and the accused had been caught red-
handed, as it were, by the most popular soldier of
the patriotic season. In those extraordinary cir-
cumstances the Press was paralysed into probity
and accuracy; and the rest of this somewhat singu-
lar business can practically be recorded from the re-
ports of Bruno's trial.
The trial was presided over by Mr. Justice Monk-
house, 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, be-
cause 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 trust-
worthy, and how to be rhetorical with reluctance.
The prisoner was defended by Mr. Patrick Butler,
107


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
K.C., who was mistaken for a mere flaneur by those
who misunderstand 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, agree-
ing with the eminent surgeon who had later exam-
ined 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 first
doctor 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 im-
portant 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;
108


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
and though everyone looked at him as they would
at the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 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 lu-
cid, 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 de-
ceased 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 de-
ceased, 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 movements
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 pas-
sage? Yes, he saw something in the passage.
Sir Walter Cowdray allowed an impressive inter-
val, during which the witness looked down, and for
109


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 dis-
tinctly 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 to you like?"
"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 pris-
oner by main force; but they felt his figure in the
dock, and they felt it as gigantic. Tall as Bruno
no


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
was to the eye, he seemed to swell taller and taller
when all 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 de-
fence 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 Sey-
mour'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 first it was a woman?"
Seymour looked troubled for the first time. "It
is hardly a point of fact," he said, "but if his lord-
ship 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."
in


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 com-
posed 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 pas-
sage, 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 expres-
sion," 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
112


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
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-femi-
nine 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 Cut-
ler, 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. There-
fore, he took Father Brown up sharply whenever
113



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you mean by saying that it looked
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Cutler seemed seriously agitated.
oughtn't to have said that,” he said, "L
112



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THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 irra-
tional 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 respec-
table men who had all seen it, was a shifting night-
mare: one called it a woman, and the other a beast,
and the other a devil. ...
114


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
The judge was looking at Father Brown with
level and piercing eyes. "You are a most extraordi-
nary 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 pas-
sage?"
"He was myself," said Father Brown.
Butler, K.C., sprang to his feet in an extraordi-
nary stillness, and said quite calmly: "Your lord-
ship 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 sol-
emnly 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 have in the-
atres; 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 for-
"5


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
give 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 gabbling 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,"
asked 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 this mere witness as an expert;
but no one noticed it now.
"The poor lady's dress was torn," said the wit-
ness, "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," ex-
plained Father Brown. "When I was in the dress-
ing-room I noticed that some of them could prob-
ably be slid out into the passage."
There was another vast and unnatural silence, and
this time it was the judge who spoke. "So you
116


THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
really mean that, when you looked down that pas-
sage, 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 Sey-
mour 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 luxuri-
ance 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 look-
ing-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.”


V
THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
Flambeau and his friend the priest were sitting in
the Temple Gardens about sunset; and their neigh-
bourhood or some such accidental influence had
turned their talk to matters of legal process. From
the problem of the license 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, espe-
cially 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,
118


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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!" ex-
claimed Father Brown, "and how much more senti-
mental 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
119


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 patronising 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, ac-
cording 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 So-
ciety 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 ele-
gant and more miscellaneous and large-hearted in
social outlook was Last-Trick's show the year pre-
vious, the popular Cannibal Crush Lunch, at which
120


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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 hos-
pitable Todd is entertaining in Lord Falconroy, the
famous traveller, a true-blooded aristocrat fresh
from England's oak-groves. Lord Falconroy's trav-
els began before his ancient feudal title was resur-
rected; 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 any-
thing 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
121


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
another scrap of newspaper. "Well, does that in-
terest 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 ruf-
fian 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, appar-
ently 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
122


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ap-
peared 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 bay-
onets) 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," ob-
served 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 gov-
ernor coolly. "I pass over the first as too simple to


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
be emphasised—I mean that fashionable athletes do
not run across ploughed fields or scratch their eyes
out in bramble hedges. Nor do they run all dou-
bled 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 gro-
tesque; 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 confederates'
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 been very short. Then I re-
membered 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

125


'THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
that was doubtless due to some very natural mis-
chance or change of plans. Probably the same pol-
icy 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." i
"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.
126


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
grey, greasy, half-liquid shores in which they say
our fathers used to make witches walk until they
sank. I've forgotten the exact tale; but you know
the place I mean; it lies north of Todd's house to-
wards the wilderness, and has two queer wrinkled
trees, so dismal that they look more like huge fun-
goids 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 atten-
tion 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 cau-
tious 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
128


