The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (47 page)

But
he was a very different figure from the confused mass of white and black that had
appeared for an instant in the doorway. He was buttoned and buckled up to his
bursting eyeballs in the most brilliant fashion. A tall black hat was tilted on
his broad black head — a hat of the sort that the French wit has compared to
eight mirrors. But somehow the black man was like the black hat. He also was
black, and yet his glossy skin flung back the light at eight angles or more. It
is needless to say that he wore white spats and a white slip inside his
waistcoat. The red flower stood up in his buttonhole aggressively, as if it had
suddenly grown there. And in the way he carried his cane in one hand and his
cigar in the other there was a certain attitude — an attitude we must always
remember when we talk of racial prejudices: something innocent and insolent —
the cake walk.

“
Sometimes,”
said Flambeau, looking after him, “I’m not surprised that they lynch them.”

“
I
am never surprised,” said Father Brown, “at any work of hell. But as I was saying,”
he resumed, as the negro, still ostentatiously pulling on his yellow gloves,
betook himself briskly towards the watering-place, a queer music-hall figure
against that grey and frosty scene — “as I was saying, I couldn’t describe the
man very minutely, but he had a flourish and old-fashioned whiskers and
moustachios, dark or dyed, as in the pictures of foreign financiers, round his
neck was wrapped a long purple scarf that thrashed out in the wind as he
walked. It was fixed at the throat rather in the way that nurses fix children’s
comforters with a safety-pin. Only this,” added the priest, gazing placidly out
to sea, “was not a safety-pin.”

The
man sitting on the long iron bench was also gazing placidly out to sea. Now he was
once more in repose. Flambeau felt quite certain that one of his eyes was naturally
larger than the other. Both were now well opened, and he could almost fancy the
left eye grew larger as he gazed.

“
It
was a very long gold pin, and had the carved head of a monkey or some such thing,”
continued the cleric; “and it was fixed in a rather odd way — he wore pince-nez
and a broad black —”

The
motionless man continued to gaze at the sea, and the eyes in his head might have
belonged to two different men. Then he made a movement of blinding swiftness.

Father
Brown had his back to him, and in that flash might have fallen dead on his face.
Flambeau had no weapon, but his large brown hands were resting on the end of
the long iron seat. His shoulders abruptly altered their shape, and he heaved
the whole huge thing high over his head, like a headsman’s axe about to fall.
The mere height of the thing, as he held it vertical, looked like a long iron
ladder by which he was inviting men to climb towards the stars. But the long
shadow, in the level evening light, looked like a giant brandishing the Eiffel
Tower. It was the shock of that shadow, before the shock of the iron crash,
that made the stranger quail and dodge, and then dart into his inn, leaving the
flat and shining dagger he had dropped exactly where it had fallen.

“
We
must get away from here instantly,” cried Flambeau, flinging the huge seat away
with furious indifference on the beach. He caught the little priest by the elbow
and ran him down a grey perspective of barren back garden, at the end of which
there was a closed back garden door. Flambeau bent over it an instant in violent
silence, and then said: “The door is locked.”

As
he spoke a black feather from one of the ornamental firs fell, brushing the brim
of his hat. It startled him more than the small and distant detonation that had
come just before. Then came another distant detonation, and the door he was
trying to open shook under the bullet buried in it. Flambeau’s shoulders again
filled out and altered suddenly. Three hinges and a lock burst at the same
instant, and he went out into the empty path behind, carrying the great garden
door with him, as Samson carried the gates of Gaza.

Then
he flung the garden door over the garden wall, just as a third shot picked up a
spurt of snow and dust behind his heel. Without ceremony he snatched up the little
priest, slung him astraddle on his shoulders, and went racing towards Seawood
as fast as his long legs could carry him. It was not until nearly two miles
farther on that he set his small companion down. It had hardly been a dignified
escape, in spite of the classic model of Anchises, but Father Brown’s face only
wore a broad grin.

“
Well,”
said Flambeau, after an impatient silence, as they resumed their more conventional
tramp through the streets on the edge of the town, where no outrage need be
feared, “I don’t know what all this means, but I take it I may trust my own
eyes that you never met the man you have so accurately described.”

“
I
did meet him in a way,” Brown said, biting his finger rather nervously — “I did
really. And it was too dark to see him properly, because it was under that bandstand
affair. But I’m afraid I didn’t describe him so very accurately after all, for
his pince-nez was broken under him, and the long gold pin wasn’t stuck through
his purple scarf but through his heart.”

“
And
I suppose,” said the other in a lower voice, “that glass-eyed guy had something
to do with it.”

“
I
had hoped he had only a little,” answered Brown in a rather troubled voice, “and
I may have been wrong in what I did. I acted on impulse. But I fear this business
has deep roots and dark.”

They
walked on through some streets in silence. The yellow lamps were beginning to be
lit in the cold blue twilight, and they were evidently approaching the more central
parts of the town. Highly coloured bills announcing the glove-fight between
Nigger Ned and Malvoli were slapped about the walls.

“
Well,”
said Flambeau, “I never murdered anyone, even in my criminal days, but I can almost
sympathize with anyone doing it in such a dreary place. Of all God-forsaken
dustbins of Nature, I think the most heart-breaking are places like that
bandstand, that were meant to be festive and are forlorn. I can fancy a morbid
man feeling he must kill his rival in the solitude and irony of such a scene. I
remember once taking a tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing
but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast circle of land, and over me
lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge as a
Roman amphitheatre and as empty as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed in heaven
over it. It was the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no one would ever be
happy there again.”

