The Innocence of Father Brown

THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN

Contents

The Blue Cross The Secret Garden The Queer Feet The Flying Stars The Invisible Man The Honour of Israel Gow The Wrong Shape The Sins of Prince Saradine The Hammer of God The Eye of Apollo The Sign of the Broken Sword The Three Tools of Death

The Blue Cross

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous—nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.

Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.

It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d’instruction upside down and stood him on his head, “to clear his mind”; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by the simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside people’s doors to the doors of his own customers. It was he who had kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware that his adventures would not end when he had found him.

But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin’s ideas were still in process of settlement.

There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height. If Valentin’s quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he had already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on the journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver “with blue stones” in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling everybody about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four inches above it.

He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal so far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this side was broken by one of London’s admirable accidents—a restaurant that looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object, with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door almost as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the yellow-white blinds and considered them long.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.

Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was not “a thinking machine”; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places—banks, police stations, rendezvous—he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop. Something about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective’s rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by the window, asked for a cup of black coffee.

It was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic,” he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.

He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some speciality in the condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste which puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin. Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.

When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.

“Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?” inquired Valentin. “Does changing the salt and sugar never pall on you as a jest?”

The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment had certainly no such intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.

Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of words.

“I zink,” he stuttered eagerly, “I zink it is those two clergy-men.”

“What two clergymen?”

“The two clergymen,” said the waiter, “that threw soup at the wall.”

“Threw soup at the wall?” repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian metaphor.

“Yes, yes,” said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at the dark splash on the white paper; “threw it over there on the wall.”

Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s quite true, though I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people; one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don’t do any particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the next corner into Carstairs Street.”

The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other street.

It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular greengrocer and fruiterer’s, an array of goods set out in the open air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the two most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold, blue chalk, “Best tangerine oranges, two a penny.” On the oranges was the equally clear and exact description, “Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb.” M. Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the attention of the red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his walking-cane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, “Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and the association of ideas.”

The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane, “Why,” he pursued, “why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer’s shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the other short?”

The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail’s; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: “I don’t know what you ‘ave to do with it, but if you’re one of their friends, you can tell ‘em from me that I’ll knock their silly ‘eads off, parsons or no parsons, if they upset my apples again.”

“Indeed?” asked the detective, with great sympathy. “Did they upset your apples?”

“One of ‘em did,” said the heated shopman; “rolled ‘em all over the street. I’d ‘ave caught the fool but for havin’ to pick ‘em up.”

“Which way did these parsons go?” asked Valentin.

“Up that second road on the left-hand side, and then across the square,” said the other promptly.

“Thanks,” replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square he found a policeman, and said: “This is urgent, constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel hats?”

The policeman began to chuckle heavily. “I ‘ave, sir; and if you arst me, one of ‘em was drunk. He stood in the middle of the road that bewildered that—”

“Which way did they go?” snapped Valentin.

“They took one of them yellow buses over there,” answered the man; “them that go to Hampstead.”

Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly: “Call up two of your men to come with me in pursuit,” and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a man in plain clothes.

“Well, sir,” began the former, with smiling importance, “and what may—?”

Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. “I’ll tell you on the top of that omnibus,” he said, and was darting and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: “We could go four times as quick in a taxi.”

“Quite true,” replied their leader placidly, “if we only had an idea of where we were going.”

“Well, where are you going?” asked the other, staring.

Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing his cigarette, he said: “If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing.”

“What sort of queer thing do you mean?” asked the inspector.

“Any sort of queer thing,” answered Valentin, and relapsed into obstinate silence.

The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But though the winter twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by on either side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind, the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man’s shoulder, and shouted to the driver to stop.

They tumbled down the steps into the road without realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards a window on the left side of the road. It was a large window, forming part of the long facade of a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part reserved for respectable dining, and labelled “Restaurant.” This window, like all the rest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass; but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.

“Our cue at last,” cried Valentin, waving his stick; “the place with the broken window.”

“What window? What cue?” asked his principal assistant. “Why, what proof is there that this has anything to do with them?”

Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.

“Proof!” he cried. “Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don’t you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?” He banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table, and looked at the star of smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even then.

“Got your window broken, I see,” said Valentin to the waiter as he paid the bill.

“Yes, sir,” answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, to which Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable animation.

“Ah, yes, sir,” he said. “Very odd thing, that, sir.”

“Indeed?” Tell us about it,” said the detective with careless curiosity.

“Well, two gents in black came in,” said the waiter; “two of those foreign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other was just going out to join him when I looked at my change again and found he’d paid me more than three times too much. ‘Here,’ I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door, ‘you’ve paid too much.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, very cool, ‘have we?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, and picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was a knock-out.”

“What do you mean?” asked his interlocutor.

“Well, I’d have sworn on seven Bibles that I’d put 4s. on that bill. But now I saw I’d put 14s., as plain as paint.”

“Well?” cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes, “and then?”

“The parson at the door he says all serene, ‘Sorry to confuse your accounts, but it’ll pay for the window.’ ‘What window?’ I says. ‘The one I’m going to break,’ he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his umbrella.”

All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under his breath, “Are we after escaped lunatics?” The waiter went on with some relish for the ridiculous story:

“I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn’t do anything. The man marched out of the place and joined his friend just round the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn’t catch them, though I ran round the bars to do it.”

“Bullock Street,” said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple he pursued.

Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few windows; streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess in what exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however, was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull’s-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant’s hesitation he went in; he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not need one.

An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.

“Oh,” she said, “if you’ve come about that parcel, I’ve sent it off already.”

“Parcel?” repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.

“I mean the parcel the gentleman left—the clergyman gentleman.”

“For goodness’ sake,” said Valentin, leaning forward with his first real confession of eagerness, “for Heaven’s sake tell us what happened exactly.”

“Well,” said the woman a little doubtfully, “the clergymen came in about half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runs back into the shop and says, ‘Have I left a parcel!’ Well, I looked everywhere and couldn’t see one; so he says, ‘Never mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,’ and he left me the address and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought I’d looked everywhere, I found he’d left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it to the place he said. I can’t remember the address now; it was somewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought perhaps the police had come about it.”

“So they have,” said Valentin shortly. “Is Hampstead Heath near here?”

“Straight on for fifteen minutes,” said the woman, “and you’ll come right out on the open.” Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially black which did not break—a group of two figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student’s stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the distance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom he had warned about his brown paper parcels.

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the congress. This undoubtedly was the “silver with blue stones”; and Father Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all natural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful about the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.

The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word “reason” recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives actually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find the trail again for an agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot was an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests for the first time.

After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs on its thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black Spanish cathedral.

The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown’s sentences, which ended: ”… what they really meant in the Middle Ages by the heavens being incorruptible.”

The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:

“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”

“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”

The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

“Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?”

“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth.”

Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:

“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tall priest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:

“Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my head.”

Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:

“Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We’re all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll.”

The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange violence to that shocking change of speech. But the guarder of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and sat rigid with terror.

“Yes,” said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the same still posture, “yes, I am Flambeau.”

Then, after a pause, he said:

“Come, will you give me that cross?”

“No,” said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound.

Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions. The great robber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but long.

“No,” he cried, “you won’t give it me, you proud prelate. You won’t give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I tell you why you won’t give it me? Because I’ve got it already in my own breast-pocket.”

The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face in the dusk, and said, with the timid eagerness of “The Private Secretary”:

“Are—are you sure?”

Flambeau yelled with delight.

“Really, you’re as good as a three-act farce,” he cried. “Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you’ve got the duplicate and I’ve got the jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown—a very old dodge.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with the same strange vagueness of manner. “Yes, I’ve heard of it before.”

The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.

“You have heard of it?” he asked. “Where have you heard of it?”

“Well, I mustn’t tell you his name, of course,” said the little man simply. “He was a penitent, you know. He had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap’s way of doing it at once.”

“Began to suspect me?” repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. “Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just because I brought you up to this bare part of the heath?”

“No, no,” said Brown with an air of apology. “You see, I suspected you when we first met. It’s that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet.”

“How in Tartarus,” cried Flambeau, “did you ever hear of the spiked bracelet?”

“Oh, one’s little flock, you know!” said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. “When I was a curate in Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I suspected you from the first, don’t you see, I made sure that the cross should go safe, anyhow. I’m afraid I watched you, you know. So at last I saw you change the parcels. Then, don’t you see, I changed them back again. And then I left the right one behind.”

“Left it behind?” repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there was another note in his voice beside his triumph.

“Well, it was like this,” said the little priest, speaking in the same unaffected way. “I went back to that sweet-shop and asked if I’d left a parcel, and gave them a particular address if it turned up. Well, I knew I hadn’t; but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running after me with that valuable parcel, they have sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster.” Then he added rather sadly: “I learnt that, too, from a poor fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but he’s in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to know, you know,” he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology. “We can’t help being priests. People come and tell us these things.”

Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper and sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and cried:

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. I believe you’ve still got the stuff on you, and if you don’t give it up—why, we’re all alone, and I’ll take it by force!”

“No,” said Father Brown simply, and stood up also, “you won’t take it by force. First, because I really haven’t still got it. And, second, because we are not alone.”

Flambeau stopped in his stride forward.

“Behind that tree,” said Father Brown, pointing, “are two strong policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of course! How did I do it? Why, I’ll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we have to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes! Well, I wasn’t sure you were a thief, and it would never do to make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would make you show yourself. A man generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn’t, he has some reason for keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if his bill is three times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it.”

The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was stunned with the utmost curiosity.

“Well,” went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, “as you wouldn’t leave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to do something that would get us talked about for the rest of the day. I didn’t do much harm— a splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I saved the cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn’t stop it with the Donkey’s Whistle.”

“With the what?” asked Flambeau.

“I’m glad you’ve never heard of it,” said the priest, making a face. “It’s a foul thing. I’m sure you’re too good a man for a Whistler. I couldn’t have countered it even with the Spots myself; I’m not strong enough in the legs.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked the other.

“Well, I did think you’d know the Spots,” said Father Brown, agreeably surprised. “Oh, you can’t have gone so very wrong yet!”

“How in blazes do you know all these horrors?” cried Flambeau.

The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.

“Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose,” he said. “Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.”

“What?” asked the thief, almost gaping.

“You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology.”

And even as he turned away to collect his property, the three policemen came out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow.

“Do not bow to me, mon ami,” said Valentin with silver clearness. “Let us both bow to our master.”

And they both stood an instant uncovered while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.

The Secret Garden

Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall—a hall hung with weapons. Valentin’s house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but the oddity—and perhaps the police value—of its architecture was this: that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate, and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall, smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden, perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill.

As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and largely over European— policial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.

When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette—an elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked with grey. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened on the grounds behind. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party; he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador—a choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and a forehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness, since they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he had recently met in England. He saw—perhaps with more interest than any of these— a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. This was Commandant O’Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in an officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he had an air at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways—especially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after some crash of debts, and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging about in uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador’s family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.

But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other, their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. No one of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that multi-millionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of small religions have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity for the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr. Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was ready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it was an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare— a hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman, but thought that Luke P. Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more “progressive” than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought “progressive.” He thought Valentin “progressive,” thereby doing him a grave injustice.

The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us can claim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, without so much relief as a watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and well brushed back like a German’s; his face was red, fierce and cherubic, with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwise infantile visage with an effect theatrical and even Mephistophelean. Not long, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American; his lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with all speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.

Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O’Brien, her father was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorously gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men—Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and the detrimental O’Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform— all melted away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung every sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O’Brien might be signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him. After a time this “progressive” logomachy had reached a crisis of tedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about “science and religion.” But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing— he saw what was not there. He saw that Commandant O’Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was absent too.

Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from the dining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His notion of protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian n’er-do-weel had become something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin’s study, he was surprised to meet his daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a second enigma. If she had been with O’Brien, where was O’Brien! If she had not been with O’Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and eventually found a servants’ entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all the storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out as Commandant O’Brien.

He vanished through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord Galloway in an indescribable temper, at once virulent and vague. The blue-and-silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt him with all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authority was at war. The length and grace of the Irishman’s stride enraged him as if he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him. He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteau fairyland; and, willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities by speech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight—an elderly English diplomatist running hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.

His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beaming glasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard the nobleman’s first clear words. Lord Galloway was crying: “A corpse in the grass—a blood-stained corpse.” O’Brien at last had gone utterly out of his mind.

“We must tell Valentin at once,” said the doctor, when the other had brokenly described all that he had dared to examine. “It is fortunate that he is here”; and even as he spoke the great detective entered the study, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation; he had come with the common concern of a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was told the gory fact, he turned with all his gravity instantly bright and businesslike; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his business.

“Strange, gentlemen,” he said as they hurried out into the garden, “that I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes and settles in my own back-yard. But where is the place?” They crossed the lawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river; but under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body sunken in deep grass—the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He lay face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were clad in black cloth, and that his big head was bald, except for a wisp or two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed. A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.

“At least,” said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, “he is none of our party.”

“Examine him, doctor,” cried Valentin rather sharply. “He may not be dead.”

The doctor bent down. “He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough,” he answered. “Just help me to lift him up.”

They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts as to his being really dead were settled at once and frightfully. The head fell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever had cut his throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. “He must have been as strong as a gorilla,” he muttered.

Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr. Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw, but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face, at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids—a face of a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a distant touch of a Chinese emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eye of ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, as they had lifted his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam of a shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said, the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have been trying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.

Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest professional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor, and quite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellings except a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, which Valentin lifted for an instant’s examination and then tossed away.

“Twigs,” he said gravely; “twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn.”

There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply:

“Who’s that! Who’s that over there by the garden wall!”

A small figure with a foolishly large head drew waveringly near them in the moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out to be the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.

“I say,” he said meekly, “there are no gates to this garden, do you know.”

Valentin’s black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they did on principle at the sight of the cassock. But he was far too just a man to deny the relevance of the remark. “You are right,” he said. “Before we find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be done without prejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certain distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies, gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down as a crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can use my own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that I can afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear everyone of my own guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, upon your honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon; there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find my man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him to leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway, you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened, and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remain with the body.”

When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like a bugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and routed out Ivan, the public detective’s private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-room and told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time the company assembled there the ladies were already startled and already soothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at the head and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their two philosophies of death.

Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came out of the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively with the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master’s permission to examine the remains.

“Yes; look, if you like, Ivan,” said Valentin, “but don’t be long. We must go in and thrash this out in the house.”

Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.

“Why,” he gasped, “it’s—no, it isn’t; it can’t be. Do you know this man, sir?”

“No,” said Valentin indifferently; “we had better go inside.”

Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and then all made their way to the drawing-room.

The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even without hesitation; but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at assize. He made a few rapid notes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: “Is everybody here?”

“Not Mr. Brayne,” said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.

“No,” said Lord Galloway in a hoarse, harsh voice. “And not Mr. Neil O’Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when the corpse was still warm.”

“Ivan,” said the detective, “go and fetch Commandant O’Brien and Mr. Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room; Commandant O’Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. I am not sure.”

The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone could stir or speak Valentin went on with the same soldierly swiftness of exposition.

“Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, his head cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do you think that to cut a man’s throat like that would need great force? Or, perhaps, only a very sharp knife?”

“I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all,” said the pale doctor.

“Have you any thought,” resumed Valentin, “of a tool with which it could be done?”

“Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven’t,” said the doctor, arching his painful brows. “It’s not easy to hack a neck through even clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with a battle-axe or an old headsman’s axe, or an old two-handed sword.”

“But, good heavens!” cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, “there aren’t any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here.”

Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. “Tell me,” he said, still writing rapidly, “could it have been done with a long French cavalry sabre?”

A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason, curdled everyone’s blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: “A sabre—yes, I suppose it could.”

“Thank you,” said Valentin. “Come in, Ivan.”

The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in Commandant Neil O’Brien, whom he had found at last pacing the garden again.

The Irish officer stood up disordered and defiant on the threshold. “What do you want with me?” he cried.

“Please sit down,” said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. “Why, you aren’t wearing your sword. Where is it?”

“I left it on the library table,” said O’Brien, his brogue deepening in his disturbed mood. “It was a nuisance, it was getting—”

“Ivan,” said Valentin, “please go and get the Commandant’s sword from the library.” Then, as the servant vanished, “Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were you doing in the garden?”

The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. “Oh,” he cried in pure Irish, “admirin’ the moon. Communing with Nature, me bhoy.”

A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came again that trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard. “This is all I can find,” he said.

“Put it on the table,” said Valentin, without looking up.

There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess’s weak exclamations had long ago died away. Lord Galloway’s swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered. The voice that came was quite unexpected.

“I think I can tell you,” cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quivering voice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly. “I can tell you what Mr. O’Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder,” she added, with rather a wan smile, “if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did a thing like this.”

Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was intimidating her in what he imagined to be an undertone. “Hold your tongue, Maggie,” he said in a thunderous whisper. “Why should you shield the fellow? Where’s his sword? Where’s his confounded cavalry—”

He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter was regarding him, a look that was indeed a lurid magnet for the whole group.

“You old fool!” she said in a low voice without pretence of piety, “what do you suppose you are trying to prove? I tell you this man was innocent while with me. But if he wasn’t innocent, he was still with me. If he murdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seen—who must at least have known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your own daughter—”

Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of those satanic tragedies that have been between lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irish adventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of formless historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonous paramours.

In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: “Was it a very long cigar?”

The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken.

“I mean,” said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, “I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking-stick.”

Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation in Valentin’s face as he lifted his head.

“Quite right,” he remarked sharply. “Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once.”

The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.

“Lady Margaret,” he said, “we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity and explaining the Commandant’s conduct. But there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and the Commandant still walking there.”

“You have to remember,” replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, “that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have come back arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind— and so got charged with murder.”

“In those few moments,” said Valentin gravely, “he might really—”

The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but Mr. Brayne has left the house.”

“Left!” cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.

“Gone. Scooted. Evaporated,” replied Ivan in humorous French. “His hat and coat are gone, too, and I’ll tell you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too.”

“What do you mean?” asked Valentin.

“I’ll show you,” said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan went on quite quietly:

“I found this,” he said, “flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr. Brayne threw it when he ran away.”

There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, and then turned a respectful face to O’Brien. “Commandant,” he said, “we trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile,” he added, slapping the steel back in the ringing scabbard, “let me return you your sword.”

At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardly refrain from applause.

For Neil O’Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turning-point of existence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhaps given him something better than an apology, as they drifted among the old flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole company was more lighthearted and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load of suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with the strange millionaire— a man they hardly knew. The devil was cast out of the house— he had cast himself out.

Still, the riddle remained; and when O’Brien threw himself on a garden seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumed it. He did not get much talk out of O’Brien, whose thoughts were on pleasanter things.

“I can’t say it interests me much,” said the Irishman frankly, “especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brayne hated this stranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him with my sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went. By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in his pocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne’s, and that seems to clinch it. I don’t see any difficulties about the business.”

“There are five colossal difficulties,” said the doctor quietly; “like high walls within walls. Don’t mistake me. I don’t doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great hulking sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front door all the evening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin’s garden anywhere. How did the dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?”

“And the fifth,” said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest who was coming slowly up the path.

“Is a trifle, I suppose,” said the doctor, “but I think an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin had struck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across the truncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring his body in the moonlight?”

“Horrible!” said O’Brien, and shuddered.

The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and had waited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then he said awkwardly:

“I say, I’m sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!”

“News?” repeated Simon, and stared at him rather painfully through his glasses.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” said Father Brown mildly. “There’s been another murder, you know.”

Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.

“And, what’s stranger still,” continued the priest, with his dull eye on the rhododendrons, “it’s the same disgusting sort; it’s another beheading. They found the second head actually bleeding into the river, a few yards along Brayne’s road to Paris; so they suppose that he—”

“Great Heaven!” cried O’Brien. “Is Brayne a monomaniac?”

“There are American vendettas,” said the priest impassively. Then he added: “They want you to come to the library and see it.”

Commandant O’Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage; where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one head was hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himself bitterly) it was not true that two heads were better than one. As he crossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. Upon Valentin’s table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head; and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him it was only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every week showed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes and writhing features just after execution; for Valentin was an anti-clerical of some note. But O’Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in his sins; and his gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellect which belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from the grotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in the newspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the Revolution. He saw the whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying on Valentin’s table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles, the great devil grins on Notre Dame.

The library was long, low, and dark; what light entered it shot from under low blinds and had still some of the ruddy tinge of morning. Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end of a long, slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, looking enormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of the man found in the garden confronted them essentially unchanged. The second head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin’s men were still seeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposed to be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O’Brien’s sensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined it with his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of wet white hair, fringed with silver fire in the red and level morning light; the face, which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal type, had been much battered against trees or stones as it tossed in the water.

“Good morning, Commandant O’Brien,” said Valentin, with quiet cordiality. “You have heard of Brayne’s last experiment in butchery, I suppose?”

Father Brown was still bending over the head with white hair, and he said, without looking up:

“I suppose it is quite certain that Brayne cut off this head, too.”

“Well, it seems common sense,” said Valentin, with his hands in his pockets. “Killed in the same way as the other. Found within a few yards of the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carried away.”

“Yes, yes; I know,” replied Father Brown submissively. “Yet, you know, I doubt whether Brayne could have cut off this head.”

“Why not?” inquired Dr. Simon, with a rational stare.

“Well, doctor,” said the priest, looking up blinking, “can a man cut off his own head? I don’t know.”

O’Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears; but the doctor sprang forward with impetuous practicality and pushed back the wet white hair.

“Oh, there’s no doubt it’s Brayne,” said the priest quietly. “He had exactly that chip in the left ear.”

The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady and glittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply: “You seem to know a lot about him, Father Brown.”

“I do,” said the little man simply. “I’ve been about with him for some weeks. He was thinking of joining our church.”

The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin’s eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. “And, perhaps,” he cried, with a blasting sneer, “perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to your church.”

“Perhaps he was,” said Brown stolidly; “it is possible.”

“In that case,” cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile, “you may indeed know a great deal about him. About his life and about his—”

Commandant O’Brien laid a hand on Valentin’s arm. “Drop that slanderous rubbish, Valentin,” he said, “or there may be more swords yet.”

But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the priest) had already recovered himself. “Well,” he said shortly, “people’s private opinions can wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; you must enforce it on yourselves— and on each other. Ivan here will tell you anything more you want to know; I must get to business and write to the authorities. We can’t keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writing in my study if there is any more news.”

“Is there any more news, Ivan?” asked Dr. Simon, as the chief of police strode out of the room.

“Only one more thing, I think, sir,” said Ivan, wrinkling up his grey old face, “but that’s important, too, in its way. There’s that old buffer you found on the lawn,” and he pointed without pretence of reverence at the big black body with the yellow head. “We’ve found out who he is, anyhow.”

“Indeed!” cried the astonished doctor, “and who is he?”

“His name was Arnold Becker,” said the under-detective, “though he went by many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to have been in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. We didn’t have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany. We’ve communicated, of course, with the German police. But, oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker, whom we had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well, it’s a rum thing, gentlemen, but when I saw that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn’t seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes, I’d have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, of course, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and following up the clue—”

The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason that nobody was listening to him. The Commandant and the doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding his temples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain.

“Stop, stop, stop!” he cried; “stop talking a minute, for I see half. Will God give me strength? Will my brain make the one jump and see all? Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphrase any page in Aquinas once. Will my head split—or will it see? I see half—I only see half.”

He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of rigid torture of thought or prayer, while the other three could only go on staring at this last prodigy of their wild twelve hours.

When Father Brown’s hands fell they showed a face quite fresh and serious, like a child’s. He heaved a huge sigh, and said: “Let us get this said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this will be the quickest way to convince you all of the truth.” He turned to the doctor. “Dr. Simon,” he said, “you have a strong head-piece, and I heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business. Well, if you will ask them again, I will answer them.”

Simon’s pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. “Well, the first question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?”

“A man cannot behead with a bodkin,” said Brown calmly, “and for this murder beheading was absolutely necessary.”

“Why?” asked O’Brien, with interest.

“And the next question?” asked Father Brown.

“Well, why didn’t the man cry out or anything?” asked the doctor; “sabres in gardens are certainly unusual.”

“Twigs,” said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which looked on the scene of death. “No one saw the point of the twigs. Why should they lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were not snapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch in mid-air, or what-not. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result, a silent slash, and the head fell.”

“Well,” said the doctor slowly, “that seems plausible enough. But my next two questions will stump anyone.”

The priest still stood looking critically out of the window and waited.

“You know how all the garden was sealed up like an air-tight chamber,” went on the doctor. “Well, how did the strange man get into the garden?”

Without turning round, the little priest answered: “There never was any strange man in the garden.”

There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost childish laughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of Brown’s remark moved Ivan to open taunts.

“Oh!” he cried; “then we didn’t lug a great fat corpse on to a sofa last night? He hadn’t got into the garden, I suppose?”

“Got into the garden?” repeated Brown reflectively. “No, not entirely.”

“Hang it all,” cried Simon, “a man gets into a garden, or he doesn’t.”

“Not necessarily,” said the priest, with a faint smile. “What is the nest question, doctor?”

“I fancy you’re ill,” exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; “but I’ll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?”

“He didn’t get out of the garden,” said the priest, still looking out of the window.

“Didn’t get out of the garden?” exploded Simon.

“Not completely,” said Father Brown.

Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. “A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn’t,” he cried.

“Not always,” said Father Brown.

Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. “I have no time to spare on such senseless talk,” he cried angrily. “If you can’t understand a man being on one side of a wall or the other, I won’t trouble you further.”

“Doctor,” said the cleric very gently, “we have always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question.”

The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: “The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death.”

“Yes,” said the motionless priest, “it was done so as to make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body.”

The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O’Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that man’s unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: “Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads.” Yet, while these shameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching the odd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.

Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window, with his face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no Gaelic souls on earth.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face of Dr. Simon’s rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!” (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) “you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this man?”

He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified, unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.

“The murderer,” went on Brown quietly, “hacked off his enemy’s head and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you all imagined a totally new man.”

“Clap on another head!” said O’Brien staring. “What other head? Heads don’t grow on garden bushes, do they?”

“No,” said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; “there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you never see in that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad! He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne’s crazy millions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and—”

Ivan of the Scar sprang up. “You lunatic,” he yelled; “you’ll go to my master now, if I take you by—”

“Why, I was going there,” said Brown heavily; “I must ask him to confess, and all that.”

Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin’s study.

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.

The Queer Feet

If you meet a member of that select club, “The Twelve True Fishermen,” entering the Vernon Hotel for the annual club dinner, you will observe, as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and not black. If (supposing that you have the star-defying audacity to address such a being) you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter. You will then retire crushed. But you will leave behind you a mystery as yet unsolved and a tale worth telling.

If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is perhaps a little proud of this wild and wonderful guess of his, and it is possible that he might refer to it. But since it is immeasurably unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find “The Twelve True Fishermen,” or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at all unless you hear it from me.

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product—an “exclusive” commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one. But its very inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, was held to be of vital importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London. Thus it happened that even the twenty-four seats at this table could only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet more difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. Of course he combined with this limitation in the scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance. The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them all told. It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman’s servant. And, indeed, there was generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dine anywhere but in such a place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish, and each loaded at the hilt with one large pearl. These were always laid out for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most magnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a vast number of ceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; that was where it was so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were already a certain sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been in existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-president was the Duke of Chester.

If I have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel, the reader may feel a natural wonder as to how I came to know anything about it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden galley. As far as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is in the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the most refined retreats with the dreadful information that all men are brothers, and wherever this leveller went on his pale horse it was Father Brown’s trade to follow. One of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer, marvelling mildly at such superstitions, had consented to send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to Father Brown we are not concerned, for the excellent reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but apparently it involved him in writing out a note or statement for the conveying of some message or the righting of some wrong. Father Brown, therefore, with a meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be provided with a room and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man, and had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusual stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any borderland or anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance. There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one’s own family. Moreover, the priest’s appearance was second-rate and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse of him afar off might precipitate a crisis in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a plan to cover, since he might not obliterate, the disgrace. When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage decorated with a few dingy but important pictures, and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass office, which abuts upon the lounge—a house within a house, so to speak, like the old hotel bar which probably once occupied its place.

In this office sat the representative of the proprietor (nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could help it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants’ quarters, was the gentlemen’s cloak room, the last boundary of the gentlemen’s domain. But between the office and the cloak room was a small private room without other outlet, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or declining to lend him sixpence. It is a mark of the magnificent tolerance of Mr. Lever that he permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by a mere priest, scribbling away on a piece of paper. The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known. I can merely state that it was very nearly as long, and that the last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting and absorbing.

For it was by the time that he had reached these that the priest began a little to allow his thoughts to wander and his animal senses, which were commonly keen, to awaken. The time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his own forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps the gathering gloom, as occasionally happens, sharpened the sense of sound. As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a recurrent noise outside, just as one sometimes thinks to the tune of a railway train. When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was: only the ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got to his feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merely listening, but listening and thinking also.

The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as one might hear in any hotel; and yet, taken as a whole, there was something very strange about them. There were no other footsteps. It was always a very silent house, for the few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments, and the well-trained waiters were told to be almost invisible until they were wanted. One could not conceive any place where there was less reason to apprehend anything irregular. But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call them regular or irregular. Father Brown followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like a man trying to learn a tune on the piano.

First, there came a long rush of rapid little steps, such as a light man might make in winning a walking race. At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter of the steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the last echoing stamp had died away would come again the run or ripple of light, hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? Yet no other description would cover the antics of this invisible pair of legs. The man was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in order to walk very slow down the other half; or he was walking very slow at one end to have the rapture of walking fast at the other. Neither suggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker and darker, like his room.

Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of his cell seemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he began to see as in a kind of vision the fantastic feet capering along the corridor in unnatural or symbolic attitudes. Was it a heathen religious dance? Or some entirely new kind of scientific exercise? Father Brown began to ask himself with more exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow step first: it certainly was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk with a rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be any servant or messenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer orders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they stand or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with a kind of careless emphasis, not specially noisy, yet not caring what noise it made, belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It was a gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never worked for his living.

Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed to the quicker one, and ran past the door as feverishly as a rat. The listener remarked that though this step was much swifter it was also much more noiseless, almost as if the man were walking on tiptoe. Yet it was not associated in his mind with secrecy, but with something else—something that he could not remember. He was maddened by one of those half-memories that make a man feel half-witted. Surely he had heard that strange, swift walking somewhere. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a new idea in his head, and walked to the door. His room had no direct outlet on the passage, but let on one side into the glass office, and on the other into the cloak room beyond. He tried the door into the office, and found it locked. Then he looked at the window, now a square pane full of purple cloud cleft by livid sunset, and for an instant he smelt evil as a dog smells rats.

The rational part of him (whether the wiser or not) regained its supremacy. He remembered that the proprietor had told him that he should lock the door, and would come later to release him. He told himself that twenty things he had not thought of might explain the eccentric sounds outside; he reminded himself that there was just enough light left to finish his own proper work. Bringing his paper to the window so as to catch the last stormy evening light, he resolutely plunged once more into the almost completed record. He had written for about twenty minutes, bending closer and closer to his paper in the lessening light; then suddenly he sat upright. He had heard the strange feet once more.

This time they had a third oddity. Previously the unknown man had walked, with levity indeed and lightning quickness, but he had walked. This time he ran. One could hear the swift, soft, bounding steps coming along the corridor, like the pads of a fleeing and leaping panther. Whoever was coming was a very strong, active man, in still yet tearing excitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the office like a sort of whispering whirlwind, it suddenly changed again to the old slow, swaggering stamp.

Father Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the office door to be locked, went at once into the cloak room on the other side. The attendant of this place was temporarily absent, probably because the only guests were at dinner and his office was a sinecure. After groping through a grey forest of overcoats, he found that the dim cloak room opened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of counter or half-door, like most of the counters across which we have all handed umbrellas and received tickets. There was a light immediately above the semicircular arch of this opening. It threw little illumination on Father Brown himself, who seemed a mere dark outline against the dim sunset window behind him. But it threw an almost theatrical light on the man who stood outside the cloak room in the corridor.

He was an elegant man in very plain evening dress; tall, but with an air of not taking up much room; one felt that he could have slid along like a shadow where many smaller men would have been obvious and obstructive. His face, now flung back in the lamplight, was swarthy and vivacious, the face of a foreigner. His figure was good, his manners good humoured and confident; a critic could only say that his black coat was a shade below his figure and manners, and even bulged and bagged in an odd way. The moment he caught sight of Brown’s black silhouette against the sunset, he tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called out with amiable authority: “I want my hat and coat, please; I find I have to go away at once.”

Father Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange gentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said laughing: “I haven’t got any silver; you can keep this.” And he threw down half a sovereign, and caught up his coat.

Father Brown’s figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million. Often the Catholic Church (which is wedded to common sense) did not approve of it. Often he did not approve of it himself. But it was real inspiration—important at rare crises—when whosoever shall lose his head the same shall save it.

“I think, sir,” he said civilly, “that you have some silver in your pocket.”

The tall gentleman stared. “Hang it,” he cried, “if I choose to give you gold, why should you complain?”

“Because silver is sometimes more valuable than gold,” said the priest mildly; “that is, in large quantities.”

The stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked still more curiously up the passage towards the main entrance. Then he looked back at Brown again, and then he looked very carefully at the window beyond Brown’s head, still coloured with the after-glow of the storm. Then he seemed to make up his mind. He put one hand on the counter, vaulted over as easily as an acrobat and towered above the priest, putting one tremendous hand upon his collar.

“Stand still,” he said, in a hacking whisper. “I don’t want to threaten you, but—”

“I do want to threaten you,” said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum, “I want to threaten you with the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.”

“You’re a rum sort of cloak-room clerk,” said the other.

“I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau,” said Brown, “and I am ready to hear your confession.”

The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back into a chair.

The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen had proceeded with placid success. I do not possess a copy of the menu; and if I did it would not convey anything to anybody. It was written in a sort of super-French employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible to Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club that the hors d’oeuvres should be various and manifold to the point of madness. They were taken seriously because they were avowedly useless extras, like the whole dinner and the whole club. There was also a tradition that the soup course should be light and unpretending—a sort of simple and austere vigil for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange, slight talk which governs the British Empire, which governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it. Cabinet ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole, praised—as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were very important. And yet, anything seemed important about them except their politics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anything—not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party could ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have been put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was a young and rising politician. That is to say, he was a pleasant youth, with flat, fair hair and a freckled face, with moderate intelligence and enormous estates. In public his appearances were always successful and his principle was simple enough. When he thought of a joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said that this was no time for trifling, and was called able. In private, in a club of his own class, he was simply quite pleasantly frank and silly, like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated them a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. He himself was a Conservative, even in private life. He had a roll of grey hair over the back of his collar, like certain old-fashioned statesmen, and seen from behind he looked like the man the empire wants. Seen from the front he looked like a mild, self-indulgent bachelor, with rooms in the Albany—which he was.

As has been remarked, there were twenty-four seats at the terrace table, and only twelve members of the club. Thus they could occupy the terrace in the most luxurious style of all, being ranged along the inner side of the table, with no one opposite, commanding an uninterrupted view of the garden, the colours of which were still vivid, though evening was closing in somewhat luridly for the time of year. The chairman sat in the centre of the line, and the vice-president at the right-hand end of it. When the twelve guests first trooped into their seats it was the custom (for some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to stand lining the wall like troops presenting arms to the king, while the fat proprietor stood and bowed to the club with radiant surprise, as if he had never heard of them before. But before the first chink of knife and fork this army of retainers had vanished, only the one or two required to collect and distribute the plates darting about in deathly silence. Mr. Lever, the proprietor, of course had disappeared in convulsions of courtesy long before. It would be exaggerative, indeed irreverent, to say that he ever positively appeared again. But when the important course, the fish course, was being brought on, there was—how shall I put it?—a vivid shadow, a projection of his personality, which told that he was hovering near. The sacred fish course consisted (to the eyes of the vulgar) in a sort of monstrous pudding, about the size and shape of a wedding cake, in which some considerable number of interesting fishes had finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. The Twelve True Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives and fish forks, and approached it as gravely as if every inch of the pudding cost as much as the silver fork it was eaten with. So it did, for all I know. This course was dealt with in eager and devouring silence; and it was only when his plate was nearly empty that the young duke made the ritual remark: “They can’t do this anywhere but here.”

“Nowhere,” said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning to the speaker and nodding his venerable head a number of times. “Nowhere, assuredly, except here. It was represented to me that at the Cafe Anglais—”

Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by the removal of his plate, but he recaptured the valuable thread of his thoughts. “It was represented to me that the same could be done at the Cafe Anglais. Nothing like it, sir,” he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like a hanging judge. “Nothing like it.”

“Overrated place,” said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking (by the look of him) for the first time for some months.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Duke of Chester, who was an optimist, “it’s jolly good for some things. You can’t beat it at—”

A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. His stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those vague and kindly gentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinery which surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I would feel if the inanimate world disobeyed— if a chair ran away from us.

The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time. It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would have asked him, with comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter, after standing for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned round and ran madly out of the room.

When he reappeared in the room, or rather in the doorway, it was in company with another waiter, with whom he whispered and gesticulated with southern fierceness. Then the first waiter went away, leaving the second waiter, and reappeared with a third waiter. By the time a fourth waiter had joined this hurried synod, Mr. Audley felt it necessary to break the silence in the interests of Tact. He used a very loud cough, instead of a presidential hammer, and said: “Splendid work young Moocher’s doing in Burmah. Now, no other nation in the world could have—”

A fifth waiter had sped towards him like an arrow, and was whispering in his ear: “So sorry. Important! Might the proprietor speak to you?”

The chairman turned in disorder, and with a dazed stare saw Mr. Lever coming towards them with his lumbering quickness. The gait of the good proprietor was indeed his usual gait, but his face was by no means usual. Generally it was a genial copper-brown; now it was a sickly yellow.

“You will pardon me, Mr. Audley,” he said, with asthmatic breathlessness. “I have great apprehensions. Your fish-plates, they are cleared away with the knife and fork on them!”

“Well, I hope so,” said the chairman, with some warmth.

“You see him?” panted the excited hotel keeper; “you see the waiter who took them away? You know him?”

“Know the waiter?” answered Mr. Audley indignantly. “Certainly not!”

Mr. Lever opened his hands with a gesture of agony. “I never send him,” he said. “I know not when or why he come. I send my waiter to take away the plates, and he find them already away.”

Mr. Audley still looked rather too bewildered to be really the man the empire wants; none of the company could say anything except the man of wood—Colonel Pound—who seemed galvanised into an unnatural life. He rose rigidly from his chair, leaving all the rest sitting, screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and spoke in a raucous undertone as if he had half-forgotten how to speak. “Do you mean,” he said, “that somebody has stolen our silver fish service?”

The proprietor repeated the open-handed gesture with even greater helplessness and in a flash all the men at the table were on their feet.

“Are all your waiters here?” demanded the colonel, in his low, harsh accent.

“Yes; they’re all here. I noticed it myself,” cried the young duke, pushing his boyish face into the inmost ring. “Always count ‘em as I come in; they look so queer standing up against the wall.”

“But surely one cannot exactly remember,” began Mr. Audley, with heavy hesitation.

“I remember exactly, I tell you,” cried the duke excitedly. “There never have been more than fifteen waiters at this place, and there were no more than fifteen tonight, I’ll swear; no more and no less.”

The proprietor turned upon him, quaking in a kind of palsy of surprise. “You say—you say,” he stammered, “that you see all my fifteen waiters?”

“As usual,” assented the duke. “What is the matter with that!”

“Nothing,” said Lever, with a deepening accent, “only you did not. For one of zem is dead upstairs.”

There was a shocking stillness for an instant in that room. It may be (so supernatural is the word death) that each of those idle men looked for a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea. One of them— the duke, I think—even said with the idiotic kindness of wealth: “Is there anything we can do?”

“He has had a priest,” said the Jew, not untouched.

Then, as to the clang of doom, they awoke to their own position. For a few weird seconds they had really felt as if the fifteenth waiter might be the ghost of the dead man upstairs. They had been dumb under that oppression, for ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like beggars. But the remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous; broke it abruptly and with a brutal reaction. The colonel flung over his chair and strode to the door. “If there was a fifteenth man here, friends,” he said, “that fifteenth fellow was a thief. Down at once to the front and back doors and secure everything; then we’ll talk. The twenty-four pearls of the club are worth recovering.”

Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it was gentlemanly to be in such a hurry about anything; but, seeing the duke dash down the stairs with youthful energy, he followed with a more mature motion.

At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and declared that he had found the pile of fish plates on a sideboard, with no trace of the silver.

The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled helter-skelter down the passages divided into two groups. Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound, with the chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted down the corridor leading to the servants’ quarters, as the more likely line of escape. As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern of the cloak room, and saw a short, black-coated figure, presumably an attendant, standing a little way back in the shadow of it.

“Hallo, there!” called out the duke. “Have you seen anyone pass?”

The short figure did not answer the question directly, but merely said: “Perhaps I have got what you are looking for, gentlemen.”

They paused, wavering and wondering, while he quietly went to the back of the cloak room, and came back with both hands full of shining silver, which he laid out on the counter as calmly as a salesman. It took the form of a dozen quaintly shaped forks and knives.

“You—you—” began the colonel, quite thrown off his balance at last. Then he peered into the dim little room and saw two things: first, that the short, black-clad man was dressed like a clergyman; and, second, that the window of the room behind him was burst, as if someone had passed violently through. “Valuable things to deposit in a cloak room, aren’t they?” remarked the clergyman, with cheerful composure.

“Did—did you steal those things?” stammered Mr. Audley, with staring eyes.

“If I did,” said the cleric pleasantly, “at least I am bringing them back again.”

“But you didn’t,” said Colonel Pound, still staring at the broken window.

“To make a clean breast of it, I didn’t,” said the other, with some humour. And he seated himself quite gravely on a stool. “But you know who did,” said the, colonel.

“I don’t know his real name,” said the priest placidly, “but I know something of his fighting weight, and a great deal about his spiritual difficulties. I formed the physical estimate when he was trying to throttle me, and the moral estimate when he repented.”

“Oh, I say—repented!” cried young Chester, with a sort of crow of laughter.

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. “Odd, isn’t it,” he said, “that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my province. If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks. You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there are all your silver fish. But He has made me a fisher of men.”

“Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning.

Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

There was a long silence. All the other men present drifted away to carry the recovered silver to their comrades, or to consult the proprietor about the queer condition of affairs. But the grim-faced colonel still sat sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legs and biting his dark moustache.

At last he said quietly to the priest: “He must have been a clever fellow, but I think I know a cleverer.”

“He was a clever fellow,” answered the other, “but I am not quite sure of what other you mean.”

“I mean you,” said the colonel, with a short laugh. “I don’t want to get the fellow jailed; make yourself easy about that. But I’d give a good many silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair, and how you got the stuff out of him. I reckon you’re the most up-to-date devil of the present company.”

Father Brown seemed rather to like the saturnine candour of the soldier. “Well,” he said, smiling, “I mustn’t tell you anything of the man’s identity, or his own story, of course; but there’s no particular reason why I shouldn’t tell you of the mere outside facts which I found out for myself.”

He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and sat beside Colonel Pound, kicking his short legs like a little boy on a gate. He began to tell the story as easily as if he were telling it to an old friend by a Christmas fire.

“You see, colonel,” he said, “I was shut up in that small room there doing some writing, when I heard a pair of feet in this passage doing a dance that was as queer as the dance of death. First came quick, funny little steps, like a man walking on tiptoe for a wager; then came slow, careless, creaking steps, as of a big man walking about with a cigar. But they were both made by the same feet, I swear, and they came in rotation; first the run and then the walk, and then the run again. I wondered at first idly and then wildly why a man should act these two parts at once. One walk I knew; it was just like yours, colonel. It was the walk of a well-fed gentleman waiting for something, who strolls about rather because he is physically alert than because he is mentally impatient. I knew that I knew the other walk, too, but I could not remember what it was. What wild creature had I met on my travels that tore along on tiptoe in that extraordinary style? Then I heard a clink of plates somewhere; and the answer stood up as plain as St. Peter’s. It was the walk of a waiter— that walk with the body slanted forward, the eyes looking down, the ball of the toe spurning away the ground, the coat tails and napkin flying. Then I thought for a minute and a half more. And I believe I saw the manner of the crime, as clearly as if I were going to commit it.”

Colonel Pound looked at him keenly, but the speaker’s mild grey eyes were fixed upon the ceiling with almost empty wistfulness.

“A crime,” he said slowly, “is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come from an infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us say, the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the flowers of the mad girl, the fantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the grin of the skull are all oddities in a sort of tangled wreath round one plain tragic figure of a man in black. Well, this also,” he said, getting slowly down from his seat with a smile, “this also is the plain tragedy of a man in black. Yes,” he went on, seeing the colonel look up in some wonder, “the whole of this tale turns on a black coat. In this, as in Hamlet, there are the rococo excrescences—yourselves, let us say. There is the dead waiter, who was there when he could not be there. There is the invisible hand that swept your table clear of silver and melted into air. But every clever crime is founded ultimately on some one quite simple fact—some fact that is not itself mysterious. The mystification comes in covering it up, in leading men’s thoughts away from it. This large and subtle and (in the ordinary course) most profitable crime, was built on the plain fact that a gentleman’s evening dress is the same as a waiter’s. All the rest was acting, and thundering good acting, too.”

“Still,” said the colonel, getting up and frowning at his boots, “I am not sure that I understand.”

“Colonel,” said Father Brown, “I tell you that this archangel of impudence who stole your forks walked up and down this passage twenty times in the blaze of all the lamps, in the glare of all the eyes. He did not go and hide in dim corners where suspicion might have searched for him. He kept constantly on the move in the lighted corridors, and everywhere that he went he seemed to be there by right. Don’t ask me what he was like; you have seen him yourself six or seven times tonight. You were waiting with all the other grand people in the reception room at the end of the passage there, with the terrace just beyond. Whenever he came among you gentlemen, he came in the lightning style of a waiter, with bent head, flapping napkin and flying feet. He shot out on to the terrace, did something to the table cloth, and shot back again towards the office and the waiters’ quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had become another man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He strolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swell from the dinner party should pace all parts of the house like an animal at the Zoo; they know that nothing marks the Smart Set more than a habit of walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of walking down that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past the office; in the shadow of the arch just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the Twelve Fishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a chance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In the proprietor’s private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon of soda water, saying he was thirsty. He said genially that he would carry it himself, and he did; he carried it quickly and correctly through the thick of you, a waiter with an obvious errand. Of course, it could not have been kept up long, but it only had to be kept up till the end of the fish course.

“His worst moment was when the waiters stood in a row; but even then he contrived to lean against the wall just round the corner in such a way that for that important instant the waiters thought him a gentleman, while the gentlemen thought him a waiter. The rest went like winking. If any waiter caught him away from the table, that waiter caught a languid aristocrat. He had only to time himself two minutes before the fish was cleared, become a swift servant, and clear it himself. He put the plates down on a sideboard, stuffed the silver in his breast pocket, giving it a bulgy look, and ran like a hare (I heard him coming) till he came to the cloak room. There he had only to be a plutocrat again—a plutocrat called away suddenly on business. He had only to give his ticket to the cloak-room attendant, and go out again elegantly as he had come in. Only—only I happened to be the cloak-room attendant.”

“What did you do to him?” cried the colonel, with unusual intensity. “What did he tell you?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the priest immovably, “that is where the story ends.”

“And the interesting story begins,” muttered Pound. “I think I understand his professional trick. But I don’t seem to have got hold of yours.”

“I must be going,” said Father Brown.

They walked together along the passage to the entrance hall, where they saw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of Chester, who was bounding buoyantly along towards them.

“Come along, Pound,” he cried breathlessly. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The dinner’s going again in spanking style, and old Audley has got to make a speech in honour of the forks being saved. We want to start some new ceremony, don’t you know, to commemorate the occasion. I say, you really got the goods back, what do you suggest?”

“Why,” said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval, “I should suggest that henceforward we wear green coats, instead of black. One never knows what mistakes may arise when one looks so like a waiter.”

“Oh, hang it all!” said the young man, “a gentleman never looks like a waiter.”

“Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose,” said Colonel Pound, with the same lowering laughter on his face. “Reverend sir, your friend must have been very smart to act the gentleman.”

Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the neck, for the night was stormy, and took his commonplace umbrella from the stand.

“Yes,” he said; “it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought that it may be almost as laborious to be a waiter.”

And saying “Good evening,” he pushed open the heavy doors of that palace of pleasures. The golden gates closed behind him, and he went at a brisk walk through the damp, dark streets in search of a penny omnibus.

The Flying Stars

“The most beautiful crime I ever committed,” Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, “was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.

“Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens’s style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.”

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobutrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.

“Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much too high.”

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”

“How can you say such things!” she remonstrated.

“Well,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”

“I never know what you will say or do next,” she said.

“I don’t often know myself,” replied Mr. Crook; “but then I am on the right side of the wall now.”

“And which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady, smiling.

“Whichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

“Hullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie, “here’s somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as this.”

“Oh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing Day.”

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:

“He is very kind.”

John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and it was not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in certain articles in The Clarion or The New Age Sir Leopold had been dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large, neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking old gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, who rubbed his big fur gloves together.

Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch had opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry young lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a fez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt. With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big and rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by name James Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such family gatherings.

In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed, were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase at the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung the colonel’s sword, the process was completed and the company, including the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable financier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of his well-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vain-glory that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them all; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole group.

“I’ll put ‘em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ‘em coming down. They’re the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track; but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It was quite possible.”

“Quite natural, I should say,” growled the man in the red tie. “I shouldn’t blame ‘em if they had taken ‘em. When they ask for bread, and you don’t even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for themselves.”

“I won’t have you talking like that,” cried the girl, who was in a curious glow. “You’ve only talked like that since you became a horrid what’s-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?”

“A saint,” said Father Brown.

“I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means a Socialist.”

“A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes,” remarked Crook, with some impatience; and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it.”

“But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own your own soot.”

Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. “Does one want to own soot?” he asked.

“One might,” answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. “I’ve heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn’t come, entirely with soot—applied externally.”

“Oh, splendid,” cried Ruby. “Oh, I wish you’d do it to this company.”

The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in applause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerable deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest opened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens, monkey-tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat, evidently a common messenger. “Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?” he asked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared, and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.

“I’m sick at being such a nuisance, colonel,” he said, with the cheery colonial conventions; “but would it upset you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it’s Florian, that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out West (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have business for me, though I hardly guess what.”

“Of course, of course,” replied the colonel carelessly—“My dear chap, any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition.”

“He’ll black his face, if that’s what you mean,” cried Blount, laughing. “I don’t doubt he’d black everyone else’s eyes. I don’t care; I’m not refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat.”

“Not on mine, please,” said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.

“Well, well,” observed Crook, airily, “don’t let’s quarrel. There are lower jokes than sitting on a top hat.”

Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led Fischer to say, in his most sarcastic, magisterial manner: “No doubt you have found something much lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?”

“Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance,” said the Socialist.

“Now, now, now,” cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence, “don’t let’s spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let’s do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if you don’t like those— but something of the sort. Why couldn’t we have a proper old English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it’s blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country only last year, and I find the thing’s extinct. Nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or something. Blue Beard’s more in my line, and him I like best when he turned into the pantaloon.”

“I’m all for making a policeman into sausages,” said John Crook. “It’s a better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the get-up would be too big a business.”

“Not a scrap,” cried Blount, quite carried away. “A harlequinade’s the quickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to any degree; and, second, all the objects are household things—tables and towel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that.”

“That’s true,” admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about. “But I’m afraid I can’t have my policeman’s uniform? Haven’t killed a policeman lately.”

Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. “Yes, we can!” he cried. “I’ve got Florian’s address here, and he knows every costumier in London. I’ll phone him to bring a police dress when he comes.” And he went bounding away to the telephone.

“Oh, it’s glorious, godfather,” cried Ruby, almost dancing. “I’ll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon.”

The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. “I think, my dear,” he said, “you must get someone else for pantaloon.”

“I will be pantaloon, if you like,” said Colonel Adams, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and speaking for the first and last time.

“You ought to have a statue,” cried the Canadian, as he came back, radiant, from the telephone. “There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall be clown; he’s a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian ‘phones he’s bringing the police costume; he’s changing on the way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors can be the back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English interior. Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic.” And snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the line of the footlights.

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that house that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grew wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions from which it had to create. The columbine looked charming in an outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade in the drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained (like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin, already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle, James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in his excitement; he was like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey’s head unexpectedly on Father Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paper donkey’s tail to the coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down. “Uncle is too absurd,” cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of sausages. “Why is he so wild?”

“He is harlequin to your columbine,” said Crook. “I am only the clown who makes the old jokes.”

“I wish you were the harlequin,” she said, and left the string of sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes, and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee. The spectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and the servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played the constabulary chorus in the “Pirates of Penzance,” but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet; the pianist playing “Where did you get that hat?” he faced about in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of “Then we had another one”). Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the fame still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a living person could appear so limp.

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed him like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable heavily off the floor the clown played “I arise from dreams of thee.” When he shuffled him across his back, “With my bundle on my shoulder,” and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling measure with some words which are still believed to have been, “I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it.”

At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown’s view was obscured altogether; for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full height and thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down nervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights; then he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst in silence out of the room.

The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not inelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconscious foe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwards out of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had been too glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing in with a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched, and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel’s study.

He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled by a solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat Colonel Adams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed whalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against the mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.

“This is a very painful matter, Father Brown,” said Adams. “The truth is, those diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished from my friend’s tail-coat pocket. And as you—”

“As I,” supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, “was sitting just behind him—”

“Nothing of the sort shall be suggested,” said Colonel Adams, with a firm look at Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing had been suggested. “I only ask you to give me the assistance that any gentleman might give.”

“Which is turning out his pockets,” said Father Brown, and proceeded to do so, displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The colonel looked at him long, and then said, “Do you know, I should like to see the inside of your head more than the inside of your pockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she has lately—” and he stopped.

“She has lately,” cried out old Fischer, “opened her father’s house to a cut-throat Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from a richer man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer man—and none the richer.”

“If you want the inside of my head you can have it,” said Brown rather wearily. “What it’s worth you can say afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds don’t talk Socialism. They are more likely,” he added demurely, “to denounce it.”

Both the others shifted sharply and the priest went on:

“You see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would no more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one man we don’t know. The fellow acting the policeman—Florian. Where is he exactly at this minute, I wonder.”

The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, “The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there.”

Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.

“Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”

“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”

They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.

“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say seriously what all this means.”

Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech. “Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman—this clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about—he was—” His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.

“He was?” called Fischer inquiringly.

“A real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably called up to him.

“Well, Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star; but that always means a Falling Star at last.”

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels and, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below. “You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to have marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer’s coming. But there’s no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting a paper donkey’s tail to Fischer’s coat. But in the rest you eclipsed yourself.”

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the man below.

“Oh, yes,” says the man below, “I know all about it. I know you not only forced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin’s the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to the stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned and drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything better. And now, by the way, you might give me back those diamonds.”

The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in astonishment; but the voice went on:

“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he’s paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed him and hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.”

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:

“Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this world.

The Invisible Man

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many gutter-snipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost better than chocolate itself; and the huge white wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of the neighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. But this corner was also attractive to youth at a later stage; and a young man, not less than twenty-four, was staring into the same shop window. To him, also, the shop was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to be explained by chocolates; which, however, he was far from despising.

He was a tall, burly, red-haired young man, with a resolute face but a listless manner. He carried under his arm a flat, grey portfolio of black-and-white sketches, which he had sold with more or less success to publishers ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinherited him for Socialism, because of a lecture which he had delivered against that economic theory. His name was John Turnbull Angus.

Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner’s shop to the back room, which was a sort of pastry-cook restaurant, merely raising his hat to the young lady who was serving there. She was a dark, elegant, alert girl in black, with a high colour and very quick, dark eyes; and after the ordinary interval she followed him into the inner room to take his order.

His order was evidently a usual one. “I want, please,” he said with precision, “one halfpenny bun and a small cup of black coffee.” An instant before the girl could turn away he added, “Also, I want you to marry me.”

The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly and said, “Those are jokes I don’t allow.”

The red-haired young man lifted grey eyes of an unexpected gravity.

“Really and truly,” he said, “it’s as serious—as serious as the halfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one pays for it. It is indigestible, like the bun. It hurts.”

The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off him, but seemed to be studying him with almost tragic exactitude. At the end of her scrutiny she had something like the shadow of a smile, and she sat down in a chair.

“Don’t you think,” observed Angus, absently, “that it’s rather cruel to eat these halfpenny buns? They might grow up into penny buns. I shall give up these brutal sports when we are married.”

The dark young lady rose from her chair and walked to the window, evidently in a state of strong but not unsympathetic cogitation. When at last she swung round again with an air of resolution she was bewildered to observe that the young man was carefully laying out on the table various objects from the shop-window. They included a pyramid of highly coloured sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two decanters containing that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar to pastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the huge ornament of the window.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

“Duty, my dear Laura,” he began.

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake, stop a minute,” she cried, “and don’t talk to me in that way. I mean, what is all that?”

“A ceremonial meal, Miss Hope.”

“And what is that?” she asked impatiently, pointing to the mountain of sugar.

“The wedding-cake, Mrs. Angus,” he said.

The girl marched to that article, removed it with some clatter, and put it back in the shop window; she then returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table, regarded the young man not unfavourably but with considerable exasperation.

“You don’t give me any time to think,” she said.

“I’m not such a fool,” he answered; “that’s my Christian humility.”

She was still looking at him; but she had grown considerably graver behind the smile.

“Mr. Angus,” she said steadily, “before there is a minute more of this nonsense I must tell you something about myself as shortly as I can.’”

“Delighted,” replied Angus gravely. “You might tell me something about myself, too, while you are about it.”

“Oh, do hold your tongue and listen,” she said. “It’s nothing that I’m ashamed of, and it isn’t even anything that I’m specially sorry about. But what would you say if there were something that is no business of mine and yet is my nightmare?”

“In that case,” said the man seriously, “I should suggest that you bring back the cake.”

“Well, you must listen to the story first,” said Laura, persistently. “To begin with, I must tell you that my father owned the inn called the ‘Red Fish’ at Ludbury, and I used to serve people in the bar.”

“I have often wondered,” he said, “why there was a kind of a Christian air about this one confectioner’s shop.”

“Ludbury is a sleepy, grassy little hole in the Eastern Counties, and the only kind of people who ever came to the ‘Red Fish’ were occasional commercial travellers, and for the rest, the most awful people you can see, only you’ve never seen them. I mean little, loungy men, who had just enough to live on and had nothing to do but lean about in bar-rooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just too good for them. Even these wretched young rotters were not very common at our house; but there were two of them that were a lot too common— common in every sort of way. They both lived on money of their own, and were wearisomely idle and over-dressed. But yet I was a bit sorry for them, because I half believe they slunk into our little empty bar because each of them had a slight deformity; the sort of thing that some yokels laugh at. It wasn’t exactly a deformity either; it was more an oddity. One of them was a surprisingly small man, something like a dwarf, or at least like a jockey. He was not at all jockeyish to look at, though; he had a round black head and a well-trimmed black beard, bright eyes like a bird’s; he jingled money in his pockets; he jangled a great gold watch chain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn’t be the slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, just coming up to the counter, making a jumping kangaroo out of five cigars.

“The other fellow was more silent and more ordinary; but somehow he alarmed me much more than poor little Smythe. He was very tall and slight, and light-haired; his nose had a high bridge, and he might almost have been handsome in a spectral sort of way; but he had one of the most appalling squints I have ever seen or heard of. When he looked straight at you, you didn’t know where you were yourself, let alone what he was looking at. I fancy this sort of disfigurement embittered the poor chap a little; for while Smythe was ready to show off his monkey tricks anywhere, James Welkin (that was the squinting man’s name) never did anything except soak in our bar parlour, and go for great walks by himself in the flat, grey country all round. All the same, I think Smythe, too, was a little sensitive about being so small, though he carried it off more smartly. And so it was that I was really puzzled, as well as startled, and very sorry, when they both offered to marry me in the same week.

“Well, I did what I’ve since thought was perhaps a silly thing. But, after all, these freaks were my friends in a way; and I had a horror of their thinking I refused them for the real reason, which was that they were so impossibly ugly. So I made up some gas of another sort, about never meaning to marry anyone who hadn’t carved his way in the world. I said it was a point of principle with me not to live on money that was just inherited like theirs. Two days after I had talked in this well-meaning sort of way, the whole trouble began. The first thing I heard was that both of them had gone off to seek their fortunes, as if they were in some silly fairy tale.

“Well, I’ve never seen either of them from that day to this. But I’ve had two letters from the little man called Smythe, and really they were rather exciting.”

“Ever heard of the other man?” asked Angus.

“No, he never wrote,” said the girl, after an instant’s hesitation. “Smythe’s first letter was simply to say that he had started out walking with Welkin to London; but Welkin was such a good walker that the little man dropped out of it, and took a rest by the roadside. He happened to be picked up by some travelling show, and, partly because he was nearly a dwarf, and partly because he was really a clever little wretch, he got on quite well in the show business, and was soon sent up to the Aquarium, to do some tricks that I forget. That was his first letter. His second was much more of a startler, and I only got it last week.”

The man called Angus emptied his coffee-cup and regarded her with mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight twist of laughter as she resumed, “I suppose you’ve seen on the hoardings all about this ‘Smythe’s Silent Service’? Or you must be the only person that hasn’t. Oh, I don’t know much about it, it’s some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: ‘Press a Button—A Butler who Never Drinks.’ ‘Turn a Handle—Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.’ You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are making it all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can’t help feeling pleased the poor little chap has fallen on his feet; but the plain fact is, I’m in terror of his turning up any minute and telling me he’s carved his way in the world— as he certainly has.”

“And the other man?” repeated Angus with a sort of obstinate quietude.

Laura Hope got to her feet suddenly. “My friend,” she said, “I think you are a witch. Yes, you are quite right. I have not seen a line of the other man’s writing; and I have no more notion than the dead of what or where he is. But it is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is all about my path. It is he who has half driven me mad. Indeed, I think he has driven me mad; for I have felt him where he could not have been, and I have heard his voice when he could not have spoken.”

“Well, my dear,” said the young man, cheerfully, “if he were Satan himself, he is done for now you have told somebody. One goes mad all alone, old girl. But when was it you fancied you felt and heard our squinting friend?”

“I heard James Welkin laugh as plainly as I hear you speak,” said the girl, steadily. “There was nobody there, for I stood just outside the shop at the corner, and could see down both streets at once. I had forgotten how he laughed, though his laugh was as odd as his squint. I had not thought of him for nearly a year. But it’s a solemn truth that a few seconds later the first letter came from his rival.”

“Did you ever make the spectre speak or squeak, or anything?” asked Angus, with some interest.

Laura suddenly shuddered, and then said, with an unshaken voice, “Yes. Just when I had finished reading the second letter from Isidore Smythe announcing his success. Just then, I heard Welkin say, ‘He shan’t have you, though.’ It was quite plain, as if he were in the room. It is awful, I think I must be mad.”

“If you really were mad,” said the young man, “you would think you must be sane. But certainly there seems to me to be something a little rum about this unseen gentleman. Two heads are better than one—I spare you allusions to any other organs and really, if you would allow me, as a sturdy, practical man, to bring back the wedding-cake out of the window—”

Even as he spoke, there was a sort of steely shriek in the street outside, and a small motor, driven at devilish speed, shot up to the door of the shop and stuck there. In the same flash of time a small man in a shiny top hat stood stamping in the outer room.

Angus, who had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins and match-boxes; Isidore Smythe, who made millions out of undrinking butlers and unflirting housemaids of metal. For a moment the two men, instinctively understanding each other’s air of possession, looked at each other with that curious cold generosity which is the soul of rivalry.

Mr. Smythe, however, made no allusion to the ultimate ground of their antagonism, but said simply and explosively, “Has Miss Hope seen that thing on the window?”

“On the window?” repeated the staring Angus.

“There’s no time to explain other things,” said the small millionaire shortly. “There’s some tomfoolery going on here that has to be investigated.”

He pointed his polished walking-stick at the window, recently depleted by the bridal preparations of Mr. Angus; and that gentleman was astonished to see along the front of the glass a long strip of paper pasted, which had certainly not been on the window when he looked through it some time before. Following the energetic Smythe outside into the street, he found that some yard and a half of stamp paper had been carefully gummed along the glass outside, and on this was written in straggly characters, “If you marry Smythe, he will die.”

“Laura,” said Angus, putting his big red head into the shop, “you’re not mad.”

“It’s the writing of that fellow Welkin,” said Smythe gruffly. “I haven’t seen him for years, but he’s always bothering me. Five times in the last fortnight he’s had threatening letters left at my flat, and I can’t even find out who leaves them, let alone if it is Welkin himself. The porter of the flats swears that no suspicious characters have been seen, and here he has pasted up a sort of dado on a public shop window, while the people in the shop—”

“Quite so,” said Angus modestly, “while the people in the shop were having tea. Well, sir, I can assure you I appreciate your common sense in dealing so directly with the matter. We can talk about other things afterwards. The fellow cannot be very far off yet, for I swear there was no paper there when I went last to the window, ten or fifteen minutes ago. On the other hand, he’s too far off to be chased, as we don’t even know the direction. If you’ll take my advice, Mr. Smythe, you’ll put this at once in the hands of some energetic inquiry man, private rather than public. I know an extremely clever fellow, who has set up in business five minutes from here in your car. His name’s Flambeau, and though his youth was a bit stormy, he’s a strictly honest man now, and his brains are worth money. He lives in Lucknow Mansions, Hampstead.”

“That is odd,” said the little man, arching his black eyebrows. “I live, myself, in Himylaya Mansions, round the corner. Perhaps you might care to come with me; I can go to my rooms and sort out these queer Welkin documents, while you run round and get your friend the detective.”

“You are very good,” said Angus politely. “Well, the sooner we act the better.”

Both men, with a queer kind of impromptu fairness, took the same sort of formal farewell of the lady, and both jumped into the brisk little car. As Smythe took the handles and they turned the great corner of the street, Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of “Smythe’s Silent Service,” with a picture of a huge headless iron doll, carrying a saucepan with the legend, “A Cook Who is Never Cross.”

“I use them in my own flat,” said the little black-bearded man, laughing, “partly for advertisements, and partly for real convenience. Honestly, and all above board, those big clockwork dolls of mine do bring your coals or claret or a timetable quicker than any live servants I’ve ever known, if you know which knob to press. But I’ll never deny, between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too.

“Indeed?” said Angus; “is there something they can’t do?”

“Yes,” replied Smythe coolly; “they can’t tell me who left those threatening letters at my flat.”

The man’s motor was small and swift like himself; in fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they say in the modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner of London which is almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite so picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flats they sought, rose above them all to almost Egyptian height, gilt by the level sunset. The change, as they turned the corner and entered the crescent known as Himylaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of a window; for they found that pile of flats sitting above London as above a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were the only human shapes in that high suburban solitude; but he had an irrational sense that they expressed the speechless poetry of London. He felt as if they were figures in a story.

The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet, and shot out its owner like a bomb shell. He was immediately inquiring of a tall commissionaire in shining braid, and a short porter in shirt sleeves, whether anybody or anything had been seeking his apartments. He was assured that nobody and nothing had passed these officials since his last inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus were shot up in the lift like a rocket, till they reached the top floor.

“Just come in for a minute,” said the breathless Smythe. “I want to show you those Welkin letters. Then you might run round the corner and fetch your friend.” He pressed a button concealed in the wall, and the door opened of itself.

It opened on a long, commodious ante-room, of which the only arresting features, ordinarily speaking, were the rows of tall half-human mechanical figures that stood up on both sides like tailors’ dummies. Like tailors’ dummies they were headless; and like tailors’ dummies they had a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and a pigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were not much more like a human figure than any automatic machine at a station that is about the human height. They had two great hooks like arms, for carrying trays; and they were painted pea-green, or vermilion, or black for convenience of distinction; in every other way they were only automatic machines and nobody would have looked twice at them. On this occasion, at least, nobody did. For between the two rows of these domestic dummies lay something more interesting than most of the mechanics of the world. It was a white, tattered scrap of paper scrawled with red ink; and the agile inventor had snatched it up almost as soon as the door flew open. He handed it to Angus without a word. The red ink on it actually was not dry, and the message ran, “If you have been to see her today, I shall kill you.”

There was a short silence, and then Isidore Smythe said quietly, “Would you like a little whiskey? I rather feel as if I should.”

“Thank you; I should like a little Flambeau,” said Angus, gloomily. “This business seems to me to be getting rather grave. I’m going round at once to fetch him.”

“Right you are,” said the other, with admirable cheerfulness. “Bring him round here as quick as you can.”

But as Angus closed the front door behind him he saw Smythe push back a button, and one of the clockwork images glided from its place and slid along a groove in the floor carrying a tray with syphon and decanter. There did seem something a trifle weird about leaving the little man alone among those dead servants, who were coming to life as the door closed.

Six steps down from Smythe’s landing the man in shirt sleeves was doing something with a pail. Angus stopped to extract a promise, fortified with a prospective bribe, that he would remain in that place until the return with the detective, and would keep count of any kind of stranger coming up those stairs. Dashing down to the front hall he then laid similar charges of vigilance on the commissionaire at the front door, from whom he learned the simplifying circumstances that there was no back door. Not content with this, he captured the floating policeman and induced him to stand opposite the entrance and watch it; and finally paused an instant for a pennyworth of chestnuts, and an inquiry as to the probable length of the merchant’s stay in the neighbourhood.

The chestnut seller, turning up the collar of his coat, told him he should probably be moving shortly, as he thought it was going to snow. Indeed, the evening was growing grey and bitter, but Angus, with all his eloquence, proceeded to nail the chestnut man to his post.

“Keep yourself warm on your own chestnuts,” he said earnestly. “Eat up your whole stock; I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you a sovereign if you’ll wait here till I come back, and then tell me whether any man, woman, or child has gone into that house where the commissionaire is standing.”

He then walked away smartly, with a last look at the besieged tower.

“I’ve made a ring round that room, anyhow,” he said. “They can’t all four of them be Mr. Welkin’s accomplices.”

Lucknow Mansions were, so to speak, on a lower platform of that hill of houses, of which Himylaya Mansions might be called the peak. Mr. Flambeau’s semi-official flat was on the ground floor, and presented in every way a marked contrast to the American machinery and cold hotel-like luxury of the flat of the Silent Service. Flambeau, who was a friend of Angus, received him in a rococo artistic den behind his office, of which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage cooking-pots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who looked particularly out of place.

“This is my friend Father Brown,” said Flambeau. “I’ve often wanted you to meet him. Splendid weather, this; a little cold for Southerners like me.”

“Yes, I think it will keep clear,” said Angus, sitting down on a violet-striped Eastern ottoman.

“No,” said the priest quietly, “it has begun to snow.”

And, indeed, as he spoke, the first few flakes, foreseen by the man of chestnuts, began to drift across the darkening windowpane.

“Well,” said Angus heavily. “I’m afraid I’ve come on business, and rather jumpy business at that. The fact is, Flambeau, within a stone’s throw of your house is a fellow who badly wants your help; he’s perpetually being haunted and threatened by an invisible enemy— a scoundrel whom nobody has even seen.” As Angus proceeded to tell the whole tale of Smythe and Welkin, beginning with Laura’s story, and going on with his own, the supernatural laugh at the corner of two empty streets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty room, Flambeau grew more and more vividly concerned, and the little priest seemed to be left out of it, like a piece of furniture. When it came to the scribbled stamp-paper pasted on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to fill the room with his huge shoulders.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think you had better tell me the rest on the nearest road to this man’s house. It strikes me, somehow, that there is no time to be lost.”

“Delighted,” said Angus, rising also, “though he’s safe enough for the present, for I’ve set four men to watch the only hole to his burrow.”

They turned out into the street, the small priest trundling after them with the docility of a small dog. He merely said, in a cheerful way, like one making conversation, “How quick the snow gets thick on the ground.”

As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered with silver, Angus finished his story; and by the time they reached the crescent with the towering flats, he had leisure to turn his attention to the four sentinels. The chestnut seller, both before and after receiving a sovereign, swore stubbornly that he had watched the door and seen no visitor enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had had experience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn’t so green as to expect suspicious characters to look suspicious; he looked out for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when all three men gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood smiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more final still.

“I’ve got a right to ask any man, duke or dustman, what he wants in these flats,” said the genial and gold-laced giant, “and I’ll swear there’s been nobody to ask since this gentleman went away.”

The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking modestly at the pavement, here ventured to say meekly, “Has nobody been up and down stairs, then, since the snow began to fall? It began while we were all round at Flambeau’s.”

“Nobody’s been in here, sir, you can take it from me,” said the official, with beaming authority.

“Then I wonder what that is?” said the priest, and stared at the ground blankly like a fish.

The others all looked down also; and Flambeau used a fierce exclamation and a French gesture. For it was unquestionably true that down the middle of the entrance guarded by the man in gold lace, actually between the arrogant, stretched legs of that colossus, ran a stringy pattern of grey footprints stamped upon the white snow.

“God!” cried Angus involuntarily, “the Invisible Man!”

Without another word he turned and dashed up the stairs, with Flambeau following; but Father Brown still stood looking about him in the snow-clad street as if he had lost interest in his query.

Flambeau was plainly in a mood to break down the door with his big shoulders; but the Scotchman, with more reason, if less intuition, fumbled about on the frame of the door till he found the invisible button; and the door swung slowly open.

It showed substantially the same serried interior; the hall had grown darker, though it was still struck here and there with the last crimson shafts of sunset, and one or two of the headless machines had been moved from their places for this or that purpose, and stood here and there about the twilit place. The green and red of their coats were all darkened in the dusk; and their likeness to human shapes slightly increased by their very shapelessness. But in the middle of them all, exactly where the paper with the red ink had lain, there lay something that looked like red ink spilt out of its bottle. But it was not red ink.

With a French combination of reason and violence Flambeau simply said “Murder!” and, plunging into the flat, had explored, every corner and cupboard of it in five minutes. But if he expected to find a corpse he found none. Isidore Smythe was not in the place, either dead or alive. After the most tearing search the two men met each other in the outer hall, with streaming faces and staring eyes. “My friend,” said Flambeau, talking French in his excitement, “not only is your murderer invisible, but he makes invisible also the murdered man.”

Angus looked round at the dim room full of dummies, and in some Celtic corner of his Scotch soul a shudder started. One of the life-size dolls stood immediately overshadowing the blood stain, summoned, perhaps, by the slain man an instant before he fell. One of the high-shouldered hooks that served the thing for arms, was a little lifted, and Angus had suddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe’s own iron child had struck him down. Matter had rebelled, and these machines had killed their master. But even so, what had they done with him?

“Eaten him?” said the nightmare at his ear; and he sickened for an instant at the idea of rent, human remains absorbed and crushed into all that acephalous clockwork.

He recovered his mental health by an emphatic effort, and said to Flambeau, “Well, there it is. The poor fellow has evaporated like a cloud and left a red streak on the floor. The tale does not belong to this world.”

“There is only one thing to be done,” said Flambeau, “whether it belongs to this world or the other. I must go down and talk to my friend.”

They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again asseverated that he had let no intruder pass, down to the commissionaire and the hovering chestnut man, who rigidly reasserted their own watchfulness. But when Angus looked round for his fourth confirmation he could not see it, and called out with some nervousness, “Where is the policeman?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Father Brown; “that is my fault. I just sent him down the road to investigate something— that I just thought worth investigating.”

“Well, we want him back pretty soon,” said Angus abruptly, “for the wretched man upstairs has not only been murdered, but wiped out.”

“How?” asked the priest.

“Father,” said Flambeau, after a pause, “upon my soul I believe it is more in your department than mine. No friend or foe has entered the house, but Smythe is gone, as if stolen by the fairies. If that is not supernatural, I—”

As he spoke they were all checked by an unusual sight; the big blue policeman came round the corner of the crescent, running. He came straight up to Brown.

“You’re right, sir,” he panted, “they’ve just found poor Mr. Smythe’s body in the canal down below.”

Angus put his hand wildly to his head. “Did he run down and drown himself?” he asked.

“He never came down, I’ll swear,” said the constable, “and he wasn’t drowned either, for he died of a great stab over the heart.”

“And yet you saw no one enter?” said Flambeau in a grave voice.

“Let us walk down the road a little,” said the priest.

As they reached the other end of the crescent he observed abruptly, “Stupid of me! I forgot to ask the policeman something. I wonder if they found a light brown sack.”

“Why a light brown sack?” asked Angus, astonished.

“Because if it was any other coloured sack, the case must begin over again,” said Father Brown; “but if it was a light brown sack, why, the case is finished.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” said Angus with hearty irony. “It hasn’t begun, so far as I am concerned.”

“You must tell us all about it,” said Flambeau with a strange heavy simplicity, like a child.

Unconsciously they were walking with quickening steps down the long sweep of road on the other side of the high crescent, Father Brown leading briskly, though in silence. At last he said with an almost touching vagueness, “Well, I’m afraid you’ll think it so prosy. We always begin at the abstract end of things, and you can’t begin this story anywhere else.

“Have you ever noticed this—that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean—or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house, ‘Is anybody staying with you?’ the lady doesn’t answer ‘Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,’ though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says ‘There is nobody staying with us,’ meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, ‘Who is staying in the house?’ then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like that; you never get a question answered literally, even when you get it answered truly. When those four quite honest men said that no man had gone into the Mansions, they did not really mean that no man had gone into them. They meant no man whom they could suspect of being your man. A man did go into the house, and did come out of it, but they never noticed him.”

“An invisible man?” inquired Angus, raising his red eyebrows. “A mentally invisible man,” said Father Brown.

A minute or two after he resumed in the same unassuming voice, like a man thinking his way. “Of course you can’t think of such a man, until you do think of him. That’s where his cleverness comes in. But I came to think of him through two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angus told us. First, there was the fact that this Welkin went for long walks. And then there was the vast lot of stamp paper on the window. And then, most of all, there were the two things the young lady said—things that couldn’t be true. Don’t get annoyed,” he added hastily, noting a sudden movement of the Scotchman’s head; “she thought they were true. A person can’t be quite alone in a street a second before she receives a letter. She can’t be quite alone in a street when she starts reading a letter just received. There must be somebody pretty near her; he must be mentally invisible.”

“Why must there be somebody near her?” asked Angus.

“Because,” said Father Brown, “barring carrier-pigeons, somebody must have brought her the letter.”

“Do you really mean to say,” asked Flambeau, with energy, “that Welkin carried his rival’s letters to his lady?”

“Yes,” said the priest. “Welkin carried his rival’s letters to his lady. You see, he had to.”

“Oh, I can’t stand much more of this,” exploded Flambeau. “Who is this fellow? What does he look like? What is the usual get-up of a mentally invisible man?”

“He is dressed rather handsomely in red, blue and gold,” replied the priest promptly with precision, “and in this striking, and even showy, costume he entered Himylaya Mansions under eight human eyes; he killed Smythe in cold blood, and came down into the street again carrying the dead body in his arms—”

“Reverend sir,” cried Angus, standing still, “are you raving mad, or am I?”

“You are not mad,” said Brown, “only a little unobservant. You have not noticed such a man as this, for example.”

He took three quick strides forward, and put his hand on the shoulder of an ordinary passing postman who had bustled by them unnoticed under the shade of the trees.

“Nobody ever notices postmen somehow,” he said thoughtfully; “yet they have passions like other men, and even carry large bags where a small corpse can be stowed quite easily.”

The postman, instead of turning naturally, had ducked and tumbled against the garden fence. He was a lean fair-bearded man of very ordinary appearance, but as he turned an alarmed face over his shoulder, all three men were fixed with an almost fiendish squint.

---

Flambeau went back to his sabres, purple rugs and Persian cat, having many things to attend to. John Turnbull Angus went back to the lady at the shop, with whom that imprudent young man contrives to be extremely comfortable. But Father Brown walked those snow-covered hills under the stars for many hours with a murderer, and what they said to each other will never be known.

The Honour of Israel Gow

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to meet his friend Flambeau, the amateur detective, who was at Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer investigating the life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen of Scots.

The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the result of their machinations candidly: As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies.

For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in Glengyle Castle; and with the Victorian era one would have thought that all eccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle, however, satisfied his tribal tradition by doing the only thing that was left for him to do; he disappeared. I do not mean that he went abroad; by all accounts he was still in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name was in the church register and the big red Peerage, nobody ever saw him under the sun.

If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant, something between a groom and a gardener. He was so deaf that the more business-like assumed him to be dumb; while the more penetrating declared him to be half-witted. A gaunt, red-haired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin, but quite blank blue eyes, he went by the name of Israel Gow, and was the one silent servant on that deserted estate. But the energy with which he dug potatoes, and the regularity with which he disappeared into the kitchen gave people an impression that he was providing for the meals of a superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed in the castle. If society needed any further proof that he was there, the servant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One morning the provost and the minister (for the Glengyles were Presbyterian) were summoned to the castle. There they found that the gardener, groom and cook had added to his many professions that of an undertaker, and had nailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how little further inquiry this odd fact was passed, did not as yet very plainly appear; for the thing had never been legally investigated till Flambeau had gone north two or three days before. By then the body of Lord Glengyle (if it was the body) had lain for some time in the little churchyard on the hill.

As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and the whole air damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thought it natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew the respectability which might well feel it necessary to wear “blacks” for an official inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose an hour’s digging for that. Even the man’s start and suspicious stare as the priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and jealousy of such a type.

The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with him a lean man with iron-grey hair and papers in his hand: Inspector Craven from Scotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly stripped and empty; but the pale, sneering faces of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked down out of black periwigs and blackening canvas.

Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the allies had been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was covered with scribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole of its remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged at intervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects could be. One looked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked like a high heap of brown dust. A third appeared to be a plain stick of wood.

“You seem to have a sort of geological museum here,” he said, as he sat down, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the brown dust and the crystalline fragments.

“Not a geological museum,” replied Flambeau; “say a psychological museum.”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake,” cried the police detective laughing, “don’t let’s begin with such long words.”

“Don’t you know what psychology means?” asked Flambeau with friendly surprise. “Psychology means being off your chump.”

“Still I hardly follow,” replied the official.

“Well,” said Flambeau, with decision, “I mean that we’ve only found out one thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a maniac.”

The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed the window, dimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father Brown stared passively at it and answered:

“I can understand there must have been something odd about the man, or he wouldn’t have buried himself alive—nor been in such a hurry to bury himself dead. But what makes you think it was lunacy?”

“Well,” said Flambeau, “you just listen to the list of things Mr. Craven has found in the house.”

“We must get a candle,” said Craven, suddenly. “A storm is getting up, and it’s too dark to read.”

“Have you found any candles,” asked Brown smiling, “among your oddities?”

Flambeau raised a grave face, and fixed his dark eyes on his friend.

“That is curious, too,” he said. “Twenty-five candles, and not a trace of a candlestick.”

In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown went along the table to where a bundle of wax candles lay among the other scrappy exhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally over the heap of red-brown dust; and a sharp sneeze cracked the silence.

“Hullo!” he said, “snuff!”

He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it in the neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every side of the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine wood seething like a black sea around a rock.

“I will read the inventory,” began Craven gravely, picking up one of the papers, “the inventory of what we found loose and unexplained in the castle. You are to understand that the place generally was dismantled and neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in a simple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who was not the servant Gow. The list is as follows:

“First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Of course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; but those are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particular articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loose in their pockets, like coppers.

“Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, or even a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on the sideboard, on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not take the trouble to look in a pocket or lift a lid.

“Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps of minute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some in the form of microscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.

“Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottle necks because there is nothing else to stick them in. Now I wish you to note how very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For the central riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there was something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose the master isn’t really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins’ tragedy you like, and you still have not explained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of good family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core of the tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By no stretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork.”

“I think I see the connection,” said the priest. “This Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of the last Bourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century luxury; wax candles, because they were the eighteenth century lighting; the mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; the diamonds are for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette.”

Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. “What a perfectly extraordinary notion!” cried Flambeau. “Do you really think that is the truth?”

“I am perfectly sure it isn’t,” answered Father Brown, “only you said that nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork and candles. I give you that connection off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure, lies deeper.”

He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in the turrets. Then he said, “The late Earl of Glengyle was a thief. He lived a second and darker life as a desperate housebreaker. He did not have any candlesticks because he only used these candles cut short in the little lantern he carried. The snuff he employed as the fiercest French criminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in dense masses in the face of a captor or pursuer. But the final proof is in the curious coincidence of the diamonds and the small steel wheels. Surely that makes everything plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are the only two instruments with which you can cut out a pane of glass.”

The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast against the windowpane behind them, as if in parody of a burglar, but they did not turn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father Brown.

“Diamonds and small wheels,” repeated Craven ruminating. “Is that all that makes you think it the true explanation?”

“I don’t think it the true explanation,” replied the priest placidly; “but you said that nobody could connect the four things. The true tale, of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle had found, or thought he had found, precious stones on his estate. Somebody had bamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying they were found in the castle caverns. The little wheels are some diamond-cutting affair. He had to do the thing very roughly and in a small way, with the help of a few shepherds or rude fellows on these hills. Snuff is the one great luxury of such Scotch shepherds; it’s the one thing with which you can bribe them. They didn’t have candlesticks because they didn’t want them; they held the candles in their hands when they explored the caves.”

“Is that all?” asked Flambeau after a long pause. “Have we got to the dull truth at last?”

“Oh, no,” said Father Brown.

As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, went on:

“I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. But we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?”

Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled down the long table.

“Items five, six, seven, etc.,” he said, “and certainly more varied than instructive. A curious collection, not of lead pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils. A senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rather splintered. It might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn’t any crime. The only other things are a few old missals and little Catholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the Middle Ages—their family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. We only put them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about and defaced.”

The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds across Glengyle and threw the long room into darkness as Father Brown picked up the little illuminated pages to examine them. He spoke before the drift of darkness had passed; but it was the voice of an utterly new man.

“Mr. Craven,” said he, talking like a man ten years younger, “you have got a legal warrant, haven’t you, to go up and examine that grave? The sooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom of this horrible affair. If I were you I should start now.”

“Now,” repeated the astonished detective, “and why now?”

“Because this is serious,” answered Brown; “this is not spilt snuff or loose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons. There is only one reason I know of for this being done; and the reason goes down to the roots of the world. These religious pictures are not just dirtied or torn or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or bigotry, by children or by Protestants. These have been treated very carefully— and very queerly. In every place where the great ornamented name of God comes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. The only other thing that has been removed is the halo round the head of the Child Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant and our spade and our hatchet, and go up and break open that coffin.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the London officer.

“I mean,” answered the little priest, and his voice seemed to rise slightly in the roar of the gale. “I mean that the great devil of the universe may be sitting on the top tower of this castle at this moment, as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring like the Apocalypse. There is black magic somewhere at the bottom of this.”

“Black magic,” repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was too enlightened a man not to know of such things; “but what can these other things mean?”

“Oh, something damnable, I suppose,” replied Brown impatiently. “How should I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below? Perhaps you can make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust after wax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to the grave.”

His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him till a blast of the night wind nearly flung them on their faces in the garden. Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for Craven found a hatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau was carrying the heavy spade of the strange gardener; Father Brown was carrying the little gilt book from which had been torn the name of God.

The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short; only under that stress of wind it seemed laborious and long. Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universal gesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that wind were whistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all that infinite growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient sorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy that the voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were cries of the lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never find their way back to heaven.

“You see,” said Father Brown in low but easy tone, “Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they’re a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That,” he added genially, “is why they jumped at the Puritan theology.”

“My friend,” said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, “what does all that snuff mean?”

“My friend,” replied Brown, with equal seriousness, “there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectly genuine religion.”

They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the few bald spots that stood clear of the crashing and roaring pine forest. A mean enclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tell them the border of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven had come to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau had planted his spade point downwards and leaned on it, they were both almost as shaken as the shaky wood and wire. At the foot of the grave grew great tall thistles, grey and silver in their decay. Once or twice, when a ball of thistledown broke under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumped slightly as if it had been an arrow.

Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling grass into the wet clay below. Then he seemed to stop and lean on it as on a staff.

“Go on,” said the priest very gently. “We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?”

“I am afraid of finding it,” said Flambeau.

The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice that was meant to be conversational and cheery. “I wonder why he really did hide himself like that. Something nasty, I suppose; was he a leper?”

“Something worse than that,” said Flambeau.

“And what do you imagine,” asked the other, “would be worse than a leper?”

“I don’t imagine it,” said Flambeau.

He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in a choked voice, “I’m afraid of his not being the right shape.”

“Nor was that piece of paper, you know,” said Father Brown quietly, “and we survived even that piece of paper.”

Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had shouldered away the choking grey clouds that clung to the hills like smoke and revealed grey fields of faint starlight before he cleared the shape of a rude timber coffin, and somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven stepped forward with his axe; a thistle-top touched him, and he flinched. Then he took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy like Flambeau’s till the lid was torn off, and all that was there lay glimmering in the grey starlight.

“Bones,” said Craven; and then he added, “but it is a man,” as if that were something unexpected.

“Is he,” asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and down, “is he all right?”

“Seems so,” said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure and decaying skeleton in the box. “Wait a minute.”

A vast heave went over Flambeau’s huge figure. “And now I come to think of it,” he cried, “why in the name of madness shouldn’t he be all right? What is it gets hold of a man on these cursed cold mountains? I think it’s the black, brainless repetition; all these forests, and over all an ancient horror of unconsciousness. It’s like the dream of an atheist. Pine-trees and more pine-trees and millions more pine-trees—”

“God!” cried the man by the coffin, “but he hasn’t got a head.”

While the others stood rigid the priest, for the first time, showed a leap of startled concern.

“No head!” he repeated. “No head?” as if he had almost expected some other deficiency.

Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a headless youth hiding himself in the castle, of a headless man pacing those ancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in panorama through their minds. But even in that stiffened instant the tale took no root in them and seemed to have no reason in it. They stood listening to the loud woods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like exhausted animals. Thought seemed to be something enormous that had suddenly slipped out of their grasp.

“There are three headless men,” said Father Brown, “standing round this open grave.”

The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and left it open like a yokel, while a long scream of wind tore the sky; then he looked at the axe in his hands as if it did not belong to him, and dropped it.

“Father,” said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used very seldom, “what are we to do?”

His friend’s reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun going off.

“Sleep!” cried Father Brown. “Sleep. We have come to the end of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something has fallen on us that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing that can fall on them.”

Craven’s parted lips came together to say, “What do you mean?”

The priest had turned his face to the castle as he answered: “We have found the truth; and the truth makes no sense.”

He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and reckless step very rare with him, and when they reached the castle again he threw himself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.

Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier than anyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchen garden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains, and the day came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed even to have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he planted his spade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast, shifted along the lines of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen. “He’s a valuable man, that,” said Father Brown. “He does the potatoes amazingly. Still,” he added, with a dispassionate charity, “he has his faults; which of us hasn’t? He doesn’t dig this bank quite regularly. There, for instance,” and he stamped suddenly on one spot. “I’m really very doubtful about that potato.”

“And why?” asked Craven, amused with the little man’s hobby.

“I’m doubtful about it,” said the other, “because old Gow was doubtful about it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place but just this. There must be a mighty fine potato just here.”

Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place. He turned up, under a load of soil, something that did not look like a potato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struck the spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned up at them.

“The Earl of Glengyle,” said Brown sadly, and looked down heavily at the skull.

Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau, and, saying “We must hide it again,” clamped the skull down in the earth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handle of the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes were empty and his forehead full of wrinkles. “If one could only conceive,” he muttered, “the meaning of this last monstrosity.” And leaning on the large spade handle, he buried his brows in his hands, as men do in church.

All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; the birds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so loud it seemed as if the trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.

“Well, I give it all up,” said Flambeau at last boisterously. “My brain and this world don’t fit each other; and there’s an end of it. Snuff, spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical boxes—what—”

Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade handle with an intolerance quite unusual with him. “Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!” he cried. “All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I understood the snuff and clockwork, and so on, when I first opened my eyes this morning. And since then I’ve had it out with old Gow, the gardener, who is neither so deaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There’s nothing amiss about the loose items. I was wrong about the torn mass-book, too; there’s no harm in that. But it’s this last business. Desecrating graves and stealing dead men’s heads— surely there’s harm in that? Surely there’s black magic still in that? That doesn’t fit in to the quite simple story of the snuff and the candles.” And, striding about again, he smoked moodily.

“My friend,” said Flambeau, with a grim humour, “you must be careful with me and remember I was once a criminal. The great advantage of that estate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things at the instant; I always fought duels the next morning; I always paid bills on the nail; I never even put off a visit to the dentist—”

Father Brown’s pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three pieces on the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact picture of an idiot. “Lord, what a turnip I am!” he kept saying. “Lord, what a turnip!” Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he began to laugh.

“The dentist!” he repeated. “Six hours in the spiritual abyss, and all because I never thought of the dentist! Such a simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but now the sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world.”

“I will get some sense out of this,” cried Flambeau, striding forward, “if I use the tortures of the Inquisition.”

Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition to dance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite piteously, like a child, “Oh, let me be silly a little. You don’t know how unhappy I have been. And now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all. Only a little lunacy, perhaps—and who minds that?”

He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity.

“This is not a story of crime,” he said; “rather it is the story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion of this race.

“That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle— As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies— was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that the Glengyles sought for wealth; it was also true that they literally gathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments and utensils in that metal. They were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn. In the light of that fact, run through all the things we found in the castle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles without their gold candlesticks; snuff without the gold snuff-boxes; pencil-leads without the gold pencil-cases; a walking stick without its gold top; clockwork without the gold clocks— or rather watches. And, mad as it sounds, because the halos and the name of God in the old missals were of real gold; these also were taken away.”

The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in the strengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau lit a cigarette as his friend went on.

“Were taken away,” continued Father Brown; “were taken away— but not stolen. Thieves would never have left this mystery. Thieves would have taken the gold snuff-boxes, snuff and all; the gold pencil-cases, lead and all. We have to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, but certainly a conscience. I found that mad moralist this morning in the kitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.

“The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man ever born at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which, somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More especially he distrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold of Glengyle. Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of its being answered. One day, however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but when he turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and a sovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation. Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species. Either he would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with it virtuously, a snob seeking a reward. In the middle of that night Lord Glengyle was knocked up out of his bed— for he lived alone—and forced to open the door to the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, not the sovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings in change.

“Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad lord’s brain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that had long sought an honest man, and at last had found one. He made a new will, which I have seen. He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, and trained him up as his solitary servant and—after an odd manner—his heir. And whatever that queer creature understands, he understood absolutely his lord’s two fixed ideas: first, that the letter of right is everything; and second, that he himself was to have the gold of Glengyle. So far, that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped the house of gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much as a grain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fully satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I understood; but I could not understand this skull business. I was really uneasy about that human head buried among the potatoes. It distressed me—till Flambeau said the word.

“It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth.”

And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw that strange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober top hat on his head.

The Wrong Shape

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so on. If anyone walks along one of these roads he will pass a house which will probably catch his eye, though he may not be able to explain its attraction. It is a long, low house, running parallel with the road, painted mostly white and pale green, with a veranda and sun-blinds, and porches capped with those quaint sort of cupolas like wooden umbrellas that one sees in some old-fashioned houses. In fact, it is an old-fashioned house, very English and very suburban in the good old wealthy Clapham sense. And yet the house has a look of having been built chiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white paint and sun-blinds one thinks vaguely of pugarees and even of palm trees. I cannot trace the feeling to its root; perhaps the place was built by an Anglo-Indian.

Anyone passing this house, I say, would be namelessly fascinated by it; would feel that it was a place about which some story was to be told. And he would have been right, as you shall shortly hear. For this is the story—the story of the strange things that did really happen in it in the Whitsuntide of the year 18—:

Anyone passing the house on the Thursday before WhitSunday at about half-past four p.m. would have seen the front door open, and Father Brown, of the small church of St. Mungo, come out smoking a large pipe in company with a very tall French friend of his called Flambeau, who was smoking a very small cigarette. These persons may or may not be of interest to the reader, but the truth is that they were not the only interesting things that were displayed when the front door of the white-and-green house was opened. There are further peculiarities about this house, which must be described to start with, not only that the reader may understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realise what it was that the opening of the door revealed.

The whole house was built upon the plan of a T, but a T with a very long cross piece and a very short tail piece. The long cross piece was the frontage that ran along in face of the street, with the front door in the middle; it was two stories high, and contained nearly all the important rooms. The short tail piece, which ran out at the back immediately opposite the front door, was one story high, and consisted only of two long rooms, the one leading into the other. The first of these two rooms was the study in which the celebrated Mr. Quinton wrote his wild Oriental poems and romances. The farther room was a glass conservatory full of tropical blossoms of quite unique and almost monstrous beauty, and on such afternoons as these glowing with gorgeous sunlight. Thus when the hall door was open, many a passer-by literally stopped to stare and gasp; for he looked down a perspective of rich apartments to something really like a transformation scene in a fairy play: purple clouds and golden suns and crimson stars that were at once scorchingly vivid and yet transparent and far away.

Leonard Quinton, the poet, had himself most carefully arranged this effect; and it is doubtful whether he so perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems. For he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of form—even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach. He had attempted, not perhaps with complete artistic success, but with acknowledged imagination and invention, to compose epics and love stories reflecting the riot of violent and even cruel colour; tales of tropical heavens of burning gold or blood-red copper; of eastern heroes who rode with twelve-turbaned mitres upon elephants painted purple or peacock green; of gigantic jewels that a hundred negroes could not carry, but which burned with ancient and strange-hued fires.

In short (to put the matter from the more common point of view), he dealt much in eastern heavens, rather worse than most western hells; in eastern monarchs, whom we might possibly call maniacs; and in eastern jewels which a Bond Street jeweller (if the hundred staggering negroes brought them into his shop) might possibly not regard as genuine. Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one; and even his morbidity appeared more in his life than in his work. In temperament he was weak and waspish, and his health had suffered heavily from oriental experiments with opium. His wife—a handsome, hard-working, and, indeed, over-worked woman objected to the opium, but objected much more to a live Indian hermit in white and yellow robes, whom her husband insisted on entertaining for months together, a Virgil to guide his spirit through the heavens and the hells of the east.

It was out of this artistic household that Father Brown and his friend stepped on to the door-step; and to judge from their faces, they stepped out of it with much relief. Flambeau had known Quinton in wild student days in Paris, and they had renewed the acquaintance for a week-end; but apart from Flambeau’s more responsible developments of late, he did not get on well with the poet now. Choking oneself with opium and writing little erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil. As the two paused on the door-step, before taking a turn in the garden, the front garden gate was thrown open with violence, and a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his head tumbled up the steps in his eagerness. He was a dissipated-looking youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry, as if he had slept in it, and he kept fidgeting and lashing about with one of those little jointed canes.

“I say,” he said breathlessly, “I want to see old Quinton. I must see him. Has he gone?”

“Mr. Quinton is in, I believe,” said Father Brown, cleaning his pipe, “but I do not know if you can see him. The doctor is with him at present.”

The young man, who seemed not to be perfectly sober, stumbled into the hall; and at the same moment the doctor came out of Quinton’s study, shutting the door and beginning to put on his gloves.

“See Mr. Quinton?” said the doctor coolly. “No, I’m afraid you can’t. In fact, you mustn’t on any account. Nobody must see him; I’ve just given him his sleeping draught.”

“No, but look here, old chap,” said the youth in the red tie, trying affectionately to capture the doctor by the lapels of his coat. “Look here. I’m simply sewn up, I tell you. I—”

“It’s no good, Mr. Atkinson,” said the doctor, forcing him to fall back; “when you can alter the effects of a drug I’ll alter my decision,” and, settling on his hat, he stepped out into the sunlight with the other two. He was a bull-necked, good-tempered little man with a small moustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an impression of capacity.

The young man in the billycock, who did not seem to be gifted with any tact in dealing with people beyond the general idea of clutching hold of their coats, stood outside the door, as dazed as if he had been thrown out bodily, and silently watched the other three walk away together through the garden.

“That was a sound, spanking lie I told just now,” remarked the medical man, laughing. “In point of fact, poor Quinton doesn’t have his sleeping draught for nearly half an hour. But I’m not going to have him bothered with that little beast, who only wants to borrow money that he wouldn’t pay back if he could. He’s a dirty little scamp, though he is Mrs. Quinton’s brother, and she’s as fine a woman as ever walked.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown. “She’s a good woman.”

“So I propose to hang about the garden till the creature has cleared off,” went on the doctor, “and then I’ll go in to Quinton with the medicine. Atkinson can’t get in, because I locked the door.”

“In that case, Dr. Harris,” said Flambeau, “we might as well walk round at the back by the end of the conservatory. There’s no entrance to it that way, but it’s worth seeing, even from the outside.”

“Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient,” laughed the doctor, “for he prefers to lie on an ottoman right at the end of the conservatory amid all those blood-red poinsettias; it would give me the creeps. But what are you doing?”

Father Brown had stopped for a moment, and picked up out of the long grass, where it had almost been wholly hidden, a queer, crooked Oriental knife, inlaid exquisitely in coloured stones and metals.

“What is this?” asked Father Brown, regarding it with some disfavour.

“Oh, Quinton’s, I suppose,” said Dr. Harris carelessly; “he has all sorts of Chinese knickknacks about the place. Or perhaps it belongs to that mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps on a string.”

“What Hindoo?” asked Father Brown, still staring at the dagger in his hand.

“Oh, some Indian conjuror,” said the doctor lightly; “a fraud, of course.”

“You don’t believe in magic?” asked Father Brown, without looking up.

“O crickey! magic!” said the doctor.

“It’s very beautiful,” said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; “the colours are very beautiful. But it’s the wrong shape.”

“What for?” asked Flambeau, staring.

“For anything. It’s the wrong shape in the abstract. Don’t you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in a Turkey carpet.”

“Mon Dieu!” cried Flambeau, laughing.

“They are letters and symbols in a language I don’t know; but I know they stand for evil words,” went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. “The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling to escape.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” said the doctor with a loud laugh.

Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. “The Father sometimes gets this mystic’s cloud on him,” he said; “but I give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it except when there was some evil quite near.”

“Oh, rats!” said the scientist.

“Why, look at it,” cried Father Brown, holding out the crooked knife at arm’s length, as if it were some glittering snake. “Don’t you see it is the wrong shape? Don’t you see that it has no hearty and plain purpose? It does not point like a spear. It does not sweep like a scythe. It does not look like a weapon. It looks like an instrument of torture.”

“Well, as you don’t seem to like it,” said the jolly Harris, “it had better be taken back to its owner. Haven’t we come to the end of this confounded conservatory yet? This house is the wrong shape, if you like.”

“You don’t understand,” said Father Brown, shaking his head. “The shape of this house is quaint—it is even laughable. But there is nothing wrong about it.”

As they spoke they came round the curve of glass that ended the conservatory, an uninterrupted curve, for there was neither door nor window by which to enter at that end. The glass, however, was clear, and the sun still bright, though beginning to set; and they could see not only the flamboyant blossoms inside, but the frail figure of the poet in a brown velvet coat lying languidly on the sofa, having, apparently, fallen half asleep over a book. He was a pale, slight man, with loose, chestnut hair and a fringe of beard that was the paradox of his face, for the beard made him look less manly. These traits were well known to all three of them; but even had it not been so, it may be doubted whether they would have looked at Quinton just then. Their eyes were riveted on another object.

Exactly in their path, immediately outside the round end of the glass building, was standing a tall man, whose drapery fell to his feet in faultless white, and whose bare, brown skull, face, and neck gleamed in the setting sun like splendid bronze. He was looking through the glass at the sleeper, and he was more motionless than a mountain.

“Who is that?” cried Father Brown, stepping back with a hissing intake of his breath.

“Oh, it is only that Hindoo humbug,” growled Harris; “but I don’t know what the deuce he’s doing here.”

“It looks like hypnotism,” said Flambeau, biting his black moustache.

“Why are you unmedical fellows always talking bosh about hypnotism?” cried the doctor. “It looks a deal more like burglary.”

“Well, we will speak to it, at any rate,” said Flambeau, who was always for action. One long stride took him to the place where the Indian stood. Bowing from his great height, which overtopped even the Oriental’s, he said with placid impudence:

“Good evening, sir. Do you want anything?”

Quite slowly, like a great ship turning into a harbour, the great yellow face turned, and looked at last over its white shoulder. They were startled to see that its yellow eyelids were quite sealed, as in sleep. “Thank you,” said the face in excellent English. “I want nothing.” Then, half opening the lids, so as to show a slit of opalescent eyeball, he repeated, “I want nothing.” Then he opened his eyes wide with a startling stare, said, “I want nothing,” and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening garden.

“The Christian is more modest,” muttered Father Brown; “he wants something.”

“What on earth was he doing?” asked Flambeau, knitting his black brows and lowering his voice.

“I should like to talk to you later,” said Father Brown.

The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it. They turned round the end of the conservatory, and walked in silence down the other side to get round to the front door. As they went they seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird, in the deeper corner between the study and the main building; and again they saw the white-robed fakir slide out of the shadow, and slip round towards the front door. To their surprise, however, he had not been alone. They found themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish their bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy golden hair and square pale face, advancing on them out of the twilight. She looked a little stern, but was entirely courteous.

“Good evening, Dr. Harris,” was all she said.

“Good evening, Mrs. Quinton,” said the little doctor heartily. “I am just going to give your husband his sleeping draught.”

“Yes,” she said in a clear voice. “I think it is quite time.” And she smiled at them, and went sweeping into the house.

“That woman’s over-driven,” said Father Brown; “that’s the kind of woman that does her duty for twenty years, and then does something dreadful.”

The little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye of interest. “Did you ever study medicine?” he asked.

“You have to know something of the mind as well as the body,” answered the priest; “we have to know something of the body as well as the mind.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “I think I’ll go and give Quinton his stuff.”

They had turned the corner of the front facade, and were approaching the front doorway. As they turned into it they saw the man in the white robe for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that it seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was locked.

Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on the impossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging about, humming and poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor’s face had a spasm of disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: “I must lock the door again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out again in two minutes.”

He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, just balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door open for an instant, and called out: “Oh, I say, Quinton, I want—”

From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in something between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter.

“Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I’m writing a song about peacocks.”

Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through the aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singular dexterity.

“So that’s settled,” said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, he led the way out into the garden.

“Poor Leonard can get a little peace now,” he added to Father Brown; “he’s locked in all by himself for an hour or two.”

“Yes,” answered the priest; “and his voice sounded jolly enough when we left him.” Then he looked gravely round the garden, and saw the loose figure of Atkinson standing and jingling the half-sovereign in his pocket, and beyond, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian sitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass with his face turned towards the setting sun. Then he said abruptly: “Where is Mrs. Quinton!”

“She has gone up to her room,” said the doctor. “That is her shadow on the blind.”

Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinised a dark outline at the gas-lit window.

“Yes,” he said, “that is her shadow,” and he walked a yard or two and threw himself upon a garden seat.

Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of those energetic people who live naturally on their legs. He walked away, smoking, into the twilight, and the two friends were left together.

“My father,” said Flambeau in French, “what is the matter with you?”

Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute, then he said: “Superstition is irreligious, but there is something in the air of this place. I think it’s that Indian—at least, partly.”

He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of the Indian, who still sat rigid as if in prayer. At first sight he seemed motionless, but as Father Brown watched him he saw that the man swayed ever so slightly with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayed ever so slightly in the wind that was creeping up the dim garden paths and shuffling the fallen leaves a little.

The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a storm, but they could still see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a listless face; Quinton’s wife was still at her window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of the conservatory; they could see his cigar like a will-o’-the-wisp; and the fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began to rock and almost to roar. Storm was certainly coming.

“When that Indian spoke to us,” went on Brown in a conversational undertone, “I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he said ‘I want nothing,’ it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, ‘I want nothing,’ and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, ‘I want nothing,’ he said it with blazing eyes. And I knew that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desire and his home; that he was weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation, the mere destruction of everything or anything—”

Two drops of rain fell; and for some reason Flambeau started and looked up, as if they had stung him. And the same instant the doctor down by the end of the conservatory began running towards them, calling out something as he ran.

As he came among them like a bombshell the restless Atkinson happened to be taking a turn nearer to the house front; and the doctor clutched him by the collar in a convulsive grip. “Foul play!” he cried; “what have you been doing to him, you dog?”

The priest had sprung erect, and had the voice of steel of a soldier in command.

“No fighting,” he cried coolly; “we are enough to hold anyone we want to. What is the matter, doctor?”

“Things are not right with Quinton,” said the doctor, quite white. “I could just see him through the glass, and I don’t like the way he’s lying. It’s not as I left him, anyhow.”

“Let us go in to him,” said Father Brown shortly. “You can leave Mr. Atkinson alone. I have had him in sight since we heard Quinton’s voice.”

“I will stop here and watch him,” said Flambeau hurriedly. “You go in and see.”

The doctor and the priest flew to the study door, unlocked it, and fell into the room. In doing so they nearly fell over the large mahogany table in the centre at which the poet usually wrote; for the place was lit only by a small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of this table lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on purpose. The doctor snatched it up, glanced at it, handed it to Father Brown, and crying, “Good God, look at that!” plunged toward the glass room beyond, where the terrible tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson memory of the sunset.

Father Brown read the words three times before he put down the paper. The words were: “I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!” They were in the quite inimitable, not to say illegible, handwriting of Leonard Quinton.

Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, strode towards the conservatory, only to meet his medical friend coming back with a face of assurance and collapse. “He’s done it,” said Harris.

They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty of cactus and azalea and found Leonard Quinton, poet and romancer, with his head hanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground. Into his left side was thrust the queer dagger that they had picked up in the garden, and his limp hand still rested on the hilt.

Outside the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge, and garden and glass roof were darkened with driving rain. Father Brown seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it close to his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held it up against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared at them for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.

Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown’s voice said out of the dark: “Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape.”

“What do you mean?” asked Doctor Harris, with a frowning stare.

“It isn’t square,” answered Brown. “It has a sort of edge snipped off at the corner. What does it mean?”

“How the deuce should I know?” growled the doctor. “Shall we move this poor chap, do you think? He’s quite dead.”

“No,” answered the priest; “we must leave him as he lies and send for the police.” But he was still scrutinising the paper.

As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and picked up a small pair of nail scissors. “Ah,” he said, with a sort of relief, “this is what he did it with. But yet—” And he knitted his brows.

“Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper,” said the doctor emphatically. “It was a fad of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut all his paper like that,” as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper still unused on another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and held up a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.

“Quite so,” he said. “And here I see the corners that were snipped off.” And to the indignation of his colleague he began to count them.

“That’s all right,” he said, with an apologetic smile. “Twenty-three sheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off them. And as I see you are impatient we will rejoin the others.”

“Who is to tell his wife?” asked Dr. Harris. “Will you go and tell her now, while I send a servant for the police?”

“As you will,” said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to the hall door.

Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed nothing less than his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of the steps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his billycock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau’s almost paternal custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch’s abdication.

Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, when the priest patted him easily on the shoulder.

“Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend,” he said. “Beg a mutual pardon and say ‘Good night.’ We need not detain him any longer.” Then, as Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick and went towards the garden gate, Father Brown said in a more serious voice: “Where is that Indian?”

They all three (for the doctor had joined them) turned involuntarily towards the dim grassy bank amid the tossing trees purple with twilight, where they had last seen the brown man swaying in his strange prayers. The Indian was gone.

“Confound him,” cried the doctor, stamping furiously. “Now I know that it was that nigger that did it.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic,” said Father Brown quietly.

“No more I did,” said the doctor, rolling his eyes. “I only know that I loathed that yellow devil when I thought he was a sham wizard. And I shall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one.”

“Well, his having escaped is nothing,” said Flambeau. “For we could have proved nothing and done nothing against him. One hardly goes to the parish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft or auto-suggestion.”

Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went to break the news to the wife of the dead man.

When he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic, but what passed between them in that interview was never known, even when all was known.

Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see his friend reappear so soon at his elbow; but Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor apart. “You have sent for the police, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Harris. “They ought to be here in ten minutes.”

“Will you do me a favour?” said the priest quietly. “The truth is, I make a collection of these curious stories, which often contain, as in the case of our Hindoo friend, elements which can hardly be put into a police report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for my private use. Yours is a clever trade,” he said, looking the doctor gravely and steadily in the face. “I sometimes think that you know some details of this matter which you have not thought fit to mention. Mine is a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat anything you write for me in strict confidence. But write the whole.”

The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little on one side, looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said: “All right,” and went into the study, closing the door behind him.

“Flambeau,” said Father Brown, “there is a long seat there under the veranda, where we can smoke out of the rain. You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”

They established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; Father Brown, against his common habit, accepted a good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence, while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of the veranda.

“My friend,” he said at length, “this is a very queer case. A very queer case.”

“I should think it was,” said Flambeau, with something like a shudder.

“You call it queer, and I call it queer,” said the other, “and yet we mean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mystery in the sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil) instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now, you mean that this business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it is witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of men. But for the present my point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think, then it is marvellous; but it is not mysterious—that is, it is not complicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple. Now, the manner of this business has been the reverse of simple.”

The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder. Father Brown let fall the ash of his cigar and went on:

“There has been in this incident,” he said, “a twisted, ugly, complex quality that does not belong to the straight bolts either of heaven or hell. As one knows the crooked track of a snail, I know the crooked track of a man.”

The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut up again, and the priest went on:

“Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that piece of paper. It was crookeder than the dagger that killed him.”

“You mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his suicide,” said Flambeau.

“I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’” answered Father Brown. “The shape of that paper, my friend, was the wrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I have seen it in this wicked world.”

“It only had a corner snipped off,” said Flambeau, “and I understand that all Quinton’s paper was cut that way.”

“It was a very odd way,” said the other, “and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton—God receive his soul!—was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist, with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can’t prove what I say; I can’t prove anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he could never have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he had wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or binding up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the scissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong shape. Like this. Don’t you remember?”

And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making irregular squares so rapidly that Flambeau really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the darkness— hieroglyphics such as his friend had spoken of, which are undecipherable, yet can have no good meaning.

“But,” said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again and leaned back, staring at the roof, “suppose somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper, make Quinton commit suicide?”

Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took his cigar out of his mouth and said: “Quinton never did commit suicide.”

Flambeau stared at him. “Why, confound it all,” he cried, “then why did he confess to suicide?”

The priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, looked at the ground, and said, in a low, distinct voice: “He never did confess to suicide.”

Flambeau laid his cigar down. “You mean,” he said, “that the writing was forged?”

“No,” said Father Brown. “Quinton wrote it all right.”

“Well, there you are,” said the aggravated Flambeau; “Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’ with his own hand on a plain piece of paper.”

“Of the wrong shape,” said the priest calmly.

“Oh, the shape be damned!” cried Flambeau. “What has the shape to do with it?”

“There were twenty-three snipped papers,” resumed Brown unmoved, “and only twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had been destroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggest anything to you?”

A light dawned on Flambeau’s face, and he said: “There was something else written by Quinton, some other words. ‘They will tell you I die by my own hand,’ or ‘Do not believe that—’”

“Hotter, as the children say,” said his friend. “But the piece was hardly half an inch across; there was no room for one word, let alone five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man with hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him?”

