G.K. Chesterton.......................................................................................................................................1

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let

loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuousnor

wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his

clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat,

and a silver straw hat with a greyblue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black

beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness

of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver,

that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful

intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous

investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the

Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to

Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage of

the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would

travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain;

It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when

he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I

mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every

morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by

committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of

his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d'instruction upside down and stood him on his head,

"to clear his mind"; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to

say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes;

his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a

new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London,

with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by the

simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside people's doors to the doors of his own customers. It

was he who had kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose whole

letterbag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages infinitesimally small

upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said

that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap.

It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillarbox, which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the

chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his

huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the treetops like a monkey. Hence the great

Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware that his adventures would not end when he

But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin's ideas were still in process of settlement.

There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his

singular height. If Valentin's quick eye had caught a tall applewoman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably

tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a

disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he had

already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on the journey limited themselves with

certainty to six. There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market

gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town,

and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case,

Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he

had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several

brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless

sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin

was a sceptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for

them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly

fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a

mooncalf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made

of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his brownpaper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with

saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all

his parcels, and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the good nature to warn

him not to take care of the silver by telling everybody about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his

eye open for someone else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up

He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal so

far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit

another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and

squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London,

full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the

square of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was much

higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this side was broken by one of London's admirable

accidentsa restaurant that looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object,

with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above

the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front

door almost as a fireescape might run up to a firstfloor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into

the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact

and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days.

Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man

named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence

which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of

Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely.

He was not "a thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A

machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same

had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the

world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so faras in

the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason.

Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing

of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong first principles.

Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp

on Wimbledon Common to a tall toastmaster at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked state of nescience,

In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow the train of the

reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right

placesbanks, police stations, rendezvous he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every

empty house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every

crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said that if

one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the

chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the

pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop. Something

about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused

all the detective's rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went up the steps, and

It was halfway through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood

about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceeded

musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered

how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to

pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might

destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully

realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour

smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.

He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a sugarbasin; as

unmistakably meant for sugar as a champagnebottle for champagne. He wondered why they should keep

salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two saltcellars quite

full. Perhaps there was some speciality in the condiment in the saltcellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he

looked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other traces of that

singular artistic taste which puts the sugar in the saltcellars and the salt in the sugarbasin. Except for an

odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the whitepapered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and

When that official hurried up, fuzzyhaired and somewhat bleareyed at that early hour, the detective (who

was not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was

up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.

"Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?" inquired Valentin. "Does changing the

The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment had certainly no

such intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugarbasin and looked at it; he picked

up the saltcellar and looked at that, his face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused

himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the

"Threw soup at the wall?" repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian metaphor.

"Yes, yes," said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at the dark splash on the white paper; "threw it over there

Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.

"Yes, sir," he said, "it's quite true, though I don't suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two

clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as the shutters were taken down. They were both

very quiet, respectable people; one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach

altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at last. Only, the instant before

he stepped into the street he deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the

soup slap on the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only rush out in time

to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don't do any particular damage, but it was confounded cheek;

and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the

The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal

darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough.

Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other street.

It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shopfront

went by him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular greengrocer and

fruiterer's, an array of goods set out in the open air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the

two most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On the heap of nuts

lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold, blue chalk, "Best tangerine oranges, two a penny." On

the oranges was the equally clear and exact description, "Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb." M. Valentin looked at

these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat

recently. He drew the attention of the redfaced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the

street, to this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each card into its

proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his walkingcane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last

he said, "Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in

The redfaced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane,

"Why," he pursued, "why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer's shop like a shovel hat that has

come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which

connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the other short?"

The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail's; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling

himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: "I don't know what you 'ave to do with it, but if

you're one of their friends, you can tell 'em from me that I'll knock their silly 'eads off, parsons or no parsons,

"Indeed?" asked the detective, with great sympathy. "Did they upset your apples?"

"One of 'em did," said the heated shopman; "rolled 'em all over the street. I'd 'ave caught the fool but for

"Which way did these parsons go?" asked Valentin. "Up that second road on the lefthand side, and then

"Thanks," replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square he found a

policeman, and said: "This is urgent, constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel hats?"

The policeman began to chuckle heavily. "I 'ave, sir; and if you arst me, one of 'em was drunk. He stood in

"Which way did they go?" snapped Valentin. "They took one of them yellow buses over there," answered the

Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly: "Call up two of your men to come with me in

pursuit," and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the ponderous policeman was moved to

almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by

Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. "I'll tell you on the top of that omnibus," he said, and was darting

and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank panting on the top seats of the yellow

"Quite true," replied their leader placidly, "if we only had an idea of where we were going."

"Well, where are you going?" asked the other, staring. Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then,

removing his cigarette, he said: "If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess

what he's doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you

may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing."

"What sort of queer thing do you mean?" asked the inspector. "Any sort of queer thing," answered Valentin,

The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed like hours on end; the great detective

would not explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps,

also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour,

and the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an infernal

telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come

to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London died

away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably born again in blazing high streets

and blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But

though the winter twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective still sat

silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by on either side. By the time they had left

Camden Town behind, the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as

Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man's shoulder, and shouted to the driver to stop.

They tumbled down the steps into the road without realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked

round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards a window on the left

side of the road. It was a large window, forming part of the long facade of a gilt and palatial publichouse; it

was the part reserved for respectable dining, and labelled "Restaurant." This window, like all the rest along

the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass; but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like

"Our cue at last," cried Valentin, waving his stick; "the place with the broken window."

"What window? What cue?" asked his principal assistant. "Why, what proof is there that this has anything to

Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage. "Proof!" he cried. "Good God! the man is looking for

proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can

we do? Don't you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?" He banged his way

into the restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table,

and looked at the star of smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even then.

"Got your window broken, I see," said Valentin to the waiter as he paid the bill.

"Yes, sir," answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, to which Valentin silently added an

enormous tip. The waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable animation.

"Ah, yes, sir," he said. "Very odd thing, that, sir." "Indeed?" Tell us about it," said the detective with careless

"Well, two gents in black came in," said the waiter; "two of those foreign parsons that are running about.

They had a cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other was just going out

to join him when I looked at my change again and found he'd paid me more than three times too much.

`Here,' I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door, `you've paid too much.' `Oh,' he says, very cool,

`have we?' 'Yes,' I says, and picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was a knockout."

"What do you mean?" asked his interlocutor. "Well, I'd have sworn on seven Bibles that I'd put 4s. on that

"The parson at the door he says all serene, `Sorry to confuse your accounts, but it'll pay for the window.'

`What window?' I says. `The one I'm going to break,' he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his

All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under his breath, "Are we after escaped

"I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn't do anything. The man marched out of the place and joined his

friend just round the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn't catch them, though I

"Bullock Street," said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple he

Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few

windows; streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk was

deepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess in what exact direction they were

treading. The inspector, however, was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of

Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gaslit window broke the blue twilight like a bull'seye lantern; and

Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in; he

stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars

with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not need one.

An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegant appearance with a merely automatic

inquiry; but when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyes

"For goodness' sake," said Valentin, leaning forward with his first real confession of eagerness, "for Heaven's

"Well," said the woman a little doubtfully, "the clergymen came in about half an hour ago and bought some

peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runs back

into the shop and says, `Have I left a parcel!' Well, I looked everywhere and couldn't see one; so he says,

`Never mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,' and he left me the address and a shilling

for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought I'd looked everywhere, I found he'd left a brown paper

parcel, so I posted it to the place he said. I can't remember the address now; it was somewhere in

Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought perhaps the police had come about it."

"Straight on for fifteen minutes," said the woman, "and you'll come right out on the open." Valentin sprang

out of the shop and began to run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into

the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of

peacockgreen sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint

was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a

golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The

holiday makers who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches;

and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and

darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking across the valley,

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially black which did not breaka

group of two figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of

them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student's stoop and an inconspicuous manner,

he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick

impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the distance and magnified the two black figures as

in a vast microscope, he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet which he had

somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It

was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom he had warned about his brown

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his

inquiries that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a relic

of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the congress. This undoubtedly was the "silver

with blue stones"; and Father Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing

wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out

everything. Also there was nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire cross he

should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all natural history. And most certainly there was

nothing wonderful about the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the

man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on a string to the

North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could lead him to

Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his

helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin

thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for

the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blueandsilver cross from a priest from Essex

to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for

windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet somehow he had

missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but

nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.

The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies across the huge green contour of a hill.

They were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but they were

certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter

had to use the undignified attitudes of the deerstalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl

prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close enough to the quarry to

hear the murmur of the discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word "reason" recurring

frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets,

the detectives actually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find the trail again for an

agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of

rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot was an old ramshackle

wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still

clung to the darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacockgreen to

peacockblue, and the stars detached themselves more and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his

followers, Valentin contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence,

After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the

two English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs on its

thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure, about the

most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to

the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them.

But no more innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black

The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown's sentences, which ended: "... what they really meant in

The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said: "Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but

who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us

"No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of

things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on

earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound

"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe?" "Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning

sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."

Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of

the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical

gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and

"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they

were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of

forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire.

But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of

conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a noticeboard, `Thou shalt not

Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as

might be, felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tall priest made him

stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his

"Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason. The mystery of heaven is

Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:

"Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We're all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like

The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange violence to that shocking change of speech. But the

guarder of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of the compass. He seemed still to

have a somewhat foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps, he had

"Yes," said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the same still posture, "yes, I am Flambeau."

"Come, will you give me that cross?" "No," said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound. Flambeau

suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions. The great robber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but

"No," he cried, "you won't give it me, you proud prelate. You won't give it me, you little celibate simpleton.

Shall I tell you why you won't give it me? Because I've got it already in my own breastpocket."

The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face in the dusk, and said, with the timid

"Really, you're as good as a threeact farce," he cried. "Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to

make a duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you've got the duplicate and I've got the jewels. An

"Yes," said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with the same strange vagueness of manner.

The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.

"Well, I mustn't tell you his name, of course," said the little man simply. "He was a penitent, you know. He

had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown paper parcels. And so, you see,

when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap's way of doing it at once."

"Began to suspect me?" repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. "Did you really have the gumption to

"No, no," said Brown with an air of apology. "You see, I suspected you when we first met. It's that little bulge

"Oh, one's little flock, you know!" said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. "When I was a

curate in Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I suspected you from the first,

don't you see, I made sure that the cross should go safe, anyhow. I'm afraid I watched you, you know. So at

last I saw you change the parcels. Then, don't you see, I changed them back again. And then I left the right

"Left it behind?" repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there was another note in his voice beside his

"Well, it was like this," said the little priest, speaking in the same unaffected way. "I went back to that

sweetshop and asked if I'd left a parcel, and gave them a particular address if it turned up. Well, I knew I

hadn't; but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running after me with that valuable parcel, they have

sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster." Then he added rather sadly: "I learnt that, too, from a poor

fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but he's in a monastery now.

Oh, one gets to know, you know," he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology.

Flambeau tore a brownpaper parcel out of his inner pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper

and sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and cried:

"I don't believe you. I don't believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. I believe you've still got the

stuff on you, and if you don't give it upwhy, we're all alone, and I'll take it by force!"

"No," said Father Brown simply, and stood up also, "you won't take it by force. First, because I really haven't

Flambeau stopped in his stride forward. "Behind that tree," said Father Brown, pointing, "are two strong

policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of

course! How did I do it? Why, I'll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we have to know twenty such things

when we work among the criminal classes! Well, I wasn't sure you were a thief, and it would never do to

make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would make you show

yourself. A man generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn't, he has some reason

for keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if his bill is three

times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it."

The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was

"Well," went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, "as you wouldn't leave any tracks for the police, of

course somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to do something that would get us talked

about for the rest of the day. I didn't do much harma splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I

saved the cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn't

"I'm glad you've never heard of it," said the priest, making a face. "It's a foul thing. I'm sure you're too good a

man for a Whistler. I couldn't have countered it even with the Spots myself; I'm not strong enough in the

"What on earth are you talking about?" asked the other. "Well, I did think you'd know the Spots," said Father

"How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau. The shadow of a smile crossed the round,

"Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to

nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact,

"What?" asked the thief, almost gaping. "You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology." And

even as he turned away to collect his property, the three policemen came out from under the twilight trees.

Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow.

"Do not bow to me, mon ami," said Valentin with silver clearness. "Let us both bow to our master."

And they both stood an instant uncovered while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.

Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive

before him. These were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a

face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance halla hall hung with

weapons. Valentin's house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house, with

high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but the oddityand perhaps the police valueof

its architecture was this: that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, which was

guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate, and there were many exits from the

house into the garden. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall,

smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden, perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom

As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in

truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were

rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he

was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over Frenchand largely over

Europeanpolicial methods, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences

and the purification of prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only thing

When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosettean elegant figure, his

dark beard already streaked with grey. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened on the

grounds behind. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place,

he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the

flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific

natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem

of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his

guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawingroom when he entered it was enough to make

certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party; he saw

Lord Galloway, the English Ambassadora choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the

blue ribbon of the Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a face sensitive

and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and

coppercoloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, blackeyed and opulent, and with her her two

daughters, blackeyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed

brown beard, and a forehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness,

since they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex,

whom he had recently met in England. He sawperhaps with more interest than any of thesea tall man in

uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now

advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. This was Commandant O'Brien, of the French Foreign Legion.

He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, cleanshaven, darkhaired, and blueeyed, and, as seemed

natural in an officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he had an air at

once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the

Gallowaysespecially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after some crash of debts, and now

expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging about in uniform, sabre and spurs. When

he bowed to the Ambassador's family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.

But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other, their distinguished host was not

specially interested in them. No one of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was

expecting, for special reasons, a man of worldwide fame, whose friendship he had secured during some of

his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that

multimillionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of small religions have occasioned so much

easy sport and easier solemnity for the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether

Mr. Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was ready to pour money into any

intellectual vessel, so long as it was an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American

Shakespearea hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman, but thought that Luke P.

Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more "progressive" than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought

"progressive." He thought Valentin "progressive," thereby doing him a grave injustice.

The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great

quality, which very few of us can claim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as

fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, without so much relief as a watchchain or a ring. His hair

was white and well brushed back like a German's; his face was red, fierce and cherubic, with one dark tuft

under the lower lip that threw up that otherwise infantile visage with an effect theatrical and even

Mephistophelean. Not long, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American; his lateness had

already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with all speed into the diningroom with Lady

Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the

arm of that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorously

gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic

enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger menSimon the doctor, Brown the

priest, and the detrimental O'Brien, the exile in a foreign uniformall melted away to mix with the ladies or

smoke in the conservatory, then the English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung every

sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien might be signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not

attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed in all

religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but

neither could appeal to him. After a time this "progressive" logomachy had reached a crisis of tedium; Lord

Galloway got up also and sought the drawingroom. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight

minutes: till he heard the highpitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest,

followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about "science and

religion." But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thinghe saw what was not there. He

Rising impatiently from the drawingroom, as he had from the diningroom, he stamped along the passage

once more. His notion of protecting his daughter from the IrishAlgerian n'erdoweel had become

something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin's

study, he was surprised to meet his daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a second

enigma. If she had been with O'Brien, where was O'Brien! If she had not been with O'Brien, where had she

been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion,

and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon with her scimitar had now

ripped up and rolled away all the stormwrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall

figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings

He vanished through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord Galloway in an indescribable temper,

at once virulent and vague. The blueandsilver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt him with

all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authority was at war. The length and grace of the

Irishman's stride enraged him as if he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him. He was

trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteau fairyland; and, willing to shake off such

amorous imbecilities by speech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or

stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity. The next

instant the moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight an elderly English diplomatist running

His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beaming glasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon,

who heard the nobleman's first clear words. Lord Galloway was crying: "A corpse in the grassa

"We must tell Valentin at once," said the doctor, when the other had brokenly described all that he had dared

to examine. "It is fortunate that he is here"; and even as he spoke the great detective entered the study,

attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation; he had come with the common

concern of a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was told the gory fact,

he turned with all his gravity instantly bright and businesslike; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his

"Strange, gentlemen," he said as they hurried out into the garden, "that I should have hunted mysteries all

over the earth, and now one comes and settles in my own backyard. But where is the place?" They crossed

the lawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river; but under the guidance of the shaken

Galloway they found the body sunken in deep grassthe body of a very tall and broadshouldered man. He

lay face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were clad in black cloth, and that his big

head was bald, except for a wisp or two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed. A scarlet

"At least," said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, "he is none of our party."

The doctor bent down. "He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough," he answered. "Just help me

They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts as to his being really dead were settled at

once and frightfully. The head fell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever had cut his

throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. "He must have been as

Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr. Simon lifted the head. It was slightly

slashed about the neck and jaw, but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face, at

once sunken and swollen, with a hawklike nose and heavy lidsa face of a wicked Roman emperor, with,

perhaps, a distant touch of a Chinese emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eye of

ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, as they had lifted his body, they had seen

underneath it the white gleam of a shirtfront defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said, the man

had never been of their party. But he might very well have been trying to join it, for he had come dressed for

Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest professional attention the grass

and ground for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor, and

quite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellings except a few twigs, snapped or

chopped into very small lengths, which Valentin lifted for an instant's examination and then tossed away.

"Twigs," he said gravely; "twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn."

There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply:

"Who's that! Who's that over there by the garden wall!" A small figure with a foolishly large head drew

waveringly near them in the moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out to be the

Valentin's black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they did on principle at the sight of the

cassock. But he was far too just a man to deny the relevance of the remark. "You are right," he said. "Before

we find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he came to be here. Now listen to me,

gentlemen. If it can be done without prejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certain

distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies, gentlemen, and there is a foreign

ambassador. If we must mark it down as a crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can

use my own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that I can afford to be private. Please

Heaven, I will clear everyone of my own guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen,

upon your honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon; there are bedrooms for all.

Simon, I think you know where to find my man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him to

leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway, you are certainly the best person to

tell the ladies what has happened, and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remain

When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like a bugle. Dr. Simon went through to the

armoury and routed out Ivan, the public detective's private detective. Galloway went to the drawingroom

and told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time the company assembled there the ladies were

already startled and already soothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at the head and

foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their two philosophies of death.

Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came out of the house like a cannon ball, and

came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively with the glow

of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's

"Yes; look, if you like, Ivan," said Valentin, "but don't be long. We must go in and thrash this out in the

Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop. "Why," he gasped, "it'sno, it isn't; it can't be. Do you know

"No," said Valentin indifferently; "we had better go inside." Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in

The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even without hesitation; but his eye was the iron eye of a judge

at assize. He made a few rapid notes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: "Is everybody here?"

"No," said Lord Galloway in a hoarse, harsh voice. "And not Mr. Neil O'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman

"Ivan," said the detective, "go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr. Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is

finishing a cigar in the diningroom; Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the

The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone could stir or speak Valentin went on with the

"Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, his head cut clean from his body. Dr.

Simon, you have examined it. Do you think that to cut a man's throat like that would need great force? Or,

"I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all," said the pale doctor.

"Have you any thought," resumed Valentin, "of a tool with which it could be done?"

"Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't," said the doctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not

easy to hack a neck through even clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with a battleaxe

"But, good heavens!" cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, "there aren't any twohanded swords and

Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. "Tell me," he said, still writing rapidly, "could it have

A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason, curdled everyone's blood like the

knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: "A sabre yes, I suppose it

"Thank you," said Valentin. "Come in, Ivan." The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in

The Irish officer stood up disordered and defiant on the threshold. "What do you want with me?" he cried.

"Please sit down," said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. "Why, you aren't wearing your sword. Where is it?"

"I left it on the library table," said O'Brien, his brogue deepening in his disturbed mood. "It was a nuisance, it

"Ivan," said Valentin, "please go and get the Commandant's sword from the library." Then, as the servant

vanished, "Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were

The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. "Oh," he cried in pure Irish, "admirin' the moon.

A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came again that trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan

reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard. "This is all I can find," he said.

"Put it on the table," said Valentin, without looking up. There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that

sea of inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess's weak exclamations had

long ago died away. Lord Galloway's swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered. The voice that came

"I think I can tell you," cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quivering voice with which a courageous woman

speaks publicly. "I can tell you what Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He

was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my

respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder," she added, with

rather a wan smile, "if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he

Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was intimidating her in what he imagined to be an

undertone. "Hold your tongue, Maggie," he said in a thunderous whisper. "Why should you shield the fellow?

He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter was regarding him, a look that was indeed a

"You old fool!" she said in a low voice without pretence of piety, "what do you suppose you are trying to

prove? I tell you this man was innocent while with me. But if he wasn't innocent, he was still with me. If he

murdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seenwho must at least have known? Do you hate

Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of those satanic tragedies that have been

between lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irish

adventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of formless historical memories of

In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: "Was it a very long cigar?"

The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken.

"I mean," said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, "I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It

Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation in Valentin's face as he lifted his head.

"Quite right," he remarked sharply. "Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once."

The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.

"Lady Margaret," he said, "we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above

your lower dignity and explaining the Commandant's conduct. But there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I

understand, met you passing from the study to the drawingroom, and it was only some minutes afterwards

"You have to remember," replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, "that I had just refused him, so we

should scarcely have come back arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behindand so got

The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face. "Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but Mr. Brayne has left

"Gone. Scooted. Evaporated," replied Ivan in humorous French. "His hat and coat are gone, too, and I'll tell

you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace,

"What do you mean?" asked Valentin. "I'll show you," said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked

cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a

"I found this," he said, "flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just

There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, reflected with unaffected

concentration of thought, and then turned a respectful face to O'Brien. "Commandant," he said, "we trust you

will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile," he added, slapping the

At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardly refrain from applause.

For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turningpoint of existence. By the time he was wandering in

the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen

from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered

him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhaps given

him something better than an apology, as they drifted among the old flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole

company was more lighthearted and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load of

suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with the strange millionairea man they hardly

Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw himself on a garden seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly

scientific person at once resumed it. He did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were on

"I can't say it interests me much," said the Irishman frankly, "especially as it seems pretty plain now.

Apparently Brayne hated this stranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him with my

sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went. By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man

had a Yankee dollar in his pocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne's, and that seems to clinch it. I don't see

"There are five colossal difficulties," said the doctor quietly; "like high walls within walls. Don't mistake me.

I don't doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why

should a man kill another man with a great hulking sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife

and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Does a man commonly

see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front

door all the evening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin's garden anywhere. How did the dead man get into the

garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?"

"And the fifth," said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest who was coming slowly up the path.

"Is a trifle, I suppose," said the doctor, "but I think an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been

slashed, I supposed the assassin had struck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across the

truncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did Brayne hate his foe so

"Horrible!" said O'Brien, and shuddered. The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and

had waited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then he said awkwardly:

"Yes, I'm sorry," said Father Brown mildly. "There's been another murder, you know."

Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking. "And, what's stranger still," continued the priest, with his

dull eye on the rhododendrons, "it's the same disgusting sort; it's another beheading. They found the second

head actually bleeding into the river, a few yards along Brayne's road to Paris; so they suppose that he"

"Great Heaven!" cried O'Brien. "Is Brayne a monomaniac?" "There are American vendettas," said the priest

Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed

all this secretive carnage; where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one head was

hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himself bitterly) it was not true that two heads were better

than one. As he crossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. Upon Valentin's table lay

the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head; and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance

showed him it was only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every week showed one of its

political opponents with rolling eyes and writhing features just after execution; for Valentin was an

anticlerical of some note. But O'Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in his sins; and his

gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellect which belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole,

from the grotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in the newspapers. He remembered the

gigantic jests of the Revolution. He saw the whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying

on Valentin's table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles, the great devil grins on Notre

The library was long, low, and dark; what light entered it shot from under low blinds and had still some of the

ruddy tinge of morning. Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end of a long,

slightlysloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, looking enormous in the twilight. The big black

figure and yellow face of the man found in the garden confronted them essentially unchanged. The second

head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay streaming and dripping beside it;

Valentin's men were still seeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposed to be afloat.

Father Brown, who did not seem to share O'Brien's sensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and

examined it with his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of wet white hair, fringed with silver fire in

the red and level morning light; the face, which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal type, had

"Good morning, Commandant O'Brien," said Valentin, with quiet cordiality. "You have heard of Brayne's

Father Brown was still bending over the head with white hair, and he said, without looking up:

"Well, it seems common sense," said Valentin, with his hands in his pockets. "Killed in the same way as the

other. Found within a few yards of the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carried

"Yes, yes; I know," replied Father Brown submissively. "Yet, you know, I doubt whether Brayne could have

"Why not?" inquired Dr. Simon, with a rational stare. "Well, doctor," said the priest, looking up blinking,

O'Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears; but the doctor sprang forward with impetuous

"Oh, there's no doubt it's Brayne," said the priest quietly. "He had exactly that chip in the left ear."

The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady and glittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth

"I do," said the little man simply. "I've been about with him for some weeks. He was thinking of joining our

The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. "And,

perhaps," he cried, with a blasting sneer, "perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to your

"Perhaps he was," said Brown stolidly; "it is possible." "In that case," cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile,

Commandant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. "Drop that slanderous rubbish, Valentin," he said, "or

But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the priest) had already recovered himself. "Well," he said

shortly, "people's private opinions can wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; you must

enforce it on yourselvesand on each other. Ivan here will tell you anything more you want to know; I must

get to business and write to the authorities. We can't keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writing in my study

"Is there any more news, Ivan?" asked Dr. Simon, as the chief of police strode out of the room.

"Only one more thing, I think, sir," said Ivan, wrinkling up his grey old face, "but that's important, too, in its

way. There's that old buffer you found on the lawn," and he pointed without pretence of reverence at the big

"Indeed!" cried the astonished doctor, "and who is he?" "His name was Arnold Becker," said the

underdetective, "though he went by many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to have

been in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. We didn't have much to do with him

ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany. We've communicated, of course, with the German police. But,

oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker, whom we had a great deal to do with. In

fact, we found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well, it's a rum thing, gentlemen, but when I saw

that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn't seen Louis Becker guillotined with

my own eyes, I'd have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, of course, I remembered his

The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason that nobody was listening to him. The Commandant

and the doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding his

"Stop, stop, stop!" he cried; "stop talking a minute, for I see half. Will God give me strength? Will my brain

make the one jump and see all? Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphrase any

page in Aquinas once. Will my head splitor will it see? I see halfI only see half."

