The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (53 page)

“
How
do you know there were two shots?” asked the little priest.

“
There
was only one in his head,” said his companion, “but there was another bullet-hole
in the sash.”

Father
Brown’s smooth brow became suddenly constricted. “Was the other bullet found?” he
demanded.

Flambeau
started a little. “I don’t think I remember,” he said.

“
Hold
on! Hold on! Hold on!” cried Brown, frowning more and more, with a quite unusual
concentration of curiosity. “Don’t think me rude. Let me think this out for a
moment.”

“
All
right,” said Flambeau, laughing, and finished his beer. A slight breeze stirred
the budding trees and blew up into the sky cloudlets of white and pink that seemed
to make the sky bluer and the whole coloured scene more quaint. They might have
been cherubs flying home to the casements of a sort of celestial nursery. The
oldest tower of the castle, the Dragon Tower, stood up as grotesque as the
ale-mug, but as homely. Only beyond the tower glimmered the wood in which the
man had lain dead.

“
What
became of this Hedwig eventually?” asked the priest at last.

“
She
is married to General Schwartz,” said Flambeau. “No doubt you’ve heard of his career,
which was rather romantic. He had distinguished himself even, before his
exploits at Sadowa and Gravelotte; in fact, he rose from the ranks, which is
very unusual even in the smallest of the German . . .”

Father
Brown sat up suddenly.

“
Rose
from the ranks!” he cried, and made a mouth as if to whistle. “Well, well, what
a queer story! What a queer way of killing a man; but I suppose it was the only
one possible. But to think of hate so patient —”

“
What
do you mean?” demanded the other. “In what way did they kill the man?”

“
They
killed him with the sash,” said Brown carefully; and then, as Flambeau protested:
“Yes, yes, I know about the bullet. Perhaps I ought to say he died of having a
sash. I know it doesn’t sound like having a disease.”

“
I
suppose,” said Flambeau, “that you’ve got some notion in your head, but it won’t
easily get the bullet out of his. As I explained before, he might easily have
been strangled. But he was shot. By whom? By what?”

“
He
was shot by his own orders,” said the priest.

“
You
mean he committed suicide?”

“
I
didn’t say by his own wish,” replied Father Brown. “I said by his own orders.”

“
Well,
anyhow, what is your theory?”

Father
Brown laughed. “I am only on my holiday,” he said. “I haven’t got any theories.
Only this place reminds me of fairy stories, and, if you like, I’ll tell you a story.”

The
little pink clouds, that looked rather like sweet-stuff, had floated up to crown
the turrets of the gilt gingerbread castle, and the pink baby fingers of the
budding trees seemed spreading and stretching to reach them; the blue sky began
to take a bright violet of evening, when Father Brown suddenly spoke again:

“
It
was on a dismal night, with rain still dropping from the trees and dew already clustering,
that Prince Otto of Grossenmark stepped hurriedly out of a side door of the
castle and walked swiftly into the wood. One of the innumerable sentries
saluted him, but he did not notice it. He had no wish to be specially noticed
himself. He was glad when the great trees, grey and already greasy with rain,
swallowed him up like a swamp. He had deliberately chosen the least frequented
side of his palace, but even that was more frequented than he liked. But there
was no particular chance of officious or diplomatic pursuit, for his exit had
been a sudden impulse. All the full-dressed diplomatists he left behind were
unimportant. He had realized suddenly that he could do without them.

“
His
great passion was not the much nobler dread of death, but the strange desire of
gold. For this legend of the gold he had left Grossenmark and invaded Heiligwaldenstein.
For this and only this he had bought the traitor and butchered the hero, for
this he had long questioned and cross-questioned the false Chamberlain, until
he had come to the conclusion that, touching his ignorance, the renegade really
told the truth. For this he had, somewhat reluctantly, paid and promised money
on the chance of gaining the larger amount; and for this he had stolen out of
his palace like a thief in the rain, for he had thought of another way to get
the desire of his eyes, and to get it cheap.

