The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (92 page)

“
Finally,
he had only to tumble the corpse on to the lawn, fire a shot from each pistol, and
there he was. It might never have been found out but for a guess about the two
beards.”

“
Why
had your friend Michael kept the old beard?” Devine said thoughtfully. “That seems
to me questionable.”

“
To
me, who knew him, it seems quite inevitable,” replied Father Brown. “His whole attitude
was like that wig that he wore. There was no disguise about his disguises. He
didn’t want the old disguise any more, but he wasn’t frightened of it; he would
have felt it false to destroy the false beard. It would have been like hiding;
and he was not hiding. He was not hiding from God; he was not hiding from
himself. He was in the broad daylight. If they’d taken him back to prison, he’d
still have been quite happy. He was not whitewashed, but washed white. There
was something very strange about him; almost as strange as the grotesque dance
of death through which he was dragged after he was dead. When he moved to and
fro smiling among these beehives, even then, in a most radiant and shining
sense, he was dead. He was out of the judgment of this world.”

There
was a short pause, and then Devine shrugged his shoulders and said: “It all comes
back to bees and wasps looking very much alike in this world, doesn’t it?”

THE
soul of Mr. Peregrine Smart hovered like a fly round one possession and one joke.
It might be considered a mild joke, for it consisted merely of asking people if
they had seen his goldfish. It might also be considered an expensive joke; but
it is doubtful whether he was not secretly more attached to the joke than to
the evidence of expenditure. In talking to his neighbours in the little group
of new houses that had grown up round the old village green, he lost no time in
turning the conversation in the direction of his hobby. To Dr. Burdock, a
rising biologist with a resolute chin and hair brushed back like a German’s, Mr.
Smart made the easy transition. “You are interested in natural history; have
you seen my goldfish?” To so orthodox an evolutionist as Dr. Burdock doubtless
all nature was one; but at first sight the link was not close, as he was a
specialist who had concentrated entirely upon the primitive ancestry of the
giraffe. To Father Brown, from a church in the neighbouring provincial town, he
traced a rapid train of thought which touched on the topics of “Rome — St.
Peter — fisherman — fish — goldfish.” In talking to Mr. Imlack Smith, the bank
manager, a slim and sallow gentleman of dressy appearance but quiet demeanour,
he violently wrenched the conversation to the subject of the gold standard,
from which it was merely a step to goldfish. In talking to that brilliant
Oriental traveller and scholar, Count Yvon de Lara (whose title was French and
his face rather Russian, not to say Tartar), the versatile conversationalist
showed an intense and intelligent interest in the Ganges and the Indian Ocean,
leading naturally to the possible presence of goldfish in those waters.

From
Mr. Harry Hartopp, the very rich but very shy and silent young gentleman who had
recently come down from London, he had at last extorted the information that
the embarrassed youth in question was not interested in fishing, and had then
added: “Talking about fishing, have you seen my goldfish?”

The
peculiar thing about the goldfish was that they were made of gold. They were part
of an eccentric but expensive toy, said to have been made by the freak of some
rich Eastern prince, and Mr. Smart had picked it up at some sale or in some curiosity
shop, such as he frequented for the purpose of lumbering up his house with
unique and useless things. From the other end of the room it looked like a rather
unusually large bowl containing rather unusually large living fish; a closer
inspection showed it to be a huge bubble of beautifully blown Venetian glass,
very thin and delicately clouded with faintly iridescent colour, in the tinted
twilight of which hung grotesque golden fishes with great rubies for eyes. The
whole thing was undoubtedly worth a great deal in solid material; how much more
would depend upon the waves of lunacy passing over the world of collectors. Mr.
Smart’s new secretary, a young man named Francis Boyle, though an Irishman and
not credited with caution, was mildly surprised at his talking so freely of the
gems of his collection to the group of comparative strangers who happened to
have alighted in a rather nomadic fashion in the neighbourhood; for collectors
are commonly vigilant and sometimes secretive. In the course of settling down
to his new duties, Mr. Boyle found he was not alone in this sentiment, and that
in others, it passed from a mild wonder to a grave disapproval.

“
It’s
a wonder his throat isn’t cut,” said Mr. Smart’s valet, Harris, not without a hypothetical
relish, almost as if he had said, in a purely artistic sense: “It’s a pity.”