He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of rigid torture of thought or prayer, while the other three

When Father Brown's hands fell they showed a face quite fresh and serious, like a child's. He heaved a huge

sigh, and said: "Let us get this said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this will be the quickest

way to convince you all of the truth." He turned to the doctor. "Dr. Simon," he said, "you have a strong

headpiece, and I heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business. Well, if you

Simon's pincenez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. "Well, the first

question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill with a

"A man cannot behead with a bodkin," said Brown calmly, "and for this murder beheading was absolutely

"Why?" asked O'Brien, with interest. "And the next question?" asked Father Brown. "Well, why didn't the

man cry out or anything?" asked the doctor; "sabres in gardens are certainly unusual."

"Twigs," said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which looked on the scene of death. "No one saw

the point of the twigs. Why should they lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were not

snapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some tricks with the sabre,

showing how he could cut a branch in midair, or whatnot. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the

"Well," said the doctor slowly, "that seems plausible enough. But my next two questions will stump anyone."

"You know how all the garden was sealed up like an airtight chamber," went on the doctor. "Well, how did

Without turning round, the little priest answered: "There never was any strange man in the garden."

There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost childish laughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of

"Oh!" he cried; "then we didn't lug a great fat corpse on to a sofa last night? He hadn't got into the garden, I

"Not necessarily," said the priest, with a faint smile. "What is the nest question, doctor?"

"I fancy you're ill," exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; "but I'll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne

"He didn't get out of the garden," said the priest, still looking out of the window.

"Didn't get out of the garden?" exploded Simon. "Not completely," said Father Brown. Simon shook his fists

in a frenzy of French logic. "A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn't," he cried.

Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. "I have no time to spare on such senseless talk," he cried angrily. "If

you can't understand a man being on one side of a wall or the other, I won't trouble you further."

"Doctor," said the cleric very gently, "we have always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of

The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: "The head and shoulders were cut about

"Yes," said the motionless priest, "it was done so as to make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood

that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body."

The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt

the chaotic presence of all the horsemen and fishwomen that man's unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice

older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: "Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree

with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads." Yet, while these shameful

symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert,

Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window, with his face in dense shadow; but even

in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no

"Gentlemen," he said, "you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any

strange body in the garden. In face of Dr. Simon's rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly

present. Look here!" (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) "you never saw that man in your

He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the whitemaned head

"The murderer," went on Brown quietly, "hacked off his enemy's head and flung the sword far over the wall.

But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap

on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you all imagined a totally new man."

"Clap on another head!" said O'Brien staring. "What other head? Heads don't grow on garden bushes, do

"No," said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; "there is only one place where they grow. They

grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an

hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an

honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you never see in that cold, grey eye of his

that he is mad! He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has

fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne's crazy millions had hitherto been

scattered among so many sects that they did little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper

that Brayne, like so many scatterbrained sceptics, was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing.

Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support six

Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took

flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of

detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological

excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord Galloway did

not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used

Ivan of the Scar sprang up. "You lunatic," he yelled; "you'll go to my master now, if I take you by"

"Why, I was going there," said Brown heavily; "I must ask him to confess, and all that."

Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a

moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward

suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin's elbow, and that

Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.

If you meet a member of that select club, "The Twelve True Fishermen," entering the Vernon Hotel for the

annual club dinner, you will observe, as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and not black.

If (supposing that you have the stardefying audacity to address such a being) you ask him why, he will

probably answer that he does it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter. You will then retire crushed. But you

If (to pursue the same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet a mild, hardworking little priest,

named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would

probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime

and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. He is perhaps a little proud of

this wild and wonderful guess of his, and it is possible that he might refer to it. But since it is immeasurably

unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find "The Twelve True Fishermen," or that

you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as

can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that

topsyturvy productan "exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by

attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become

cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that their

wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were a fashionable

hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would meekly make up parties of

sixfoot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was

only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if

by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one. But its

very inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular,

was held to be of vital importance: the fact that practically only twentyfour people could dine in the place at

once. The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood open to the air on a sort of

veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London. Thus it happened that even the

twentyfour seats at this table could only be enjoyed in warm weather; and this making the enjoyment yet

more difficult made it yet more desired. The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he

made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. Of course he combined with this limitation

in the scope of his enterprise the most careful polish in its performance. The wines and cooking were really as

good as any in Europe, and the demeanour of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English

upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them

all told. It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel. Each

waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have consented to dine anywhere but in such a place, for

it insisted on a luxurious privacy; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club

was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit

of exposing all their treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set of fish knives

and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the

form of a fish, and each loaded at the hilt with one large pearl. These were always laid out for the fish course,

and the fish course was always the most magnificent in that magnificent repast. The society had a vast

number of ceremonies and observances, but it had no history and no object; that was where it was so very

aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers; unless you were

already a certain sort of person, you never even heard of them. It had been in existence twelve years. Its

If I have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel, the reader may feel a natural wonder

as to how I came to know anything about it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as my

friend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden galley. As far as that is concerned, my story is

simple, or even vulgar. There is in the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the most

refined retreats with the dreadful information that all men are brothers, and wherever this leveller went on his

pale horse it was Father Brown's trade to follow. One of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a

paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer, marvelling mildly at such superstitions, had

consented to send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to Father Brown we are not

concerned, for the excellent reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but apparently it involved him in writing

out a note or statement for the conveying of some message or the righting of some wrong. Father Brown,

therefore, with a meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be

provided with a room and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man, and had also that

bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusual

stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any

borderland or anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on

chance. There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be as startling to find a new guest in

the hotel that night as to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one's own family. Moreover, the priest's

appearance was secondrate and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse of him afar off might precipitate a crisis

in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a plan to cover, since he might not obliterate, the disgrace. When you

enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage decorated with a few dingy but

important pictures, and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages

leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the

hotel. Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass office, which abuts upon the loungea house

within a house, so to speak, like the old hotel bar which probably once occupied its place.

In this office sat the representative of the proprietor (nobody in this place ever appeared in person if he could

help it), and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants' quarters, was the gentlemen's cloak room, the

last boundary of the gentlemen's domain. But between the office and the cloak room was a small private

room without other outlet, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as

lending a duke a thousand pounds or declining to lend him sixpence. It is a mark of the magnificent tolerance

of Mr. Lever that he permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour profaned by a mere priest,

scribbling away on a piece of paper. The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much

better story than this one, only it will never be known. I can merely state that it was very nearly as long, and

that the last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting and absorbing.

For it was by the time that he had reached these that the priest began a little to allow his thoughts to wander

and his animal senses, which were commonly keen, to awaken. The time of darkness and dinner was drawing

on; his own forgotten little room was without a light, and perhaps the gathering gloom, as occasionally

happens, sharpened the sense of sound. As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his

document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a recurrent noise outside, just as one sometimes thinks

to the tune of a railway train. When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was: only the ordinary

patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the

darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had listened for a few seconds dreamily, he got to his

feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his

The footsteps outside at any given moment were such as one might hear in any hotel; and yet, taken as a

whole, there was something very strange about them. There were no other footsteps. It was always a very

silent house, for the few familiar guests went at once to their own apartments, and the welltrained waiters

were told to be almost invisible until they were wanted. One could not conceive any place where there was

less reason to apprehend anything irregular. But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call

them regular or irregular. Father Brown followed them with his finger on the edge of the table, like a man

First, there came a long rush of rapid little steps, such as a light man might make in winning a walking race.

At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter of the

steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the last echoing stamp had died away would come

again the run or ripple of light, hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly

the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because

they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking

questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump.

He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why

should he walk in order to run? Yet no other description would cover the antics of this invisible pair of legs.

The man was either walking very fast down onehalf of the corridor in order to walk very slow down the

other half; or he was walking very slow at one end to have the rapture of walking fast at the other. Neither

suggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker and darker, like his room.

Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of his cell seemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he

began to see as in a kind of vision the fantastic feet capering along the corridor in unnatural or symbolic

attitudes. Was it a heathen religious dance? Or some entirely new kind of scientific exercise? Father Brown

began to ask himself with more exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow step first: it certainly

was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk with a rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be

any servant or messenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer orders (in an oligarchy)

sometimes lurch about when they are slightly drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes,

they stand or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with a kind of careless emphasis,

not specially noisy, yet not caring what noise it made, belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It

was a gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never worked for his living.

Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed to the quicker one, and ran past the door as feverishly

as a rat. The listener remarked that though this step was much swifter it was also much more noiseless, almost

as if the man were walking on tiptoe. Yet it was not associated in his mind with secrecy, but with something

elsesomething that he could not remember. He was maddened by one of those halfmemories that make a

man feel halfwitted. Surely he had heard that strange, swift walking somewhere. Suddenly he sprang to his

feet with a new idea in his head, and walked to the door. His room had no direct outlet on the passage, but let

on one side into the glass office, and on the other into the cloak room beyond. He tried the door into the

office, and found it locked. Then he looked at the window, now a square pane full of purple cloud cleft by

The rational part of him (whether the wiser or not) regained its supremacy. He remembered that the

proprietor had told him that he should lock the door, and would come later to release him. He told himself

that twenty things he had not thought of might explain the eccentric sounds outside; he reminded himself that

there was just enough light left to finish his own proper work. Bringing his paper to the window so as to catch

the last stormy evening light, he resolutely plunged once more into the almost completed record. He had

written for about twenty minutes, bending closer and closer to his paper in the lessening light; then suddenly

This time they had a third oddity. Previously the unknown man had walked, with levity indeed and lightning

quickness, but he had walked. This time he ran. One could hear the swift, soft, bounding steps coming along

the corridor, like the pads of a fleeing and leaping panther. Whoever was coming was a very strong, active

man, in still yet tearing excitement. Yet, when the sound had swept up to the office like a sort of whispering

Father Brown flung down his paper, and, knowing the office door to be locked, went at once into the cloak

room on the other side. The attendant of this place was temporarily absent, probably because the only guests

were at dinner and his office was a sinecure. After groping through a grey forest of overcoats, he found that

the dim cloak room opened on the lighted corridor in the form of a sort of counter or halfdoor, like most of

the counters across which we have all handed umbrellas and received tickets. There was a light immediately

above the semicircular arch of this opening. It threw little illumination on Father Brown himself, who seemed

a mere dark outline against the dim sunset window behind him. But it threw an almost theatrical light on the

He was an elegant man in very plain evening dress; tall, but with an air of not taking up much room; one felt

that he could have slid along like a shadow where many smaller men would have been obvious and

obstructive. His face, now flung back in the lamplight, was swarthy and vivacious, the face of a foreigner. His

figure was good, his manners good humoured and confident; a critic could only say that his black coat was a

shade below his figure and manners, and even bulged and bagged in an odd way. The moment he caught sight

of Brown's black silhouette against the sunset, he tossed down a scrap of paper with a number and called out

with amiable authority: "I want my hat and coat, please; I find I have to go away at once."

Father Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first

menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange

gentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said laughing: "I haven't got any silver; you can

Father Brown's figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was

always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four

million. Often the Catholic Church (which is wedded to common sense) did not approve of it. Often he did

not approve of it himself. But it was real inspirationimportant at rare criseswhen whosoever shall lose

The tall gentleman stared. "Hang it," he cried, "if I choose to give you gold, why should you complain?"

"Because silver is sometimes more valuable than gold," said the priest mildly; "that is, in large quantities."

The stranger looked at him curiously. Then he looked still more curiously up the passage towards the main

entrance. Then he looked back at Brown again, and then he looked very carefully at the window beyond

Brown's head, still coloured with the afterglow of the storm. Then he seemed to make up his mind. He put

one hand on the counter, vaulted over as easily as an acrobat and towered above the priest, putting one

"Stand still," he said, in a hacking whisper. "I don't want to threaten you, but"

"I do want to threaten you," said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum, "I want to threaten you with

"You're a rum sort of cloakroom clerk," said the other. "I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau," said Brown,

The other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back into a chair.

The first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen had proceeded with placid success. I do

not possess a copy of the menu; and if I did it would not convey anything to anybody. It was written in a sort

of superFrench employed by cooks, but quite unintelligible to Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club

that the hors d'oeuvres should be various and manifold to the point of madness. They were taken seriously

because they were avowedly useless extras, like the whole dinner and the whole club. There was also a

tradition that the soup course should be light and unpretendinga sort of simple and austere vigil for the

feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange, slight talk which governs the British Empire, which

governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it.

Cabinet ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian names with a sort of bored benignity. The

Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to be cursing for his

extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all

Liberals were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole, praisedas a Liberal. It seemed

somehow that politicians were very important. And yet, anything seemed important about them except their

politics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was a

kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never done anythingnot even anything

wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end

of it. No party could ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have been put

there. The Duke of Chester, the vicepresident, was a young and rising politician. That is to say, he was a

pleasant youth, with flat, fair hair and a freckled face, with moderate intelligence and enormous estates. In

public his appearances were always successful and his principle was simple enough. When he thought of a

joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said that this was no time for

trifling, and was called able. In private, in a club of his own class, he was simply quite pleasantly frank and

silly, like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated them a little more seriously.

Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between

a Liberal and a Conservative. He himself was a Conservative, even in private life. He had a roll of grey hair

over the back of his collar, like certain oldfashioned statesmen, and seen from behind he looked like the

man the empire wants. Seen from the front he looked like a mild, selfindulgent bachelor, with rooms in the

As has been remarked, there were twentyfour seats at the terrace table, and only twelve members of the

club. Thus they could occupy the terrace in the most luxurious style of all, being ranged along the inner side

of the table, with no one opposite, commanding an uninterrupted view of the garden, the colours of which

were still vivid, though evening was closing in somewhat luridly for the time of year. The chairman sat in the

centre of the line, and the vicepresident at the righthand end of it. When the twelve guests first trooped into

their seats it was the custom (for some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to stand lining the wall like

troops presenting arms to the king, while the fat proprietor stood and bowed to the club with radiant surprise,

as if he had never heard of them before. But before the first chink of knife and fork this army of retainers had

vanished, only the one or two required to collect and distribute the plates darting about in deathly silence. Mr.

Lever, the proprietor, of course had disappeared in convulsions of courtesy long before. It would be

exaggerative, indeed irreverent, to say that he ever positively appeared again. But when the important course,

the fish course, was being brought on, there washow shall I put it? a vivid shadow, a projection of his

personality, which told that he was hovering near. The sacred fish course consisted (to the eyes of the vulgar)

in a sort of monstrous pudding, about the size and shape of a wedding cake, in which some considerable

number of interesting fishes had finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. The Twelve True

Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives and fish forks, and approached it as gravely as if every inch of

the pudding cost as much as the silver fork it was eaten with. So it did, for all I know. This course was dealt

with in eager and devouring silence; and it was only when his plate was nearly empty that the young duke

"Nowhere," said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning to the speaker and nodding his venerable head a

number of times. "Nowhere, assuredly, except here. It was represented to me that at the Cafe Anglais"

Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by the removal of his plate, but he recaptured the

valuable thread of his thoughts. "It was represented to me that the same could be done at the Cafe Anglais.

Nothing like it, sir," he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like a hanging judge. "Nothing like it."

"Overrated place," said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking (by the look of him) for the first time for some

"Oh, I don't know," said the Duke of Chester, who was an optimist, "it's jolly good for some things. You can't

A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. His stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all

those vague and kindly gentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinery which

surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt

as you and I would feel if the inanimate world disobeyed if a chair ran away from us.

The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is

wholly the product of our time. It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern

abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic aristocrat would have thrown things at the

waiter, beginning with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would have

asked him, with comradelike clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats

could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with

the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need

to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter, after standing

for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned round and ran madly out of the room.

When he reappeared in the room, or rather in the doorway, it was in company with another waiter, with

whom he whispered and gesticulated with southern fierceness. Then the first waiter went away, leaving the

second waiter, and reappeared with a third waiter. By the time a fourth waiter had joined this hurried synod,

Mr. Audley felt it necessary to break the silence in the interests of Tact. He used a very loud cough, instead of

a presidential hammer, and said: "Splendid work young Moocher's doing in Burmah. Now, no other nation in

A fifth waiter had sped towards him like an arrow, and was whispering in his ear: "So sorry. Important!

The chairman turned in disorder, and with a dazed stare saw Mr. Lever coming towards them with his

lumbering quickness. The gait of the good proprietor was indeed his usual gait, but his face was by no means

"You will pardon me, Mr. Audley," he said, with asthmatic breathlessness. "I have great apprehensions. Your

"Well, I hope so," said the chairman, with some warmth. "You see him?" panted the excited hotel keeper;

Mr. Lever opened his hands with a gesture of agony. "I never send him," he said. "I know not when or why

he come. I send my waiter to take away the plates, and he find them already away."

Mr. Audley still looked rather too bewildered to be really the man the empire wants; none of the company

could say anything except the man of woodColonel Poundwho seemed galvanised into an unnatural life.

He rose rigidly from his chair, leaving all the rest sitting, screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and spoke in a

raucous undertone as if he had halfforgotten how to speak. "Do you mean," he said, "that somebody has

The proprietor repeated the openhanded gesture with even greater helplessness and in a flash all the men at

"Yes; they're all here. I noticed it myself," cried the young duke, pushing his boyish face into the inmost ring.

"Always count 'em as I come in; they look so queer standing up against the wall."

"But surely one cannot exactly remember," began Mr. Audley, with heavy hesitation.

"I remember exactly, I tell you," cried the duke excitedly. "There never have been more than fifteen waiters at

this place, and there were no more than fifteen tonight, I'll swear; no more and no less."

The proprietor turned upon him, quaking in a kind of palsy of surprise. "You sayyou say," he stammered,

"As usual," assented the duke. "What is the matter with that!" "Nothing," said Lever, with a deepening

There was a shocking stillness for an instant in that room. It may be (so supernatural is the word death) that

each of those idle men looked for a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea. One of themthe

duke, I thinkeven said with the idiotic kindness of wealth: "Is there anything we can do?"

"He has had a priest," said the Jew, not untouched. Then, as to the clang of doom, they awoke to their own

position. For a few weird seconds they had really felt as if the fifteenth waiter might be the ghost of the dead

man upstairs. They had been dumb under that oppression, for ghosts were to them an embarrassment, like

beggars. But the remembrance of the silver broke the spell of the miraculous; broke it abruptly and with a

brutal reaction. The colonel flung over his chair and strode to the door. "If there was a fifteenth man here,

friends," he said, "that fifteenth fellow was a thief. Down at once to the front and back doors and secure

everything; then we'll talk. The twentyfour pearls of the club are worth recovering."

Mr. Audley seemed at first to hesitate about whether it was gentlemanly to be in such a hurry about anything;

but, seeing the duke dash down the stairs with youthful energy, he followed with a more mature motion.

At the same instant a sixth waiter ran into the room, and declared that he had found the pile of fish plates on a

The crowd of diners and attendants that tumbled helterskelter down the passages divided into two groups.

Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound,

with the chairman, the vicepresident, and one or two others darted down the corridor leading to the servants'

quarters, as the more likely line of escape. As they did so they passed the dim alcove or cavern of the cloak

room, and saw a short, blackcoated figure, presumably an attendant, standing a little way back in the

The short figure did not answer the question directly, but merely said: "Perhaps I have got what you are

They paused, wavering and wondering, while he quietly went to the back of the cloak room, and came back

with both hands full of shining silver, which he laid out on the counter as calmly as a salesman. It took the

"Youyou" began the colonel, quite thrown off his balance at last. Then he peered into the dim little

room and saw two things: first, that the short, blackclad man was dressed like a clergyman; and, second, that

the window of the room behind him was burst, as if someone had passed violently through. "Valuable things

to deposit in a cloak room, aren't they?" remarked the clergyman, with cheerful composure.

"If I did," said the cleric pleasantly, "at least I am bringing them back again."

"To make a clean breast of it, I didn't," said the other, with some humour. And he seated himself quite

"I don't know his real name," said the priest placidly, "but I know something of his fighting weight, and a

great deal about his spiritual difficulties. I formed the physical estimate when he was trying to throttle me,

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. "Odd, isn't it," he said, "that a thief and a

vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit

for God or man? But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my province. If you doubt the

penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks. You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there are

"Did you catch this man?" asked the colonel, frowning. Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face.

"Yes," he said, "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him

wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."

There was a long silence. All the other men present drifted away to carry the recovered silver to their

comrades, or to consult the proprietor about the queer condition of affairs. But the grimfaced colonel still sat

sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legs and biting his dark moustache.

At last he said quietly to the priest: "He must have been a clever fellow, but I think I know a cleverer."

"He was a clever fellow," answered the other, "but I am not quite sure of what other you mean."

"I mean you," said the colonel, with a short laugh. "I don't want to get the fellow jailed; make yourself easy

about that. But I'd give a good many silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair, and how you

got the stuff out of him. I reckon you're the most uptodate devil of the present company."

Father Brown seemed rather to like the saturnine candour of the soldier. "Well," he said, smiling, "I mustn't

tell you anything of the man's identity, or his own story, of course; but there's no particular reason why I

He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and sat beside Colonel Pound, kicking his short legs like

a little boy on a gate. He began to tell the story as easily as if he were telling it to an old friend by a Christmas

"You see, colonel," he said, "I was shut up in that small room there doing some writing, when I heard a pair

of feet in this passage doing a dance that was as queer as the dance of death. First came quick, funny little

steps, like a man walking on tiptoe for a wager; then came slow, careless, creaking steps, as of a big man

walking about with a cigar. But they were both made by the same feet, I swear, and they came in rotation;

first the run and then the walk, and then the run again. I wondered at first idly and then wildly why a man

should act these two parts at once. One walk I knew; it was just like yours, colonel. It was the walk of a

wellfed gentleman waiting for something, who strolls about rather because he is physically alert than

because he is mentally impatient. I knew that I knew the other walk, too, but I could not remember what it

was. What wild creature had I met on my travels that tore along on tiptoe in that extraordinary style? Then I

heard a clink of plates somewhere; and the answer stood up as plain as St. Peter's. It was the walk of a

waiterthat walk with the body slanted forward, the eyes looking down, the ball of the toe spurning away

the ground, the coat tails and napkin flying. Then I thought for a minute and a half more. And I believe I saw

Colonel Pound looked at him keenly, but the speaker's mild grey eyes were fixed upon the ceiling with

"A crime," he said slowly, "is like any other work of art. Don't look surprised; crimes are by no means the

only works of art that come from an infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one

indispensable markI mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be

complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, let us say, the grotesqueness of the gravedigger, the flowers of the mad girl,

the fantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the grin of the skull are all oddities in a sort of tangled

wreath round one plain tragic figure of a man in black. Well, this also," he said, getting slowly down from his

seat with a smile, "this also is the plain tragedy of a man in black. Yes," he went on, seeing the colonel look

up in some wonder, "the whole of this tale turns on a black coat. In this, as in Hamlet, there are the rococo

excrescencesyourselves, let us say. There is the dead waiter, who was there when he could not be there.

There is the invisible hand that swept your table clear of silver and melted into air. But every clever crime is

founded ultimately on some one quite simple factsome fact that is not itself mysterious. The mystification

comes in covering it up, in leading men's thoughts away from it. This large and subtle and (in the ordinary

course) most profitable crime, was built on the plain fact that a gentleman's evening dress is the same as a

"Still," said the colonel, getting up and frowning at his boots, "I am not sure that I understand."

"Colonel," said Father Brown, "I tell you that this archangel of impudence who stole your forks walked up

and down this passage twenty times in the blaze of all the lamps, in the glare of all the eyes. He did not go

and hide in dim corners where suspicion might have searched for him. He kept constantly on the move in the

lighted corridors, and everywhere that he went he seemed to be there by right. Don't ask me what he was like;

you have seen him yourself six or seven times tonight. You were waiting with all the other grand people in

the reception room at the end of the passage there, with the terrace just beyond. Whenever he came among

you gentlemen, he came in the lightning style of a waiter, with bent head, flapping napkin and flying feet. He

shot out on to the terrace, did something to the table cloth, and shot back again towards the office and the

waiters' quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had become

another man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He strolled among the servants with the

absentminded insolence which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swell

from the dinner party should pace all parts of the house like an animal at the Zoo; they know that nothing

marks the Smart Set more than a habit of walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of

walking down that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past the office; in the shadow of

the arch just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the

Twelve Fishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a chance waiter? Why should

the waiters suspect a firstrate walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In the

proprietor's private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon of soda water, saying he was thirsty. He said

genially that he would carry it himself, and he did; he carried it quickly and correctly through the thick of

you, a waiter with an obvious errand. Of course, it could not have been kept up long, but it only had to be

"His worst moment was when the waiters stood in a row; but even then he contrived to lean against the wall

just round the corner in such a way that for that important instant the waiters thought him a gentleman, while

the gentlemen thought him a waiter. The rest went like winking. If any waiter caught him away from the

table, that waiter caught a languid aristocrat. He had only to time himself two minutes before the fish was

cleared, become a swift servant, and clear it himself. He put the plates down on a sideboard, stuffed the silver

in his breast pocket, giving it a bulgy look, and ran like a hare (I heard him coming) till he came to the cloak

room. There he had only to be a plutocrat againa plutocrat called away suddenly on business. He had only

to give his ticket to the cloakroom attendant, and go out again elegantly as he had come in. Onlyonly I

"What did you do to him?" cried the colonel, with unusual intensity. "What did he tell you?"

"And the interesting story begins," muttered Pound. "I think I understand his professional trick. But I don't

"I must be going," said Father Brown. They walked together along the passage to the entrance hall, where

they saw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of Chester, who was bounding buoyantly along towards them.

"Come along, Pound," he cried breathlessly. "I've been looking for you everywhere. The dinner's going again

in spanking style, and old Audley has got to make a speech in honour of the forks being saved. We want to

start some new ceremony, don't you know, to commemorate the occasion. I say, you really got the goods

"Why," said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval, "I should suggest that henceforward we

wear green coats, instead of black. One never knows what mistakes may arise when one looks so like a

"Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose," said Colonel Pound, with the same lowering laughter on his face.

Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the neck, for the night was stormy, and took his

"Yes," he said; "it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought

And saying "Good evening," he pushed open the heavy doors of that palace of pleasures. The golden gates

closed behind him, and he went at a brisk walk through the damp, dark streets in search of a penny omnibus.

"The most beautiful crime I ever committed," Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, "was also, by

a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide

crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or

garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled

with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the

lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not

so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey

towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant

(which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped

poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.

"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middleclass crime; a crime of Charles

Dickens. I did it in a good old middleclass house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a

house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey

tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens's style was dexterous and literary.

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen

from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it.

From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable

opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the

afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond

conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless

beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on

the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread

for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobutrusively down the

lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of

wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a

"Oh, don't jump, Mr. Crook," she called out in some alarm; "it's much too high."

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking

up like a hair brush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion.

