The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (114 page)

‘
That
may be true,’ said the Professor, nodding slowly. ‘But when it was confirmed, I
knew it was the truth. You say I saw nothing myself. But I did; I saw my own clerk
disappear. Berridge did disappear.’

‘
Berridge
did not disappear,’ said Father Brown. ‘On the contrary.’

‘
What
the devil do you mean by “on the contrary”?’

‘
I
mean,’ said Father Brown, ‘that he never disappeared. He appeared.’

Openshaw
stared across at his friend, but the eyes had already altered in his head, as they
did when they concentrated on a new presentation of a problem. The priest went
on: ‘He appeared in your study, disguised in a bushy red beard and buttoned up
in a clumsy cape, and announced himself as the Rev. Luke Pringle. And you had
never noticed your own clerk enough to know him again, when he was in so
rough-and-ready a disguise.’

‘
But
surely,’ began the Professor.

‘
Could
you describe him for the police?’ asked Father Brown. ‘Not you. You probably knew
he was clean-shaven and wore tinted glasses; and merely taking off those glasses
was a better disguise than putting on anything else. You had never seen his
eyes any more than his soul; jolly laughing eyes. He had planted his absurd book
and all the properties; then he calmly smashed the window, put on the beard and
cape and walked into your study; knowing that you had never looked at him in
your life.’

‘
But
why should he play me such an insane trick?’ demanded Openshaw.

‘
Why,
because you had never looked at him in your life,’ said Father Brown; and his hand
slightly curled and clinched, as if he might have struck the table, if he had
been given to gesture. ‘You called him the Calculating Machine, because that
was all you ever used him for. You never found out even what a stranger strolling
into your office could find out, in five minutes’ chat: that he was a character;
that he was full of antics; that he had all sorts of views on you and your
theories and your reputation for “spotting” people. Can’t you understand his
itching to prove that you couldn’t spot your own clerk? He has nonsense notions
of all sorts. About collecting useless things, for instance. Don’t you know the
story of the woman who bought the two most useless things: an old doctor’s
brass-plate and a wooden leg? With those your ingenious clerk created the
character of the remarkable Dr Hankey; as easily as the visionary Captain Wales.
Planting them in his own house — ’

‘
Do
you mean that place we visited beyond Hampstead was Berridge’s own house?’
asked Openshaw.

‘
Did
you know his house — or even his address?’ retorted the priest. ‘Look here, don’t
think I’m speaking disrespectfully of you or your work. You are a great servant
of truth and you know I could never be disrespectful to that. You’ve seen
through a lot of liars, when you put your mind to it. But don’t only look at
liars. Do, just occasionally, look at honest men — like the waiter.’

‘
Where
is Berridge now?’ asked the Professor, after a long silence.

‘
I
haven’t the least doubt,’ said Father Brown, ‘that he is back in your office. In
fact, he came back into your office at the exact moment when the Rev. Luke Pringle
read the awful volume and faded into the void.’

There
was another long silence and then Professor Openshaw laughed; with the laugh of
a great man who is great enough to look small. Then he said abruptly:

‘
I
suppose I do deserve it; for not noticing the nearest helpers I have. But you must
admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel
just a momentary awe of the awful volume?’

‘
Oh,
that,’ said Father Brown. ‘I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It’s all
blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.’

A
young man in knickerbockers, with an eager sanguine profile, was playing golf against
himself on the links that lay parallel to the sand and sea, which were all
growing grey with twilight. He was not carelessly knocking a ball about, but
rather practising particular strokes with a sort of microscopic fury; like a
neat and tidy whirlwind. He had learned many games quickly, but he had a disposition
to learn them a little more quickly than they can be learnt. He was rather
prone to be a victim of those remarkable invitations by which a man may learn
the Violin in Six Lessons — or acquire a perfect French accent by a Correspondence
Course. He lived in the breezy atmosphere of such hopeful advertisement and
adventure. He was at present the private secretary of Admiral Sir Michael
Craven, who owned the big house behind the park abutting on the links. He was
ambitious, and had no intention of continuing indefinitely to be private secretary
to anybody. But he was also reasonable; and he knew that the best way of
ceasing to be a secretary was to be a good secretary. Consequently he was a very
good secretary; dealing with the ever-accumulating arrears of the Admiral’s
correspondence with the same swift centripetal concentration with which he
addressed the golf-ball. He had to struggle with the correspondence alone and
at his own discretion at present; for the Admiral had been with his ship for
the last six months, and, though now returning, was not expected for hours, or
possibly days.

With
an athletic stride, the young man, whose name was Harold Harker, crested the rise
of turf that was the rampart of the links and, looking out across the sands to
the sea, saw a strange sight. He did not see it very clearly; for the dusk was
darkening every minute under stormy clouds; but it seemed to him, by a sort of
momentary illusion, like a dream of days long past or a drama played by ghosts,
out of another age in history.