“I can think of nothing,” said Flambeau at last.

“What about quotation marks?” said the priest, and flung his cigar far into the darkness like a shooting star.

All words had left the other man’s mouth, and Father Brown said, like one going back to fundamentals:

“Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism. He—”

At this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and the doctor came out with his hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest’s hands.

“That’s the document you wanted,” he said, “and I must be getting home. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope and read the following words:

DEAR FATHER BROWN,—Vicisti Galilee. Otherwise, damn your

eyes, which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that

there is something in all that stuff of yours after all?

I am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and

in all natural functions and instincts, whether men called them

moral or immoral. Long before I became a doctor, when I was a

schoolboy keeping mice and spiders, I believed that to be a good

animal is the best thing in the world. But just now I am shaken;

I have believed in Nature; but it seems as if Nature could betray

a man. Can there be anything in your bosh? I am really getting

morbid.

I loved Quinton’s wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature

told me to, and it’s love that makes the world go round. I also

thought quite sincerely that she would be happier with a clean

animal like me than with that tormenting little lunatic. What was

there wrong in that? I was only facing facts, like a man of

science. She would have been happier.

According to my own creed I was quite free to kill Quinton,

which was the best thing for everybody, even himself. But as a

healthy animal I had no notion of killing myself. I resolved,

therefore, that I would never do it until I saw a chance that

would leave me scot free. I saw that chance this morning.

I have been three times, all told, into Quinton’s study today.

The first time I went in he would talk about nothing but the weird

tale, called “The Cure of a Saint,” which he was writing, which

was all about how some Indian hermit made an English colonel kill

himself by thinking about him. He showed me the last sheets, and

even read me the last paragraph, which was something like this:

“The conqueror of the Punjab, a mere yellow skeleton, but still

gigantic, managed to lift himself on his elbow and gasp in his

nephew’s ear: ‘I die by my own hand, yet I die murdered!’” It so

happened by one chance out of a hundred, that those last words

were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room,

and went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightful

opportunity.

We walked round the house; and two more things happened in my

favour. You suspected an Indian, and you found a dagger which the

Indian might most probably use. Taking the opportunity to stuff

it in my pocket I went back to Quinton’s study, locked the door,

and gave him his sleeping draught. He was against answering

Atkinson at all, but I urged him to call out and quiet the fellow,

because I wanted a clear proof that Quinton was alive when I left

the room for the second time. Quinton lay down in the conservatory, and I came through the study. I am a quick man with my hands, and

in a minute and a half I had done what I wanted to do. I had

emptied all the first part of Quinton’s romance into the fireplace,

where it burnt to ashes. Then I saw that the quotation marks

wouldn’t do, so I snipped them off, and to make it seem likelier,

snipped the whole quire to match. Then I came out with the

knowledge that Quinton’s confession of suicide lay on the front

table, while Quinton lay alive but asleep in the conservatory

beyond.

The last act was a desperate one; you can guess it: I pretended

to have seen Quinton dead and rushed to his room. I delayed you

with the paper, and, being a quick man with my hands, killed

Quinton while you were looking at his confession of suicide. He

was half-asleep, being drugged, and I put his own hand on the

knife and drove it into his body. The knife was of so queer a

shape that no one but an operator could have calculated the angle

that would reach his heart. I wonder if you noticed this.

When I had done it, the extraordinary thing happened. Nature

deserted me. I felt ill. I felt just as if I had done something

wrong. I think my brain is breaking up; I feel some sort of

desperate pleasure in thinking I have told the thing to somebody;

that I shall not have to be alone with it if I marry and have

children. What is the matter with me? … Madness … or can one

have remorse, just as if one were in Byron’s poems! I cannot

write any more.

James Erskine Harris.

Father Brown carefully folded up the letter, and put it in his breast pocket just as there came a loud peal at the gate bell, and the wet waterproofs of several policemen gleamed in the road outside.

The Sins of Prince Saradine

When Flambeau took his month’s holiday from his office in Westminster he took it in a small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of its time as a rowing-boat. He took it, moreover, in little rivers in the Eastern counties, rivers so small that the boat looked like a magic boat, sailing on land through meadows and cornfields. The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die. With this light luggage he crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending to reach the Broads at last, but meanwhile delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows, the mirrored mansions or villages, lingering to fish in the pools and corners, and in some sense hugging the shore.

Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he had been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he had often received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or even love; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of a visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back of the card was written in French and in green ink: “If you ever retire and become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have met all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French history.” On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion, “Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk.”

He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining that he had been a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In his youth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; the escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to men’s minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrity and settled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprise visit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether he should find the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small and forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he expected.

They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses and short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light. To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright. Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods. Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed to be giant daisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them of the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficed to sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make them gaze upwards at the grass. “By Jove!” said Flambeau, “it’s like being in fairyland.”

Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare, what was the matter.

“The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads,” answered the priest, “knew more about fairies than you do. It isn’t only nice things that happen in fairyland.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Flambeau. “Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood.”

“All right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous.”

They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of the sky and the pale gold of the moon grew fainter and fainter, amd faded into that vast colourless cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn. When the first faint stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizon from end to end they were broken by the black bulk of a town or village which sat on the river just ahead of them. It was already an easy twilight, in which all things were visible, when they came under the hanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet. The houses, with their long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at the river, like huge grey and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawn had already turned to working daylight before they saw any living creature on the wharves and bridges of that silent town. Eventually they saw a very placid and prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around the low arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By an impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island or Reed House. The prosperous man’s smile grew slightly more expansive, and he simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeau went ahead without further speech.

The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy and silent reaches of river; but before the search had become monotonous they had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silence of a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrested them. For in the middle of this wider piece of water, fringed on every side with rushes, lay a long, low islet, along which ran a long, low house or bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane. The upstanding rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow, the sloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwise the long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morning breeze rustled the reeds round the island and sang in the strange ribbed house as in a giant pan-pipe.

“By George!” cried Flambeau; “here is the place, after all! Here is Reed Island, if ever there was one. Here is Reed House, if it is anywhere. I believe that fat man with whiskers was a fairy.”

“Perhaps,” remarked Father Brown impartially. “If he was, he was a bad fairy.”

But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore in the rattling reeds, and they stood in the long, quaint islet beside the odd and silent house.

The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the only landing-stage; the main entrance was on the other side, and looked down the long island garden. The visitors approached it, therefore, by a small path running round nearly three sides of the house, close under the low eaves. Through three different windows on three different sides they looked in on the same long, well-lit room, panelled in light wood, with a large number of looking-glasses, and laid out as for an elegant lunch. The front door, when they came round to it at last, was flanked by two turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless— who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. “His Highness may be here any minute,” he said, “and would be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had invited. We have orders always to keep a little cold lunch for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to be offered.”

Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assented gracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable about it, except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows with many long, low oblongs of looking-glass, which gave a singular air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow like lunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph of a very young man in uniform, another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeau whether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly in the negative; it was the prince’s younger brother, Captain Stephen Saradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenly and lose all taste for conversation.

After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs, the guests were introduced to the garden, the library, and the housekeeper—a dark, handsome lady, of no little majesty, and rather like a plutonic Madonna. It appeared that she and the butler were the only survivors of the prince’s original foreign menage the other servants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by the housekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, but she spoke with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt that Anthony was a Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, the butler, also had a faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue and training English, as are many of the most polished men-servants of the cosmopolitan nobility.

Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminous sadness. Hours passed in it like days. The long, well-windowed rooms were full of daylight, but it seemed a dead daylight. And through all other incidental noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or the passing feet of servants, they could hear on all sides of the house the melancholy noise of the river.

“We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place,” said Father Brown, looking out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silver flood. “Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic little man, and in those few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had that knack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances all that in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was naturally uncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been very badly treated. The chief offender seemed to be his highness’s brother, whose name alone would lengthen the old man’s lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer. Captain Stephen was a ne’er-do-weel, apparently, and had drained his benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly from fashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul, the butler, would say, and Paul was obviously a partisan.

The Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brown fancied, somewhat less content. Her tone about her master was faintly acid; though not without a certain awe. Flambeau and his friend were standing in the room of the looking-glasses examining the red sketch of the two boys, when the housekeeper swept in swiftly on some domestic errand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering, glass-panelled place that anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors at once; and Father Brown, without turning round, stopped in the middle of a sentence of family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to the picture, was already saying in a loud voice, “The brothers Saradine, I suppose. They both look innocent enough. It would be hard to say which is the good brother and which the bad.” Then, realising the lady’s presence, he turned the conversation with some triviality, and strolled out into the garden. But Father Brown still gazed steadily at the red crayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at Father Brown.

She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darkly with a curious and painful wonder—as of one doubtful of a stranger’s identity or purpose. Whether the little priest’s coat and creed touched some southern memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knew more than he did, she said to him in a low voice as to a fellow plotter, “He is right enough in one way, your friend. He says it would be hard to pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be hard, it would be mighty hard, to pick out the good one.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Father Brown, and began to move away.

The woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort of savage stoop, like a bull lowering his horns.

“There isn’t a good one,” she hissed. “There was badness enough in the captain taking all that money, but I don’t think there was much goodness in the prince giving it. The captain’s not the only one with something against him.”

A light dawned on the cleric’s averted face, and his mouth formed silently the word “blackmail.” Even as he did so the woman turned an abrupt white face over her shoulder and almost fell. The door had opened soundlessly and the pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. By the weird trick of the reflecting walls, it seemed as if five Pauls had entered by five doors simultaneously.

“His Highness,” he said, “has just arrived.”

In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside the first window, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted stage. An instant later he passed at the second window and the many mirrors repainted in successive frames the same eagle profile and marching figure. He was erect and alert, but his hair was white and his complexion of an odd ivory yellow. He had that short, curved Roman nose which generally goes with long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly masked by moustache and imperial. The moustache was much darker than the beard, giving an effect slightly theatrical, and he was dressed up to the same dashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellow waistcoat and yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked. When he came round to the front door they heard the stiff Paul open it, and heard the new arrival say cheerfully, “Well, you see I have come.” The stiff Mr. Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for a few minutes their conversation could not be heard. Then the butler said, “Everything is at your disposal”; and the glove-flapping Prince Saradine came gaily into the room to greet them. They beheld once more that spectral scene— five princes entering a room with five doors.

The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the table and offered his hand quite cordially.

“Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau,” he said. “Knowing you very well by reputation, if that’s not an indiscreet remark.”

“Not at all,” answered Flambeau, laughing. “I am not sensitive. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.”

The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the retort had any personal point; then he laughed also and offered chairs to everyone, including himself.

“Pleasant little place, this, I think,” he said with a detached air. “Not much to do, I fear; but the fishing is really good.”

The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare of a baby, was haunted by some fancy that escaped definition. He looked at the grey, carefully curled hair, yellow white visage, and slim, somewhat foppish figure. These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononce, like the outfit of a figure behind the footlights. The nameless interest lay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown was tormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. The man looked like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he suddenly remembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychological effect of that multiplication of human masks.

Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between his guests with great gaiety and tact. Finding the detective of a sporting turn and eager to employ his holiday, he guided Flambeau and Flambeau’s boat down to the best fishing spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoe in twenty minutes to join Father Brown in the library and plunge equally politely into the priest’s more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that the travels were so disreputable or so amusing.

Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world, Prince Saradine radiated to such sensitive observers as the priest, a certain atmosphere of the restless and even the unreliable. His face was fastidious, but his eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken by drink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to have, his hand on the helm of household affairs. All these were left to the two old servants, especially to the butler, who was plainly the central pillar of the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not so much a butler as a sort of steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and he consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly— rather as if he were the prince’s solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which had half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder. Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain, he could not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretive about Saradine that made the tale by no means incredible.

When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest’s mind again like a little grey cloud. “I wish Flambeau were back,” he muttered.

“Do you believe in doom?” asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.

“No,” answered his guest. “I believe in Doomsday.”

The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singular manner, his face in shadow against the sunset. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,” answered Father Brown. “The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.”

The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other’s mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine’s blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, “The wrong person—the wrong person,” many more times than was natural in a social exclamation.

Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors before him he could see the silent door standing open, and the silent Mr. Paul standing in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.

“I thought it better to announce at once,” he said, with the same stiff respectfulness as of an old family lawyer, “a boat rowed by six men has come to the landing-stage, and there’s a gentleman sitting in the stern.”

“A boat!” repeated the prince; “a gentleman?” and he rose to his feet.

There was a startled silence punctuated only by the odd noise of the bird in the sedge; and then, before anyone could speak again, a new face and figure passed in profile round the three sunlit windows, as the prince had passed an hour or two before. But except for the accident that both outlines were aquiline, they had little in common. Instead of the new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of antiquated or foreign shape; under it was a young and very solemn face, clean shaven, blue about its resolute chin, and carrying a faint suggestion of the young Napoleon. The association was assisted by something old and odd about the whole get-up, as of a man who had never troubled to change the fashions of his fathers. He had a shabby blue frock coat, a red, soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of coarse white trousers common among the early Victorians, but strangely incongruous today. From all this old clothes-shop his olive face stood out strangely young and monstrously sincere.

“The deuce!” said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his white hat he went to the front door himself, flinging it open on the sunset garden.

By that time the new-comer and his followers were drawn up on the lawn like a small stage army. The six boatmen had pulled the boat well up on shore, and were guarding it almost menacingly, holding their oars erect like spears. They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. But one of them stood forward beside the olive-faced young man in the red waistcoat, and carried a large black case of unfamiliar form.

“Your name,” said the young man, “is Saradine?”

Saradine assented rather negligently.

The new-comer had dull, dog-like brown eyes, as different as possible from the restless and glittering grey eyes of the prince. But once again Father Brown was tortured with a sense of having seen somewhere a replica of the face; and once again he remembered the repetitions of the glass-panelled room, and put down the coincidence to that. “Confound this crystal palace!” he muttered. “One sees everything too many times. It’s like a dream.”

“If you are Prince Saradine,” said the young man, “I may tell you that my name is Antonelli.”

“Antonelli,” repeated the prince languidly. “Somehow I remember the name.”

“Permit me to present myself,” said the young Italian.

With his left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned top-hat; with his right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across the face that the white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blue flower-pots rocked upon its pedestal.

The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward; he sprang at his enemy’s throat and almost bore him backwards to the grass. But his enemy extricated himself with a singularly inappropriate air of hurried politeness.

“That is all right,” he said, panting and in halting English. “I have insulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco, open the case.”

The man beside him with the earrings and the big black case proceeded to unlock it. He took out of it two long Italian rapiers, with splendid steel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn. The strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow and vindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like two crosses in a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers behind, gave it all an odd appearance of being some barbaric court of justice. But everything else was unchanged, so sudden had been the interruption. The sunset gold still glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as announcing some small but dreadful destiny.

“Prince Saradine,” said the man called Antonelli, “when I was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father was the more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to kill you. You and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass in Sicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could imitate you if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you all over the world, and you have always fled from me. But this is the end of the world—and of you. I have you now, and I give you the chance you never gave my father. Choose one of those swords.”

Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to hesitate a moment, but his ears were still singing with the blow, and he sprang forward and snatched at one of the hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward, striving to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presence made matters worse. Saradine was a French freemason and a fierce atheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for the other man neither priest nor layman moved him at all. This young man with the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was something far sterner than a puritan—a pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of the earth; a man of the stone age— a man of stone.

One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ran back into the house. He found, however, that all the under servants had been given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only the sombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the moment she turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the riddles of the house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the heavy brown eyes of Mrs. Anthony; and in a flash he saw half the story.

“Your son is outside,” he said without wasting words; “either he or the prince will be killed. Where is Mr. Paul?”

“He is at the landing-stage,” said the woman faintly. “He is—he is—signalling for help.”

“Mrs. Anthony,” said Father Brown seriously, “there is no time for nonsense. My friend has his boat down the river fishing. Your son’s boat is guarded by your son’s men. There is only this one canoe; what is Mr. Paul doing with it?”

“Santa Maria! I do not know,” she said; and swooned all her length on the matted floor.

Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her, shouted for help, and then rushed down to the landing-stage of the little island. But the canoe was already in mid-stream, and old Paul was pulling and pushing it up the river with an energy incredible at his years.

“I will save my master,” he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally. “I will save him yet!”

Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggled up-stream and pray that the old man might waken the little town in time.

“A duel is bad enough,” he muttered, rubbing up his rough dust-coloured hair, “but there’s something wrong about this duel, even as a duel. I feel it in my bones. But what can it be?”

As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, he heard from the other end of the island garden a small but unmistakable sound—the cold concussion of steel. He turned his head.

Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip of turf beyond the last rank of roses, the duellists had already crossed swords. Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant as they were, every detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats, but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red waistcoat and white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like the colours of the dancing clockwork dolls. The two swords sparkled from point to pommel like two diamond pins. There was something frightful in the two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like two butterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.

Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like a wheel. But when he came to the field of combat he found he was born too late and too early—too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of the grim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate any disastrous issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched, the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, the Sicilian using his with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches can ever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled and sparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fight was balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest; by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in the Pacific.

Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to a rattle, the prince’s arms flew up, and the point shot out behind between his shoulder-blades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almost like one throwing the half of a boy’s cart-wheel. The sword flew from his hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant river. And he himself sank with so earth-shaking a subsidence that he broke a big rose-tree with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of red earth— like the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had made blood-offering to the ghost of his father.

The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but only to make too sure that it was a corpse. As he was still trying some last hopeless tests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, and saw a police boat shoot up to the landing-stage, with constables and other important people, including the excited Paul. The little priest rose with a distinctly dubious grimace.

“Now, why on earth,” he muttered, “why on earth couldn’t he have come before?”

Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an invasion of townsfolk and police, and the latter had put their hands on the victorious duellist, ritually reminding him that anything he said might be used against him.

“I shall not say anything,” said the monomaniac, with a wonderful and peaceful face. “I shall never say anything more. I am very happy, and I only want to be hanged.”

Then he shut his mouth as they led him away, and it is the strange but certain truth that he never opened it again in this world, except to say “Guilty” at his trial.

Father Brown had stared at the suddenly crowded garden, the arrest of the man of blood, the carrying away of the corpse after its examination by the doctor, rather as one watches the break-up of some ugly dream; he was motionless, like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and address as a witness, but declined their offer of a boat to the shore, and remained alone in the island garden, gazing at the broken rose bush and the whole green theatre of that swift and inexplicable tragedy. The light died along the river; mist rose in the marshy banks; a few belated birds flitted fitfully across.

Stuck stubbornly in his sub-consciousness (which was an unusually lively one) was an unspeakable certainty that there was something still unexplained. This sense that had clung to him all day could not be fully explained by his fancy about “looking-glass land.” Somehow he had not seen the real story, but some game or masque. And yet people do not get hanged or run through the body for the sake of a charade.

As he sat on the steps of the landing-stage ruminating he grew conscious of the tall, dark streak of a sail coming silently down the shining river, and sprang to his feet with such a backrush of feeling that he almost wept.

“Flambeau!” he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again and again, much to the astonishment of that sportsman, as he came on shore with his fishing tackle. “Flambeau,” he said, “so you’re not killed?”

“Killed!” repeated the angler in great astonishment. “And why should I be killed?”

“Oh, because nearly everybody else is,” said his companion rather wildly. “Saradine got murdered, and Antonelli wants to be hanged, and his mother’s fainted, and I, for one, don’t know whether I’m in this world or the next. But, thank God, you’re in the same one.” And he took the bewildered Flambeau’s arm.

As they turned from the landing-stage they came under the eaves of the low bamboo house, and looked in through one of the windows, as they had done on their first arrival. They beheld a lamp-lit interior well calculated to arrest their eyes. The table in the long dining-room had been laid for dinner when Saradine’s destroyer had fallen like a stormbolt on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress, for Mrs. Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the table, while at the head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo, eating and drinking of the best, his bleared, bluish eyes standing queerly out of his face, his gaunt countenance inscrutable, but by no means devoid of satisfaction.

With a gesture of powerful impatience, Flambeau rattled at the window, wrenched it open, and put an indignant head into the lamp-lit room.

“Well,” he cried. “I can understand you may need some refreshment, but really to steal your master’s dinner while he lies murdered in the garden—”

“I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant life,” replied the strange old gentleman placidly; “this dinner is one of the few things I have not stolen. This dinner and this house and garden happen to belong to me.”

A thought flashed across Flambeau’s face. “You mean to say,” he began, “that the will of Prince Saradine—”

“I am Prince Saradine,” said the old man, munching a salted almond.

Father Brown, who was looking at the birds outside, jumped as if he were shot, and put in at the window a pale face like a turnip.

“You are what?” he repeated in a shrill voice.

“Paul, Prince Saradine, A vos ordres,” said the venerable person politely, lifting a glass of sherry. “I live here very quietly, being a domestic kind of fellow; and for the sake of modesty I am called Mr. Paul, to distinguish me from my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. He died, I hear, recently—in the garden. Of course, it is not my fault if enemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to the regrettable irregularity of his life. He was not a domestic character.”

He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the opposite wall just above the bowed and sombre head of the woman. They saw plainly the family likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his old shoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, but his face did not alter.

“My God!” cried Flambeau after a pause, “he’s laughing!”

“Come away,” said Father Brown, who was quite white. “Come away from this house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again.”

Night had sunk on rushes and river by the time they had pushed off from the island, and they went down-stream in the dark, warming themselves with two big cigars that glowed like crimson ships’ lanterns. Father Brown took his cigar out of his mouth and said:

“I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it’s a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than one.”

“I do not follow that,” answered Flambeau.

“Oh, it’s really simple,” rejoined his friend. “Simple, though anything but innocent. Both the Saradines were scamps, but the prince, the elder, was the sort of scamp that gets to the top, and the younger, the captain, was the sort that sinks to the bottom. This squalid officer fell from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold upon his brother, the prince. Obviously it was for no light matter, for Prince Paul Saradine was frankly ‘fast,’ and had no reputation to lose as to the mere sins of society. In plain fact, it was a hanging matter, and Stephen literally had a rope round his brother’s neck. He had somehow discovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could prove that Paul murdered old Antonelli in the mountains. The captain raked in the hush money heavily for ten years, until even the prince’s splendid fortune began to look a little foolish.

“But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his blood-sucking brother. He knew that the son of Antonelli, a mere child at the time of the murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived only to avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen’s legal proof), but with the old weapons of vendetta. The boy had practised arms with a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough to use them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel. The fact is that he began to flee for his life, passing from place to place like a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon his trail. That was Prince Paul’s position, and by no means a pretty one. The more money he spent on eluding Antonelli the less he had to silence Stephen. The more he gave to silence Stephen the less chance there was of finally escaping Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself a great man—a genius like Napoleon.

“Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered suddenly to both of them. He gave way like a Japanese wrestler, and his foes fell prostrate before him. He gave up the race round the world, and he gave up his address to young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to his brother. He sent Stephen money enough for smart clothes and easy travel, with a letter saying roughly: ‘This is all I have left. You have cleaned me out. I still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and a cellar, and if you want more from me you must take that. Come and take possession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friend or agent or anything.’ He knew that the Sicilian had never seen the Saradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were somewhat alike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then he shaved his own face and waited. The trap worked. The unhappy captain, in his new clothes, entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian’s sword.

“There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues of mankind. He took it for granted that the Italian’s blow, when it came, would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so die without speech. It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli’s chivalry proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations. It was then that I found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes. He was fleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn who he was.

“But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer and he knew the fanatic. It was quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing a part, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal’s trust in luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli, the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales of his family. Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight was over. Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw his two vanquished enemies taken away forever, and sat down smiling to his dinner.”

“Laughing, God help us!” said Flambeau with a strong shudder. “Do they get such ideas from Satan?”

“He got that idea from you,” answered the priest.

“God forbid!” ejaculated Flambeau. “From me! What do you mean!”

The priest pulled a visiting-card from his pocket and held it up in the faint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled with green ink.

“Don’t you remember his original invitation to you?” he asked, “and the compliment to your criminal exploit? ‘That trick of yours,’ he says, ‘of getting one detective to arrest the other’? He has just copied your trick. With an enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of the way and let them collide and kill each other.”

Flambeau tore Prince Saradine’s card from the priest’s hands and rent it savagely in small pieces.

“There’s the last of that old skull and crossbones,” he said as he scattered the pieces upon the dark and disappearing waves of the stream; “but I should think it would poison the fishes.”

The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened; a faint and vibrant colour as of morning changed the sky, and the moon behind the grasses grew paler. They drifted in silence.

“Father,” said Flambeau suddenly, “do you think it was all a dream?”

The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward down the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.

The Hammer of God

The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steep that the tall spire of its church seemed only like the peak of a small mountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red with fires and always littered with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite to this, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was “The Blue Boar,” the only inn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leaden and silver daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke; though one was beginning the day and the other finishing it. The Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to some austere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon. Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sitting in evening dress on the bench outside “The Blue Boar,” drinking what the philosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass on Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. The colonel was not particular.

The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really dating from the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high in chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had been Mohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria. But like more than one of the really ancient houses, they had rotted in the last two centuries into mere drunkards and dandy degenerates, till there had even come a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human about the colonel’s wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his face. Over his evening clothes he wore a curious pale yellow coat that looked more like a very light dressing gown than an overcoat, and on the back of his head was stuck an extraordinary broad-brimmed hat of a bright green colour, evidently some oriental curiosity caught up at random. He was proud of appearing in such incongruous attires—proud of the fact that he always made them look congruous.

His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the elegance, but he was buttoned up to the chin in black, and his face was clean-shaven, cultivated, and a little nervous. He seemed to live for nothing but his religion; but there were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who was a Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic architecture rather than of God, and that his haunting of the church like a ghost was only another and purer turn of the almost morbid thirst for beauty which sent his brother raging after women and wine. This charge was doubtful, while the man’s practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was mostly an ignorant misunderstanding of the love of solitude and secret prayer, and was founded on his being often found kneeling, not before the altar, but in peculiar places, in the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry. He was at the moment about to enter the church through the yard of the smithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he saw his brother’s cavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On the hypothesis that the colonel was interested in the church he did not waste any speculations. There only remained the blacksmith’s shop, and though the blacksmith was a Puritan and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some scandals about a beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He flung a suspicious look across the shed, and the colonel stood up laughing to speak to him.

“Good morning, Wilfred,” he said. “Like a good landlord I am watching sleeplessly over my people. I am going to call on the blacksmith.”

Wilfred looked at the ground, and said: “The blacksmith is out. He is over at Greenford.”

“I know,” answered the other with silent laughter; “that is why I am calling on him.”

“Norman,” said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in the road, “are you ever afraid of thunderbolts?”

“What do you mean?” asked the colonel. “Is your hobby meteorology?”

“I mean,” said Wilfred, without looking up, “do you ever think that God might strike you in the street?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the colonel; “I see your hobby is folk-lore.”

“I know your hobby is blasphemy,” retorted the religious man, stung in the one live place of his nature. “But if you do not fear God, you have good reason to fear man.”

The elder raised his eyebrows politely. “Fear man?” he said.

“Barnes the blacksmith is the biggest and strongest man for forty miles round,” said the clergyman sternly. “I know you are no coward or weakling, but he could throw you over the wall.”

This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by mouth and nostril darkened and deepened. For a moment he stood with the heavy sneer on his face. But in an instant Colonel Bohun had recovered his own cruel good humour and laughed, showing two dog-like front teeth under his yellow moustache. “In that case, my dear Wilfred,” he said quite carelessly, “it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come out partially in armour.”

And he took off the queer round hat covered with green, showing that it was lined within with steel. Wilfred recognised it indeed as a light Japanese or Chinese helmet torn down from a trophy that hung in the old family hall.

“It was the first hat to hand,” explained his brother airily; “always the nearest hat—and the nearest woman.”

“The blacksmith is away at Greenford,” said Wilfred quietly; “the time of his return is unsettled.”

And with that he turned and went into the church with bowed head, crossing himself like one who wishes to be quit of an unclean spirit. He was anxious to forget such grossness in the cool twilight of his tall Gothic cloisters; but on that morning it was fated that his still round of religious exercises should be everywhere arrested by small shocks. As he entered the church, hitherto always empty at that hour, a kneeling figure rose hastily to its feet and came towards the full daylight of the doorway. When the curate saw it he stood still with surprise. For the early worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew of the blacksmith, one who neither would nor could care for the church or for anything else. He was always called “Mad Joe,” and seemed to have no other name; he was a dark, strong, slouching lad, with a heavy white face, dark straight hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed the priest, his moon-calf countenance gave no hint of what he had been doing or thinking of. He had never been known to pray before. What sort of prayers was he saying now? Extraordinary prayers surely.

Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious appearance of trying to hit it.

This ugly sunlit picture of the stupidity and cruelty of the earth sent the ascetic finally to his prayers for purification and new thoughts. He went up to a pew in the gallery, which brought him under a coloured window which he loved and always quieted his spirit; a blue window with an angel carrying lilies. There he began to think less about the half-wit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He began to think less of his evil brother, pacing like a lean lion in his horrible hunger. He sank deeper and deeper into those cold and sweet colours of silver blossoms and sapphire sky.

In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by Gibbs, the village cobbler, who had been sent for him in some haste. He got to his feet with promptitude, for he knew that no small matter would have brought Gibbs into such a place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages, an atheist, and his appearance in church was a shade more extraordinary than Mad Joe’s. It was a morning of theological enigmas.

“What is it?” asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but putting out a trembling hand for his hat.

The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was quite startlingly respectful, and even, as it were, huskily sympathetic.

“You must excuse me, sir,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “but we didn’t think it right not to let you know at once. I’m afraid a rather dreadful thing has happened, sir. I’m afraid your brother—”

Wilfred clenched his frail hands. “What devilry has he done now?” he cried in voluntary passion.

“Why, sir,” said the cobbler, coughing, “I’m afraid he’s done nothing, and won’t do anything. I’m afraid he’s done for. You had really better come down, sir.”

The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding stair which brought them out at an entrance rather higher than the street. Bohun saw the tragedy in one glance, flat underneath him like a plan. In the yard of the smithy were standing five or six men mostly in black, one in an inspector’s uniform. They included the doctor, the Presbyterian minister, and the priest from the Roman Catholic chapel, to which the blacksmith’s wife belonged. The latter was speaking to her, indeed, very rapidly, in an undertone, as she, a magnificent woman with red-gold hair, was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups, and just clear of the main heap of hammers, lay a man in evening dress, spread-eagled and flat on his face. From the height above Wilfred could have sworn to every item of his costume and appearance, down to the Bohun rings upon his fingers; but the skull was only a hideous splash, like a star of blackness and blood.

Wilfred Bohun gave but one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard. The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. He could only stammer out: “My brother is dead. What does it mean? What is this horrible mystery?” There was an unhappy silence; and then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered: “Plenty of horror, sir,” he said; “but not much mystery.”

“What do you mean?” asked Wilfred, with a white face.

“It’s plain enough,” answered Gibbs. “There is only one man for forty miles round that could have struck such a blow as that, and he’s the man that had most reason to.”

“We must not prejudge anything,” put in the doctor, a tall, black-bearded man, rather nervously; “but it is competent for me to corroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about the nature of the blow, sir; it is an incredible blow. Mr. Gibbs says that only one man in this district could have done it. I should have said myself that nobody could have done it.”

A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate. “I can hardly understand,” he said.

“Mr. Bohun,” said the doctor in a low voice, “metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of a giant.”

He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then he added: “The thing has one advantage—that it clears most people of suspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in the country were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infant would be acquitted of stealing the Nelson column.”

“That’s what I say,” repeated the cobbler obstinately; “there’s only one man that could have done it, and he’s the man that would have done it. Where’s Simeon Barnes, the blacksmith?”

“He’s over at Greenford,” faltered the curate.

“More likely over in France,” muttered the cobbler.

“No; he is in neither of those places,” said a small and colourless voice, which came from the little Roman priest who had joined the group. “As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment.”

The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubbly brown hair and a round and stolid face. But if he had been as splendid as Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyone turned round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plain below, along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and with a hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and gigantic man, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He was walking and talking quietly with two other men; and though he was never specially cheerful, he seemed quite at his ease.

“My God!” cried the atheistic cobbler, “and there’s the hammer he did it with.”

“No,” said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a sandy moustache, speaking for the first time. “There’s the hammer he did it with over there by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as they are.”

All glanced round and the short priest went across and looked down in silence at the tool where it lay. It was one of the smallest and the lightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among the rest; but on the iron edge of it were blood and yellow hair.

After a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there was a new note in his dull voice. “Mr. Gibbs was hardly right,” he said, “in saying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so big a man should attempt so big a blow with so little a hammer.”

“Oh, never mind that,” cried Gibbs, in a fever. “What are we to do with Simeon Barnes?”

“Leave him alone,” said the priest quietly. “He is coming here of himself. I know those two men with him. They are very good fellows from Greenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel.”

Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church, and strode into his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and the hammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrable propriety, immediately went up to him.

“I won’t ask you, Mr. Barnes,” he said, “whether you know anything about what has happened here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don’t know, and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the form of arresting you in the King’s name for the murder of Colonel Norman Bohun.”

“You are not bound to say anything,” said the cobbler in officious excitement. “They’ve got to prove everything. They haven’t proved yet that it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that.”

“That won’t wash,” said the doctor aside to the priest. “That’s out of the detective stories. I was the colonel’s medical man, and I knew his body better than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. The second and third fingers were the same length. Oh, that’s the colonel right enough.”

As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the motionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.

“Is Colonel Bohun dead?” said the smith quite calmly. “Then he’s damned.”

“Don’t say anything! Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a fanatic.

“It’s well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world’s law favours you,” he said; “but God guards His own in His pocket, as you shall see this day.”

Then he pointed to the colonel and said: “When did this dog die in his sins?”

“Moderate your language,” said the doctor.

“Moderate the Bible’s language, and I’ll moderate mine. When did he die?”

“I saw him alive at six o’clock this morning,” stammered Wilfred Bohun.

“God is good,” said the smith. “Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightest objection to being arrested. It is you who may object to arresting me. I don’t mind leaving the court without a stain on my character. You do mind perhaps leaving the court with a bad set-back in your career.”

The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with a lively eye; as did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, who was still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.

“There are two men standing outside this shop,” went on the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity, “good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till daybreak and long after in the committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits all night, we save souls so fast. In Greenford itself twenty people could swear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector, I would let you walk on to your downfall. But as a Christian man I feel bound to give you your chance, and ask you whether you will hear my alibi now or in court.”

The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and said, “Of course I should be glad to clear you altogether now.”

The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, and returned to his two friends from Greenford, who were indeed friends of nearly everyone present. Each of them said a few words which no one ever thought of disbelieving. When they had spoken, the innocence of Simeon stood up as solid as the great church above them.

One of those silences struck the group which are more strange and insufferable than any speech. Madly, in order to make conversation, the curate said to the Catholic priest:

“You seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown.”

“Yes, I am,” said Father Brown; “why is it such a small hammer?”

The doctor swung round on him.

“By George, that’s true,” he cried; “who would use a little hammer with ten larger hammers lying about?”

Then he lowered his voice in the curate’s ear and said: “Only the kind of person that can’t lift a large hammer. It is not a question of force or courage between the sexes. It’s a question of lifting power in the shoulders. A bold woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer and never turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle with a heavy one.”

Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotised horror, while Father Brown listened with his head a little on one side, really interested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:

“Why do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates the wife’s lover is the wife’s husband? Nine times out of ten the person who most hates the wife’s lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence or treachery he had shown her—look there!”

He made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench. She had lifted her head at last and the tears were drying on her splendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electric glare that had in it something of idiocy.

The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desire to know; but Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown from the furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.

“You are like so many doctors,” he said; “your mental science is really suggestive. It is your physical science that is utterly impossible. I agree that the woman wants to kill the co-respondent much more than the petitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a small hammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physical impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man’s skull out flat like that.” Then he added reflectively, after a pause: “These people haven’t grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing an iron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at that woman. Look at her arms.”

Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily: “Well, I may be wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stick to the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammer if he could use a big hammer.”

With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to his head and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant they dropped, and he cried: “That was the word I wanted; you have said the word.”

Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: “The words you said were, ‘No man but an idiot would pick up the small hammer.’”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Well?”

“Well,” said the curate, “no man but an idiot did.” The rest stared at him with eyes arrested and riveted, and he went on in a febrile and feminine agitation.

“I am a priest,” he cried unsteadily, “and a priest should be no shedder of blood. I—I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. And I thank God that I see the criminal clearly now—because he is a criminal who cannot be brought to the gallows.”

“You will not denounce him?” inquired the doctor.

“He would not be hanged if I did denounce him,” answered Wilfred with a wild but curiously happy smile. “When I went into the church this morning I found a madman praying there—that poor Joe, who has been wrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with such strange folk it is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down. Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a man. When I last saw poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking him.”

“By Jove!” cried the doctor, “this is talking at last. But how do you explain—”

The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his own glimpse of the truth. “Don’t you see; don’t you see,” he cried feverishly; “that is the only theory that covers both the queer things, that answers both the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer and the big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow, but would not have chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the little hammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman might have done both. As for the little hammer—why, he was mad and might have picked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor, that a maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?”

The doctor drew a deep breath and then said, “By golly, I believe you’ve got it.”

Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily as to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he said with marked respect: “Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded which holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think, therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that it is not the true one.” And with that the old little man walked away and stared again at the hammer.

“That fellow seems to know more than he ought to,” whispered the doctor peevishly to Wilfred. “Those popish priests are deucedly sly.”

“No, no,” said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. “It was the lunatic. It was the lunatic.”

The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from the more official group containing the inspector and the man he had arrested. Now, however, that their own party had broken up, they heard voices from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then looked down again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud voice:

“I hope I’ve convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I’m a strong man, as you say, but I couldn’t have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammer hasn’t got wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges and fields.”

The inspector laughed amicably and said: “No, I think you can be considered out of it, though it’s one of the rummiest coincidences I ever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can in finding a man as big and strong as yourself. By George! you might be useful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at the man?”

“I may have a guess,” said the pale smith, “but it is not at a man.” Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he put his huge hand on her shoulder and said: “Nor a woman either.”

“What do you mean?” asked the inspector jocularly. “You don’t think cows use hammers, do you?”

“I think no thing of flesh held that hammer,” said the blacksmith in a stifled voice; “mortally speaking, I think the man died alone.”

Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burning eyes.

“Do you mean to say, Barnes,” came the sharp voice of the cobbler, “that the hammer jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?”

“Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger,” cried Simeon; “you clergymen who tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. I believe that One who walks invisible in every house defended the honour of mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe the force in that blow was just the force there is in earthquakes, and no force less.”

Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: “I told Norman myself to beware of the thunderbolt.”

“That agent is outside my jurisdiction,” said the inspector with a slight smile.

“You are not outside His,” answered the smith; “see you to it,” and, turning his broad back, he went into the house.

The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy and friendly way with him. “Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,” he said. “May I look inside your church? I hear it’s one of the oldest in England. We take some interest, you know,” he added with a comical grimace, “in old English churches.”

Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. But he nodded rather eagerly, being only too ready to explain the Gothic splendours to someone more likely to be sympathetic than the Presbyterian blacksmith or the atheist cobbler.

“By all means,” he said; “let us go in at this side.” And he led the way into the high side entrance at the top of the flight of steps. Father Brown was mounting the first step to follow him when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to behold the dark, thin figure of the doctor, his face darker yet with suspicion.

“Sir,” said the physician harshly, “you appear to know some secrets in this black business. May I ask if you are going to keep them to yourself?”

“Why, doctor,” answered the priest, smiling quite pleasantly, “there is one very good reason why a man of my trade should keep things to himself when he is not sure of them, and that is that it is so constantly his duty to keep them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you think I have been discourteously reticent with you or anyone, I will go to the extreme limit of my custom. I will give you two very large hints.”

“Well, sir?” said the doctor gloomily.

“First,” said Father Brown quietly, “the thing is quite in your own province. It is a matter of physical science. The blacksmith is mistaken, not perhaps in saying that the blow was divine, but certainly in saying that it came by a miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, except in so far as man is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked and yet half-heroic heart. The force that smashed that skull was a force well known to scientists— one of the most frequently debated of the laws of nature.”

The doctor, who was looking at him with frowning intentness, only said: “And the other hint?”

“The other hint is this,” said the priest. “Do you remember the blacksmith, though he believes in miracles, talking scornfully of the impossible fairy tale that his hammer had wings and flew half a mile across country?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “I remember that.”

“Well,” added Father Brown, with a broad smile, “that fairy tale was the nearest thing to the real truth that has been said today.” And with that he turned his back and stumped up the steps after the curate.

The Reverend Wilfred, who had been waiting for him, pale and impatient, as if this little delay were the last straw for his nerves, led him immediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of the gallery closest to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful window with the angel. The little Latin priest explored and admired everything exhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the time. When in the course of his investigation he found the side exit and the winding stair down which Wilfred had rushed to find his brother dead, Father Brown ran not down but up, with the agility of a monkey, and his clear voice came from an outer platform above.

“Come up here, Mr. Bohun,” he called. “The air will do you good.”

Bohun followed him, and came out on a kind of stone gallery or balcony outside the building, from which one could see the illimitable plain in which their small hill stood, wooded away to the purple horizon and dotted with villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite small beneath them, was the blacksmith’s yard, where the inspector still stood taking notes and the corpse still lay like a smashed fly.

“Might be the map of the world, mightn’t it?” said Father Brown.

“Yes,” said Bohun very gravely, and nodded his head.

Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the Gothic building plunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin to suicide. There is that element of Titan energy in the architecture of the Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seems to be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. This church was hewn out of ancient and silent stone, bearded with old fungoids and stained with the nests of birds. And yet, when they saw it from below, it sprang like a fountain at the stars; and when they saw it, as now, from above, it poured like a cataract into a voiceless pit. For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terrible aspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion, the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great things small and small things great; a topsy-turvydom of stone in the mid-air. Details of stone, enormous by their proximity, were relieved against a pattern of fields and farms, pygmy in their distance. A carved bird or beast at a corner seemed like some vast walking or flying dragon wasting the pastures and villages below. The whole atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if men were upheld in air amid the gyrating wings of colossal genii; and the whole of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed to sit upon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.

“I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on these high places even to pray,” said Father Brown. “Heights were made to be looked at, not to be looked from.”

“Do you mean that one may fall over,” asked Wilfred.

“I mean that one’s soul may fall if one’s body doesn’t,” said the other priest.

“I scarcely understand you,” remarked Bohun indistinctly.

“Look at that blacksmith, for instance,” went on Father Brown calmly; “a good man, but not a Christian—hard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, his Scotch religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags, and learnt to look down on the world more than to look up at heaven. Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

“But he—he didn’t do it,” said Bohun tremulously.

“No,” said the other in an odd voice; “we know he didn’t do it.”

After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain with his pale grey eyes. “I knew a man,” he said, “who began by worshipping with others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonely places to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And once in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turn under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he was God. So that, though he was a good man, he committed a great crime.”

Wilfred’s face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and white as they tightened on the parapet of stone.

“He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down the sinner. He would never have had such a thought if he had been kneeling with other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about like insects. He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent and evident by a bright green hat—a poisonous insect.”

Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no other sound till Father Brown went on.

“This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awful engines of nature; I mean gravitation, that mad and quickening rush by which all earth’s creatures fly back to her heart when released. See, the inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were to toss a pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bullet by the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer— even a small hammer—”

Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had him in a minute by the collar.

“Not by that door,” he said quite gently; “that door leads to hell.”

Bohun staggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightful eyes.

“How do you know all this?” he cried. “Are you a devil?”

“I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and therefore have all devils in my heart. Listen to me,” he said after a short pause. “I know what you did—at least, I can guess the great part of it. When you left your brother you were racked with no unrighteous rage, to the extent even that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill him with his foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttoned coat instead, and rushed into the church. You pray wildly in many places, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and a higher platform still, from which you could see the colonel’s Eastern hat like the back of a green beetle crawling about. Then something snapped in your soul, and you let God’s thunderbolt fall.”

Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voice: “How did you know that his hat looked like a green beetle?”

“Oh, that,” said the other with the shadow of a smile, “that was common sense. But hear me further. I say I know all this; but no one else shall know it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I will seal this with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are many reasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to you because you have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not help to fix the crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, when that was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile because you knew that he could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my business to find in assassins. And now come down into the village, and go your own way as free as the wind; for I have said my last word.”

They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out into the sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun carefully unlatched the wooden gate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: “I wish to give myself up; I have killed my brother.”

The Eye of Apollo

That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and more from its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall and the other very short; they might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clerical dress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the short man was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell deathbed to see the new offices of his friend.

The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and American also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones and lifts. But it was barely finished and still understaffed; only three tenants had moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also was the office just below him; the two floors above that and the three floors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new tower of flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a few relics of scaffolding, the one glaring object was erected outside the office just above Flambeau’s. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye, surrounded with rays of gold, and taking up as much room as two or three of the office windows.

“What on earth is that?” asked Father Brown, and stood still. “Oh, a new religion,” said Flambeau, laughing; “one of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any. Rather like Christian Science, I should think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon (I don’t know what his name is, except that it can’t be that) has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he worships the sun.”

“Let him look out,” said Father Brown. “The sun was the cruellest of all the gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?”

“As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs,” answered Flambeau, “that a man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man were really healthy he could stare at the sun.”

“If a man were really healthy,” said Father Brown, “he would not bother to stare at it.”

“Well, that’s all I can tell you about the new religion,” went on Flambeau carelessly. “It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases.”

“Can it cure the one spiritual disease?” asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity.

“And what is the one spiritual disease?” asked Flambeau, smiling.

“Oh, thinking one is quite well,” said his friend.

Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below him than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and new religions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. But humanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking; moreover, the ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The office was kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall and striking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She had eyes of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stiff for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore a business-like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There are thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparent position.

For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth ; she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her masterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business, the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributed in various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work among women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightly prosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leader with a dog-like affection which was somehow more attractive, with its touch of tragedy, than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For Pauline Stacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny its existence.

Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much on the first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall waiting for the lift-boy, who generally conducts strangers to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falcon of a girl had openly refused to endure such official delay. She said sharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent on boys—or men either. Though her flat was only three floors above, she managed in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a great many of her fundamental views in an off-hand manner; they were to the general effect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger against those who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance. Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines, just as she could manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeau opening the lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his own apartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of such spit-fire self-dependence.

She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive. Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting business, and found she had just flung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the “sickly medical notions” and the morbid admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She dared her sister to bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. She asked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.

Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain from asking Miss Pauline (with direct French logic) why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if science might help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other.

“That is so different,” said Pauline Stacey, loftily. “Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the force of man—yes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at these great engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high and splendid—that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters the doctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was free-born, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these things because they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in power and courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare at the sun, and so they can’t do it without blinking. But why among the stars should there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and I will open my eyes and stare at him whenever I choose.”

“Your eyes,” said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, “will dazzle the sun.” He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partly because it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: “So she has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his golden eye.” For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon, he had heard of his special notion about sun-gazing.

He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below him was close and increasing. The man who called himself Kalon was a magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiff of Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much better looking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung back like a lion’s. In structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche, but all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. And this despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact that he had an office half-way up a building in Victoria Street; that the clerk (a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room, between him and the corridor; that his name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like the advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away from the man called Kalon the vivid oppression and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence of this quack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loose jacket-suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office he was a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the white vestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau, first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo.

Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus, and plunged into the porch of the tall building without even looking for his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery, stopped and stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper, just as he might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon the Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands, and the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all the way down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middle of it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth; it is substantially certain that he did not see a stunted, round-faced priest who, in the crowd below, looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startling difference between even these two far divided men. Father Brown could not look at anything without blinking; but the priest of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid.

“O sun,” cried the prophet, “O star that art too great to be allowed among the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret spot that is called space. White Father of all white unwearied things, white flames and white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocent than all thy most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into the peace of which—”

A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad news— bad news that was all the worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained still after the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.

At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in the doorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the top of his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his friend Father Brown dipped in insignificantly after him. Even as he ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy god who is the friend of fountains and flowers.

Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round the enclosed space into which the lift commonly descended. But the lift had not descended. Something else had descended; something that ought to have come by a lift.

For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied the existence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it was Pauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not the slightest doubt that she was dead.

He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her; there was so much both to like and dislike. But she had been a person to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbed him with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty face and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness which is all the bitterness of death. In an instant like a bolt from the blue, like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had been dashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was it suicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it murder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder anybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice, habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the last fifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god. When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, he turned his swarthy face and said abruptly:

“Then, if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?”

“Perhaps,” said the other, “we might go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before the police will move.”

Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons, Flambeau dashed up the stairs to the typewriting office, found it utterly empty, and then dashed up to his own. Having entered that, he abruptly returned with a new and white face to his friend.

“Her sister,” he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, “her sister seems to have gone out for a walk.”

Father Brown nodded. “Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sun man,” he said. “If I were you I should just verify that, and then let us all talk it over in your office. No,” he added suddenly, as if remembering something, “shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in their office downstairs.”

Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys, where that impenetrable pastor took a large red-leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see the stairs and landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In about four minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the dead woman— evidently she had been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself, his litany finished, sweeping down the empty stairs in utter magnificence— something in his white robes, beard and parted hair had the look of Dore’s Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third was Flambeau, black browed and somewhat bewildered.

Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with grey, walked straight to her own desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacey was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some time with an odd little smile, and then, without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else.

“Prophet,” he said, presumably addressing Kalon, “I wish you would tell me a lot about your religion.”

“I shall be proud to do it,” said Kalon, inclining his still crowned head, “but I am not sure that I understand.”

“Why, it’s like this,” said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way: “We are taught that if a man has really bad first principles, that must be partly his fault. But, for all that, we can make some difference between a man who insults his quite clear conscience and a man with a conscience more or less clouded with sophistries. Now, do you really think that murder is wrong at all?”

“Is this an accusation?” asked Kalon very quietly.

“No,” answered Brown, equally gently, “it is the speech for the defence.”

In the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apollo slowly rose; and really it was like the rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a round, black blot upon some splendour of Hellas.

“We meet at last, Caiaphas,” said the prophet. “Your church and mine are the only realities on this earth. I adore the sun, and you the darkening of the sun; you are the priest of the dying and I of the living God. Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of your coat and creed. All your church is but a black police; you are only spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether by treachery or torture. You would convict men of crime, I would convict them of innocence. You would convince them of sin, I would convince them of virtue.

“Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away your baseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly could you understand how little I care whether you can convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child’s toy-book to a man once grown up. You said you were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this life that I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but one thing that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say it myself. The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after such manner as your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sterner than you will ever understand. She and I walked another world from yours, and trod palaces of crystal while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love there must soon be hatred; so there you have the first point made for the prosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not grudge it you. Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that this very morning, before she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving me and my new church half a million. Come, where are the handcuffs? Do you suppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be like waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will only be going to her in a headlong car.”

He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flambeau and Joan Stacey stared at him in amazed admiration. Father Brown’s face seemed to express nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the ground with one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sun leaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed:

“In a few words I have put before you the whole case against me— the only possible case against me. In fewer words still I will blow it to pieces, so that not a trace of it remains. As to whether I have committed this crime, the truth is in one sentence: I could not have committed this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor to the ground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into the witness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony of my own rooms above from just before the stroke of noon to a quarter-past—the usual period of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth from Clapham, with no sort of connection with me) will swear that he sat in my outer office all the morning, and that no communication passed through. He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes before the hour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony all that time. No one ever had so complete an alibi; I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you had better put the handcuffs away again. The case is at an end.

“But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in the air, I will tell you all you want to know. I believe I do know how my unhappy friend came by her death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my faith and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannot lock me up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths that certain adepts and illuminati have in history attained the power of levitation—that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air. It is but a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main element in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious temper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that if one’s will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There is the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainly not criminal or in any way connected with me. In the short-hand of the police-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall always call it heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling of heaven.”

It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. He still sat looking at the ground, with a painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet’s winged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspecter of men overwhelmed by a prouder and purer spirit of natural liberty and health. At last he said, blinking as if in bodily distress: “Well, if that is so, sir, you need do no more than take the testamentary paper you spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left it.”

“It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think,” said Kalon, with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly. “She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actually saw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room.”

“Was her door open then?” asked the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting.

“Yes,” said Kalon calmly.

“Ah! it has been open ever since,” said the other, and resumed his silent study of the mat.

“There is a paper over here,” said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to her sister’s desk by the doorway, and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a sour smile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, and Flambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.

Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through. But Flambeau took it out of the lady’s hand, and read it with the utmost amazement. It did, indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after the words “I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed” the writing abruptly stopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the priest of the sun.

An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies, had crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.

“What monkey tricks have you been playing here?” he cried. “That’s not all Pauline wrote.”

They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee shrillness in it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from him like a cloak.

“That is the only thing on her desk,” said Joan, and confronted him steadily with the same smile of evil favour.

Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words. There was something shocking about the dropping of his mask; it was like a man’s real face falling off.

“See here!” he cried in broad American, when he was breathless with cursing, “I may be an adventurer, but I guess you’re a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here’s your death explained, and without any levitation. The poor girl is writing a will in my favour; her cursed sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and throws her down before she can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs after all.”

“As you have truly remarked,” replied Joan, with ugly calm, “your clerk is a very respectable young man, who knows the nature of an oath; and he will swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging some typewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell. Mr. Flambeau will tell you that he found me there.”

There was a silence.

“Why, then,” cried Flambeau, “Pauline was alone when she fell, and it was suicide!”

“She was alone when she fell,” said Father Brown, “but it was not suicide.”

“Then how did she die?” asked Flambeau impatiently.

“She was murdered.”

“But she was alone,” objected the detective.

“She was murdered when she was all alone,” answered the priest.

All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same old dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow; his voice was colourless and sad.

“What I want to know,” cried Kalon, with an oath, “is when the police are coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She’s killed her flesh and blood; she’s robbed me of half a million that was just as sacredly mine as—”

“Come, come, prophet,” interrupted Flambeau, with a kind of sneer; “remember that all this world is a cloudland.”

The hierophant of the sun-god made an effort to climb back on his pedestal. “It is not the mere money,” he cried, “though that would equip the cause throughout the world. It is also my beloved one’s wishes. To Pauline all this was holy. In Pauline’s eyes—”

Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale, yet he seemed fired with a hope; his eyes shone.

“That’s it!” he cried in a clear voice. “That’s the way to begin. In Pauline’s eyes—”

The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost mad disorder. “What do you mean? How dare you?” he cried repeatedly.

“In Pauline’s eyes,” repeated the priest, his own shining more and more. “Go on—in God’s name, go on. The foulest crime the fiends ever prompted feels lighter after confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, go on—in Pauline’s eyes—”

“Let me go, you devil!” thundered Kalon, struggling like a giant in bonds. “Who are you, you cursed spy, to weave your spiders’ webs round me, and peep and peer? Let me go.”

“Shall I stop him?” asked Flambeau, bounding towards the exit, for Kalon had already thrown the door wide open.

“No; let him pass,” said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the universe. “Let Cain pass by, for he belongs to God.”

There was a long-drawn silence in the room when he had left it, which was to Flambeau’s fierce wits one long agony of interrogation. Miss Joan Stacey very coolly tidied up the papers on her desk.

“Father,” said Flambeau at last, “it is my duty, not my curiosity only— it is my duty to find out, if I can, who committed the crime.”

“Which crime?” asked Father Brown.

“The one we are dealing with, of course,” replied his impatient friend.

“We are dealing with two crimes,” said Brown, “crimes of very different weight—and by very different criminals.”

Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded to lock up her drawer. Father Brown went on, noticing her as little as she noticed him.

“The two crimes,” he observed, “were committed against the same weakness of the same person, in a struggle for her money. The author of the larger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime; the author of the smaller crime got the money.”

“Oh, don’t go on like a lecturer,” groaned Flambeau; “put it in a few words.”

“I can put it in one word,” answered his friend.

Miss Joan Stacey skewered her business-like black hat on to her head with a business-like black frown before a little mirror, and, as the conversation proceeded, took her handbag and umbrella in an unhurried style, and left the room.

“The truth is one word, and a short one,” said Father Brown. “Pauline Stacey was blind.”

“Blind!” repeated Flambeau, and rose slowly to his whole huge stature.

“She was subject to it by blood,” Brown proceeded. “Her sister would have started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her; but it was her special philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases by yielding to them. She would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispel it by will. So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, or whatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun with the naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new pagans would only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagans knew that mere naked Nature-worship must have a cruel side. They knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind.”

There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even broken voice. “Whether or no that devil deliberately made her blind, there is no doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The very simplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up and down in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl’s landing, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony, and was safely praying before the crowded street when the poor girl, having finished her work, ran gaily out to where lover and lift were to receive her, and stepped—”

“Don’t!” cried Flambeau.

“He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button,” continued the little father, in the colourless voice in which he talked of such horrors. “But that went smash. It went smash because there happened to be another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew the secret about poor Pauline’s sight. There was one thing about that will that I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real witnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at all.

“People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this was specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and memory she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could not tell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sister—all except this fountain pen. This was carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held out for a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal and brilliant murders in human history for nothing.”

Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascending the stairs. He turned and said: “You must have followed everything devilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes.”

Father Brown gave a sort of start.

“Oh! to him,” he said. “No; I had to follow rather close to find out about Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew Kalon was the criminal before I came into the front door.”

“You must be joking!” cried Flambeau.

“I’m quite serious,” answered the priest. “I tell you I knew he had done it, even before I knew what he had done.”

“But why?”

“These pagan stoics,” said Brown reflectively, “always fail by their strength. There came a crash and a scream down the street, and the priest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what it was. But I knew that he was expecting it.”

The Sign of the Broken Sword

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.

It rose abruptly out of the ashen wastes of forest in a sort of hump or shoulder of green turf that looked grey in the starlight. Most of the graves were on a slant, and the path leading up to the church was as steep as a staircase. On the top of the hill, in the one flat and prominent place, was the monument for which the place was famous. It contrasted strangely with the featureless graves all round, for it was the work of one of the greatest sculptors of modern Europe; and yet his fame was at once forgotten in the fame of the man whose image he had made. It showed, by touches of the small silver pencil of starlight, the massive metal figure of a soldier recumbent, the strong hands sealed in an everlasting worship, the great head pillowed upon a gun. The venerable face was bearded, or rather whiskered, in the old, heavy Colonel Newcome fashion. The uniform, though suggested with the few strokes of simplicity, was that of modern war. By his right side lay a sword, of which the tip was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they felt the vast forest land with its one dumpy dome of churchyard and church as a place oddly dumb and neglected. In this freezing darkness of mid-winter one would think he might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in the stillness of those stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, and two dim figures dressed in black climbed up the little path to the tomb.

So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could have been traced about them except that while they both wore black, one man was enormously big, and the other (perhaps by contrast) almost startlingly small. They went up to the great graven tomb of the historic warrior, and stood for a few minutes staring at it. There was no human, perhaps no living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might well have wondered if they were human themselves. In any case, the beginning of their conversation might have seemed strange. After the first silence the small man said to the other:

“Where does a wise man hide a pebble?”

And the tall man answered in a low voice: “On the beach.”

The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: “Where does a wise man hide a leaf?”

And the other answered: “In the forest.”

There was another stillness, and then the tall man resumed: “Do you mean that when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?”

“No, no,” said the little man with a laugh, “we will let bygones be bygones.”

He stamped his cold feet for a second or two, and then said: “I’m not thinking of that at all, but of something else; something rather peculiar. Just strike a match, will you?”

The big man fumbled in his pocket, and soon a scratch and a flare painted gold the whole flat side of the monument. On it was cut in black letters the well-known words which so many Americans had reverently read: “Sacred to the Memory of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, Hero and Martyr, who Always Vanquished his Enemies and Always Spared Them, and Was Treacherously Slain by Them At Last. May God in Whom he Trusted both Reward and Revenge him.”

The match burnt the big man’s fingers, blackened, and dropped. He was about to strike another, but his small companion stopped him. “That’s all right, Flambeau, old man; I saw what I wanted. Or, rather, I didn’t see what I didn’t want. And now we must walk a mile and a half along the road to the next inn, and I will try to tell you all about it. For Heaven knows a man should have a fire and ale when he dares tell such a story.”

They descended the precipitous path, they relatched the rusty gate, and set off at a stamping, ringing walk down the frozen forest road. They had gone a full quarter of a mile before the smaller man spoke again. He said: “Yes; the wise man hides a pebble on the beach. But what does he do if there is no beach? Do you know anything of that great St. Clare trouble?”

“I know nothing about English generals, Father Brown,” answered the large man, laughing, “though a little about English policemen. I only know that you have dragged me a precious long dance to all the shrines of this fellow, whoever he is. One would think he got buried in six different places. I’ve seen a memorial to General St. Clare in Westminster Abbey. I’ve seen a ramping equestrian statue of General St. Clare on the Embankment. I’ve seen a medallion of St. Clare in the street he was born in, and another in the street he lived in; and now you drag me after dark to his coffin in the village churchyard. I am beginning to be a bit tired of his magnificent personality, especially as I don’t in the least know who he was. What are you hunting for in all these crypts and effigies?”

“I am only looking for one word,” said Father Brown. “A word that isn’t there.”

“Well,” asked Flambeau; “are you going to tell me anything about it?”

“I must divide it into two parts,” remarked the priest. “First there is what everybody knows; and then there is what I know. Now, what everybody knows is short and plain enough. It is also entirely wrong.”

“Right you are,” said the big man called Flambeau cheerfully. “Let’s begin at the wrong end. Let’s begin with what everybody knows, which isn’t true.”

“If not wholly untrue, it is at least very inadequate,” continued Brown; “for in point of fact, all that the public knows amounts precisely to this: The public knows that Arthur St. Clare was a great and successful English general. It knows that after splendid yet careful campaigns both in India and Africa he was in command against Brazil when the great Brazilian patriot Olivier issued his ultimatum. It knows that on that occasion St. Clare with a very small force attacked Olivier with a very large one, and was captured after heroic resistance. And it knows that after his capture, and to the abhorrence of the civilised world, St. Clare was hanged on the nearest tree. He was found swinging there after the Brazilians had retired, with his broken sword hung round his neck.”

“And that popular story is untrue?” suggested Flambeau.

“No,” said his friend quietly, “that story is quite true, so far as it goes.”

“Well, I think it goes far enough!” said Flambeau; “but if the popular story is true, what is the mystery?”

They had passed many hundreds of grey and ghostly trees before the little priest answered. Then he bit his finger reflectively and said: “Why, the mystery is a mystery of psychology. Or, rather, it is a mystery of two psychologies. In that Brazilian business two of the most famous men of modern history acted flat against their characters. Mind you, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroes—the old thing, and no mistake; it was like the fight between Hector and Achilles. Now, what would you say to an affair in which Achilles was timid and Hector was treacherous?”

“Go on,” said the large man impatiently as the other bit his finger again.

“Sir Arthur St. Clare was a soldier of the old religious type— the type that saved us during the Mutiny,” continued Brown. “He was always more for duty than for dash; and with all his personal courage was decidedly a prudent commander, particularly indignant at any needless waste of soldiers. Yet in this last battle he attempted something that a baby could see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it was as wild as wind; just as one need not be a strategist to keep out of the way of a motor-bus. Well, that is the first mystery; what had become of the English general’s head? The second riddle is, what had become of the Brazilian general’s heart? President Olivier might be called a visionary or a nuisance; but even his enemies admitted that he was magnanimous to the point of knight errantry. Almost every other prisoner he had ever captured had been set free or even loaded with benefits. Men who had really wronged him came away touched by his simplicity and sweetness. Why the deuce should he diabolically revenge himself only once in his life; and that for the one particular blow that could not have hurt him? Well, there you have it. One of the wisest men in the world acted like an idiot for no reason. One of the best men in the world acted like a fiend for no reason. That’s the long and the short of it; and I leave it to you, my boy.”

“No, you don’t,” said the other with a snort. “I leave it to you; and you jolly well tell me all about it.”

“Well,” resumed Father Brown, “it’s not fair to say that the public impression is just what I’ve said, without adding that two things have happened since. I can’t say they threw a new light; for nobody can make sense of them. But they threw a new kind of darkness; they threw the darkness in new directions. The first was this. The family physician of the St. Clares quarrelled with that family, and began publishing a violent series of articles, in which he said that the late general was a religious maniac; but as far as the tale went, this seemed to mean little more than a religious man. Anyhow, the story fizzled out. Everyone knew, of course, that St. Clare had some of the eccentricities of puritan piety. The second incident was much more arresting. In the luckless and unsupported regiment which made that rash attempt at the Black River there was a certain Captain Keith, who was at that time engaged to St. Clare’s daughter, and who afterwards married her. He was one of those who were captured by Olivier, and, like all the rest except the general, appears to have been bounteously treated and promptly set free. Some twenty years afterwards this man, then Lieutenant-Colonel Keith, published a sort of autobiography called ‘A British Officer in Burmah and Brazil.’ In the place where the reader looks eagerly for some account of the mystery of St. Clare’s disaster may be found the following words: ‘Everywhere else in this book I have narrated things exactly as they occurred, holding as I do the old-fashioned opinion that the glory of England is old enough to take care of itself. The exception I shall make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and my reasons, though private, are honourable and compelling. I will, however, add this in justice to the memories of two distinguished men. General St. Clare has been accused of incapacity on this occasion; I can at least testify that this action, properly understood, was one of the most brilliant and sagacious of his life. President Olivier by similar report is charged with savage injustice. I think it due to the honour of an enemy to say that he acted on this occasion with even more than his characteristic good feeling. To put the matter popularly, I can assure my countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool nor Olivier such a brute as he looked. This is all I have to say; nor shall any earthly consideration induce me to add a word to it.’”

A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and by its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory of Captain Keith’s text from a scrap of printed paper. As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau threw up his hand with a French gesture.

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” he cried excitedly. “I believe I can guess it at the first go.”

He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull neck forward, like a man winning a walking race. The little priest, amused and interested, had some trouble in trotting beside him. Just before them the trees fell back a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear, moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the wall of another wood. The entrance to the farther forest looked small and round, like the black hole of a remote railway tunnel. But it was within some hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before Flambeau spoke again.

“I’ve got it,” he cried at last, slapping his thigh with his great hand. “Four minutes’ thinking, and I can tell your whole story myself.”

“All right,” assented his friend. “You tell it.”

Flambeau lifted his head, but lowered his voice. “General Sir Arthur St. Clare,” he said, “came of a family in which madness was hereditary; and his whole aim was to keep this from his daughter, and even, if possible, from his future son-in-law. Rightly or wrongly, he thought the final collapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary suicide would blazon the very idea he dreaded. As the campaign approached the clouds came thicker on his brain; and at last in a mad moment he sacrificed his public duty to his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fall by the first shot. When he found that he had only attained capture and discredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst, and he broke his own sword and hanged himself.”

He stared firmly at the grey facade of forest in front of him, with the one black gap in it, like the mouth of the grave, into which their path plunged. Perhaps something menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowed reinforced his vivid vision of the tragedy, for he shuddered.

“A horrid story,” he said.

“A horrid story,” repeated the priest with bent head. “But not the real story.”

Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and cried: “Oh, I wish it had been.”

The tall Flambeau faced round and stared at him.

“Yours is a clean story,” cried Father Brown, deeply moved. “A sweet, pure, honest story, as open and white as that moon. Madness and despair are innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau.”

Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and from where he stood one black tree-bough curved across it exactly like a devil’s horn.

“Father—father,” cried Flambeau with the French gesture and stepping yet more rapidly forward, “do you mean it was worse than that?”

“Worse than that,” said Paul like a grave echo. And they plunged into the black cloister of the woodland, which ran by them in a dim tapestry of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream.

They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt close about them foliage that they could not see, when the priest said again:

“Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?”

“Well, well,” cried Flambeau irritably, “what does he do?”

“He grows a forest to hide it in,” said the priest in an obscure voice. “A fearful sin.”

“Look here,” cried his friend impatiently, for the dark wood and the dark saying got a little on his nerves; will you tell me this story or not? What other evidence is there to go on?”

“There are three more bits of evidence,” said the other, “that I have dug up in holes and corners; and I will give them in logical rather than chronological order. First of all, of course, our authority for the issue and event of the battle is in Olivier’s own dispatches, which are lucid enough. He was entrenched with two or three regiments on the heights that swept down to the Black River, on the other side of which was lower and more marshy ground. Beyond this again was gently rising country, on which was the first English outpost, supported by others which lay, however, considerably in its rear. The British forces as a whole were greatly superior in numbers; but this particular regiment was just far enough from its base to make Olivier consider the project of crossing the river to cut it off. By sunset, however, he had decided to retain his own position, which was a specially strong one. At daybreak next morning he was thunderstruck to see that this stray handful of English, entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselves across the river, half by a bridge to the right, and the other half by a ford higher up, and were massed upon the marshy bank below him.

“That they should attempt an attack with such numbers against such a position was incredible enough; but Olivier noticed something yet more extraordinary. For instead of attempting to seize more solid ground, this mad regiment, having put the river in its rear by one wild charge, did nothing more, but stuck there in the mire like flies in treacle. Needless to say, the Brazilians blew great gaps in them with artillery, which they could only return with spirited but lessening rifle fire. Yet they never broke; and Olivier’s curt account ends with a strong tribute of admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. ‘Our line then advanced finally,’ writes Olivier, ‘and drove them into the river; we captured General St. Clare himself and several other officers. The colonel and the major had both fallen in the battle. I cannot resist saying that few finer sights can have been seen in history than the last stand of this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up the rifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us on horseback bareheaded and with a broken sword.’ On what happened to the general afterwards Olivier is as silent as Captain Keith.”

“Well,” grunted Flambeau, “get on to the next bit of evidence.”

“The next evidence,” said Father Brown, “took some time to find, but it will not take long to tell. I found at last in an almshouse down in the Lincolnshire Fens an old soldier who not only was wounded at the Black River, but had actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when he died. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull of an Irishman; and it would seem that he died almost as much of rage as of bullets. He, at any rate, was not responsible for that ridiculous raid; it must have been imposed on him by the general. His last edifying words, according to my informant, were these: ‘And there goes the damned old donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I wish it was his head.’ You will remark that everyone seems to have noticed this detail about the broken sword blade, though most people regard it somewhat more reverently than did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for the third fragment.”

Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and the speaker paused a little for breath before he went on. Then he continued in the same business-like tone:

“Only a month or two ago a certain Brazilian official died in England, having quarrelled with Olivier and left his country. He was a well-known figure both here and on the Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knew him myself, a yellow-faced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For various private reasons I had permission to see the documents he had left; he was a Catholic, of course, and I had been with him towards the end. There was nothing of his that lit up any corner of the black St. Clare business, except five or six common exercise books filled with the diary of some English soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by the Brazilians on one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped abruptly the night before the battle.

“But the account of that last day in the poor fellow’s life was certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it’s too dark to read it here, and I will give you a resume. The first part of that entry is full of jokes, evidently flung about among the men, about somebody called the Vulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one of themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of as one of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he were some local go-between and non-combatant; perhaps a guide or a journalist. He has been closeted with old Colonel Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major. Indeed, the major is somewhat prominent in this soldier’s narrative; a lean, dark-haired man, apparently, of the name of Murray— a north of Ireland man and a Puritan. There are continual jests about the contrast between this Ulsterman’s austerity and the conviviality of Colonel Clancy. There is also some joke about the Vulture wearing bright-coloured clothes.

“But all these levities are scattered by what may well be called the note of a bugle. Behind the English camp and almost parallel to the river ran one of the few great roads of that district. Westward the road curved round towards the river, which it crossed by the bridge before mentioned. To the east the road swept backwards into the wilds, and some two miles along it was the next English outpost. From this direction there came along the road that evening a glitter and clatter of light cavalry, in which even the simple diarist could recognise with astonishment the general with his staff. He rode the great white horse which you have seen so often in illustrated papers and Academy pictures; and you may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merely ceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but, springing from the saddle immediately, mixed with the group of officers, and fell into emphatic though confidential speech. What struck our friend the diarist most was his special disposition to discuss matters with Major Murray; but, indeed, such a selection, so long as it was not marked, was in no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy; they were men who ‘read their Bibles’; they were both the old Evangelical type of officer. However this may be, it is certain that when the general mounted again he was still talking earnestly to Murray; and that as he walked his horse slowly down the road towards the river, the tall Ulsterman still walked by his bridle rein in earnest debate. The soldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump of trees where the road turned towards the river. The colonel had gone back to his tent, and the men to their pickets; the man with the diary lingered for another four minutes, and saw a marvellous sight.

“The great white horse which had marched slowly down the road, as it had marched in so many processions, flew back, galloping up the road towards them as if it were mad to win a race. At first they thought it had run away with the man on its back; but they soon saw that the general, a fine rider, was himself urging it to full speed. Horse and man swept up to them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the reeling charger, the general turned on them a face like flame, and called for the colonel like the trumpet that wakes the dead.

“I conceive that all the earthquake events of that catastrophe tumbled on top of each other rather like lumber in the minds of men such as our friend with the diary. With the dazed excitement of a dream, they found themselves falling—literally falling—into their ranks, and learned that an attack was to be led at once across the river. The general and the major, it was said, had found out something at the bridge, and there was only just time to strike for life. The major had gone back at once to call up the reserve along the road behind; it was doubtful if even with that prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they must pass the stream that night, and seize the heights by morning. It is with the very stir and throb of that romantic nocturnal march that the diary suddenly ends.”

Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path grew smaller, steeper, and more twisted, till they felt as if they were ascending a winding staircase. The priest’s voice came from above out of the darkness.

“There was one other little and enormous thing. When the general urged them to their chivalric charge he half drew his sword from the scabbard; and then, as if ashamed of such melodrama, thrust it back again. The sword again, you see.”

A half-light broke through the network of boughs above them, flinging the ghost of a net about their feet; for they were mounting again to the faint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round him as an atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain: “Well, what’s the matter with the sword? Officers generally have swords, don’t they?”

“They are not often mentioned in modern war,” said the other dispassionately; “but in this affair one falls over the blessed sword everywhere.”

“Well, what is there in that?” growled Flambeau; “it was a twopence coloured sort of incident; the old man’s blade breaking in his last battle. Anyone might bet the papers would get hold of it, as they have. On all these tombs and things it’s shown broken at the point. I hope you haven’t dragged me through this Polar expedition merely because two men with an eye for a picture saw St. Clare’s broken sword.”

“No,” cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; “but who saw his unbroken sword?”

“What do you mean?” cried the other, and stood still under the stars. They had come abruptly out of the grey gates of the wood.

“I say, who saw his unbroken sword?” repeated Father Brown obstinately. “Not the writer of the diary, anyhow; the general sheathed it in time.”

Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind might look in the sun; and his friend went on, for the first time with eagerness:

“Flambeau,” he cried, “I cannot prove it, even after hunting through the tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add just one more tiny fact that tips the whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the first struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to close quarters. But he saw St. Clare’s sword broken. Why was it broken? How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle.”

“Oh!” said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; “and pray where is the other piece?”

“I can tell you,” said the priest promptly. “In the northeast corner of the cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral at Belfast.”

“Indeed?” inquired the other. “Have you looked for it?”

“I couldn’t,” replied Brown, with frank regret. “There’s a great marble monument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fell fighting gloriously at the famous Battle of the Black River.”

Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. “You mean,” he cried hoarsely, “that General St. Clare hated Murray, and murdered him on the field of battle because—”

“You are still full of good and pure thoughts,” said the other. “It was worse than that.”

“Well,” said the large man, “my stock of evil imagination is used up.”

The priest seemed really doubtful where to begin, and at last he said again:

“Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”

The other did not answer.

“If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest.”

There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly and quietly:

“And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead bodies to hide it in.”

Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time or space; but Father Brown went on as if he were continuing the last sentence:

“Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else’s Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cant about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society, and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted—lust, tyranny, treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?

“In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord? Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door after door in hell, and always into smaller and smaller chambers. This is the real case against crime, that a man does not become wilder and wilder, but only meaner and meaner. St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties of bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by the time of the Battle of the Black River he had fallen from world to world to that place which Dante makes the lowest floor of the universe.”

“What do you mean?” asked his friend again.

“I mean that,” retorted the cleric, and suddenly pointed at a puddle sealed with ice that shone in the moon. “Do you remember whom Dante put in the last circle of ice?”

“The traitors,” said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he looked around at the inhuman landscape of trees, with taunting and almost obscene outlines, he could almost fancy he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of a voice was, indeed, a Virgil leading him through a land of eternal sins.

The voice went on: “Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not permit a secret service and spies. The thing, however, was done, like many other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friend Espado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt his way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its one corrupt man—please God!—and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foul need of money, and mountains of it. The discredited family doctor was threatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and were broken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane; things done by an English Evangelist that smelt like human sacrifice and hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter’s dowry; for to him the fame of wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snapped the last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in from the enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vulture as well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster had guessed the hideous truth; and when they walked slowly together down that road towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he must resign instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The general temporised with him till they came to the fringe of tropic trees by the bridge; and there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I can see the picture) the general drew his sabre and plunged it through the body of the major.”

The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel black shapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond it faintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight, but some fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its close.

“St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I’ll swear, was he so lucid and so strong as when poor Murray lay a cold lump at his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was the great man so great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. He looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw the point he had planted between his victim’s shoulders had broken off in the body. He saw quite calmly, as through a club windowpane, all that must follow. He saw that men must find the unaccountable corpse; must extract the unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable broken sword—or absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But his imperious intellect rose against the facer; there was one way yet. He could make the corpse less unaccountable. He could create a hill of corpses to cover this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred English soldiers were marching down to their death.”

The warmer glow behind the black winter wood grew richer and brighter, and Flambeau strode on to reach it. Father Brown also quickened his stride; but he seemed merely absorbed in his tale.

“Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such the genius of their commander, that if they had at once attacked the hill, even their mad march might have met some luck. But the evil mind that played with them like pawns had other aims and reasons. They must remain in the marshes by the bridge at least till British corpses should be a common sight there. Then for the last grand scene; the silver-haired soldier-saint would give up his shattered sword to save further slaughter. Oh, it was well organised for an impromptu. But I think (I cannot prove), I think that it was while they stuck there in the bloody mire that someone doubted—and someone guessed.”

He was mute a moment, and then said: “There is a voice from nowhere that tells me the man who guessed was the lover … the man to wed the old man’s child.”

“But what about Olivier and the hanging?” asked Flambeau.

“Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy, seldom encumbered his march with captives,” explained the narrator. “He released everybody in most cases. He released everybody in this case.

“Everybody but the general,” said the tall man.

“Everybody,” said the priest.

Flambeau knit his black brows. “I don’t grasp it all yet,” he said.

“There is another picture, Flambeau,” said Brown in his more mystical undertone. “I can’t prove it; but I can do more—I can see it. There is a camp breaking up on the bare, torrid hills at morning, and Brazilian uniforms massed in blocks and columns to march. There is the red shirt and long black beard of Olivier, which blows as he stands, his broad-brimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the great enemy he is setting free— the simple, snow-headed English veteran, who thanks him in the name of his men. The English remnant stand behind at attention; beside them are stores and vehicles for the retreat. The drums roll; the Brazilians are moving; the English are still like statues. So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy have faded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their postures all at once, like dead men coming to life; they turn their fifty faces upon the general—faces not to be forgotten.”

Flambeau gave a great jump. “Ah,” he cried, “you don’t mean—”

“Yes,” said Father Brown in a deep, moving voice. “It was an English hand that put the rope round St. Clare’s neck; I believe the hand that put the ring on his daughter’s finger. They were English hands that dragged him up to the tree of shame; the hands of men that had adored him and followed him to victory. And they were English souls (God pardon and endure us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign sun on the green gallows of palm, and prayed in their hatred that he might drop off it into hell.”

As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the strong scarlet light of a red-curtained English inn. It stood sideways in the road, as if standing aside in the amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stood open with invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the hum and laughter of humanity happy for a night.

“I need not tell you more,” said Father Brown. “They tried him in the wilderness and destroyed him; and then, for the honour of England and of his daughter, they took an oath to seal up for ever the story of the traitor’s purse and the assassin’s sword blade. Perhaps—Heaven help them—they tried to forget it. Let us try to forget it, anyhow; here is our inn.”

“With all my heart,” said Flambeau, and was just striding into the bright, noisy bar when he stepped back and almost fell on the road.

“Look there, in the devil’s name!” he cried, and pointed rigidly at the square wooden sign that overhung the road. It showed dimly the crude shape of a sabre hilt and a shortened blade; and was inscribed in false archaic lettering, “The Sign of the Broken Sword.”

“Were you not prepared?” asked Father Brown gently. “He is the god of this country; half the inns and parks and streets are named after him and his story.”

“I thought we had done with the leper,” cried Flambeau, and spat on the road.

“You will never have done with him in England,” said the priest, looking down, “while brass is strong and stone abides. His marble statues will erect the souls of proud, innocent boys for centuries, his village tomb will smell of loyalty as of lilies. Millions who never knew him shall love him like a father— this man whom the last few that knew him dealt with like dung. He shall be a saint; and the truth shall never be told of him, because I have made up my mind at last. There is so much good and evil in breaking secrets, that I put my conduct to a test. All these newspapers will perish; the anti-Brazil boom is already over; Olivier is already honoured everywhere. But I told myself that if anywhere, by name, in metal or marble that will endure like the pyramids, Colonel Clancy, or Captain Keith, or President Olivier, or any innocent man was wrongly blamed, then I would speak. If it were only that St. Clare was wrongly praised, I would be silent. And I will.”

They plunged into the red-curtained tavern, which was not only cosy, but even luxurious inside. On a table stood a silver model of the tomb of St. Clare, the silver head bowed, the silver sword broken. On the walls were coloured photographs of the same scene, and of the system of wagonettes that took tourists to see it. They sat down on the comfortable padded benches.

“Come, it’s cold,” cried Father Brown; “let’s have some wine or beer.”

“Or brandy,” said Flambeau.

The Three Tools of Death

Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of us, that every man is dignified when he is dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about secret violence in connection with so entirely entertaining and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the point of being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary. It was like hearing that Sunny Jim had hanged himself; or that Mr. Pickwick had died in Hanwell. For though Sir Aaron was a philanthropist, and thus dealt with the darker side of our society, he prided himself on dealing with it in the brightest possible style. His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and “loud laughter”; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer.

The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men.

He had lived on the rural skirt of Hampstead in a handsome house, high but not broad, a modern and prosaic tower. The narrowest of its narrow sides overhung the steep green bank of a railway, and was shaken by passing trains. Sir Aaron Armstrong, as he boisterously explained, had no nerves. But if the train had often given a shock to the house, that morning the tables were turned, and it was the house that gave a shock to the train.

The engine slowed down and stopped just beyond that point where an angle of the house impinged upon the sharp slope of turf. The arrest of most mechanical things must be slow; but the living cause of this had been very rapid. A man clad completely in black, even (it was remembered) to the dreadful detail of black gloves, appeared on the ridge above the engine, and waved his black hands like some sable windmill. This in itself would hardly have stopped even a lingering train. But there came out of him a cry which was talked of afterwards as something utterly unnatural and new. It was one of those shouts that are horridly distinct even when we cannot hear what is shouted. The word in this case was “Murder!”

But the engine-driver swears he would have pulled up just the same if he had heard only the dreadful and definite accent and not the word.

The train once arrested, the most superficial stare could take in many features of the tragedy. The man in black on the green bank was Sir Aaron Armstrong’s man-servant Magnus. The baronet in his optimism had often laughed at the black gloves of this dismal attendant; but no one was likely to laugh at him just now.

So soon as an inquirer or two had stepped off the line and across the smoky hedge, they saw, rolled down almost to the bottom of the bank, the body of an old man in a yellow dressing-gown with a very vivid scarlet lining. A scrap of rope seemed caught about his leg, entangled presumably in a struggle. There was a smear or so of blood, though very little; but the body was bent or broken into a posture impossible to any living thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong. A few more bewildered moments brought out a big fair-bearded man, whom some travellers could salute as the dead man’s secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemian society and even famous in the Bohemian arts. In a manner more vague, but even more convincing, he echoed the agony of the servant. By the time the third figure of that household, Alice Armstrong, daughter of the dead man, had come already tottering and waving into the garden, the engine-driver had put a stop to his stoppage. The whistle had blown and the train had panted on to get help from the next station.

Father Brown had been thus rapidly summoned at the request of Patrick Royce, the big ex-Bohemian secretary. Royce was an Irishman by birth; and that casual kind of Catholic that never remembers his religion until he is really in a hole. But Royce’s request might have been less promptly complied with if one of the official detectives had not been a friend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau; and it was impossible to be a friend of Flambeau without hearing numberless stories about Father Brown. Hence, while the young detective (whose name was Merton) led the little priest across the fields to the railway, their talk was more confidential than could be expected between two total strangers.

“As far as I can see,” said Mr. Merton candidly, “there is no sense to be made of it at all. There is nobody one can suspect. Magnus is a solemn old fool; far too much of a fool to be an assassin. Royce has been the baronet’s best friend for years; and his daughter undoubtedly adored him. Besides, it’s all too absurd. Who would kill such a cheery old chap as Armstrong? Who could dip his hands in the gore of an after-dinner speaker? It would be like killing Father Christmas.”

“Yes, it was a cheery house,” assented Father Brown. “It was a cheery house while he was alive. Do you think it will be cheery now he is dead?”

Merton started a little and regarded his companion with an enlivened eye. “Now he is dead?” he repeated.

“Yes,” continued the priest stolidly, “he was cheerful. But did he communicate his cheerfulness? Frankly, was anyone else in the house cheerful but he?”

A window in Merton’s mind let in that strange light of surprise in which we see for the first time things we have known all along. He had often been to the Armstrongs’, on little police jobs of the philanthropist; and, now he came to think of it, it was in itself a depressing house. The rooms were very high and very cold; the decoration mean and provincial; the draughty corridors were lit by electricity that was bleaker than moonlight. And though the old man’s scarlet face and silver beard had blazed like a bonfire in each room or passage in turn, it did not leave any warmth behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort in the place was partly due to the very vitality and exuberance of its owner; he needed no stoves or lamps, he would say, but carried his own warmth with him. But when Merton recalled the other inmates, he was compelled to confess that they also were as shadows of their lord. The moody man-servant, with his monstrous black gloves, was almost a nightmare; Royce, the secretary, was solid enough, a big bull of a man, in tweeds, with a short beard; but the straw-coloured beard was startlingly salted with grey like the tweeds, and the broad forehead was barred with premature wrinkles. He was good-natured enough also, but it was a sad sort of good-nature, almost a heart-broken sort— he had the general air of being some sort of failure in life. As for Armstrong’s daughter, it was almost incredible that she was his daughter; she was so pallid in colour and sensitive in outline. She was graceful, but there was a quiver in the very shape of her that was like the lines of an aspen. Merton had sometimes wondered if she had learnt to quail at the crash of the passing trains.

“You see,” said Father Brown, blinking modestly, “I’m not sure that the Armstrong cheerfulness is so very cheerful—for other people. You say that nobody could kill such a happy old man, but I’m not sure; ne nos inducas in tentationem. If ever I murdered somebody,” he added quite simply, “I dare say it might be an Optimist.”

“Why?” cried Merton amused. “Do you think people dislike cheerfulness?”

“People like frequent laughter,” answered Father Brown, “but I don’t think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing.”

They walked some way in silence along the windy grassy bank by the rail, and just as they came under the far-flung shadow of the tall Armstrong house, Father Brown said suddenly, like a man throwing away a troublesome thought rather than offering it seriously: “Of course, drink is neither good nor bad in itself. But I can’t help sometimes feeling that men like Armstrong want an occasional glass of wine to sadden them.”

Merton’s official superior, a grizzled and capable detective named Gilder, was standing on the green bank waiting for the coroner, talking to Patrick Royce, whose big shoulders and bristly beard and hair towered above him. This was the more noticeable because Royce walked always with a sort of powerful stoop, and seemed to be going about his small clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled style, like a buffalo drawing a go-cart.

He raised his head with unusual pleasure at the sight of the priest, and took him a few paces apart. Meanwhile Merton was addressing the older detective respectfully indeed, but not without a certain boyish impatience.

“Well, Mr. Gilder, have you got much farther with the mystery?”

“There is no mystery,” replied Gilder, as he looked under dreamy eyelids at the rooks.

“Well, there is for me, at any rate,” said Merton, smiling.

“It is simple enough, my boy,” observed the senior investigator, stroking his grey, pointed beard. “Three minutes after you’d gone for Mr. Royce’s parson the whole thing came out. You know that pasty-faced servant in the black gloves who stopped the train?”

“I should know him anywhere. Somehow he rather gave me the creeps.”

“Well,” drawled Gilder, “when the train had gone on again, that man had gone too. Rather a cool criminal, don’t you think, to escape by the very train that went off for the police?”

“You’re pretty sure, I suppose,” remarked the young man, “that he really did kill his master?”

“Yes, my son, I’m pretty sure,” replied Gilder drily, “for the trifling reason that he has gone off with twenty thousand pounds in papers that were in his master’s desk. No, the only thing worth calling a difficulty is how he killed him. The skull seems broken as with some big weapon, but there’s no weapon at all lying about, and the murderer would have found it awkward to carry it away, unless the weapon was too small to be noticed.”

“Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed,” said the priest, with an odd little giggle.

Gilder looked round at this wild remark, and rather sternly asked Brown what he meant.

“Silly way of putting it, I know,” said Father Brown apologetically. “Sounds like a fairy tale. But poor Armstrong was killed with a giant’s club, a great green club, too big to be seen, and which we call the earth. He was broken against this green bank we are standing on.”

“How do you mean?” asked the detective quickly.

Father Brown turned his moon face up to the narrow facade of the house and blinked hopelessly up. Following his eyes, they saw that right at the top of this otherwise blind back quarter of the building, an attic window stood open.

“Don’t you see,” he explained, pointing a little awkwardly like a child, “he was thrown down from there?”

Gilder frowningly scrutinised the window, and then said: “Well, it is certainly possible. But I don’t see why you are so sure about it.”

Brown opened his grey eyes wide. “Why,” he said, “there’s a bit of rope round the dead man’s leg. Don’t you see that other bit of rope up there caught at the corner of the window?”

At that height the thing looked like the faintest particle of dust or hair, but the shrewd old investigator was satisfied. “You’re quite right, sir,” he said to Father Brown; “that is certainly one to you.”

Almost as he spoke a special train with one carriage took the curve of the line on their left, and, stopping, disgorged another group of policemen, in whose midst was the hangdog visage of Magnus, the absconded servant.

“By Jove! they’ve got him,” cried Gilder, and stepped forward with quite a new alertness.

“Have you got the money!” he cried to the first policeman.

The man looked him in the face with a rather curious expression and said: “No.” Then he added: “At least, not here.”

“Which is the inspector, please?” asked the man called Magnus.

When he spoke everyone instantly understood how this voice had stopped a train. He was a dull-looking man with flat black hair, a colourless face, and a faint suggestion of the East in the level slits in his eyes and mouth. His blood and name, indeed, had remained dubious, ever since Sir Aaron had “rescued” him from a waitership in a London restaurant, and (as some said) from more infamous things. But his voice was as vivid as his face was dead. Whether through exactitude in a foreign language, or in deference to his master (who had been somewhat deaf), Magnus’s tones had a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the whole group quite jumped when he spoke.

“I always knew this would happen,” he said aloud with brazen blandness. “My poor old master made game of me for wearing black; but I always said I should be ready for his funeral.”

And he made a momentary movement with his two dark-gloved hands.

“Sergeant,” said Inspector Gilder, eyeing the black hands with wrath, “aren’t you putting the bracelets on this fellow; he looks pretty dangerous.”

“Well, sir,” said the sergeant, with the same odd look of wonder, “I don’t know that we can.”

“What do you mean?” asked the other sharply. “Haven’t you arrested him?”

A faint scorn widened the slit-like mouth, and the whistle of an approaching train seemed oddly to echo the mockery.

“We arrested him,” replied the sergeant gravely, “just as he was coming out of the police station at Highgate, where he had deposited all his master’s money in the care of Inspector Robinson.”

Gilder looked at the man-servant in utter amazement. “Why on earth did you do that?” he asked of Magnus.

“To keep it safe from the criminal, of course,” replied that person placidly.

“Surely,” said Gilder, “Sir Aaron’s money might have been safely left with Sir Aaron’s family.”

The tail of his sentence was drowned in the roar of the train as it went rocking and clanking; but through all the hell of noises to which that unhappy house was periodically subject, they could hear the syllables of Magnus’s answer, in all their bell-like distinctness: “I have no reason to feel confidence in Sir Aaron’s family.”

All the motionless men had the ghostly sensation of the presence of some new person; and Merton was scarcely surprised when he looked up and saw the pale face of Armstrong’s daughter over Father Brown’s shoulder. She was still young and beautiful in a silvery style, but her hair was of so dusty and hueless a brown that in some shadows it seemed to have turned totally grey.

“Be careful what you say,” said Royce gruffly, “you’ll frighten Miss Armstrong.”

“I hope so,” said the man with the clear voice.

As the woman winced and everyone else wondered, he went on: “I am somewhat used to Miss Armstrong’s tremors. I have seen her trembling off and on for years. And some said she was shaking with cold and some she was shaking with fear, but I know she was shaking with hate and wicked anger— fiends that have had their feast this morning. She would have been away by now with her lover and all the money but for me. Ever since my poor old master prevented her from marrying that tipsy blackguard—”

“Stop,” said Gilder very sternly. “We have nothing to do with your family fancies or suspicions. Unless you have some practical evidence, your mere opinions—”

“Oh! I’ll give you practical evidence,” cut in Magnus, in his hacking accent. “You’ll have to subpoena me, Mr. Inspector, and I shall have to tell the truth. And the truth is this: An instant after the old man was pitched bleeding out of the window, I ran into the attic, and found his daughter swooning on the floor with a red dagger still in her hand. Allow me to hand that also to the proper authorities.” He took from his tail-pocket a long horn-hilted knife with a red smear on it, and handed it politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back again, and his slits of eyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese sneer.

Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of him; and he muttered to Gilder: “Surely you would take Miss Armstrong’s word against his?”

Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh that it looked somehow as if he had just washed it. “Yes,” he said, radiating innocence, “but is Miss Armstrong’s word against his?”

The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry; everyone looked at her. Her figure was rigid as if paralysed; only her face within its frame of faint brown hair was alive with an appalling surprise. She stood like one of a sudden lassooed and throttled.

“This man,” said Mr. Gilder gravely, “actually says that you were found grasping a knife, insensible, after the murder.”

“He says the truth,” answered Alice.

The next fact of which they were conscious was that Patrick Royce strode with his great stooping head into their ring and uttered the singular words: “Well, if I’ve got to go, I’ll have a bit of pleasure first.”

His huge shoulder heaved and he sent an iron fist smash into Magnus’s bland Mongolian visage, laying him on the lawn as flat as a starfish. Two or three of the police instantly put their hands on Royce; but to the rest it seemed as if all reason had broken up and the universe were turning into a brainless harlequinade.

“None of that, Mr. Royce,” Gilder had called out authoritatively. “I shall arrest you for assault.”

“No, you won’t,” answered the secretary in a voice like an iron gong, “you will arrest me for murder.”

Gilder threw an alarmed glance at the man knocked down; but since that outraged person was already sitting up and wiping a little blood off a substantially uninjured face, he only said shortly: “What do you mean?”

“It is quite true, as this fellow says,” explained Royce, “that Miss Armstrong fainted with a knife in her hand. But she had not snatched the knife to attack her father, but to defend him.”

“To defend him,” repeated Gilder gravely. “Against whom?”

“Against me,” answered the secretary.

Alice looked at him with a complex and baffling face; then she said in a low voice: “After it all, I am still glad you are brave.”

“Come upstairs,” said Patrick Royce heavily, “and I will show you the whole cursed thing.”

The attic, which was the secretary’s private place (and rather a small cell for so large a hermit), had indeed all the vestiges of a violent drama. Near the centre of the floor lay a large revolver as if flung away; nearer to the left was rolled a whisky bottle, open but not quite empty. The cloth of the little table lay dragged and trampled, and a length of cord, like that found on the corpse, was cast wildly across the windowsill. Two vases were smashed on the mantelpiece and one on the carpet.

“I was drunk,” said Royce; and this simplicity in the prematurely battered man somehow had the pathos of the first sin of a baby.

“You all know about me,” he continued huskily; “everybody knows how my story began, and it may as well end like that too. I was called a clever man once, and might have been a happy one; Armstrong saved the remains of a brain and body from the taverns, and was always kind to me in his own way, poor fellow! Only he wouldn’t let me marry Alice here; and it will always be said that he was right enough. Well, you can form your own conclusions, and you won’t want me to go into details. That is my whisky bottle half emptied in the corner; that is my revolver quite emptied on the carpet. It was the rope from my box that was found on the corpse, and it was from my window the corpse was thrown. You need not set detectives to grub up my tragedy; it is a common enough weed in this world. I give myself to the gallows; and, by God, that is enough!”

At a sufficiently delicate sign, the police gathered round the large man to lead him away; but their unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered by the remarkable appearance of Father Brown, who was on his hands and knees on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind of undignified prayers. Being a person utterly insensible to the social figure he cut, he remained in this posture, but turned a bright round face up at the company, presenting the appearance of a quadruped with a very comic human head.

“I say,” he said good-naturedly, “this really won’t do at all, you know. At the beginning you said we’d found no weapon. But now we’re finding too many; there’s the knife to stab, and the rope to strangle, and the pistol to shoot; and after all he broke his neck by falling out of a window! It won’t do. It’s not economical.” And he shook his head at the ground as a horse does grazing.

Inspector Gilder had opened his mouth with serious intentions, but before he could speak the grotesque figure on the floor had gone on quite volubly.

“And now three quite impossible things. First, these holes in the carpet, where the six bullets have gone in. Why on earth should anybody fire at the carpet? A drunken man lets fly at his enemy’s head, the thing that’s grinning at him. He doesn’t pick a quarrel with his feet, or lay siege to his slippers. And then there’s the rope”—and having done with the carpet the speaker lifted his hands and put them in his pocket, but continued unaffectedly on his knees—“in what conceivable intoxication would anybody try to put a rope round a man’s neck and finally put it round his leg? Royce, anyhow, was not so drunk as that, or he would be sleeping like a log by now. And, plainest of all, the whisky bottle. You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle, and then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half and leaving the other. That is the very last thing a dipsomaniac would do.”

He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the self-accused murderer in tones of limpid penitence: “I’m awfully sorry, my dear sir, but your tale is really rubbish.”

“Sir,” said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, “can I speak to you alone for a moment?”

This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, and before he could speak in the next room, the girl was talking with strange incisiveness.

“You are a clever man,” she said, “and you are trying to save Patrick, I know. But it’s no use. The core of all this is black, and the more things you find out the more there will be against the miserable man I love.”

“Why?” asked Brown, looking at her steadily.

“Because,” she answered equally steadily, “I saw him commit the crime myself.”

“Ah!” said the unmoved Brown, “and what did he do?”

“I was in this room next to them,” she explained; “both doors were closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard on earth, roaring ‘Hell, hell, hell,’ again and again, and then the two doors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the thing banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full of smoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick’s hand; and I saw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapt on my father, who was clinging in terror to the window-sill, and, grappling, tried to strangle him with the rope, which he threw over his head, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then it tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac. I snatched a knife from the mat, and, rushing between them, managed to cut the rope before I fainted.”

“I see,” said Father Brown, with the same wooden civility. “Thank you.”

As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly into the next room, where he found Gilder and Merton alone with Patrick Royce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector submissively:

“Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he take off those funny cuffs for a minute?”

“He is a very powerful man,” said Merton in an undertone. “Why do you want them taken off?”

“Why, I thought,” replied the priest humbly, “that perhaps I might have the very great honour of shaking hands with him.”

Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: “Won’t you tell them about it, sir?”

The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the priest turned impatiently.

“Then I will,” he said. “Private lives are more important than public reputations. I am going to save the living, and let the dead bury their dead.”

He went to the fatal window, and blinked out of it as he went on talking.

“I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only one death. I tell you now that they were not weapons, and were not used to cause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the bloody knife, the exploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not used to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him.”

“To save him!” repeated Gilder. “And from what?”

“From himself,” said Father Brown. “He was a suicidal maniac.”

“What?” cried Merton in an incredulous tone. “And the Religion of Cheerfulness—”

“It is a cruel religion,” said the priest, looking out of the window. “Why couldn’t they let him weep a little, like his fathers before him? His plans stiffened, his views grew cold; behind that merry mask was the empty mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public level, he fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned long ago. But there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere teetotaler: that he pictures and expects that psychological inferno from which he has warned others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong prematurely, and by this morning he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in hell, in so crazy a voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad for death, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had scattered round him death in many shapes—a running noose and his friend’s revolver and a knife. Royce entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife on the mat behind him, snatched up the revolver, and having no time to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. The suicide saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for the window. The rescuer did the only thing he could—ran after him with the rope and tried to tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father free. At first she only slashed poor Royce’s knuckles, from which has come all the little blood in this affair. But, of course, you noticed that he left blood, but no wound, on that servant’s face? Only before the poor woman swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through that window into eternity.”

There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises of Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce, to whom he said: “I think I should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady are worth more than Armstrong’s obituary notices.”

“Confound Armstrong’s notices,” cried Royce roughly. “Don’t you see it was because she mustn’t know?”

“Mustn’t know what?” asked Merton.

“Why, that she killed her father, you fool!” roared the other. “He’d have been alive now but for her. It might craze her to know that.”

“No, I don’t think it would,” remarked Father Brown, as he picked up his hat. “I rather think I should tell her. Even the most murderous blunders don’t poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier now. I’ve got to go back to the Deaf School.”

As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from Highgate stopped him and said:

“The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin.”

“I’ve got to get back to the Deaf School,” said Father Brown. “I’m sorry I can’t stop for the inquiry.”

The Blue Cross

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous—nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.

Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.

It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d’instruction upside down and stood him on his head, “to clear his mind”; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by the simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside people’s doors to the doors of his own customers. It was he who had kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware that his adventures would not end when he had found him.

But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin’s ideas were still in process of settlement.

There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height. If Valentin’s quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he had already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on the journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver “with blue stones” in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling everybody about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four inches above it.

La Croce Azzurra

Fra il nastro d’argento del mattino e il verde nastro scintillante del mare, il piroscafo toccò Harwich e sciolse uno sciame di gente come mosche, tra cui l’uomo che dobbiamo seguire non era affatto appariscente, né desiderava esserlo. Nulla in lui aveva del notevole, salvo un lieve contrasto tra l’allegria vacanziera degli abiti e la gravità ufficiale del volto. Portava una giacca leggera d’un grigio pallido, un panciotto bianco e un cappello di paglia argentata con un nastro grigio-azzurro. Il viso scarno spiccava scuro per contrasto, e terminava in una barbetta nera e appuntita che pareva spagnola e faceva pensare a una gorgiera elisabettiana. Fumava una sigaretta con la serietà di un ozioso. Nulla in lui lasciava intuire che la giacca grigia nascondeva una rivoltella carica, che il panciotto bianco nascondeva una tessera di polizia, o che il cappello di paglia nascondeva uno degli ingegni più poderosi d’Europa. Poiché costui era Valentin in persona, il capo della polizia di Parigi e il più celebre investigatore del mondo; e veniva da Bruxelles a Londra per compiere il più grande arresto del secolo.

Flambeau era in Inghilterra. La polizia di tre paesi aveva finalmente seguìto le tracce del grande criminale da Gand a Bruxelles, da Bruxelles all’Aia di Olanda; e si congetturava che egli avrebbe tratto qualche vantaggio dalla novità e dalla confusione del Congresso Eucaristico, che allora si teneva a Londra. Probabilmente avrebbe viaggiato sotto le spoglie di qualche modesto impiegato o segretario a esso collegato; ma, naturalmente, Valentin non poteva esserne certo; nessuno poteva esser certo di nulla riguardo a Flambeau.

Sono molti anni ormai da quando questo colosso del delitto cessò d’improvviso di tenere il mondo in subbuglio; e quando cessò, come si disse dopo la morte di Orlando, vi fu una gran quiete sulla terra. Ma nei suoi giorni migliori (voglio dire, s’intende, i peggiori) Flambeau era una figura statuaria e internazionale quanto il Kaiser. Quasi ogni mattina il giornale annunciava che egli era sfuggito alle conseguenze di un delitto straordinario commettendone un altro. Era un guascone di statura gigantesca e di audacia fisica; e i racconti più sfrenati correvano sulle sue esplosioni di umorismo atletico: come voltò sottosopra il juge d’instruction e lo tenne ritto a testa in giù, «per schiarirgli le idee»; come corse giù per la Rue de Rivoli con un poliziotto sotto ciascun braccio. Va detto a suo credito che la sua fantastica forza fisica era generalmente impiegata in scene siffatte, incruente per quanto poco dignitose; i suoi delitti veri erano soprattutto quelli di rapine ingegnose e su vasta scala. Ma ognuno dei suoi furti era quasi un peccato nuovo, e da solo farebbe una storia. Fu lui a gestire a Londra la grande Compagnia Casearia Tirolese, senza latterie, senza vacche, senza carri, senza latte, ma con qualche migliaio di abbonati. Costoro li serviva con la semplice operazione di spostare i piccoli bidoni del latte dalle porte altrui alle porte dei propri clienti. Fu lui a mantenere una fitta e inspiegabile corrispondenza con una giovane signora, di cui l’intera posta veniva intercettata, mediante il trucco straordinario di fotografare i propri messaggi in dimensioni infinitesimali sui vetrini di un microscopio. Una vasta semplicità, tuttavia, segnava molti dei suoi esperimenti. Si dice che una volta ridipinse tutti i numeri di una via nel cuore della notte solo per deviare un viaggiatore in una trappola. È certissimo che inventò una cassetta postale portatile, che piantava agli angoli di quieti sobborghi confidando che qualche estraneo vi imbucasse i propri vaglia. Infine, era noto come acrobata sbalorditivo; malgrado la mole imponente, poteva balzare come una cavalletta e dileguarsi tra le cime degli alberi come una scimmia. Perciò il grande Valentin, quando si mise in cerca di Flambeau, sapeva perfettamente che le sue avventure non sarebbero finite una volta trovatolo.

Ma come trovarlo? Su questo punto le idee del grande Valentin erano ancora in via di assestamento.

C’era una cosa che Flambeau, con tutta la sua destrezza nel travestirsi, non poteva nascondere, ed era la sua singolare statura. Se l’occhio rapido di Valentin avesse colto una fruttivendola alta, un granatiere alto, o persino una duchessa discretamente alta, li avrebbe potuti arrestare sul posto. Ma lungo tutto il suo treno non c’era nessuno che potesse essere un Flambeau travestito, non più di quanto un gatto potesse essere una giraffa travestita. Della gente sul piroscafo si era già rassicurato; e le persone raccolte a Harwich o durante il viaggio si limitavano con certezza a sei. C’era un basso funzionario ferroviario diretto al capolinea, tre orticoltori piuttosto bassi saliti due stazioni dopo, una signora vedova molto bassa proveniente da una cittadina dell’Essex, e un pretino cattolico romano molto basso proveniente da un villaggio dell’Essex. Giunto all’ultimo caso, Valentin vi rinunciò e quasi rise. Il pretino era a tal punto l’essenza di quelle piatte lande orientali: aveva una faccia tonda e ottusa come un canederlo del Norfolk; aveva occhi vuoti come il Mare del Nord; aveva parecchi pacchetti di carta marrone che era del tutto incapace di raccogliere. Il Congresso Eucaristico aveva senza dubbio risucchiato dal loro ristagno locale molte creature simili, cieche e indifese, come talpe dissepolte. Valentin era uno scettico alla severa maniera di Francia, e non poteva nutrire amore per i preti. Ma poteva provarne pietà, e questo qui l’avrebbe suscitata in chiunque. Aveva un grande ombrello sdrucito, che gli cadeva di continuo per terra. Non pareva sapere quale fosse il verso giusto del suo biglietto di ritorno. Spiegava con una candida ingenuità da lunatico a tutti nello scompartimento che doveva stare attento, perché aveva qualcosa fatto di vero argento «con delle pietre azzurre» in uno dei suoi pacchetti di carta marrone. Il suo bizzarro connubio di piattezza dell’Essex e di santa semplicità divertì di continuo il francese, finché il prete non fu arrivato (chissà come) a Tottenham con tutti i suoi pacchetti, e tornò indietro per l’ombrello. Quando fece quest’ultima cosa, Valentin ebbe persino la buona grazia di ammonirlo a non custodire l’argento raccontandolo a tutti. Ma con chiunque parlasse, Valentin teneva l’occhio aperto per qualcun altro; cercava con costanza chiunque, ricco o povero, uomo o donna, arrivasse ai sei piedi buoni; perché Flambeau li superava di quattro pollici.

He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal so far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this side was broken by one of London’s admirable accidents—a restaurant that looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object, with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door almost as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the yellow-white blinds and considered them long.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.

Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was not “a thinking machine”; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places—banks, police stations, rendezvous—he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop. Something about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective’s rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by the window, asked for a cup of black coffee.

It was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic,” he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.

He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some speciality in the condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste which puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin. Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.

Scese però a Liverpool Street con la coscienza del tutto sicura di non aver mancato fin lì il criminale. Andò poi a Scotland Yard per regolarizzare la propria posizione e predisporre aiuto in caso di bisogno; poi accese un’altra sigaretta e si concesse una lunga passeggiata per le vie di Londra. Mentre camminava per le vie e le piazze oltre Victoria, si fermò d’improvviso e si arrestò. Era una piazza bizzarra e quieta, tipicissima di Londra, colma d’una immobilità casuale. Le case alte e piatte tutt’intorno parevano insieme prospere e disabitate; il quadrato di arbusti al centro pareva deserto come un verde isolotto del Pacifico. Uno dei quattro lati era assai più alto degli altri, come un palco; e la linea di questo lato era interrotta da uno di quegli ammirevoli accidenti di Londra: un ristorante che sembrava sviato da Soho. Era un oggetto irragionevolmente attraente, con pianticelle nane in vaso e lunghe tende a righe giallo limone e bianche. Sorgeva particolarmente in alto sulla strada, e nel consueto modo rappezzato di Londra una rampa di gradini saliva dalla strada a incontrare la porta d’ingresso quasi come una scala anti-incendio potrebbe salire fino a una finestra del primo piano. Valentin si fermò a fumare davanti alle tende bianco-gialle e le contemplò a lungo.

La cosa più incredibile dei miracoli è che accadono. Alcune nuvole in cielo si radunano davvero nella forma fissa di un occhio umano. Un albero si erge davvero nel paesaggio di un viaggio incerto nella forma esatta ed elaborata di un punto interrogativo. Ho visto io stesso entrambe queste cose negli ultimi giorni. Nelson muore davvero nell’istante della vittoria; e un uomo di nome Williams assassina del tutto per caso un uomo di nome Williamson; suona come una specie di infanticidio. Insomma, c’è nella vita un elemento di coincidenza fatata che chi fa i conti col prosaico può perennemente mancare. Come è stato ben espresso nel paradosso di Poe, la saggezza dovrebbe fare i conti con l’imprevisto.

Aristide Valentin era insondabilmente francese; e l’intelligenza francese è intelligenza in modo speciale e unico. Egli non era «una macchina pensante»; ché questa è una frase sventata del fatalismo e del materialismo moderni. Una macchina è una macchina solo perché non sa pensare. Ma egli era un uomo pensante, e al medesimo tempo un uomo semplice. Tutti i suoi mirabili successi, che parevano prestidigitazione, li aveva conseguiti a forza di logica tenace, di pensiero francese chiaro e ordinario. I francesi elettrizzano il mondo non lanciando qualche paradosso, lo elettrizzano portando alle estreme conseguenze un truismo. Portano un truismo tanto lontano — come nella Rivoluzione francese. Ma proprio perché Valentin comprendeva la ragione, ne comprendeva i limiti. Solo chi non sa nulla di motori parla di guidare senza benzina; solo chi non sa nulla di ragione parla di ragionare senza primi princìpi saldi e incontestati. Qui egli non aveva primi princìpi saldi. Flambeau era stato mancato a Harwich; e se pure era a Londra, poteva essere qualsiasi cosa, da un alto vagabondo sul Wimbledon Common a un alto maestro di cerimonie all’Hotel Metropole. In tale nudo stato di ignoranza, Valentin aveva una sua veduta e un suo metodo.

In casi simili faceva i conti con l’imprevisto. In casi simili, quando non poteva seguire il filo del ragionevole, seguiva freddamente e con cura il filo dell’irragionevole. Invece di andare nei luoghi giusti — banche, posti di polizia, luoghi di convegno — andava sistematicamente nei luoghi sbagliati; bussava a ogni casa vuota, imboccava ogni vicolo cieco, risaliva ogni viuzza ingombra di rifiuti, faceva il giro di ogni mezzaluna che lo portava inutilmente fuori strada. Difendeva questo procedere folle in modo del tutto logico. Diceva che se si aveva un indizio quello era il modo peggiore; ma se non si aveva alcun indizio era il migliore, perché c’era pur sempre la probabilità che qualche stranezza che aveva colpito l’occhio dell’inseguitore fosse la stessa che aveva colpito l’occhio dell’inseguito. Da qualche parte un uomo deve pur cominciare, e tanto valeva farlo proprio là dove un altro uomo potrebbe fermarsi. Qualcosa in quella rampa di gradini che saliva al negozio, qualcosa nella quiete e nella bizzarria del ristorante, ridestò tutta la rara fantasia romantica del detective e lo indusse a colpire a caso. Salì i gradini e, sedendosi a un tavolo presso la finestra, chiese una tazza di caffè nero.

Era metà mattina, e non aveva fatto colazione; le tenui tracce delle altrui colazioni erano ancora sparse sul tavolo a ricordargli la fame; e aggiunto un uovo in camicia all’ordinazione, si mise pensoso a scuotere un po’ di zucchero bianco nel caffè, pensando per tutto il tempo a Flambeau. Ricordava come Flambeau fosse sfuggito, una volta grazie a un paio di forbicine da unghie, e una volta grazie a una casa in fiamme; una volta per aver dovuto pagare il soprattassa di una lettera priva di francobollo, e una volta facendo guardare la gente in un telescopio verso una cometa che poteva distruggere il mondo. Riteneva il proprio cervello di detective buono quanto quello del criminale, e ciò era vero. Ma si rendeva pienamente conto dello svantaggio. «Il criminale è l’artista creatore; il detective è soltanto il critico», disse con un sorriso acido, e accostò lentamente la tazza di caffè alle labbra, e la posò molto in fretta. Vi aveva messo del sale.

Guardò il recipiente da cui era venuta la polvere argentea; era senza dubbio una zuccheriera; inequivocabilmente destinata allo zucchero come una bottiglia di champagne allo champagne. Si domandò perché mai vi tenessero il sale. Cercò con lo sguardo se vi fossero recipienti più ortodossi. Sì; c’erano due saliere del tutto piene. Forse c’era qualche specialità nel condimento delle saliere. Lo assaggiò; era zucchero. Allora si guardò intorno per il ristorante con aria rinnovata d’interesse, per vedere se vi fossero altre tracce di quel singolare gusto artistico che mette lo zucchero nelle saliere e il sale nella zuccheriera. A parte una strana chiazza di un liquido scuro su una delle pareti tappezzate di carta bianca, l’intero locale appariva lindo, allegro e ordinario. Suonò il campanello per il cameriere.