This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he

seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl's alarmed adjuration, but leapt

like a grasshopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

"I think I was meant to be a burglar," he said placidly, "and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn't

happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can't see any harm in it, anyhow."

"How can you say such things!" she remonstrated. "Well," said the young man, "if you're born on the wrong

"I never know what you will say or do next," she said. "I don't often know myself," replied Mr. Crook; "but

"Whichever side you are on," said the young man named Crook. As they went together through the laurels

towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed,

great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

"Hullo, hullo!" said the young man with the red tie, "here's somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn't

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:

John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and it was not his fault if the City magnate

had not heard of him; for in certain articles in The Clarion or The New Age Sir Leopold had been dealt with

austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the motorcar, which was rather a long

process. A large, neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat manservant in grey got out

from the back, and between them they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like

some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the forest, and

scarves of all the colours of the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something resembling

the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreignlooking old gentleman, with a grey goatlike beard and a

Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch had opened in the middle, and

Colonel Adams (father of the furry young lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He

was a tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smokingcap like a fez, making him look like one

of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt. With him was his brotherinlaw, lately come from Canada, a big

and rather boisterous young gentlemanfarmer, with a yellow beard, by name James Blount. With him also

was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel's late

wife had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had been trained to follow her.

Everything seemed undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the

colonel had always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such family

In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for Sir Leopold and the removal of his

wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed, were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a

big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase at the other. In front of the large hall

fire, over which hung the colonel's sword, the process was completed and the company, including the

saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable financier, however, still seemed struggling

with portions of his welllined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tailcoat pocket, a black

oval case which he radiantly explained to be his Christmas present for his goddaughter. With an unaffected

vainglory that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them all; it flew open at a touch

and halfblinded them. It was just as if a crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet

lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them.

Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim

"I'll put 'em back now, my dear," said Fischer, returning the case to the tails of his coat. "I had to be careful of

'em coming down. They're the three great African diamonds called `The Flying Stars,' because they've been

stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track; but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels

could hardly have kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It was quite possible."

"Quite natural, I should say," growled the man in the red tie. "I shouldn't blame 'em if they had taken 'em.

When they ask for bread, and you don't even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for

"I won't have you talking like that," cried the girl, who was in a curious glow. "You've only talked like that

since you became a horrid what'shisname. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to

"I think," said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, "that Ruby means a Socialist."

"A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook, with some impatience; and a

Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man

who desires a social evening with the chimneysweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys

"But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low voice, "to own your own soot."

Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. "Does one want to own soot?" he asked.

"One might," answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. "I've heard that gardeners use it. And I once made

six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn't come, entirely with sootapplied externally."

The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in applause, and the astonished financier his

(in some considerable deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest opened them,

and they showed again the front garden of evergreens, monkeytree and all, now gathering gloom against a

gorgeous violet sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back scene in a play, that

they forgot a moment the insignificant figure standing in the door. He was dustylooking and in a frayed

coat, evidently a common messenger. "Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?" he asked, and held forward a

letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident

astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared, and he turned to his brotherinlaw and

"I'm sick at being such a nuisance, colonel," he said, with the cheery colonial conventions; "but would it

upset you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it's Florian, that

famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out West (he was a FrenchCanadian by

"Of course, of course," replied the colonel carelessly"My dear chap, any friend of yours. No doubt he will

"He'll black his face, if that's what you mean," cried Blount, laughing. "I don't doubt he'd black everyone

else's eyes. I don't care; I'm not refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat."

"Not on mine, please," said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity. "Well, well," observed Crook, airily, "don't

Dislike of the redtied youth, born of his predatory opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild,

led Fischer to say, in his most sarcastic, magisterial manner: "No doubt you have found something much

"Now, now, now," cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence, "don't let's spoil a jolly

evening. What I say is, let's do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if

you don't like thosebut something of the sort. Why couldn't we have a proper old English pantomime

clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it's blazed in my brain

like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country only last year, and I find the thing's extinct. Nothing

but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they give me

princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or something. Blue Beard's more in my line, and him I like

"I'm all for making a policeman into sausages," said John Crook. "It's a better definition of Socialism than

"Not a scrap," cried Blount, quite carried away. "A harlequinade's the quickest thing we can do, for two

reasons. First, one can gag to any degree; and, second, all the objects are household thingstables and

"That's true," admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about. "But I'm afraid I can't have my

Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. "Yes, we can!" he cried. "I've got Florian's

address here, and he knows every costumier in London. I'll phone him to bring a police dress when he

"Oh, it's glorious, godfather," cried Ruby, almost dancing. "I'll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon."

The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. "I think, my dear," he said, "you must get

"I will be pantaloon, if you like," said Colonel Adams, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and speaking for the

"You ought to have a statue," cried the Canadian, as he came back, radiant, from the telephone. "There, we

are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall be clown; he's a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin,

that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian 'phones he's bringing the police costume; he's

changing on the way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite, one

row above another. These front doors can be the back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English

interior. Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic." And snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from

his pocket, he ran it across the hall floor, halfway between the front door and the staircase, to mark the line

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained a riddle. But they went at it with that

mixture of recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that house that

night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it flamed. As always happens,

the invention grew wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions from which it

had to create. The columbine looked charming in an outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large

lampshade in the drawingroom. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from the

cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained (like all true Christian benefactors)

anonymous. The harlequin, already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented

from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals. In

fact he would certainly have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had

worn at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle, James Blount, was getting almost

out of hand in his excitement; he was like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey's head unexpectedly on Father

Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to

put the paper donkey's tail to the coattails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down.

"Uncle is too absurd," cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of

"He is harlequin to your columbine," said Crook. "I am only the clown who makes the old jokes."

"I wish you were the harlequin," she said, and left the string of sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes, and had even evoked applause by his

transformation of a pillow into a pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience with

all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee. The spectators were few, relations, one or two local

friends, and the servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still furcollared figure largely

obscuring the view of the little cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities whether

the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it a rage of

improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was

inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world, that which comes to a young man who

has seen for an instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but he

was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scenepainter,

the sceneshifter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would

hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front doors at the back of the scene flew

open, showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the

great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played the constabulary chorus in the

"Pirates of Penzance," but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic

actor was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police. The harlequin

leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet; the pianist playing "Where did you get that hat?" he faced about

in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a

few bars of "Then we had another one"). Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and

fell on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange actor gave that celebrated imitation of

a dead man, of which the fame still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a living

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed him like an Indian club; all the time

to the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable

heavily off the floor the clown played "I arise from dreams of thee." When he shuffled him across his back,

"With my bundle on my shoulder," and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most

convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling measure with some words which are still

believed to have been, "I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it."

At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown's view was obscured altogether; for the City magnate in

front of him rose to his full height and thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down

nervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed seriously likely that he would

stride across the footlights; then he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst in silence

The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not inelegant dance of the amateur

harlequin over his splendidly unconscious foe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly

backwards out of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The vamped dress of

silver paper and paste, which had been too glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and

silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing in with a cataract of applause,

when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched, and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel's study.

He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled by a solemn comicality in the

scene of the study. There sat Colonel Adams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed

whalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir

Leopold Fischer was leaning against the mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.

"This is a very painful matter, Father Brown," said Adams. "The truth is, those diamonds we all saw this

"As I," supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, "was sitting just behind him"

"Nothing of the sort shall be suggested," said Colonel Adams, with a firm look at Fischer, which rather

implied that some such thing had been suggested. "I only ask you to give me the assistance that any

"Which is turning out his pockets," said Father Brown, and proceeded to do so, displaying seven and

sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The colonel looked at him long, and then said, "Do you know, I should like to see the inside of your head

more than the inside of your pockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she has lately" and

"She has lately," cried out old Fischer, "opened her father's house to a cutthroat Socialist, who says openly

he would steal anything from a richer man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer manand none the

"If you want the inside of my head you can have it," said Brown rather wearily. "What it's worth you can say

afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds don't

Both the others shifted sharply and the priest went on: "You see, we know these people, more or less. That

Socialist would no more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one man we don't

know. The fellow acting the policeman Florian. Where is he exactly at this minute, I wonder."

The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire

stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity,

"The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there."

Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began

"Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?" "Wife!" replied the staring soldier, "she died this

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. "Come on!" he cried in quite unusual excitement. "Come on!

They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed

whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.

"Chloroform," he said as he rose; "I only guessed it just now." There was a startled stillness, and then the

Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it for instants during the

rest of his speech. "Gentlemen," he gasped, "there's not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But

this great French actor who played the policemanthis clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled

and threw abouthe was" His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.

"He was?" called Fischer inquiringly. "A real policeman," said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other

immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of

the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a

monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden

trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to

heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of

him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree

in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably called

"Well, Flambeau," says the voice, "you really look like a Flying Star; but that always means a Falling Star at

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels and, confident of escape, listens to the

"You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose)

just a week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to have

marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer's coming. But there's no cleverness, but mere

genius, in what followed. Stealing the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by

sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting a paper donkey's tail to Fischer's coat.

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind

"Oh, yes," says the man below, "I know all about it. I know you not only forced the pantomime, but put it to a

double use. You were going to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were already

suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common thief would

have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion of hiding

the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin's the appearance

of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police station to find you,

and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to

the stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned and drugged by the dancing

harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do

The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in astonishment; but the voice went on:

"I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour

and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man

has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and

turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest

outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of

principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and talebearer that both sides used and despised. Harry

Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he's sponging on a halfstarved sister for

endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he's paying

blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the great gentlemanapache before your

time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the "narks" and receivers that had betrayed him and

hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could

melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in

your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the treetops will be very bare."

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash;

"Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something

mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are

separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in

uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he

himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner's,

glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework,

for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt

and gailycoloured cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many

guttersnipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are

almost better than chocolate itself; and the huge white weddingcake in the window was somehow at once

remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could

naturally collect the youth of the neighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. But this corner was also

attractive to youth at a later stage; and a young man, not less than twentyfour, was staring into the same

shop window. To him, also, the shop was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to be explained by

He was a tall, burly, redhaired young man, with a resolute face but a listless manner. He carried under his

arm a flat, grey portfolio of blackandwhite sketches, which he had sold with more or less success to

publishers ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinherited him for Socialism, because of a lecture

which he had delivered against that economic theory. His name was John Turnbull Angus.

Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner's shop to the back room, which was a sort of pastrycook

restaurant, merely raising his hat to the young lady who was serving there. She was a dark, elegant, alert girl

in black, with a high colour and very quick, dark eyes; and after the ordinary interval she followed him into

His order was evidently a usual one. "I want, please," he said with precision, "one halfpenny bun and a small

cup of black coffee." An instant before the girl could turn away he added, "Also, I want you to marry me."

The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly and said, "Those are jokes I don't allow."

"Really and truly," he said, "it's as seriousas serious as the halfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one

The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off him, but seemed to be studying him with almost tragic

exactitude. At the end of her scrutiny she had something like the shadow of a smile, and she sat down in a

"Don't you think," observed Angus, absently, "that it's rather cruel to eat these halfpenny buns? They might

grow up into penny buns. I shall give up these brutal sports when we are married."

The dark young lady rose from her chair and walked to the window, evidently in a state of strong but not

unsympathetic cogitation. When at last she swung round again with an air of resolution she was bewildered to

observe that the young man was carefully laying out on the table various objects from the shopwindow.

They included a pyramid of highly coloured sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two decanters

containing that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar to pastrycooks. In the middle of this neat

arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the huge

"Oh, for the Lord's sake, stop a minute," she cried, "and don't talk to me in that way. I mean, what is all that?"

"The weddingcake, Mrs. Angus," he said. The girl marched to that article, removed it with some clatter, and

put it back in the shop window; she then returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table, regarded the

"You don't give me any time to think," she said. "I'm not such a fool," he answered; "that's my Christian

She was still looking at him; but she had grown considerably graver behind the smile.

"Mr. Angus," she said steadily, "before there is a minute more of this nonsense I must tell you something

"Delighted," replied Angus gravely. "You might tell me something about myself, too, while you are about it."

"Oh, do hold your tongue and listen," she said. "It's nothing that I'm ashamed of, and it isn't even anything

that I'm specially sorry about. But what would you say if there were something that is no business of mine

"In that case," said the man seriously, "I should suggest that you bring back the cake."

"Well, you must listen to the story first," said Laura, persistently. "To begin with, I must tell you that my

father owned the inn called the `Red Fish' at Ludbury, and I used to serve people in the bar."

"I have often wondered," he said, "why there was a kind of a Christian air about this one confectioner's shop."

"Ludbury is a sleepy, grassy little hole in the Eastern Counties, and the only kind of people who ever came to

the `Red Fish' were occasional commercial travellers, and for the rest, the most awful people you can see,

only you've never seen them. I mean little, loungy men, who had just enough to live on and had nothing to do

but lean about in barrooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just too good for them. Even these

wretched young rotters were not very common at our house; but there were two of them that were a lot too

commoncommon in every sort of way. They both lived on money of their own, and were wearisomely idle

and overdressed. But yet I was a bit sorry for them, because I half believe they slunk into our little empty

bar because each of them had a slight deformity; the sort of thing that some yokels laugh at. It wasn't exactly

a deformity either; it was more an oddity. One of them was a surprisingly small man, something like a dwarf,

or at least like a jockey. He was not at all jockeyish to look at, though; he had a round black head and a

welltrimmed black beard, bright eyes like a bird's; he jingled money in his pockets; he jangled a great gold

watch chain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool

though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be the slightest use; a

sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a

banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his

little dark face, just coming up to the counter, making a jumping kangaroo out of five cigars.

"The other fellow was more silent and more ordinary; but somehow he alarmed me much more than poor

little Smythe. He was very tall and slight, and lighthaired; his nose had a high bridge, and he might almost

have been handsome in a spectral sort of way; but he had one of the most appalling squints I have ever seen

or heard of. When he looked straight at you, you didn't know where you were yourself, let alone what he was

looking at. I fancy this sort of disfigurement embittered the poor chap a little; for while Smythe was ready to

show off his monkey tricks anywhere, James Welkin (that was the squinting man's name) never did anything

except soak in our bar parlour, and go for great walks by himself in the flat, grey country all round. All the

same, I think Smythe, too, was a little sensitive about being so small, though he carried it off more smartly.

And so it was that I was really puzzled, as well as startled, and very sorry, when they both offered to marry

"Well, I did what I've since thought was perhaps a silly thing. But, after all, these freaks were my friends in a

way; and I had a horror of their thinking I refused them for the real reason, which was that they were so

impossibly ugly. So I made up some gas of another sort, about never meaning to marry anyone who hadn't

carved his way in the world. I said it was a point of principle with me not to live on money that was just

inherited like theirs. Two days after I had talked in this wellmeaning sort of way, the whole trouble began.

The first thing I heard was that both of them had gone off to seek their fortunes, as if they were in some silly

"Well, I've never seen either of them from that day to this. But I've had two letters from the little man called

"Ever heard of the other man?" asked Angus. "No, he never wrote," said the girl, after an instant's hesitation.

"Smythe's first letter was simply to say that he had started out walking with Welkin to London; but Welkin

was such a good walker that the little man dropped out of it, and took a rest by the roadside. He happened to

be picked up by some travelling show, and, partly because he was nearly a dwarf, and partly because he was

really a clever little wretch, he got on quite well in the show business, and was soon sent up to the Aquarium,

to do some tricks that I forget. That was his first letter. His second was much more of a startler, and I only got

The man called Angus emptied his coffeecup and regarded her with mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth

took a slight twist of laughter as she resumed, "I suppose you've seen on the hoardings all about this

`Smythe's Silent Service'? Or you must be the only person that hasn't. Oh, I don't know much about it, it's

some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: `Press a

ButtonA Butler who Never Drinks.' `Turn a HandleTen Housemaids who Never Flirt.' You must have

seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are

making it all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can't help feeling pleased the poor little chap

has fallen on his feet; but the plain fact is, I'm in terror of his turning up any minute and telling me he's carved

Laura Hope got to her feet suddenly. "My friend," she said, "I think you are a witch. Yes, you are quite right.

I have not seen a line of the other man's writing; and I have no more notion than the dead of what or where he

is. But it is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is all about my path. It is he who has half driven me mad.

Indeed, I think he has driven me mad; for I have felt him where he could not have been, and I have heard his

"Well, my dear," said the young man, cheerfully, "if he were Satan himself, he is done for now you have told

somebody. One goes mad all alone, old girl. But when was it you fancied you felt and heard our squinting

"I heard James Welkin laugh as plainly as I hear you speak," said the girl, steadily. "There was nobody there,

for I stood just outside the shop at the corner, and could see down both streets at once. I had forgotten how he

laughed, though his laugh was as odd as his squint. I had not thought of him for nearly a year. But it's a

"Did you ever make the spectre speak or squeak, or anything?" asked Angus, with some interest.

Laura suddenly shuddered, and then said, with an unshaken voice, "Yes. Just when I had finished reading the

second letter from Isidore Smythe announcing his success. Just then, I heard Welkin say, `He shan't have you,

though.' It was quite plain, as if he were in the room. It is awful, I think I must be mad."

"If you really were mad," said the young man, "you would think you must be sane. But certainly there seems

to me to be something a little rum about this unseen gentleman. Two heads are better than oneI spare you

allusions to any other organs and really, if you would allow me, as a sturdy, practical man, to bring back the

Even as he spoke, there was a sort of steely shriek in the street outside, and a small motor, driven at devilish

speed, shot up to the door of the shop and stuck there. In the same flash of time a small man in a shiny top hat

Angus, who had hitherto maintained hilarious ease from motives of mental hygiene, revealed the strain of his

soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the newcomer. A glance at him was quite

sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the

spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers,

could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins

and matchboxes; Isidore Smythe, who made millions out of undrinking butlers and unflirting housemaids of

metal. For a moment the two men, instinctively understanding each other's air of possession, looked at each

Mr. Smythe, however, made no allusion to the ultimate ground of their antagonism, but said simply and

"On the window?" repeated the staring Angus. "There's no time to explain other things," said the small

millionaire shortly. "There's some tomfoolery going on here that has to be investigated."

He pointed his polished walkingstick at the window, recently depleted by the bridal preparations of Mr.

Angus; and that gentleman was astonished to see along the front of the glass a long strip of paper pasted,

which had certainly not been on the window when he looked through it some time before. Following the

energetic Smythe outside into the street, he found that some yard and a half of stamp paper had been carefully

gummed along the glass outside, and on this was written in straggly characters, "If you marry Smythe, he will

"It's the writing of that fellow Welkin," said Smythe gruffly. "I haven't seen him for years, but he's always

bothering me. Five times in the last fortnight he's had threatening letters left at my flat, and I can't even find

out who leaves them, let alone if it is Welkin himself. The porter of the flats swears that no suspicious

characters have been seen, and here he has pasted up a sort of dado on a public shop window, while the

"Quite so," said Angus modestly, "while the people in the shop were having tea. Well, sir, I can assure you I

appreciate your common sense in dealing so directly with the matter. We can talk about other things

afterwards. The fellow cannot be very far off yet, for I swear there was no paper there when I went last to the

window, ten or fifteen minutes ago. On the other hand, he's too far off to be chased, as we don't even know

the direction. If you'll take my advice, Mr. Smythe, you'll put this at once in the hands of some energetic

inquiry man, private rather than public. I know an extremely clever fellow, who has set up in business five

minutes from here in your car. His name's Flambeau, and though his youth was a bit stormy, he's a strictly

honest man now, and his brains are worth money. He lives in Lucknow Mansions, Hampstead."

"That is odd," said the little man, arching his black eyebrows. "I live, myself, in Himylaya Mansions, round

the corner. Perhaps you might care to come with me; I can go to my rooms and sort out these queer Welkin

Both men, with a queer kind of impromptu fairness, took the same sort of formal farewell of the lady, and

both jumped into the brisk little car. As Smythe took the handles and they turned the great corner of the

street, Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of "Smythe's Silent Service," with a picture of a huge

headless iron doll, carrying a saucepan with the legend, "A Cook Who is Never Cross."

"I use them in my own flat," said the little blackbearded man, laughing, "partly for advertisements, and

partly for real convenience. Honestly, and all above board, those big clockwork dolls of mine do bring your

coals or claret or a timetable quicker than any live servants I've ever known, if you know which knob to

press. But I'll never deny, between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too.

"Indeed?" said Angus; "is there something they can't do?" "Yes," replied Smythe coolly; "they can't tell me

The man's motor was small and swift like himself; in fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own

invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something

tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of

evening. Soon the white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they say in the

modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner of London which is almost as precipitous as

Edinburgh, if not quite so picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flats they sought,

rose above them all to almost Egyptian height, gilt by the level sunset. The change, as they turned the corner

and entered the crescent known as Himylaya Mansions, was as abrupt as the opening of a window; for they

found that pile of flats sitting above London as above a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the

other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and

some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress.

As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and

right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were

the only human shapes in that high suburban solitude; but he had an irrational sense that they expressed the

The little car shot up to the right house like a bullet, and shot out its owner like a bomb shell. He was

immediately inquiring of a tall commissionaire in shining braid, and a short porter in shirt sleeves, whether

anybody or anything had been seeking his apartments. He was assured that nobody and nothing had passed

these officials since his last inquiries; whereupon he and the slightly bewildered Angus were shot up in the

"Just come in for a minute," said the breathless Smythe. "I want to show you those Welkin letters. Then you

might run round the corner and fetch your friend." He pressed a button concealed in the wall, and the door

It opened on a long, commodious anteroom, of which the only arresting features, ordinarily speaking, were

the rows of tall halfhuman mechanical figures that stood up on both sides like tailors' dummies. Like tailors'

dummies they were headless; and like tailors' dummies they had a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the

shoulders, and a pigeonbreasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were not much more like a

human figure than any automatic machine at a station that is about the human height. They had two great

hooks like arms, for carrying trays; and they were painted peagreen, or vermilion, or black for convenience

of distinction; in every other way they were only automatic machines and nobody would have looked twice at

them. On this occasion, at least, nobody did. For between the two rows of these domestic dummies lay

something more interesting than most of the mechanics of the world. It was a white, tattered scrap of paper

scrawled with red ink; and the agile inventor had snatched it up almost as soon as the door flew open. He

handed it to Angus without a word. The red ink on it actually was not dry, and the message ran, "If you have

There was a short silence, and then Isidore Smythe said quietly, "Would you like a little whiskey? I rather

"Thank you; I should like a little Flambeau," said Angus, gloomily. "This business seems to me to be getting

"Right you are," said the other, with admirable cheerfulness. "Bring him round here as quick as you can."

But as Angus closed the front door behind him he saw Smythe push back a button, and one of the clockwork

images glided from its place and slid along a groove in the floor carrying a tray with syphon and decanter.

There did seem something a trifle weird about leaving the little man alone among those dead servants, who

Six steps down from Smythe's landing the man in shirt sleeves was doing something with a pail. Angus

stopped to extract a promise, fortified with a prospective bribe, that he would remain in that place until the

return with the detective, and would keep count of any kind of stranger coming up those stairs. Dashing down

to the front hall he then laid similar charges of vigilance on the commissionaire at the front door, from whom

he learned the simplifying circumstances that there was no back door. Not content with this, he captured the

floating policeman and induced him to stand opposite the entrance and watch it; and finally paused an instant

for a pennyworth of chestnuts, and an inquiry as to the probable length of the merchant's stay in the

The chestnut seller, turning up the collar of his coat, told him he should probably be moving shortly, as he

thought it was going to snow. Indeed, the evening was growing grey and bitter, but Angus, with all his

"Keep yourself warm on your own chestnuts," he said earnestly. "Eat up your whole stock; I'll make it worth

your while. I'll give you a sovereign if you'll wait here till I come back, and then tell me whether any man,

"I've made a ring round that room, anyhow," he said. "They can't all four of them be Mr. Welkin's

Lucknow Mansions were, so to speak, on a lower platform of that hill of houses, of which Himylaya

Mansions might be called the peak. Mr. Flambeau's semiofficial flat was on the ground floor, and presented

in every way a marked contrast to the American machinery and cold hotellike luxury of the flat of the Silent

Service. Flambeau, who was a friend of Angus, received him in a rococo artistic den behind his office, of

which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage

cookingpots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small dustylooking Roman Catholic priest, who looked

"This is my friend Father Brown," said Flambeau. "I've often wanted you to meet him. Splendid weather,

"Yes, I think it will keep clear," said Angus, sitting down on a violetstriped Eastern ottoman.

"No," said the priest quietly, "it has begun to snow." And, indeed, as he spoke, the first few flakes, foreseen

"Well," said Angus heavily. "I'm afraid I've come on business, and rather jumpy business at that. The fact is,

stone's throw of your house is a fellow who badly wants your help; he's perpetually being haunted and

threatened by an invisible enemy a scoundrel whom nobody has even seen." As Angus proceeded to tell

the whole tale of Smythe and Welkin, beginning with Laura's story, and going on with his own, the

supernatural laugh at the corner of two empty streets, the strange distinct words spoken in an empty room,

Flambeau grew more and more vividly concerned, and the little priest seemed to be left out of it, like a piece

of furniture. When it came to the scribbled stamppaper pasted on the window, Flambeau rose, seeming to

"If you don't mind," he said, "I think you had better tell me the rest on the nearest road to this man's house. It

"Delighted," said Angus, rising also, "though he's safe enough for the present, for I've set four men to watch

They turned out into the street, the small priest trundling after them with the docility of a small dog. He

merely said, in a cheerful way, like one making conversation, "How quick the snow gets thick on the

As they threaded the steep side streets already powdered with silver, Angus finished his story; and by the

time they reached the crescent with the towering flats, he had leisure to turn his attention to the four sentinels.

The chestnut seller, both before and after receiving a sovereign, swore stubbornly that he had watched the

door and seen no visitor enter. The policeman was even more emphatic. He said he had had experience of

crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn't so green as to expect suspicious characters to look

suspicious; he looked out for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when all three men

gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood smiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more

"I've got a right to ask any man, duke or dustman, what he wants in these flats," said the genial and

goldlaced giant, "and I'll swear there's been nobody to ask since this gentleman went away."

The unimportant Father Brown, who stood back, looking modestly at the pavement, here ventured to say

meekly, "Has nobody been up and down stairs, then, since the snow began to fall? It began while we were all

"Nobody's been in here, sir, you can take it from me," said the official, with beaming authority.

"Then I wonder what that is?" said the priest, and stared at the ground blankly like a fish.

