The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (94 page)

“
And
it might be called an example of what I said,” said the doctor sharply, “about a
little scientific knowledge being enough to show how the tricks are done.”

“
Do
you really mean, doctor,” asked Smart in some excitement, “that you can throw any
scientific light on this mystery?”

“
I
can throw light on what the Count calls a mystery,” said the doctor, “because it
is not a mystery at all. That part of it is plain enough. A sound is only a wave
of vibration, and certain vibrations can break glass, if the sound is of a certain
kind and the glass of a certain kind. The man did not stand in the road and
think, which the Count tells us is the ideal method when Orientals want a little
chat. He sang out what he wanted, quite loud, and struck a shrill note on an
instrument. It is similar to many experiments by which glass of special composition
has been cracked.”

“
Such
as the experiment,” said the Count lightly, “by which several lumps of solid gold
have suddenly ceased to exist.”

“
Here
comes Inspector Pinner,” said Boyle. “Between ourselves, I think he would regard
the doctor’s natural explanation as quite as much of a fairy tale as the Count’s
preternatural one. A very sceptical intellect, Mr. Pinner’s, especially about
me. I rather think I am under suspicion.”

“
I
think we are all under suspicion,” said the Count.

It
was the presence of this suspicion in his own case that led Boyle to seek the personal
advice of Father Brown. They were walking round the village green together,
some hours later in the day, when the priest, who was frowning thoughtfully at
the ground as he listened, suddenly stopped.

“
Do
you see that?” he asked. “Somebody’s been washing the pavement here — just this
little strip of pavement outside Colonel Varney’s house. I wonder whether that was
done yesterday.”

Father
Brown looked rather earnestly at the house, which was high and narrow, and carried
rows of striped sun-blinds of gay but already faded colours. The chinks or
crannies that gave glimpses of the interior looked all the darker; indeed, they
looked almost black in contrast with the facade thus golden in the morning light.

“
That
is Colonel Varney’s house, isn’t it?” he asked. “He comes from the East, too, I
fancy. What sort of man is he?”

“
I’ve
never even seen him,” answered Boyle. “I don’t think anybody’s seen him, except
Dr. Burdock, and I rather fancy the doctor doesn’t see him more than he need.”

“
Well,
I’m going to see him for a minute,” said Father Brown.

The
big front door opened and swallowed the small priest, and his friend stood staring
at it in a dazed and irrational manner, as if wondering whether it would ever
open again. It opened in a few minutes, and Father Brown emerged, still
smiling, and continued his slow and pottering progress round the square of roads.
Sometimes he seemed to have forgotten the matter in hand altogether, for he
would make passing remarks on historical and social questions, or on the prospects
of development in the district. He remarked on the soil used for the beginning
of a new road by the bank; he looked across the old village green with a vague
expression.

“
Common
land. I suppose people ought to feed their pigs and geese on it, if they had any
pigs or geese; as it is, it seems to feed nothing but nettles and thistles. What
a pity that what was supposed to be a sort of large meadow has been turned into
a small and petty wilderness. That’s Dr. Burdock’s house opposite, isn’t it?”

“
Yes,”
answered Boyle, almost jumping at this abrupt postscript.

“
Very
well,” answered Father Brown, “then I think we’ll go indoors again.”

As
they opened the front door of Smart’s house and mounted the stairs, Boyle repeated
to his companion many details of the drama enacted there at daybreak.

“
I
suppose you didn’t doze off again?” asked Father Brown, “giving time for somebody
to scale the balcony while Jameson ran down to secure the door.”

“
No,”
answered Boyle; “I am sure of that. I woke up to hear Jameson challenging the stranger
from the balcony; then I heard him running downstairs and putting up the bars,
and then in two strides I was on the balcony myself.”

“
Or
could he have slipped in between you from another angle? Are there any other entrances
besides the front entrance?”

“
Apparently
there are not,” said Boyle gravely.

“
I
had better make sure, don’t you think?” asked Father Brown apologetically, and scuttled
softly downstairs again. Boyle remained in the front bedroom gazing rather
doubtfully after him. After a comparatively brief interval the round and rather
rustic visage appeared again at the head of the stairs, looking rather like a
turnip ghost with a broad grin.

“
No;
I think that settles the matter of entrances,” said the turnip ghost, cheerfully.
“And now, I think, having got everything in a tight box, so to speak, we can
take stock of what we’ve got. It’s rather a curious business.”

“
Do
you think,” asked Boyle, ‘that the Count or the colonel, or any of these Eastern
travellers have anything to do with it? Do you think it is — preternatural?”

“
I
will grant you this,” said the priest gravely, “if the Count, or the colonel, or
any of your neighbours did dress up in Arab masquerade and creep up to this house
in the dark — then it was preternatural.”

“
What
do you mean? Why?”

“
Because
the Arab left no footprints,” answered Father Brown. “The colonel on the one side
and the banker on the other are the nearest of your neighbours. That loose red
soil is between you and the bank, it would print off bare feet like a plaster
cast and probably leave red marks everywhere. I braved the colonel’s curry-seasoned
temper to verify the fact that the front pavement was washed yesterday and not
to-day; it was wet enough to make wet footprints all along the road. Now, if
the visitor were the Count or the doctor in the houses opposite, he might
possibly, of course, have come across the common. But he must have found it
exceedingly uncomfortable with bare feet, for it is, as I remarked, one mass of
thorns and thistles and stinging nettles. He would surely have pricked himself
and probably left traces of it. Unless, as you say, he was a preternatural
being.”

Boyle
looked steadily at the grave and indecipherable face of his clerical friend.

“
Do
you mean that he was?” he asked, at length.