When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.

“Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?” inquired Valentin. “Does changing the salt and sugar never pall on you as a jest?”

The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment had certainly no such intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.

Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of words.

“I zink,” he stuttered eagerly, “I zink it is those two clergy-men.”

“What two clergymen?”

“The two clergymen,” said the waiter, “that threw soup at the wall.”

“Threw soup at the wall?” repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian metaphor.

“Yes, yes,” said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at the dark splash on the white paper; “threw it over there on the wall.”

Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s quite true, though I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people; one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don’t do any particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the next corner into Carstairs Street.”

The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other street.

It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular greengrocer and fruiterer’s, an array of goods set out in the open air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the two most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold, blue chalk, “Best tangerine oranges, two a penny.” On the oranges was the equally clear and exact description, “Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb.” M. Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the attention of the red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his walking-cane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, “Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and the association of ideas.”

The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane, “Why,” he pursued, “why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer’s shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the other short?”

The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail’s; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: “I don’t know what you ‘ave to do with it, but if you’re one of their friends, you can tell ‘em from me that I’ll knock their silly ‘eads off, parsons or no parsons, if they upset my apples again.”

“Indeed?” asked the detective, with great sympathy. “Did they upset your apples?”

“One of ‘em did,” said the heated shopman; “rolled ‘em all over the street. I’d ‘ave caught the fool but for havin’ to pick ‘em up.”

“Which way did these parsons go?” asked Valentin.

“Up that second road on the left-hand side, and then across the square,” said the other promptly.

“Thanks,” replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square he found a policeman, and said: “This is urgent, constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel hats?”

The policeman began to chuckle heavily. “I ‘ave, sir; and if you arst me, one of ‘em was drunk. He stood in the middle of the road that bewildered that—”

“Which way did they go?” snapped Valentin.

“They took one of them yellow buses over there,” answered the man; “them that go to Hampstead.”

Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly: “Call up two of your men to come with me in pursuit,” and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a man in plain clothes.

Quando quel funzionario accorse, coi capelli arruffati e gli occhi un po’ cisposi a quell’ora mattutina, il detective (che non era privo d’apprezzamento per le forme più semplici di umorismo) gli chiese di assaggiare lo zucchero e di vedere se era all’altezza dell’alta reputazione dell’albergo. Il risultato fu che il cameriere sbadigliò d’improvviso e si svegliò.

«Fate questo delicato scherzo ai vostri clienti ogni mattina?» domandò Valentin. «Scambiare il sale e lo zucchero non vi stanca mai come facezia?»

Il cameriere, quando questa ironia si fece più chiara, gli assicurò balbettando che l’esercizio non aveva di certo alcuna simile intenzione; doveva trattarsi di un curiosissimo sbaglio. Prese la zuccheriera e la guardò; prese la saliera e guardò anche quella, con la faccia sempre più sconcertata. Alla fine si scusò bruscamente e, allontanandosi in fretta, tornò dopo pochi secondi col proprietario. Anche il proprietario esaminò la zuccheriera e poi la saliera; anche il proprietario parve sconcertato.

D’improvviso il cameriere parve farsi inarticolato per un fiotto di parole.

«Io penso» balbettò con foga, «io penso che siano quei due religiosi.»

«Quali due religiosi?»

«I due religiosi» disse il cameriere «che hanno gettato la minestra contro il muro.»

«Gettato la minestra contro il muro?» ripeté Valentin, certo che dovesse trattarsi di qualche singolare metafora italiana.

«Sì, sì» disse concitato l’inserviente, e indicò la chiazza scura sulla carta bianca; «l’hanno gettata là contro il muro.»

Valentin volse lo sguardo interrogativo al proprietario, che venne in suo soccorso con più ampi ragguagli.

«Sì, signore» disse, «è verissimo, per quanto non credo abbia nulla a che fare con lo zucchero e il sale. Due religiosi entrarono e bevvero qui la minestra assai di buon’ora, appena tolte le imposte. Erano entrambi persone molto quiete e rispettabili; uno di loro pagò il conto e uscì; l’altro, che pareva del tutto più lento, impiegò qualche minuto di più a raccogliere le sue cose. Ma alla fine se ne andò. Solo che, un istante prima di uscire in strada, prese deliberatamente la sua tazza, che aveva vuotato solo a metà, e sbatté la minestra di netto contro il muro. Io ero nel retro, e così pure il cameriere; sicché potei solo precipitarmi fuori in tempo per trovare il muro schizzato e il locale vuoto. Non fa danno di sorta, ma fu una sfacciataggine matta; e cercai di acchiappare quei due in strada. Erano però troppo lontani; notai soltanto che voltavano l’angolo seguente in Carstairs Street.»

Il detective era già in piedi, il cappello calcato e il bastone in mano. Aveva già deciso che, nella tenebra universale della sua mente, poteva solo seguire il primo dito bizzarro che gli indicasse la via; e questo dito era abbastanza bizzarro. Pagato il conto e sbattendosi dietro le porte a vetri, di lì a poco svoltava spedito nell’altra via.

Fu una fortuna che anche in momenti tanto febbrili il suo occhio fosse freddo e pronto. Qualcosa in una vetrina gli passò accanto come un semplice lampo; eppure tornò indietro a guardarla. Il negozio era una comune frutta e verdura, con una fila di merci esposte all’aria aperta e chiaramente munite di cartellini coi nomi e i prezzi. Nei due scomparti più in vista c’erano due cumuli, rispettivamente di arance e di noci. Sul cumulo di noci stava un pezzetto di cartone su cui era scritto a chiare lettere, in gesso azzurro: «Ottimi mandarini, due al penny». Sulle arance c’era la descrizione altrettanto chiara ed esatta: «Finissime noci del Brasile, 4 pence la libbra». Il signor Valentin guardò questi due cartelli e s’immaginò d’aver già incontrato prima questa forma sommamente sottile di umorismo, e in tempi piuttosto recenti. Attirò l’attenzione del fruttivendolo dalla faccia rossa, che scrutava piuttosto imbronciato su e giù per la strada, su questa inesattezza nelle sue réclame. Il fruttivendolo non disse nulla, ma rimise seccamente ciascun cartello al suo posto giusto. Il detective, appoggiandosi con eleganza al bastone da passeggio, continuò a scrutare il negozio. Alla fine disse: «Vi prego di scusare la mia apparente inopportunità, mio buon signore, ma vorrei rivolgervi una domanda di psicologia sperimentale e di associazione delle idee.»

Il bottegaio dalla faccia rossa lo squadrò con occhio minaccioso; ma egli proseguì allegro, dondolando il bastone: «Perché mai», riprese, «perché mai due cartellini messi al posto sbagliato in una bottega di frutta e verdura assomigliano a un cappello a tesa larga sceso a Londra per una vacanza? Oppure, caso mai non mi spiegassi bene, qual è la mistica associazione che collega l’idea di noci contrassegnate come arance con l’idea di due religiosi, uno alto e l’altro basso?»

Gli occhi del bottegaio gli sporgevano dalla testa come quelli di una lumaca; parve davvero, per un istante, sul punto di scagliarsi sullo sconosciuto. Alla fine balbettò con collera: «Non so cosa ci abbiate a che fare voi, ma se siete un loro amico, potete dirgli da parte mia che gli spacco le loro sciocche teste, preti o non preti, se mi rovesciano di nuovo le mele.»

«Davvero?» chiese il detective con grande simpatia. «Vi hanno rovesciato le mele?»

«Uno di loro sì» disse il bottegaio infervorato; «me le ha fatte rotolare per tutta la strada. L’avrei acchiappato, quel sciocco, se non avessi dovuto raccoglierle.»

«Da che parte sono andati quei preti?» chiese Valentin.

«Su per quella seconda strada sulla sinistra, e poi attraverso la piazza» rispose l’altro pronto.

«Grazie» replicò Valentin, e sparì come una fata. Dall’altro lato della seconda piazza trovò un poliziotto e disse: «È urgente, agente; avete visto due religiosi con cappelli a tesa larga?»

Il poliziotto cominciò a ridacchiare pesantemente. «Sì, signore; e se volete il mio parere, uno di loro era ubriaco. Se ne stava in mezzo alla strada tanto stralunato che…»

«Da che parte sono andati?» tagliò corto Valentin.

«Han preso uno di quegli autobus gialli laggiù» rispose l’uomo; «di quelli che vanno a Hampstead.»

Valentin esibì la propria tessera ufficiale e disse rapidissimo: «Chiamate due dei vostri uomini a venire con me all’inseguimento», e attraversò la strada con un’energia tanto contagiosa che il ponderoso poliziotto fu spinto a un’obbedienza quasi agile. In un minuto e mezzo il detective francese venne raggiunto sul marciapiede di fronte da un ispettore e da un uomo in abiti civili.

“Well, sir,” began the former, with smiling importance, “and what may—?”

Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. “I’ll tell you on the top of that omnibus,” he said, and was darting and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: “We could go four times as quick in a taxi.”

“Quite true,” replied their leader placidly, “if we only had an idea of where we were going.”

“Well, where are you going?” asked the other, staring.

Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing his cigarette, he said: “If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing.”

“What sort of queer thing do you mean?” asked the inspector.

“Any sort of queer thing,” answered Valentin, and relapsed into obstinate silence.

The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But though the winter twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by on either side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind, the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man’s shoulder, and shouted to the driver to stop.

They tumbled down the steps into the road without realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards a window on the left side of the road. It was a large window, forming part of the long facade of a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part reserved for respectable dining, and labelled “Restaurant.” This window, like all the rest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass; but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.

“Our cue at last,” cried Valentin, waving his stick; “the place with the broken window.”

“What window? What cue?” asked his principal assistant. “Why, what proof is there that this has anything to do with them?”

Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.

“Proof!” he cried. “Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don’t you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?” He banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table, and looked at the star of smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even then.

“Got your window broken, I see,” said Valentin to the waiter as he paid the bill.

“Yes, sir,” answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, to which Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable animation.

“Ah, yes, sir,” he said. “Very odd thing, that, sir.”

“Indeed?” Tell us about it,” said the detective with careless curiosity.

“Well, two gents in black came in,” said the waiter; “two of those foreign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other was just going out to join him when I looked at my change again and found he’d paid me more than three times too much. ‘Here,’ I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door, ‘you’ve paid too much.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, very cool, ‘have we?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, and picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was a knock-out.”

“What do you mean?” asked his interlocutor.

“Well, I’d have sworn on seven Bibles that I’d put 4s. on that bill. But now I saw I’d put 14s., as plain as paint.”

“Well?” cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes, “and then?”

“The parson at the door he says all serene, ‘Sorry to confuse your accounts, but it’ll pay for the window.’ ‘What window?’ I says. ‘The one I’m going to break,’ he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his umbrella.”

All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under his breath, “Are we after escaped lunatics?” The waiter went on with some relish for the ridiculous story:

“I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn’t do anything. The man marched out of the place and joined his friend just round the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn’t catch them, though I ran round the bars to do it.”

“Bullock Street,” said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple he pursued.

Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few windows; streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess in what exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however, was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull’s-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant’s hesitation he went in; he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not need one.

«Ebbene, signore», esordì il primo con sorridente sussiego, «e in che cosa posso…?»

Valentin puntò d’improvviso il bastone. «Ve lo dirò in cima a quell’omnibus», disse, e già saettava e schivava attraverso il groviglio del traffico. Quando tutti e tre si lasciarono cadere ansanti sui sedili in cima al veicolo giallo, l’ispettore disse: «In taxi andremmo quattro volte più svelti.»

«Verissimo» replicò placido il loro capo, «se solo avessimo un’idea di dove stiamo andando.»

«Ebbene, dove state andando?» chiese l’altro, sgranando gli occhi.

Valentin fumò accigliato per qualche secondo; poi, togliendosi la sigaretta, disse: «Se sai cosa sta facendo un uomo, mettiti davanti a lui; ma se vuoi indovinare cosa sta facendo, stagli dietro. Devia quando devia; férmati quando si ferma; viaggia lento quanto lui. Allora potrai vedere ciò che ha visto lui e agire come ha agito lui. Tutto quello che possiamo fare è tenere gli occhi bene aperti per una cosa strana.»

«Che genere di cosa strana intendete?» chiese l’ispettore.

«Qualsiasi genere di cosa strana» rispose Valentin, e ricadde in un ostinato silenzio.

L’omnibus giallo arrancò su per le strade settentrionali per quelle che parvero ore intere; il grande detective non volle spiegarsi oltre, e forse i suoi assistenti provavano un silenzioso e crescente dubbio sulla sua missione. Forse, anche, provavano un silenzioso e crescente desiderio di pranzo, ché le ore trascorrevano ben oltre la consueta ora di colazione, e le lunghe strade dei sobborghi della Londra settentrionale parevano allungarsi in tratti su tratti come un infernale telescopio. Era uno di quei viaggi durante i quali un uomo sente perennemente che ora finalmente dev’essere giunto alla fine dell’universo, e poi scopre d’esser arrivato appena all’inizio di Tufnell Park. Londra si spegneva in taverne sciatte e squallidi sterpeti, e poi rinasceva inspiegabilmente in strade principali sfolgoranti e alberghi chiassosi. Era come attraversare tredici distinte città volgari che appena si toccano l’un l’altra. Ma per quanto il crepuscolo d’inverno già minacciasse la strada davanti a loro, il detective parigino sedeva ancora silenzioso e vigile, scrutando le facciate delle vie che scivolavano via da un lato e dall’altro. Nel tempo in cui ebbero lasciato Camden Town alle spalle, i poliziotti erano quasi addormentati; per lo meno, ebbero un sussulto quando Valentin balzò dritto in piedi, batté una mano sulla spalla di ciascuno, e gridò al conducente di fermarsi.

Ruzzolarono giù dai gradini nella strada senza rendersi conto del perché fossero stati sloggiati; quando si guardarono attorno in cerca di lumi, trovarono Valentin che puntava trionfante il dito verso una finestra sul lato sinistro della strada. Era una grande finestra, parte della lunga facciata di una sontuosa e dorata casa pubblica; era la parte riservata al pranzo per bene, e recava l’insegna «Ristorante». Questa finestra, come tutte le altre lungo la facciata dell’albergo, era di vetro smerigliato e figurato; ma nel mezzo c’era una grande crepa nera, come una stella nel ghiaccio.

«Ecco finalmente la nostra traccia», gridò Valentin agitando il bastone; «il locale con la finestra rotta.»

«Quale finestra? Quale traccia?» chiese il suo assistente principale. «Ma quale prova c’è che questo abbia qualcosa a che fare con loro?»

Valentin per poco non spezzò per la rabbia il suo bastone di bambù.

«Prova!» esclamò. «Buon Dio! quest’uomo cerca una prova! Ma certo, le probabilità sono venti a uno che non abbia nulla a che fare con loro. Ma cos’altro possiamo fare? Non vedete che dobbiamo o inseguire un’unica folle possibilità o andarcene a casa a letto?» Si fece largo a spintoni dentro il ristorante, seguìto dai compagni, e di lì a poco sedevano a un tardo pranzo a un tavolino, guardando dall’interno la stella di vetro infranto. Non che ciò fosse per loro molto istruttivo, neppure allora.

«Vi hanno rotto la finestra, a quanto vedo», disse Valentin al cameriere mentre pagava il conto.

«Sì, signore», rispose l’inserviente, chinandosi affaccendato sul resto, al quale Valentin aggiunse in silenzio una mancia enorme. Il cameriere si raddrizzò con mite ma inequivocabile animazione.

«Ah, sì, signore», disse. «Cosa ben strana, quella, signore.»

«Davvero? Raccontatecela», disse il detective con noncurante curiosità.

«Ebbene, entrarono due signori vestiti di nero», disse il cameriere; «due di quei preti stranieri che vanno in giro. Fecero un pranzetto frugale e tranquillo, e uno di loro lo pagò e uscì. L’altro stava giusto per uscire a raggiungerlo quando guardai di nuovo il mio resto e trovai che m’aveva pagato più del triplo del dovuto. “Ehi”, dico al tipo che era quasi fuori dalla porta, “avete pagato troppo.” “Oh”, fa lui, freddissimo, “davvero?” “Sì”, dico io, e prendo il conto per mostrarglielo. Ebbene, quella fu una mazzata.»

«Che cosa intendete?» chiese il suo interlocutore.

«Ebbene, avrei giurato su sette Bibbie di aver segnato 4 scellini su quel conto. Ma allora vidi che avevo segnato 14 scellini, chiaro come la vernice.»

«Ebbene?» esclamò Valentin, muovendosi lento, ma con occhi ardenti, «e poi?»

«Il prete sulla porta, dice tutto sereno: “Spiacente di confondervi i conti, ma servirà a pagare la finestra.” “Quale finestra?” dico io. “Quella che sto per rompere”, dice lui, e frantumò quel benedetto vetro con l’ombrello.»

Tutti e tre gli inquirenti fecero un’esclamazione; e l’ispettore disse sottovoce: «Stiamo dando la caccia a dei pazzi evasi?» Il cameriere proseguì con un certo gusto per la storia ridicola:

«Restai talmente sbalordito per un momento che non seppi far nulla. L’uomo se ne uscì impettito dal locale e raggiunse l’amico giusto dietro l’angolo. Poi filarono su per Bullock Street così in fretta che non riuscii ad acchiapparli, per quanto corressi attorno al bancone per farlo.»

«Bullock Street», disse il detective, e si lanciò su per quella via con la stessa rapidità della strana coppia che inseguiva.

Il loro cammino ora li portò attraverso nudi passaggi di mattoni simili a gallerie; strade con poche luci e persino con poche finestre; strade che parevano costruite coi retri ciechi di ogni cosa e di ogni luogo. Il buio s’infittiva, e non era facile neppure per i poliziotti londinesi indovinare in quale esatta direzione stessero incamminandosi. L’ispettore, tuttavia, era abbastanza sicuro che alla fine avrebbero raggiunto qualche parte di Hampstead Heath. D’improvviso una finestra sporgente e illuminata a gas ruppe il crepuscolo azzurro come una lanterna cieca; e Valentin si arrestò un istante davanti a una piccola e vistosa bottega di dolciumi. Dopo un istante d’esitazione entrò; se ne stette tra i colori sgargianti della confetteria con tutta serietà e comprò tredici sigari di cioccolato con una certa cura. Stava evidentemente preparando un attacco; ma non ne ebbe bisogno.

An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.

“Oh,” she said, “if you’ve come about that parcel, I’ve sent it off already.”

“Parcel?” repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.

“I mean the parcel the gentleman left—the clergyman gentleman.”

“For goodness’ sake,” said Valentin, leaning forward with his first real confession of eagerness, “for Heaven’s sake tell us what happened exactly.”

“Well,” said the woman a little doubtfully, “the clergymen came in about half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runs back into the shop and says, ‘Have I left a parcel!’ Well, I looked everywhere and couldn’t see one; so he says, ‘Never mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,’ and he left me the address and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought I’d looked everywhere, I found he’d left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it to the place he said. I can’t remember the address now; it was somewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought perhaps the police had come about it.”

“So they have,” said Valentin shortly. “Is Hampstead Heath near here?”

“Straight on for fifteen minutes,” said the woman, “and you’ll come right out on the open.” Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially black which did not break—a group of two figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student’s stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the distance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom he had warned about his brown paper parcels.

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the congress. This undoubtedly was the “silver with blue stones”; and Father Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all natural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful about the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.

The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word “reason” recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives actually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find the trail again for an agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot was an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests for the first time.

Una spigolosa giovane donna non più giovanissima, nel negozio, aveva osservato il suo elegante aspetto con un’indagine puramente meccanica; ma quando vide la porta dietro di lui bloccata dalla divisa azzurra dell’ispettore, i suoi occhi parvero destarsi.

«Oh», disse, «se siete venuti per quel pacco, l’ho già spedito.»

«Pacco?» ripeté Valentin; e toccò a lui aver l’aria interrogativa.

«Voglio dire il pacco che ha lasciato quel signore, il signore religioso.»

«Per l’amor del cielo», disse Valentin, protendendosi in avanti con la sua prima vera confessione di premura, «per l’amor di Dio, diteci esattamente cosa è accaduto.»

«Ebbene», disse la donna un po’ dubbiosa, «i religiosi entrarono circa mezz’ora fa e comprarono delle mentine e chiacchierarono un po’, e poi se ne andarono verso la Heath. Ma un attimo dopo, uno di loro ritorna di corsa nel negozio e dice: “Ho lasciato un pacco?” Ebbene, cercai dappertutto e non ne vidi nessuno; sicché lui dice: “Non importa; ma se dovesse saltar fuori, siate gentile, speditelo a questo indirizzo”, e mi lasciò l’indirizzo e uno scellino per il disturbo. E difatti, per quanto credessi d’aver guardato dappertutto, trovai che aveva lasciato un pacco di carta marrone, sicché lo spedii al luogo che aveva detto. Non ricordo più l’indirizzo, ora; era da qualche parte a Westminster. Ma siccome la cosa pareva così importante, ho pensato che forse la polizia fosse venuta per questo.»

«Difatti», disse Valentin secco. «Hampstead Heath è vicina di qui?»

«Sempre dritto per quindici minuti», disse la donna, «e sboccherete proprio all’aperto.» Valentin scattò fuori dal negozio e si mise a correre. Gli altri detective lo seguirono a un trotto riluttante.

La strada che imboccarono era così stretta e chiusa fra le ombre che quando sbucarono inaspettatamente nel vuoto della brughiera comune e nel vasto cielo trasalirono nel trovare la sera ancora così chiara e luminosa. Una cupola perfetta di verde pavone sprofondava nell’oro tra gli alberi che annerivano e le lontananze di un violetto scuro. La tinta verde e luminosa era appena tanto profonda da far spiccare in punti di cristallo una o due stelle. Tutto ciò che restava della luce diurna giaceva in un luccichio dorato lungo il margine di Hampstead e di quella popolare conca chiamata la Valle della Salute. I villeggianti che vagano per questa regione non si erano del tutto dispersi; qualche coppia sedeva informe sulle panchine; e qua e là una fanciulla lontana ancora strillava su una delle altalene. La gloria del cielo si faceva più profonda e più cupa intorno alla sublime volgarità dell’uomo; e stando sul pendio e guardando attraverso la valle, Valentin scorse la cosa che cercava.

Tra i gruppi neri e sparsi in quella lontananza ce n’era uno particolarmente nero che non si sparpagliava: un gruppo di due figure vestite da ecclesiastici. Per quanto sembrassero piccole come insetti, Valentin poté vedere che una di esse era assai più piccola dell’altra. Per quanto l’altra avesse la curva delle spalle dello studioso e un fare dimesso, egli poté vedere che quell’uomo superava di molto i sei piedi d’altezza. Serrò i denti e avanzò, roteando il bastone con impazienza. Quando ebbe sostanzialmente ridotto la distanza e ingrandito le due figure nere come in un vasto microscopio, aveva percepito qualcos’altro; qualcosa che lo trasalì, eppure che egli in qualche modo aveva previsto. Chiunque fosse il prete alto, non poteva esservi dubbio sull’identità di quello basso. Era il suo amico del treno di Harwich, il tarchiato pretino dell’Essex che aveva ammonito riguardo ai suoi pacchetti di carta marrone.

Ora, fin qui, tutto si incastrava alla fine in modo abbastanza razionale. Valentin aveva appreso dalle sue indagini di quel mattino che un certo Padre Brown dell’Essex stava portando su una croce d’argento con zaffiri, una reliquia di considerevole valore, da mostrare ad alcuni dei preti stranieri al congresso. Questo era senza dubbio l’«argento con le pietre azzurre»; e Padre Brown era senza dubbio il piccolo sprovveduto sul treno. Ora, non c’era nulla di meraviglioso nel fatto che ciò che Valentin aveva scoperto lo avesse scoperto anche Flambeau; Flambeau scopriva tutto. E non c’era nulla di meraviglioso neppure nel fatto che, udendo parlare di una croce di zaffiri, egli cercasse di rubarla; era la cosa più naturale di tutta la storia naturale. E di certo non c’era nulla di meraviglioso nel fatto che Flambeau potesse fare tutto a modo suo con una pecora tanto sciocca come l’uomo dell’ombrello e dei pacchetti. Era il tipo d’uomo che chiunque avrebbe potuto condurre al guinzaglio fino al Polo Nord; non c’era da stupirsi che un attore come Flambeau, travestito da altro prete, potesse condurlo a Hampstead Heath. Fin qui il delitto pareva abbastanza chiaro; e mentre il detective compativa il prete per la sua impotenza, quasi disprezzava Flambeau per essersi degnato di una vittima tanto ingenua. Ma quando Valentin pensava a tutto ciò che era accaduto nel frattempo, a tutto ciò che l’aveva condotto al suo trionfo, si scervellava per trovarvi il minimo capo o coda. Che c’entrava il furto di una croce d’azzurro e d’argento a un prete dell’Essex con lo scagliare la minestra contro la tappezzeria? Che c’entrava col chiamare arance le noci, o col pagare le finestre prima e romperle poi? Era giunto alla fine della sua caccia; eppure in qualche modo ne aveva mancato il mezzo. Quando falliva (il che avveniva di rado), di solito aveva afferrato l’indizio, ma nondimeno aveva mancato il criminale. Qui aveva afferrato il criminale, ma ancora non riusciva ad afferrare l’indizio.

Le due figure che seguivano avanzavano strisciando come mosche nere attraverso l’enorme contorno verde di una collina. Erano evidentemente immerse nella conversazione, e forse non badavano a dove andavano; ma di sicuro andavano verso le alture più selvagge e silenziose della Heath. Man mano che gli inseguitori guadagnavano terreno, questi dovettero ricorrere alle indegne posture del cacciatore di cervi, accovacciandosi dietro i cespugli e persino strisciando proni nell’erba alta. Con questi sgraziati accorgimenti i cacciatori giunsero persino abbastanza vicini alla preda da udire il mormorio della discussione, ma non si poteva distinguere alcuna parola tranne la parola «ragione» che ricorreva di frequente in una voce acuta e quasi infantile. Una volta, oltre un brusco avvallamento del terreno e un fitto groviglio di macchie, i detective persero addirittura le due figure che seguivano. Non ne ritrovarono la traccia se non dopo dieci minuti d’agonia, e allora essa li condusse intorno al ciglio d’una grande cupola di collina che dominava un anfiteatro di ricche e desolate scenografie di tramonto. Sotto un albero, in quel punto imponente e pure trascurato, c’era una vecchia panca di legno malandata. Su quella panca sedevano i due preti, ancora in grave colloquio. Il sontuoso verde e oro si aggrappava ancora all’orizzonte che s’incupiva; ma la cupola sopra andava lentamente mutando dal verde pavone all’azzurro pavone, e le stelle si staccavano sempre più come solidi gioielli. Facendo muti cenni ai suoi seguaci, Valentin riuscì a strisciare fin dietro il grande albero ramificato e, stando lì in un silenzio di morte, udì per la prima volta le parole degli strani preti.

After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs on its thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black Spanish cathedral.

The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown’s sentences, which ended: ”… what they really meant in the Middle Ages by the heavens being incorruptible.”

The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:

“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”

“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”

The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

“Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?”

“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth.”

Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:

“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tall priest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:

“Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my head.”

Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:

“Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We’re all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll.”

The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange violence to that shocking change of speech. But the guarder of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and sat rigid with terror.

“Yes,” said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the same still posture, “yes, I am Flambeau.”

Then, after a pause, he said:

“Come, will you give me that cross?”

“No,” said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound.

Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions. The great robber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but long.

“No,” he cried, “you won’t give it me, you proud prelate. You won’t give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I tell you why you won’t give it me? Because I’ve got it already in my own breast-pocket.”

The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face in the dusk, and said, with the timid eagerness of “The Private Secretary”:

“Are—are you sure?”

Flambeau yelled with delight.

“Really, you’re as good as a three-act farce,” he cried. “Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you’ve got the duplicate and I’ve got the jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown—a very old dodge.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with the same strange vagueness of manner. “Yes, I’ve heard of it before.”

The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.

“You have heard of it?” he asked. “Where have you heard of it?”

“Well, I mustn’t tell you his name, of course,” said the little man simply. “He was a penitent, you know. He had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap’s way of doing it at once.”

“Began to suspect me?” repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. “Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just because I brought you up to this bare part of the heath?”

“No, no,” said Brown with an air of apology. “You see, I suspected you when we first met. It’s that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet.”

“How in Tartarus,” cried Flambeau, “did you ever hear of the spiked bracelet?”

“Oh, one’s little flock, you know!” said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. “When I was a curate in Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I suspected you from the first, don’t you see, I made sure that the cross should go safe, anyhow. I’m afraid I watched you, you know. So at last I saw you change the parcels. Then, don’t you see, I changed them back again. And then I left the right one behind.”

Dopo aver ascoltato per un minuto e mezzo, fu preso da un dubbio diabolico. Forse aveva trascinato i due poliziotti inglesi nelle lande di una brughiera notturna per una missione non più assennata del cercare fichi sui suoi cardi. Poiché i due preti discorrevano esattamente come preti, piamente, con dottrina e agio, dei più aerei enigmi della teologia. Il pretino dell’Essex parlava con maggior semplicità, col volto rotondo rivolto alle stelle che si facevano più intense; l’altro parlava col capo chino, come se non fosse neppure degno di guardarle. Ma nessuna conversazione più innocentemente clericale si sarebbe potuta udire in un bianco chiostro italiano o in una nera cattedrale spagnola.

La prima cosa che udì fu la coda di una delle frasi di Padre Brown, che terminava: «…ciò che intendevano davvero nel Medioevo dicendo che i cieli sono incorruttibili.»

Il prete più alto annuì col capo chino e disse:

«Ah, sì, questi moderni infedeli si appellano alla loro ragione; ma chi può guardare quei milioni di mondi e non sentire che potrebbero ben esservi universi meravigliosi sopra di noi, dove la ragione è del tutto irragionevole?»

«No», disse l’altro prete; «la ragione è sempre ragionevole, persino nell’ultimo limbo, nella perduta terra di confine delle cose. So che si accusa la Chiesa di abbassare la ragione, ma è proprio il contrario. Sola sulla terra, la Chiesa rende la ragione veramente sovrana. Sola sulla terra, la Chiesa afferma che Dio stesso è vincolato dalla ragione.»

L’altro prete levò il suo austero volto al cielo trapunto di stelle e disse:

«Eppure, chi sa se in quell’universo infinito…?»

«Infinito solo fisicamente», disse il pretino, voltandosi di scatto sulla panca, «non infinito nel senso di sfuggire alle leggi della verità.»

Valentin, dietro il suo albero, si strappava le unghie con silenziosa furia. Gli pareva quasi di udire i risolini dei detective inglesi che aveva condotto tanto lontano su una fantastica congettura solo per ascoltare i pettegolezzi metafisici di due miti vecchi pretonzoli. Nell’impazienza perse la risposta altrettanto elaborata dell’alto chierico, e quando tornò ad ascoltare era di nuovo Padre Brown a parlare:

«La ragione e la giustizia stringono la stella più remota e più solitaria. Guardate quelle stelle. Non sembrano forse diamanti e zaffiri isolati? Ebbene, potete immaginare qualunque folle botanica o geologia vi piaccia. Pensate a foreste d’adamante con foglie di brillanti. Pensate che la luna sia una luna azzurra, un unico elefantesco zaffiro. Ma non crediate che tutta quella frenetica astronomia farebbe la minima differenza per la ragione e la giustizia della condotta. Su pianure d’opale, sotto rupi scolpite nella perla, trovereste pur sempre un cartello: “Non rubare.”»

Valentin stava giusto per alzarsi dalla sua rigida posizione accovacciata e allontanarsi strisciando quanto più silenziosamente possibile, abbattuto dall’unica grande follia della sua vita. Ma qualcosa nel silenzio stesso del prete alto lo indusse a fermarsi finché questi non parlò. Quando alla fine parlò, disse semplicemente, col capo chino e le mani sulle ginocchia:

«Ebbene, io penso che altri mondi possano forse elevarsi più in alto della nostra ragione. Il mistero del cielo è insondabile, e io per primo non posso che chinare il capo.»

Poi, con la fronte ancora piegata e senza mutare della più tenue sfumatura il proprio atteggiamento o la propria voce, aggiunse:

«Passatemi solo quella vostra croce di zaffiri, volete? Siamo del tutto soli qui, e potrei farvi a pezzi come una bambola di paglia.»

La voce e l’atteggiamento del tutto immutati aggiunsero una strana violenza a quello sconvolgente cambio di discorso. Ma il custode della reliquia parve soltanto voltare il capo del più piccolo settore della bussola. Pareva avere ancora un volto piuttosto sciocco rivolto alle stelle. Forse non aveva capito. Oppure, forse, aveva capito e sedeva rigido di terrore.

«Sì», disse il prete alto, con la stessa voce sommessa e nella stessa immobile posizione, «sì, io sono Flambeau.»

Poi, dopo una pausa, disse:

«Su, volete darmi quella croce?»

«No», disse l’altro, e il monosillabo ebbe un suono strano.

Flambeau scrollò d’un tratto ogni sua pontificale posa. Il grande ladrone si abbandonò contro lo schienale e rise sommesso ma a lungo.

«No», gridò, «non me la darete, superbo prelato. Non me la darete, piccolo sempliciotto celibe. Volete che vi dica perché non me la darete? Perché l’ho già io nella mia stessa tasca interna.»

Il piccolo uomo dell’Essex volse quella che parve una faccia stordita nel crepuscolo, e disse, con la timida premura del «Segretario privato»:

«Ne… ne siete sicuro?»

Flambeau urlò dalla gioia.

«Davvero, valete quanto una farsa in tre atti», gridò. «Sì, rapa, ne sono del tutto sicuro. Ho avuto il buon senso di fare un doppione del pacco giusto, e ora, amico mio, voi avete il doppione e io ho i gioielli. Un vecchio trucco, Padre Brown, un trucco vecchissimo.»

«Sì», disse Father Brown, e si passò la mano tra i capelli con la stessa strana vaghezza di modi. «Sì, ne avevo sentito parlare prima.»

Il colosso del delitto si sporse verso il piccolo prete di campagna con una sorta d’improvviso interesse.

«Ne avete sentito parlare?» chiese. «Dove ne avete sentito parlare?»

«Ebbene, non devo dirvi il suo nome, naturalmente», disse il piccolo uomo con semplicità. «Era un penitente, sapete. Aveva vissuto agiatamente per una ventina d’anni interamente su doppioni di pacchi di carta marrone. E così, vedete, quando cominciai a sospettare di voi, pensai subito al modo di fare di quel povero diavolo.»

«Cominciaste a sospettare di me?» ripeté il fuorilegge con accresciuta intensità. «Aveste davvero il fegato di sospettare di me solo perché vi condussi su in questa parte spoglia della brughiera?»

«No, no», disse Brown con aria di scusa. «Vedete, vi sospettai la prima volta che ci incontrammo. È quel piccolo rigonfio su per la manica dove voialtri portate il braccialetto a punte.»

«Come in nome di Tartaro», esclamò Flambeau, «avete mai sentito parlare del braccialetto a punte?»

«Oh, il proprio gregge, sapete!» disse Father Brown, inarcando piuttosto inespressivamente le sopracciglia. «Quando ero curato a Hartlepool, ce n’erano tre col braccialetto a punte. Sicché, siccome vi sospettavo fin dal principio, capite, mi assicurai che la croce fosse comunque al sicuro. Temo di avervi tenuto d’occhio, sapete. E così alla fine vi vidi scambiare i pacchi. Poi, capite, li riscambiai di nuovo. E poi lasciai indietro quello giusto.»

“Left it behind?” repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there was another note in his voice beside his triumph.

“Well, it was like this,” said the little priest, speaking in the same unaffected way. “I went back to that sweet-shop and asked if I’d left a parcel, and gave them a particular address if it turned up. Well, I knew I hadn’t; but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running after me with that valuable parcel, they have sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster.” Then he added rather sadly: “I learnt that, too, from a poor fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but he’s in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to know, you know,” he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology. “We can’t help being priests. People come and tell us these things.”

Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper and sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and cried:

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. I believe you’ve still got the stuff on you, and if you don’t give it up—why, we’re all alone, and I’ll take it by force!”

“No,” said Father Brown simply, and stood up also, “you won’t take it by force. First, because I really haven’t still got it. And, second, because we are not alone.”

Flambeau stopped in his stride forward.

“Behind that tree,” said Father Brown, pointing, “are two strong policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of course! How did I do it? Why, I’ll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we have to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes! Well, I wasn’t sure you were a thief, and it would never do to make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would make you show yourself. A man generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn’t, he has some reason for keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if his bill is three times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it.”

The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was stunned with the utmost curiosity.

“Well,” went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, “as you wouldn’t leave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to do something that would get us talked about for the rest of the day. I didn’t do much harm— a splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I saved the cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn’t stop it with the Donkey’s Whistle.”

“With the what?” asked Flambeau.

“I’m glad you’ve never heard of it,” said the priest, making a face. “It’s a foul thing. I’m sure you’re too good a man for a Whistler. I couldn’t have countered it even with the Spots myself; I’m not strong enough in the legs.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked the other.

“Well, I did think you’d know the Spots,” said Father Brown, agreeably surprised. “Oh, you can’t have gone so very wrong yet!”

“How in blazes do you know all these horrors?” cried Flambeau.

The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.

“Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose,” he said. “Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.”

“What?” asked the thief, almost gaping.

“You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology.”

And even as he turned away to collect his property, the three policemen came out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow.

“Do not bow to me, mon ami,” said Valentin with silver clearness. “Let us both bow to our master.”

And they both stood an instant uncovered while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.

«Lasciato indietro?» ripeté Flambeau, e per la prima volta vi fu nella sua voce un’altra nota oltre al trionfo.

«Ebbene, è andata così», disse il pretino, parlando nello stesso modo disadorno. «Tornai in quella bottega di dolciumi e chiesi se avevo lasciato un pacco, e diedi loro un indirizzo preciso caso mai fosse saltato fuori. Ebbene, sapevo di non averlo fatto; ma quando me ne andai di nuovo, lo feci. Così, invece di corrermi dietro con quel prezioso pacco, l’hanno spedito di volata a un mio amico a Westminster.» Poi aggiunse piuttosto mesto: «Anche questo l’ho imparato da un poveretto di Hartlepool. Lo faceva con le borse da viaggio che rubava nelle stazioni ferroviarie, ma ora è in un monastero. Oh, si finisce col sapere, sapete», aggiunse, stropicciandosi di nuovo la testa con la stessa sorta di disperata scusa. «Non possiamo farci nulla se siamo preti. La gente viene a raccontarci queste cose.»

Flambeau strappò dalla tasca interna un pacco di carta marrone e lo fece a pezzi. Non c’era dentro altro che carta e bastoncini di piombo. Balzò in piedi con un gesto gigantesco e gridò:

«Non vi credo. Non credo che uno zoticone come voi possa aver architettato tutto questo. Credo che abbiate ancora la roba addosso, e se non la consegnate, be’, siamo del tutto soli, e la prenderò con la forza!»

«No», disse Father Brown semplicemente, e si alzò anch’egli, «non la prenderete con la forza. Primo, perché davvero non ce l’ho più. E secondo, perché non siamo soli.»

Flambeau si arrestò nel suo balzo in avanti.

«Dietro quell’albero», disse Father Brown indicando, «ci sono due robusti poliziotti e il più grande detective vivente. Come sono venuti qui, chiedete? Ma li ho portati io, naturalmente! Come ci sono riuscito? Ebbene, ve lo dirò, se volete! Che il Signore vi benedica, dobbiamo conoscere venti cose simili quando lavoriamo fra le classi criminali! Ebbene, non ero sicuro che foste un ladro, e non sarebbe mai stato bene sollevare uno scandalo contro uno del nostro clero. Così vi misi semplicemente alla prova per vedere se qualcosa vi avrebbe fatto tradire. Un uomo di solito fa una piccola scenata se trova del sale nel caffè; se non la fa, ha qualche ragione per starsene zitto. Scambiai il sale e lo zucchero, e voi steste zitto. Un uomo di solito protesta se il suo conto è il triplo del dovuto. Se lo paga, ha qualche motivo per passare inosservato. Alterai il vostro conto, e voi lo pagaste.»

Il mondo pareva attendere che Flambeau balzasse come una tigre. Ma egli era trattenuto come da un incantesimo; era stordito dalla più estrema curiosità.

«Ebbene», proseguì Father Brown con pesante lucidità, «siccome voi non avreste lasciato tracce per la polizia, naturalmente qualcuno doveva farlo. In ogni luogo in cui andammo, ebbi cura di fare qualcosa che ci facesse restare sulla bocca di tutti per il resto della giornata. Non feci gran danno: un muro schizzato, mele rovesciate, una finestra rotta; ma salvai la croce, come la croce sarà sempre salvata. A quest’ora è a Westminster. Anzi mi meraviglio che non l’abbiate fermata col Fischietto dell’Asino.»

«Col che cosa?» chiese Flambeau.

«Sono lieto che non ne abbiate mai sentito parlare», disse il prete, facendo una smorfia. «È una cosa immonda. Sono certo che siete un uomo troppo buono per essere un Fischiatore. Non avrei saputo contrastarla neppure con le Macchie, io; non ho le gambe abbastanza forti.»

«Ma di che diavolo state parlando?» chiese l’altro.

«Ebbene, credevo davvero che avreste conosciuto le Macchie», disse Father Brown, piacevolmente sorpreso. «Oh, non potete esservi ancora spinto tanto sulla cattiva strada!»

«Come diamine conoscete tutti questi orrori?» esclamò Flambeau.

L’ombra di un sorriso attraversò il volto rotondo e semplice del suo avversario in tonaca.

«Oh, per il fatto di essere un sempliciotto celibe, suppongo», disse. «Non vi è mai venuto in mente che un uomo che non fa quasi altro che ascoltare i peccati veri degli uomini difficilmente sarà del tutto ignaro del male umano? Ma, per la verità, anche un’altra parte del mio mestiere mi rese certo che non eravate un prete.»

«Quale?» chiese il ladro, quasi a bocca aperta.

«Avete attaccato la ragione», disse Father Brown. «È cattiva teologia.»

E proprio mentre si voltava per raccogliere la sua proprietà, i tre poliziotti sbucarono da sotto gli alberi crepuscolari. Flambeau era un artista e uno sportivo. Fece un passo indietro e rivolse a Valentin un grande inchino.

«Non inchinatevi a me, mon ami», disse Valentin con argentea chiarezza. «Inchiniamoci entrambi al nostro maestro.»

Ed entrambi rimasero un istante a capo scoperto mentre il pretino dell’Essex sbatteva le palpebre in cerca del suo ombrello.

The Secret Garden

Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall—a hall hung with weapons. Valentin’s house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but the oddity—and perhaps the police value—of its architecture was this: that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate, and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall, smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden, perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill.

As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French—and largely over European— policial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.

When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette—an elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked with grey. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened on the grounds behind. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party; he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador—a choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and a forehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness, since they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he had recently met in England. He saw—perhaps with more interest than any of these— a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. This was Commandant O’Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in an officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he had an air at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways—especially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after some crash of debts, and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging about in uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador’s family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.

But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other, their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. No one of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that multi-millionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of small religions have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity for the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr. Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was ready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it was an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare— a hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman, but thought that Luke P. Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more “progressive” than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought “progressive.” He thought Valentin “progressive,” thereby doing him a grave injustice.

The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us can claim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, without so much relief as a watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and well brushed back like a German’s; his face was red, fierce and cherubic, with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwise infantile visage with an effect theatrical and even Mephistophelean. Not long, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American; his lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with all speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.

Il giardino segreto

Aristide Valentin, capo della Polizia di Parigi, era in ritardo per la cena, e alcuni dei suoi ospiti cominciarono ad arrivare prima di lui. Furono tuttavia rassicurati dal suo servitore di fiducia, Ivan, il vecchio dalla cicatrice, con un volto quasi grigio quanto i suoi baffi, che sedeva sempre a un tavolo nell’atrio d’ingresso: un atrio ornato di armi. La casa di Valentin era forse tanto singolare e celebre quanto il suo padrone. Era una vecchia dimora, dagli alti muri e dagli alti pioppi che quasi sovrastavano la Senna; ma la stranezza — e forse il pregio poliziesco — della sua architettura era questa: che non vi era altra via d’uscita se non attraverso il portone d’ingresso, custodito da Ivan e dall’armeria. Il giardino era ampio ed elaborato, e vi erano molte uscite dalla casa verso il giardino. Ma non c’era alcuna uscita dal giardino verso il mondo esterno: tutt’intorno correva un muro alto, liscio, inscalabile, con speciali punte in cima; non un cattivo giardino, forse, in cui riflettere per un uomo che qualche centinaio di criminali aveva giurato di uccidere.

Come Ivan spiegò agli ospiti, il loro anfitrione aveva telefonato di essere trattenuto per dieci minuti. In verità stava dando gli ultimi disposizioni riguardo a esecuzioni e altre brutte faccende del genere; e per quanto questi doveri gli fossero radicalmente ripugnanti, li adempiva sempre con precisione. Spietato nella caccia ai criminali, era assai mite riguardo alla loro punizione. Da quando era stato supremo sui metodi polizieschi francesi — e in gran parte europei — la sua grande influenza era stata onorevolmente impiegata per la mitigazione delle sentenze e la purificazione delle prigioni. Era uno dei grandi liberi pensatori umanitari francesi; e l’unico difetto di costoro è che rendono la misericordia persino più fredda della giustizia.

Quando Valentin arrivò era già vestito di nero, con la rosetta rossa: una figura elegante, la barba scura già striata di grigio. Attraversò diritto la sua casa fino allo studio, che dava sul terreno retrostante. La porta del giardino era aperta, e dopo aver accuratamente chiuso a chiave la sua cassetta nel posto ufficiale, rimase per qualche secondo sulla soglia aperta a guardare fuori, verso il giardino. Una luna aguzza lottava con i brandelli e i cenci volanti di una tempesta, e Valentin la contemplava con una malinconia insolita in nature scientifiche come la sua. Forse tali nature scientifiche hanno qualche presentimento psichico del più tremendo problema della loro vita. Da un simile stato d’animo occulto, ad ogni modo, si riprese in fretta, perché sapeva di essere in ritardo e che i suoi ospiti avevano già cominciato ad arrivare. Un’occhiata al salotto, quando vi entrò, bastò a rendergli certo che il suo ospite principale non c’era, in ogni caso. Vide tutti gli altri pilastri della piccola brigata; vide Lord Galloway, l’ambasciatore inglese — un vecchio collerico dal volto rossastro come una mela, che portava il nastro azzurro della Giarrettiera. Vide Lady Galloway, sottile e filiforme, coi capelli d’argento e un viso sensibile e altero. Vide sua figlia, Lady Margaret Graham, una fanciulla pallida e graziosa dal viso da elfo e dai capelli color rame. Vide la Duchessa di Mont St. Michel, dagli occhi neri e opulenta, e con lei le sue due figlie, dagli occhi neri e opulente anch’esse. Vide il dottor Simon, tipico scienziato francese, con gli occhiali, una barba bruna a punta e una fronte sbarrata da quelle rughe parallele che sono la pena della supponenza, poiché nascono dal costante inarcare le sopracciglia. Vide Father Brown, di Cobhole, nell’Essex, che aveva conosciuto di recente in Inghilterra. Vide — forse con maggior interesse di tutti costoro — un uomo alto in uniforme, che si era inchinato ai Galloway senza ricevere alcun cordialissimo riconoscimento, e che ora si faceva avanti da solo per porgere i suoi omaggi all’anfitrione. Era il Comandante O’Brien, della Legione Straniera francese. Era una figura slanciata eppure alquanto spavalda, sbarbato, dai capelli scuri e dagli occhi azzurri, e, come pareva naturale in un ufficiale di quel famoso reggimento di fallimenti vittoriosi e suicidi riusciti, aveva un’aria al tempo stesso brillante e malinconica. Era per nascita un gentiluomo irlandese, e da ragazzo aveva conosciuto i Galloway — specialmente Margaret Graham. Aveva lasciato il suo paese dopo un qualche tracollo di debiti, e ora esprimeva la sua completa libertà dall’etichetta britannica sfoggiandosi in giro in uniforme, sciabola e speroni. Quando si inchinò alla famiglia dell’ambasciatore, Lord e Lady Galloway si piegarono rigidamente, e Lady Margaret guardò altrove.

Ma per qualunque antica ragione simili persone potessero interessarsi l’una all’altra, il loro illustre anfitrione non si interessava particolarmente a loro. Nessuno di essi, almeno, era ai suoi occhi l’ospite della serata. Valentin aspettava, per ragioni speciali, un uomo di fama mondiale, la cui amicizia si era assicurata durante alcuni dei suoi grandi giri e trionfi da detective negli Stati Uniti. Aspettava Julius K. Brayne, quel multimilionario le cui colossali e persino schiaccianti elargizioni a piccole religioni hanno fornito tanto facile spasso e ancor più facile solennità ai giornali americani e inglesi. Nessuno riusciva a capire bene se il signor Brayne fosse un ateo, o un mormone, o uno scienziato cristiano; ma era pronto a riversare denaro in qualsiasi recipiente intellettuale, purché fosse un recipiente non ancora sperimentato. Uno dei suoi passatempi era attendere lo Shakespeare americano: un passatempo più paziente della pesca con la lenza. Ammirava Walt Whitman, ma riteneva che Luke P. Tanner, di Paris, Pa., fosse più “progressista” di Whitman in qualsiasi giorno. Gli piaceva tutto ciò che riteneva “progressista”. Riteneva Valentin “progressista”, facendogli con ciò una grave ingiustizia.

L’apparizione solida di Julius K. Brayne nella sala fu decisiva come una campana della cena. Aveva quella grande qualità, che pochissimi di noi possono vantare, per cui la sua presenza era grande quanto la sua assenza. Era un uomo enorme, grasso quanto alto, vestito di un completo nero da sera, senza nemmeno il sollievo di una catena da orologio o di un anello. I capelli erano bianchi e ben pettinati all’indietro come quelli di un tedesco; il volto era rosso, fiero e cherubico, con un solo ciuffo scuro sotto il labbro inferiore che risollevava quel viso altrimenti infantile con un effetto teatrale e persino mefistofelico. Non a lungo, tuttavia, quel salotto si limitò a fissare il celebre americano; il suo ritardo era già divenuto un problema domestico, ed egli fu spedito a tutta velocità nella sala da pranzo con Lady Galloway al braccio.

Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O’Brien, her father was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorously gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men—Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and the detrimental O’Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform— all melted away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung every sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O’Brien might be signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him. After a time this “progressive” logomachy had reached a crisis of tedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about “science and religion.” But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing— he saw what was not there. He saw that Commandant O’Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was absent too.

Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from the dining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His notion of protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian n’er-do-weel had become something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin’s study, he was surprised to meet his daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a second enigma. If she had been with O’Brien, where was O’Brien! If she had not been with O’Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and eventually found a servants’ entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all the storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out as Commandant O’Brien.

He vanished through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord Galloway in an indescribable temper, at once virulent and vague. The blue-and-silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt him with all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authority was at war. The length and grace of the Irishman’s stride enraged him as if he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him. He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteau fairyland; and, willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities by speech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight—an elderly English diplomatist running hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.

His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beaming glasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard the nobleman’s first clear words. Lord Galloway was crying: “A corpse in the grass—a blood-stained corpse.” O’Brien at last had gone utterly out of his mind.

“We must tell Valentin at once,” said the doctor, when the other had brokenly described all that he had dared to examine. “It is fortunate that he is here”; and even as he spoke the great detective entered the study, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation; he had come with the common concern of a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was told the gory fact, he turned with all his gravity instantly bright and businesslike; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his business.

“Strange, gentlemen,” he said as they hurried out into the garden, “that I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes and settles in my own back-yard. But where is the place?” They crossed the lawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river; but under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body sunken in deep grass—the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He lay face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were clad in black cloth, and that his big head was bald, except for a wisp or two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed. A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.

“At least,” said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, “he is none of our party.”

“Examine him, doctor,” cried Valentin rather sharply. “He may not be dead.”

The doctor bent down. “He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough,” he answered. “Just help me to lift him up.”

They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts as to his being really dead were settled at once and frightfully. The head fell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever had cut his throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. “He must have been as strong as a gorilla,” he muttered.

Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr. Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw, but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face, at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids—a face of a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a distant touch of a Chinese emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eye of ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, as they had lifted his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam of a shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said, the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have been trying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.

Salvo che su un punto, i Galloway erano abbastanza gioviali e disinvolti. Finché Lady Margaret non prendeva il braccio di quell’avventuriero di O’Brien, suo padre era del tutto soddisfatto; e lei non l’aveva fatto, era entrata compostamente insieme al dottor Simon. Ciononostante, il vecchio Lord Galloway era irrequieto e quasi scortese. Fu abbastanza diplomatico durante la cena, ma quando, davanti ai sigari, tre dei più giovani — Simon il dottore, Brown il prete, e il pernicioso O’Brien, l’esule in una divisa straniera — si dileguarono tutti per mescolarsi alle signore o fumare nella serra, allora il diplomatico inglese divenne davvero assai poco diplomatico. Ogni sessanta secondi lo pungeva il pensiero che quella canaglia di O’Brien potesse in qualche modo fare segnali a Margaret; non tentava di immaginare come. Rimase davanti al caffè con Brayne, il canuto yankee che credeva in tutte le religioni, e Valentin, il francese brizzolato che non credeva in nessuna. Potevano discutere tra loro, ma nessuno dei due poteva fare appello a lui. Dopo un po’ di tempo questa logomachia “progressista” aveva raggiunto una crisi di tedio; anche Lord Galloway si alzò e cercò il salotto. Si smarrì per sei o otto minuti in lunghi corridoi: finché udì la voce acuta e didattica del dottore, e poi la voce sorda del prete, seguita da una risata generale. Anche loro, pensò con una imprecazione, probabilmente stavano discutendo di “scienza e religione”. Ma nell’istante in cui aprì la porta del salotto vide una sola cosa: vide ciò che non c’era. Vide che il Comandante O’Brien era assente, e che anche Lady Margaret era assente.

Alzandosi con impazienza dal salotto, come aveva fatto dalla sala da pranzo, percorse di nuovo a passi pesanti il corridoio. La sua idea di proteggere la figlia dallo scapestrato irlandese-algerino era divenuta qualcosa di centrale e persino folle nella sua mente. Mentre si dirigeva verso il retro della casa, dove si trovava lo studio di Valentin, ebbe la sorpresa di incontrare sua figlia, che gli passò accanto in fretta con un viso bianco e sdegnoso, il che era un secondo enigma. Se era stata con O’Brien, dov’era O’Brien? Se non era stata con O’Brien, dov’era stata? Con una sorta di sospetto senile e appassionato si fece strada a tentoni nelle buie parti posteriori della magione, e alla fine trovò un ingresso di servizio che dava sul giardino. La luna con la sua scimitarra aveva ormai squarciato e disperso tutti i relitti della tempesta. La luce argentea illuminava tutti e quattro gli angoli del giardino. Una figura alta in azzurro attraversava a grandi passi il prato verso la porta dello studio; un bagliore d’argento lunare sui suoi paramenti lo rivelava come il Comandante O’Brien.

Scomparve attraverso le portefinestre nella casa, lasciando Lord Galloway in un umore indescrivibile, insieme virulento e vago. Il giardino azzurro e argento, come una scena di teatro, pareva schernirlo con tutta quella tenerezza tirannica contro la quale la sua autorità mondana era in guerra. La lunghezza e la grazia del passo dell’irlandese lo infuriavano come se fosse un rivale invece che un padre; il chiaro di luna lo faceva impazzire. Era intrappolato come per magia in un giardino di trovatori, in un paese fatato alla Watteau; e, deciso a scrollarsi di dosso simili amorose imbecillità con la parola, mosse con passo svelto dietro il suo nemico. Nel far ciò inciampò in qualche albero o pietra nell’erba; abbassò lo sguardo dapprima con irritazione e poi una seconda volta con curiosità. L’istante seguente la luna e gli alti pioppi assistettero a uno spettacolo insolito: un anziano diplomatico inglese che correva a perdifiato piangendo o urlando mentre correva.

Le sue grida rauche fecero comparire un volto pallido alla porta dello studio, gli occhiali raggianti e la fronte preoccupata del dottor Simon, che udì le prime parole chiare del nobiluomo. Lord Galloway gridava: «Un cadavere nell’erba… un cadavere insanguinato di sangue.» O’Brien, alla fine, era del tutto uscito di senno.

«Dobbiamo dirlo subito a Valentin,» disse il dottore, quando l’altro ebbe descritto a frammenti tutto ciò che aveva osato esaminare. «È una fortuna che sia qui»; e mentre ancora parlava il grande detective entrò nello studio, attratto dal grido. Era quasi divertente notare la sua tipica trasformazione; era venuto con la comune preoccupazione di un anfitrione e di un gentiluomo, temendo che qualche ospite o servitore fosse malato. Quando gli fu detto il fatto cruento, si fece istantaneamente, con tutta la sua gravità, sveglio e pratico; poiché quello, per quanto brusco e spaventoso, era il suo mestiere.

«Strano, signori,» disse mentre uscivano in fretta nel giardino, «che io abbia dato la caccia ai misteri per tutta la terra, e ora uno venga a stabilirsi nel mio stesso cortile. Ma dov’è il posto?» Attraversarono il prato meno agevolmente, perché una leggera foschia aveva cominciato a levarsi dal fiume; ma sotto la guida dello scosso Galloway trovarono il corpo affondato nell’erba alta: il corpo di un uomo assai alto e dalle spalle larghe. Giaceva a faccia in giù, sicché poterono vedere soltanto che le sue grandi spalle erano coperte di panno nero, e che la sua grande testa era calva, salvo un ciuffo o due di capelli castani appiccicati al cranio come alghe bagnate. Un serpente scarlatto di sangue strisciava da sotto il volto riverso.

«Almeno,» disse Simon, con un’intonazione profonda e singolare, «non è nessuno dei nostri.»

«Esaminatelo, dottore,» gridò Valentin piuttosto seccamente. «Potrebbe non essere morto.»

Il dottore si chinò. «Non è del tutto freddo, ma temo sia morto abbastanza,» rispose. «Aiutatemi soltanto a sollevarlo.»

Lo sollevarono con cura di un pollice da terra, e ogni dubbio sul fatto che fosse davvero morto fu risolto all’istante e in modo spaventoso. La testa si staccò. Era stata interamente separata dal corpo; chiunque gli avesse tagliato la gola era riuscito a recidere anche il collo. Persino Valentin ne fu leggermente turbato. «Dev’essere stato forte come un gorilla,» mormorò.

Non senza un brivido, benché fosse avvezzo agli obbrobri anatomici, il dottor Simon sollevò la testa. Era leggermente squarciata attorno al collo e alla mascella, ma il volto era sostanzialmente illeso. Era un volto pesante e giallastro, insieme incavato e gonfio, con un naso adunco e palpebre pesanti: il volto di un malvagio imperatore romano, con, forse, un lontano tocco di imperatore cinese. Tutti i presenti parvero guardarlo con l’occhio più freddo dell’ignoranza. Nient’altro poté notarsi di quell’uomo, salvo che, mentre ne avevano sollevato il corpo, avevano visto sotto di esso il bianco barbaglio di uno sparato di camicia deturpato da un rosso barbaglio di sangue. Come aveva detto il dottor Simon, quell’uomo non era mai stato dei loro. Ma poteva benissimo aver cercato di unirsi a loro, poiché era venuto vestito per una simile occasione.

Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest professional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor, and quite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellings except a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, which Valentin lifted for an instant’s examination and then tossed away.

“Twigs,” he said gravely; “twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn.”

There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply:

“Who’s that! Who’s that over there by the garden wall!”

A small figure with a foolishly large head drew waveringly near them in the moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out to be the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.

“I say,” he said meekly, “there are no gates to this garden, do you know.”

Valentin’s black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they did on principle at the sight of the cassock. But he was far too just a man to deny the relevance of the remark. “You are right,” he said. “Before we find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be done without prejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certain distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies, gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down as a crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can use my own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that I can afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear everyone of my own guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, upon your honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon; there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find my man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him to leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway, you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened, and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remain with the body.”

When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like a bugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and routed out Ivan, the public detective’s private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-room and told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time the company assembled there the ladies were already startled and already soothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at the head and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their two philosophies of death.

Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came out of the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively with the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master’s permission to examine the remains.

“Yes; look, if you like, Ivan,” said Valentin, “but don’t be long. We must go in and thrash this out in the house.”

Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.

“Why,” he gasped, “it’s—no, it isn’t; it can’t be. Do you know this man, sir?”

“No,” said Valentin indifferently; “we had better go inside.”

Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and then all made their way to the drawing-room.

The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even without hesitation; but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at assize. He made a few rapid notes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: “Is everybody here?”

“Not Mr. Brayne,” said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.

“No,” said Lord Galloway in a hoarse, harsh voice. “And not Mr. Neil O’Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when the corpse was still warm.”

“Ivan,” said the detective, “go and fetch Commandant O’Brien and Mr. Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room; Commandant O’Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. I am not sure.”

The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone could stir or speak Valentin went on with the same soldierly swiftness of exposition.

“Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, his head cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do you think that to cut a man’s throat like that would need great force? Or, perhaps, only a very sharp knife?”

“I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all,” said the pale doctor.

“Have you any thought,” resumed Valentin, “of a tool with which it could be done?”

“Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven’t,” said the doctor, arching his painful brows. “It’s not easy to hack a neck through even clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with a battle-axe or an old headsman’s axe, or an old two-handed sword.”

“But, good heavens!” cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, “there aren’t any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here.”

Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. “Tell me,” he said, still writing rapidly, “could it have been done with a long French cavalry sabre?”

A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason, curdled everyone’s blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: “A sabre—yes, I suppose it could.”

“Thank you,” said Valentin. “Come in, Ivan.”

The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in Commandant Neil O’Brien, whom he had found at last pacing the garden again.

Valentin si mise carponi ed esaminò con la più stretta attenzione professionale l’erba e il terreno per una ventina di iarde intorno al corpo, in ciò assistito con minore abilità dal dottore, e in modo del tutto vago dal lord inglese. Nulla ricompensò il loro brancolare, salvo qualche ramoscello, spezzato o tagliato in pezzetti piccolissimi, che Valentin sollevò per un istante d’esame e poi gettò via.

«Ramoscelli,» disse gravemente; «ramoscelli, e un perfetto sconosciuto con la testa mozzata; ecco tutto ciò che c’è su questo prato.»

Vi fu un silenzio quasi raccapricciante, e poi lo snervato Galloway gridò seccamente:

«Chi è quello! Chi è quello laggiù presso il muro del giardino!»

Una piccola figura con una testa scioccamente grande si avvicinò a loro con passo incerto nella foschia lunare; parve per un istante un folletto, ma si rivelò l’innocuo pretino che avevano lasciato in salotto.

«Dico io,» disse mansueto, «non ci sono cancelli in questo giardino, sapete.»

Le nere sopracciglia di Valentin si erano un po’ aggrottate stizzosamente, come facevano per principio alla vista della tonaca. Ma era un uomo troppo giusto per negare la pertinenza dell’osservazione. «Avete ragione,» disse. «Prima di scoprire come sia stato ucciso, potremmo dover scoprire come sia giunto qui. Ora ascoltatemi, signori. Se lo si può fare senza pregiudizio per la mia posizione e il mio dovere, converremo tutti che certi nomi illustri potrebbero benissimo essere tenuti fuori da questa faccenda. Ci sono delle signore, signori, e c’è un ambasciatore straniero. Se dobbiamo classificarlo come un delitto, allora dovrà essere perseguito come un delitto. Ma fino ad allora posso usare la mia discrezione. Sono il capo della polizia; sono così pubblico che posso permettermi di essere privato. Piaccia al Cielo, scagionerò ognuno dei miei ospiti prima di chiamare i miei uomini a cercare qualcun altro. Signori, sul vostro onore, nessuno di voi lascerà la casa fino a domani a mezzogiorno; ci sono camere da letto per tutti. Simon, credo che sappiate dove trovare il mio uomo, Ivan, nell’atrio d’ingresso; è un uomo di fiducia. Ditegli di lasciare un altro servitore di guardia e di venire subito da me. Lord Galloway, siete di certo la persona migliore per dire alle signore ciò che è accaduto, e prevenire il panico. Anch’esse devono restare. Father Brown e io rimarremo con il corpo.»

Quando questo spirito di capitano parlava in Valentin, egli veniva obbedito come uno squillo di tromba. Il dottor Simon attraversò fino all’armeria e stanò Ivan, il detective privato del detective pubblico. Galloway andò in salotto e diede la terribile notizia con sufficiente tatto, così che nel momento in cui la compagnia vi si radunò le signore erano già trasalite e già rasserenate. Intanto il buon prete e il buon ateo stavano al capo e ai piedi del morto, immobili al chiaro di luna, come statue simboliche delle loro due filosofie della morte.

Ivan, l’uomo di fiducia con la cicatrice e i baffi, uscì dalla casa come una palla di cannone, e venne di corsa attraverso il prato verso Valentin come un cane verso il padrone. Il suo volto livido era tutto vivace per l’ardore di questa storia da detective domestica, e fu con una premura quasi sgradevole che chiese al padrone il permesso di esaminare le spoglie.

«Sì; guarda pure, se vuoi, Ivan,» disse Valentin, «ma non metterci troppo. Dobbiamo rientrare e sviscerare la cosa in casa.»

Ivan sollevò la testa, e quasi la lasciò cadere.

«Ma come,» ansimò, «è… no, non è possibile; non può essere. Conoscete quest’uomo, signore?»

«No,» disse Valentin con indifferenza; «faremmo meglio a rientrare.»

Insieme trasportarono il cadavere su un divano nello studio, e poi tutti si avviarono verso il salotto.

Il detective sedette a una scrivania con calma, e persino senza esitazione; ma il suo occhio era l’occhio di ferro di un giudice d’assise. Prese qualche rapido appunto su un foglio davanti a sé, e poi disse breve: «Sono tutti qui?»

«Manca il signor Brayne,» disse la Duchessa di Mont St. Michel, guardandosi attorno.

«No,» disse Lord Galloway con voce rauca e aspra. «E non c’è nemmeno il signor Neil O’Brien, mi pare. Ho visto quel signore passeggiare nel giardino quando il cadavere era ancora caldo.»

«Ivan,» disse il detective, «va’ a chiamare il Comandante O’Brien e il signor Brayne. Il signor Brayne, lo so, sta finendo un sigaro nella sala da pranzo; il Comandante O’Brien, credo, passeggia su e giù per la serra. Non ne sono sicuro.»

Il fedele attendente sfrecciò fuori dalla stanza, e prima che alcuno potesse muoversi o parlare Valentin proseguì con la stessa marziale rapidità di esposizione.

«Tutti qui sanno che un morto è stato trovato nel giardino, la testa recisa di netto dal corpo. Dottor Simon, voi l’avete esaminato. Ritenete che tagliare la gola a un uomo in quel modo richiederebbe grande forza? Oppure, forse, soltanto un coltello molto affilato?»

«Direi che non si potrebbe affatto farlo con un coltello,» disse il pallido dottore.

«Avete qualche idea,» riprese Valentin, «di uno strumento con cui si potrebbe fare?»

«Parlando entro le probabilità moderne, davvero no,» disse il dottore, inarcando le sopracciglia dolenti. «Non è facile recidere un collo nemmeno goffamente, e questo era un taglio nettissimo. Si potrebbe fare con un’ascia da battaglia o una vecchia scure da boia, o una vecchia spada a due mani.»

«Ma, santo cielo!» gridò la Duchessa, quasi in preda a un attacco isterico, «non ci sono spade a due mani né asce da battaglia qui intorno.»

Valentin era ancora indaffarato col foglio davanti a sé. «Ditemi,» disse, sempre scrivendo rapidamente, «potrebbe essere stato fatto con una lunga sciabola da cavalleria francese?»

Un lieve bussare venne alla porta, che, per qualche irragionevole ragione, raggelò a tutti il sangue come il bussare nel Macbeth. In mezzo a quel gelido silenzio il dottor Simon riuscì a dire: «Una sciabola… sì, suppongo che potrebbe.»

«Grazie,» disse Valentin. «Entra, Ivan.»

Il fidato Ivan aprì la porta e introdusse il Comandante Neil O’Brien, che aveva infine trovato mentre passeggiava di nuovo nel giardino.

The Irish officer stood up disordered and defiant on the threshold. “What do you want with me?” he cried.

“Please sit down,” said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. “Why, you aren’t wearing your sword. Where is it?”

“I left it on the library table,” said O’Brien, his brogue deepening in his disturbed mood. “It was a nuisance, it was getting—”

“Ivan,” said Valentin, “please go and get the Commandant’s sword from the library.” Then, as the servant vanished, “Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were you doing in the garden?”

The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. “Oh,” he cried in pure Irish, “admirin’ the moon. Communing with Nature, me bhoy.”

A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came again that trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard. “This is all I can find,” he said.

“Put it on the table,” said Valentin, without looking up.

There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess’s weak exclamations had long ago died away. Lord Galloway’s swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered. The voice that came was quite unexpected.

“I think I can tell you,” cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quivering voice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly. “I can tell you what Mr. O’Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder,” she added, with rather a wan smile, “if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did a thing like this.”

Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was intimidating her in what he imagined to be an undertone. “Hold your tongue, Maggie,” he said in a thunderous whisper. “Why should you shield the fellow? Where’s his sword? Where’s his confounded cavalry—”

He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter was regarding him, a look that was indeed a lurid magnet for the whole group.

“You old fool!” she said in a low voice without pretence of piety, “what do you suppose you are trying to prove? I tell you this man was innocent while with me. But if he wasn’t innocent, he was still with me. If he murdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seen—who must at least have known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your own daughter—”

Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of those satanic tragedies that have been between lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irish adventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of formless historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonous paramours.

In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: “Was it a very long cigar?”

The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken.

“I mean,” said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, “I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking-stick.”

Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation in Valentin’s face as he lifted his head.

“Quite right,” he remarked sharply. “Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once.”

The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.

“Lady Margaret,” he said, “we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity and explaining the Commandant’s conduct. But there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and the Commandant still walking there.”

“You have to remember,” replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, “that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have come back arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind— and so got charged with murder.”

“In those few moments,” said Valentin gravely, “he might really—”

The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but Mr. Brayne has left the house.”

“Left!” cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.

“Gone. Scooted. Evaporated,” replied Ivan in humorous French. “His hat and coat are gone, too, and I’ll tell you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too.”

“What do you mean?” asked Valentin.

“I’ll show you,” said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan went on quite quietly:

“I found this,” he said, “flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr. Brayne threw it when he ran away.”

There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, and then turned a respectful face to O’Brien. “Commandant,” he said, “we trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile,” he added, slapping the steel back in the ringing scabbard, “let me return you your sword.”

At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardly refrain from applause.

L’ufficiale irlandese si fermò sulla soglia, scomposto e provocatorio. «Cosa volete da me?» gridò.

«Vi prego di sedervi,» disse Valentin con toni piacevoli e pacati. «Ma come, non portate la vostra spada. Dov’è?»

«L’ho lasciata sul tavolo della biblioteca,» disse O’Brien, il suo accento irlandese accentuandosi nell’agitazione. «Era un fastidio, stava diventando…»

«Ivan,» disse Valentin, «per favore va’ a prendere la spada del Comandante dalla biblioteca.» Poi, mentre il servitore spariva: «Lord Galloway dice di avervi visto lasciare il giardino proprio prima di trovare il cadavere. Cosa facevate nel giardino?»

Il Comandante si gettò con noncuranza su una sedia. «Oh,» gridò con puro accento irlandese, «ammiravo la luna. Comunicavo con la Natura, ragazzo mio.»

Un pesante silenzio calò e perdurò, e alla sua fine venne di nuovo quel triviale e terribile bussare. Ivan ricomparve, recando un fodero d’acciaio vuoto. «È tutto ciò che riesco a trovare,» disse.

«Mettilo sul tavolo,» disse Valentin, senza alzare lo sguardo.

Vi fu un silenzio disumano nella stanza, come quel mare di silenzio disumano intorno al banco del condannato all’assassinio. Le deboli esclamazioni della Duchessa erano da tempo spente. Il gonfio odio di Lord Galloway era appagato e persino rabbonito. La voce che si levò fu del tutto inaspettata.

«Credo di potervelo dire io,» gridò Lady Margaret, con quella voce chiara e tremula con cui una donna coraggiosa parla in pubblico. «Posso dirvi cosa faceva il signor O’Brien nel giardino, dato che egli è tenuto al silenzio. Mi stava chiedendo di sposarlo. Io ho rifiutato; ho detto che nella situazione della mia famiglia non potevo dargli nulla se non la mia stima. Egli se ne è un po’ adirato; non pareva tenere molto alla mia stima. Mi chiedo,» aggiunse, con un sorriso piuttosto smorto, «se ora gliene importerà qualcosa. Perché ora gliela offro. Giurerò dovunque che non ha mai fatto una cosa simile.»

Lord Galloway si era avvicinato alla figlia, e la intimidiva con quello che immaginava fosse un tono sommesso. «Tieni a freno la lingua, Maggie,» disse in un tonante bisbiglio. «Perché mai dovresti scudare quel tale? Dov’è la sua spada? Dov’è la sua maledetta cavalleria…»

Si arrestò a causa dello sguardo singolare con cui la figlia lo fissava, uno sguardo che era davvero una calamita lurida per l’intero gruppo.

«Vecchio sciocco!» disse a bassa voce, senza finzione di pietà, «cosa credi di voler dimostrare? Ti dico che quest’uomo era innocente mentre era con me. Ma se non era innocente, era comunque con me. Se ha assassinato un uomo nel giardino, chi è che deve aver visto… chi deve almeno aver saputo? Odi Neil tanto da mettere la tua stessa figlia…»

Lady Galloway lanciò un urlo. Tutti gli altri sedevano fremendo al tocco di quelle sataniche tragedie che sono esistite fra amanti anche prima d’ora. Vedevano il volto fiero e bianco dell’aristocratica scozzese e del suo amante, l’avventuriero irlandese, come vecchi ritratti in una casa buia. Il lungo silenzio era colmo di informi memorie storiche di mariti assassinati e amanti velenosi.

Nel centro di questo morboso silenzio una voce innocente disse: «Era un sigaro molto lungo?»

Il mutamento di pensiero fu così brusco che dovettero guardarsi attorno per vedere chi avesse parlato.

«Voglio dire,» disse il piccolo Father Brown, dall’angolo della stanza, «voglio dire quel sigaro che il signor Brayne sta finendo. Sembra lungo quasi quanto un bastone da passeggio.»

Malgrado l’irrilevanza, vi fu tanto assenso quanto irritazione sul volto di Valentin quando alzò la testa.

«Giustissimo,» osservò seccamente. «Ivan, va’ a vedere di nuovo del signor Brayne, e portalo subito qui.»

Nell’istante in cui il factotum ebbe chiuso la porta, Valentin si rivolse alla fanciulla con una serietà del tutto nuova.

«Lady Margaret,» disse, «tutti proviamo, ne sono certo, gratitudine e ammirazione per il vostro gesto di elevarvi al di sopra della vostra dignità minore e spiegare la condotta del Comandante. Ma resta ancora un iato. Lord Galloway, se ho ben capito, vi ha incontrata mentre passavate dallo studio al salotto, e fu solo alcuni minuti dopo che trovò il giardino e il Comandante che ancora vi passeggiava.»

«Dovete ricordare,» replicò Margaret, con una lieve ironia nella voce, «che io lo avevo appena rifiutato, sicché difficilmente saremmo tornati a braccetto. È comunque un gentiluomo; e si attardò indietro… e così finì per essere accusato di omicidio.»

«In quei pochi istanti,» disse Valentin gravemente, «egli potrebbe davvero…»

Il bussare venne di nuovo, e Ivan sporse il suo volto sfregiato.

«Chiedo scusa, signore,» disse, «ma il signor Brayne ha lasciato la casa.»

«Lasciata!» gridò Valentin, e per la prima volta si alzò in piedi.

«Sparito. Squagliato. Evaporato,» rispose Ivan in un francese scherzoso. «Anche il cappello e il soprabito sono spariti, e vi dirò una cosa che corona il tutto. Sono corso fuori dalla casa per trovare qualche sua traccia, e ne ho trovata una, e una bella grossa, per giunta.»

«Cosa intendi?» chiese Valentin.

«Ve la mostro,» disse il servitore, e ricomparve con una sciabola da cavalleria nuda e lampeggiante, striata di sangue sulla punta e sul filo. Tutti nella stanza la fissarono come se fosse un fulmine; ma l’esperto Ivan proseguì del tutto tranquillo:

«Ho trovato questa,» disse, «gettata tra i cespugli cinquanta iarde più su lungo la strada per Parigi. In altre parole, l’ho trovata proprio dove il vostro rispettabile signor Brayne l’ha gettata quando è fuggito.»

Vi fu di nuovo un silenzio, ma di specie nuova. Valentin prese la sciabola, la esaminò, riflettè con schietta concentrazione di pensiero, e poi volse un viso rispettoso verso O’Brien. «Comandante,» disse, «confidiamo che produrrete sempre quest’arma qualora fosse richiesta per l’esame di polizia. Nel frattempo,» aggiunse, ricacciando l’acciaio nel risonante fodero, «lasciate che vi restituisca la vostra spada.»

Al simbolismo militare del gesto l’uditorio riuscì a stento a trattenersi dall’applauso.

For Neil O’Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turning-point of existence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhaps given him something better than an apology, as they drifted among the old flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole company was more lighthearted and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load of suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with the strange millionaire— a man they hardly knew. The devil was cast out of the house— he had cast himself out.

Still, the riddle remained; and when O’Brien threw himself on a garden seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumed it. He did not get much talk out of O’Brien, whose thoughts were on pleasanter things.

“I can’t say it interests me much,” said the Irishman frankly, “especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brayne hated this stranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him with my sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went. By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in his pocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne’s, and that seems to clinch it. I don’t see any difficulties about the business.”

“There are five colossal difficulties,” said the doctor quietly; “like high walls within walls. Don’t mistake me. I don’t doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great hulking sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front door all the evening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin’s garden anywhere. How did the dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?”

“And the fifth,” said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest who was coming slowly up the path.

“Is a trifle, I suppose,” said the doctor, “but I think an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin had struck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across the truncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring his body in the moonlight?”

“Horrible!” said O’Brien, and shuddered.

The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and had waited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then he said awkwardly:

“I say, I’m sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!”

“News?” repeated Simon, and stared at him rather painfully through his glasses.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” said Father Brown mildly. “There’s been another murder, you know.”

Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.

“And, what’s stranger still,” continued the priest, with his dull eye on the rhododendrons, “it’s the same disgusting sort; it’s another beheading. They found the second head actually bleeding into the river, a few yards along Brayne’s road to Paris; so they suppose that he—”

“Great Heaven!” cried O’Brien. “Is Brayne a monomaniac?”

“There are American vendettas,” said the priest impassively. Then he added: “They want you to come to the library and see it.”

Commandant O’Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage; where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one head was hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himself bitterly) it was not true that two heads were better than one. As he crossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. Upon Valentin’s table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head; and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him it was only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every week showed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes and writhing features just after execution; for Valentin was an anti-clerical of some note. But O’Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in his sins; and his gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellect which belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from the grotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in the newspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the Revolution. He saw the whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying on Valentin’s table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles, the great devil grins on Notre Dame.

The library was long, low, and dark; what light entered it shot from under low blinds and had still some of the ruddy tinge of morning. Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end of a long, slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, looking enormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of the man found in the garden confronted them essentially unchanged. The second head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin’s men were still seeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposed to be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O’Brien’s sensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined it with his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of wet white hair, fringed with silver fire in the red and level morning light; the face, which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal type, had been much battered against trees or stones as it tossed in the water.

Per Neil O’Brien, in verità, quel gesto fu la svolta dell’esistenza. Nel momento in cui, nei colori del mattino, si aggirava di nuovo nel misterioso giardino, la tragica futilità del suo aspetto abituale era caduta da lui; era un uomo con molte ragioni per essere felice. Lord Galloway era un gentiluomo, e gli aveva offerto delle scuse. Lady Margaret era qualcosa di meglio di una lady, una donna almeno, e gli aveva forse dato qualcosa di meglio di una scusa, mentre vagavano tra le vecchie aiuole prima della colazione. L’intera compagnia era più spensierata e umana, poiché, benché l’enigma della morte rimanesse, il peso del sospetto era stato tolto da tutti loro, e mandato via a volo verso Parigi con lo strano milionario: un uomo che a stento conoscevano. Il diavolo era stato scacciato dalla casa: si era scacciato da sé.

Eppure, l’enigma rimaneva; e quando O’Brien si gettò su una panchina del giardino accanto al dottor Simon, quella persona acutamente scientifica lo riprese subito. Non cavò molta conversazione da O’Brien, i cui pensieri erano rivolti a cose più piacevoli.

«Non posso dire che m’interessi molto,» disse l’irlandese francamente, «tanto più che ora sembra abbastanza chiaro. A quanto pare Brayne odiava questo sconosciuto per qualche ragione; lo ha attirato nel giardino e lo ha ucciso con la mia spada. Poi è fuggito verso la città, gettando via la spada mentre andava. A proposito, Ivan mi dice che il morto aveva un dollaro yankee in tasca. Dunque era un compatriota di Brayne, e questo pare risolvere la cosa. Non vedo alcuna difficoltà nella faccenda.»

«Ci sono cinque difficoltà colossali,» disse il dottore con calma; «come alti muri dentro altri muri. Non fraintendetemi. Non dubito che sia stato Brayne; la sua fuga, credo, lo dimostra. Ma quanto al modo in cui l’ha fatto. Prima difficoltà: perché un uomo dovrebbe uccidere un altro uomo con un’enorme sciabola sgraziata, quando può quasi ucciderlo con un temperino e rimetterselo in tasca? Seconda difficoltà: perché non ci fu alcun rumore né grido? Un uomo di solito vede un altro avanzare brandendo una scimitarra e non fa alcuna osservazione? Terza difficoltà: un servitore sorvegliò il portone per tutta la sera; e nel giardino di Valentin non può entrare nemmeno un topo. Come fece il morto a entrare nel giardino? Quarta difficoltà: date le stesse condizioni, come fece Brayne a uscire dal giardino?»

«E la quinta,» disse Neil, con gli occhi fissi sul prete inglese che risaliva lentamente il sentiero.

«È una bagatella, suppongo,» disse il dottore, «ma penso sia una cosa strana. Quando vidi per la prima volta come la testa fosse stata squarciata, supposi che l’assassino avesse colpito più di una volta. Ma all’esame trovai molti tagli attraverso la sezione troncata; in altre parole, furono inferti dopo che la testa era già staccata. Brayne odiava il suo nemico tanto ferocemente da restare a sciabolarne il corpo al chiaro di luna?»

«Orribile!» disse O’Brien, e rabbrividì.

Il pretino, Brown, era arrivato mentre parlavano, e aveva atteso, con caratteristica timidezza, che avessero finito. Poi disse impacciato:

«Dico io, mi spiace interrompere. Ma sono stato mandato a darvi la notizia!»

«Notizia?» ripeté Simon, e lo fissò piuttosto penosamente attraverso gli occhiali.

«Sì, mi spiace,» disse Father Brown mitemente. «C’è stato un altro omicidio, sapete.»

Entrambi gli uomini sulla panchina balzarono in piedi, lasciandola dondolare.

«E, cosa ancora più strana,» proseguì il prete, con l’occhio spento fisso sui rododendri, «è dello stesso genere disgustoso; è un’altra decapitazione. Hanno trovato la seconda testa che sanguinava proprio nel fiume, a poche iarde lungo la strada di Brayne per Parigi; sicché suppongono che egli…»

«Gran Dio!» gridò O’Brien. «Brayne è un monomaniaco?»

«Ci sono vendette americane,» disse il prete impassibile. Poi aggiunse: «Vogliono che veniate in biblioteca a vederla.»

Il Comandante O’Brien seguì gli altri verso l’inchiesta, sentendosi decisamente male. Da soldato, aborriva tutta questa carneficina furtiva; dove sarebbero finite queste amputazioni stravaganti? Prima una testa veniva mozzata, e poi un’altra; in questo caso (si disse amaramente) non era vero che due teste valessero più di una. Mentre attraversava lo studio quasi barcollò per una scioccante coincidenza. Sul tavolo di Valentin giaceva l’immagine colorata di una terza testa sanguinante; ed era la testa di Valentin stesso. Una seconda occhiata gli rivelò che era soltanto un giornale nazionalista, chiamato La Ghigliottina, che ogni settimana mostrava uno dei suoi avversari politici con gli occhi roteanti e i lineamenti contorti subito dopo l’esecuzione; poiché Valentin era un anticlericale di una certa fama. Ma O’Brien era un irlandese, con una sorta di castità persino nei suoi peccati; e il suo stomaco si rivoltava contro quella grande brutalità dell’intelletto che appartiene soltanto alla Francia. Sentiva Parigi tutta intera, dai grotteschi sulle chiese gotiche alle grossolane caricature dei giornali. Ricordò le gigantesche facezie della Rivoluzione. Vedeva l’intera città come un’unica brutta energia, dallo schizzo sanguinario che giaceva sul tavolo di Valentin su fino a dove, sopra una montagna e una foresta di gargolle, il grande diavolo ghigna su Notre Dame.

La biblioteca era lunga, bassa e buia; la poca luce che vi entrava filtrava da sotto tende basse e conservava ancora qualcosa della tinta rossastra del mattino. Valentin e il suo servitore Ivan li attendevano all’estremità superiore di una lunga scrivania lievemente inclinata, sulla quale giacevano le spoglie mortali, che parevano enormi nella penombra. La grande figura nera e il volto giallo dell’uomo trovato nel giardino li fronteggiavano sostanzialmente immutati. La seconda testa, che era stata ripescata quella mattina fra i canneti del fiume, giaceva accanto ad essa, grondante e gocciolante; gli uomini di Valentin cercavano ancora di recuperare il resto di questo secondo cadavere, che si supponeva galleggiasse. Father Brown, che non pareva affatto condividere la sensibilità di O’Brien, si avvicinò alla seconda testa e la esaminò con la sua premura sbattendo le palpebre. Era poco più di un ammasso di bagnati capelli bianchi, orlati di fuoco argenteo nella rossa luce radente del mattino; il volto, che pareva di tipo brutto, paonazzo e forse criminale, era stato molto sbattuto contro alberi o pietre mentre era sballottato nell’acqua.

“Good morning, Commandant O’Brien,” said Valentin, with quiet cordiality. “You have heard of Brayne’s last experiment in butchery, I suppose?”

Father Brown was still bending over the head with white hair, and he said, without looking up:

“I suppose it is quite certain that Brayne cut off this head, too.”

“Well, it seems common sense,” said Valentin, with his hands in his pockets. “Killed in the same way as the other. Found within a few yards of the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carried away.”

“Yes, yes; I know,” replied Father Brown submissively. “Yet, you know, I doubt whether Brayne could have cut off this head.”

“Why not?” inquired Dr. Simon, with a rational stare.

“Well, doctor,” said the priest, looking up blinking, “can a man cut off his own head? I don’t know.”

O’Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears; but the doctor sprang forward with impetuous practicality and pushed back the wet white hair.

“Oh, there’s no doubt it’s Brayne,” said the priest quietly. “He had exactly that chip in the left ear.”

The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady and glittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply: “You seem to know a lot about him, Father Brown.”

“I do,” said the little man simply. “I’ve been about with him for some weeks. He was thinking of joining our church.”

The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin’s eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. “And, perhaps,” he cried, with a blasting sneer, “perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to your church.”

“Perhaps he was,” said Brown stolidly; “it is possible.”

“In that case,” cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile, “you may indeed know a great deal about him. About his life and about his—”

Commandant O’Brien laid a hand on Valentin’s arm. “Drop that slanderous rubbish, Valentin,” he said, “or there may be more swords yet.”

But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the priest) had already recovered himself. “Well,” he said shortly, “people’s private opinions can wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; you must enforce it on yourselves— and on each other. Ivan here will tell you anything more you want to know; I must get to business and write to the authorities. We can’t keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writing in my study if there is any more news.”

“Is there any more news, Ivan?” asked Dr. Simon, as the chief of police strode out of the room.

“Only one more thing, I think, sir,” said Ivan, wrinkling up his grey old face, “but that’s important, too, in its way. There’s that old buffer you found on the lawn,” and he pointed without pretence of reverence at the big black body with the yellow head. “We’ve found out who he is, anyhow.”

“Indeed!” cried the astonished doctor, “and who is he?”

“His name was Arnold Becker,” said the under-detective, “though he went by many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to have been in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. We didn’t have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany. We’ve communicated, of course, with the German police. But, oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker, whom we had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well, it’s a rum thing, gentlemen, but when I saw that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn’t seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes, I’d have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, of course, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and following up the clue—”

The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason that nobody was listening to him. The Commandant and the doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding his temples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain.

“Stop, stop, stop!” he cried; “stop talking a minute, for I see half. Will God give me strength? Will my brain make the one jump and see all? Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphrase any page in Aquinas once. Will my head split—or will it see? I see half—I only see half.”

He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of rigid torture of thought or prayer, while the other three could only go on staring at this last prodigy of their wild twelve hours.

When Father Brown’s hands fell they showed a face quite fresh and serious, like a child’s. He heaved a huge sigh, and said: “Let us get this said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this will be the quickest way to convince you all of the truth.” He turned to the doctor. “Dr. Simon,” he said, “you have a strong head-piece, and I heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business. Well, if you will ask them again, I will answer them.”

Simon’s pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. “Well, the first question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?”

“A man cannot behead with a bodkin,” said Brown calmly, “and for this murder beheading was absolutely necessary.”

“Why?” asked O’Brien, with interest.

“And the next question?” asked Father Brown.

“Well, why didn’t the man cry out or anything?” asked the doctor; “sabres in gardens are certainly unusual.”

“Twigs,” said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which looked on the scene of death. “No one saw the point of the twigs. Why should they lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were not snapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch in mid-air, or what-not. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result, a silent slash, and the head fell.”

«Buongiorno, Comandante O’Brien,» disse Valentin, con quieta cordialità. «Avete saputo dell’ultimo esperimento di macelleria di Brayne, suppongo?»

Father Brown era ancora chino sulla testa dai capelli bianchi, e disse, senza alzare lo sguardo:

«Suppongo sia del tutto certo che anche questa testa l’abbia tagliata Brayne.»

«Beh, mi pare buon senso,» disse Valentin, con le mani in tasca. «Ucciso nello stesso modo dell’altro. Trovato a poche iarde dall’altro. E affettato dalla stessa arma che sappiamo egli portò via.»

«Sì, sì; lo so,» replicò Father Brown con sottomissione. «Eppure, sapete, dubito che Brayne potesse aver tagliato questa testa.»

«Perché no?» domandò il dottor Simon, con uno sguardo razionale.

«Beh, dottore,» disse il prete, alzando lo sguardo e sbattendo le palpebre, «può un uomo tagliarsi la propria testa? Non lo so.»

O’Brien sentì un universo folle crollargli attorno alle orecchie; ma il dottore balzò avanti con impetuosa praticità e scostò i bagnati capelli bianchi.

«Oh, non c’è dubbio che sia Brayne,» disse il prete con calma. «Aveva esattamente quella scheggiatura nell’orecchio sinistro.»

Il detective, che aveva osservato il prete con occhi fermi e scintillanti, aprì la bocca serrata e disse seccamente: «Pare che sappiate un mucchio di cose su di lui, Father Brown.»

«È così,» disse il piccolo uomo semplicemente. «Sono stato in giro con lui per alcune settimane. Pensava di unirsi alla nostra chiesa.»

La stella del fanatico balzò negli occhi di Valentin; egli mosse a grandi passi verso il prete con le mani serrate. «E, forse,» gridò, con un ghigno fulminante, «forse pensava anche di lasciare tutto il suo denaro alla vostra chiesa.»

«Forse sì,» disse Brown flemmatico; «è possibile.»

«In tal caso,» gridò Valentin, con un sorriso terribile, «potreste davvero sapere un mucchio di cose su di lui. Sulla sua vita e sulla sua…»

Il Comandante O’Brien posò una mano sul braccio di Valentin. «Piantala con questa spazzatura calunniosa, Valentin,» disse, «o potrebbero esserci ancora altre spade.»

Ma Valentin (sotto lo sguardo fermo e umile del prete) si era già ripreso. «Bene,» disse breve, «le opinioni private della gente possono aspettare. Voi signori siete ancora vincolati dalla vostra promessa di restare; dovrete farla rispettare a voi stessi… e l’un l’altro. Ivan qui vi dirà tutto ciò che volete sapere; io devo mettermi al lavoro e scrivere alle autorità. Non possiamo tenere la cosa nascosta più a lungo. Scriverò nel mio studio, se ci saranno altre notizie.»

«Ci sono altre notizie, Ivan?» chiese il dottor Simon, mentre il capo della polizia usciva a grandi passi dalla stanza.

«Solo un’altra cosa, credo, signore,» disse Ivan, corrugando il suo vecchio volto grigio, «ma anche quella è importante, a suo modo. C’è quel vecchio arnese che avete trovato sul prato,» e indicò, senza finzione di riverenza, il grande corpo nero dalla testa gialla. «Comunque abbiamo scoperto chi è.»

«Davvero!» gridò il dottore stupito, «e chi è?»

«Si chiamava Arnold Becker,» disse il sotto-detective, «benché girasse sotto molti falsi nomi. Era una specie di canaglia vagabonda, e si sa che è stato in America; sicché è là che Brayne gli ha piantato addosso il coltello. Noi non abbiamo avuto molto a che fare con lui, perché operava soprattutto in Germania. Abbiamo comunicato, naturalmente, con la polizia tedesca. Ma, per quanto strano, c’era un suo fratello gemello, di nome Louis Becker, col quale abbiamo avuto moltissimo a che fare. Anzi, l’abbiamo dovuto ghigliottinare proprio ieri. Beh, è una cosa buffa, signori, ma quando ho visto quel tale disteso sul prato ho avuto il più grande sobbalzo della mia vita. Se non avessi visto Louis Becker ghigliottinato coi miei stessi occhi, avrei giurato che fosse Louis Becker steso là nell’erba. Poi, naturalmente, mi sono ricordato del suo fratello gemello in Germania, e seguendo l’indizio…»

L’esplicativo Ivan si fermò, per l’eccellente ragione che nessuno lo stava ascoltando. Il Comandante e il dottore stavano entrambi fissando Father Brown, che era balzato rigidamente in piedi, e si teneva le tempie strette come un uomo in preda a un dolore improvviso e violento.

«Ferma, ferma, ferma!» gridò; «smettete di parlare un minuto, perché vedo metà. Vorrà Dio darmi la forza? Vorrà il mio cervello fare l’unico salto e vedere tutto? Il Cielo mi aiuti! Un tempo ero abbastanza bravo a pensare. Una volta sapevo parafrasare qualsiasi pagina di Aquino. Mi si spaccherà la testa… o vedrà? Vedo metà… vedo solo metà.»

Affondò la testa fra le mani, e rimase in una sorta di rigida tortura di pensiero o di preghiera, mentre gli altri tre non potevano che continuare a fissare quest’ultimo prodigio delle loro folli dodici ore.

Quando le mani di Father Brown ricaddero, mostrarono un volto del tutto fresco e serio, come quello di un bambino. Emise un enorme sospiro, e disse: «Sbrighiamo questa faccenda e finiamola il più in fretta possibile. Sentite, questo sarà il modo più rapido per convincervi tutti della verità.» Si volse al dottore. «Dottor Simon,» disse, «voi avete una testa robusta, e vi ho sentito stamattina porre le cinque domande più difficili su questa faccenda. Bene, se vorrete porle di nuovo, io vi risponderò.»

Il pince-nez di Simon cadde dal naso per il dubbio e la meraviglia, ma egli rispose subito. «Bene, la prima domanda, sapete, è perché un uomo dovrebbe uccidere un altro con una goffa sciabola, quando può uccidere con un punteruolo?»

«Un uomo non può decapitare con un punteruolo,» disse Brown con calma, «e per questo omicidio la decapitazione era assolutamente necessaria.»

«Perché?» chiese O’Brien, con interesse.

«E la prossima domanda?» chiese Father Brown.

«Bene, perché l’uomo non gridò o non fece nulla?» chiese il dottore; «le sciabole nei giardini sono di certo insolite.»

«Ramoscelli,» disse il prete tetramente, e si volse verso la finestra che dava sulla scena della morte. «Nessuno colse il senso dei ramoscelli. Perché mai giacevano su quel prato (guardatelo) così lontano da qualsiasi albero? Non erano stati spezzati; erano stati tagliati. L’assassino tenne occupato il suo nemico con qualche giochetto di sciabola, mostrandogli come sapeva tagliare un ramo a mezz’aria, o cose del genere. Poi, mentre il suo nemico si chinava a vedere il risultato, un silenzioso fendente, e la testa cadde.»

“Well,” said the doctor slowly, “that seems plausible enough. But my next two questions will stump anyone.”

The priest still stood looking critically out of the window and waited.

“You know how all the garden was sealed up like an air-tight chamber,” went on the doctor. “Well, how did the strange man get into the garden?”

Without turning round, the little priest answered: “There never was any strange man in the garden.”

There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost childish laughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of Brown’s remark moved Ivan to open taunts.

“Oh!” he cried; “then we didn’t lug a great fat corpse on to a sofa last night? He hadn’t got into the garden, I suppose?”

“Got into the garden?” repeated Brown reflectively. “No, not entirely.”

“Hang it all,” cried Simon, “a man gets into a garden, or he doesn’t.”

“Not necessarily,” said the priest, with a faint smile. “What is the nest question, doctor?”

“I fancy you’re ill,” exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; “but I’ll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?”

“He didn’t get out of the garden,” said the priest, still looking out of the window.

“Didn’t get out of the garden?” exploded Simon.

“Not completely,” said Father Brown.

Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. “A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn’t,” he cried.

“Not always,” said Father Brown.

Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. “I have no time to spare on such senseless talk,” he cried angrily. “If you can’t understand a man being on one side of a wall or the other, I won’t trouble you further.”

“Doctor,” said the cleric very gently, “we have always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question.”

The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: “The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death.”

“Yes,” said the motionless priest, “it was done so as to make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body.”

The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O’Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that man’s unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: “Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads.” Yet, while these shameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching the odd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.

Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window, with his face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no Gaelic souls on earth.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face of Dr. Simon’s rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!” (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) “you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this man?”

He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified, unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.

“The murderer,” went on Brown quietly, “hacked off his enemy’s head and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you all imagined a totally new man.”

“Clap on another head!” said O’Brien staring. “What other head? Heads don’t grow on garden bushes, do they?”

“No,” said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; “there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you never see in that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad! He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne’s crazy millions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and—”

Ivan of the Scar sprang up. “You lunatic,” he yelled; “you’ll go to my master now, if I take you by—”

“Why, I was going there,” said Brown heavily; “I must ask him to confess, and all that.”

Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin’s study.

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.

«Bene,» disse il dottore lentamente, «questo pare abbastanza plausibile. Ma le mie prossime due domande metteranno in imbarazzo chiunque.»

Il prete rimase ancora a guardare criticamente fuori dalla finestra e attese.

«Sapete come tutto il giardino fosse sigillato come una camera ermetica,» proseguì il dottore. «Bene, come fece lo sconosciuto a entrare nel giardino?»

Senza voltarsi, il pretino rispose: «Non ci fu mai alcuno sconosciuto nel giardino.»

Vi fu un silenzio, e poi un’improvvisa risatina di riso quasi infantile alleviò la tensione. L’assurdità dell’osservazione di Brown spinse Ivan ad aperti dileggi.

«Oh!» gridò; «allora non abbiamo trascinato un grosso e grasso cadavere su un divano ieri notte? Non era entrato nel giardino, suppongo?»

«Entrato nel giardino?» ripeté Brown pensosamente. «No, non del tutto.»

«Ma insomma,» gridò Simon, «un uomo entra in un giardino, oppure no.»

«Non necessariamente,» disse il prete, con un lieve sorriso. «Qual è la prossima domanda, dottore?»

«Temo che siate malato,» esclamò il dottor Simon seccamente; «ma vi porrò la prossima domanda, se volete. Come fece Brayne a uscire dal giardino?»

«Non uscì dal giardino,» disse il prete, sempre guardando fuori dalla finestra.

«Non uscì dal giardino?» esplose Simon.

«Non completamente,» disse Father Brown.

Simon scosse i pugni in un frenesia di logica francese. «Un uomo esce da un giardino, oppure no,» gridò.

«Non sempre,» disse Father Brown.

Il dottor Simon balzò in piedi con impazienza. «Non ho tempo da perdere in simili discorsi insensati,» gridò con collera. «Se non riuscite a capire che un uomo sta da un lato o dall’altro di un muro, non vi disturberò oltre.»

«Dottore,» disse il chierico assai gentilmente, «siamo sempre andati molto d’accordo. Se non altro per amore della vecchia amicizia, fermatevi e ditemi la vostra quinta domanda.»

L’impaziente Simon sprofondò in una sedia presso la porta e disse breve: «La testa e le spalle erano tagliuzzate in modo strano. Pareva fosse stato fatto dopo la morte.»

«Sì,» disse il prete immobile, «fu fatto così da indurvi ad assumere esattamente l’unica semplice falsità che avete assunto. Fu fatto per farvi dare per scontato che la testa appartenesse al corpo.»

Il territorio di confine del cervello, dove si generano tutti i mostri, si mosse orribilmente nell’O’Brien gaelico. Sentì la caotica presenza di tutti gli uomini-cavallo e delle donne-pesce che la fantasia innaturale dell’uomo ha generato. Una voce più antica dei suoi primi padri parve dirgli all’orecchio: «Tieniti fuori dal mostruoso giardino dove cresce l’albero dal duplice frutto. Evita il malvagio giardino dove morì l’uomo con due teste.» Eppure, mentre queste vergognose forme simboliche attraversavano l’antico specchio della sua anima irlandese, il suo intelletto affrancesato era del tutto vigile, e osservava lo strano prete con la stessa attenzione incredula di tutti gli altri.

Father Brown si era infine voltato, e stava in piedi contro la finestra, col volto in fitta ombra; ma persino in quell’ombra potevano vedere che era pallido come la cenere. Ciononostante, parlò in modo del tutto assennato, come se non ci fossero anime gaeliche sulla terra.

«Signori,» disse, «voi non avete trovato lo strano corpo di Becker nel giardino. Non avete trovato alcuno strano corpo nel giardino. A dispetto del razionalismo del dottor Simon, io affermo ancora che Becker era presente solo in parte. Guardate qui!» (indicando la nera mole del misterioso cadavere) «voi non avete mai visto quest’uomo in vita vostra. Avete mai visto quest’altro?»

Fece rapidamente rotolare via la calva testa gialla dello sconosciuto, e mise al suo posto la testa dalla candida chioma che le stava accanto. E là, completo, unificato, inconfondibile, giaceva Julius K. Brayne.

«L’assassino,» proseguì Brown con calma, «mozzò la testa del suo nemico e gettò la spada lontano al di là del muro. Ma fu troppo scaltro per gettare soltanto la spada. Gettò al di là del muro anche la testa. Poi non ebbe che da appioppare un’altra testa al cadavere, e (dato che pretese un’inchiesta privata) tutti voi immaginaste un uomo completamente nuovo.»

«Appioppare un’altra testa!» disse O’Brien fissandolo. «Quale altra testa? Le teste non crescono sui cespugli del giardino, no?»

«No,» disse Father Brown con voce roca, guardandosi le scarpe; «c’è un solo posto dove crescono. Crescono nel cesto della ghigliottina, accanto al quale il capo della polizia, Aristide Valentin, se ne stava non un’ora prima dell’omicidio. Oh, amici miei, ascoltatemi ancora un minuto prima di farmi a pezzi. Valentin è un uomo onesto, se essere pazzo per una causa discutibile è onestà. Ma non avete mai visto in quel suo occhio freddo e grigio che è pazzo? Farebbe qualsiasi cosa, qualsiasi cosa, per infrangere ciò che chiama la superstizione della Croce. Ha combattuto per essa e ha patito la fame per essa, e ora ha ucciso per essa. I folli milioni di Brayne erano finora stati dispersi fra tanti sette da fare ben poco per alterare l’equilibrio delle cose. Ma Valentin udì un bisbiglio che Brayne, come tanti scettici scervellati, stava scivolando verso di noi; e quella era una faccenda del tutto diversa. Brayne avrebbe riversato rifornimenti nell’impoverita e battagliera Chiesa di Francia; avrebbe sostenuto sei giornali nazionalisti come La Ghigliottina. La battaglia era già in bilico su un punto, e il fanatico prese fuoco al rischio. Decise di distruggere il milionario, e lo fece come ci si aspetterebbe che il più grande dei detective commetta il suo unico delitto. Sottrasse la testa recisa di Becker con qualche pretesto criminologico, e la portò a casa nella sua cassetta ufficiale. Ebbe con Brayne quell’ultima discussione, di cui Lord Galloway non udì la fine; fallita quella, lo condusse fuori nel sigillato giardino, parlò di scherma, si servì di ramoscelli e di una sciabola per illustrare, e…»

Ivan della Cicatrice balzò in piedi. «Pazzo furioso,» sbraitò; «adesso vai dal mio padrone, o ti prendo per…»

«Ma certo, ci stavo appunto andando,» disse Brown pesantemente; «devo chiedergli di confessare, e tutto il resto.»

Sospingendo davanti a sé l’infelice Brown come un ostaggio o una vittima sacrificale, si precipitarono insieme nell’improvvisa immobilità dello studio di Valentin.

Il grande detective sedeva alla scrivania, apparentemente troppo occupato per udire il loro turbolento ingresso. Si fermarono un istante, e poi qualcosa nell’aspetto di quella schiena eretta ed elegante fece sì che il dottore corresse avanti d’un tratto. Un tocco e un’occhiata gli mostrarono che c’era una piccola scatola di pillole al gomito di Valentin, e che Valentin era morto sulla sua sedia; e sul volto cieco del suicida c’era più che l’orgoglio di Catone.

The Queer Feet

If you meet a member of that select club, “The Twelve True Fishermen,” entering the Vernon Hotel for the annual club dinner, you will observe, as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and not black. If (supposing that you have the star-defying audacity to address such a being) you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter. You will then retire crushed. But you will leave behind you a mystery as yet unsolved and a tale worth telling.

If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is perhaps a little proud of this wild and wonderful guess of his, and it is possible that he might refer to it. But since it is immeasurably unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find “The Twelve True Fishermen,” or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at all unless you hear it from me.

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product—an “exclusive” commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one. But its very inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, was held to be of vital importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London. Thus it happened that even the twenty-four seats at this table could only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet more difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. Of course he combined with this limitation in the scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance. The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them all told. It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman’s servant. And, indeed, there was generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dine anywhere but in such a place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish, and each loaded at the hilt with one large pearl. These were always laid out for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most magnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a vast number of ceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; that was where it was so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were already a certain sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been in existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-president was the Duke of Chester.

If I have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel, the reader may feel a natural wonder as to how I came to know anything about it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden galley. As far as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is in the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the most refined retreats with the dreadful information that all men are brothers, and wherever this leveller went on his pale horse it was Father Brown’s trade to follow. One of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer, marvelling mildly at such superstitions, had consented to send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to Father Brown we are not concerned, for the excellent reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but apparently it involved him in writing out a note or statement for the conveying of some message or the righting of some wrong. Father Brown, therefore, with a meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be provided with a room and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man, and had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusual stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any borderland or anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance. There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one’s own family. Moreover, the priest’s appearance was second-rate and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse of him afar off might precipitate a crisis in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a plan to cover, since he might not obliterate, the disgrace. When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage decorated with a few dingy but important pictures, and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass office, which abuts upon the lounge—a house within a house, so to speak, like the old hotel bar which probably once occupied its place.

Gli strani passi

Se v’imbattete in un membro di quel club esclusivo, «I Dodici Veri Pescatori», mentre entra nel Vernon Hotel per la cena annuale del sodalizio, noterete, nel momento in cui si toglie il soprabito, che il suo abito da sera è verde e non nero. Se (ammesso che abbiate l’audacia sfrontata e sfida-stelle di rivolgervi a un simile essere) gli domanderete perché, con ogni probabilità vi risponderà che lo fa per non essere scambiato per un cameriere. Vi ritirerete allora annientati. Ma vi lascerete alle spalle un mistero non ancora risolto e un racconto che merita d’esser narrato.

Se (per proseguire nella stessa vena d’improbabili congetture) vi accadesse di incontrare un piccolo prete mite e laborioso, di nome padre Brown, e gli chiedeste quale fosse a suo giudizio la più singolare fortuna della sua vita, egli probabilmente vi risponderebbe che, tutto sommato, il suo colpo migliore l’aveva messo a segno al Vernon Hotel, dove aveva sventato un delitto e, forse, salvato un’anima, semplicemente ascoltando pochi passi in un corridoio. Va forse un po’ orgoglioso di questa sua congettura sfrenata e mirabile, ed è possibile che vi accenni. Ma poiché è oltre ogni misura improbabile che voi saliate mai tanto in alto nel mondo elegante da trovare «I Dodici Veri Pescatori», o che scendiate mai tanto in basso fra tuguri e criminali da trovare padre Brown, temo che non udrete mai questa storia se non la udrete da me.

Il Vernon Hotel, dove I Dodici Veri Pescatori tenevano le loro cene annuali, era un’istituzione quale può esistere soltanto in una società oligarchica quasi impazzita per la buona educazione. Era quel prodotto rovesciato: un’impresa commerciale «esclusiva». Vale a dire, era una cosa che rendeva non attirando la gente, bensì respingendola addirittura. Nel cuore di una plutocrazia i mercanti si fanno tanto scaltri da diventare più schizzinosi dei loro clienti. Creano positivamente difficoltà, affinché la loro clientela ricca e annoiata possa spendere denaro e diplomazia per superarle. Se ci fosse a Londra un albergo alla moda in cui non potesse entrare alcun uomo alto meno di sei piedi, la società metterebbe docilmente insieme comitive di uomini alti sei piedi per andarvi a cenare. Se ci fosse un ristorante costoso che, per mero capriccio del proprietario, aprisse soltanto il giovedì pomeriggio, sarebbe affollato il giovedì pomeriggio. Il Vernon Hotel sorgeva, quasi per caso, all’angolo di una piazza di Belgravia. Era un piccolo albergo, e assai scomodo. Ma le sue stesse scomodità venivano considerate mura protettrici di una determinata classe. Una scomodità, in particolare, era ritenuta d’importanza vitale: il fatto che in pratica soltanto ventiquattro persone potessero cenarvi in una volta. L’unico grande tavolo da pranzo era il celebre tavolo della terrazza, che stava all’aperto su una specie di veranda affacciata su uno dei più squisiti giardini antichi di Londra. Accadeva così che anche i ventiquattro posti a quel tavolo potessero essere goduti soltanto col tempo caldo; e questo, rendendone il godimento ancor più difficile, lo rendeva ancor più desiderato. Il proprietario in carica dell’albergo era un ebreo di nome Lever; e ci ricavava quasi un milione, rendendo difficile entrarvi. Naturalmente egli univo a questa limitazione nella portata della sua impresa la più accurata perfezione nell’esecuzione. I vini e la cucina erano davvero buoni quanto i migliori d’Europa, e il contegno degli inservienti rispecchiava esattamente l’umore immutabile dell’alta borghesia inglese. Il proprietario conosceva tutti i suoi camerieri come le dita della propria mano; in tutto non erano che quindici. Era assai più facile diventare membro del Parlamento che diventare cameriere in quell’albergo. Ciascun cameriere era addestrato in un terribile silenzio e in una terribile compostezza, come se fosse il servitore di un gentiluomo. E, in verità, in genere c’era almeno un cameriere per ogni gentiluomo che vi cenava.

Il club dei Dodici Veri Pescatori non avrebbe acconsentito a cenare in nessun altro luogo se non in uno simile, poiché esigeva una lussuosa intimità; e sarebbe rimasto profondamente turbato dalla sola idea che un altro club stesse addirittura cenando nel medesimo edificio. In occasione della loro cena annuale i Pescatori usavano esporre tutti i loro tesori, come se si trovassero in una casa privata, e specialmente la celebre serie di coltelli e forchette da pesce che erano, per così dire, l’insegna del sodalizio, ciascuno squisitamente cesellato in argento a forma di pesce, e ciascuno caricato all’impugnatura di una grossa perla. Venivano sempre disposti per la portata di pesce, e la portata di pesce era sempre la più magnifica di quel magnifico banchetto. Il sodalizio aveva un numero sterminato di cerimonie e di riti, ma non aveva né storia né scopo; ed era proprio in questo che era così aristocratico. Non occorreva essere alcunché per essere uno dei Dodici Pescatori; a meno che non foste già una certa sorta di persona, non ne udivate mai neppure parlare. Esisteva da dodici anni. Il suo presidente era il signor Audley. Il suo vicepresidente era il Duca di Chester.

Se sono riuscito in qualche misura a rendere l’atmosfera di questo tremendo albergo, il lettore potrà provare una naturale meraviglia su come io sia giunto a saperne alcunché, e potrà persino chiedersi come una persona tanto ordinaria quale il mio amico padre Brown sia venuto a trovarsi in quella galera dorata. Per quanto ciò riguarda, la mia storia è semplice, o addirittura volgare. C’è al mondo un rivoltoso e demagogo assai attempato che irrompe nei ritiri più raffinati con la spaventosa notizia che tutti gli uomini sono fratelli, e ovunque questo livellatore andasse sul suo pallido cavallo era mestiere di padre Brown seguirlo. Uno dei camerieri, un italiano, era stato colpito quel pomeriggio da un colpo apoplettico; e il suo datore di lavoro ebreo, meravigliandosi blandamente di simili superstizioni, aveva acconsentito a mandare a chiamare il più vicino prete papista. Ciò che il cameriere confessò a padre Brown non ci riguarda, per l’ottima ragione che quel chierico se lo tenne per sé; ma pare che ciò lo coinvolse nella stesura di un biglietto o di una dichiarazione per recapitare un qualche messaggio o riparare un qualche torto. Padre Brown, perciò, con una mite sfrontatezza che avrebbe mostrato allo stesso modo a Buckingham Palace, chiese che gli fossero forniti una stanza e l’occorrente per scrivere. Il signor Lever era diviso in due. Era un uomo di buon cuore, e aveva altresì quella cattiva imitazione della bontà, l’avversione per ogni difficoltà o scenata. Allo stesso tempo la presenza di un forestiero insolito nel suo albergo quella sera era come un granello di sporcizia su qualcosa appena pulito. Non c’era mai zona di confine né anticamera al Vernon Hotel, nessuno che attendesse nell’atrio, nessun cliente che entrasse per caso. C’erano quindici camerieri. C’erano dodici ospiti. Sarebbe stato sorprendente trovare un nuovo ospite nell’albergo quella notte quanto trovare un nuovo fratello che faceva colazione o merenda nella propria famiglia. Per di più, l’aspetto del prete era di seconda categoria e i suoi abiti erano infangati; una semplice occhiata a lui da lontano avrebbe potuto precipitare una crisi nel club. Il signor Lever infine escogitò un piano per coprire, giacché non poteva cancellare, la vergogna. Quando entrate (come non farete mai) nel Vernon Hotel, percorrete un breve corridoio decorato con alcuni quadri lerci ma importanti, e giungete al vestibolo principale e all’atrio che si apre alla vostra destra in corridoi che conducono alle sale pubbliche, e alla vostra sinistra in un corridoio simile che punta verso le cucine e gli uffici dell’albergo. Immediatamente alla vostra sinistra si trova l’angolo di un ufficio a vetri, che sporge sull’atrio: una casa dentro una casa, per così dire, come il vecchio bar dell’albergo che probabilmente un tempo ne occupava il posto.

