The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (25 page)

“
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
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.”