The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (119 page)

Taylor
had turned quite white, but he forced his grating voice to composure: ‘I never said
Muggleton didn’t see Bruce on the pier.’

‘
No;
and why didn’t you?’ asked Father Brown. ‘If he made up one man on the pier, why
shouldn’t he make up two men on the pier? Of course we do know that Bruce did
exist; but we don’t seem to know what has happened to him for several weeks.
Perhaps he was left behind in Yorkshire.’

The
rather strident voice of the secretary rose almost to a scream. All his veneer of
society suavity seemed to have vanished.

‘
You’re
simply shuffling! You’re simply shirking! You’re trying to drag in mad
insinuations about me, simply because you can’t answer my question.’

‘
Let
me see,’ said Father Brown reminiscently. ‘What was your question?’

‘
You
know well enough what it was; and you know you’re damned well stumped by it. Where
is the man with the scarf? Who has seen him? Whoever heard of him or spoke of
him, except that little liar of yours? If you want to convince us, you must
produce him. If he ever existed, he may be hiding in the Hebrides or off to
Callao. But you’ve got to produce him, though I know he doesn’t exist. Well then!
Where is he?’

‘
I
rather think he is over there,’ said Father Brown, peering and blinking towards
the nearer waves that washed round the iron pillars of the pier; where the two figures
of the agent and the old fisher and preacher were still dark against the green
glow of the water. ‘I mean in that sort of net thing that’s tossing about in
the sea.’

With
whatever bewilderment, Inspector Grinstead took the upper hand again with a flash,
and strode down the beach.

‘
Do
you mean to say,’ he cried, ‘that the murderer’s body is in the old boy’s net?’

Father
Brown nodded as he followed down the shingly slope; and, even as they moved, little
Muggleton the agent turned and began to climb the same shore, his mere dark
outline a pantomime of amazement and discovery.

‘
It’s
true, for all we said,’ he gasped. ‘The murderer did try to swim ashore and was
drowned, of course, in that weather. Or else he did really commit suicide. Anyhow,
he drifted dead into Old Brimstone’s fishing-net, and that’s what the old
maniac meant when he said he fished for dead men.’

The
Inspector ran down the shore with an agility that outstripped them all, and was
heard shouting out orders. In a few moments the fishermen and a few bystanders,
assisted by the policemen, had hauled the net into shore, and rolled it with its
burden on to the wet sands that still reflected the sunset. The secretary looked
at what lay on the sands and the words died on his lips. For what lay on the
sands was indeed the body of a gigantic man in rags, with the huge shoulders
somewhat humped and bony eagle face; and a great red ragged woollen scarf or
comforter, sprawled along the sunset sands like a great stain of blood. But
Taylor was staring not at the gory scarf or the fabulous stature, but at the
face; and his own face was a conflict of incredulity and suspicion.

The
Inspector instantly turned to Muggleton with a new air of civility.

‘
This
certainly confirms your story,’ he said. And until he heard the tone of those words,
Muggleton had never guessed how almost universally his story had been disbelieved.
Nobody had believed him. Nobody but Father Brown.

Therefore,
seeing Father Brown edging away from the group, he made a movement to depart in
his company; but even then he was brought up rather short by the discovery that
the priest was once more being drawn away by the deadly attractions of the funny
little automatic machines. He even saw the reverend gentleman fumbling for a
penny. He stopped, however, with the penny poised in his finger and thumb, as
the secretary spoke for the last time in his loud discordant voice.

‘
And
I suppose we may add,’ he said, ‘that the monstrous and imbecile charges against
me are also at an end.’

‘
My
dear sir,’ said the priest, ‘I never made any charges against you. I’m not such
a fool as to suppose you were likely to murder your master in Yorkshire and then
come down here to fool about with his luggage. All I said was that I could make
out a better case against you than you were making out so vigorously against
poor Mr Muggleton. All the same, if you really want to learn the truth about
his business (and I assure you the truth isn’t generally grasped yet), I can
give you a hint even from your own affairs. It is rather a rum and significant
thing that Mr Bruce the millionaire had been unknown to all his usual haunts
and habits for weeks before he was really killed. As you seem to be a promising
amateur detective, I advise you to work on that line.’

‘
What
do you mean?’ asked Taylor sharply.

But
he got no answer out of Father Brown, who was once more completely concentrated
on jiggling the little handle of the machine, that made one doll jump out and then
another doll jump after it.

‘
Father
Brown,’ said Muggleton, his old annoyance faintly reviving: ‘Will you tell me why
you like that fool thing so much?’

