The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (64 page)

‘
You’ve
said that several times,’ said Wain, with a puzzled air; ‘but I can’t see any inference,
except that this murderer threw an arrow and hit a man on the top of a house
very like a fortress. But of course the arrow wasn’t thrown but shot, and would
go much further. Certainly it went uncommonly far; but I don’t see how it
brings us any farther.’

‘
I’m
afraid you missed the point of the story,’ said Father Brown. ‘It isn’t that if
one thing can go far another can go farther. It is that the wrong use of a tool
can cut both ways. The men on Crake’s fort thought of a knife as a thing for a hand-to-hand
fight and forgot that it could be a missile like a javelin. Some other people I
know thought of a thing as a missile like a javelin and forgot that, after all,
it could be used hand-to-hand as a spear. In short, the moral of the story is
that since a dagger can be turned into an arrow, so can an arrow be turned into
a dagger.’

They
were all looking at him now; but he continued in the same casual and unconscious
tone: ‘Naturally we wondered and worried a good deal about who shot that arrow
through the window and whether it came from far away, and so on. But the truth
is that nobody shot the arrow at all. It never came in at the window at all.’

‘
Then
how did it come there?’ asked the swarthy lawyer, with a rather lowering face.

‘
Somebody
brought it with him, I suppose,’ said Father Brown; ‘it wouldn’t be hard to carry
or conceal. Somebody had it in his hand as he stood with Merton in Merton’s own
room. Somebody thrust it into Merton’s throat like a poignard, and then had the
highly intelligent idea of placing the whole thing at such a place and angle
that we all assumed in a flash that it had flown in at the window like a bird.’

‘
Somebody,’
said old Crake, in a voice as heavy as stone.

The
telephone bell rang with a strident and horrible clamour of insistence. It was in
the adjoining room, and Father Brown had darted there before anybody else could
move.

‘
What
the devil is it all about?’ cried Peter Wain, who seemed all shaken and
distracted.

‘
He
said he expected to be rung up by Wilton, the secretary,’ replied his uncle in the
same dead voice.

‘
I
suppose it is Wilton?’ observed the lawyer, like one speaking to fill up a silence.
But nobody answered the question until Father Brown reappeared suddenly and
silently in the room, bringing the answer.

‘
Gentlemen,’
he said, when he had resumed his seat, ‘it was you who asked me to look into the
truth about this puzzle; and having found the truth, I must tell it, without
any pretence of softening the shock. I’m afraid anybody who pokes his nose into
things like this can’t afford to be a respecter of persons.’

‘
I
suppose,’ said Crake, breaking the silence that followed, ‘that means that some
of us are accused, or suspected.’

‘
All
of us are suspected,’ answered Father Brown. ‘I may be suspected myself, for I found
the body.’

‘
Of
course we’re suspected,’ snapped Wain. ‘Father Brown kindly explained to me how
I could have besieged the tower in a flying-machine.’

‘
No,’
replied the priest, with a smile; ‘you described to me how you could have done it.
That was just the interesting part of it.’

‘
He
seemed to think it likely,’ growled Crake, ‘that I killed him myself with a Red
Indian arrow.’

‘
I
thought it most unlikely,’ said Father Brown, making rather a wry face. I’m sorry
if I did wrong, but I couldn’t think of any other way of testing the matter. I
can hardly think of anything more improbable than the notion that Captain Wain
went careering in a huge machine past the window, at the very moment of the
murder, and nobody noticed it; unless, perhaps, it were the notion that a
respectable old gentleman should play at Red Indians with a bow and arrow
behind the bushes, to kill somebody he could have killed in twenty much simpler
ways. But I had to find out if they had had anything to do with it; and so I
had to accuse them in order to prove their innocence.’

‘
And
how have you proved their innocence?’ asked Blake the lawyer, leaning forward eagerly.

‘
Only
by the agitation they showed when they were accused,’ answered the other.

‘
What
do you mean, exactly?’