The others all looked down also; and Flambeau used a fierce exclamation and a French gesture. For it was

unquestionably true that down the middle of the entrance guarded by the man in gold lace, actually between

the arrogant, stretched legs of that colossus, ran a stringy pattern of grey footprints stamped upon the white

"God!" cried Angus involuntarily, "the Invisible Man!" Without another word he turned and dashed up the

stairs, with Flambeau following; but Father Brown still stood looking about him in the snowclad street as if

Flambeau was plainly in a mood to break down the door with his big shoulders; but the Scotchman, with

more reason, if less intuition, fumbled about on the frame of the door till he found the invisible button; and

It showed substantially the same serried interior; the hall had grown darker, though it was still struck here and

there with the last crimson shafts of sunset, and one or two of the headless machines had been moved from

their places for this or that purpose, and stood here and there about the twilit place. The green and red of their

coats were all darkened in the dusk; and their likeness to human shapes slightly increased by their very

shapelessness. But in the middle of them all, exactly where the paper with the red ink had lain, there lay

something that looked like red ink spilt out of its bottle. But it was not red ink.

With a French combination of reason and violence Flambeau simply said "Murder!" and, plunging into the

flat, had explored, every corner and cupboard of it in five minutes. But if he expected to find a corpse he

found none. Isidore Smythe was not in the place, either dead or alive. After the most tearing search the two

men met each other in the outer hall, with streaming faces and staring eyes. "My friend," said Flambeau,

talking French in his excitement, "not only is your murderer invisible, but he makes invisible also the

Angus looked round at the dim room full of dummies, and in some Celtic corner of his Scotch soul a shudder

started. One of the lifesize dolls stood immediately overshadowing the blood stain, summoned, perhaps, by

the slain man an instant before he fell. One of the highshouldered hooks that served the thing for arms, was

a little lifted, and Angus had suddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe's own iron child had struck him

down. Matter had rebelled, and these machines had killed their master. But even so, what had they done with

"Eaten him?" said the nightmare at his ear; and he sickened for an instant at the idea of rent, human remains

He recovered his mental health by an emphatic effort, and said to Flambeau, "Well, there it is. The poor

fellow has evaporated like a cloud and left a red streak on the floor. The tale does not belong to this world."

"There is only one thing to be done," said Flambeau, "whether it belongs to this world or the other. I must go

They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again asseverated that he had let no intruder pass, down

to the commissionaire and the hovering chestnut man, who rigidly reasserted their own watchfulness. But

when Angus looked round for his fourth confirmation he could not see it, and called out with some

"I beg your pardon," said Father Brown; "that is my fault. I just sent him down the road to investigate

"Well, we want him back pretty soon," said Angus abruptly, "for the wretched man upstairs has not only been

"Father," said Flambeau, after a pause, "upon my soul I believe it is more in your department than mine. No

friend or foe has entered the house, but Smythe is gone, as if stolen by the fairies. If that is not supernatural,

As he spoke they were all checked by an unusual sight; the big blue policeman came round the corner of the

"You're right, sir," he panted, "they've just found poor Mr. Smythe's body in the canal down below."

Angus put his hand wildly to his head. "Did he run down and drown himself?" he asked.

"He never came down, I'll swear," said the constable, "and he wasn't drowned either, for he died of a great

"And yet you saw no one enter?" said Flambeau in a grave voice. "Let us walk down the road a little," said

the priest. As they reached the other end of the crescent he observed abruptly, "Stupid of me! I forgot to ask

"Why a light brown sack?" asked Angus, astonished. "Because if it was any other coloured sack, the case

must begin over again," said Father Brown; "but if it was a light brown sack, why, the case is finished."

"I am pleased to hear it," said Angus with hearty irony. "It hasn't begun, so far as I am concerned."

"You must tell us all about it," said Flambeau with a strange heavy simplicity, like a child.

Unconsciously they were walking with quickening steps down the long sweep of road on the other side of the

high crescent, Father Brown leading briskly, though in silence. At last he said with an almost touching

vagueness, "Well, I'm afraid you'll think it so prosy. We always begin at the abstract end of things, and you

"Have you ever noticed thisthat people never answer what you say? They answer what you meanor

what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house, `Is anybody staying with

you?' the lady doesn't answer `Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,' though the

parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says `There is nobody staying with us,'

meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, `Who is staying

in the house?' then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like

that; you never get a question answered literally, even when you get it answered truly. When those four quite

honest men said that no man had gone into the Mansions, they did not really mean that no man had gone into

them. They meant no man whom they could suspect of being your man. A man did go into the house, and did

"An invisible man?" inquired Angus, raising his red eyebrows. "A mentally invisible man," said Father

A minute or two after he resumed in the same unassuming voice, like a man thinking his way. "Of course you

can't think of such a man, until you do think of him. That's where his cleverness comes in. But I came to think

of him through two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angus told us. First, there was the fact that this

Welkin went for long walks. And then there was the vast lot of stamp paper on the window. And then, most

of all, there were the two things the young lady saidthings that couldn't be true. Don't get annoyed," he

added hastily, noting a sudden movement of the Scotchman's head; "she thought they were true. A person

can't be quite alone in a street a second before she receives a letter. She can't be quite alone in a street when

she starts reading a letter just received. There must be somebody pretty near her; he must be mentally

"Why must there be somebody near her?" asked Angus. "Because," said Father Brown, "barring

"Do you really mean to say," asked Flambeau, with energy, "that Welkin carried his rival's letters to his

"Yes," said the priest. "Welkin carried his rival's letters to his lady. You see, he had to."

"Oh, I can't stand much more of this," exploded Flambeau. "Who is this fellow? What does he look like?

"He is dressed rather handsomely in red, blue and gold," replied the priest promptly with precision, "and in

this striking, and even showy, costume he entered Himylaya Mansions under eight human eyes; he killed

Smythe in cold blood, and came down into the street again carrying the dead body in his arms"

"You are not mad," said Brown, "only a little unobservant. You have not noticed such a man as this, for

He took three quick strides forward, and put his hand on the shoulder of an ordinary passing postman who

"Nobody ever notices postmen somehow," he said thoughtfully; "yet they have passions like other men, and

The postman, instead of turning naturally, had ducked and tumbled against the garden fence. He was a lean

fairbearded man of very ordinary appearance, but as he turned an alarmed face over his shoulder, all three

Flambeau went back to his sabres, purple rugs and Persian cat, having many things to attend to. John

Turnbull Angus went back to the lady at the shop, with whom that imprudent young man contrives to be

extremely comfortable. But Father Brown walked those snowcovered hills under the stars for many hours

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came

to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or

hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen

slate in the manner of the old FrenchScotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeplehats

of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as

black as numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy from

the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow

which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men. For

Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of

The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to meet his friend Flambeau, the amateur

detective, who was at Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer investigating the life and death of the

late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and

violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth

century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that

The rhyme in the countryside attested the motive and the result of their machinations candidly:

For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in Glengyle Castle; and with the Victorian era one

would have thought that all eccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle, however, satisfied his tribal

tradition by doing the only thing that was left for him to do; he disappeared. I do not mean that he went

abroad; by all accounts he was still in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name was in the church

If anyone saw him it was a solitary manservant, something between a groom and a gardener. He was so deaf

that the more businesslike assumed him to be dumb; while the more penetrating declared him to be

halfwitted. A gaunt, redhaired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin, but quite blank blue eyes, he went by

the name of Israel Gow, and was the one silent servant on that deserted estate. But the energy with which he

dug potatoes, and the regularity with which he disappeared into the kitchen gave people an impression that he

was providing for the meals of a superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed in the castle. If society

needed any further proof that he was there, the servant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One

morning the provost and the minister (for the Glengyles were Presbyterian) were summoned to the castle.

There they found that the gardener, groom and cook had added to his many professions that of an undertaker,

and had nailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how little further inquiry this odd fact was

passed, did not as yet very plainly appear; for the thing had never been legally investigated till Flambeau had

gone north two or three days before. By then the body of Lord Glengyle (if it was the body) had lain for some

As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were

thick and the whole air damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of the greengold sunset he saw a black

human silhouette; a man in a chimneypot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was

queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thought it

natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew the respectability which might well feel

it necessary to wear "blacks" for an official inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose an hour's

digging for that. Even the man's start and suspicious stare as the priest went by were consonant enough with

The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with him a lean man with irongrey hair and

papers in his hand: Inspector Craven from Scotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly stripped and empty;

but the pale, sneering faces of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked down out of black periwigs and

Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the allies had been seated at a long oak table, of

which their end was covered with scribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole of its

remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged at intervals; objects about as inexplicable as

any objects could be. One looked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked like a high heap

"You seem to have a sort of geological museum here," he said, as he sat down, jerking his head briefly in the

"Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective laughing, "don't let's begin with such long words."

"Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau with friendly surprise. "Psychology means being

"Still I hardly follow," replied the official. "Well," said Flambeau, with decision, "I mean that we've only

The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed the window, dimly outlined against the

"I can understand there must have been something odd about the man, or he wouldn't have buried himself

alivenor been in such a hurry to bury himself dead. But what makes you think it was lunacy?"

"Well," said Flambeau, "you just listen to the list of things Mr. Craven has found in the house."

"We must get a candle," said Craven, suddenly. "A storm is getting up, and it's too dark to read."

"That is curious, too," he said. "Twentyfive candles, and not a trace of a candlestick."

In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown went along the table to where a bundle of wax

candles lay among the other scrappy exhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally over the heap of redbrown

He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it in the neck of the whisky bottle. The

unrestful night air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every side

of the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine wood seething like a black sea around a rock.

"I will read the inventory," began Craven gravely, picking up one of the papers, "the inventory of what we

found loose and unexplained in the castle. You are to understand that the place generally was dismantled and

neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in a simple but not squalid style by somebody;

"First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without

any setting whatever. Of course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; but those are

exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particular articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to

"Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, or even a pouch, but lying in heaps on the

mantelpieces, on the sideboard, on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not take the

"Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps of minute pieces of metal, some like steel

springs and some in the form of microscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.

"Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottle necks because there is nothing else to stick

them in. Now I wish you to note how very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For the

central riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there was something wrong about the last

earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that

redhaired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the worst in all

this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or

suppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant

is buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have not explained a

candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of good family should habitually spill snuff on the

piano. The core of the tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By no stretch of fancy can

the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork."

"I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was

an enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to reenact literally the family life of the last Bourbons.

He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century luxury; wax candles, because they were the eighteenth

century lighting; the mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; the diamonds are

Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. "What a perfectly extraordinary notion!" cried

"I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown, "only you said that nobody could connect snuff and

diamonds and clockwork and candles. I give you that connection offhand. The real truth, I am very sure, lies

He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in the turrets. Then he said, "The late Earl of

Glengyle was a thief. He lived a second and darker life as a desperate housebreaker. He did not have any

candlesticks because he only used these candles cut short in the little lantern he carried. The snuff he

employed as the fiercest French criminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in dense masses in the face

of a captor or pursuer. But the final proof is in the curious coincidence of the diamonds and the small steel

wheels. Surely that makes everything plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are the only two

The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast against the windowpane behind them, as if in

parody of a burglar, but they did not turn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father Brown.

"Diamonds and small wheels," repeated Craven ruminating. "Is that all that makes you think it the true

"I don't think it the true explanation," replied the priest placidly; "but you said that nobody could connect the

four things. The true tale, of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle had found, or thought he

had found, precious stones on his estate. Somebody had bamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying

they were found in the castle caverns. The little wheels are some diamondcutting affair. He had to do the

thing very roughly and in a small way, with the help of a few shepherds or rude fellows on these hills. Snuff

is the one great luxury of such Scotch shepherds; it's the one thing with which you can bribe them. They

didn't have candlesticks because they didn't want them; they held the candles in their hands when they

"Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we got to the dull truth at last?"

As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an

"I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles with

bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. But we

want the real explanation of the castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?"

Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled down the long table.

"Items five, six, seven, etc.," he said, "and certainly more varied than instructive. A curious collection, not of

lead pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils. A senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rather splintered. It

might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn't any crime. The only other things are a few old missals

and little Catholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the Middle Agestheir family pride

being stronger than their Puritanism. We only put them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about

The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds across Glengyle and threw the long room into

darkness as Father Brown picked up the little illuminated pages to examine them. He spoke before the drift of

"Mr. Craven," said he, talking like a man ten years younger, "you have got a legal warrant, haven't you, to go

up and examine that grave? The sooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom of this horrible affair. If I

"Now," repeated the astonished detective, "and why now?" "Because this is serious," answered Brown; "this

is not spilt snuff or loose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons. There is only one reason I know

of for this being done; and the reason goes down to the roots of the world. These religious pictures are not

just dirtied or torn or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or bigotry, by children or by

Protestants. These have been treated very carefullyand very queerly. In every place where the great

ornamented name of God comes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. The only other

thing that has been removed is the halo round the head of the Child Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our

"What do you mean?" demanded the London officer. "I mean," answered the little priest, and his voice

seemed to rise slightly in the roar of the gale. "I mean that the great devil of the universe may be sitting on the

top tower of this castle at this moment, as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring like the Apocalypse. There

"Black magic," repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was too enlightened a man not to know of such

"Oh, something damnable, I suppose," replied Brown impatiently. "How should I know? How can I guess all

their mazes down below? Perhaps you can make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust after

wax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery

His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him till a blast of the night wind nearly flung

them on their faces in the garden. Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for Craven found a

hatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau was carrying the heavy spade of the strange

gardener; Father Brown was carrying the little gilt book from which had been torn the name of God.

The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short; only under that stress of wind it seemed

laborious and long. Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyond

seas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universal gesture seemed as vain as it was

vast, as vain as if that wind were whistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all that

infinite growth of greyblue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient sorrow that is in the heart of all heathen

things. One could fancy that the voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were cries of the lost

and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never find their

"You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious

lot. In fact, they're a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons.

"My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, "what does all that snuff mean?"

"My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism.

They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the few bald spots that stood clear of the crashing

and roaring pine forest. A mean enclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tell them the

border of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven had come to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau

had planted his spade point downwards and leaned on it, they were both almost as shaken as the shaky wood

and wire. At the foot of the grave grew great tall thistles, grey and silver in their decay. Once or twice, when

a ball of thistledown broke under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumped slightly as if it had been an

Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling grass into the wet clay below. Then he seemed

"Go on," said the priest very gently. "We are only trying to find the truth. What are you afraid of?"

"I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau. The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice that

was meant to be conversational and cheery. "I wonder why he really did hide himself like that. Something

"Something worse than that," said Flambeau. "And what do you imagine," asked the other, "would be worse

"I don't imagine it," said Flambeau. He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in a choked

"Nor was that piece of paper, you know," said Father Brown quietly, "and we survived even that piece of

Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had shouldered away the choking grey clouds that

clung to the hills like smoke and revealed grey fields of faint starlight before he cleared the shape of a rude

timber coffin, and somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven stepped forward with his axe; a thistletop

touched him, and he flinched. Then he took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy like

Flambeau's till the lid was torn off, and all that was there lay glimmering in the grey starlight.

"Bones," said Craven; and then he added, "but it is a man," as if that were something unexpected.

"Is he," asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and down, "is he all right?"

"Seems so," said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure and decaying skeleton in the box. "Wait a

A vast heave went over Flambeau's huge figure. "And now I come to think of it," he cried, "why in the name

of madness shouldn't he be all right? What is it gets hold of a man on these cursed cold mountains? I think it's

the black, brainless repetition; all these forests, and over all an ancient horror of unconsciousness. It's like the

"God!" cried the man by the coffin, "but he hasn't got a head." While the others stood rigid the priest, for the

"No head!" he repeated. "No head?" as if he had almost expected some other deficiency.

Halfwitted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a headless youth hiding himself in the castle, of a

headless man pacing those ancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in panorama through their minds.

But even in that stiffened instant the tale took no root in them and seemed to have no reason in it. They stood

listening to the loud woods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like exhausted animals. Thought seemed to

"There are three headless men," said Father Brown, "standing round this open grave."

The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and left it open like a yokel, while a long scream

of wind tore the sky; then he looked at the axe in his hands as if it did not belong to him, and dropped it.

"Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used very seldom, "what are we to do?"

"Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do

you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a

food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something has fallen on us that falls very seldom on

Craven's parted lips came together to say, "What do you mean?" The priest had turned his face to the castle as

He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and reckless step very rare with him, and when they

reached the castle again he threw himself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.

Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier than anyone else except the silent

gardener; and was found smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchen

garden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains, and the day came with a curious

freshness. The gardener seemed even to have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he planted his

spade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast, shifted along the lines of cabbages and

shut himself in the kitchen. "He's a valuable man, that," said Father Brown. "He does the potatoes amazingly.

Still," he added, with a dispassionate charity, "he has his faults; which of us hasn't? He doesn't dig this bank

quite regularly. There, for instance," and he stamped suddenly on one spot. "I'm really very doubtful about

"And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's hobby. "I'm doubtful about it," said the other,

"because old Gow was doubtful about it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place but just this.

Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place. He turned up, under a load of soil,

something that did not look like a potato, but rather like a monstrous, overdomed mushroom. But it struck

the spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned up at them.

Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau, and, saying "We must hide it

again," clamped the skull down in the earth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handle

of the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes were empty and his forehead full of wrinkles. "If

one could only conceive," he muttered, "the meaning of this last monstrosity." And leaning on the large spade

All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; the birds were chattering in the tiny garden

trees; so loud it seemed as if the trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.

"Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last boisterously. "My brain and this world don't fit each other; and

there's an end of it. Snuff, spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical boxeswhat"

Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade handle with an intolerance quite unusual with

him. "Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!" he cried. "All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I understood the snuff and clockwork,

and so on, when I first opened my eyes this morning. And since then I've had it out with old Gow, the

gardener, who is neither so deaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There's nothing amiss about the loose items. I

was wrong about the torn massbook, too; there's no harm in that. But it's this last business. Desecrating

graves and stealing dead men's headssurely there's harm in that? Surely there's black magic still in that?

That doesn't fit in to the quite simple story of the snuff and the candles." And, striding about again, he

"My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must be careful with me and remember I was once a

criminal. The great advantage of that estate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quick

as I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my life, for

good or evil, I have done things at the instant; I always fought duels the next morning; I always paid bills on

Father Brown's pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three pieces on the gravel path. He stood rolling his

eyes, the exact picture of an idiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!" he kept saying. "Lord, what a turnip!" Then, in

"The dentist!" he repeated. "Six hours in the spiritual abyss, and all because I never thought of the dentist!

Such a simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but now the

sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world."

"I will get some sense out of this," cried Flambeau, striding forward, "if I use the tortures of the Inquisition."

Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition to dance on the now sunlit lawn and

cried quite piteously, like a child, "Oh, let me be silly a little. You don't know how unhappy I have been. And

now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all. Only a little lunacy, perhaps and who

He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity. "This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is

the story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken

no more than his due. It is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion of this race.

was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that the Glengyles sought for wealth; it was also

true that they literally gathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments and utensils in that metal. They

were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn. In the light of that fact, run through all the things we found

in the castle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles without their gold candlesticks; snuff without the

gold snuffboxes; pencilleads without the gold pencilcases; a walking stick without its gold top;

clockwork without the gold clocksor rather watches. And, mad as it sounds, because the halos and the

The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in the strengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told.

"Were taken away," continued Father Brown; "were taken away but not stolen. Thieves would never have

left this mystery. Thieves would have taken the gold snuffboxes, snuff and all; the gold pencilcases, lead

and all. We have to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, but certainly a conscience. I found that mad

moralist this morning in the kitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.

"The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man ever born at Glengyle. But his bitter

virtue took the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which,

somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More especially he distrusted philanthropy or freegiving;

and he swore if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold of Glengyle.

Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of its being

answered. One day, however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated

telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so,

but when he turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and a sovereign gone. The accident

offered him vistas of sneering speculation. Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species.

Either he would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with it virtuously, a snob seeking a

reward. In the middle of that night Lord Glengyle was knocked up out of his bedfor he lived aloneand

forced to open the door to the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, not the sovereign, but exactly nineteen

"Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad lord's brain like fire. He swore he was

Diogenes, that had long sought an honest man, and at last had found one. He made a new will, which I have

seen. He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, and trained him up as his solitary servant and

after an odd mannerhis heir. And whatever that queer creature understands, he understood absolutely

his lord's two fixed ideas: first, that the letter of right is everything; and second, that he himself was to have

the gold of Glengyle. So far, that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped the house of gold, and taken not a

grain that was not gold; not so much as a grain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fully

satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I understood; but I could not understand this skull business. I

was really uneasy about that human head buried among the potatoes. It distressed metill Flambeau said the

"It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth."

And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw that strange being, the just miser, digging

at the desecrated grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober top hat on his

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and

interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of

shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous publichouse, and then perhaps a market

garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so

on. If anyone walks along one of these roads he will pass a house which will probably catch his eye, though

he may not be able to explain its attraction. It is a long, low house, running parallel with the road, painted

mostly white and pale green, with a veranda and sunblinds, and porches capped with those quaint sort of

cupolas like wooden umbrellas that one sees in some oldfashioned houses. In fact, it is an oldfashioned

house, very English and very suburban in the good old wealthy Clapham sense. And yet the house has a look

of having been built chiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white paint and sunblinds one thinks vaguely

of pugarees and even of palm trees. I cannot trace the feeling to its root; perhaps the place was built by an

Anyone passing this house, I say, would be namelessly fascinated by it; would feel that it was a place about

which some story was to be told. And he would have been right, as you shall shortly hear. For this is the

storythe story of the strange things that did really happen in it in the Whitsuntide of the year 18:

Anyone passing the house on the Thursday before WhitSunday at about halfpast four p.m. would have seen

the front door open, and Father Brown, of the small church of St. Mungo, come out smoking a large pipe in

company with a very tall French friend of his called Flambeau, who was smoking a very small cigarette.

These persons may or may not be of interest to the reader, but the truth is that they were not the only

interesting things that were displayed when the front door of the whiteandgreen house was opened. There

are further peculiarities about this house, which must be described to start with, not only that the reader may

understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realise what it was that the opening of the door revealed.

The whole house was built upon the plan of a T, but a T with a very long cross piece and a very short tail

piece. The long cross piece was the frontage that ran along in face of the street, with the front door in the

middle; it was two stories high, and contained nearly all the important rooms. The short tail piece, which ran

out at the back immediately opposite the front door, was one story high, and consisted only of two long

rooms, the one leading into the other. The first of these two rooms was the study in which the celebrated Mr.

Quinton wrote his wild Oriental poems and romances. The farther room was a glass conservatory full of

tropical blossoms of quite unique and almost monstrous beauty, and on such afternoons as these glowing with

gorgeous sunlight. Thus when the hall door was open, many a passerby literally stopped to stare and gasp;

for he looked down a perspective of rich apartments to something really like a transformation scene in a fairy

play: purple clouds and golden suns and crimson stars that were at once scorchingly vivid and yet transparent

Leonard Quinton, the poet, had himself most carefully arranged this effect; and it is doubtful whether he so

perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems. For he was a man who drank and bathed in colours,

who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of formeven of good form. This it was that had

turned his genius so wholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries

in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach. He had

attempted, not perhaps with complete artistic success, but with acknowledged imagination and invention, to

compose epics and love stories reflecting the riot of violent and even cruel colour; tales of tropical heavens of

burning gold or bloodred copper; of eastern heroes who rode with twelveturbaned mitres upon elephants

painted purple or peacock green; of gigantic jewels that a hundred negroes could not carry, but which burned

In short (to put the matter from the more common point of view), he dealt much in eastern heavens, rather

worse than most western hells; in eastern monarchs, whom we might possibly call maniacs; and in eastern

jewels which a Bond Street jeweller (if the hundred staggering negroes brought them into his shop) might

possibly not regard as genuine. Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one; and even his morbidity appeared more

in his life than in his work. In temperament he was weak and waspish, and his health had suffered heavily

from oriental experiments with opium. His wife a handsome, hardworking, and, indeed, overworked

woman objected to the opium, but objected much more to a live Indian hermit in white and yellow robes,

whom her husband insisted on entertaining for months together, a Virgil to guide his spirit through the

It was out of this artistic household that Father Brown and his friend stepped on to the doorstep; and to

judge from their faces, they stepped out of it with much relief. Flambeau had known Quinton in wild student

days in Paris, and they had renewed the acquaintance for a weekend; but apart from Flambeau's more

responsible developments of late, he did not get on well with the poet now. Choking oneself with opium and

writing little erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil. As the two

paused on the doorstep, before taking a turn in the garden, the front garden gate was thrown open with

violence, and a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his head tumbled up the steps in his eagerness.

He was a dissipatedlooking youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry, as if he had slept in it, and he kept

"I say," he said breathlessly, "I want to see old Quinton. I must see him. Has he gone?"

"Mr. Quinton is in, I believe," said Father Brown, cleaning his pipe, "but I do not know if you can see him.

The young man, who seemed not to be perfectly sober, stumbled into the hall; and at the same moment the

doctor came out of Quinton's study, shutting the door and beginning to put on his gloves.

"See Mr. Quinton?" said the doctor coolly. "No, I'm afraid you can't. In fact, you mustn't on any account.

"No, but look here, old chap," said the youth in the red tie, trying affectionately to capture the doctor by the

"It's no good, Mr. Atkinson," said the doctor, forcing him to fall back; "when you can alter the effects of a

drug I'll alter my decision," and, settling on his hat, he stepped out into the sunlight with the other two. He

was a bullnecked, goodtempered little man with a small moustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an

The young man in the billycock, who did not seem to be gifted with any tact in dealing with people beyond

the general idea of clutching hold of their coats, stood outside the door, as dazed as if he had been thrown out

bodily, and silently watched the other three walk away together through the garden.

"That was a sound, spanking lie I told just now," remarked the medical man, laughing. "In point of fact, poor

Quinton doesn't have his sleeping draught for nearly half an hour. But I'm not going to have him bothered

with that little beast, who only wants to borrow money that he wouldn't pay back if he could. He's a dirty

little scamp, though he is Mrs. Quinton's brother, and she's as fine a woman as ever walked."

"Yes," said Father Brown. "She's a good woman." "So I propose to hang about the garden till the creature has

cleared off," went on the doctor, "and then I'll go in to Quinton with the medicine. Atkinson can't get in,

"In that case, Dr. Harris," said Flambeau, "we might as well walk round at the back by the end of the

conservatory. There's no entrance to it that way, but it's worth seeing, even from the outside."

"Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient," laughed the doctor, "for he prefers to lie on an ottoman right at

the end of the conservatory amid all those bloodred poinsettias; it would give me the creeps. But what are

Father Brown had stopped for a moment, and picked up out of the long grass, where it had almost been

wholly hidden, a queer, crooked Oriental knife, inlaid exquisitely in coloured stones and metals.

"Oh, Quinton's, I suppose," said Dr. Harris carelessly; "he has all sorts of Chinese knickknacks about the

place. Or perhaps it belongs to that mild Hindoo of his whom he keeps on a string."