“
There
is one general truth to remember,” said Father Brown, after a pause. “A thing can
sometimes be too close to be seen, as, for instance, a man cannot see himself.
There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope,
and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon. And I am
told that if a man hears the exact reproduction of his own voice it sounds like
the voice of a stranger. In the same way, if anything is right in the
foreground of our life we hardly see it, and if we did we might think it quite
odd. If the thing in the foreground got into the middle distance, we should
probably think it had come from the remote distance. Just come outside the
house again for a moment. I want to show you how it looks from another standpoint.”

He
had already risen, and as they descended the stairs he continued his remarks in
a rather groping fashion as if he were thinking aloud.

“
The
Count and the Asiatic atmosphere all come in, because, in a case like this, everything
depends on the preparation of the mind. A man can reach a condition in which a
brick, falling on his head, will seem to be a Babylonian brick carved with
cuneiform, and dropped from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, so that he will
never even look at the brick and see it is of one pattern with the bricks of
his own house. So in your case —”

“
What
does this mean?” interrupted Boyle, staring and pointing at the entrance. “What
in the name of wonder does it mean? The door is barred again.”

He
was staring at the front door by which they had entered but a little while before,
and across which stood, once more, the great dark bands of rusty iron which had
once, as he had said, locked the stable door too late. There was something
darkly and dumbly ironic in those old fastenings closing behind them and
imprisoning them as if of their own motion.

“
Oh
those!” said Father Brown casually. “I put up those bars myself, just now. Didn’t
you hear me?”

“
No,”
answered Boyle, staring. “I heard nothing.”

“
Well,
I rather thought you wouldn’t,” said the other equably. “There’s really no reason
why anybody upstairs should hear those bars being put up. A sort of hook fits
easily into a sort of hole. When you’re quite close you hear a dull click; but
that’s all. The only thing that makes any noise a man could hear upstairs, is
this.”

And
he lifted the bar out of its socket and let it fall with a clang at the side of
the door,

“
It
does make a noise if you unbar the door,” said Father Brown gravely, “even if you
do it pretty carefully.”

“
You
mean —”

“
I
mean,” said Father Brown, “that what you heard upstairs was Jameson opening the
door and not shutting it. And now let’s open the door ourselves and go outside.”

When
they stood outside in the street, under the balcony, the little priest resumed his
previous explanation as coolly as if it had been a chemical lecture.

“
I
was saying that a man may be in the mood to look for something very distant, and
not realize that it is something very close, something very close to himself,
perhaps something very like himself. It was a strange and outlandish thing that
you saw when you looked down at this road. I suppose it never occurred to you
to consider what he saw when he looked up at that balcony?”

Boyle
was staring at the balcony and did not answer, and the other added:

“
You
thought it very wild and wonderful that an Arab should come through civilized England
with bare feet. You did not remember that at the same moment you had bare feet
yourself.”

Boyle
at last found words, and it was to repeat words already spoken.

“
Jameson
opened the door,” he said mechanically.

“
Yes,”
assented, his friend. “Jameson opened the door and came out into the road in his
nightclothes, just as you came out on the balcony. He caught up two things that
you had seen a hundred times: the length of old blue curtain that he wrapped
round his head, and the Oriental musical instrument you must have often seen in
that heap of Oriental curiosities. The rest was atmosphere and acting, very
fine acting, for he is a very fine artist in crime.”

“
Jameson!”
exclaimed Boyle incredulously. “He was such a dull old stick that I never even noticed
him.”

“
Precisely,”
said the priest, “he was an artist. If he could act a wizard or a troubadour for
six minutes, do you think he could not act a clerk for six weeks?”

“
I
am still not quite sure of his object,” said Boyle.

“
His
object has been achieved,” replied Father Brown, “or very nearly achieved. He had
taken the goldfish already, of course, as he had twenty chances of doing. But
if he had simply taken them, everybody would have realized that he had twenty
chances of doing it. By creating a mysterious magician from the end of the
earth, he set everybody’s thoughts wandering far afield to Arabia and India, so
that you yourself can hardly believe that the whole thing was so near home. It
was too close to you to be seen.”

“
If
this is true,” said Boyle, “it was an extraordinary risk to run, and he had to cut
it very fine. It’s true I never heard the man in the street say anything while
Jameson was talking from the balcony, so I suppose that was all a fake. And I
suppose it’s true that there was time for him to get outside before I had fully
woken up and got out on to the balcony.”

“
Every
crime depends on somebody not waking up too soon,” replied Father Brown; “and in
every sense most of us wake up too late. I, for one, have woken up much too late.
For I imagine he’s bolted long ago, just before or just after they took his
finger-prints.”

“
You
woke up before anybody else, anyhow,” said Boyle, “and I should never have woken
up in that sense. Jameson was so correct and colourless that I forgot all about
him.”

“
Beware
of the man you forget,” replied his friend; “he is the one man who has you entirely
at a disadvantage. But I did not suspect him, either, until you told me how you
had heard him barring the door.”

“
Anyhow,
we owe it all to you,” said Boyle warmly.

“
You
owe it all to Mrs. Robinson,” said Father Brown with a smile.

“
Mrs.
Robinson?” questioned the wondering secretary. “You don’t mean the housekeeper?”

“
Beware
of the woman you forget, and even more,” answered the other. “This man was a very
high-class criminal; he had been an excellent actor, and therefore he was a
good psychologist. A man like the Count never hears any voice but his own; but
this man could listen, when you had all forgotten he was there, and gather exactly
the right materials for his romance and know exactly the right note to strike
to lead you all astray. But he made one bad mistake in the psychology of Mrs.
Robinson, the housekeeper.”