In this office sat the representative of the proprietor (nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could help it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants’ quarters, was the gentlemen’s cloak room, the last boundary of the gentlemen’s domain. But between the office and the cloak room was a small private room without other outlet, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or declining to lend him sixpence. It is a mark of the magnificent tolerance of Mr. Lever that he permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by a mere priest, scribbling away on a piece of paper. The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known. I can merely state that it was very nearly as long, and that the last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting and absorbing.

For it was by the time that he had reached these that the priest began a little to allow his thoughts to wander and his animal senses, which were commonly keen, to awaken. The time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his own forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps the gathering gloom, as occasionally happens, sharpened the sense of sound. As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a recurrent noise outside, just as one sometimes thinks to the tune of a railway train. When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was: only the ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got to his feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merely listening, but listening and thinking also.

The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as one might hear in any hotel; and yet, taken as a whole, there was something very strange about them. There were no other footsteps. It was always a very silent house, for the few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments, and the well-trained waiters were told to be almost invisible until they were wanted. One could not conceive any place where there was less reason to apprehend anything irregular. But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call them regular or irregular. Father Brown followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like a man trying to learn a tune on the piano.

First, there came a long rush of rapid little steps, such as a light man might make in winning a walking race. At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter of the steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the last echoing stamp had died away would come again the run or ripple of light, hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? Yet no other description would cover the antics of this invisible pair of legs. The man was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in order to walk very slow down the other half; or he was walking very slow at one end to have the rapture of walking fast at the other. Neither suggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker and darker, like his room.

Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of his cell seemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he began to see as in a kind of vision the fantastic feet capering along the corridor in unnatural or symbolic attitudes. Was it a heathen religious dance? Or some entirely new kind of scientific exercise? Father Brown began to ask himself with more exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow step first: it certainly was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk with a rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be any servant or messenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer orders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they stand or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with a kind of careless emphasis, not specially noisy, yet not caring what noise it made, belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It was a gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never worked for his living.

Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed to the quicker one, and ran past the door as feverishly as a rat. The listener remarked that though this step was much swifter it was also much more noiseless, almost as if the man were walking on tiptoe. Yet it was not associated in his mind with secrecy, but with something else—something that he could not remember. He was maddened by one of those half-memories that make a man feel half-witted. Surely he had heard that strange, swift walking somewhere. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a new idea in his head, and walked to the door. His room had no direct outlet on the passage, but let on one side into the glass office, and on the other into the cloak room beyond. He tried the door into the office, and found it locked. Then he looked at the window, now a square pane full of purple cloud cleft by livid sunset, and for an instant he smelt evil as a dog smells rats.

In questo ufficio sedeva il rappresentante del proprietario (nessuno, in quel luogo, compariva mai di persona se poteva evitarlo), e appena oltre l’ufficio, sulla via degli alloggi della servitù, c’era il guardaroba dei signori, l’ultimo confine del dominio dei signori. Ma fra l’ufficio e il guardaroba c’era una piccola stanza privata senza altra uscita, talvolta usata dal proprietario per faccende delicate e importanti, come prestare a un duca mille sterline o rifiutarsi di prestargliene sei pence. È segno della magnifica tolleranza del signor Lever l’aver permesso che questo luogo sacro fosse per circa mezz’ora profanato da un semplice prete che scarabocchiava su un pezzo di carta. La storia che padre Brown stava mettendo per iscritto era assai probabilmente una storia molto migliore di questa, solo che non si conoscerà mai. Posso soltanto affermare che era quasi altrettanto lunga, e che gli ultimi due o tre paragrafi erano i meno emozionanti e avvincenti.

Fu infatti nel momento in cui giunse a questi che il prete cominciò un poco a lasciar vagare i propri pensieri e a risvegliare i propri sensi animali, che di solito erano acuti. Il tempo dell’oscurità e della cena si approssimava; la sua stessa stanzetta dimenticata era senza lume, e forse l’oscurità che s’addensava, come talora accade, affinava il senso dell’udito. Mentre padre Brown scriveva l’ultima e meno essenziale parte del suo documento, si sorprese a scrivere al ritmo di un rumore ricorrente là fuori, così come talvolta si pensa al ritmo di un treno. Quando ne divenne consapevole scoprì di che si trattava: null’altro che l’ordinario scalpiccio di piedi che passavano davanti alla porta, cosa in un albergo per nulla improbabile. Ciò nonostante, fissò lo sguardo sul soffitto ottenebrato e ascoltò quel suono. Dopo aver ascoltato per pochi secondi in modo trasognato, si alzò in piedi e ascoltò intensamente, con la testa un po’ inclinata da un lato. Poi si risedette e affondò la fronte nelle mani, ora non più semplicemente ascoltando, ma ascoltando e insieme riflettendo.

I passi là fuori, presi in un dato istante, erano tali quali si potrebbero udire in un albergo qualsiasi; eppure, considerati nel loro insieme, c’era in essi qualcosa di assai strano. Non c’erano altri passi. Era sempre una casa silenziosissima, poiché i pochi ospiti abituali si ritiravano subito nei propri appartamenti, e ai camerieri ben addestrati era ordinato d’essere pressoché invisibili finché non venissero richiesti. Non si sarebbe potuto concepire luogo alcuno in cui vi fosse minor ragione di temere qualcosa d’irregolare. Ma quei passi erano tanto bizzarri che non si riusciva a decidere se chiamarli regolari o irregolari. Padre Brown li seguiva col dito sull’orlo del tavolo, come un uomo che tenti d’imparare un motivo al pianoforte.

Dapprima veniva una lunga scarica di rapidi passetti, quali potrebbe farli un uomo leggero nel vincere una gara di marcia. A un certo punto si arrestavano e mutavano in una sorta di pestare lento e dondolante, che contava neanche un quarto dei passi, ma occupava all’incirca lo stesso tempo. Nel momento in cui l’ultimo pestare rimbombante si era spento, tornava di nuovo la corsa o l’increspatura di piedi leggeri e frettolosi, e poi di nuovo il tonfo del camminare più pesante. Era certamente lo stesso paio di stivali, in parte perché (come s’è detto) non c’erano altri stivali in giro, e in parte perché avevano in sé un piccolo ma inconfondibile scricchiolio. Padre Brown aveva il tipo di testa che non può fare a meno di porsi domande; e su questa domanda apparentemente banale la testa gli si spaccava quasi. Aveva visto uomini correre per saltare. Aveva visto uomini correre per scivolare. Ma perché mai un uomo dovrebbe correre per camminare? O, di nuovo, perché dovrebbe camminare per correre? Eppure nessun’altra descrizione avrebbe coperto le buffonerie di quell’invisibile paio di gambe. L’uomo o camminava velocissimo lungo una metà del corridoio per camminare lentissimo lungo l’altra metà; oppure camminava lentissimo a un’estremità per avere l’ebbrezza di camminare velocissimo all’altra. Nessuna delle due ipotesi pareva aver molto senso. Il suo cervello si faceva sempre più buio, come la sua stanza.

Eppure, non appena cominciò a riflettere con costanza, la nerezza stessa della sua cella parve rendere i suoi pensieri più vividi; cominciò a vedere come in una specie di visione i piedi fantastici che caracollavano lungo il corridoio in atteggiamenti innaturali o simbolici. Era una danza religiosa pagana? O qualche genere del tutto nuovo di esercizio scientifico? Padre Brown cominciò a chiedersi con maggiore esattezza che cosa suggerissero quei passi. Prendendo per primo il passo lento: non era certo il passo del proprietario. Gli uomini del suo tipo camminano con una rapida andatura anserina, oppure stanno seduti immobili. Non poteva essere alcun servitore o messaggero in attesa d’istruzioni. Non ne aveva il suono. I ceti più poveri (in un’oligarchia) talvolta barcollano quando sono un po’ ubriachi, ma in genere, e specialmente in scenari tanto sfarzosi, stanno in piedi o seduti in atteggiamenti costretti. No; quel passo pesante eppure elastico, con una sorta di noncurante enfasi, non particolarmente rumoroso, eppure incurante del rumore che faceva, apparteneva a uno solo fra gli animali di questa terra. Era un gentiluomo dell’Europa occidentale, e probabilmente uno che non aveva mai lavorato per vivere.

Proprio mentre giungeva a questa solida certezza, il passo mutò in quello più rapido, e corse oltre la porta febbrile come un topo. L’ascoltatore osservò che, benché quel passo fosse assai più svelto, era anche assai più silenzioso, quasi come se l’uomo camminasse in punta di piedi. Eppure nella sua mente non era associato alla segretezza, bensì a qualcos’altro: qualcosa che non riusciva a rammentare. Lo faceva impazzire uno di quei mezzi ricordi che fanno sentire un uomo mezzo scemo. Di certo aveva udito da qualche parte quello strano, rapido camminare. All’improvviso balzò in piedi con una nuova idea in testa, e si diresse alla porta. La sua stanza non aveva alcuno sbocco diretto sul corridoio, ma dava da un lato nell’ufficio a vetri, e dall’altro nel guardaroba al di là. Provò la porta dell’ufficio, e la trovò chiusa a chiave. Poi guardò la finestra, ora un riquadro pieno di nuvole purpuree fesse da un livido tramonto, e per un istante fiutò il male come un cane fiuta i topi.

The rational part of him (whether the wiser or not) regained its supremacy. He remembered that the proprietor had told him that he should lock the door, and would come later to release him. He told himself that twenty things he had not thought of might explain the eccentric sounds outside; he reminded himself that there was just enough light left to finish his own proper work. Bringing his paper to the window so as to catch the last stormy evening light, he resolutely plunged once more into the almost completed record. He had written for about twenty minutes, bending closer and closer to his paper in the lessening light; then suddenly he sat upright. He had heard the strange feet once more.

This time they had a third oddity. Previously the unknown man had walked, with levity indeed and lightning quickness, but he had walked. This time he ran. One could hear the swift, soft, bounding steps coming along the corridor, like the pads of a fleeing and leaping panther. Whoever was coming was a very strong, active man, in still yet tearing excitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the office like a sort of whispering whirlwind, it suddenly changed again to the old slow, swaggering stamp.

Father Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the office door to be locked, went at once into the cloak room on the other side. The attendant of this place was temporarily absent, probably because the only guests were at dinner and his office was a sinecure. After groping through a grey forest of overcoats, he found that the dim cloak room opened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of counter or half-door, like most of the counters across which we have all handed umbrellas and received tickets. There was a light immediately above the semicircular arch of this opening. It threw little illumination on Father Brown himself, who seemed a mere dark outline against the dim sunset window behind him. But it threw an almost theatrical light on the man who stood outside the cloak room in the corridor.

He was an elegant man in very plain evening dress; tall, but with an air of not taking up much room; one felt that he could have slid along like a shadow where many smaller men would have been obvious and obstructive. His face, now flung back in the lamplight, was swarthy and vivacious, the face of a foreigner. His figure was good, his manners good humoured and confident; a critic could only say that his black coat was a shade below his figure and manners, and even bulged and bagged in an odd way. The moment he caught sight of Brown’s black silhouette against the sunset, he tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called out with amiable authority: “I want my hat and coat, please; I find I have to go away at once.”

Father Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange gentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said laughing: “I haven’t got any silver; you can keep this.” And he threw down half a sovereign, and caught up his coat.

Father Brown’s figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million. Often the Catholic Church (which is wedded to common sense) did not approve of it. Often he did not approve of it himself. But it was real inspiration—important at rare crises—when whosoever shall lose his head the same shall save it.

“I think, sir,” he said civilly, “that you have some silver in your pocket.”

The tall gentleman stared. “Hang it,” he cried, “if I choose to give you gold, why should you complain?”

“Because silver is sometimes more valuable than gold,” said the priest mildly; “that is, in large quantities.”

The stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked still more curiously up the passage towards the main entrance. Then he looked back at Brown again, and then he looked very carefully at the window beyond Brown’s head, still coloured with the after-glow of the storm. Then he seemed to make up his mind. He put one hand on the counter, vaulted over as easily as an acrobat and towered above the priest, putting one tremendous hand upon his collar.

“Stand still,” he said, in a hacking whisper. “I don’t want to threaten you, but—”

“I do want to threaten you,” said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum, “I want to threaten you with the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.”

“You’re a rum sort of cloak-room clerk,” said the other.

“I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau,” said Brown, “and I am ready to hear your confession.”

The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back into a chair.

The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen had proceeded with placid success. I do not possess a copy of the menu; and if I did it would not convey anything to anybody. It was written in a sort of super-French employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible to Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club that the hors d’oeuvres should be various and manifold to the point of madness. They were taken seriously because they were avowedly useless extras, like the whole dinner and the whole club. There was also a tradition that the soup course should be light and unpretending—a sort of simple and austere vigil for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange, slight talk which governs the British Empire, which governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it. Cabinet ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole, praised—as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were very important. And yet, anything seemed important about them except their politics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anything—not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party could ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have been put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was a young and rising politician. That is to say, he was a pleasant youth, with flat, fair hair and a freckled face, with moderate intelligence and enormous estates. In public his appearances were always successful and his principle was simple enough. When he thought of a joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said that this was no time for trifling, and was called able. In private, in a club of his own class, he was simply quite pleasantly frank and silly, like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated them a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. He himself was a Conservative, even in private life. He had a roll of grey hair over the back of his collar, like certain old-fashioned statesmen, and seen from behind he looked like the man the empire wants. Seen from the front he looked like a mild, self-indulgent bachelor, with rooms in the Albany—which he was.

La parte razionale di lui (che fosse la più saggia o no) riacquistò la propria supremazia. Ricordò che il proprietario gli aveva detto che avrebbe chiuso a chiave la porta, e sarebbe tornato più tardi a liberarlo. Si disse che venti cose alle quali non aveva pensato potevano spiegare gli eccentrici suoni là fuori; si rammentò che c’era giusto luce a sufficienza per finire il proprio lavoro. Portando il foglio alla finestra così da cogliere l’ultima tempestosa luce serale, si tuffò risolutamente ancora una volta nel resoconto quasi completato. Aveva scritto per circa venti minuti, chinandosi sempre più vicino al foglio nella luce calante; poi d’un tratto si drizzò. Aveva udito di nuovo gli strani piedi.

Questa volta avevano una terza stranezza. In precedenza lo sconosciuto aveva camminato, con leggerezza invero e con fulminea rapidità, ma aveva camminato. Questa volta correva. Si udivano i passi rapidi, morbidi, balzanti venire lungo il corridoio, come i polpastrelli di una pantera in fuga e in salto. Chiunque stesse arrivando era un uomo assai forte, attivo, in un’eccitazione quieta eppure lacerante. Eppure, quando il suono si fu precipitato fino all’ufficio come una specie di turbine bisbigliante, mutò di nuovo all’improvviso nel vecchio pestare lento e spavaldo.

Padre Brown gettò via il foglio e, sapendo la porta dell’ufficio chiusa a chiave, andò subito nel guardaroba dall’altra parte. L’inserviente di quel luogo era temporaneamente assente, probabilmente perché gli unici ospiti erano a cena e la sua mansione era una sinecura. Dopo aver brancolato attraverso una grigia foresta di soprabiti, scoprì che il tenebroso guardaroba si apriva sul corridoio illuminato sotto forma di una specie di bancone o mezza porta, come la maggior parte dei banconi attraverso i quali tutti noi abbiamo consegnato ombrelli e ricevuto scontrini. C’era un lume immediatamente sopra l’arco semicircolare di quest’apertura. Esso gettava poca luce su padre Brown medesimo, che pareva un mero profilo scuro contro la fioca finestra al tramonto alle sue spalle. Ma gettava una luce quasi teatrale sull’uomo che stava fuori del guardaroba, nel corridoio.

Era un uomo elegante, in un abito da sera assai dimesso; alto, ma con un’aria di non occupare molto spazio; si sentiva che avrebbe potuto scivolar via come un’ombra là dove molti uomini più piccoli sarebbero stati vistosi e ingombranti. Il suo volto, ora riverso all’indietro nella luce della lampada, era bruno e vivace, il volto di uno straniero. La sua figura era bella, i suoi modi allegri e sicuri; un critico avrebbe potuto dire soltanto che il suo abito nero era una spanna al di sotto della sua figura e dei suoi modi, e anzi si gonfiava e si borsava in modo strano. Nel momento in cui scorse la nera sagoma di Brown contro il tramonto, gettò giù un pezzetto di carta con un numero e chiamò con amabile autorità: «Il mio cappello e il mio soprabito, prego; mi trovo a dover andar via all’istante».

Padre Brown prese il foglietto senza una parola, e obbediente andò a cercare il soprabito; non era il primo lavoro servile che avesse svolto nella sua vita. Lo portò e lo depose sul bancone; nel frattempo, lo strano gentiluomo, che si era andato frugando nel taschino del panciotto, disse ridendo: «Non ho spiccioli d’argento; potete tenervi questa». E gettò giù mezza sovrana, e afferrò il soprabito.

La figura di padre Brown rimase del tutto scura e immobile; ma in quell’istante egli aveva perso la testa. La sua testa era sempre di massimo valore quando l’aveva perduta. In simili momenti egli faceva due più due e otteneva quattro milioni. Spesso la Chiesa Cattolica (che è sposata al buon senso) non l’approvava. Spesso egli stesso non l’approvava. Ma era vera ispirazione — importante nelle rare crisi — quando chiunque perderà la sua testa, quello stesso la salverà.

«Penso, signore», disse cortesemente, «che voi abbiate del denaro d’argento in tasca».

L’alto gentiluomo lo fissò. «Al diavolo», gridò, «se scelgo di darvi dell’oro, perché mai dovreste lamentarvi?»

«Perché l’argento è talvolta più prezioso dell’oro», disse il prete con mitezza; «vale a dire, in grandi quantità».

Lo straniero lo guardò con curiosità. Poi guardò con curiosità ancora maggiore su per il corridoio, verso l’ingresso principale. Poi guardò di nuovo Brown, e poi guardò con estrema attenzione la finestra oltre la testa di Brown, ancora colorata dal bagliore residuo della tempesta. Poi parve prendere una decisione. Posò una mano sul bancone, lo scavalcò con la facilità di un acrobata e torreggiò sul prete, posandogli una mano tremenda sul colletto.

«Sta’ fermo», disse, con un sibilo rauco. «Non voglio minacciarti, ma…»

«Io voglio minacciarti», disse padre Brown, con una voce simile a un rullo di tamburo, «voglio minacciarti col verme che non muore e col fuoco che non si spegne».

«Sei uno strano tipo di guardarobiere», disse l’altro.

«Sono un prete, Monsieur Flambeau», disse Brown, «e sono pronto ad ascoltare la vostra confessione».

L’altro rimase ansimante per qualche istante, e poi barcollò all’indietro fino a cadere su una sedia.

Le prime due portate della cena dei Dodici Veri Pescatori erano procedute con placido successo. Non possiedo una copia del menù; e se pure la possedessi non direbbe nulla a nessuno. Era scritto in una specie di super-francese impiegato dai cuochi, ma del tutto incomprensibile ai francesi. C’era nel club una tradizione secondo cui gli antipasti dovessero essere svariati e molteplici fino alla follia. Venivano presi sul serio proprio perché erano dichiaratamente inutili aggiunte, come l’intera cena e l’intero club. C’era anche una tradizione secondo cui la portata di minestra dovesse essere leggera e senza pretese: una specie di veglia semplice e austera in vista della festa di pesce che stava per venire. La conversazione era quella strana, esile conversazione che governa l’Impero Britannico, che lo governa in segreto, e che tuttavia a stento illuminerebbe un inglese comune anche se potesse origliarla. I ministri di gabinetto di entrambe le parti venivano menzionati col loro nome di battesimo con una specie di annoiata benevolenza. Il Cancelliere dello Scacchiere radicale, che l’intero partito Tory si supponeva stesse maledicendo per le sue estorsioni, veniva lodato per la sua poesia minore, o per la sua sella nel campo di caccia. Il leader Tory, che tutti i Liberali si supponeva odiassero come un tiranno, veniva discusso e, tutto sommato, lodato — come un Liberale. Pareva in qualche modo che i politici fossero molto importanti. Eppure tutto pareva importante in loro, tranne la loro politica. Il signor Audley, il presidente, era un uomo amabile e attempato che portava ancora i colletti alla Gladstone; era una specie di simbolo di tutta quella società fantasmatica eppure immutabile. Non aveva mai fatto nulla — nemmeno nulla di male. Non era dissoluto; non era neppure particolarmente ricco. Era semplicemente dentro la cosa; e non c’era altro da dire. Nessun partito poteva ignorarlo, e se avesse desiderato essere nel gabinetto certamente ve lo avrebbero messo. Il Duca di Chester, il vicepresidente, era un politico giovane ed emergente. Vale a dire, era un piacevole giovanotto, coi capelli lisci e biondi e il volto lentigginoso, d’intelligenza moderata ed enormi possedimenti. In pubblico le sue apparizioni erano sempre coronate da successo e il suo principio era abbastanza semplice. Quando pensava a una battuta la faceva, e veniva definito brillante. Quando non riusciva a pensare a una battuta diceva che quello non era il momento di scherzare, e veniva definito capace. In privato, in un club della sua classe, era semplicemente franco e sciocco in modo piuttosto piacevole, come uno scolaretto. Il signor Audley, non essendo mai stato in politica, la trattava un po’ più seriamente. Talvolta metteva persino in imbarazzo la compagnia con frasi che lasciavano intendere esservi qualche differenza fra un Liberale e un Conservatore. Egli stesso era un Conservatore, anche nella vita privata. Aveva una massa di capelli grigi sopra il retro del colletto, come certi statisti all’antica, e visto di spalle pareva l’uomo di cui l’impero ha bisogno. Visto di fronte pareva uno scapolo mite e indulgente verso il proprio io, con un appartamento all’Albany — cosa che era.

As has been remarked, there were twenty-four seats at the terrace table, and only twelve members of the club. Thus they could occupy the terrace in the most luxurious style of all, being ranged along the inner side of the table, with no one opposite, commanding an uninterrupted view of the garden, the colours of which were still vivid, though evening was closing in somewhat luridly for the time of year. The chairman sat in the centre of the line, and the vice-president at the right-hand end of it. When the twelve guests first trooped into their seats it was the custom (for some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to stand lining the wall like troops presenting arms to the king, while the fat proprietor stood and bowed to the club with radiant surprise, as if he had never heard of them before. But before the first chink of knife and fork this army of retainers had vanished, only the one or two required to collect and distribute the plates darting about in deathly silence. Mr. Lever, the proprietor, of course had disappeared in convulsions of courtesy long before. It would be exaggerative, indeed irreverent, to say that he ever positively appeared again. But when the important course, the fish course, was being brought on, there was—how shall I put it?—a vivid shadow, a projection of his personality, which told that he was hovering near. The sacred fish course consisted (to the eyes of the vulgar) in a sort of monstrous pudding, about the size and shape of a wedding cake, in which some considerable number of interesting fishes had finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. The Twelve True Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives and fish forks, and approached it as gravely as if every inch of the pudding cost as much as the silver fork it was eaten with. So it did, for all I know. This course was dealt with in eager and devouring silence; and it was only when his plate was nearly empty that the young duke made the ritual remark: “They can’t do this anywhere but here.”

“Nowhere,” said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning to the speaker and nodding his venerable head a number of times. “Nowhere, assuredly, except here. It was represented to me that at the Cafe Anglais—”

Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by the removal of his plate, but he recaptured the valuable thread of his thoughts. “It was represented to me that the same could be done at the Cafe Anglais. Nothing like it, sir,” he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like a hanging judge. “Nothing like it.”

“Overrated place,” said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking (by the look of him) for the first time for some months.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Duke of Chester, who was an optimist, “it’s jolly good for some things. You can’t beat it at—”

A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. His stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those vague and kindly gentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinery which surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I would feel if the inanimate world disobeyed— if a chair ran away from us.

The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time. It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would have asked him, with comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter, after standing for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned round and ran madly out of the room.

When he reappeared in the room, or rather in the doorway, it was in company with another waiter, with whom he whispered and gesticulated with southern fierceness. Then the first waiter went away, leaving the second waiter, and reappeared with a third waiter. By the time a fourth waiter had joined this hurried synod, Mr. Audley felt it necessary to break the silence in the interests of Tact. He used a very loud cough, instead of a presidential hammer, and said: “Splendid work young Moocher’s doing in Burmah. Now, no other nation in the world could have—”

A fifth waiter had sped towards him like an arrow, and was whispering in his ear: “So sorry. Important! Might the proprietor speak to you?”

The chairman turned in disorder, and with a dazed stare saw Mr. Lever coming towards them with his lumbering quickness. The gait of the good proprietor was indeed his usual gait, but his face was by no means usual. Generally it was a genial copper-brown; now it was a sickly yellow.

“You will pardon me, Mr. Audley,” he said, with asthmatic breathlessness. “I have great apprehensions. Your fish-plates, they are cleared away with the knife and fork on them!”

“Well, I hope so,” said the chairman, with some warmth.

“You see him?” panted the excited hotel keeper; “you see the waiter who took them away? You know him?”

“Know the waiter?” answered Mr. Audley indignantly. “Certainly not!”

Mr. Lever opened his hands with a gesture of agony. “I never send him,” he said. “I know not when or why he come. I send my waiter to take away the plates, and he find them already away.”

Mr. Audley still looked rather too bewildered to be really the man the empire wants; none of the company could say anything except the man of wood—Colonel Pound—who seemed galvanised into an unnatural life. He rose rigidly from his chair, leaving all the rest sitting, screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and spoke in a raucous undertone as if he had half-forgotten how to speak. “Do you mean,” he said, “that somebody has stolen our silver fish service?”

Come s’è osservato, c’erano ventiquattro posti al tavolo della terrazza, e soltanto dodici membri del club. Così essi potevano occupare la terrazza nello stile più lussuoso che si possa immaginare, disposti lungo il lato interno del tavolo, con nessuno di fronte, dominando una veduta ininterrotta del giardino, i cui colori erano ancora vividi, benché la sera si stesse chiudendo in modo alquanto sinistro per la stagione dell’anno. Il presidente sedeva al centro della fila, e il vicepresidente all’estremità destra di essa. Quando i dodici ospiti si avviarono in gruppo verso i loro posti era usanza (per chissà quale ragione) che tutti e quindici i camerieri stessero schierati lungo la parete come truppe che presentano le armi al re, mentre il grasso proprietario stava in piedi e s’inchinava al club con raggiante sorpresa, come se non ne avesse mai udito parlare prima. Ma prima del primo tintinnio di coltello e forchetta quest’armata di servitori era svanita, e soltanto uno o due dei necessari a raccogliere e distribuire i piatti sfrecciavano qua e là in un mortale silenzio. Il signor Lever, il proprietario, naturalmente era scomparso in convulsioni di cortesia molto tempo prima. Sarebbe esagerato, anzi irriverente, dire che tornò mai a comparire positivamente. Ma quando fu portata la portata importante, la portata di pesce, ci fu — come dire? — una vivida ombra, una proiezione della sua personalità, che rivelava come egli aleggiasse lì vicino. La sacra portata di pesce consisteva (agli occhi del volgo) in una specie di mostruoso budino, all’incirca della dimensione e della forma di una torta nuziale, nel quale un certo numero considerevole di pesci interessanti aveva definitivamente perduto le forme che Dio aveva loro dato. I Dodici Veri Pescatori presero i loro celebri coltelli da pesce e le loro forchette da pesce, e vi si accostarono con la stessa gravità come se ogni pollice del budino costasse quanto la forchetta d’argento con cui lo si mangiava. E così era, per quel che ne so. Questa portata fu affrontata in un silenzio avido e vorace; e fu soltanto quando il suo piatto era quasi vuoto che il giovane duca fece la rituale osservazione: «Questo non lo sanno fare da nessun’altra parte che qui».

«Da nessuna parte», disse il signor Audley, con una profonda voce di basso, volgendosi verso chi aveva parlato e annuendo più volte col suo venerabile capo. «Da nessuna parte, assicuro, tranne che qui. Mi fu rappresentato che al Café Anglais…»

Qui fu interrotto e persino turbato per un momento dal ritiro del suo piatto, ma riafferrò il prezioso filo dei propri pensieri. «Mi fu rappresentato che lo stesso si poteva fare al Café Anglais. Nulla di simile, signore», disse, scuotendo la testa spietatamente, come un giudice condannatore. «Nulla di simile».

«Posto sopravvalutato», disse un certo Colonnello Pound, parlando (a giudicare dal suo aspetto) per la prima volta da alcuni mesi.

«Oh, non saprei», disse il Duca di Chester, che era un ottimista, «è dannatamente buono per certe cose. Non lo si può battere in fatto di…»

Un cameriere venne rapido lungo la sala, e poi si arrestò di colpo. Il suo arresto fu silenzioso quanto il suo passo; ma tutti quei vaghi e cortesi signori erano talmente abituati alla perfetta scorrevolezza dell’invisibile macchinario che circondava e sosteneva le loro vite, che un cameriere il quale facesse qualcosa d’inatteso era un sobbalzo e uno strappo. Provavano ciò che voi e io proveremmo se il mondo inanimato disobbedisse — se una sedia scappasse via da noi.

Il cameriere rimase a fissare per qualche secondo, mentre su ogni volto al tavolo si approfondiva una strana vergogna che è tutta prodotto del nostro tempo. È la combinazione dell’umanitarismo moderno col terribile abisso moderno fra le anime dei ricchi e dei poveri. Un genuino aristocratico storico avrebbe scagliato oggetti contro il cameriere, cominciando dalle bottiglie vuote, e assai probabilmente finendo col denaro. Un genuino democratico gli avrebbe chiesto, con la chiarezza di parola propria di un compagno, che diavolo stesse facendo. Ma questi plutocrati moderni non potevano sopportare un uomo povero accanto a sé, né come schiavo né come amico. Che qualcosa fosse andato storto con la servitù era per loro soltanto un cupo, cocente imbarazzo. Non volevano essere brutali, e paventavano la necessità d’essere benevoli. Volevano che la cosa, qualunque fosse, finisse. Finì. Il cameriere, dopo essere rimasto per qualche secondo rigido, come un catalettico, si voltò e corse follemente fuori della sala.

Quando ricomparve nella sala, o piuttosto nel vano della porta, era in compagnia di un altro cameriere, col quale bisbigliava e gesticolava con meridionale foga. Poi il primo cameriere se ne andò, lasciando il secondo cameriere, e ricomparve con un terzo cameriere. Nel momento in cui un quarto cameriere si fu unito a questo affrettato sinodo, il signor Audley sentì necessario rompere il silenzio nell’interesse del Tatto. Usò un colpo di tosse assai fragoroso, invece di un martello presidenziale, e disse: «Splendido lavoro sta facendo il giovane Moocher in Birmania. Ecco, nessun’altra nazione al mondo avrebbe potuto…»

Un quinto cameriere aveva puntato verso di lui come una freccia, e gli bisbigliava all’orecchio: «Chiedo scusa. Importante! Potrebbe il proprietario parlarle?»

Il presidente si voltò scompostamente, e con uno sguardo attonito vide il signor Lever che veniva verso di loro con la sua goffa sveltezza. L’andatura del buon proprietario era invero la sua andatura consueta, ma il suo volto non era affatto consueto. In genere era di un bruno ramato gioviale; ora era di un giallo malaticcio.

«Vorrà perdonarmi, signor Audley», disse, con affanno asmatico. «Ho grandi apprensioni. I suoi piatti di pesce, sono stati portati via col coltello e la forchetta sopra!»

«Beh, lo spero bene», disse il presidente, con un certo calore.

«Lei lo vede?» ansimava l’eccitato albergatore; «lei vede il cameriere che li ha portati via? Lei lo conosce?»

«Conoscere il cameriere?» rispose il signor Audley indignato. «Certo che no!»

Il signor Lever aprì le mani con un gesto d’angoscia. «Io non l’ho mandato», disse. «Non so quando né perché sia venuto. Mando il mio cameriere a portar via i piatti, e lui li trova già portati via».

Il signor Audley aveva ancora un’aria troppo sconcertata per essere davvero l’uomo di cui l’impero ha bisogno; nessuno della compagnia riuscì a dire alcunché tranne l’uomo di legno — il Colonnello Pound — che parve galvanizzato in una vita innaturale. Si alzò rigidamente dalla sedia, lasciando tutti gli altri seduti, si avvitò il monocolo nell’occhio, e parlò in un rauco sottovoce come se avesse mezzo dimenticato come si parla. «Vuol dire», disse, «che qualcuno ha rubato il nostro servizio di pesce d’argento?»

The proprietor repeated the open-handed gesture with even greater helplessness and in a flash all the men at the table were on their feet.

“Are all your waiters here?” demanded the colonel, in his low, harsh accent.

“Yes; they’re all here. I noticed it myself,” cried the young duke, pushing his boyish face into the inmost ring. “Always count ‘em as I come in; they look so queer standing up against the wall.”

“But surely one cannot exactly remember,” began Mr. Audley, with heavy hesitation.

“I remember exactly, I tell you,” cried the duke excitedly. “There never have been more than fifteen waiters at this place, and there were no more than fifteen tonight, I’ll swear; no more and no less.”

The proprietor turned upon him, quaking in a kind of palsy of surprise. “You say—you say,” he stammered, “that you see all my fifteen waiters?”

“As usual,” assented the duke. “What is the matter with that!”

“Nothing,” said Lever, with a deepening accent, “only you did not. For one of zem is dead upstairs.”

There was a shocking stillness for an instant in that room. It may be (so supernatural is the word death) that each of those idle men looked for a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea. One of them— the duke, I think—even said with the idiotic kindness of wealth: “Is there anything we can do?”

“He has had a priest,” said the Jew, not untouched.

Then, as to the clang of doom, they awoke to their own position. For a few weird seconds they had really felt as if the fifteenth waiter might be the ghost of the dead man upstairs. They had been dumb under that oppression, for ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like beggars. But the remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous; broke it abruptly and with a brutal reaction. The colonel flung over his chair and strode to the door. “If there was a fifteenth man here, friends,” he said, “that fifteenth fellow was a thief. Down at once to the front and back doors and secure everything; then we’ll talk. The twenty-four pearls of the club are worth recovering.”

Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it was gentlemanly to be in such a hurry about anything; but, seeing the duke dash down the stairs with youthful energy, he followed with a more mature motion.

At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and declared that he had found the pile of fish plates on a sideboard, with no trace of the silver.

The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled helter-skelter down the passages divided into two groups. Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound, with the chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted down the corridor leading to the servants’ quarters, as the more likely line of escape. As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern of the cloak room, and saw a short, black-coated figure, presumably an attendant, standing a little way back in the shadow of it.

“Hallo, there!” called out the duke. “Have you seen anyone pass?”

The short figure did not answer the question directly, but merely said: “Perhaps I have got what you are looking for, gentlemen.”

They paused, wavering and wondering, while he quietly went to the back of the cloak room, and came back with both hands full of shining silver, which he laid out on the counter as calmly as a salesman. It took the form of a dozen quaintly shaped forks and knives.

“You—you—” began the colonel, quite thrown off his balance at last. Then he peered into the dim little room and saw two things: first, that the short, black-clad man was dressed like a clergyman; and, second, that the window of the room behind him was burst, as if someone had passed violently through. “Valuable things to deposit in a cloak room, aren’t they?” remarked the clergyman, with cheerful composure.

“Did—did you steal those things?” stammered Mr. Audley, with staring eyes.

“If I did,” said the cleric pleasantly, “at least I am bringing them back again.”

“But you didn’t,” said Colonel Pound, still staring at the broken window.

“To make a clean breast of it, I didn’t,” said the other, with some humour. And he seated himself quite gravely on a stool. “But you know who did,” said the, colonel.

“I don’t know his real name,” said the priest placidly, “but I know something of his fighting weight, and a great deal about his spiritual difficulties. I formed the physical estimate when he was trying to throttle me, and the moral estimate when he repented.”

“Oh, I say—repented!” cried young Chester, with a sort of crow of laughter.

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. “Odd, isn’t it,” he said, “that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my province. If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks. You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there are all your silver fish. But He has made me a fisher of men.”

“Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning.

Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

There was a long silence. All the other men present drifted away to carry the recovered silver to their comrades, or to consult the proprietor about the queer condition of affairs. But the grim-faced colonel still sat sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legs and biting his dark moustache.

At last he said quietly to the priest: “He must have been a clever fellow, but I think I know a cleverer.”

“He was a clever fellow,” answered the other, “but I am not quite sure of what other you mean.”

Il proprietario ripeté il gesto a mani aperte con impotenza ancor maggiore, e in un lampo tutti gli uomini al tavolo furono in piedi.

«Sono tutti qui i suoi camerieri?» domandò il colonnello, col suo accento basso e aspro.

«Sì; sono tutti qui. L’ho notato io stesso», gridò il giovane duca, spingendo il suo volto fanciullesco nel cerchio più interno. «Li conto sempre quando entro; hanno un’aria così buffa ritti contro il muro».

«Ma di certo non si può ricordare con esattezza», cominciò il signor Audley, con pesante esitazione.

«Ricordo con esattezza, ve lo dico io», gridò il duca eccitato. «Non ci sono mai stati più di quindici camerieri in questo posto, e non ce n’erano più di quindici stasera, lo giuro; né più né meno».

Il proprietario si volse verso di lui, tremando in una specie di paralisi da sorpresa. «Lei dice… lei dice», balbettò, «che ha visto tutti i miei quindici camerieri?»

«Come al solito», assentì il duca. «Che c’è di male?»

«Nulla», disse Lever, con accento sempre più marcato, «solo che non li ha visti. Perché uno di loro è morto di sopra».

Ci fu per un istante un silenzio scioccante in quella sala. Può darsi (tanto è soprannaturale la parola morte) che ciascuno di quegli uomini oziosi guardasse per un secondo alla propria anima, e la vedesse come un piccolo pisello secco. Uno di loro — il duca, credo — disse persino con l’idiota bontà della ricchezza: «C’è qualcosa che possiamo fare?»

«Ha avuto un prete», disse l’ebreo, non del tutto insensibile.

Poi, come al rintocco del giudizio, si destarono alla propria posizione. Per qualche secondo bizzarro avevano davvero sentito come se il quindicesimo cameriere potesse essere il fantasma del morto di sopra. Erano rimasti muti sotto quell’oppressione, poiché i fantasmi erano per loro un imbarazzo, come i mendicanti. Ma il ricordo dell’argento spezzò l’incantesimo del miracoloso; lo spezzò bruscamente e con una brutale reazione. Il colonnello rovesciò la sedia e mosse a grandi passi verso la porta. «Se c’era qui un quindicesimo uomo, amici», disse, «quel quindicesimo tizio era un ladro. Giù subito alle porte anteriori e posteriori e mettete tutto in sicurezza; poi ne parleremo. Le ventiquattro perle del club valgono la pena d’essere recuperate».

Il signor Audley parve dapprima esitare sul fatto se fosse da gentiluomo mostrarsi tanto frettoloso per qualcosa; ma, vedendo il duca precipitarsi giù per le scale con giovanile energia, lo seguì con moto più maturo.

Nel medesimo istante un sesto cameriere corse nella sala, e dichiarò di aver trovato la pila dei piatti di pesce su una credenza, senza traccia dell’argento.

La folla di commensali e inservienti che ruzzolò alla rinfusa giù per i corridoi si divise in due gruppi. La maggior parte dei Pescatori seguì il proprietario nella sala anteriore per chiedere notizie di qualsiasi uscita. Il Colonnello Pound, col presidente, il vicepresidente e uno o due altri, si lanciò giù per il corridoio che conduceva agli alloggi della servitù, come la più probabile via di fuga. Nel far ciò passarono davanti alla fioca alcova o caverna del guardaroba, e videro una figura bassa, dal cappotto nero, presumibilmente un inserviente, che stava un po’ arretrata nell’ombra di esso.

«Ehi, voi!» gridò il duca. «Avete visto passare qualcuno?»

La bassa figura non rispose direttamente alla domanda, ma disse soltanto: «Forse ho io ciò che state cercando, signori».

Fecero una pausa, vacillanti e perplessi, mentre egli andava tranquillamente sul fondo del guardaroba, e tornava con entrambe le mani colme di argento lucente, che dispose sul bancone con la calma di un commesso. Prese la forma di una dozzina di forchette e coltelli dalla forma bizzarra.

«Voi… voi…» cominciò il colonnello, finalmente del tutto sbilanciato. Poi scrutò dentro la fioca stanzetta e vide due cose: primo, che l’uomo basso, vestito di nero, era abbigliato come un ecclesiastico; e secondo, che la finestra della stanza alle sue spalle era sfondata, come se qualcuno fosse passato attraverso con violenza. «Oggetti di valore da depositare in un guardaroba, non trovate?» osservò l’ecclesiastico, con allegra compostezza.

«Le avete… le avete rubate voi, quelle cose?» balbettò il signor Audley, con gli occhi sbarrati.

«Se l’avessi fatto», disse il chierico amabilmente, «per lo meno le sto riportando indietro».

«Ma non l’avete fatto», disse il Colonnello Pound, sempre fissando la finestra rotta.

«A voler essere del tutto sincero, non l’ho fatto», disse l’altro, con un certo umorismo. E si sedette del tutto gravemente su uno sgabello. «Ma voi sapete chi è stato», disse il colonnello.

«Non conosco il suo vero nome», disse il prete placidamente, «ma so qualcosa del suo peso da combattimento, e molto delle sue difficoltà spirituali. Formulai la stima fisica quando cercava di strangolarmi, e la stima morale quando si pentì».

«Oh, ma va’ — pentirsi!» gridò il giovane Chester, con una sorta di gorgoglio di risa.

Padre Brown si alzò in piedi, mettendosi le mani dietro la schiena. «Strano, non è vero», disse, «che un ladro e un vagabondo si pentano, mentre tanti che sono ricchi e al sicuro restano duri e frivoli, e senza frutto per Dio o per l’uomo? Ma ecco, se mi perdonate, voi sconfinate un poco nel mio campo. Se dubitate della penitenza come fatto pratico, ecco lì i vostri coltelli e le vostre forchette. Voi siete I Dodici Veri Pescatori, ed ecco tutti i vostri pesci d’argento. Ma Egli ha fatto di me un pescatore di uomini».

«L’avete preso, quest’uomo?» chiese il colonnello, aggrottando le sopracciglia.

Padre Brown lo guardò dritto nel volto accigliato. «Sì», disse, «l’ho preso, con un amo invisibile e una lenza invisibile che è tanto lunga da lasciarlo vagare fino ai confini del mondo, e tuttavia da riportarlo indietro con uno strattone al filo».

Ci fu un lungo silenzio. Tutti gli altri uomini presenti si allontanarono alla spicciolata per portare l’argento ritrovato ai loro compagni, o per consultare il proprietario sulla bizzarra piega degli avvenimenti. Ma il colonnello dal volto arcigno sedeva ancora di traverso sul bancone, dondolando le sue lunghe gambe magre e mordicchiandosi i baffi scuri.

Alla fine disse tranquillamente al prete: «Dev’essere stato un tipo in gamba, ma credo di conoscerne uno più in gamba».

«Era un tipo in gamba», rispose l’altro, «ma non sono del tutto sicuro di quale altro intendiate».

“I mean you,” said the colonel, with a short laugh. “I don’t want to get the fellow jailed; make yourself easy about that. But I’d give a good many silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair, and how you got the stuff out of him. I reckon you’re the most up-to-date devil of the present company.”

Father Brown seemed rather to like the saturnine candour of the soldier. “Well,” he said, smiling, “I mustn’t tell you anything of the man’s identity, or his own story, of course; but there’s no particular reason why I shouldn’t tell you of the mere outside facts which I found out for myself.”

He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and sat beside Colonel Pound, kicking his short legs like a little boy on a gate. He began to tell the story as easily as if he were telling it to an old friend by a Christmas fire.

“You see, colonel,” he said, “I was shut up in that small room there doing some writing, when I heard a pair of feet in this passage doing a dance that was as queer as the dance of death. First came quick, funny little steps, like a man walking on tiptoe for a wager; then came slow, careless, creaking steps, as of a big man walking about with a cigar. But they were both made by the same feet, I swear, and they came in rotation; first the run and then the walk, and then the run again. I wondered at first idly and then wildly why a man should act these two parts at once. One walk I knew; it was just like yours, colonel. It was the walk of a well-fed gentleman waiting for something, who strolls about rather because he is physically alert than because he is mentally impatient. I knew that I knew the other walk, too, but I could not remember what it was. What wild creature had I met on my travels that tore along on tiptoe in that extraordinary style? Then I heard a clink of plates somewhere; and the answer stood up as plain as St. Peter’s. It was the walk of a waiter— that walk with the body slanted forward, the eyes looking down, the ball of the toe spurning away the ground, the coat tails and napkin flying. Then I thought for a minute and a half more. And I believe I saw the manner of the crime, as clearly as if I were going to commit it.”

Colonel Pound looked at him keenly, but the speaker’s mild grey eyes were fixed upon the ceiling with almost empty wistfulness.

“A crime,” he said slowly, “is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come from an infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us say, the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the flowers of the mad girl, the fantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the grin of the skull are all oddities in a sort of tangled wreath round one plain tragic figure of a man in black. Well, this also,” he said, getting slowly down from his seat with a smile, “this also is the plain tragedy of a man in black. Yes,” he went on, seeing the colonel look up in some wonder, “the whole of this tale turns on a black coat. In this, as in Hamlet, there are the rococo excrescences—yourselves, let us say. There is the dead waiter, who was there when he could not be there. There is the invisible hand that swept your table clear of silver and melted into air. But every clever crime is founded ultimately on some one quite simple fact—some fact that is not itself mysterious. The mystification comes in covering it up, in leading men’s thoughts away from it. This large and subtle and (in the ordinary course) most profitable crime, was built on the plain fact that a gentleman’s evening dress is the same as a waiter’s. All the rest was acting, and thundering good acting, too.”

“Still,” said the colonel, getting up and frowning at his boots, “I am not sure that I understand.”

“Colonel,” said Father Brown, “I tell you that this archangel of impudence who stole your forks walked up and down this passage twenty times in the blaze of all the lamps, in the glare of all the eyes. He did not go and hide in dim corners where suspicion might have searched for him. He kept constantly on the move in the lighted corridors, and everywhere that he went he seemed to be there by right. Don’t ask me what he was like; you have seen him yourself six or seven times tonight. You were waiting with all the other grand people in the reception room at the end of the passage there, with the terrace just beyond. Whenever he came among you gentlemen, he came in the lightning style of a waiter, with bent head, flapping napkin and flying feet. He shot out on to the terrace, did something to the table cloth, and shot back again towards the office and the waiters’ quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had become another man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He strolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swell from the dinner party should pace all parts of the house like an animal at the Zoo; they know that nothing marks the Smart Set more than a habit of walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of walking down that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past the office; in the shadow of the arch just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the Twelve Fishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a chance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In the proprietor’s private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon of soda water, saying he was thirsty. He said genially that he would carry it himself, and he did; he carried it quickly and correctly through the thick of you, a waiter with an obvious errand. Of course, it could not have been kept up long, but it only had to be kept up till the end of the fish course.

«Intendo voi», disse il colonnello, con una breve risata. «Non voglio far finire il tizio in prigione; mettetevi il cuore in pace su questo. Ma darei parecchie forchette d’argento per sapere esattamente come vi siete trovato immischiato in questa faccenda, e come gli avete cavato la refurtiva. Scommetto che voi siete il diavolo più aggiornato della presente compagnia».

Padre Brown parve piuttosto gradire la saturnina franchezza del soldato. «Beh», disse, sorridendo, «non devo dirvi nulla dell’identità dell’uomo, né della sua storia, naturalmente; ma non c’è ragione particolare per cui non dovrei raccontarvi i meri fatti esteriori che ho scoperto da me».

Saltò oltre la barriera con inaspettata agilità, e si sedette accanto al Colonnello Pound, dondolando le sue corte gambe come un ragazzino su un cancello. Cominciò a raccontare la storia con la stessa facilità come se la raccontasse a un vecchio amico accanto a un fuoco di Natale.

«Vedete, colonnello», disse, «ero rinchiuso in quella stanzetta là a scrivere, quando udii un paio di piedi in questo corridoio che facevano una danza bizzarra come la danza della morte. Prima vennero passetti rapidi e buffi, come un uomo che cammina in punta di piedi per scommessa; poi vennero passi lenti, noncuranti, scricchiolanti, come di un uomo corpulento che passeggia con un sigaro. Ma erano fatti entrambi dagli stessi piedi, lo giuro, e venivano in avvicendamento; prima la corsa e poi la camminata, e poi di nuovo la corsa. Mi domandai dapprima oziosamente e poi freneticamente perché un uomo dovesse recitare queste due parti in una volta. Una camminata la conoscevo; era proprio come la vostra, colonnello. Era la camminata di un gentiluomo ben pasciuto in attesa di qualcosa, che passeggia piuttosto perché è fisicamente sveglio che perché sia mentalmente impaziente. Sapevo di conoscere anche l’altra camminata, ma non riuscivo a ricordare quale fosse. Quale creatura selvaggia avevo incontrato nei miei viaggi che si lanciava in punta di piedi in quello stile straordinario? Poi udii un tintinnio di piatti da qualche parte; e la risposta si drizzò in piedi chiara come San Pietro. Era la camminata di un cameriere — quella camminata col corpo inclinato in avanti, gli occhi rivolti in basso, la punta del piede che scaccia via il suolo, le falde della giacca e il tovagliolo al vento. Poi pensai per un altro minuto e mezzo. E credo di aver visto la maniera del delitto, con la stessa chiarezza come se stessi per commetterlo io stesso».

Il Colonnello Pound lo guardò acutamente, ma i miti occhi grigi di chi parlava erano fissi sul soffitto con una malinconia quasi vuota.

«Un delitto», disse lentamente, «è come qualsiasi altra opera d’arte. Non abbiate un’aria sorpresa; i delitti non sono affatto le sole opere d’arte che provengono da un’officina infernale. Ma ogni opera d’arte, divina o diabolica, ha un segno indispensabile: intendo dire che il suo centro è semplice, per quanto complicata possa esserne la realizzazione. Così, nell’Amleto, poniamo, la grottesca figura del becchino, i fiori della fanciulla folle, la stravagante eleganza di Osric, il pallore del fantasma e il ghigno del teschio sono tutte stranezze in una specie di ghirlanda intricata attorno all’unica semplice figura tragica di un uomo in nero. Beh, anche questa», disse, scendendo lentamente dal suo posto con un sorriso, «anche questa è la semplice tragedia di un uomo in nero. Sì», proseguì, vedendo il colonnello alzare lo sguardo con una certa meraviglia, «l’intera vicenda ruota attorno a un abito nero. In questa, come nell’Amleto, ci sono le escrescenze rococò — voi stessi, poniamo. C’è il cameriere morto, che era là quando non poteva esservi. C’è la mano invisibile che spazzò via l’argento dal vostro tavolo e si dileguò nell’aria. Ma ogni delitto ingegnoso è fondato in ultima analisi su qualche fatto assai semplice — qualche fatto che non è di per sé misterioso. La mistificazione sta nel coprirlo, nel condurre lontano da esso i pensieri degli uomini. Questo ampio, sottile e (nel corso ordinario delle cose) redditizio delitto, era costruito sul semplice fatto che l’abito da sera di un gentiluomo è uguale a quello di un cameriere. Tutto il resto era recitazione, e recitazione dannatamente buona, per giunta».

«Eppure», disse il colonnello, alzandosi e aggrottando lo sguardo sui propri stivali, «non sono sicuro di capire».

«Colonnello», disse padre Brown, «vi dico che questo arcangelo dell’impudenza che ha rubato le vostre forchette camminò su e giù per questo corridoio venti volte nel bagliore di tutte le lampade, nel chiarore di tutti gli occhi. Non andò a nascondersi in angoli bui dove il sospetto avrebbe potuto cercarlo. Si tenne costantemente in movimento nei corridoi illuminati, e ovunque andasse pareva esservi di diritto. Non chiedetemi com’era; l’avete visto voi stesso sei o sette volte stasera. Voi stavate ad aspettare con tutte le altre nobili persone nella sala di ricevimento in fondo a quel corridoio là, con la terrazza appena oltre. Ogni volta che veniva fra voi signori, veniva nello stile fulmineo di un cameriere, col capo chino, il tovagliolo sventolante e i piedi volanti. Schizzava fuori sulla terrazza, faceva qualcosa alla tovaglia, e schizzava di nuovo indietro verso l’ufficio e gli alloggi dei camerieri. Nel momento in cui giungeva sotto l’occhio dell’impiegato d’ufficio e dei camerieri era diventato un altro uomo in ogni pollice del suo corpo, in ogni gesto istintivo. Passeggiava fra i servitori con l’insolenza sovrappensiero che essi hanno tutti visto nei loro clienti. Non era per loro cosa nuova che un damerino della cena andasse a spasso per ogni parte della casa come un animale allo Zoo; sanno che nulla contraddistingue lo Smart Set più dell’abitudine di camminare dove più aggrada. Quando era magnificamente stanco di camminare su e giù per quel particolare corridoio, faceva dietrofront e ripercorreva a passo lento davanti all’ufficio; nell’ombra dell’arco appena oltre veniva mutato come da una folata di magia, e s’affrettava di nuovo in avanti fra i Dodici Pescatori, un ossequioso inserviente. Perché mai i signori avrebbero dovuto guardare un cameriere qualsiasi? Perché mai i camerieri avrebbero dovuto sospettare di un gentiluomo di prim’ordine a passeggio? Una o due volte giocò i tiri più spudorati. Negli alloggi privati del proprietario chiese con disinvoltura un sifone d’acqua di seltz, dicendo di aver sete. Disse con cordialità che l’avrebbe portato lui stesso, e così fece; lo portò rapidamente e correttamente attraverso il folto di voi, un cameriere con un’evidente incombenza. Naturalmente, non si sarebbe potuto tirare avanti a lungo, ma bastava tirare avanti fino alla fine della portata di pesce.

“His worst moment was when the waiters stood in a row; but even then he contrived to lean against the wall just round the corner in such a way that for that important instant the waiters thought him a gentleman, while the gentlemen thought him a waiter. The rest went like winking. If any waiter caught him away from the table, that waiter caught a languid aristocrat. He had only to time himself two minutes before the fish was cleared, become a swift servant, and clear it himself. He put the plates down on a sideboard, stuffed the silver in his breast pocket, giving it a bulgy look, and ran like a hare (I heard him coming) till he came to the cloak room. There he had only to be a plutocrat again—a plutocrat called away suddenly on business. He had only to give his ticket to the cloak-room attendant, and go out again elegantly as he had come in. Only—only I happened to be the cloak-room attendant.”

“What did you do to him?” cried the colonel, with unusual intensity. “What did he tell you?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the priest immovably, “that is where the story ends.”

“And the interesting story begins,” muttered Pound. “I think I understand his professional trick. But I don’t seem to have got hold of yours.”

“I must be going,” said Father Brown.

They walked together along the passage to the entrance hall, where they saw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of Chester, who was bounding buoyantly along towards them.

“Come along, Pound,” he cried breathlessly. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The dinner’s going again in spanking style, and old Audley has got to make a speech in honour of the forks being saved. We want to start some new ceremony, don’t you know, to commemorate the occasion. I say, you really got the goods back, what do you suggest?”

“Why,” said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval, “I should suggest that henceforward we wear green coats, instead of black. One never knows what mistakes may arise when one looks so like a waiter.”

“Oh, hang it all!” said the young man, “a gentleman never looks like a waiter.”

“Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose,” said Colonel Pound, with the same lowering laughter on his face. “Reverend sir, your friend must have been very smart to act the gentleman.”

Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the neck, for the night was stormy, and took his commonplace umbrella from the stand.

“Yes,” he said; “it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought that it may be almost as laborious to be a waiter.”

And saying “Good evening,” he pushed open the heavy doors of that palace of pleasures. The golden gates closed behind him, and he went at a brisk walk through the damp, dark streets in search of a penny omnibus.

«Il suo momento peggiore fu quando i camerieri si disposero in fila; ma anche allora riuscì ad appoggiarsi alla parete proprio dietro l’angolo in modo tale che, per quell’istante importante, i camerieri lo credettero un gentiluomo, mentre i gentiluomini lo credettero un cameriere. Il resto andò via in un batter d’occhio. Se qualche cameriere lo coglieva lontano dal tavolo, quel cameriere coglieva un languido aristocratico. Non gli restava che calcolare il momento due minuti prima che il pesce fosse portato via, farsi svelto servitore, e portarlo via lui stesso. Poggiò i piatti su una credenza, si cacciò l’argento nel taschino del petto, dandogli un aspetto rigonfio, e corse come una lepre (lo udii venire) finché giunse al guardaroba. Là non gli restava che ridiventare un plutocrate — un plutocrate chiamato via all’improvviso per affari. Non gli restava che dare il suo scontrino al guardarobiere, e uscire di nuovo elegantemente com’era entrato. Solo… solo che il guardarobiere per caso ero io».

«Che cosa gli avete fatto?» gridò il colonnello, con insolita intensità. «Che cosa vi ha detto?»

«Vi chiedo scusa», disse il prete imperturbabile, «ma è qui che la storia finisce».

«E la storia interessante comincia», borbottò Pound. «Credo di aver capito il suo trucco professionale. Ma non pare che io abbia afferrato il vostro».

«Devo andare», disse padre Brown.

Camminarono insieme lungo il corridoio fino all’atrio d’ingresso, dove videro il volto fresco e lentigginoso del Duca di Chester, che veniva balzando allegro verso di loro.

«Venite, Pound», gridò senza fiato. «Vi ho cercato dappertutto. La cena è ripartita alla grande, e il vecchio Audley deve fare un discorso in onore delle forchette salvate. Vogliamo istituire qualche nuova cerimonia, capite, per commemorare l’occasione. Dico, siete voi che avete davvero recuperato la roba, che cosa suggerite?»

«Ebbene», disse il colonnello, squadrandolo con una certa sardonica approvazione, «suggerirei che d’ora in avanti indossassimo giacche verdi, invece che nere. Non si sa mai quali equivoci possano sorgere quando si somiglia tanto a un cameriere».

«Oh, ma andiamo!» disse il giovanotto, «un gentiluomo non somiglia mai a un cameriere».

«Né un cameriere a un gentiluomo, suppongo», disse il Colonnello Pound, con la stessa risata cupa sul volto. «Reverendo signore, il vostro amico dev’essere stato assai in gamba a recitare il gentiluomo».

Padre Brown si abbottonò fino al collo il suo dimesso soprabito, poiché la notte era tempestosa, e prese il suo dimesso ombrello dal portaombrelli.

«Sì», disse; «dev’essere un lavoro assai duro essere un gentiluomo; ma, sapete, ho talvolta pensato che possa essere quasi altrettanto faticoso essere un cameriere».

E dicendo «Buona sera», spinse i pesanti battenti di quel palazzo dei piaceri. Le porte dorate si chiusero dietro di lui, ed egli se ne andò a passo svelto attraverso le umide strade buie in cerca di un omnibus da un penny.

The Flying Stars

“The most beautiful crime I ever committed,” Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, “was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.

“Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens’s style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.”

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobutrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.

“Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much too high.”

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”

“How can you say such things!” she remonstrated.

“Well,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”

“I never know what you will say or do next,” she said.

“I don’t often know myself,” replied Mr. Crook; “but then I am on the right side of the wall now.”

“And which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady, smiling.

“Whichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

“Hullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie, “here’s somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as this.”

“Oh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing Day.”

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:

“He is very kind.”

John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and it was not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in certain articles in The Clarion or The New Age Sir Leopold had been dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large, neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking old gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, who rubbed his big fur gloves together.

Le stelle volanti

«Il più bel delitto che io abbia mai commesso» soleva dire Flambeau nella sua oltremodo morale vecchiaia «fu anche, per una singolare coincidenza, il mio ultimo. Fu commesso a Natale. Da artista avevo sempre cercato di offrire delitti adatti alla stagione o al paesaggio particolare in cui mi trovavo, scegliendo questa o quella terrazza o questo o quel giardino per una catastrofe, come per un gruppo statuario. Così i possidenti vanno truffati in lunghe sale rivestite di quercia; mentre gli ebrei, per contro, devono piuttosto ritrovarsi inaspettatamente al verde tra le luci e i paraventi del Café Riche. Così, in Inghilterra, se desideravo alleggerire un decano delle sue ricchezze (cosa non così facile come si potrebbe supporre), volevo incorniciarlo, se mi spiego, tra i verdi prati e le grigie torri di qualche città con cattedrale. Allo stesso modo, in Francia, quando avevo estorto denaro a un contadino ricco e malvagio (cosa quasi impossibile), mi compiaceva veder stagliare il suo capo indignato contro una grigia fila di pioppi potati, e quelle solenni pianure della Gallia su cui aleggia il possente spirito di Millet.

«Ebbene, il mio ultimo delitto fu un delitto natalizio, un delitto allegro, accogliente, della classe media inglese; un delitto alla Charles Dickens. Lo commisi in una bella e vecchia casa borghese presso Putney, una casa con un semicerchio di viale carrozzabile, una casa con una scuderia a fianco, una casa con il nome sui due cancelli esterni, una casa con un’araucaria. Basta così, conoscete la specie. Credo davvero che la mia imitazione dello stile di Dickens fosse abile e letteraria. Sembra quasi un peccato che me ne sia pentito la sera stessa.»

Flambeau avrebbe poi proseguito raccontando la storia dall’interno; e anche dall’interno era strana. Vista dall’esterno risultava perfettamente incomprensibile, ed è dall’esterno che l’estraneo deve studiarla. Da questo punto di vista il dramma si può dire che cominciò quando la porta d’ingresso della casa con la scuderia si aprì sul giardino con l’araucaria, e una giovane ragazza uscì con del pane per nutrire gli uccelli nel pomeriggio di Santo Stefano. Aveva un viso grazioso, con arditi occhi castani; ma la sua figura sfuggiva a ogni congettura, poiché era così avvolta in pellicce brune che era difficile dire dove finisse il pelo e dove i capelli. Se non fosse stato per il viso attraente, avrebbe potuto sembrare un piccolo orso ciondolante.

Il pomeriggio d’inverno arrossava verso sera, e già una luce di rubino si stendeva sulle aiuole senza fiori, colmandole, per così dire, dei fantasmi delle rose morte. Da un lato della casa sorgeva la scuderia, dall’altro un viale o chiostro di allori conduceva al più ampio giardino sul retro. La giovane dama, sparso il pane per gli uccelli (per la quarta o quinta volta quel giorno, perché il cane lo mangiava), si inoltrò senza dar nell’occhio lungo il sentiero degli allori e in una scintillante piantagione di sempreverdi sul retro. Qui diede in un’esclamazione di meraviglia, reale o rituale, e alzando lo sguardo verso l’alto muro del giardino sopra di lei, lo vide fantasticamente cavalcato da una figura alquanto fantastica.

«Oh, non salti, signor Crook» gridò con un certo allarme; «è troppo alto.»

L’individuo che cavalcava il muro divisorio come un cavallo aereo era un giovane alto e angoloso, con i capelli scuri ritti come una spazzola, lineamenti intelligenti e persino distinti, ma una carnagione olivastra e quasi straniera. Ciò appariva tanto più chiaramente perché portava un’aggressiva cravatta rossa, l’unica parte del suo abbigliamento di cui sembrasse prendersi cura. Forse era un simbolo. Non fece caso alcuno all’allarmata esortazione della ragazza, ma balzò a terra al suo fianco come una cavalletta, dove avrebbe potuto benissimo rompersi le gambe.

«Credo di essere nato per fare lo scassinatore» disse placido, «e non ho alcun dubbio che lo sarei diventato se non mi fosse capitato di nascere in quella graziosa casa qui accanto. Comunque non ci vedo alcun male.»

«Come può dire simili cose!» protestò lei.

«Ebbene» disse il giovane, «se uno nasce dalla parte sbagliata del muro, non vedo che ci sia nulla di male a scavalcarlo.»

«Non so mai cosa dirà o farà un momento dopo» disse lei.

«Spesso non lo so nemmeno io» rispose il signor Crook; «ma d’altra parte adesso sono dalla parte giusta del muro.»

«E qual è la parte giusta del muro?» chiese la giovane dama, sorridendo.

«Quella su cui vi trovate voi» disse il giovane di nome Crook.

Mentre attraversavano insieme gli allori verso il giardino anteriore, un clacson suonò tre volte, avvicinandosi sempre più, e un’automobile di splendida velocità, grande eleganza e un pallido colore verde si accostò alle porte d’ingresso come un uccello e si fermò pulsando.

«Ehilà, ehilà!» disse il giovane dalla cravatta rossa, «ecco comunque qualcuno nato dalla parte giusta. Non sapevo, signorina Adams, che il suo Babbo Natale fosse così moderno.»

«Oh, è il mio padrino, Sir Leopold Fischer. Viene sempre a Santo Stefano.»

Poi, dopo una pausa innocente, che tradiva inconsapevolmente una certa mancanza d’entusiasmo, Ruby Adams aggiunse:

«È molto gentile.»

John Crook, giornalista, aveva sentito parlare di quell’eminente magnate della City; e non era colpa sua se il magnate della City non aveva sentito parlare di lui; poiché in certi articoli su The Clarion o The New Age Sir Leopold era stato trattato con severità. Ma non disse nulla e osservò cupo lo scaricamento dell’automobile, che fu un processo piuttosto lungo. Un autista grande e lindo in verde scese dal davanti, e un piccolo e lindo domestico in grigio scese dal dietro, e insieme deposero Sir Leopold sulla soglia e cominciarono a disimballarlo, come un pacco protetto con estrema cura. Coperte a sufficienza per rifornire un bazar, pellicce di tutte le bestie della foresta, e sciarpe di tutti i colori dell’arcobaleno furono svolte a una a una, finché rivelarono qualcosa che somigliava alla forma umana; la forma di un vecchio signore cordiale, ma dall’aspetto straniero, con una grigia barba caprina e un sorriso raggiante, che si strofinava insieme i grossi guanti di pelliccia.

Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch had opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry young lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a fez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt. With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big and rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by name James Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such family gatherings.

In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed, were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase at the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung the colonel’s sword, the process was completed and the company, including the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable financier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of his well-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vain-glory that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them all; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole group.

“I’ll put ‘em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ‘em coming down. They’re the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track; but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It was quite possible.”

“Quite natural, I should say,” growled the man in the red tie. “I shouldn’t blame ‘em if they had taken ‘em. When they ask for bread, and you don’t even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for themselves.”

“I won’t have you talking like that,” cried the girl, who was in a curious glow. “You’ve only talked like that since you became a horrid what’s-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?”

“A saint,” said Father Brown.

“I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means a Socialist.”

“A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes,” remarked Crook, with some impatience; and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it.”

“But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own your own soot.”

Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. “Does one want to own soot?” he asked.

“One might,” answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. “I’ve heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn’t come, entirely with soot—applied externally.”

“Oh, splendid,” cried Ruby. “Oh, I wish you’d do it to this company.”

The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in applause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerable deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest opened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens, monkey-tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat, evidently a common messenger. “Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?” he asked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared, and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.

“I’m sick at being such a nuisance, colonel,” he said, with the cheery colonial conventions; “but would it upset you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it’s Florian, that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out West (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have business for me, though I hardly guess what.”

“Of course, of course,” replied the colonel carelessly—“My dear chap, any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition.”

“He’ll black his face, if that’s what you mean,” cried Blount, laughing. “I don’t doubt he’d black everyone else’s eyes. I don’t care; I’m not refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat.”

“Not on mine, please,” said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.

“Well, well,” observed Crook, airily, “don’t let’s quarrel. There are lower jokes than sitting on a top hat.”

Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led Fischer to say, in his most sarcastic, magisterial manner: “No doubt you have found something much lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?”

Molto prima che questa rivelazione fosse completa, i due grandi battenti del portico si erano aperti nel mezzo, e il colonnello Adams (padre della giovane dama impellicciata) era uscito di persona a invitare dentro il suo eminente ospite. Era un uomo alto, abbronzato e assai taciturno, che portava una rossa papalina da fumo simile a un fez, che lo faceva assomigliare a uno dei Sirdar o Pascià inglesi in Egitto. Con lui c’era suo cognato, giunto di recente dal Canada, un grande e piuttosto turbolento giovane gentiluomo-agricoltore, con una barba gialla, di nome James Blount. Con lui c’era anche la figura più insignificante del prete della vicina chiesa cattolica romana; poiché la defunta moglie del colonnello era stata cattolica, e i figli, come è consueto in tali casi, erano stati educati a seguirne la fede. Tutto sembrava dimesso nel prete, persino il nome, che era Brown; eppure il colonnello aveva sempre trovato in lui qualcosa di socievole, e spesso lo invitava a simili raduni familiari.

Nell’ampio atrio d’ingresso della casa c’era spazio a sufficienza persino per Sir Leopold e per la rimozione dei suoi involti. Portico e vestibolo, in verità, erano indebitamente grandi in proporzione alla casa, e formavano, per così dire, una grande sala con la porta d’ingresso a un’estremità, e il fondo della scala all’altra. Davanti al grande fuoco dell’atrio, sopra il quale pendeva la spada del colonnello, il processo fu completato e la compagnia, incluso il saturnino Crook, presentata a Sir Leopold Fischer. Quel venerabile finanziere, tuttavia, sembrava ancora alle prese con parti del suo ben foderato abbigliamento, e alla fine estrasse da una tasca assai interna della marsina un astuccio ovale nero che spiegò raggiante essere il suo regalo di Natale per la figlioccia. Con una schietta vanagloria che aveva in sé qualcosa di disarmante, tese l’astuccio davanti a tutti loro; si aprì di scatto a un tocco e li accecò a metà. Fu proprio come se una fontana di cristallo fosse zampillata nei loro occhi. In un nido di velluto arancio giacevano, come tre uova, tre bianchi e vividi diamanti che sembravano appiccare il fuoco all’aria stessa tutt’intorno a loro. Fischer stava raggiante di benevolenza, abbeverandosi dello stupore e dell’estasi della ragazza, della cupa ammirazione e dei burberi ringraziamenti del colonnello, della meraviglia dell’intero gruppo.

«Adesso li rimetto a posto, mia cara» disse Fischer, riponendo l’astuccio nelle falde della giacca. «Ho dovuto stare attento a portarli fin qui. Sono i tre grandi diamanti africani chiamati “Le Stelle Volanti”, perché sono stati rubati così spesso. Tutti i grandi criminali ne sono sulle tracce; ma persino i rozzi individui che bighellonano per le strade e gli alberghi difficilmente riuscirebbero a tenerne lontane le mani. Avrei potuto perderli lungo la strada fin qui. Era assai possibile.»

«Assai naturale, direi» ringhiò l’uomo dalla cravatta rossa. «Non li biasimerei se li avessero presi. Quando chiedono pane, e voi non date loro nemmeno una pietra, penso che potrebbero prendersi la pietra da soli.»

«Non ti permetto di parlare così» esclamò la ragazza, che era pervasa da uno strano ardore. «Parli così solo da quando sei diventato un orribile come-si-chiama. Sai cosa intendo. Come chiami un uomo che vuole abbracciare lo spazzacamino?»

«Un santo» disse Padre Brown.

«Credo» disse Sir Leopold, con un sorriso altezzoso, «che Ruby intenda un socialista.»

«Un radicale non è un uomo che vive di ravanelli» osservò Crook, con una certa impazienza; «e un conservatore non è un uomo che conserva la marmellata. Né, ve l’assicuro, un socialista è un uomo che desidera trascorrere una serata mondana con lo spazzacamino. Un socialista è un uomo che vuole che tutti i camini siano spazzati e che tutti gli spazzacamini siano pagati per farlo.»

«Ma che non ti permetterà» aggiunse il prete a voce bassa, «di possedere la tua stessa fuliggine.»

Crook lo guardò con occhio interessato e persino rispettoso. «C’è forse chi vuole possedere la fuliggine?» chiese.

«Potrebbe esserci» rispose Brown, con aria meditabonda. «Ho sentito che i giardinieri la usano. E una volta ho reso felici sei bambini a Natale, quando il prestigiatore non venne, unicamente con della fuliggine… applicata esternamente.»

«Oh, splendido» esclamò Ruby. «Oh, vorrei che lo facesse a questa compagnia.»

Il turbolento canadese, il signor Blount, stava levando la sua voce sonora in applausi, e lo stupito finanziere la propria (con notevole disapprovazione), quando un colpo risuonò alla doppia porta d’ingresso. Il prete la aprì, e mostrò di nuovo il giardino anteriore di sempreverdi, araucaria e tutto il resto, ora raccolto nell’ombra contro uno splendido tramonto violetto. La scena così incorniciata era tanto colorata e pittoresca, come un fondale in una commedia, che per un momento dimenticarono l’insignificante figura ferma sulla soglia. Aveva un aspetto impolverato e un cappotto liso, evidentemente un comune fattorino. «C’è tra voi signori il signor Blount?» chiese, e porse incerto una lettera. Il signor Blount trasalì, e s’interruppe nel suo grido d’assenso. Strappando la busta con evidente stupore la lesse; il suo volto si rannuvolò un poco, poi si rischiarò, e si volse al cognato e ospite.

«Mi dispiace essere un tale disturbo, colonnello» disse, con le allegre convenzioni coloniali; «ma le dispiacerebbe se una vecchia conoscenza venisse a trovarmi qui stasera per affari? In effetti si tratta di Florian, quel famoso acrobata e attore comico francese; lo conobbi anni fa nel West (era franco-canadese di nascita), e pare abbia degli affari per me, benché non riesca a immaginare quali.»

«Ma certo, ma certo» rispose il colonnello con noncuranza. «Mio caro, ogni amico suo è il benvenuto. Non ho dubbio che si rivelerà un acquisto.»

«Si tingerà la faccia di nero, se è questo che intende» esclamò Blount ridendo. «E non dubito che pesterebbe gli occhi a chiunque altro. Non m’importa; non sono raffinato. Mi piace la vecchia allegra pantomima in cui un uomo si siede sul proprio cilindro.»

«Non sul mio, la prego» disse Sir Leopold Fischer, con dignità.

«Via, via» osservò Crook con leggerezza, «non litighiamo. Ci sono scherzi più bassi che sedersi su un cilindro.»

L’antipatia per il giovane dalla cravatta rossa, nata dalle sue opinioni predatorie e dalla sua evidente intimità con la graziosa figlioccia, indusse Fischer a dire, nel suo tono più sarcastico e magistrale: «Non dubito che lei abbia trovato qualcosa di ben più basso che sedersi su un cilindro. Che cos’è, di grazia?»

“Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance,” said the Socialist.

“Now, now, now,” cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence, “don’t let’s spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let’s do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if you don’t like those— but something of the sort. Why couldn’t we have a proper old English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it’s blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country only last year, and I find the thing’s extinct. Nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or something. Blue Beard’s more in my line, and him I like best when he turned into the pantaloon.”

“I’m all for making a policeman into sausages,” said John Crook. “It’s a better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the get-up would be too big a business.”

“Not a scrap,” cried Blount, quite carried away. “A harlequinade’s the quickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to any degree; and, second, all the objects are household things—tables and towel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that.”

“That’s true,” admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about. “But I’m afraid I can’t have my policeman’s uniform? Haven’t killed a policeman lately.”

Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. “Yes, we can!” he cried. “I’ve got Florian’s address here, and he knows every costumier in London. I’ll phone him to bring a police dress when he comes.” And he went bounding away to the telephone.

“Oh, it’s glorious, godfather,” cried Ruby, almost dancing. “I’ll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon.”

The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. “I think, my dear,” he said, “you must get someone else for pantaloon.”

“I will be pantaloon, if you like,” said Colonel Adams, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and speaking for the first and last time.

“You ought to have a statue,” cried the Canadian, as he came back, radiant, from the telephone. “There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall be clown; he’s a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian ‘phones he’s bringing the police costume; he’s changing on the way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors can be the back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English interior. Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic.” And snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the line of the footlights.

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that house that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grew wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions from which it had to create. The columbine looked charming in an outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade in the drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained (like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin, already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle, James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in his excitement; he was like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey’s head unexpectedly on Father Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paper donkey’s tail to the coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down. “Uncle is too absurd,” cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of sausages. “Why is he so wild?”

“He is harlequin to your columbine,” said Crook. “I am only the clown who makes the old jokes.”

“I wish you were the harlequin,” she said, and left the string of sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes, and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee. The spectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and the servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

«Lasciare che un cilindro si sieda su di te, per esempio» disse il socialista.

«Su, su, su» esclamò l’agricoltore canadese con la sua barbarica benevolenza, «non roviniamo una bella serata. Quel che dico è: facciamo qualcosa per la compagnia stasera. Non tingere facce o sedersi su cappelli, se non vi piacciono… ma qualcosa del genere. Perché non potremmo mettere in scena una bella vecchia pantomima all’inglese… clown, colombina e così via. Ne vidi una quando lasciai l’Inghilterra a dodici anni, e da allora mi arde nel cervello come un falò. Sono tornato nella vecchia patria solo l’anno scorso, e trovo che la cosa è estinta. Nient’altro che un mucchio di piagnucolose commediole di fate. Voglio un rovente attizzatoio e un poliziotto trasformato in salsicce, e mi danno principesse che moraleggiano al chiaro di luna, Uccelli Azzurri, o roba simile. Barbablù è più nelle mie corde, e lui mi piace di più quando si trasforma nel pantalone.»

«Sono tutto per trasformare un poliziotto in salsicce» disse John Crook. «È una definizione di socialismo migliore di alcune date di recente. Ma di sicuro la messinscena sarebbe un’impresa troppo grossa.»

«Nemmeno per sogno» esclamò Blount, del tutto trasportato. «Un’arlecchinata è la cosa più rapida che possiamo fare, per due ragioni. Primo, si può improvvisare a piacimento; e, secondo, tutti gli oggetti sono cose di casa… tavoli e portasciugamani e ceste della biancheria, e cose del genere.»

«È vero» ammise Crook, annuendo con entusiasmo e camminando avanti e indietro. «Ma temo di non poter avere la mia uniforme da poliziotto? Non ho ucciso nessun poliziotto di recente.»

Blount aggrottò la fronte pensieroso per un istante, poi si diede una manata sulla coscia. «Sì che possiamo!» esclamò. «Ho qui l’indirizzo di Florian, e lui conosce ogni costumista di Londra. Gli telefonerò di portare una divisa da poliziotto quando viene.» E se ne andò a balzi verso il telefono.

«Oh, è magnifico, padrino» esclamò Ruby, quasi danzando. «Io sarò colombina e tu sarai il pantalone.»

Il milionario si mantenne rigido con una sorta di solennità pagana. «Credo, mia cara» disse, «che dovrai trovare qualcun altro per il pantalone.»

«Farò io il pantalone, se vuoi» disse il colonnello Adams, togliendosi il sigaro di bocca, e parlando per la prima e ultima volta.

«Meriteresti una statua» esclamò il canadese, tornando raggiante dal telefono. «Ecco, siamo tutti a posto. Il signor Crook farà il clown; è giornalista e conosce tutte le battute più vecchie. Io posso fare arlecchino, che richiede solo gambe lunghe e salti. Il mio amico Florian telefona che porta il costume da poliziotto; si cambia per strada. Possiamo recitarla proprio in questo atrio, con il pubblico seduto su quelle ampie scale di fronte, una fila sopra l’altra. Queste porte d’ingresso possono fare da fondale, aperte o chiuse. Chiuse, si vede un interno inglese. Aperte, un giardino al chiaro di luna. Va tutto per magia.» E afferrando un pezzo qualsiasi di gesso da biliardo dalla tasca, lo fece scorrere sul pavimento dell’atrio, a metà strada tra la porta d’ingresso e la scala, per segnare la linea delle luci della ribalta.

Come persino un simile banchetto di sciocchezze fu allestito in tempo rimase un enigma. Ma vi si dedicarono con quel misto di sconsideratezza e industria che vive quando in una casa c’è la gioventù; e la gioventù era in quella casa quella notte, benché non tutti forse abbiano isolato i due volti e i due cuori da cui essa fiammeggiava. Come sempre accade, l’invenzione si fece sempre più sfrenata proprio a causa dell’insipidezza delle convenzioni borghesi da cui doveva creare. La colombina appariva incantevole in una gonna sporgente che stranamente somigliava al grande paralume del salotto. Il clown e il pantalone si fecero bianchi di farina presa dalla cuoca, e rossi di belletto preso da qualche altra domestica, che rimase (come tutti i veri benefattori cristiani) anonima. L’arlecchino, già vestito di carta argentata ricavata dalle scatole di sigari, fu, a stento, trattenuto dallo sfracellare i vecchi lampadari vittoriani di cristallo, per potersi ricoprire di risplendenti cristalli. Di fatto l’avrebbe certamente fatto, se Ruby non avesse dissotterrato certi vecchi gioielli di vetro da pantomima che aveva indossato a una festa in costume come Regina di Quadri. In verità suo zio, James Blount, stava diventando quasi incontenibile nella sua eccitazione; era come uno scolaretto. Mise inaspettatamente una testa d’asino di carta a Padre Brown, che la sopportò con pazienza, e trovò persino un suo modo privato di muovere le orecchie. Tentò addirittura di attaccare la coda d’asino di carta alle falde della marsina di Sir Leopold Fischer. Questo, tuttavia, fu disapprovato. «Lo zio è troppo assurdo» esclamò Ruby a Crook, attorno alle cui spalle aveva seriamente posato una collana di salsicce. «Perché è così scatenato?»

«È arlecchino alla tua colombina» disse Crook. «Io sono solo il clown che fa le vecchie battute.»

«Vorrei che tu fossi l’arlecchino» disse lei, e lasciò dondolare la collana di salsicce.

Padre Brown, benché conoscesse ogni dettaglio compiuto dietro le quinte, e avesse persino strappato applausi con la sua trasformazione di un cuscino in un bimbo da pantomima, andò davanti e si sedette tra il pubblico con tutta la solenne aspettativa di un bambino al suo primo spettacolo pomeridiano. Gli spettatori erano pochi: parenti, uno o due amici del luogo, e i domestici; Sir Leopold sedeva in prima fila, la sua figura piena e ancora dal colletto di pelliccia che oscurava in gran parte la vista del piccolo chierico dietro di lui; ma le autorità artistiche non hanno mai stabilito se il chierico perdesse gran che. La pantomima era del tutto caotica, eppure non spregevole; la percorreva una furia d’improvvisazione che proveniva soprattutto da Crook, il clown. Di solito era un uomo intelligente, ed era ispirato quella sera da una sfrenata onniscienza, da una follia più saggia del mondo, quella che viene a un giovane che ha colto per un istante una particolare espressione su un particolare volto. Doveva fare il clown, ma in realtà era quasi tutto il resto: l’autore (nella misura in cui c’era un autore), il suggeritore, lo scenografo, il macchinista, e, soprattutto, l’orchestra. A intervalli improvvisi nell’oltraggiosa rappresentazione si scagliava in pieno costume sul pianoforte e martellava qualche musica popolare tanto assurda quanto appropriata.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played the constabulary chorus in the “Pirates of Penzance,” but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet; the pianist playing “Where did you get that hat?” he faced about in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of “Then we had another one”). Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the fame still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a living person could appear so limp.

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed him like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable heavily off the floor the clown played “I arise from dreams of thee.” When he shuffled him across his back, “With my bundle on my shoulder,” and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling measure with some words which are still believed to have been, “I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it.”

At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown’s view was obscured altogether; for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full height and thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down nervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights; then he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst in silence out of the room.

The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not inelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconscious foe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwards out of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had been too glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing in with a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched, and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel’s study.

He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled by a solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat Colonel Adams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed whalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against the mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.

“This is a very painful matter, Father Brown,” said Adams. “The truth is, those diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished from my friend’s tail-coat pocket. And as you—”

“As I,” supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, “was sitting just behind him—”

“Nothing of the sort shall be suggested,” said Colonel Adams, with a firm look at Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing had been suggested. “I only ask you to give me the assistance that any gentleman might give.”

“Which is turning out his pockets,” said Father Brown, and proceeded to do so, displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The colonel looked at him long, and then said, “Do you know, I should like to see the inside of your head more than the inside of your pockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she has lately—” and he stopped.

“She has lately,” cried out old Fischer, “opened her father’s house to a cut-throat Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from a richer man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer man—and none the richer.”

“If you want the inside of my head you can have it,” said Brown rather wearily. “What it’s worth you can say afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds don’t talk Socialism. They are more likely,” he added demurely, “to denounce it.”

Both the others shifted sharply and the priest went on:

“You see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would no more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one man we don’t know. The fellow acting the policeman—Florian. Where is he exactly at this minute, I wonder.”

The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, “The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there.”

Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.

“Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”

“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”

They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.

Il culmine di tutto ciò, come di tutto il resto, fu il momento in cui i due battenti d’ingresso in fondo alla scena si spalancarono, mostrando il delizioso giardino al chiaro di luna, ma mostrando ancor più in evidenza il famoso ospite professionale: il grande Florian, travestito da poliziotto. Il clown al pianoforte suonava il coro dei gendarmi dei “Pirates of Penzance”, ma fu sommerso dall’applauso assordante, poiché ogni gesto del grande attore comico era un’ammirevole benché contenuta versione del portamento e del contegno della polizia. L’arlecchino gli balzò addosso e lo colpì sull’elmo; il pianista suonando “Where did you get that hat?” egli si voltò con stupore mirabilmente simulato, e poi l’arlecchino saltellante lo colpì di nuovo (il pianista suggerendo qualche battuta di “Then we had another one”). Poi l’arlecchino si gettò dritto tra le braccia del poliziotto e gli cadde addosso, tra un boato d’applausi. Fu allora che lo strano attore diede quella celebre imitazione di un morto, la cui fama ancora aleggia intorno a Putney. Era quasi impossibile credere che una persona viva potesse apparire tanto floscia.

L’atletico arlecchino lo scaraventava qua e là come un sacco, o lo attorcigliava e lo lanciava come una clava indiana; sempre alle più esasperanti e ridicole melodie del pianoforte. Quando l’arlecchino sollevò pesantemente dal pavimento il comico gendarme il clown suonò “I arise from dreams of thee”. Quando se lo trascinò sulla schiena, “With my bundle on my shoulder”, e quando l’arlecchino infine lasciò cadere il poliziotto con un tonfo assai convincente, il pazzo allo strumento attaccò una cadenza tintinnante con certe parole che si crede ancora fossero: “I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it”.

Verso questo limite dell’anarchia mentale la vista di Padre Brown fu del tutto ostruita; poiché il magnate della City davanti a lui si alzò in tutta la sua statura e cacciò furiosamente le mani in tutte le tasche. Poi si risedette nervosamente, sempre frugando, e poi si rialzò. Per un istante parve seriamente probabile che varcasse a grandi passi le luci della ribalta; poi lanciò un’occhiata furibonda al clown che suonava il pianoforte; e poi irruppe in silenzio fuori dalla stanza.

Il prete aveva osservato solo per pochi altri minuti l’assurda ma non inelegante danza dell’arlecchino dilettante sopra il suo splendidamente inconsapevole avversario. Con arte reale benché rozza, l’arlecchino danzò lentamente all’indietro fuori dalla porta nel giardino, che era colmo di chiaro di luna e di quiete. L’abito rabberciato di carta argentata e vetro, che era stato troppo sgargiante sotto le luci della ribalta, appariva sempre più magico e argenteo mentre danzava via sotto una luna splendente. Il pubblico si stringeva addosso con una cateratta d’applausi, quando Brown si sentì toccare bruscamente il braccio, e gli fu chiesto in un sussurro di venire nello studio del colonnello.

Seguì il suo convocatore con crescente dubbio, che non fu dissipato da una solenne comicità nella scena dello studio. Là sedeva il colonnello Adams, ancora candidamente vestito da pantalone, con il nodoso fanone d’osso di balena che ondeggiava sopra la sua fronte, ma con i poveri vecchi occhi tanto tristi da aver reso sobri dei Saturnali. Sir Leopold Fischer era appoggiato alla mensola del camino e ansimava con tutta l’importanza del panico.

«È una faccenda molto penosa, Padre Brown» disse Adams. «La verità è che quei diamanti che tutti abbiamo visto questo pomeriggio sembrano essere svaniti dalla tasca della marsina del mio amico. E poiché lei…»

«Poiché io» completò Padre Brown, con un ampio sorriso, «ero seduto proprio dietro di lui…»

«Nulla del genere sarà insinuato» disse il colonnello Adams, con uno sguardo fermo a Fischer, che piuttosto sottintendeva che qualcosa del genere fosse stato insinuato. «Le chiedo soltanto di darmi l’assistenza che ogni gentiluomo potrebbe dare.»

«Ossia svuotare le tasche» disse Padre Brown, e procedette a farlo, esibendo sette scellini e sei pence, un biglietto di andata e ritorno, un piccolo crocifisso d’argento, un piccolo breviario, e una stecca di cioccolato.

Il colonnello lo guardò a lungo, poi disse: «Sa, mi piacerebbe vedere l’interno della sua testa più che l’interno delle sue tasche. Mia figlia è una dei vostri, lo so; ebbene, di recente ha…» e si fermò.

«Di recente ha» esclamò il vecchio Fischer, «aperto la casa di suo padre a un socialista tagliagole, che dichiara apertamente che ruberebbe qualsiasi cosa a un uomo più ricco di lui. Ecco come va a finire. Ecco l’uomo più ricco… e per nulla più ricco.»

«Se volete l’interno della mia testa, potete averlo» disse Brown piuttosto stancamente. «Quanto valga potrete dirlo dopo. Ma la prima cosa che trovo in quella tasca in disuso è questa: che gli uomini che intendono rubare diamanti non parlano di socialismo. È più probabile» aggiunse con modestia, «che lo denuncino.»

Gli altri due si mossero bruscamente e il prete proseguì:

«Vedete, noi conosciamo questa gente, più o meno. Quel socialista non ruberebbe un diamante più di quanto ruberebbe una Piramide. Dovremmo guardare subito all’unico uomo che non conosciamo. Il tizio che recita il poliziotto… Florian. Dove sarà esattamente in questo momento, mi domando.»

Il pantalone scattò in piedi e uscì a grandi passi dalla stanza. Ne seguì un intervallo, durante il quale il milionario fissava il prete, e il prete il suo breviario; poi il pantalone tornò e disse, con staccata gravità: «Il poliziotto è ancora disteso sul palco. Il sipario è calato e rialzato sei volte; lui è ancora là disteso.»

Padre Brown lasciò cadere il libro e rimase a fissare con un’aria di totale rovina mentale. Assai lentamente una luce cominciò a insinuarsi nei suoi occhi grigi, e poi diede la risposta poco ovvia.

«La prego di perdonarmi, colonnello, ma quando è morta sua moglie?»

«Mia moglie!» rispose il soldato con lo sguardo fisso, «è morta due mesi fa quest’anno. Suo fratello James arrivò appena una settimana troppo tardi per vederla.»

Il piccolo prete balzò come un coniglio colpito. «Venite!» esclamò con del tutto insolita eccitazione. «Venite! Dobbiamo andare a guardare quel poliziotto!»

Si precipitarono sul palco ormai chiuso dal sipario, passando bruscamente accanto alla colombina e al clown (che parevano bisbigliare del tutto contenti), e Padre Brown si chinò sul comico poliziotto prostrato.

“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say seriously what all this means.”

Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech. “Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman—this clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about—he was—” His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.

“He was?” called Fischer inquiringly.

“A real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably called up to him.

“Well, Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star; but that always means a Falling Star at last.”

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels and, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below. “You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to have marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer’s coming. But there’s no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting a paper donkey’s tail to Fischer’s coat. But in the rest you eclipsed yourself.”

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the man below.

“Oh, yes,” says the man below, “I know all about it. I know you not only forced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin’s the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to the stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned and drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything better. And now, by the way, you might give me back those diamonds.”

The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in astonishment; but the voice went on:

“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he’s paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed him and hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.”

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:

“Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this world.

«Cloroformio» disse rialzandosi; «l’ho solo intuito adesso.»

Ci fu un silenzio attonito, poi il colonnello disse lentamente: «La prego di dire seriamente cosa significa tutto questo.»

Padre Brown scoppiò all’improvviso in una risata, poi si fermò, e non fece che lottarci per pochi istanti durante il resto del suo discorso. «Signori» ansimò, «non c’è molto tempo per parlare. Devo correre dietro al criminale. Ma questo grande attore francese che ha recitato il poliziotto… questo abile cadavere con cui l’arlecchino ha danzato il valzer e che ha cullato e sballottato… egli era…» La sua voce di nuovo gli mancò, ed egli voltò le spalle per correre.

«Era?» chiamò Fischer interrogativamente.

«Un vero poliziotto» disse Padre Brown, e fuggì nel buio.

C’erano avvallamenti e pergolati all’estremità di quel frondoso giardino, in cui gli allori e altri arbusti immortali si stagliavano contro il cielo di zaffiro e la luna d’argento, mostrando, persino in quel cuore dell’inverno, calde tinte come quelle del sud. La verde allegria degli allori ondeggianti, il ricco indaco purpureo della notte, la luna come un mostruoso cristallo, compongono un quadro romantico quasi irresponsabile; e tra i rami più alti degli alberi del giardino si arrampica una strana figura, che appare non tanto romantica quanto impossibile. Scintilla dalla testa ai piedi, come vestita di dieci milioni di lune; la vera luna lo coglie a ogni movimento e gli accende un nuovo pollice di sé. Ma egli oscilla, sfavillante e trionfante, dall’albero basso di questo giardino all’alto e disordinato albero dell’altro, e si ferma là solo perché un’ombra è scivolata sotto l’albero più piccolo e lo ha inequivocabilmente chiamato dal basso.

«Bene, Flambeau» dice la voce, «sembri davvero una Stella Volante; ma questo alla fine significa sempre una Stella Cadente.»

La figura d’argento scintillante lassù sembra protendersi in avanti tra gli allori e, sicura della fuga, ascolta la piccola figura in basso. «Non hai mai fatto nulla di meglio, Flambeau. È stato ingegnoso venire dal Canada (con un biglietto per Parigi, suppongo) appena una settimana dopo la morte della signora Adams, quando nessuno era in vena di fare domande. È stato ancora più ingegnoso aver preso di mira le Stelle Volanti e il giorno preciso dell’arrivo di Fischer. Ma non c’è ingegno, bensì puro genio, in ciò che seguì. Rubare le pietre, suppongo, non era nulla per te. Avresti potuto farlo con un gioco di prestigio in cento altri modi oltre a quella finta di attaccare una coda d’asino di carta alla giacca di Fischer. Ma nel resto hai superato te stesso.»

La figura argentea tra le foglie verdi sembra indugiare come ipnotizzata, benché la fuga sia facile alle sue spalle; fissa l’uomo in basso.

«Oh, sì» dice l’uomo in basso, «so tutto. So che non solo hai imposto la pantomima, ma le hai dato un duplice uso. Stavi per rubare le pietre in silenzio; giunse notizia da un complice che eri già sospettato, e che un abile agente di polizia sarebbe venuto a stanarti quella notte stessa. Un ladro comune sarebbe stato grato dell’avvertimento e sarebbe fuggito; ma tu sei un poeta. Avevi già avuto l’ingegnosa idea di nascondere i gioielli in una fiammata di falsa gioielleria da palcoscenico. Ora, ti accorgesti che se il costume fosse stato quello di un arlecchino, l’apparizione di un poliziotto sarebbe stata del tutto appropriata. Il degno agente partì dal posto di polizia di Putney per trovarti, e cadde nella più bizzarra trappola mai tesa a questo mondo. Quando la porta d’ingresso si aprì, egli avanzò dritto sul palco di una pantomima natalizia, dove poté essere preso a calci, bastonato, tramortito e drogato dall’arlecchino danzante, tra i boati di risa di tutte le persone più rispettabili di Putney. Oh, non farai mai nulla di meglio. E ora, a proposito, potresti restituirmi quei diamanti.»

Il ramo verde su cui oscillava la scintillante figura, frusciò come per lo stupore; ma la voce proseguì:

«Voglio che tu li restituisca, Flambeau, e voglio che tu abbandoni questa vita. C’è ancora giovinezza e onore e umorismo in te; non illuderti che dureranno in quel mestiere. Gli uomini possono mantenere una sorta di livello nel bene, ma nessun uomo è mai riuscito a mantenersi su un solo livello nel male. Quella strada va giù, sempre più giù. L’uomo gentile beve e diventa crudele; l’uomo franco uccide e poi mente al riguardo. Molti uomini che ho conosciuto cominciarono come te a fare gli onesti fuorilegge, gli allegri rapinatori dei ricchi, e finirono calpestati nel fango. Maurice Blum cominciò come un anarchico di principio, un padre dei poveri; finì come una viscida spia e delatore che entrambe le parti usarono e disprezzarono. Harry Burke avviò il suo movimento per il denaro libero abbastanza sinceramente; ora scrocca a una sorella mezza affamata infiniti brandy e soda. Lord Amber entrò nell’alta società dissoluta per una sorta di cavalleria; ora paga il ricatto ai più bassi avvoltoi di Londra. Il capitano Barillon fu il grande gentiluomo-apache prima del tuo tempo; morì in un manicomio, urlando per la paura delle “spie” e dei ricettatori che lo avevano tradito e braccato. So che i boschi sembrano molto liberi alle tue spalle, Flambeau; so che in un lampo potresti dileguarti tra essi come una scimmia. Ma un giorno sarai una vecchia scimmia grigia, Flambeau. Te ne starai seduto nella tua libera foresta col cuore freddo e vicino alla morte, e le cime degli alberi saranno assai spoglie.»

Tutto rimase immobile, come se il piccolo uomo in basso tenesse l’altro sull’albero con qualche lungo guinzaglio invisibile; ed egli proseguì:

«I tuoi passi verso il basso sono cominciati. Ti vantavi di non fare nulla di meschino, ma stai facendo qualcosa di meschino stanotte. Stai lasciando cadere il sospetto su un ragazzo onesto che ha già parecchio contro di sé; lo stai separando dalla donna che ama e che lo ama. Ma farai cose più meschine di questa prima di morire.»

Tre diamanti scintillanti caddero dall’albero sull’erba. Il piccolo uomo si chinò a raccoglierli, e quando alzò di nuovo lo sguardo la verde gabbia dell’albero era vuota del suo uccello d’argento.

La restituzione delle gemme (raccolte per caso proprio da Padre Brown, tra tutti quanti) concluse la serata in un trionfo fragoroso; e Sir Leopold, al colmo del buonumore, disse persino al prete che, benché egli stesso avesse vedute più ampie, poteva rispettare coloro il cui credo esigeva che fossero chiusi in convento e ignari di questo mondo.

The Invisible Man

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many gutter-snipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost better than chocolate itself; and the huge white wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of the neighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. But this corner was also attractive to youth at a later stage; and a young man, not less than twenty-four, was staring into the same shop window. To him, also, the shop was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to be explained by chocolates; which, however, he was far from despising.

He was a tall, burly, red-haired young man, with a resolute face but a listless manner. He carried under his arm a flat, grey portfolio of black-and-white sketches, which he had sold with more or less success to publishers ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinherited him for Socialism, because of a lecture which he had delivered against that economic theory. His name was John Turnbull Angus.

Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner’s shop to the back room, which was a sort of pastry-cook restaurant, merely raising his hat to the young lady who was serving there. She was a dark, elegant, alert girl in black, with a high colour and very quick, dark eyes; and after the ordinary interval she followed him into the inner room to take his order.

His order was evidently a usual one. “I want, please,” he said with precision, “one halfpenny bun and a small cup of black coffee.” An instant before the girl could turn away he added, “Also, I want you to marry me.”

The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly and said, “Those are jokes I don’t allow.”

The red-haired young man lifted grey eyes of an unexpected gravity.

“Really and truly,” he said, “it’s as serious—as serious as the halfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one pays for it. It is indigestible, like the bun. It hurts.”

The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off him, but seemed to be studying him with almost tragic exactitude. At the end of her scrutiny she had something like the shadow of a smile, and she sat down in a chair.

“Don’t you think,” observed Angus, absently, “that it’s rather cruel to eat these halfpenny buns? They might grow up into penny buns. I shall give up these brutal sports when we are married.”

The dark young lady rose from her chair and walked to the window, evidently in a state of strong but not unsympathetic cogitation. When at last she swung round again with an air of resolution she was bewildered to observe that the young man was carefully laying out on the table various objects from the shop-window. They included a pyramid of highly coloured sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two decanters containing that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar to pastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the huge ornament of the window.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

“Duty, my dear Laura,” he began.

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake, stop a minute,” she cried, “and don’t talk to me in that way. I mean, what is all that?”

“A ceremonial meal, Miss Hope.”

“And what is that?” she asked impatiently, pointing to the mountain of sugar.

“The wedding-cake, Mrs. Angus,” he said.

The girl marched to that article, removed it with some clatter, and put it back in the shop window; she then returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table, regarded the young man not unfavourably but with considerable exasperation.

“You don’t give me any time to think,” she said.

“I’m not such a fool,” he answered; “that’s my Christian humility.”

She was still looking at him; but she had grown considerably graver behind the smile.

“Mr. Angus,” she said steadily, “before there is a minute more of this nonsense I must tell you something about myself as shortly as I can.’”

“Delighted,” replied Angus gravely. “You might tell me something about myself, too, while you are about it.”

“Oh, do hold your tongue and listen,” she said. “It’s nothing that I’m ashamed of, and it isn’t even anything that I’m specially sorry about. But what would you say if there were something that is no business of mine and yet is my nightmare?”

“In that case,” said the man seriously, “I should suggest that you bring back the cake.”

“Well, you must listen to the story first,” said Laura, persistently. “To begin with, I must tell you that my father owned the inn called the ‘Red Fish’ at Ludbury, and I used to serve people in the bar.”

“I have often wondered,” he said, “why there was a kind of a Christian air about this one confectioner’s shop.”

“Ludbury is a sleepy, grassy little hole in the Eastern Counties, and the only kind of people who ever came to the ‘Red Fish’ were occasional commercial travellers, and for the rest, the most awful people you can see, only you’ve never seen them. I mean little, loungy men, who had just enough to live on and had nothing to do but lean about in bar-rooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just too good for them. Even these wretched young rotters were not very common at our house; but there were two of them that were a lot too common— common in every sort of way. They both lived on money of their own, and were wearisomely idle and over-dressed. But yet I was a bit sorry for them, because I half believe they slunk into our little empty bar because each of them had a slight deformity; the sort of thing that some yokels laugh at. It wasn’t exactly a deformity either; it was more an oddity. One of them was a surprisingly small man, something like a dwarf, or at least like a jockey. He was not at all jockeyish to look at, though; he had a round black head and a well-trimmed black beard, bright eyes like a bird’s; he jingled money in his pockets; he jangled a great gold watch chain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn’t be the slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, just coming up to the counter, making a jumping kangaroo out of five cigars.

L’uomo invisibile

Nel fresco crepuscolo azzurro di due strade ripide a Camden Town, la bottega all’angolo, quella di un pasticciere, ardeva come la punta di un sigaro. Sarebbe forse più giusto dire come la punta di un fuoco d’artificio, ché la luce era di molti colori e di una certa complessità, spezzata da molti specchi e danzante su molte torte e leccornie dorate e dai colori sgargianti. Contro quell’unico vetro infuocato erano incollati i nasi di molti monelli di strada, poiché i cioccolatini erano tutti avvolti in quelle carte metalliche rosse, oro e verdi che sono quasi meglio del cioccolato stesso; e l’enorme torta nuziale bianca in vetrina era in qualche modo, insieme, remota e appagante, proprio come se l’intero Polo Nord fosse buono da mangiare. Simili provocazioni arcobaleno potevano naturalmente radunare la gioventù del vicinato fino ai dieci o dodici anni. Ma quell’angolo era attraente anche per una gioventù di stadio più avanzato; e un giovanotto, di non meno di ventiquattro anni, fissava la medesima vetrina. Anche per lui la bottega aveva un fascino infuocato, ma quell’attrazione non era da spiegarsi interamente coi cioccolatini; che, tuttavia, egli era ben lungi dal disprezzare.

Era un giovane alto, robusto, dai capelli rossi, con un volto risoluto ma un fare svogliato. Portava sotto il braccio una piatta cartella grigia di schizzi in bianco e nero, che aveva venduto con più o meno successo agli editori fin da quando suo zio (che era un ammiraglio) lo aveva diseredato per socialismo, a causa di una conferenza da lui tenuta contro quella teoria economica. Si chiamava John Turnbull Angus.

Entrato infine, attraversò la bottega del pasticciere fino alla saletta sul retro, che era una specie di pasticceria-ristorante, limitandosi a sollevare il cappello dinanzi alla giovane signorina che vi serviva. Era una ragazza bruna, elegante, sveglia, vestita di nero, dal colorito acceso e dagli occhi scuri e vivacissimi; e dopo il consueto intervallo ella lo seguì nella saletta interna per prendere l’ordinazione.

L’ordinazione era evidentemente la solita. «Vorrei, per favore», disse con precisione, «un panino da mezzo penny e una piccola tazza di caffè nero.» Un istante prima che la ragazza potesse voltarsi, aggiunse: «E poi voglio che lei mi sposi.»

La giovane signorina della bottega si irrigidì di colpo e disse: «Questi sono scherzi che non permetto.»

Il giovane dai capelli rossi levò due occhi grigi di una gravità inaspettata.

«Sul serio, davvero», disse, «è una cosa seria… seria come il panino da mezzo penny. È costosa, come il panino; si paga. È indigesta, come il panino. Fa male.»

La bruna signorina non aveva mai staccato da lui i suoi occhi scuri, ma pareva studiarlo con esattezza quasi tragica. Al termine del suo scrutinio aveva qualcosa come l’ombra di un sorriso, e si sedette su una sedia.

«Non le pare», osservò Angus, distratto, «che sia piuttosto crudele mangiare questi panini da mezzo penny? Potrebbero crescere e diventare panini da un penny. Rinuncerò a questi sport brutali quando saremo sposati.»

La bruna signorina si alzò dalla sedia e andò alla finestra, evidentemente in uno stato di forte ma non ostile riflessione. Quando alfine si voltò di nuovo con aria di risolutezza, rimase sconcertata nell’osservare che il giovanotto stava disponendo accuratamente sul tavolo vari oggetti presi dalla vetrina. Vi erano una piramide di dolciumi dai colori vivaci, parecchi piatti di tramezzini, e le due caraffe contenenti quel misterioso porto e sherry che sono propri dei pasticcieri. Al centro di quella ordinata disposizione aveva accuratamente deposto l’enorme carico di bianca torta zuccherata che era stata il grande ornamento della vetrina.

«Ma che diamine sta facendo?» chiese lei.

«Il mio dovere, mia cara Laura», cominciò.

«Oh, per amor del cielo, si fermi un momento», gridò lei, «e non mi parli in quel modo. Voglio dire: che cos’è tutta questa roba?»

«Un banchetto cerimoniale, signorina Hope.»

«E questo che cos’è?» chiese lei con impazienza, indicando la montagna di zucchero.

«La torta nuziale, signora Angus», disse lui.

La ragazza marciò verso quell’oggetto, lo tolse con un certo fracasso, e lo rimise in vetrina; poi tornò e, posando gli eleganti gomiti sul tavolo, guardò il giovane non senza favore, ma con considerevole esasperazione.

«Non mi dà nemmeno il tempo di pensare», disse.

«Non sono così sciocco», rispose lui; «è la mia umiltà cristiana.»

Ella lo stava ancora guardando; ma era diventata assai più seria dietro il sorriso.

«Signor Angus», disse con fermezza, «prima che vada avanti anche solo un minuto tutta questa assurdità, devo dirle qualcosa di me nel modo più breve che posso.»

«Ne sarò lieto», rispose Angus con gravità. «Potrebbe dirmi anche qualcosa di me, giacché ci siamo.»

«Oh, la smetta e mi ascolti», disse lei. «Non è nulla di cui io mi vergogni, e non è nemmeno qualcosa di cui io sia particolarmente pentita. Ma che cosa direbbe lei se ci fosse qualcosa che non mi riguarda e che pure è il mio incubo?»

«In tal caso», disse l’uomo con serietà, «le suggerirei di riportare qui la torta.»

«Be’, prima deve ascoltare la storia», disse Laura, ostinata. «Per cominciare, devo dirle che mio padre era proprietario della locanda chiamata il “Pesce Rosso” a Ludbury, e io servivo la gente al banco.»

«Mi sono spesso chiesto», disse lui, «perché ci fosse una sorta di aria cristiana attorno a questa bottega di pasticciere.»

«Ludbury è un sonnolento, erboso buco delle Contee Orientali, e l’unica specie di gente che veniva mai al “Pesce Rosso” erano occasionali commessi viaggiatori, e per il resto, la gente più tremenda che si possa vedere, solo che voi non l’avete mai vista. Voglio dire quegli omuncoli, tipi sfaccendati, che avevano appena di che vivere e non avevano nulla da fare se non gironzolare nelle sale del bar e scommettere sui cavalli, in abiti sciatti che erano appena troppo buoni per loro. Persino questi disgraziati giovani buoni a nulla non erano molto frequenti da noi; ma ce n’erano due che erano fin troppo frequenti… volgari in ogni senso. Vivevano entrambi di denaro proprio, ed erano stancamente oziosi e troppo eleganti. Eppure provavo un po’ di pena per loro, perché quasi credo che si intrufolassero nel nostro piccolo bar vuoto perché ciascuno di loro aveva una lieve deformità; il genere di cosa di cui certi villani ridono. Non era esattamente una deformità, per la verità; era piuttosto una stranezza. Uno di loro era un uomo sorprendentemente piccolo, qualcosa come un nano, o perlomeno come un fantino. Non aveva però affatto l’aria del fantino; aveva una testa rotonda e nera e una barba nera ben curata, occhi vividi come quelli di un uccello; faceva tintinnare monete in tasca; faceva sonare una gran catena d’orologio d’oro; e non compariva mai se non vestito appena troppo da signore per esserlo davvero. Non era però uno sciocco, benché fosse un ozioso inconcludente; era curiosamente abile in ogni genere di cose che non potevano avere la minima utilità; una sorta di prestidigitazione improvvisata; far prendere fuoco a quindici fiammiferi l’uno con l’altro come un vero fuoco d’artificio; o intagliare una banana o qualcosa del genere in una bambola danzante. Si chiamava Isidore Smythe; e posso vederlo ancora, con la sua piccola faccia scura, mentre si accostava al banco, facendo un canguro saltellante con cinque sigari.

“The other fellow was more silent and more ordinary; but somehow he alarmed me much more than poor little Smythe. He was very tall and slight, and light-haired; his nose had a high bridge, and he might almost have been handsome in a spectral sort of way; but he had one of the most appalling squints I have ever seen or heard of. When he looked straight at you, you didn’t know where you were yourself, let alone what he was looking at. I fancy this sort of disfigurement embittered the poor chap a little; for while Smythe was ready to show off his monkey tricks anywhere, James Welkin (that was the squinting man’s name) never did anything except soak in our bar parlour, and go for great walks by himself in the flat, grey country all round. All the same, I think Smythe, too, was a little sensitive about being so small, though he carried it off more smartly. And so it was that I was really puzzled, as well as startled, and very sorry, when they both offered to marry me in the same week.

“Well, I did what I’ve since thought was perhaps a silly thing. But, after all, these freaks were my friends in a way; and I had a horror of their thinking I refused them for the real reason, which was that they were so impossibly ugly. So I made up some gas of another sort, about never meaning to marry anyone who hadn’t carved his way in the world. I said it was a point of principle with me not to live on money that was just inherited like theirs. Two days after I had talked in this well-meaning sort of way, the whole trouble began. The first thing I heard was that both of them had gone off to seek their fortunes, as if they were in some silly fairy tale.

“Well, I’ve never seen either of them from that day to this. But I’ve had two letters from the little man called Smythe, and really they were rather exciting.”

“Ever heard of the other man?” asked Angus.

“No, he never wrote,” said the girl, after an instant’s hesitation. “Smythe’s first letter was simply to say that he had started out walking with Welkin to London; but Welkin was such a good walker that the little man dropped out of it, and took a rest by the roadside. He happened to be picked up by some travelling show, and, partly because he was nearly a dwarf, and partly because he was really a clever little wretch, he got on quite well in the show business, and was soon sent up to the Aquarium, to do some tricks that I forget. That was his first letter. His second was much more of a startler, and I only got it last week.”

The man called Angus emptied his coffee-cup and regarded her with mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight twist of laughter as she resumed, “I suppose you’ve seen on the hoardings all about this ‘Smythe’s Silent Service’? Or you must be the only person that hasn’t. Oh, I don’t know much about it, it’s some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: ‘Press a Button—A Butler who Never Drinks.’ ‘Turn a Handle—Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.’ You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are making it all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can’t help feeling pleased the poor little chap has fallen on his feet; but the plain fact is, I’m in terror of his turning up any minute and telling me he’s carved his way in the world— as he certainly has.”

“And the other man?” repeated Angus with a sort of obstinate quietude.

Laura Hope got to her feet suddenly. “My friend,” she said, “I think you are a witch. Yes, you are quite right. I have not seen a line of the other man’s writing; and I have no more notion than the dead of what or where he is. But it is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is all about my path. It is he who has half driven me mad. Indeed, I think he has driven me mad; for I have felt him where he could not have been, and I have heard his voice when he could not have spoken.”

“Well, my dear,” said the young man, cheerfully, “if he were Satan himself, he is done for now you have told somebody. One goes mad all alone, old girl. But when was it you fancied you felt and heard our squinting friend?”

“I heard James Welkin laugh as plainly as I hear you speak,” said the girl, steadily. “There was nobody there, for I stood just outside the shop at the corner, and could see down both streets at once. I had forgotten how he laughed, though his laugh was as odd as his squint. I had not thought of him for nearly a year. But it’s a solemn truth that a few seconds later the first letter came from his rival.”

“Did you ever make the spectre speak or squeak, or anything?” asked Angus, with some interest.

Laura suddenly shuddered, and then said, with an unshaken voice, “Yes. Just when I had finished reading the second letter from Isidore Smythe announcing his success. Just then, I heard Welkin say, ‘He shan’t have you, though.’ It was quite plain, as if he were in the room. It is awful, I think I must be mad.”