“
Away
at the upper end of a rambling mountain path to which he was making his way, among
the pillared rocks along the ridge that hangs above the town, stood the hermitage,
hardly more than a cavern fenced with thorn, in which the third of the great
brethren had long hidden himself from the world. He, thought Prince Otto, could
have no real reason for refusing to give up the gold. He had known its place
for years, and made no effort to find it, even before his new ascetic creed had
cut him off from property or pleasures. True, he had been an enemy, but he now
professed a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his cause, some
appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere money secret out of him.
Otto was no coward, in spite of his network of military precautions, and, in
any case, his avarice was stronger than his fears. Nor was there much cause for
fear. Since he was certain there were no private arms in the whole principality,
he was a hundred times more certain there were none in the Quaker’s little
hermitage on the hill, where he lived on herbs, with two old rustic servants,
and with no other voice of man for year after year. Prince Otto looked down
with something of a grim smile at the bright, square labyrinths of the lamp-lit
city below him. For as far as the eye could see there ran the rifles of his
friends, and not one pinch of powder for his enemies. Rifles ranked so close
even to that mountain path that a cry from him would bring the soldiers rushing
up the hill, to say nothing of the fact that the wood and ridge were patrolled
at regular intervals; rifles so far away, in the dim woods, dwarfed by
distance, beyond the river, that an enemy could not slink into the town by any
detour. And round the palace rifles at the west door and the east door, at the
north door and the south, and all along the four facades linking them. He was
safe.

“
It
was all the more clear when he had crested the ridge and found how naked was the
nest of his old enemy. He found himself on a small platform of rock, broken abruptly
by the three corners of precipice. Behind was the black cave, masked with green
thorn, so low that it was hard to believe that a man could enter it. In front
was the fall of the cliffs and the vast but cloudy vision of the valley. On the
small rock platform stood an old bronze lectern or reading-stand, groaning
under a great German Bible. The bronze or copper of it had grown green with the
eating airs of that exalted place, and Otto had instantly the thought, “Even if
they had arms, they must be rusted by now.” Moonrise had already made a deathly
dawn behind the crests and crags, and the rain had ceased.

“
Behind
the lectern, and looking across the valley, stood a very old man in a black robe
that fell as straight as the cliffs around him, but whose white hair and weak
voice seemed alike to waver in the wind. He was evidently reading some daily
lesson as part of his religious exercises. “They trust in their horses . . .”

“‘
Sir,’
said the Prince of Heiligwaldenstein, with quite unusual courtesy, ‘I should like
only one word with you.’

“‘
.
. . and in their chariots,’ went on the old man weakly, ‘but we will trust in the
name of the Lord of Hosts . . . .’ His last words were inaudible, but he closed
the book reverently and, being nearly blind, made a groping movement and gripped
the reading-stand. Instantly his two servants slipped out of the low-browed
cavern and supported him. They wore dull-black gowns like his own, but they had
not the frosty silver on the hair, nor the frost-bitten refinement of the features.
They were peasants, Croat or Magyar, with broad, blunt visages and blinking
eyes. For the first time something troubled the Prince, but his courage and
diplomatic sense stood firm.

“‘
I
fear we have not met,’ he said, ‘since that awful cannonade in which your poor brother
died.’

“‘
All
my brothers died,’ said the old man, still looking across the valley. Then, for
one instant turning on Otto his drooping, delicate features, and the wintry hair
that seemed to drip over his eyebrows like icicles, he added: ‘You see, I am
dead, too.’

“‘
I
hope you’ll understand,’ said the Prince, controlling himself almost to a point
of conciliation, ‘that I do not come here to haunt you, as a mere ghost of those
great quarrels. We will not talk about who was right or wrong in that, but at
least there was one point on which we were never wrong, because you were always
right. Whatever is to be said of the policy of your family, no one for one
moment imagines that you were moved by the mere gold; you have proved yourself
above the suspicion that . . .’

“
The
old man in the black gown had hitherto continued to gaze at him with watery blue
eyes and a sort of weak wisdom in his face. But when the word ‘gold’ was said
he held out his hand as if in arrest of something, and turned away his face to
the mountains.

