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THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN ...........................................................................................................1

G. K. CHESTERTON ............................................................................................................................1

THE consultingrooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and specialist in certain moral

disorders, lay along the seafront at Scarborough, in a series of very large and welllighted french windows,

which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of bluegreen marble. In such a place the sea had

something of the monotony of a bluegreen dado: for the chambers themselves were ruled throughout by a

terrible tidiness not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be supposed that Dr Hood's apartments

excluded luxury, or even poetry. These things were there, in their place; but one felt that they were never

allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: there stood upon a special table eight or ten boxes of the best

cigars; but they were built upon a plan so that the strongest were always nearest the wall and the mildest

nearest the window. A tantalum containing three kinds of spirit, all of a liqueur excellence, stood always on

this table of luxury; but the fanciful have asserted that the whisky, brandy, and rum seemed always to stand at

the same level. Poetry was there: the lefthand corner of the room was lined with as complete a set of English

classics as the right hand could show of English and foreign physiologists. But if one took a volume of

Chaucer or Shelley from that rank, its absence irritated the mind like a gap in a man's front teeth. One could

not say the books were never read; probably they were, but there was a sense of their being chained to their

places, like the Bibles in the old churches. Dr Hood treated his private bookshelf as if it were a public

library. And if this strict scientific intangibility steeped even the shelves laden with lyrics and ballads and the

tables laden with drink and tobacco, it goes without saying that yet more of such heathen holiness protected

the other shelves that held the specialist's library, and the other tables that sustained the frail and even

Dr Hood paced the length of his string of apartments, bounded as the boys' geographies sayon the east

by the North Sea and on the west by the serried ranks of his sociological and criminologist library. He was

clad in an artist's velvet, but with none of an artist's negligence; his hair was heavily shot with grey, but

growing thick and healthy; his face was lean, but sanguine and expectant. Everything about him and his room

indicated something at once rigid and restless, like that great northern sea by which (on pure principles of

Fate, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and introduced into those long, strict, seaflanked

apartments one who was perhaps the most startling opposite of them and their master. In answer to a curt but

civil summons, the door opened inwards and there shambled into the room a shapeless little figure, which

seemed to find its own hat and umbrella as unmanageable as a mass of luggage. The umbrella was a black

and prosaic bundle long past repair; the hat was a broadcurved black hat, clerical but not common in

The doctor regarded the newcomer with a restrained astonishment, not unlike that he would have shown if

some huge but obviously harmless seabeast had crawled into his room. The newcomer regarded the doctor

with that beaming but breathless geniality which characterizes a corpulent charwoman who has just managed

to stuff herself into an omnibus. It is a rich confusion of social selfcongratulation and bodily disarray. His

hat tumbled to the carpet, his heavy umbrella slipped between his knees with a thud; he reached after the one

and ducked after the other, but with an unimpaired smile on his round face spoke simultaneously as follows:

"My name is Brown. Pray excuse me. I've come about that business of the MacNabs. I have heard, you often

By this time he had sprawlingly recovered the hat, and made an odd little bobbing bow over it, as if setting

"I hardly understand you," replied the scientist, with a cold intensity of manner. "I fear you have mistaken the

chambers. I am Dr Hood, and my work is almost entirely literary and educational. It is true that I have

sometimes been consulted by the police in cases of peculiar difficulty and importance, but"

"Oh, this is of the greatest importance," broke in the little man called Brown. "Why, her mother won't let

The brows of Dr Hood were drawn down darkly, but the eyes under them were bright with something that

might be anger or might be amusement. "And still," he said, "I do not quite understand."

"You see, they want to get married," said the man with the clerical hat. "Maggie MacNab and young

The great Orion Hood's scientific triumphs had deprived him of many thingssome said of his health, others

of his God; but they had not wholly despoiled him of his sense of the absurd. At the last plea of the ingenuous

priest a chuckle broke out of him from inside, and he threw himself into an armchair in an ironical attitude

"Mr Brown," he said gravely, "it is quite fourteen and a half years since I was personally asked to test a

personal problem: then it was the case of an attempt to poison the French President at a Lord Mayor's

Banquet. It is now, I understand, a question of whether some friend of yours called Maggie is a suitable

fiancee for some friend of hers called Todhunter. Well, Mr Brown, I am a sportsman. I will take it on. I will

give the MacNab family my best advice, as good as I gave the French Republic and the King of

Englandno, better: fourteen years better. I have nothing else to do this afternoon. Tell me your story."

The little clergyman called Brown thanked him with unquestionable warmth, but still with a queer kind of

simplicity. It was rather as if he were thanking a stranger in a smokingroom for some trouble in passing the

matches, than as if he were (as he was) practically thanking the Curator of Kew Gardens for coming with him

into a field to find a fourleaved clover. With scarcely a semicolon after his hearty thanks, the little man

"I told you my name was Brown; well, that's the fact, and I'm the priest of the little Catholic Church I dare

say you've seen beyond those straggly streets, where the town ends towards the north. In the last and

straggliest of those streets which runs along the sea like a seawall there is a very honest but rather

sharptempered member of my flock, a widow called MacNab. She has one daughter, and she lets lodgings,

and between her and the daughter, and between her and the lodgerswell, I dare say there is a great deal to

be said on both sides. At present she has only one lodger, the young man called Todhunter; but he has given

more trouble than all the rest, for he wants to marry the young woman of the house."

"And the young woman of the house," asked Dr Hood, with huge and silent amusement, "what does she

"Why, she wants to marry him," cried Father Brown, sitting up eagerly. "That is just the awful complication."

"This young James Todhunter," continued the cleric, "is a very decent man so far as I know; but then nobody

knows very much. He is a bright, brownish little fellow, agile like a monkey, cleanshaven like an actor, and

obliging like a born courtier. He seems to have quite a pocketful of money, but nobody knows what his trade

is. Mrs MacNab, therefore (being of a pessimistic turn), is quite sure it is something dreadful, and probably

connected with dynamite. The dynamite must be of a shy and noiseless sort, for the poor fellow only shuts

himself up for several hours of the day and studies something behind a locked door. He declares his privacy

is temporary and justified, and promises to explain before the wedding. That is all that anyone knows for

certain, but Mrs MacNab will tell you a great deal more than even she is certain of. You know how the tales

grow like grass on such a patch of ignorance as that. There are tales of two voices heard talking in the room;

though, when the door is opened, Todhunter is always found alone. There are tales of a mysterious tall man in

a silk hat, who once came out of the seamists and apparently out of the sea, stepping softly across the sandy

fields and through the small back garden at twilight, till he was heard talking to the lodger at his open

window. The colloquy seemed to end in a quarrel. Todhunter dashed down his window with violence, and the

man in the high hat melted into the seafog again. This story is told by the family with the fiercest

mystification; but I really think Mrs MacNab prefers her own original tale: that the Other Man (or whatever it

is) crawls out every night from the big box in the corner, which is kept locked all day. You see, therefore,

how this sealed door of Todhunter's is treated as the gate of all the fancies and monstrosities of the `Thousand

and One Nights'. And yet there is the little fellow in his respectable black jacket, as punctual and innocent as

a parlour clock. He pays his rent to the tick; he is practically a teetotaller; he is tirelessly kind with the

younger children, and can keep them amused for a day on end; and, last and most urgent of all, he has made

himself equally popular with the eldest daughter, who is ready to go to church with him tomorrow."

A man warmly concerned with any large theories has always a relish for applying them to any triviality. The

great specialist having condescended to the priest's simplicity, condescended expansively. He settled himself

with comfort in his armchair and began to talk in the tone of a somewhat absentminded lecturer:

"Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may

not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide,

but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements,

destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring. Now the root

fact in all history is Race. Race produces religion; Race produces legal and ethical wars. There is no stronger

case than that of the wild, unworldly and perishing stock which we commonly call the Celts, of whom your

friends the MacNabs are specimens. Small, swarthy, and of this dreamy and drifting blood, they accept easily

the superstitious explanation of any incidents, just as they still accept (you will excuse me for saying) that

superstitious explanation of all incidents which you and your Church represent. It is not remarkable that such

people, with the sea moaning behind them and the Church (excuse me again) droning in front of them, should

put fantastic features into what are probably plain events. You, with your small parochial responsibilities, see

only this particular Mrs MacNab, terrified with this particular tale of two voices and a tall man out of the sea.

But the man with the scientific imagination sees, as it were, the whole clans of MacNab scattered over the

whole world, in its ultimate average as uniform as a tribe of birds. He sees thousands of Mrs MacNabs, in

thousands of houses, dropping their little drop of morbidity in the teacups of their friends; he sees"

Before the scientist could conclude his sentence, another and more impatient summons sounded from

without; someone with swishing skirts was marshalled hurriedly down the corridor, and the door opened on a

young girl, decently dressed but disordered and redhot with haste. She had seablown blonde hair, and

would have been entirely beautiful if her cheekbones had not been, in the Scotch manner, a little high in

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir," she said, "but I had to follow Father Brown at once; it's nothing less than life

Father Brown began to get to his feet in some disorder. "Why, what has happened, Maggie?" he said.

"James has been murdered, for all I can make out," answered the girl, still breathing hard from her rush. "That

man Glass has been with him again; I heard them talking through the door quite plain. Two separate voices:

"I know his name is Glass," answered the girl, in great impatience. "I heard it through the door. They were

quarrellingabout money, I thinkfor I heard James say again and again, `That's right, Mr Glass,' or `No,

Mr Glass,' and then, `Two or three, Mr Glass.' But we're talking too much; you must come at once, and there

"But time for what?" asked Dr Hood, who had been studying the young lady with marked interest. "What is

"I tried to break down the door and couldn't," answered the girl shortly, "Then I ran to the backyard, and

managed to climb on to the windowsill that looks into the room. It was an dim, and seemed to be empty, but

I swear I saw James lying huddled up in a corner, as if he were drugged or strangled."

"This is very serious," said Father Brown, gathering his errant hat and umbrella and standing up; "in point of

"Has been largely altered," said the scientist gravely. "I do not think this young lady is so Celtic as I had

supposed. As I have nothing else to do, I will put on my hat and stroll down town with you."

