The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (34 page)

“
And
it is?” asked Father Brown.

“
It
is,” said his friend gloomily. “It is a clumsy forgery by somebody who knew nothing
of the real hiding-place. It says the paper is in the cupboard on the right of
the Secretary’s desk. As a fact the cupboard with the secret drawer is some way
to the left of the desk. It says the grey envelope contains a long document
written in red ink. It isn’t written in red ink, but in ordinary black ink.
It’s manifestly absurd to say that Hirsch can have made a mistake about a paper
that nobody knew of but himself; or can have tried to help a foreign thief by
telling him to fumble in the wrong drawer. I think we must chuck it up and
apologize to old Carrots.”

Father
Brown seemed to cogitate; he lifted a little whitebait on his fork. “You are sure
the grey envelope was in the left cupboard?” he asked.

“
Positive,”
replied Flambeau. “The grey envelope — it was a white envelope really — was —”

Father
Brown put down the small silver fish and the fork and stared across at his companion.
“What?” he asked, in an altered voice.

“
Well,
what?” repeated Flambeau, eating heartily.

“
It
was not grey,” said the priest. “Flambeau, you frighten me.”

“
What
the deuce are you frightened of?”

“
I’m
frightened of a white envelope,” said the other seriously, “If it had only just
been grey! Hang it all, it might as well have been grey. But if it was white, the
whole business is black. The Doctor has been dabbling in some of the old brimstone
after all.”

“
But
I tell you he couldn’t have written such a note!” cried Flambeau. “The note is utterly
wrong about the facts. And innocent or guilty, Dr Hirsch knew all about the
facts.”

“
The
man who wrote that note knew all about the facts,” said his clerical companion soberly.
“He could never have got ’em so wrong without knowing about ’em. You have to
know an awful lot to be wrong on every subject — like the devil.”

“
Do
you mean — ?”

“
I
mean a man telling lies on chance would have told some of the truth,” said his friend
firmly. “Suppose someone sent you to find a house with a green door and a blue
blind, with a front garden but no back garden, with a dog but no cat, and where
they drank coffee but not tea. You would say if you found no such house that it
was all made up. But I say no. I say if you found a house where the door was
blue and the blind green, where there was a back garden and no front garden,
where cats were common and dogs instantly shot, where tea was drunk in quarts
and coffee forbidden — then you would know you had found the house. The man
must have known that particular house to be so accurately inaccurate.”

“
But
what could it mean?” demanded the diner opposite.

“
I
can’t conceive,” said Brown; “I don’t understand this Hirsch affair at all. As long
as it was only the left drawer instead of the right, and red ink instead of
black, I thought it must be the chance blunders of a forger, as you say. But three
is a mystical number; it finishes things. It finishes this. That the direction
about the drawer, the colour of ink, the colour of envelope, should none of
them be right by accident, that can’t be a coincidence. It wasn’t.”

“
What
was it, then? Treason?” asked Flambeau, resuming his dinner.

“
I
don’t know that either,” answered Brown, with a face of blank bewilderment. “The
only thing I can think of . . . Well, I never understood that Dreyfus case. I
can always grasp moral evidence easier than the other sorts. I go by a man’s
eyes and voice, don’t you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what
subjects he chooses — and avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. Not
by the horrible things imputed both ways; I know (though it’s not modern to say
so) that human nature in the highest places is still capable of being Cenci or
Borgia. No — what puzzled me was the sincerity of both parties. I don’t mean
the political parties; the rank and file are always roughly honest, and often
duped. I mean the persons of the play. I mean the conspirators, if they were
conspirators. I mean the traitor, if he was a traitor. I mean the men who must
have known the truth. Now Dreyfus went on like a man who knew he was a wronged
man. And yet the French statesmen and soldiers went on as if they knew he
wasn’t a wronged man but simply a wrong ’un. I don’t mean they behaved well; I
mean they behaved as if they were sure. I can’t describe these things; I know
what I mean.”

