The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (39 page)

“
I
have a suggestion to make,” he said, “but it seems a little confusing. I don’t know
this gentleman — but — but I think I know him. Now, you know him — you know him
quite well — but you don’t know him — naturally. Sounds paradoxical, I know.”

“
I
reckon the Cosmos is cracked,” said Usher, and fell asprawl in his round office
chair.

“
Now,
see here,” vociferated the stranger, striking the table, but speaking in a voice
that was all the more mysterious because it was comparatively mild and rational
though still resounding. “I won’t let you in. I want —”

“
Who
in hell are you?” yelled Usher, suddenly sitting up straight.

“
I
think the gentleman’s name is Todd,” said the priest.

Then
he picked up the pink slip of newspaper.

“
I
fear you don’t read the Society papers properly,” he said, and began to read out
in a monotonous voice, “‘Or locked in the jewelled bosoms of our city’s gayest
leaders; but there is talk of a pretty parody of the manners and customs of the
other end of Society’s scale.’ There’s been a big Slum Dinner up at Pilgrim’s
Pond tonight; and a man, one of the guests, disappeared. Mr Ireton Todd is a
good host, and has tracked him here, without even waiting to take off his
fancy-dress.”

“
What
man do you mean?”

“
I
mean the man with comically ill-fitting clothes you saw running across the ploughed
field. Hadn’t you better go and investigate him? He will be rather impatient to
get back to his champagne, from which he ran away in such a hurry, when the
convict with the gun hove in sight.”

“
Do
you seriously mean —” began the official.

“
Why,
look here, Mr Usher,” said Father Brown quietly, “you said the machine couldn’t
make a mistake; and in one sense it didn’t. But the other machine did; the machine
that worked it. You assumed that the man in rags jumped at the name of Lord
Falconroy, because he was Lord Falconroy’s murderer. He jumped at the name of
Lord Falconroy because he is Lord Falconroy.”

“
Then
why the blazes didn’t he say so?” demanded the staring Usher.

“
He
felt his plight and recent panic were hardly patrician,” replied the priest, “so
he tried to keep the name back at first. But he was just going to tell it you,
when” — and Father Brown looked down at his boots — “when a woman found another
name for him.”

“
But
you can’t be so mad as to say,” said Greywood Usher, very white, “that Lord Falconroy
was Drugger Davis.”

The
priest looked at him very earnestly, but with a baffling and undecipherable face.

“
I
am not saying anything about it,” he said. “I leave all the rest to you. Your pink
paper says that the title was recently revived for him; but those papers are
very unreliable. It says he was in the States in youth; but the whole story seems
very strange. Davis and Falconroy are both pretty considerable cowards, but so
are lots of other men. I would not hang a dog on my own opinion about this. But
I think,” he went on softly and reflectively, “I think you Americans are too
modest. I think you idealize the English aristocracy — even in assuming it to
be so aristocratic. You see a good-looking Englishman in evening-dress; you
know he’s in the House of Lords; and you fancy he has a father. You don’t allow
for our national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our most influential noblemen
have not only risen recently, but —”

“
Oh,
stop it!” cried Greywood Usher, wringing one lean hand in impatience against a shade
of irony in the other’s face.

“
Don’t
stay talking to this lunatic!” cried Todd brutally. “Take me to my friend.”

Next
morning Father Brown appeared with the same demure expression, carrying yet another
piece of pink newspaper.

“
I’m
afraid you neglect the fashionable press rather,” he said, “but this cutting may
interest you.”

Usher
read the headlines, “Last-Trick’s Strayed Revellers: Mirthful Incident near Pilgrim’s
Pond.” The paragraph went on: “A laughable occurrence took place outside
Wilkinson’s Motor Garage last night. A policeman on duty had his attention
drawn by larrikins to a man in prison dress who was stepping with considerable
coolness into the steering-seat of a pretty high-toned Panhard; he was
accompanied by a girl wrapped in a ragged shawl. On the police interfering, the
young woman threw back the shawl, and all recognized Millionaire Todd’s daughter,
who had just come from the Slum Freak Dinner at the Pond, where all the
choicest guests were in a similar deshabille. She and the gentleman who had donned
prison uniform were going for the customary joy-ride.”

