The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (103 page)

And
he glanced across at the opalescent eyes and smiling bearded mouth of the Master,
and saw that the smile was just a shade broader. There was something in it that
made the others jump to their feet with an air of sudden relaxation and general,
gasping relief.

“
This
is a very fortunate escape for us all,” said Lord Mounteagle, smiling rather nervously.
“There cannot be the least doubt it is as you say. It has been a most painful
episode and I really don’t know what apologies — —”

“
I
have no complaints,” said the Master or the Mountain, still smiling. “You have never
touched Me at all.”

While
the rest went off rejoicing, with Hardcastle for the hero of the hour, the little
Phrenologist with the whiskers sauntered back towards his preposterous tent.
Looking over his shoulder he was surprised to find Father Brown following him.

“
Can
I feel your bumps?” asked the expert, in his mildly sarcastic tone.

“
I
don’t think you want to feel any more, do you?” said the priest good-humouredly.
“You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

“
Yep,”
replied the other. “Lady Mounteagle asked me to keep an eye on the Master, being
no fool, for all her mysticism; and when he left his tent, I could only follow
by behaving like a nuisance and a monomaniac. If anybody had come into my tent,
I’d have had to look up Bumps in an encyclopaedia.”

“
Bumps,
What Ho She; see Folk-Lore,” observed Father Brown, dreamily. “Well, you were quite
in the part in pestering people — at a bazaar.”

“
Rum
case, wasn’t it?” remarked the fallacious Phrenologist. “Queer to think the thing
was there all the time.”

“
Very
queer,” said the priest.

Something
in his voice made the other man stop and stare.

“
Look
here!” he cried; “what’s the matter with you? What are you looking like that for!
Don’t you believe that it was there all the time?”

Father
Brown blinked rather as if he had received a buffet; then he said slowly and with
hesitation: “No, the fact is ... I can’t — I can’t quite bring myself to believe
it.”

“
You’re
not the sort of chap,” said the other shrewdly, “who’d say that without reason.
Why don’t you think the ruby had been there all the time?”

“
Only
because I put it back myself,” said Father Brown.

The
other man stood rooted to the spot, like one whose hair was standing on end. He
opened his mouth without speech.

“
Or
rather,” went on the priest, “I persuaded the thief to let me put it back. I told
him what I’d guessed and showed him there was still time for repentance. I don’t
mind telling you in professional confidence; besides, I don’t think the Mounteagles
would prosecute, now they’ve got the thing back, especially considering who
stole it.”

“
Do
you mean the Master?” asked the late Phroso.

“
No,”
said Father Brown, “the Master didn’t steal it.”

“
But
I don’t understand,” objected the other. “Nobody was outside the window except the
Master; and a hand certainly came from outside.”

“
The
hand came from outside, but the thief came from the inside,” said Father Brown.

“
We
seem to be back among the mystics again. Look here, I’m a practical man; I only
wanted to know if it is all right with the ruby — —”

“
I
knew it was all wrong,” said Father Brown, “before I even knew there was a ruby.”

After
a pause he went on thoughtfully. “Right away back in that argument of theirs, by
the tents, I knew things were going wrong. People will tell you that theories
don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical. Don’t you believe
them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something
the matter. Now, that quite abstract argument ended with something funny.
Consider what the theories were. Hardcastle was a trifle superior and said that
all things were perfectly possible; but they were mostly done merely by
mesmerism, or clairvoyance; scientific names for philosophical puzzles, in the
usual style. But Hunter thought it all sheer fraud and wanted to show it up. By
Lady Mounteagle’s testimony, he not only went about showing up fortune-tellers
and such like, but he had actually come down specially to confront this one. He
didn’t often come; he didn’t get on with Mounteagle, from whom, being a
spendthrift, he always tried to borrow; but when he heard the Master was
coming, he came hurrying down. Very well. In spite of that, it was Hardcastle
who went to consult the wizard and Hunter who refused. He said he’d waste no
time on such nonsense; having apparently wasted a lot of his life on proving it
to be nonsense. That seems inconsistent. He thought in this case it was
crystal-gazing; but he found it was palmistry.”