“‘
He
has spoken of gold,’ he said. ‘He has spoken of things not lawful. Let him cease
to speak.’

“
Otto
had the vice of his Prussian type and tradition, which is to regard success not
as an incident but as a quality. He conceived himself and his like as perpetually
conquering peoples who were perpetually being conquered. Consequently, he was
ill acquainted with the emotion of surprise, and ill prepared for the next
movement, which startled and stiffened him. He had opened his mouth to answer
the hermit, when the mouth was stopped and the voice strangled by a strong,
soft gag suddenly twisted round his head like a tourniquet. It was fully forty
seconds before he even realized that the two Hungarian servants had done it,
and that they had done it with his own military scarf.

“
The
old man went again weakly to his great brazen-supported Bible, turned over the leaves,
with a patience that had something horrible about it, till he came to the
Epistle of St James, and then began to read: ‘The tongue is a little member,
but — ’

“
Something
in the very voice made the Prince turn suddenly and plunge down the mountain-path
he had climbed. He was half-way towards the gardens of the palace before he
even tried to tear the strangling scarf from his neck and jaws. He tried again
and again, and it was impossible; the men who had knotted that gag knew the
difference between what a man can do with his hands in front of him and what he
can do with his hands behind his head. His legs were free to leap like an
antelope on the mountains, his arms were free to use any gesture or wave any
signal, but he could not speak. A dumb devil was in him.

“
He
had come close to the woods that walled in the castle before he had quite realized
what his wordless state meant and was meant to mean. Once more he looked down
grimly at the bright, square labyrinths of the lamp-lit city below him, and he
smiled no more. He felt himself repeating the phrases of his former mood with a
murderous irony. Far as the eye could see ran the rifles of his friends, every
one of whom would shoot him dead if he could not answer the challenge. Rifles
were so near that the wood and ridge could be patrolled at regular intervals;
therefore it was useless to hide in the wood till morning. Rifles were ranked
so far away that an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour;
therefore it was vain to return to the city by any remote course. A cry from
him would bring his soldiers rushing up the hill. But from him no cry would
come.

“
The
moon had risen in strengthening silver, and the sky showed in stripes of bright,
nocturnal blue between the black stripes of the pines about the castle. Flowers
of some wide and feathery sort — for he had never noticed such things before —
were at once luminous and discoloured by the moonshine, and seemed indescribably
fantastic as they clustered, as if crawling about the roots of the trees.
Perhaps his reason had been suddenly unseated by the unnatural captivity he
carried with him, but in that wood he felt something unfathomably German — the
fairy tale. He knew with half his mind that he was drawing near to the castle
of an ogre — he had forgotten that he was the ogre. He remembered asking his
mother if bears lived in the old park at home. He stooped to pick a flower, as
if it were a charm against enchantment. The stalk was stronger than he
expected, and broke with a slight snap. Carefully trying to place it in his scarf,
he heard the halloo, ‘Who goes there?’ Then he remembered the scarf was not in
its usual place.

“
He
tried to scream and was silent. The second challenge came; and then a shot that
shrieked as it came and then was stilled suddenly by impact. Otto of Grossenmark
lay very peacefully among the fairy trees, and would do no more harm either
with gold or steel; only the silver pencil of the moon would pick out and trace
here and there the intricate ornament of his uniform, or the old wrinkles on
his brow. May God have mercy on his soul.

“
The
sentry who had fired, according to the strict orders of the garrison, naturally
ran forward to find some trace of his quarry. He was a private named Schwartz, since
not unknown in his profession, and what he found was a bald man in uniform, but
with his face so bandaged by a kind of mask made of his own military scarf that
nothing but open, dead eyes could be seen, glittering stonily in the moonlight.
The bullet had gone through the gag into the jaw; that is why there was a
shot-hole in the scarf, but only one shot. Naturally, if not correctly, young
Schwartz tore off the mysterious silken mask and cast it on the grass; and then
he saw whom he had slain.