Under
the pink slip Mr Usher found a strip of a later paper, headed, “Astounding Escape
of Millionaire’s Daughter with Convict. She had Arranged Freak Dinner. Now Safe
in —”

Mr
Greenwood Usher lifted his eyes, but Father Brown was gone.

THERE
is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich
but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the
dark front doors seem as steep as the side of pyramids; one would hesitate to
knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more
depressing feature in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless
continuity. The pilgrim walking down it begins to think he will never come to a
break or a corner; but there is one exception — a very small one, but hailed by
the pilgrim almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews between two of the
tall mansions, a mere slit like the crack of a door by comparison with the
street, but just large enough to permit a pigmy ale-house or eating-house,
still allowed by the rich to their stable-servants, to stand in the angle.
There is something cheery in its very dinginess, and something free and elfin
in its very insignificance. At the feet of those grey stone giants it looks
like a lighted house of dwarfs.

Anyone
passing the place during a certain autumn evening, itself almost fairylike, might
have seen a hand pull aside the red half-blind which (along with some large
white lettering) half hid the interior from the street, and a face peer out not
unlike a rather innocent goblin’s. It was, in fact, the face of one with the
harmless human name of Brown, formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, and now
working in London. His friend, Flambeau, a semi-official investigator, was sitting
opposite him, making his last notes of a case he had cleared up in the neighbourhood.
They were sitting at a small table, close up to the window, when the priest
pulled the curtain back and looked out. He waited till a stranger in the street
had passed the window, to let the curtain fall into its place again. Then his
round eyes rolled to the large white lettering on the window above his head,
and then strayed to the next table, at which sat only a navvy with beer and
cheese, and a young girl with red hair and a glass of milk. Then (seeing his
friend put away the pocket-book), he said softly:

“
If
you’ve got ten minutes, I wish you’d follow that man with the false nose.”

Flambeau
looked up in surprise; but the girl with the red hair also looked up, and with something
that was stronger than astonishment. She was simply and even loosely dressed in
light brown sacking stuff; but she was a lady, and even, on a second glance, a
rather needlessly haughty one. “The man with the false nose!” repeated
Flambeau. “Who’s he?”

“
I
haven’t a notion,” answered Father Brown. “I want you to find out; I ask it as a
favour. He went down there” — and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in one
of his undistinguished gestures — “and can’t have passed three lamp-posts yet.
I only want to know the direction.”

Flambeau
gazed at his friend for some time, with an expression between perplexity and amusement;
and then, rising from the table; squeezed his huge form out of the little door
of the dwarf tavern, and melted into the twilight.

Father
Brown took a small book out of his pocket and began to read steadily; he betrayed
no consciousness of the fact that the red-haired lady had left her own table
and sat down opposite him. At last she leaned over and said in a low, strong
voice: “Why do you say that? How do you know it’s false?”

He
lifted his rather heavy eyelids, which fluttered in considerable embarrassment.
Then his dubious eye roamed again to the white lettering on the glass front of the
public-house. The young woman’s eyes followed his, and rested there also, but
in pure puzzledom.

“
No,”
said Father Brown, answering her thoughts. “It doesn’t say ‘Sela’, like the thing
in the Psalms; I read it like that myself when I was wool-gathering just now; it
says ‘Ales.’”

“
Well?”
inquired the staring young lady. “What does it matter what it says?”

His
ruminating eye roved to the girl’s light canvas sleeve, round the wrist of which
ran a very slight thread of artistic pattern, just enough to distinguish it
from a working-dress of a common woman and make it more like the working-dress
of a lady art-student. He seemed to find much food for thought in this; but his
reply was very slow and hesitant. “You see, madam,” he said, “from outside the
place looks — well, it is a perfectly decent place — but ladies like you don’t
— don’t generally think so. They never go into such places from choice, except
—”

“
Well?”
she repeated.

“
Except
an unfortunate few who don’t go in to drink milk.”

“
You
are a most singular person,” said the young lady. “What is your object in all this?”