‘
For
one reason,’ replied the priest, peering closely into the glass puppet-show. ‘Because
it contains the secret of this tragedy.’

Then
he suddenly straightened himself; and looked quite seriously at his companion.

‘
I
knew all along,’ he said, ‘that you were telling the truth and the opposite of the
truth.’

Muggleton
could only stare at a return of all the riddles.

‘
It’s
quite simple,’ added the priest, lowering his voice. ‘That corpse with the scarlet
scarf over there is the corpse of Braham Bruce the millionaire. There won’t be
any other.’

‘
But
the two men — ’ began Muggleton, and his mouth fell open.

‘
Your
description of the two men was quite admirably vivid,’ said Father Brown. ‘I assure
you I’m not at all likely to forget it. If I may say so, you have a literary
talent; perhaps journalism would give you more scope than detection. I believe
I remember practically each point about each person. Only, you see, queerly
enough, each point affected you in one way and me in exactly the opposite way.
Let’s begin with the first you mentioned. You said that the first man you saw
had an indescribable air of authority and dignity. And you said to yourself,
“That’s the Trust Magnate, the great merchant prince, the ruler of markets.”
But when I heard about the air of dignity and authority, I said to myself,
“That’s the actor; everything about this is the actor, “ You don’t get that
look by being President of the Chain Store Amalgamation Company. You get that
look by being Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost, or Julius Caesar, or King Lear, and you
never altogether lose it. You couldn’t see enough of his clothes to tell whether
they were really seedy, but you saw a strip of fur and a sort of faintly
fashionable cut; and I said to myself again, “The actor.”

‘
Next,
before we go into details about the other man, notice one thing about him evidently
absent from the first man. You said the second man was not only ragged but
unshaven to the point of being bearded. Now we have all seen shabby actors,
dirty actors, drunken actors, utterly disreputable actors. But such a thing as
a scrub-bearded actor, in a job or even looking round for a job, has scarcely
been seen in this world. On the other hand, shaving is often almost the first
thing to go, with a gentleman or a wealthy eccentric who is really letting
himself go to pieces. Now we have every reason to believe that your friend the
millionaire was letting himself go to pieces. His letter was the letter of a
man who had already gone to pieces. But it wasn’t only negligence that made him
look poor and shabby. Don’t you understand that the man was practically in
hiding? That was why he didn’t go to his hotel; and his own secretary hadn’t
seen him for weeks. He was a millionaire; but his whole object was to be a
completely disguised millionaire. Have you ever read “The Woman in White”?
Don’t you remember that the fashionable and luxurious Count Fosco, fleeing for
his life before a secret society, was found stabbed in the blue blouse of a
common French workman? Then let us go back for a moment to the demeanour of
these men. You saw the first man calm and collected and you said to yourself,
“That’s the innocent victim”; though the innocent victim’s own letter wasn’t at
all calm and collected. I heard he was calm and collected; and I said to
myself, “That’s the murderer.” Why should he be anything else but calm and
collected? He knew what he was going to do. He had made up his mind to do it
for a long time; if he had ever had any hesitation or remorse he had hardened
himself against them before he came on the scene — in his case, we might say,
on the stage. He wasn’t likely to have any particular stage-fright. He didn’t
pull out his pistol and wave it about; why should he? He kept it in his pocket
till he wanted it; very likely he fired from his pocket. The other man fidgeted
with his pistol because he was nervous as a cat, and very probably had never
had a pistol before. He did it for the same reason that he rolled his eyes; and
I remember that, even in your own unconscious evidence, it is particularly
stated that he rolled them backwards. In fact, he was looking behind him. In
fact, he was not the pursuer but the pursued. But because you happened to see
the first man first, you couldn’t help thinking of the other man as coming up
behind him. In mere mathematics and mechanics, each of them was running after
the other — just like the others.’

‘
What
others?’ inquired the dazed detective.

‘
Why,
these,’ cried Father Brown, striking the automatic machine with the little wooden
spade, which had incongruously remained in his hand throughout these murderous
mysteries. ‘These little clockwork dolls that chase each other round and round
for ever. Let us call them Mr Blue and Mr Red, after the colour of their coats.
I happened to start off with Mr Blue, and so the children said that Mr Red was
running after him; but it would have looked exactly the contrary if I had
started with Mr Red.’