“
Do
you mean he made that an excuse?” asked his companion, puzzled.

“
I
thought so at first,” replied the priest; “but I know now it was not an excuse,
but a reason. He really was put off by finding it was a palmist, because — —”

“
Well,”
demanded the other impatiently.

“
Because
he didn’t want to take his glove off,” said Father Brown.

“
Take
his glove off?” repeated the inquirer.

“
If
he had,” said Father Brown mildly, “we should all have seen that his hand was painted
pale brown already. ... Oh, yes, he did come down specially because the Master
was here. He came down very fully prepared.”

“
You
mean,” cried Phroso, “that it was Hunter’s hand, painted brown, that came in at
the window? Why, he was with us all the time!”

“
Go
and try it on the spot and you’ll find it’s quite possible,” said the priest. “Hunter
leapt forward and leaned out of the window; in a flash he could tear off his
glove, tuck up his sleeve, and thrust his hand back round the other side of the
pillar, while he gripped the Indian with the other hand and halloed out that
he’d caught the thief. I remarked at the time that he held the thief with one
hand, where any sane man would have used two. But the other hand was slipping
the jewel into his trouser pocket.”

There
was a long pause and then the ex-Phrenologist said slowly. “Well, that’s a staggerer.
But the thing stumps me still. For one thing, it doesn’t explain the queer
behaviour of the old magician himself. If he was entirely innocent, why the
devil didn’t he say so? Why wasn’t he indignant at being accused and searched?
Why did he only sit smiling and hinting in a sly way what wild and wonderful
things he could do?”

“
Ah!”
cried Father Brown, with a sharp note in his voice: “there you come up against it!
Against everything these people don’t and won’t understand. All religions are
the same, says Lady Mounteagle. Are they, by George! I tell you some of them
are so different that the best man of one creed will be callous, where the worst
man of another will be sensitive. I told you I didn’t like spiritual power,
because the accent is on the word power. I don’t say the Master would steal a
ruby, very likely he wouldn’t; very likely he wouldn’t think it worth stealing.
It wouldn’t be specially his temptation to take jewels; but it would be his
temptation to take credit for miracles that didn’t belong to him any more than
the jewels. It was to that sort of temptation, to that sort of stealing that he
yielded today. He liked us to think that he had marvellous mental powers that
could make a material object fly through space; and even when he hadn’t done
it, he allowed us to think he had. The point about private property wouldn’t
occur primarily to him at all. The question wouldn’t present itself in the
form: ‘Shall I steal this pebble?’ but only in the form: ‘Could I make a pebble
vanish and re-appear on a distant mountain?’ The question of whose pebble would
strike him as irrelevant. That is what I mean by religious being different. He
is very proud of having what he calls spiritual powers. But what he calls
spiritual doesn’t mean what we call moral. It means rather mental; the power of
the mind over matter; the magician controlling the elements. Now we are not
like that, even when we are no better; even when we are worse. We, whose
fathers at least were Christians, who have grown up under those mediaeval
arches even if we bedizen them with all the demons in Asia — we have the very
opposite ambition and the very opposite shame. We should all be anxious that
nobody should think we had done it. He was actually anxious that everybody
should think he had — even when he hadn’t. He actually stole the credit of
stealing. While we were all casting the crime from us like a snake, he was
actually luring it to him like a snake-charmer. But snakes are not pets in this
country! Here the traditions of Christendom tell at once under a test like
this. Look at old Mounteagle himself, for instance! Ah, you may be as Eastern
and esoteric as you like, and wear a turban and a long robe and live on messages
from Mahatmas; but if a bit of stone is stolen in your house, and your friends
are suspected, you will jolly soon find out that you’re an ordinary English
gentleman in a fuss. The man who really did it would never want us to think he
did it, for he also was an English gentleman. He was also something very much
better; he was a Christian thief. I hope and believe he was a penitent thief.”

“
By
your account,” said his companion laughing, “the Christian thief and the heathen
fraud went by contraries. One was sorry he’d done it and the other was sorry he
hadn’t.”