‘
If
you will permit me to say so,’ remarked Father Brown, composedly enough, ‘I did
undoubtedly think it my duty to suspect them and everybody else. I did suspect Mr
Crake and I did suspect Captain Wain, in the sense that I considered the possibility
or probability of their guilt. I told them I had formed conclusions about it;
and I will now tell them what those conclusions were. I was sure they were
innocent, because of the manner and the moment in which they passed from unconsciousness
to indignation. So long as they never thought they were accused, they went on
giving me materials to support the accusation. They practically explained to me
how they might have committed the crime. Then they suddenly realized with a
shock and a shout of rage that they were accused; they realized it long after
they might well have expected to be accused, but long before I had accused
them. Now no guilty person could possibly do that. He might be snappy and
suspicious from the first; or he might simulate unconsciousness and innocence
up to the end. But he wouldn’t begin by making things worse for himself and
then give a great jump and begin furiously denying the notion he had himself
helped to suggest. That could only come by his having really failed to realize
what he was suggesting. The self-consciousness of a murderer would always be at
least morbidly vivid enough to prevent him first forgetting his relation with
the thing and then remembering to deny it. So I ruled you both out and others
for other reasons I needn’t discuss now. For instance, there was the secretary
—

‘
But
I’m not talking about that just now. Look here, I’ve just heard from Wilton on the
phone, and he’s given me permission to tell you some rather serious news. Now I
suppose you all know by this time who Wilton was, and what he was after.’

‘
I
know he was after Daniel Doom and wouldn’t be happy till he got him,’ answered Peter
Wain; ‘and I’ve heard the story that he’s the son of old Horder, and that’s why
he’s the avenger of blood. Anyhow, he’s certainly looking for the man called
Doom.’

‘
Well,’
said Father Brown, ‘he has found him.’

Peter
Wain sprang to his feet in excitement.

‘
The
murderer!’ he cried. ‘Is the murderer in the lock-up already?’

‘
No,’
said Father Brown, gravely; ‘I said the news was serious, and it’s more serious
than that. I’m afraid poor Wilton has taken a terrible responsibility. I’m afraid
he’s going to put a terrible responsibility on us. He hunted the criminal down,
and just when he had him cornered at last — well, he has taken the law into his
own hands.’

‘
You
mean that Daniel Doom — ’ began the lawyer.

‘
I
mean that Daniel Doom is dead,’ said the priest. ‘There was some sort of wild struggle,
and Wilton killed him.’

‘
Serve
him right,’ growled Mr Hickory Crake.

‘
Can’t
blame Wilton for downing a crook like that, especially considering the feud,’ assented
Wain; ‘it was like stepping on a viper.’

‘
I
don’t agree with you,’ said Father Brown. ‘I suppose we all talk romantic stuff
at random in defence of lynching and lawlessness; but I have a suspicion that if
we lose our laws and liberties we shall regret it. Besides, it seems to me illogical
to say there is something to be said for Wilton committing murder, without even
inquiring whether there was anything to be said for Doom committing it. I
rather doubt whether Doom was merely a vulgar assassin; he may have been a sort
of outlaw with a mania about the cup, demanding it with threats and only
killing after a struggle; both victims were thrown down just outside their
houses. The objection to Wilton’s way of doing it is that we shall never hear
Doom’s side of the case.’

‘
Oh,
I’ve no patience with all this sentimental whitewashing of worthless, murderous
blackguards,’ cried Wain, heatedly. ‘If Wilton croaked the criminal he did a jolly
good day’s work, and there’s an end of it.’

‘
Quite
so, quite so,’ said his uncle, nodding vigorously.

Father
Brown’s face had a yet heavier gravity as he looked slowly round the semicircle
of faces. ‘Is that really what you all think?’ he asked. Even as he did so he realized
that he was an Englishman and an exile. He realized that he was among foreigners,
even if he was among friends. Around that ring of foreigners ran a restless
fire that was not native to his own breed; the fiercer spirit of the western
nation that can rebel and lynch, and above all, combine. He knew that they had
already combined.