“
I
wish I did,” said his friend. “And what has it to do with old Hirsch?”

“
Suppose
a person in a position of trust,” went on the priest, “began to give the enemy information
because it was false information. Suppose he even thought he was saving his
country by misleading the foreigner. Suppose this brought him into spy circles,
and little loans were made to him, and little ties tied on to him. Suppose he
kept up his contradictory position in a confused way by never telling the
foreign spies the truth, but letting it more and more be guessed. The better
part of him (what was left of it) would still say: ‘I have not helped the
enemy; I said it was the left drawer.’ The meaner part of him would already be
saying: ‘But they may have the sense to see that means the right.’ I think it
is psychologically possible — in an enlightened age, you know.”

“
It
may be psychologically possible,” answered Flambeau, “and it certainly would explain
Dreyfus being certain he was wronged and his judges being sure he was guilty.
But it won’t wash historically, because Dreyfus’s document (if it was his
document) was literally correct.”

“
I
wasn’t thinking of Dreyfus,” said Father Brown.

Silence
had sunk around them with the emptying of the tables; it was already late, though
the sunlight still clung to everything, as if accidentally entangled in the
trees. In the stillness Flambeau shifted his seat sharply — making an isolated
and echoing noise — and threw his elbow over the angle of it. “Well,” he said,
rather harshly, “if Hirsch is not better than a timid treason-monger . . .”

“
You
mustn’t be too hard on them,” said Father Brown gently. “It’s not entirely their
fault; but they have no instincts. I mean those things that make a woman refuse
to dance with a man or a man to touch an investment. They’ve been taught that
it’s all a matter of degree.”

“
Anyhow,”
cried Flambeau impatiently, “he’s not a patch on my principal; and I shall go through
with it. Old Dubosc may be a bit mad, but he’s a sort of patriot after all.”

Father
Brown continued to consume whitebait.

Something
in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau’s fierce black eyes to ramble over his
companion afresh. “What’s the matter with you?” Flambeau demanded. “Dubosc’s
all right in that way. You don’t doubt him?”

“
My
friend,” said the small priest, laying down his knife and fork in a kind of cold
despair, “I doubt everything. Everything, I mean, that has happened today. I
doubt the whole story, though it has been acted before my face. I doubt every sight
that my eyes have seen since morning. There is something in this business quite
different from the ordinary police mystery where one man is more or less lying
and the other man more or less telling the truth. Here both men . . . Well!
I’ve told you the only theory I can think of that could satisfy anybody. It
doesn’t satisfy me.”

“
Nor
me either,” replied Flambeau frowning, while the other went on eating fish with
an air of entire resignation. “If all you can suggest is that notion of a message
conveyed by contraries, I call it uncommonly clever, but . . . well, what would
you call it?”

“
I
should call it thin,” said the priest promptly. “I should call it uncommonly thin.
But that’s the queer thing about the whole business. The lie is like a schoolboy’s.
There are only three versions, Dubosc’s and Hirsch’s and that fancy of mine.
Either that note was written by a French officer to ruin a French official; or
it was written by the French official to help German officers; or it was
written by the French official to mislead German officers. Very well. You’d
expect a secret paper passing between such people, officials or officers, to
look quite different from that. You’d expect, probably a cipher, certainly
abbreviations; most certainly scientific and strictly professional terms. But
this thing’s elaborately simple, like a penny dreadful: ‘In the purple grotto
you will find the golden casket.’ It looks as if . . . as if it were meant to
be seen through at once.”

Almost
before they could take it in a short figure in French uniform had walked up to their
table like the wind, and sat down with a sort of thump.

“
I
have extraordinary news,” said the Duc de Valognes. “I have just come from this
Colonel of ours. He is packing up to leave the country, and he asks us to make his
excuses sur le terrain.”