“
Not
to trouble you about it,” he replied, very gently. “Only to arm myself with knowledge
enough to help you, if ever you freely ask my help.”

“
But
why should I need help?”

He
continued his dreamy monologue. “You couldn’t have come in to see protegees, humble
friends, that sort of thing, or you’d have gone through into the parlour . . .
and you couldn’t have come in because you were ill, or you’d have spoken to the
woman of the place, who’s obviously respectable . . . besides, you don’t look
ill in that way, but only unhappy . . . This street is the only original long
lane that has no turning; and the houses on both sides are shut up . . . I could
only suppose that you’d seen somebody coming whom you didn’t want to meet; and
found the public-house was the only shelter in this wilderness of stone . . . I
don’t think I went beyond the licence of a stranger in glancing at the only man
who passed immediately after . . . And as I thought he looked like the wrong
sort . . . and you looked like the right sort. . . . I held myself ready to
help if he annoyed you; that is all. As for my friend, he’ll be back soon; and
he certainly can’t find out anything by stumping down a road like this. . . . I
didn’t think he could.”

“
Then
why did you send him out?” she cried, leaning forward with yet warmer curiosity.
She had the proud, impetuous face that goes with reddish colouring, and a Roman
nose, as it did in Marie Antoinette.

He
looked at her steadily for the first time, and said: “Because I hoped you would
speak to me.”

She
looked back at him for some time with a heated face, in which there hung a red shadow
of anger; then, despite her anxieties, humour broke out of her eyes and the
corners of her mouth, and she answered almost grimly: “Well, if you’re so keen
on my conversation, perhaps you’ll answer my question.” After a pause she added:
“I had the honour to ask you why you thought the man’s nose was false.”

“
The
wax always spots like that just a little in this weather,” answered Father Brown
with entire simplicity,

“
But
it’s such a crooked nose,” remonstrated the red-haired girl.

The
priest smiled in his turn. “I don’t say it’s the sort of nose one would wear out
of mere foppery,” he admitted. “This man, I think, wears it because his real
nose is so much nicer.”

“
But
why?” she insisted.

“
What
is the nursery-rhyme?” observed Brown absent-mindedly. “There was a crooked man
and he went a crooked mile. . . . That man, I fancy, has gone a very crooked road
— by following his nose.”

“
Why,
what’s he done?” she demanded, rather shakily.

“
I
don’t want to force your confidence by a hair,” said Father Brown, very quietly.
“But I think you could tell me more about that than I can tell you.”

The
girl sprang to her feet and stood quite quietly, but with clenched hands, like one
about to stride away; then her hands loosened slowly, and she sat down again.
“You are more of a mystery than all the others,” she said desperately, “but I
feel there might be a heart in your mystery.”

“
What
we all dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That
is why atheism is only a nightmare.” “I will tell you everything,” said the
red-haired girl doggedly, “except why I am telling you; and that I don’t know.”

She
picked at the darned table-cloth and went on: “You look as if you knew what isn’t
snobbery as well as what is; and when I say that ours is a good old family,
you’ll understand it is a necessary part of the story; indeed, my chief danger
is in my brother’s high-and-dry notions, noblesse oblige and all that. Well, my
name is Christabel Carstairs; and my father was that Colonel Carstairs you’ve
probably heard of, who made the famous Carstairs Collection of Roman coins. I
could never describe my father to you; the nearest I can say is that he was
very like a Roman coin himself. He was as handsome and as genuine and as valuable
and as metallic and as out-of-date. He was prouder of his Collection than of
his coat-of-arms — nobody could say more than that. His extraordinary character
came out most in his will. He had two sons and one daughter. He quarrelled with
one son, my brother Giles, and sent him to Australia on a small allowance. He
then made a will leaving the Carstairs Collection, actually with a yet smaller
allowance, to my brother Arthur. He meant it as a reward, as the highest honour
he could offer, in acknowledgement of Arthur’s loyalty and rectitude and the
distinctions he had already gained in mathematics and economics at Cambridge.
He left me practically all his pretty large fortune; and I am sure he meant it
in contempt.