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
curved garden path which brought her within half a
hundred yards of me; then she stood up for an in-
stant 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 ple-
beian 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 realised that the de-
tective fever that had lured me into the adventure
was rather undignified; and that in a more authori-
tative 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 direc-
tors; it was Ireton Todd himself. Some of the
others seemed to have gone to the lower windows or
129


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
onto the steps, and were calling up to him that Fal-
conroy 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 plung-
ing 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 much later than eight o'clock.
"I now ask you to recall that little Society para-
graph 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 geo-
logical 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 many people in
America might want to kill Todd. There is no rea-
son why anybody in America should want to kill an
English lord newly landed, except for the one rea-
son mentioned in the pink paper—that the lord is
paying his attentions to the millionaire's daughter.
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THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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 Can-
terbury'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 realise 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 impos-
sible 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?"
131


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 re-
corded the variations of his pulse; and I simply ob-
served 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 V at the end of the word,
that machine just bounded. Who else in this re-
public 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: the evidence of
a reliable machine?"
132


THE MISTAKE OF THE 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 un-
reliable 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 tre-
mendously agitated? There was no machine tied
on to your pulse."
"I tell you," cried the American in the utmost ex-
citement, "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 man-
ner that the word that might hang him was coming?
133


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ex-
citement: "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 evi-
dently 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 sudden impatience for some-
thing sensible that might come to take him out of
134


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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, cu-
riously enough, because he did it in the same man-
ner 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 ex-
tent; 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 prac-
tical still, the criminal could not be found. I heard
a rumour of his having reappeared somewhere in
the opposite character this time, lending money in-
stead of borrowing it; but still to such poor widows
as he might personally fascinate, and still with the
same bad result for them. Well, there is your inno-
cent man, and there is his innocent record. Ever
since then four criminals and three warders have
136


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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 more poor people in the same patient and
pacific style. Let it be granted—let us admit, for
137


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 war-
der. 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 unceremoni-
ous way to which he was totally unaccustomed.
The door flew open. The moment before Grey-
wood Usher had been coming to the conclusion that
Father Brown might possibly be mad. The mo-
ment 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 showed
up from one of his eyes, both of which were glar-
ing like a tiger's. The rest of his face was almost
undiscoverable, being masked with a matted beard
138


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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 gentle-
man-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.”
139


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"I reckon the Cosmos is cracked," said Usher, and
fell asprawl in his round office chair.
“Now, see here,” vociferated the stranger, strik-
ing 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 proper-
ly," 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 to-night; and a man, one of
the guests, disappeared. Mr. Ireton Todd is a good
host, and has tracked him here, without even wait-
ing to take off his fancy dress."
"What man do you mean?”
"I mean the man with the 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,
140


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
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 mis-
take; and in one sense it didn't. But the other ma-
chine did; the machine that worked it. You as-
sumed 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 Fal-
conroy 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 Grey-
wood Usher, very white, "that Lord Falconroy was
Drugger Davis."
The priest looked at him very earnestly but with
a baffling and a decipherable 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
141


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
States in youth; but the whole story seems very
strange. Davis and Falconroy are both pretty con-
siderable 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
idealise 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 up-
lift. 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
142


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
by larrikins to a man in prison dress who was step-
ping with considerable coolness into the steering seat
of a pretty high-toned Panhard; he was accompa-
nied by a girl wrapped in a ragged shawl. On the
police interfering, the young woman threw back the
shawl, and all recognised Millionaire Todd's daugh-
ter, who had just come from the Slum Freak Din-
ner 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 cus-
tomary joy-ride."
Under the pink slip Mr. Usher found a strip of
a later paper, headed, "Astounding Escape of Mil-
lionaire's Daughter with Convict. She Had Ar-
ranged Freak Dinner. Now Safe in"
Mr. Grey wood Usher lifted his eyes, but Father
Brown was gone.
143


VI
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 sides of pyramids; and one would hesi-
tate 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 change-
less continuity. The pilgrim walking down it be-
gins 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 al-
lowed 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 gray stone
giants it looks like a lighted house of dwarfs.
144


THE HEAB OF CiESAR
Any one passing the place during a certain au-
tumn 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 inte-
rior 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 work-
ing 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 neigh-
bourhood. 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 cur-
tain fall into its place again. Then his round eyes
rolled to the blind 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 sack-
145


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
States in youth; but the whole story seems very
strange. Davis and Falconroy are both pretty con-
siderable 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
idealise 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 up-
lift. 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
142


THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE
by larrikins to a man in prison dress who was step-
ping with considerable coolness into the steering seat
of a pretty high-toned Panhard; he was accompa-
nied by a girl wrapped in a ragged shawl. On the
police interfering, the young woman threw back the
shawl, and all recognised Millionaire Todd's daugh-
ter, who had just come from the Slum Freak Din-
ner at the Pond, where all the choicest guests were
in a similar déshabillé. She and the gentleman who
had donned prison uniform were going for the cus-
tomary joy-ride."
Under the pink slip Mr. Usher found a strip of
a later paper, headed, “Astounding Escape of Mil-
lionaire's Daughter with Convict. She Had Ar-
ranged Freak Dinner. Now Safe in- "
Mr. Greywood Usher lifted his eyes, but Father
Brown was gone.
143


THE HEAD OF CJESAEi
"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 can-
vas sleeve, round the wrist of which ran a very
slight thread of artistic pattern, just enough to dis-
tinguish 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 out-
side 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?"
147


THE HEAD OF CÆSAR
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 ques-
tion.” 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 fop-
pery,” 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.
149


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 quiet-
ly, 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
ISO


THE HEAD OF CAESAR
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 Car-
stairs Collection, actually with a yet smaller allow-
ance, to my brother Arthur. He meant it as a re-
ward, as the highest honour he could offer, in ac-
knowledgment of Arthur's loyalty and rectitude and
the distinctions he had already gained in mathemat-
ics and economics at Cambridge. He left me prac-
tically 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 Ro-
man virtues. He took no pleasures; he spent noth-
ing on himself; he lived for the Collection. Often
he would not trouble to dress for his simple meals;
but pottered about among the corded brown-paper


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 posi-
tion. But I am so rattled with more dreadful things
that I can hardly read my own feelings; and don't
know whether I despise it now as a flirtation or
152


THE HEAD OF CiESAR
bear it as a broken heart. We lived then at a little
seaside watering-place in South Wales, and a re-
tired sea-captain living a few doors off had a son
about five years older than myself, who had been a
friend of Giles's 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 every-
thing. 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
153


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
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 wish-
ing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild, fool-
ish 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 thou-
sand 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 antiquar-
ian fussiness and my longing for the youth and lib-
erty 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
154


THE HEAD OF CLESAR
and dustier as life went by. Nature and the Car-
stairs 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 Em-
pire 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 Csesars 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
155


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
was no earthly logical evidence that he was looking
at me; he might have been looking at a ship, or the
sunset, or the seagulls, 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 bar-
rier 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
156


THE HEAD OF CiESAR
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 youth-
ful; 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
157


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 black-
mailed for the theft of the bronze piece; and all my
merely superstitious fears and doubts were swal-
lowed 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 mend-
ing 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
158


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
'for the present.' And then he added, quite sud-
denly 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 speeches, men-
tioning his knowledge and sympathy in such cases;
and almost without knowing, the girl was soon re-
iterating 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, ex-
cept 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 sulk-
ing, but more sheepishly than I had expected-per-
160


THE HEAD OF CAESAR
haps 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 to-
wards 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 wax-work 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
161


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
the back garden gate, which stood open and by
which he had undoubtedly entered. This renewed
timidity on his part was so different from the im-
pudence 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 mu-
seum), 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 reawakened 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
162


THE HEAD OF CESAR
to my room, and locked myself in. But even as I
passed, I could almost 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 round 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 at the door
and then went in: to see the last and worst sight.
"My brother's chair was empty; and he was ob-
viously 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 poison-
ous enough while he was pursuing and watching
me. But I think his unconsciousness of my pres-
ence 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 papers which, though it was mine, I dare
say I had no right to touch. He went off at last,
163


THE HEAD OF C^SAR
miracle? or how can any one but Philip and myself
know I gave him a tiny coin in the middle of the
sea?"
"It is an extraordinary problem," admitted Flam-
beau.
"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 tem-
porary 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
165


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Flam-
beau 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, nod-
ding.
"And now, take it from the start. It lies be-
tween 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-
166


THE HEAD OF CAESAR
frequenting, and then wrote him blackmailing let-
ters 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 unmis-
takable head that resembled the Roman coin. "Miss
Carstairs," said Hawker without ceremony,
"wouldn't go in till you came."
"Well," observed Brown confidentially, "don't
you think it's the best thing she can do to stop out-
side—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 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,
167