"O crickey! magic!" said the doctor. "It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; "the

"What for?" asked Flambeau, staring. "For anything. It's the wrong shape in the abstract. Don't you ever feel

that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad deliberately

"Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing. "They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know; but I know

they stand for evil words," went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. "The lines go wrong on

Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. "The Father sometimes gets this mystic's cloud on him," he said;

"but I give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it except when there was some evil quite

"Why, look at it," cried Father Brown, holding out the crooked knife at arm's length, as if it were some

glittering snake. "Don't you see it is the wrong shape? Don't you see that it has no hearty and plain purpose?

It does not point like a spear. It does not sweep like a scythe. It does not look like a weapon. It looks like an

"Well, as you don't seem to like it," said the jolly Harris, "it had better be taken back to its owner. Haven't we

come to the end of this confounded conservatory yet? This house is the wrong shape, if you like."

"You don't understand," said Father Brown, shaking his head. "The shape of this house is quaintit is even

As they spoke they came round the curve of glass that ended the conservatory, an uninterrupted curve, for

there was neither door nor window by which to enter at that end. The glass, however, was clear, and the sun

still bright, though beginning to set; and they could see not only the flamboyant blossoms inside, but the frail

figure of the poet in a brown velvet coat lying languidly on the sofa, having, apparently, fallen half asleep

over a book. He was a pale, slight man, with loose, chestnut hair and a fringe of beard that was the paradox of

his face, for the beard made him look less manly. These traits were well known to all three of them; but even

had it not been so, it may be doubted whether they would have looked at Quinton just then. Their eyes were

Exactly in their path, immediately outside the round end of the glass building, was standing a tall man, whose

drapery fell to his feet in faultless white, and whose bare, brown skull, face, and neck gleamed in the setting

sun like splendid bronze. He was looking through the glass at the sleeper, and he was more motionless than a

"Who is that?" cried Father Brown, stepping back with a hissing intake of his breath.

"Oh, it is only that Hindoo humbug," growled Harris; "but I don't know what the deuce he's doing here."

"Why are you unmedical fellows always talking bosh about hypnotism?" cried the doctor. "It looks a deal

"Well, we will speak to it, at any rate," said Flambeau, who was always for action. One long stride took him

to the place where the Indian stood. Bowing from his great height, which overtopped even the Oriental's, he

"Good evening, sir. Do you want anything?" Quite slowly, like a great ship turning into a harbour, the great

yellow face turned, and looked at last over its white shoulder. They were startled to see that its yellow eyelids

were quite sealed, as in sleep. "Thank you," said the face in excellent English. "I want nothing." Then, half

opening the lids, so as to show a slit of opalescent eyeball, he repeated, "I want nothing." Then he opened his

eyes wide with a startling stare, said, "I want nothing," and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening

"What on earth was he doing?" asked Flambeau, knitting his black brows and lowering his voice.

"I should like to talk to you later," said Father Brown. The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light

of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it. They turned

round the end of the conservatory, and walked in silence down the other side to get round to the front door.

As they went they seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird, in the deeper corner between the study

and the main building; and again they saw the whiterobed fakir slide out of the shadow, and slip round

towards the front door. To their surprise, however, he had not been alone. They found themselves abruptly

pulled up and forced to banish their bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy golden

hair and square pale face, advancing on them out of the twilight. She looked a little stern, but was entirely

"Good evening, Dr. Harris," was all she said. "Good evening, Mrs. Quinton," said the little doctor heartily. "I

"Yes," she said in a clear voice. "I think it is quite time." And she smiled at them, and went sweeping into the

"That woman's overdriven," said Father Brown; "that's the kind of woman that does her duty for twenty

The little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye of interest. "Did you ever study medicine?" he

"You have to know something of the mind as well as the body," answered the priest; "we have to know

They had turned the corner of the front facade, and were approaching the front doorway. As they turned into

it they saw the man in the white robe for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that it

seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study

Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a

man to waste his thoughts on the impossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then

stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was

still hanging about, humming and poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor's face had a spasm of

disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: "I must lock the door again, or this rat will

He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, just balking a blundering charge from the

young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a

Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about

four minutes the door was opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door

From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in something between a yawn and a yell of

"Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I'm writing a song about peacocks."

Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through the aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward,

"So that's settled," said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, he led the way out into the garden.

"Poor Leonard can get a little peace now," he added to Father Brown; "he's locked in all by himself for an

"Yes," answered the priest; "and his voice sounded jolly enough when we left him." Then he looked gravely

round the garden, and saw the loose figure of Atkinson standing and jingling the halfsovereign in his

pocket, and beyond, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian sitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass

with his face turned towards the setting sun. Then he said abruptly: "Where is Mrs. Quinton!"

"She has gone up to her room," said the doctor. "That is her shadow on the blind."

Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinised a dark outline at the gaslit window.

"Yes," he said, "that is her shadow," and he walked a yard or two and threw himself upon a garden seat.

Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of those energetic people who live naturally on their

legs. He walked away, smoking, into the twilight, and the two friends were left together.

Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute, then he said: "Superstition is irreligious, but there

is something in the air of this place. I think it's that Indianat least, partly."

He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of the Indian, who still sat rigid as if in prayer. At first

sight he seemed motionless, but as Father Brown watched him he saw that the man swayed ever so slightly

with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark treetops swayed ever so slightly in the wind that was creeping

The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a storm, but they could still see all the figures in their

various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a listless face; Quinton's wife was still at her

window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of the conservatory; they could see his cigar like a

willo'thewisp; and the fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began to rock and

"When that Indian spoke to us," went on Brown in a conversational undertone, "I had a sort of vision, a

vision of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he said `I want

nothing,' it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, `I

want nothing,' and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no

God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, `I want nothing,' he said it with blazing

eyes. And I knew that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desire and his home; that he was

weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation, the mere destruction of everything or anything"

Two drops of rain fell; and for some reason Flambeau started and looked up, as if they had stung him. And

the same instant the doctor down by the end of the conservatory began running towards them, calling out

As he came among them like a bombshell the restless Atkinson happened to be taking a turn nearer to the

house front; and the doctor clutched him by the collar in a convulsive grip. "Foul play!" he cried; "what have

The priest had sprung erect, and had the voice of steel of a soldier in command.

"No fighting," he cried coolly; "we are enough to hold anyone we want to. What is the matter, doctor?"

"Things are not right with Quinton," said the doctor, quite white. "I could just see him through the glass, and I

"Let us go in to him," said Father Brown shortly. "You can leave Mr. Atkinson alone. I have had him in sight

The doctor and the priest flew to the study door, unlocked it, and fell into the room. In doing so they nearly

fell over the large mahogany table in the centre at which the poet usually wrote; for the place was lit only by

a small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of this table lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on

purpose. The doctor snatched it up, glanced at it, handed it to Father Brown, and crying, "Good God, look at

that!" plunged toward the glass room beyond, where the terrible tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson

Father Brown read the words three times before he put down the paper. The words were: "I die by my own

hand; yet I die murdered!" They were in the quite inimitable, not to say illegible, handwriting

Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, strode towards the conservatory, only to meet his

medical friend coming back with a face of assurance and collapse. "He's done it," said Harris.

They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty of cactus and azalea and found Leonard Quinton,

poet and romancer, with his head hanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground.

Into his left side was thrust the queer dagger that they had picked up in the garden, and his limp hand still

Outside the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge, and garden and glass roof were

darkened with driving rain. Father Brown seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it

close to his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held it up against the faint light, and, as

he did so, lightning stared at them for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.

Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown's voice said out of the dark: "Doctor,

"It isn't square," answered Brown. "It has a sort of edge snipped off at the corner. What does it mean?"

"How the deuce should I know?" growled the doctor. "Shall we move this poor chap, do you think? He's

"No," answered the priest; "we must leave him as he lies and send for the police." But he was still scrutinising

As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and picked up a small pair of nail scissors. "Ah,"

he said, with a sort of relief, "this is what he did it with. But yet" And he knitted his brows.

"Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper," said the doctor emphatically. "It was a fad of his. He had

hundreds of them. He cut all his paper like that," as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper still unused on

another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and held up a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.

"Quite so," he said. "And here I see the corners that were snipped off." And to the indignation of his

"That's all right," he said, with an apologetic smile. "Twentythree sheets cut and twentytwo corners cut off

"Who is to tell his wife?" asked Dr. Harris. "Will you go and tell her now, while I send a servant for the

"As you will," said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to the hall door.

Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed nothing less than his big friend

Flambeau in an attitude to which he had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of

the steps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his billycock hat and walking cane

sent flying in opposite directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau's almost

paternal custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play

Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, when the priest patted him easily on

"Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend," he said. "Beg a mutual pardon and say `Good night.' We need not

detain him any longer." Then, as Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick and went

towards the garden gate, Father Brown said in a more serious voice: "Where is that Indian?"

They all three (for the doctor had joined them) turned involuntarily towards the dim grassy bank amid the

tossing trees purple with twilight, where they had last seen the brown man swaying in his strange prayers.

"Confound him," cried the doctor, stamping furiously. "Now I know that it was that nigger that did it."

"No more I did," said the doctor, rolling his eyes. "I only know that I loathed that yellow devil when I thought

he was a sham wizard. And I shall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one."

"Well, his having escaped is nothing," said Flambeau. "For we could have proved nothing and done nothing

against him. One hardly goes to the parish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft or

Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went to break the news to the wife of

When he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic, but what passed between them in that interview

Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see his friend reappear so soon at his

elbow; but Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor apart. "You have sent for the police, haven't

"Will you do me a favour?" said the priest quietly. "The truth is, I make a collection of these curious stories,

which often contain, as in the case of our Hindoo friend, elements which can hardly be put into a police

report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for my private use. Yours is a clever trade," he said,

looking the doctor gravely and steadily in the face. "I sometimes think that you know some details of this

matter which you have not thought fit to mention. Mine is a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat

The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little on one side, looked the priest in the

face for an instant, and said: "All right," and went into the study, closing the door behind him.

"Flambeau," said Father Brown, "there is a long seat there under the veranda, where we can smoke out of the

rain. You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you."

They established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; Father Brown, against his common habit,

accepted a good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence, while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of the

"You call it queer, and I call it queer," said the other, "and yet we mean quite opposite things. The modern

mind always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mystery in the

sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple.

It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil) instead of indirectly

through nature or human wills. Now, you mean that this business is marvellous because it is miraculous,

because it is witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was not spiritual or

diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of men.

But for the present my point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think, then it is marvellous; but it is not

mysteriousthat is, it is not complicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple.

The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of

"There has been in this incident," he said, "a twisted, ugly, complex quality that does not belong to the

straight bolts either of heaven or hell. As one knows the crooked track of a snail, I know the crooked track of

The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut up again, and the priest went on:

"Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that piece of paper. It was crookeder than the

"I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, `I die by my own hand,'" answered Father Brown. "The shape of

that paper, my friend, was the wrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I have seen it in this wicked world."

"It only had a corner snipped off," said Flambeau, "and I understand that all Quinton's paper was cut that

"It was a very odd way," said the other, "and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau,

this QuintonGod receive his soul!was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist,

with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can't prove

what I say; I can't prove anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he could never have cut

that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he had wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in,

or binding up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the scissors. Do you remember

the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong shape. Like this. Don't you remember?"

And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making irregular squares so rapidly that

Flambeau really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the darknesshieroglyphics such as his

"But," said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again and leaned back, staring at the roof,

"suppose somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody else, cutting pieces off his sermon

Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took his cigar out of his mouth and said:

Flambeau stared at him. "Why, confound it all," he cried, "then why did he confess to suicide?"

The priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, looked at the ground, and said, in a low,

Flambeau laid his cigar down. "You mean," he said, "that the writing was forged?"

"No," said Father Brown. "Quinton wrote it all right." "Well, there you are," said the aggravated Flambeau;

"Quinton wrote, `I die by my own hand,' with his own hand on a plain piece of paper."

"Of the wrong shape," said the priest calmly. "Oh, the shape be damned!" cried Flambeau. "What has the

"There were twentythree snipped papers," resumed Brown unmoved, "and only twentytwo pieces snipped

off. Therefore one of the pieces had been destroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggest

A light dawned on Flambeau's face, and he said: "There was something else written by Quinton, some other

"Hotter, as the children say," said his friend. "But the piece was hardly half an inch across; there was no room

for one word, let alone five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man with hell

"I can think of nothing," said Flambeau at last. "What about quotation marks?" said the priest, and flung his

All words had left the other man's mouth, and Father Brown said, like one going back to fundamentals:

"Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism.

At this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and the doctor came out with his hat on. He put a long

"That's the document you wanted," he said, "and I must be getting home. Good night."

"Good night," said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open, so

that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope and read the following

Father Brown carefully folded up the letter, and put it in his breast pocket just as there came a loud peal at the

gate bell, and the wet waterproofs of several policemen gleamed in the road outside.

When Flambeau took his month's holiday from his office in Westminster he took it in a small sailingboat, so

small that it passed much of its time as a rowingboat. He took it, moreover, in little rivers in the Eastern

counties, rivers so small that the boat looked like a magic boat, sailing on land through meadows and

cornfields. The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and

Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced

themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he

should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case

he should die. With this light luggage he crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending to reach the Broads

at last, but meanwhile delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows, the mirrored mansions or

villages, lingering to fish in the pools and corners, and in some sense hugging the shore.

Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse.

He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but

just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he had been a king of thieves and the most

famous figure in Paris, he had often received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or even love;

but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of a visitingcard, in an envelope with an

English postmark. On the back of the card was written in French and in green ink: "If you ever retire and

become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have met all the other great men of my time.

That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French history."

On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion, "Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island,

He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining that he had been a brilliant and

fashionable figure in southern Italy. In his youth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high

rank; the escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to men's minds because of an

additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a

precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been

passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European

celebrity and settled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprise visit to this eminent exile in

the Norfolk Broads. Whether he should find the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small

and forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he expected.

They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses and short pollarded trees. Sleep,

after heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light.

To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the

forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violetblue, nocturnal but bright. Both men

had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close

over us like woods. Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed to be giant daisies,

the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them of the dado of a nursery wallpaper. The

drop of the riverbed sufficed to sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make them gaze

Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt that his friend

"The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads," answered the priest, "knew more about fairies than you do. It

"Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing

on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such

"All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always

They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of the sky and the pale gold of the moon

grew fainter and fainter, amd faded into that vast colourless cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn.

When the first faint stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizon from end to end they were broken by the

black bulk of a town or village which sat on the river just ahead of them. It was already an easy twilight, in

which all things were visible, when they came under the hanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet.

The houses, with their long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at the river, like huge grey

and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawn had already turned to working daylight before they saw

any living creature on the wharves and bridges of that silent town. Eventually they saw a very placid and

prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red

whisker around the low arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. By an impulse not to be

analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed

Island or Reed House. The prosperous man's smile grew slightly more expansive, and he simply pointed up

the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeau went ahead without further speech.

The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy and silent reaches of river; but before

the search had become monotonous they had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silence

of a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrested them. For in the middle of this wider piece

of water, fringed on every side with rushes, lay a long, low islet, along which ran a long, low house or

bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane. The upstanding rods of bamboo which made

the walls were pale yellow, the sloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwise the

long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morning breeze rustled the reeds round the

"By George!" cried Flambeau; "here is the place, after all! Here is Reed Island, if ever there was one. Here is

Reed House, if it is anywhere. I believe that fat man with whiskers was a fairy."

But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore in the rattling reeds, and they stood in

The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the only landingstage; the main entrance was on

the other side, and looked down the long island garden. The visitors approached it, therefore, by a small path

running round nearly three sides of the house, close under the low eaves. Through three different windows on

three different sides they looked in on the same long, welllit room, panelled in light wood, with a large

number of lookingglasses, and laid out as for an elegant lunch. The front door, when they came round to it

at last, was flanked by two turquoiseblue flower pots. It was opened by a butler of the drearier typelong,

lean, grey and listlesswho murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected

hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green

ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky

courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be here any minute," he said,

"and would be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had invited. We have orders always to keep a

little cold lunch for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to be offered."

Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assented gracefully, and followed the old man, who

ushered him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable about it,

except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows with many long, low oblongs of

lookingglass, which gave a singular air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow like

lunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph of

a very young man in uniform, another a red chalk sketch of two longhaired boys. Asked by Flambeau

whether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly in the negative; it was the prince's

younger brother, Captain Stephen Saradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenly

After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs, the guests were introduced to the garden, the

library, and the housekeepera dark, handsome lady, of no little majesty, and rather like a plutonic

Madonna. It appeared that she and the butler were the only survivors of the prince's original foreign menage

the other servants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by the housekeeper. This latter lady

went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, but she spoke with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt

that Anthony was a Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, the butler, also had a faintly foreign

air, but he was in tongue and training English, as are many of the most polished menservants of the

Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminous sadness. Hours passed in it like days.

The long, wellwindowed rooms were full of daylight, but it seemed a dead daylight. And through all other

incidental noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or the passing feet of servants, they could hear on all

"We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place," said Father Brown, looking out of the window

at the greygreen sedges and the silver flood. "Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right

Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic little man, and in those few but endless

hours he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had that

knack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely a word, he probably obtained

from his new acquaintances all that in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was naturally

uncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been

very badly treated. The chief offender seemed to be his highness's brother, whose name alone would lengthen

the old man's lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer. Captain Stephen was a ne'erdoweel,

apparently, and had drained his benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly from

fashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul, the butler, would say, and Paul was

The Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brown fancied, somewhat less

content. Her tone about her master was faintly acid; though not without a certain awe. Flambeau and his

friend were standing in the room of the lookingglasses examining the red sketch of the two boys, when the

housekeeper swept in swiftly on some domestic errand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering, glasspanelled

place that anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors at once; and Father Brown, without turning

round, stopped in the middle of a sentence of family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to

the picture, was already saying in a loud voice, "The brothers Saradine, I suppose. They both look innocent

enough. It would be hard to say which is the good brother and which the bad." Then, realising the lady's

presence, he turned the conversation with some triviality, and strolled out into the garden. But Father Brown

still gazed steadily at the red crayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at Father Brown.

She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darkly with a curious and painful

wonderas of one doubtful of a stranger's identity or purpose. Whether the little priest's coat and creed

touched some southern memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knew more than he did, she said to

him in a low voice as to a fellow plotter, "He is right enough in one way, your friend. He says it would be

hard to pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be hard, it would be mighty hard, to pick out the

The woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort of savage stoop, like a bull lowering

"There isn't a good one," she hissed. "There was badness enough in the captain taking all that money, but I

don't think there was much goodness in the prince giving it. The captain's not the only one with something

A light dawned on the cleric's averted face, and his mouth formed silently the word "blackmail." Even as he

did so the woman turned an abrupt white face over her shoulder and almost fell. The door had opened

soundlessly and the pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. By the weird trick of the reflecting walls, it

"His Highness," he said, "has just arrived." In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside the first

window, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted stage. An instant later he passed at the second window and the

many mirrors repainted in successive frames the same eagle profile and marching figure. He was erect and

alert, but his hair was white and his complexion of an odd ivory yellow. He had that short, curved Roman

nose which generally goes with long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly masked by moustache and

imperial. The moustache was much darker than the beard, giving an effect slightly theatrical, and he was

dressed up to the same dashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellow waistcoat and

yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked. When he came round to the front door they heard

the stiff Paul open it, and heard the new arrival say cheerfully, "Well, you see I have come." The stiff Mr.

Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for a few minutes their conversation could not be heard.

Then the butler said, "Everything is at your disposal"; and the gloveflapping Prince Saradine came gaily into

the room to greet them. They beheld once more that spectral scenefive princes entering a room with five

The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the table and offered his hand quite cordially.

"Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau," he said. "Knowing you very well by reputation, if that's not an

"Not at all," answered Flambeau, laughing. "I am not sensitive. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied

The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the retort had any personal point; then he laughed also and

"Pleasant little place, this, I think," he said with a detached air. "Not much to do, I fear; but the fishing is

The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare of a baby, was haunted by some fancy that escaped

definition. He looked at the grey, carefully curled hair, yellow white visage, and slim, somewhat foppish

figure. These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononce, like the outfit of a figure behind the

footlights. The nameless interest lay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown was

tormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. The man looked like some old friend of

his dressed up. Then he suddenly remembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychological

Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between his guests with great gaiety and tact. Finding the

detective of a sporting turn and eager to employ his holiday, he guided Flambeau and Flambeau's boat down

to the best fishing spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoe in twenty minutes to join Father Brown

in the library and plunge equally politely into the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a

great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six

languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies,

for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or

Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the oncecelebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost

ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that the travels were so disreputable or so amusing.

Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world, Prince Saradine radiated to such sensitive observers as the

priest, a certain atmosphere of the restless and even the unreliable. His face was fastidious, but his eye was

wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken by drink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to

have, his hand on the helm of household affairs. All these were left to the two old servants, especially to the

butler, who was plainly the central pillar of the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not so much a butler as a sort of

steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his master; he was feared

by all the servants; and he consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly rather as if he

were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed

to efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which had

half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder. Whether the prince was really being thus

bled by the absent captain, he could not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretive about

When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was

dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his

dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest's mind again

"No," answered his guest. "I believe in Doomsday." The prince turned from the window and stared at him in

a singular manner, his face in shadow against the sunset. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," answered Father Brown. "The things that happen

here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will

The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A

new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine's blend

of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, "The wrong

personthe wrong person," many more times than was natural in a social exclamation.

Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors before him he could see the silent door

standing open, and the silent Mr. Paul standing in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.

"I thought it better to announce at once," he said, with the same stiff respectfulness as of an old family

lawyer, "a boat rowed by six men has come to the landingstage, and there's a gentleman sitting in the stern."

There was a startled silence punctuated only by the odd noise of the bird in the sedge; and then, before

anyone could speak again, a new face and figure passed in profile round the three sunlit windows, as the

prince had passed an hour or two before. But except for the accident that both outlines were aquiline, they

had little in common. Instead of the new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of antiquated or foreign

shape; under it was a young and very solemn face, clean shaven, blue about its resolute chin, and carrying a

faint suggestion of the young Napoleon. The association was assisted by something old and odd about the

whole getup, as of a man who had never troubled to change the fashions of his fathers. He had a shabby

blue frock coat, a red, soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of coarse white trousers common among the

early Victorians, but strangely incongruous today. From all this old clothesshop his olive face stood out

"The deuce!" said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his white hat he went to the front door himself, flinging it

By that time the newcomer and his followers were drawn up on the lawn like a small stage army. The six

boatmen had pulled the boat well up on shore, and were guarding it almost menacingly, holding their oars

erect like spears. They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. But one of them stood forward

beside the olivefaced young man in the red waistcoat, and carried a large black case of unfamiliar form.

"Your name," said the young man, "is Saradine?" Saradine assented rather negligently. The newcomer had

dull, doglike brown eyes, as different as possible from the restless and glittering grey eyes of the prince. But

once again Father Brown was tortured with a sense of having seen somewhere a replica of the face; and once

again he remembered the repetitions of the glasspanelled room, and put down the coincidence to that.

"Confound this crystal palace!" he muttered. "One sees everything too many times. It's like a dream."

"If you are Prince Saradine," said the young man, "I may tell you that my name is Antonelli."

"Permit me to present myself," said the young Italian. With his left hand he politely took off his

oldfashioned tophat; with his right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across the face that the

white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blue flowerpots rocked upon its pedestal.

The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward; he sprang at his enemy's throat and almost bore

him backwards to the grass. But his enemy extricated himself with a singularly inappropriate air of hurried

"That is all right," he said, panting and in halting English. "I have insulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco,

The man beside him with the earrings and the big black case proceeded to unlock it. He took out of it two

long Italian rapiers, with splendid steel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn. The

strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow and vindictive face, the two swords standing

up in the turf like two crosses in a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers behind, gave it all an odd

appearance of being some barbaric court of justice. But everything else was unchanged, so sudden had been

the interruption. The sunset gold still glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as announcing some

"Prince Saradine," said the man called Antonelli, "when I was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and

stole my mother; my father was the more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to kill you. You

and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass in Sicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your

way. I could imitate you if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you all over the world, and

you have always fled from me. But this is the end of the worldand of you. I have you now, and I give you

Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to hesitate a moment, but his ears were still singing with the

blow, and he sprang forward and snatched at one of the hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward, striving

to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presence made matters worse. Saradine was a French

freemason and a fierce atheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for the other man neither

priest nor layman moved him at all. This young man with the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was

something far sterner than a puritana pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of the earth; a man

One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ran back into the house. He found,

however, that all the under servants had been given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only the

sombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the moment she turned a ghastly face upon

him, he resolved one of the riddles of the house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the

"Your son is outside," he said without wasting words; "either he or the prince will be killed. Where is Mr.

"He is at the landingstage," said the woman faintly. "He is he issignalling for help."

"Mrs. Anthony," said Father Brown seriously, "there is no time for nonsense. My friend has his boat down

the river fishing. Your son's boat is guarded by your son's men. There is only this one canoe; what is Mr. Paul

"Santa Maria! I do not know," she said; and swooned all her length on the matted floor.

Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her, shouted for help, and then rushed down to the

landingstage of the little island. But the canoe was already in midstream, and old Paul was pulling and

"I will save my master," he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally. "I will save him yet!"

Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggled upstream and pray that the old man

"A duel is bad enough," he muttered, rubbing up his rough dustcoloured hair, "but there's something wrong

As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, he heard from the other end of the island garden

Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip of turf beyond the last rank of roses, the

duellists had already crossed swords. Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant as they

were, every detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats, but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of

Saradine, the red waistcoat and white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like the colours of the

dancing clockwork dolls. The two swords sparkled from point to pommel like two diamond pins. There was

something frightful in the two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like two butterflies trying to

Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like a wheel. But when he came to the field of

combat he found he was born too late and too earlytoo late to stop the strife, under the shadow of the grim

Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate any disastrous issue of it. For the two men were

singularly well matched, the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, the Sicilian using his

with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches can ever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than

that which tinkled and sparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fight was balanced so

long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest; by all common probability Paul must soon come back

with the police. It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau,

physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much

queerer, no sign of Paul or the police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast

Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to a rattle, the prince's arms flew up, and

the point shot out behind between his shoulderblades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almost

like one throwing the half of a boy's cartwheel. The sword flew from his hand like a shooting star, and dived

into the distant river. And he himself sank with so earthshaking a subsidence that he broke a big rosetree

with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of red earthlike the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The

The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but only to make too sure that it was a corpse. As he was

still trying some last hopeless tests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, and saw a

police boat shoot up to the landingstage, with constables and other important people, including the excited

Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an invasion of townsfolk and police, and the latter had

put their hands on the victorious duellist, ritually reminding him that anything he said might be used against

"I shall not say anything," said the monomaniac, with a wonderful and peaceful face. "I shall never say

Then he shut his mouth as they led him away, and it is the strange but certain truth that he never opened it

Father Brown had stared at the suddenly crowded garden, the arrest of the man of blood, the carrying away of

the corpse after its examination by the doctor, rather as one watches the breakup of some ugly dream; he

was motionless, like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and address as a witness, but declined their

offer of a boat to the shore, and remained alone in the island garden, gazing at the broken rose bush and the

whole green theatre of that swift and inexplicable tragedy. The light died along the river; mist rose in the

Stuck stubbornly in his subconsciousness (which was an unusually lively one) was an unspeakable certainty

that there was something still unexplained. This sense that had clung to him all day could not be fully

explained by his fancy about "lookingglass land." Somehow he had not seen the real story, but some game

or masque. And yet people do not get hanged or run through the body for the sake of a charade.