In a few minutes all three were approaching the dreary tail of the MacNabs' street: the girl with the stern and

breathless stride of the mountaineer, the criminologist with a lounging grace (which was not without a certain

leopardlike swiftness), and the priest at an energetic trot entirely devoid of distinction. The aspect of this

edge of the town was not entirely without justification for the doctor's hints about desolate moods and

environments. The scattered houses stood farther and farther apart in a broken string along the seashore; the

afternoon was closing with a premature and partly lurid twilight; the sea was of an inky purple and

murmuring ominously. In the scrappy back garden of the MacNabs which ran down towards the sand, two

black, barrenlooking trees stood up like demon hands held up in astonishment, and as Mrs MacNab ran

down the street to meet them with lean hands similarly spread, and her fierce face in shadow, she was a little

like a demon herself. The doctor and the priest made scant reply to her shrill reiterations of her daughter's

story, with more disturbing details of her own, to the divided vows of vengeance against Mr Glass for

murdering, and against Mr Todhunter for being murdered, or against the latter for having dared to want to

marry her daughter, and for not having lived to do it. They passed through the narrow passage in the front of

the house until they came to the lodger's door at the back, and there Dr Hood, with the trick of an old

It opened on a scene of silent catastrophe. No one seeing it, even for a flash, could doubt that the room had

been the theatre of some thrilling collision between two, or perhaps more, persons. Playingcards lay littered

across the table or fluttered about the floor as if a game had been interrupted. Two wine glasses stood ready

for wine on a sidetable, but a third lay smashed in a star of crystal upon the carpet. A few feet from it lay

what looked like a long knife or short sword, straight, but with an ornamental and pictured handle, its dull

blade just caught a grey glint from the dreary window behind, which showed the black trees against the

leaden level of the sea. Towards the opposite corner of the room was rolled a gentleman's silk top hat, as if it

had just been knocked off his head; so much so, indeed, that one almost looked to see it still rolling. And in

the corner behind it, thrown like a sack of potatoes, but corded like a railway trunk, lay Mr James Todhunter,

with a scarf across his mouth, and six or seven ropes knotted round his elbows and ankles. His brown eyes

Dr Orion Hood paused for one instant on the doormat and drank in the whole scene of voiceless violence.

Then he stepped swiftly across the carpet, picked up the tall silk hat, and gravely put it upon the head of the

yet pinioned Todhunter. It was so much too large for him that it almost slipped down on to his shoulders.

"Mr Glass's hat," said the doctor, returning with it and peering into the inside with a pocket lens. "How to

explain the absence of Mr Glass and the presence of Mr Glass's hat? For Mr Glass is not a careless man with

his clothes. That hat is of a stylish shape and systematically brushed and burnished, though not very new. An

"But, good heavens!" called out Miss MacNab, "aren't you going to untie the man first?"

"I say `old' with intention, though not with certainty" continued the expositor; "my reason for it might seem a

little farfetched. The hair of human beings falls out in very varying degrees, but almost always falls out

slightly, and with the lens I should see the tiny hairs in a hat recently worn. It has none, which leads me to

guess that Mr Glass is bald. Now when this is taken with the highpitched and querulous voice which Miss

MacNab described so vividly (patience, my dear lady, patience), when we take the hairless head together with

the tone common in senile anger, I should think we may deduce some advance in years. Nevertheless, he was

probably vigorous, and he was almost certainly tall. I might rely in some degree on the story of his previous

appearance at the window, as a tall man in a silk hat, but I think I have more exact indication. This wineglass

has been smashed all over the place, but one of its splinters lies on the high bracket beside the mantelpiece.

No such fragment could have fallen there if the vessel had been smashed in the hand of a comparatively short

"By the way," said Father Brown, "might it not be as well to untie Mr Todhunter?"

"Our lesson from the drinkingvessels does not end here," proceeded the specialist. "I may say at once that it

is possible that the man Glass was bald or nervous through dissipation rather than age. Mr Todhunter, as has

been remarked, is a quiet thrifty gentleman, essentially an abstainer. These cards and winecups are no part

of his normal habit; they have been produced for a particular companion. But, as it happens, we may go

farther. Mr Todhunter may or may not possess this wineservice, but there is no appearance of his possessing

any wine. What, then, were these vessels to contain? I would at once suggest some brandy or whisky, perhaps

of a luxurious sort, from a flask in the pocket of Mr Glass. We have thus something like a picture of the man,

or at least of the type: tall, elderly, fashionable, but somewhat frayed, certainly fond of play and strong

waters, perhaps rather too fond of them Mr Glass is a gentleman not unknown on the fringes of society."

"Look here," cried the young woman, "if you don't let me pass to untie him I'll run outside and scream for the

"I should not advise you, Miss MacNab," said Dr Hood gravely, "to be in any hurry to fetch the police. Father

Brown, I seriously ask you to compose your flock, for their sakes, not for mine. Well, we have seen

something of the figure and quality of Mr Glass; what are the chief facts known of Mr Todhunter? They are

substantially three: that he is economical, that he is more or less wealthy, and that he has a secret. Now,

surely it is obvious that there are the three chief marks of the kind of man who is blackmailed. And surely it is

equally obvious that the faded finery, the profligate habits, and the shrill irritation of Mr Glass are the

unmistakable marks of the kind of man who blackmails him. We have the two typical figures of a tragedy of

hush money: on the one hand, the respectable man with a mystery; on the other, the Westend vulture with a

scent for a mystery. These two men have met here today and have quarrelled, using blows and a bare

Dr Hood replaced the silk hat carefully on the side table, and went across to the captive. He studied him

intently, even moving him a little and halfturning him round by the shoulders, but he only answered:

"No; I think these ropes will do very well till your friends the police bring the handcuffs."

Father Brown, who had been looking dully at the carpet, lifted his round face and said: "What do you mean?"

The man of science had picked up the peculiar daggersword from the carpet and was examining it intently

"Because you find Mr Todhunter tied up," he said, "you all jump to the conclusion that Mr Glass had tied him

up; and then, I suppose, escaped. There are four objections to this: First, why should a gentleman so dressy as

our friend Glass leave his hat behind him, if he left of his own free will? Second," he continued, moving

towards the window, "this is the only exit, and it is locked on the inside. Third, this blade here has a tiny

touch of blood at the point, but there is no wound on Mr Todhunter. Mr Glass took that wound away with

him, dead or alive. Add to all this primary probability. It is much more likely that the blackmailed person

would try to kill his incubus, rather than that the blackmailer would try to kill the goose that lays his golden

"But the ropes?" inquired the priest, whose eyes had remained open with a rather vacant admiration.

"Ah, the ropes," said the expert with a singular intonation. "Miss MacNab very much wanted to know why I

did not set Mr Todhunter free from his ropes. Well, I will tell her. I did not do it because Mr Todhunter can

"I have looked at all the knots on Mr Todhunter," reiterated Hood quietly. "I happen to know something

about knots; they are quite a branch of criminal science. Every one of those knots he has made himself and

could loosen himself; not one of them would have been made by an enemy really trying to pinion him. The

whole of this affair of the ropes is a clever fake, to make us think him the victim of the struggle instead of the

wretched Glass, whose corpse may be hidden in the garden or stuffed up the chimney."

There was a rather depressed silence; the room was darkening, the seablighted boughs of the garden trees

looked leaner and blacker than ever, yet they seemed to have come nearer to the window. One could almost

fancy they were seamonsters like krakens or cuttlefish, writhing polypi who had crawled up from the sea to

see the end of this tragedy, even as he, the villain and victim of it, the terrible man in the tall hat, had once

crawled up from the sea. For the whole air was dense with the morbidity of blackmail, which is the most

morbid of human things, because it is a crime concealing a crime; a black plaster on a blacker wound.

The face of the little Catholic priest, which was commonly complacent and even comic, had suddenly

become knotted with a curious frown. It was not the blank curiosity of his first innocence. It was rather that

creative curiosity which comes when a man has the beginnings of an idea. "Say it again, please," he said in a

simple, bothered manner; "do you mean that Todhunter can tie himself up all alone and untie himself all

"Jerusalem!" ejaculated Brown suddenly, "I wonder if it could possibly be that!"

He scuttled across the room rather like a rabbit, and peered with quite a new impulsiveness into the

partiallycovered face of the captive. Then he turned his own rather fatuous face to the company. "Yes, that's

it!" he cried in a certain excitement. "Can't you see it in the man's face? Why, look at his eyes!"

Both the Professor and the girl followed the direction of his glance. And though the broad black scarf

completely masked the lower half of Todhunter's visage, they did grow conscious of something struggling

"His eyes do look queer," cried the young woman, strongly moved. "You brutes; I believe it's hurting him!"

"Not that, I think," said Dr Hood; "the eyes have certainly a singular expression. But I should interpret those

"Laughing!" repeated the doctor, with a start; "but what on earth can he be laughing at?"

"Well," replied the Reverend Brown apologetically, "not to put too fine a point on it, I think he is laughing at

you. And indeed, I'm a little inclined to laugh at myself, now I know about it."

He shuffled about the room, looking at one object after another with what seemed to be a vacant stare, and

then invariably bursting into an equally vacant laugh, a highly irritating process for those who had to watch it.

He laughed very much over the hat, still more uproariously over the broken glass, but the blood on the sword

point sent him into mortal convulsions of amusement. Then he turned to the fuming specialist.

"Dr Hood," he cried enthusiastically, "you are a great poet! You have called an uncreated being out of the

void. How much more godlike that is than if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! Indeed, the mere facts

"I have no notion what you are talking about," said Dr Hood rather haughtily; "my facts are all inevitable,

though necessarily incomplete. A place may be permitted to intuition, perhaps (or poetry if you prefer the

term), but only because the corresponding details cannot as yet be ascertained. In the absence of Mr Glass"

"That's it, that's it," said the little priest, nodding quite eagerly, "that's the first idea to get fixed; the absence

of Mr Glass. He is so extremely absent. I suppose," he added reflectively, "that there was never anybody so

"I mean he is absent from everywhere," answered Father Brown; "he is absent from the Nature of Things, so

"Do you seriously mean," said the specialist with a smile, "that there is no such person?"

Orion Hood broke into a contemptuous laugh. "Well," he said, "before we go on to the hundred and one other

evidences, let us take the first proof we found; the first fact we fell over when we fell into this room. If there

"But it doesn't fit him," cried Hood impatiently. "He couldn't possibly wear it!"

Father Brown shook his head with ineffable mildness. "I never said he could wear it," he answered. "I said it

"And what is the shade of difference?" asked the criminologist with a slight sneer.