“
We
mustn’t be too hard on either of them,” said Father Brown. “Other English gentlemen
have stolen before now, and been covered by legal and political protection; and
the West also has its own way of covering theft with sophistry. After all, the
ruby is not the only kind of valuable stone in the world that has changed
owners; it is true of other precious stones; often carved like cameos and
coloured like flowers.” The other looked at him inquiringly; and the priest’s
finger was pointed to the Gothic outline of the great Abbey. “A great graven
stone,” he said, “and that was also stolen.”

A
BLAZE of lightning blanched the grey woods tracing all the wrinkled foliage down
to the last curled leaf, as if every detail were drawn in silverpoint or graven
in silver. The same strange trick of lightning by which it seems to record
millions of minute things in an instant of time, picked out everything, from
the elegant litter of the picnic spread under the spreading tree to the pale
lengths of winding road, at the end of which a white car was waiting. In the
distance a melancholy mansion with four towers like a castle, which in the grey
evening had been but a dim and distant huddle of walls like a crumbling cloud,
seemed to spring into the foreground, and stood up with all its embattled,
roofs and blank and staring windows. And in this, at least, the light had
something in it of revelation. For to some of those grouped under the tree that
castle was, indeed, a thing faded and almost forgotten, which was to prove its
power to spring up again in the foreground of their lives.

The
light also clothed for an instant, in the same silver splendour, at least one human
figure that stood up as motionless as one of the towers. It was that of a tall
man standing on a rise of ground above the rest, who were mostly sitting on the
grass or stooping to gather up the hamper and crockery. He wore a picturesque
short cloak or cape clasped with a silver clasp and chain, which blazed like a
star when the flash touched it; and something metallic in his motionless figure
was emphasized by the fact that his closely-curled hair was of the burnished
yellow that can be really called gold; and had the look of being younger than
his face, which was handsome in a hard aquiline fashion, but looked, under the
strong light, a little wrinkled and withered. Possibly it had suffered from
wearing a mask of make-up, for Hugo Romaine was the greatest actor of his day.
For that instant of illumination the golden curls and ivory mask and silver
ornament made his figure gleam like that of a man in armour; the next instant
his figure was a dark and even black silhouette against the sickly grey of the
rainy evening sky.

But
there was something about its stillness, like that of a statue, that distinguished
it from the group at his feet. All the other figures around him had made the
ordinary involuntary movement at the unexpected shock of light; for though the
skies were rainy it was the first flash of the storm. The only lady present,
whose air of carrying grey hair gracefully, as if she were really proud of it,
marked her a matron of the United States, unaffectedly shut her eyes and
uttered a sharp cry. Her English husband, General Outram, a very stolid
Anglo-Indian, with a bald head and black moustache and whiskers of antiquated
pattern, looked up with one stiff movement and then resumed his occupation of
tidying up. A young man of the name of Mallow, very big and shy, with brown
eyes like a dog’s, dropped a cup and apologized awkwardly. A third man, much
more dressy, with a resolute head, like an inquisitive terrier’s, and grey hair
brushed stiffly back, was no other than the great newspaper proprietor, Sir
John Cockspur; he cursed freely, but not in an English idiom or accent, for he
came from Toronto. But the tall man in the short cloak stood up literally like
a statue in the twilight; his eagle face under the full glare had been like the
bust of a Roman Emperor, and the carved eyelids had not moved.

A
moment after, the dark dome cracked across with thunder, and the statue seemed to
come to life. He turned his head over his shoulder and said casually;

“
About
a minute and half between the flash and the bang, but I think the storm’s coming
nearer. A tree is not supposed to be a good umbrella for the lightning, but we
shall want it soon for the rain. I think it will be a deluge.”

The
young man glanced at the lady a little anxiously and said: “Can’t we get shelter
anywhere? There seems to be a house over there.”

“
There
is a house over there,” remarked the general, rather grimly; “but not quite what
you’d call a hospitable hotel.”

“
It’s
curious,” said his wife sadly, “that we should be caught in a storm with no house
near but that one, of all others.”

Something
in her tone seemed to check the younger man, who was both sensitive and comprehending;
but nothing of that sort daunted the man from Toronto.

“
What’s
the matter with it?” he asked. “Looks rather like a ruin.”