“
Arthur,
you may say, might well complain of this; but Arthur is my father over again. Though
he had some differences with my father in early youth, no sooner had he taken
over the Collection than he became like a pagan priest dedicated to a temple.
He mixed up these Roman halfpence with the honour of the Carstairs family in
the same stiff, idolatrous way as his father before him. He acted as if Roman
money must be guarded by all the Roman virtues. He took no pleasures; he spent
nothing on himself; he lived for the Collection. Often he would not trouble to
dress for his simple meals; but pattered about among the corded brown-paper
parcels (which no one else was allowed to touch) in an old brown dressing-gown.
With its rope and tassel and his pale, thin, refined face, it made him look like
an old ascetic monk. Every now and then, though, he would appear dressed like a
decidedly fashionable gentleman; but that was only when he went up to the
London sales or shops to make an addition to the Carstairs Collection.

“
Now,
if you’ve known any young people, you won’t be shocked if I say that I got into
rather a low frame of mind with all this; the frame of mind in which one begins
to say that the Ancient Romans were all very well in their way. I’m not like my
brother Arthur; I can’t help enjoying enjoyment. I got a lot of romance and rubbish
where I got my red hair, from the other side of the family. Poor Giles was the
same; and I think the atmosphere of coins might count in excuse for him; though
he really did wrong and nearly went to prison. But he didn’t behave any worse
than I did; as you shall hear.

“
I
come now to the silly part of the story. I think a man as clever as you can guess
the sort of thing that would begin to relieve the monotony for an unruly girl
of seventeen placed in such a position. But I am so rattled with more dreadful
things that I can hardly read my own feeling; and don’t know whether I despise
it now as a flirtation or bear it as a broken heart. We lived then at a little
seaside watering-place in South Wales, and a retired sea-captain living a few
doors off had a son about five years older than myself, who had been a friend
of Giles before he went to the Colonies. His name does not affect my tale; but
I tell you it was Philip Hawker, because I am telling you everything. We used
to go shrimping together, and said and thought we were in love with each other;
at least he certainly said he was, and I certainly thought I was. If I tell you
he had bronzed curly hair and a falconish sort of face, bronzed by the sea
also, it’s not for his sake, I assure you, but for the story; for it was the
cause of a very curious coincidence.

“
One
summer afternoon, when I had promised to go shrimping along the sands with Philip,
I was waiting rather impatiently in the front drawing-room, watching Arthur
handle some packets of coins he had just purchased and slowly shunt them, one
or two at a time, into his own dark study and museum which was at the back of
the house. As soon as I heard the heavy door close on him finally, I made a
bolt for my shrimping-net and tam-o’-shanter and was just going to slip out,
when I saw that my brother had left behind him one coin that lay gleaming on
the long bench by the window. It was a bronze coin, and the colour, combined with
the exact curve of the Roman nose and something in the very lift of the long,
wiry neck, made the head of Caesar on it the almost precise portrait of Philip
Hawker. Then I suddenly remembered Giles telling Philip of a coin that was like
him, and Philip wishing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild, foolish
thoughts with which my head went round; I felt as if I had had a gift from the
fairies. It seemed to me that if I could only run away with this, and give it
to Philip like a wild sort of wedding-ring, it would be a bond between us for
ever; I felt a thousand such things at once. Then there yawned under me, like
the pit, the enormous, awful notion of what I was doing; above all, the unbearable
thought, which was like touching hot iron, of what Arthur would think of it. A
Carstairs a thief; and a thief of the Carstairs treasure! I believe my brother
could see me burned like a witch for such a thing, But then, the very thought
of such fanatical cruelty heightened my old hatred of his dingy old antiquarian
fussiness and my longing for the youth and liberty that called to me from the
sea. Outside was strong sunlight with a wind; and a yellow head of some broom
or gorse in the garden rapped against the glass of the window. I thought of
that living and growing gold calling to me from all the heaths of the world —
and then of that dead, dull gold and bronze and brass of my brother’s growing
dustier and dustier as life went by. Nature and the Carstairs Collection had
come to grips at last.