The
last of the sunset lay in long bars of copper and gold above the last dark strip
of sea that seemed rather black than blue. But blacker still against this gleam
in the west, there passed in sharp outline, like figures in a shadow pantomime,
two men with three-cornered cocked hats and swords; as if they had just landed
from one of the wooden ships of Nelson. It was not at all the sort of
hallucination that would have come natural to Mr Harker, had he been prone to
hallucinations. He was of the type that is at once sanguine and scientific; and
would be more likely to fancy the flying-ships of the future than the fighting
ships of the past. He therefore very sensibly came to the conclusion that even
a futurist can believe his eyes.

His
illusion did not last more than a moment. On the second glance, what he saw was
unusual but not incredible. The two men who were striding in single file across
the sands, one some fifteen yards behind the other, were ordinary modern naval officers;
but naval officers wearing that almost extravagant full-dress uniform which
naval officers never do wear if they can possibly help it; only on great ceremonial
occasions such as the visits of Royalty. In the man walking in front, who
seemed more or less unconscious of the man walking behind, Harker recognized at
once the high-bridged nose and spike-shaped beard of his own employer the
Admiral. The other man following in his tracks he did not know. But he did know
something about the circumstances connected with the ceremonial occasion. He
knew that when the Admiral’s ship put in at the adjacent port, it was to be
formally visited by a Great Personage; which was enough, in that sense, to
explain the officers being in full dress. But he did also know the officers; or
at any rate the Admiral. And what could have possessed the Admiral to come on
shore in that rig-out, when one could swear he would seize five minutes to
change into mufti or at least into undress uniform, was more than his secretary
could conceive. It seemed somehow to be the very last thing he would do. It was
indeed to remain for many weeks one of the chief mysteries of this mysterious
business. As it was, the outline of these fantastic court uniforms against the
empty scenery, striped with dark sea and sand, had something suggestive of
comic opera; and reminded the spectator of Pinafore.

The
second figure was much more singular; somewhat singular in appearance, despite his
correct lieutenant’s uniform, and still more extraordinary in behaviour. He walked
in a strangely irregular and uneasy manner; sometimes quickly and sometimes
slowly; as if he could not make up his mind whether to overtake the Admiral or
not. The Admiral was rather deaf and certainly heard no footsteps behind him on
the yielding sand; but the footsteps behind him, if traced in the detective
manner, would have given rise to twenty conjectures from a limp to a dance. The
man’s face was swarthy as well as darkened with shadow, and every now and then
the eyes in it shifted and shone, as if to accent his agitation. Once he began
to run and then abruptly relapsed into a swaggering slowness and carelessness.
Then he did something which Mr Harker could never have conceived any normal
naval officer in His Britannic Majesty’s Service doing, even in a lunatic
asylum. He drew his sword.

It
was at this bursting-point of the prodigy that the two passing figures disappeared
behind a headland on the shore. The staring secretary had just time to notice
the swarthy stranger, with a resumption of carelessness, knock off a head of
sea-holly with his glittering blade. He seemed then to have abandoned all idea
of catching the other man up. But Mr Harold Harker’s face became very thoughtful
indeed; and he stood there ruminating for some time before he gravely took
himself inland, towards the road that ran past the gates of the great house and
so by a long curve down to the sea.

It
was up this curving road from the coast that the Admiral might be expected to come,
considering the direction in which he had been walking, and making the natural
assumption that he was bound for his own door. The path along the sands, under
the links, turned inland just beyond the headland and solidifying itself into a
road, returned towards Craven House. It was down this road, therefore, that the
secretary darted, with characteristic impetuosity, to meet his patron returning
home. But the patron was apparently not returning home. What was still more
peculiar, the secretary was not returning home either; at least until many
hours later; a delay quite long enough to arouse alarm and mystification at
Craven House.

Behind
the pillars and palms of that rather too palatial country house, indeed, there was
expectancy gradually changing to uneasiness. Gryce the butler, a big bilious
man abnormally silent below as well as above stairs, showed a certain restlessness
as he moved about the main front-hall and occasionally looked out of the side
windows of the porch, on the white road that swept towards the sea. The
Admiral’s sister Marion, who kept house for him, had her brother’s high nose
with a more sniffy expression; she was voluble, rather rambling, not without
humour, and capable of sudden emphasis as shrill as a cockatoo. The Admiral’s
daughter Olive was dark, dreamy, and as a rule abstractedly silent, perhaps
melancholy; so that her aunt generally conducted most of the conversation, and
that without reluctance. But the girl also had a gift of sudden laughter that
was very engaging.

‘
I
can’t think why they’re not here already,’ said the elder lady. ‘The postman distinctly
told me he’d seen the Admiral coming along the beach; along with that dreadful
creature Rook. Why in the world they call him Lieutenant Rook — ’

‘
Perhaps,’
suggested the melancholy young lady, with a momentary brightness, ‘perhaps they
call him Lieutenant because he is a Lieutenant.’

‘
I
can’t think why the Admiral keeps him,’ snorted her aunt, as if she were talking
of a housemaid. She was very proud of her brother and always called him the
Admiral; but her notions of a commission in the Senior Service were inexact.

‘
Well,
Roger Rook is sulky and unsociable and all that,’ replied Olive, ‘but of course
that wouldn’t prevent him being a capable sailor.’