“
What?”
cried Flambeau, with an incredulity quite frightful — “apologize?”

“
Yes,”
said the Duke gruffly; “then and there — before everybody — when the swords are
drawn. And you and I have to do it while he is leaving the country.”

“
But
what can this mean?” cried Flambeau. “He can’t be afraid of that little Hirsch!
Confound it!” he cried, in a kind of rational rage; “nobody could be afraid of Hirsch!”

“
I
believe it’s some plot!” snapped Valognes — “some plot of the Jews and Freemasons.
It’s meant to work up glory for Hirsch . . .”

The
face of Father Brown was commonplace, but curiously contented; it could shine with
ignorance as well as with knowledge. But there was always one flash when the
foolish mask fell, and the wise mask fitted itself in its place; and Flambeau,
who knew his friend, knew that his friend had suddenly understood. Brown said
nothing, but finished his plate of fish.

“
Where
did you last see our precious Colonel?” asked Flambeau, irritably.

“
He’s
round at the Hotel Saint Louis by the Elysee, where we drove with him. He’s packing
up, I tell you.”

“
Will
he be there still, do you think?” asked Flambeau, frowning at the table.

“
I
don’t think he can get away yet,” replied the Duke; “he’s packing to go a long journey
. . .”

“
No,”
said Father Brown, quite simply, but suddenly standing up, “for a very short journey.
For one of the shortest, in fact. But we may still be in time to catch him if
we go there in a motor-cab.”

Nothing
more could be got out of him until the cab swept round the corner by the Hotel Saint
Louis, where they got out, and he led the party up a side lane already in deep
shadow with the growing dusk. Once, when the Duke impatiently asked whether
Hirsch was guilty of treason or not, he answered rather absently: “No; only of
ambition — like Caesar.” Then he somewhat inconsequently added: “He lives a
very lonely life; he has had to do everything for himself.”

“
Well,
if he’s ambitious, he ought to be satisfied now,” said Flambeau rather bitterly.
“All Paris will cheer him now our cursed Colonel has turned tail.”

“
Don’t
talk so loud,” said Father Brown, lowering his voice, “your cursed Colonel is just
in front.”

The
other two started and shrank farther back into the shadow of the wall, for the sturdy
figure of their runaway principal could indeed be seen shuffling along in the
twilight in front, a bag in each hand. He looked much the same as when they
first saw him, except that he had changed his picturesque mountaineering knickers
for a conventional pair of trousers. It was clear he was already escaping from
the hotel.

The
lane down which they followed him was one of those that seem to be at the back of
things, and look like the wrong side of the stage scenery. A colourless, continuous
wall ran down one flank of it, interrupted at intervals by dull-hued and
dirt-stained doors, all shut fast and featureless save for the chalk scribbles
of some passing gamin. The tops of trees, mostly rather depressing evergreens,
showed at intervals over the top of the wall, and beyond them in the grey and
purple gloaming could be seen the back of some long terrace of tall Parisian
houses, really comparatively close, but somehow looking as inaccessible as a
range of marble mountains. On the other side of the lane ran the high gilt
railings of a gloomy park.

Flambeau
was looking round him in rather a weird way. “Do you know,” he said, “there is something
about this place that —”

“
Hullo!”
called out the Duke sharply; “that fellow’s disappeared. Vanished, like a blasted
fairy!”

“
He
has a key,” explained their clerical friend. “He’s only gone into one of these garden
doors,” and as he spoke they heard one of the dull wooden doors close again
with a click in front of them.

Flambeau
strode up to the door thus shut almost in his face, and stood in front of it for
a moment, biting his black moustache in a fury of curiosity. Then he threw up
his long arms and swung himself aloft like a monkey and stood on the top of the
wall, his enormous figure dark against the purple sky, like the dark tree-tops.

The
Duke looked at the priest. “Dubosc’s escape is more elaborate than we thought,”
he said; “but I suppose he is escaping from France.”