As he sat on the steps of the landingstage ruminating he grew conscious of the tall, dark streak of a sail

coming silently down the shining river, and sprang to his feet with such a backrush of feeling that he almost

"Flambeau!" he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again and again, much to the astonishment of that

sportsman, as he came on shore with his fishing tackle. "Flambeau," he said, "so you're not killed?"

"Killed!" repeated the angler in great astonishment. "And why should I be killed?"

"Oh, because nearly everybody else is," said his companion rather wildly. "Saradine got murdered, and

Antonelli wants to be hanged, and his mother's fainted, and I, for one, don't know whether I'm in this world or

the next. But, thank God, you're in the same one." And he took the bewildered Flambeau's arm.

As they turned from the landingstage they came under the eaves of the low bamboo house, and looked in

through one of the windows, as they had done on their first arrival. They beheld a lamplit interior well

calculated to arrest their eyes. The table in the long diningroom had been laid for dinner when Saradine's

destroyer had fallen like a stormbolt on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress, for Mrs.

Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the table, while at the head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo,

eating and drinking of the best, his bleared, bluish eyes standing queerly out of his face, his gaunt

With a gesture of powerful impatience, Flambeau rattled at the window, wrenched it open, and put an

"Well," he cried. "I can understand you may need some refreshment, but really to steal your master's dinner

"I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant life," replied the strange old gentleman placidly;

"this dinner is one of the few things I have not stolen. This dinner and this house and garden happen to belong

A thought flashed across Flambeau's face. "You mean to say," he began, "that the will of Prince Saradine"

Father Brown, who was looking at the birds outside, jumped as if he were shot, and put in at the window a

"You are what?" he repeated in a shrill voice. "Paul, Prince Saradine, A vos ordres," said the venerable

person politely, lifting a glass of sherry. "I live here very quietly, being a domestic kind of fellow; and for the

sake of modesty I am called Mr. Paul, to distinguish me from my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. He died, I

hear, recentlyin the garden. Of course, it is not my fault if enemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to

He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the opposite wall just above the bowed and sombre head of

the woman. They saw plainly the family likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his old

shoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, but his face did not alter.

"My God!" cried Flambeau after a pause, "he's laughing!" "Come away," said Father Brown, who was quite

white. "Come away from this house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again."

Night had sunk on rushes and river by the time they had pushed off from the island, and they went

downstream in the dark, warming themselves with two big cigars that glowed like crimson ships' lanterns.

"I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He

"I do not follow that," answered Flambeau. "Oh, it's really simple," rejoined his friend. "Simple, though

anything but innocent. Both the Saradines were scamps, but the prince, the elder, was the sort of scamp that

gets to the top, and the younger, the captain, was the sort that sinks to the bottom. This squalid officer fell

from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold upon his brother, the prince. Obviously it was

for no light matter, for Prince Paul Saradine was frankly `fast,' and had no reputation to lose as to the mere

sins of society. In plain fact, it was a hanging matter, and Stephen literally had a rope round his brother's

neck. He had somehow discovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could prove that Paul murdered old

Antonelli in the mountains. The captain raked in the hush money heavily for ten years, until even the prince's

"But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his bloodsucking brother. He knew that the son of

Antonelli, a mere child at the time of the murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived only

to avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen's legal proof), but with the old weapons of

vendetta. The boy had practised arms with a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough to

use them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel. The fact is that he began to flee for his

life, passing from place to place like a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon his trail. That was

Prince Paul's position, and by no means a pretty one. The more money he spent on eluding Antonelli the less

he had to silence Stephen. The more he gave to silence Stephen the less chance there was of finally escaping

Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself a great mana genius like Napoleon.

"Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered suddenly to both of them. He gave way like a

Japanese wrestler, and his foes fell prostrate before him. He gave up the race round the world, and he gave up

his address to young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to his brother. He sent Stephen money enough for

smart clothes and easy travel, with a letter saying roughly: `This is all I have left. You have cleaned me out. I

still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and a cellar, and if you want more from me you must take

that. Come and take possession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friend or agent or anything.'

He knew that the Sicilian had never seen the Saradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were

somewhat alike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then he shaved his own face and waited. The trap worked.

The unhappy captain, in his new clothes, entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the

"There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by

never expecting the virtues of mankind. He took it for granted that the Italian's blow, when it came, would be

dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from

behind a hedge, and so die without speech. It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli's chivalry

proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations. It was then that I found him putting off in his boat

with wild eyes. He was fleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn who he was.

"But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer and he knew the fanatic. It was quite

probable that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing

a part, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal's trust in luck, and his fine fencing. It was

certain that Antonelli, the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales of his family.

Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight was over. Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw

his two vanquished enemies taken away forever, and sat down smiling to his dinner."

"Laughing, God help us!" said Flambeau with a strong shudder. "Do they get such ideas from Satan?"

"He got that idea from you," answered the priest. "God forbid!" ejaculated Flambeau. "From me! What do

The priest pulled a visitingcard from his pocket and held it up in the faint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled

"Don't you remember his original invitation to you?" he asked, "and the compliment to your criminal exploit?

`That trick of yours,' he says, `of getting one detective to arrest the other'? He has just copied your trick. With

an enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of the way and let them collide and kill each other."

Flambeau tore Prince Saradine's card from the priest's hands and rent it savagely in small pieces.

"There's the last of that old skull and crossbones," he said as he scattered the pieces upon the dark and

disappearing waves of the stream; "but I should think it would poison the fishes."

The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened; a faint and vibrant colour as of

morning changed the sky, and the moon behind the grasses grew paler. They drifted in silence.

The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of

orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed

their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward down the winding river to happier places and

The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steep that the tall spire of its church seemed only

like the peak of a small mountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red with fires and

always littered with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite to this, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was

"The Blue Boar," the only inn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leaden and silver

daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke; though one was beginning the day and the other

finishing it. The Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to some austere

exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon. Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no

means devout, and was sitting in evening dress on the bench outside "The Blue Boar," drinking what the

philosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass on Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. The

The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really dating from the Middle Ages, and their

pennon had actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high in

chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions.

The Bohuns had been Mohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria. But like more than

one of the really ancient houses, they had rotted in the last two centuries into mere drunkards and dandy

degenerates, till there had even come a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human

about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a

touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly

yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face

that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each

side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his face. Over his evening

clothes he wore a curious pale yellow coat that looked more like a very light dressing gown than an overcoat,

and on the back of his head was stuck an extraordinary broadbrimmed hat of a bright green colour,

evidently some oriental curiosity caught up at random. He was proud of appearing in such incongruous

His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the elegance, but he was buttoned up to the chin in black,

and his face was cleanshaven, cultivated, and a little nervous. He seemed to live for nothing but his religion;

but there were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who was a Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic

architecture rather than of God, and that his haunting of the church like a ghost was only another and purer

turn of the almost morbid thirst for beauty which sent his brother raging after women and wine. This charge

was doubtful, while the man's practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was mostly an ignorant

misunderstanding of the love of solitude and secret prayer, and was founded on his being often found

kneeling, not before the altar, but in peculiar places, in the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry. He was at

the moment about to enter the church through the yard of the smithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he

saw his brother's cavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On the hypothesis that the colonel was

interested in the church he did not waste any speculations. There only remained the blacksmith's shop, and

though the blacksmith was a Puritan and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some scandals about a

beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He flung a suspicious look across the shed, and the colonel stood up

"Good morning, Wilfred," he said. "Like a good landlord I am watching sleeplessly over my people. I am

Wilfred looked at the ground, and said: "The blacksmith is out. He is over at Greenford."

"I know," answered the other with silent laughter; "that is why I am calling on him."

"Norman," said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in the road, "are you ever afraid of thunderbolts?"

"I mean," said Wilfred, without looking up, "do you ever think that God might strike you in the street?"

"I know your hobby is blasphemy," retorted the religious man, stung in the one live place of his nature. "But

The elder raised his eyebrows politely. "Fear man?" he said. "Barnes the blacksmith is the biggest and

strongest man for forty miles round," said the clergyman sternly. "I know you are no coward or weakling, but

This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by mouth and nostril darkened and deepened. For a

moment he stood with the heavy sneer on his face. But in an instant Colonel Bohun had recovered his own

cruel good humour and laughed, showing two doglike front teeth under his yellow moustache. "In that case,

my dear Wilfred," he said quite carelessly, "it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come out partially in

And he took off the queer round hat covered with green, showing that it was lined within with steel. Wilfred

recognised it indeed as a light Japanese or Chinese helmet torn down from a trophy that hung in the old

"It was the first hat to hand," explained his brother airily; "always the nearest hatand the nearest woman."

"The blacksmith is away at Greenford," said Wilfred quietly; "the time of his return is unsettled."

And with that he turned and went into the church with bowed head, crossing himself like one who wishes to

be quit of an unclean spirit. He was anxious to forget such grossness in the cool twilight of his tall Gothic

cloisters; but on that morning it was fated that his still round of religious exercises should be everywhere

arrested by small shocks. As he entered the church, hitherto always empty at that hour, a kneeling figure rose

hastily to its feet and came towards the full daylight of the doorway. When the curate saw it he stood still

with surprise. For the early worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew of the blacksmith, one

who neither would nor could care for the church or for anything else. He was always called "Mad Joe," and

seemed to have no other name; he was a dark, strong, slouching lad, with a heavy white face, dark straight

hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed the priest, his mooncalf countenance gave no hint of what he

had been doing or thinking of. He had never been known to pray before. What sort of prayers was he saying

Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see

his dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel

throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious appearance of trying to hit it.

This ugly sunlit picture of the stupidity and cruelty of the earth sent the ascetic finally to his prayers for

purification and new thoughts. He went up to a pew in the gallery, which brought him under a coloured

window which he loved and always quieted his spirit; a blue window with an angel carrying lilies. There he

began to think less about the halfwit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He began to think less of his

evil brother, pacing like a lean lion in his horrible hunger. He sank deeper and deeper into those cold and

In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by Gibbs, the village cobbler, who had been sent for him in

some haste. He got to his feet with promptitude, for he knew that no small matter would have brought Gibbs

into such a place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages, an atheist, and his appearance in church was a

shade more extraordinary than Mad Joe's. It was a morning of theological enigmas.

"What is it?" asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but putting out a trembling hand for his hat.

The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was quite startlingly respectful, and even, as it were,

"You must excuse me, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper, "but we didn't think it right not to let you know at

once. I'm afraid a rather dreadful thing has happened, sir. I'm afraid your brother"

Wilfred clenched his frail hands. "What devilry has he done now?" he cried in voluntary passion.

"Why, sir," said the cobbler, coughing, "I'm afraid he's done nothing, and won't do anything. I'm afraid he's

The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding stair which brought them out at an entrance rather

higher than the street. Bohun saw the tragedy in one glance, flat underneath him like a plan. In the yard of the

smithy were standing five or six men mostly in black, one in an inspector's uniform. They included the

doctor, the Presbyterian minister, and the priest from the Roman Catholic chapel, to which the blacksmith's

wife belonged. The latter was speaking to her, indeed, very rapidly, in an undertone, as she, a magnificent

woman with redgold hair, was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups, and just clear of the

main heap of hammers, lay a man in evening dress, spreadeagled and flat on his face. From the height above

Wilfred could have sworn to every item of his costume and appearance, down to the Bohun rings upon his

fingers; but the skull was only a hideous splash, like a star of blackness and blood.

Wilfred Bohun gave but one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard. The doctor, who was the family

physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. He could only stammer out: "My brother is dead.

What does it mean? What is this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappy silence; and then the cobbler, the

most outspoken man present, answered: "Plenty of horror, sir," he said; "but not much mystery."

"What do you mean?" asked Wilfred, with a white face. "It's plain enough," answered Gibbs. "There is only

one man for forty miles round that could have struck such a blow as that, and he's the man that had most

"We must not prejudge anything," put in the doctor, a tall, blackbearded man, rather nervously; "but it is

competent for me to corroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about the nature of the blow, sir; it is an incredible

blow. Mr. Gibbs says that only one man in this district could have done it. I should have said myself that

A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate. "I can hardly understand," he said.

"Mr. Bohun," said the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull

was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets

He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then he added: "The thing has one

advantagethat it clears most people of suspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in the

country were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infant would be acquitted of stealing the

"That's what I say," repeated the cobbler obstinately; "there's only one man that could have done it, and he's

"He's over at Greenford," faltered the curate. "More likely over in France," muttered the cobbler. "No; he is in

neither of those places," said a small and colourless voice, which came from the little Roman priest who had

joined the group. "As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment."

The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubbly brown hair and a round and stolid face.

But if he had been as splendid as Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyone turned

round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plain below, along which was indeed walking, at

his own huge stride and with a hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and gigantic man,

with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He was walking and talking quietly with two other men;

"No," said the inspector, a sensiblelooking man with a sandy moustache, speaking for the first time. "There's

the hammer he did it with over there by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as they are."

All glanced round and the short priest went across and looked down in silence at the tool where it lay. It was

one of the smallest and the lightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among the rest; but on

After a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there was a new note in his dull voice. "Mr.

Gibbs was hardly right," he said, "in saying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so

"Oh, never mind that," cried Gibbs, in a fever. "What are we to do with Simeon Barnes?"

"Leave him alone," said the priest quietly. "He is coming here of himself. I know those two men with him.

They are very good fellows from Greenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel."

Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church, and strode into his own yard. Then he

stood there quite still, and the hammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrable

"I won't ask you, Mr. Barnes," he said, "whether you know anything about what has happened here. You are

not bound to say. I hope you don't know, and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the form

"You are not bound to say anything," said the cobbler in officious excitement. "They've got to prove

everything. They haven't proved yet that it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that."

"That won't wash," said the doctor aside to the priest. "That's out of the detective stories. I was the colonel's

medical man, and I knew his body better than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. The

second and third fingers were the same length. Oh, that's the colonel right enough."

As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the motionless blacksmith followed

"Don't say anything! Oh, don't say anything," cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of

admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

"It's well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world's law favours you," he said; "but God guards

"Moderate your language," said the doctor. "Moderate the Bible's language, and I'll moderate mine. When did

"God is good," said the smith. "Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightest objection to being arrested. It is you

who may object to arresting me. I don't mind leaving the court without a stain on my character. You do mind

The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with a lively eye; as did everybody else, except

the short, strange priest, who was still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.

"There are two men standing outside this shop," went on the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity, "good

tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till

daybreak and long after in the committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits all night, we save souls so

fast. In Greenford itself twenty people could swear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector,

I would let you walk on to your downfall. But as a Christian man I feel bound to give you your chance, and

The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and said, "Of course I should be glad to clear you altogether

The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, and returned to his two friends from

Greenford, who were indeed friends of nearly everyone present. Each of them said a few words which no one

ever thought of disbelieving. When they had spoken, the innocence of Simeon stood up as solid as the great

One of those silences struck the group which are more strange and insufferable than any speech. Madly, in

"You seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown." "Yes, I am," said Father Brown; "why is it

"By George, that's true," he cried; "who would use a little hammer with ten larger hammers lying about?"

Then he lowered his voice in the curate's ear and said: "Only the kind of person that can't lift a large hammer.

It is not a question of force or courage between the sexes. It's a question of lifting power in the shoulders. A

bold woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer and never turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle

Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotised horror, while Father Brown listened with his head

a little on one side, really interested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:

"Why do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates the wife's lover is the wife's husband?

Nine times out of ten the person who most hates the wife's lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence or

He made a momentary gesture towards the redhaired woman on the bench. She had lifted her head at last

and the tears were drying on her splendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electric glare

The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desire to know; but Father Brown,

dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown from the furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.

"You are like so many doctors," he said; "your mental science is really suggestive. It is your physical science

that is utterly impossible. I agree that the woman wants to kill the corespondent much more than the

petitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a small hammer instead of a big one. But the

difficulty is one of physical impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man's skull out flat

like that." Then he added reflectively, after a pause: "These people haven't grasped the whole of it. The man

was actually wearing an iron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at that woman. Look at

Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily: "Well, I may be wrong; there are

objections to everything. But I stick to the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammer

With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to his head and seemed to clutch his scanty

yellow hair. After an instant they dropped, and he cried: "That was the word I wanted; you have said the

Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: "The words you said were, `No man but an idiot would pick

"Well," said the curate, "no man but an idiot did." The rest stared at him with eyes arrested and riveted, and

"I am a priest," he cried unsteadily, "and a priest should be no shedder of blood. II mean that he should

bring no one to the gallows. And I thank God that I see the criminal clearly now because he is a criminal

"You will not denounce him?" inquired the doctor. "He would not be hanged if I did denounce him,"

answered Wilfred with a wild but curiously happy smile. "When I went into the church this morning I found a

madman praying there that poor Joe, who has been wrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with

such strange folk it is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down. Very likely a lunatic

would pray before killing a man. When I last saw poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking

The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his own glimpse of the truth. "Don't you see;

don't you see," he cried feverishly; "that is the only theory that covers both the queer things, that answers both

the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer and the big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow,

but would not have chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the little hammer, but she could

not have struck the big blow. But the madman might have done both. As for the little hammerwhy, he was

mad and might have picked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor, that a maniac in

The doctor drew a deep breath and then said, "By golly, I believe you've got it."

Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily as to prove that his large grey, oxlike

eyes were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he said with marked

respect: "Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded which holds water every way and is essentially

unassailable. I think, therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that it is not the true

one." And with that the old little man walked away and stared again at the hammer.

"That fellow seems to know more than he ought to," whispered the doctor peevishly to Wilfred. "Those

"No, no," said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. "It was the lunatic. It was the lunatic."

The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from the more official group containing the

inspector and the man he had arrested. Now, however, that their own party had broken up, they heard voices

from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then looked down again as he heard the blacksmith say in a

"I hope I've convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I'm a strong man, as you say, but I couldn't have flung my hammer

bang here from Greenford. My hammer hasn't got wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges

The inspector laughed amicably and said: "No, I think you can be considered out of it, though it's one of the

rummiest coincidences I ever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can in finding a man as

big and strong as yourself. By George! you might be useful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have

"I may have a guess," said the pale smith, "but it is not at a man." Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards

his wife on the bench, he put his huge hand on her shoulder and said: "Nor a woman either."

"What do you mean?" asked the inspector jocularly. "You don't think cows use hammers, do you?"

"I think no thing of flesh held that hammer," said the blacksmith in a stifled voice; "mortally speaking, I think

"Do you mean to say, Barnes," came the sharp voice of the cobbler, "that the hammer jumped up of itself and

"Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger," cried Simeon; "you clergymen who tell us on Sunday in what a

stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. I believe that One who walks invisible in every house defended the

honour of mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe the force in that blow was just the

Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: "I told Norman myself to beware of the thunderbolt."

"That agent is outside my jurisdiction," said the inspector with a slight smile.

"You are not outside His," answered the smith; "see you to it," and, turning his broad back, he went into the

The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy and friendly way with him. "Let us get

out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun," he said. "May I look inside your church? I hear it's one of the oldest in

England. We take some interest, you know," he added with a comical grimace, "in old English churches."

Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. But he nodded rather eagerly, being

only too ready to explain the Gothic splendours to someone more likely to be sympathetic than the

"By all means," he said; "let us go in at this side." And he led the way into the high side entrance at the top of

the flight of steps. Father Brown was mounting the first step to follow him when he felt a hand on his

shoulder, and turned to behold the dark, thin figure of the doctor, his face darker yet with suspicion.

"Sir," said the physician harshly, "you appear to know some secrets in this black business. May I ask if you

"Why, doctor," answered the priest, smiling quite pleasantly, "there is one very good reason why a man of my

trade should keep things to himself when he is not sure of them, and that is that it is so constantly his duty to

keep them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you think I have been discourteously reticent with you

or anyone, I will go to the extreme limit of my custom. I will give you two very large hints."

"Well, sir?" said the doctor gloomily. "First," said Father Brown quietly, "the thing is quite in your own

province. It is a matter of physical science. The blacksmith is mistaken, not perhaps in saying that the blow

was divine, but certainly in saying that it came by a miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, except in so far as man

is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked and yet halfheroic heart. The force that smashed that skull

was a force well known to scientists one of the most frequently debated of the laws of nature."

The doctor, who was looking at him with frowning intentness, only said: "And the other hint?"

"The other hint is this," said the priest. "Do you remember the blacksmith, though he believes in miracles,

talking scornfully of the impossible fairy tale that his hammer had wings and flew half a mile across

"Yes," said the doctor, "I remember that." "Well," added Father Brown, with a broad smile, "that fairy tale

was the nearest thing to the real truth that has been said today." And with that he turned his back and stumped

The Reverend Wilfred, who had been waiting for him, pale and impatient, as if this little delay were the last

straw for his nerves, led him immediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of the gallery closest

to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful window with the angel. The little Latin priest explored and

admired everything exhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the time. When in the course of his

investigation he found the side exit and the winding stair down which Wilfred had rushed to find his brother

dead, Father Brown ran not down but up, with the agility of a monkey, and his clear voice came from an

Bohun followed him, and came out on a kind of stone gallery or balcony outside the building, from which

one could see the illimitable plain in which their small hill stood, wooded away to the purple horizon and

dotted with villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite small beneath them, was the blacksmith's yard,

where the inspector still stood taking notes and the corpse still lay like a smashed fly.

"Yes," said Bohun very gravely, and nodded his head. Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the

Gothic building plunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin to suicide. There is that

element of Titan energy in the architecture of the Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always

seems to be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. This church was hewn out of

ancient and silent stone, bearded with old fungoids and stained with the nests of birds. And yet, when they

saw it from below, it sprang like a fountain at the stars; and when they saw it, as now, from above, it poured

like a cataract into a voiceless pit. For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terrible

aspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion, the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of

great things small and small things great; a topsyturvydom of stone in the midair. Details of stone,

enormous by their proximity, were relieved against a pattern of fields and farms, pygmy in their distance. A

carved bird or beast at a corner seemed like some vast walking or flying dragon wasting the pastures and

villages below. The whole atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if men were upheld in air amid the

gyrating wings of colossal genii; and the whole of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed to sit

"I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on these high places even to pray," said Father

"Do you mean that one may fall over," asked Wilfred. "I mean that one's soul may fall if one's body doesn't,"

"I scarcely understand you," remarked Bohun indistinctly. "Look at that blacksmith, for instance," went on

Father Brown calmly; "a good man, but not a Christianhard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, his Scotch

religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags, and learnt to look down on the world more

than to look up at heaven. Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small

"But hehe didn't do it," said Bohun tremulously. "No," said the other in an odd voice; "we know he didn't

After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain with his pale grey eyes. "I knew a man," he

said, "who began by worshipping with others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonely places to

pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And once in one of those dizzy places, where the whole

world seemed to turn under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he was God. So that,

Wilfred's face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and white as they tightened on the parapet of

"He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down the sinner. He would never have had such

a thought if he had been kneeling with other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about like insects.

He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent and evident by a bright green hata poisonous

Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no other sound till Father Brown went on.

"This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awful engines of nature; I mean gravitation,

that mad and quickening rush by which all earth's creatures fly back to her heart when released. See, the

inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were to toss a pebble over this parapet it would be

something like a bullet by the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammereven a small hammer"

Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had him in a minute by the collar.

"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely;

"and therefore have all devils in my heart. Listen to me," he said after a short pause. "I know what you

didat least, I can guess the great part of it. When you left your brother you were racked with no

unrighteous rage, to the extent even that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill him with his

foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttoned coat instead, and rushed into the church.

You pray wildly in many places, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and a higher platform

still, from which you could see the colonel's Eastern hat like the back of a green beetle crawling about. Then

Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voice: "How did you know that his hat looked like a

"Oh, that," said the other with the shadow of a smile, "that was common sense. But hear me further. I say I

know all this; but no one else shall know it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I will seal this

with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are many reasons, and only one that concerns you. I

leave things to you because you have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not help to fix the

crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, when that was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile

because you knew that he could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my business to find in

assassins. And now come down into the village, and go your own way as free as the wind; for I have said my

They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out into the sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred

Bohun carefully unlatched the wooden gate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: "I wish to give

which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and more from its grey to its glittering extreme

as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was

very tall and the other very short; they might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant

clocktower of Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clerical

dress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was going

to his new offices in a new pile of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the short man

was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier's Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a

The building was American in its skyscraping altitude, and American also in the oiled elaboration of its

machinery of telephones and lifts. But it was barely finished and still understaffed; only three tenants had

moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also was the office just below him; the two floors

above that and the three floors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new tower of flats caught

something much more arresting. Save for a few relics of scaffolding, the one glaring object was erected

outside the office just above Flambeau's. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye, surrounded with

"What on earth is that?" asked Father Brown, and stood still. "Oh, a new religion," said Flambeau, laughing;

"one of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any. Rather like Christian Science,

I should think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon (I don't know what his name is, except that it

can't be that) has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this

enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he worships the sun."

"Let him look out," said Father Brown. "The sun was the cruellest of all the gods. But what does that

"As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs," answered Flambeau, "that a man can endure anything if his mind

is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man were really

"If a man were really healthy," said Father Brown, "he would not bother to stare at it."

"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion," went on Flambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that

"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity.

"Oh, thinking one is quite well," said his friend. Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below

him than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as

anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and new religions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line.

But humanity was always in his line, especially when it was goodlooking; moreover, the ladies downstairs

were characters in their way. The office was kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall and

striking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one always thinks of

in profile, as of the cleancut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She had eyes

of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure

was a shade too stiff for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little greyer, paler, and

more insignificant. They both wore a businesslike black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There are

thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay rather in their

For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth ;

she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman)

had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her

money; in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her masterful

utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she had put

into her business, the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributed in various leagues

and causes for the advancement of such work among women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this

slightly prosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leader with a doglike affection

which was somehow more attractive, with its touch of tragedy, than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For

Pauline Stacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny its existence.

Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much on the first occasion of his entering

the flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall waiting for the liftboy, who generally conducts

strangers to the various floors. But this brighteyed falcon of a girl had openly refused to endure such official

delay. She said sharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent on boysor men either.

Though her flat was only three floors above, she managed in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a

great many of her fundamental views in an offhand manner; they were to the general effect that she was a

modern working woman and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract

anger against those who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance. Everyone, she said,

ought to be able to manage machines, just as she could manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact

of Flambeau opening the liftdoor for her; and that gentleman went up to his own apartments smiling with

She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or

Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting business, and found she had just flung a pair of

spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the

rapids of an ethical tirade about the "sickly medical notions" and the morbid admission of weakness implied

in such an apparatus. She dared her sister to bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. She

asked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled

Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain from asking Miss Pauline (with direct

French logic) why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if science

"That is so different," said Pauline Stacey, loftily. "Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the

force of manyes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at these great engines

that devour distance and defy time. That is high and splendidthat is really science. But these nasty props

and plasters the doctors sell why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if

we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was freeborn, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these

things because they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in power and courage, just as the silly

nurses tell children not to stare at the sun, and so they can't do it without blinking. But why among the stars

should there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and I will open my eyes and stare at him

"Your eyes," said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, "will dazzle the sun." He took pleasure in complimenting

this strange stiff beauty, partly because it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor

he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: "So she has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs

with his golden eye." For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon, he had heard of his

He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below him was close and increasing.

The man who called himself Kalon was a magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiff

of Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much better looking, with a golden beard, strong

blue eyes, and a mane flung back like a lion's. In structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche, but all this

animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like

one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. And this despite the

cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact that he had an office halfway up a building in Victoria

Street; that the clerk (a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room, between him and the

corridor; that his name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like the

advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away from the man called Kalon the vivid

oppression and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence of this

quack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loose jacketsuit of linen that he wore as a

workshop dress in his office he was a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the white

vestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid

that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new

sunworshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his

shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of

noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of

Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus, and plunged into the porch of the tall

building without even looking for his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a

professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery, stopped and stared up at the

balcony of the sunworshipper, just as he might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon the

Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands, and the sound of his strangely

penetrating voice could be heard all the way down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in

the middle of it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this

earth; it is substantially certain that he did not see a stunted, roundfaced priest who, in the crowd below,

looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startling difference between even these two

far divided men. Father Brown could not look at anything without blinking; but the priest of Apollo could

"O sun," cried the prophet, "O star that art too great to be allowed among the stars! O fountain that flowest

quietly in that secret spot that is called space. White Father of all white unwearied things, white flames and

white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocent than all thy most innocent and quiet children;

A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five

people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened

each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad

newsbad news that was all the worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained still after

the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ below

At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in the doorway of the mansions and dominated

the little mob. Talking at the top of his voice like a foghorn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a

surgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his friend Father Brown dipped in

insignificantly after him. Even as he ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificent

melody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy god who is the friend of fountains and

Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round the enclosed space into which the

lift commonly descended. But the lift had not descended. Something else had descended; something that

For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that

beautiful woman who denied the existence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it was

Pauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not the slightest doubt that she was dead.

He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her; there was so much both to like

and dislike. But she had been a person to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbed him

with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty face and priggish speeches with a

sudden secret vividness which is all the bitterness of death. In an instant like a bolt from the blue, like a

thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had been dashed down the open well of the lift to

death at the bottom. Was it suicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it murder? But

who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder anybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant

to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice, habitually heavy,

quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the last fifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony

worshipping his god. When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, he turned his

"Perhaps," said the other, "we might go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before the police will

Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons, Flambeau dashed up the stairs to the

typewriting office, found it utterly empty, and then dashed up to his own. Having entered that, he abruptly

"Her sister," he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, "her sister seems to have gone out for a walk."

Father Brown nodded. "Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sun man," he said. "If I were you I

should just verify that, and then let us all talk it over in your office. No," he added suddenly, as if

remembering something, "shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in their office downstairs."

Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys, where that

impenetrable pastor took a large redleather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see the stairs and

landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In about four minutes three figures descended the stairs,

alike only in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the dead womanevidently she had

been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself, his litany

finished, sweeping down the empty stairs in utter magnificencesomething in his white robes, beard and

parted hair had the look of Dore's Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third was Flambeau, black browed and

Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with grey, walked straight to her

own desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss

Joan Stacey was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some time with an odd little

smile, and then, without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else.

"Prophet," he said, presumably addressing Kalon, "I wish you would tell me a lot about your religion."

"I shall be proud to do it," said Kalon, inclining his still crowned head, "but I am not sure that I understand."

"Why, it's like this," said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way: "We are taught that if a man has really

bad first principles, that must be partly his fault. But, for all that, we can make some difference between a

man who insults his quite clear conscience and a man with a conscience more or less clouded with

"Is this an accusation?" asked Kalon very quietly. "No," answered Brown, equally gently, "it is the speech for

In the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apollo slowly rose; and really it was like the

rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily

have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic

gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to

"We meet at last, Caiaphas," said the prophet. "Your church and mine are the only realities on this earth. I

adore the sun, and you the darkening of the sun; you are the priest of the dying and I of the living God. Your

present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of your coat and creed. All your church is but a black police;

you are only spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether by treachery or

torture. You would convict men of crime, I would convict them of innocence. You would convince them of

"Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away your baseless nightmares for ever. Not even

faintly could you understand how little I care whether you can convict me or no. The things you call disgrace

and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child's toybook to a man once grown up. You said

you were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this life that I will offer you

the speech for the prosecution. There is but one thing that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say

it myself. The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after such manner as your tin chapels call

lawful, but by a law purer and sterner than you will ever understand. She and I walked another world from

yours, and trod palaces of crystal while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I

know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love there must soon

be hatred; so there you have the first point made for the prosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not

grudge it you. Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that this very morning, before she

died, she wrote at that table a will leaving me and my new church half a million. Come, where are the

handcuffs? Do you suppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be like

waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will only be going to her in a headlong car."

He spoke with the brainshaking authority of an orator, and Flambeau and Joan Stacey stared at him in

amazed admiration. Father Brown's face seemed to express nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the

ground with one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sun leaned easily against the

"In a few words I have put before you the whole case against methe only possible case against me. In

fewer words still I will blow it to pieces, so that not a trace of it remains. As to whether I have committed this

crime, the truth is in one sentence: I could not have committed this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor

to the ground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into the witnessbox and say that I was

standing out upon the balcony of my own rooms above from just before the stroke of noon to a

quarterpastthe usual period of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth from Clapham, with no

sort of connection with me) will swear that he sat in my outer office all the morning, and that no

communication passed through. He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes before the hour, fifteen

minutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony all that time. No

one ever had so complete an alibi; I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you had better put the

"But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in the air, I will tell you all you want to know. I

believe I do know how my unhappy friend came by her death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my

faith and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannot lock me up. It is well known to all students of the

higher truths that certain adepts and illuminati have in history attained the power of levitation that is, of

being selfsustained upon the empty air. It is but a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main

element in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious temper. I think, to tell the

truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we

went down in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a

feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or

faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There is

the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainly not

criminal or in any way connected with me. In the shorthand of the policecourts, you had better call it

suicide. I shall always call it heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling of heaven."

It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. He still sat looking at the ground,

with a painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet's

winged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspecter of men overwhelmed by a prouder

and purer spirit of natural liberty and health. At last he said, blinking as if in bodily distress: "Well, if that is

so, sir, you need do no more than take the testamentary paper you spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor

"It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think," said Kalon, with that massive innocence of manner

that seemed to acquit him wholly. "She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actually saw

"Was her door open then?" asked the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting.

"Ah! it has been open ever since," said the other, and resumed his silent study of the mat.

"There is a paper over here," said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to

her sister's desk by the doorway, and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a sour smile

on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, and Flambeau looked at her with a darkening

Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through.

But Flambeau took it out of the lady's hand, and read it with the utmost amazement. It did, indeed, begin in

the formal manner of a will, but after the words "I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed" the writing

abruptly stopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any legatee. Flambeau, in

wonder, handed this truncated testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the

An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies, had crossed the room in two great

strides, and was towering over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.

"What monkey tricks have you been playing here?" he cried. "That's not all Pauline wrote."

They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee shrillness in it; all his grandeur and

"That is the only thing on her desk," said Joan, and confronted him steadily with the same smile of evil

Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words. There was something

shocking about the dropping of his mask; it was like a man's real face falling off.

"See here!" he cried in broad American, when he was breathless with cursing, "I may be an adventurer, but I

guess you're a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here's your death explained, and without any levitation. The poor

girl is writing a will in my favour; her cursed sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and

throws her down before she can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs after all."

"As you have truly remarked," replied Joan, with ugly calm, "your clerk is a very respectable young man,

who knows the nature of an oath; and he will swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging some

typewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell. Mr. Flambeau will tell you that

"Why, then," cried Flambeau, "Pauline was alone when she fell, and it was suicide!"

"But she was alone," objected the detective. "She was murdered when she was all alone," answered the priest.

All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same old dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his

round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow; his voice was colourless and sad.

"What I want to know," cried Kalon, with an oath, "is when the police are coming for this bloody and wicked

sister. She's killed her flesh and blood; she's robbed me of half a million that was just as sacredly mine as"

"Come, come, prophet," interrupted Flambeau, with a kind of sneer; "remember that all this world is a

The hierophant of the sungod made an effort to climb back on his pedestal. "It is not the mere money," he

cried, "though that would equip the cause throughout the world. It is also my beloved one's wishes. To

Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale, yet he

"That's it!" he cried in a clear voice. "That's the way to begin. In Pauline's eyes"

The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost mad disorder. "What do you mean? How dare

"In Pauline's eyes," repeated the priest, his own shining more and more. "Go onin God's name, go on. The

foulest crime the fiends ever prompted feels lighter after confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, go

"Let me go, you devil!" thundered Kalon, struggling like a giant in bonds. "Who are you, you cursed spy, to

"Shall I stop him?" asked Flambeau, bounding towards the exit, for Kalon had already thrown the door wide

"No; let him pass," said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the

There was a longdrawn silence in the room when he had left it, which was to Flambeau's fierce wits one

long agony of interrogation. Miss Joan Stacey very coolly tidied up the papers on her desk.

"Father," said Flambeau at last, "it is my duty, not my curiosity onlyit is my duty to find out, if I can, who

"We are dealing with two crimes," said Brown, "crimes of very different weightand by very different

Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded to lock up her drawer. Father Brown

"The two crimes," he observed, "were committed against the same weakness of the same person, in a struggle

for her money. The author of the larger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime; the author of the

"I can put it in one word," answered his friend. Miss Joan Stacey skewered her businesslike black hat on to

her head with a businesslike black frown before a little mirror, and, as the conversation proceeded, took her

"The truth is one word, and a short one," said Father Brown. "Pauline Stacey was blind."

"She was subject to it by blood," Brown proceeded. "Her sister would have started eyeglasses if Pauline

would have let her; but it was her special philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases by

yielding to them. She would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispel it by will. So her eyes got worse and

worse with straining; but the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, or whatever he

calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun with the naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if

these new pagans would only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagans knew that mere

naked Natureworship must have a cruel side. They knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind."

There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even broken voice. "Whether or no that devil

deliberately made her blind, there is no doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The very

simplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up and down in those lifts without official

help; you know also how smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl's landing, and

saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had promised him. He called

out to her cheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he

pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own

balcony, and was safely praying before the crowded street when the poor girl, having finished her work, ran

"He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button," continued the little father, in the colourless

voice in which he talked of such horrors. "But that went smash. It went smash because there happened to be

another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew the secret about poor Pauline's sight. There

was one thing about that will that I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and without signature,

the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses. Joan had signed first,

saying Pauline could finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore, Joan wanted

her sister to sign the will without real witnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had

wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at all.

"People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this was specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her

strong will and memory she could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could not tell when her pen

needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sisterall except this fountain pen.

This was carefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held out for a few lines and then failed

altogether. And the prophet lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal and

Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascending the stairs. He turned and said: "You

must have followed everything devilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes."

"Oh! to him," he said. "No; I had to follow rather close to find out about Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But

"You must be joking!" cried Flambeau. "I'm quite serious," answered the priest. "I tell you I knew he had

"These pagan stoics," said Brown reflectively, "always fail by their strength. There came a crash and a

scream down the street, and the priest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what it was. But I

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark greenbluelike

slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted

countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked

like bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold. Even the square stone

tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the

sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps

It rose abruptly out of the ashen wastes of forest in a sort of hump or shoulder of green turf that looked grey

in the starlight. Most of the graves were on a slant, and the path leading up to the church was as steep as a

staircase. On the top of the hill, in the one flat and prominent place, was the monument for which the place

was famous. It contrasted strangely with the featureless graves all round, for it was the work of one of the

greatest sculptors of modern Europe; and yet his fame was at once forgotten in the fame of the man whose

image he had made. It showed, by touches of the small silver pencil of starlight, the massive metal figure of a

soldier recumbent, the strong hands sealed in an everlasting worship, the great head pillowed upon a gun. The

venerable face was bearded, or rather whiskered, in the old, heavy Colonel Newcome fashion. The uniform,

though suggested with the few strokes of simplicity, was that of modern war. By his right side lay a sword, of

which the tip was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came

full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they felt the vast forest land with

its one dumpy dome of churchyard and church as a place oddly dumb and neglected. In this freezing darkness

of midwinter one would think he might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in the stillness of those

stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, and two dim figures dressed in black climbed up the little path to the

So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could have been traced about them except that while they both

wore black, one man was enormously big, and the other (perhaps by contrast) almost startlingly small. They

went up to the great graven tomb of the historic warrior, and stood for a few minutes staring at it. There was

no human, perhaps no living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might well have wondered if they

were human themselves. In any case, the beginning of their conversation might have seemed strange. After

"Where does a wise man hide a pebble?" And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach." The

small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wise man hide a leaf?"

And the other answered: "In the forest." There was another stillness, and then the tall man resumed: "Do you

mean that when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?"

He stamped his cold feet for a second or two, and then said: "I'm not thinking of that at all, but of something

The big man fumbled in his pocket, and soon a scratch and a flare painted gold the whole flat side of the

monument. On it was cut in black letters the wellknown words which so many Americans had reverently

read: "Sacred to the Memory of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, Hero and Martyr, who Always Vanquished his

Enemies and Always Spared Them, and Was Treacherously Slain by Them At Last. May God in Whom he

The match burnt the big man's fingers, blackened, and dropped. He was about to strike another, but his small

companion stopped him. "That's all right, Flambeau, old man; I saw what I wanted. Or, rather, I didn't see

what I didn't want. And now we must walk a mile and a half along the road to the next inn, and I will try to

tell you all about it. For Heaven knows a man should have a fire and ale when he dares tell such a story."

They descended the precipitous path, they relatched the rusty gate, and set off at a stamping, ringing walk

down the frozen forest road. They had gone a full quarter of a mile before the smaller man spoke again. He

said: "Yes; the wise man hides a pebble on the beach. But what does he do if there is no beach? Do you know

"I know nothing about English generals, Father Brown," answered the large man, laughing, "though a little

about English policemen. I only know that you have dragged me a precious long dance to all the shrines of

this fellow, whoever he is. One would think he got buried in six different places. I've seen a memorial to

General St. Clare in Westminster Abbey. I've seen a ramping equestrian statue of General St. Clare on the

Embankment. I've seen a medallion of St. Clare in the street he was born in, and another in the street he lived

in; and now you drag me after dark to his coffin in the village churchyard. I am beginning to be a bit tired of

his magnificent personality, especially as I don't in the least know who he was. What are you hunting for in

"I must divide it into two parts," remarked the priest. "First there is what everybody knows; and then there is

what I know. Now, what everybody knows is short and plain enough. It is also entirely wrong."

"Right you are," said the big man called Flambeau cheerfully. "Let's begin at the wrong end. Let's begin with

"If not wholly untrue, it is at least very inadequate," continued Brown; "for in point of fact, all that the public

knows amounts precisely to this: The public knows that Arthur St. Clare was a great and successful English

general. It knows that after splendid yet careful campaigns both in India and Africa he was in command

against Brazil when the great Brazilian patriot Olivier issued his ultimatum. It knows that on that occasion St.

Clare with a very small force attacked Olivier with a very large one, and was captured after heroic resistance.

And it knows that after his capture, and to the abhorrence of the civilised world, St. Clare was hanged on the

nearest tree. He was found swinging there after the Brazilians had retired, with his broken sword hung round

"And that popular story is untrue?" suggested Flambeau. "No," said his friend quietly, "that story is quite true,

"Well, I think it goes far enough!" said Flambeau; "but if the popular story is true, what is the mystery?"

They had passed many hundreds of grey and ghostly trees before the little priest answered. Then he bit his

finger reflectively and said: "Why, the mystery is a mystery of psychology. Or, rather, it is a mystery of two

psychologies. In that Brazilian business two of the most famous men of modern history acted flat against

their characters. Mind you, Olivier and St. Clare were both heroesthe old thing, and no mistake; it was like

the fight between Hector and Achilles. Now, what would you say to an affair in which Achilles was timid and

"Sir Arthur St. Clare was a soldier of the old religious type the type that saved us during the Mutiny,"

continued Brown. "He was always more for duty than for dash; and with all his personal courage was

decidedly a prudent commander, particularly indignant at any needless waste of soldiers. Yet in this last

battle he attempted something that a baby could see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it was as

wild as wind; just as one need not be a strategist to keep out of the way of a motorbus. Well, that is the first

mystery; what had become of the English general's head? The second riddle is, what had become of the

Brazilian general's heart? President Olivier might be called a visionary or a nuisance; but even his enemies

admitted that he was magnanimous to the point of knight errantry. Almost every other prisoner he had ever

captured had been set free or even loaded with benefits. Men who had really wronged him came away

touched by his simplicity and sweetness. Why the deuce should he diabolically revenge himself only once in

his life; and that for the one particular blow that could not have hurt him? Well, there you have it. One of the

wisest men in the world acted like an idiot for no reason. One of the best men in the world acted like a fiend

for no reason. That's the long and the short of it; and I leave it to you, my boy."

"No, you don't," said the other with a snort. "I leave it to you; and you jolly well tell me all about it."

"Well," resumed Father Brown, "it's not fair to say that the public impression is just what I've said, without

adding that two things have happened since. I can't say they threw a new light; for nobody can make sense of

them. But they threw a new kind of darkness; they threw the darkness in new directions. The first was this.

The family physician of the St. Clares quarrelled with that family, and began publishing a violent series of

articles, in which he said that the late general was a religious maniac; but as far as the tale went, this seemed

Anyhow, the story fizzled out. Everyone knew, of course, that St. Clare had some of the eccentricities of

puritan piety. The second incident was much more arresting. In the luckless and unsupported regiment which

made that rash attempt at the Black River there was a certain Captain Keith, who was at that time engaged to

daughter, and who afterwards married her. He was one of those who were captured by Olivier, and, like all

appears to have been bounteously treated and promptly set free. Some twenty years afterwards this man, then

LieutenantColonel Keith, published a sort of autobiography called `A British Officer in Burmah and Brazil.'

In the place where the reader looks eagerly for some account of the mystery of St. Clare's disaster may be

found the following words: `Everywhere else in this book I have narrated things exactly as they occurred,

holding as I do the oldfashioned opinion that the glory of England is old enough to take care of itself. The

exception I shall make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and my reasons, though private, are

honourable and compelling. I will, however, add this in justice to the memories of two distinguished men.

General St. Clare has been accused of incapacity on this occasion; I can at least testify that this action,

properly understood, was one of the most brilliant and sagacious of his life. President Olivier by similar

report is charged with savage injustice. I think it due to the honour of an enemy to say that he acted on this

occasion with even more than his characteristic good feeling. To put the matter popularly, I can assure my

countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool nor Olivier such a brute as he looked. This is all I

have to say; nor shall any earthly consideration induce me to add a word to it.'"

A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and

by its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory of Captain Keith's text from a scrap of printed

paper. As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau threw up his hand with a French gesture.

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," he cried excitedly. "I believe I can guess it at the first go."

He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull neck forward, like a man winning a walking race. The

little priest, amused and interested, had some trouble in trotting beside him. Just before them the trees fell

back a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear, moonlit valley, till it dived again

like a rabbit into the wall of another wood. The entrance to the farther forest looked small and round, like the

black hole of a remote railway tunnel. But it was within some hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before

"I've got it," he cried at last, slapping his thigh with his great hand. "Four minutes' thinking, and I can tell

"All right," assented his friend. "You tell it." Flambeau lifted his head, but lowered his voice. "General Sir

Arthur St. Clare," he said, "came of a family in which madness was hereditary; and his whole aim was to

keep this from his daughter, and even, if possible, from his future soninlaw. Rightly or wrongly, he

thought the final collapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary suicide would blazon the very idea

he dreaded. As the campaign approached the clouds came thicker on his brain; and at last in a mad moment

he sacrificed his public duty to his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fall by the first shot. When

he found that he had only attained capture and discredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst, and he broke his

He stared firmly at the grey facade of forest in front of him, with the one black gap in it, like the mouth of the

grave, into which their path plunged. Perhaps something menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowed

Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and cried: "Oh, I wish it had been."

The tall Flambeau faced round and stared at him. "Yours is a clean story," cried Father Brown, deeply

moved. "A sweet, pure, honest story, as open and white as that moon. Madness and despair are innocent

Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and from where he stood one black treebough curved

"Fatherfather," cried Flambeau with the French gesture and stepping yet more rapidly forward, "do you

"Worse than that," said Paul like a grave echo. And they plunged into the black cloister of the woodland,

which ran by them in a dim tapestry of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream.

They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt close about them foliage that they could not

"Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?"

"Well, well," cried Flambeau irritably, "what does he do?" "He grows a forest to hide it in," said the priest in

"Look here," cried his friend impatiently, for the dark wood and the dark saying got a little on his nerves; will

"There are three more bits of evidence," said the other, "that I have dug up in holes and corners; and I will

give them in logical rather than chronological order. First of all, of course, our authority for the issue and

event of the battle is in Olivier's own dispatches, which are lucid enough. He was entrenched with two or

three regiments on the heights that swept down to the Black River, on the other side of which was lower and

more marshy ground. Beyond this again was gently rising country, on which was the first English outpost,

supported by others which lay, however, considerably in its rear. The British forces as a whole were greatly

superior in numbers; but this particular regiment was just far enough from its base to make Olivier consider

the project of crossing the river to cut it off. By sunset, however, he had decided to retain his own position,

which was a specially strong one. At daybreak next morning he was thunderstruck to see that this stray

handful of English, entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselves across the river, half by a

bridge to the right, and the other half by a ford higher up, and were massed upon the marshy bank below him.

"That they should attempt an attack with such numbers against such a position was incredible enough; but

Olivier noticed something yet more extraordinary. For instead of attempting to seize more solid ground, this

mad regiment, having put the river in its rear by one wild charge, did nothing more, but stuck there in the

mire like flies in treacle. Needless to say, the Brazilians blew great gaps in them with artillery, which they

could only return with spirited but lessening rifle fire. Yet they never broke; and Olivier's curt account ends

with a strong tribute of admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. `Our line then advanced finally,'

writes Olivier, `and drove them into the river; we captured General St. Clare himself and several other

officers. The colonel and the major had both fallen in the battle. I cannot resist saying that few finer sights

can have been seen in history than the last stand of this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up

the rifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us on horseback bareheaded and with a broken

sword.' On what happened to the general afterwards Olivier is as silent as Captain Keith."

"Well," grunted Flambeau, "get on to the next bit of evidence." "The next evidence," said Father Brown,

"took some time to find, but it will not take long to tell. I found at last in an almshouse down in the

Lincolnshire Fens an old soldier who not only was wounded at the Black River, but had actually knelt beside

the colonel of the regiment when he died. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull of an Irishman;

and it would seem that he died almost as much of rage as of bullets. He, at any rate, was not responsible for

that ridiculous raid; it must have been imposed on him by the general. His last edifying words, according to

my informant, were these: `And there goes the damned old donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I

wish it was his head.' You will remark that everyone seems to have noticed this detail about the broken sword

blade, though most people regard it somewhat more reverently than did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for

Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and the speaker paused a little for breath before he

"Only a month or two ago a certain Brazilian official died in England, having quarrelled with Olivier and left

his country. He was a wellknown figure both here and on the Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knew

him myself, a yellowfaced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For various private reasons I had permission to

see the documents he had left; he was a Catholic, of course, and I had been with him towards the end. There

was nothing of his that lit up any corner of the black St. Clare business, except five or six common exercise

books filled with the diary of some English soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by the Brazilians on

one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped abruptly the night before the battle.

"But the account of that last day in the poor fellow's life was certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it's

too dark to read it here, and I will give you a resume. The first part of that entry is full of jokes, evidently

flung about among the men, about somebody called the Vulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever

he was, was one of themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of as one of the enemy.

It sounds rather as if he were some local gobetween and noncombatant; perhaps a guide or a journalist. He

has been closeted with old Colonel Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major. Indeed, the major is

somewhat prominent in this soldier's narrative; a lean, darkhaired man, apparently, of the name of

Murraya north of Ireland man and a Puritan. There are continual jests about the contrast between this

Ulsterman's austerity and the conviviality of Colonel Clancy. There is also some joke about the Vulture

"But all these levities are scattered by what may well be called the note of a bugle. Behind the English camp

and almost parallel to the river ran one of the few great roads of that district. Westward the road curved round

towards the river, which it crossed by the bridge before mentioned. To the east the road swept backwards into

the wilds, and some two miles along it was the next English outpost. From this direction there came along the

road that evening a glitter and clatter of light cavalry, in which even the simple diarist could recognise with

astonishment the general with his staff. He rode the great white horse which you have seen so often in

illustrated papers and Academy pictures; and you may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merely

ceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but, springing from the saddle immediately, mixed

with the group of officers, and fell into emphatic though confidential speech. What struck our friend the

diarist most was his special disposition to discuss matters with Major Murray; but, indeed, such a selection,

so long as it was not marked, was in no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy; they were men

who `read their Bibles'; they were both the old Evangelical type of officer. However this may be, it is certain

that when the general mounted again he was still talking earnestly to Murray; and that as he walked his horse

slowly down the road towards the river, the tall Ulsterman still walked by his bridle rein in earnest debate.

The soldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump of trees where the road turned towards the

river. The colonel had gone back to his tent, and the men to their pickets; the man with the diary lingered for

"The great white horse which had marched slowly down the road, as it had marched in so many processions,

flew back, galloping up the road towards them as if it were mad to win a race. At first they thought it had run

away with the man on its back; but they soon saw that the general, a fine rider, was himself urging it to full

speed. Horse and man swept up to them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the reeling charger, the general

turned on them a face like flame, and called for the colonel like the trumpet that wakes the dead.