‘
Yes,
I begin to see,’ said Muggleton; ‘and I suppose all the rest fits in. The family
likeness, of course, cuts both ways, and they never saw the murderer leaving
the pier — ’

‘
They
never looked for the murderer leaving the pier,’ said the other. ‘Nobody told them
to look for a quiet clean-shaven gentleman in an astrakhan coat. All the mystery
of his vanishing revolved on your description of a hulking fellow in a red
neckcloth. But the simple truth was that the actor in the astrakhan coat murdered
the millionaire with the red rag, and there is the poor fellow’s body. It’s
just like the red and blue dolls; only, because you saw one first, you guessed
wrong about which was red with vengeance and which was blue with funk.’

At
this point two or three children began to straggle across the sands, and the priest
waved them to him with the wooden spade, theatrically tapping the automatic
machine. Muggleton guessed that it was mainly to prevent their straying towards
the horrible heap on the shore.

‘
One
more penny left in the world,’ said Father Brown, ‘and then we must go home to tea.
Do you know, Doris, I rather like those revolving games, that just go round and
round like the Mulberry-Bush. After all, God made all the suns and stars to
play Mulberry-Bush. But those other games, where one must catch up with
another, where runners are rivals and run neck and neck and outstrip each other;
well — much nastier things seem to happen. I like to think of Mr Red and Mr
Blue always jumping with undiminished spirits; all free and equal; and never hurting
each other. “Fond lover, never, never, wilt thou kiss — or kill.” Happy, happy
Mr Red!

He
cannot change; though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever will thou jump; and he be Blue.

Reciting
this remarkable quotation from Keats, with some emotion, Father Brown tucked the
little spade under one arm, and giving a hand to two of the children, stumped
solemnly up the beach to tea.

Three
men came out from under the lowbrowed Tudor arch in the mellow facade of Mandeville
College, into the strong evening sunlight of a summer day which seemed as if it
would never end; and in that sunlight they saw something that blasted like
lightning; well-fitted to be the shock of their lives.

Even
before they had realized anything in the way of a catastrophe, they were conscious
of a contrast. They themselves, in a curious quiet way, were quite harmonious
with their surroundings. Though the Tudor arches that ran like a cloister round
the College gardens had been built four hundred years ago, at that moment when
the Gothic fell from heaven and bowed, or almost crouched, over the cosier
chambers of Humanism and the Revival of Learning — though they themselves were
in modern clothes (that is in clothes whose ugliness would have amazed any of
the four centuries) yet something in the spirit of the place made them all at
one. The gardens had been tended so carefully as to achieve the final triumph
of looking careless; the very flowers seemed beautiful by accident, like
elegant weeds; and the modern costumes had at least any picturesqueness that
can be produced by being untidy. The first of the three, a tall, bald, bearded
maypole of a man, was a familiar figure in the Quad in cap and gown; the gown
slipped off one of his sloping shoulders. The second was very
square-shouldered, short and compact, with a rather jolly grin, commonly clad
in a jacket, with his gown over his arm. The third was even shorter and much
shabbier, in black clerical clothes. But they all seemed suitable to Mandeville
College; and the indescribable atmosphere of the two ancient and unique
Universities of England. They fitted into it and they faded into it; which is
there regarded as most fitting.

The
two men seated on garden chairs by a little table were a sort of brilliant blot
on this grey-green landscape. They were clad mostly in black and yet they glittered
from head to heel, from their burnished top-hats to their perfectly polished
boots. It was dimly felt as an outrage that anybody should be so well-dressed
in the well-bred freedom of Mandeville College. The only excuse was that they
were foreigners. One was an American, a millionaire named Hake, dressed in the
spotlessly and sparklingly gentlemanly manner known only to the rich of New
York. The other, who added to all these things the outrage of an astrakhan
overcoat (to say nothing of a pair of florid whiskers), was a German Count of
great wealth, the shortest part of whose name was Von Zimmern. The mystery of
this story, however, is not the mystery of why they were there. They were there
for the reason that commonly explains the meeting of incongruous things; they
proposed to give the College some money. They had come in support of a plan
supported by several financiers and magnates of many countries, for founding a
new Chair of Economics at Mandeville College. They had inspected the College
with that tireless conscientious sightseeing of which no sons of Eve are
capable except the American and the German. And now they were resting from their
labours and looking solemnly at the College gardens. So far so good.

The
three other men, who had already met them, passed with a vague salutation; but one
of them stopped; the smallest of the three, in the black clerical clothes.

‘
I
say,’ he said, with rather the air of a frightened rabbit, ‘I don’t like the look
of those men.’

‘
Good
God! Who could?’ ejaculated the tall man, who happened to be the Master of Mandeville.
‘At least we have some rich men who don’t go about dressed up like tailors’
dummies.’