"My good sir," cried the mild little man, with his first movement akin to impatience, "if you will walk down

the street to the nearest hatter's shop, you will see that there is, in common speech, a difference between a

"But a hatter," protested Hood, "can get money out of his stock of new hats. What could Todhunter get out of

"Rabbits, ribbons, sweetmeats, goldfish, rolls of coloured paper," said the reverend gentleman with rapidity.

"Didn't you see it all when you found out the faked ropes? It's just the same with the sword. Mr Todhunter

hasn't got a scratch on him, as you say; but he's got a scratch in him, if you follow me."

"I do not mean inside Mr Todhunter's clothes," said Father Brown. "I mean inside Mr Todhunter."

"Mr Todhunter," explained Father Brown placidly, "is learning to be a professional conjurer, as well as

juggler, ventriloquist, and expert in the rope trick. The conjuring explains the hat. It is without traces of hair,

not because it is worn by the prematurely bald Mr Glass, but because it has never been worn by anybody. The

juggling explains the three glasses, which Todhunter was teaching himself to throw up and catch in rotation.

But, being only at the stage of practice, he smashed one glass against the ceiling. And the juggling also

explains the sword, which it was Mr Todhunter's professional pride and duty to swallow. But, again, being at

the stage of practice, he very slightly grazed the inside of his throat with the weapon. Hence he has a wound

inside him, which I am sure (from the expression on his face) is not a serious one. He was also practising the

trick of a release from ropes, like the Davenport Brothers, and he was just about to free himself when we all

burst into the room. The cards, of course, are for card tricks, and they are scattered on the floor because he

had just been practising one of those dodges of sending them flying through the air. He merely kept his trade

secret, because he had to keep his tricks secret, like any other conjurer. But the mere fact of an idler in a top

hat having once looked in at his back window, and been driven away by him with great indignation, was

enough to set us all on a wrong track of romance, and make us imagine his whole life overshadowed by the

"Have you never heard a ventriloquist?" asked Father Brown. "Don't you know they speak first in their

natural voice, and then answer themselves in just that shrill, squeaky, unnatural voice that you heard?"

There was a long silence, and Dr Hood regarded the little man who had spoken with a dark and attentive

smile. "You are certainly a very ingenious person," he said; "it could not have been done better in a book. But

there is just one part of Mr Glass you have not succeeded in explaining away, and that is his name. Miss

The Rev. Mr Brown broke into a rather childish giggle. "Well, that," he said, "that's the silliest part of the

whole silly story. When our juggling friend here threw up the three glasses in turn, he counted them aloud as

he caught them, and also commented aloud when he failed to catch them. What he really said was: `One, two

There was a second of stillness in the room, and then everyone with one accord burst out laughing. As they

did so the figure in the corner complacently uncoiled all the ropes and let them fall with a flourish. Then,

advancing into the middle of the room with a bow, he produced from his pocket a big bill printed in blue and

red, which announced that ZALADIN, the World's Greatest Conjurer, Contortionist, Ventriloquist and

Human Kangaroo would be ready with an entirely new series of Tricks at the Empire Pavilion, Scarborough,

THE great Muscari, most original of the young Tuscan poets, walked swiftly into his favourite restaurant,

which overlooked the Mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon and orange trees.

Waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch;

and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose

like Dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have

carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a

troubadour had still a definite social office, like a bishop. He went as near as his century permitted to walking

For he never travelled without a case of swords, with which he had fought many brilliant duels, or without a

corresponding case for his mandolin, with which he had actually serenaded Miss Ethel Harrogate, the highly

conventional daughter of a Yorkshire banker on a holiday. Yet he was neither a charlatan nor a child; but a

hot, logical Latin who liked a certain thing and was it. His poetry was as straightforward as anyone else's

prose. He desired fame or wine or the beauty of women with a torrid directness inconceivable among the

cloudy ideals or cloudy compromises of the north; to vaguer races his intensity smelt of danger or even crime.

The banker and his beautiful English daughter were staying at the hotel attached to Muscari's restaurant; that

was why it was his favourite restaurant. A glance flashed around the room told him at once, however, that the

English party had not descended. The restaurant was glittering, but still comparatively empty. Two priests

were talking at a table in a corner, but Muscari (an ardent Catholic) took no more notice of them than of a

couple of crows. But from a yet farther seat, partly concealed behind a dwarf tree golden with oranges, there

rose and advanced towards the poet a person whose costume was the most aggressively opposite to his own.

This figure was clad in tweeds of a piebald check, with a pink tie, a sharp collar and protuberant yellow

boots. He contrived, in the true tradition of 'Arry at Margate, to look at once startling and commonplace. But

as the Cockney apparition drew nearer, Muscari was astounded to observe that the head was distinctly

different from the body. It was an Italian head: fuzzy, swarthy and very vivacious, that rose abruptly out of

the standing collar like cardboard and the comic pink tie. In fact it was a head he knew. He recognized it,

above all the dire erection of English holiday array, as the face of an old but forgotten friend name Ezza. This

youth had been a prodigy at college, and European fame was promised him when he was barely fifteen; but

when he appeared in the world he failed, first publicly as a dramatist and a demagogue, and then privately for

years on end as an actor, a traveller, a commission agent or a journalist. Muscari had known him last behind

the footlights; he was but too well attuned to the excitements of that profession, and it was believed that some

"Ezza!" cried the poet, rising and shaking hands in a pleasant astonishment. "Well, I've seen you in many

costumes in the green room; but I never expected to see you dressed up as an Englishman."

"This," answered Ezza gravely, "is not the costume of an Englishman, but of the Italian of the future."

"That is your old mistake, Muscari," said the man in tweeds, shaking his head; "and the mistake of Italy. In

the sixteenth century we Tuscans made the morning: we had the newest steel, the newest carving, the newest

chemistry. Why should we not now have the newest factories, the newest motors, the newest financethe

"Because they are not worth having," answered Muscari. "You cannot make Italians really progressive; they

are too intelligent. Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads."

"Well, to me Marconi, or D'Annunzio, is the star of Italy" said the other. "That is why I have become a

"A courier!" cried Muscari, laughing. "Is that the last of your list of trades? And whom are you conducting?"

"It will pay me," said Ezza, with a very enigmatic smile. "But I am a rather curious sort of courier." Then, as

"The daughter is divine," affirmed Muscari, "the father and son are, I suppose, human. But granted his

harmless qualities doesn't that banker strike you as a splendid instance of my argument? Harrogate has

millions in his safes, and I havethe hole in my pocket. But you daren't say you can't saythat he's

cleverer than I, or bolder than I, or even more energetic. He's not clever, he's got eyes like blue buttons; he's

not energetic, he moves from chair to chair like a paralytic. He's a conscientious, kindly old blockhead; but

he's got money simply because he collects money, as a boy collects stamps. You're too strongminded for

business, Ezza. You won't get on. To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to

"I'm stupid enough for that," said Ezza gloomily. "But I should suggest a suspension of your critique of the

Mr Harrogate, the great financier, did indeed enter the room, but nobody looked at him. He was a massive

elderly man with a boiled blue eye and faded greysandy moustaches; but for his heavy stoop he might have

been a colonel. He carried several unopened letters in his hand. His son Frank was a really fine lad,

curlyhaired, sunburnt and strenuous; but nobody looked at him either. All eyes, as usual, were riveted, for

the moment at least, upon Ethel Harrogate, whose golden Greek head and colour of the dawn seemed set

purposely above that sapphire sea, like a goddess's. The poet Muscari drew a deep breath as if he were

drinking something, as indeed he was. He was drinking the Classic; which his fathers made. Ezza studied her

Miss Harrogate was specially radiant and ready for conversation on this occasion; and her family had fallen

into the easier Continental habit, allowing the stranger Muscari and even the courier Ezza to share their table

and their talk. In Ethel Harrogate conventionality crowned itself with a perfection and splendour of its own.

Proud of her father's prosperity, fond of fashionable pleasures, a fond daughter but an arrant flirt, she was all

these things with a sort of golden goodnature that made her very pride pleasing and her worldly

They were in an eddy of excitement about some alleged peril in the mountain path they were to attempt that

week. The danger was not from rock and avalanche, but from something yet more romantic. Ethel had been

earnestly assured that brigands, the true cutthroats of the modern legend, still haunted that ridge and held

"They say," she cried, with the awful relish of a schoolgirl, "that all that country isn't ruled by the King of

"A great man," replied Muscari, "worthy to rank with your own Robin Hood, signorina. Montano, the King of

Thieves, was first heard of in the mountains some ten years ago, when people said brigands were extinct. But

his wild authority spread with the swiftness of a silent revolution. Men found his fierce proclamations nailed

in every mountain village; his sentinels, gun in hand, in every mountain ravine. Six times the Italian

Government tried to dislodge him, and was defeated in six pitched battles as if by Napoleon."

"Now that sort of thing," observed the banker weightily, "would never be allowed in England; perhaps, after

all, we had better choose another route. But the courier thought it perfectly safe."

"It is perfectly safe," said the courier contemptuously. "I have been over it twenty times. There may have

been some old jailbird called a King in the time of our grandmothers; but he belongs to history if not to fable.

"It can never be utterly stamped out," Muscari answered; "because armed revolt is a recreation natural to

southerners. Our peasants are like their mountains, rich in grace and green gaiety, but with the fires beneath.

There is a point of human despair where the northern poor take to drinkand our own poor take to daggers."

"A poet is privileged," replied Ezza, with a sneer. "If Signor Muscari were English be would still be looking

for highwaymen in Wandsworth. Believe me, there is no more danger of being captured in Italy than of being

"Oh, it sounds rather dreadful," cried the girl, turning her glorious eyes on Muscari. "Do you really think the

Muscari threw back his black mane. "I know it is dangerous:" he said. "I am crossing it tomorrow."

The young Harrogate was left behind for a moment emptying a glass of white wine and lighting a cigarette,

as the beauty retired with the banker, the courier and the poet, distributing peals of silvery satire. At about the

same instant the two priests in the corner rose; the taller, a whitehaired Italian, taking his leave. The shorter

priest turned and walked towards the banker's son, and the latter was astonished to realize that though a

Roman priest the man was an Englishman. He vaguely remembered meeting him at the social crushes of

some of his Catholic friends. But the man spoke before his memories could collect themselves.