"I conceive that all the earthquake events of that catastrophe tumbled on top of each other rather like lumber

in the minds of men such as our friend with the diary. With the dazed excitement of a dream, they found

themselves fallingliterally falling into their ranks, and learned that an attack was to be led at once across

the river. The general and the major, it was said, had found out something at the bridge, and there was only

just time to strike for life. The major had gone back at once to call up the reserve along the road behind; it

was doubtful if even with that prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they must pass the stream

that night, and seize the heights by morning. It is with the very stir and throb of that romantic nocturnal

Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path grew smaller, steeper, and more twisted, till they

felt as if they were ascending a winding staircase. The priest's voice came from above out of the darkness.

"There was one other little and enormous thing. When the general urged them to their chivalric charge he half

drew his sword from the scabbard; and then, as if ashamed of such melodrama, thrust it back again. The

A halflight broke through the network of boughs above them, flinging the ghost of a net about their feet; for

they were mounting again to the faint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round him as an

atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain: "Well, what's the matter with the sword?

"They are not often mentioned in modern war," said the other dispassionately; "but in this affair one falls

"Well, what is there in that?" growled Flambeau; "it was a twopence coloured sort of incident; the old man's

blade breaking in his last battle. Anyone might bet the papers would get hold of it, as they have. On all these

tombs and things it's shown broken at the point. I hope you haven't dragged me through this Polar expedition

"No," cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; "but who saw his unbroken sword?"

"What do you mean?" cried the other, and stood still under the stars. They had come abruptly out of the grey

"I say, who saw his unbroken sword?" repeated Father Brown obstinately. "Not the writer of the diary,

Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind might look in the sun; and his friend

"Flambeau," he cried, "I cannot prove it, even after hunting through the tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me

add just one more tiny fact that tips the whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the

first struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to close quarters. But he saw St. Clare's

sword broken. Why was it broken? How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle."

"Oh!" said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; "and pray where is the other piece?"

"I can tell you," said the priest promptly. "In the northeast corner of the cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral

"Indeed?" inquired the other. "Have you looked for it?" "I couldn't," replied Brown, with frank regret.

"There's a great marble monument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fell fighting

Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. "You mean," he cried hoarsely, "that General St. Clare

"You are still full of good and pure thoughts," said the other. "It was worse than that."

"If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead

"And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead bodies to hide it in."

Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time or space; but Father Brown went on as

"Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter

with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads

everybody else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds

polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old

AngloIndian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant

about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society, and

soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read the Old Testament rather

than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wantedlust, tyranny, treason. Oh,

I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of

"In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he

amassed shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the

Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord? Anyhow, there is this about such

evil, that it opens door after door in hell, and always into smaller and smaller chambers. This is the real case

against crime, that a man does not become wilder and wilder, but only meaner and meaner. St. Clare was

soon suffocated by difficulties of bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by the time of

the Battle of the Black River he had fallen from world to world to that place which Dante makes the lowest

"What do you mean?" asked his friend again. "I mean that," retorted the cleric, and suddenly pointed at a

puddle sealed with ice that shone in the moon. "Do you remember whom Dante put in the last circle of ice?"

"The traitors," said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he looked around at the inhuman landscape of trees, with

taunting and almost obscene outlines, he could almost fancy he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of a

The voice went on: "Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not permit a secret service and spies. The

thing, however, was done, like many other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friend Espado;

he was the brightclad fop, whose hook nose got him called the Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at

the front, he felt his way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its one corrupt manplease

God! and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foul need of money, and mountains of it. The discredited

family doctor was threatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and were broken off; tales

of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane; things done by an English Evangelist that smelt like human

sacrifice and hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter's dowry; for to him the fame of

wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snapped the last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth

poured in from the enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vulture as well as he.

Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster had guessed the hideous truth; and when they walked

slowly together down that road towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he must resign

instantly, or be courtmartialled and shot. The general temporised with him till they came to the fringe of

tropic trees by the bridge; and there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I can see the picture) the

The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel black shapes of bush and thicket; but

Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond it faintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight,

but some fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its close.

"St. Clare was a hellhound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I'll swear, was he so lucid and so strong as

when poor Murray lay a cold lump at his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was the

great man so great as he was in this last worlddespised defeat. He looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off

the blood; he saw the point he had planted between his victim's shoulders had broken off in the body. He saw

quite calmly, as through a club windowpane, all that must follow. He saw that men must find the

unaccountable corpse; must extract the unaccountable swordpoint; must notice the unaccountable broken

swordor absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But his imperious intellect rose against the

facer; there was one way yet. He could make the corpse less unaccountable. He could create a hill of corpses

to cover this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred English soldiers were marching down to their death."

The warmer glow behind the black winter wood grew richer and brighter, and Flambeau strode on to reach it.

Father Brown also quickened his stride; but he seemed merely absorbed in his tale.

"Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such the genius of their commander, that if they had at

once attacked the hill, even their mad march might have met some luck. But the evil mind that played with

them like pawns had other aims and reasons. They must remain in the marshes by the bridge at least till

British corpses should be a common sight there. Then for the last grand scene; the silverhaired soldiersaint

would give up his shattered sword to save further slaughter. Oh, it was well organised for an impromptu. But

I think (I cannot prove), I think that it was while they stuck there in the bloody mire that someone doubted

He was mute a moment, and then said: "There is a voice from nowhere that tells me the man who guessed

"But what about Olivier and the hanging?" asked Flambeau. "Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from

policy, seldom encumbered his march with captives," explained the narrator. "He released everybody in most

"There is another picture, Flambeau," said Brown in his more mystical undertone. "I can't prove it; but I can

do moreI can see it. There is a camp breaking up on the bare, torrid hills at morning, and Brazilian

uniforms massed in blocks and columns to march. There is the red shirt and long black beard of Olivier,

which blows as he stands, his broadbrimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the great enemy he is

setting freethe simple, snowheaded English veteran, who thanks him in the name of his men. The English

remnant stand behind at attention; beside them are stores and vehicles for the retreat. The drums roll; the

Brazilians are moving; the English are still like statues. So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy

have faded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their postures all at once, like dead men coming to life;

Flambeau gave a great jump. "Ah," he cried, "you don't mean" "Yes," said Father Brown in a deep,

moving voice. "It was an English hand that put the rope round St. Clare's neck; I believe the hand that put the

ring on his daughter's finger. They were English hands that dragged him up to the tree of shame; the hands of

men that had adored him and followed him to victory. And they were English souls (God pardon and endure

us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign sun on the green gallows of palm, and prayed in their

As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the strong scarlet light of a redcurtained English inn. It

stood sideways in the road, as if standing aside in the amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stood open with

invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the hum and laughter of humanity happy for a night.

"I need not tell you more," said Father Brown. "They tried him in the wilderness and destroyed him; and then,

for the honour of England and of his daughter, they took an oath to seal up for ever the story of the traitor's

purse and the assassin's sword blade. PerhapsHeaven help themthey tried to forget it. Let us try to forget

"With all my heart," said Flambeau, and was just striding into the bright, noisy bar when he stepped back and

"Look there, in the devil's name!" he cried, and pointed rigidly at the square wooden sign that overhung the

road. It showed dimly the crude shape of a sabre hilt and a shortened blade; and was inscribed in false archaic

"Were you not prepared?" asked Father Brown gently. "He is the god of this country; half the inns and parks

"You will never have done with him in England," said the priest, looking down, "while brass is strong and

stone abides. His marble statues will erect the souls of proud, innocent boys for centuries, his village tomb

will smell of loyalty as of lilies. Millions who never knew him shall love him like a fatherthis man whom

the last few that knew him dealt with like dung. He shall be a saint; and the truth shall never be told of him,

because I have made up my mind at last. There is so much good and evil in breaking secrets, that I put my

conduct to a test. All these newspapers will perish; the antiBrazil boom is already over; Olivier is already

honoured everywhere. But I told myself that if anywhere, by name, in metal or marble that will endure like

the pyramids, Colonel Clancy, or Captain Keith, or President Olivier, or any innocent man was wrongly

blamed, then I would speak. If it were only that St. Clare was wrongly praised, I would be silent. And I will."

They plunged into the redcurtained tavern, which was not only cosy, but even luxurious inside. On a table

stood a silver model of the tomb of St. Clare, the silver head bowed, the silver sword broken. On the walls

were coloured photographs of the same scene, and of the system of wagonettes that took tourists to see it.

Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of us, that every man is dignified when

he is dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir

Aaron Armstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about secret violence in

connection with so entirely entertaining and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to

the point of being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary. It was like hearing that

Sunny Jim had hanged himself; or that Mr. Pickwick had died in Hanwell. For though Sir Aaron was a

philanthropist, and thus dealt with the darker side of our society, he prided himself on dealing with it in the

brightest possible style. His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his

bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his

favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous

The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had

been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of

both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling

spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow,

that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dramdrinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most

He had lived on the rural skirt of Hampstead in a handsome house, high but not broad, a modern and prosaic

tower. The narrowest of its narrow sides overhung the steep green bank of a railway, and was shaken by

passing trains. Sir Aaron Armstrong, as he boisterously explained, had no nerves. But if the train had often

given a shock to the house, that morning the tables were turned, and it was the house that gave a shock to the

The engine slowed down and stopped just beyond that point where an angle of the house impinged upon the

sharp slope of turf. The arrest of most mechanical things must be slow; but the living cause of this had been

very rapid. A man clad completely in black, even (it was remembered) to the dreadful detail of black gloves,

appeared on the ridge above the engine, and waved his black hands like some sable windmill. This in itself

would hardly have stopped even a lingering train. But there came out of him a cry which was talked of

afterwards as something utterly unnatural and new. It was one of those shouts that are horridly distinct even

But the enginedriver swears he would have pulled up just the same if he had heard only the dreadful and

The train once arrested, the most superficial stare could take in many features of the tragedy. The man in

black on the green bank was Sir Aaron Armstrong's manservant Magnus. The baronet in his optimism had

often laughed at the black gloves of this dismal attendant; but no one was likely to laugh at him just now.

So soon as an inquirer or two had stepped off the line and across the smoky hedge, they saw, rolled down

almost to the bottom of the bank, the body of an old man in a yellow dressinggown with a very vivid scarlet

lining. A scrap of rope seemed caught about his leg, entangled presumably in a struggle. There was a smear

or so of blood, though very little; but the body was bent or broken into a posture impossible to any living

thing. It was Sir Aaron Armstrong. A few more bewildered moments brought out a big fairbearded man,

whom some travellers could salute as the dead man's secretary, Patrick Royce, once well known in Bohemian

society and even famous in the Bohemian arts. In a manner more vague, but even more convincing, he

echoed the agony of the servant. By the time the third figure of that household, Alice Armstrong, daughter of

the dead man, had come already tottering and waving into the garden, the enginedriver had put a stop to his

stoppage. The whistle had blown and the train had panted on to get help from the next station.

Father Brown had been thus rapidly summoned at the request of Patrick Royce, the big exBohemian

secretary. Royce was an Irishman by birth; and that casual kind of Catholic that never remembers his religion

until he is really in a hole. But Royce's request might have been less promptly complied with if one of the

official detectives had not been a friend and admirer of the unofficial Flambeau; and it was impossible to be a

friend of Flambeau without hearing numberless stories about Father Brown. Hence, while the young detective

(whose name was Merton) led the little priest across the fields to the railway, their talk was more confidential

"As far as I can see," said Mr. Merton candidly, "there is no sense to be made of it at all. There is nobody one

can suspect. Magnus is a solemn old fool; far too much of a fool to be an assassin. Royce has been the

baronet's best friend for years; and his daughter undoubtedly adored him. Besides, it's all too absurd. Who

would kill such a cheery old chap as Armstrong? Who could dip his hands in the gore of an afterdinner

"Yes, it was a cheery house," assented Father Brown. "It was a cheery house while he was alive. Do you

Merton started a little and regarded his companion with an enlivened eye. "Now he is dead?" he repeated.

"Yes," continued the priest stolidly, "he was cheerful. But did he communicate his cheerfulness? Frankly,

A window in Merton's mind let in that strange light of surprise in which we see for the first time things we

have known all along. He had often been to the Armstrongs', on little police jobs of the philanthropist; and,

now he came to think of it, it was in itself a depressing house. The rooms were very high and very cold; the

decoration mean and provincial; the draughty corridors were lit by electricity that was bleaker than

moonlight. And though the old man's scarlet face and silver beard had blazed like a bonfire in each room or

passage in turn, it did not leave any warmth behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort in the place was

partly due to the very vitality and exuberance of its owner; he needed no stoves or lamps, he would say, but

carried his own warmth with him. But when Merton recalled the other inmates, he was compelled to confess

that they also were as shadows of their lord. The moody manservant, with his monstrous black gloves, was

almost a nightmare; Royce, the secretary, was solid enough, a big bull of a man, in tweeds, with a short

beard; but the strawcoloured beard was startlingly salted with grey like the tweeds, and the broad forehead

was barred with premature wrinkles. He was goodnatured enough also, but it was a sad sort of goodnature,

almost a heartbroken sorthe had the general air of being some sort of failure in life. As for Armstrong's

daughter, it was almost incredible that she was his daughter; she was so pallid in colour and sensitive in

outline. She was graceful, but there was a quiver in the very shape of her that was like the lines of an aspen.

Merton had sometimes wondered if she had learnt to quail at the crash of the passing trains.

"You see," said Father Brown, blinking modestly, "I'm not sure that the Armstrong cheerfulness is so very

cheerfulfor other people. You say that nobody could kill such a happy old man, but I'm not sure; ne nos

inducas in tentationem. If ever I murdered somebody," he added quite simply, "I dare say it might be an

"People like frequent laughter," answered Father Brown, "but I don't think they like a permanent smile.

They walked some way in silence along the windy grassy bank by the rail, and just as they came under the

farflung shadow of the tall Armstrong house, Father Brown said suddenly, like a man throwing away a

troublesome thought rather than offering it seriously: "Of course, drink is neither good nor bad in itself. But I

can't help sometimes feeling that men like Armstrong want an occasional glass of wine to sadden them."

Merton's official superior, a grizzled and capable detective named Gilder, was standing on the green bank

waiting for the coroner, talking to Patrick Royce, whose big shoulders and bristly beard and hair towered

above him. This was the more noticeable because Royce walked always with a sort of powerful stoop, and

seemed to be going about his small clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled style, like a buffalo

He raised his head with unusual pleasure at the sight of the priest, and took him a few paces apart. Meanwhile

Merton was addressing the older detective respectfully indeed, but not without a certain boyish impatience.

"Well, Mr. Gilder, have you got much farther with the mystery?" "There is no mystery," replied Gilder, as he

"Well, there is for me, at any rate," said Merton, smiling. "It is simple enough, my boy," observed the senior

stroking his grey, pointed beard. "Three minutes after you'd gone for Mr. Royce's parson the whole thing

came out. You know that pastyfaced servant in the black gloves who stopped the train?"

"Well," drawled Gilder, "when the train had gone on again, that man had gone too. Rather a cool criminal,

"You're pretty sure, I suppose," remarked the young man, "that he really did kill his master?"

"Yes, my son, I'm pretty sure," replied Gilder drily, "for the trifling reason that he has gone off with twenty

thousand pounds in papers that were in his master's desk. No, the only thing worth calling a difficulty is how

he killed him. The skull seems broken as with some big weapon, but there's no weapon at all lying about, and

the murderer would have found it awkward to carry it away, unless the weapon was too small to be noticed."

"Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed," said the priest, with an odd little giggle.

Gilder looked round at this wild remark, and rather sternly asked Brown what he meant.

"Silly way of putting it, I know," said Father Brown apologetically. "Sounds like a fairy tale. But poor

Armstrong was killed with a giant's club, a great green club, too big to be seen, and which we call the earth.

"How do you mean?" asked the detective quickly. Father Brown turned his moon face up to the narrow

facade of the house and blinked hopelessly up. Following his eyes, they saw that right at the top of this

"Don't you see," he explained, pointing a little awkwardly like a child, "he was thrown down from there?"

Gilder frowningly scrutinised the window, and then said: "Well, it is certainly possible. But I don't see why

Brown opened his grey eyes wide. "Why," he said, "there's a bit of rope round the dead man's leg. Don't you

At that height the thing looked like the faintest particle of dust or hair, but the shrewd old investigator was

satisfied. "You're quite right, sir," he said to Father Brown; "that is certainly one to you."

Almost as he spoke a special train with one carriage took the curve of the line on their left, and, stopping,

disgorged another group of policemen, in whose midst was the hangdog visage of Magnus, the absconded

"By Jove! they've got him," cried Gilder, and stepped forward with quite a new alertness.

"Have you got the money!" he cried to the first policeman. The man looked him in the face with a rather

"Which is the inspector, please?" asked the man called Magnus. When he spoke everyone instantly

understood how this voice had stopped a train. He was a dulllooking man with flat black hair, a colourless

face, and a faint suggestion of the East in the level slits in his eyes and mouth. His blood and name, indeed,

had remained dubious, ever since Sir Aaron had "rescued" him from a waitership in a London restaurant, and

(as some said) from more infamous things. But his voice was as vivid as his face was dead. Whether through

exactitude in a foreign language, or in deference to his master (who had been somewhat deaf), Magnus's

tones had a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the whole group quite jumped when he spoke.

"I always knew this would happen," he said aloud with brazen blandness. "My poor old master made game of

"Sergeant," said Inspector Gilder, eyeing the black hands with wrath, "aren't you putting the bracelets on this

"Well, sir," said the sergeant, with the same odd look of wonder, "I don't know that we can."

A faint scorn widened the slitlike mouth, and the whistle of an approaching train seemed oddly to echo the

"We arrested him," replied the sergeant gravely, "just as he was coming out of the police station at Highgate,

where he had deposited all his master's money in the care of Inspector Robinson."

Gilder looked at the manservant in utter amazement. "Why on earth did you do that?" he asked of Magnus.

"Surely," said Gilder, "Sir Aaron's money might have been safely left with Sir Aaron's family."

The tail of his sentence was drowned in the roar of the train as it went rocking and clanking; but through all

the hell of noises to which that unhappy house was periodically subject, they could hear the syllables of

Magnus's answer, in all their belllike distinctness: "I have no reason to feel confidence in Sir Aaron's

All the motionless men had the ghostly sensation of the presence of some new person; and Merton was

scarcely surprised when he looked up and saw the pale face of Armstrong's daughter over Father Brown's

shoulder. She was still young and beautiful in a silvery style, but her hair was of so dusty and hueless a

"Be careful what you say," said Royce gruffly, "you'll frighten Miss Armstrong."

"I hope so," said the man with the clear voice. As the woman winced and everyone else wondered, he went

on: "I am somewhat used to Miss Armstrong's tremors. I have seen her trembling off and on for years. And

some said she was shaking with cold and some she was shaking with fear, but I know she was shaking with

hate and wicked angerfiends that have had their feast this morning. She would have been away by now

with her lover and all the money but for me. Ever since my poor old master prevented her from marrying that

"Stop," said Gilder very sternly. "We have nothing to do with your family fancies or suspicions. Unless you

"Oh! I'll give you practical evidence," cut in Magnus, in his hacking accent. "You'll have to subpoena me,

Mr. Inspector, and I shall have to tell the truth. And the truth is this: An instant after the old man was pitched

bleeding out of the window, I ran into the attic, and found his daughter swooning on the floor with a red

dagger still in her hand. Allow me to hand that also to the proper authorities." He took from his tailpocket a

long hornhilted knife with a red smear on it, and handed it politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back

again, and his slits of eyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese sneer.

Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of him; and he muttered to Gilder: "Surely you would take

Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh that it looked somehow as if he had just washed it.

"Yes," he said, radiating innocence, "but is Miss Armstrong's word against his?"

The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry; everyone looked at her. Her figure was rigid as if paralysed; only

her face within its frame of faint brown hair was alive with an appalling surprise. She stood like one of a

"This man," said Mr. Gilder gravely, "actually says that you were found grasping a knife, insensible, after the

"He says the truth," answered Alice. The next fact of which they were conscious was that Patrick Royce

strode with his great stooping head into their ring and uttered the singular words: "Well, if I've got to go, I'll

His huge shoulder heaved and he sent an iron fist smash into Magnus's bland Mongolian visage, laying him

on the lawn as flat as a starfish. Two or three of the police instantly put their hands on Royce; but to the rest it

seemed as if all reason had broken up and the universe were turning into a brainless harlequinade.

"No, you won't," answered the secretary in a voice like an iron gong, "you will arrest me for murder."

Gilder threw an alarmed glance at the man knocked down; but since that outraged person was already sitting

up and wiping a little blood off a substantially uninjured face, he only said shortly: "What do you mean?"

"It is quite true, as this fellow says," explained Royce, "that Miss Armstrong fainted with a knife in her hand.

"To defend him," repeated Gilder gravely. "Against whom?" "Against me," answered the secretary. Alice

looked at him with a complex and baffling face; then she said in a low voice: "After it all, I am still glad you

"Come upstairs," said Patrick Royce heavily, "and I will show you the whole cursed thing."

The attic, which was the secretary's private place (and rather a small cell for so large a hermit), had indeed all

the vestiges of a violent drama. Near the centre of the floor lay a large revolver as if flung away; nearer to the

left was rolled a whisky bottle, open but not quite empty. The cloth of the little table lay dragged and

trampled, and a length of cord, like that found on the corpse, was cast wildly across the windowsill. Two

"I was drunk," said Royce; and this simplicity in the prematurely battered man somehow had the pathos of

"You all know about me," he continued huskily; "everybody knows how my story began, and it may as well

end like that too. I was called a clever man once, and might have been a happy one; Armstrong saved the

remains of a brain and body from the taverns, and was always kind to me in his own way, poor fellow! Only

he wouldn't let me marry Alice here; and it will always be said that he was right enough. Well, you can form

your own conclusions, and you won't want me to go into details. That is my whisky bottle half emptied in the

corner; that is my revolver quite emptied on the carpet. It was the rope from my box that was found on the

corpse, and it was from my window the corpse was thrown. You need not set detectives to grub up my

tragedy; it is a common enough weed in this world. I give myself to the gallows; and, by God, that is

At a sufficiently delicate sign, the police gathered round the large man to lead him away; but their

unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered by the remarkable appearance of Father Brown, who was on his

hands and knees on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind of undignified prayers. Being a

person utterly insensible to the social figure he cut, he remained in this posture, but turned a bright round face

up at the company, presenting the appearance of a quadruped with a very comic human head.

"I say," he said goodnaturedly, "this really won't do at all, you know. At the beginning you said we'd found

no weapon. But now we're finding too many; there's the knife to stab, and the rope to strangle, and the pistol

to shoot; and after all he broke his neck by falling out of a window! It won't do. It's not economical." And he

Inspector Gilder had opened his mouth with serious intentions, but before he could speak the grotesque figure

"And now three quite impossible things. First, these holes in the carpet, where the six bullets have gone in.

Why on earth should anybody fire at the carpet? A drunken man lets fly at his enemy's head, the thing that's

grinning at him. He doesn't pick a quarrel with his feet, or lay siege to his slippers. And then there's the

rope"and having done with the carpet the speaker lifted his hands and put them in his pocket, but

continued unaffectedly on his knees"in what conceivable intoxication would anybody try to put a rope

round a man's neck and finally put it round his leg? Royce, anyhow, was not so drunk as that, or he would be

sleeping like a log by now. And, plainest of all, the whisky bottle. You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the

whisky bottle, and then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half and leaving the other. That is

He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the selfaccused murderer in tones of limpid penitence: "I'm

"Sir," said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, "can I speak to you alone for a moment?"

This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, and before he could speak in the next

"You are a clever man," she said, "and you are trying to save Patrick, I know. But it's no use. The core of all

this is black, and the more things you find out the more there will be against the miserable man I love."

"Why?" asked Brown, looking at her steadily. "Because," she answered equally steadily, "I saw him commit

"Ah!" said the unmoved Brown, "and what did he do?" "I was in this room next to them," she explained;

"both doors were closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard on earth, roaring `Hell, hell,

hell,' again and again, and then the two doors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the

thing banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full of smoke; but the pistol was smoking in

my poor, mad Patrick's hand; and I saw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapt

on my father, who was clinging in terror to the windowsill, and, grappling, tried to strangle him with the

rope, which he threw over his head, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then it

tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac. I snatched a knife from the mat, and,

As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly into the next room, where he found Gilder

and Merton alone with Patrick Royce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector

"Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he take off those funny cuffs for a minute?"

"He is a very powerful man," said Merton in an undertone. "Why do you want them taken off?"

"Why, I thought," replied the priest humbly, "that perhaps I might have the very great honour of shaking

Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: "Won't you tell them about it, sir?"

"Then I will," he said. "Private lives are more important than public reputations. I am going to save the living,

"I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only one death. I tell you now that they were

not weapons, and were not used to cause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the bloody knife, the

exploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not used to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him."

"To save him!" repeated Gilder. "And from what?" "From himself," said Father Brown. "He was a suicidal

maniac." "What?" cried Merton in an incredulous tone. "And the Religion of Cheerfulness"

"It is a cruel religion," said the priest, looking out of the window. "Why couldn't they let him weep a little,

like his fathers before him? His plans stiffened, his views grew cold; behind that merry mask was the empty

mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public level, he fell back on that dramdrinking he had

abandoned long ago. But there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere teetotaler: that he pictures and

expects that psychological inferno from which he has warned others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong

prematurely, and by this morning he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in hell, in so crazy a

voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad for death, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had

scattered round him death in many shapesa running noose and his friend's revolver and a knife. Royce

entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife on the mat behind him, snatched up the revolver,

and having no time to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. The suicide saw a fourth shape of

death, and made a dash for the window. The rescuer did the only thing he could ran after him with the rope

and tried to tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and misunderstanding the struggle,

strove to slash her father free. At first she only slashed poor Royce's knuckles, from which has come all the

little blood in this affair. But, of course, you noticed that he left blood, but no wound, on that servant's face?

Only before the poor woman swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through that

There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises of Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick

Royce, to whom he said: "I think I should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady are worth more

"Confound Armstrong's notices," cried Royce roughly. "Don't you see it was because she mustn't know?"

"Why, that she killed her father, you fool!" roared the other. "He'd have been alive now but for her. It might

"No, I don't think it would," remarked Father Brown, as he picked up his hat. "I rather think I should tell her.

Even the most murderous blunders don't poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier

As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from Highgate stopped him and said:

"The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin." "I've got to get back to the Deaf School," said