‘
Yes,’
hissed the little cleric, ‘that’s what I mean. Like tailors’ dummies.’

‘
Why,
what do you mean?’ asked the shorter of the other men, sharply.

‘
I
mean they’re like horrible waxworks,’ said the cleric in a faint voice. ‘I mean
they don’t move. Why don’t they move?’

Suddenly
starting out of his dim retirement, he darted across the garden and touched the
German Baron on the elbow. The German Baron fell over, chair and all, and the trousered
legs that stuck up in the air were as stiff as the legs of the chair.

Mr
Gideon P. Hake continued to gaze at the College gardens with glassy eyes; but the
parallel of a waxwork confirmed the impression that they were like eyes made of
glass. Somehow the rich sunlight and the coloured garden increased the creepy
impression of a stiffly dressed doll; a marionette on an Italian stage. The
small man in black, who was a priest named Brown, tentatively touched the millionaire
on the shoulder, and the millionaire fell sideways, but horribly all of a
piece, like something carved in wood.

‘
Rigor
mortis,’ said Father Brown, ‘and so soon. But it does vary a good deal.’

The
reason the first three men had joined the other two men so late (not to say too
late) will best be understood by noting what had happened just inside the building,
behind the Tudor archway, but a short time before they came out. They had all
dined together in Hall, at the High Table; but the two foreign philanthropists,
slaves of duty in the matter of seeing everything, had solemnly gone back to the
chapel, of which one cloister and a staircase remained unexamined; promising to
rejoin the rest in the garden, to examine as earnestly the College cigars. The
rest, in a more reverent and right-minded spirit, had adjourned as usual to the
long narrow oak table, round which the after-dinner wine had circulated, for
all anybody knew, ever since the College had been founded in the Middle Ages by
Sir John Mandeville, for the encouragement of telling stories. The Master, with
the big fair beard and bald brow, took the head of the table, and the squat man
in the square jacket sat on his left; for he was the Bursar or business man of
the College. Next to him, on that side of the table, sat a queer-looking man
with what could only be called a crooked face; for its dark tufts of moustache
and eyebrow, slanting at contrary angles, made a sort of zig-zag, as if half
his face were puckered or paralysed. His name was Byles; he was the lecturer in
Roman History, and his political opinions were founded on those of Coriolanus,
not to mention Tarquinius Superbus. This tart Toryism, and rabidly reactionary
view of all current problems, was not altogether unknown among the more
old-fashioned sort of dons; but in the case of Byles there was a suggestion
that it was a result rather than a cause of his acerbity. More than one sharp
observer had received the impression that there was something really wrong with
Byles; that some secret or some great misfortune had embittered him; as if that
half-withered face had really been blasted like a storm-stricken tree. Beyond
him again sat Father Brown and at the end of the table a Professor of
Chemistry, large and blond and bland, with eyes that were sleepy and perhaps a
little sly. It was well known that this natural philosopher regarded the other
philosophers, of a more classical tradition, very much as old logics. On the
other side of the table, opposite Father Brown, was a very swarthy and silent
young man, with a black pointed beard, introduced because somebody had insisted
on having a Chair of Persian; opposite the sinister Byles was a very
mild-looking little Chaplain, with a head like an egg. Opposite the Bursar and
at the right hand of the Master, was an empty chair; and there were many there
who were glad to see it empty.

‘
I
don’t know whether Craken is coming,’ said the Master, not without a nervous glance
at the chair, which contrasted with the usual languid freedom of his demeanour.
‘I believe in giving people a lot of rope myself; but I confess I’ve reached the
point of being glad when he is here, merely because he isn’t anywhere else.’

‘
Never
know what he’ll be up to next,’ said the Bursar, cheerfully, ‘especially when he’s
instructing the young.’

‘
A
brilliant fellow, but fiery of course,’ said the Master, with a rather abrupt relapse
into reserve.

‘
Fireworks
are fiery, and also brilliant,’ growled old Byles, ‘but I don’t want to be burned
in my bed so that Craken can figure as a real Guy Fawkes.’

‘
Do
you really think he would join a physical force revolution, if there were one,’
asked the Bursar smiling.

‘
Well,
he thinks he would,’ said Byles sharply. ‘Told a whole hall full of undergraduates
the other day that nothing now could avert the Class War turning into a real
war, with killing in the streets of the town; and it didn’t matter, so long as
it ended in Communism and the victory of the working-class.’