"Mr Frank Harrogate, I think," he said. "I have had an introduction, but I do not mean to presume on it. The

odd thing I have to say will come far better from a stranger. Mr Harrogate, I say one word and go: take care

Even for Frank's truly fraternal indifference the radiance and derision of his sister still seemed to sparkle and

ring; he could hear her laughter still from the garden of the hotel, and he stared at his sombre adviser in

"Do you mean the brigands?" he asked; and then, remembering a vague fear of his own, "or can you be

"One is never thinking of the real sorrow," said the strange priest. "One can only be kind when it comes."

And he passed promptly from the room, leaving the other almost with his mouth open.

A day or two afterwards a coach containing the company was really crawling and staggering up the spurs of

the menacing mountain range. Between Ezza's cheery denial of the danger and Muscari's boisterous defiance

of it, the financial family were firm in their original purpose; and Muscari made his mountain journey

coincide with theirs. A more surprising feature was the appearance at the coasttown station of the little

priest of the restaurant; he alleged merely that business led him also to cross the mountains of the midland.

But young Harrogate could not but connect his presence with the mystical fears and warnings of yesterday.

The coach was a kind of commodious wagonette, invented by the modernist talent of the courier, who

dominated the expedition with his scientific activity and breezy wit. The theory of danger from thieves was

banished from thought and speech; though so far conceded in formal act that some slight protection was

employed. The courier and the young banker carried loaded revolvers, and Muscari (with much boyish

He had planted his person at a flying leap next to the lovely Englishwoman; on the other side of her sat the

priest, whose name was Brown and who was fortunately a silent individual; the courier and the father and son

were on the banc behind. Muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the peril, and his talk to

Ethel might well have made her think him a maniac. But there was something in the crazy and gorgeous

ascent, amid crags like peaks loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged her spirit up alone with his into

purple preposterous heavens with wheeling suns. The white road climbed like a white cat; it spanned sunless

And yet, however high they went, the desert still blossomed like the rose. The fields were burnished in sun

and wind with the colour of kingfisher and parrot and hummingbird, the hues of a hundred flowering

flowers. There are no lovelier meadows and woodlands than the English, no nobler crests or chasms than

those of Snowdon and Glencoe. But Ethel Harrogate had never before seen the southern parks tilted on the

splintered northern peaks; the gorge of Glencoe laden with the fruits of Kent. There was nothing here of that

chill and desolation that in Britain one associates with high and wild scenery. It was rather like a mosaic

palace, rent with earthquakes; or like a Dutch tulip garden blown to the stars with dynamite.

"It is our secret," answered he, "the secret of the volcano; that is also the secret of the revolutionthat a

"And yet rather fruitless," he admitted; "if I die tonight I die unmarried and a fool."

"It is never your fault," answered Muscari; "it was not your fault that Troy fell."

As they spoke they came under overwhelming cliffs that spread almost like wings above a corner of peculiar

peril. Shocked by the big shadow on the narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. The driver leapt to the

earth to hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his full height the titanic

and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the

whole coach heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes over the cliff. Muscari threw an

arm round Ethel, who clung to him, and shouted aloud. It was for such moments that he lived.

At the moment when the gorgeous mountain walls went round the poet's head like a purple windmill a thing

happened which was superficially even more startling. The elderly and lethargic banker sprang erect in the

coach and leapt over the precipice before the tilted vehicle could take him there. In the first flash it looked as

wild as suicide; but in the second it was as sensible as a safe investment. The Yorkshireman had evidently

more promptitude, as well as more sagacity, than Muscari had given him credit for; for he landed in a lap of

land which might have been specially padded with turf and clover to receive him. As it happened, indeed, the

whole company were equally lucky, if less dignified in their form of ejection. Immediately under this abrupt

turn of the road was a grassy and flowery hollow like a sunken meadow; a sort of green velvet pocket in the

long, green, trailing garments of the hills. Into this they were all tipped or tumbled with little damage, save

that their smallest baggage and even the contents of their pockets were scattered in the grass around them.

The wrecked coach still hung above, entangled in the tough hedge, and the horses plunged painfully down the

slope. The first to sit up was the little priest, who scratched his head with a face of foolish wonder. Frank

Harrogate heard him say to himself: "Now why on earth have we fallen just here?"

He blinked at the litter around him, and recovered his own very clumsy umbrella. Beyond it lay the broad

sombrero fallen from the head of Muscari, and beside it a sealed business letter which, after a glance at the

address, he returned to the elder Harrogate. On the other side of him the grass partly hid Miss Ethel's

sunshade, and just beyond it lay a curious little glass bottle hardly two inches long. The priest picked it up; in

a quick, unobtrusive manner he uncorked and sniffed it, and his heavy face turned the colour of clay.

"Heaven deliver us!" he muttered; "it can't be hers! Has her sorrow come on her already?" He slipped it into

his own waistcoat pocket. "I think I'm justified," he said, "till I know a little more."

He gazed painfully at the girl, at that moment being raised out of the flowers by Muscari, who was saying:

"We have fallen into heaven; it is a sign. Mortals climb up and they fall down; but it is only gods and

And indeed she rose out of the sea of colours so beautiful and happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion

shaken and shifted. "After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's one of Muscari's

Muscari set the lady lightly on her feet, made her an absurdly theatrical bow, and then, drawing his cutlass,

hacked hard at the taut reins of the horses, so that they scrambled to their feet and stood in the grass

trembling. When he had done so, a most remarkable thing occurred. A very quiet man, very poorly dressed

and extremely sunburnt, came out of the bushes and took hold of the horses' heads. He had a queershaped

knife, very broad and crooked, buckled on his belt; there was nothing else remarkable about him, except his

sudden and silent appearance. The poet asked him who he was, and he did not answer.

Looking around him at the confused and startled group in the hollow, Muscari then perceived that another

tanned and tattered man, with a short gun under his arm, was looking at them from the ledge just below,

leaning his elbows on the edge of the turf. Then he looked up at the road from which they had fallen and saw,

looking down on them, the muzzles of four other carbines and four other brown faces with bright but quite

"The brigands!" cried Muscari, with a kind of monstrous gaiety. "This was a trap. Ezza, if you will oblige me

by shooting the coachman first, we can cut our way out yet. There are only six of them."

"The coachman," said Ezza, who was standing grimly with his hands in his pockets, "happens to be a servant

"Then shoot him all the more," cried the poet impatiently; "he was bribed to upset his master. Then put the

And, wading in wild grass and flowers, he advanced fearlessly on the four carbines; but finding that no one

followed except young Harrogate, he turned, brandishing his cutlass to wave the others on. He beheld the

courier still standing slightly astride in the centre of the grassy ring, his hands in his pockets; and his lean,

"You thought, Muscari, I was the failure among our schoolfellows," he said, "and you thought you were the

success. But I have succeeded more than you and fill a bigger place in history. I have been acting epics while

"Come on, I tell you!" thundered Muscari from above. "Will you stand there talking nonsense about yourself

with a woman to save and three strong men to help you? What do you call yourself?"

"I call myself Montano," cried the strange courier in a voice equally loud and full. "I am the King of Thieves,

And even as he spoke five more silent men with weapons ready came out of the bushes, and looked towards

"This pretty little nest where we are all picnicking," went on the courierbrigand, with the same easy yet

sinister smile, "is, together with some caves underneath it, known by the name of the Paradise of Thieves. It

is my principal stronghold on these hills; for (as you have doubtless noticed) the eyrie is invisible both from

the road above and from the valley below. It is something better than impregnable; it is unnoticeable. Here I

mostly live, and here I shall certainly die, if the gendarmes ever track me here. I am not the kind of criminal

that `reserves his defence,' but the better kind that reserves his last bullet."

All were staring at him thunderstruck and still, except Father Brown, who heaved a huge sigh as of relief and

fingered the little phial in his pocket. "Thank God!" he muttered; "that's much more probable. The poison

belongs to this robberchief, of course. He carries it so that he may never be captured, like Cato."

The King of Thieves was, however, continuing his address with the same kind of dangerous politeness. "It

only remains for me," he said, "to explain to my guests the social conditions upon which I have the pleasure

of entertaining them. I need not expound the quaint old ritual of ransom, which it is incumbent upon me to

keep up; and even this only applies to a part of the company. The Reverend Father Brown and the celebrated

Signor Muscari I shall release tomorrow at dawn and escort to my outposts. Poets and priests, if you will

pardon my simplicity of speech, never have any money. And so (since it is impossible to get anything out of

them), let us, seize the opportunity to show our admiration for classic literature and our reverence for Holy

He paused with an unpleasing smile; and Father Brown blinked repeatedly at him, and seemed suddenly to be

listening with great attention. The brigand captain took the large paper from the attendant brigand and,

glancing over it, continued: "My other intentions are clearly set forth in this public document, which I will

hand round in a moment; and which after that will be posted on a tree by every village in the valley, and

every crossroad in the hills. I will not weary you with the verbalism, since you will be able to check it; the

substance of my proclamation is this: I announce first that I have captured the English millionaire, the

colossus of finance, Mr Samuel Harrogate. I next announce that I have found on his person notes and bonds

for two thousand pounds, which he has given up to me. Now since it would be really immoral to announce

such a thing to a credulous public if it had not occurred, I suggest it should occur without further delay. I

suggest that Mr Harrogate senior should now give me the two thousand pounds in his pocket."

The banker looked at him under lowering brows, redfaced and sulky, but seemingly cowed. That leap from

the failing carriage seemed to have used up his last virility. He had held back in a hangdog style when his

son and Muscari had made a bold movement to break out of the brigand trap. And now his red and trembling

hand went reluctantly to his breastpocket, and passed a bundle of papers and envelopes to the brigand.

"Excellent!" cried that outlaw gaily; "so far we are all cosy. I resume the points of my proclamation, so soon

to be published to all Italy. The third item is that of ransom. I am asking from the friends of the Harrogate

family a ransom of three thousand pounds, which I am sure is almost insulting to that family in its moderate

estimate of their importance. Who would not pay triple this sum for another day's association with such a

domestic circle? I will not conceal from you that the document ends with certain legal phrases about the

unpleasant things that may happen if the money is not paid; but meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, let me

assure you that I am comfortably off here for accommodation, wine and cigars, and bid you for the present a

All the time that he had been speaking, the dubiouslooking men with carbines and dirty slouch hats had

been gathering silently in such preponderating numbers that even Muscari was compelled to recognize his

sally with the sword as hopeless. He glanced around him; but the girl had already gone over to soothe and

comfort her father, for her natural affection for his person was as strong or stronger than her somewhat

snobbish pride in his success. Muscari, with the illogicality of a lover, admired this filial devotion, and yet

was irritated by it. He slapped his sword back in the scabbard and went and flung himself somewhat sulkily

on one of the green banks. The priest sat down within a yard or two, and Muscari turned his aquiline nose on

"Well," said the poet tartly, "do people still think me too romantic? Are there, I wonder, any brigands left in

"I mean I am puzzled," replied the priest. "I am puzzled about Ezza or Montano, or whatever his name is. He

"But in what way?" persisted his companion. "Santa Maria! I should have thought the brigand was plain

"I find three curious difficulties," said the priest in a quiet voice. "I should like to have your opinion on them.