“
It’s
extraordinary how he leaves things about,” said Mr. Smart’s head clerk, Jameson,
who had come up from the office to assist the new secretary, “and he won’t even
put up those ramshackle old bars across his ramshackle old door.”

“
It’s
all very well with Father Brown and the doctor,” said Mr. Smart’s housekeeper, with
a certain vigorous vagueness that marked her opinions, “but when it comes to
foreigners, I call it tempting providence. It isn’t only the Count, either; that
man at the bank looks to me much too yellow to be English.”

“
Well,
that young Hartopp is English enough,” said Boyle good-humouredly, “to the extent
of not having a word to say for himself.”

“
He
thinks the more,” said the housekeeper. “He may not be exactly a foreigner, but
he is not such a fool as he looks. Foreign is as foreign does, I say,” she added
darkly.

Her
disapproval would probably have deepened if she had heard the conversation, in her
master’s drawing-room that afternoon, a conversation of which the goldfish were
the text, though the offensive foreigner tended more and more to be the central
figure. It was not that he spoke so very much; but even his silences had
something positive about them. He looked the more massive for sitting in a sort
of heap on a heap of cushions, and in the deepening twilight his wide Mongolian
face seemed faintly luminous, like a moon. Perhaps his background brought out
something atmospherically Asiatic about his face and figure, for the room was a
chaos of more or less costly curiosities, amid which could be seen the crooked
curves and burning colours of countless Eastern weapons, Eastern pipes and
vessels, Eastern musical instruments and illuminated manuscripts. Anyhow, as
the conversation proceeded, Boyle felt more and more that the figure seated on
the cushions and dark against the twilight had the exact outline of a huge
image of Buddha.

The
conversation was general enough, for all the little local group were present. They
were, indeed, often in the habit of dropping in at each other’s houses, and by
this time constituted a sort of club, of people coming from the four or five
houses standing round the green. Of these houses Peregrine Smart’s was the oldest,
largest, and most picturesque; it straggled down almost the whole of one side
of the square, leaving only room for a small villa, inhabited by a retired colonel
named Varney, who was reported to be an invalid, and certainly was never seen
to go abroad. At right angles to these stood two or three shops that served the
simpler needs of the hamlet, and at the corner the inn of the Blue Dragon, at
which Mr. Hartopp, the stranger from London, was staying. On the opposite side
were three houses, one rented by the Count de Lara, one by Dr. Burdock, and the
third still standing empty. On the fourth side was the bank, with an adjoining
house for the bank manager, and a line of fence enclosing some land that was
let for building. It was thus a very self-contained group, and the comparative
emptiness of the open ground for miles round it threw the members more and more
on each other’s society. That afternoon, one stranger had indeed broken into
the magic circle: a hatchet-faced fellow with fierce tufts of eyebrows and
moustache, and so shabbily dressed that he must have been a millionaire or a
duke if he had really (as was alleged) come down to do business with the old collector.
But he was known, at the Blue Dragon at least, as Mr. Harmer.

To
him had been recounted anew the glories of the gilded fish and the criticisms regarding
their custody.

“
People
are always telling me I ought to lock them up more carefully,” observed Mr. Smart,
cocking an eyebrow over his shoulder at the dependant who stood there holding
some papers from the office. Smart was a round-faced, round-bodied little old
man rather like a bald parrot. “Jameson and Harris and the rest are always at
me to bar the doors as if it were a mediaeval fortress, though really these
rotten old rusty bars are too mediaeval to keep anybody out, I should think. I
prefer to trust to luck and the local police.”

“
It
is not always the best bars that keep people out,” said the Count. “It all depends
on who’s trying to get in. There was an ancient Hindu hermit who lived naked in
a cave and passed through the three armies that encircled the Mogul and took
the great ruby out of the tyrant’s turban, and went back unscathed like a shadow.
For he wished to teach the great how small are the laws of space and time.”

“
When
we really study the small laws of space and time,” said Dr. Burdock dryly, “we generally
find out how those tricks are done. Western science has let in daylight on a good
deal of Eastern magic. Doubtless a great deal can be done with hypnotism and
suggestion, to say nothing of sleight-of-hand.”

“
The
ruby was not in the royal tent,” observed the Count in his dream fashion; “but he
found it among a hundred tents.”