“If you really were mad,” said the young man, “you would think you must be sane. But certainly there seems to me to be something a little rum about this unseen gentleman. Two heads are better than one—I spare you allusions to any other organs and really, if you would allow me, as a sturdy, practical man, to bring back the wedding-cake out of the window—”

Even as he spoke, there was a sort of steely shriek in the street outside, and a small motor, driven at devilish speed, shot up to the door of the shop and stuck there. In the same flash of time a small man in a shiny top hat stood stamping in the outer room.

Angus, who had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins and match-boxes; Isidore Smythe, who made millions out of undrinking butlers and unflirting housemaids of metal. For a moment the two men, instinctively understanding each other’s air of possession, looked at each other with that curious cold generosity which is the soul of rivalry.

«L’altro tizio era più silenzioso e più ordinario; ma in qualche modo mi allarmava molto più del povero piccolo Smythe. Era molto alto e sottile, e di capelli chiari; il naso aveva una gobba alta, e sarebbe stato quasi bello in una specie di modo spettrale; ma aveva uno degli strabismi più spaventosi che io abbia mai visto o di cui abbia mai sentito parlare. Quando ti guardava dritto, non sapevi più nemmeno dove ti trovassi tu, figuriamoci che cosa stesse guardando lui. Immagino che questo tipo di sfregio inasprisse un poco il poveretto; poiché, mentre Smythe era pronto a esibire i suoi giochi da scimmia dovunque, James Welkin (era questo il nome dell’uomo strabico) non faceva mai altro che marcire nella nostra saletta del bar, e andare a fare grandi passeggiate da solo nella campagna piatta e grigia tutt’intorno. Ciò nondimeno, credo che anche Smythe fosse un po’ suscettibile riguardo all’essere così piccolo, benché lo mascherasse con più disinvoltura. E fu così che rimasi davvero perplessa, oltre che sbigottita, e molto dispiaciuta, quando entrambi mi offrirono di sposarli nella stessa settimana.

«Ebbene, feci ciò che da allora ho pensato fosse forse una sciocchezza. Ma, dopotutto, quei due esseri strani erano in un certo senso miei amici; e avevo orrore all’idea che pensassero ch’io li rifiutavo per la vera ragione, ossia che erano così impossibilmente brutti. Così inventai una qualche scusa d’altro genere, che non avrei mai voluto sposare nessuno che non si fosse fatto la propria strada nel mondo. Dissi che era per me una questione di principio non vivere di denaro semplicemente ereditato come il loro. Due giorni dopo aver parlato in quel modo bene intenzionato, cominciarono tutti i guai. La prima cosa che seppi fu che entrambi se n’erano andati in cerca di fortuna, come se fossero in qualche sciocca fiaba.

«Ebbene, non ho più rivisto nessuno dei due da quel giorno a oggi. Ma ho ricevuto due lettere dall’ometto di nome Smythe, e per la verità erano piuttosto avvincenti.»

«Mai sentito nulla dell’altro uomo?» chiese Angus.

«No, non ha mai scritto», disse la ragazza, dopo un istante di esitazione. «La prima lettera di Smythe diceva semplicemente che si era messo in cammino con Welkin verso Londra; ma Welkin era un camminatore così bravo che l’ometto rimase indietro, e si prese un riposo lungo la strada. Si dà il caso che venisse raccolto da qualche spettacolo ambulante, e, in parte perché era quasi un nano, e in parte perché era davvero un disgraziatello sveglio, se la cavò piuttosto bene nel mondo dello spettacolo, e fu presto spedito all’Aquarium, a fare certi giochi che ho dimenticato. Questa fu la sua prima lettera. La seconda fu molto più sconvolgente, e l’ho ricevuta solo la settimana scorsa.»

L’uomo di nome Angus vuotò la sua tazza di caffè e la guardò con occhi miti e pazienti. La bocca di lei prese una lieve piega di riso mentre riprendeva: «Suppongo che avrà visto sui manifesti tutta la faccenda di questo “Silent Service di Smythe”. O forse è l’unica persona che non l’ha vista. Oh, non ne so molto, è una qualche invenzione a orologeria per fare tutte le faccende di casa con dei macchinari. Sa il genere di cosa: “Premete un bottone: un maggiordomo che non beve mai.” “Girate una manovella: dieci cameriere che non fanno mai le civette.” Deve aver visto le réclame. Ebbene, qualunque cosa siano queste macchine, stanno facendo montagne di denaro; e lo stanno facendo tutto per quel piccolo diavolo che conobbi laggiù a Ludbury. Non posso fare a meno di rallegrarmi che il povero ometto sia caduto in piedi; ma la pura verità è che vivo nel terrore che salti fuori da un momento all’altro e mi dica che si è fatto la sua strada nel mondo… come di certo ha fatto.»

«E l’altro uomo?» ripeté Angus con una specie di ostinata quiete.

Laura Hope si alzò in piedi all’improvviso. «Amico mio», disse, «credo che lei sia uno stregone. Sì, ha perfettamente ragione. Non ho visto una sola riga di scrittura dell’altro uomo; e non ne ho più idea di un morto di che cosa o dove egli sia. Ma è di lui che ho paura. È lui che sta dappertutto lungo il mio cammino. È lui che mi ha quasi fatto impazzire. Anzi, credo che mi abbia fatto impazzire; poiché l’ho sentito dov’egli non poteva essere, e ho udito la sua voce quando non poteva aver parlato.»

«Ebbene, mia cara», disse il giovane, allegramente, «se anche fosse Satana in persona, è spacciato ora che lei ne ha parlato a qualcuno. Si impazzisce tutti da soli, vecchia mia. Ma quand’è che le è parso di sentire e udire il nostro amico strabico?»

«Ho udito James Welkin ridere così distintamente come sento lei parlare», disse la ragazza, con fermezza. «Non c’era nessuno lì, poiché stavo proprio fuori della bottega all’angolo, e potevo vedere in fondo a entrambe le strade insieme. Avevo dimenticato come rideva, benché la sua risata fosse strana quanto il suo strabismo. Non pensavo a lui da quasi un anno. Ma è una solenne verità che pochi secondi dopo arrivò la prima lettera del suo rivale.»

«Ha mai fatto parlare o squittire lo spettro, o qualcosa del genere?» chiese Angus, con un certo interesse.

Laura rabbrividì all’improvviso, e poi disse, con voce ferma: «Sì. Proprio quando avevo finito di leggere la seconda lettera di Isidore Smythe che annunciava il suo successo. Proprio allora, udii Welkin dire: “Non l’avrà, però.” Era del tutto chiaro, come se fosse nella stanza. È terribile, credo di dover essere pazza.»

«Se lei fosse davvero pazza», disse il giovane, «penserebbe di dover essere sana. Ma di certo mi pare che ci sia qualcosa di un po’ curioso in questo gentiluomo invisibile. Due teste sono meglio di una… le risparmio le allusioni a qualsiasi altro organo… e davvero, se mi permettesse, da uomo robusto e pratico qual sono, di riportare in casa la torta nuziale dalla vetrina…»

Proprio mentre parlava, ci fu una specie di stridore metallico nella strada là fuori, e una piccola automobile, spinta a velocità indiavolata, sfrecciò fino alla porta della bottega e vi si arrestò di colpo. Nello stesso lampo di tempo un ometto in lucido cappello a cilindro stava pestando i piedi nella saletta esterna.

Angus, che fino a quel momento aveva mantenuto una giovialità disinvolta per motivi d’igiene mentale, rivelò la tensione del proprio animo uscendo bruscamente a grandi passi dalla saletta interna e affrontando il nuovo venuto. Un’occhiata bastò pienamente a confermare le feroci congetture di un uomo innamorato. Quella figura assai elegante ma nanesca, con la punta della barba nera protesa in avanti con insolenza, gli occhi svegli e inquieti, le dita ordinate ma molto nervose, non potevano essere altri che l’uomo appena descrittogli: Isidore Smythe, che faceva bambole con bucce di banana e scatole di fiammiferi; Isidore Smythe, che faceva milioni con maggiordomi astemi e cameriere di metallo che non civettavano. Per un attimo i due uomini, comprendendo istintivamente l’aria di possesso l’uno dell’altro, si guardarono con quella curiosa fredda generosità che è l’anima della rivalità.

Mr. Smythe, however, made no allusion to the ultimate ground of their antagonism, but said simply and explosively, “Has Miss Hope seen that thing on the window?”

“On the window?” repeated the staring Angus.

“There’s no time to explain other things,” said the small millionaire shortly. “There’s some tomfoolery going on here that has to be investigated.”

He pointed his polished walking-stick at the window, recently depleted by the bridal preparations of Mr. Angus; and that gentleman was astonished to see along the front of the glass a long strip of paper pasted, which had certainly not been on the window when he looked through it some time before. Following the energetic Smythe outside into the street, he found that some yard and a half of stamp paper had been carefully gummed along the glass outside, and on this was written in straggly characters, “If you marry Smythe, he will die.”

“Laura,” said Angus, putting his big red head into the shop, “you’re not mad.”

“It’s the writing of that fellow Welkin,” said Smythe gruffly. “I haven’t seen him for years, but he’s always bothering me. Five times in the last fortnight he’s had threatening letters left at my flat, and I can’t even find out who leaves them, let alone if it is Welkin himself. The porter of the flats swears that no suspicious characters have been seen, and here he has pasted up a sort of dado on a public shop window, while the people in the shop—”

“Quite so,” said Angus modestly, “while the people in the shop were having tea. Well, sir, I can assure you I appreciate your common sense in dealing so directly with the matter. We can talk about other things afterwards. The fellow cannot be very far off yet, for I swear there was no paper there when I went last to the window, ten or fifteen minutes ago. On the other hand, he’s too far off to be chased, as we don’t even know the direction. If you’ll take my advice, Mr. Smythe, you’ll put this at once in the hands of some energetic inquiry man, private rather than public. I know an extremely clever fellow, who has set up in business five minutes from here in your car. His name’s Flambeau, and though his youth was a bit stormy, he’s a strictly honest man now, and his brains are worth money. He lives in Lucknow Mansions, Hampstead.”

“That is odd,” said the little man, arching his black eyebrows. “I live, myself, in Himylaya Mansions, round the corner. Perhaps you might care to come with me; I can go to my rooms and sort out these queer Welkin documents, while you run round and get your friend the detective.”

“You are very good,” said Angus politely. “Well, the sooner we act the better.”

Both men, with a queer kind of impromptu fairness, took the same sort of formal farewell of the lady, and both jumped into the brisk little car. As Smythe took the handles and they turned the great corner of the street, Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of “Smythe’s Silent Service,” with a picture of a huge headless iron doll, carrying a saucepan with the legend, “A Cook Who is Never Cross.”

“I use them in my own flat,” said the little black-bearded man, laughing, “partly for advertisements, and partly for real convenience. Honestly, and all above board, those big clockwork dolls of mine do bring your coals or claret or a timetable quicker than any live servants I’ve ever known, if you know which knob to press. But I’ll never deny, between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too.

“Indeed?” said Angus; “is there something they can’t do?”

“Yes,” replied Smythe coolly; “they can’t tell me who left those threatening letters at my flat.”

The man’s motor was small and swift like himself; in fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they say in the modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner of London which is almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite so picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flats they sought, rose above them all to almost Egyptian height, gilt by the level sunset. The change, as they turned the corner and entered the crescent known as Himylaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of a window; for they found that pile of flats sitting above London as above a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were the only human shapes in that high suburban solitude; but he had an irrational sense that they expressed the speechless poetry of London. He felt as if they were figures in a story.

The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet, and shot out its owner like a bomb shell. He was immediately inquiring of a tall commissionaire in shining braid, and a short porter in shirt sleeves, whether anybody or anything had been seeking his apartments. He was assured that nobody and nothing had passed these officials since his last inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus were shot up in the lift like a rocket, till they reached the top floor.

“Just come in for a minute,” said the breathless Smythe. “I want to show you those Welkin letters. Then you might run round the corner and fetch your friend.” He pressed a button concealed in the wall, and the door opened of itself.

It opened on a long, commodious ante-room, of which the only arresting features, ordinarily speaking, were the rows of tall half-human mechanical figures that stood up on both sides like tailors’ dummies. Like tailors’ dummies they were headless; and like tailors’ dummies they had a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and a pigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were not much more like a human figure than any automatic machine at a station that is about the human height. They had two great hooks like arms, for carrying trays; and they were painted pea-green, or vermilion, or black for convenience of distinction; in every other way they were only automatic machines and nobody would have looked twice at them. On this occasion, at least, nobody did. For between the two rows of these domestic dummies lay something more interesting than most of the mechanics of the world. It was a white, tattered scrap of paper scrawled with red ink; and the agile inventor had snatched it up almost as soon as the door flew open. He handed it to Angus without a word. The red ink on it actually was not dry, and the message ran, “If you have been to see her today, I shall kill you.”

Il signor Smythe, tuttavia, non fece alcuna allusione al fondamento ultimo del loro antagonismo, ma disse semplicemente e in modo esplosivo: «La signorina Hope ha visto quella cosa sulla vetrina?»

«Sulla vetrina?» ripeté Angus, sbalordito.

«Non c’è tempo di spiegare altre cose», disse il piccolo milionario in tono breve. «Qui c’è in corso qualche pagliacciata che dev’essere indagata.»

Puntò il suo lucido bastone da passeggio verso la vetrina, recentemente sguarnita dai preparativi nuziali del signor Angus; e quel gentiluomo rimase stupito nel vedere lungo la parte anteriore del vetro una lunga striscia di carta incollata, che certamente non c’era sulla vetrina quando l’aveva guardata attraverso poco prima. Seguendo l’energico Smythe fuori nella strada, scoprì che un metro e mezzo circa di carta da bollo era stata accuratamente incollata lungo il vetro all’esterno, e su di essa era scritto in caratteri sbilenchi: «Se sposi Smythe, egli morirà.»

«Laura», disse Angus, sporgendo la sua grande testa rossa nella bottega, «non sei pazza.»

«È la scrittura di quel tale Welkin», disse Smythe burbero. «Non lo vedo da anni, ma non smette mai di importunarmi. Cinque volte nelle ultime due settimane mi sono state lasciate lettere minatorie al mio appartamento, e non riesco nemmeno a scoprire chi le lascia, figuriamoci se sia Welkin stesso. Il portiere del palazzo giura che non è stato visto alcun personaggio sospetto, e qui lui incolla una specie di zoccolatura sulla vetrina di una bottega pubblica, mentre la gente nella bottega…»

«Appunto», disse Angus con modestia, «mentre la gente nella bottega prendeva il tè. Ebbene, signore, posso assicurarle che apprezzo il suo buon senso nell’affrontare la faccenda in modo così diretto. Delle altre cose potremo parlare in seguito. Il tale non può essere ancora molto lontano, poiché giuro che non c’era carta lì quando andai l’ultima volta alla vetrina, dieci o quindici minuti fa. D’altro canto, è troppo lontano per essere inseguito, dato che non ne conosciamo nemmeno la direzione. Se vuol seguire il mio consiglio, signor Smythe, metta subito la cosa nelle mani di un energico investigatore, privato piuttosto che pubblico. Conosco un tizio straordinariamente in gamba, che si è messo in affari a cinque minuti da qui con la sua auto. Si chiama Flambeau, e benché la sua giovinezza sia stata un po’ burrascosa, adesso è un uomo rigorosamente onesto, e il suo cervello vale denaro. Abita a Lucknow Mansions, a Hampstead.»

«È strano», disse l’ometto, inarcando le nere sopracciglia. «Io stesso abito a Himylaya Mansions, dietro l’angolo. Forse le farebbe piacere venire con me; posso salire nelle mie stanze e mettere in ordine questi curiosi documenti di Welkin, mentre lei corre a prendere il suo amico investigatore.»

«Lei è molto gentile», disse Angus con cortesia. «Ebbene, prima agiamo, meglio è.»

Entrambi gli uomini, con una strana specie di improvvisata correttezza, presero il medesimo formale congedo dalla signora, e balzarono entrambi nella svelta automobiletta. Mentre Smythe impugnava le leve e svoltavano il grande angolo della strada, Angus si divertì a vedere un gigantesco manifesto del “Silent Service di Smythe”, con l’immagine di un’enorme bambola di ferro senza testa, che reggeva una casseruola con la leggenda: «Una cuoca che non è mai imbronciata.»

«Le uso nel mio stesso appartamento», disse l’ometto dalla barba nera, ridendo, «in parte per réclame, e in parte per reale comodità. Onestamente, e in tutta chiarezza, quelle mie grandi bambole a orologeria vi portano il carbone o il chiaretto o un orario ferroviario più in fretta di qualsiasi servitore in carne e ossa io abbia mai conosciuto, se sapete quale manopola premere. Ma non negherò mai, tra noi, che tali servitori hanno anche i loro svantaggi.»

«Davvero?» disse Angus; «c’è qualcosa che non sanno fare?»

«Sì», rispose Smythe con freddezza; «non sanno dirmi chi ha lasciato quelle lettere minatorie al mio appartamento.»

L’automobile dell’uomo era piccola e veloce come lui; anzi, al pari del suo servizio domestico, era di sua propria invenzione. Se era un ciarlatano della réclame, era di quelli che credono nella propria mercanzia. La sensazione di qualcosa di minuscolo e volante era accentuata mentre risalivano lunghe curve bianche di strada nella spenta ma aperta luce del vespro. Presto le curve bianche si fecero più nette e più vertiginose; erano su spirali ascendenti, come si dice nelle religioni moderne. Poiché, in verità, stavano superando la cresta di un angolo di Londra che è quasi scosceso come Edimburgo, se non altrettanto pittoresco. Terrazza si levava sopra terrazza, e la particolare torre di appartamenti che cercavano si levava sopra tutte a un’altezza quasi egizia, dorata dal tramonto radente. Il mutamento, mentre svoltavano l’angolo ed entravano nel semicerchio noto come Himylaya Mansions, fu tanto brusco quanto l’aprirsi di una finestra; poiché trovarono quella mole di appartamenti posata sopra Londra come sopra un verde mare d’ardesia. Di fronte al palazzo, sull’altro lato del semicerchio ghiaioso, c’era un recinto cespuglioso più simile a una ripida siepe o argine che a un giardino, e un po’ più in basso scorreva una striscia d’acqua artificiale, una sorta di canale, come il fossato di quella fortezza inghirlandata di verde. Mentre l’auto girava attorno al semicerchio passò, a un angolo, la sperduta bancarella di un uomo che vendeva castagne; e proprio in fondo, all’altra estremità della curva, Angus poté scorgere un fioco poliziotto azzurro che camminava lentamente. Erano le uniche forme umane in quell’alta solitudine suburbana; ma egli ebbe l’irrazionale sensazione che esse esprimessero la muta poesia di Londra. Si sentì come se fossero figure in un racconto.

L’automobiletta sfrecciò fino alla casa giusta come una pallottola, e sparò fuori il suo proprietario come una granata. Egli stava già domandando a un alto usciere in gallone lucente, e a un basso portiere in maniche di camicia, se qualcuno o qualcosa avesse cercato il suo appartamento. Gli fu assicurato che nessuno e nulla era passato dinanzi a quei funzionari dalle sue ultime domande; dopodiché lui e il leggermente sconcertato Angus furono sparati su per l’ascensore come un razzo, finché raggiunsero l’ultimo piano.

«Entri solo un momento», disse Smythe ansante. «Voglio mostrarle quelle lettere di Welkin. Poi potrebbe fare un salto dietro l’angolo e andare a prendere il suo amico.» Premette un bottone nascosto nel muro, e la porta si aprì da sé.

Si aprì su una lunga, comoda anticamera, di cui gli unici tratti degni di nota, in condizioni normali, erano le file di alte figure meccaniche semiumane che si ergevano su entrambi i lati come manichini da sarto. Come manichini da sarto erano senza testa; e come manichini da sarto avevano una bella superflua gobbosità nelle spalle, e una sporgenza pettoruta del torace; ma a parte questo, non somigliavano a una figura umana più di qualsiasi macchina automatica di una stazione che sia all’incirca dell’altezza di un uomo. Avevano due grandi ganci a mo’ di braccia, per portare vassoi; ed erano dipinti verde pisello, o vermiglio, o nero per comodità di distinzione; in ogni altro senso erano soltanto macchine automatiche e nessuno le avrebbe guardate due volte. In quell’occasione, almeno, nessuno lo fece. Poiché tra le due file di questi manichini domestici giaceva qualcosa di più interessante di gran parte dei congegni del mondo. Era un bianco, lacero brandello di carta scarabocchiato con inchiostro rosso; e l’agile inventore l’aveva ghermito quasi non appena la porta si era spalancata. Lo porse ad Angus senza una parola. L’inchiostro rosso su di esso in realtà non era asciutto, e il messaggio diceva: «Se sei stato a trovarla oggi, ti ucciderò.»

There was a short silence, and then Isidore Smythe said quietly, “Would you like a little whiskey? I rather feel as if I should.”

“Thank you; I should like a little Flambeau,” said Angus, gloomily. “This business seems to me to be getting rather grave. I’m going round at once to fetch him.”

“Right you are,” said the other, with admirable cheerfulness. “Bring him round here as quick as you can.”

But as Angus closed the front door behind him he saw Smythe push back a button, and one of the clockwork images glided from its place and slid along a groove in the floor carrying a tray with syphon and decanter. There did seem something a trifle weird about leaving the little man alone among those dead servants, who were coming to life as the door closed.

Six steps down from Smythe’s landing the man in shirt sleeves was doing something with a pail. Angus stopped to extract a promise, fortified with a prospective bribe, that he would remain in that place until the return with the detective, and would keep count of any kind of stranger coming up those stairs. Dashing down to the front hall he then laid similar charges of vigilance on the commissionaire at the front door, from whom he learned the simplifying circumstances that there was no back door. Not content with this, he captured the floating policeman and induced him to stand opposite the entrance and watch it; and finally paused an instant for a pennyworth of chestnuts, and an inquiry as to the probable length of the merchant’s stay in the neighbourhood.

The chestnut seller, turning up the collar of his coat, told him he should probably be moving shortly, as he thought it was going to snow. Indeed, the evening was growing grey and bitter, but Angus, with all his eloquence, proceeded to nail the chestnut man to his post.

“Keep yourself warm on your own chestnuts,” he said earnestly. “Eat up your whole stock; I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you a sovereign if you’ll wait here till I come back, and then tell me whether any man, woman, or child has gone into that house where the commissionaire is standing.”

He then walked away smartly, with a last look at the besieged tower.

“I’ve made a ring round that room, anyhow,” he said. “They can’t all four of them be Mr. Welkin’s accomplices.”

Lucknow Mansions were, so to speak, on a lower platform of that hill of houses, of which Himylaya Mansions might be called the peak. Mr. Flambeau’s semi-official flat was on the ground floor, and presented in every way a marked contrast to the American machinery and cold hotel-like luxury of the flat of the Silent Service. Flambeau, who was a friend of Angus, received him in a rococo artistic den behind his office, of which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage cooking-pots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who looked particularly out of place.

“This is my friend Father Brown,” said Flambeau. “I’ve often wanted you to meet him. Splendid weather, this; a little cold for Southerners like me.”

“Yes, I think it will keep clear,” said Angus, sitting down on a violet-striped Eastern ottoman.

“No,” said the priest quietly, “it has begun to snow.”

And, indeed, as he spoke, the first few flakes, foreseen by the man of chestnuts, began to drift across the darkening windowpane.

“Well,” said Angus heavily. “I’m afraid I’ve come on business, and rather jumpy business at that. The fact is, Flambeau, within a stone’s throw of your house is a fellow who badly wants your help; he’s perpetually being haunted and threatened by an invisible enemy— a scoundrel whom nobody has even seen.” As Angus proceeded to tell the whole tale of Smythe and Welkin, beginning with Laura’s story, and going on with his own, the supernatural laugh at the corner of two empty streets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty room, Flambeau grew more and more vividly concerned, and the little priest seemed to be left out of it, like a piece of furniture. When it came to the scribbled stamp-paper pasted on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to fill the room with his huge shoulders.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think you had better tell me the rest on the nearest road to this man’s house. It strikes me, somehow, that there is no time to be lost.”

“Delighted,” said Angus, rising also, “though he’s safe enough for the present, for I’ve set four men to watch the only hole to his burrow.”

They turned out into the street, the small priest trundling after them with the docility of a small dog. He merely said, in a cheerful way, like one making conversation, “How quick the snow gets thick on the ground.”

As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered with silver, Angus finished his story; and by the time they reached the crescent with the towering flats, he had leisure to turn his attention to the four sentinels. The chestnut seller, both before and after receiving a sovereign, swore stubbornly that he had watched the door and seen no visitor enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had had experience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn’t so green as to expect suspicious characters to look suspicious; he looked out for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when all three men gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood smiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more final still.

“I’ve got a right to ask any man, duke or dustman, what he wants in these flats,” said the genial and gold-laced giant, “and I’ll swear there’s been nobody to ask since this gentleman went away.”

The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking modestly at the pavement, here ventured to say meekly, “Has nobody been up and down stairs, then, since the snow began to fall? It began while we were all round at Flambeau’s.”

“Nobody’s been in here, sir, you can take it from me,” said the official, with beaming authority.

“Then I wonder what that is?” said the priest, and stared at the ground blankly like a fish.

Ci fu un breve silenzio, e poi Isidore Smythe disse con calma: «Le andrebbe un po’ di whisky? Io ho piuttosto la sensazione che me ne serva.»

«Grazie; a me andrebbe un po’ di Flambeau», disse Angus, cupo. «Questa faccenda mi pare stia diventando piuttosto grave. Vado subito a prenderlo.»

«Fa benissimo», disse l’altro, con ammirevole allegria. «Me lo porti qui il più in fretta che può.»

Ma mentre Angus si chiudeva la porta d’ingresso alle spalle, vide Smythe respingere indietro un bottone, e una delle immagini a orologeria scivolò dal suo posto e sdrucciolò lungo un solco nel pavimento reggendo un vassoio con sifone e caraffa. Sembrava esserci davvero qualcosa di un tantino sinistro nel lasciare l’ometto solo tra quei servitori morti, che tornavano in vita mentre la porta si chiudeva.

Sei gradini più sotto del pianerottolo di Smythe, l’uomo in maniche di camicia stava facendo qualcosa con un secchio. Angus si fermò per estorcergli la promessa, rafforzata da una mancia in prospettiva, che sarebbe rimasto in quel luogo fino al suo ritorno con l’investigatore, e che avrebbe tenuto il conto di qualunque sorta di estraneo salisse quelle scale. Precipitandosi giù all’atrio d’ingresso, affidò poi analoghi incarichi di vigilanza all’usciere alla porta principale, dal quale apprese la circostanza semplificatrice che non c’era porta sul retro. Non contento di questo, catturò il poliziotto errante e lo persuase a mettersi di fronte all’ingresso e a sorvegliarlo; e infine si fermò un istante per un penny di castagne, e per informarsi sulla probabile durata della permanenza del venditore nel vicinato.

Il venditore di castagne, tirandosi su il colletto del cappotto, gli disse che probabilmente se ne sarebbe andato tra poco, poiché pensava che stesse per nevicare. In effetti, la sera si faceva grigia e pungente, ma Angus, con tutta la sua eloquenza, si adoperò per inchiodare l’uomo delle castagne al suo posto.

«Si tenga caldo con le sue stesse castagne», disse con fervore. «Si mangi tutta la scorta; ne varrà la pena, glielo faccio io. Le darò una sterlina se aspetta qui finché non torno, e poi mi dice se qualche uomo, donna o bambino è entrato in quella casa dove sta l’usciere.»

Poi si allontanò a passo svelto, con un ultimo sguardo alla torre assediata.

«In ogni caso, ho fatto un cerchio attorno a quella stanza», disse. «Non possono essere tutti e quattro complici del signor Welkin.»

Lucknow Mansions erano, per così dire, su una piattaforma più bassa di quella collina di case, di cui Himylaya Mansions poteva dirsi la vetta. L’appartamento semiufficiale del signor Flambeau era al pianterreno, e presentava sotto ogni aspetto un netto contrasto con i macchinari americani e il freddo lusso da albergo dell’appartamento del Silent Service. Flambeau, che era amico di Angus, lo ricevette in un covo artistico in stile rococò dietro l’ufficio, i cui ornamenti erano sciabole, archibugi, curiosità orientali, fiaschi di vino italiano, selvagge pentole da cucina, un piumoso gatto persiano, e un piccolo pretino cattolico dall’aria impolverata, che pareva particolarmente fuori posto.

«Questo è il mio amico Padre Brown», disse Flambeau. «Da tempo desideravo fartelo conoscere. Splendido tempo, questo; un po’ freddo per un meridionale come me.»

«Sì, credo che si manterrà sereno», disse Angus, sedendosi su un’ottomana orientale a righe violacee.

«No», disse il prete con calma, «ha cominciato a nevicare.»

E, in effetti, mentre egli parlava, i primi fiocchi, previsti dall’uomo delle castagne, cominciarono a fluttuare attraverso il vetro della finestra che si oscurava.

«Be’», disse Angus con gravità. «Temo di essere venuto per affari, e per affari piuttosto inquietanti, per giunta. Il fatto è, Flambeau, che a un tiro di sasso da casa tua c’è un tale che ha un gran bisogno del tuo aiuto; è perpetuamente perseguitato e minacciato da un nemico invisibile… un mascalzone che nessuno ha mai neppure visto.» Mentre Angus proseguiva a raccontare tutta la storia di Smythe e Welkin, cominciando dal racconto di Laura, e continuando col proprio, la risata soprannaturale all’angolo di due strade vuote, le strane parole distinte pronunciate in una stanza vuota, Flambeau si mostrava sempre più vivamente preoccupato, e il piccolo prete pareva essere lasciato fuori dalla faccenda, come un pezzo di mobilio. Quando si venne alla carta da bollo scarabocchiata e incollata sulla vetrina, Flambeau si alzò, sembrando riempire la stanza con le sue enormi spalle.

«Se non ti dispiace», disse, «penso che faresti meglio a raccontarmi il resto lungo la strada più breve verso la casa di quest’uomo. Ho l’impressione, chissà perché, che non ci sia tempo da perdere.»

«Ne sarò lieto», disse Angus, alzandosi anche lui, «benché per il momento egli sia abbastanza al sicuro, giacché ho messo quattro uomini a sorvegliare l’unico buco della sua tana.»

Uscirono nella strada, il piccolo prete che li seguiva trotterellando con la docilità di un cagnolino. Si limitò a dire, in tono allegro, come chi fa conversazione: «Come diventa spessa in fretta la neve sul terreno.»

Mentre si infilavano per le ripide stradine laterali già incipriate d’argento, Angus terminò la sua storia; e quando raggiunsero il semicerchio con gli altissimi palazzi, ebbe agio di rivolgere l’attenzione alle quattro sentinelle. Il venditore di castagne, sia prima sia dopo aver ricevuto una sterlina, giurò cocciutamente di aver sorvegliato la porta e di non aver visto entrare alcun visitatore. Il poliziotto fu ancora più categorico. Disse che aveva avuto esperienza di furfanti di ogni genere, in cappello a cilindro e in stracci; non era così sprovveduto da aspettarsi che i personaggi sospetti avessero l’aria sospetta; teneva d’occhio chiunque, e, che Dio lo aiutasse, non c’era stato nessuno. E quando tutti e tre gli uomini si radunarono attorno all’usciere dorato, che ancora se ne stava sorridente a gambe divaricate sotto il portico, il verdetto fu ancora più definitivo.

«Ho il diritto di chiedere a qualsiasi uomo, duca o spazzino, che cosa vuole in questi appartamenti», disse il gioviale gigante gallonato d’oro, «e giuro che non c’è stato nessuno a cui chiederlo da quando questo signore se n’è andato.»

L’insignificante Padre Brown, che se ne stava in disparte, guardando modestamente il selciato, si azzardò qui a dire con mitezza: «Nessuno è dunque salito o sceso per le scale da quando ha cominciato a cadere la neve? Ha cominciato mentre eravamo tutti da Flambeau.»

«Non è entrato nessuno qui, signore, può prenderlo per certo da me», disse il funzionario, con raggiante autorità.

«Allora mi chiedo che cosa sia quello», disse il prete, e fissò il suolo con aria vacua come un pesce.

The others all looked down also; and Flambeau used a fierce exclamation and a French gesture. For it was unquestionably true that down the middle of the entrance guarded by the man in gold lace, actually between the arrogant, stretched legs of that colossus, ran a stringy pattern of grey footprints stamped upon the white snow.

“God!” cried Angus involuntarily, “the Invisible Man!”

Without another word he turned and dashed up the stairs, with Flambeau following; but Father Brown still stood looking about him in the snow-clad street as if he had lost interest in his query.

Flambeau was plainly in a mood to break down the door with his big shoulders; but the Scotchman, with more reason, if less intuition, fumbled about on the frame of the door till he found the invisible button; and the door swung slowly open.

It showed substantially the same serried interior; the hall had grown darker, though it was still struck here and there with the last crimson shafts of sunset, and one or two of the headless machines had been moved from their places for this or that purpose, and stood here and there about the twilit place. The green and red of their coats were all darkened in the dusk; and their likeness to human shapes slightly increased by their very shapelessness. But in the middle of them all, exactly where the paper with the red ink had lain, there lay something that looked like red ink spilt out of its bottle. But it was not red ink.

With a French combination of reason and violence Flambeau simply said “Murder!” and, plunging into the flat, had explored, every corner and cupboard of it in five minutes. But if he expected to find a corpse he found none. Isidore Smythe was not in the place, either dead or alive. After the most tearing search the two men met each other in the outer hall, with streaming faces and staring eyes. “My friend,” said Flambeau, talking French in his excitement, “not only is your murderer invisible, but he makes invisible also the murdered man.”

Angus looked round at the dim room full of dummies, and in some Celtic corner of his Scotch soul a shudder started. One of the life-size dolls stood immediately overshadowing the blood stain, summoned, perhaps, by the slain man an instant before he fell. One of the high-shouldered hooks that served the thing for arms, was a little lifted, and Angus had suddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe’s own iron child had struck him down. Matter had rebelled, and these machines had killed their master. But even so, what had they done with him?

“Eaten him?” said the nightmare at his ear; and he sickened for an instant at the idea of rent, human remains absorbed and crushed into all that acephalous clockwork.

He recovered his mental health by an emphatic effort, and said to Flambeau, “Well, there it is. The poor fellow has evaporated like a cloud and left a red streak on the floor. The tale does not belong to this world.”

“There is only one thing to be done,” said Flambeau, “whether it belongs to this world or the other. I must go down and talk to my friend.”

They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again asseverated that he had let no intruder pass, down to the commissionaire and the hovering chestnut man, who rigidly reasserted their own watchfulness. But when Angus looked round for his fourth confirmation he could not see it, and called out with some nervousness, “Where is the policeman?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Father Brown; “that is my fault. I just sent him down the road to investigate something— that I just thought worth investigating.”

“Well, we want him back pretty soon,” said Angus abruptly, “for the wretched man upstairs has not only been murdered, but wiped out.”

“How?” asked the priest.

“Father,” said Flambeau, after a pause, “upon my soul I believe it is more in your department than mine. No friend or foe has entered the house, but Smythe is gone, as if stolen by the fairies. If that is not supernatural, I—”

As he spoke they were all checked by an unusual sight; the big blue policeman came round the corner of the crescent, running. He came straight up to Brown.

“You’re right, sir,” he panted, “they’ve just found poor Mr. Smythe’s body in the canal down below.”

Angus put his hand wildly to his head. “Did he run down and drown himself?” he asked.

“He never came down, I’ll swear,” said the constable, “and he wasn’t drowned either, for he died of a great stab over the heart.”

“And yet you saw no one enter?” said Flambeau in a grave voice.

“Let us walk down the road a little,” said the priest.

As they reached the other end of the crescent he observed abruptly, “Stupid of me! I forgot to ask the policeman something. I wonder if they found a light brown sack.”

“Why a light brown sack?” asked Angus, astonished.

“Because if it was any other coloured sack, the case must begin over again,” said Father Brown; “but if it was a light brown sack, why, the case is finished.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” said Angus with hearty irony. “It hasn’t begun, so far as I am concerned.”

“You must tell us all about it,” said Flambeau with a strange heavy simplicity, like a child.

Unconsciously they were walking with quickening steps down the long sweep of road on the other side of the high crescent, Father Brown leading briskly, though in silence. At last he said with an almost touching vagueness, “Well, I’m afraid you’ll think it so prosy. We always begin at the abstract end of things, and you can’t begin this story anywhere else.

“Have you ever noticed this—that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean—or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house, ‘Is anybody staying with you?’ the lady doesn’t answer ‘Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,’ though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says ‘There is nobody staying with us,’ meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, ‘Who is staying in the house?’ then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like that; you never get a question answered literally, even when you get it answered truly. When those four quite honest men said that no man had gone into the Mansions, they did not really mean that no man had gone into them. They meant no man whom they could suspect of being your man. A man did go into the house, and did come out of it, but they never noticed him.”

Anche gli altri guardarono in giù; e Flambeau ricorse a una feroce esclamazione e a un gesto francese. Poiché era indiscutibilmente vero che lungo il centro dell’ingresso custodito dall’uomo in gallone d’oro, proprio tra le arroganti gambe divaricate di quel colosso, correva un filiforme disegno di grigie impronte impresse sulla bianca neve.

«Dio!» gridò Angus involontariamente, «l’uomo invisibile!»

Senza un’altra parola si voltò e si precipitò su per le scale, con Flambeau al seguito; ma Padre Brown restava ancora a guardarsi attorno nella strada coperta di neve come se avesse perso interesse per la sua domanda.

Flambeau era chiaramente in vena di sfondare la porta con le sue grandi spalle; ma lo scozzese, con più ragione, se con meno intuito, andò a tastare il telaio della porta finché trovò il bottone invisibile; e la porta si aprì lentamente.

Mostrava sostanzialmente lo stesso interno serrato; l’atrio si era fatto più buio, benché fosse ancora colpito qua e là dagli ultimi cremisi raggi del tramonto, e una o due delle macchine senza testa erano state spostate dai loro posti per questo o quello scopo, e si ergevano qua e là per il luogo crepuscolare. Il verde e il rosso delle loro giubbe erano tutti oscurati nella penombra; e la loro somiglianza con forme umane era lievemente accresciuta dalla loro stessa informità. Ma nel bel mezzo di tutte, esattamente dove era giaciuta la carta con l’inchiostro rosso, giaceva qualcosa che pareva inchiostro rosso rovesciato dalla sua bottiglia. Ma non era inchiostro rosso.

Con una francese combinazione di raziocinio e violenza Flambeau disse semplicemente «Assassinio!» e, gettandosi nell’appartamento, ne esplorò ogni angolo e armadio in cinque minuti. Ma se si aspettava di trovare un cadavere, non ne trovò alcuno. Isidore Smythe non era nel luogo, né morto né vivo. Dopo la più straziante ricerca i due uomini si ritrovarono nell’atrio esterno, coi volti madidi e gli occhi sbarrati. «Amico mio», disse Flambeau, parlando francese per l’eccitazione, «non solo il tuo assassino è invisibile, ma rende invisibile anche l’assassinato.»

Angus si guardò attorno nella stanza fioca piena di manichini, e in qualche angolo celtico della sua anima scozzese cominciò un brivido. Una delle bambole a grandezza naturale sovrastava immediatamente la macchia di sangue, chiamata, forse, dall’uomo ucciso un istante prima che cadesse. Uno dei ganci a spalla alta che servivano da braccia all’aggeggio, era leggermente sollevato, e Angus ebbe d’improvviso l’orribile fantasia che il figlio di ferro del povero Smythe l’avesse abbattuto. La materia si era ribellata, e quelle macchine avevano ucciso il loro padrone. Ma anche così, che cosa ne avevano fatto?

«Lo hanno mangiato?» disse l’incubo al suo orecchio; ed egli ebbe un moto di nausea per un istante all’idea di lacerati, umani resti assorbiti e stritolati in tutta quella acefala meccanica a orologeria.

Recuperò la propria sanità mentale con uno sforzo deciso, e disse a Flambeau: «Bene, ecco qua. Il pover’uomo è evaporato come una nuvola e ha lasciato una striscia rossa sul pavimento. La storia non appartiene a questo mondo.»

«C’è solo una cosa da fare», disse Flambeau, «che appartenga a questo mondo o all’altro. Devo scendere a parlare col mio amico.»

Scesero, passando davanti all’uomo col secchio, che di nuovo asserì di non aver lasciato passare alcun intruso, giù fino all’usciere e all’ aleggiante uomo delle castagne, i quali rigidamente riaffermarono la loro stessa vigilanza. Ma quando Angus si guardò attorno in cerca della sua quarta conferma non riuscì a vederla, e gridò con una certa nervosità: «Dov’è il poliziotto?»

«Chiedo scusa», disse Padre Brown; «è colpa mia. L’ho appena mandato giù per la strada a indagare su una cosa… che mi è appena parsa degna d’indagine.»

«Bene, lo rivogliamo qui abbastanza presto», disse Angus bruscamente, «poiché il disgraziato là sopra non solo è stato assassinato, ma cancellato.»

«Come?» chiese il prete.

«Padre», disse Flambeau, dopo una pausa, «sull’anima mia credo che sia più affare del suo reparto che del mio. Nessun amico né nemico è entrato nella casa, eppure Smythe è sparito, come rubato dalle fate. Se questo non è soprannaturale, io…»

Mentre parlava furono tutti bloccati da uno spettacolo insolito; il grosso poliziotto azzurro spuntò di corsa dall’angolo del semicerchio. Venne dritto verso Brown.

«Ha ragione, signore», ansimò, «hanno appena trovato il corpo del povero signor Smythe nel canale là sotto.»

Angus si portò follemente la mano alla testa. «È corso giù e si è annegato?» chiese.

«Non è mai sceso, lo giuro», disse l’agente, «e non è nemmeno annegato, poiché è morto per un gran colpo di pugnale al cuore.»

«Eppure non avete visto entrare nessuno?» disse Flambeau con voce grave.

«Scendiamo un poco per la strada», disse il prete.

Quando raggiunsero l’altra estremità del semicerchio egli osservò bruscamente: «Che stupido sono stato! Ho dimenticato di chiedere una cosa al poliziotto. Mi chiedo se abbiano trovato un sacco marrone chiaro.»

«Perché un sacco marrone chiaro?» chiese Angus, stupito.

«Perché se fosse stato un sacco di qualsiasi altro colore, il caso dovrebbe ricominciare da capo», disse Padre Brown; «ma se era un sacco marrone chiaro, ebbene, il caso è chiuso.»

«Sono lieto di sentirlo», disse Angus con cordiale ironia. «Per quanto mi riguarda, non è nemmeno cominciato.»

«Deve raccontarci tutto», disse Flambeau con una strana pesante semplicità, come un bambino.

Inconsapevolmente camminavano a passi sempre più rapidi giù per la lunga distesa di strada sull’altro lato dell’alto semicerchio, con Padre Brown che apriva la marcia spedito, benché in silenzio. Alla fine disse con una vaghezza quasi commovente: «Be’, temo che vi parrà una cosa tanto prosaica. Cominciamo sempre dal capo astratto delle cose, e questa storia non si può cominciare da nessun’altra parte.

«Avete mai notato questo… che la gente non risponde mai a ciò che dite? Risponde a ciò che intendete… o a ciò che pensa voi intendiate. Supponete che una signora dica a un’altra in una casa di campagna: “C’è qualcuno che alloggia da voi?”; la signora non risponde: “Sì, il maggiordomo, i tre valletti, la cameriera di sala, eccetera”, benché la cameriera di sala possa essere nella stanza, o il maggiordomo dietro la sua sedia. Dice: “Non c’è nessuno che alloggi da noi”, intendendo nessuno del genere a cui voi pensate. Ma supponete che un medico, indagando su un’epidemia, chieda: “Chi alloggia nella casa?”; allora la signora si ricorderà del maggiordomo, della cameriera di sala e di tutti gli altri. Tutto il linguaggio si usa così; non ottenete mai una domanda a cui si risponda alla lettera, anche quando ottenete una risposta veritiera. Quando quei quattro uomini del tutto onesti hanno detto che nessun uomo era entrato nel palazzo, non intendevano davvero che nessun uomo vi fosse entrato. Intendevano nessun uomo che potessero sospettare essere il vostro uomo. Un uomo entrò nella casa, e ne uscì, ma essi non lo notarono mai.»

“An invisible man?” inquired Angus, raising his red eyebrows. “A mentally invisible man,” said Father Brown.

A minute or two after he resumed in the same unassuming voice, like a man thinking his way. “Of course you can’t think of such a man, until you do think of him. That’s where his cleverness comes in. But I came to think of him through two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angus told us. First, there was the fact that this Welkin went for long walks. And then there was the vast lot of stamp paper on the window. And then, most of all, there were the two things the young lady said—things that couldn’t be true. Don’t get annoyed,” he added hastily, noting a sudden movement of the Scotchman’s head; “she thought they were true. A person can’t be quite alone in a street a second before she receives a letter. She can’t be quite alone in a street when she starts reading a letter just received. There must be somebody pretty near her; he must be mentally invisible.”

“Why must there be somebody near her?” asked Angus.

“Because,” said Father Brown, “barring carrier-pigeons, somebody must have brought her the letter.”

“Do you really mean to say,” asked Flambeau, with energy, “that Welkin carried his rival’s letters to his lady?”

“Yes,” said the priest. “Welkin carried his rival’s letters to his lady. You see, he had to.”

“Oh, I can’t stand much more of this,” exploded Flambeau. “Who is this fellow? What does he look like? What is the usual get-up of a mentally invisible man?”

“He is dressed rather handsomely in red, blue and gold,” replied the priest promptly with precision, “and in this striking, and even showy, costume he entered Himylaya Mansions under eight human eyes; he killed Smythe in cold blood, and came down into the street again carrying the dead body in his arms—”

“Reverend sir,” cried Angus, standing still, “are you raving mad, or am I?”

“You are not mad,” said Brown, “only a little unobservant. You have not noticed such a man as this, for example.”

He took three quick strides forward, and put his hand on the shoulder of an ordinary passing postman who had bustled by them unnoticed under the shade of the trees.

“Nobody ever notices postmen somehow,” he said thoughtfully; “yet they have passions like other men, and even carry large bags where a small corpse can be stowed quite easily.”

The postman, instead of turning naturally, had ducked and tumbled against the garden fence. He was a lean fair-bearded man of very ordinary appearance, but as he turned an alarmed face over his shoulder, all three men were fixed with an almost fiendish squint.

---

Flambeau went back to his sabres, purple rugs and Persian cat, having many things to attend to. John Turnbull Angus went back to the lady at the shop, with whom that imprudent young man contrives to be extremely comfortable. But Father Brown walked those snow-covered hills under the stars for many hours with a murderer, and what they said to each other will never be known.

«Un uomo invisibile?» s’informò Angus, sollevando le rosse sopracciglia. «Un uomo mentalmente invisibile», disse Padre Brown.

Un minuto o due dopo riprese con la stessa voce dimessa, come uno che va pensando strada facendo. «Naturalmente non riuscite a pensare a un uomo simile, finché non ci pensate. È qui che sta la sua abilità. Ma io arrivai a pensare a lui attraverso due o tre piccole cose nel racconto che il signor Angus ci ha fatto. Primo, c’era il fatto che questo Welkin faceva lunghe passeggiate. E poi c’era la vasta quantità di carta da bollo sulla vetrina. E poi, soprattutto, c’erano le due cose che la giovane signorina disse… cose che non potevano essere vere. Non si offenda», aggiunse in fretta, notando un improvviso moto della testa dello scozzese; «lei le credeva vere. Una persona non può essere del tutto sola in una strada un secondo prima di ricevere una lettera. Non può essere del tutto sola in una strada quando comincia a leggere una lettera appena ricevuta. Ci deve essere qualcuno abbastanza vicino a lei; egli dev’essere mentalmente invisibile.»

«Perché ci deve essere qualcuno vicino a lei?» chiese Angus.

«Perché», disse Padre Brown, «salvo i piccioni viaggiatori, qualcuno deve averle portato la lettera.»

«Vuole davvero dire», chiese Flambeau, con energia, «che Welkin portava le lettere del rivale alla sua dama?»

«Sì», disse il prete. «Welkin portava le lettere del rivale alla sua dama. Vedete, non poteva fare altrimenti.»

«Oh, non ne posso più di tutto questo», esplose Flambeau. «Chi è questo tale? Che aspetto ha? Qual è la tenuta abituale di un uomo mentalmente invisibile?»

«È vestito piuttosto elegantemente di rosso, azzurro e oro», rispose il prete prontamente con precisione, «e in questo vistoso, e persino sgargiante, costume egli entrò a Himylaya Mansions sotto otto occhi umani; uccise Smythe a sangue freddo, e scese di nuovo in strada portando il cadavere tra le braccia…»

«Reverendo signore», gridò Angus, fermandosi di colpo, «è pazzo furioso lei, o lo sono io?»

«Lei non è pazzo», disse Brown, «solo un po’ poco osservante. Non ha notato un uomo come questo, per esempio.»

Fece tre rapidi passi in avanti, e posò la mano sulla spalla di un comune postino di passaggio che era sgusciato loro accanto inosservato all’ombra degli alberi.

«Nessuno nota mai i postini, chissà perché», disse pensieroso; «eppure hanno passioni come gli altri uomini, e per giunta portano grandi sacchi dove un piccolo cadavere può essere riposto con tutta comodità.»

Il postino, invece di voltarsi con naturalezza, si abbassò e ruzzolò contro lo steccato del giardino. Era un uomo magro, dalla barba chiara, d’aspetto assai comune, ma nel voltare un viso allarmato al di sopra della spalla, tutti e tre gli uomini furono inchiodati da uno strabismo quasi diabolico.

---

Flambeau tornò alle sue sciabole, ai tappeti purpurei e al gatto persiano, avendo molte cose da sbrigare. John Turnbull Angus tornò dalla signora alla bottega, con la quale quell’imprudente giovanotto si ingegna di starsene estremamente a proprio agio. Ma Padre Brown camminò per quelle colline coperte di neve sotto le stelle per molte ore insieme a un assassino, e ciò che si dissero l’un l’altro non si saprà mai.

The Honour of Israel Gow

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to meet his friend Flambeau, the amateur detective, who was at Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer investigating the life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen of Scots.

The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the result of their machinations candidly: As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies.

For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in Glengyle Castle; and with the Victorian era one would have thought that all eccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle, however, satisfied his tribal tradition by doing the only thing that was left for him to do; he disappeared. I do not mean that he went abroad; by all accounts he was still in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name was in the church register and the big red Peerage, nobody ever saw him under the sun.

If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant, something between a groom and a gardener. He was so deaf that the more business-like assumed him to be dumb; while the more penetrating declared him to be half-witted. A gaunt, red-haired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin, but quite blank blue eyes, he went by the name of Israel Gow, and was the one silent servant on that deserted estate. But the energy with which he dug potatoes, and the regularity with which he disappeared into the kitchen gave people an impression that he was providing for the meals of a superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed in the castle. If society needed any further proof that he was there, the servant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One morning the provost and the minister (for the Glengyles were Presbyterian) were summoned to the castle. There they found that the gardener, groom and cook had added to his many professions that of an undertaker, and had nailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how little further inquiry this odd fact was passed, did not as yet very plainly appear; for the thing had never been legally investigated till Flambeau had gone north two or three days before. By then the body of Lord Glengyle (if it was the body) had lain for some time in the little churchyard on the hill.

As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and the whole air damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thought it natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew the respectability which might well feel it necessary to wear “blacks” for an official inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose an hour’s digging for that. Even the man’s start and suspicious stare as the priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and jealousy of such a type.

The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with him a lean man with iron-grey hair and papers in his hand: Inspector Craven from Scotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly stripped and empty; but the pale, sneering faces of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked down out of black periwigs and blackening canvas.

Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the allies had been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was covered with scribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole of its remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged at intervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects could be. One looked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked like a high heap of brown dust. A third appeared to be a plain stick of wood.

“You seem to have a sort of geological museum here,” he said, as he sat down, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the brown dust and the crystalline fragments.

“Not a geological museum,” replied Flambeau; “say a psychological museum.”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake,” cried the police detective laughing, “don’t let’s begin with such long words.”

“Don’t you know what psychology means?” asked Flambeau with friendly surprise. “Psychology means being off your chump.”

“Still I hardly follow,” replied the official.

“Well,” said Flambeau, with decision, “I mean that we’ve only found out one thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a maniac.”

The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed the window, dimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father Brown stared passively at it and answered:

L’onore di Israel Gow

Una sera tempestosa, tutta d’oliva e d’argento, andava calando, quando Padre Brown, avvolto in un grigio plaid scozzese, giunse in fondo a una grigia valle scozzese e scorse lo strano castello di Glengyle. Chiudeva un capo della gola o della conca come un vicolo cieco; e pareva la fine del mondo. Levandosi in ripidi tetti e in guglie d’ardesia verde-mare alla maniera degli antichi castelli franco-scozzesi, ricordava a un inglese i sinistri cappelli aguzzi delle streghe nelle fiabe; e le pinete che ondeggiavano intorno alle verdi torrette parevano, al confronto, nere come innumerevoli stormi di corvi. Questa nota di una diavoleria sognante, quasi sonnolenta, non era mera fantasia suggerita dal paesaggio. Perché su quel luogo posava davvero una di quelle nubi di orgoglio, di follia e di misterioso dolore che gravano più pesantemente sulle nobili casate di Scozia che su qualunque altro dei figli degli uomini. Perché la Scozia ha una doppia dose del veleno chiamato eredità: il senso del sangue nell’aristocratico e il senso della dannazione nel calvinista.

Il prete aveva strappato una giornata alle sue occupazioni a Glasgow per incontrare il suo amico Flambeau, il detective dilettante, che si trovava al castello di Glengyle insieme a un altro funzionario, più ufficiale di lui, per indagare sulla vita e sulla morte del defunto conte di Glengyle. Quel personaggio misterioso era l’ultimo rappresentante di una stirpe il cui valore, la cui follia e la cui violenta astuzia li avevano resi terribili persino tra la sinistra nobiltà della loro nazione nel sedicesimo secolo. Nessuno fu più addentro a quella labirintica ambizione, in camera dentro camera di quel palazzo di menzogne che fu edificato attorno a Maria Stuarda regina di Scozia.

La filastrocca corrente nelle campagne attestava candidamente il movente e l’esito dei loro maneggi: Come verde linfa agli alberi d’estate, così è l’oro rosso agli Ogilvie.

Per molti secoli non vi era mai stato un signore rispettabile nel castello di Glengyle; e con l’era vittoriana si sarebbe pensato che ogni eccentricità fosse ormai esaurita. L’ultimo Glengyle, tuttavia, soddisfece la tradizione della sua tribù facendo l’unica cosa che gli restasse da fare: sparì. Non voglio dire che se ne andò all’estero; a detta di tutti era ancora nel castello, se pure era da qualche parte. Ma benché il suo nome figurasse nel registro parrocchiale e nel grande e rosso libro dei Pari, nessuno mai lo vide sotto il sole.

Se qualcuno lo vedeva, era un solitario servitore, qualcosa a metà tra uno stalliere e un giardiniere. Era tanto sordo che i più pragmatici lo davano per muto; mentre i più penetranti lo dichiaravano mezzo scemo. Un manovale scarno, dai capelli rossi, con la mascella e il mento ostinati, ma gli occhi azzurri del tutto vacui, andava sotto il nome di Israel Gow, ed era l’unico servitore silenzioso di quella tenuta deserta. Ma l’energia con cui zappava le patate, e la regolarità con cui spariva nella cucina davano alla gente l’impressione che provvedesse ai pasti di un superiore, e che lo strano conte fosse ancora nascosto nel castello. Se la società avesse avuto bisogno di un’ulteriore prova che egli era là, il servitore asseriva ostinatamente che non era in casa. Una mattina il prevosto e il pastore (perché i Glengyle erano presbiteriani) furono convocati al castello. Là trovarono che il giardiniere, stalliere e cuoco aveva aggiunto alle sue molte professioni quella di becchino, e aveva inchiodato il suo nobile padrone dentro una bara. Con quanta o quanto poca ulteriore indagine questo strano fatto fosse passato, non appariva ancora troppo chiaramente; perché la cosa non era mai stata legalmente investigata finché Flambeau non era salito al nord due o tre giorni prima. Ormai il corpo di lord Glengyle (se era il suo corpo) giaceva da qualche tempo nel piccolo cimitero sulla collina.

Mentre Padre Brown attraversava il fioco giardino e veniva a trovarsi nell’ombra del castello, le nubi erano dense e l’aria tutta umida e carica di tuoni. Contro l’ultima striscia del tramonto verde-oro egli vide una nera silhouette umana: un uomo con un cilindro, una grossa vanga sulla spalla. La combinazione evocava stranamente un becchino; ma quando Brown si ricordò del servitore sordo che zappava le patate, la giudicò abbastanza naturale. Conosceva qualcosa del contadino scozzese; conosceva quella rispettabilità che poteva ben ritenere necessario indossare i «panni neri» per un’inchiesta ufficiale; conosceva anche la parsimonia che non avrebbe rinunciato a un’ora di lavoro di vanga per questo. Persino il sussulto dell’uomo e il suo sguardo sospettoso al passare del prete erano abbastanza consoni alla vigilanza e alla diffidenza di un simile tipo.

Il grande portone fu aperto da Flambeau in persona, che aveva con sé un uomo magro dai capelli grigio ferro e con dei fogli in mano: l’ispettore Craven di Scotland Yard. L’atrio d’ingresso era per lo più spoglio e vuoto; ma i pallidi volti sogghignanti di uno o due dei malvagi Ogilvie guardavano in basso da sotto nere parrucche e da tele annerite dal tempo.

Seguendoli in una sala interna, Padre Brown trovò che gli alleati sedevano a una lunga tavola di quercia, di cui la loro estremità era coperta di carte scarabocchiate, affiancate da whisky e sigari. Per tutta la restante lunghezza essa era occupata da oggetti sparsi, disposti a intervalli; oggetti quanto mai inesplicabili si potesse immaginare. Uno pareva un piccolo mucchietto di vetri rotti e scintillanti. Un altro pareva un alto mucchio di polvere bruna. Un terzo sembrava essere un semplice bastone di legno.

«Pare che abbiate qui una specie di museo geologico», disse egli, sedendosi e accennando brevemente col capo in direzione della polvere bruna e dei frammenti cristallini.

«Non un museo geologico», replicò Flambeau; «diciamo un museo psicologico».

«Oh, per amor del cielo», gridò ridendo il detective della polizia, «non cominciamo con paroloni simili».

«Non sapete che cosa significa psicologia?» chiese Flambeau con amichevole sorpresa. «Psicologia significa avere il cervello fuori posto».

«Continuo a non seguirvi bene», rispose il funzionario.

«Ebbene», disse Flambeau con decisione, «voglio dire che abbiamo scoperto soltanto una cosa a proposito di lord Glengyle. Era un maniaco».

La nera silhouette di Gow, col suo cilindro e la sua vanga, passò davanti alla finestra, fiocamente stagliata contro il cielo che si oscurava. Padre Brown la fissò con aria passiva e rispose:

“I can understand there must have been something odd about the man, or he wouldn’t have buried himself alive—nor been in such a hurry to bury himself dead. But what makes you think it was lunacy?”

“Well,” said Flambeau, “you just listen to the list of things Mr. Craven has found in the house.”

“We must get a candle,” said Craven, suddenly. “A storm is getting up, and it’s too dark to read.”

“Have you found any candles,” asked Brown smiling, “among your oddities?”

Flambeau raised a grave face, and fixed his dark eyes on his friend.

“That is curious, too,” he said. “Twenty-five candles, and not a trace of a candlestick.”

In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown went along the table to where a bundle of wax candles lay among the other scrappy exhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally over the heap of red-brown dust; and a sharp sneeze cracked the silence.

“Hullo!” he said, “snuff!”

He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it in the neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every side of the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine wood seething like a black sea around a rock.

“I will read the inventory,” began Craven gravely, picking up one of the papers, “the inventory of what we found loose and unexplained in the castle. You are to understand that the place generally was dismantled and neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in a simple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who was not the servant Gow. The list is as follows:

“First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Of course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; but those are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particular articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loose in their pockets, like coppers.

“Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, or even a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on the sideboard, on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not take the trouble to look in a pocket or lift a lid.

“Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps of minute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some in the form of microscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.

“Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottle necks because there is nothing else to stick them in. Now I wish you to note how very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For the central riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there was something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose the master isn’t really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins’ tragedy you like, and you still have not explained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of good family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core of the tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By no stretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork.”

“I think I see the connection,” said the priest. “This Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of the last Bourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century luxury; wax candles, because they were the eighteenth century lighting; the mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; the diamonds are for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette.”

Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. “What a perfectly extraordinary notion!” cried Flambeau. “Do you really think that is the truth?”

“I am perfectly sure it isn’t,” answered Father Brown, “only you said that nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork and candles. I give you that connection off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure, lies deeper.”

He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in the turrets. Then he said, “The late Earl of Glengyle was a thief. He lived a second and darker life as a desperate housebreaker. He did not have any candlesticks because he only used these candles cut short in the little lantern he carried. The snuff he employed as the fiercest French criminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in dense masses in the face of a captor or pursuer. But the final proof is in the curious coincidence of the diamonds and the small steel wheels. Surely that makes everything plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are the only two instruments with which you can cut out a pane of glass.”

The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast against the windowpane behind them, as if in parody of a burglar, but they did not turn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father Brown.

“Diamonds and small wheels,” repeated Craven ruminating. “Is that all that makes you think it the true explanation?”

“I don’t think it the true explanation,” replied the priest placidly; “but you said that nobody could connect the four things. The true tale, of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle had found, or thought he had found, precious stones on his estate. Somebody had bamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying they were found in the castle caverns. The little wheels are some diamond-cutting affair. He had to do the thing very roughly and in a small way, with the help of a few shepherds or rude fellows on these hills. Snuff is the one great luxury of such Scotch shepherds; it’s the one thing with which you can bribe them. They didn’t have candlesticks because they didn’t want them; they held the candles in their hands when they explored the caves.”

«Posso capire che ci dovesse essere qualcosa di bizzarro in quell’uomo, o non si sarebbe sepolto vivo — né sarebbe stato tanto in fretta di seppellirsi da morto. Ma che cosa vi fa pensare che fosse pazzia?»

«Ebbene», disse Flambeau, «state solo a sentire l’elenco delle cose che il signor Craven ha trovato nella casa».

«Ci vuole una candela», disse Craven all’improvviso. «Si sta scatenando una tempesta, ed è troppo buio per leggere».

«Avete trovato qualche candela», chiese Brown sorridendo, «tra le vostre stranezze?»

Flambeau alzò un volto grave e fissò i suoi occhi scuri sull’amico.

«Anche questo è curioso», disse. «Venticinque candele, e non una traccia di candeliere».

Nella stanza che si oscurava rapidamente e nel vento che rapidamente si levava, Brown percorse la tavola fino al punto in cui un fascio di candele di cera giaceva tra gli altri frammentari reperti. Nel far ciò si chinò per caso sopra il mucchio di polvere rosso-bruna; e un aspro starnuto ruppe il silenzio.

«Ehilà!» disse, «tabacco da fiuto!»

Prese una delle candele, la accese con cura, tornò indietro e la ficcò nel collo della bottiglia di whisky. L’aria irrequieta della notte, soffiando attraverso la finestra sconnessa, faceva ondeggiare la lunga fiamma come una bandiera. E da ogni lato del castello si potevano udire le miglia e le miglia di nera pineta ribollire come un mare nero attorno a uno scoglio.

«Leggerò l’inventario», cominciò Craven con gravità, prendendo uno dei fogli, «l’inventario di ciò che abbiamo trovato sparso e inspiegato nel castello. Dovete sapere che il luogo, in generale, era smantellato e trascurato; ma una o due stanze erano state chiaramente abitate da qualcuno, in uno stile semplice ma non squallido; qualcuno che non era il servitore Gow. L’elenco è il seguente:

«Primo articolo. Un tesoro assai considerevole di pietre preziose, quasi tutte diamanti, e tutte quante sciolte, prive di qualsiasi montatura. Naturalmente è normale che gli Ogilvie avessero gioielli di famiglia; ma quelle sono precisamente le gemme che si trovano quasi sempre incastonate in particolari oggetti d’ornamento. Gli Ogilvie parrebbero aver tenuto le loro sciolte in tasca, come monetine di rame.

«Secondo articolo. Mucchi e mucchi di tabacco da fiuto sciolto, non tenuto in un corno, e nemmeno in una borsetta, ma sparso in mucchi sulle mensole dei camini, sulla credenza, sul pianoforte, dovunque. Sembra che il vecchio gentiluomo non volesse prendersi il disturbo di frugare in tasca o di sollevare un coperchio.

«Terzo articolo. Qua e là per la casa, curiosi mucchietti di minuti pezzi di metallo, alcuni simili a molle d’acciaio e altri a forma di microscopiche ruote. Come se avessero sventrato qualche giocattolo meccanico.

«Quarto articolo. Le candele di cera, che si devono ficcare nei colli delle bottiglie perché non c’è nient’altro in cui infilarle. Ora vorrei che notaste quanto tutto questo sia molto più bizzarro di qualunque cosa avevamo previsto. All’enigma centrale siamo preparati; abbiamo tutti visto a colpo d’occhio che c’era qualcosa che non andava nell’ultimo conte. Siamo venuti qui per scoprire se davvero abitasse qui, se davvero morisse qui, se quello spauracchio dai capelli rossi che gli fece da becchino avesse qualcosa a che fare con la sua morte. Ma supponete il peggio in tutto ciò, la soluzione più truce o melodrammatica che vi piaccia. Supponete che il servitore abbia davvero ucciso il padrone, oppure che il padrone non sia davvero morto, oppure che il padrone si travesta da servitore, oppure che il servitore sia sepolto al posto del padrone; inventate quale tragedia di Wilkie Collins vi pare, e ancora non avrete spiegato una candela senza candeliere, né perché un anziano gentiluomo di buona famiglia debba abitualmente rovesciare tabacco da fiuto sul pianoforte. Il nocciolo del racconto potremmo immaginarlo; sono i margini a essere misteriosi. Per quanto si sforzi la fantasia, la mente umana non riesce a collegare fra loro tabacco e diamanti e cera e ingranaggi sciolti».

«Credo di vedere il collegamento», disse il prete. «Questo Glengyle era pazzo contro la Rivoluzione francese. Era un entusiasta dell’ancien régime, e cercava di ricostruire alla lettera la vita familiare degli ultimi Borbone. Aveva tabacco da fiuto perché era il lusso del diciottesimo secolo; candele di cera, perché erano l’illuminazione del diciottesimo secolo; i pezzetti meccanici di ferro rappresentano l’hobby del fabbro di Luigi XVI; i diamanti sono per la Collana di Diamanti di Maria Antonietta».

Gli altri due lo fissavano con occhi tondi. «Che idea assolutamente straordinaria!» gridò Flambeau. «Credete davvero che sia la verità?»

«Sono perfettamente sicuro che non lo sia», rispose Padre Brown, «solo che voi avete detto che nessuno poteva collegare tabacco e diamanti e ingranaggi e candele. Ve lo do io, il collegamento, così su due piedi. La vera verità, ne sono ben certo, giace più in profondità».

Fece una pausa e ascoltò il gemito del vento nelle torrette. Poi disse: «Il defunto conte di Glengyle era un ladro. Viveva una seconda e più oscura vita come disperato scassinatore. Non aveva candelieri perché usava soltanto queste candele tagliate corte nella piccola lanterna che portava con sé. Il tabacco da fiuto lo impiegava come i più feroci criminali francesi hanno usato il pepe: per gettarlo all’improvviso in dense nuvole in faccia a chi lo catturava o lo inseguiva. Ma la prova definitiva sta nella curiosa coincidenza dei diamanti e delle piccole ruote d’acciaio. Non vi rende tutto chiaro, di certo? Diamanti e piccole ruote d’acciaio sono i due soli strumenti con cui si possa ritagliare una lastra di vetro».

Il ramo di un pino spezzato sferzò pesantemente nella raffica contro il vetro della finestra alle loro spalle, come in parodia di uno scassinatore, ma essi non si voltarono. I loro occhi erano fissi su Padre Brown.

«Diamanti e piccole ruote», ripeté Craven meditando. «È tutto qui ciò che vi fa credere che sia la spiegazione vera?»

«Non credo che sia la spiegazione vera», rispose il prete placidamente; «ma voi avete detto che nessuno poteva collegare le quattro cose. Il racconto vero, naturalmente, è qualcosa di assai più prosaico. Glengyle aveva trovato, o creduto di trovare, pietre preziose nella sua tenuta. Qualcuno lo aveva imbrogliato con quei brillanti sciolti, dicendo che erano stati trovati nelle caverne del castello. Le piccole ruote sono qualche arnese da taglio dei diamanti. Doveva fare la cosa molto rozzamente e in piccolo, con l’aiuto di qualche pastore o di qualche zotico di queste colline. Il tabacco da fiuto è il grande lusso di simili pastori scozzesi; è l’unica cosa con cui si possano corrompere. Non avevano candelieri perché non ne volevano; tenevano le candele in mano quando esploravano le caverne».

“Is that all?” asked Flambeau after a long pause. “Have we got to the dull truth at last?”

“Oh, no,” said Father Brown.

As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, went on:

“I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. But we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?”

Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled down the long table.

“Items five, six, seven, etc.,” he said, “and certainly more varied than instructive. A curious collection, not of lead pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils. A senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rather splintered. It might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn’t any crime. The only other things are a few old missals and little Catholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the Middle Ages—their family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. We only put them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about and defaced.”

The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds across Glengyle and threw the long room into darkness as Father Brown picked up the little illuminated pages to examine them. He spoke before the drift of darkness had passed; but it was the voice of an utterly new man.

“Mr. Craven,” said he, talking like a man ten years younger, “you have got a legal warrant, haven’t you, to go up and examine that grave? The sooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom of this horrible affair. If I were you I should start now.”

“Now,” repeated the astonished detective, “and why now?”

“Because this is serious,” answered Brown; “this is not spilt snuff or loose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons. There is only one reason I know of for this being done; and the reason goes down to the roots of the world. These religious pictures are not just dirtied or torn or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or bigotry, by children or by Protestants. These have been treated very carefully— and very queerly. In every place where the great ornamented name of God comes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. The only other thing that has been removed is the halo round the head of the Child Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant and our spade and our hatchet, and go up and break open that coffin.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the London officer.

“I mean,” answered the little priest, and his voice seemed to rise slightly in the roar of the gale. “I mean that the great devil of the universe may be sitting on the top tower of this castle at this moment, as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring like the Apocalypse. There is black magic somewhere at the bottom of this.”

“Black magic,” repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was too enlightened a man not to know of such things; “but what can these other things mean?”

“Oh, something damnable, I suppose,” replied Brown impatiently. “How should I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below? Perhaps you can make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust after wax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to the grave.”

His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him till a blast of the night wind nearly flung them on their faces in the garden. Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for Craven found a hatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau was carrying the heavy spade of the strange gardener; Father Brown was carrying the little gilt book from which had been torn the name of God.

The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short; only under that stress of wind it seemed laborious and long. Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universal gesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that wind were whistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all that infinite growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient sorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy that the voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were cries of the lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never find their way back to heaven.

“You see,” said Father Brown in low but easy tone, “Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they’re a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That,” he added genially, “is why they jumped at the Puritan theology.”

“My friend,” said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, “what does all that snuff mean?”

“My friend,” replied Brown, with equal seriousness, “there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectly genuine religion.”

They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the few bald spots that stood clear of the crashing and roaring pine forest. A mean enclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tell them the border of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven had come to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau had planted his spade point downwards and leaned on it, they were both almost as shaken as the shaky wood and wire. At the foot of the grave grew great tall thistles, grey and silver in their decay. Once or twice, when a ball of thistledown broke under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumped slightly as if it had been an arrow.

Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling grass into the wet clay below. Then he seemed to stop and lean on it as on a staff.

«È tutto qui?» chiese Flambeau dopo una lunga pausa. «Siamo finalmente arrivati alla scialba verità?»

«Oh, no», disse Padre Brown.

Mentre il vento moriva nelle più lontane pinete con un lungo ululato come di scherno, Padre Brown, con un volto del tutto impassibile, proseguì:

«L’ho suggerita solo perché voi avevate detto che non si poteva plausibilmente collegare il tabacco agli ingranaggi o le candele alle pietre lucenti. Dieci false filosofie si adattano all’universo; dieci false teorie si adattano al castello di Glengyle. Ma noi vogliamo la vera spiegazione del castello e dell’universo. Ma non ci sono altri reperti?»

Craven rise, e Flambeau si alzò in piedi sorridendo e passeggiò lungo la lunga tavola.

«Articoli cinque, sei, sette, eccetera», disse, «e di certo più vari che istruttivi. Una curiosa collezione, non di matite di piombo, ma del piombo estratto dalle matite. Un insensato bastoncino di bambù, con la punta piuttosto scheggiata. Potrebbe essere lo strumento del delitto. Solo che non c’è nessun delitto. Le uniche altre cose sono qualche vecchio messale e qualche immaginetta cattolica, che gli Ogilvie conservarono, suppongo, fin dal Medioevo — essendo il loro orgoglio di famiglia più forte del loro puritanesimo. Le abbiamo messe nel museo soltanto perché sembrano curiosamente ritagliate e sfregiate».

La tempesta inebriante che infuriava fuori spinse un tremendo ammasso di nubi attraverso Glengyle e gettò nell’oscurità la lunga sala, mentre Padre Brown prendeva le piccole pagine miniate per esaminarle. Parlò prima che il flusso dell’oscurità fosse passato; ma era la voce di un uomo del tutto nuovo.

«Signor Craven», disse, parlando come un uomo di dieci anni più giovane, «avete un mandato legale, non è vero, per salire lassù ed esaminare quella tomba? Quanto prima lo faremo, tanto meglio, così andremo in fondo a questa orribile faccenda. Se fossi in voi comincerei adesso».

«Adesso», ripeté il detective sbalordito, «e perché adesso?»

«Perché questa è una cosa seria», rispose Brown; «questo non è tabacco rovesciato o sassolini sparsi, che potrebbero trovarsi lì per cento ragioni. C’è una sola ragione, per quanto ne so, per cui si è fatto questo; e la ragione affonda fino alle radici del mondo. Queste immagini sacre non sono soltanto sporcate o strappate o scarabocchiate, cosa che si potrebbe fare per ozio o per bigottismo, da bambini o da protestanti. Queste sono state trattate con grande cura — e in modo assai bizzarro. In ogni punto dove nelle antiche miniature compare il grande nome ornato di Dio, esso è stato accuratamente asportato. L’unica altra cosa che è stata tolta è l’aureola attorno al capo del Bambino Gesù. Perciò, dico, prendiamo il nostro mandato e la nostra vanga e la nostra accetta, e saliamo a scoperchiare quella bara».

«Che cosa volete dire?» incalzò il funzionario di Londra.

«Voglio dire», rispose il piccolo prete, e la sua voce parve alzarsi lievemente nel ruggito della bufera. «Voglio dire che il grande diavolo dell’universo potrebbe essere seduto in questo momento in cima alla torre più alta di questo castello, grosso come cento elefanti, e ruggente come l’Apocalisse. C’è della magia nera in fondo a tutto questo, da qualche parte».

«Magia nera», ripeté Flambeau a bassa voce, perché era un uomo troppo illuminato per non conoscere simili cose; «ma che cosa possono significare queste altre cose?»

«Oh, qualcosa di dannabile, suppongo», rispose Brown con impazienza. «Come faccio a saperlo? Come posso indovinare tutti i loro labirinti là sotto? Forse da tabacco e bambù si può ricavare una tortura. Forse i pazzi bramano cera e limatura d’acciaio. Forse esiste una droga che fa impazzire fatta di matite di piombo! La scorciatoia più breve verso il mistero è su per la collina, fino alla tomba».

I suoi compagni si accorsero appena di avergli obbedito e di averlo seguito finché una raffica del vento notturno non li gettò quasi bocconi nel giardino. Nondimeno gli avevano obbedito come automi; perché Craven si ritrovò un’accetta in mano, e il mandato in tasca; Flambeau portava la pesante vanga dello strano giardiniere; Padre Brown portava il piccolo libro dorato dal quale era stato strappato il nome di Dio.

Il sentiero su per la collina fino al cimitero era tortuoso ma corto; solo che, sotto quella pressione del vento, pareva faticoso e lungo. Fin dove giungeva l’occhio, sempre più lontano man mano che salivano il pendio, c’erano mari oltre mari di pini, ora tutti inclinati da una parte sotto il vento. E quel gesto universale pareva vano quanto era vasto, vano come se quel vento fischiasse attorno a qualche pianeta spopolato e senza scopo. Attraverso tutta quella infinita crescita di foreste grigio-azzurre cantava, acuto e alto, quell’antico dolore che è nel cuore di tutte le cose pagane. Si poteva immaginare che le voci provenienti dal mondo sotterraneo dell’insondabile fogliame fossero grida degli dèi pagani perduti e vaganti: dèi che erano andati errando in quella foresta irrazionale, e che non ritroveranno mai la via del cielo.

«Vedete», disse Padre Brown con tono basso ma disinvolto, «gli scozzesi, prima che la Scozia esistesse, erano una razza curiosa. Anzi, sono una razza curiosa ancora. Ma nei tempi preistorici immagino che adorassero davvero i demoni. Ecco», aggiunse cordialmente, «perché si buttarono a capofitto sulla teologia puritana».

«Amico mio», disse Flambeau, voltandosi in una specie di furore, «che cosa significa tutto quel tabacco da fiuto?»

«Amico mio», rispose Brown, con eguale serietà, «c’è un segno di tutte le religioni autentiche: il materialismo. Ora, il culto del diavolo è una religione perfettamente autentica».

Erano saliti sulla erbosa cocuzza della collina, uno dei pochi punti brulli che spiccavano liberi dalla pineta fragorosa e ruggente. Un misero recinto, in parte di legname e in parte di filo di ferro, sferragliava nella tempesta a indicare loro il confine del cimitero. Ma quando l’ispettore Craven giunse all’angolo della tomba, e Flambeau ebbe piantato la vanga con la punta all’ingiù e vi si fu appoggiato, erano entrambi quasi scossi quanto il traballante legno e filo di ferro. Ai piedi della tomba crescevano alti cardi enormi, grigi e argentei nel loro sfacelo. Una volta o due, quando una palla di lanugine di cardo si spezzava sotto la brezza e gli sfrecciava accanto, Craven sussultava lievemente come se fosse stata una freccia.

Flambeau spinse la lama della vanga attraverso l’erba fischiante fin nella creta umida sottostante. Poi parve fermarsi e appoggiarvisi come a un bastone.

“Go on,” said the priest very gently. “We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?”

“I am afraid of finding it,” said Flambeau.

The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice that was meant to be conversational and cheery. “I wonder why he really did hide himself like that. Something nasty, I suppose; was he a leper?”

“Something worse than that,” said Flambeau.

“And what do you imagine,” asked the other, “would be worse than a leper?”

“I don’t imagine it,” said Flambeau.

He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in a choked voice, “I’m afraid of his not being the right shape.”

“Nor was that piece of paper, you know,” said Father Brown quietly, “and we survived even that piece of paper.”

Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had shouldered away the choking grey clouds that clung to the hills like smoke and revealed grey fields of faint starlight before he cleared the shape of a rude timber coffin, and somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven stepped forward with his axe; a thistle-top touched him, and he flinched. Then he took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy like Flambeau’s till the lid was torn off, and all that was there lay glimmering in the grey starlight.

“Bones,” said Craven; and then he added, “but it is a man,” as if that were something unexpected.

“Is he,” asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and down, “is he all right?”

“Seems so,” said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure and decaying skeleton in the box. “Wait a minute.”

A vast heave went over Flambeau’s huge figure. “And now I come to think of it,” he cried, “why in the name of madness shouldn’t he be all right? What is it gets hold of a man on these cursed cold mountains? I think it’s the black, brainless repetition; all these forests, and over all an ancient horror of unconsciousness. It’s like the dream of an atheist. Pine-trees and more pine-trees and millions more pine-trees—”

“God!” cried the man by the coffin, “but he hasn’t got a head.”

While the others stood rigid the priest, for the first time, showed a leap of startled concern.

“No head!” he repeated. “No head?” as if he had almost expected some other deficiency.

Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a headless youth hiding himself in the castle, of a headless man pacing those ancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in panorama through their minds. But even in that stiffened instant the tale took no root in them and seemed to have no reason in it. They stood listening to the loud woods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like exhausted animals. Thought seemed to be something enormous that had suddenly slipped out of their grasp.

“There are three headless men,” said Father Brown, “standing round this open grave.”

The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and left it open like a yokel, while a long scream of wind tore the sky; then he looked at the axe in his hands as if it did not belong to him, and dropped it.

“Father,” said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used very seldom, “what are we to do?”

His friend’s reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun going off.

“Sleep!” cried Father Brown. “Sleep. We have come to the end of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something has fallen on us that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing that can fall on them.”

Craven’s parted lips came together to say, “What do you mean?”

The priest had turned his face to the castle as he answered: “We have found the truth; and the truth makes no sense.”

He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and reckless step very rare with him, and when they reached the castle again he threw himself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.

Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier than anyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchen garden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains, and the day came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed even to have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he planted his spade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast, shifted along the lines of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen. “He’s a valuable man, that,” said Father Brown. “He does the potatoes amazingly. Still,” he added, with a dispassionate charity, “he has his faults; which of us hasn’t? He doesn’t dig this bank quite regularly. There, for instance,” and he stamped suddenly on one spot. “I’m really very doubtful about that potato.”

“And why?” asked Craven, amused with the little man’s hobby.

“I’m doubtful about it,” said the other, “because old Gow was doubtful about it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place but just this. There must be a mighty fine potato just here.”

Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place. He turned up, under a load of soil, something that did not look like a potato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struck the spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned up at them.

“The Earl of Glengyle,” said Brown sadly, and looked down heavily at the skull.

Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau, and, saying “We must hide it again,” clamped the skull down in the earth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handle of the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes were empty and his forehead full of wrinkles. “If one could only conceive,” he muttered, “the meaning of this last monstrosity.” And leaning on the large spade handle, he buried his brows in his hands, as men do in church.

«Avanti», disse il prete con molta dolcezza. «Stiamo solo cercando di trovare la verità. Di che cosa avete paura?»

«Ho paura di trovarla», disse Flambeau.

Il detective londinese parlò all’improvviso con una voce alta e stridula che voleva essere colloquiale e allegra. «Mi domando perché si sia davvero nascosto in quel modo. Qualcosa di sgradevole, suppongo; era forse un lebbroso?»

«Qualcosa di peggio», disse Flambeau.

«E che cosa immaginate», chiese l’altro, «potrebbe essere peggio di un lebbroso?»

«Non lo immagino», disse Flambeau.

Scavò per alcuni tremendi minuti in silenzio, poi disse con voce soffocata: «Ho paura che non abbia la forma giusta».

«Non l’aveva nemmeno quel pezzo di carta, sapete», disse Padre Brown con calma, «e siamo sopravvissuti persino a quel pezzo di carta».

Flambeau continuò a scavare con cieca energia. Ma la tempesta aveva scostato via le soffocanti nubi grigie che si aggrappavano alle colline come fumo e aveva rivelato grigi campi di fioca luce stellare prima che egli avesse liberato la sagoma di una rozza bara di legname, e in qualche modo la rovesciò sull’erba. Craven si fece avanti con l’ascia; una cima di cardo lo sfiorò, e lui trasalì. Poi mosse un passo più fermo, e menò colpi e strappò con un’energia pari a quella di Flambeau finché il coperchio fu divelto, e tutto ciò che era là dentro giacque luccicando nella grigia luce delle stelle.

«Ossa», disse Craven; e poi aggiunse: «ma è un uomo», come se fosse qualcosa di inaspettato.

«È», chiese Flambeau con una voce che saliva e scendeva stranamente, «è tutto a posto?»

«Pare di sì», disse il funzionario con voce rauca, chinandosi sull’oscuro e decomposto scheletro nella cassa. «Aspettate un momento».

Un ampio sussulto percorse l’enorme figura di Flambeau. «E adesso che ci penso», gridò, «perché mai, in nome della follia, non dovrebbe essere tutto a posto? Che cos’è che afferra un uomo su queste maledette montagne gelide? Credo che sia la nera, sconsiderata ripetizione; tutte queste foreste, e sopra a tutto un antico orrore di incoscienza. È come il sogno di un ateo. Pini e altri pini e milioni di altri pini —»

«Dio!» gridò l’uomo presso la bara, «ma non ha la testa».

Mentre gli altri restavano rigidi, il prete, per la prima volta, mostrò un guizzo di trasalita apprensione.

«Niente testa!» ripeté. «Niente testa?» come se si fosse quasi aspettato qualche altra mancanza.

Visioni deliranti di un neonato senza testa nato a Glengyle, di un giovane senza testa che si nascondeva nel castello, di un uomo senza testa che percorreva quegli antichi saloni o quel magnifico giardino, passarono in panorama nelle loro menti. Ma persino in quell’istante irrigidito il racconto non mise radici in loro e parve privo di ogni ragione. Restarono ad ascoltare i boschi fragorosi e il cielo stridente in modo del tutto sciocco, come animali sfiniti. Il pensiero pareva qualcosa di enorme che era improvvisamente sgusciato dalla loro presa.

«Ci sono tre uomini senza testa», disse Padre Brown, «in piedi attorno a questa tomba aperta».

Il pallido detective venuto da Londra aprì la bocca per parlare, e la lasciò aperta come uno zotico, mentre un lungo urlo di vento squarciava il cielo; poi guardò l’ascia che aveva in mano come se non gli appartenesse, e la lasciò cadere.

«Padre», disse Flambeau con quella voce infantile e greve che usava assai di rado, «che cosa dobbiamo fare?»

La risposta del suo amico giunse con la trattenuta prontezza di un colpo di fucile.

«Dormire!» gridò Padre Brown. «Dormire. Siamo giunti alla fine dei cammini. Sapete che cos’è il sonno? Sapete che ogni uomo che dorme crede in Dio? È un sacramento; perché è un atto di fede ed è un cibo. E noi abbiamo bisogno di un sacramento, foss’anche solo naturale. Qualcosa è caduto su di noi che ben di rado cade sugli uomini; forse la cosa peggiore che possa cadere loro addosso».

Le labbra socchiuse di Craven si riunirono per dire: «Che cosa volete dire?»

Il prete aveva rivolto il viso verso il castello mentre rispondeva: «Abbiamo trovato la verità; e la verità non ha alcun senso».

Scese davanti a loro per il sentiero con un passo impetuoso e temerario assai raro in lui, e quando raggiunsero di nuovo il castello egli si abbandonò al sonno con la semplicità di un cane.

Nonostante il suo mistico elogio del sopore, Padre Brown fu in piedi prima di chiunque altro, tranne il silenzioso giardiniere; e fu trovato mentre fumava una grossa pipa e osservava quell’esperto alle sue mute fatiche nell’orto. Verso l’alba la tempesta ondeggiante era finita in scroscianti piogge, e il giorno venne con una curiosa freschezza. Il giardiniere pareva persino aver conversato, ma alla vista dei detective piantò imbronciato la vanga in un’aiuola e, dicendo qualcosa a proposito della sua colazione, si spostò lungo le file dei cavoli e si chiuse in cucina. «È un uomo prezioso, quello», disse Padre Brown. «Fa le patate in modo straordinario. Eppure», aggiunse, con una carità imparziale, «ha i suoi difetti; chi di noi non ne ha? Non zappa questa scarpata proprio con regolarità. Là, per esempio», e batté improvvisamente il piede su un punto. «Sono davvero molto dubbioso a proposito di quella patata».

«E perché?» chiese Craven, divertito dall’hobby dell’ometto.

«Ne sono dubbioso», disse l’altro, «perché il vecchio Gow ne era dubbioso lui stesso. Ha piantato la vanga metodicamente in ogni punto, tranne proprio in questo. Ci dev’essere una patata magnifica proprio qui».

Flambeau strappò via la vanga e la conficcò impetuosamente nel punto. Ne rivoltò fuori, sotto un carico di terra, qualcosa che non pareva una patata, ma piuttosto un fungo mostruoso e troppo cupolato. Ma urtò la vanga con un freddo tintinnio; rotolò via come una palla, e ghignò verso di loro.

«Il conte di Glengyle», disse Brown mestamente, e guardò pesantemente in basso il teschio.

Poi, dopo un istante di meditazione, strappò la vanga a Flambeau, e, dicendo «Dobbiamo nasconderlo di nuovo», ricacciò il teschio giù nella terra. Poi appoggiò il suo piccolo corpo e la sua enorme testa al grande manico della vanga, che stava ritto e rigido nel terreno, e i suoi occhi erano vuoti e la sua fronte piena di rughe. «Se solo si potesse concepire», mormorò, «il significato di quest’ultima mostruosità». E appoggiandosi al grande manico della vanga, affondò le sopracciglia nelle mani, come fanno gli uomini in chiesa.

All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; the birds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so loud it seemed as if the trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.

“Well, I give it all up,” said Flambeau at last boisterously. “My brain and this world don’t fit each other; and there’s an end of it. Snuff, spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical boxes—what—”

Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade handle with an intolerance quite unusual with him. “Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!” he cried. “All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I understood the snuff and clockwork, and so on, when I first opened my eyes this morning. And since then I’ve had it out with old Gow, the gardener, who is neither so deaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There’s nothing amiss about the loose items. I was wrong about the torn mass-book, too; there’s no harm in that. But it’s this last business. Desecrating graves and stealing dead men’s heads— surely there’s harm in that? Surely there’s black magic still in that? That doesn’t fit in to the quite simple story of the snuff and the candles.” And, striding about again, he smoked moodily.

“My friend,” said Flambeau, with a grim humour, “you must be careful with me and remember I was once a criminal. The great advantage of that estate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things at the instant; I always fought duels the next morning; I always paid bills on the nail; I never even put off a visit to the dentist—”

Father Brown’s pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three pieces on the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact picture of an idiot. “Lord, what a turnip I am!” he kept saying. “Lord, what a turnip!” Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he began to laugh.

“The dentist!” he repeated. “Six hours in the spiritual abyss, and all because I never thought of the dentist! Such a simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but now the sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world.”

“I will get some sense out of this,” cried Flambeau, striding forward, “if I use the tortures of the Inquisition.”

Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition to dance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite piteously, like a child, “Oh, let me be silly a little. You don’t know how unhappy I have been. And now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all. Only a little lunacy, perhaps—and who minds that?”

He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity.

“This is not a story of crime,” he said; “rather it is the story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion of this race.

“That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle— As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies— was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that the Glengyles sought for wealth; it was also true that they literally gathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments and utensils in that metal. They were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn. In the light of that fact, run through all the things we found in the castle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles without their gold candlesticks; snuff without the gold snuff-boxes; pencil-leads without the gold pencil-cases; a walking stick without its gold top; clockwork without the gold clocks— or rather watches. And, mad as it sounds, because the halos and the name of God in the old missals were of real gold; these also were taken away.”

The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in the strengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau lit a cigarette as his friend went on.

“Were taken away,” continued Father Brown; “were taken away— but not stolen. Thieves would never have left this mystery. Thieves would have taken the gold snuff-boxes, snuff and all; the gold pencil-cases, lead and all. We have to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, but certainly a conscience. I found that mad moralist this morning in the kitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.

“The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man ever born at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which, somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More especially he distrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold of Glengyle. Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of its being answered. One day, however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but when he turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and a sovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation. Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species. Either he would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with it virtuously, a snob seeking a reward. In the middle of that night Lord Glengyle was knocked up out of his bed— for he lived alone—and forced to open the door to the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, not the sovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings in change.

“Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad lord’s brain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that had long sought an honest man, and at last had found one. He made a new will, which I have seen. He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, and trained him up as his solitary servant and—after an odd manner—his heir. And whatever that queer creature understands, he understood absolutely his lord’s two fixed ideas: first, that the letter of right is everything; and second, that he himself was to have the gold of Glengyle. So far, that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped the house of gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much as a grain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fully satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I understood; but I could not understand this skull business. I was really uneasy about that human head buried among the potatoes. It distressed me—till Flambeau said the word.

“It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth.”

And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw that strange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober top hat on his head.

Tutti gli angoli del cielo si andavano rischiarando in azzurro e argento; gli uccelli cinguettavano tra i piccoli alberi del giardino; così forte che pareva quasi che fossero gli alberi stessi a parlare. Ma i tre uomini erano abbastanza silenziosi.

«Ebbene, rinuncio a tutto», disse infine Flambeau con foga. «Il mio cervello e questo mondo non si adattano l’uno all’altro; e la faccenda finisce qui. Tabacco da fiuto, libri di preghiere sciupati, e le interiora dei carillon — che cosa —»

Brown sollevò la fronte tormentata e picchiò sul manico della vanga con un’insofferenza del tutto insolita in lui. «Oh, ma via, via, via, via!» gridò. «Tutto questo è chiaro come il sole. Ho capito il tabacco e gli ingranaggi, e via dicendo, non appena ho aperto gli occhi stamattina. E da allora ne ho parlato a fondo col vecchio Gow, il giardiniere, che non è né così sordo né così stupido come finge. Non c’è nulla di storto nei reperti sciolti. Mi sbagliavo anche a proposito del messale strappato; non c’è alcun male in quello. Ma è quest’ultima faccenda. Profanare tombe e rubare le teste dei morti — non c’è forse del male in questo? Non c’è forse ancora della magia nera in questo? Questo non si accorda con la storia assai semplice del tabacco e delle candele». E, tornando a camminare a grandi passi, fumava cupamente.

«Amico mio», disse Flambeau, con un umorismo tetro, «dovete essere prudente con me e ricordare che un tempo fui un criminale. Il grande vantaggio di quella condizione era che inventavo sempre la storia da me, e la mettevo in atto con la rapidità che mi piaceva. Questo mestiere del detective, che consiste nell’aspettare, è troppo per la mia impazienza francese. Per tutta la vita, nel bene o nel male, ho fatto le cose all’istante; ho sempre battuto i miei duelli la mattina dopo; ho sempre pagato i conti seduta stante; non ho mai nemmeno rimandato una visita dal dentista —»

La pipa di Padre Brown gli cadde di bocca e si spezzò in tre pezzi sul sentiero di ghiaia. Egli restò lì a roteare gli occhi, la perfetta immagine di un idiota. «Signore, che rapa sono!» continuava a dire. «Signore, che rapa!» Poi, in un modo alquanto barcollante, cominciò a ridere.

«Il dentista!» ripeté. «Sei ore nell’abisso spirituale, e tutto perché non ho mai pensato al dentista! Un pensiero così semplice, così bello e sereno! Amici, abbiamo passato una notte all’inferno; ma ora il sole è sorto, gli uccelli cantano, e la radiosa figura del dentista consola il mondo».

«Un po’ di senso lo caverò da questa faccenda», gridò Flambeau, avanzando a grandi passi, «dovessi usare le torture dell’Inquisizione».

Padre Brown represse quella che pareva una momentanea inclinazione a danzare sul prato ormai illuminato dal sole e gridò in modo del tutto pietoso, come un bambino: «Oh, lasciatemi essere sciocco per un po’. Non sapete quanto sono stato infelice. E ora so che in tutta questa faccenda non c’è stato alcun peccato profondo. Solo un po’ di follia, forse — e a chi importa di questo?»

Fece un altro giro su se stesso, poi li affrontò con gravità.

«Questa non è una storia di delitto», disse; «è piuttosto la storia di una strana e contorta onestà. Abbiamo a che fare con l’unico uomo sulla terra, forse, che non ha preso più del suo dovuto. È uno studio nella feroce logica vivente che è stata la religione di questa razza.

«Quell’antica filastrocca locale sulla casa di Glengyle — Come verde linfa agli alberi d’estate, così è l’oro rosso agli Ogilvie — era letterale non meno che metaforica. Non voleva soltanto dire che i Glengyle cercavano la ricchezza; era anche vero che essi raccoglievano letteralmente oro; possedevano una enorme collezione di ornamenti e utensili di quel metallo. Erano, di fatto, avari la cui mania aveva preso quella piega. Alla luce di questo fatto, ripercorrete tutte le cose che abbiamo trovato nel castello. Diamanti senza i loro anelli d’oro; candele senza i loro candelieri d’oro; tabacco senza le tabacchiere d’oro; mine di matita senza i portamine d’oro; un bastone da passeggio senza il suo pomo d’oro; ingranaggi senza gli orologi d’oro — o piuttosto gli orologi da taschino. E, per folle che suoni, poiché le aureole e il nome di Dio negli antichi messali erano d’oro vero, anche questi furono portati via».

Il giardino parve rischiararsi, l’erba farsi più gaia nel sole che si rafforzava, man mano che la folle verità veniva narrata. Flambeau accese una sigaretta mentre l’amico proseguiva.

«Furono portati via», continuò Padre Brown; «furono portati via — ma non rubati. Dei ladri non avrebbero mai lasciato questo mistero. Dei ladri avrebbero preso le tabacchiere d’oro, tabacco e tutto; i portamine d’oro, mina e tutto. Abbiamo a che fare con un uomo dalla coscienza particolare, ma di certo con una coscienza. Ho trovato quel folle moralista stamattina laggiù nell’orto, e ho ascoltato tutta la storia.

«Il defunto Archibald Ogilvie fu il più vicino a essere un uomo buono che sia mai nato a Glengyle. Ma la sua amara virtù prese la piega del misantropo; si crucciava per la disonestà dei suoi antenati, dalla quale, in qualche modo, generalizzava una disonestà di tutti gli uomini. Più di tutto diffidava della filantropia o del dare gratuito; e giurò che se avesse trovato un solo uomo che prendesse esattamente ciò che gli spettava, costui avrebbe avuto tutto l’oro di Glengyle. Lanciata questa sfida all’umanità, si rinchiuse, senza la minima aspettativa che vi si rispondesse. Un giorno, tuttavia, un ragazzo sordo e in apparenza insensato, di un villaggio lontano, gli portò un telegramma in ritardo; e Glengyle, con la sua acida faceziosità, gli diede un quarto di penny nuovo di zecca. Almeno credette di averlo fatto, ma quando rivoltò il suo resto trovò il quarto di penny nuovo ancora lì e uno sterlino sparito. L’incidente gli aprì prospettive di sogghignante speculazione. In un modo o nell’altro, il ragazzo avrebbe mostrato l’untuosa avidità della specie. O sarebbe svanito, un ladro che ruba una moneta; oppure sarebbe tornato di soppiatto a restituirla virtuosamente, uno snob in cerca di ricompensa. Nel cuore di quella notte lord Glengyle fu tirato giù dal letto — perché viveva solo — e costretto ad aprire la porta al sordo idiota. L’idiota portava con sé, non lo sterlino, ma esattamente diciannove scellini e undici pence e tre quarti di resto.

«Allora la selvaggia esattezza di quell’azione afferrò la mente del pazzo signore come il fuoco. Giurò di essere Diogene, che a lungo aveva cercato un uomo onesto, e finalmente ne aveva trovato uno. Fece un nuovo testamento, che io ho visto. Prese quel giovane letterale nella sua immensa e trascurata casa, e lo educò come suo unico servitore e — in un modo bizzarro — suo erede. E qualunque cosa quella strana creatura comprenda, comprese in modo assoluto le due idee fisse del suo signore: primo, che la lettera del diritto è tutto; e secondo, che egli stesso doveva avere l’oro di Glengyle. Fin qui, è tutto; ed è semplice. Ha spogliato la casa di tutto l’oro, e non ha preso un solo granello che non fosse oro; neppure un granello di tabacco da fiuto. Ha sollevato la foglia d’oro da un’ antica miniatura, pienamente soddisfatto di lasciare intatto il resto. Tutto questo l’ho capito; ma non riuscivo a capire questa faccenda del teschio. Ero davvero a disagio per quella testa umana sepolta tra le patate. Mi angustiava — finché Flambeau non pronunciò la parola.

«Andrà tutto bene. Rimetterà il teschio nella tomba, quando avrà tolto l’oro dal dente».

E, in effetti, quando Flambeau attraversò la collina quella mattina, vide quello strano essere, il giusto avaro, che scavava presso la tomba profanata, il plaid intorno alla gola sbattuto dal vento della montagna; il sobrio cilindro sul capo.

The Wrong Shape

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so on. If anyone walks along one of these roads he will pass a house which will probably catch his eye, though he may not be able to explain its attraction. It is a long, low house, running parallel with the road, painted mostly white and pale green, with a veranda and sun-blinds, and porches capped with those quaint sort of cupolas like wooden umbrellas that one sees in some old-fashioned houses. In fact, it is an old-fashioned house, very English and very suburban in the good old wealthy Clapham sense. And yet the house has a look of having been built chiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white paint and sun-blinds one thinks vaguely of pugarees and even of palm trees. I cannot trace the feeling to its root; perhaps the place was built by an Anglo-Indian.

Anyone passing this house, I say, would be namelessly fascinated by it; would feel that it was a place about which some story was to be told. And he would have been right, as you shall shortly hear. For this is the story—the story of the strange things that did really happen in it in the Whitsuntide of the year 18—:

Anyone passing the house on the Thursday before WhitSunday at about half-past four p.m. would have seen the front door open, and Father Brown, of the small church of St. Mungo, come out smoking a large pipe in company with a very tall French friend of his called Flambeau, who was smoking a very small cigarette. These persons may or may not be of interest to the reader, but the truth is that they were not the only interesting things that were displayed when the front door of the white-and-green house was opened. There are further peculiarities about this house, which must be described to start with, not only that the reader may understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realise what it was that the opening of the door revealed.

The whole house was built upon the plan of a T, but a T with a very long cross piece and a very short tail piece. The long cross piece was the frontage that ran along in face of the street, with the front door in the middle; it was two stories high, and contained nearly all the important rooms. The short tail piece, which ran out at the back immediately opposite the front door, was one story high, and consisted only of two long rooms, the one leading into the other. The first of these two rooms was the study in which the celebrated Mr. Quinton wrote his wild Oriental poems and romances. The farther room was a glass conservatory full of tropical blossoms of quite unique and almost monstrous beauty, and on such afternoons as these glowing with gorgeous sunlight. Thus when the hall door was open, many a passer-by literally stopped to stare and gasp; for he looked down a perspective of rich apartments to something really like a transformation scene in a fairy play: purple clouds and golden suns and crimson stars that were at once scorchingly vivid and yet transparent and far away.

Leonard Quinton, the poet, had himself most carefully arranged this effect; and it is doubtful whether he so perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems. For he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of form—even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach. He had attempted, not perhaps with complete artistic success, but with acknowledged imagination and invention, to compose epics and love stories reflecting the riot of violent and even cruel colour; tales of tropical heavens of burning gold or blood-red copper; of eastern heroes who rode with twelve-turbaned mitres upon elephants painted purple or peacock green; of gigantic jewels that a hundred negroes could not carry, but which burned with ancient and strange-hued fires.

In short (to put the matter from the more common point of view), he dealt much in eastern heavens, rather worse than most western hells; in eastern monarchs, whom we might possibly call maniacs; and in eastern jewels which a Bond Street jeweller (if the hundred staggering negroes brought them into his shop) might possibly not regard as genuine. Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one; and even his morbidity appeared more in his life than in his work. In temperament he was weak and waspish, and his health had suffered heavily from oriental experiments with opium. His wife—a handsome, hard-working, and, indeed, over-worked woman objected to the opium, but objected much more to a live Indian hermit in white and yellow robes, whom her husband insisted on entertaining for months together, a Virgil to guide his spirit through the heavens and the hells of the east.

It was out of this artistic household that Father Brown and his friend stepped on to the door-step; and to judge from their faces, they stepped out of it with much relief. Flambeau had known Quinton in wild student days in Paris, and they had renewed the acquaintance for a week-end; but apart from Flambeau’s more responsible developments of late, he did not get on well with the poet now. Choking oneself with opium and writing little erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil. As the two paused on the door-step, before taking a turn in the garden, the front garden gate was thrown open with violence, and a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his head tumbled up the steps in his eagerness. He was a dissipated-looking youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry, as if he had slept in it, and he kept fidgeting and lashing about with one of those little jointed canes.

La forma sbagliata

Certe delle grandi strade che escono da Londra verso nord si prolungano lontano nella campagna come una sorta di spettro attenuato e interrotto di via cittadina, con ampi vuoti tra gli edifici, ma conservando la linea. Qui si troverà un gruppo di botteghe, seguito da un campo recintato o da un paddock, e poi una famosa osteria, e poi magari un orto mercantile o un vivaio, e poi una grande casa privata, e poi un altro campo e un’altra locanda, e così via. Se qualcuno percorre una di queste strade, passerà davanti a una casa che probabilmente gli attirerà lo sguardo, per quanto non sappia spiegarne l’attrattiva. È una casa lunga e bassa, che corre parallela alla strada, dipinta per lo più di bianco e verde pallido, con una veranda e tende parasole, e portici sormontati da quelle bizzarre cupolette simili a ombrelli di legno che si vedono in certe case all’antica. E infatti è una casa all’antica, molto inglese e molto suburbana nel buon vecchio senso agiato di Clapham. Eppure la casa ha l’aria di essere stata costruita soprattutto per il caldo. Guardando la sua vernice bianca e le tende parasole si pensa vagamente a pugaree e persino a palme. Non riesco a risalire alla radice di questa sensazione; forse il luogo fu costruito da un anglo-indiano.

Chiunque passasse davanti a questa casa, dico, ne sarebbe fatalmente affascinato; sentirebbe che è un luogo intorno al quale c’è qualche storia da raccontare. E avrebbe avuto ragione, come sentirete tra breve. Perché questa è la storia — la storia delle strane cose che vi accaddero davvero durante la Pentecoste dell’anno 18—:

Chiunque fosse passato davanti alla casa il giovedì prima della Pentecoste, verso le quattro e mezzo del pomeriggio, avrebbe visto aprirsi la porta d’ingresso, e Padre Brown, della piccola chiesa di St. Mungo, uscirne fumando una grossa pipa in compagnia di un amico francese assai alto, un certo Flambeau, che fumava una sigaretta piccolissima. Queste persone possono interessare o meno al lettore, ma la verità è che non erano le sole cose interessanti che si mostrarono quando la porta d’ingresso della casa bianca e verde venne aperta. Vi sono altre particolarità in questa casa, che vanno descritte per cominciare, non solo perché il lettore possa comprendere questo tragico racconto, ma anche perché comprenda che cosa fu che l’apertura della porta rivelò.

L’intera casa era costruita sulla pianta di una T, ma una T con una traversa lunghissima e una coda cortissima. La lunga traversa era la facciata che correva dinanzi alla strada, con la porta d’ingresso nel mezzo; era alta due piani, e conteneva quasi tutte le stanze importanti. La corta coda, che si prolungava sul retro immediatamente di fronte alla porta d’ingresso, era alta un solo piano, e consisteva soltanto di due lunghe stanze, l’una che immetteva nell’altra. La prima di queste due stanze era lo studio in cui il celebre signor Quinton scriveva i suoi sfrenati poemi e romanzi orientali. La stanza più interna era una serra a vetri piena di fioriture tropicali di una bellezza affatto singolare e quasi mostruosa, e in pomeriggi come quello ardente di sfarzosa luce solare. Così, quando la porta dell’atrio era aperta, più di un passante letteralmente si fermava a fissare e a rimanere senza fiato; poiché il suo sguardo scorreva lungo una prospettiva di ricche stanze fino a qualcosa che somigliava davvero a una scena di trasformazione in una féerie: nubi purpuree e soli d’oro e stelle cremisi, insieme cocentemente vivide e tuttavia trasparenti e lontane.

Leonard Quinton, il poeta, aveva egli stesso disposto con la massima cura questo effetto; ed è dubbio che egli abbia mai espresso tanto perfettamente la propria personalità in alcuna delle sue poesie. Perché era un uomo che beveva e si immergeva nei colori, che assecondava la sua brama di colore con qualche trascuratezza della forma — persino della buona forma. Fu questo che volse così interamente il suo genio all’arte e all’immaginario orientale; a quei tappeti sconcertanti o a quei ricami accecanti in cui tutti i colori sembrano precipitati in un fortunato caos, senza nulla da simboleggiare o da insegnare. Aveva tentato, forse non con pieno successo artistico, ma con riconosciuta fantasia e inventiva, di comporre poemi epici e storie d’amore che riflettessero il tumulto di un colore violento e persino crudele; racconti di cieli tropicali d’oro fiammeggiante o di rame rosso sangue; di eroi orientali che cavalcavano con mitre da dodici turbanti su elefanti dipinti di porpora o di verde pavone; di gioielli giganteschi che cento negri non avrebbero potuto reggere, ma che ardevano di fuochi antichi e dalle strane tinte.

In breve (per mettere la cosa dal punto di vista più comune), egli trafficava molto in cieli orientali, piuttosto peggiori della maggior parte degli inferni occidentali; in monarchi orientali, che potremmo forse chiamare maniaci; e in gioielli orientali che un gioielliere di Bond Street (se i cento barcollanti negri glieli avessero portati in bottega) forse non avrebbe giudicato autentici. Quinton era un genio, sia pure morboso; e persino la sua morbosità appariva più nella sua vita che nella sua opera. Di temperamento era debole e stizzoso, e la sua salute aveva sofferto gravemente per gli esperimenti orientali con l’oppio. Sua moglie — una donna avvenente, laboriosa, e, in verità, sovraffaticata — protestava contro l’oppio, ma protestava molto di più contro un eremita indiano in carne e ossa, in vesti bianche e gialle, che il marito si ostinava a ospitare per mesi interi, un Virgilio che guidasse il suo spirito attraverso i cieli e gli inferni d’Oriente.

Fu da questa dimora d’artista che Padre Brown e il suo amico misero piede sulla soglia; e a giudicare dai loro volti, ne uscirono con molto sollievo. Flambeau aveva conosciuto Quinton negli sfrenati anni di studente a Parigi, e avevano rinnovato la conoscenza per un fine settimana; ma a prescindere dagli sviluppi più responsabili di Flambeau negli ultimi tempi, egli non andava più d’accordo con il poeta. Soffocarsi con l’oppio e scrivere piccoli versi erotici su pergamena non era la sua idea di come un gentiluomo debba andare in malora. Mentre i due indugiavano sulla soglia, prima di fare un giro in giardino, il cancello del giardino d’ingresso fu spalancato con violenza, e un giovane con una bombetta rovesciata sulla nuca inciampò su per gli scalini nella sua foga. Era un giovanotto dall’aria dissipata, con una vistosa cravatta rossa tutta di traverso, come se ci avesse dormito, e non smetteva di agitarsi e di frustare l’aria con uno di quei bastoncini snodati.

“I say,” he said breathlessly, “I want to see old Quinton. I must see him. Has he gone?”

“Mr. Quinton is in, I believe,” said Father Brown, cleaning his pipe, “but I do not know if you can see him. The doctor is with him at present.”

The young man, who seemed not to be perfectly sober, stumbled into the hall; and at the same moment the doctor came out of Quinton’s study, shutting the door and beginning to put on his gloves.

“See Mr. Quinton?” said the doctor coolly. “No, I’m afraid you can’t. In fact, you mustn’t on any account. Nobody must see him; I’ve just given him his sleeping draught.”

“No, but look here, old chap,” said the youth in the red tie, trying affectionately to capture the doctor by the lapels of his coat. “Look here. I’m simply sewn up, I tell you. I—”

“It’s no good, Mr. Atkinson,” said the doctor, forcing him to fall back; “when you can alter the effects of a drug I’ll alter my decision,” and, settling on his hat, he stepped out into the sunlight with the other two. He was a bull-necked, good-tempered little man with a small moustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an impression of capacity.

The young man in the billycock, who did not seem to be gifted with any tact in dealing with people beyond the general idea of clutching hold of their coats, stood outside the door, as dazed as if he had been thrown out bodily, and silently watched the other three walk away together through the garden.

“That was a sound, spanking lie I told just now,” remarked the medical man, laughing. “In point of fact, poor Quinton doesn’t have his sleeping draught for nearly half an hour. But I’m not going to have him bothered with that little beast, who only wants to borrow money that he wouldn’t pay back if he could. He’s a dirty little scamp, though he is Mrs. Quinton’s brother, and she’s as fine a woman as ever walked.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown. “She’s a good woman.”

“So I propose to hang about the garden till the creature has cleared off,” went on the doctor, “and then I’ll go in to Quinton with the medicine. Atkinson can’t get in, because I locked the door.”

“In that case, Dr. Harris,” said Flambeau, “we might as well walk round at the back by the end of the conservatory. There’s no entrance to it that way, but it’s worth seeing, even from the outside.”

“Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient,” laughed the doctor, “for he prefers to lie on an ottoman right at the end of the conservatory amid all those blood-red poinsettias; it would give me the creeps. But what are you doing?”

Father Brown had stopped for a moment, and picked up out of the long grass, where it had almost been wholly hidden, a queer, crooked Oriental knife, inlaid exquisitely in coloured stones and metals.

“What is this?” asked Father Brown, regarding it with some disfavour.

“Oh, Quinton’s, I suppose,” said Dr. Harris carelessly; “he has all sorts of Chinese knickknacks about the place. Or perhaps it belongs to that mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps on a string.”

“What Hindoo?” asked Father Brown, still staring at the dagger in his hand.

“Oh, some Indian conjuror,” said the doctor lightly; “a fraud, of course.”

“You don’t believe in magic?” asked Father Brown, without looking up.

“O crickey! magic!” said the doctor.

“It’s very beautiful,” said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; “the colours are very beautiful. But it’s the wrong shape.”

“What for?” asked Flambeau, staring.

“For anything. It’s the wrong shape in the abstract. Don’t you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in a Turkey carpet.”

“Mon Dieu!” cried Flambeau, laughing.

“They are letters and symbols in a language I don’t know; but I know they stand for evil words,” went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. “The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling to escape.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” said the doctor with a loud laugh.

Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. “The Father sometimes gets this mystic’s cloud on him,” he said; “but I give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it except when there was some evil quite near.”

“Oh, rats!” said the scientist.

“Why, look at it,” cried Father Brown, holding out the crooked knife at arm’s length, as if it were some glittering snake. “Don’t you see it is the wrong shape? Don’t you see that it has no hearty and plain purpose? It does not point like a spear. It does not sweep like a scythe. It does not look like a weapon. It looks like an instrument of torture.”

“Well, as you don’t seem to like it,” said the jolly Harris, “it had better be taken back to its owner. Haven’t we come to the end of this confounded conservatory yet? This house is the wrong shape, if you like.”

“You don’t understand,” said Father Brown, shaking his head. “The shape of this house is quaint—it is even laughable. But there is nothing wrong about it.”

As they spoke they came round the curve of glass that ended the conservatory, an uninterrupted curve, for there was neither door nor window by which to enter at that end. The glass, however, was clear, and the sun still bright, though beginning to set; and they could see not only the flamboyant blossoms inside, but the frail figure of the poet in a brown velvet coat lying languidly on the sofa, having, apparently, fallen half asleep over a book. He was a pale, slight man, with loose, chestnut hair and a fringe of beard that was the paradox of his face, for the beard made him look less manly. These traits were well known to all three of them; but even had it not been so, it may be doubted whether they would have looked at Quinton just then. Their eyes were riveted on another object.