First of all I must tell you I was lunching in that restaurant at the seaside. As four of you left the room, you

and Miss Harrogate went ahead, talking and laughing; the banker and the courier came behind, speaking

sparely and rather low. But I could not help hearing Ezza say these words`Well, let her have a little fun;

you know the blow may smash her any minute.' Mr Harrogate answered nothing; so the words must have had

some meaning. On the impulse of the moment I warned her brother that she might be in peril; I said nothing

of its nature, for I did not know. But if it meant this capture in the hills, the thing is nonsense. Why should the

brigandcourier warn his patron, even by a hint, when it was his whole purpose to lure him into the

mountainmousetrap? It could not have meant that. But if not, what is this disaster, known both to courier

"Disaster to Miss Harrogate!" ejaculated the poet, sitting up with some ferocity. "Explain yourself; go on."

"All my riddles, however, revolve round our bandit chief," resumed the priest reflectively. "And here is the

second of them. Why did he put so prominently in his demand for ransom the fact that he had taken two

thousand pounds from his victim on the spot? It had no faintest tendency to evoke the ransom. Quite the other

way, in fact. Harrogate's friends would be far likelier to fear for his fate if they thought the thieves were poor

and desperate. Yet the spoliation on the spot was emphasized and even put first in the demand. Why should

Ezza Montano want so specially to tell all Europe that he had picked the pocket before he levied the

"I cannot imagine," said Muscari, rubbing up his black hair for once with an unaffected gesture. "You may

think you enlighten me, but you are leading me deeper in the dark. What may be the third objection to the

King of the Thieves?" "The third objection," said Father Brown, still in meditation, "is this bank we are

sitting on. Why does our brigandcourier call this his chief fortress and the Paradise of Thieves? It is

certainly a soft spot to fall on and a sweet spot to look at. It is also quite true, as he says, that it is invisible

from valley and peak, and is therefore a hidingplace. But it is not a fortress. It never could be a fortress. I

think it would be the worst fortress in the world. For it is actually commanded from above by the common

highroad across the mountains the very place where the police would most probably pass. Why, five

shabby short guns held us helpless here about half an hour ago. The quarter of a company of any kind of

soldiers could have blown us over the precipice. Whatever is the meaning of this odd little nook of grass and

flowers, it is not an entrenched position. It is something else; it has some other strange sort of importance;

some value that I do not understand. It is more like an accidental theatre or a natural greenroom; it is like the

As the little priest's words lengthened and lost themselves in a dull and dreamy sincerity, Muscari, whose

animal senses were alert and impatient, heard a new noise in the mountains. Even for him the sound was as

yet very small and faint; but he could have sworn the evening breeze bore with it something like the pulsation

At the same moment, and long before the vibration had touched the lessexperienced English ears, Montano

the brigand ran up the bank above them and stood in the broken hedge, steadying himself against a tree and

peering down the road. He was a strange figure as he stood there, for he had assumed a flapped fantastic hat

and swinging baldric and cutlass in his capacity of bandit king, but the bright prosaic tweed of the courier

The next moment he turned his olive, sneering face and made a movement with his hand. The brigands

scattered at the signal, not in confusion, but in what was evidently a kind of guerrilla discipline. Instead of

occupying the road along the ridge, they sprinkled themselves along the side of it behind the trees and the

hedge, as if watching unseen for an enemy. The noise beyond grew stronger, beginning to shake the mountain

road, and a voice could be clearly heard calling out orders. The brigands swayed and huddled, cursing and

whispering, and the evening air was full of little metallic noises as they cocked their pistols, or loosened their

knives, or trailed their scabbards over the stones. Then the noises from both quarters seemed to meet on the

"A rescue!" cried Muscari, springing to his feet and waving his hat; "the gendarmes are on them! Now for

freedom and a blow for it! Now to be rebels against robbers! Come, don't let us leave everything to the

police; that is so dreadfully modern. Fall on the rear of these ruffians. The gendarmes are rescuing us; come,

And throwing his hat over the trees, he drew his cutlass once more and began to escalade the slope up to the

road. Frank Harrogate jumped up and ran across to help him, revolver in hand, but was astounded to hear

himself imperatively recalled by the raucous voice of his father, who seemed to be in great agitation.

"I won't have it," said the banker in a choking voice; "I command you not to interfere."

"But, father," said Frank very warmly, "an Italian gentleman has led the way. You wouldn't have it said that

"It is useless," said the older man, who was trembling violently, "it is useless. We must submit to our lot."

Father Brown looked at the banker; then he put his hand instinctively as if on his heart, but really on the little

bottle of poison; and a great light came into his face like the light of the revelation of death.

Muscari meanwhile, without waiting for support, had crested the bank up to the road, and struck the brigand

king heavily on the shoulder, causing him to stagger and swing round. Montano also had his cutlass

unsheathed, and Muscari, without further speech, sent a slash at his head which he was compelled to catch

and parry. But even as the two short blades crossed and clashed the King of Thieves deliberately dropped his

"What's the good, old man?" he said in spirited Italian slang; "this damned farce will soon be over."

"What do you mean, you shuffler?" panted the fireeating poet. "Is your courage a sham as well as your

"Everything about me is a sham," responded the excourier in complete good humour. "I am an actor; and if I

ever had a private character, I have forgotten it. I am no more a genuine brigand than I am a genuine courier.

I am only a bundle of masks, and you can't fight a duel with that." And he laughed with boyish pleasure and

fell into his old straddling attitude, with his back to the skirmish up the road.

Darkness was deepening under the mountain walls, and it was not easy to discern much of the progress of the

struggle, save that tall men were pushing their horses' muzzles through a clinging crowd of brigands, who

seemed more inclined to harass and hustle the invaders than to kill them. It was more like a town crowd

preventing the passage of the police than anything the poet had ever pictured as the last stand of doomed and

outlawed men of blood. Just as he was rolling his eyes in bewilderment he felt a touch on his elbow, and

found the odd little priest standing there like a small Noah with a large hat, and requesting the favour of a

"Signor Muscari," said the cleric, "in this queer crisis personalities may be pardoned. I may tell you without

offence of a way in which you will do more good than by helping the gendarmes, who are bound to break

through in any case. You will permit me the impertinent intimacy, but do you care about that girl? Care

"Then go over there and offer yourself," said the priest: "offer her everything you can; offer her heaven and

"Well, you go over there," said his adviser, "and be ready to rescue her from the rescue."

Almost as he spoke the hedges were broken all along the ridge by a rush of the escaping brigands. They dived

into bushes and thick grass like defeated men pursued; and the great cocked hats of the mounted gendarmerie

were seen passing along above the broken hedge. Another order was given; there was a noise of dismounting,

and a tall officer with cocked hat, a grey imperial, and a paper in his hand appeared in the gap that was the

gate of the Paradise of Thieves. There was a momentary silence, broken in an extraordinary way by the

banker, who cried out in a hoarse and strangled voice: "Robbed! I've been robbed!"

"Why, that was hours ago," cried his son in astonishment: "when you were robbed of two thousand pounds."

"Not of two thousand pounds," said the financier, with an abrupt and terrible composure, "only of a small

The policeman with the grey imperial was striding across the green hollow. Encountering the King of the

Thieves in his path, he clapped him on the shoulder with something between a caress and a buffet and gave

him a push that sent him staggering away. "You'll get into trouble, too," he said, "if you play these tricks."

Again to Muscari's artistic eye it seemed scarcely like the capture of a great outlaw at bay. Passing on, the

policeman halted before the Harrogate group and said: "Samuel Harrogate, I arrest you in the name of the law

The great banker nodded with an odd air of business assent, seemed to reflect a moment, and before they

could interpose took a half turn and a step that brought him to the edge of the outer mountain wall. Then,

flinging up his hands, he leapt exactly as he leapt out of the coach. But this time he did not fall into a little

meadow just beneath; he fell a thousand feet below, to become a wreck of bones in the valley.

The anger of the Italian policeman, which he expressed volubly to Father Brown, was largely mixed with

admiration. "It was like him to escape us at last," he said. "He was a great brigand if you like. This last trick

of his I believe to be absolutely unprecedented. He fled with the company's money to Italy, and actually got

himself captured by sham brigands in his own pay, so as to explain both the disappearance of the money and

the disappearance of himself. That demand for ransom was really taken seriously by most of the police. But

for years he's been doing things as good as that, quite as good as that. He will be a serious loss to his family."

Muscari was leading away the unhappy daughter, who held hard to him, as she did for many a year after. But

even in that tragic wreck he could not help having a smile and a hand of halfmocking friendship for the

indefensible Ezza Montano. "And where are you going next?" he asked him over his shoulder.