‘
Well,’
said Father Brown, with a sigh, ‘I am to understand, then, that you do definitely
condone this unfortunate man’s crime, or act of private justice, or whatever
you call it. In that case it will not hurt him if I tell you a little more
about it.’

He
rose suddenly to his feet; and though they saw no meaning in his movement, it seemed
in some way to change or chill the very air in the room.

‘
Wilton
killed Doom in a rather curious way,’ he began.

‘
How
did Wilton kill him?’ asked Crake, abruptly.

‘
With
an arrow,’ said Father Brown.

Twilight
was gathering in the long room, and daylight dwindling to a gleam from the great
window in the inner room, where the great millionaire had died. Almost automatically
the eyes of the group turned slowly towards it, but as yet there was no sound.
Then the voice of Crake came cracked and high and senile in a sort of crowing
gabble.

‘
What
you mean? What you mean? Brander Merton killed by an arrow. This crook killed by
an arrow — ’

‘
By
the same arrow,’ said the priest, ‘and at the same moment.’

Again
there was a sort of strangled and yet swollen and bursting silence, and young Wain
began: ‘You mean — ’

‘
I
mean that your friend Merton was Daniel Doom,’ said Father Brown firmly;’ and the
only Daniel Doom you’ll ever find. Your friend Merton was always crazy after
that Coptic Cup that he used to worship like an idol every day; and in his wild
youth he had really killed two men to get it, though I still think the deaths
may have been in a sense accidents of the robbery. Anyhow, he had it; and that
man Drage knew the story and was blackmailing him. But Wilton was after him for
a very different purpose; I fancy he only discovered the truth when he’d got
into this house. But anyhow, it was in this house, and in that room, that this
hunt ended, and he slew the slayer of his father.’

For
a long time nobody answered. Then old Crake could be heard drumming with his
fingers on the table and muttering:

‘
Brander
must have been mad. He must have been mad.’

‘
But,
good Lord!’ burst out Peter Wain; ‘what are we to do? What are we to say? Oh, it’s
all quite different! What about the papers and the big business people? Brander
Merton is a thing like the President or the Pope of Rome.’

‘
I
certainly think it is rather different,’ began Barnard Blake, the lawyer, in a low
voice. ‘The difference involves a whole — ’

Father
Brown struck the table so that the glasses on it rang; and they could almost fancy
a ghostly echo from the mysterious chalice that still stood in the room beyond.

‘
No!’
he cried, in a voice like a pistol-shot. ‘There shall be no difference. I gave you
your chance of pitying the poor devil when you thought he was a common criminal.
You wouldn’t listen then; you were all for private vengeance then. You were all
for letting him be butchered like a wild beast without a hearing or a public
trial, and said he had only got his deserts. Very well then, if Daniel Doom has
got his deserts, Brander Merton has got his deserts. If that was good enough
for Doom, by all that is holy it is good enough for Merton. Take your wild
justice or our dull legality; but in the name of Almighty God, let there be an
equal lawlessness or an equal law.’

Nobody
answered except the lawyer, and he answered with something like a snarl: ‘What will
the police say if we tell them we mean to condone a crime?’

‘
What
will they say if I tell them you did condone it?’ replied Father Brown. ‘Your respect
for the law comes rather late, Mr Barnard Blake.’

After
a pause he resumed in a milder tone: ’I, for one, am ready to tell the truth if
the proper authorities ask me; and the rest of you can do as you like. But as a
fact, it will make very little difference. Wilton only rang me up to tell me that
I was now free to lay his confession before you; for when you heard it, he would
be beyond pursuit.’

He
walked slowly into the inner room and stood there by the little table beside which
the millionaire had died. The Coptic Cup still stood in the same place, and he
remained there for a space staring at its cluster of all the colours of the
rainbow, and beyond it into a blue abyss of sky.