Exactly in their path, immediately outside the round end of the glass building, was standing a tall man, whose drapery fell to his feet in faultless white, and whose bare, brown skull, face, and neck gleamed in the setting sun like splendid bronze. He was looking through the glass at the sleeper, and he was more motionless than a mountain.

«Senta un po’», disse ansimando, «voglio vedere il vecchio Quinton. Devo vederlo. Se n’è andato?»

«Il signor Quinton è in casa, credo», disse Padre Brown, pulendo la pipa, «ma non so se potrà vederlo. In questo momento è con lui il medico.»

Il giovane, che non pareva del tutto sobrio, entrò barcollando nell’atrio; e nel medesimo istante il medico uscì dallo studio di Quinton, chiudendo la porta e cominciando a infilarsi i guanti.

«Vedere il signor Quinton?» disse il medico con freddezza. «No, temo che non possa. Anzi, non deve a nessun costo. Nessuno deve vederlo; gli ho appena dato la sua pozione soporifera.»

«No, ma senta un po’, vecchio mio», disse il giovanotto dalla cravatta rossa, tentando affettuosamente di ghermire il medico per i risvolti della giacca. «Senta. Sono con l’acqua alla gola, glielo dico io. Io…»

«Non c’è niente da fare, signor Atkinson», disse il medico, costringendolo a indietreggiare; «quando saprà alterare gli effetti di una droga, io altererò la mia decisione», e, calcandosi il cappello, uscì nella luce del sole con gli altri due. Era un ometto dal collo taurino e dal buon carattere, con un piccolo paio di baffi, inesprimibilmente ordinario, eppure capace di dare un’impressione di competenza.

Il giovane con la bombetta, che non pareva dotato di alcun tatto nel trattare con la gente al di là dell’idea generale di afferrarne le giacche, rimase fuori della porta, stordito come se fosse stato buttato fuori di peso, e in silenzio guardò gli altri tre allontanarsi insieme attraverso il giardino.

«Bella e sonora la bugia che ho detto poco fa», osservò il medico ridendo. «A dire il vero, il povero Quinton non prende la sua pozione soporifera se non fra quasi mezz’ora. Ma non ho nessuna intenzione di lasciarlo importunare da quel bestiolo, che vuole soltanto farsi prestare del denaro che non restituirebbe nemmeno se potesse. È un lurido mascalzoncello, benché sia il fratello della signora Quinton, e lei è la donna più squisita che abbia mai calcato la terra.»

«Sì», disse Padre Brown. «È una brava donna.»

«Perciò mi propongo di gironzolare per il giardino finché quella creatura non se ne sia andata», proseguì il medico, «e poi entrerò da Quinton con la medicina. Atkinson non può entrare, perché ho chiuso la porta a chiave.»

«In tal caso, dottor Harris», disse Flambeau, «tanto varrebbe fare il giro sul retro, fino in fondo alla serra. Da quella parte non c’è ingresso, ma vale la pena di vederla, anche solo dall’esterno.»

«Sì, e potrei dare una sbirciatina al mio paziente», rise il medico, «perché preferisce sdraiarsi su un’ottomana proprio in fondo alla serra in mezzo a tutte quelle poinsettie rosso sangue; a me verrebbero i brividi. Ma che cosa state facendo?»

Padre Brown si era fermato un istante, e aveva raccolto dall’erba alta, dove era rimasto quasi del tutto nascosto, uno strano coltello orientale ricurvo, squisitamente intarsiato di pietre e metalli colorati.

«Che cos’è questo?» chiese Padre Brown, osservandolo con una certa avversione.

«Oh, di Quinton, immagino», disse il dottor Harris con noncuranza; «ha ogni sorta di ninnoli cinesi in giro per la casa. Oppure appartiene a quel mite indù che si tiene al guinzaglio.»

«Quale indù?» chiese Padre Brown, ancora fissando il pugnale che teneva in mano.

«Oh, un prestigiatore indiano», disse il medico con leggerezza; «un impostore, s’intende.»

«Non crede nella magia?» chiese Padre Brown, senza alzare lo sguardo.

«Perbacco! La magia!» disse il medico.

«È molto bello», disse il prete con voce bassa e sognante; «i colori sono molto belli. Ma ha la forma sbagliata.»

«Sbagliata per cosa?» chiese Flambeau, fissandolo.

«Per qualsiasi cosa. Ha la forma sbagliata in astratto. Non lo sentite mai, questo, davanti all’arte orientale? I colori sono inebrianti di bellezza; ma le forme sono meschine e cattive — deliberatamente meschine e cattive. Ho visto cose malvagie in un tappeto turco.»

«Mon Dieu!» esclamò Flambeau ridendo.

«Sono lettere e simboli in una lingua che non conosco; ma so che stanno per parole malvagie», proseguì il prete, con la voce che si abbassava sempre di più. «Le linee vanno storte apposta — come serpenti che si ripiegano per fuggire.»

«Che diavolo state dicendo?» disse il medico con una sonora risata.

Flambeau gli rispose sottovoce. «A volte al Padre viene addosso questa nube da mistico», disse; «ma vi avverto lealmente che non l’ho mai visto averla se non quando c’era qualcosa di malvagio proprio lì vicino.»

«Oh, sciocchezze!» disse lo scienziato.

«Ma guardatelo», esclamò Padre Brown, tenendo il coltello ricurvo a distanza di braccio, come se fosse un serpente scintillante. «Non vedete che ha la forma sbagliata? Non vedete che non ha alcuno scopo schietto e semplice? Non punta come una lancia. Non falcia come una falce. Non ha l’aria di un’arma. Ha l’aria di uno strumento di tortura.»

«Be’, dal momento che a lei non sembra piacere», disse l’allegro Harris, «sarà meglio riportarlo al suo proprietario. Non siamo ancora arrivati in fondo a questa maledetta serra? Questa casa, se è per questo, ha la forma sbagliata.»

«Lei non capisce», disse Padre Brown scuotendo il capo. «La forma di questa casa è bizzarra — è persino ridicola. Ma non c’è nulla di sbagliato in essa.»

Mentre parlavano giunsero alla curva di vetro che chiudeva la serra, una curva ininterrotta, perché non vi era né porta né finestra da cui entrare a quell’estremità. Il vetro, tuttavia, era trasparente, e il sole ancora luminoso, benché cominciasse a calare; e potevano vedere non solo le fioriture fiammeggianti là dentro, ma la fragile figura del poeta in una giacca di velluto marrone, sdraiato languidamente sul divano, essendosi, a quanto pareva, mezzo addormentato su un libro. Era un uomo pallido ed esile, con radi capelli castani e una frangia di barba che era il paradosso del suo volto, poiché la barba lo faceva sembrare meno virile. Questi tratti erano ben noti a tutti e tre; ma anche se non fosse stato così, è dubbio che avrebbero guardato Quinton in quel momento. I loro occhi erano inchiodati su un altro oggetto.

Esattamente sul loro cammino, immediatamente fuori dell’estremità arrotondata dell’edificio di vetro, stava in piedi un uomo alto, le cui vesti scendevano fino ai piedi in un bianco immacolato, e il cui cranio bruno e nudo, il volto e il collo, luccicavano nel sole calante come splendido bronzo. Guardava attraverso il vetro il dormiente, ed era più immobile di una montagna.

“Who is that?” cried Father Brown, stepping back with a hissing intake of his breath.

“Oh, it is only that Hindoo humbug,” growled Harris; “but I don’t know what the deuce he’s doing here.”

“It looks like hypnotism,” said Flambeau, biting his black moustache.

“Why are you unmedical fellows always talking bosh about hypnotism?” cried the doctor. “It looks a deal more like burglary.”

“Well, we will speak to it, at any rate,” said Flambeau, who was always for action. One long stride took him to the place where the Indian stood. Bowing from his great height, which overtopped even the Oriental’s, he said with placid impudence:

“Good evening, sir. Do you want anything?”

Quite slowly, like a great ship turning into a harbour, the great yellow face turned, and looked at last over its white shoulder. They were startled to see that its yellow eyelids were quite sealed, as in sleep. “Thank you,” said the face in excellent English. “I want nothing.” Then, half opening the lids, so as to show a slit of opalescent eyeball, he repeated, “I want nothing.” Then he opened his eyes wide with a startling stare, said, “I want nothing,” and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening garden.

“The Christian is more modest,” muttered Father Brown; “he wants something.”

“What on earth was he doing?” asked Flambeau, knitting his black brows and lowering his voice.

“I should like to talk to you later,” said Father Brown.

The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it. They turned round the end of the conservatory, and walked in silence down the other side to get round to the front door. As they went they seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird, in the deeper corner between the study and the main building; and again they saw the white-robed fakir slide out of the shadow, and slip round towards the front door. To their surprise, however, he had not been alone. They found themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish their bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy golden hair and square pale face, advancing on them out of the twilight. She looked a little stern, but was entirely courteous.

“Good evening, Dr. Harris,” was all she said.

“Good evening, Mrs. Quinton,” said the little doctor heartily. “I am just going to give your husband his sleeping draught.”

“Yes,” she said in a clear voice. “I think it is quite time.” And she smiled at them, and went sweeping into the house.

“That woman’s over-driven,” said Father Brown; “that’s the kind of woman that does her duty for twenty years, and then does something dreadful.”

The little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye of interest. “Did you ever study medicine?” he asked.

“You have to know something of the mind as well as the body,” answered the priest; “we have to know something of the body as well as the mind.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “I think I’ll go and give Quinton his stuff.”

They had turned the corner of the front facade, and were approaching the front doorway. As they turned into it they saw the man in the white robe for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that it seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was locked.

Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on the impossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging about, humming and poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor’s face had a spasm of disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: “I must lock the door again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out again in two minutes.”

He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, just balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door open for an instant, and called out: “Oh, I say, Quinton, I want—”

From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in something between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter.

“Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I’m writing a song about peacocks.”

Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through the aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singular dexterity.

“So that’s settled,” said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, he led the way out into the garden.

“Poor Leonard can get a little peace now,” he added to Father Brown; “he’s locked in all by himself for an hour or two.”

“Yes,” answered the priest; “and his voice sounded jolly enough when we left him.” Then he looked gravely round the garden, and saw the loose figure of Atkinson standing and jingling the half-sovereign in his pocket, and beyond, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian sitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass with his face turned towards the setting sun. Then he said abruptly: “Where is Mrs. Quinton!”

“She has gone up to her room,” said the doctor. “That is her shadow on the blind.”

Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinised a dark outline at the gas-lit window.

“Yes,” he said, “that is her shadow,” and he walked a yard or two and threw himself upon a garden seat.

Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of those energetic people who live naturally on their legs. He walked away, smoking, into the twilight, and the two friends were left together.

“My father,” said Flambeau in French, “what is the matter with you?”

«Chi è quello?» esclamò Padre Brown, indietreggiando con un sibilante tirare di fiato.

«Oh, è solo quell’imbroglione di indù», brontolò Harris; «ma non so che diamine ci faccia qui.»

«Ha l’aria di ipnotismo», disse Flambeau, mordendosi i baffi neri.

«Perché voi profani della medicina parlate sempre di ipnotismo a vanvera?» esclamò il medico. «Ha molto più l’aria di un furto con scasso.»

«Be’, in ogni caso gli rivolgeremo la parola», disse Flambeau, che era sempre per l’azione. Una sola lunga falcata lo portò dove stava l’indiano. Inchinandosi dalla sua grande statura, che sovrastava perfino quella dell’orientale, disse con placida sfrontatezza:

«Buona sera, signore. Desidera qualcosa?»

Assai lentamente, come un grande vascello che entra in porto, il grande volto giallo si volse, e guardò infine al di sopra della spalla bianca. Trasalirono nel vedere che le palpebre gialle erano del tutto sigillate, come nel sonno. «Grazie», disse il volto in eccellente inglese. «Non desidero nulla.» Poi, socchiudendo le palpebre in modo da mostrare una fessura di bulbo opalescente, ripeté: «Non desidero nulla.» Poi spalancò gli occhi con uno sguardo fisso e sorprendente, disse: «Non desidero nulla», e se ne andò frusciando nel giardino che rapidamente si oscurava.

«Il cristiano è più modesto», mormorò Padre Brown; «egli desidera qualcosa.»

«Che diavolo stava facendo?» chiese Flambeau, aggrottando le nere sopracciglia e abbassando la voce.

«Vorrei parlartene più tardi», disse Padre Brown.

La luce del sole era ancora una realtà, ma era la luce rossa della sera, e la massa degli alberi e dei cespugli del giardino si faceva sempre più nera contro di essa. Girarono attorno all’estremità della serra, e camminarono in silenzio lungo l’altro lato per raggiungere la porta d’ingresso. Mentre andavano parvero risvegliare qualcosa, come si fa alzare un uccello, nell’angolo più fondo tra lo studio e il corpo principale dell’edificio; e di nuovo videro il fachiro in veste bianca scivolar fuori dall’ombra, e sgusciare verso la porta d’ingresso. Con loro sorpresa, tuttavia, non era stato solo. Si trovarono bruscamente arrestati e costretti a scacciare il loro smarrimento dall’apparire della signora Quinton, con i suoi pesanti capelli dorati e il viso quadrato e pallido, che avanzava verso di loro fuori dal crepuscolo. Aveva un’aria un po’ severa, ma era del tutto cortese.

«Buona sera, dottor Harris», fu tutto ciò che disse.

«Buona sera, signora Quinton», disse cordialmente l’ometto medico. «Sto giusto per andare a dare a suo marito la sua pozione soporifera.»

«Sì», disse con voce chiara. «Credo che sia proprio ora.» E sorrise loro, e s’incamminò maestosa dentro casa.

«Quella donna è sovraffaticata», disse Padre Brown; «è il tipo di donna che compie il proprio dovere per vent’anni, e poi fa qualcosa di terribile.»

L’ometto medico lo guardò per la prima volta con occhio d’interesse. «Ha mai studiato medicina?» chiese.

«Bisogna sapere qualcosa della mente non meno che del corpo», rispose il prete; «noi dobbiamo sapere qualcosa del corpo non meno che della mente.»

«Be’», disse il medico, «credo che andrò a dare a Quinton la sua roba.»

Avevano voltato l’angolo della facciata anteriore, e si avvicinavano alla soglia d’ingresso. Mentre vi si voltavano videro per la terza volta l’uomo nella veste bianca. Veniva così diritto verso la porta d’ingresso che pareva del tutto incredibile che non fosse appena uscito dallo studio di fronte a essa. Eppure sapevano che la porta dello studio era chiusa a chiave.

Padre Brown e Flambeau, tuttavia, si tennero per sé questa bizzarra contraddizione, e il dottor Harris non era uomo da sprecare i propri pensieri sull’impossibile. Permise all’onnipresente asiatico di fare la sua uscita, e poi entrò con passo spedito nell’atrio. Là trovò una figura che aveva già dimenticato. L’inetto Atkinson bighellonava ancora, canticchiando e frugando le cose con il suo bastone nodoso. Il volto del medico ebbe uno spasmo di disgusto e di decisione, ed egli sussurrò rapidamente al suo compagno: «Devo chiudere di nuovo la porta a chiave, o questo topo entrerà. Ma sarò di nuovo fuori tra due minuti.»

Aprì rapidamente la porta e la richiuse a chiave dietro di sé, sventando appena una carica goffa del giovane con la bombetta. Il giovane si buttò con impazienza su una sedia dell’atrio. Flambeau guardava una miniatura persiana alla parete; Padre Brown, che pareva in una sorta di stordimento, fissava ottusamente la porta. In circa quattro minuti la porta fu riaperta. Atkinson questa volta fu più svelto. Balzò avanti, tenne la porta aperta per un istante, e gridò: «Ehi, senta, Quinton, voglio…»

Dall’altra estremità dello studio giunse la voce chiara di Quinton, in qualcosa tra uno sbadiglio e un urlo di stanca risata.

«Oh, lo so che cosa vuoi. Prendilo, e lasciami in pace. Sto scrivendo una canzone sui pavoni.»

Prima che la porta si chiudesse, mezza sterlina d’oro volò attraverso lo spiraglio; e Atkinson, inciampando in avanti, la afferrò con singolare destrezza.

«Ecco fatto, è sistemato», disse il medico, e, chiudendo la porta a chiave con ferocia, li guidò fuori nel giardino.

«Il povero Leonard può avere un po’ di pace, adesso», aggiunse rivolto a Padre Brown; «è chiuso a chiave tutto solo per un’ora o due.»

«Sì», rispose il prete; «e la sua voce suonava piuttosto allegra quando lo lasciammo.» Poi si guardò gravemente attorno per il giardino, e vide la sciolta figura di Atkinson che stava in piedi facendo tintinnare la mezza sterlina in tasca, e più in là, nel crepuscolo purpureo, la figura dell’indiano seduto ben eretto su un argine erboso, con il volto rivolto verso il sole calante. Poi disse bruscamente: «Dov’è la signora Quinton?»

«È salita nella sua stanza», disse il medico. «Quella è la sua ombra sulla tendina.»

Padre Brown alzò lo sguardo, e scrutò accigliato una scura sagoma alla finestra illuminata a gas.

«Sì», disse, «quella è la sua ombra», e fece un paio di passi e si gettò su una panchina del giardino.

Flambeau si sedette accanto a lui; ma il medico era uno di quegli individui energici che vivono naturalmente sulle proprie gambe. Si allontanò, fumando, nel crepuscolo, e i due amici rimasero soli insieme.

«Padre mio», disse Flambeau in francese, «che cosa avete?»

Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute, then he said: “Superstition is irreligious, but there is something in the air of this place. I think it’s that Indian—at least, partly.”

He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of the Indian, who still sat rigid as if in prayer. At first sight he seemed motionless, but as Father Brown watched him he saw that the man swayed ever so slightly with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayed ever so slightly in the wind that was creeping up the dim garden paths and shuffling the fallen leaves a little.

The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a storm, but they could still see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a listless face; Quinton’s wife was still at her window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of the conservatory; they could see his cigar like a will-o’-the-wisp; and the fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began to rock and almost to roar. Storm was certainly coming.

“When that Indian spoke to us,” went on Brown in a conversational undertone, “I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he said ‘I want nothing,’ it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, ‘I want nothing,’ and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, ‘I want nothing,’ he said it with blazing eyes. And I knew that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desire and his home; that he was weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation, the mere destruction of everything or anything—”

Two drops of rain fell; and for some reason Flambeau started and looked up, as if they had stung him. And the same instant the doctor down by the end of the conservatory began running towards them, calling out something as he ran.

As he came among them like a bombshell the restless Atkinson happened to be taking a turn nearer to the house front; and the doctor clutched him by the collar in a convulsive grip. “Foul play!” he cried; “what have you been doing to him, you dog?”

The priest had sprung erect, and had the voice of steel of a soldier in command.

“No fighting,” he cried coolly; “we are enough to hold anyone we want to. What is the matter, doctor?”

“Things are not right with Quinton,” said the doctor, quite white. “I could just see him through the glass, and I don’t like the way he’s lying. It’s not as I left him, anyhow.”

“Let us go in to him,” said Father Brown shortly. “You can leave Mr. Atkinson alone. I have had him in sight since we heard Quinton’s voice.”

“I will stop here and watch him,” said Flambeau hurriedly. “You go in and see.”

The doctor and the priest flew to the study door, unlocked it, and fell into the room. In doing so they nearly fell over the large mahogany table in the centre at which the poet usually wrote; for the place was lit only by a small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of this table lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on purpose. The doctor snatched it up, glanced at it, handed it to Father Brown, and crying, “Good God, look at that!” plunged toward the glass room beyond, where the terrible tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson memory of the sunset.

Father Brown read the words three times before he put down the paper. The words were: “I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!” They were in the quite inimitable, not to say illegible, handwriting of Leonard Quinton.

Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, strode towards the conservatory, only to meet his medical friend coming back with a face of assurance and collapse. “He’s done it,” said Harris.

They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty of cactus and azalea and found Leonard Quinton, poet and romancer, with his head hanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground. Into his left side was thrust the queer dagger that they had picked up in the garden, and his limp hand still rested on the hilt.

Outside the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge, and garden and glass roof were darkened with driving rain. Father Brown seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it close to his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held it up against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared at them for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.

Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown’s voice said out of the dark: “Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape.”

“What do you mean?” asked Doctor Harris, with a frowning stare.

“It isn’t square,” answered Brown. “It has a sort of edge snipped off at the corner. What does it mean?”

“How the deuce should I know?” growled the doctor. “Shall we move this poor chap, do you think? He’s quite dead.”

“No,” answered the priest; “we must leave him as he lies and send for the police.” But he was still scrutinising the paper.

As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and picked up a small pair of nail scissors. “Ah,” he said, with a sort of relief, “this is what he did it with. But yet—” And he knitted his brows.

“Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper,” said the doctor emphatically. “It was a fad of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut all his paper like that,” as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper still unused on another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and held up a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.

“Quite so,” he said. “And here I see the corners that were snipped off.” And to the indignation of his colleague he began to count them.

Padre Brown rimase muto e immobile per mezzo minuto, poi disse: «La superstizione è irreligiosa, ma c’è qualcosa nell’aria di questo luogo. Credo che sia quell’indiano — almeno, in parte.»

Sprofondò nel silenzio, e osservò la lontana sagoma dell’indiano, che sedeva ancora rigido come in preghiera. A prima vista pareva immobile, ma mentre Padre Brown lo osservava vide che l’uomo oscillava impercettibilmente con un movimento ritmico, proprio come le scure cime degli alberi oscillavano impercettibilmente nel vento che risaliva i vialetti oscuri del giardino e smuoveva un poco le foglie cadute.

Il paesaggio si faceva rapidamente scuro, come in vista di una tempesta, ma potevano ancora vedere tutte le figure ai loro vari posti. Atkinson era appoggiato a un albero con volto svogliato; la moglie di Quinton era ancora alla sua finestra; il medico se n’era andato a zonzo attorno all’estremità della serra; potevano vedere il suo sigaro come un fuoco fatuo; e il fachiro sedeva ancora rigido eppure dondolante, mentre gli alberi sopra di lui cominciavano a dondolare e quasi a ruggire. La tempesta stava certamente arrivando.

«Quando quell’indiano ci ha rivolto la parola», proseguì Brown in tono discorsivo e sommesso, «ho avuto una sorta di visione, una visione di lui e di tutto il suo universo. Eppure non ha detto che tre volte la stessa cosa. Quando disse la prima volta ‘Non desidero nulla’, voleva dire soltanto che era impenetrabile, che l’Asia non si dà mai. Poi disse di nuovo ‘Non desidero nulla’, e capii che intendeva dire che era sufficiente a se stesso, come un cosmo, che non aveva bisogno di alcun Dio, né ammetteva alcun peccato. E quando disse la terza volta ‘Non desidero nulla’, lo disse con occhi fiammeggianti. E capii che intendeva alla lettera ciò che diceva; che il nulla era il suo desiderio e la sua dimora; che spasimava per il nulla come per il vino; che l’annientamento, la mera distruzione di ogni cosa o di qualunque cosa…»

Caddero due gocce di pioggia; e per qualche ragione Flambeau trasalì e alzò lo sguardo, come se lo avessero punto. E nello stesso istante il medico, laggiù in fondo alla serra, cominciò a correre verso di loro, gridando qualcosa mentre correva.

Mentre piombava tra loro come una bomba, l’irrequieto Atkinson si era per caso avvicinato di qualche passo alla facciata della casa; e il medico lo afferrò per il colletto con stretta convulsa. «Delitto!» gridò; «che cosa gli avete fatto, cane che non siete altro?»

Il prete era balzato in piedi, e aveva la voce d’acciaio di un soldato che comanda.

«Niente risse», gridò con freddezza; «siamo abbastanza per trattenere chiunque vogliamo. Che cosa succede, dottore?»

«Le cose non vanno bene con Quinton», disse il medico, bianco in volto. «Sono riuscito a vederlo appena attraverso il vetro, e non mi piace il modo in cui giace. In ogni caso, non è come l’avevo lasciato.»

«Andiamo da lui», disse Padre Brown in tono secco. «Può lasciar stare il signor Atkinson in pace. L’ho tenuto d’occhio da quando abbiamo sentito la voce di Quinton.»

«Io resto qui a sorvegliarlo», disse Flambeau in fretta. «Entrate voi e andate a vedere.»

Il medico e il prete volarono alla porta dello studio, la aprirono, e si precipitarono nella stanza. Così facendo, per poco non caddero sul grande tavolo di mogano al centro, a cui il poeta soleva scrivere; poiché il luogo era illuminato soltanto da un piccolo fuoco tenuto acceso per il malato. In mezzo a questo tavolo giaceva un unico foglio di carta, evidentemente lasciato lì a bella posta. Il medico lo afferrò, vi diede un’occhiata, lo porse a Padre Brown, e gridando: «Buon Dio, guardi qua!» si slanciò verso la stanza di vetro al di là, dove i terribili fiori tropicali parevano ancora conservare un cremisi ricordo del tramonto.

Padre Brown lesse le parole tre volte prima di posare il foglio. Le parole erano: «Muoio per mia propria mano; eppure muoio assassinato!» Erano nella del tutto inimitabile, per non dire illeggibile, calligrafia di Leonard Quinton.

Poi Padre Brown, sempre tenendo il foglio in mano, si diresse a grandi passi verso la serra, solo per incontrare il suo amico medico che tornava indietro con un volto insieme sicuro e affranto. «L’ha fatto», disse Harris.

Passarono insieme attraverso la sfarzosa, innaturale bellezza di cactus e azalee e trovarono Leonard Quinton, poeta e romanziere, con il capo penzolante giù dall’ottomana e i riccioli rossi che spazzavano il suolo. Nel fianco sinistro gli era conficcato lo strano pugnale che avevano raccolto in giardino, e la sua mano floscia riposava ancora sull’impugnatura.

Fuori la tempesta era arrivata d’un sol passo, come la notte in Coleridge, e il giardino e il tetto di vetro erano oscurati dalla pioggia sferzante. Padre Brown pareva studiare il foglio più che il cadavere; lo teneva vicino agli occhi; e pareva tentare di leggerlo nel crepuscolo. Poi lo tenne alzato contro la debole luce, e, mentre lo faceva, il lampo li fissò per un istante così bianco che il foglio parve nero contro di esso.

Seguì un buio pieno di tuono, e dopo il tuono la voce di Padre Brown disse dal buio: «Dottore, questo foglio ha la forma sbagliata.»

«Che cosa intende?» chiese il dottor Harris, con uno sguardo accigliato.

«Non è quadrato», rispose Brown. «Ha una sorta di bordo tagliato via all’angolo. Che cosa significa?»

«Come diamine dovrei saperlo?» brontolò il medico. «Crede che dovremmo spostare questo poveretto? È del tutto morto.»

«No», rispose il prete; «dobbiamo lasciarlo come giace e mandare a chiamare la polizia.» Ma stava ancora scrutando il foglio.

Mentre tornavano indietro attraverso lo studio, egli si fermò accanto al tavolo e raccolse un piccolo paio di forbicine da unghie. «Ah», disse, con una sorta di sollievo, «ecco con che cosa l’ha fatto. Eppure…» E aggrottò le sopracciglia.

«Oh, la smetta di trastullarsi con quel pezzo di carta», disse il medico con enfasi. «Era una sua mania. Ne aveva a centinaia. Tagliava tutta la sua carta così», mentre indicava una pila di carta da sermoni ancora inutilizzata su un altro tavolo più piccolo. Padre Brown vi si avvicinò e sollevò un foglio. Aveva la stessa forma irregolare.

«Proprio così», disse. «E qui vedo gli angoli che sono stati tagliati via.» E, con indignazione del collega, cominciò a contarli.

“That’s all right,” he said, with an apologetic smile. “Twenty-three sheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off them. And as I see you are impatient we will rejoin the others.”

“Who is to tell his wife?” asked Dr. Harris. “Will you go and tell her now, while I send a servant for the police?”

“As you will,” said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to the hall door.

Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed nothing less than his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of the steps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his billycock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau’s almost paternal custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch’s abdication.

Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, when the priest patted him easily on the shoulder.

“Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend,” he said. “Beg a mutual pardon and say ‘Good night.’ We need not detain him any longer.” Then, as Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick and went towards the garden gate, Father Brown said in a more serious voice: “Where is that Indian?”

They all three (for the doctor had joined them) turned involuntarily towards the dim grassy bank amid the tossing trees purple with twilight, where they had last seen the brown man swaying in his strange prayers. The Indian was gone.

“Confound him,” cried the doctor, stamping furiously. “Now I know that it was that nigger that did it.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic,” said Father Brown quietly.

“No more I did,” said the doctor, rolling his eyes. “I only know that I loathed that yellow devil when I thought he was a sham wizard. And I shall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one.”

“Well, his having escaped is nothing,” said Flambeau. “For we could have proved nothing and done nothing against him. One hardly goes to the parish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft or auto-suggestion.”

Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went to break the news to the wife of the dead man.

When he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic, but what passed between them in that interview was never known, even when all was known.

Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see his friend reappear so soon at his elbow; but Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor apart. “You have sent for the police, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Harris. “They ought to be here in ten minutes.”

“Will you do me a favour?” said the priest quietly. “The truth is, I make a collection of these curious stories, which often contain, as in the case of our Hindoo friend, elements which can hardly be put into a police report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for my private use. Yours is a clever trade,” he said, looking the doctor gravely and steadily in the face. “I sometimes think that you know some details of this matter which you have not thought fit to mention. Mine is a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat anything you write for me in strict confidence. But write the whole.”

The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little on one side, looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said: “All right,” and went into the study, closing the door behind him.

“Flambeau,” said Father Brown, “there is a long seat there under the veranda, where we can smoke out of the rain. You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”

They established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; Father Brown, against his common habit, accepted a good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence, while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of the veranda.

“My friend,” he said at length, “this is a very queer case. A very queer case.”

“I should think it was,” said Flambeau, with something like a shudder.

“You call it queer, and I call it queer,” said the other, “and yet we mean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mystery in the sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil) instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now, you mean that this business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it is witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of men. But for the present my point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think, then it is marvellous; but it is not mysterious—that is, it is not complicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple. Now, the manner of this business has been the reverse of simple.”

The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder. Father Brown let fall the ash of his cigar and went on:

“There has been in this incident,” he said, “a twisted, ugly, complex quality that does not belong to the straight bolts either of heaven or hell. As one knows the crooked track of a snail, I know the crooked track of a man.”

The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut up again, and the priest went on:

“Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that piece of paper. It was crookeder than the dagger that killed him.”

“You mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his suicide,” said Flambeau.

«Va tutto bene», disse, con un sorriso di scusa. «Ventitré fogli tagliati e ventidue angoli tagliati via da essi. E poiché vedo che è impaziente, andremo a raggiungere gli altri.»

«Chi deve dirlo a sua moglie?» chiese il dottor Harris. «Vuole andare a dirglielo adesso, mentre io mando un domestico a chiamare la polizia?»

«Come vuole», disse Padre Brown con indifferenza. E andò verso la porta d’ingresso.

Anche qui trovò un dramma, benché di sorta più grottesca. Non mostrava niente meno che il suo grosso amico Flambeau in un atteggiamento al quale da tempo non era più avvezzo, mentre sul vialetto in fondo agli scalini giaceva sdraiato con gli stivali in aria l’amabile Atkinson, con la sua bombetta e il bastone da passeggio scagliati in direzioni opposte lungo il vialetto. Atkinson si era alla fine stancato della custodia quasi paterna di Flambeau, e aveva tentato di stenderlo, il che non era affatto un gioco liscio da fare col Roi des Apaches, anche dopo l’abdicazione di quel monarca.

Flambeau stava per balzare sul suo nemico e assicurarselo di nuovo, quando il prete gli diede un colpetto leggero sulla spalla.

«Faccia pace con il signor Atkinson, amico mio», disse. «Chiedetevi mutuo perdono e ditevi ‘Buona notte’. Non è più necessario trattenerlo.» Poi, mentre Atkinson si rialzava un po’ esitante e raccoglieva cappello e bastone e s’incamminava verso il cancello del giardino, Padre Brown disse con voce più grave: «Dov’è quell’indiano?»

Tutti e tre (perché il medico si era unito a loro) si voltarono involontariamente verso il fioco argine erboso in mezzo agli alberi agitati e purpurei di crepuscolo, dove per l’ultima volta avevano visto l’uomo bruno oscillare nelle sue strane preghiere. L’indiano era scomparso.

«Che sia maledetto», gridò il medico, pestando i piedi furiosamente. «Adesso so che è stato quel negro a farlo.»

«Credevo che lei non credesse nella magia», disse Padre Brown con calma.

«E infatti non ci credevo», disse il medico, roteando gli occhi. «So soltanto che ho detestato quel diavolo giallo quando lo credevo un mago da strapazzo. E lo detesterò ancora di più se dovrò arrivare a pensare che fosse un mago vero.»

«Be’, il fatto che sia fuggito non conta nulla», disse Flambeau. «Perché non avremmo potuto provare nulla né fare nulla contro di lui. Non si va certo dal poliziotto di parrocchia con una storia di suicidio imposto per stregoneria o autosuggestione.»

Intanto Padre Brown si era fatto strada dentro casa, e ora andava a dare la notizia alla moglie del morto.

Quando uscì di nuovo appariva un po’ pallido e tragico, ma ciò che passò tra loro in quel colloquio non fu mai saputo, nemmeno quando tutto fu saputo.

Flambeau, che stava parlando tranquillamente col medico, fu sorpreso di vedere l’amico ricomparire così presto al suo fianco; ma Brown non ci badò, e trasse semplicemente il medico in disparte. «Ha mandato a chiamare la polizia, non è vero?» chiese.

«Sì», rispose Harris. «Dovrebbero essere qui tra dieci minuti.»

«Vuole farmi un favore?» disse il prete con calma. «La verità è che faccio una collezione di queste curiose storie, che spesso contengono, come nel caso del nostro amico indù, elementi che difficilmente si possono mettere in un rapporto di polizia. Ora, vorrei che lei mi scrivesse un resoconto di questo caso per mio uso privato. Il suo è un mestiere abile», disse, guardando il medico gravemente e fissamente in volto. «A volte penso che lei conosca certi particolari di questa faccenda che non ha ritenuto opportuno menzionare. Il mio è un mestiere confidenziale come il suo, e tratterò tutto ciò che lei scriverà per me nella più stretta riservatezza. Ma scriva tutto.»

Il medico, che aveva ascoltato pensosamente con il capo un poco inclinato da un lato, guardò il prete in volto per un istante, e disse: «D’accordo», ed entrò nello studio, chiudendo la porta dietro di sé.

«Flambeau», disse Padre Brown, «c’è una lunga panca laggiù sotto la veranda, dove possiamo fumare al riparo dalla pioggia. Tu sei il mio solo amico al mondo, e voglio parlarti. O, forse, tacere con te.»

Si sistemarono comodamente sulla panca della veranda; Padre Brown, contro la sua consueta abitudine, accettò un buon sigaro e lo fumò senza sosta in silenzio, mentre la pioggia strideva e crepitava sul tetto della veranda.

«Amico mio», disse alla fine, «questo è un caso davvero bizzarro. Un caso davvero bizzarro.»

«Direi proprio di sì», disse Flambeau, con qualcosa di simile a un brivido.

«Tu lo chiami bizzarro, e io lo chiamo bizzarro», disse l’altro, «eppure intendiamo cose del tutto opposte. La mente moderna confonde sempre due idee diverse: il mistero nel senso di ciò che è meraviglioso, e il mistero nel senso di ciò che è complicato. È qui metà della sua difficoltà con i miracoli. Un miracolo è sconcertante; ma è semplice. È semplice proprio perché è un miracolo. È potenza che viene direttamente da Dio (o dal diavolo) invece che indirettamente attraverso la natura o le volontà umane. Ora, tu vuoi dire che questa faccenda è meravigliosa perché è miracolosa, perché è stregoneria operata da un indiano malvagio. Bada, io non dico che non fosse spirituale o diabolica. Il cielo e l’inferno soli sanno per quali circostanti influenze strani peccati entrino nelle vite degli uomini. Ma per ora il mio punto è questo: se fu pura magia, come tu pensi, allora è meravigliosa; ma non è misteriosa — vale a dire, non è complicata. La qualità di un miracolo è misteriosa, ma il suo modo è semplice. Ora, il modo di questa faccenda è stato il contrario del semplice.»

La tempesta, che si era placata per un poco, pareva gonfiarsi di nuovo, e vennero pesanti movimenti come di fioco tuono. Padre Brown lasciò cadere la cenere del sigaro e proseguì:

«C’è stata in questo episodio», disse, «una qualità contorta, brutta, complessa che non appartiene ai fulmini diritti né del cielo né dell’inferno. Come si conosce la traccia storta di una lumaca, io conosco la traccia storta di un uomo.»

Il bianco lampo aprì il suo enorme occhio in un batter di ciglia, il cielo si richiuse, e il prete proseguì:

«Di tutte queste cose storte, la più storta era la forma di quel pezzo di carta. Era più storta del pugnale che lo uccise.»

«Intendi il foglio su cui Quinton confessò il suo suicidio», disse Flambeau.

“I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’” answered Father Brown. “The shape of that paper, my friend, was the wrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I have seen it in this wicked world.”

“It only had a corner snipped off,” said Flambeau, “and I understand that all Quinton’s paper was cut that way.”

“It was a very odd way,” said the other, “and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton—God receive his soul!—was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist, with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can’t prove what I say; I can’t prove anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he could never have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he had wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or binding up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the scissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong shape. Like this. Don’t you remember?”

And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making irregular squares so rapidly that Flambeau really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the darkness— hieroglyphics such as his friend had spoken of, which are undecipherable, yet can have no good meaning.

“But,” said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again and leaned back, staring at the roof, “suppose somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper, make Quinton commit suicide?”

Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took his cigar out of his mouth and said: “Quinton never did commit suicide.”

Flambeau stared at him. “Why, confound it all,” he cried, “then why did he confess to suicide?”

The priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, looked at the ground, and said, in a low, distinct voice: “He never did confess to suicide.”

Flambeau laid his cigar down. “You mean,” he said, “that the writing was forged?”

“No,” said Father Brown. “Quinton wrote it all right.”

“Well, there you are,” said the aggravated Flambeau; “Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’ with his own hand on a plain piece of paper.”

“Of the wrong shape,” said the priest calmly.

“Oh, the shape be damned!” cried Flambeau. “What has the shape to do with it?”

“There were twenty-three snipped papers,” resumed Brown unmoved, “and only twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had been destroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggest anything to you?”

A light dawned on Flambeau’s face, and he said: “There was something else written by Quinton, some other words. ‘They will tell you I die by my own hand,’ or ‘Do not believe that—’”

“Hotter, as the children say,” said his friend. “But the piece was hardly half an inch across; there was no room for one word, let alone five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man with hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him?”

“I can think of nothing,” said Flambeau at last.

“What about quotation marks?” said the priest, and flung his cigar far into the darkness like a shooting star.

All words had left the other man’s mouth, and Father Brown said, like one going back to fundamentals:

“Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism. He—”

At this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and the doctor came out with his hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest’s hands.

“That’s the document you wanted,” he said, “and I must be getting home. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope and read the following words:

DEAR FATHER BROWN,—Vicisti Galilee. Otherwise, damn your

eyes, which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that

there is something in all that stuff of yours after all?

I am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and

in all natural functions and instincts, whether men called them

moral or immoral. Long before I became a doctor, when I was a

schoolboy keeping mice and spiders, I believed that to be a good

animal is the best thing in the world. But just now I am shaken;

I have believed in Nature; but it seems as if Nature could betray

a man. Can there be anything in your bosh? I am really getting

morbid.

I loved Quinton’s wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature

told me to, and it’s love that makes the world go round. I also

thought quite sincerely that she would be happier with a clean

animal like me than with that tormenting little lunatic. What was

there wrong in that? I was only facing facts, like a man of

science. She would have been happier.

According to my own creed I was quite free to kill Quinton,

which was the best thing for everybody, even himself. But as a

healthy animal I had no notion of killing myself. I resolved,

therefore, that I would never do it until I saw a chance that

would leave me scot free. I saw that chance this morning.

I have been three times, all told, into Quinton’s study today.

The first time I went in he would talk about nothing but the weird

tale, called “The Cure of a Saint,” which he was writing, which

was all about how some Indian hermit made an English colonel kill

himself by thinking about him. He showed me the last sheets, and

even read me the last paragraph, which was something like this:

“The conqueror of the Punjab, a mere yellow skeleton, but still

gigantic, managed to lift himself on his elbow and gasp in his

nephew’s ear: ‘I die by my own hand, yet I die murdered!’” It so

happened by one chance out of a hundred, that those last words

«Intendo il foglio su cui Quinton scrisse ‘Muoio per mia propria mano’», rispose Padre Brown. «La forma di quel foglio, amico mio, era la forma sbagliata; la forma sbagliata, se mai ne ho vista una in questo mondo malvagio.»

«Aveva soltanto un angolo tagliato via», disse Flambeau, «e mi risulta che tutta la carta di Quinton fosse tagliata in quel modo.»

«Era un modo assai strano», disse l’altro, «e un modo assai cattivo, per il mio gusto e la mia fantasia. Ascolta, Flambeau, questo Quinton — Dio ne accolga l’anima! — era forse per certi versi un po’ un mascalzone, ma era davvero un artista, con la matita non meno che con la penna. La sua calligrafia, benché difficile da leggere, era ardita e bella. Non posso provare ciò che dico; non posso provare nulla. Ma ti dico con tutta la forza della convinzione che egli non avrebbe mai potuto ritagliare quel meschino pezzetto da un foglio di carta. Se avesse voluto ritagliare la carta per qualche scopo di adattamento, o di rilegatura, o che so io, avrebbe dato tutta un’altra sforbiciata. Ti ricordi la forma? Era una forma meschina. Era una forma sbagliata. Come questa. Non te la ricordi?»

E agitò dinanzi a sé il sigaro acceso nel buio, tracciando quadrati irregolari con tale rapidità che Flambeau davvero parve vederli come geroglifici di fuoco sul buio — geroglifici come quelli di cui l’amico aveva parlato, che sono indecifrabili, eppure non possono avere alcun buon significato.

«Ma», disse Flambeau, mentre il prete si rimetteva il sigaro in bocca e si appoggiava all’indietro, fissando il tetto, «supponi che qualcun altro abbia usato le forbici. Perché mai qualcun altro, tagliando pezzi dalla sua carta da sermoni, avrebbe indotto Quinton a commettere suicidio?»

Padre Brown era ancora appoggiato all’indietro e fissava il tetto, ma si tolse il sigaro di bocca e disse: «Quinton non commise mai suicidio.»

Flambeau lo fissò. «Ma, corpo di mille diavoli», esclamò, «allora perché confessò il suicidio?»

Il prete si sporse di nuovo in avanti, appoggiò i gomiti sulle ginocchia, guardò il suolo, e disse, con voce bassa e distinta: «Non confessò mai il suicidio.»

Flambeau posò il sigaro. «Vuoi dire», disse, «che la scrittura era falsificata?»

«No», disse Padre Brown. «Quinton la scrisse davvero.»

«Ebbene, eccoci qua», disse l’esasperato Flambeau; «Quinton scrisse ‘Muoio per mia propria mano’, di sua propria mano, su un semplice foglio di carta.»

«Della forma sbagliata», disse il prete con calma.

«Oh, al diavolo la forma!» esclamò Flambeau. «Che cosa c’entra la forma con tutto questo?»

«C’erano ventitré fogli tagliati», riprese Brown impassibile, «e solo ventidue pezzi tagliati via. Dunque uno dei pezzi era stato distrutto, probabilmente quello del foglio scritto. Questo ti suggerisce qualcosa?»

Una luce albeggiò sul volto di Flambeau, ed egli disse: «C’era qualcos’altro scritto da Quinton, qualche altra parola. ‘Vi diranno che muoio per mia propria mano’, o ‘Non crediate che…’»

«Più caldo, come dicono i bambini», disse l’amico. «Ma il pezzo era largo appena mezzo pollice; non c’era spazio per una parola, figuriamoci per cinque. Riesci a pensare a qualcosa poco più grande di una virgola, che l’uomo con l’inferno nel cuore ha dovuto strappar via come testimonianza contro di sé?»

«Non riesco a pensare a nulla», disse Flambeau alla fine.

«E le virgolette?» disse il prete, e scagliò il sigaro lontano nel buio come una stella cadente.

Ogni parola era svanita dalla bocca dell’altro, e Padre Brown disse, come chi torna ai fondamenti:

«Leonard Quinton era un romanziere, e stava scrivendo un romanzo orientale intorno alla stregoneria e all’ipnotismo. Egli…»

In quel momento la porta si aprì bruscamente dietro di loro, e il medico uscì col cappello in testa. Mise una lunga busta nelle mani del prete.

«Ecco il documento che voleva», disse, «e io devo tornarmene a casa. Buona notte.»

«Buona notte», disse Padre Brown, mentre il medico si dirigeva a passo spedito verso il cancello. Aveva lasciato aperta la porta d’ingresso, così che un fascio di luce a gas cadeva su di loro. Alla luce di questo Brown aprì la busta e lesse le seguenti parole:

CARO PADRE BROWN, — Vicisti Galilee. Per il resto, che siano maledetti i vostri

occhi, che sono davvero molto penetranti. È mai possibile che

ci sia qualcosa in tutte le vostre fandonie, dopotutto?

Sono un uomo che fin dalla fanciullezza ha creduto nella Natura e

in tutte le funzioni e gli istinti naturali, che gli uomini li chiamassero

morali o immorali. Molto prima di diventare medico, quando ero uno

scolaro che allevava topi e ragni, credevo che essere un buon

animale fosse la cosa migliore al mondo. Ma proprio ora vacillo;

ho creduto nella Natura; eppure sembra che la Natura possa tradire

un uomo. Può esserci qualcosa nelle vostre sciocchezze? Sto davvero diventando

morboso.

Amavo la moglie di Quinton. Che male c’era in questo? La Natura

me lo diceva, ed è l’amore che fa girare il mondo. E poi

pensavo, in tutta sincerità, che sarebbe stata più felice con un animale pulito

come me che con quel piccolo lunatico tormentoso. Che male

c’era in questo? Non facevo che guardare in faccia i fatti, da uomo di

scienza. Sarebbe stata più felice.

Secondo il mio proprio credo ero pienamente libero di uccidere Quinton,

il che era la cosa migliore per tutti, perfino per lui stesso. Ma in quanto

animale sano, non avevo la minima intenzione di uccidere me stesso. Decisi,

perciò, che non l’avrei mai fatto finché non avessi visto un’occasione che

mi lasciasse del tutto impunito. Quell’occasione l’ho vista questa mattina.

Oggi sono entrato, in tutto, tre volte nello studio di Quinton.

La prima volta che entrai, non voleva parlare d’altro che della bizzarra

novella, intitolata «The Cure of a Saint», che stava scrivendo, e che

parlava di come un certo eremita indiano inducesse un colonnello inglese a

uccidersi soltanto pensando a lui. Mi mostrò gli ultimi fogli, e

mi lesse persino l’ultimo paragrafo, che suonava press’a poco così:

«Il conquistatore del Punjab, ormai un mero scheletro giallo, ma ancora

gigantesco, riuscì a sollevarsi sul gomito e a rantolare all’orecchio del

nipote: ‘Muoio per mia propria mano, eppure muoio assassinato!’» Accadde

così, per un caso su cento, che quelle ultime parole

were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room,

and went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightful

opportunity.

We walked round the house; and two more things happened in my

favour. You suspected an Indian, and you found a dagger which the

Indian might most probably use. Taking the opportunity to stuff

it in my pocket I went back to Quinton’s study, locked the door,

and gave him his sleeping draught. He was against answering

Atkinson at all, but I urged him to call out and quiet the fellow,

because I wanted a clear proof that Quinton was alive when I left

the room for the second time. Quinton lay down in the conservatory, and I came through the study. I am a quick man with my hands, and

in a minute and a half I had done what I wanted to do. I had

emptied all the first part of Quinton’s romance into the fireplace,

where it burnt to ashes. Then I saw that the quotation marks

wouldn’t do, so I snipped them off, and to make it seem likelier,

snipped the whole quire to match. Then I came out with the

knowledge that Quinton’s confession of suicide lay on the front

table, while Quinton lay alive but asleep in the conservatory

beyond.

The last act was a desperate one; you can guess it: I pretended

to have seen Quinton dead and rushed to his room. I delayed you

with the paper, and, being a quick man with my hands, killed

Quinton while you were looking at his confession of suicide. He

was half-asleep, being drugged, and I put his own hand on the

knife and drove it into his body. The knife was of so queer a

shape that no one but an operator could have calculated the angle

that would reach his heart. I wonder if you noticed this.

When I had done it, the extraordinary thing happened. Nature

deserted me. I felt ill. I felt just as if I had done something

wrong. I think my brain is breaking up; I feel some sort of

desperate pleasure in thinking I have told the thing to somebody;

that I shall not have to be alone with it if I marry and have

children. What is the matter with me? … Madness … or can one

have remorse, just as if one were in Byron’s poems! I cannot

write any more.

James Erskine Harris.

Father Brown carefully folded up the letter, and put it in his breast pocket just as there came a loud peal at the gate bell, and the wet waterproofs of several policemen gleamed in the road outside.

The Sins of Prince Saradine

When Flambeau took his month’s holiday from his office in Westminster he took it in a small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of its time as a rowing-boat. He took it, moreover, in little rivers in the Eastern counties, rivers so small that the boat looked like a magic boat, sailing on land through meadows and cornfields. The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die. With this light luggage he crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending to reach the Broads at last, but meanwhile delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows, the mirrored mansions or villages, lingering to fish in the pools and corners, and in some sense hugging the shore.

Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he had been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he had often received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or even love; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of a visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back of the card was written in French and in green ink: “If you ever retire and become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have met all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French history.” On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion, “Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk.”

He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining that he had been a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In his youth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; the escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to men’s minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrity and settled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprise visit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether he should find the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small and forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he expected.

They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses and short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light. To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright. Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods. Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed to be giant daisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them of the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficed to sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make them gaze upwards at the grass. “By Jove!” said Flambeau, “it’s like being in fairyland.”

Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare, what was the matter.

“The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads,” answered the priest, “knew more about fairies than you do. It isn’t only nice things that happen in fairyland.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Flambeau. “Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood.”

“All right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous.”

They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of the sky and the pale gold of the moon grew fainter and fainter, amd faded into that vast colourless cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn. When the first faint stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizon from end to end they were broken by the black bulk of a town or village which sat on the river just ahead of them. It was already an easy twilight, in which all things were visible, when they came under the hanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet. The houses, with their long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at the river, like huge grey and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawn had already turned to working daylight before they saw any living creature on the wharves and bridges of that silent town. Eventually they saw a very placid and prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around the low arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By an impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island or Reed House. The prosperous man’s smile grew slightly more expansive, and he simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeau went ahead without further speech.

I peccati del principe Saradine

Quando Flambeau prese il suo mese di vacanza dall’ufficio di Westminster, lo trascorse in una piccola barca a vela, tanto piccola che passava gran parte del suo tempo come barca a remi. Lo trascorse, per giunta, in piccoli fiumi delle contee orientali, fiumi così esigui che la barca pareva una barca magica, che navigasse sulla terraferma tra prati e campi di grano. Il vascello era appena comodo per due persone; c’era posto soltanto per lo stretto necessario, e Flambeau l’aveva riempita di quelle cose che la sua speciale filosofia giudicava necessarie. Esse si riducevano, a quanto pare, a quattro elementi essenziali: scatole di salmone, se avesse voluto mangiare; rivoltelle cariche, se avesse voluto combattere; una bottiglia di brandy, presumibilmente nel caso gli venisse un mancamento; e un prete, presumibilmente nel caso dovesse morire. Con questo bagaglio leggero si trascinava lungo i piccoli fiumi del Norfolk, intenzionato a raggiungere infine i Broads, ma frattanto deliziandosi dei giardini e dei prati sporgenti, delle magioni o dei villaggi specchiati nell’acqua, indugiando a pescare nelle pozze e negli anfratti, e in un certo senso costeggiando la riva.

Da vero filosofo, Flambeau non aveva scopo nella sua vacanza; ma, da vero filosofo, aveva una scusa. Aveva una sorta di mezzo proposito, che prendeva quel tanto sul serio da far sì che il suo successo coronasse la vacanza, ma quel tanto alla leggera da far sì che il suo fallimento non la rovinasse. Anni prima, quando era stato un re dei ladri e la figura più famosa di Parigi, aveva ricevuto spesso comunicazioni stravaganti di approvazione, di condanna, o perfino d’amore; ma una, chissà come, gli era rimasta impressa nella memoria. Consisteva semplicemente in un biglietto da visita, dentro una busta con timbro postale inglese. Sul retro del biglietto era scritto in francese e con inchiostro verde: «Se mai vi ritirerete e diventerete rispettabile, venite a trovarmi. Desidero conoscervi, perché ho conosciuto tutti gli altri grandi uomini del mio tempo. Quel vostro trucco di far arrestare un detective dall’altro fu la scena più splendida della storia francese.» Sul davanti del biglietto era inciso nella foggia formale: «Principe Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk.»

Allora non si era preoccupato molto del principe, se non appurando che era stato una figura brillante e alla moda dell’Italia meridionale. In gioventù, si diceva, era fuggito con una donna sposata di alto rango; la scappatella era ben poco sorprendente nel suo mondo sociale, ma si era abbarbicata alla mente degli uomini a causa di una tragedia supplementare: il presunto suicidio del marito oltraggiato, che pareva essersi gettato da un precipizio in Sicilia. Il principe visse poi a Vienna per un certo tempo, ma i suoi anni più recenti sembravano essere trascorsi in perpetui e irrequieti viaggi. Ma quando Flambeau, come il principe stesso, ebbe lasciato la celebrità europea e si fu stabilito in Inghilterra, gli venne in mente che avrebbe potuto fare una visita a sorpresa a questo eminente esule nei Broads del Norfolk. Se avrebbe trovato il luogo non ne aveva idea; e, in verità, era abbastanza piccolo e dimenticato. Ma, come andarono le cose, lo trovò assai prima di quanto si aspettasse.

Avevano ormeggiato la barca una notte sotto un argine velato da erbe alte e da bassi alberi capitozzati. Il sonno, dopo la faticosa remata, li aveva colti presto, e per un accidente corrispondente si svegliarono prima che facesse giorno. Per parlare con più esattezza, si svegliarono prima che fosse pieno giorno; poiché una grande luna color limone stava appena tramontando nella foresta d’erba alta sopra le loro teste, e il cielo era di un vivido azzurro-violaceo, notturno eppure luminoso. Entrambi gli uomini ebbero simultaneamente una reminiscenza dell’infanzia, di quel tempo elfico e avventuroso in cui le erbacce alte si chiudono su di noi come boschi. Ergendosi così contro la grande luna bassa, le pratoline sembravano davvero pratoline giganti, i denti di leone denti di leone giganti. Chissà come, tutto ciò ricordava loro la fascia decorativa di una carta da parati di camera per bambini. Il dislivello del letto del fiume bastava a farli sprofondare sotto le radici di ogni arbusto e fiore, e a far loro guardare in su verso l’erba. «Perbacco!» disse Flambeau, «è come essere nel paese delle fate.»

Father Brown si drizzò a sedere nella barca e si fece il segno della croce. Il suo movimento fu così brusco che l’amico gli chiese, con un mite sguardo fisso, che cosa avesse.

«Quelli che scrivevano le ballate medievali», rispose il prete, «ne sapevano più di voi sulle fate. Non sono soltanto cose piacevoli quelle che accadono nel paese delle fate.»

«Oh, sciocchezze!» disse Flambeau. «Solo cose piacevoli potrebbero accadere sotto una luna tanto innocente. Io sono per proseguire adesso e vedere che cosa davvero verrà. Potremmo morire e imputridire prima di rivedere mai una simile luna o un simile stato d’animo.»

«D’accordo», disse Father Brown. «Non ho mai detto che fosse sempre sbagliato entrare nel paese delle fate. Ho detto soltanto che era sempre pericoloso.»

Risalirono lentamente il fiume che andava schiarendosi; il fulgido violetto del cielo e il pallido oro della luna si fecero sempre più fiochi, e si dissolsero in quel vasto cosmo scolorito che precede i colori dell’alba. Quando le prime deboli strisce di rosso e d’oro e grigio spaccarono l’orizzonte da un capo all’altro, furono interrotte dalla massa nera di una città o di un villaggio adagiato sul fiume proprio davanti a loro. Era già un facile crepuscolo, in cui tutte le cose erano visibili, quando giunsero sotto i tetti sporgenti e i ponti di questo borgo fluviale. Le case, coi loro tetti lunghi, bassi e spioventi, parevano scendere ad abbeverarsi al fiume, come enormi bestiame grigio e rosso. L’alba che s’allargava e imbiancava si era già mutata in operosa luce del giorno prima che scorgessero qualsiasi creatura vivente sui moli e sui ponti di quella città silenziosa. Alla fine videro un uomo assai placido e prospero in maniche di camicia, con una faccia tonda come la luna appena tramontata, e raggi di basette rosse intorno al basso arco di essa, che stava appoggiato a un palo sopra la marea sonnolenta. Per un impulso da non analizzare, Flambeau si levò in tutta la sua statura nella barca ondeggiante e gridò all’uomo per chiedergli se conoscesse Reed Island o Reed House. Il sorriso dell’uomo prospero si fece leggermente più espansivo, ed egli si limitò a indicare il fiume verso la sua ansa successiva. Flambeau proseguì senza aggiungere parola.

The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy and silent reaches of river; but before the search had become monotonous they had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silence of a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrested them. For in the middle of this wider piece of water, fringed on every side with rushes, lay a long, low islet, along which ran a long, low house or bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane. The upstanding rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow, the sloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwise the long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morning breeze rustled the reeds round the island and sang in the strange ribbed house as in a giant pan-pipe.

“By George!” cried Flambeau; “here is the place, after all! Here is Reed Island, if ever there was one. Here is Reed House, if it is anywhere. I believe that fat man with whiskers was a fairy.”

“Perhaps,” remarked Father Brown impartially. “If he was, he was a bad fairy.”

But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore in the rattling reeds, and they stood in the long, quaint islet beside the odd and silent house.

The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the only landing-stage; the main entrance was on the other side, and looked down the long island garden. The visitors approached it, therefore, by a small path running round nearly three sides of the house, close under the low eaves. Through three different windows on three different sides they looked in on the same long, well-lit room, panelled in light wood, with a large number of looking-glasses, and laid out as for an elegant lunch. The front door, when they came round to it at last, was flanked by two turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless— who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. “His Highness may be here any minute,” he said, “and would be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had invited. We have orders always to keep a little cold lunch for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to be offered.”

Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assented gracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable about it, except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows with many long, low oblongs of looking-glass, which gave a singular air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow like lunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph of a very young man in uniform, another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeau whether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly in the negative; it was the prince’s younger brother, Captain Stephen Saradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenly and lose all taste for conversation.

After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs, the guests were introduced to the garden, the library, and the housekeeper—a dark, handsome lady, of no little majesty, and rather like a plutonic Madonna. It appeared that she and the butler were the only survivors of the prince’s original foreign menage the other servants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by the housekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, but she spoke with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt that Anthony was a Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, the butler, also had a faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue and training English, as are many of the most polished men-servants of the cosmopolitan nobility.

Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminous sadness. Hours passed in it like days. The long, well-windowed rooms were full of daylight, but it seemed a dead daylight. And through all other incidental noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or the passing feet of servants, they could hear on all sides of the house the melancholy noise of the river.

“We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place,” said Father Brown, looking out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silver flood. “Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic little man, and in those few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had that knack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances all that in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was naturally uncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been very badly treated. The chief offender seemed to be his highness’s brother, whose name alone would lengthen the old man’s lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer. Captain Stephen was a ne’er-do-weel, apparently, and had drained his benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly from fashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul, the butler, would say, and Paul was obviously a partisan.

La barca svoltò molti simili angoli erbosi e seguì molti simili tratti canneti e silenziosi del fiume; ma prima che la ricerca fosse divenuta monotona avevano girato attorno a un’ansa particolarmente acuta ed erano entrati nel silenzio di una sorta di pozza o lago, la cui vista d’istinto li arrestò. Poiché in mezzo a questo più ampio specchio d’acqua, orlato d’ogni lato di giunchi, giaceva un isolotto lungo e basso, lungo il quale correva una lunga, bassa casa o bungalow costruita di bambù o di qualche sorta di dura canna tropicale. Le canne erette di bambù che formavano le pareti erano di un giallo pallido, le canne oblique che formavano il tetto erano di un rosso o bruno più cupo, per il resto la lunga casa era una cosa di ripetizione e monotonia. La brezza del primo mattino faceva stormire i giunchi intorno all’isola e cantava nella strana casa costolata come in una gigantesca zampogna.

«Perdinci!» esclamò Flambeau; «ecco il luogo, dopotutto! Ecco Reed Island, se mai ce ne fu una. Ecco Reed House, se è da qualche parte. Credo che quel grassone con le basette fosse una fata.»

«Forse», osservò Father Brown con imparzialità. «Se lo era, era una fata cattiva.»

Ma mentre ancora parlava l’impetuoso Flambeau aveva già spinto la barca a riva tra i giunchi frusciarti, ed essi stavano sul lungo, bizzarro isolotto accanto alla strana e silenziosa casa.

La casa volgeva, per così dire, le spalle al fiume e all’unico approdo; l’ingresso principale era dal lato opposto, e guardava giù per il lungo giardino dell’isola. I visitatori vi si avvicinarono, perciò, per un sentierino che correva attorno a quasi tre lati della casa, sotto la bassa gronda. Attraverso tre diverse finestre su tre diversi lati essi guardarono dentro la medesima stanza lunga e ben illuminata, rivestita di legno chiaro, con un gran numero di specchi, e apparecchiata come per un elegante pranzo. La porta d’ingresso, quando alla fine vi giunsero attorno, era fiancheggiata da due vasi di fiori azzurro-turchese. Fu aperta da un maggiordomo del tipo più tetro — lungo, magro, grigio e apatico — il quale mormorò che il principe Saradine era per il momento fuori casa, ma era atteso di ora in ora; la casa veniva tenuta pronta per lui e i suoi ospiti. L’esibizione del biglietto con lo scarabocchio d’inchiostro verde ridestò un guizzo di vita nel volto pergamenaceo del depresso servitore, e fu con una certa cortesia malferma che egli suggerì agli sconosciuti di trattenersi. «Sua Altezza può arrivare da un momento all’altro», disse, «e sarebbe addolorata di aver appena mancato un gentiluomo da lei invitato. Abbiamo ordine di tenergli sempre pronto un piccolo pranzo freddo per lui e i suoi amici, e sono certo che desidererebbe fosse offerto.»

Mosso dalla curiosità per questa minore avventura, Flambeau acconsentì con grazia, e seguì il vecchio, che lo introdusse cerimoniosamente nella lunga stanza leggermente rivestita di legno. Non c’era nulla di molto notevole in essa, tranne la piuttosto insolita alternanza di molte lunghe e basse finestre con molti lunghi e bassi rettangoli di specchio, che davano al luogo una singolare aria di leggerezza e d’inconsistenza. Era in qualche modo come pranzare all’aperto. Uno o due quadri di natura tranquilla pendevano negli angoli, uno una grande fotografia grigia di un uomo giovanissimo in uniforme, un altro uno schizzo a gessetto rosso di due ragazzi dai lunghi capelli. Richiesto da Flambeau se il personaggio soldatesco fosse il principe, il maggiordomo rispose brevemente in senso negativo; era il fratello minore del principe, il capitano Stephen Saradine, disse. E con ciò il vecchio parve inaridirsi d’improvviso e perdere ogni gusto per la conversazione.

Dopo che il pranzo si fu spento in un caffè squisito e in liquori, gli ospiti furono introdotti al giardino, alla biblioteca, e alla governante — una signora bruna e avvenente, di non poca maestà, e piuttosto simile a una Madonna plutonica. Risultò che lei e il maggiordomo erano i soli superstiti dell’originaria servitù straniera del principe, gli altri domestici ora nella casa essendo nuovi e reclutati nel Norfolk dalla governante. Quest’ultima signora andava sotto il nome di Mrs. Anthony, ma parlava con un lieve accento italiano, e Flambeau non dubitò che Anthony fosse una versione del Norfolk di qualche nome più latino. Mr. Paul, il maggiordomo, aveva anch’egli un’aria vagamente straniera, ma era di lingua e di formazione inglese, come lo sono molti dei più raffinati servitori della nobiltà cosmopolita.

Per quanto graziosa e unica fosse, quel luogo aveva in sé una curiosa luminosa tristezza. Le ore vi passavano come giorni. Le lunghe stanze dalle belle finestre erano piene di luce del giorno, ma pareva una luce morta. E attraverso tutti gli altri rumori accidentali, il suono delle chiacchiere, il tintinnio dei bicchieri, o il passo dei domestici, potevano udire da ogni parte della casa il malinconico rumore del fiume.

«Abbiamo preso una svolta sbagliata, e siamo giunti in un luogo sbagliato», disse Father Brown, guardando fuori dalla finestra i grigioverdi carici e la marea argentea. «Non importa; a volte si può fare del bene essendo la persona giusta nel luogo sbagliato.»

Father Brown, sebbene comunemente silenzioso, era un ometto stranamente comprensivo, e in quelle poche ma interminabili ore sprofondò inconsapevolmente più a fondo nei segreti di Reed House del suo amico professionista. Aveva quella dote dell’amichevole silenzio che è tanto essenziale al pettegolezzo; e, pur non dicendo quasi una parola, probabilmente ottenne dalle sue nuove conoscenze tutto ciò che in ogni caso gli avrebbero raccontato. Il maggiordomo, in verità, era naturalmente poco comunicativo. Tradiva un affetto imbronciato e quasi animalesco per il suo padrone; il quale, disse, era stato trattato assai malamente. Il principale colpevole pareva essere il fratello di sua altezza, il cui nome soltanto allungava le mascelle da lanterna del vecchio e increspava il suo naso a pappagallo in un ghigno. Il capitano Stephen era uno scapestrato, a quanto pareva, e aveva prosciugato al suo benevolo fratello centinaia e migliaia di sterline; lo aveva costretto a fuggire dalla vita mondana e a vivere quietamente in questo rifugio. Questo era tutto ciò che Paul, il maggiordomo, avrebbe detto, e Paul era evidentemente un partigiano.

The Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brown fancied, somewhat less content. Her tone about her master was faintly acid; though not without a certain awe. Flambeau and his friend were standing in the room of the looking-glasses examining the red sketch of the two boys, when the housekeeper swept in swiftly on some domestic errand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering, glass-panelled place that anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors at once; and Father Brown, without turning round, stopped in the middle of a sentence of family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to the picture, was already saying in a loud voice, “The brothers Saradine, I suppose. They both look innocent enough. It would be hard to say which is the good brother and which the bad.” Then, realising the lady’s presence, he turned the conversation with some triviality, and strolled out into the garden. But Father Brown still gazed steadily at the red crayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at Father Brown.

She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darkly with a curious and painful wonder—as of one doubtful of a stranger’s identity or purpose. Whether the little priest’s coat and creed touched some southern memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knew more than he did, she said to him in a low voice as to a fellow plotter, “He is right enough in one way, your friend. He says it would be hard to pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be hard, it would be mighty hard, to pick out the good one.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Father Brown, and began to move away.

The woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort of savage stoop, like a bull lowering his horns.

“There isn’t a good one,” she hissed. “There was badness enough in the captain taking all that money, but I don’t think there was much goodness in the prince giving it. The captain’s not the only one with something against him.”

A light dawned on the cleric’s averted face, and his mouth formed silently the word “blackmail.” Even as he did so the woman turned an abrupt white face over her shoulder and almost fell. The door had opened soundlessly and the pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. By the weird trick of the reflecting walls, it seemed as if five Pauls had entered by five doors simultaneously.

“His Highness,” he said, “has just arrived.”

In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside the first window, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted stage. An instant later he passed at the second window and the many mirrors repainted in successive frames the same eagle profile and marching figure. He was erect and alert, but his hair was white and his complexion of an odd ivory yellow. He had that short, curved Roman nose which generally goes with long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly masked by moustache and imperial. The moustache was much darker than the beard, giving an effect slightly theatrical, and he was dressed up to the same dashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellow waistcoat and yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked. When he came round to the front door they heard the stiff Paul open it, and heard the new arrival say cheerfully, “Well, you see I have come.” The stiff Mr. Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for a few minutes their conversation could not be heard. Then the butler said, “Everything is at your disposal”; and the glove-flapping Prince Saradine came gaily into the room to greet them. They beheld once more that spectral scene— five princes entering a room with five doors.

The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the table and offered his hand quite cordially.

“Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau,” he said. “Knowing you very well by reputation, if that’s not an indiscreet remark.”

“Not at all,” answered Flambeau, laughing. “I am not sensitive. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.”

The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the retort had any personal point; then he laughed also and offered chairs to everyone, including himself.

“Pleasant little place, this, I think,” he said with a detached air. “Not much to do, I fear; but the fishing is really good.”

The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare of a baby, was haunted by some fancy that escaped definition. He looked at the grey, carefully curled hair, yellow white visage, and slim, somewhat foppish figure. These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononce, like the outfit of a figure behind the footlights. The nameless interest lay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown was tormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. The man looked like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he suddenly remembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychological effect of that multiplication of human masks.

Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between his guests with great gaiety and tact. Finding the detective of a sporting turn and eager to employ his holiday, he guided Flambeau and Flambeau’s boat down to the best fishing spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoe in twenty minutes to join Father Brown in the library and plunge equally politely into the priest’s more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that the travels were so disreputable or so amusing.

La governante italiana era in qualche modo più comunicativa, essendo, come Brown immaginava, in qualche modo meno soddisfatta. Il suo tono riguardo al padrone era vagamente acido; sebbene non privo di un certo timore reverenziale. Flambeau e il suo amico stavano nella stanza degli specchi a esaminare lo schizzo rosso dei due ragazzi, quando la governante entrò svelta con qualche incombenza domestica. Era una peculiarità di quel luogo scintillante, dai pannelli di vetro, che chiunque vi entrasse veniva riflesso in quattro o cinque specchi in una volta; e Father Brown, senza voltarsi, si arrestò nel mezzo di una frase di critica familiare. Ma Flambeau, che aveva il volto accostato al quadro, stava già dicendo ad alta voce: «I fratelli Saradine, suppongo. Sembrano entrambi abbastanza innocenti. Sarebbe difficile dire quale sia il fratello buono e quale il cattivo.» Poi, avvedutosi della presenza della signora, spostò la conversazione con qualche banalità, e uscì a passeggio nel giardino. Ma Father Brown fissava ancora fermamente lo schizzo a matita rossa; e Mrs. Anthony fissava ancora fermamente Father Brown.

Ella aveva grandi e tragici occhi bruni, e il suo volto olivastro ardeva cupamente di una curiosa e dolorosa meraviglia — come di chi sia in dubbio sull’ identità o sullo scopo di uno straniero. Se l’abito e il credo del piccolo prete toccassero qualche meridionale ricordo di confessione, o se ella si immaginasse che egli sapesse più di quanto sapeva, gli disse a bassa voce come a un compagno di congiura: «In un certo senso ha ragione, il vostro amico. Dice che sarebbe difficile scegliere il fratello buono e il cattivo. Oh, sarebbe difficile, sarebbe maledettamente difficile, scegliere quello buono.»

«Non vi capisco», disse Father Brown, e cominciò ad allontanarsi.

La donna fece un passo verso di lui, con la fronte tempestosa e una sorta di feroce curvatura, come un toro che abbassa le corna.

«Non ce n’è uno buono», sibilò. «C’era abbastanza malvagità nel capitano che prendeva tutto quel denaro, ma non credo ci fosse molta bontà nel principe che glielo dava. Il capitano non è l’unico ad avere qualcosa sulla coscienza.»

Una luce sorse sul volto distolto del chierico, e la sua bocca formò in silenzio la parola «ricatto». Nell’istante stesso in cui lo faceva, la donna volse un’improvvisa faccia bianca al di sopra della spalla e per poco non cadde. La porta si era aperta senza rumore e il pallido Paul stava come un fantasma sulla soglia. Per lo stravagante trucco delle pareti riflettenti, pareva che cinque Paul fossero entrati da cinque porte simultaneamente.

«Sua Altezza», disse, «è appena arrivata.»

Nello stesso lampo la figura di un uomo era passata al di fuori della prima finestra, attraversando il vetro assolato come un palcoscenico illuminato. Un istante dopo passò alla seconda finestra e i molti specchi ridipinsero in successivi riquadri il medesimo profilo d’aquila e la figura in marcia. Era eretto e vigile, ma i suoi capelli erano bianchi e la sua carnagione di uno strano giallo avorio. Aveva quel naso romano corto e ricurvo che di solito si accompagna a guance lunghe e magre e a un mento affilato, ma questi erano in parte mascherati dai baffi e dal pizzetto. I baffi erano assai più scuri della barba, dando un effetto lievemente teatrale, ed egli era vestito all’altezza della medesima parte spavalda, avendo un cilindro bianco, un’orchidea all’occhiello, un panciotto giallo e guanti gialli che sventolava e faceva roteare camminando. Quando giunse attorno alla porta d’ingresso lo udirono aprirla dal rigido Paul, e udirono il nuovo arrivato dire allegramente: «Ebbene, vedete che sono venuto.» Il rigido Mr. Paul s’inchinò e rispose alla sua maniera impercettibile; per qualche minuto la loro conversazione non poté essere udita. Poi il maggiordomo disse: «Ogni cosa è a vostra disposizione»; e il principe Saradine, sventolando i guanti, entrò gaiamente nella stanza per accoglierli. Contemplarono di nuovo quella scena spettrale — cinque principi che entravano in una stanza con cinque porte.

Il principe posò il cappello bianco e i guanti gialli sul tavolo e offrì la mano assai cordialmente.

«Lieto di vedervi qui, Mr. Flambeau», disse. «Conoscendovi assai bene di fama, se non è un’osservazione indiscreta.»

«Niente affatto», rispose Flambeau, ridendo. «Non sono suscettibile. Ben poche reputazioni si conquistano con virtù immacolata.»

Il principe gli lanciò uno sguardo acuto per vedere se la replica avesse qualche punta personale; poi rise anche lui e offrì sedie a tutti, compreso se stesso.

«Un posticino piacevole, questo, credo», disse con aria distaccata. «Non molto da fare, temo; ma la pesca è davvero buona.»

Il prete, che lo fissava con lo sguardo solenne di un neonato, era perseguitato da un’immaginazione che sfuggiva a ogni definizione. Guardava i capelli grigi accuratamente arricciati, il volto bianco-giallastro, e la figura snella, alquanto vanesia. Queste cose non erano innaturali, sebbene forse un po’ troppo marcate, come l’abbigliamento di una figura dietro le luci della ribalta. L’interesse senza nome risiedeva in qualcos’altro, nella struttura stessa del volto; Brown era tormentato da un mezzo ricordo di averlo visto da qualche parte in precedenza. L’uomo somigliava a qualche vecchio amico suo travestito. Poi si ricordò all’improvviso degli specchi, e attribuì la sua fantasia a qualche effetto psicologico di quella moltiplicazione di maschere umane.

Il principe Saradine distribuì le sue attenzioni mondane tra gli ospiti con grande gaiezza e tatto. Trovando il detective di inclinazione sportiva e desideroso di impiegare la sua vacanza, guidò Flambeau e la barca di Flambeau giù fino al miglior punto di pesca del corso d’acqua, e fu di ritorno nella propria canoa in venti minuti per raggiungere Father Brown in biblioteca e immergersi con altrettanta cortesia nei più filosofici piaceri del prete. Sembrava sapere moltissimo tanto sulla pesca quanto sui libri, sebbene di questi non i più edificanti; parlava cinque o sei lingue, ma soprattutto il gergo di ciascuna. Aveva evidentemente vissuto in svariate città e in società assai variopinte, poiché alcune delle sue storie più allegre riguardavano bische e fumerie d’oppio, banditi australiani o briganti italiani. Father Brown sapeva che il un tempo celebre Saradine aveva passato gli ultimi anni in viaggi quasi incessanti, ma non aveva immaginato che i viaggi fossero così poco rispettabili o così divertenti.

Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world, Prince Saradine radiated to such sensitive observers as the priest, a certain atmosphere of the restless and even the unreliable. His face was fastidious, but his eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken by drink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to have, his hand on the helm of household affairs. All these were left to the two old servants, especially to the butler, who was plainly the central pillar of the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not so much a butler as a sort of steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and he consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly— rather as if he were the prince’s solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which had half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder. Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain, he could not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretive about Saradine that made the tale by no means incredible.

When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest’s mind again like a little grey cloud. “I wish Flambeau were back,” he muttered.

“Do you believe in doom?” asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.

“No,” answered his guest. “I believe in Doomsday.”

The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singular manner, his face in shadow against the sunset. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,” answered Father Brown. “The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.”

The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other’s mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine’s blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, “The wrong person—the wrong person,” many more times than was natural in a social exclamation.

Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors before him he could see the silent door standing open, and the silent Mr. Paul standing in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.

“I thought it better to announce at once,” he said, with the same stiff respectfulness as of an old family lawyer, “a boat rowed by six men has come to the landing-stage, and there’s a gentleman sitting in the stern.”

“A boat!” repeated the prince; “a gentleman?” and he rose to his feet.

There was a startled silence punctuated only by the odd noise of the bird in the sedge; and then, before anyone could speak again, a new face and figure passed in profile round the three sunlit windows, as the prince had passed an hour or two before. But except for the accident that both outlines were aquiline, they had little in common. Instead of the new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of antiquated or foreign shape; under it was a young and very solemn face, clean shaven, blue about its resolute chin, and carrying a faint suggestion of the young Napoleon. The association was assisted by something old and odd about the whole get-up, as of a man who had never troubled to change the fashions of his fathers. He had a shabby blue frock coat, a red, soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of coarse white trousers common among the early Victorians, but strangely incongruous today. From all this old clothes-shop his olive face stood out strangely young and monstrously sincere.

“The deuce!” said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his white hat he went to the front door himself, flinging it open on the sunset garden.

By that time the new-comer and his followers were drawn up on the lawn like a small stage army. The six boatmen had pulled the boat well up on shore, and were guarding it almost menacingly, holding their oars erect like spears. They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. But one of them stood forward beside the olive-faced young man in the red waistcoat, and carried a large black case of unfamiliar form.

“Your name,” said the young man, “is Saradine?”

Saradine assented rather negligently.

The new-comer had dull, dog-like brown eyes, as different as possible from the restless and glittering grey eyes of the prince. But once again Father Brown was tortured with a sense of having seen somewhere a replica of the face; and once again he remembered the repetitions of the glass-panelled room, and put down the coincidence to that. “Confound this crystal palace!” he muttered. “One sees everything too many times. It’s like a dream.”

“If you are Prince Saradine,” said the young man, “I may tell you that my name is Antonelli.”

“Antonelli,” repeated the prince languidly. “Somehow I remember the name.”

“Permit me to present myself,” said the young Italian.

With his left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned top-hat; with his right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across the face that the white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blue flower-pots rocked upon its pedestal.

The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward; he sprang at his enemy’s throat and almost bore him backwards to the grass. But his enemy extricated himself with a singularly inappropriate air of hurried politeness.

Invero, con tutta la sua dignità di uomo di mondo, il principe Saradine irradiava, a osservatori così sensibili come il prete, una certa atmosfera di irrequietezza e perfino di inaffidabilità. Il suo volto era schizzinoso, ma il suo occhio era selvaggio; aveva piccoli tic nervosi, come un uomo scosso dal bere o dalle droghe, e non aveva, né professava di avere, la mano sul timone degli affari domestici. Tutto ciò era lasciato ai due vecchi domestici, specialmente al maggiordomo, che era palesemente il pilastro centrale della casa. Mr. Paul, in verità, non era tanto un maggiordomo quanto una sorta di intendente o, addirittura, ciambellano; pranzava in privato, ma con quasi tanta pompa quanta il suo padrone; era temuto da tutti i domestici; e si consultava col principe con decoro, ma con qualche rigidità — piuttosto come se fosse il legale del principe. La cupa governante era in confronto una mera ombra; anzi, sembrava cancellare se stessa e servire soltanto il maggiordomo, e Brown non udì più quei sussurri vulcanici che gli avevano per metà rivelato del fratello minore che ricattava il maggiore. Se il principe fosse davvero così dissanguato dal capitano assente, non poteva esserne certo, ma c’era qualcosa di malsicuro e segreto in Saradine che rendeva il racconto tutt’altro che incredibile.

Quando entrarono di nuovo nella lunga sala con le finestre e gli specchi, la sera gialla scendeva sulle acque e sugli argini di salici; e un tarabuso risuonò in lontananza come un elfo sul suo tamburo da nano. Il medesimo singolare sentimento di un triste e malvagio paese delle fate attraversò di nuovo la mente del prete come una piccola nube grigia. «Vorrei che Flambeau fosse tornato», mormorò.

«Credete nel fato?» chiese all’improvviso l’irrequieto principe Saradine.

«No», rispose l’ospite. «Credo nel Giorno del Giudizio.»

Il principe si allontanò dalla finestra e lo fissò in modo singolare, il volto in ombra contro il tramonto. «Che cosa intendete?» chiese.

«Intendo che noi qui siamo sul rovescio dell’arazzo», rispose Father Brown. «Le cose che accadono qui non sembrano significare nulla; significano qualcosa altrove. Altrove la punizione ricadrà sul vero colpevole. Qui spesso sembra ricadere sulla persona sbagliata.»

Il principe emise un rumore inspiegabile come un animale; nel suo volto in ombra gli occhi brillavano stranamente. Un pensiero nuovo e acuto esplose in silenzio nella mente dell’altro. C’era un altro significato in quella miscela di brillantezza e bruschezza di Saradine? Il principe era — Era perfettamente sano di mente? Ripeteva: «La persona sbagliata — la persona sbagliata», molte più volte di quanto fosse naturale in un’esclamazione mondana.

Poi Father Brown si destò tardivamente a una seconda verità. Negli specchi davanti a sé poteva vedere la porta silenziosa spalancata, e il silenzioso Mr. Paul ritto in essa, con la sua consueta pallida impassibilità.

«Ho ritenuto meglio annunciare subito», disse, con la stessa rigida deferenza di un vecchio avvocato di famiglia, «che una barca a remi con sei uomini è giunta all’approdo, e c’è un gentiluomo seduto a poppa.»

«Una barca!» ripeté il principe; «un gentiluomo?» e si levò in piedi.

Vi fu un silenzio trasalito, punteggiato soltanto dal bizzarro verso dell’uccello tra i carici; e poi, prima che alcuno potesse parlare di nuovo, un nuovo volto e una nuova figura passarono di profilo dinanzi alle tre finestre assolate, come il principe era passato un’ora o due prima. Ma a parte l’accidente che entrambi i profili erano aquilini, avevano poco in comune. Invece del nuovo cilindro bianco di Saradine, ce n’era uno nero di foggia antiquata o straniera; sotto di esso c’era un volto giovane e assai solenne, ben rasato, azzurrognolo attorno al mento risoluto, e recante una debole traccia del giovane Napoleone. L’associazione era favorita da qualcosa di antico e strano in tutto l’abbigliamento, come di un uomo che non si fosse mai curato di cambiare le mode dei propri padri. Aveva una logora finanziera azzurra, un panciotto rosso dall’aria marziale, e una sorta di rozzi calzoni bianchi comuni tra i primi vittoriani, ma stranamente incongrui oggigiorno. Da tutto questo mercato di abiti smessi il suo volto olivastro spiccava stranamente giovane e mostruosamente sincero.

«Diavolo!» disse il principe Saradine, e calcandosi il cilindro bianco andò egli stesso alla porta d’ingresso, spalancandola sul giardino al tramonto.

A quel punto il nuovo venuto e i suoi seguaci erano schierati sul prato come un piccolo esercito da palcoscenico. I sei barcaioli avevano tirato la barca ben su a riva, e la sorvegliavano quasi minacciosamente, tenendo i remi eretti come lance. Erano uomini scuri di carnagione, e alcuni di essi portavano orecchini. Ma uno di loro si teneva in avanti accanto al giovane dal volto olivastro nel panciotto rosso, e recava una grande custodia nera di forma insolita.

«Il vostro nome», disse il giovane, «è Saradine?»

Saradine assentì piuttosto con negligenza.

Il nuovo venuto aveva occhi bruni spenti, canini, quanto più possibile diversi dagli irrequieti e scintillanti occhi grigi del principe. Ma ancora una volta Father Brown fu tormentato dalla sensazione di aver visto da qualche parte una replica di quel volto; e ancora una volta si ricordò delle ripetizioni della stanza dai pannelli di vetro, e attribuì la coincidenza a quello. «Maledetto questo palazzo di cristallo!» mormorò. «Si vede ogni cosa troppe volte. È come un sogno.»

«Se siete il principe Saradine», disse il giovane, «posso dirvi che il mio nome è Antonelli.»

«Antonelli», ripeté il principe languidamente. «Chissà come, ricordo il nome.»

«Permettetemi di presentarmi», disse il giovane italiano.

Con la mano sinistra si tolse cortesemente il suo cilindro all’antica; con la destra assestò al principe Saradine uno schiaffo così sonoro sul volto che il cilindro bianco rotolò giù per i gradini e uno dei vasi di fiori azzurri vacillò sul suo piedistallo.

Il principe, qualunque cosa fosse, non era evidentemente un codardo; balzò alla gola del nemico e per poco non lo rovesciò all’indietro sull’erba. Ma il suo nemico si districò con un’aria singolarmente inappropriata di frettolosa cortesia.

“That is all right,” he said, panting and in halting English. “I have insulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco, open the case.”

The man beside him with the earrings and the big black case proceeded to unlock it. He took out of it two long Italian rapiers, with splendid steel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn. The strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow and vindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like two crosses in a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers behind, gave it all an odd appearance of being some barbaric court of justice. But everything else was unchanged, so sudden had been the interruption. The sunset gold still glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as announcing some small but dreadful destiny.

“Prince Saradine,” said the man called Antonelli, “when I was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father was the more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to kill you. You and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass in Sicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could imitate you if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you all over the world, and you have always fled from me. But this is the end of the world—and of you. I have you now, and I give you the chance you never gave my father. Choose one of those swords.”

Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to hesitate a moment, but his ears were still singing with the blow, and he sprang forward and snatched at one of the hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward, striving to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presence made matters worse. Saradine was a French freemason and a fierce atheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for the other man neither priest nor layman moved him at all. This young man with the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was something far sterner than a puritan—a pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of the earth; a man of the stone age— a man of stone.

One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ran back into the house. He found, however, that all the under servants had been given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only the sombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the moment she turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the riddles of the house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the heavy brown eyes of Mrs. Anthony; and in a flash he saw half the story.

“Your son is outside,” he said without wasting words; “either he or the prince will be killed. Where is Mr. Paul?”

“He is at the landing-stage,” said the woman faintly. “He is—he is—signalling for help.”

“Mrs. Anthony,” said Father Brown seriously, “there is no time for nonsense. My friend has his boat down the river fishing. Your son’s boat is guarded by your son’s men. There is only this one canoe; what is Mr. Paul doing with it?”

“Santa Maria! I do not know,” she said; and swooned all her length on the matted floor.

Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her, shouted for help, and then rushed down to the landing-stage of the little island. But the canoe was already in mid-stream, and old Paul was pulling and pushing it up the river with an energy incredible at his years.

“I will save my master,” he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally. “I will save him yet!”

Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggled up-stream and pray that the old man might waken the little town in time.

“A duel is bad enough,” he muttered, rubbing up his rough dust-coloured hair, “but there’s something wrong about this duel, even as a duel. I feel it in my bones. But what can it be?”

As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, he heard from the other end of the island garden a small but unmistakable sound—the cold concussion of steel. He turned his head.

Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip of turf beyond the last rank of roses, the duellists had already crossed swords. Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant as they were, every detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats, but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red waistcoat and white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like the colours of the dancing clockwork dolls. The two swords sparkled from point to pommel like two diamond pins. There was something frightful in the two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like two butterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.

Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like a wheel. But when he came to the field of combat he found he was born too late and too early—too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of the grim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate any disastrous issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched, the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, the Sicilian using his with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches can ever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled and sparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fight was balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest; by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in the Pacific.

«Va bene così», disse, ansimando e in inglese stentato. «Ho insultato. Darò soddisfazione. Marco, apri la custodia.»

L’uomo accanto a lui con gli orecchini e la grande custodia nera si accinse a sbloccarla. Ne trasse due lunghi stocchi italiani, con splendidi else e lame d’acciaio, che piantò con la punta in giù nel prato. Lo strano giovane in piedi di fronte all’ingresso col suo volto giallo e vendicativo, le due spade drizzate nel tappeto erboso come due croci in un cimitero, e la fila delle sagome allineate dietro, davano a tutto ciò una bizzarra apparenza di essere una qualche barbarica corte di giustizia. Ma tutto il resto era immutato, tanto era stata improvvisa l’interruzione. L’oro del tramonto ancora ardeva sul prato, e il tarabuso ancora rombava come ad annunciare qualche piccolo ma tremendo destino.

«Principe Saradine», disse l’uomo chiamato Antonelli, «quando ero un lattante nella culla voi uccideste mio padre e rubaste mia madre; mio padre fu il più fortunato. Non lo uccideste lealmente, come io sto per uccidere voi. Voi e la mia malvagia madre lo conduceste in carrozza a un passo solitario in Sicilia, lo gettaste giù da una rupe, e ve ne andaste per la vostra strada. Potrei imitarvi se lo volessi, ma imitarvi è troppo vile. Vi ho seguito per tutto il mondo, e voi siete sempre fuggito da me. Ma questa è la fine del mondo — e di voi. Ora vi ho, e vi do la possibilità che voi non deste mai a mio padre. Scegliete una di quelle spade.»

Il principe Saradine, con le sopracciglia contratte, parve esitare un momento, ma le sue orecchie ancora gli ronzavano per il colpo, ed egli balzò avanti e afferrò una delle else. Anche Father Brown era balzato avanti, sforzandosi di comporre la contesa; ma presto si accorse che la sua presenza personale peggiorava le cose. Saradine era un massone francese e un feroce ateo, e un prete lo smuoveva per la legge dei contrari. E quanto all’altro, né prete né laico lo smuovevano affatto. Questo giovane dal volto di Bonaparte e dagli occhi bruni era qualcosa di assai più inflessibile di un puritano — un pagano. Era un semplice uccisore dal mattino della terra; un uomo dell’età della pietra — un uomo di pietra.

Restava una speranza, la chiamata a raccolta della servitù; e Father Brown corse indietro nella casa. Trovò, tuttavia, che tutti i domestici di rango inferiore avevano avuto una vacanza a terra dall’autocrate Paul, e che soltanto la cupa Mrs. Anthony si aggirava a disagio per le lunghe stanze. Ma nel momento in cui ella volse un volto spettrale verso di lui, egli risolse uno degli enigmi della casa degli specchi. I pesanti occhi bruni di Antonelli erano i pesanti occhi bruni di Mrs. Anthony; e in un lampo vide metà della storia.

«Vostro figlio è là fuori», disse senza sprecare parole; «o lui o il principe verrà ucciso. Dov’è Mr. Paul?»

«È all’approdo», disse la donna debolmente. «Sta — sta — segnalando per avere aiuto.»

«Mrs. Anthony», disse Father Brown gravemente, «non c’è tempo per sciocchezze. Il mio amico ha la barca giù per il fiume a pescare. La barca di vostro figlio è sorvegliata dagli uomini di vostro figlio. C’è solo questa unica canoa; che cosa ne sta facendo Mr. Paul?»

«Santa Maria! Non lo so», disse; e svenne lunga distesa sul pavimento a stuoie.

Father Brown la sollevò su un divano, le gettò addosso un vaso d’acqua, gridò per avere aiuto, e poi si precipitò all’approdo della piccola isola. Ma la canoa era già a metà corrente, e il vecchio Paul la spingeva e la tirava su per il fiume con un’energia incredibile per i suoi anni.

«Salverò il mio padrone», gridava, gli occhi fiammeggianti maniacalmente. «Lo salverò ancora!»

Father Brown non poté far altro che guardare la barca mentre lottava controcorrente e pregare che il vecchio potesse svegliare in tempo la cittadina.

«Un duello è già abbastanza brutto», mormorò, arruffandosi i ruvidi capelli color polvere, «ma c’è qualcosa che non va in questo duello, perfino come duello. Lo sento nelle ossa. Ma che cosa può essere?»

Mentre stava fissando l’acqua, un tremolante specchio di tramonto, udì dall’altro capo del giardino dell’isola un suono piccolo ma inconfondibile — il freddo cozzo dell’acciaio. Voltò la testa.

Laggiù sul capo più lontano o promontorio del lungo isolotto, su una striscia di tappeto erboso oltre l’ultima fila di rose, i duellanti avevano già incrociato le spade. La sera sopra di loro era una cupola d’oro vergine, e, per quanto distanti fossero, ogni dettaglio risaltava. Avevano gettato via le giacche, ma il panciotto giallo e i capelli bianchi di Saradine, il panciotto rosso e i calzoni bianchi di Antonelli, scintillavano nella luce orizzontale come i colori delle bambole meccaniche danzanti. Le due spade sfavillavano dalla punta al pomo come due spilli di diamante. C’era qualcosa di spaventoso nelle due figure che apparivano così piccole e così gaie. Sembravano due farfalle che cercassero di appuntarsi l’una all’altra su un sughero.

Father Brown corse più forte che poté, le sue gambette che giravano come una ruota. Ma quando giunse al campo di combattimento trovò di essere nato troppo tardi e troppo presto — troppo tardi per fermare la lotta, sotto l’ombra dei truci siciliani appoggiati ai loro remi, e troppo presto per prevenire un qualche esito disastroso di essa. Poiché i due uomini erano singolarmente ben appaiati, il principe usando la sua abilità con una sorta di cinica sicurezza, il siciliano usando la sua con una cura assassina. Ben pochi più raffinati incontri di scherma si sono mai potuti vedere in affollati anfiteatri di quello che tintinnava e sfavillava su quell’isola dimenticata nel fiume canneto. Il vertiginoso combattimento fu tenuto in bilico così a lungo che la speranza cominciò a rinascere nel prete che protestava; per ogni comune probabilità Paul doveva presto tornare con la polizia. Sarebbe stato un qualche conforto anche se Flambeau fosse tornato dalla pesca, poiché Flambeau, fisicamente parlando, valeva quattro altri uomini. Ma non c’era segno di Flambeau, e, cosa assai più strana, nessun segno di Paul o della polizia. Nessuna altra zattera o palo era rimasto su cui galleggiare; in quell’isola perduta in quella vasta pozza senza nome, erano tagliati fuori come su uno scoglio nel Pacifico.

Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to a rattle, the prince’s arms flew up, and the point shot out behind between his shoulder-blades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almost like one throwing the half of a boy’s cart-wheel. The sword flew from his hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant river. And he himself sank with so earth-shaking a subsidence that he broke a big rose-tree with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of red earth— like the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had made blood-offering to the ghost of his father.

The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but only to make too sure that it was a corpse. As he was still trying some last hopeless tests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, and saw a police boat shoot up to the landing-stage, with constables and other important people, including the excited Paul. The little priest rose with a distinctly dubious grimace.

“Now, why on earth,” he muttered, “why on earth couldn’t he have come before?”

Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an invasion of townsfolk and police, and the latter had put their hands on the victorious duellist, ritually reminding him that anything he said might be used against him.

“I shall not say anything,” said the monomaniac, with a wonderful and peaceful face. “I shall never say anything more. I am very happy, and I only want to be hanged.”

Then he shut his mouth as they led him away, and it is the strange but certain truth that he never opened it again in this world, except to say “Guilty” at his trial.

Father Brown had stared at the suddenly crowded garden, the arrest of the man of blood, the carrying away of the corpse after its examination by the doctor, rather as one watches the break-up of some ugly dream; he was motionless, like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and address as a witness, but declined their offer of a boat to the shore, and remained alone in the island garden, gazing at the broken rose bush and the whole green theatre of that swift and inexplicable tragedy. The light died along the river; mist rose in the marshy banks; a few belated birds flitted fitfully across.

Stuck stubbornly in his sub-consciousness (which was an unusually lively one) was an unspeakable certainty that there was something still unexplained. This sense that had clung to him all day could not be fully explained by his fancy about “looking-glass land.” Somehow he had not seen the real story, but some game or masque. And yet people do not get hanged or run through the body for the sake of a charade.

As he sat on the steps of the landing-stage ruminating he grew conscious of the tall, dark streak of a sail coming silently down the shining river, and sprang to his feet with such a backrush of feeling that he almost wept.

“Flambeau!” he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again and again, much to the astonishment of that sportsman, as he came on shore with his fishing tackle. “Flambeau,” he said, “so you’re not killed?”

“Killed!” repeated the angler in great astonishment. “And why should I be killed?”

“Oh, because nearly everybody else is,” said his companion rather wildly. “Saradine got murdered, and Antonelli wants to be hanged, and his mother’s fainted, and I, for one, don’t know whether I’m in this world or the next. But, thank God, you’re in the same one.” And he took the bewildered Flambeau’s arm.

As they turned from the landing-stage they came under the eaves of the low bamboo house, and looked in through one of the windows, as they had done on their first arrival. They beheld a lamp-lit interior well calculated to arrest their eyes. The table in the long dining-room had been laid for dinner when Saradine’s destroyer had fallen like a stormbolt on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress, for Mrs. Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the table, while at the head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo, eating and drinking of the best, his bleared, bluish eyes standing queerly out of his face, his gaunt countenance inscrutable, but by no means devoid of satisfaction.

With a gesture of powerful impatience, Flambeau rattled at the window, wrenched it open, and put an indignant head into the lamp-lit room.

“Well,” he cried. “I can understand you may need some refreshment, but really to steal your master’s dinner while he lies murdered in the garden—”

“I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant life,” replied the strange old gentleman placidly; “this dinner is one of the few things I have not stolen. This dinner and this house and garden happen to belong to me.”

A thought flashed across Flambeau’s face. “You mean to say,” he began, “that the will of Prince Saradine—”

“I am Prince Saradine,” said the old man, munching a salted almond.

Father Brown, who was looking at the birds outside, jumped as if he were shot, and put in at the window a pale face like a turnip.

“You are what?” he repeated in a shrill voice.

“Paul, Prince Saradine, A vos ordres,” said the venerable person politely, lifting a glass of sherry. “I live here very quietly, being a domestic kind of fellow; and for the sake of modesty I am called Mr. Paul, to distinguish me from my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. He died, I hear, recently—in the garden. Of course, it is not my fault if enemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to the regrettable irregularity of his life. He was not a domestic character.”

He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the opposite wall just above the bowed and sombre head of the woman. They saw plainly the family likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his old shoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, but his face did not alter.

Quasi nell’istante in cui ebbe il pensiero il risuonare degli stocchi si affrettò in uno scroscio, le braccia del principe schizzarono in alto, e la punta gli spuntò dietro tra le scapole. Egli cadde con un gran movimento vorticoso, quasi come chi fa la mezza ruota di un carro dei ragazzi. La spada volò dalla sua mano come una stella cadente, e s’immerse nel lontano fiume. Ed egli stesso sprofondò con un cedimento così scuotente la terra che spezzò un grande rosaio col suo corpo e sollevò nel cielo una nube di terra rossa — come il fumo di un qualche sacrificio pagano. Il siciliano aveva fatto offerta di sangue al fantasma di suo padre.

Il prete fu all’istante in ginocchio accanto al cadavere; ma solo per accertarsi fin troppo bene che fosse un cadavere. Mentre stava ancora tentando alcune ultime disperate prove udì per la prima volta delle voci da più su lungo il fiume, e vide una barca della polizia sfrecciare fino all’approdo, con agenti e altre persone importanti, compreso l’eccitato Paul. Il piccolo prete si levò con una smorfia decisamente dubbiosa.

«Ora, perché diamine», mormorò, «perché diamine non poteva venire prima?»

Circa sette minuti dopo l’isola era occupata da un’invasione di cittadini e poliziotti, e questi ultimi avevano messo le mani sul duellante vittorioso, ricordandogli ritualmente che qualsiasi cosa avesse detto poteva essere usata contro di lui.

«Non dirò nulla», disse il monomaniaco, con un volto meraviglioso e pacifico. «Non dirò mai più nulla. Sono molto felice, e desidero soltanto essere impiccato.»

Poi chiuse la bocca mentre lo conducevano via, ed è la strana ma certa verità che egli non la riaprì mai più in questo mondo, tranne per dire «Colpevole» al processo.

Father Brown aveva fissato il giardino improvvisamente affollato, l’arresto dell’uomo di sangue, il trasporto del cadavere dopo il suo esame da parte del medico, piuttosto come si guarda il dissolversi di un qualche brutto sogno; era immobile, come un uomo in un incubo. Diede il proprio nome e indirizzo come testimone, ma declinò l’offerta di una barca per la riva, e rimase solo nel giardino dell’isola, fissando il rosaio spezzato e l’intero verde teatro di quella rapida e inspiegabile tragedia. La luce morì lungo il fiume; la nebbia si levò dagli argini paludosi; alcuni uccelli attardati svolazzarono a scatti attraverso.

Conficcata ostinatamente nel suo subconscio (che era insolitamente vivace) c’era una indicibile certezza che vi fosse qualcosa ancora inspiegato. Questa sensazione che gli si era aggrappata tutto il giorno non poteva essere pienamente spiegata dalla sua fantasia del «paese degli specchi». In qualche modo non aveva visto la storia vera, ma un qualche gioco o mascherata. Eppure la gente non viene impiccata né trafitta attraverso il corpo per amore di una sciarada.

Mentre sedeva sui gradini dell’approdo a rimuginare, si accorse della snella, scura striscia di una vela che scendeva silenziosa lungo il rilucente fiume, e balzò in piedi con un tale riflusso di emozione che per poco non pianse.

«Flambeau!» gridò, e scosse l’amico per entrambe le mani più e più volte, con gran stupore di quello sportivo, mentre veniva a riva con la sua attrezzatura da pesca. «Flambeau», disse, «dunque non sei stato ucciso?»

«Ucciso!» ripeté il pescatore con gran stupore. «E perché mai avrei dovuto essere ucciso?»

«Oh, perché quasi tutti gli altri lo sono», disse il suo compagno piuttosto sconvolto. «Saradine è stato assassinato, e Antonelli vuole essere impiccato, e sua madre è svenuta, e io, per uno, non so se sono in questo mondo o nell’altro. Ma, grazie a Dio, tu sei nel medesimo.» E prese il braccio dello sconcertato Flambeau.

Mentre si allontanavano dall’approdo giunsero sotto le gronde della bassa casa di bambù, e guardarono dentro attraverso una delle finestre, come avevano fatto al loro primo arrivo. Contemplarono un interno illuminato da una lampada ben atto ad arrestare i loro occhi. Il tavolo nella lunga sala da pranzo era stato apparecchiato per la cena quando il distruttore di Saradine era caduto come un fulmine di tempesta sull’isola. E la cena era ora in placido corso, poiché Mrs. Anthony sedeva alquanto imbronciata ai piedi del tavolo, mentre a capotavola c’era Mr. Paul, il maggiordomo maggiore, che mangiava e beveva del migliore, i suoi occhi cisposi e bluastri che sporgevano stranamente dal volto, il suo scarno sembiante imperscrutabile, ma per nulla privo di soddisfazione.

Con un gesto di poderosa impazienza, Flambeau scosse la finestra, la spalancò a forza, e ficcò una testa indignata nella stanza illuminata dalla lampada.

«Ebbene», gridò. «Posso capire che possiate aver bisogno di qualche rinfresco, ma rubare davvero la cena del vostro padrone mentre egli giace assassinato nel giardino…»

«Ho rubato moltissime cose in una lunga e piacevole vita», replicò placidamente lo strano vecchio gentiluomo; «questa cena è una delle poche cose che non ho rubato. Questa cena e questa casa e questo giardino guarda caso appartengono a me.»

Un pensiero balenò sul volto di Flambeau. «Volete dire», cominciò, «che il testamento del principe Saradine…»

«Io sono il principe Saradine», disse il vecchio, sgranocchiando una mandorla salata.

Father Brown, che stava guardando gli uccelli là fuori, sobbalzò come se gli avessero sparato, e ficcò dentro la finestra una faccia pallida come una rapa.

«Voi siete che cosa?» ripeté con voce stridula.

«Paul, principe Saradine, à vos ordres», disse il venerabile personaggio cortesemente, sollevando un bicchiere di sherry. «Vivo qui assai quietamente, essendo un tipo casalingo; e per amor di modestia mi faccio chiamare Mr. Paul, per distinguermi dal mio sventurato fratello Mr. Stephen. È morto, sento dire, di recente — nel giardino. Naturalmente, non è colpa mia se dei nemici lo inseguono fin qui. È dovuto alla deplorevole irregolarità della sua vita. Non era un carattere casalingo.»

Ricadde nel silenzio, e continuò a fissare la parete di fronte proprio al di sopra del capo chino e cupo della donna. Videro chiaramente la somiglianza di famiglia che li aveva perseguitati nel morto. Poi le sue vecchie spalle cominciarono a sollevarsi e a scuotersi un poco, come se stesse soffocando, ma il suo volto non mutò.

“My God!” cried Flambeau after a pause, “he’s laughing!”

“Come away,” said Father Brown, who was quite white. “Come away from this house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again.”

Night had sunk on rushes and river by the time they had pushed off from the island, and they went down-stream in the dark, warming themselves with two big cigars that glowed like crimson ships’ lanterns. Father Brown took his cigar out of his mouth and said:

“I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it’s a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than one.”

“I do not follow that,” answered Flambeau.

“Oh, it’s really simple,” rejoined his friend. “Simple, though anything but innocent. Both the Saradines were scamps, but the prince, the elder, was the sort of scamp that gets to the top, and the younger, the captain, was the sort that sinks to the bottom. This squalid officer fell from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold upon his brother, the prince. Obviously it was for no light matter, for Prince Paul Saradine was frankly ‘fast,’ and had no reputation to lose as to the mere sins of society. In plain fact, it was a hanging matter, and Stephen literally had a rope round his brother’s neck. He had somehow discovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could prove that Paul murdered old Antonelli in the mountains. The captain raked in the hush money heavily for ten years, until even the prince’s splendid fortune began to look a little foolish.

“But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his blood-sucking brother. He knew that the son of Antonelli, a mere child at the time of the murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived only to avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen’s legal proof), but with the old weapons of vendetta. The boy had practised arms with a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough to use them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel. The fact is that he began to flee for his life, passing from place to place like a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon his trail. That was Prince Paul’s position, and by no means a pretty one. The more money he spent on eluding Antonelli the less he had to silence Stephen. The more he gave to silence Stephen the less chance there was of finally escaping Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself a great man—a genius like Napoleon.

“Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered suddenly to both of them. He gave way like a Japanese wrestler, and his foes fell prostrate before him. He gave up the race round the world, and he gave up his address to young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to his brother. He sent Stephen money enough for smart clothes and easy travel, with a letter saying roughly: ‘This is all I have left. You have cleaned me out. I still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and a cellar, and if you want more from me you must take that. Come and take possession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friend or agent or anything.’ He knew that the Sicilian had never seen the Saradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were somewhat alike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then he shaved his own face and waited. The trap worked. The unhappy captain, in his new clothes, entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian’s sword.

“There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues of mankind. He took it for granted that the Italian’s blow, when it came, would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so die without speech. It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli’s chivalry proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations. It was then that I found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes. He was fleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn who he was.

“But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer and he knew the fanatic. It was quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing a part, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal’s trust in luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli, the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales of his family. Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight was over. Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw his two vanquished enemies taken away forever, and sat down smiling to his dinner.”

“Laughing, God help us!” said Flambeau with a strong shudder. “Do they get such ideas from Satan?”

“He got that idea from you,” answered the priest.

“God forbid!” ejaculated Flambeau. “From me! What do you mean!”

The priest pulled a visiting-card from his pocket and held it up in the faint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled with green ink.

“Don’t you remember his original invitation to you?” he asked, “and the compliment to your criminal exploit? ‘That trick of yours,’ he says, ‘of getting one detective to arrest the other’? He has just copied your trick. With an enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of the way and let them collide and kill each other.”

Flambeau tore Prince Saradine’s card from the priest’s hands and rent it savagely in small pieces.

“There’s the last of that old skull and crossbones,” he said as he scattered the pieces upon the dark and disappearing waves of the stream; “but I should think it would poison the fishes.”

The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened; a faint and vibrant colour as of morning changed the sky, and the moon behind the grasses grew paler. They drifted in silence.

“Father,” said Flambeau suddenly, “do you think it was all a dream?”

The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward down the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.

«Dio mio!» gridò Flambeau dopo una pausa, «sta ridendo!»

«Andiamo via», disse Father Brown, che era tutto bianco. «Andiamo via da questa casa d’inferno. Torniamo su una barca onesta.»

La notte era calata sui giunchi e sul fiume al momento in cui ebbero staccato la barca dall’ isola, e discesero la corrente nel buio, riscaldandosi con due grossi sigari che ardevano come cremisi lanterne di nave. Father Brown si tolse il sigaro di bocca e disse:

«Immagino che ora tu possa indovinare tutta la storia? Dopotutto, è una storia primitiva. Un uomo aveva due nemici. Era un uomo saggio. E così scoprì che due nemici sono meglio di uno.»

«Non ti seguo», rispose Flambeau.

«Oh, è davvero semplice», ribatté l’amico. «Semplice, sebbene tutt’altro che innocente. Entrambi i Saradine erano canaglie, ma il principe, il maggiore, era il tipo di canaglia che arriva in cima, e il minore, il capitano, era il tipo che affonda in fondo. Questo squallido ufficiale scese da accattone a ricattatore, e un brutto giorno mise la mano addosso a suo fratello, il principe. Ovviamente non era per faccenda da poco, poiché il principe Paul Saradine era francamente ‘dissoluto’, e non aveva reputazione da perdere quanto ai meri peccati della società. In parole povere, era faccenda da forca, e Stephen aveva letteralmente una corda al collo del fratello. Aveva in qualche modo scoperto la verità sulla faccenda siciliana, e poteva provare che Paul aveva assassinato il vecchio Antonelli sui monti. Il capitano raccolse pesantemente il denaro del silenzio per dieci anni, finché perfino la splendida fortuna del principe cominciò a sembrare un po’ misera.

«Ma il principe Saradine portava un altro fardello oltre al fratello succhiasangue. Sapeva che il figlio di Antonelli, un semplice bambino all’epoca dell’assassinio, era stato addestrato in una selvaggia lealtà siciliana, e viveva soltanto per vendicare suo padre, non con la forca (poiché gli mancava la prova legale di Stephen), ma con le antiche armi della vendetta. Il ragazzo si era esercitato nelle armi con una perfezione micidiale, e verso l’epoca in cui fu abbastanza grande per usarle il principe Saradine cominciò, come dicevano i giornali mondani, a viaggiare. Il fatto è che cominciò a fuggire per salvarsi la vita, passando di luogo in luogo come un criminale braccato; ma con un uomo implacabile sulle sue tracce. Questa era la posizione del principe Paul, e per nulla graziosa. Più denaro spendeva per sfuggire ad Antonelli, meno ne aveva per mettere a tacere Stephen. Più ne dava per mettere a tacere Stephen, meno probabilità c’era di sfuggire finalmente ad Antonelli. Fu allora che si mostrò un grand’uomo — un genio come Napoleone.

«Invece di resistere ai suoi due antagonisti, si arrese d’improvviso a entrambi. Cedette come un lottatore giapponese, e i suoi nemici caddero prostrati davanti a lui. Rinunciò alla corsa intorno al mondo, e diede il proprio indirizzo al giovane Antonelli; poi cedette ogni cosa a suo fratello. Mandò a Stephen denaro sufficiente per eleganti abiti e comodi viaggi, con una lettera che diceva grosso modo: ‘Questo è tutto ciò che mi resta. Mi hai ripulito. Mi resta ancora una piccola casa nel Norfolk, con dei domestici e una cantina, e se vuoi di più da me devi prenderti quella. Vieni a prenderne possesso se ti va, e io vivrò là quietamente come tuo amico o agente o qualsiasi cosa.’ Sapeva che il siciliano non aveva mai visto i fratelli Saradine se non, forse, in fotografia; sapeva che erano alquanto simili, avendo entrambi barbe grigie e appuntite. Poi si rase la propria faccia e attese. La trappola funzionò. L’infelice capitano, nei suoi nuovi abiti, entrò nella casa in trionfo come un principe, e andò a cadere sulla spada del siciliano.

«Ci fu un intoppo, ed è a onore della natura umana. Gli spiriti malvagi come Saradine spesso sbagliano non aspettandosi mai le virtù dell’umanità. Diede per scontato che il colpo dell’italiano, quando fosse venuto, sarebbe stato oscuro, violento e senza nome, come il colpo che vendicava; che la vittima sarebbe stata accoltellata di notte, o fucilata da dietro una siepe, e così morire senza parlare. Fu un brutto momento per il principe Paul quando la cavalleria di Antonelli propose un duello formale, con tutte le sue possibili spiegazioni. Fu allora che lo trovai mentre prendeva il largo nella sua barca con occhi selvaggi. Fuggiva, a capo scoperto, in una barca aperta prima che Antonelli potesse apprendere chi egli fosse.

«Ma, per quanto agitato, non era disperato. Conosceva l’avventuriero e conosceva il fanatico. Era assai probabile che Stephen, l’avventuriero, tenesse la bocca chiusa, per il suo mero piacere istrionico di recitare una parte, per la sua brama di aggrapparsi ai suoi nuovi comodi alloggi, per la sua fiducia da furfante nella fortuna, e per la sua bella scherma. Era certo che Antonelli, il fanatico, avrebbe tenuto la bocca chiusa, e si sarebbe fatto impiccare senza fare la spia sulla propria famiglia. Paul bighellonò sul fiume finché non seppe che il combattimento era finito. Poi destò la città, portò la polizia, vide i suoi due vinti nemici portati via per sempre, e si sedette sorridendo alla sua cena.»

«Ridendo, che Dio ci aiuti!» disse Flambeau con un forte brivido. «Prendono simili idee da Satana?»

«Ha preso quell’idea da te», rispose il prete.

«Dio non voglia!» esclamò Flambeau. «Da me! Che cosa intendi!»

Il prete estrasse un biglietto da visita dalla tasca e lo tenne sollevato nel debole bagliore del suo sigaro; era scarabocchiato con inchiostro verde.

«Non ricordi il suo invito originale a te?» chiese, «e il complimento alla tua impresa criminale? ‘Quel vostro trucco’, dice, ‘di far arrestare un detective dall’altro’? Ha semplicemente copiato il tuo trucco. Con un nemico da ciascun lato, sgusciò via rapidamente e li lasciò collidere e uccidersi a vicenda.»