"Birmingham," answered the actor, puffing a cigarette. "Didn't I tell you I was a Futurist? I really do believe

in those things if I believe in anything. Change, bustle and new things every morning. I am going to

Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Huddersfield, Glasgow, Chicagoin short, to enlightened, energetic,

M. MAURICE BRUN and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit Champs Elysee with a kind of

vivacious respectability. They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem

to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hair look like artificial. M. Brun

had a dark wedge of beard apparently affixed under his lower lip. M. Armagnac, by way of a change, had two

beards; one sticking out from each corner of his emphatic chin. They were both young. They were both

atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mobility of exposition. They were both pupils of the

M. Brun had become prominent by his proposal that the common expression "Adieu" should be obliterated

from all the French classics, and a slight fine imposed for its use in private life. "Then," he said, "the very

name of your imagined God will have echoed for the last time in the ear of man." M. Armagnac specialized

rather in a resistance to militarism, and wished the chorus of the Marseillaise altered from "Aux armes,

citoyens" to "Aux greves, citoyens". But his antimilitarism was of a peculiar and Gallic sort. An eminent and

very wealthy English Quaker, who had come to see him to arrange for the disarmament of the whole planet,

was rather distressed by Armagnac's proposal that (by way of beginning) the soldiers should shoot their

And indeed it was in this regard that the two men differed most from their leader and father in philosophy. Dr

Hirsch, though born in France and covered with the most triumphant favours of French education, was

temperamentally of another typemild, dreamy, humane; and, despite his sceptical system, not devoid of

transcendentalism. He was, in short, more like a German than a Frenchman; and much as they admired him,

something in the subconsciousness of these Gauls was irritated at his pleading for peace in so peaceful a

manner. To their party throughout Europe, however, Paul Hirsch was a saint of science. His large and daring

cosmic theories advertised his austere life and innocent, if somewhat frigid, morality; he held something of

the position of Darwin doubled with the position of Tolstoy. But he was neither an anarchist nor an

antipatriot; his views on disarmament were moderate and evolutionary the Republican Government put

considerable confidence in him as to various chemical improvements. He had lately even discovered a

His house stood in a handsome street near the Elysee a street which in that strong summer seemed almost

as full of foliage as the park itself; a row of chestnuts shattered the sunshine, interrupted only in one place

where a large cafe ran out into the street. Almost opposite to this were the white and green blinds of the great

scientist's house, an iron balcony, also painted green, running along in front of the firstfloor windows.

Beneath this was the entrance into a kind of court, gay with shrubs and tiles, into which the two Frenchmen

The door was opened to them by the doctor's old servant, Simon, who might very well have passed for a

doctor himself, having a strict suit of black, spectacles, grey hair, and a confidential manner. In fact, he was a

far more presentable man of science than his master, Dr Hirsch, who was a forked radish of a fellow, with

just enough bulb of a head to make his body insignificant. With all the gravity of a great physician handling a

prescription, Simon handed a letter to M. Armagnac. That gentleman ripped it up with a racial impatience,

I cannot come down to speak to you. There is a man in this house whom I refuse to meet. He is a Chauvinist

officer, Dubosc. He is sitting on the stairs. He has been kicking the furniture about in all the other rooms; I

have locked myself in my study, opposite that cafe. If you love me, go over to the cafe and wait at one of the

tables outside. I will try to send him over to you. I want you to answer him and deal with him. I cannot meet

M. Armagnac looked at M. Brun. M. Brun borrowed the letter, read it, and looked at M. Armagnac. Then

both betook themselves briskly to one of the little tables under the chestnuts opposite, where they procured

two tall glasses of horrible green absinthe, which they could drink apparently in any weather and at any time.

Otherwise the cafe seemed empty, except for one soldier drinking coffee at one table, and at another a large

Maurice Brun cleared his throat and said: "Of course we must help the master in every way, but"

There was an abrupt silence, and Armagnac said: "He may have excellent reasons for not meeting the man

Before either could complete a sentence, it was evident that the invader had been expelled from the house

opposite. The shrubs under the archway swayed and burst apart, as that unwelcome guest was shot out of

He was a sturdy figure in a small and tilted Tyrolean felt hat, a figure that had indeed something generally

Tyrolean about it. The man's shoulders were big and broad, but his legs were neat and active in

kneebreeches and knitted stockings. His face was brown like a nut; he had very bright and restless brown

eyes; his dark hair was brushed back stiffly in front and cropped close behind, outlining a square and

powerful skull; and he had a huge black moustache like the horns of a bison. Such a substantial head is

generally based on a bull neck; but this was hidden by a big coloured scarf, swathed round up the man's ears

and falling in front inside his jacket like a sort of fancy waistcoat. It was a scarf of strong dead colours, dark

red and old gold and purple, probably of Oriental fabrication. Altogether the man had something a shade

barbaric about him; more like a Hungarian squire than an ordinary French officer. His French, however, was

obviously that of a native; and his French patriotism was so impulsive as to be slightly absurd. His first act

when he burst out of the archway was to call in a clarion voice down the street: "Are there any Frenchmen

Armagnac and Brun instantly stood up; but they were too late. Men were already running from the street

corners; there was a small but everclustering crowd. With the prompt French instinct for the politics of the

street, the man with the black moustache had already run across to a corner of the cafe, sprung on one of the

tables, and seizing a branch of chestnut to steady himself, shouted as Camille Desmoulins once shouted when

"Frenchmen!" he volleyed; "I cannot speak! God help me, that is why I am speaking! The fellows in their

filthy parliaments who learn to speak also learn to be silentsilent as that spy cowering in the house

opposite! Silent as he is when I beat on his bedroom door! Silent as he is now, though he hears my voice

across this street and shakes where he sits! Oh, they can be silent eloquently the politicians! But the time

has come when we that cannot speak must speak. You are betrayed to the Prussians. Betrayed at this moment.

Betrayed by that man. I am Jules Dubosc, Colonel of Artillery, Belfort. We caught a German spy in the

Vosges yesterday, and a paper was found on hima paper I hold in my hand. Oh, they tried to hush it up;

but I took it direct to the man who wrote itthe man in that house! It is in his hand. It is signed with his

initials. It is a direction for finding the secret of this new Noiseless Powder. Hirsch invented it; Hirsch wrote

this note about it. This note is in German, and was found in a German's pocket. `Tell the man the formula for

powder is in grey envelope in first drawer to the left of Secretary's desk, War Office, in red ink. He must be

He rattled short sentences like a quickfiring gun, but he was plainly the sort of man who is either mad or

right. The mass of the crowd was Nationalist, and already in threatening uproar; and a minority of equally

angry Intellectuals, led by Armagnac and Brun, only made the majority more militant.

"If this is a military secret," shouted Brun, "why do you yell about it in the street?"

"I will tell you why I do!" roared Dubosc above the roaring crowd. "I went to this man in straight and civil

style. If he had any explanation it could have been given in complete confidence. He refuses to explain. He

refers me to two strangers in a cafe as to two flunkeys. He has thrown me out of the house, but I am going

A shout seemed to shake the very facade of mansions and two stones flew, one breaking a window above the

balcony. The indignant Colonel plunged once more under the archway and was heard crying and thundering

inside. Every instant the human sea grew wider and wider; it surged up against the rails and steps of the

traitor's house; it was already certain that the place would be burst into like the Bastille, when the broken

french window opened and Dr Hirsch came out on the balcony. For an instant the fury half turned to laughter;

for he was an absurd figure in such a scene. His long bare neck and sloping shoulders were the shape of a

champagne bottle, but that was the only festive thing about him. His coat hung on him as on a peg; he wore

his carrotcoloured hair long and weedy; his cheeks and chin were fully fringed with one of those irritating

beards that begin far from the mouth. He was very pale, and he wore blue spectacles.

Livid as he was, he spoke with a sort of prim decision, so that the mob fell silent in the middle of his third

"...only two things to say to you now. The first is to my foes, the second to my friends. To my foes I say: It is

true I will not meet M. Dubosc, though he is storming outside this very room. It is true I have asked two other

men to confront him for me. And I will tell you why! Because I will not and must not see him because it

would be against all rules of dignity and honour to see him. Before I am triumphantly cleared before a court,

there is another arbitration this gentleman owes me as a gentleman, and in referring him to my seconds I am

Armagnac and Brun were waving their hats wildly, and even the Doctor's enemies roared applause at this

unexpected defiance. Once more a few sentences were inaudible, but they could hear him say: "To my

friendsI myself should always prefer weapons purely intellectual, and to these an evolved humanity will

certainly confine itself. But our own most precious truth is the fundamental force of matter and heredity. My

books are successful; my theories are unrefuted; but I suffer in politics from a prejudice almost physical in

the French. I cannot speak like Clemenceau and Deroulede, for their words are like echoes of their pistols.

The French ask for a duellist as the English ask for a sportsman. Well, I give my proofs: I will pay this

Two men were instantly found in the crowd itself to offer their services to Colonel Dubosc, who came out

presently, satisfied. One was the common soldier with the coffee, who said simply: "I will act for you, sir. I

am the Duc de Valognes." The other was the big man, whom his friend the priest sought at first to dissuade;

In the early evening a light dinner was spread at the back of the Cafe Charlemagne. Though unroofed by any

glass or gilt plaster, the guests were nearly all under a delicate and irregular roof of leaves; for the ornamental

trees stood so thick around and among the tables as to give something of the dimness and the dazzle of a

small orchard. At one of the central tables a very stumpy little priest sat in complete solitude, and applied

himself to a pile of whitebait with the gravest sort of enjoyment. His daily living being very plain, he had a

peculiar taste for sudden and isolated luxuries; he was an abstemious epicure. He did not lift his eyes from his

plate, round which red pepper, lemons, brown bread and butter, etc., were rigidly ranked, until a tall shadow

fell across the table, and his friend Flambeau sat down opposite. Flambeau was gloomy.

"I'm afraid I must chuck this business," said he heavily. "I'm all on the side of the French soldiers like

Dubosc, and I'm all against the French atheists like Hirsch; but it seems to me in this case we've made a

mistake. The Duke and I thought it as well to investigate the charge, and I must say I'm glad we did."

"That's just the odd thing," replied Flambeau. "It's exactly like Hirsch's writing, and nobody can point out any

mistake in it. But it wasn't written by Hirsch. If he's a French patriot he didn't write it, because it gives

information to Germany. And if he's a German spy he didn't write it, wellbecause it doesn't give

"Wrong," replied the other, "and wrong exactly where Dr Hirsch would have been rightabout the

hidingplace of his own secret formula in his own official department. By favour of Hirsch and the

authorities, the Duke and I have actually been allowed to inspect the secret drawer at the War Office where

the Hirsch formula is kept. We are the only people who have ever known it, except the inventor himself and

the Minister for War; but the Minister permitted it to save Hirsch from fighting. After that we really can't

"It is," said his friend gloomily. "It is a clumsy forgery by somebody who knew nothing of the real

hidingplace. It says the paper is in the cupboard on the right of the Secretary's desk. As a fact the cupboard

with the secret drawer is some way to the left of the desk. It says the grey envelope contains a long document

written in red ink. It isn't written in red ink, but in ordinary black ink. It's manifestly absurd to say that Hirsch

can have made a mistake about a paper that nobody knew of but himself; or can have tried to help a foreign

thief by telling him to fumble in the wrong drawer. I think we must chuck it up and apologize to old Carrots."