‘
Sailor!’
cried her aunt with one of her rather startling cockatoo notes, ‘he isn’t my notion
of a sailor. The Lass that Loved a Sailor, as they used to sing when I was
young . . . Just think of it! He’s not gay and free and whats-its-name. He doesn’t
sing chanties or dance a hornpipe.’

‘
Well,’
observed her niece with gravity. ‘The Admiral doesn’t very often dance a hornpipe.’

‘
Oh,
you know what I mean — he isn’t bright or breezy or anything,’ replied the old lady.
‘Why, that secretary fellow could do better than that.’

Olive’s
rather tragic face was transfigured by one of her good and rejuvenating waves of
laughter.

‘
I’m
sure Mr Harker would dance a hornpipe for you,’ she said, ‘and say he had learnt
it in half an hour from the book of instructions. He’s always learning things
of that sort.’

She
stopped laughing suddenly and looked at her aunt’s rather strained face.

‘
I
can’t think why Mr Harker doesn’t come,’ she added.

‘
I
don’t care about Mr Harker,’ replied the aunt, and rose and looked out of the window.

The
evening light had long turned from yellow to grey and was now turning almost to
white under the widening moonlight, over the large flat landscape by the coast;
unbroken by any features save a clump of sea-twisted trees round a pool and beyond,
rather gaunt and dark against the horizon, the shabby fishermen’s tavern on the
shore that bore the name of the Green Man. And all that road and landscape was
empty of any living thing. Nobody had seen the figure in the cocked hat that
had been observed, earlier in the evening, walking by the sea; or the other and
stranger figure that had been seen trailing after him. Nobody had even seen the
secretary who saw them.

It
was after midnight when the secretary at last burst in and aroused the household;
and his face, white as a ghost, looked all the paler against the background of
the stolid face and figure of a big Inspector of Police. Somehow that red,
heavy, indifferent face looked, even more than the white and harassed one, like
a mask of doom. The news was broken to the two women with such consideration or
concealments as were possible. But the news was that the body of Admiral Craven
had been eventually fished out of the foul weeds and scum of the pool under the
trees; and that he was drowned and dead.

Anybody
acquainted with Mr Harold Harker, secretary, will realize that, whatever his agitation,
he was by morning in a mood to be tremendously on the spot. He hustled the
Inspector, whom he had met the night before on the road down by the Green Man,
into another room for private and practical consultation. He questioned the
Inspector rather as the Inspector might have questioned a yokel. But Inspector
Burns was a stolid character; and was either too stupid or too clever to resent
such trifles. It soon began to look as if he were by no means so stupid as he
looked; for he disposed of Harker’s eager questions in a manner that was slow
but methodical and rational.

‘
Well,’
said Harker (his head full of many manuals with titles like ‘Be a Detective in Ten
Days’). ‘Well, it’s the old triangle, I suppose. Accident, Suicide or Murder.’

‘
I
don’t see how it could be accident,’ answered the policeman. ‘It wasn’t even dark
yet and the pool’s fifty yards from the straight road that he knew like his own
doorstep. He’d no more have got into that pond than he’d go and carefully lie
down in a puddle in the street. As for suicide, it’s rather a responsibility to
suggest it, and rather improbable too. The Admiral was a pretty spry and
successful man and frightfully rich, nearly a millionaire in fact; though of
course that doesn’t prove anything. He seemed to be pretty normal and
comfortable in his private life too; he’s the last man I should suspect of
drowning himself.’

‘
So
that we come,’ said the secretary, lowering his voice with the thrill, ‘I suppose
we come to the third possibility.’

‘
We
won’t be in too much of a hurry about that,’ said the Inspector to the annoyance
of Harker, who was in a hurry about everything. ‘But naturally there are one or
two things one would like to know. One would like to know — about his property,
for instance. Do you know who’s likely to come in for it? You’re his private
secretary; do you know anything about his will?’

‘
I’m
not so private a secretary as all that,’ answered the young man. ‘His solicitors
are Messrs Willis, Hardman and Dyke, over in Suttford High Street; and I
believe the will is in their custody.’

‘
Well,
I’d better get round and see them pretty soon,’ said the Inspector.

‘
Let’s
get round and see them at once,’ said the impatient secretary.

He
took a turn or two restlessly up and down the room and then exploded in a fresh
place.

‘
What
have you done about the body, Inspector?’ he asked.

‘
Dr
Straker is examining it now at the Police Station. His report ought to be ready
in an hour or so.’

‘
It
can’t be ready too soon,’ said Harker. ‘It would save time if we could meet him
at the lawyer’s.’ Then he stopped and his impetuous tone changed abruptly to one
of some embarrassment.

‘
Look
here,’ he said, ‘I want ... we want to consider the young lady, the poor Admiral’s
daughter, as much as possible just now. She’s got a notion that may be all
nonsense; but I wouldn’t like to disappoint her. There’s some friend of hers
she wants to consult, staying in the town at present. Man of the name of Brown;
priest or parson of some sort — she’s given me his address. I don’t take much
stock in priests or parsons, but — ’