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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-col-
lector ?” 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 quali-
ties.”
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 dress-
ing-gown lay amid his burst and gaping brown-
paper parcels; out of which poured and rolled, not
Roman, but very modern English coins.
168


THE HEAD OF CAESAR
The priest held up the bronze head of Caesar.
"This," he said, "was all that was left of the Car-
stairs Collection."
After a silence he went on, with more than com-
mon 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 fon-
der 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 black-
mailing his own family in a disguise. He black-
mailed his brother from Australia for his little for-
gotten 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
169


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
. . . thou shalt not make 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 every-
thing, they are probably getting on very well."
170


VII
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 expres-
sion altogether misleading. It might truly be said
of him, as of many journalists in authority, that
his most familiar emotion was one of continuous
fear; fear of libel actions, fear of lost advertise-
ments, 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
171


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ran 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 any-
thing, not even in journalism. The legend, you'll
probably remember, was about the blackest business
172


THE PURPLE WIG
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 witch-
craft mixed up with it; and the story goes that a
manservant listening at a 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 re-
current 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 ag-
nostics. 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 a disease
or something. Another tradition says that Cava-
liers just after James I. began to wear their hair
long only to cover the ear of the first Lord Ex-
moor. 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 dia-
monds. Most men rather admire the nobs for hav-
173


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
ing 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 down-
right 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 en-
tirely 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 "re-
press."
In such happy, healthful activities did Mr. Nutt
174


THE PURPLE WIG
disport himself, until the ensuing Saturday found
him at the same desk, dictating to the same type-
writer, 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 TLord Jones Dead' to people who never
knew that Lord Jones was alive. Your present cor-
respondent thinks that this, like many other journal-
istic 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.
175


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 sug-
gested. 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, be-
fore teetotallers and brewers between them de-
stroyed freedom. And at this table sat three gentle-
men, 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
176


THE PURPLE WIG
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 realised why I connected him with any-
thing 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 neckcloth 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 un-
usual 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
177


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
impression was simply a set of tall, old-fashioned
wine-glasses, one or two lemons and two church-
warden pipes. And also, perhaps, the old-world
errand on which I had come.
"Being a hardened reporter, and it being appar-
ently 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 re-
straint 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 a
178


THE PURPLE WIG
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 fear or embarrassment,
looked steadily at the table, and seemed to listen to
the recital with great pain—as well 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
flaming 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,
179


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 an-
other 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 regu-
larising 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 some-
times thought it was a wild version of one of those
180


THE PURPLE WIG
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 simply 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 for-
get 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
Sitting simples. Don't
lord in the
181


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 dispro-
portion 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 giv-
ing 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 pro-
ceeded to tell the tale as he had heard it from his
predecessor in the same post, who had been his
18a


THE PURPLE WIG
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 for-
tunes; the tale of a family lawyer. This lawyer,
however, had the sense to cheat honestly, if the ex-
pression 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 ref-
erence 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 lamp-shades 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 or-
183


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
chard. 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
«yes still blazed. 'The law will give it you,' he said,
'but you will not take it. . . . Why not? Why,
because it would be the crack of doom for me; and
if you take it / shall take off my wig. . . . Why,
you pitiful plucked fowl, any one 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 country-
side. And since then Exmoor has been feared more
for a warlock than even for a landlord and a magis-
trate.
"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 possi-
bility 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
184


THE PURPLE WIG
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 afterwards 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:
185


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
"I have made an astounding discovery. I freely
confess it is quite different from anything I ex-
pected 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. T 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
186


THE PURPLE WIG
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 mor-
bid 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 spirted from his thin lips the
instant you so much as mentioned his ancestors.
Why should he show every stranger over such a
187


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
Chamber of Horrors unless he is prond of it? He
doesn't conceal his wig, he doesn't conceal his blood,
he doesn't conceal his family curse, he doesn't con-
ceal 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. Be-
fore 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 serious-
ness. 'Father Brown,' he said, 'Doctor Mull in-
forms me that you have come here to make a re-
quest. I no longer profess an observance of the
188


THE PURPLE WIG
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 jour-
nalist made me stand still. Before this paralysis
could pass, the priest had made a momentarily de-
taining motion. 'If,' he said, 'your Grace will per-
mit 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.
-
189


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"'I spare you,' said the Duke in a voice of in-
human 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 beg-
ging 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 some-
thing is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he
says something 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
190