‘
The
Class War,’ mused the Master, with a sort of distaste mellowed by distance; for
he had known William Morris long ago and been familiar enough with the more artistic
and leisurely Socialists. ‘I never can understand all this about the Class War.
When I was young, Socialism was supposed to mean saying that there are no
classes.’

‘
Nother
way of saying that Socialists are no class,’ said Byles with sour relish.

‘
Of
course, you’d be more against them than I should,’ said the Master thoughtfully,
‘but I suppose my Socialism is almost as old-fashioned as your Toryism. Wonder
what our young friends really think. What do you think, Baker?’ he said
abruptly to the Bursar on his left.

‘
Oh,
I don’t think, as the vulgar saying is,’ said the Bursar laughing. ‘You must remember
I’m a very vulgar person. I’m not a thinker. I’m only a business man; and as a
business man I think it’s all bosh. You can’t make men equal and it’s damned
bad business to pay them equal; especially a lot of them not worth paying for
at all. Whatever it is, you’ve got to take the practical way out, because it’s
the only way out. It’s not our fault if nature made everything a scramble.’

‘
I
agree with you there,’ said the Professor of Chemistry, speaking with a lisp that
seemed childish in so large a man. ‘Communism pretends to be oh so modern; but
it is not. Throwback to the superstitions of monks and primitive tribes. A scientific
government, with a really ethical responsibility to posterity, would be always
looking for the line of promise and progress; not levelling and flattening it
all back into the mud again. Socialism is sentimentalism; and more dangerous
than a pestilence, for in that at least the fittest would survive.’

The
Master smiled a little sadly. ‘You know you and I will never feel quite the same
about differences of opinion. Didn’t somebody say up here, about walking with a
friend by the river, “Not differing much, except in opinion.” Isn’t that the
motto of a university? To have hundreds of opinions and not be opinionated. If
people fall here, it’s by what they are, not what they think. Perhaps I’m a
relic of the eighteenth century; but I incline to the old sentimental heresy,
“For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; he can’t be wrong whose life
is in the right.” What do you think about that, Father Brown?’

He
glanced a little mischievously across at the priest and was mildly startled. For
he had always found the priest very cheerful and amiable and easy to get on with;
and his round face was mostly solid with good humour. But for some reason the
priest’s face at this moment was knotted with a frown much more sombre than any
the company had ever seen on it; so that for an instant that commonplace countenance
actually looked darker and more ominous than the haggard face of Byles. An
instant later the cloud seemed to have passed; but Father Brown still spoke
with a certain sobriety and firmness.

‘
I
don’t believe in that, anyhow,’ he said shortly. ‘How can his life be in the right,
if his whole view of life is wrong? That’s a modern muddle that arose because
people didn’t know how much views of life can differ. Baptists and Methodists
knew they didn’t differ very much in morality; but then they didn’t differ very
much in religion or philosophy. It’s quite different when you pass from the
Baptists to the Anabaptists; or from the Theosophists to the Thugs. Heresy
always does affect morality, if it’s heretical enough. I suppose a man may
honestly believe that thieving isn’t wrong. But what’s the good of saying that
he honestly believes in dishonesty?’

‘
Damned
good,’ said Byles with a ferocious contortion of feature, believed by many to be
meant for a friendly smile. ‘And that’s why I object to having a Chair of Theoretical
Thieving in this College.’

‘
Well,
you’re all very down on Communism, of course,’ said the Master, with a sigh. ‘But
do you really think there’s so much of it to be down on? Are any of your heresies
really big enough to be dangerous?’

‘
I
think they have grown so big,’ said Father Brown gravely, ‘that in some circles
they are already taken for granted. They are actually unconscious. That is, without
conscience.’

‘
And
the end of it,’ said Byles, ‘will be the ruin of this country.’

‘
The
end will be something worse,’ said Father Brown.

A
shadow shot or slid rapidly along the panelled wall opposite, as swiftly followed
by the figure that had flung it; a tall but stooping figure with a vague
outline like a bird of prey; accentuated by the fact that its sudden appearance
and swift passage were like those of a bird startled and flying from a bush. It
was only the figure of a long-limbed, high-shouldered man with long drooping
moustaches, in fact, familiar enough to them all; but something in the twilight
and candlelight and the flying and streaking shadow connected it strangely with
the priest’s unconscious words of omen; for all the world, as if those words
had indeed been an augury, in the old Roman sense; and the sign of it the
flight of a bird. Perhaps Mr Byles might have given a lecture on such Roman
augury; and especially on that bird of ill-omen.