Father Brown seemed to cogitate; he lifted a little whitebait on his fork. "You are sure the grey envelope was

"Positive," replied Flambeau. "The grey envelope it was a white envelope reallywas"

Father Brown put down the small silver fish and the fork and stared across at his companion. "What?" he

"I'm frightened of a white envelope," said the other seriously, "If it had only just been grey! Hang it all, it

might as well have been grey. But if it was white, the whole business is black. The Doctor has been dabbling

"But I tell you he couldn't have written such a note!" cried Flambeau. "The note is utterly wrong about the

"The man who wrote that note knew all about the facts," said his clerical companion soberly. "He could never

have got 'em so wrong without knowing about 'em. You have to know an awful lot to be wrong on every

"I mean a man telling lies on chance would have told some of the truth," said his friend firmly. "Suppose

someone sent you to find a house with a green door and a blue blind, with a front garden but no back garden,

with a dog but no cat, and where they drank coffee but not tea. You would say if you found no such house

that it was all made up. But I say no. I say if you found a house where the door was blue and the blind green,

where there was a back garden and no front garden, where cats were common and dogs instantly shot, where

tea was drunk in quarts and coffee forbiddenthen you would know you had found the house. The man must

"I can't conceive," said Brown; "I don't understand this Hirsch affair at all. As long as it was only the left

drawer instead of the right, and red ink instead of black, I thought it must be the chance blunders of a forger,

as you say. But three is a mystical number; it finishes things. It finishes this. That the direction about the

drawer, the colour of ink, the colour of envelope, should none of them be right by accident, that can't be a

"I don't know that either," answered Brown, with a face of blank bewilderment. "The only thing I can think

of.... Well, I never understood that Dreyfus case. I can always grasp moral evidence easier than the other

sorts. I go by a man's eyes and voice, don't you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what

subjects he choosesand avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. Not by the horrible things imputed

both ways; I know (though it's not modern to say so) that human nature in the highest places is still capable of

being Cenci or Borgia. No, what puzzled me was the sincerity of both parties. I don't mean the political

parties; the rank and file are always roughly honest, and often duped. I mean the persons of the play. I mean

the conspirators, if they were conspirators. I mean the traitor, if he was a traitor. I mean the men who must

have known the truth. Now Dreyfus went on like a man who knew he was a wronged man. And yet the

French statesmen and soldiers went on as if they knew he wasn't a wronged man but simply a wrong 'un. I

don't mean they behaved well; I mean they behaved as if they were sure. I can't describe these things; I know

"Suppose a person in a position of trust," went on the priest, "began to give the enemy information because it

was false information. Suppose he even thought he was saving his country by misleading the foreigner.

Suppose this brought him into spy circles, and little loans were made to him, and little ties tied on to him.

Suppose he kept up his contradictory position in a confused way by never telling the foreign spies the truth,

but letting it more and more be guessed. The better part of him (what was left of it) would still say: `I have

not helped the enemy; I said it was the left drawer.' The meaner part of him would already be saying: `But

they may have the sense to see that means the right.' I think it is psychologically possiblein an enlightened

"It may be psychologically possible," answered Flambeau, "and it certainly would explain Dreyfus being

certain he was wronged and his judges being sure he was guilty. But it won't wash historically, because

Silence had sunk around them with the emptying of the tables; it was already late, though the sunlight still

clung to everything, as if accidentally entangled in the trees. In the stillness Flambeau shifted his seat

sharplymaking an isolated and echoing noise and threw his elbow over the angle of it. "Well," he said,

"You mustn't be too hard on them," said Father Brown gently. "It's not entirely their fault; but they have no

instincts. I mean those things that make a woman refuse to dance with a man or a man to touch an investment.

"Anyhow," cried Flambeau impatiently, "he's not a patch on my principal; and I shall go through with it. Old

Something in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau's fierce black eyes to ramble over his companion

afresh. "What's the matter with you?" Flambeau demanded. "Dubosc's all right in that way. You don't doubt

"My friend," said the small priest, laying down his knife and fork in a kind of cold despair, "I doubt

everything. Everything, I mean, that has happened today. I doubt the whole story, though it has been acted

before my face. I doubt every sight that my eyes have seen since morning. There is something in this business

quite different from the ordinary police mystery where one man is more or less lying and the other man more

or less telling the truth. Here both men.... Well! I've told you the only theory I can think of that could satisfy

"Nor me either," replied Flambeau frowning, while the other went on eating fish with an air of entire

resignation. "If all you can suggest is that notion of a message conveyed by contraries, I call it uncommonly

"I should call it thin," said the priest promptly. "I should call it uncommonly thin. But that's the queer thing

about the whole business. The lie is like a schoolboy's. There are only three versions, Dubosc's and Hirsch's

and that fancy of mine. Either that note was written by a French officer to ruin a French official; or it was

written by the French official to help German officers; or it was written by the French official to mislead

German officers. Very well. You'd expect a secret paper passing between such people, officials or officers, to

look quite different from that. You'd expect, probably a cipher, certainly abbreviations; most certainly

scientific and strictly professional terms. But this thing's elaborately simple, like a penny dreadful: `In the

purple grotto you will find the golden casket.' It looks as if... as if it were meant to be seen through at once."

Almost before they could take it in a short figure in French uniform had walked up to their table like the

"I have extraordinary news," said the Duc de Valognes. "I have just come from this Colonel of ours. He is

packing up to leave the country, and he asks us to make his excuses sur le terrain."

"Yes," said the Duke gruffly; "then and therebefore everybody when the swords are drawn. And you

"But what can this mean?" cried Flambeau. "He can't be afraid of that little Hirsch! Confound it!" he cried, in

"I believe it's some plot!" snapped Valognes"some plot of the Jews and Freemasons. It's meant to work up

The face of Father Brown was commonplace, but curiously contented; it could shine with ignorance as well

as with knowledge. But there was always one flash when the foolish mask fell, and the wise mask fitted itself

in its place; and Flambeau, who knew his friend, knew that his friend had suddenly understood. Brown said

"He's round at the Hotel Saint Louis by the Elysee, where we drove with him. He's packing up, I tell you."

"I don't think he can get away yet," replied the Duke; "he's packing to go a long journey..."

"No," said Father Brown, quite simply, but suddenly standing up, "for a very short journey. For one of the

shortest, in fact. But we may still be in time to catch him if we go there in a motorcab."

Nothing more could be got out of him until the cab swept round the corner by the Hotel Saint Louis, where

they got out, and he led the party up a side lane already in deep shadow with the growing dusk. Once, when

the Duke impatiently asked whether Hirsch was guilty of treason or not, he answered rather absently: "No;

only of ambitionlike Caesar." Then he somewhat inconsequently added: "He lives a very lonely life; he has

"Well, if he's ambitious, he ought to be satisfied now," said Flambeau rather bitterly. "All Paris will cheer

"Don't talk so loud," said Father Brown, lowering his voice, "your cursed Colonel is just in front."

The other two started and shrank farther back into the shadow of the wall, for the sturdy figure of their

runaway principal could indeed be seen shuffling along in the twilight in front, a bag in each hand. He looked

much the same as when they first saw him, except that he had changed his picturesque mountaineering

knickers for a conventional pair of trousers. It was clear he was already escaping from the hotel.

The lane down which they followed him was one of those that seem to be at the back of things, and look like

the wrong side of the stage scenery. A colourless, continuous wall ran down one flank of it, interrupted at

intervals by dullhued and dirtstained doors, all shut fast and featureless save for the chalk scribbles of

some passing gamin. The tops of trees, mostly rather depressing evergreens, showed at intervals over the top

of the wall, and beyond them in the grey and purple gloaming could be seen the back of some long terrace of

tall Parisian houses, really comparatively close, but somehow looking as inaccessible as a range of marble

mountains. On the other side of the lane ran the high gilt railings of a gloomy park.

Flambeau was looking round him in rather a weird way. "Do you know," he said, "there is something about

"Hullo!" called out the Duke sharply; "that fellow's disappeared. Vanished, like a blasted fairy!"

"He has a key," explained their clerical friend. "He's only gone into one of these garden doors," and as he

spoke they heard one of the dull wooden doors close again with a click in front of them.

Flambeau strode up to the door thus shut almost in his face, and stood in front of it for a moment, biting his

black moustache in a fury of curiosity. Then he threw up his long arms and swung himself aloft like a

monkey and stood on the top of the wall, his enormous figure dark against the purple sky, like the dark

The Duke looked at the priest. "Dubosc's escape is more elaborate than we thought," he said; "but I suppose

Valognes's eyes brightened, but his voice sank. "Do you mean suicide?" he asked.

A kind of cry came from Flambeau on the wall above. "My God," he exclaimed in French, "I know what this

place is now! Why, it's the back of the street where old Hirsch lives. I thought I could recognize the back of a

"And Dubosc's gone in there!" cried the Duke, smiting his hip. "Why, they'll meet after all!" And with sudden

Gallic vivacity he hopped up on the wall beside Flambeau and sat there positively kicking his legs with

excitement. The priest alone remained below, leaning against the wall, with his back to the whole theatre of

events, and looking wistfully across to the park palings and the twinkling, twilit trees.

The Duke, however stimulated, had the instincts of an aristocrat, and desired rather to stare at the house than

to spy on it; but Flambeau, who had the instincts of a burglar (and a detective), had already swung himself

from the wall into the fork of a straggling tree from which he could crawl quite close to the only illuminated

window in the back of the high dark house. A red blind had been pulled down over the light, but pulled

crookedly, so that it gaped on one side, and by risking his neck along a branch that looked as treacherous as a

twig, Flambeau could just see Colonel Dubosc walking about in a brilliantlylighted and luxurious bedroom.