“
That
place,” said the general dryly, “belongs to the Marquis of Marne.”

“
Gee!”
said Sir John Cockspur. “I’ve heard all about that bird, anyhow; and a queer bird,
too. Ran him as a front-page mystery in the Comet last year. ‘The Nobleman
Nobody Knows.’”

“
Yes,
I’ve heard of him, too,” said young Mallow in a low voice. “There seem to be all
sorts of weird stories about why he hides himself like that. I’ve heard that he
wears a mask because he’s a leper. But somebody else told me quite seriously
that there’s a curse on the family; a child born with some frightful deformity
that’s kept in a dark room.”

“
The
Marquis of Marne has three heads,” remarked Romaine quite gravely. “Once in every
three hundred years a three-headed nobleman adorns the family tree. No human
being dares approach the accursed house except a silent procession of hatters,
sent to provide an abnormal number of hats. But,” — and his voice took one of
those deep and terrible turns, that could cause such a thrill in the theatre —
“my friends, those hats are of no human shape.”

The
American lady looked at him with a frown and a slight air of distrust, as if that
trick of voice had moved her in spite of herself.

“
I
don’t like your ghoulish jokes,” she said; “and I’d rather you didn’t joke about
this, anyhow.”

“
I
hear and obey,” replied the actor; “but am I, like the Light Brigade, forbidden
even to reason why?”

“
The
reason,” she replied, “is that he isn’t the Nobleman Nobody Knows. I know him myself,
or, at least, I knew him very well when he was an attache at Washington thirty
years ago, when we were all young. And he didn’t wear a mask, at least, he
didn’t wear it with me. He wasn’t a leper, though he may be almost as lonely.
And he had only one head and only one heart, and that was broken.”

“
Unfortunate
love affair, of course,” said Cockspur. “I should like that for the Comet.”

“
I
suppose it’s a compliment to us,” she replied thoughtfully, “that you always assume
a man’s heart is broken by a woman. But there are other kinds of love and
bereavement. Have you never read ‘In Memoriam’? Have you never heard of David
and Jonathan? What broke poor Marne up was the death of his brother; at least,
he was really a first cousin, but had been brought up with him like a brother,
and was much nearer than most brothers. James Mair, as the marquis was called
when I knew him, was the elder of the two, but he always played the part of
worshipper, with Maurice Mair as a god. And, by his account, Maurice Mair was
certainly a wonder. James was no fool, and very good at his own political job;
but it seems that Maurice could do that and everything else; that he was a brilliant
artist and amateur actor and musician, and all the rest of it. James was very
good-looking himself, long and strong and strenuous, with a high-bridged nose;
though I suppose the young people would think he looked very quaint with his
beard divided into two bushy whiskers in the fashion of those Victorian times.
But Maurice was clean-shaven, and, by the portraits shown to me, certainly
quite beautiful; though he looked a little more like a tenor than a gentleman
ought to look. James was always asking me again and again whether his friend
was not a marvel, whether any woman wouldn’t fall in love with him, and so on,
until it became rather a bore, except that it turned so suddenly into a
tragedy. His whole life seemed to be in that idolatry, and one day the idol
tumbled down, and was broken like any china doll. A chill caught at the seaside,
and it was all over.”

“
And
after that,” asked the young man, “did he shut himself up like this?”

“
He
went abroad at first,” she answered; “away to Asia and the Cannibal Islands and
Lord knows where. These deadly strokes take different people in different ways.
It took him in the way of an utter sundering or severance from everything, even
from tradition and as far as possible from memory. He could not bear a reference
to the old tie; a portrait or an anecdote or even an association. He couldn’t
bear the business of a great public funeral. He longed to get away. He stayed
away for ten years. I heard some rumour that he had begun to revive a little at
the end of the exile; but when he came back to his own home he relapsed
completely. He settled down into religious melancholia, and that’s practically
madness.”

“
The
priests got hold of him, they say,” grumbled the old general. “I know he gave thousands
to found a monastery, and lives himself rather like a monk — or, at any rate, a
hermit. Can’t understand what good they think that will do.”