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 techni-
cal 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 'ex-
tinct' 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—probably,
in his snobbish soul, really envied and admired
them. So that thousands of poor English people
tremble before a mysterious chieftain with an an-
192


THE PURPLE WIG
cient destiny and a diadem of evil stars—when they
are really trembling before a gutter-snipe 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 Brad-
ford. 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."
193


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
As Miss Barlow rattled away cheerfully, he crum-
pled up the copy and tossed it into the waste-paper
basket; but not before he had, automatically and by
mere force of habit, altered the word “God” to the
word "circumstances.”
194


VIII
THE PERISHING OF THE PEN-
DRAGONS
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 Fan-
shaw, 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
195


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 any-
where; 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 Fan-
shaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep
both eyes open and be spry. And he heard Fan-
shaw 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 county was full of such quaint fables
and idioms; it was the very home of romance; he
even pitted this part of Cornwall against Devon-
shire, as a claimant to the laurels of Elizabethan sea-
manship. According to him there had been captains
among these coves and islets compared with whom
Drake was practically a landsman. He heard Flam-
beau laugh, and ask if, perhaps, the adventurous
title of "Westward Ho!" only meant that all Dev-
onshire 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,
196


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
who was scarred by thrilling voyages full of ad-
ventures; 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 deli-
cacy of tint and type. The big shoulders, black
brows and black mousquetaire swagger of Flam-
beau were a great contrast.
All these trivialities Brown heard and saw; but
heard them as a tired man hears a tune in the rail-
way 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
earthy, 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, how-
ever, 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
197


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 or 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 some-
thing 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
gypsies 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 un-
common: a dark-haired lady bare-headed, and pad-
dling her own canoe. If Father Brown ever at-
tached any importance to either of these, he cer-
198


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
tainly 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 build-
ing, unlike anything they could remember or con-
nect 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 criss-cross 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 some-
thing reminds us of something, and yet we are cer-
tain it is something very different.
Father Brown, even when he was mystified, was
199


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 incongru-
ous 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 propor-
tions. 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 ap-
peared 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 tri-
umphantly. "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
200


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
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 archi-
tecture 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 hnsband's
ship, as he sailed home from the Spanish main."
20I


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 gentle-
men in honourable captivity, intending to escort
them to Elizabeth's court. But he was a man of
naming 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 Pen-
dragon, 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 pierc-
202


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
ing 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 after-
wards."
"There's that girl in the canoe again," said Flam-
beau 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 scan-
dals have followed in the track of the Spaniard's
curse; and no doubt, as you would put it, any acci-
dent happening to this Cornish family would be
connected with it by rural credulity. But it is per-
fectly true that this tower has been burnt down two
or three times; and the family can't be called lucky,
203


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 im-
proved 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,
204


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
the first stroke; and after waggling a little to ex-
tricate itself (accompanied with curses in the dark-
ness) split it down to the ground with a second.
Then a kick of devilish energy sent the whole loos-
ened 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 ut-
tered an exclamation of astonishment. "My dear
Admiral!" he exclaimed, "do you—er—do you gen-
erally 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 in-
stance, he wore an ordinary broad-brimmed hat as

206


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
parent rage of profanity. The Admiral pooh-
poohed it at first as a piece of necessary but annoy-
ing 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 fam-
ily 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,
208


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
hairy and rather sullen-looking gardener was hang-
ing 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 flower beds; and in a tree-
less 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 the spectacles at the mould-
ings 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 con-
vey some sense to him. The first seemed to be the
209


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 representa-
tion 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 vener-
able 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 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."
210


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 con-
founded 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 Fan-
shaw had even some difficulty in recovering his, as
they saw a long, thin stream of blue smoke ascend-
ing silently into the end of the evening light.
Then Pendragon broke into a scornful laugh
again. “Gypsies !” he said; "they've been camping
about here for 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
212


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Pen-
dragon 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 woke up, took up the
digression and talked natural history with his host
with a flow of words and much unexpected informa-
tion, 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 Pen-
dragor. 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, Span-
ish-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 to-night," continued the Ad-
214


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
miral, "when my nephew comes back safe from his
ship. You look 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 de-
veloped 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 ship-
wrecked. My father, coming up this coast out of
215


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
Some three hours afterwards Fanshaw, Flam-
beau 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 dream-
ily. "If I could find a spud or something I'd do it
myself."
They followed him, laughing and half remon-
strating; 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 most energetically to brush the fallen leaves
off the grass.
"Always some little thing to be done," he said
with idiot 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
218