Flambeau strappò il biglietto del principe Saradine dalle mani del prete e lo dilaniò selvaggiamente in piccoli pezzi.

«Ecco l’ultimo resto di quel vecchio teschio con le ossa incrociate», disse mentre spargeva i pezzi sulle scure e sparenti onde del corso d’acqua; «ma penso proprio che avvelenerebbe i pesci.»

L’ultimo barlume di biglietto bianco e d’inchiostro verde fu annegato e oscurato; un debole e vibrante colore come di mattino mutò il cielo, e la luna dietro le erbe impallidì. Andarono alla deriva in silenzio.

«Padre», disse Flambeau all’improvviso, «pensi che sia stato tutto un sogno?»

Il prete scosse il capo, se in dissenso o in agnosticismo, ma rimase muto. Un odore di biancospino e di frutteti giunse loro attraverso l’oscurità, dicendo loro che un vento si era destato; un attimo dopo esso fece oscillare la loro barchetta e gonfiò la vela, e li portò avanti giù per il tortuoso fiume verso luoghi più felici e le dimore di uomini innocui.

The Hammer of God

The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steep that the tall spire of its church seemed only like the peak of a small mountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red with fires and always littered with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite to this, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was “The Blue Boar,” the only inn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leaden and silver daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke; though one was beginning the day and the other finishing it. The Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to some austere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon. Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sitting in evening dress on the bench outside “The Blue Boar,” drinking what the philosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass on Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. The colonel was not particular.

The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really dating from the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high in chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had been Mohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria. But like more than one of the really ancient houses, they had rotted in the last two centuries into mere drunkards and dandy degenerates, till there had even come a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human about the colonel’s wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his face. Over his evening clothes he wore a curious pale yellow coat that looked more like a very light dressing gown than an overcoat, and on the back of his head was stuck an extraordinary broad-brimmed hat of a bright green colour, evidently some oriental curiosity caught up at random. He was proud of appearing in such incongruous attires—proud of the fact that he always made them look congruous.

His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the elegance, but he was buttoned up to the chin in black, and his face was clean-shaven, cultivated, and a little nervous. He seemed to live for nothing but his religion; but there were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who was a Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic architecture rather than of God, and that his haunting of the church like a ghost was only another and purer turn of the almost morbid thirst for beauty which sent his brother raging after women and wine. This charge was doubtful, while the man’s practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was mostly an ignorant misunderstanding of the love of solitude and secret prayer, and was founded on his being often found kneeling, not before the altar, but in peculiar places, in the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry. He was at the moment about to enter the church through the yard of the smithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he saw his brother’s cavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On the hypothesis that the colonel was interested in the church he did not waste any speculations. There only remained the blacksmith’s shop, and though the blacksmith was a Puritan and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some scandals about a beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He flung a suspicious look across the shed, and the colonel stood up laughing to speak to him.

“Good morning, Wilfred,” he said. “Like a good landlord I am watching sleeplessly over my people. I am going to call on the blacksmith.”

Wilfred looked at the ground, and said: “The blacksmith is out. He is over at Greenford.”

“I know,” answered the other with silent laughter; “that is why I am calling on him.”

“Norman,” said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in the road, “are you ever afraid of thunderbolts?”

“What do you mean?” asked the colonel. “Is your hobby meteorology?”

“I mean,” said Wilfred, without looking up, “do you ever think that God might strike you in the street?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the colonel; “I see your hobby is folk-lore.”

“I know your hobby is blasphemy,” retorted the religious man, stung in the one live place of his nature. “But if you do not fear God, you have good reason to fear man.”

The elder raised his eyebrows politely. “Fear man?” he said.

“Barnes the blacksmith is the biggest and strongest man for forty miles round,” said the clergyman sternly. “I know you are no coward or weakling, but he could throw you over the wall.”

This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by mouth and nostril darkened and deepened. For a moment he stood with the heavy sneer on his face. But in an instant Colonel Bohun had recovered his own cruel good humour and laughed, showing two dog-like front teeth under his yellow moustache. “In that case, my dear Wilfred,” he said quite carelessly, “it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come out partially in armour.”

And he took off the queer round hat covered with green, showing that it was lined within with steel. Wilfred recognised it indeed as a light Japanese or Chinese helmet torn down from a trophy that hung in the old family hall.

“It was the first hat to hand,” explained his brother airily; “always the nearest hat—and the nearest woman.”

Il martello di Dio

Il piccolo villaggio di Bohun Beacon era appollaiato su una collina tanto ripida che l’alto campanile della sua chiesa pareva soltanto la vetta di una piccola montagna. Ai piedi della chiesa sorgeva una fucina, di solito rossa di fuochi e sempre ingombra di martelli e di rottami di ferro; di fronte a questa, oltre una rozza croce di viottoli acciottolati, stava «Il Cinghiale Azzurro», l’unica locanda del luogo. Fu proprio su quel crocicchio, nel levarsi di un’alba plumbea e argentea, che due fratelli si incontrarono per la via e si parlarono; sebbene l’uno cominciasse la giornata e l’altro la finisse. Il reverendo e nobile Wilfred Bohun era assai devoto, e si recava verso qualche austero esercizio di preghiera o di contemplazione all’alba. Il colonnello e nobile Norman Bohun, il fratello maggiore, non era affatto devoto, e sedeva in abito da sera sulla panca fuori del «Cinghiale Azzurro», bevendo ciò che l’osservatore filosofo era libero di considerare o come il suo ultimo bicchiere del martedì o come il primo del mercoledì. Il colonnello non stava a sottilizzare.

I Bohun erano una delle pochissime famiglie aristocratiche davvero risalenti al Medioevo, e il loro gonfalone aveva realmente veduto la Palestina. Ma è un grave errore supporre che simili casati stiano in alto nella tradizione cavalleresca. Ben pochi, tranne i poveri, conservano le tradizioni. Gli aristocratici vivono non di tradizioni ma di mode. I Bohun erano stati Mohock sotto la Queen Anna e Masher sotto la Queen Vittoria. Ma, come più d’uno dei casati davvero antichi, essi negli ultimi due secoli erano imputriditi in meri ubriaconi e dandy degenerati, finché non era corsa persino una voce di follia. Certo vi era qualcosa di appena umano nella lupesca caccia al piacere del colonnello, e la sua cronica risoluzione di non tornare a casa prima del mattino aveva un che dell’orribile lucidità dell’insonnia. Era un uomo alto, un bell’animale, attempato, ma coi capelli ancora d’un giallo sorprendente. Sarebbe parso semplicemente biondo e leonino, se non fosse che i suoi occhi azzurri erano infossati tanto nel volto da sembrare neri. Erano un poco troppo ravvicinati. Aveva lunghissimi baffi gialli; ai lati di essi una piega o un solco dalla narice alla mascella, così che un ghigno pareva inciso nel suo viso. Sopra l’abito da sera indossava un curioso cappotto d’un giallo pallido che pareva più una vestaglia molto leggera che un soprabito, e sulla nuca gli stava conficcato uno straordinario cappello a larghe tese d’un vivo colore verde, evidentemente qualche curiosità orientale raccolta a caso. Andava fiero di comparire con abbigliamenti tanto incongrui, fiero del fatto che sempre riusciva a farli sembrare congrui.

Anche suo fratello il curato aveva i capelli gialli e l’eleganza, ma era abbottonato fino al mento di nero, e il suo volto era ben rasato, coltivato e un poco nervoso. Pareva vivere unicamente per la sua religione; ma vi era chi diceva (segnatamente il fabbro, che era presbiteriano) che si trattasse d’un amore dell’architettura gotica più che di Dio, e che quel suo aggirarsi per la chiesa come un fantasma non fosse che un’altra e più pura volta di quella sete quasi morbosa di bellezza che spingeva suo fratello a smaniare dietro le donne e il vino. Questa accusa era dubbia, mentre la pietà pratica dell’uomo era indubitabile. In verità, l’accusa era per lo più un ignorante fraintendimento dell’amore della solitudine e della segreta preghiera, e si fondava sul fatto che lo si trovava spesso inginocchiato, non davanti all’altare, ma in luoghi peculiari, nelle cripte o nella galleria, o persino nel campanile. In quel momento stava per entrare in chiesa attraverso il cortile della fucina, ma si arrestò e si accigliò un poco nel vedere gli occhi cavernosi del fratello che fissavano nella medesima direzione. Sull’ipotesi che il colonnello si interessasse alla chiesa non sprecò alcuna congettura. Non rimaneva che la bottega del fabbro, e sebbene il fabbro fosse un puritano e non uno dei suoi fedeli, Wilfred Bohun aveva udito certi pettegolezzi su una moglie bella e alquanto celebre. Lanciò uno sguardo sospettoso attraverso la tettoia, e il colonnello si alzò ridendo per rivolgergli la parola.

«Buon giorno, Wilfred» disse. «Da buon signorotto veglio insonne sui miei sudditi. Sto per andare a far visita al fabbro.»

Wilfred guardò a terra, e disse: «Il fabbro è fuori. È laggiù a Greenford.»

«Lo so» rispose l’altro con silente risata; «per questo gli faccio visita.»

«Norman» disse l’ecclesiastico, con l’occhio su un ciottolo della strada, «hai mai paura dei fulmini?»

«Che vuoi dire?» chiese il colonnello. «Il tuo passatempo è la meteorologia?»

«Voglio dire» disse Wilfred, senza alzare lo sguardo, «pensi mai che Dio possa colpirti per la strada?»

«Chiedo scusa» disse il colonnello; «vedo che il tuo passatempo è il folklore.»

«So che il tuo passatempo è la bestemmia» ribatté l’uomo religioso, punto nell’unico punto vivo della sua natura. «Ma se non temi Dio, hai buoni motivi di temere l’uomo.»

Il maggiore inarcò le sopracciglia con cortesia. «Temere l’uomo?» disse.

«Barnes il fabbro è l’uomo più grosso e più forte per quaranta miglia all’intorno» disse il curato con severità. «So che tu non sei un codardo né un debole, ma egli potrebbe scagliarti oltre il muro.»

Ciò colpì nel segno, essendo vero, e la linea cupa presso la bocca e la narice si oscurò e si approfondì. Per un momento egli rimase con quel pesante ghigno sul volto. Ma in un istante il colonnello Bohun ebbe ritrovato il proprio crudele buon umore e rise, mostrando due canini anteriori sotto i baffi gialli. «In tal caso, mio caro Wilfred» disse con perfetta noncuranza, «fu saggio da parte dell’ultimo dei Bohun uscire parzialmente in armatura.»

E si tolse lo strano cappello tondo coperto di verde, mostrando che internamente era foderato d’acciaio. Wilfred lo riconobbe invero come un leggero elmo giapponese o cinese strappato a un trofeo appeso nell’antica sala di famiglia.

«Era il primo cappello a portata di mano» spiegò il fratello con leggerezza; «sempre il cappello più vicino… e la donna più vicina.»

“The blacksmith is away at Greenford,” said Wilfred quietly; “the time of his return is unsettled.”

And with that he turned and went into the church with bowed head, crossing himself like one who wishes to be quit of an unclean spirit. He was anxious to forget such grossness in the cool twilight of his tall Gothic cloisters; but on that morning it was fated that his still round of religious exercises should be everywhere arrested by small shocks. As he entered the church, hitherto always empty at that hour, a kneeling figure rose hastily to its feet and came towards the full daylight of the doorway. When the curate saw it he stood still with surprise. For the early worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew of the blacksmith, one who neither would nor could care for the church or for anything else. He was always called “Mad Joe,” and seemed to have no other name; he was a dark, strong, slouching lad, with a heavy white face, dark straight hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed the priest, his moon-calf countenance gave no hint of what he had been doing or thinking of. He had never been known to pray before. What sort of prayers was he saying now? Extraordinary prayers surely.

Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious appearance of trying to hit it.

This ugly sunlit picture of the stupidity and cruelty of the earth sent the ascetic finally to his prayers for purification and new thoughts. He went up to a pew in the gallery, which brought him under a coloured window which he loved and always quieted his spirit; a blue window with an angel carrying lilies. There he began to think less about the half-wit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He began to think less of his evil brother, pacing like a lean lion in his horrible hunger. He sank deeper and deeper into those cold and sweet colours of silver blossoms and sapphire sky.

In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by Gibbs, the village cobbler, who had been sent for him in some haste. He got to his feet with promptitude, for he knew that no small matter would have brought Gibbs into such a place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages, an atheist, and his appearance in church was a shade more extraordinary than Mad Joe’s. It was a morning of theological enigmas.

“What is it?” asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but putting out a trembling hand for his hat.

The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was quite startlingly respectful, and even, as it were, huskily sympathetic.

“You must excuse me, sir,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “but we didn’t think it right not to let you know at once. I’m afraid a rather dreadful thing has happened, sir. I’m afraid your brother—”

Wilfred clenched his frail hands. “What devilry has he done now?” he cried in voluntary passion.

“Why, sir,” said the cobbler, coughing, “I’m afraid he’s done nothing, and won’t do anything. I’m afraid he’s done for. You had really better come down, sir.”

The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding stair which brought them out at an entrance rather higher than the street. Bohun saw the tragedy in one glance, flat underneath him like a plan. In the yard of the smithy were standing five or six men mostly in black, one in an inspector’s uniform. They included the doctor, the Presbyterian minister, and the priest from the Roman Catholic chapel, to which the blacksmith’s wife belonged. The latter was speaking to her, indeed, very rapidly, in an undertone, as she, a magnificent woman with red-gold hair, was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups, and just clear of the main heap of hammers, lay a man in evening dress, spread-eagled and flat on his face. From the height above Wilfred could have sworn to every item of his costume and appearance, down to the Bohun rings upon his fingers; but the skull was only a hideous splash, like a star of blackness and blood.

Wilfred Bohun gave but one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard. The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. He could only stammer out: “My brother is dead. What does it mean? What is this horrible mystery?” There was an unhappy silence; and then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered: “Plenty of horror, sir,” he said; “but not much mystery.”

“What do you mean?” asked Wilfred, with a white face.

“It’s plain enough,” answered Gibbs. “There is only one man for forty miles round that could have struck such a blow as that, and he’s the man that had most reason to.”

“We must not prejudge anything,” put in the doctor, a tall, black-bearded man, rather nervously; “but it is competent for me to corroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about the nature of the blow, sir; it is an incredible blow. Mr. Gibbs says that only one man in this district could have done it. I should have said myself that nobody could have done it.”

A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate. “I can hardly understand,” he said.

“Mr. Bohun,” said the doctor in a low voice, “metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of a giant.”

He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then he added: “The thing has one advantage—that it clears most people of suspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in the country were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infant would be acquitted of stealing the Nelson column.”

«Il fabbro è via a Greenford» disse Wilfred sommessamente; «il momento del suo ritorno è incerto.»

E con ciò si voltò ed entrò in chiesa a capo chino, segnandosi come chi voglia liberarsi di uno spirito immondo. Era ansioso di dimenticare tanta grossolanità nel fresco crepuscolo dei suoi alti chiostri gotici; ma quel mattino era destino che il suo tranquillo giro di esercizi religiosi fosse ovunque interrotto da piccole scosse. Mentre entrava in chiesa, fin lì sempre vuota a quell’ora, una figura inginocchiata si alzò in fretta in piedi e mosse verso la piena luce diurna della porta. Quando il curato la vide, si fermò immobile per la sorpresa. Poiché il devoto mattiniero non era altri che l’idiota del villaggio, un nipote del fabbro, uno che né voleva né poteva curarsi della chiesa o di qualsivoglia altra cosa. Lo chiamavano sempre «Joe il Matto», e pareva non avesse altro nome; era un ragazzo bruno, robusto, dinoccolato, dal pesante volto bianco, dai capelli scuri e lisci, e la bocca sempre aperta. Nel passare accanto al prete, il suo volto da lunatico non diede alcun indizio di ciò che egli avesse fatto o pensato. Non si era mai saputo che pregasse prima. Che sorta di preghiere andava dicendo ora? Straordinarie preghiere di certo.

Wilfred Bohun rimase inchiodato al posto abbastanza a lungo da vedere l’idiota uscire alla luce del sole, e persino da vedere il suo dissoluto fratello salutarlo con una specie di giovialità da zione. L’ultima cosa che vide fu il colonnello che gettava monetine nella bocca aperta di Joe, con l’aria seria di chi cerchi di far centro.

Questa brutta scena assolata della stupidità e crudeltà della terra spinse l’asceta infine alle sue preghiere di purificazione e di nuovi pensieri. Salì a un banco della galleria, che lo poneva sotto una vetrata colorata che egli amava e che sempre gli quietava lo spirito; una vetrata azzurra con un angelo che recava gigli. Lì cominciò a pensare meno all’idiota, dal volto livido e la bocca simile a un pesce. Cominciò a pensare meno al suo malvagio fratello, che si aggirava come un magro leone nella sua orribile fame. Sprofondò sempre più in quei freddi e dolci colori di argentei fiori e di cielo di zaffiro.

In quel luogo, mezz’ora più tardi, lo trovò Gibbs, il ciabattino del villaggio, che era stato mandato a cercarlo con una certa fretta. Si rizzò in piedi con prontezza, poiché sapeva che nessuna piccola faccenda avrebbe condotto Gibbs in un simile luogo. Il ciabattino era, come in molti villaggi, un ateo, e la sua comparsa in chiesa era una sfumatura più straordinaria di quella di Joe il Matto. Era un mattino di enigmi teologici.

«Che c’è?» chiese Wilfred Bohun piuttosto rigidamente, ma tendendo una mano tremante verso il cappello.

L’ateo parlò in un tono che, provenendo da lui, era straordinariamente rispettoso, e persino, per così dire, roco di partecipazione.

«Dovete scusarmi, signore» disse in un rauco sussurro, «ma non ci pareva giusto non avvertirvi subito. Temo che sia accaduta una cosa piuttosto terribile, signore. Temo che vostro fratello…»

Wilfred serrò le fragili mani. «Quale diavoleria ha combinato ora?» gridò in un moto involontario di passione.

«Ecco, signore» disse il ciabattino, tossendo, «temo che non abbia combinato nulla, e non combinerà più nulla. Temo che sia bell’e spacciato. Fareste proprio meglio a scendere, signore.»

Il curato seguì il ciabattino giù per una breve scala a chiocciola che li portò a un’uscita un poco più alta della strada. Bohun vide la tragedia in un solo sguardo, distesa sotto di lui come una pianta. Nel cortile della fucina stavano cinque o sei uomini per lo più vestiti di nero, uno in uniforme d’ispettore. Fra essi vi erano il medico, il ministro presbiteriano, e il prete della cappella cattolica romana, alla quale apparteneva la moglie del fabbro. Quest’ultimo le stava invero parlando, assai rapidamente, a mezza voce, mentre lei, una donna magnifica dai capelli rosso-oro, singhiozzava alla cieca su una panca. Fra questi due gruppi, e appena discosto dal mucchio principale dei martelli, giaceva un uomo in abito da sera, disteso a braccia aperte e bocconi. Dall’altezza sovrastante Wilfred avrebbe potuto giurare su ogni particolare del suo abbigliamento e del suo aspetto, fino agli anelli dei Bohun sulle sue dita; ma il cranio non era che un’orrenda macchia, come una stella di nerezza e di sangue.

Wilfred Bohun diede un solo sguardo, e corse giù per i gradini nel cortile. Il medico, che era il medico di famiglia, lo salutò, ma egli lo notò appena. Poté solo balbettare: «Mio fratello è morto. Che significa? Che cos’è questo orribile mistero?» Vi fu un infelice silenzio; e poi il ciabattino, l’uomo più franco fra i presenti, rispose: «Molto orrore, signore» disse; «ma non molto mistero.»

«Che vuoi dire?» chiese Wilfred, col volto bianco.

«È abbastanza chiaro» rispose Gibbs. «C’è un solo uomo per quaranta miglia all’intorno che avrebbe potuto vibrare un simile colpo, ed è l’uomo che aveva più ragione di farlo.»

«Non dobbiamo pregiudicare nulla» intervenne il medico, un uomo alto dalla barba nera, piuttosto nervosamente; «ma è nelle mie competenze corroborare ciò che il signor Gibbs dice sulla natura del colpo, signore; è un colpo incredibile. Il signor Gibbs dice che un solo uomo in questo distretto avrebbe potuto darlo. Io direi da parte mia che nessuno avrebbe potuto darlo.»

Un brivido di superstizione attraversò l’esile figura del curato. «Riesco a stento a comprendere» disse.

«Signor Bohun» disse il medico a bassa voce, «le metafore letteralmente mi vengono meno. È insufficiente dire che il cranio fu fracassato in pezzi come un guscio d’uovo. Schegge d’osso furono cacciate nel corpo e nel terreno come pallottole in un muro di fango. Fu la mano di un gigante.»

Tacque un momento, guardando cupamente attraverso gli occhiali; poi aggiunse: «La cosa ha un vantaggio: scagiona la maggior parte della gente dal sospetto d’un sol colpo. Se voi o io o qualsiasi uomo di normale costituzione del paese fossimo accusati di questo delitto, saremmo assolti come un lattante sarebbe assolto dal furto della colonna di Nelson.»

“That’s what I say,” repeated the cobbler obstinately; “there’s only one man that could have done it, and he’s the man that would have done it. Where’s Simeon Barnes, the blacksmith?”

“He’s over at Greenford,” faltered the curate.

“More likely over in France,” muttered the cobbler.

“No; he is in neither of those places,” said a small and colourless voice, which came from the little Roman priest who had joined the group. “As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment.”

The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubbly brown hair and a round and stolid face. But if he had been as splendid as Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyone turned round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plain below, along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and with a hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and gigantic man, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He was walking and talking quietly with two other men; and though he was never specially cheerful, he seemed quite at his ease.

“My God!” cried the atheistic cobbler, “and there’s the hammer he did it with.”

“No,” said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a sandy moustache, speaking for the first time. “There’s the hammer he did it with over there by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as they are.”

All glanced round and the short priest went across and looked down in silence at the tool where it lay. It was one of the smallest and the lightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among the rest; but on the iron edge of it were blood and yellow hair.

After a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there was a new note in his dull voice. “Mr. Gibbs was hardly right,” he said, “in saying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so big a man should attempt so big a blow with so little a hammer.”

“Oh, never mind that,” cried Gibbs, in a fever. “What are we to do with Simeon Barnes?”

“Leave him alone,” said the priest quietly. “He is coming here of himself. I know those two men with him. They are very good fellows from Greenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel.”

Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church, and strode into his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and the hammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrable propriety, immediately went up to him.

“I won’t ask you, Mr. Barnes,” he said, “whether you know anything about what has happened here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don’t know, and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the form of arresting you in the King’s name for the murder of Colonel Norman Bohun.”

“You are not bound to say anything,” said the cobbler in officious excitement. “They’ve got to prove everything. They haven’t proved yet that it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that.”

“That won’t wash,” said the doctor aside to the priest. “That’s out of the detective stories. I was the colonel’s medical man, and I knew his body better than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. The second and third fingers were the same length. Oh, that’s the colonel right enough.”

As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the motionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.

“Is Colonel Bohun dead?” said the smith quite calmly. “Then he’s damned.”

“Don’t say anything! Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a fanatic.

“It’s well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world’s law favours you,” he said; “but God guards His own in His pocket, as you shall see this day.”

Then he pointed to the colonel and said: “When did this dog die in his sins?”

“Moderate your language,” said the doctor.

“Moderate the Bible’s language, and I’ll moderate mine. When did he die?”

“I saw him alive at six o’clock this morning,” stammered Wilfred Bohun.

“God is good,” said the smith. “Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightest objection to being arrested. It is you who may object to arresting me. I don’t mind leaving the court without a stain on my character. You do mind perhaps leaving the court with a bad set-back in your career.”

The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with a lively eye; as did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, who was still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.

“There are two men standing outside this shop,” went on the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity, “good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till daybreak and long after in the committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits all night, we save souls so fast. In Greenford itself twenty people could swear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector, I would let you walk on to your downfall. But as a Christian man I feel bound to give you your chance, and ask you whether you will hear my alibi now or in court.”

The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and said, “Of course I should be glad to clear you altogether now.”

The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, and returned to his two friends from Greenford, who were indeed friends of nearly everyone present. Each of them said a few words which no one ever thought of disbelieving. When they had spoken, the innocence of Simeon stood up as solid as the great church above them.

«È quel che dico io» ripeté il ciabattino ostinatamente; «c’è un solo uomo che avrebbe potuto farlo, ed è l’uomo che l’avrebbe fatto. Dov’è Simeon Barnes, il fabbro?»

«È laggiù a Greenford» balbettò il curato.

«Più probabilmente laggiù in Francia» borbottò il ciabattino.

«No; non è in nessuno di quei luoghi» disse una voce piccola e incolore, che veniva dal piccolo prete cattolico che si era unito al gruppo. «A dire il vero, sta risalendo la strada in questo momento.»

Il piccolo prete non era un uomo interessante a vedersi, avendo ispidi capelli castani e un volto tondo e flemmatico. Ma fosse pure stato splendido come Apollo, nessuno lo avrebbe guardato in quel momento. Tutti si voltarono e scrutarono il sentiero che serpeggiava attraverso la pianura sottostante, lungo il quale camminava invero, col suo enorme passo e con un martello sulla spalla, Simeon il fabbro. Era un uomo ossuto e gigantesco, con occhi profondi, scuri, sinistri e una scura barba al mento. Camminava e chiacchierava tranquillamente con altri due uomini; e sebbene non fosse mai particolarmente allegro, pareva perfettamente a suo agio.

«Dio mio!» gridò il ciabattino ateo, «ed ecco lì il martello con cui l’ha fatto.»

«No» disse l’ispettore, un uomo dall’aria assennata con baffi rossicci, parlando per la prima volta. «Ecco lì il martello con cui l’ha fatto, laggiù presso il muro della chiesa. Abbiamo lasciato esso e il corpo esattamente come stanno.»

Tutti si volsero intorno e il piccolo prete andò a guardare in giù in silenzio l’attrezzo là dove giaceva. Era uno dei più piccoli e dei più leggeri fra i martelli, e non avrebbe attirato l’occhio fra gli altri; ma sul suo orlo di ferro vi erano sangue e capelli gialli.

Dopo un silenzio il piccolo prete parlò senza alzare lo sguardo, e vi era una nota nuova nella sua voce spenta. «Il signor Gibbs non aveva del tutto ragione» disse, «nel dire che non c’è mistero. C’è per lo meno il mistero del perché un uomo tanto grosso tentasse un colpo tanto grosso con un martello tanto piccolo.»

«Oh, lasciate perdere» gridò Gibbs, in fibrillazione. «Che cosa dobbiamo fare di Simeon Barnes?»

«Lasciatelo in pace» disse il prete tranquillamente. «Viene qui da sé. Conosco quei due uomini che sono con lui. Sono ottime persone di Greenford, e sono venuti a proposito della cappella presbiteriana.»

Mentre ancora parlava, l’alto fabbro girò l’angolo della chiesa, ed entrò a gran passi nel proprio cortile. Poi rimase là del tutto immobile, e il martello gli cadde di mano. L’ispettore, che aveva conservato un’impenetrabile compostezza, gli si avvicinò immediatamente.

«Non vi chiederò, signor Barnes» disse, «se sapete qualcosa di ciò che è accaduto qui. Non siete tenuto a parlare. Spero che non sappiate nulla, e che sarete in grado di provarlo. Ma devo compiere la formalità di arrestarvi in nome del Re per l’assassinio del colonnello Norman Bohun.»

«Non siete tenuto a dire nulla» disse il ciabattino in ossequiosa eccitazione. «Devono provare ogni cosa. Non hanno ancora provato che si tratti del colonnello Bohun, con la testa tutta fracassata a quel modo.»

«Questa non regge» disse il medico in disparte al prete. «Roba da romanzi polizieschi. Ero il medico del colonnello, e conoscevo il suo corpo meglio di lui. Aveva mani assai belle, ma proprio peculiari. Il secondo e il terzo dito erano della stessa lunghezza. Oh, è proprio il colonnello.»

Mentre egli gettava lo sguardo sul cadavere dal cranio sfracellato al suolo, gli occhi di ferro del fabbro immobile lo seguirono e si posarono anch’essi là.

«Il colonnello Bohun è morto?» disse il fabbro con perfetta calma. «Allora è dannato.»

«Non dite nulla! Oh, non dite nulla» gridò il ciabattino ateo, saltellando in un’estasi di ammirazione per il sistema legale inglese. Poiché nessun uomo è tanto legalista quanto il buon laicista.

Il fabbro volse verso di lui, di sopra la spalla, l’augusto volto di un fanatico.

«Sta bene per voi miscredenti schivare come volpi perché la legge del mondo vi favorisce» disse; «ma Dio custodisce i suoi nel suo pugno, come vedrete quest’oggi.»

Poi indicò il colonnello e disse: «Quando è morto nei suoi peccati questo cane?»

«Moderate il linguaggio» disse il medico.

«Moderate il linguaggio della Bibbia, e io modererò il mio. Quando è morto?»

«L’ho visto vivo alle sei in punto di stamattina» balbettò Wilfred Bohun.

«Dio è buono» disse il fabbro. «Signor ispettore, non ho la minima obiezione a essere arrestato. Siete voi che potreste avere obiezioni ad arrestarmi. A me non pesa lasciare il tribunale senza una macchia sul mio carattere. A voi forse pesa lasciare il tribunale con un brutto colpo alla vostra carriera.»

Il solido ispettore per la prima volta guardò il fabbro con occhio vivace; come del resto tutti gli altri, tranne lo strano, piccolo prete, che ancora fissava in giù il piccolo martello che aveva vibrato il colpo terribile.

«Ci sono due uomini là fuori di questa bottega» proseguì il fabbro con ponderosa lucidità, «bravi artigiani di Greenford che voi tutti conoscete, i quali giureranno di avermi visto da prima di mezzanotte fino all’alba e ben oltre nella sala del comitato della nostra Missione del Risveglio, che resta riunita tutta la notte, tanto in fretta salviamo le anime. A Greenford stessa venti persone potrebbero giurare per me per tutto quel tempo. Se fossi un pagano, signor ispettore, vi lascerei camminare verso la vostra rovina. Ma da uomo cristiano mi sento tenuto a darvi la vostra occasione, e a chiedervi se vorrete udire il mio alibi ora o in tribunale.»

L’ispettore parve per la prima volta turbato, e disse: «Naturalmente sarei lieto di scagionarvi del tutto sin d’ora.»

Il fabbro uscì dal suo cortile con lo stesso passo lungo e disinvolto, e tornò dai suoi due amici di Greenford, i quali erano invero amici di quasi tutti i presenti. Ciascuno di essi disse poche parole che a nessuno venne mai in mente di mettere in dubbio. Quando ebbero parlato, l’innocenza di Simeon si ergeva salda come la grande chiesa sopra di loro.

One of those silences struck the group which are more strange and insufferable than any speech. Madly, in order to make conversation, the curate said to the Catholic priest:

“You seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown.”

“Yes, I am,” said Father Brown; “why is it such a small hammer?”

The doctor swung round on him.

“By George, that’s true,” he cried; “who would use a little hammer with ten larger hammers lying about?”

Then he lowered his voice in the curate’s ear and said: “Only the kind of person that can’t lift a large hammer. It is not a question of force or courage between the sexes. It’s a question of lifting power in the shoulders. A bold woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer and never turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle with a heavy one.”

Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotised horror, while Father Brown listened with his head a little on one side, really interested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:

“Why do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates the wife’s lover is the wife’s husband? Nine times out of ten the person who most hates the wife’s lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence or treachery he had shown her—look there!”

He made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench. She had lifted her head at last and the tears were drying on her splendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electric glare that had in it something of idiocy.

The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desire to know; but Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown from the furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.

“You are like so many doctors,” he said; “your mental science is really suggestive. It is your physical science that is utterly impossible. I agree that the woman wants to kill the co-respondent much more than the petitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a small hammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physical impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man’s skull out flat like that.” Then he added reflectively, after a pause: “These people haven’t grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing an iron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at that woman. Look at her arms.”

Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily: “Well, I may be wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stick to the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammer if he could use a big hammer.”

With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to his head and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant they dropped, and he cried: “That was the word I wanted; you have said the word.”

Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: “The words you said were, ‘No man but an idiot would pick up the small hammer.’”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Well?”

“Well,” said the curate, “no man but an idiot did.” The rest stared at him with eyes arrested and riveted, and he went on in a febrile and feminine agitation.

“I am a priest,” he cried unsteadily, “and a priest should be no shedder of blood. I—I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. And I thank God that I see the criminal clearly now—because he is a criminal who cannot be brought to the gallows.”

“You will not denounce him?” inquired the doctor.

“He would not be hanged if I did denounce him,” answered Wilfred with a wild but curiously happy smile. “When I went into the church this morning I found a madman praying there—that poor Joe, who has been wrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with such strange folk it is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down. Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a man. When I last saw poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking him.”

“By Jove!” cried the doctor, “this is talking at last. But how do you explain—”

The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his own glimpse of the truth. “Don’t you see; don’t you see,” he cried feverishly; “that is the only theory that covers both the queer things, that answers both the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer and the big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow, but would not have chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the little hammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman might have done both. As for the little hammer—why, he was mad and might have picked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor, that a maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?”

The doctor drew a deep breath and then said, “By golly, I believe you’ve got it.”

Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily as to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he said with marked respect: “Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded which holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think, therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that it is not the true one.” And with that the old little man walked away and stared again at the hammer.

“That fellow seems to know more than he ought to,” whispered the doctor peevishly to Wilfred. “Those popish priests are deucedly sly.”

“No, no,” said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. “It was the lunatic. It was the lunatic.”

The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from the more official group containing the inspector and the man he had arrested. Now, however, that their own party had broken up, they heard voices from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then looked down again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud voice:

“I hope I’ve convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I’m a strong man, as you say, but I couldn’t have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammer hasn’t got wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges and fields.”

Uno di quei silenzi calò sul gruppo, di quelli più strani e insopportabili di qualsiasi discorso. Follemente, per far conversazione, il curato disse al prete cattolico:

«Vi vedo assai interessato a quel martello, Father Brown.»

«Sì, lo sono» disse Father Brown; «perché è un martello tanto piccolo?»

Il medico gli si girò addosso.

«Perbacco, è vero» gridò; «chi userebbe un piccolo martello con dieci martelli più grandi sparsi all’intorno?»

Poi abbassò la voce all’orecchio del curato e disse: «Solo il genere di persona che non sa sollevare un martello grande. Non è una questione di forza o di coraggio tra i sessi. È una questione di potenza di sollevamento nelle spalle. Una donna ardita potrebbe commettere dieci assassinî con un martello leggero senza scomporsi. Non riuscirebbe a uccidere uno scarafaggio con uno pesante.»

Wilfred Bohun lo fissava con una sorta di orrore ipnotizzato, mentre Father Brown ascoltava col capo un poco inclinato da un lato, davvero interessato e attento. Il medico proseguì con sibilo più marcato:

«Perché questi idioti presumono sempre che l’unica persona che odia l’amante della moglie sia il marito della moglie? Nove volte su dieci la persona che più odia l’amante della moglie è la moglie. Chissà quale insolenza o tradimento egli le aveva mostrato… guardate là!»

Fece un gesto momentaneo verso la donna dai capelli rossi sulla panca. Ella aveva finalmente sollevato il capo e le lacrime le si stavano asciugando sul volto splendido. Ma gli occhi erano fissi sul cadavere con un elettrico bagliore che aveva in sé qualcosa dell’idiozia.

Il reverendo Wilfred Bohun fece un molle gesto come per scacciare ogni desiderio di sapere; ma Father Brown, spolverandosi dalla manica certa cenere soffiata dalla fornace, parlò nel suo modo indifferente.

«Voi siete come tanti medici» disse; «la vostra scienza mentale è davvero suggestiva. È la vostra scienza fisica che è del tutto impossibile. Convengo che la donna desideri uccidere il correo assai più di quanto lo desideri il ricorrente. E convengo che una donna raccoglierà sempre un piccolo martello invece di uno grande. Ma la difficoltà è d’impossibilità fisica. Nessuna donna mai nata avrebbe potuto fracassare così, piatto, il cranio di un uomo.» Poi aggiunse pensosamente, dopo una pausa: «Questa gente non ha afferrato l’insieme della cosa. L’uomo indossava davvero un elmo di ferro, e il colpo lo disperse come vetro infranto. Guardate quella donna. Guardate le sue braccia.»

Il silenzio li tenne di nuovo sospesi tutti, e poi il medico disse piuttosto imbronciato: «Beh, posso sbagliarmi; ci sono obiezioni a tutto. Ma io mi attengo al punto principale. Nessun uomo, salvo un idiota, raccoglierebbe quel piccolo martello se potesse usarne uno grande.»

A ciò le magre e frementi mani di Wilfred Bohun si levarono al capo e parvero afferrargli i radi capelli gialli. Dopo un istante ricaddero, ed egli gridò: «Ecco la parola che cercavo; voi avete detto la parola.»

Poi continuò, dominando il proprio turbamento: «Le parole che avete detto sono state: “Nessun uomo, salvo un idiota, raccoglierebbe il piccolo martello”.»

«Sì» disse il medico. «Ebbene?»

«Ebbene» disse il curato, «nessun uomo, salvo un idiota, l’ha fatto.» Gli altri lo fissarono con occhi arrestati e inchiodati, ed egli proseguì in un’agitazione febbrile e femminile.

«Io sono un prete» gridò con voce malferma, «e un prete non deve essere spargitore di sangue. Io… io voglio dire che non deve condurre nessuno alla forca. E ringrazio Dio di vedere ora chiaramente il criminale… perché è un criminale che non può essere condotto alla forca.»

«Non lo denuncerete?» chiese il medico.

«Non sarebbe impiccato se lo denunciassi» rispose Wilfred con un sorriso selvaggio ma curiosamente felice. «Quando sono entrato in chiesa stamattina ho trovato un pazzo che pregava là dentro… quel povero Joe, che ha avuto la mente storta tutta la vita. Dio sa che cosa pregasse; ma con gente tanto strana non è inverosimile supporre che le loro preghiere siano tutte a rovescio. Assai probabilmente un demente pregherebbe prima di uccidere un uomo. L’ultima volta che ho visto il povero Joe era con mio fratello. Mio fratello lo derideva.»

«Perbacco!» gridò il medico, «finalmente si ragiona. Ma come spiegate…»

Il reverendo Wilfred tremava quasi per l’eccitazione del proprio barlume di verità. «Non capite; non capite» gridò febbrilmente; «che questa è l’unica teoria che copre entrambe le cose strane, che risponde a entrambi gli enigmi. I due enigmi sono il piccolo martello e il gran colpo. Il fabbro avrebbe potuto vibrare il gran colpo, ma non avrebbe scelto il piccolo martello. Sua moglie avrebbe scelto il piccolo martello, ma non avrebbe potuto vibrare il gran colpo. Ma il pazzo avrebbe potuto fare entrambe le cose. Quanto al piccolo martello… ebbene, era pazzo e avrebbe potuto raccogliere qualsiasi cosa. E quanto al gran colpo, non avete mai udito, dottore, che un maniaco nel suo parossismo può avere la forza di dieci uomini?»

Il medico trasse un profondo respiro e poi disse: «Perdinci, credo che ci abbiate azzeccato.»

Father Brown aveva tenuto gli occhi fissi sull’oratore tanto a lungo e fermamente da provare che i suoi grandi occhi grigi, bovini, non erano poi così insignificanti come il resto del suo volto. Quando fu caduto il silenzio, disse con marcato rispetto: «Signor Bohun, la vostra è l’unica teoria finora proposta che regga da ogni lato ed è essenzialmente inattaccabile. Penso, perciò, che meritiate di sentirvi dire, per mia positiva conoscenza, che non è quella vera.» E con ciò il vecchio ometto si allontanò e tornò a fissare il martello.

«Quel tale pare sapere più di quanto dovrebbe» sussurrò il medico stizzosamente a Wilfred. «Questi preti papisti sono maledettamente scaltri.»

«No, no» disse Bohun, con una sorta di selvaggia stanchezza. «È stato il demente. È stato il demente.»

Il gruppo dei due ecclesiastici e del medico si era staccato dal gruppo più ufficiale che comprendeva l’ispettore e l’uomo che egli aveva arrestato. Ora, tuttavia, che la loro stessa compagnia si era sciolta, udirono voci dagli altri. Il prete alzò lo sguardo tranquillamente e poi lo riabbassò mentre udiva il fabbro dire a voce alta:

«Spero di avervi convinto, signor ispettore. Sono un uomo forte, come dite, ma non avrei potuto scagliar qui il mio martello di netto da Greenford. Il mio martello non ha ali per venire volando mezzo miglio sopra siepi e campi.»

The inspector laughed amicably and said: “No, I think you can be considered out of it, though it’s one of the rummiest coincidences I ever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can in finding a man as big and strong as yourself. By George! you might be useful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at the man?”

“I may have a guess,” said the pale smith, “but it is not at a man.” Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he put his huge hand on her shoulder and said: “Nor a woman either.”

“What do you mean?” asked the inspector jocularly. “You don’t think cows use hammers, do you?”

“I think no thing of flesh held that hammer,” said the blacksmith in a stifled voice; “mortally speaking, I think the man died alone.”

Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burning eyes.

“Do you mean to say, Barnes,” came the sharp voice of the cobbler, “that the hammer jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?”

“Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger,” cried Simeon; “you clergymen who tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. I believe that One who walks invisible in every house defended the honour of mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe the force in that blow was just the force there is in earthquakes, and no force less.”

Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: “I told Norman myself to beware of the thunderbolt.”

“That agent is outside my jurisdiction,” said the inspector with a slight smile.

“You are not outside His,” answered the smith; “see you to it,” and, turning his broad back, he went into the house.

The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy and friendly way with him. “Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,” he said. “May I look inside your church? I hear it’s one of the oldest in England. We take some interest, you know,” he added with a comical grimace, “in old English churches.”

Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. But he nodded rather eagerly, being only too ready to explain the Gothic splendours to someone more likely to be sympathetic than the Presbyterian blacksmith or the atheist cobbler.

“By all means,” he said; “let us go in at this side.” And he led the way into the high side entrance at the top of the flight of steps. Father Brown was mounting the first step to follow him when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to behold the dark, thin figure of the doctor, his face darker yet with suspicion.

“Sir,” said the physician harshly, “you appear to know some secrets in this black business. May I ask if you are going to keep them to yourself?”

“Why, doctor,” answered the priest, smiling quite pleasantly, “there is one very good reason why a man of my trade should keep things to himself when he is not sure of them, and that is that it is so constantly his duty to keep them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you think I have been discourteously reticent with you or anyone, I will go to the extreme limit of my custom. I will give you two very large hints.”

“Well, sir?” said the doctor gloomily.

“First,” said Father Brown quietly, “the thing is quite in your own province. It is a matter of physical science. The blacksmith is mistaken, not perhaps in saying that the blow was divine, but certainly in saying that it came by a miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, except in so far as man is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked and yet half-heroic heart. The force that smashed that skull was a force well known to scientists— one of the most frequently debated of the laws of nature.”

The doctor, who was looking at him with frowning intentness, only said: “And the other hint?”

“The other hint is this,” said the priest. “Do you remember the blacksmith, though he believes in miracles, talking scornfully of the impossible fairy tale that his hammer had wings and flew half a mile across country?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “I remember that.”

“Well,” added Father Brown, with a broad smile, “that fairy tale was the nearest thing to the real truth that has been said today.” And with that he turned his back and stumped up the steps after the curate.

The Reverend Wilfred, who had been waiting for him, pale and impatient, as if this little delay were the last straw for his nerves, led him immediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of the gallery closest to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful window with the angel. The little Latin priest explored and admired everything exhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the time. When in the course of his investigation he found the side exit and the winding stair down which Wilfred had rushed to find his brother dead, Father Brown ran not down but up, with the agility of a monkey, and his clear voice came from an outer platform above.

“Come up here, Mr. Bohun,” he called. “The air will do you good.”

Bohun followed him, and came out on a kind of stone gallery or balcony outside the building, from which one could see the illimitable plain in which their small hill stood, wooded away to the purple horizon and dotted with villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite small beneath them, was the blacksmith’s yard, where the inspector still stood taking notes and the corpse still lay like a smashed fly.

“Might be the map of the world, mightn’t it?” said Father Brown.

“Yes,” said Bohun very gravely, and nodded his head.

Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the Gothic building plunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin to suicide. There is that element of Titan energy in the architecture of the Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seems to be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. This church was hewn out of ancient and silent stone, bearded with old fungoids and stained with the nests of birds. And yet, when they saw it from below, it sprang like a fountain at the stars; and when they saw it, as now, from above, it poured like a cataract into a voiceless pit. For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terrible aspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion, the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great things small and small things great; a topsy-turvydom of stone in the mid-air. Details of stone, enormous by their proximity, were relieved against a pattern of fields and farms, pygmy in their distance. A carved bird or beast at a corner seemed like some vast walking or flying dragon wasting the pastures and villages below. The whole atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if men were upheld in air amid the gyrating wings of colossal genii; and the whole of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed to sit upon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.

L’ispettore rise amichevolmente e disse: «No, credo che possiate essere considerato fuori causa, per quanto sia una delle più bizzarre coincidenze che io abbia mai visto. Posso solo chiedervi di darci tutto l’aiuto che potete nel trovare un uomo grosso e forte quanto voi. Perbacco! potreste essere utile, non foss’altro che a tenerlo fermo! Suppongo che voi stesso non abbiate alcun sospetto sull’uomo?»

«Potrei averne uno» disse il pallido fabbro, «ma non su un uomo.» Poi, vedendo gli occhi spaventati volgersi verso sua moglie sulla panca, le pose la sua enorme mano sulla spalla e disse: «E nemmeno su una donna.»

«Che volete dire?» chiese l’ispettore in tono scherzoso. «Non penserete mica che le mucche usino i martelli, vero?»

«Penso che nessuna cosa di carne abbia impugnato quel martello» disse il fabbro con voce soffocata; «mortalmente parlando, penso che l’uomo sia morto solo.»

Wilfred fece un improvviso movimento in avanti e lo scrutò con occhi ardenti.

«Volete dire, Barnes» giunse la voce tagliente del ciabattino, «che il martello sia balzato su da sé e abbia abbattuto l’uomo?»

«Oh, voi signori potete strabuzzare gli occhi e sogghignare» gridò Simeon; «voi uomini di chiesa che ci raccontate la domenica in quale silenzio il Signore percosse Sennacherib. Io credo che Colui che cammina invisibile in ogni casa abbia difeso l’onore della mia, e steso il profanatore morto dinanzi alla sua porta. Io credo che la forza in quel colpo fosse proprio la forza che c’è nei terremoti, e non una forza minore.»

Wilfred disse, con una voce assolutamente indescrivibile: «Io stesso avevo detto a Norman di guardarsi dal fulmine.»

«Quell’agente è fuori dalla mia giurisdizione» disse l’ispettore con un lieve sorriso.

«Voi non siete fuori dalla Sua» rispose il fabbro; «badateci», e, voltando la sua larga schiena, entrò in casa.

Lo scosso Wilfred fu condotto via da Father Brown, che aveva un fare disinvolto e cordiale con lui. «Usciamo da questo orribile luogo, signor Bohun» disse. «Posso dare un’occhiata dentro la vostra chiesa? Ho sentito che è una delle più antiche d’Inghilterra. Noi ci interessiamo un poco, sapete», aggiunse con una comica smorfia, «delle vecchie chiese inglesi.»

Wilfred Bohun non sorrise, poiché l’umorismo non fu mai il suo forte. Ma annuì piuttosto avidamente, essendo fin troppo pronto a illustrare gli splendori gotici a qualcuno più propenso a mostrarsi partecipe del presbiteriano fabbro o dell’ateo ciabattino.

«Ma certamente» disse; «entriamo da questo lato.» E si mise alla testa verso l’alta entrata laterale in cima alla rampa di gradini. Father Brown stava salendo il primo gradino per seguirlo quando sentì una mano sulla spalla, e si voltò a scorgere la scura, magra figura del medico, il volto ancor più scuro di sospetto.

«Signore» disse il medico aspramente, «voi pare che conosciate certi segreti in questa tenebrosa faccenda. Posso chiedervi se intendete tenerli per voi?»

«Ebbene, dottore» rispose il prete, sorridendo assai piacevolmente, «c’è una ragione ottima perché un uomo del mio mestiere tenga le cose per sé quando non ne è certo, ed è che gli è tanto di frequente dovere tenerle per sé quando ne è certo. Ma se pensate che io sia stato scortesemente reticente con voi o con chiunque, andrò al limite estremo della mia abitudine. Vi darò due indizi assai grossi.»

«Ebbene, signore?» disse il medico cupamente.

«Primo» disse Father Brown tranquillamente, «la cosa è del tutto di vostra competenza. È una questione di scienza fisica. Il fabbro s’inganna, non forse nel dire che il colpo fu divino, ma certamente nel dire che venne per miracolo. Non fu miracolo, dottore, se non in quanto l’uomo è egli stesso un miracolo, col suo cuore strano e malvagio e pur mezzo eroico. La forza che fracassò quel cranio fu una forza ben nota agli scienziati: una delle più frequentemente dibattute fra le leggi della natura.»

Il medico, che lo guardava con accigliata intensità, disse soltanto: «E l’altro indizio?»

«L’altro indizio è questo» disse il prete. «Ricordate il fabbro, che, pur credendo ai miracoli, parlava sprezzantemente dell’impossibile favola secondo cui il suo martello aveva ali e volò per mezzo miglio attraverso la campagna?»

«Sì» disse il medico, «lo ricordo.»

«Ebbene» aggiunse Father Brown, con un largo sorriso, «quella favola è stata la cosa più vicina alla vera verità che sia stata detta oggi.» E con ciò voltò le spalle e salì zoppicando i gradini dietro il curato.

Il reverendo Wilfred, che lo aveva atteso, pallido e impaziente, come se questo piccolo indugio fosse l’ultima goccia per i suoi nervi, lo condusse immediatamente al suo angolo prediletto della chiesa, quella parte della galleria più vicina al soffitto intagliato e illuminata dalla meravigliosa vetrata con l’angelo. Il piccolo prete latino esplorò e ammirò ogni cosa esaurientemente, parlando allegramente ma sempre a bassa voce. Quando nel corso della sua indagine trovò l’uscita laterale e la scala a chiocciola giù per la quale Wilfred si era precipitato a trovar morto il fratello, Father Brown corse non giù ma su, con l’agilità di una scimmia, e la sua voce chiara giunse da una piattaforma esterna, in alto.

«Venite quassù, signor Bohun» chiamò. «L’aria vi farà bene.»

Bohun lo seguì, e sbucò su una sorta di galleria o balcone di pietra all’esterno dell’edificio, dal quale si poteva vedere la sconfinata pianura in cui sorgeva la loro piccola collina, boscosa fino al purpureo orizzonte e punteggiata di villaggi e fattorie. Chiaro e squadrato, ma assai piccolo sotto di loro, era il cortile del fabbro, dove l’ispettore stava ancora prendendo appunti e il cadavere ancora giaceva come una mosca schiacciata.

«Sembra la carta geografica del mondo, non è vero?» disse Father Brown.

«Sì» disse Bohun assai gravemente, e annuì col capo.

Immediatamente sotto e intorno a loro le linee dell’edificio gotico si tuffavano all’esterno nel vuoto con una vertiginosa rapidità affine al suicidio. Vi è quell’elemento di energia titanica nell’architettura del Medioevo, che, da qualunque lato la si guardi, sembra sempre precipitare via, come la robusta groppa di qualche cavallo impazzito. Questa chiesa era stata scavata da pietra antica e silente, barbuta di vecchie muffe e macchiata dai nidi degli uccelli. Eppure, quando la si vedeva dal basso, balzava come una fontana verso le stelle; e quando la si vedeva, come ora, dall’alto, si riversava come una cateratta in un pozzo senza voce. Poiché quei due uomini sulla torre erano rimasti soli con l’aspetto più terribile del gotico; i mostruosi scorci e le sproporzioni, le vertiginose prospettive, gli scorci di grandi cose fatte piccole e di piccole cose fatte grandi; un capovolgimento di pietra a mezz’aria. Dettagli di pietra, enormi per la loro prossimità, spiccavano contro un disegno di campi e fattorie, pigmei nella loro lontananza. Un uccello o una bestia intagliati a un angolo parevano qualche vasto drago che camminasse o volasse devastando i pascoli e i villaggi sottostanti. L’intera atmosfera era vertiginosa e pericolosa, come se gli uomini fossero sospesi nell’aria fra le rotanti ali di colossali geni; e l’intera vecchia chiesa, alta e ricca come una cattedrale, pareva posarsi sul paese assolato come un acquazzone.

“I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on these high places even to pray,” said Father Brown. “Heights were made to be looked at, not to be looked from.”

“Do you mean that one may fall over,” asked Wilfred.

“I mean that one’s soul may fall if one’s body doesn’t,” said the other priest.

“I scarcely understand you,” remarked Bohun indistinctly.

“Look at that blacksmith, for instance,” went on Father Brown calmly; “a good man, but not a Christian—hard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, his Scotch religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags, and learnt to look down on the world more than to look up at heaven. Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

“But he—he didn’t do it,” said Bohun tremulously.

“No,” said the other in an odd voice; “we know he didn’t do it.”

After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain with his pale grey eyes. “I knew a man,” he said, “who began by worshipping with others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonely places to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And once in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turn under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he was God. So that, though he was a good man, he committed a great crime.”

Wilfred’s face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and white as they tightened on the parapet of stone.

“He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down the sinner. He would never have had such a thought if he had been kneeling with other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about like insects. He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent and evident by a bright green hat—a poisonous insect.”

Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no other sound till Father Brown went on.

“This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awful engines of nature; I mean gravitation, that mad and quickening rush by which all earth’s creatures fly back to her heart when released. See, the inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were to toss a pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bullet by the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer— even a small hammer—”

Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had him in a minute by the collar.

“Not by that door,” he said quite gently; “that door leads to hell.”

Bohun staggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightful eyes.

“How do you know all this?” he cried. “Are you a devil?”

“I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and therefore have all devils in my heart. Listen to me,” he said after a short pause. “I know what you did—at least, I can guess the great part of it. When you left your brother you were racked with no unrighteous rage, to the extent even that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill him with his foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttoned coat instead, and rushed into the church. You pray wildly in many places, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and a higher platform still, from which you could see the colonel’s Eastern hat like the back of a green beetle crawling about. Then something snapped in your soul, and you let God’s thunderbolt fall.”

Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voice: “How did you know that his hat looked like a green beetle?”

“Oh, that,” said the other with the shadow of a smile, “that was common sense. But hear me further. I say I know all this; but no one else shall know it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I will seal this with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are many reasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to you because you have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not help to fix the crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, when that was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile because you knew that he could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my business to find in assassins. And now come down into the village, and go your own way as free as the wind; for I have said my last word.”

They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out into the sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun carefully unlatched the wooden gate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: “I wish to give myself up; I have killed my brother.”

«Penso che vi sia qualcosa di piuttosto pericoloso nello stare su questi alti luoghi persino per pregare» disse Father Brown. «Le altezze furono fatte per essere guardate, non per guardare da esse.»

«Volete dire che si potrebbe cadere di sotto?» chiese Wilfred.

«Voglio dire che la propria anima può cadere anche se il proprio corpo non cade» disse l’altro prete.

«Vi comprendo a stento» osservò Bohun indistintamente.

«Guardate quel fabbro, per esempio» proseguì Father Brown con calma; «un buon uomo, ma non un cristiano: duro, imperioso, inesorabile. Ebbene, la sua religione scozzese fu messa insieme da uomini che pregavano su colline e alte rupi, e impararono a guardar dall’alto il mondo più che a guardar in alto verso il cielo. L’umiltà è la madre dei giganti. Si vedono grandi cose dalla valle; solo piccole cose dalla vetta.»

«Ma egli… egli non l’ha fatto» disse Bohun con voce tremante.

«No» disse l’altro con voce strana; «sappiamo che non l’ha fatto.»

Dopo un momento riprese, guardando tranquillamente sulla pianura con i suoi pallidi occhi grigi. «Conoscevo un uomo» disse, «che cominciò col venerare insieme agli altri dinanzi all’altare, ma che si affezionò ad alti e solitari luoghi da cui pregare, angoli o nicchie nel campanile o nella guglia. E una volta in uno di quei luoghi vertiginosi, dove il mondo intero pareva girargli sotto come una ruota, gli girò anche il cervello, ed egli s’immaginò di essere Dio. Cosicché, sebbene fosse un buon uomo, commise un grande delitto.»

Il volto di Wilfred era voltato altrove, ma le sue ossute mani si fecero blu e bianche mentre si serravano sul parapetto di pietra.

«Egli pensò che gli fosse dato di giudicare il mondo e di abbattere il peccatore. Non avrebbe mai avuto un simile pensiero se fosse stato inginocchiato con altri uomini su un pavimento. Ma vide tutti gli uomini che si aggiravano come insetti. Ne vide uno in particolare che pavoneggiava proprio sotto di lui, insolente ed evidente per un vivido cappello verde: un insetto velenoso.»

Le cornacchie gracchiavano intorno agli angoli del campanile; ma non vi fu altro suono finché Father Brown non riprese.

«Anche questo lo tentò, che egli aveva in mano uno dei più terribili congegni della natura; intendo la gravitazione, quella folle e acceleratrice corsa per cui tutte le creature della terra volano indietro al suo cuore quando sono lasciate libere. Vedete, l’ispettore si pavoneggia proprio sotto di noi nella fucina. Se io gettassi un ciottolo oltre questo parapetto, sarebbe qualcosa come una pallottola nel momento in cui lo colpisse. Se io lasciassi cadere un martello… anche un piccolo martello…»

Wilfred Bohun gettò una gamba oltre il parapetto, e Father Brown lo ebbe in un minuto per il bavero.

«Non da quella porta» disse assai dolcemente; «quella porta conduce all’inferno.»

Bohun barcollò indietro contro il muro, e lo fissò con occhi spaventosi.

«Come sapete tutto questo?» gridò. «Siete un diavolo?»

«Sono un uomo» rispose Father Brown gravemente; «e perciò ho tutti i diavoli nel cuore. Ascoltatemi» disse dopo una breve pausa. «So che cosa avete fatto… o almeno, posso indovinarne la gran parte. Quando lasciaste vostro fratello eravate straziato da un’ira non ingiusta, al punto persino che afferraste un piccolo martello, mezzo intenzionato a ucciderlo con la sua turpitudine sulla bocca. Ritraendovi, lo ficcaste invece sotto il cappotto abbottonato, e vi precipitaste in chiesa. Pregate follemente in molti luoghi, sotto la vetrata dell’angelo, sulla piattaforma in alto, e su una piattaforma ancor più alta, dalla quale potevate vedere il cappello orientale del colonnello come il dorso di uno scarabeo verde che strisciava attorno. Poi qualcosa si spezzò nella vostra anima, e lasciaste cadere il fulmine di Dio.»

Wilfred si portò una debole mano al capo, e chiese a bassa voce: «Come sapevate che il suo cappello sembrava uno scarabeo verde?»

«Oh, quello» disse l’altro con l’ombra di un sorriso, «quello è stato semplice buon senso. Ma ascoltatemi ancora. Io dico di sapere tutto questo; ma nessun altro lo saprà. Il passo successivo tocca a voi; io non farò altri passi; sigillerò questo col sigillo della confessione. Se mi chiedete perché, vi sono molte ragioni, e una sola che vi riguardi. Lascio le cose a voi perché non vi siete ancora spinto molto lontano nel male, per essere un assassino. Non avete contribuito ad addossare il delitto al fabbro quando era facile; né a sua moglie, quando quello era facile. Avete cercato di addossarlo all’imbecille perché sapevate che egli non poteva soffrirne. Quello è stato uno dei barlumi che è mio compito trovare negli assassini. E ora scendete nel villaggio, e andate per la vostra strada liberi come il vento; poiché ho detto la mia ultima parola.»

Scesero le scale a chiocciola in assoluto silenzio, e sbucarono alla luce del sole presso la fucina. Wilfred Bohun sollevò con cura il chiavistello del cancello di legno del cortile, e avvicinatosi all’ispettore, disse: «Desidero costituirmi; ho ucciso mio fratello.»

The Eye of Apollo

That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and more from its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall and the other very short; they might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clerical dress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the short man was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell deathbed to see the new offices of his friend.

The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and American also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones and lifts. But it was barely finished and still understaffed; only three tenants had moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also was the office just below him; the two floors above that and the three floors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new tower of flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a few relics of scaffolding, the one glaring object was erected outside the office just above Flambeau’s. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye, surrounded with rays of gold, and taking up as much room as two or three of the office windows.

“What on earth is that?” asked Father Brown, and stood still. “Oh, a new religion,” said Flambeau, laughing; “one of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any. Rather like Christian Science, I should think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon (I don’t know what his name is, except that it can’t be that) has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he worships the sun.”

“Let him look out,” said Father Brown. “The sun was the cruellest of all the gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?”

“As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs,” answered Flambeau, “that a man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man were really healthy he could stare at the sun.”

“If a man were really healthy,” said Father Brown, “he would not bother to stare at it.”

“Well, that’s all I can tell you about the new religion,” went on Flambeau carelessly. “It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases.”

“Can it cure the one spiritual disease?” asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity.

“And what is the one spiritual disease?” asked Flambeau, smiling.

“Oh, thinking one is quite well,” said his friend.

Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below him than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and new religions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. But humanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking; moreover, the ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The office was kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall and striking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She had eyes of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stiff for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore a business-like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There are thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparent position.

For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth ; she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her masterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business, the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributed in various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work among women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightly prosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leader with a dog-like affection which was somehow more attractive, with its touch of tragedy, than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For Pauline Stacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny its existence.

Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much on the first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall waiting for the lift-boy, who generally conducts strangers to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falcon of a girl had openly refused to endure such official delay. She said sharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent on boys—or men either. Though her flat was only three floors above, she managed in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a great many of her fundamental views in an off-hand manner; they were to the general effect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger against those who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance. Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines, just as she could manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeau opening the lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his own apartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of such spit-fire self-dependence.

L’occhio di Apollo

Quel singolare scintillio fumoso, insieme confusione e trasparenza, che è il segreto strano del Tamigi, andava mutando sempre più dal suo grigio al suo estremo sfavillante, mentre il sole saliva allo zenit sopra Westminster, e due uomini attraversavano il ponte di Westminster. Uno era altissimo e l’altro assai basso; li si sarebbe persino potuti paragonare, per un fantasioso capriccio, all’arrogante torre dell’orologio del Parlamento e alle più umili spalle curve dell’Abbazia, ché l’uomo basso vestiva l’abito talare. La descrizione ufficiale dell’uomo alto era: signor Hercule Flambeau, investigatore privato, e stava recandosi ai suoi nuovi uffici, in un nuovo caseggiato di appartamenti che fronteggiava l’ingresso dell’Abbazia. La descrizione ufficiale dell’uomo basso era: reverendo J. Brown, addetto alla chiesa di San Francesco Saverio, a Camberwell, e veniva dal capezzale di un moribondo di Camberwell per vedere i nuovi uffici del suo amico.

L’edificio era americano nella sua altezza da grattacielo, e americano anche nell’oliata complicazione del suo macchinario di telefoni e ascensori. Ma era appena terminato e ancora sprovvisto di personale; solo tre inquilini vi si erano trasferiti; l’ufficio appena sopra Flambeau era occupato, come pure quello appena sotto di lui; i due piani superiori a quello e i tre inferiori erano del tutto vuoti. Ma la prima occhiata alla nuova torre di appartamenti coglieva qualcosa di ben più singolare. Salvo pochi resti di impalcature, l’unico oggetto sfolgorante era stato eretto all’esterno dell’ufficio proprio sopra a quello di Flambeau. Era un’enorme effigie dorata dell’occhio umano, circondata da raggi d’oro, e occupava tanto spazio quanto due o tre finestre dell’ufficio.

«Che diamine è quella cosa?» chiese Padre Brown, e si fermò. «Oh, una nuova religione» disse Flambeau ridendo; «una di quelle nuove religioni che ti perdonano i peccati dicendoti che non ne hai mai avuti. Assai simile alla Scienza Cristiana, direi. Il fatto è che un tale che si fa chiamare Kalon (non so quale sia il suo nome, salvo che non può essere quello) ha preso l’appartamento proprio sopra il mio. Io ho due dattilografe sotto di me, e questo entusiasta vecchio impostore sopra. Si fa chiamare il Nuovo Sacerdote di Apollo, e adora il sole.»

«Che stia in guardia» disse Padre Brown. «Il sole era il più crudele di tutti gli dèi. Ma che cosa significa quel mostruoso occhio?»

«Per quanto ne capisco, è una loro teoria» rispose Flambeau, «che un uomo possa sopportare qualsiasi cosa se la sua mente è del tutto salda. I loro due grandi simboli sono il sole e l’occhio aperto; poiché dicono che, se un uomo fosse davvero sano, potrebbe fissare il sole.»

«Se un uomo fosse davvero sano» disse Padre Brown, «non si darebbe la pena di fissarlo.»

«Be’, è tutto quello che posso dirti su questa nuova religione» proseguì Flambeau con noncuranza. «Pretende, naturalmente, di poter guarire tutte le malattie fisiche.»

«Può guarire l’unica malattia spirituale?» chiese Padre Brown, con seria curiosità.

«E qual è l’unica malattia spirituale?» chiese Flambeau, sorridendo.

«Oh, credersi del tutto sani» disse il suo amico.

Flambeau era più interessato al piccolo, quieto ufficio sotto di lui che al fiammeggiante tempio di sopra. Era un lucido meridionale, incapace di concepirsi come qualcosa di diverso da un cattolico o da un ateo; e le nuove religioni di sorta vivace e smorta non erano molto nelle sue corde. Ma l’umanità era sempre nelle sue corde, specie quando era di bell’aspetto; per giunta, le signore del piano di sotto erano, a modo loro, dei caratteri. L’ufficio era tenuto da due sorelle, entrambe esili e brune, una delle quali alta e appariscente. Aveva un profilo scuro, ardente e aquilino, ed era una di quelle donne che si pensano sempre di profilo, come il taglio netto di un’arma. Pareva fendersi la strada attraverso la vita. Aveva occhi di sorprendente brillantezza, ma era la brillantezza dell’acciaio più che dei diamanti; e la sua figura diritta e slanciata era d’una sfumatura troppo rigida per la sua grazia. La sorella minore era come la sua ombra accorciata, un poco più grigia, più pallida e più insignificante. Entrambe portavano un nero d’aspetto professionale, con piccoli polsini e colletti maschili. Ci sono migliaia di simili signore sbrigative e indefesse negli uffici di Londra, ma l’interesse di queste stava piuttosto nella loro posizione reale che in quella apparente.

Poiché Pauline Stacey, la maggiore, era in realtà l’erede di un blasone e di mezza contea, oltre che di grande ricchezza; era stata allevata in castelli e giardini, prima che una gelida fierezza (propria della donna moderna) la spingesse verso quella che ella considerava un’esistenza più aspra e più alta. Non aveva, in verità, rinunciato al suo denaro; in questo vi sarebbe stato un abbandono romantico o monacale del tutto estraneo al suo dispotico utilitarismo. Ella deteneva la propria ricchezza, avrebbe detto, per impiegarla in scopi sociali pratici. Parte l’aveva investita nella propria attività, il nucleo di un emporio modello di dattilografia; parte era distribuita in varie leghe e cause per il progresso di simili lavori tra le donne. Fino a che punto Joan, sua sorella e socia, condividesse questo idealismo alquanto prosaico, nessuno avrebbe potuto dirlo con certezza. Ma ella seguiva la sua guida con un affetto canino che era in qualche modo più attraente, col suo tocco di tragedia, dell’ardore duro e altero della maggiore. Poiché Pauline Stacey non aveva nulla da dire alla tragedia; s’intendeva che ne negasse l’esistenza.

La sua rigida rapidità e la sua fredda impazienza avevano molto divertito Flambeau la prima volta che aveva messo piede nel caseggiato. Egli aveva indugiato fuori dall’ascensore, nell’atrio d’ingresso, aspettando il ragazzo dell’ascensore, che di solito accompagna gli estranei ai vari piani. Ma quella fanciulla dall’occhio vivo, simile a un falco, aveva apertamente rifiutato di sopportare tale indugio ufficiale. Disse seccamente di sapere tutto dell’ascensore, e di non dipendere da ragazzi — né da uomini. Benché il suo appartamento fosse soltanto tre piani più su, riuscì, nei pochi secondi della salita, a dare a Flambeau moltissime delle sue idee fondamentali con fare disinvolto; erano, nell’insieme, che ella era una moderna donna lavoratrice e amava i moderni macchinari del lavoro. I suoi vividi occhi neri fiammeggiavano d’astratta collera contro coloro che rimproverano la scienza meccanica e reclamano il ritorno del romanticismo. Ognuno, disse, dovrebbe saper governare le macchine, proprio come ella sapeva governare l’ascensore. Parve quasi risentirsi del fatto che Flambeau le aprisse la porta dell’ascensore; e quel gentiluomo salì ai propri appartamenti sorridendo con sentimenti alquanto contrastanti al ricordo di una simile focosa indipendenza.

She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive. Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting business, and found she had just flung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the “sickly medical notions” and the morbid admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She dared her sister to bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. She asked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.

Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain from asking Miss Pauline (with direct French logic) why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if science might help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other.

“That is so different,” said Pauline Stacey, loftily. “Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the force of man—yes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at these great engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high and splendid—that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters the doctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was free-born, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these things because they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in power and courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare at the sun, and so they can’t do it without blinking. But why among the stars should there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and I will open my eyes and stare at him whenever I choose.”

“Your eyes,” said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, “will dazzle the sun.” He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partly because it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: “So she has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his golden eye.” For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon, he had heard of his special notion about sun-gazing.

He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below him was close and increasing. The man who called himself Kalon was a magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiff of Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much better looking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung back like a lion’s. In structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche, but all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. And this despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact that he had an office half-way up a building in Victoria Street; that the clerk (a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room, between him and the corridor; that his name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like the advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away from the man called Kalon the vivid oppression and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence of this quack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loose jacket-suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office he was a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the white vestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau, first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo.

Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus, and plunged into the porch of the tall building without even looking for his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery, stopped and stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper, just as he might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon the Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands, and the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all the way down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middle of it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth; it is substantially certain that he did not see a stunted, round-faced priest who, in the crowd below, looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startling difference between even these two far divided men. Father Brown could not look at anything without blinking; but the priest of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid.

“O sun,” cried the prophet, “O star that art too great to be allowed among the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret spot that is called space. White Father of all white unwearied things, white flames and white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocent than all thy most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into the peace of which—”

A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad news— bad news that was all the worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained still after the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.

Aveva di certo un temperamento, di sorta scattante e pratica; i gesti delle sue mani sottili ed eleganti erano bruschi o persino distruttivi. Una volta Flambeau entrò nel suo ufficio per una faccenda di dattilografia, e la trovò che aveva appena scagliato in mezzo al pavimento un paio di occhiali della sorella e vi aveva pestato sopra. Era già nei gorghi di una tirata etica sulle «malaticce fisime mediche» e sulla morbosa ammissione di debolezza implicita in un simile apparecchio. Sfidò la sorella a riportare ancora in quel luogo simili scarti artificiali e malsani. Chiese se ci si aspettasse che ella portasse gambe di legno, o capelli finti, od occhi di vetro; e mentre parlava i suoi occhi scintillavano come il terribile cristallo.

Flambeau, del tutto sconcertato da questo fanatismo, non poté trattenersi dal chiedere alla signorina Pauline (con schietta logica francese) perché un paio di occhiali fosse un segno di debolezza più morboso di un ascensore, e perché, se la scienza poteva aiutarci nell’uno sforzo, non potesse aiutarci anche nell’altro.

«È così diverso» disse Pauline Stacey, altezzosa. «Le batterie, i motori e tutte quelle cose sono segni della forza dell’uomo — sì, signor Flambeau, e anche della forza della donna! Prenderemo il nostro turno a queste grandi macchine che divorano la distanza e sfidano il tempo. Questo è alto e splendido — questa è veramente scienza. Ma questi laidi puntelli e cerotti che i medici vendono — ebbene, non sono che distintivi di vigliaccheria. I medici appiccicano gambe e braccia come se fossimo nati storpi e schiavi malati. Ma io sono nata libera, signor Flambeau! La gente crede di aver bisogno di queste cose solo perché è stata educata nella paura invece che nella potenza e nel coraggio, proprio come le sciocche bambinaie dicono ai bambini di non fissare il sole, e così quelli non riescono a farlo senza sbattere le palpebre. Ma perché, fra le stelle, dovrebbe esserci una stella che io non possa guardare? Il sole non è il mio padrone, e io aprirò gli occhi e lo fisserò ogni volta che vorrò.»

«I vostri occhi» disse Flambeau, con un inchino straniero, «abbaglieranno il sole.» Provava piacere nel complimentare quella strana, rigida bellezza, in parte perché ciò la faceva un poco perdere l’equilibrio. Ma mentre saliva le scale verso il suo piano trasse un profondo respiro e fischiò, dicendo tra sé: «Così è caduta nelle mani di quel prestigiatore di sopra col suo occhio d’oro.» Poiché, per poco che sapesse o si curasse della nuova religione di Kalon, aveva sentito parlare della sua particolare fissazione sul fissare il sole.

Scoprì ben presto che il legame spirituale tra il piano sopra e quello sotto di lui era stretto e crescente. L’uomo che si faceva chiamare Kalon era una creatura magnifica, degna, in senso fisico, di essere il pontefice di Apollo. Era quasi alto come Flambeau, e assai più bello, con una barba dorata, forti occhi azzurri e una criniera gettata all’indietro come quella di un leone. Nella struttura era la bionda bestia di Nietzsche, ma tutta questa bellezza animale era esaltata, ravvivata e addolcita da genuino intelletto e spiritualità. Se somigliava a uno dei grandi re sassoni, somigliava a uno di quei re che erano anche santi. E ciò malgrado l’incongruità plebea dei suoi dintorni; il fatto che avesse un ufficio a mezza altezza di un edificio in Victoria Street; che l’impiegato (un giovane qualunque, in polsini e colletto) sedesse nella stanza esterna, tra lui e il corridoio; che il suo nome fosse su una targa d’ottone, e l’emblema dorato del suo credo pendesse sopra la strada, come la réclame di un oculista. Tutta questa volgarità non poteva togliere all’uomo chiamato Kalon la viva oppressione e ispirazione che emanavano dalla sua anima e dal suo corpo. Tutto sommato, un uomo, alla presenza di questo ciarlatano, si sentiva davvero alla presenza di un grand’uomo. Persino nell’ampio abito di lino a giacca sciolta che indossava come tuta da lavoro nel suo ufficio era una figura affascinante e formidabile; e quando era ammantato nelle bianche vesti e incoronato del cerchietto d’oro, con cui ogni giorno salutava il sole, appariva davvero così splendido che il riso della gente della strada talvolta moriva d’improvviso sulle labbra. Poiché tre volte al giorno il nuovo adoratore del sole usciva sul suo piccolo balcone, al cospetto di tutta Westminster, per recitare qualche litania al suo signore splendente: una volta all’alba, una al tramonto, e una all’urto del mezzodì. E fu mentre l’urto del mezzodì ancora tremava fievolmente dalle torri del Parlamento e della chiesa parrocchiale che Padre Brown, l’amico di Flambeau, alzò per la prima volta gli occhi e vide il bianco sacerdote di Apollo.

Flambeau aveva visto abbastanza di questi quotidiani saluti a Febo, e s’immerse nel portico dell’alto edificio senza nemmeno voltarsi a cercare l’amico ecclesiastico che lo seguisse. Ma Padre Brown, fosse per un professionale interesse verso il rituale o per un forte interesse individuale verso le buffonate, si fermò e alzò lo sguardo al balcone dell’adoratore del sole, proprio come si sarebbe fermato a guardare uno spettacolo di burattini. Kalon il Profeta era già eretto, con vesti argentee e mani levate, e il suono della sua voce stranamente penetrante si udiva giù per tutta la strada affaccendata, mentre pronunciava la sua litania solare. Ne era già a metà; i suoi occhi erano fissi sul disco fiammeggiante. È dubbio che vedesse qualcosa o qualcuno su questa terra; è sostanzialmente certo che non vide un tozzo prete dal viso tondo che, nella folla in basso, lo guardava dal basso con occhi ammiccanti. Quella era forse la più sorprendente differenza fra quei due uomini pur tanto lontani. Padre Brown non poteva guardare nulla senza sbattere le palpebre; ma il sacerdote di Apollo poteva fissare il bagliore del mezzodì senza un tremito di palpebra.

«O sole» gridò il profeta, «o astro troppo grande per essere ammesso fra gli astri! O fonte che scorri quieta in quel luogo segreto che è chiamato spazio. Bianco Padre di tutte le bianche cose instancabili, bianche fiamme e bianchi fiori e bianche vette. Padre, che sei più innocente di tutti i tuoi figli più innocenti e quieti; primordiale purezza, nella cui pace —»

Un fragore e uno schianto, come lo scoscio rovesciato di un razzo, fu spaccato da uno stridulo e incessante urlare. Cinque persone si precipitarono dentro il cancello del caseggiato mentre tre ne uscivano di corsa, e per un istante si assordarono l’un l’altra. Il senso di un orrore del tutto improvviso parve per un momento riempire mezza strada di cattive notizie — cattive notizie tanto peggiori in quanto nessuno sapeva quali fossero. Due figure rimasero immobili dopo lo schianto del tumulto: il biondo sacerdote di Apollo sul balcone in alto, e il brutto sacerdote di Cristo sotto di lui.

At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in the doorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the top of his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his friend Father Brown dipped in insignificantly after him. Even as he ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy god who is the friend of fountains and flowers.

Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round the enclosed space into which the lift commonly descended. But the lift had not descended. Something else had descended; something that ought to have come by a lift.

For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied the existence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it was Pauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not the slightest doubt that she was dead.

He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her; there was so much both to like and dislike. But she had been a person to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbed him with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty face and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness which is all the bitterness of death. In an instant like a bolt from the blue, like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had been dashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was it suicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it murder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder anybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice, habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the last fifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god. When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, he turned his swarthy face and said abruptly:

“Then, if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?”

“Perhaps,” said the other, “we might go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before the police will move.”

Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons, Flambeau dashed up the stairs to the typewriting office, found it utterly empty, and then dashed up to his own. Having entered that, he abruptly returned with a new and white face to his friend.

“Her sister,” he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, “her sister seems to have gone out for a walk.”

Father Brown nodded. “Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sun man,” he said. “If I were you I should just verify that, and then let us all talk it over in your office. No,” he added suddenly, as if remembering something, “shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in their office downstairs.”

Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys, where that impenetrable pastor took a large red-leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see the stairs and landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In about four minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the dead woman— evidently she had been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself, his litany finished, sweeping down the empty stairs in utter magnificence— something in his white robes, beard and parted hair had the look of Dore’s Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third was Flambeau, black browed and somewhat bewildered.

Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with grey, walked straight to her own desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacey was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some time with an odd little smile, and then, without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else.

“Prophet,” he said, presumably addressing Kalon, “I wish you would tell me a lot about your religion.”

“I shall be proud to do it,” said Kalon, inclining his still crowned head, “but I am not sure that I understand.”

“Why, it’s like this,” said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way: “We are taught that if a man has really bad first principles, that must be partly his fault. But, for all that, we can make some difference between a man who insults his quite clear conscience and a man with a conscience more or less clouded with sophistries. Now, do you really think that murder is wrong at all?”

“Is this an accusation?” asked Kalon very quietly.

“No,” answered Brown, equally gently, “it is the speech for the defence.”

In the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apollo slowly rose; and really it was like the rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a round, black blot upon some splendour of Hellas.

“We meet at last, Caiaphas,” said the prophet. “Your church and mine are the only realities on this earth. I adore the sun, and you the darkening of the sun; you are the priest of the dying and I of the living God. Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of your coat and creed. All your church is but a black police; you are only spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether by treachery or torture. You would convict men of crime, I would convict them of innocence. You would convince them of sin, I would convince them of virtue.

Alla fine l’alta figura e la titanica energia di Flambeau apparvero nell’uscio del caseggiato e dominarono la piccola calca. Parlando a squarciagola come una sirena da nebbia, disse a qualcuno, a chiunque, di correre a chiamare un chirurgo; e mentre si voltava di nuovo verso l’ingresso buio e gremito, il suo amico Padre Brown vi si insinuò dietro, insignificante. E anche mentre s’abbassava e si faceva strada tra la folla, poteva ancora udire la magnifica melodia e monotonia del sacerdote solare che ancora invocava il dio felice, amico delle fonti e dei fiori.

Padre Brown trovò Flambeau e altre sei persone circa in piedi attorno allo spazio chiuso in cui l’ascensore soleva discendere. Ma l’ascensore non era disceso. Qualcos’altro era disceso; qualcosa che sarebbe dovuto venire con l’ascensore.

Per gli ultimi quattro minuti Flambeau aveva guardato in basso verso di essa; aveva visto la figura fracassata e sanguinante di quella bella donna che negava l’esistenza della tragedia. Non aveva avuto il minimo dubbio che si trattasse di Pauline Stacey; e, benché avesse mandato a chiamare un medico, non aveva il minimo dubbio che ella fosse morta.

Non riusciva a ricordare con certezza se le fosse piaciuta o dispiaciuta; c’era tanto da apprezzare quanto da disapprovare. Ma era stata per lui una persona, e l’insopportabile pathos dei particolari e delle abitudini lo trafisse con tutti i piccoli pugnali del lutto. Ricordò il suo bel volto e i suoi discorsi saccenti con una improvvisa, segreta intensità che è tutta l’amarezza della morte. In un istante, come un fulmine a ciel sereno, come una folgore venuta dal nulla, quel corpo bello e ribelle era stato scagliato giù per il pozzo aperto dell’ascensore, verso la morte in fondo. Era stato suicidio? Con un’ottimista tanto insolente pareva impossibile. Era stato omicidio? Ma chi c’era, in quegli appartamenti a malapena abitati, per assassinare qualcuno? In un fiotto di parole roche, che voleva forti e trovò a un tratto deboli, chiese dove fosse quel tale Kalon. Una voce, abitualmente grave, quieta e piena, gli assicurò che Kalon, negli ultimi quindici minuti, era stato lassù sul suo balcone ad adorare il proprio dio. Quando Flambeau udì la voce, e sentì la mano di Padre Brown, volse il suo viso bruno e disse bruscamente:

«Allora, se è stato lassù tutto il tempo, chi può averlo fatto?»

«Forse» disse l’altro, «potremmo salire di sopra e scoprirlo. Abbiamo mezz’ora prima che la polizia si muova.»

Lasciando il corpo dell’ereditiera uccisa alle cure dei chirurghi, Flambeau si slanciò su per le scale fino all’ufficio di dattilografia, lo trovò del tutto vuoto, e poi si slanciò fino al proprio. Entratovi, ne tornò bruscamente con un volto nuovo e sbiancato dal suo amico.

«Sua sorella» disse, con una spiacevole serietà, «sua sorella pare essere uscita a fare una passeggiata.»

Padre Brown annuì. «Oppure può essere salita all’ufficio di quell’uomo del sole» disse. «Se fossi in voi, lo verificherei senz’altro, e poi discutiamone tutti insieme nel vostro ufficio. No» aggiunse d’improvviso, come rammentando qualcosa, «riuscirò mai a superare questa mia stupidaggine? Naturalmente, nel loro ufficio di sotto.»

Flambeau lo fissò; ma seguì il piccolo padre giù per le scale fino all’appartamento vuoto delle Stacey, dove quell’impenetrabile pastore prese una grande poltrona di cuoio rosso proprio all’ingresso, da cui poteva vedere le scale e i pianerottoli, e aspettò. Non aspettò a lungo. Nel giro di circa quattro minuti tre figure discesero le scale, simili solo nella loro solennità. La prima era Joan Stacey, la sorella della morta — evidentemente era stata di sopra nel provvisorio tempio di Apollo; la seconda era il sacerdote di Apollo in persona, terminata la sua litania, che scendeva giù per le scale vuote in piena magnificenza — qualcosa nelle sue bianche vesti, nella barba e nella capigliatura divisa aveva l’aria del Cristo di Doré che esce dal Pretorio; la terza era Flambeau, dalle sopracciglia nere e alquanto sconcertato.

La signorina Joan Stacey, bruna, dal volto contratto e coi capelli precocemente sfiorati di grigio, andò diritta alla propria scrivania e vi dispose le proprie carte con un pratico colpetto. Il semplice gesto richiamò tutti gli altri alla ragione. Se la signorina Joan Stacey era una criminale, era una criminale a sangue freddo. Padre Brown la osservò per un poco con uno strano piccolo sorriso, e poi, senza distoglierne gli occhi, si rivolse a qualcun altro.

«Profeta» disse, presumibilmente rivolgendosi a Kalon, «vorrei che mi diceste molte cose sulla vostra religione.»

«Ne sarò fiero» disse Kalon, chinando il capo ancora incoronato, «ma non sono certo di comprendere.»

«Ecco, è così» disse Padre Brown, nel suo modo francamente dubbioso: «Ci viene insegnato che, se un uomo ha davvero cattivi princìpi primi, ciò dev’essere in parte colpa sua. Ma, ciò nonostante, possiamo fare qualche distinzione tra un uomo che oltraggia la propria coscienza del tutto limpida e un uomo con una coscienza più o meno annebbiata di sofismi. Ora, credete voi davvero che l’omicidio sia in qualche modo un male?»

«È questa un’accusa?» chiese Kalon molto tranquillamente.

«No» rispose Brown, con eguale dolcezza, «è l’arringa della difesa.»

Nel lungo e attonito silenzio della stanza il profeta di Apollo lentamente si alzò; e fu davvero come il sorgere del sole. Riempì quella stanza della sua luce e vita in tal modo che un uomo sentiva ch’egli avrebbe potuto riempire con altrettanta facilità la piana di Salisbury. La sua figura ammantata pareva addobbare l’intera stanza di drappeggi classici; il suo gesto epico pareva estenderla in prospettive più grandiose, finché la piccola figura nera del moderno chierico pareva un difetto e un’intrusione, una tonda, nera macchia su qualche splendore dell’Ellade.

«Ci incontriamo alfine, Caifa» disse il profeta. «La tua Chiesa e la mia sono le uniche realtà su questa terra. Io adoro il sole, e tu l’oscurarsi del sole; tu sei il sacerdote del Dio morente, io del Dio vivente. La tua presente opera di sospetto e di calunnia è degna della tua veste e del tuo credo. Tutta la tua Chiesa non è che una nera polizia; voi non siete che spie e detective che cercano di strappare agli uomini confessioni di colpa, sia con l’inganno che con la tortura. Voi vorreste convincere gli uomini di delitto, io li convincerei d’innocenza. Voi vorreste persuaderli del peccato, io li persuaderei della virtù.

“Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away your baseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly could you understand how little I care whether you can convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child’s toy-book to a man once grown up. You said you were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this life that I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but one thing that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say it myself. The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after such manner as your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sterner than you will ever understand. She and I walked another world from yours, and trod palaces of crystal while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love there must soon be hatred; so there you have the first point made for the prosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not grudge it you. Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that this very morning, before she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving me and my new church half a million. Come, where are the handcuffs? Do you suppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be like waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will only be going to her in a headlong car.”

He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flambeau and Joan Stacey stared at him in amazed admiration. Father Brown’s face seemed to express nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the ground with one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sun leaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed:

“In a few words I have put before you the whole case against me— the only possible case against me. In fewer words still I will blow it to pieces, so that not a trace of it remains. As to whether I have committed this crime, the truth is in one sentence: I could not have committed this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor to the ground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into the witness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony of my own rooms above from just before the stroke of noon to a quarter-past—the usual period of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth from Clapham, with no sort of connection with me) will swear that he sat in my outer office all the morning, and that no communication passed through. He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes before the hour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony all that time. No one ever had so complete an alibi; I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you had better put the handcuffs away again. The case is at an end.

“But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in the air, I will tell you all you want to know. I believe I do know how my unhappy friend came by her death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my faith and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannot lock me up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths that certain adepts and illuminati have in history attained the power of levitation—that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air. It is but a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main element in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious temper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that if one’s will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There is the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainly not criminal or in any way connected with me. In the short-hand of the police-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall always call it heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling of heaven.”

It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. He still sat looking at the ground, with a painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet’s winged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspecter of men overwhelmed by a prouder and purer spirit of natural liberty and health. At last he said, blinking as if in bodily distress: “Well, if that is so, sir, you need do no more than take the testamentary paper you spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left it.”

“It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think,” said Kalon, with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly. “She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actually saw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room.”

“Was her door open then?” asked the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting.

“Yes,” said Kalon calmly.

“Ah! it has been open ever since,” said the other, and resumed his silent study of the mat.

“There is a paper over here,” said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to her sister’s desk by the doorway, and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a sour smile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, and Flambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.

Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through. But Flambeau took it out of the lady’s hand, and read it with the utmost amazement. It did, indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after the words “I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed” the writing abruptly stopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the priest of the sun.

«Lettore dei libri del male, ancora una parola prima che io soffi via per sempre i tuoi infondati incubi. Non potresti comprendere, neppure fievolmente, quanto poco mi importi che tu possa condannarmi o no. Ciò che tu chiami disonore e orribile impiccagione non è per me più di quanto un orco in un libro di fiabe per bambini sia per un uomo ormai cresciuto. Hai detto che offrivi l’arringa della difesa. M’importa così poco del regno di nubi di questa vita che ti offrirò io l’arringa dell’accusa. C’è una sola cosa che si può dire contro di me in questa faccenda, e la dirò io stesso. La donna che è morta era il mio amore e la mia sposa; non alla maniera che le vostre cappelle di latta chiamano lecita, ma per una legge più pura e più severa di quanto voi mai comprenderete. Ella e io camminavamo in un mondo diverso dal vostro, e calcavamo palazzi di cristallo mentre voi arrancavate per gallerie e corridoi di mattoni. Ebbene, so che i poliziotti, teologici e d’altra sorta, immaginano sempre che dove c’è stato amore debba presto esserci odio; ed ecco dunque il primo punto a favore dell’accusa. Ma il secondo punto è più forte; non ve lo lesino. Non solo è vero che Pauline mi amava, ma è anche vero che proprio questa mattina, prima di morire, scrisse a quel tavolo un testamento in cui lasciava a me e alla mia nuova Chiesa mezzo milione. Suvvia, dove sono le manette? Credete forse ch’io mi curi delle sciocchezze che farete di me? I lavori forzati saranno solo come attendere lei a una stazione di passaggio. La forca sarà solo un andare da lei su un carro lanciato a rotta di collo.»

Parlava con l’autorità sconvolgente d’un oratore, e Flambeau e Joan Stacey lo fissavano con stupita ammirazione. Il volto di Padre Brown pareva non esprimere nulla se non estrema angoscia; guardava il pavimento con una ruga di dolore attraverso la fronte. Il profeta del sole si appoggiò comodamente alla mensola del camino e riprese:

«In poche parole vi ho esposto l’intero caso contro di me — l’unico caso possibile contro di me. In parole ancor più poche lo ridurrò in pezzi, così che non ne resti traccia. Quanto al fatto se io abbia commesso questo delitto, la verità è in una frase: io non potevo aver commesso questo delitto. Pauline Stacey cadde da questo piano al suolo alle dodici e cinque minuti. Un centinaio di persone saliranno sul banco dei testimoni e diranno che io me ne stavo fuori, sul balcone delle mie stanze di sopra, da poco prima del rintocco del mezzodì fino alle dodici e un quarto — il consueto periodo delle mie pubbliche preghiere. Il mio impiegato (un giovane rispettabile di Clapham, senza alcun legame con me) giurerà che è rimasto seduto nel mio ufficio esterno per tutta la mattina, e che nessuna comunicazione è passata. Giurerà che io arrivai dieci minuti buoni prima dell’ora, quindici minuti prima di qualunque bisbiglio dell’incidente, e che non lasciai né l’ufficio né il balcone in tutto quel tempo. Nessuno ebbe mai un alibi tanto completo; potrei chiamare a testimoniare mezza Westminster. Credo che fareste meglio a riporre di nuovo le manette. Il caso è chiuso.

«Ma per ultimo, affinché non resti nell’aria alcun soffio di questo idiota sospetto, vi dirò tutto ciò che volete sapere. Credo di sapere davvero come la mia infelice amica trovò la morte. Potete, se volete, biasimarne me, o almeno la mia fede e la mia filosofia; ma di certo non potete rinchiudermi. È ben noto a tutti gli studiosi delle verità superiori che certi adepti e illuminati, nella storia, hanno raggiunto il potere della levitazione — cioè, di sostenersi da sé sull’aria vuota. Non è che una parte di quella generale conquista della materia che è l’elemento principale della nostra sapienza occulta. La povera Pauline era di temperamento impulsivo e ambizioso. Credo, a dire il vero, che si ritenesse un poco più addentro nei misteri di quanto fosse; e mi ha spesso detto, mentre scendevamo insieme nell’ascensore, che se la propria volontà fosse abbastanza forte, si potrebbe fluttuare giù innocui come una piuma. Credo solennemente che, in qualche estasi di nobili pensieri, ella tentò il miracolo. La sua volontà, o fede, dev’esserle venuta meno nell’istante cruciale, e la legge inferiore della materia ebbe la sua orribile vendetta. Ecco tutta la storia, signori, molto triste e, come voi pensate, molto presuntuosa e malvagia, ma di certo non criminosa né in alcun modo connessa con me. Nella stenografia dei tribunali di polizia, fareste meglio a chiamarlo suicidio. Io lo chiamerò sempre eroico fallimento per l’avanzamento della scienza e la lenta scalata del cielo.»

Era la prima volta che Flambeau vedeva Padre Brown vinto. Sedeva ancora guardando il pavimento, con la fronte dolente e corrugata, come per vergogna. Era impossibile evitare la sensazione che le alate parole del profeta avevano attizzato: che qui vi fosse un torvo, professionale sospettatore d’uomini sopraffatto da uno spirito più fiero e più puro di libertà e sanità naturali. Alla fine disse, ammiccando come per sofferenza fisica: «Ebbene, se è così, signore, non vi resta che prendere il documento testamentario di cui avete parlato e andare. Mi domando dove la povera signora l’abbia lasciato.»

«Sarà là, sulla sua scrivania presso la porta, credo» disse Kalon, con quella massiccia innocenza di modi che pareva assolverlo del tutto. «Mi disse espressamente che l’avrebbe scritto stamattina, e la vidi effettivamente scrivere mentre salivo in ascensore verso la mia stanza.»

«Era aperta allora la sua porta?» chiese il prete, con l’occhio sull’angolo della stuoia.

«Sì» disse Kalon con calma.

«Ah! è rimasta aperta da allora» disse l’altro, e riprese il suo silenzioso studio della stuoia.

«C’è un foglio qui» disse la torva signorina Joan, con voce alquanto singolare. Era passata alla scrivania della sorella presso l’uscio, e teneva in mano un foglio di carta protocollo azzurra. Sul suo volto c’era un sorriso acido che pareva inadatto a una simile scena o circostanza, e Flambeau la guardò con la fronte che si oscurava.

Kalon il profeta si tenne lontano dal foglio con quella leale inconsapevolezza che l’aveva sorretto fino a quel punto. Ma Flambeau lo tolse dalla mano della signora, e lo lesse con il più grande stupore. Cominciava, in effetti, alla maniera formale di un testamento, ma dopo le parole «Do e lascio in eredità tutto ciò di cui muoio in possesso» la scrittura si arrestava bruscamente in una serie di sgorbi, e non v’era traccia del nome di alcun legatario. Flambeau, meravigliato, porse questo testamento monco all’amico ecclesiastico, il quale gli diede un’occhiata e in silenzio lo passò al sacerdote del sole.

An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies, had crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.

“What monkey tricks have you been playing here?” he cried. “That’s not all Pauline wrote.”

They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee shrillness in it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from him like a cloak.

“That is the only thing on her desk,” said Joan, and confronted him steadily with the same smile of evil favour.

Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words. There was something shocking about the dropping of his mask; it was like a man’s real face falling off.

“See here!” he cried in broad American, when he was breathless with cursing, “I may be an adventurer, but I guess you’re a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here’s your death explained, and without any levitation. The poor girl is writing a will in my favour; her cursed sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and throws her down before she can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs after all.”

“As you have truly remarked,” replied Joan, with ugly calm, “your clerk is a very respectable young man, who knows the nature of an oath; and he will swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging some typewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell. Mr. Flambeau will tell you that he found me there.”

There was a silence.

“Why, then,” cried Flambeau, “Pauline was alone when she fell, and it was suicide!”

“She was alone when she fell,” said Father Brown, “but it was not suicide.”

“Then how did she die?” asked Flambeau impatiently.

“She was murdered.”

“But she was alone,” objected the detective.

“She was murdered when she was all alone,” answered the priest.

All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same old dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow; his voice was colourless and sad.

“What I want to know,” cried Kalon, with an oath, “is when the police are coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She’s killed her flesh and blood; she’s robbed me of half a million that was just as sacredly mine as—”

“Come, come, prophet,” interrupted Flambeau, with a kind of sneer; “remember that all this world is a cloudland.”

The hierophant of the sun-god made an effort to climb back on his pedestal. “It is not the mere money,” he cried, “though that would equip the cause throughout the world. It is also my beloved one’s wishes. To Pauline all this was holy. In Pauline’s eyes—”

Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale, yet he seemed fired with a hope; his eyes shone.

“That’s it!” he cried in a clear voice. “That’s the way to begin. In Pauline’s eyes—”

The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost mad disorder. “What do you mean? How dare you?” he cried repeatedly.

“In Pauline’s eyes,” repeated the priest, his own shining more and more. “Go on—in God’s name, go on. The foulest crime the fiends ever prompted feels lighter after confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, go on—in Pauline’s eyes—”

“Let me go, you devil!” thundered Kalon, struggling like a giant in bonds. “Who are you, you cursed spy, to weave your spiders’ webs round me, and peep and peer? Let me go.”

“Shall I stop him?” asked Flambeau, bounding towards the exit, for Kalon had already thrown the door wide open.

“No; let him pass,” said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the universe. “Let Cain pass by, for he belongs to God.”

There was a long-drawn silence in the room when he had left it, which was to Flambeau’s fierce wits one long agony of interrogation. Miss Joan Stacey very coolly tidied up the papers on her desk.

“Father,” said Flambeau at last, “it is my duty, not my curiosity only— it is my duty to find out, if I can, who committed the crime.”

“Which crime?” asked Father Brown.

“The one we are dealing with, of course,” replied his impatient friend.

“We are dealing with two crimes,” said Brown, “crimes of very different weight—and by very different criminals.”

Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded to lock up her drawer. Father Brown went on, noticing her as little as she noticed him.

“The two crimes,” he observed, “were committed against the same weakness of the same person, in a struggle for her money. The author of the larger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime; the author of the smaller crime got the money.”

“Oh, don’t go on like a lecturer,” groaned Flambeau; “put it in a few words.”

“I can put it in one word,” answered his friend.

Miss Joan Stacey skewered her business-like black hat on to her head with a business-like black frown before a little mirror, and, as the conversation proceeded, took her handbag and umbrella in an unhurried style, and left the room.

“The truth is one word, and a short one,” said Father Brown. “Pauline Stacey was blind.”

“Blind!” repeated Flambeau, and rose slowly to his whole huge stature.

“She was subject to it by blood,” Brown proceeded. “Her sister would have started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her; but it was her special philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases by yielding to them. She would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispel it by will. So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, or whatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun with the naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new pagans would only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagans knew that mere naked Nature-worship must have a cruel side. They knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind.”

Un istante dopo quel pontefice, nei suoi splendidi drappeggi svolazzanti, aveva attraversato la stanza in due grandi falcate, e torreggiava su Joan Stacey, gli occhi azzurri sporgenti dalla testa.

«Che scherzetti da scimmia avete combinato qui?» gridò. «Non è tutto quello che Pauline scrisse.»

Si trasalirono nell’udirlo parlare con una voce del tutto nuova, con una stridula asprezza yankee; tutta la sua grandezza e il suo buon inglese gli erano caduti di dosso come un mantello.

«È l’unica cosa che c’è sulla sua scrivania» disse Joan, e lo affrontò impassibile con lo stesso sorriso di malvagio compiacimento.

D’improvviso l’uomo proruppe in bestemmie e cateratte di parole incredule. C’era qualcosa di sconvolgente nel cadere della sua maschera; era come il vero volto di un uomo che si staccasse.

«Sentite qui!» gridò in ampio americano, quando fu senza fiato per l’imprecare, «io sarò anche un avventuriero, ma direi che voi siete un’assassina. Sì, signori, ecco spiegata la vostra morte, e senza alcuna levitazione. La povera ragazza sta scrivendo un testamento a mio favore; la sua maledetta sorella entra, lotta per la penna, la trascina al pozzo e ve la getta prima che possa finirlo. Perbacco! Direi che le manette ci servono dopotutto.»

«Come avete giustamente osservato» rispose Joan, con una brutta calma, «il vostro impiegato è un giovane assai rispettabile, che conosce la natura di un giuramento; e giurerà davanti a qualsiasi tribunale che io ero su nel vostro ufficio a organizzare un lavoro di dattilografia per cinque minuti prima e cinque minuti dopo che mia sorella cadde. Il signor Flambeau vi dirà che mi trovò là.»

Vi fu un silenzio.

«Ma allora» gridò Flambeau, «Pauline era sola quando cadde, e fu suicidio!»

«Era sola quando cadde» disse Padre Brown, «ma non fu suicidio.»

«E allora come morì?» chiese Flambeau con impazienza.

«Fu assassinata.»

«Ma era sola» obiettò l’investigatore.

«Fu assassinata mentre era del tutto sola» rispose il prete.

Tutti gli altri lo fissarono, ma egli rimase seduto nel medesimo vecchio atteggiamento avvilito, con una ruga nella tonda fronte e un’aria di impersonale vergogna e dolore; la sua voce era incolore e triste.

«Ciò che voglio sapere» gridò Kalon, con un’imprecazione, «è quando la polizia verrà a prendere questa sanguinaria e malvagia sorella. Ha ucciso la propria carne e il proprio sangue; mi ha derubato di mezzo milione che era sacro mio quanto —»

«Suvvia, suvvia, profeta» lo interruppe Flambeau, con una sorta di sogghigno; «ricordate che tutto questo mondo è un regno di nubi.»

Lo ierofante del dio-sole fece uno sforzo per risalire sul proprio piedistallo. «Non è il mero denaro» gridò, «benché ciò equipaggerebbe la causa in tutto il mondo. Sono anche i desideri della mia amata. Per Pauline tutto questo era sacro. Agli occhi di Pauline —»

Padre Brown balzò d’improvviso in piedi, così che la sedia gli cadde riversa dietro. Era pallido come un morto, eppure pareva acceso da una speranza; i suoi occhi brillavano.

«È questo!» gridò con voce chiara. «È così che si comincia. Agli occhi di Pauline —»

L’alto profeta indietreggiò davanti al minuscolo prete in un disordine quasi folle. «Che intendete? Come osate?» gridò ripetutamente.

«Agli occhi di Pauline» ripeté il prete, i propri sempre più splendenti. «Continuate — in nome di Dio, continuate. Il più immondo delitto che i demoni abbiano mai istigato si fa più leggero dopo la confessione; e vi imploro di confessare. Continuate, continuate — agli occhi di Pauline —»

«Lasciatemi andare, demonio!» tuonò Kalon, dibattendosi come un gigante in catene. «Chi siete voi, maledetta spia, per tessere le vostre ragnatele intorno a me, e spiare e scrutare? Lasciatemi andare.»

«Devo fermarlo?» chiese Flambeau, slanciandosi verso l’uscita, poiché Kalon aveva già spalancato la porta.

«No; lasciatelo passare» disse Padre Brown, con uno strano, profondo sospiro che pareva venire dagli abissi dell’universo. «Lasciate passare Caino, poiché appartiene a Dio.»

Vi fu un lungo, protratto silenzio nella stanza dopo che egli l’ebbe lasciata, che fu per l’acuto ingegno di Flambeau una lunga agonia di interrogativi. La signorina Joan Stacey, con grande freddezza, riordinò le carte sulla sua scrivania.

«Padre» disse Flambeau alla fine, «è mio dovere, non solo mia curiosità — è mio dovere scoprire, se posso, chi commise il delitto.»

«Quale delitto?» chiese Padre Brown.

«Quello di cui ci stiamo occupando, naturalmente» rispose l’amico impaziente.

«Ci stiamo occupando di due delitti» disse Brown, «delitti di peso assai diverso — e commessi da criminali assai diversi.»

La signorina Joan Stacey, raccolte e riposte le sue carte, procedette a chiudere a chiave il proprio cassetto. Padre Brown continuò, badando a lei tanto poco quanto ella badava a lui.

«I due delitti» osservò, «furono commessi contro la medesima debolezza della medesima persona, in una lotta per il suo denaro. L’autore del delitto maggiore si trovò sventato dal delitto minore; l’autore del delitto minore ottenne il denaro.»

«Oh, non continuate come un conferenziere» gemette Flambeau; «ditelo in poche parole.»

«Posso dirlo in una sola» rispose l’amico.

La signorina Joan Stacey si infilò con uno spillo il suo pratico cappello nero in testa, con un pratico cipiglio nero davanti a un piccolo specchio, e, mentre la conversazione proseguiva, prese la borsetta e l’ombrello con fare senza fretta, e lasciò la stanza.

«La verità è una sola parola, e breve» disse Padre Brown. «Pauline Stacey era cieca.»

«Cieca!» ripeté Flambeau, e si alzò lentamente in tutta la sua enorme statura.

«Vi era soggetta per via del sangue» proseguì Brown. «Sua sorella le avrebbe fatto usare gli occhiali, se Pauline glielo avesse permesso; ma era la sua particolare filosofia, o fisima, che non si dovessero incoraggiare simili malattie cedendo loro. Non voleva ammettere la nube; o cercava di dissiparla con la volontà. Così i suoi occhi peggioravano sempre più per lo sforzo; ma lo sforzo peggiore doveva ancora venire. Venne con questo prezioso profeta, o comunque si faccia chiamare, che le insegnò a fissare il sole ardente a occhio nudo. Lo chiamavano accogliere Apollo. Oh, se questi nuovi pagani volessero solo essere vecchi pagani, sarebbero un po’ più saggi! I vecchi pagani sapevano che la mera nuda adorazione della Natura deve avere un lato crudele. Sapevano che l’occhio di Apollo può fulminare e accecare.»

There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even broken voice. “Whether or no that devil deliberately made her blind, there is no doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The very simplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up and down in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl’s landing, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony, and was safely praying before the crowded street when the poor girl, having finished her work, ran gaily out to where lover and lift were to receive her, and stepped—”

“Don’t!” cried Flambeau.

“He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button,” continued the little father, in the colourless voice in which he talked of such horrors. “But that went smash. It went smash because there happened to be another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew the secret about poor Pauline’s sight. There was one thing about that will that I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real witnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at all.

“People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this was specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and memory she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could not tell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sister—all except this fountain pen. This was carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held out for a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal and brilliant murders in human history for nothing.”

Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascending the stairs. He turned and said: “You must have followed everything devilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes.”

Father Brown gave a sort of start.

“Oh! to him,” he said. “No; I had to follow rather close to find out about Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew Kalon was the criminal before I came into the front door.”

“You must be joking!” cried Flambeau.

“I’m quite serious,” answered the priest. “I tell you I knew he had done it, even before I knew what he had done.”

“But why?”

“These pagan stoics,” said Brown reflectively, “always fail by their strength. There came a crash and a scream down the street, and the priest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what it was. But I knew that he was expecting it.”

Vi fu una pausa, e il prete proseguì con voce dolce e persino rotta. «Che quel demonio l’abbia o no deliberatamente resa cieca, non c’è dubbio ch’egli deliberatamente l’uccise attraverso la sua cecità. La semplicità stessa del delitto è nauseante. Sapete che lui e lei salivano e scendevano in quegli ascensori senza aiuto ufficiale; sapete anche con quanta scorrevolezza e silenzio scivolano gli ascensori. Kalon portò l’ascensore al pianerottolo della fanciulla, e la vide, attraverso la porta aperta, scrivere nel suo lento modo cieco il testamento che gli aveva promesso. Le gridò allegramente che aveva pronto l’ascensore per lei, e che venisse fuori quando fosse pronta. Poi premette un bottone e schizzò silenzioso su fino al proprio piano, attraversò il proprio ufficio, uscì sul proprio balcone, e stava tranquillamente pregando davanti alla strada affollata quando la povera ragazza, terminato il suo lavoro, corse gaia là dove l’amante e l’ascensore dovevano accoglierla, e fece un passo —»

«Basta!» gridò Flambeau.

«Avrebbe dovuto ottenere mezzo milione premendo quel bottone» continuò il piccolo padre, nella voce incolore con cui parlava di simili orrori. «Ma andò a monte. Andò a monte perché si dava il caso che vi fosse un’altra persona che pure voleva il denaro, e che pure conosceva il segreto della vista della povera Pauline. C’era una cosa in quel testamento che credo nessuno abbia notato: benché fosse incompiuto e senza firma, l’altra signorina Stacey e una sua domestica l’avevano già firmato come testimoni. Joan aveva firmato per prima, dicendo che Pauline avrebbe potuto completarlo più tardi, con un tipico femmineo disprezzo per le forme legali. Perciò, Joan voleva che sua sorella firmasse il testamento senza veri testimoni. Perché? Pensai alla cecità, ed ebbi la certezza che ella aveva voluto che Pauline firmasse in solitudine perché aveva voluto che non firmasse affatto.

«Le persone come le Stacey usano sempre la penna stilografica; ma per Pauline ciò era particolarmente naturale. Per abitudine, e per la sua forte volontà e memoria, poteva ancora scrivere quasi bene come se vedesse; ma non poteva accorgersi di quando la penna avesse bisogno d’essere intinta. Perciò, le sue stilografiche venivano accuratamente riempite dalla sorella — tutte tranne questa stilografica. Questa fu accuratamente non riempita dalla sorella; i residui d’inchiostro bastarono per poche righe e poi vennero meno del tutto. E il profeta perse cinquecentomila sterline e commise uno dei più brutali e brillanti omicidi della storia umana per niente.»

Flambeau andò alla porta aperta e udì la polizia ufficiale che saliva le scale. Si voltò e disse: «Dovete aver seguito ogni cosa maledettamente da vicino per aver ricondotto il delitto a Kalon in dieci minuti.»

Padre Brown ebbe una sorta di soprassalto.

«Oh! a lui» disse. «No; ho dovuto seguire piuttosto da vicino per scoprire la faccenda della signorina Joan e della stilografica. Ma sapevo che Kalon era il criminale prima ancora di varcare la porta d’ingresso.»

«Starete scherzando!» gridò Flambeau.

«Dico sul serio» rispose il prete. «Vi dico che sapevo che era stato lui, prima ancora di sapere che cosa avesse fatto.»

«Ma perché?»

«Questi pagani stoici» disse Brown riflessivo, «falliscono sempre per la loro forza. Ci fu uno schianto e un urlo giù per la strada, e il sacerdote di Apollo non trasalì né si voltò. Io non sapevo che cosa fosse. Ma sapevo che egli se lo aspettava.»

The Sign of the Broken Sword

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.

It rose abruptly out of the ashen wastes of forest in a sort of hump or shoulder of green turf that looked grey in the starlight. Most of the graves were on a slant, and the path leading up to the church was as steep as a staircase. On the top of the hill, in the one flat and prominent place, was the monument for which the place was famous. It contrasted strangely with the featureless graves all round, for it was the work of one of the greatest sculptors of modern Europe; and yet his fame was at once forgotten in the fame of the man whose image he had made. It showed, by touches of the small silver pencil of starlight, the massive metal figure of a soldier recumbent, the strong hands sealed in an everlasting worship, the great head pillowed upon a gun. The venerable face was bearded, or rather whiskered, in the old, heavy Colonel Newcome fashion. The uniform, though suggested with the few strokes of simplicity, was that of modern war. By his right side lay a sword, of which the tip was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they felt the vast forest land with its one dumpy dome of churchyard and church as a place oddly dumb and neglected. In this freezing darkness of mid-winter one would think he might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in the stillness of those stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, and two dim figures dressed in black climbed up the little path to the tomb.

So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could have been traced about them except that while they both wore black, one man was enormously big, and the other (perhaps by contrast) almost startlingly small. They went up to the great graven tomb of the historic warrior, and stood for a few minutes staring at it. There was no human, perhaps no living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might well have wondered if they were human themselves. In any case, the beginning of their conversation might have seemed strange. After the first silence the small man said to the other:

“Where does a wise man hide a pebble?”

And the tall man answered in a low voice: “On the beach.”

The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: “Where does a wise man hide a leaf?”

And the other answered: “In the forest.”

There was another stillness, and then the tall man resumed: “Do you mean that when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?”

“No, no,” said the little man with a laugh, “we will let bygones be bygones.”

He stamped his cold feet for a second or two, and then said: “I’m not thinking of that at all, but of something else; something rather peculiar. Just strike a match, will you?”

The big man fumbled in his pocket, and soon a scratch and a flare painted gold the whole flat side of the monument. On it was cut in black letters the well-known words which so many Americans had reverently read: “Sacred to the Memory of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, Hero and Martyr, who Always Vanquished his Enemies and Always Spared Them, and Was Treacherously Slain by Them At Last. May God in Whom he Trusted both Reward and Revenge him.”

The match burnt the big man’s fingers, blackened, and dropped. He was about to strike another, but his small companion stopped him. “That’s all right, Flambeau, old man; I saw what I wanted. Or, rather, I didn’t see what I didn’t want. And now we must walk a mile and a half along the road to the next inn, and I will try to tell you all about it. For Heaven knows a man should have a fire and ale when he dares tell such a story.”

They descended the precipitous path, they relatched the rusty gate, and set off at a stamping, ringing walk down the frozen forest road. They had gone a full quarter of a mile before the smaller man spoke again. He said: “Yes; the wise man hides a pebble on the beach. But what does he do if there is no beach? Do you know anything of that great St. Clare trouble?”

“I know nothing about English generals, Father Brown,” answered the large man, laughing, “though a little about English policemen. I only know that you have dragged me a precious long dance to all the shrines of this fellow, whoever he is. One would think he got buried in six different places. I’ve seen a memorial to General St. Clare in Westminster Abbey. I’ve seen a ramping equestrian statue of General St. Clare on the Embankment. I’ve seen a medallion of St. Clare in the street he was born in, and another in the street he lived in; and now you drag me after dark to his coffin in the village churchyard. I am beginning to be a bit tired of his magnificent personality, especially as I don’t in the least know who he was. What are you hunting for in all these crypts and effigies?”

“I am only looking for one word,” said Father Brown. “A word that isn’t there.”

“Well,” asked Flambeau; “are you going to tell me anything about it?”

“I must divide it into two parts,” remarked the priest. “First there is what everybody knows; and then there is what I know. Now, what everybody knows is short and plain enough. It is also entirely wrong.”

“Right you are,” said the big man called Flambeau cheerfully. “Let’s begin at the wrong end. Let’s begin with what everybody knows, which isn’t true.”