“
Goddarned
superstition,” snorted Cockspur; “that sort of thing ought to be shown up. Here’s
a man that might have been useful to the Empire and the world, and these vampires
get hold of him and suck him dry. I bet with their unnatural notions they
haven’t even let him marry.”

“
No,
he has never married,” said the lady. “He was engaged when I knew him, as a matter
of fact, but I don’t think it ever came first with him, and I think it went
with the rest when everything else went. Like Hamlet and Ophelia — he lost hold
of love because he lost hold of life. But I knew the girl; indeed, I know her
still. Between ourselves, it was Viola Grayson, daughter of the old admiral.
She’s never married either.”

“
It’s
infamous! It’s infernal!” cried Sir John, bounding up. “It’s not only a tragedy,
but a crime. I’ve got a duty to the public, and I mean to see all this nonsensical
nightmare. In the twentieth century —”

He
was almost choked with his own protest, and then, after a silence, the old soldier
said:

“
Well,
I don’t profess to know much about those things, but I think these religious people
need to study a text which says: ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’”

“
Only,
unfortunately, that’s just what it looks like,” said his wife with a sigh. “It’s
just like some creepy story of a dead man burying another dead man, over and
over again for ever.”

“
The
storm has passed over us,” said Romaine, with a rather inscrutable smile. “You will
not have to visit the inhospitable house after all.”

She
suddenly shuddered.

“
Oh,
I’ll never do that again!” she exclaimed.

Mallow
was staring at her.

“
Again!
Have you tried it before?” he cried.

“
Well,
I did once,” she said, with a lightness not without a touch of pride; “but we needn’t
go back on all that. It’s not raining now, but I think we’d better be moving
back to the car.”

As
they moved off in procession, Mallow and the general brought up the rear; and the
latter said abruptly, lowering his voice:

“
I
don’t want that little cad Cockspur to hear but as you’ve asked you’d better know.
It’s the one thing I can’t forgive Marne; but I suppose these monks have drilled
him that way. My wife, who had been the best friend he ever had in America,
actually came to that house when he was walking in the garden. He was looking
at the ground like a monk, and hidden in a black hood that was really as
ridiculous as any mask. She had sent her card in, and stood there in his very path.
And he walked past her without a word or a glance, as if she had been a stone.
He wasn’t human; he was like some horrible automaton. She may well call him a
dead man.”

“
It’s
all very strange,” said the young man rather vaguely. “It isn’t like — like what
I should have expected.”

Young
Mr. Mallow, when he left that rather dismal picnic, took himself thoughtfully in
search of a friend. He did not know any monks, but he knew one priest, whom he
was very much concerned to confront with the curious revelations he had heard
that afternoon. He felt he would very much like to know the truth about the
cruel superstition that hung over the house of Marne, like the black thundercloud
he had seen hovering over it.

After
being referred from one place to another, he finally ran his friend Father Brown
to earth in the house of another friend, a Roman Catholic friend, with a large
family. He entered somewhat abruptly to find Father Brown sitting on the floor
with a serious expression, and attempting to pin the somewhat florid hat belonging
to a wax doll on to the head of a teddy bear.

Mallow
felt a faint sense of incongruity; but he was far too full of his problem to put
off the conversation if he could help it. He was staggering from a sort of set-back
in a subconscious process that had been going on for some time. He poured out
the whole tragedy of the house of Marne as he had heard it from the general’s
wife, along with most of the comments of the general and the newspaper proprietor.
A new atmosphere of attention seemed to be created with the mention of the
newspaper proprietor.

Father
Brown neither knew nor cared that his attitudes were comic or commonplace. He continued
to sit on the floor, where his large head and short legs made him look very
like a baby playing with toys. But there came into his great grey eyes a
certain expression that has been seen in the eyes of many men in many centuries
through the story of nineteen hundred years; only the men were not generally
sitting on floors, but at council tables, or on the seats of chapters, or the
thrones of bishops and cardinals; a far-off, watchful look, heavy with the
humility of a charge too great for men. Something of that anxious and
far-reaching look is found in the eyes of sailors and of those who have steered
through so many storms the ship of St. Peter.