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
a cannon-ball; staggered, slipped and went sprawl-
ing with his boots in the air.
"How very dreadful!" said Father Brown, look-
ing 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 to-
night. 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 Fan-
shaw.
"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 Fan-
shaw. "I suppose it can't spread to the house."
"You may remember," said the priest quietly,
220


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
"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, no-
body 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
221


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 gypsies. 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 Flam-
beau and Fanshaw bound them. Flambeau's enor-
mous 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 gypsies an-
swering and coming nearer, the plumping and suck-
ing noise of empty buckets plunged into a full
222


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
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 in-
creased, 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 gypsies, had rushed after the mys-
terious 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?"
223


PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS
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 in-
creased, 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 gypsies, had rushed after the mys-
terious 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?"
223


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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 cer-
tainly 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 Ad-
miral's telegram and come down to watch him.
Don't lef s talk about the old Admiral. Don't let's
talk about anything. It's enough to say that when-
ever 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 lighthouse."
"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
224


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ab-
stracted."
"I was sea-sick," said Father Brown simply. "I
felt simply horrible. But feeling horrible has noth-
ing 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.
226


IX
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 civilised 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.
227


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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-detec-
tive. 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 em-
banked, 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 spe-
cially care about, and, looking ahead along the pa-
rade by the sea, he saw something that put the mat-
ter 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
228


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
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 Sing-
ers down at Christmas, and there's talk about hold-
ing 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 com-
bined 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
229


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 ex-
pected of him he hopped up onto the raised plat-
form.
"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 be-
hind 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 plat-
form had given way under Father Brown, and the
unfortunate little man had dropped through to the
230


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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, per-
haps 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 Sacri-
fice."
"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 corner of a building nearer than the farm-
house, 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 direc-
tion indicated the trees fell away to right and left,
and they saw a small, rather flashy hotel, such as is
232


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
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 con-
firmed. 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-chairs
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 vis-
itors 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, bare-
headed, 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
233


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN^
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 hospi-
tality 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.
234


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
“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 ho-
tel. 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
235


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 inso-
lent—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 yel-
low 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 mous-
tachios, dark or dyed, as in the pictures of foreign
financiers; round his neck was wrapped a long pur-
ple 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.
238


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
"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 blind-
ing 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 shoul-
ders abruptly altered their shape, and he heaved the
whole huge thing high over his head, like a heads-
man'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 to-
wards 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, be-
fore 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 per-
239


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
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 accu-
rately 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 colored
bills announcing the glove-fight between Nigger Ned
and Malvoli were slapped about the walls.
"Well," said Flambeau, "I never murdered any-
one, even in my criminal days, but I can almost sym-
pathise with anyone doing it in such a dreary place.
Of all God-forsaken dustbins of Nature, I think the
241


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 Sur-
rey hills, thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks,
when I came out on a vast circle of land, and lifted
over me 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.
242


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
"Not so sure he was murdered?" queried his com-
panion.
"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 1" 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 in-
ner 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 out-
243


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
side 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—espe-
cially 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 com-
mittees 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."
244


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWtf
"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 audi-
ence 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 con-
sult?"
"I consulted a bandstand," said Father Brown,
scratching his head. "But, no, I'm wrong; I con-
sulted 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, al-
most with relish, "'is widely organised outside Ja-
246


THE GOD OF THE GONGS
maica 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's-
this? Huh! Huh! You steal a colored 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, begin-
ning to storm.
"My name is Pooley," replied the other, with a.
creditable coolness. "I am the organising secretary,,
and I advise you just now to leave the room."
247


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"Who this fellow?" demanded the dark cham-
pion, 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 dangerons 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
248


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
in April, the Black Man meant in England almost
what he once meant in Scotland.
“He must be still in England,” observed Flam-
beau, "and horridly well hidden, too. They must
have found him at the ports if he had only whit-
ened 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.
252


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAl^
might mean. Then the grey sky-line brightened into
silver, and in the broadening light he realised 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 com-
munion. 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 gar-
den 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 after-
wards discovered, a large dustbin. Round the cor-
ner 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 other-
wise he was clad only in a very vivid suit of striped
scarlet and yellow pyjamas; which, though glowing
255


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
enough to behold, must have been, on a fresh morn-
ing, 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 cere-
mony: "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 taste-
ful, being of white with a light lemon-yellow stripe.
The man was haggard, but handsome, more sun-
burned 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
256


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 nap-
kins 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 overnight; but to find it
freshly spread so early was unusual.
While he stood wavering in the hall Major Put-
nam 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 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
258