Il segno della Spada spezzata

Le mille braccia della foresta erano grigie, e le sue milioni di dita d’argento. In un cielo di un verde-azzurro cupo, simile all’ardesia, le stelle erano gelide e sfolgoranti come schegge di ghiaccio. Tutta quella campagna fittamente boscosa e scarsamente abitata era irrigidita da un gelo aspro e fragile. Le cavità nere fra i tronchi degli alberi parevano caverne senza fondo, nere caverne di quell’inferno scandinavo, un inferno di freddo incalcolabile. Persino la torre quadrata di pietra della chiesa aveva un che di nordico fino al limite del paganesimo, come se fosse una torre barbarica fra gli scogli marini dell’Islanda. Era una notte ben strana per andare a esplorare un cimitero. Ma, d’altra parte, forse valeva la pena di esplorarlo.

Esso si ergeva bruscamente dalle plaghe cineree della foresta, sopra una specie di gobba o spalla di verde tappeto erboso che, nella luce delle stelle, appariva grigio. Quasi tutte le tombe erano in pendenza, e il sentiero che saliva alla chiesa era ripido come una scala. In cima al colle, nell’unico punto piano e prominente, sorgeva il monumento per cui il luogo era famoso. Contrastava stranamente con le tombe anonime tutt’intorno, poiché era opera di uno dei più grandi scultori dell’Europa moderna; eppure la fama di lui era subito dimenticata nella fama dell’uomo di cui aveva foggiato l’immagine. Mostrava, ai tocchi della piccola matita d’argento della luce stellare, la massiccia figura di metallo di un soldato disteso supino, le forti mani serrate in un’adorazione eterna, la grande testa poggiata su un fucile come su un guanciale. Il volto venerabile era barbuto, o meglio favoriti, all’antica maniera pesante del Colonnello Newcome. La divisa, benché suggerita con pochi tratti di semplicità, era quella della guerra moderna. Al suo fianco destro giaceva una spada, di cui la punta era spezzata; al fianco sinistro giaceva una Bibbia. Nei radiosi pomeriggi d’estate arrivavano i carrozzini pieni di americani e di borghesi di periferia colti a vedere il sepolcro; ma persino allora sentivano quella vasta terra boschiva, con la sua unica tozza cupola di cimitero e chiesa, come un luogo stranamente muto e negletto. In questa gelida tenebra di pieno inverno si sarebbe pensato che egli potesse restare solo con le stelle. Nondimeno, nel silenzio di quei boschi irrigiditi, un cancello di legno cigolò, e due figure indistinte vestite di nero salirono per il sentierino fino alla tomba.

Tanto fioca era quella gelida luce stellare che nulla si sarebbe potuto distinguere di loro, se non che, mentre entrambi vestivano di nero, uno degli uomini era enormemente grande, e l’altro (forse per contrasto) quasi sorprendentemente piccolo. Si accostarono alla grande tomba scolpita del guerriero storico, e rimasero qualche minuto a contemplarla. Non v’era essere umano, forse nessun essere vivente, in un largo cerchio; e una fantasia morbosa avrebbe ben potuto chiedersi se essi stessi fossero umani. In ogni caso, l’inizio della loro conversazione sarebbe potuto sembrare strano. Dopo il primo silenzio l’uomo piccolo disse all’altro:

«Dove nasconde un uomo saggio un sassolino?»

E l’uomo alto rispose a voce bassa: «Sulla spiaggia.»

L’uomo piccolo annuì, e dopo un breve silenzio disse: «Dove nasconde un uomo saggio una foglia?»

E l’altro rispose: «Nella foresta.»

Vi fu un altro silenzio, e poi l’uomo alto riprese: «Volete dire che, quando un uomo saggio deve nascondere un vero diamante, si sa che l’ha nascosto fra quelli falsi?»

«No, no,» disse l’ometto con una risata, «lasciamo che il passato sia passato.»

Batté per un secondo o due i piedi infreddoliti, e poi disse: «Non sto affatto pensando a quello, ma a qualcos’altro; qualcosa di piuttosto singolare. Accendete un fiammifero, volete?»

L’uomo grande frugò in tasca, e ben presto uno sfregamento e una vampata dipinsero d’oro l’intero fianco piatto del monumento. Vi erano incise a lettere nere le ben note parole che tanti americani avevano letto con reverenza: «Sacro alla Memoria del Generale Sir Arthur St. Clare, Eroe e Martire, che Sempre Vinse i suoi Nemici e Sempre li Risparmiò, e Fu da Essi alla Fine Proditoriamente Ucciso. Che Dio, in Cui egli Confidò, lo Ricompensi e lo Vendichi.»

Il fiammifero bruciò le dita dell’uomo grande, annerì e cadde. Stava per accenderne un altro, ma il suo piccolo compagno lo fermò. «Va bene così, Flambeau, vecchio mio; ho visto ciò che volevo. O meglio, non ho visto ciò che non volevo. E ora dobbiamo camminare un miglio e mezzo lungo la strada fino alla prossima locanda, e cercherò di raccontarvi tutto. Perché sa il Cielo se un uomo, quando osa raccontare una storia simile, ha bisogno di un fuoco e di una birra.»

Discesero il sentiero scosceso, riabbassarono il chiavistello del cancello arrugginito, e si avviarono con passo battente e sonoro lungo la gelata strada della foresta. Avevano percorso un buon quarto di miglio prima che l’uomo più piccolo parlasse di nuovo. Disse: «Sì; l’uomo saggio nasconde un sassolino sulla spiaggia. Ma che cosa fa se non c’è spiaggia? Sapete niente di quella grande faccenda di St. Clare?»

«Non so nulla dei generali inglesi, Padre Brown,» rispose l’uomo grosso, ridendo, «per quanto sappia qualcosina dei poliziotti inglesi. So soltanto che mi avete trascinato in una bella lunga danza a tutti i santuari di questo tale, chiunque egli sia. Uno penserebbe che sia stato sepolto in sei luoghi diversi. Ho visto un memoriale del Generale St. Clare nell’Abbazia di Westminster. Ho visto una scalpitante statua equestre del Generale St. Clare sull’Embankment. Ho visto un medaglione di St. Clare nella via in cui nacque, e un altro nella via in cui visse; e ora mi trascinate al buio fino alla sua bara nel cimitero del villaggio. Comincio a essere un po’ stufo della sua magnifica personalità, tanto più che non so minimamente chi fosse. Che cosa andate cercando in tutte queste cripte ed effigi?»

«Cerco soltanto una parola,» disse Padre Brown. «Una parola che non c’è.»

«Bene,» chiese Flambeau, «avete intenzione di dirmi qualcosa in proposito?»

«Devo dividerla in due parti,» osservò il prete. «Prima c’è ciò che tutti sanno; e poi c’è ciò che so io. Ora, ciò che tutti sanno è breve e abbastanza semplice. Ed è anche interamente sbagliato.»

«Ecco fatto,» disse allegramente l’uomo grande chiamato Flambeau. «Cominciamo dal lato sbagliato. Cominciamo con ciò che tutti sanno, e che non è vero.»

“If not wholly untrue, it is at least very inadequate,” continued Brown; “for in point of fact, all that the public knows amounts precisely to this: The public knows that Arthur St. Clare was a great and successful English general. It knows that after splendid yet careful campaigns both in India and Africa he was in command against Brazil when the great Brazilian patriot Olivier issued his ultimatum. It knows that on that occasion St. Clare with a very small force attacked Olivier with a very large one, and was captured after heroic resistance. And it knows that after his capture, and to the abhorrence of the civilised world, St. Clare was hanged on the nearest tree. He was found swinging there after the Brazilians had retired, with his broken sword hung round his neck.”

“And that popular story is untrue?” suggested Flambeau.

“No,” said his friend quietly, “that story is quite true, so far as it goes.”

“Well, I think it goes far enough!” said Flambeau; “but if the popular story is true, what is the mystery?”

They had passed many hundreds of grey and ghostly trees before the little priest answered. Then he bit his finger reflectively and said: “Why, the mystery is a mystery of psychology. Or, rather, it is a mystery of two psychologies. In that Brazilian business two of the most famous men of modern history acted flat against their characters. Mind you, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroes—the old thing, and no mistake; it was like the fight between Hector and Achilles. Now, what would you say to an affair in which Achilles was timid and Hector was treacherous?”

“Go on,” said the large man impatiently as the other bit his finger again.

“Sir Arthur St. Clare was a soldier of the old religious type— the type that saved us during the Mutiny,” continued Brown. “He was always more for duty than for dash; and with all his personal courage was decidedly a prudent commander, particularly indignant at any needless waste of soldiers. Yet in this last battle he attempted something that a baby could see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it was as wild as wind; just as one need not be a strategist to keep out of the way of a motor-bus. Well, that is the first mystery; what had become of the English general’s head? The second riddle is, what had become of the Brazilian general’s heart? President Olivier might be called a visionary or a nuisance; but even his enemies admitted that he was magnanimous to the point of knight errantry. Almost every other prisoner he had ever captured had been set free or even loaded with benefits. Men who had really wronged him came away touched by his simplicity and sweetness. Why the deuce should he diabolically revenge himself only once in his life; and that for the one particular blow that could not have hurt him? Well, there you have it. One of the wisest men in the world acted like an idiot for no reason. One of the best men in the world acted like a fiend for no reason. That’s the long and the short of it; and I leave it to you, my boy.”

“No, you don’t,” said the other with a snort. “I leave it to you; and you jolly well tell me all about it.”

“Well,” resumed Father Brown, “it’s not fair to say that the public impression is just what I’ve said, without adding that two things have happened since. I can’t say they threw a new light; for nobody can make sense of them. But they threw a new kind of darkness; they threw the darkness in new directions. The first was this. The family physician of the St. Clares quarrelled with that family, and began publishing a violent series of articles, in which he said that the late general was a religious maniac; but as far as the tale went, this seemed to mean little more than a religious man. Anyhow, the story fizzled out. Everyone knew, of course, that St. Clare had some of the eccentricities of puritan piety. The second incident was much more arresting. In the luckless and unsupported regiment which made that rash attempt at the Black River there was a certain Captain Keith, who was at that time engaged to St. Clare’s daughter, and who afterwards married her. He was one of those who were captured by Olivier, and, like all the rest except the general, appears to have been bounteously treated and promptly set free. Some twenty years afterwards this man, then Lieutenant-Colonel Keith, published a sort of autobiography called ‘A British Officer in Burmah and Brazil.’ In the place where the reader looks eagerly for some account of the mystery of St. Clare’s disaster may be found the following words: ‘Everywhere else in this book I have narrated things exactly as they occurred, holding as I do the old-fashioned opinion that the glory of England is old enough to take care of itself. The exception I shall make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and my reasons, though private, are honourable and compelling. I will, however, add this in justice to the memories of two distinguished men. General St. Clare has been accused of incapacity on this occasion; I can at least testify that this action, properly understood, was one of the most brilliant and sagacious of his life. President Olivier by similar report is charged with savage injustice. I think it due to the honour of an enemy to say that he acted on this occasion with even more than his characteristic good feeling. To put the matter popularly, I can assure my countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool nor Olivier such a brute as he looked. This is all I have to say; nor shall any earthly consideration induce me to add a word to it.’”

A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and by its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory of Captain Keith’s text from a scrap of printed paper. As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau threw up his hand with a French gesture.

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” he cried excitedly. “I believe I can guess it at the first go.”

«Se non del tutto falso, è per lo meno assai inadeguato,» proseguì Brown; «poiché, in punto di fatto, tutto ciò che il pubblico sa si riduce precisamente a questo: il pubblico sa che Arthur St. Clare fu un grande e vittorioso generale inglese. Sa che, dopo splendide e tuttavia caute campagne sia in India sia in Africa, era al comando contro il Brasile quando il grande patriota brasiliano Olivier lanciò il suo ultimatum. Sa che in quell’occasione St. Clare, con una forza assai piccola, attaccò Olivier che ne aveva una assai grande, e fu catturato dopo eroica resistenza. E sa che, dopo la sua cattura, e con orrore del mondo civile, St. Clare fu impiccato al primo albero. Fu trovato che vi dondolava, dopo che i brasiliani si erano ritirati, con la spada spezzata appesa al collo.»

«E quella storia popolare è falsa?» suggerì Flambeau.

«No,» disse il suo amico con calma, «quella storia è del tutto vera, per quanto arriva.»

«Ebbene, penso che arrivi abbastanza lontano!» disse Flambeau; «ma se la storia popolare è vera, dov’è il mistero?»

Avevano oltrepassato molte centinaia di alberi grigi e spettrali prima che il piccolo prete rispondesse. Poi si morse pensosamente il dito e disse: «Ma il mistero è un mistero di psicologia. O meglio, è un mistero di due psicologie. In quella faccenda brasiliana due degli uomini più famosi della storia moderna agirono in piena contraddizione col proprio carattere. Badate, Olivier e St. Clare erano entrambi eroi — di quelli veri, senza dubbio; era come la lotta fra Ettore e Achille. Ora, che direste di una vicenda in cui Achille fosse timido ed Ettore fosse traditore?»

«Continuate,» disse l’uomo grosso con impazienza, mentre l’altro si mordeva di nuovo il dito.

«Sir Arthur St. Clare era un soldato dell’antico tipo religioso — il tipo che ci salvò durante l’Ammutinamento,» proseguì Brown. «Era sempre più per il dovere che per lo slancio; e, con tutto il suo coraggio personale, era decisamente un comandante prudente, particolarmente indignato per ogni inutile spreco di soldati. Eppure in quest’ultima battaglia tentò qualcosa che persino un bambino avrebbe visto assurdo. Non c’è bisogno di essere strateghi per capire che era folle come il vento; proprio come non c’è bisogno di essere strateghi per togliersi dalla traiettoria di un autobus. Ebbene, questo è il primo mistero: che ne era stato della testa del generale inglese? Il secondo enigma è: che ne era stato del cuore del generale brasiliano? Il presidente Olivier poteva essere definito un visionario o una seccatura; ma persino i suoi nemici ammettevano che era magnanimo fino alla cavalleria errante. Quasi ogni altro prigioniero che avesse mai catturato era stato messo in libertà o addirittura colmato di benefici. Uomini che gli avevano fatto davvero torto se ne andavano commossi dalla sua semplicità e dolcezza. Perché diamine avrebbe dovuto vendicarsi diabolicamente una sola volta in vita sua; e proprio per quell’unico colpo che non poteva averlo ferito? Ebbene, eccovi il punto. Uno degli uomini più saggi del mondo agì come un idiota senza ragione. Uno degli uomini migliori del mondo agì come un demonio senza ragione. Ecco tutta la faccenda, in breve; e la lascio a voi, ragazzo mio.»

«No davvero,» disse l’altro con uno sbuffo. «La lascio a voi; e voi avrete la compiacenza di raccontarmi tutto quanto.»

«Ebbene,» riprese Padre Brown, «non è giusto dire che l’impressione del pubblico sia esattamente quella che ho detto, senza aggiungere che da allora sono accadute due cose. Non posso dire che gettarono nuova luce; poiché nessuno riesce a trovarvi un senso. Ma gettarono un nuovo genere di tenebra; gettarono la tenebra in nuove direzioni. La prima fu questa. Il medico di famiglia dei St. Clare litigò con quella famiglia, e cominciò a pubblicare una violenta serie di articoli, in cui affermava che il defunto generale era stato un maniaco religioso; ma, per quel che diceva il racconto, ciò pareva significare poco più che un uomo religioso. Comunque, la faccenda si spense da sé. Tutti sapevano, naturalmente, che St. Clare aveva alcune delle eccentricità della pietà puritana. Il secondo episodio fu assai più impressionante. Nello sventurato e non sostenuto reggimento che tentò quell’avventato assalto al Fiume Nero c’era un certo Capitano Keith, che a quel tempo era fidanzato con la figlia di St. Clare, e che in seguito la sposò. Fu uno di quelli catturati da Olivier e, come tutti gli altri tranne il generale, sembra sia stato trattato con generosità e prontamente liberato. Quasi vent’anni dopo, quest’uomo, allora Tenente Colonnello Keith, pubblicò una specie di autobiografia intitolata «Un ufficiale britannico in Birmania e in Brasile». Nel punto in cui il lettore cerca avidamente qualche resoconto del mistero del disastro di St. Clare si trovano le seguenti parole: «Dovunque altrove in questo libro ho narrato le cose esattamente come accaddero, professando io, come professo, l’antiquata opinione che la gloria dell’Inghilterra è abbastanza vecchia da badare a se stessa. L’eccezione che farò è in questa faccenda della disfatta presso il Fiume Nero; e le mie ragioni, benché private, sono onorevoli e cogenti. Aggiungerò tuttavia questo, in giustizia alla memoria di due uomini illustri. Il Generale St. Clare è stato accusato d’incapacità in questa occasione; io posso almeno testimoniare che questa azione, propriamente intesa, fu una delle più brillanti e sagaci della sua vita. Il presidente Olivier, per analoga voce, è accusato di selvaggia ingiustizia. Ritengo dovuto all’onore di un nemico dire che in questa occasione egli agì con anche più della sua caratteristica benevolenza. Per dirla in modo popolare, posso assicurare ai miei compatrioti che St. Clare non fu affatto un tale sciocco né Olivier un tale bruto quali apparvero. È tutto ciò che ho da dire; né alcuna considerazione terrena m’indurrà ad aggiungervi una parola.»»

Una grande luna gelata, simile a una lucente palla di neve, cominciò a mostrarsi attraverso l’intrico di rami davanti a loro, e alla sua luce il narratore aveva potuto ravvivare la memoria del testo del Capitano Keith da un ritaglio di carta stampata. Mentre lo ripiegava e lo rimetteva in tasca, Flambeau alzò la mano con un gesto francese.

«Un momento, un momento,» esclamò eccitato. «Credo di poterla indovinare al primo colpo.»

He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull neck forward, like a man winning a walking race. The little priest, amused and interested, had some trouble in trotting beside him. Just before them the trees fell back a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear, moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the wall of another wood. The entrance to the farther forest looked small and round, like the black hole of a remote railway tunnel. But it was within some hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before Flambeau spoke again.

“I’ve got it,” he cried at last, slapping his thigh with his great hand. “Four minutes’ thinking, and I can tell your whole story myself.”

“All right,” assented his friend. “You tell it.”

Flambeau lifted his head, but lowered his voice. “General Sir Arthur St. Clare,” he said, “came of a family in which madness was hereditary; and his whole aim was to keep this from his daughter, and even, if possible, from his future son-in-law. Rightly or wrongly, he thought the final collapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary suicide would blazon the very idea he dreaded. As the campaign approached the clouds came thicker on his brain; and at last in a mad moment he sacrificed his public duty to his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fall by the first shot. When he found that he had only attained capture and discredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst, and he broke his own sword and hanged himself.”

He stared firmly at the grey facade of forest in front of him, with the one black gap in it, like the mouth of the grave, into which their path plunged. Perhaps something menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowed reinforced his vivid vision of the tragedy, for he shuddered.

“A horrid story,” he said.

“A horrid story,” repeated the priest with bent head. “But not the real story.”

Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and cried: “Oh, I wish it had been.”

The tall Flambeau faced round and stared at him.

“Yours is a clean story,” cried Father Brown, deeply moved. “A sweet, pure, honest story, as open and white as that moon. Madness and despair are innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau.”

Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and from where he stood one black tree-bough curved across it exactly like a devil’s horn.

“Father—father,” cried Flambeau with the French gesture and stepping yet more rapidly forward, “do you mean it was worse than that?”

“Worse than that,” said Paul like a grave echo. And they plunged into the black cloister of the woodland, which ran by them in a dim tapestry of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream.

They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt close about them foliage that they could not see, when the priest said again:

“Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?”

“Well, well,” cried Flambeau irritably, “what does he do?”

“He grows a forest to hide it in,” said the priest in an obscure voice. “A fearful sin.”

“Look here,” cried his friend impatiently, for the dark wood and the dark saying got a little on his nerves; will you tell me this story or not? What other evidence is there to go on?”

“There are three more bits of evidence,” said the other, “that I have dug up in holes and corners; and I will give them in logical rather than chronological order. First of all, of course, our authority for the issue and event of the battle is in Olivier’s own dispatches, which are lucid enough. He was entrenched with two or three regiments on the heights that swept down to the Black River, on the other side of which was lower and more marshy ground. Beyond this again was gently rising country, on which was the first English outpost, supported by others which lay, however, considerably in its rear. The British forces as a whole were greatly superior in numbers; but this particular regiment was just far enough from its base to make Olivier consider the project of crossing the river to cut it off. By sunset, however, he had decided to retain his own position, which was a specially strong one. At daybreak next morning he was thunderstruck to see that this stray handful of English, entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselves across the river, half by a bridge to the right, and the other half by a ford higher up, and were massed upon the marshy bank below him.

“That they should attempt an attack with such numbers against such a position was incredible enough; but Olivier noticed something yet more extraordinary. For instead of attempting to seize more solid ground, this mad regiment, having put the river in its rear by one wild charge, did nothing more, but stuck there in the mire like flies in treacle. Needless to say, the Brazilians blew great gaps in them with artillery, which they could only return with spirited but lessening rifle fire. Yet they never broke; and Olivier’s curt account ends with a strong tribute of admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. ‘Our line then advanced finally,’ writes Olivier, ‘and drove them into the river; we captured General St. Clare himself and several other officers. The colonel and the major had both fallen in the battle. I cannot resist saying that few finer sights can have been seen in history than the last stand of this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up the rifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us on horseback bareheaded and with a broken sword.’ On what happened to the general afterwards Olivier is as silent as Captain Keith.”

“Well,” grunted Flambeau, “get on to the next bit of evidence.”

“The next evidence,” said Father Brown, “took some time to find, but it will not take long to tell. I found at last in an almshouse down in the Lincolnshire Fens an old soldier who not only was wounded at the Black River, but had actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when he died. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull of an Irishman; and it would seem that he died almost as much of rage as of bullets. He, at any rate, was not responsible for that ridiculous raid; it must have been imposed on him by the general. His last edifying words, according to my informant, were these: ‘And there goes the damned old donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I wish it was his head.’ You will remark that everyone seems to have noticed this detail about the broken sword blade, though most people regard it somewhat more reverently than did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for the third fragment.”

Camminò a grandi passi, respirando affannosamente, la testa nera e il collo taurino protesi in avanti, come un uomo che vince una gara di marcia. Il piccolo prete, divertito e interessato, faceva una certa fatica a trotterellargli accanto. Proprio davanti a loro gli alberi si ritraevano un poco a sinistra e a destra, e la strada scendeva ampia attraverso una chiara valle illuminata dalla luna, finché non si tuffava di nuovo, come un coniglio, nella parete di un altro bosco. L’ingresso della foresta più lontana appariva piccolo e rotondo, come il buco nero di un remoto tunnel ferroviario. Ma era a un centinaio di metri, e si spalancava come una caverna prima che Flambeau parlasse di nuovo.

«Ci sono,» esclamò finalmente, battendosi la coscia con la sua gran mano. «Quattro minuti di riflessione, e posso raccontarvi da solo tutta la vostra storia.»

«D’accordo,» acconsentì il suo amico. «Raccontatela.»

Flambeau alzò la testa, ma abbassò la voce. «Il Generale Sir Arthur St. Clare,» disse, «proveniva da una famiglia in cui la follia era ereditaria; e tutto il suo scopo era tenerla nascosta alla figlia, e persino, se possibile, al futuro genero. A torto o a ragione, egli pensava che il crollo finale fosse vicino, e si decise al suicidio. Ma un suicidio ordinario avrebbe strombazzato proprio l’idea che egli temeva. Con l’avvicinarsi della campagna, le nubi si addensarono sul suo cervello; e infine, in un momento di follia, sacrificò il suo dovere pubblico a quello privato. Si gettò avventatamente in battaglia, sperando di cadere al primo colpo. Quando scoprì di aver ottenuto soltanto la cattura e il discredito, la bomba sigillata nel suo cervello esplose, ed egli spezzò la propria spada e s’impiccò.»

Fissò con fermezza la grigia facciata di foresta davanti a sé, con l’unico varco nero in essa, simile alla bocca di una tomba, in cui il loro sentiero si sprofondava. Forse qualcosa di minaccioso nella strada così improvvisamente inghiottita rafforzò la sua vivida visione della tragedia, poiché rabbrividì.

«Una storia orribile,» disse.

«Una storia orribile,» ripeté il prete a capo chino. «Ma non è la storia vera.»

Poi gettò indietro la testa con una specie di disperazione e gridò: «Oh, vorrei che lo fosse stata.»

L’alto Flambeau si voltò di scatto e lo fissò.

«La vostra è una storia pulita,» esclamò Padre Brown, profondamente commosso. «Una storia dolce, pura, onesta, aperta e candida come quella luna. La follia e la disperazione sono abbastanza innocenti. Ci sono cose peggiori, Flambeau.»

Flambeau alzò lo sguardo, sconvolto, verso la luna così invocata; e dal punto in cui stava, un nero ramo d’albero si incurvava attraverso di essa esattamente come il corno di un diavolo.

«Padre — padre,» esclamò Flambeau col gesto francese, avanzando ancora più rapidamente, «volete dire che fu peggio di così?»

«Peggio di così,» disse Paul come una cupa eco. E si tuffarono nel nero chiostro del bosco, che scorreva accanto a loro in una fioca tappezzeria di tronchi, come uno di quei corridoi oscuri di un sogno.

Furono ben presto nelle viscere più segrete del bosco, e sentirono stretto attorno a sé un fogliame che non potevano vedere, quando il prete disse di nuovo:

«Dove nasconde un uomo saggio una foglia? Nella foresta. Ma che cosa fa se non c’è foresta?»

«Su, su,» esclamò Flambeau irritato, «che cosa fa?»

«Fa crescere una foresta per nascondervela,» disse il prete con voce oscura. «Un peccato tremendo.»

«Sentite un po’,» esclamò il suo amico con impazienza, poiché il bosco oscuro e l’oscuro detto gli davano un poco sui nervi; «volete raccontarmela questa storia o no? Quali altre prove ci sono su cui procedere?»

«Ci sono altri tre frammenti di prova,» disse l’altro, «che ho dissotterrato in buchi e cantucci; e ve li darò in ordine logico piuttosto che cronologico. Prima di tutto, naturalmente, la nostra fonte per lo svolgimento e l’esito della battaglia sono i dispacci di Olivier stesso, che sono abbastanza lucidi. Egli era trincerato con due o tre reggimenti sulle alture che digradavano verso il Fiume Nero, dall’altra parte del quale c’era un terreno più basso e più paludoso. Al di là di questo, ancora, c’era una campagna dolcemente ascendente, sulla quale sorgeva il primo avamposto inglese, sostenuto da altri che giacevano, però, considerevolmente sulle sue retrovie. Le forze britanniche nel loro complesso erano di gran lunga superiori di numero; ma quel particolare reggimento era proprio abbastanza lontano dalla sua base da indurre Olivier a considerare il progetto di attraversare il fiume per tagliarlo fuori. Al tramonto, tuttavia, aveva deciso di conservare la propria posizione, che era una posizione particolarmente forte. All’alba del mattino seguente rimase fulminato nel vedere che questa sparuta manciata d’inglesi, del tutto priva di sostegno alle spalle, si era gettata attraverso il fiume, metà per un ponte a destra, e l’altra metà per un guado più a monte, e si accalcava sulla sponda paludosa al di sotto di lui.

«Che essi tentassero un attacco con un simile numero contro una simile posizione era già abbastanza incredibile; ma Olivier notò qualcosa di ancora più straordinario. Perché, invece di tentare di impadronirsi di un terreno più solido, questo folle reggimento, avendo messo il fiume alle proprie spalle con una sola carica sfrenata, non fece null’altro, ma vi rimase piantato nel fango come mosche nella melassa. Inutile dire che i brasiliani vi aprirono grandi varchi con l’artiglieria, alla quale essi potevano ribattere solo con un fuoco di fucileria vivace ma sempre più fioco. Eppure non cedettero mai; e il brusco resoconto di Olivier si chiude con un forte tributo di ammirazione per il mistico valore di questi imbecilli. ‘La nostra linea allora avanzò definitivamente,’ scrive Olivier, ‘e li ricacciò nel fiume; catturammo il Generale St. Clare in persona e vari altri ufficiali. Il colonnello e il maggiore erano caduti entrambi in battaglia. Non posso trattenermi dal dire che pochi spettacoli più belli si saranno mai visti nella storia dell’ultima resistenza di questo straordinario reggimento; ufficiali feriti che raccoglievano i fucili dei soldati morti, e il generale stesso che ci fronteggiava a cavallo, a capo scoperto e con la spada spezzata.’ Su ciò che accadde al generale in seguito, Olivier è muto quanto il Capitano Keith.»

«Bene,» grugnì Flambeau, «passate al prossimo frammento di prova.»

«La prova successiva,» disse Padre Brown, «richiese del tempo per essere trovata, ma non ci vorrà molto per raccontarla. Trovai infine, in un ospizio giù nelle Paludi del Lincolnshire, un vecchio soldato che non solo era stato ferito al Fiume Nero, ma si era addirittura inginocchiato accanto al colonnello del reggimento mentre questi moriva. Costui era un certo Colonnello Clancy, un gran torello d’irlandese; e pare che egli sia morto quasi tanto di rabbia quanto di pallottole. Egli, in ogni caso, non era responsabile di quell’assurda incursione; deve essergli stata imposta dal generale. Le sue ultime edificanti parole, secondo il mio informatore, furono queste: ‘Ed ecco che se ne va quel maledetto vecchio somaro con la punta della sua spada tranciata via. Vorrei che fosse la sua testa.’ Noterete che tutti sembrano aver notato questo particolare della spada spezzata, benché la maggior parte della gente lo consideri con un po’ più di reverenza di quanto facesse il defunto Colonnello Clancy. E ora veniamo al terzo frammento.»

Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and the speaker paused a little for breath before he went on. Then he continued in the same business-like tone:

“Only a month or two ago a certain Brazilian official died in England, having quarrelled with Olivier and left his country. He was a well-known figure both here and on the Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knew him myself, a yellow-faced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For various private reasons I had permission to see the documents he had left; he was a Catholic, of course, and I had been with him towards the end. There was nothing of his that lit up any corner of the black St. Clare business, except five or six common exercise books filled with the diary of some English soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by the Brazilians on one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped abruptly the night before the battle.

“But the account of that last day in the poor fellow’s life was certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it’s too dark to read it here, and I will give you a resume. The first part of that entry is full of jokes, evidently flung about among the men, about somebody called the Vulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one of themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of as one of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he were some local go-between and non-combatant; perhaps a guide or a journalist. He has been closeted with old Colonel Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major. Indeed, the major is somewhat prominent in this soldier’s narrative; a lean, dark-haired man, apparently, of the name of Murray— a north of Ireland man and a Puritan. There are continual jests about the contrast between this Ulsterman’s austerity and the conviviality of Colonel Clancy. There is also some joke about the Vulture wearing bright-coloured clothes.

“But all these levities are scattered by what may well be called the note of a bugle. Behind the English camp and almost parallel to the river ran one of the few great roads of that district. Westward the road curved round towards the river, which it crossed by the bridge before mentioned. To the east the road swept backwards into the wilds, and some two miles along it was the next English outpost. From this direction there came along the road that evening a glitter and clatter of light cavalry, in which even the simple diarist could recognise with astonishment the general with his staff. He rode the great white horse which you have seen so often in illustrated papers and Academy pictures; and you may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merely ceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but, springing from the saddle immediately, mixed with the group of officers, and fell into emphatic though confidential speech. What struck our friend the diarist most was his special disposition to discuss matters with Major Murray; but, indeed, such a selection, so long as it was not marked, was in no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy; they were men who ‘read their Bibles’; they were both the old Evangelical type of officer. However this may be, it is certain that when the general mounted again he was still talking earnestly to Murray; and that as he walked his horse slowly down the road towards the river, the tall Ulsterman still walked by his bridle rein in earnest debate. The soldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump of trees where the road turned towards the river. The colonel had gone back to his tent, and the men to their pickets; the man with the diary lingered for another four minutes, and saw a marvellous sight.

“The great white horse which had marched slowly down the road, as it had marched in so many processions, flew back, galloping up the road towards them as if it were mad to win a race. At first they thought it had run away with the man on its back; but they soon saw that the general, a fine rider, was himself urging it to full speed. Horse and man swept up to them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the reeling charger, the general turned on them a face like flame, and called for the colonel like the trumpet that wakes the dead.

“I conceive that all the earthquake events of that catastrophe tumbled on top of each other rather like lumber in the minds of men such as our friend with the diary. With the dazed excitement of a dream, they found themselves falling—literally falling—into their ranks, and learned that an attack was to be led at once across the river. The general and the major, it was said, had found out something at the bridge, and there was only just time to strike for life. The major had gone back at once to call up the reserve along the road behind; it was doubtful if even with that prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they must pass the stream that night, and seize the heights by morning. It is with the very stir and throb of that romantic nocturnal march that the diary suddenly ends.”

Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path grew smaller, steeper, and more twisted, till they felt as if they were ascending a winding staircase. The priest’s voice came from above out of the darkness.

“There was one other little and enormous thing. When the general urged them to their chivalric charge he half drew his sword from the scabbard; and then, as if ashamed of such melodrama, thrust it back again. The sword again, you see.”

A half-light broke through the network of boughs above them, flinging the ghost of a net about their feet; for they were mounting again to the faint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round him as an atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain: “Well, what’s the matter with the sword? Officers generally have swords, don’t they?”

“They are not often mentioned in modern war,” said the other dispassionately; “but in this affair one falls over the blessed sword everywhere.”

Il loro sentiero attraverso il bosco cominciò a salire, e chi parlava si fermò un poco per riprendere fiato prima di continuare. Poi proseguì nello stesso tono pratico:

«Solo un mese o due fa, un certo funzionario brasiliano è morto in Inghilterra, avendo litigato con Olivier e lasciato il suo paese. Era una figura ben nota tanto qui quanto sul Continente, uno spagnolo di nome Espado; lo conoscevo io stesso, un vecchio dandy dal volto giallastro, col naso adunco. Per varie ragioni private ebbi il permesso di vedere i documenti che aveva lasciato; era cattolico, naturalmente, ed ero stato accanto a lui verso la fine. Non c’era nulla di suo che illuminasse un qualche angolo della nera faccenda di St. Clare, tranne cinque o sei comuni quaderni di scuola riempiti col diario di qualche soldato inglese. Posso solo supporre che fu trovato dai brasiliani su uno di quelli che caddero. Comunque, si interrompeva bruscamente la notte prima della battaglia.

«Ma il resoconto di quell’ultimo giorno nella vita del povero diavolo valeva certamente la lettura. Ce l’ho con me; ma è troppo buio per leggerlo qui, e ve ne darò un riassunto. La prima parte di quella annotazione è piena di scherzi, evidentemente lanciati fra gli uomini, su un tale chiamato l’Avvoltoio. Non sembra che questa persona, chiunque fosse, fosse uno di loro, né tantomeno un inglese; e neppure se ne parla esattamente come di uno dei nemici. Suona piuttosto come se fosse una sorta di intermediario locale e non combattente; forse una guida o un giornalista. È stato appartato in conciliaboli col vecchio Colonnello Clancy; ma lo si vede più spesso parlare col maggiore. In effetti, il maggiore è alquanto in primo piano nel racconto di questo soldato; un uomo magro, dai capelli scuri, a quanto pare, di nome Murray — un uomo del nord dell’Irlanda e un puritano. Ci sono continue facezie sul contrasto fra l’austerità di questo dell’Ulster e la giovialità del Colonnello Clancy. C’è anche qualche scherzo sul fatto che l’Avvoltoio indossava abiti dai colori vivaci.

«Ma tutte queste leggerezze sono spazzate via da quello che si può ben chiamare il suono di una tromba di guerra. Dietro il campo inglese, e quasi parallela al fiume, correva una delle poche grandi strade di quel distretto. Verso ovest la strada si curvava verso il fiume, che essa attraversava per il ponte già menzionato. A oriente la strada si ritraeva all’indietro verso le terre selvagge, e a un paio di miglia lungo di essa c’era il successivo avamposto inglese. Da questa direzione giunse lungo la strada, quella sera, un luccichio e un fragore di cavalleria leggera, in cui persino il semplice diarista poté riconoscere con stupore il generale col suo stato maggiore. Egli cavalcava il gran cavallo bianco che avete visto tanto spesso nei giornali illustrati e nei quadri dell’Accademia; e potete star certi che il saluto che gli tributarono non fu meramente cerimonioso. Egli, per lo meno, non sprecò tempo in cerimonie, ma, balzando immediatamente giù dalla sella, si mescolò al gruppo di ufficiali, e si buttò in un discorso enfatico benché confidenziale. Ciò che colpì di più il nostro amico diarista fu la sua speciale disposizione a discutere le cose col Maggiore Murray; ma, in verità, una simile scelta, purché non fosse marcata, non aveva nulla di innaturale. I due uomini erano fatti per intendersi; erano uomini che ‘leggevano la Bibbia’; erano entrambi del vecchio tipo di ufficiale evangelico. Comunque stessero le cose, è certo che, quando il generale rimontò a cavallo, stava ancora parlando con ardore a Murray; e che, mentre faceva scendere lentamente il cavallo lungo la strada verso il fiume, l’alto uomo dell’Ulster camminava ancora accanto alle sue redini in ardente dibattito. I soldati osservarono i due finché non scomparvero dietro un gruppo d’alberi dove la strada svoltava verso il fiume. Il colonnello era tornato alla sua tenda, e gli uomini ai loro posti di guardia; l’uomo col diario si attardò ancora quattro minuti, e vide uno spettacolo meraviglioso.

«Il gran cavallo bianco che aveva disceso lentamente la strada, come aveva sfilato in tante processioni, tornò indietro volando, galoppando su per la strada verso di loro come se fosse impazzito per vincere una gara. Dapprima pensarono che fosse fuggito col cavaliere in groppa; ma videro presto che il generale, ottimo cavallerizzo, era egli stesso a spingerlo a tutta velocità. Cavallo e cavaliere piombarono su di loro come un turbine; e poi, arrestando bruscamente il destriero barcollante, il generale volse verso di loro un volto come fiamma, e chiamò il colonnello come la tromba che desta i morti.

«Immagino che tutti gli eventi sconvolgenti di quella catastrofe si accatastarono l’uno sull’altro piuttosto come ciarpame nelle menti di uomini come il nostro amico col diario. Con lo stordito eccitamento di un sogno, si trovarono a cadere — letteralmente a cadere — nei loro ranghi, e appresero che un attacco doveva essere condotto immediatamente attraverso il fiume. Il generale e il maggiore, si diceva, avevano scoperto qualcosa al ponte, e c’era appena il tempo di battersi per la vita. Il maggiore era tornato indietro subito per richiamare la riserva lungo la strada alle spalle; era dubbio se, anche con quel pronto appello, i soccorsi potessero raggiungerli in tempo. Ma dovevano attraversare il torrente quella notte, e impadronirsi delle alture entro il mattino. È col fremito e il palpito stesso di quella romantica marcia notturna che il diario si interrompe di colpo.»

Padre Brown era salito avanti; poiché il sentiero del bosco si faceva più stretto, più ripido e più tortuoso, finché ebbero l’impressione di ascendere una scala a chiocciola. La voce del prete giungeva dall’alto, fuori dalla tenebra.

«C’era un’altra cosa, piccola ed enorme. Quando il generale li spinse alla loro cavalleresca carica, sguainò a metà la spada dal fodero; e poi, come vergognandosi di un simile melodramma, la ricacciò dentro. Di nuovo la spada, vedete.»

Una mezza luce trapelò attraverso la rete di rami sopra di loro, gettando il fantasma di una rete attorno ai loro piedi; poiché stavano risalendo verso la fioca luminosità della notte nuda. Flambeau sentiva la verità tutt’intorno a sé come un’atmosfera, ma non come un’idea. Rispose con la mente frastornata: «Ebbene, che cosa c’è di strano nella spada? Gli ufficiali di solito hanno le spade, no?»

«Non se ne fa spesso menzione nella guerra moderna,» disse l’altro con distacco; «ma in questa faccenda si inciampa dappertutto in quella benedetta spada.»

“Well, what is there in that?” growled Flambeau; “it was a twopence coloured sort of incident; the old man’s blade breaking in his last battle. Anyone might bet the papers would get hold of it, as they have. On all these tombs and things it’s shown broken at the point. I hope you haven’t dragged me through this Polar expedition merely because two men with an eye for a picture saw St. Clare’s broken sword.”

“No,” cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; “but who saw his unbroken sword?”

“What do you mean?” cried the other, and stood still under the stars. They had come abruptly out of the grey gates of the wood.

“I say, who saw his unbroken sword?” repeated Father Brown obstinately. “Not the writer of the diary, anyhow; the general sheathed it in time.”

Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind might look in the sun; and his friend went on, for the first time with eagerness:

“Flambeau,” he cried, “I cannot prove it, even after hunting through the tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add just one more tiny fact that tips the whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the first struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to close quarters. But he saw St. Clare’s sword broken. Why was it broken? How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle.”

“Oh!” said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; “and pray where is the other piece?”

“I can tell you,” said the priest promptly. “In the northeast corner of the cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral at Belfast.”

“Indeed?” inquired the other. “Have you looked for it?”

“I couldn’t,” replied Brown, with frank regret. “There’s a great marble monument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fell fighting gloriously at the famous Battle of the Black River.”

Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. “You mean,” he cried hoarsely, “that General St. Clare hated Murray, and murdered him on the field of battle because—”

“You are still full of good and pure thoughts,” said the other. “It was worse than that.”

“Well,” said the large man, “my stock of evil imagination is used up.”

The priest seemed really doubtful where to begin, and at last he said again:

“Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”

The other did not answer.

“If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest.”

There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly and quietly:

“And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead bodies to hide it in.”

Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time or space; but Father Brown went on as if he were continuing the last sentence:

“Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else’s Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cant about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society, and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted—lust, tyranny, treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?

“In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord? Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door after door in hell, and always into smaller and smaller chambers. This is the real case against crime, that a man does not become wilder and wilder, but only meaner and meaner. St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties of bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by the time of the Battle of the Black River he had fallen from world to world to that place which Dante makes the lowest floor of the universe.”

“What do you mean?” asked his friend again.

“I mean that,” retorted the cleric, and suddenly pointed at a puddle sealed with ice that shone in the moon. “Do you remember whom Dante put in the last circle of ice?”

“The traitors,” said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he looked around at the inhuman landscape of trees, with taunting and almost obscene outlines, he could almost fancy he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of a voice was, indeed, a Virgil leading him through a land of eternal sins.

The voice went on: “Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not permit a secret service and spies. The thing, however, was done, like many other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friend Espado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt his way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its one corrupt man—please God!—and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foul need of money, and mountains of it. The discredited family doctor was threatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and were broken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane; things done by an English Evangelist that smelt like human sacrifice and hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter’s dowry; for to him the fame of wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snapped the last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in from the enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vulture as well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster had guessed the hideous truth; and when they walked slowly together down that road towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he must resign instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The general temporised with him till they came to the fringe of tropic trees by the bridge; and there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I can see the picture) the general drew his sabre and plunged it through the body of the major.”

«Ebbene, che cosa c’è in ciò?» ringhiò Flambeau; «era un episodio da due soldi, buono per la stampa a colori; la lama del vecchio che si spezza nella sua ultima battaglia. Chiunque avrebbe scommesso che i giornali se ne sarebbero impadroniti, come hanno fatto. Su tutte queste tombe e cose la si mostra spezzata sulla punta. Spero che non mi abbiate trascinato in questa spedizione polare solo perché due uomini con l’occhio per un bel quadro videro la spada spezzata di St. Clare.»

«No,» esclamò Padre Brown, con voce acuta come uno sparo di pistola; «ma chi vide la sua spada intatta?»

«Che cosa volete dire?» esclamò l’altro, e si fermò immobile sotto le stelle. Erano sbucati bruscamente dai grigi cancelli del bosco.

«Dico: chi vide la sua spada intatta?» ripeté Padre Brown ostinato. «Non lo scrittore del diario, in ogni caso; il generale la rinfoderò in tempo.»

Flambeau si guardò attorno nella luce lunare, come un uomo colpito da cecità potrebbe guardare nel sole; e il suo amico proseguì, per la prima volta con foga:

«Flambeau,» esclamò, «non posso provarlo, nemmeno dopo aver frugato fra le tombe. Ma ne sono certo. Lasciate che aggiunga un solo minuscolo fatto che fa capovolgere l’intera faccenda. Il colonnello, per uno strano caso, fu uno dei primi colpiti da una pallottola. Fu colpito molto prima che le truppe venissero a combattimento ravvicinato. Ma egli vide la spada di St. Clare spezzata. Perché era spezzata? Come si era spezzata? Amico mio, si era spezzata prima della battaglia.»

«Oh!» disse il suo amico, con una specie di sconsolata giocosità; «e ditemi di grazia, dov’è l’altro pezzo?»

«Ve lo posso dire,» disse il prete prontamente. «Nell’angolo nordorientale del cimitero della Cattedrale protestante di Belfast.»

«Davvero?» chiese l’altro. «L’avete cercato?»

«Non ho potuto,» rispose Brown, con schietto rammarico. «C’è un gran monumento di marmo al di sopra; un monumento all’eroico Maggiore Murray, che cadde combattendo gloriosamente nella famosa Battaglia del Fiume Nero.»

Flambeau parve d’un tratto galvanizzato all’esistenza. «Volete dire,» esclamò con voce rauca, «che il Generale St. Clare odiava Murray, e lo assassinò sul campo di battaglia perché —»

«Siete ancora pieno di pensieri buoni e puri,» disse l’altro. «Fu peggio di così.»

«Ebbene,» disse l’uomo grande, «la mia scorta d’immaginazione malvagia è esaurita.»

Il prete pareva davvero incerto su dove cominciare, e alla fine disse ancora:

«Dove nasconderebbe un uomo saggio una foglia? Nella foresta.»

L’altro non rispose.

«Se non ci fosse foresta, ne farebbe una. E se volesse nascondere una foglia morta, farebbe una foresta morta.»

Ancora non vi fu risposta, e il prete aggiunse ancora più mite e sommesso:

«E se un uomo dovesse nascondere un cadavere, farebbe un campo di cadaveri in cui nasconderlo.»

Flambeau cominciò ad avanzare a passi pesanti, con un’intolleranza per ogni indugio nel tempo o nello spazio; ma Padre Brown proseguì come se stesse continuando l’ultima frase:

«Sir Arthur St. Clare, come ho già detto, era un uomo che leggeva la Bibbia. Era proprio questo il suo guaio. Quando capirà la gente che è inutile per un uomo leggere la propria Bibbia, se non legge anche la Bibbia di tutti gli altri? Un tipografo legge una Bibbia per cercarvi i refusi. Un mormone legge la sua Bibbia, e vi trova la poligamia; uno scientista cristiano legge la sua, e scopre che non abbiamo braccia e gambe. St. Clare era un vecchio soldato protestante anglo-indiano. Ora, pensate un po’ a che cosa potrebbe significare; e, per amor del Cielo, non fatene ipocrita retorica. Potrebbe significare un uomo fisicamente formidabile che vive sotto un sole tropicale, in una società orientale, e s’imbeve senza discernimento né guida di un Libro orientale. Naturalmente, leggeva l’Antico Testamento piuttosto che il Nuovo. Naturalmente, trovava nell’Antico Testamento tutto ciò che voleva — lussuria, tirannia, tradimento. Oh, ammetto che fosse onesto, come lo chiamate voi. Ma a che serve che un uomo sia onesto nel suo culto della disonestà?

«In ciascuno dei paesi caldi e segreti in cui l’uomo andò, tenne un harem, torturò testimoni, ammassò oro vergognoso; ma certamente avrebbe detto, con occhio fermo, di farlo per la gloria del Signore. La mia teologia si esprime sufficientemente nel chiedere: quale Signore? Comunque, c’è questo, in un simile male, che apre porta dopo porta all’inferno, e sempre in camere sempre più piccole. Questa è la vera accusa contro il delitto: che un uomo non diventa sempre più selvaggio, ma soltanto sempre più meschino. St. Clare fu ben presto soffocato dalle difficoltà della corruzione e del ricatto; e aveva bisogno di sempre più denaro. E all’epoca della Battaglia del Fiume Nero era caduto di mondo in mondo fino a quel luogo che Dante pone all’ultimo piano dell’universo.»

«Che cosa volete dire?» chiese di nuovo il suo amico.

«Voglio dire quello,» ribatté il chierico, e improvvisamente additò una pozzanghera sigillata dal ghiaccio che luccicava alla luna. «Vi ricordate chi Dante mise nell’ultimo cerchio di ghiaccio?»

«I traditori,» disse Flambeau, e rabbrividì. Mentre si guardava intorno l’inumano paesaggio di alberi, dai contorni beffardi e quasi osceni, poteva quasi immaginare di essere Dante, e il prete, con quel rivolo di voce, era davvero un Virgilio che lo guidava attraverso una terra di peccati eterni.

La voce proseguì: «Olivier, come sapete, era un donchisciotte, e non voleva permettere un servizio segreto e spie. La cosa, tuttavia, fu fatta, come molte altre cose, alle sue spalle. Fu gestita dal mio vecchio amico Espado; era lui il bellimbusto dagli abiti sgargianti, il cui naso adunco gli aveva fatto guadagnare il soprannome di Avvoltoio. Posando a una sorta di filantropo al fronte, si insinuò a tentoni attraverso l’Esercito inglese, e alla fine mise le dita sul suo unico uomo corrotto — piaccia a Dio! — e quell’uomo era in cima a tutti. St. Clare aveva turpe bisogno di denaro, e a montagne. Il screditato medico di famiglia minacciava quelle straordinarie rivelazioni che poi cominciarono e furono interrotte; storie di cose mostruose e preistoriche a Park Lane; cose fatte da un evangelista inglese che sapevano di sacrificio umano e di orde di schiavi. Occorreva denaro, anche, per la dote della figlia; poiché per lui la fama della ricchezza era dolce quanto la ricchezza stessa. Egli recise l’ultimo filo, sussurrò la parola al Brasile, e la ricchezza affluì dai nemici dell’Inghilterra. Ma un altro uomo aveva parlato con Espado l’Avvoltoio oltre a lui. In qualche modo il cupo, arcigno giovane maggiore dell’Ulster aveva indovinato l’orrenda verità; e quando i due camminarono lentamente insieme lungo quella strada verso il ponte, Murray stava dicendo al generale che egli doveva dimettersi immediatamente, o essere deferito alla corte marziale e fucilato. Il generale temporeggiò con lui finché non giunsero alla frangia di alberi tropicali presso il ponte; e là, presso il fiume che cantava e le palme assolate (poiché vedo la scena), il generale trasse la sciabola e la trapassò attraverso il corpo del maggiore.»

The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel black shapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond it faintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight, but some fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its close.

“St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I’ll swear, was he so lucid and so strong as when poor Murray lay a cold lump at his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was the great man so great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. He looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw the point he had planted between his victim’s shoulders had broken off in the body. He saw quite calmly, as through a club windowpane, all that must follow. He saw that men must find the unaccountable corpse; must extract the unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable broken sword—or absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But his imperious intellect rose against the facer; there was one way yet. He could make the corpse less unaccountable. He could create a hill of corpses to cover this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred English soldiers were marching down to their death.”

The warmer glow behind the black winter wood grew richer and brighter, and Flambeau strode on to reach it. Father Brown also quickened his stride; but he seemed merely absorbed in his tale.

“Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such the genius of their commander, that if they had at once attacked the hill, even their mad march might have met some luck. But the evil mind that played with them like pawns had other aims and reasons. They must remain in the marshes by the bridge at least till British corpses should be a common sight there. Then for the last grand scene; the silver-haired soldier-saint would give up his shattered sword to save further slaughter. Oh, it was well organised for an impromptu. But I think (I cannot prove), I think that it was while they stuck there in the bloody mire that someone doubted—and someone guessed.”

He was mute a moment, and then said: “There is a voice from nowhere that tells me the man who guessed was the lover … the man to wed the old man’s child.”

“But what about Olivier and the hanging?” asked Flambeau.

“Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy, seldom encumbered his march with captives,” explained the narrator. “He released everybody in most cases. He released everybody in this case.

“Everybody but the general,” said the tall man.

“Everybody,” said the priest.

Flambeau knit his black brows. “I don’t grasp it all yet,” he said.

“There is another picture, Flambeau,” said Brown in his more mystical undertone. “I can’t prove it; but I can do more—I can see it. There is a camp breaking up on the bare, torrid hills at morning, and Brazilian uniforms massed in blocks and columns to march. There is the red shirt and long black beard of Olivier, which blows as he stands, his broad-brimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the great enemy he is setting free— the simple, snow-headed English veteran, who thanks him in the name of his men. The English remnant stand behind at attention; beside them are stores and vehicles for the retreat. The drums roll; the Brazilians are moving; the English are still like statues. So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy have faded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their postures all at once, like dead men coming to life; they turn their fifty faces upon the general—faces not to be forgotten.”

Flambeau gave a great jump. “Ah,” he cried, “you don’t mean—”

“Yes,” said Father Brown in a deep, moving voice. “It was an English hand that put the rope round St. Clare’s neck; I believe the hand that put the ring on his daughter’s finger. They were English hands that dragged him up to the tree of shame; the hands of men that had adored him and followed him to victory. And they were English souls (God pardon and endure us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign sun on the green gallows of palm, and prayed in their hatred that he might drop off it into hell.”

As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the strong scarlet light of a red-curtained English inn. It stood sideways in the road, as if standing aside in the amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stood open with invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the hum and laughter of humanity happy for a night.

“I need not tell you more,” said Father Brown. “They tried him in the wilderness and destroyed him; and then, for the honour of England and of his daughter, they took an oath to seal up for ever the story of the traitor’s purse and the assassin’s sword blade. Perhaps—Heaven help them—they tried to forget it. Let us try to forget it, anyhow; here is our inn.”

“With all my heart,” said Flambeau, and was just striding into the bright, noisy bar when he stepped back and almost fell on the road.

“Look there, in the devil’s name!” he cried, and pointed rigidly at the square wooden sign that overhung the road. It showed dimly the crude shape of a sabre hilt and a shortened blade; and was inscribed in false archaic lettering, “The Sign of the Broken Sword.”

“Were you not prepared?” asked Father Brown gently. “He is the god of this country; half the inns and parks and streets are named after him and his story.”

“I thought we had done with the leper,” cried Flambeau, and spat on the road.

“You will never have done with him in England,” said the priest, looking down, “while brass is strong and stone abides. His marble statues will erect the souls of proud, innocent boys for centuries, his village tomb will smell of loyalty as of lilies. Millions who never knew him shall love him like a father— this man whom the last few that knew him dealt with like dung. He shall be a saint; and the truth shall never be told of him, because I have made up my mind at last. There is so much good and evil in breaking secrets, that I put my conduct to a test. All these newspapers will perish; the anti-Brazil boom is already over; Olivier is already honoured everywhere. But I told myself that if anywhere, by name, in metal or marble that will endure like the pyramids, Colonel Clancy, or Captain Keith, or President Olivier, or any innocent man was wrongly blamed, then I would speak. If it were only that St. Clare was wrongly praised, I would be silent. And I will.”

They plunged into the red-curtained tavern, which was not only cosy, but even luxurious inside. On a table stood a silver model of the tomb of St. Clare, the silver head bowed, the silver sword broken. On the walls were coloured photographs of the same scene, and of the system of wagonettes that took tourists to see it. They sat down on the comfortable padded benches.

“Come, it’s cold,” cried Father Brown; “let’s have some wine or beer.”

“Or brandy,” said Flambeau.

La strada invernale si curvava sopra un crinale nel gelo tagliente, con crudeli sagome nere di cespuglio e macchia; ma Flambeau immaginò di scorgere al di là di essa, debolmente, l’orlo di un’aureola che non era luce di stelle né di luna, ma un qualche fuoco quale è acceso dagli uomini. La osservò mentre il racconto volgeva alla sua conclusione.

«St. Clare era un mastino d’inferno, ma era un mastino di razza. Mai, lo giuro, fu così lucido e così forte come quando il povero Murray giacque, freddo grumo, ai suoi piedi. Mai in tutti i suoi trionfi, come disse giustamente il Capitano Keith, il grand’uomo fu così grande come in quest’ultima disfatta disprezzata dal mondo. Guardò freddamente la sua arma per detergerne il sangue; vide che la punta che aveva piantato fra le scapole della vittima si era spezzata dentro il corpo. Vide con tutta calma, come attraverso il vetro d’una finestra di club, tutto ciò che ne doveva seguire. Vide che gli uomini avrebbero dovuto trovare il cadavere inspiegabile; estrarre la inspiegabile punta di spada; notare la inspiegabile spada spezzata — o l’assenza di spada. Aveva ucciso, ma non ridotto al silenzio. Ma il suo imperioso intelletto insorse contro l’ostacolo; c’era ancora un modo. Poteva rendere il cadavere meno inspiegabile. Poteva creare una collina di cadaveri per coprire quell’uno. In venti minuti ottocento soldati inglesi marciavano verso la loro morte.»

Il più caldo bagliore dietro il nero bosco invernale si fece più ricco e più luminoso, e Flambeau affrettò il passo per raggiungerlo. Anche Padre Brown accelerò l’andatura; ma pareva soltanto assorto nel suo racconto.

«Tale era il valore di quei mille inglesi, e tale il genio del loro comandante, che se avessero attaccato subito la collina, persino la loro folle marcia avrebbe potuto trovare qualche fortuna. Ma la mente malvagia che giocava con loro come con pedine aveva altri fini e altre ragioni. Dovevano rimanere nelle paludi presso il ponte almeno finché i cadaveri britannici non fossero divenuti là uno spettacolo comune. Poi, per l’ultima grande scena; il soldato-santo dai capelli d’argento avrebbe consegnato la sua spada infranta per risparmiare ulteriore carneficina. Oh, era ben organizzata, per un’improvvisazione. Ma io penso (non posso provarlo), penso che fu mentre stavano piantati là nel fango sanguinoso che qualcuno dubitò — e qualcuno indovinò.»

Rimase muto un momento, e poi disse: «C’è una voce dal nulla che mi dice che l’uomo che indovinò era l’innamorato… l’uomo che avrebbe sposato la figlia del vecchio.»

«Ma che ne fu di Olivier e dell’impiccagione?» chiese Flambeau.

«Olivier, in parte per cavalleria, in parte per calcolo, raramente ingombrava la sua marcia di prigionieri,» spiegò il narratore. «Nella maggior parte dei casi liberava tutti. E in questo caso liberò tutti.»

«Tutti tranne il generale,» disse l’uomo alto.

«Tutti,» disse il prete.

Flambeau aggrottò le nere sopracciglia. «Non afferro ancora tutto quanto,» disse.

«C’è un altro quadro, Flambeau,» disse Brown nel suo tono più mistico e sommesso. «Non posso provarlo; ma posso fare di più — posso vederlo. C’è un campo che si smobilita, sulle nude, torride colline al mattino, e uniformi brasiliane ammassate in blocchi e colonne pronte a marciare. C’è la camicia rossa e la lunga barba nera di Olivier, che gli si agita al vento mentre sta in piedi, il cappello a larghe tese in mano. Egli sta dicendo addio al grande nemico che sta liberando — il semplice, canuto veterano inglese, che lo ringrazia in nome dei suoi uomini. Il resto degli inglesi sta dietro sull’attenti; accanto a loro ci sono provviste e veicoli per la ritirata. I tamburi rullano; i brasiliani si muovono; gli inglesi sono immobili come statue. Così restano finché l’ultimo brusio e l’ultimo lampo del nemico non siano svaniti dall’orizzonte tropicale. Poi mutano tutti insieme il loro atteggiamento, come morti che tornano in vita; volgono i loro cinquanta volti verso il generale — volti che non si possono dimenticare.»

Flambeau diede un gran sussulto. «Ah,» esclamò, «non vorrete dire —»

«Sì,» disse Padre Brown con voce profonda e commossa. «Fu una mano inglese a mettere la corda attorno al collo di St. Clare; io credo la mano che aveva messo l’anello al dito di sua figlia. Furono mani inglesi a trascinarlo su all’albero dell’infamia; le mani di uomini che lo avevano adorato e seguìto alla vittoria. E furono anime inglesi (Dio perdoni e sopporti tutti noi!) che lo fissarono mentre dondolava in quel sole straniero sul verde patibolo di palma, e pregarono nel loro odio che ne cadesse giù nell’inferno.»

Mentre i due valicarono il crinale, irruppe su di loro la forte luce scarlatta di una locanda inglese dalle tende rosse. Sorgeva di traverso sulla strada, come se si scostasse nell’ampiezza dell’ospitalità. Le sue tre porte stavano aperte in un invito; e persino da dove stavano potevano udire il brusio e le risa dell’umanità felice per una notte.

«Non ho bisogno di dirvi altro,» disse Padre Brown. «Lo processarono nelle terre selvagge e lo distrussero; e poi, per l’onore dell’Inghilterra e di sua figlia, fecero giuramento di suggellare per sempre la storia della borsa del traditore e della lama di spada dell’assassino. Forse — il Cielo li aiuti — cercarono di dimenticarla. Cerchiamo di dimenticarla anche noi, in ogni caso; ecco la nostra locanda.»

«Con tutto il cuore,» disse Flambeau, e stava proprio per entrare a grandi passi nella rumorosa e luminosa mescita, quando indietreggiò e per poco non cadde sulla strada.

«Guardate là, in nome del diavolo!» esclamò, e additò rigidamente la squadrata insegna di legno che pendeva sopra la strada. Essa mostrava indistintamente la rozza forma di un’elsa di sciabola e di una lama accorciata; ed era iscritta in falsi caratteri arcaici: «Al Segno della Spada Spezzata».

«Non eravate preparato?» chiese Padre Brown con dolcezza. «Egli è il dio di questa contrada; metà delle locande, dei parchi e delle vie prende nome da lui e dalla sua storia.»

«Credevo che l’avessimo chiusa con quel lebbroso,» esclamò Flambeau, e sputò sulla strada.

«Non l’avrete mai chiusa con lui, in Inghilterra,» disse il prete, guardando in basso, «finché il bronzo sarà saldo e la pietra durerà. Le sue statue di marmo raddrizzeranno l’anima di fanciulli fieri e innocenti per secoli, la sua tomba di villaggio olezzerà di lealtà come di gigli. Milioni di persone che non lo conobbero mai lo ameranno come un padre — quest’uomo che i pochi ultimi che lo conobbero trattarono come letame. Egli sarà un santo; e la verità non sarà mai detta su di lui, perché io ho infine deciso. C’è tanto bene e tanto male nel violare i segreti, che ho messo la mia condotta alla prova. Tutti questi giornali periranno; l’ondata anti-brasiliana è già passata; Olivier è già onorato dappertutto. Ma ho detto a me stesso che se in qualche luogo, per nome, in metallo o in marmo che dureranno come le piramidi, il Colonnello Clancy, o il Capitano Keith, o il presidente Olivier, o un qualsiasi uomo innocente fosse ingiustamente incolpato, allora avrei parlato. Se si trattasse soltanto del fatto che St. Clare è ingiustamente lodato, tacerei. E tacerò.»

Si tuffarono nella taverna dalle tende rosse, che all’interno non era solo accogliente, ma addirittura lussuosa. Su un tavolo stava un modellino d’argento della tomba di St. Clare, la testa d’argento chinata, la spada d’argento spezzata. Sulle pareti c’erano fotografie a colori della stessa scena, e del sistema di carrozzini che portavano i turisti a vederla. Si sedettero sulle comode panche imbottite.

«Su, fa freddo,» esclamò Padre Brown; «prendiamo un po’ di vino o di birra.»

«O del brandy,» disse Flambeau.

The Three Tools of Death

Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of us, that every man is dignified when he is dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about secret violence in connection with so entirely entertaining and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the point of being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary. It was like hearing that Sunny Jim had hanged himself; or that Mr. Pickwick had died in Hanwell. For though Sir Aaron was a philanthropist, and thus dealt with the darker side of our society, he prided himself on dealing with it in the brightest possible style. His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and “loud laughter”; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer.

The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men.

He had lived on the rural skirt of Hampstead in a handsome house, high but not broad, a modern and prosaic tower. The narrowest of its narrow sides overhung the steep green bank of a railway, and was shaken by passing trains. Sir Aaron Armstrong, as he boisterously explained, had no nerves. But if the train had often given a shock to the house, that morning the tables were turned, and it was the house that gave a shock to the train.

The engine slowed down and stopped just beyond that point where an angle of the house impinged upon the sharp slope of turf. The arrest of most mechanical things must be slow; but the living cause of this had been very rapid. A man clad completely in black, even (it was remembered) to the dreadful detail of black gloves, appeared on the ridge above the engine, and waved his black hands like some sable windmill. This in itself would hardly have stopped even a lingering train. But there came out of him a cry which was talked of afterwards as something utterly unnatural and new. It was one of those shouts that are horridly distinct even when we cannot hear what is shouted. The word in this case was “Murder!”

But the engine-driver swears he would have pulled up just the same if he had heard only the dreadful and definite accent and not the word.

The train once arrested, the most superficial stare could take in many features of the tragedy. The man in black on the green bank was Sir Aaron Armstrong’s man-servant Magnus. The baronet in his optimism had often laughed at the black gloves of this dismal attendant; but no one was likely to laugh at him just now.

So soon as an inquirer or two had stepped off the line and across the smoky hedge, they saw, rolled down almost to the bottom of the bank, the body of an old man in a yellow dressing-gown with a very vivid scarlet lining. A scrap of rope seemed caught about his leg, entangled presumably in a struggle. There was a smear or so of blood, though very little; but the body was bent or broken into a posture impossible to any living thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong. A few more bewildered moments brought out a big fair-bearded man, whom some travellers could salute as the dead man’s secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemian society and even famous in the Bohemian arts. In a manner more vague, but even more convincing, he echoed the agony of the servant. By the time the third figure of that household, Alice Armstrong, daughter of the dead man, had come already tottering and waving into the garden, the engine-driver had put a stop to his stoppage. The whistle had blown and the train had panted on to get help from the next station.

Father Brown had been thus rapidly summoned at the request of Patrick Royce, the big ex-Bohemian secretary. Royce was an Irishman by birth; and that casual kind of Catholic that never remembers his religion until he is really in a hole. But Royce’s request might have been less promptly complied with if one of the official detectives had not been a friend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau; and it was impossible to be a friend of Flambeau without hearing numberless stories about Father Brown. Hence, while the young detective (whose name was Merton) led the little priest across the fields to the railway, their talk was more confidential than could be expected between two total strangers.

“As far as I can see,” said Mr. Merton candidly, “there is no sense to be made of it at all. There is nobody one can suspect. Magnus is a solemn old fool; far too much of a fool to be an assassin. Royce has been the baronet’s best friend for years; and his daughter undoubtedly adored him. Besides, it’s all too absurd. Who would kill such a cheery old chap as Armstrong? Who could dip his hands in the gore of an after-dinner speaker? It would be like killing Father Christmas.”

“Yes, it was a cheery house,” assented Father Brown. “It was a cheery house while he was alive. Do you think it will be cheery now he is dead?”

Merton started a little and regarded his companion with an enlivened eye. “Now he is dead?” he repeated.

“Yes,” continued the priest stolidly, “he was cheerful. But did he communicate his cheerfulness? Frankly, was anyone else in the house cheerful but he?”

A window in Merton’s mind let in that strange light of surprise in which we see for the first time things we have known all along. He had often been to the Armstrongs’, on little police jobs of the philanthropist; and, now he came to think of it, it was in itself a depressing house. The rooms were very high and very cold; the decoration mean and provincial; the draughty corridors were lit by electricity that was bleaker than moonlight. And though the old man’s scarlet face and silver beard had blazed like a bonfire in each room or passage in turn, it did not leave any warmth behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort in the place was partly due to the very vitality and exuberance of its owner; he needed no stoves or lamps, he would say, but carried his own warmth with him. But when Merton recalled the other inmates, he was compelled to confess that they also were as shadows of their lord. The moody man-servant, with his monstrous black gloves, was almost a nightmare; Royce, the secretary, was solid enough, a big bull of a man, in tweeds, with a short beard; but the straw-coloured beard was startlingly salted with grey like the tweeds, and the broad forehead was barred with premature wrinkles. He was good-natured enough also, but it was a sad sort of good-nature, almost a heart-broken sort— he had the general air of being some sort of failure in life. As for Armstrong’s daughter, it was almost incredible that she was his daughter; she was so pallid in colour and sensitive in outline. She was graceful, but there was a quiver in the very shape of her that was like the lines of an aspen. Merton had sometimes wondered if she had learnt to quail at the crash of the passing trains.

I tre strumenti della morte

Per vocazione e per convinzione, Father Brown sapeva, meglio della maggior parte di noi, che ogni uomo acquista dignità nel momento in cui muore. Eppure anche lui provò una fitta di sconvenienza quando lo tirarono giù dal letto all’alba per dirgli che Sir Aaron Armstrong era stato assassinato. C’era qualcosa di assurdo e di indecoroso nell’accostare una violenza segreta a una figura tanto squisitamente spassosa e popolare. Poiché Sir Aaron Armstrong era spassoso fino a rasentare il comico, e popolare in un modo che sfiorava la leggenda. Era come sentir dire che Sunny Jim si fosse impiccato, o che il signor Pickwick fosse morto a Hanwell. Perché, benché Sir Aaron fosse un filantropo, e trattasse dunque il lato più oscuro della nostra società, si vantava di trattarlo con lo stile più luminoso che si potesse immaginare. I suoi discorsi politici e sociali erano cascate di aneddoti e di «fragorose risate»; la sua salute fisica era di quelle prorompenti; la sua etica era tutta ottimismo; e affrontava il problema dell’alcol (il suo argomento prediletto) con quell’immortale, e persino monotona, allegria che così spesso contraddistingue l’astemio prospero.

La consacrata storia della sua conversione era ben nota sulle pedane e sui pulpiti più puritani: come, quando era ancora un ragazzo, fosse stato tratto lontano dalla teologia scozzese dal whisky scozzese, e come si fosse risollevato da entrambi diventando (secondo la sua modesta espressione) ciò che era. Eppure l’ampia barba bianca, il volto cherubico e gli occhiali scintillanti, che comparivano agli innumerevoli banchetti e congressi, rendevano in qualche modo difficile credere che fosse mai stato qualcosa di tanto morboso come un bevitore di liquori o un calvinista. Era, si sentiva, il più seriamente allegro fra tutti i figli degli uomini.

Aveva vissuto sul lembo rurale di Hampstead, in una bella casa, alta ma non larga, una torre moderna e prosaica. Il più stretto dei suoi lati stretti sovrastava il ripido pendio verde d’una scarpata ferroviaria, ed era scosso dal passaggio dei treni. Sir Aaron Armstrong, come spiegava a gran voce, non aveva nervi. Ma se spesso era stato il treno a dare uno scossone alla casa, quella mattina le parti si erano invertite, ed era stata la casa a dare uno scossone al treno.

La locomotiva rallentò e si fermò appena oltre il punto in cui uno spigolo della casa premeva contro il netto declivio erboso. L’arresto della maggior parte delle cose meccaniche è per forza lento; ma la causa vivente di questo arresto era stata rapidissima. Un uomo interamente vestito di nero, financo (fu ricordato) nel raccapricciante dettaglio dei guanti neri, apparve sul crinale sopra la locomotiva e agitò le mani nere come un tetro mulino a vento. Questo, di per sé, difficilmente avrebbe fermato anche il più lento dei treni. Ma da lui uscì un grido di cui in seguito si parlò come di qualcosa di assolutamente innaturale e nuovo. Era uno di quegli urli orribilmente distinti anche quando non riusciamo a udire ciò che viene urlato. La parola, in questo caso, era: «Assassinio!».

Ma il macchinista giura che avrebbe frenato ugualmente se avesse udito soltanto l’accento terribile e inequivocabile, e non la parola.

Fermato il treno, anche lo sguardo più superficiale poteva cogliere molti particolari della tragedia. L’uomo in nero sulla scarpata verde era Magnus, il domestico di Sir Aaron Armstrong. Il baronetto, nel suo ottimismo, aveva spesso riso dei guanti neri di quel lugubre attendente; ma difficilmente qualcuno avrebbe riso di lui in quel momento.

Non appena uno o due curiosi ebbero messo piede fuori dai binari e superato la siepe fuligginosa, videro, rotolato quasi in fondo alla scarpata, il corpo di un vecchio in una vestaglia gialla dalla fodera d’uno scarlatto vivissimo. Un pezzetto di corda pareva impigliato attorno alla sua gamba, ingarbugliatosi presumibilmente in una colluttazione. C’era qualche schizzo di sangue, benché pochissimo; ma il corpo era piegato, o spezzato, in una posa impossibile per qualsiasi essere vivente. Era Sir Aaron Armstrong. Pochi altri istanti di sgomento fecero venir fuori un uomo grande e con la barba bionda, che alcuni viaggiatori poterono salutare come il segretario del morto, Patrick Royce, un tempo assai noto negli ambienti bohémien e persino famoso nelle arti bohémien. In un modo più vago, ma ancor più convincente, egli fece eco all’angoscia del domestico. Quando la terza figura di quella casa, Alice Armstrong, figlia del morto, entrò in giardino già barcollando e agitando le braccia, il macchinista aveva già posto fine alla propria sosta. Il fischio era risuonato e il treno era ripartito ansimando a cercare aiuto alla stazione successiva.

Father Brown era stato così rapidamente convocato su richiesta di Patrick Royce, il grosso ex bohémien segretario. Royce era irlandese di nascita, e di quel genere di cattolico disinvolto che non si ricorda mai della propria religione finché non si trova davvero in un guaio. Ma alla richiesta di Royce si sarebbe forse dato ascolto meno prontamente, se uno dei detective ufficiali non fosse stato amico e ammiratore dell’ufficioso Flambeau; e non era possibile essere amico di Flambeau senza sentire innumerevoli storie su Father Brown. Fu così che, mentre il giovane detective (il cui nome era Merton) conduceva il piccolo prete attraverso i campi fino alla ferrovia, la loro conversazione fu più confidenziale di quanto ci si potesse attendere fra due perfetti sconosciuti.

«Per quel che vedo io», disse candidamente il signor Merton, «non c’è alcun senso da cavarne. Non c’è nessuno che si possa sospettare. Magnus è un vecchio sciocco tutto compunto, troppo sciocco per essere un assassino. Royce è stato per anni il migliore amico del baronetto; e sua figlia lo adorava senza dubbio. E poi è tutto troppo assurdo. Chi mai ucciderebbe un vecchietto tanto gioviale come Armstrong? Chi potrebbe intingere le mani nel sangue di un oratore da fine cena? Sarebbe come uccidere Babbo Natale.»

«Sì, era una casa allegra», convenne Father Brown. «Era una casa allegra finché lui era vivo. Crede che sarà allegra ora che è morto?»

Merton trasalì un poco e osservò il compagno con occhio ravvivato. «Ora che è morto?» ripeté.

«Sì», proseguì il prete flemmatico, «era allegro. Ma comunicava la propria allegria? Sinceramente, c’era nella casa qualcun altro che fosse allegro, all’infuori di lui?»

Una finestra si aprì nella mente di Merton e vi lasciò entrare quella strana luce di sorpresa nella quale vediamo per la prima volta cose che abbiamo sempre conosciuto. Era stato spesso dagli Armstrong, per piccole faccende di polizia del filantropo; e, ora che ci pensava, era in sé una casa deprimente. Le stanze erano altissime e freddissime; l’arredo meschino e provinciale; i corridoi pieni di spifferi erano illuminati da una luce elettrica più squallida del chiaro di luna. E benché il volto scarlatto e la barba d’argento del vecchio avessero avvampato come un falò in ogni stanza o corridoio via via che vi passava, non lasciavano dietro di sé alcun tepore. Senza dubbio quello spettrale disagio del luogo era in parte dovuto proprio alla vitalità e all’esuberanza del suo padrone: non gli occorrevano stufe né lampade, diceva, perché portava con sé il proprio calore. Ma quando Merton richiamò alla mente gli altri abitanti, fu costretto a confessare che anch’essi erano come ombre del loro signore. Il tetro domestico, con i suoi mostruosi guanti neri, era quasi un incubo; Royce, il segretario, era abbastanza solido, un grosso toro d’uomo, in tweed, con una barba corta; ma la barba color della paglia era spaventosamente cosparsa di grigio, come il tweed, e l’ampia fronte era solcata da rughe premature. Anche lui era di buon carattere, ma d’una bontà triste, quasi affranta, con l’aria generale di essere in qualche modo un fallito nella vita. Quanto alla figlia di Armstrong, era quasi incredibile che fosse sua figlia, tanto pallida di colorito e delicata di lineamenti. Era aggraziata, ma nella sua stessa persona correva un tremito simile alle linee di un pioppo tremulo. Merton si era talvolta domandato se avesse imparato a trasalire allo schianto dei treni in corsa.

“You see,” said Father Brown, blinking modestly, “I’m not sure that the Armstrong cheerfulness is so very cheerful—for other people. You say that nobody could kill such a happy old man, but I’m not sure; ne nos inducas in tentationem. If ever I murdered somebody,” he added quite simply, “I dare say it might be an Optimist.”

“Why?” cried Merton amused. “Do you think people dislike cheerfulness?”

“People like frequent laughter,” answered Father Brown, “but I don’t think they like a permanent smile. Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing.”

They walked some way in silence along the windy grassy bank by the rail, and just as they came under the far-flung shadow of the tall Armstrong house, Father Brown said suddenly, like a man throwing away a troublesome thought rather than offering it seriously: “Of course, drink is neither good nor bad in itself. But I can’t help sometimes feeling that men like Armstrong want an occasional glass of wine to sadden them.”

Merton’s official superior, a grizzled and capable detective named Gilder, was standing on the green bank waiting for the coroner, talking to Patrick Royce, whose big shoulders and bristly beard and hair towered above him. This was the more noticeable because Royce walked always with a sort of powerful stoop, and seemed to be going about his small clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled style, like a buffalo drawing a go-cart.

He raised his head with unusual pleasure at the sight of the priest, and took him a few paces apart. Meanwhile Merton was addressing the older detective respectfully indeed, but not without a certain boyish impatience.

“Well, Mr. Gilder, have you got much farther with the mystery?”

“There is no mystery,” replied Gilder, as he looked under dreamy eyelids at the rooks.

“Well, there is for me, at any rate,” said Merton, smiling.

“It is simple enough, my boy,” observed the senior investigator, stroking his grey, pointed beard. “Three minutes after you’d gone for Mr. Royce’s parson the whole thing came out. You know that pasty-faced servant in the black gloves who stopped the train?”

“I should know him anywhere. Somehow he rather gave me the creeps.”

“Well,” drawled Gilder, “when the train had gone on again, that man had gone too. Rather a cool criminal, don’t you think, to escape by the very train that went off for the police?”

“You’re pretty sure, I suppose,” remarked the young man, “that he really did kill his master?”

“Yes, my son, I’m pretty sure,” replied Gilder drily, “for the trifling reason that he has gone off with twenty thousand pounds in papers that were in his master’s desk. No, the only thing worth calling a difficulty is how he killed him. The skull seems broken as with some big weapon, but there’s no weapon at all lying about, and the murderer would have found it awkward to carry it away, unless the weapon was too small to be noticed.”

“Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed,” said the priest, with an odd little giggle.

Gilder looked round at this wild remark, and rather sternly asked Brown what he meant.

“Silly way of putting it, I know,” said Father Brown apologetically. “Sounds like a fairy tale. But poor Armstrong was killed with a giant’s club, a great green club, too big to be seen, and which we call the earth. He was broken against this green bank we are standing on.”

“How do you mean?” asked the detective quickly.

Father Brown turned his moon face up to the narrow facade of the house and blinked hopelessly up. Following his eyes, they saw that right at the top of this otherwise blind back quarter of the building, an attic window stood open.

“Don’t you see,” he explained, pointing a little awkwardly like a child, “he was thrown down from there?”

Gilder frowningly scrutinised the window, and then said: “Well, it is certainly possible. But I don’t see why you are so sure about it.”

Brown opened his grey eyes wide. “Why,” he said, “there’s a bit of rope round the dead man’s leg. Don’t you see that other bit of rope up there caught at the corner of the window?”

At that height the thing looked like the faintest particle of dust or hair, but the shrewd old investigator was satisfied. “You’re quite right, sir,” he said to Father Brown; “that is certainly one to you.”

Almost as he spoke a special train with one carriage took the curve of the line on their left, and, stopping, disgorged another group of policemen, in whose midst was the hangdog visage of Magnus, the absconded servant.

“By Jove! they’ve got him,” cried Gilder, and stepped forward with quite a new alertness.

“Have you got the money!” he cried to the first policeman.

The man looked him in the face with a rather curious expression and said: “No.” Then he added: “At least, not here.”

“Which is the inspector, please?” asked the man called Magnus.

When he spoke everyone instantly understood how this voice had stopped a train. He was a dull-looking man with flat black hair, a colourless face, and a faint suggestion of the East in the level slits in his eyes and mouth. His blood and name, indeed, had remained dubious, ever since Sir Aaron had “rescued” him from a waitership in a London restaurant, and (as some said) from more infamous things. But his voice was as vivid as his face was dead. Whether through exactitude in a foreign language, or in deference to his master (who had been somewhat deaf), Magnus’s tones had a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the whole group quite jumped when he spoke.

“I always knew this would happen,” he said aloud with brazen blandness. “My poor old master made game of me for wearing black; but I always said I should be ready for his funeral.”

And he made a momentary movement with his two dark-gloved hands.

“Sergeant,” said Inspector Gilder, eyeing the black hands with wrath, “aren’t you putting the bracelets on this fellow; he looks pretty dangerous.”

“Well, sir,” said the sergeant, with the same odd look of wonder, “I don’t know that we can.”

«Vede», disse Father Brown, sbattendo le palpebre con modestia, «non sono sicuro che l’allegria degli Armstrong sia poi tanto allegra… per gli altri. Lei dice che nessuno potrebbe uccidere un vecchio tanto felice, ma io non ne sono così sicuro; ne nos inducas in tentationem. Se mai dovessi assassinare qualcuno», aggiunse con la più grande semplicità, «oserei dire che potrebbe trattarsi di un ottimista.»

«Perché?» esclamò Merton divertito. «Crede che alla gente non piaccia l’allegria?»

«Alla gente piace ridere spesso», rispose Father Brown, «ma non credo che le piaccia un sorriso perenne. L’allegria senza umorismo è una cosa davvero snervante.»

Camminarono un tratto in silenzio lungo la ventosa scarpata erbosa accanto ai binari, e proprio mentre giungevano sotto l’ombra allungata dell’alta casa Armstrong, Father Brown disse a un tratto, come chi getta via un pensiero fastidioso più che offrirlo sul serio: «Certo, il bere non è né buono né cattivo in sé. Ma a volte non posso fare a meno di pensare che uomini come Armstrong avrebbero bisogno di un bicchiere di vino ogni tanto, per rattristarsi un po’.»

Il superiore gerarchico di Merton, un detective brizzolato e capace di nome Gilder, se ne stava sulla scarpata verde in attesa del coroner, a colloquio con Patrick Royce, le cui grandi spalle e la barba e i capelli irsuti lo sovrastavano. Ciò era tanto più evidente perché Royce camminava sempre con una sorta di possente curvatura, e sembrava sbrigare i suoi piccoli doveri di scrivano e di domestico in maniera greve e umiliata, come un bufalo che tira un carretto.

Sollevò il capo con insolito piacere alla vista del prete, e lo condusse in disparte di qualche passo. Nel frattempo Merton si rivolgeva al detective più anziano con deferenza, sì, ma non senza una certa fanciullesca impazienza.

«Ebbene, signor Gilder, ha fatto molti progressi con il mistero?»

«Non c’è alcun mistero», replicò Gilder, guardando le cornacchie da sotto le palpebre sognanti.

«Beh, per me ce n’è uno, quantomeno», disse Merton sorridendo.

«È semplicissimo, ragazzo mio», osservò l’anziano investigatore, lisciandosi la barba grigia e appuntita. «Tre minuti dopo che lei era andato a cercare il prete del signor Royce, tutto è venuto a galla. Conosce quel domestico dalla faccia smorta e dai guanti neri che ha fermato il treno?»

«Lo riconoscerei dovunque. In qualche modo mi ha fatto venire i brividi.»

«Ebbene», strascicò Gilder, «quando il treno è ripartito, se n’era andato anche lui. Un criminale piuttosto freddo, non trova, fuggire proprio col treno partito a chiamare la polizia?»

«Immagino che lei sia abbastanza sicuro», osservò il giovane, «che sia stato davvero lui a uccidere il padrone?»

«Sì, figlio mio, ne sono abbastanza sicuro», replicò Gilder seccamente, «per la trascurabile ragione che se n’è andato con ventimila sterline in titoli che si trovavano nella scrivania del suo padrone. No, l’unica cosa che meriti il nome di difficoltà è come lo abbia ucciso. Il cranio pare fracassato come da una grossa arma, ma non c’è nessuna arma in giro, e all’assassino sarebbe stato scomodo portarsela via, a meno che l’arma non fosse troppo piccola per essere notata.»

«Forse l’arma era troppo grande per essere notata», disse il prete, con una strana risatina.

Gilder si voltò a quella bizzarra osservazione, e con una certa severità chiese a Brown cosa intendesse.

«Un modo sciocco di dirlo, lo so», disse Father Brown in tono di scusa. «Sembra una fiaba. Ma il povero Armstrong è stato ucciso con la clava di un gigante, una grande clava verde, troppo grande per essere vista, e che noi chiamiamo terra. È stato scagliato contro questa scarpata verde su cui ci troviamo.»

«Che cosa vuol dire?» chiese in fretta il detective.

Father Brown rivolse la sua faccia lunare verso la stretta facciata della casa e strizzò gli occhi in su, senza speranza. Seguendo il suo sguardo, videro che proprio in cima a quella parte posteriore altrimenti cieca dell’edificio, una finestra della soffitta era aperta.

«Non vede», spiegò, indicando con un gesto un po’ impacciato, come un bambino, «che è stato buttato giù di lassù?»

Gilder scrutò la finestra aggrottando le sopracciglia, poi disse: «Beh, è certamente possibile. Ma non capisco perché lei ne sia così sicuro.»

Brown spalancò i grigi occhi. «Ma come», disse, «c’è un pezzetto di corda attorno alla gamba del morto. Non vede quell’altro pezzetto di corda là in alto, impigliato all’angolo della finestra?»

A quell’altezza la cosa pareva la più tenue particella di polvere o un capello, ma l’astuto vecchio investigatore fu soddisfatto. «Ha perfettamente ragione, signore», disse a Father Brown; «questo punto va decisamente a lei.»

Aveva appena finito di parlare che un treno speciale, con una sola vettura, affrontò la curva della linea alla loro sinistra e, fermandosi, sputò fuori un altro gruppo di poliziotti, in mezzo ai quali si scorgeva la faccia da cane bastonato di Magnus, il domestico datosi alla fuga.

«Perbacco! L’hanno preso», esclamò Gilder, e si fece avanti con un’inedita prontezza.

«Avete il denaro?» gridò al primo poliziotto.

L’uomo lo guardò in faccia con un’espressione piuttosto curiosa e disse: «No.» Poi aggiunse: «Almeno, non qui.»

«Chi è l’ispettore, per favore?» chiese l’uomo di nome Magnus.

Quando parlò, tutti compresero all’istante come quella voce avesse potuto fermare un treno. Era un uomo dall’aspetto scialbo, con lisci capelli neri, un volto incolore e una vaga suggestione d’Oriente nelle fessure orizzontali degli occhi e della bocca. Il suo sangue e il suo nome, in verità, erano rimasti dubbi da quando Sir Aaron lo aveva «salvato» dal mestiere di cameriere in un ristorante di Londra, e (come alcuni dicevano) da cose ancor più infami. Ma la sua voce era viva quanto morto era il suo volto. Fosse per esattezza in una lingua straniera, o per deferenza verso il padrone (che era alquanto sordo), i toni di Magnus avevano una qualità singolarmente squillante e penetrante, e l’intero gruppo sobbalzò quando parlò.

«Ho sempre saputo che sarebbe accaduto», disse ad alta voce con sfrontata cortesia. «Il mio povero vecchio padrone si burlava di me perché vestivo di nero; ma io ho sempre detto che sarei stato pronto per il suo funerale.»

E fece un momentaneo movimento con le due mani inguantate di nero.

«Sergente», disse l’ispettore Gilder, fissando con ira le mani nere, «non mette i ferri a costui? Ha un’aria piuttosto pericolosa.»

«Beh, signore», disse il sergente, con quella stessa strana espressione di stupore, «non so se possiamo.»

“What do you mean?” asked the other sharply. “Haven’t you arrested him?”

A faint scorn widened the slit-like mouth, and the whistle of an approaching train seemed oddly to echo the mockery.

“We arrested him,” replied the sergeant gravely, “just as he was coming out of the police station at Highgate, where he had deposited all his master’s money in the care of Inspector Robinson.”

Gilder looked at the man-servant in utter amazement. “Why on earth did you do that?” he asked of Magnus.

“To keep it safe from the criminal, of course,” replied that person placidly.

“Surely,” said Gilder, “Sir Aaron’s money might have been safely left with Sir Aaron’s family.”

The tail of his sentence was drowned in the roar of the train as it went rocking and clanking; but through all the hell of noises to which that unhappy house was periodically subject, they could hear the syllables of Magnus’s answer, in all their bell-like distinctness: “I have no reason to feel confidence in Sir Aaron’s family.”

All the motionless men had the ghostly sensation of the presence of some new person; and Merton was scarcely surprised when he looked up and saw the pale face of Armstrong’s daughter over Father Brown’s shoulder. She was still young and beautiful in a silvery style, but her hair was of so dusty and hueless a brown that in some shadows it seemed to have turned totally grey.

“Be careful what you say,” said Royce gruffly, “you’ll frighten Miss Armstrong.”

“I hope so,” said the man with the clear voice.

As the woman winced and everyone else wondered, he went on: “I am somewhat used to Miss Armstrong’s tremors. I have seen her trembling off and on for years. And some said she was shaking with cold and some she was shaking with fear, but I know she was shaking with hate and wicked anger— fiends that have had their feast this morning. She would have been away by now with her lover and all the money but for me. Ever since my poor old master prevented her from marrying that tipsy blackguard—”

“Stop,” said Gilder very sternly. “We have nothing to do with your family fancies or suspicions. Unless you have some practical evidence, your mere opinions—”

“Oh! I’ll give you practical evidence,” cut in Magnus, in his hacking accent. “You’ll have to subpoena me, Mr. Inspector, and I shall have to tell the truth. And the truth is this: An instant after the old man was pitched bleeding out of the window, I ran into the attic, and found his daughter swooning on the floor with a red dagger still in her hand. Allow me to hand that also to the proper authorities.” He took from his tail-pocket a long horn-hilted knife with a red smear on it, and handed it politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back again, and his slits of eyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese sneer.

Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of him; and he muttered to Gilder: “Surely you would take Miss Armstrong’s word against his?”

Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh that it looked somehow as if he had just washed it. “Yes,” he said, radiating innocence, “but is Miss Armstrong’s word against his?”

The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry; everyone looked at her. Her figure was rigid as if paralysed; only her face within its frame of faint brown hair was alive with an appalling surprise. She stood like one of a sudden lassooed and throttled.

“This man,” said Mr. Gilder gravely, “actually says that you were found grasping a knife, insensible, after the murder.”

“He says the truth,” answered Alice.

The next fact of which they were conscious was that Patrick Royce strode with his great stooping head into their ring and uttered the singular words: “Well, if I’ve got to go, I’ll have a bit of pleasure first.”

His huge shoulder heaved and he sent an iron fist smash into Magnus’s bland Mongolian visage, laying him on the lawn as flat as a starfish. Two or three of the police instantly put their hands on Royce; but to the rest it seemed as if all reason had broken up and the universe were turning into a brainless harlequinade.

“None of that, Mr. Royce,” Gilder had called out authoritatively. “I shall arrest you for assault.”

“No, you won’t,” answered the secretary in a voice like an iron gong, “you will arrest me for murder.”

Gilder threw an alarmed glance at the man knocked down; but since that outraged person was already sitting up and wiping a little blood off a substantially uninjured face, he only said shortly: “What do you mean?”

“It is quite true, as this fellow says,” explained Royce, “that Miss Armstrong fainted with a knife in her hand. But she had not snatched the knife to attack her father, but to defend him.”

“To defend him,” repeated Gilder gravely. “Against whom?”

“Against me,” answered the secretary.

Alice looked at him with a complex and baffling face; then she said in a low voice: “After it all, I am still glad you are brave.”

“Come upstairs,” said Patrick Royce heavily, “and I will show you the whole cursed thing.”

The attic, which was the secretary’s private place (and rather a small cell for so large a hermit), had indeed all the vestiges of a violent drama. Near the centre of the floor lay a large revolver as if flung away; nearer to the left was rolled a whisky bottle, open but not quite empty. The cloth of the little table lay dragged and trampled, and a length of cord, like that found on the corpse, was cast wildly across the windowsill. Two vases were smashed on the mantelpiece and one on the carpet.

“I was drunk,” said Royce; and this simplicity in the prematurely battered man somehow had the pathos of the first sin of a baby.

“You all know about me,” he continued huskily; “everybody knows how my story began, and it may as well end like that too. I was called a clever man once, and might have been a happy one; Armstrong saved the remains of a brain and body from the taverns, and was always kind to me in his own way, poor fellow! Only he wouldn’t let me marry Alice here; and it will always be said that he was right enough. Well, you can form your own conclusions, and you won’t want me to go into details. That is my whisky bottle half emptied in the corner; that is my revolver quite emptied on the carpet. It was the rope from my box that was found on the corpse, and it was from my window the corpse was thrown. You need not set detectives to grub up my tragedy; it is a common enough weed in this world. I give myself to the gallows; and, by God, that is enough!”

«Che cosa intende?» chiese l’altro bruscamente. «Non lo avete arrestato?»

Un lieve disprezzo allargò la bocca simile a una fessura, e il fischio di un treno in avvicinamento parve stranamente far eco a quello scherno.

«Lo abbiamo arrestato», rispose il sergente con gravità, «proprio mentre usciva dalla stazione di polizia di Highgate, dove aveva depositato tutto il denaro del suo padrone nelle mani dell’ispettore Robinson.»

Gilder guardò il domestico con assoluto stupore. «Perché diavolo lo ha fatto?» chiese a Magnus.

«Per metterlo al sicuro dal criminale, naturalmente», rispose quello placidamente.

«Ma di certo», disse Gilder, «il denaro di Sir Aaron poteva essere lasciato senza pericolo alla famiglia di Sir Aaron.»

La coda della sua frase fu sommersa dal fragore del treno che passava sobbalzando e sferragliando; ma attraverso tutto l’inferno di rumori a cui quella casa infelice era periodicamente soggetta, poterono udire le sillabe della risposta di Magnus, in tutta la loro nitidezza di campana: «Non ho alcuna ragione di aver fiducia nella famiglia di Sir Aaron.»

Tutti gli uomini immobili ebbero la spettrale sensazione della presenza di una persona nuova; e Merton non si sorprese troppo quando, alzando gli occhi, vide il pallido volto della figlia di Armstrong al di sopra della spalla di Father Brown. Era ancora giovane e bella, in uno stile argenteo, ma i suoi capelli erano di un castano così polveroso e smorto che in certe ombre parevano essere diventati del tutto grigi.

«Faccia attenzione a ciò che dice», disse Royce burbero, «spaventerà la signorina Armstrong.»

«Lo spero bene», disse l’uomo dalla voce limpida.

Mentre la donna sussultava e tutti gli altri si stupivano, egli proseguì: «Sono in qualche modo abituato ai tremori della signorina Armstrong. L’ho vista tremare a intermittenza per anni. E alcuni dicevano che tremasse di freddo, altri di paura, ma io so che tremava d’odio e di malvagia ira: demoni che stamattina hanno banchettato. A quest’ora sarebbe già lontana, col suo amante e con tutto il denaro, se non fosse stato per me. Da quando il mio povero vecchio padrone le impedì di sposare quel farabutto ubriacone…»

«Basta», disse Gilder con grande severità. «Non abbiamo nulla a che fare con le sue fantasie o i suoi sospetti familiari. A meno che lei non abbia qualche prova concreta, le sue semplici opinioni…»

«Oh! Le darò una prova concreta», tagliò corto Magnus, con il suo accento aspro. «Dovrà citarmi in giudizio, signor ispettore, e io dovrò dire la verità. E la verità è questa: un istante dopo che il vecchio fu scaraventato sanguinante fuori dalla finestra, corsi nella soffitta e vi trovai sua figlia svenuta sul pavimento, con ancora in mano un pugnale rosso. Permettetemi di consegnare anche questo alle debite autorità.» Estrasse dalla tasca posteriore un lungo coltello dal manico di corno, macchiato di rosso, e lo porse cortesemente al sergente. Poi indietreggiò di nuovo, e le sue fessure d’occhi quasi svanirono dal volto in un solo, grasso sogghigno cinese.

Merton provò una nausea quasi fisica alla vista di lui; e mormorò a Gilder: «Vorrà pure credere alla parola della signorina Armstrong contro la sua?»

Father Brown sollevò a un tratto un volto così assurdamente fresco che pareva, chissà come, se lo fosse appena lavato. «Sì», disse, irradiando innocenza, «ma la parola della signorina Armstrong è contro la sua?»

La ragazza emise un piccolo grido trasalito, singolare; tutti la guardarono. La sua figura era rigida come paralizzata; solo il volto, entro la cornice dei tenui capelli castani, era vivo di una sorpresa spaventosa. Stava come chi sia stato all’improvviso preso al lazo e strozzato.

«Quest’uomo», disse il signor Gilder con gravità, «afferma addirittura che lei è stata trovata, priva di sensi, stringendo un coltello dopo l’omicidio.»

«Dice il vero», rispose Alice.

Il fatto successivo di cui ebbero coscienza fu che Patrick Royce avanzò a grandi passi, con la sua grande testa curva, dentro il loro cerchio, e pronunciò queste singolari parole: «Beh, se devo andarci di mezzo, prima voglio togliermi una soddisfazione.»

L’enorme spalla si sollevò e scagliò un pugno di ferro contro il volto blando e mongolico di Magnus, stendendolo sul prato piatto come una stella marina. Due o tre poliziotti misero all’istante le mani su Royce; ma agli altri parve che ogni ragione si fosse dissolta e che l’universo si stesse mutando in una farsa da arlecchini senza cervello.

«Niente di tutto ciò, signor Royce», aveva gridato Gilder con tono d’autorità. «La arresterò per aggressione.»

«No, non lo farà», rispose il segretario con voce da gong di ferro, «mi arresterà per omicidio.»

Gilder lanciò uno sguardo allarmato all’uomo abbattuto; ma poiché quell’offeso stava già rimettendosi seduto e asciugandosi un po’ di sangue da un volto sostanzialmente illeso, si limitò a dire brevemente: «Che cosa vuol dire?»

«È del tutto vero, come dice costui», spiegò Royce, «che la signorina Armstrong è svenuta con un coltello in mano. Ma non aveva afferrato il coltello per aggredire suo padre, bensì per difenderlo.»

«Per difenderlo», ripeté Gilder gravemente. «Da chi?»

«Da me», rispose il segretario.

Alice lo guardò con un volto complesso e sconcertante; poi disse a bassa voce: «Dopo tutto questo, sono ancora contenta che tu sia coraggioso.»

«Salite di sopra», disse Patrick Royce con pesantezza, «e vi mostrerò tutta questa maledetta faccenda.»

La soffitta, che era il rifugio privato del segretario (e una cella piuttosto piccola per un eremita tanto grande), recava in effetti tutte le tracce di un dramma violento. Vicino al centro del pavimento giaceva una grossa rivoltella, come gettata via; più verso sinistra era rotolata una bottiglia di whisky, aperta ma non del tutto vuota. Il panno del tavolino era stato trascinato e calpestato, e uno spezzone di corda, simile a quello trovato sul cadavere, giaceva scagliato scompostamente sul davanzale. Due vasi erano andati in frantumi sulla mensola del camino e uno sul tappeto.

«Ero ubriaco», disse Royce; e questa semplicità, in quell’uomo prematuramente devastato, aveva chissà come il patetismo del primo peccato di un bambino.

«Sapete tutto di me», proseguì con voce roca; «tutti sanno come cominciò la mia storia, e tanto vale che finisca anche allo stesso modo. Un tempo mi chiamavano un uomo intelligente, e sarei potuto essere felice; Armstrong salvò dalle taverne ciò che restava di un cervello e di un corpo, e fu sempre buono con me a modo suo, pover’uomo! Solo, non volle lasciarmi sposare Alice, qui presente; e si dirà sempre che aveva perfettamente ragione. Ebbene, potete trarre le vostre conclusioni, e non vorrete che io entri nei dettagli. Quella è la mia bottiglia di whisky mezza vuota nell’angolo; quella è la mia rivoltella del tutto scarica sul tappeto. Era la corda del mio baule quella trovata sul cadavere, ed è dalla mia finestra che il cadavere è stato gettato. Non c’è bisogno che mandiate i detective a scavare nella mia tragedia; è un’erbaccia abbastanza comune, a questo mondo. Mi consegno alla forca; e, per Dio, tanto basta!»

At a sufficiently delicate sign, the police gathered round the large man to lead him away; but their unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered by the remarkable appearance of Father Brown, who was on his hands and knees on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind of undignified prayers. Being a person utterly insensible to the social figure he cut, he remained in this posture, but turned a bright round face up at the company, presenting the appearance of a quadruped with a very comic human head.

“I say,” he said good-naturedly, “this really won’t do at all, you know. At the beginning you said we’d found no weapon. But now we’re finding too many; there’s the knife to stab, and the rope to strangle, and the pistol to shoot; and after all he broke his neck by falling out of a window! It won’t do. It’s not economical.” And he shook his head at the ground as a horse does grazing.

Inspector Gilder had opened his mouth with serious intentions, but before he could speak the grotesque figure on the floor had gone on quite volubly.

“And now three quite impossible things. First, these holes in the carpet, where the six bullets have gone in. Why on earth should anybody fire at the carpet? A drunken man lets fly at his enemy’s head, the thing that’s grinning at him. He doesn’t pick a quarrel with his feet, or lay siege to his slippers. And then there’s the rope”—and having done with the carpet the speaker lifted his hands and put them in his pocket, but continued unaffectedly on his knees—“in what conceivable intoxication would anybody try to put a rope round a man’s neck and finally put it round his leg? Royce, anyhow, was not so drunk as that, or he would be sleeping like a log by now. And, plainest of all, the whisky bottle. You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle, and then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half and leaving the other. That is the very last thing a dipsomaniac would do.”

He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the self-accused murderer in tones of limpid penitence: “I’m awfully sorry, my dear sir, but your tale is really rubbish.”

“Sir,” said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, “can I speak to you alone for a moment?”

This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, and before he could speak in the next room, the girl was talking with strange incisiveness.

“You are a clever man,” she said, “and you are trying to save Patrick, I know. But it’s no use. The core of all this is black, and the more things you find out the more there will be against the miserable man I love.”

“Why?” asked Brown, looking at her steadily.

“Because,” she answered equally steadily, “I saw him commit the crime myself.”

“Ah!” said the unmoved Brown, “and what did he do?”

“I was in this room next to them,” she explained; “both doors were closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard on earth, roaring ‘Hell, hell, hell,’ again and again, and then the two doors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the thing banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full of smoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick’s hand; and I saw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapt on my father, who was clinging in terror to the window-sill, and, grappling, tried to strangle him with the rope, which he threw over his head, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then it tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac. I snatched a knife from the mat, and, rushing between them, managed to cut the rope before I fainted.”

“I see,” said Father Brown, with the same wooden civility. “Thank you.”

As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly into the next room, where he found Gilder and Merton alone with Patrick Royce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector submissively:

“Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he take off those funny cuffs for a minute?”

“He is a very powerful man,” said Merton in an undertone. “Why do you want them taken off?”

“Why, I thought,” replied the priest humbly, “that perhaps I might have the very great honour of shaking hands with him.”

Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: “Won’t you tell them about it, sir?”

The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the priest turned impatiently.

“Then I will,” he said. “Private lives are more important than public reputations. I am going to save the living, and let the dead bury their dead.”

He went to the fatal window, and blinked out of it as he went on talking.

“I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only one death. I tell you now that they were not weapons, and were not used to cause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the bloody knife, the exploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not used to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him.”

“To save him!” repeated Gilder. “And from what?”

“From himself,” said Father Brown. “He was a suicidal maniac.”

“What?” cried Merton in an incredulous tone. “And the Religion of Cheerfulness—”

“It is a cruel religion,” said the priest, looking out of the window. “Why couldn’t they let him weep a little, like his fathers before him? His plans stiffened, his views grew cold; behind that merry mask was the empty mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public level, he fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned long ago. But there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere teetotaler: that he pictures and expects that psychological inferno from which he has warned others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong prematurely, and by this morning he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in hell, in so crazy a voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad for death, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had scattered round him death in many shapes—a running noose and his friend’s revolver and a knife. Royce entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife on the mat behind him, snatched up the revolver, and having no time to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. The suicide saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for the window. The rescuer did the only thing he could—ran after him with the rope and tried to tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father free. At first she only slashed poor Royce’s knuckles, from which has come all the little blood in this affair. But, of course, you noticed that he left blood, but no wound, on that servant’s face? Only before the poor woman swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through that window into eternity.”

There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises of Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce, to whom he said: “I think I should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady are worth more than Armstrong’s obituary notices.”

“Confound Armstrong’s notices,” cried Royce roughly. “Don’t you see it was because she mustn’t know?”

“Mustn’t know what?” asked Merton.

“Why, that she killed her father, you fool!” roared the other. “He’d have been alive now but for her. It might craze her to know that.”

“No, I don’t think it would,” remarked Father Brown, as he picked up his hat. “I rather think I should tell her. Even the most murderous blunders don’t poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier now. I’ve got to go back to the Deaf School.”

As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from Highgate stopped him and said:

“The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin.”

“I’ve got to get back to the Deaf School,” said Father Brown. “I’m sorry I can’t stop for the inquiry.”

A un segnale sufficientemente discreto, i poliziotti si strinsero attorno al grande uomo per condurlo via; ma la loro discrezione fu alquanto sconcertata dalla notevole apparizione di Father Brown, che se ne stava carponi sul tappeto, sulla soglia, come impegnato in una sorta di preghiere indecorose. Essendo una persona del tutto insensibile alla figura sociale che faceva, rimase in quella posizione, ma volse una faccia luminosa e tonda verso i presenti, offrendo l’aspetto di un quadrupede con una testa umana quanto mai comica.

«Sentite», disse bonariamente, «così proprio non va, sapete. All’inizio avete detto che non avevamo trovato alcuna arma. Ma adesso ne troviamo troppe: c’è il coltello per pugnalare, e la corda per strangolare, e la pistola per sparare; e dopotutto si è rotto il collo cadendo da una finestra! Non va. Non è economico.» E scosse il capo verso il pavimento, come fa un cavallo al pascolo.

L’ispettore Gilder aveva aperto la bocca con serie intenzioni, ma prima che potesse parlare la grottesca figura sul pavimento era andata avanti con gran facondia.

«E ora tre cose del tutto impossibili. Primo, questi fori nel tappeto, dove sono penetrati i sei proiettili. Perché mai qualcuno dovrebbe sparare al tappeto? Un ubriaco spara in faccia al suo nemico, alla cosa che gli sogghigna davanti. Non attacca briga con i propri piedi, né pone l’assedio alle proprie pantofole. E poi c’è la corda» — e finito con il tappeto l’oratore sollevò le mani e se le mise in tasca, ma continuò con la massima naturalezza rimanendo in ginocchio — «in quale immaginabile ubriachezza qualcuno cercherebbe di mettere una corda attorno al collo di un uomo per finire con l’avvolgergliela attorno alla gamba? Royce, in ogni caso, non era ubriaco a tal punto, altrimenti a quest’ora dormirebbe come un ghiro. E, cosa più lampante di tutte, la bottiglia di whisky. Voi supponete che un dipsomane abbia lottato per la bottiglia di whisky, e poi, avendola vinta, l’abbia fatta rotolare in un angolo, versandone metà e lasciando l’altra metà. È l’ultima cosa al mondo che un dipsomane farebbe.»

Si rialzò goffamente in piedi, e disse all’omicida autoaccusatosi in tono di limpida contrizione: «Mi dispiace terribilmente, mio caro signore, ma il suo racconto è davvero una sciocchezza.»

«Signore», disse Alice Armstrong a bassa voce al prete, «posso parlarle da sola un momento?»

Questa richiesta costrinse il comunicativo ecclesiastico a uscire dal corridoio, e prima che egli potesse parlare, nella stanza attigua, la ragazza già parlava con strana incisività.

«Lei è un uomo intelligente», disse, «e sta cercando di salvare Patrick, lo so. Ma è inutile. Il nocciolo di tutto questo è nero, e più cose scoprirà, più ce ne saranno contro il miserabile uomo che amo.»

«Perché?» chiese Brown, guardandola fermamente.

«Perché», rispose lei con altrettanta fermezza, «l’ho visto commettere il delitto con i miei occhi.»

«Ah!» disse Brown imperturbato, «e che cosa ha fatto?»

«Ero in questa stanza accanto a loro», spiegò; «entrambe le porte erano chiuse, ma udii a un tratto una voce, come non ne avevo mai udite sulla terra, ruggire “Inferno, inferno, inferno”, più e più volte, e poi le due porte tremarono alla prima esplosione della rivoltella. Per tre volte ancora la cosa tuonò prima che riuscissi ad aprire le due porte e trovassi la stanza piena di fumo; ma la pistola fumava nella mano del mio povero, folle Patrick; e lo vidi sparare con i miei occhi l’ultima omicida scarica. Poi si avventò su mio padre, che si aggrappava terrorizzato al davanzale della finestra, e, afferrandolo, cercò di strangolarlo con la corda, che gli gettò intorno al capo, ma che gli scivolò lungo le spalle in lotta fino ai piedi. Allora si strinse attorno a una gamba e Patrick lo trascinò come un forsennato. Afferrai un coltello dallo zerbino e, precipitandomi fra loro, riuscii a tagliare la corda prima di svenire.»

«Capisco», disse Father Brown, con la stessa cortesia di legno. «Grazie.»

Mentre la ragazza crollava sotto i propri ricordi, il prete passò rigidamente nella stanza attigua, dove trovò Gilder e Merton soli con Patrick Royce, che sedeva su una sedia, ammanettato. Là disse all’ispettore con sottomissione:

«Potrei dire una parola al prigioniero, in sua presenza; e potrebbe egli togliersi quei buffi ferri per un minuto?»

«È un uomo molto forte», disse Merton sottovoce. «Perché vuole che glieli tolgano?»

«Ecco, pensavo», rispose umilmente il prete, «che forse potrei avere il grandissimo onore di stringergli la mano.»

Entrambi i detective lo fissarono, e Father Brown aggiunse: «Non vuole raccontar loro come è andata, signore?»

L’uomo sulla sedia scosse la testa arruffata, e il prete si voltò impaziente.

«Allora lo farò io», disse. «Le vite private contano più delle reputazioni pubbliche. Sto per salvare i vivi, e lascio che i morti seppelliscano i loro morti.»

Andò alla fatale finestra, e strizzò gli occhi guardando fuori mentre proseguiva a parlare.

«Vi ho detto che in questo caso c’erano troppe armi e una sola morte. Ora vi dico che non erano armi, e non furono usate per causare la morte. Tutti quei macabri strumenti — il cappio, il coltello insanguinato, la pistola che sparava — erano strumenti di una curiosa misericordia. Non furono usati per uccidere Sir Aaron, ma per salvarlo.»

«Per salvarlo!» ripeté Gilder. «E da che cosa?»

«Da se stesso», disse Father Brown. «Era un maniaco suicida.»

«Che cosa?» esclamò Merton in tono incredulo. «E la Religione dell’Allegria…»

«È una religione crudele», disse il prete, guardando fuori dalla finestra. «Perché non potevano lasciarlo piangere un poco, come i suoi padri prima di lui? I suoi progetti si irrigidirono, le sue vedute si fecero fredde; dietro quella maschera gioviale c’era la mente vuota dell’ateo. Alla fine, per mantenere il suo ilare livello pubblico, tornò a quel bere liquori che aveva abbandonato tanto tempo prima. Ma c’è questo orrore, nell’alcolismo di un sincero astemio: che egli si raffigura e attende quell’inferno psicologico da cui ha messo in guardia gli altri. Piombò prematuramente sul povero Armstrong, e stamattina egli era ridotto a tal punto che sedeva qui e gridava di essere all’inferno, con una voce così folle che sua figlia non la riconosceva. Era pazzo di morte, e con le scimmiesche stramberie del pazzo aveva sparso intorno a sé la morte sotto molte forme: un cappio scorsoio, la rivoltella dell’amico e un coltello. Royce entrò per caso e agì in un lampo. Gettò il coltello sullo zerbino dietro di sé, afferrò la rivoltella e, non avendo il tempo di scaricarla, la svuotò colpo dopo colpo sul pavimento. Il suicida vide una quarta forma della morte e si slanciò verso la finestra. Il soccorritore fece l’unica cosa che poteva: gli corse dietro con la corda e cercò di legarlo mani e piedi. Fu allora che la sventurata ragazza entrò di corsa e, fraintendendo la lotta, si sforzò di liberare il padre a colpi di coltello. Dapprima non fece che ferire le nocche del povero Royce, da cui è venuto tutto il poco sangue di questa faccenda. Ma, naturalmente, avrete notato che sul volto di quel domestico lui lasciò sangue, ma nessuna ferita. Solo, prima che la povera donna svenisse, riuscì a liberare il padre con i colpi, sicché egli precipitò attraverso quella finestra nell’eternità.»

Vi fu un lungo silenzio, rotto lentamente dai rumori metallici di Gilder che apriva le manette di Patrick Royce, al quale disse: «Credo che avrei dovuto dire la verità, signore. Lei e la giovane signora valete più dei necrologi di Armstrong.»

«Al diavolo i necrologi di Armstrong», esclamò Royce rudemente. «Non capisce che era perché lei non doveva sapere?»

«Non doveva sapere che cosa?» chiese Merton.

«Ma come, che ha ucciso suo padre, sciocco che non è altro!» ruggì l’altro. «A quest’ora sarebbe vivo, se non fosse stato per lei. Saperlo potrebbe farla impazzire.»

«No, non credo», osservò Father Brown, raccogliendo il cappello. «Sono piuttosto propenso a dirglielo. Neppure gli errori più sanguinosi avvelenano la vita come fanno i peccati; a ogni modo, credo che ora possiate essere entrambi più felici. Devo tornare alla Scuola per Sordi.»

Mentre usciva sull’erba battuta dal vento, un conoscente di Highgate lo fermò e gli disse:

«Il coroner è arrivato. L’inchiesta sta per cominciare.»

«Devo tornare alla Scuola per Sordi», disse Father Brown. «Mi dispiace di non potermi fermare per l’inchiesta.»