“
Can’t
all that be explained by telepathy?” asked the doctor sharply. The question sounded
the sharper because it was followed by a heavy silence, almost as if the
distinguished Oriental traveller had, with imperfect politeness, gone to sleep.

“
I
beg your pardon,” he said rousing himself with a sudden smile. “I had forgotten
we were talking with words. In the east we talk with thoughts, and so we never misunderstand
each other. It is strange how you people worship words and are satisfied with
words. What difference does it make to a thing that you now call it telepathy,
as you once called it tomfoolery? If a man climbs into the sky on a mango-tree,
how is it altered by saying it is only levitation, instead of saying it is only
lies. If a medieval witch waved a wand and turned me into a blue baboon, you
would say it was only atavism.”

The
doctor looked for a moment as if he might say that it would not be so great a change
after all. But before his irritation could find that or any other vent, the man
called Harmer interrupted gruffly:

“
It’s
true enough those Indian conjurers can do queer things, but I notice they generally
do them in India. Confederates, perhaps, or merely mass psychology. I don’t
think those tricks have ever been played in an English village, and I should
say our friend’s goldfish were quite safe.”

“
I
will tell you a story,” said de Lara, in his motionless way, “which happened not
in India, but outside an English barrack in the most modernized part of Cairo.
A sentinel was standing inside the grating of an iron gateway looking out
between the bars on to the street. There appeared outside the gate a beggar,
barefoot and in native rags, who asked him, in English that was startlingly
distinct and refined, for a certain official document kept in the building for
safety. The soldier told the man, of course, that he could not come inside; and
the man answered, smiling: ‘What is inside and what is outside?’ The soldier
was still staring scornfully through the iron grating when he gradually
realized that, though neither he nor the gate had moved, he was actually
standing in the street and looking in at the barrack yard, where the beggar
stood still and smiling and equally motionless. Then, when the beggar turned
towards the building, the sentry awoke to such sense as he had left, and shouted
a warning to all the soldiers within the gated enclosure to hold the prisoner
fast. ‘You won’t get out of there anyhow,’ he said vindictively. Then the
beggar said in his silvery voice: ‘What is outside and what is inside?’ And the
soldier, still glaring through the same bars, saw that they were once more between
him and the street, where the beggar stood free and smiling with a paper in his
hand.”

Mr.
Imlack Smith, the bank manager, was looking at the carpet with his dark sleek head
bowed, and he spoke for the first time.

“
Did
anything happen about the paper?” he asked.

“
Your
professional instincts are correct, sir,” said the Count with grim affability. “It
was a paper of considerable financial importance. Its consequences were international.”

“
I
hope they don’t occur often,” said young Hartopp gloomily.

“
I
do not touch the political side,” said the Count serenely, “but only the philosophical.
It illustrates how the wise man can get behind time and space and turn the
levers of them, so to speak, so that the whole world turns round before our
eyes. But is it so hard for you people to believe that spiritual powers are
really more powerful than material ones.”

“
Well,”
said old Smart cheerfully, “I don’t profess to be an authority on spiritual powers.
What do you say, Father Brown?”

“
The
only thing that strikes me,” answered the little priest, “is that all the supernatural
acts we have yet heard of seem to be thefts. And stealing by spiritual methods
seem to me much the same as stealing by material ones.”

“
Father
Brown is a Philistine,” said the smiling Smith.

“
I
have a sympathy with the tribe,” said Father Brown. “A Philistine is only a man
who is right without knowing why.”

“
All
this is too clever for me,” said Hartopp heartily.

“
Perhaps,”
said Father Brown with a smile, “you would like to speak without words, as the Count
suggests. He would begin by saying nothing in a pointed fashion, and you would
retort with a burst of taciturnity.”

“
Something
might be done with music,” murmured the Count dreamily. “It would be better than
all these words.”

“
Yes,
I might understand that better,” said the young man in a low voice.

Boyle
had followed the conversation with curious attention, for there was something in
the demeanour of more than one of the talkers that seemed to him significant or
even odd. As the talk drifted to music, with an appeal to the dapper bank manager
(who was an amateur musician of some merit), the young secretary awoke with a
start to his secretarial duties, and reminded his employer that the head clerk
was still standing patiently with the papers in his hand.