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
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 tracing now, I fear," he
said.
Then, as the restless man with the revolver turned
again towards the door into 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 fol-
low 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 ex-
amining the condition of gravel and grass. While
the Major strolled unobtrusively towards him, the
259


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 appear-
ance, whatever else he observed. He remained thus
for a measurable period, as if engaged in some mys-
terious 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 reas-
suring; 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 cummer-bund, 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 con-
trasted quaintly with his snow-white cap and cos-
tume. The cook might well be careworn, for cook-
ery was the Major's hobby. He was one of those
260


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
amateurs who always know more than the profes-
sional. 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 ele-
gant 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 house-
keeper; 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.
261


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"Well, if you are not going to bother about the bur-
glar, I shouldn't bother about the lunch. It's Sun-
day, 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, look-
ing 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 house-
keeper 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 full-
ness 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 do-
262


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
mestic difficulty of which she was now speaking so
decisively was rather comic than tragic. Father
Brown gathered, from the course of the conversa-
tion, that Cray, the other gourmet, had to leave be-
fore 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 un-
brushed head was lifted abruptly, as if in some sur-
prise at his continued presence. And indeed, Father
Brown, for reasons best known to himself, had lin-
gered 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
263


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
amateurs who always know more than the profes-
sional. 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 ele-
gant 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 house-
keeper; 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.
261


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"Well, if you are not going to bother about the bur-
glar, I shouldn't bother about the lunch. It's Sun-
day, 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, look-
ing 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 house-
keeper 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 full-
ness 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 do-
262


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
man composedly. "And I incline to think you are
not."
"What do you mean?" snapped Cray quite sav-
agely.
"Real madmen," explained Father Brown, "al-
ways 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 mad-
man ever wants."
"And what is that?"
"You want to be proved wrong," said Brown.
During the last words, Cray had sprung or stag-
gered 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 to-day about how cruel I was to shoot a poor
harmless housebreaker, and how I have the devil in
me against poor harmless natives. But I was a
good-natured man once—as good-natured as Put-
nam."
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

264


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
you have seen the Monkey's Tail, we must pro-
nounce 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 no-
where; 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 mid-
night, and lay thinking of nothing in particular,
when I felt a faint tickling thing, like a thread or
267


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWIKT
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 jum-
ble 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 insensi-
ble 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
268


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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. "Put-
nam 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 eye over the stew-pots or other strange
utensils on the wall.
270


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
At this moment the jolly subject of their conver-
sation 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 scrutinised 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 here earlier to-day?"
Father Brown, touching other people, was as sen-
sitive as a barometer; but to-day 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 lin-
gered, covering his position with torrents of amus-
ing 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 or 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
271


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 van-
ished with the cruet and the burglar."
"I know," replied Brown, rather vaguely.
"That's what I've always been afraid would hap-
pen. 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 vine-
gar," 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.
272 *


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
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 revers-
ible by the use of the commonest emetics. I sup-
pose 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 grim-'
ly: "The Major is a long time looking for the
police."
"Or the police in looking for the Major?" said
the priest. "Well, good-bye."
275


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
"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 Dar-
winian evolution, it fluttered no corner of the Eng-
lish 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. Boul-
nois quite gigantically across its pages. By the
paradox already noted, articles of valuable intelli-
gence 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 some-
what dazed manner, to receive the interviewer, and
had named the hour of nine that evening. The last
277


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN"
of a summer sunset clung about Cumnor and the low-
wooded hills; the romantic Yankee was both doubt-
ful of his road and inquisitive about his surround-
ings; 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 neglige from the dap-
per 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 under-
stand?"
"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."
278


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
"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 realise 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 land-
lord, and attached to a pink paper which he heartily
despised, called Smart Society, in the capacity of re-
porter and of something painfully like spy.
279


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 poi-
son: 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 boom-
erang. You'll see some of them in the Major's
study."
With that he went outside and spoke for a mo-
ment 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
274


THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY
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 revers-
ible by the use of the commonest emetics. I sup-
pose 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 grim-'
ly: "The Major is a long time looking for the
police."
"Or the police in looking for the Major?" said
the priest. "Well, good-bye."
275


XI
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 Sun-
set." 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 panto-
mimic vulgarity long past anything English, it also
shows a real excitement about the most earnest
mental problems, of which English papers are inno-
cent, 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
276