“
It’s
odd you should mention Epsom,” said the priest. “Do you remember what was called
the Sutton Mystery, because two suspected men — ice-cream men, I think — happened
to live at Sutton? They were eventually released. A man was found strangled, it
was said, on the Downs round that part. As a fact, I know (from an Irish
policeman who is a friend of mine) that he was found close up to the Epsom
Grand Stand — in fact, only hidden by one of the lower doors being pushed back.”

“
That
is queer,” assented Flambeau. “But it rather confirms my view that such pleasure
places look awfully lonely out of season, or the man wouldn’t have been
murdered there.”

“
I’m
not so sure he —” began Brown, and stopped.

“
Not
so sure he was murdered?” queried his companion.

“
Not
so sure he was murdered out of the season,” answered the little priest, with simplicity.
“Don’t you think there’s something rather tricky about this solitude, Flambeau?
Do you feel sure a wise murderer would always want the spot to be lonely? It’s
very, very seldom a man is quite alone. And, short of that, the more alone he
is, the more certain he is to be seen. No; I think there must be some other —
Why, here we are at the Pavilion or Palace, or whatever they call it.”

They
had emerged on a small square, brilliantly lighted, of which the principal building
was gay with gilding, gaudy with posters, and flanked with two giant photographs
of Malvoli and Nigger Ned.

“
Hallo!”
cried Flambeau in great surprise, as his clerical friend stumped straight up the
broad steps. “I didn’t know pugilism was your latest hobby. Are you going to
see the fight?”

“
I
don’t think there will be any fight,” replied Father Brown.

They
passed rapidly through ante-rooms and inner rooms; they passed through the hall
of combat itself, raised, roped, and padded with innumerable seats and boxes, and
still the cleric did not look round or pause till he came to a clerk at a desk
outside a door marked “Committee”. There he stopped and asked to see Lord Pooley.

The
attendant observed that his lordship was very busy, as the fight was coming on soon,
but Father Brown had a good-tempered tedium of reiteration for which the official
mind is generally not prepared. In a few moments the rather baffled Flambeau
found himself in the presence of a man who was still shouting directions to
another man going out of the room. “Be careful, you know, about the ropes after
the fourth — Well, and what do you want, I wonder!”

Lord
Pooley was a gentleman, and, like most of the few remaining to our race, was worried
— especially about money. He was half grey and half flaxen, and he had the eyes
of fever and a high-bridged, frost-bitten nose.

“
Only
a word,” said Father Brown. “I have come to prevent a man being killed.”

Lord
Pooley bounded off his chair as if a spring had flung him from it. “I’m damned if
I’ll stand any more of this!” he cried. “You and your committees and parsons and
petitions! Weren’t there parsons in the old days, when they fought without gloves?
Now they’re fighting with the regulation gloves, and there’s not the rag of a
possibility of either of the boxers being killed.”

“
I
didn’t mean either of the boxers,” said the little priest.

“
Well,
well, well!” said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour. “Who’s going to be
killed? The referee?”

“
I
don’t know who’s going to be killed,” replied Father Brown, with a reflective stare.
“If I did I shouldn’t have to spoil your pleasure. I could simply get him to
escape. I never could see anything wrong about prize-fights. As it is, I must
ask you to announce that the fight is off for the present.”

“
Anything
else?” jeered the gentleman with feverish eyes. “And what do you say to the two
thousand people who have come to see it?”

“
I
say there will be one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them left alive when
they have seen it,” said Father Brown.

Lord
Pooley looked at Flambeau. “Is your friend mad?” he asked.

“
Far
from it,” was the reply.

“
And
look here,” resumed Pooley in his restless way, “it’s worse than that. A whole pack
of Italians have turned up to back Malvoli — swarthy, savage fellows of some
country, anyhow. You know what these Mediterranean races are like. If I send
out word that it’s off we shall have Malvoli storming in here at the head of a
whole Corsican clan.”

“
My
lord, it is a matter of life and death,” said the priest. “Ring your bell. Give
your message. And see whether it is Malvoli who answers.”

The
nobleman struck the bell on the table with an odd air of new curiosity. He said
to the clerk who appeared almost instantly in the doorway: “I have a serious announcement
to make to the audience shortly. Meanwhile, would you kindly tell the two
champions that the fight will have to be put off.”

The
clerk stared for some seconds as if at a demon and vanished.

“
What
authority have you for what you say?” asked Lord Pooley abruptly. “Whom did you
consult?”

“
I
consulted a bandstand,” said Father Brown, scratching his head. “But, no, I’m wrong;
I consulted a book, too. I picked it up on a bookstall in London — very cheap,
too.”

He
had taken out of his pocket a small, stout, leather-bound volume, and Flambeau,
looking over his shoulder, could see that it was some book of old travels, and had
a leaf turned down for reference.

“‘
The
only form in which Voodoo — ’” began Father Brown, reading aloud.

“
In
which what?” inquired his lordship.

“‘
In
which Voodoo,’” repeated the reader, almost with relish, “‘is widely organized outside
Jamaica itself is in the form known as the Monkey, or the God of the Gongs,
which is powerful in many parts of the two American continents, especially
among half-breeds, many of whom look exactly like white men. It differs from
most other forms of devil-worship and human sacrifice in the fact that the
blood is not shed formally on the altar, but by a sort of assassination among
the crowd. The gongs beat with a deafening din as the doors of the shrine open
and the monkey-god is revealed; almost the whole congregation rivet ecstatic
eyes on him. But after — ’”

The
door of the room was flung open, and the fashionable negro stood framed in it, his
eyeballs rolling, his silk hat still insolently tilted on his head. “Huh!” he
cried, showing his apish teeth. “What this? Huh! Huh! You steal a coloured gentleman’s
prize — prize his already — yo’ think yo’ jes’ save that white ‘Talian trash —”

“
The
matter is only deferred,” said the nobleman quietly. “I will be with you to explain
in a minute or two.”