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
Smart Society, I regret to say, felt none of that
interest in Boulnois on Darwin which was such a
credit to the heads 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 Him-
alayas, 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 ama-
teur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of
that antiquarium frivolity that we convey by the
word "dilettante."
That faultless falcon profile with purple-black
280


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 shak-
ing 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 pos-
sible."
"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
282


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
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. Find-
ing the name on the narrow wooden gate, however,
and seeing by his watch that the hour of the "Think-
er'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 planta-
tion of prosperous pear trees; the dog that came out
of the kennel was reverend-looking and reluctant
to bark; and the plain, elderly manservant 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
283


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
tense; 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 in-
appropriate 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 un-
just duel in that ancient park. It fell on the path-
way 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 closer 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 in-
terrupted by a smaller road at right angles; which,
286


CRIME OF JOHN BQULNOIS
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 pic-
turesque surprises common in the old landscape gar-
dening; 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
287


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"Boulnois," said Calhoun Kidd, and whistled
softly.
The doctor stared at him gloomily with a redden-
ing brow; but he did not contradict. Then the
priest, a shorter figure in the background, said mild-
ly: "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 derned 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
any one else yet."
"Does Mrs. Boulnois know?" asked James Dal-
roy; 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
290


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
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 pom-
mel, he handed the long weapon to the doctor.
"I fear I'm no use here," he said, with a brief
sign. "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 to-
wards the lodge-gates, where an inspector and two
constables could already be seen in consultation with
a 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 de-
mands for a lovely and aristocratic ghost. It was
a young woman in silvery satins of a Renascence de-
sign; she had golden hair in two long shining ropes,
and a face so startlingly pale between them that she
might have been chryselephantine—made, that is,
like some old Greek statues, out of ivory and gold.
291


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
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 mur-
derer."
He turned his blank round face up to the stars and
continued absent-mindedly: "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 impossibil-
ities. I know your husband only slightly, but I
think this crime of his, as generally conceived, some-
thing 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 gener-
ally 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."
293


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
"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
294


CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS
ica; 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 de-
spair. 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 jeal-
ousy ; 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.
297


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 con-
fess than the big ones—but that's why it's so im-
portant to confess them. Your crime is committed
by every fashionable hostess six times a week: and
yet you find it stick 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 se-
curity, 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 plentitude.
Then that bell rang, and I thought for one long
mortal minute that I couldn't get out of that chair—
300


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
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 in-
numerable childish figures.
Despite his prosaic appearance and generally prac-
tical walk of life, Father Brown was not without
a certain streak of romance in his composition,
though he generally kept his day-dreams 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 mem-
ories 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 one-
self 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."
303


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
and literal disarmament. It was carried out with
extraordinary thoroughness and severity, by very
well-organised 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; cer-
tainly 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 pe-
culiar?"
"Not that I ever heard of," answered Flambeau;
"but all 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 in-
quiry about Prince Otto, but I forgot to ask him
307


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
the deputation of distinguished geologists and min-
eralogists 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 gradu-
ally the Chamberlain—you saw his portrait, too:
man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a mean-
ingless 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—this is his ac-
count, of course. And even as he did so he heard a
burst of cries and tumult in the long rooms and cor-
ridors without.
"First it was a distant din and thrill of some-
thing 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
309


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
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, espe-
cially the mining experts, were in the wildest doubt
and excitement, as well as many important Prus-
sian 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 inter-
national advantages, and some even said that the
Prince's secret apartments and strong military pro-
tection 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 flow-
ers 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 hesi-
tated.
"Well?" inquired the other.
3"


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
Flambeau started a little. "I don't think I re-
member," he said.
"Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" cried Brown,
frowning more and more, with a quite unusual con-
centration of curiosity. "Don't think me rude. Let
me think this out for a moment."
"All right," said Flambeau, langhing, 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 glim-
mered 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 Flam-
beau. "No doubt you've heard of his career, which
was rather romantic. He had distinguished him-
self even before his exploits at Sadowa and Grave-
lotte; 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
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THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 on my only holi-
day," 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
sweetstuff, had floated up to crown the turrets of the
gilt gingerbread castle, and the pink baby fingers
of the budding trees seemed spreading and stretch-
ing to reach them; the blue sky began to take a
314


THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
chance of gaming 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 cav-
ern 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 prob-
ably 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.
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FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
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 fagades 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
*reen 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
317


FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN
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 realised 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 détour; 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 made luminous and discoloured by the moon-
shine, and seemed indescribably fantastic as they
chistered, as if crawling, about the roots of the
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