But close as Flambeau was to the house, he heard the words of his colleagues by the wall, and repeated them

"They will never meet," said Father Brown. "Hirsch was right when he said that in such an affair the

principals must not meet. Have you read a queer psychological story by Henry James, of two persons who so

perpetually missed meeting each other by accident that they began to feel quite frightened of each other, and

"There are people in Paris who will cure them of such morbid fancies," said Valognes vindictively. "They

"They will not meet on the Day of Judgement," said the priest. "If God Almighty held the truncheon of the

lists, if St Michael blew the trumpet for the swords to crosseven then, if one of them stood ready, the other

"Oh, what does all this mysticism mean?" cried the Duc de Valognes, impatiently; "why on earth shouldn't

"They are the opposite of each other," said Father Brown, with a queer kind of smile. "They contradict each

He continued to gaze at the darkening trees opposite, but Valognes turned his head sharply at a suppressed

exclamation from Flambeau. That investigator, peering into the lighted room, had just seen the Colonel, after

a pace or two, proceed to take his coat off. Flambeau's first thought was that this really looked like a fight;

but he soon dropped the thought for another. The solidity and squareness of Dubosc's chest and shoulders was

all a powerful piece of padding and came off with his coat. In his shirt and trousers he was a comparatively

slim gentleman, who walked across the bedroom to the bathroom with no more pugnacious purpose than that

of washing himself. He bent over a basin, dried his dripping hands and face on a towel, and turned again so

that the strong light fell on his face. His brown complexion had gone, his big black moustache had gone;

hewas cleanshaven and very pate. Nothing remained of the Colonel but his bright, hawklike, brown

eyes. Under the wall Father Brown was going on in heavy meditation, as if to himself.

"It is all just like what I was saying to Flambeau. These opposites won't do. They don't work. They don't

fight. If it's white instead of black, and solid instead of liquid, and so on all along the linethen there's

something wrong, Monsieur, there's something wrong. One of these men is fair and the other dark, one stout

and the other slim, one strong and the other weak. One has a moustache and no beard, so you can't see his

mouth; the other has a beard and no moustache, so you can't see his chin. One has hair cropped to his skull,

but a scarf to hide his neck; the other has low shirtcollars, but long hair to bide his skull. It's all too neat and

correct, Monsieur, and there's something wrong. Things made so opposite are things that cannot quarrel.

Wherever the one sticks out the other sinks in. Like a face and a mask, like a lock and a key..."

Flambeau was peering into the house with a visage as white as a sheet. The occupant of the room was

standing with his back to him, but in front of a lookingglass, and had already fitted round his face a sort of

framework of rank red hair, hanging disordered from the head and clinging round the jaws and chin while

leaving the mocking mouth uncovered. Seen thus in the glass the white face looked like the face of Judas

laughing horribly and surrounded by capering flames of hell. For a spasm Flambeau saw the fierce,

redbrown eyes dancing, then they were covered with a pair of blue spectacles. Slipping on a loose black

coat, the figure vanished towards the front of the house. A few moments later a roar of popular applause from

the street beyond announced that Dr Hirsch had once more appeared upon the balcony.

TWO men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage running along the side of the Apollo

Theatre in the Adelphi. The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous, opalescent and empty.

The passage was comparatively long and dark, so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at

the other end. Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline; for they were both men of

The covered passage opened at one end on one of the steep streets of the Adelphi, and at the other on a

terrace overlooking the sunsetcoloured river. One side of the passage was a blank wall, for the building it

supported was an old unsuccessful theatre restaurant, now shut up. The other side of the passage contained

two doors, one at each end. Neither was what was commonly called the stage door; they were a sort of special

and private stage doors used by very special performers, and in this case by the star actor and actress in the

Shakespearean performance of the day. Persons of that eminence often like to have such private exits and

The two men in question were certainly two such friends, men who evidently knew the doors and counted on

their opening, for each approached the door at the upper end with equal coolness and confidence. Not,

however, with equal speed; but the man who walked fast was the man from the other end of the tunnel, so

they both arrived before the secret stage door almost at the same instant. They saluted each other with

civility, and waited a moment before one of them, the sharper walker who seemed to have the shorter

In this and everything else each man was opposite and neither could be called inferior. As private persons

both were handsome, capable and popular. As public persons, both were in the first public rank. But

everything about them, from their glory to their good looks, was of a diverse and incomparable kind. Sir

Wilson Seymour was the kind of man whose importance is known to everybody who knows. The more you

mixed with the innermost ring in every polity or profession, the more often you met Sir Wilson Seymour. He

was the one intelligent man on twenty unintelligent committeeson every sort of subject, from the reform of

the Royal Academy to the project of bimetallism for Greater Britain. In the Arts especially he was

omnipotent. He was so unique that nobody could quite decide whether he was a great aristocrat who had

taken up Art, or a great artist whom the aristocrats had taken up. But you could not meet him for five minutes

His appearance was "distinguished" in exactly the same sense; it was at once conventional and unique.

Fashion could have found no fault with his high silk hat, yet it was unlike anyone else's hat a little

higher, perhaps, and adding something to his natural height. His tall, slender figure had a slight stoop yet it

looked the reverse of feeble. His hair was silvergrey, but he did not look old; it was worn longer than the

common yet he did not look effeminate; it was curly but it did not look curled. His carefully pointed beard

made him look more manly and militant than otherwise, as it does in those old admirals of Velazquez with

whose dark portraits his house was hung. His grey gloves were a shade bluer, his silverknobbed cane a

shade longer than scores of such gloves and canes flapped and flourished about the theatres and the

The other man was not so tall, yet would have struck nobody as short, but merely as strong and handsome.

His hair also was curly, but fair and cropped close to a strong, massive headthe sort of head you break a

door with, as Chaucer said of the Miller's. His military moustache and the carriage of his shoulders showed

him a soldier, but he had a pair of those peculiar frank and piercing blue eyes which are more common in

sailors. His face was somewhat square, his jaw was square, his shoulders were square, even his jacket was

square. Indeed, in the wild school of caricature then current, Mr Max Beerbohm had represented him as a

For he also was a public man, though with quite another sort of success. You did not have to be in the best

society to have heard of Captain Cutler, of the siege of HongKong, and the great march across China. You

could not get away from hearing of him wherever you were; his portrait was on every other postcard; his

maps and battles in every other illustrated paper; songs in his honour in every other musichall turn or on

every other barrelorgan. His fame, though probably more temporary, was ten times more wide, popular and

spontaneous than the other man's. In thousands of English homes he appeared enormous above England, like

The door was opened to them by an aged servant or "dresser", whose brokendown face and figure and black

shabby coat and trousers contrasted queerly with the glittering interior of the great actress's dressingroom. It

was fitted and filled with lookingglasses at every angle of refraction, so that they looked like the hundred

facets of one huge diamondif one could get inside a diamond. The other features of luxury, a few flowers,

a few coloured cushions, a few scraps of stage costume, were multiplied by all the mirrors into the madness

of the Arabian Nights, and danced and changed places perpetually as the shuffling attendant shifted a mirror

They both spoke to the dingy dresser by name, calling him Parkinson, and asking for the lady as Miss Aurora

Rome. Parkinson said she was in the other room, but he would go and tell her. A shade crossed the brow of

both visitors; for the other room was the private room of the great actor with whom Miss Aurora was

performing, and she was of the kind that does not inflame admiration without inflaming jealousy. In about

half a minute, however, the inner door opened, and she entered as she always did, even in private life, so that

the very silence seemed to be a roar of applause, and one welldeserved. She was clad in a somewhat strange

garb of peacock green and peacock blue satins, that gleamed like blue and green metals, such as delight

children and aesthetes, and her heavy, hot brown hair framed one of those magic faces which are dangerous

to all men, but especially to boys and to men growing grey. In company with her male colleague, the great

American actor, Isidore Bruno, she was producing a particularly poetical and fantastic interpretation of

Midsummer Night's Dream: in which the artistic prominence was given to Oberon and Titania, or in other

words to Bruno and herself. Set in dreamy and exquisite scenery, and moving in mystical dances, the green

costume, like burnished beetlewings, expressed all the elusive individuality of an elfin queen. But when

personally confronted in what was still broad daylight, a man looked only at the woman's face.

She greeted both men with the beaming and baffling smile which kept so many males at the same just

dangerous distance from her. She accepted some flowers from Cutler, which were as tropical and expensive

as his victories; and another sort of present from Sir Wilson Seymour, offered later on and more nonchalantly

by that gentleman. For it was against his breeding to show eagerness, and against his conventional

unconventionality to give anything so obvious as flowers. He had picked up a trifle, he said, which was rather

a curiosity, it was an ancient Greek dagger of the Mycenaean Epoch, and might well have been worn in the

time of Theseus and Hippolyta. It was made of brass like all the Heroic weapons, but, oddly enough, sharp

enough to prick anyone still. He had really been attracted to it by the leaflike shape; it was as perfect as a

Greek vase. If it was of any interest to Miss Rome or could come in anywhere in the play, he hoped she

The inner door burst open and a big figure appeared, who was more of a contrast to the explanatory Seymour

than even Captain Cutler. Nearly sixfootsix, and of more than theatrical thews and muscles, Isidore Bruno,

in the gorgeous leopard skin and goldenbrown garments of Oberon, looked like a barbaric god. He leaned

on a sort of huntingspear, which across a theatre looked a slight, silvery wand, but which in the small and

comparatively crowded room looked as plain as a pikestaffand as menacing. His vivid black eyes rolled

volcanically, his bronzed face, handsome as it was, showed at that moment a combination of high cheekbones

with set white teeth, which recalled certain American conjectures about his origin in the Southern plantations.

"Aurora," he began, in that deep voice like a drum of passion that had moved so many audiences, "will

He stopped indecisively because a sixth figure had suddenly presented itself just inside the doorwaya

figure so incongruous in the scene as to be almost comic. It was a very short man in the black uniform of the

Roman secular clergy, and looking (especially in such a presence as Bruno's and Aurora's) rather like the

wooden Noah out of an ark. He did not, however, seem conscious of any contrast, but said with dull civility:

A shrewd observer might have remarked that the emotional temperature rather rose at so unemotional an

interruption. The detachment of a professional celibate seemed to reveal to the others that they stood round

the woman as a ring of amorous rivals; just as a stranger coming in with frost on his coat will reveal that a

room is like a furnace. The presence of the one man who did not care about her increased Miss Rome's sense

that everybody else was in love with her, and each in a somewhat dangerous way: the actor with all the

appetite of a savage and a spoilt child; the soldier with all the simple selfishness of a man of will rather than

mind; Sir Wilson with that daily hardening concentration with which old Hedonists take to a hobby; nay,

even the abject Parkinson, who had known her before her triumphs, and who followed her about the room

A shrewd person might also have noted a yet odder thing. The man like a black wooden Noah (who was not

wholly without shrewdness) noted it with a considerable but contained amusement. It was evident that the

great Aurora, though by no means indifferent to the admiration of the other sex, wanted at this moment to get

rid of all the men who admired her and be left alone with the man who did not did not admire her in that

sense at least; for the little priest did admire and even enjoy the firm feminine diplomacy with which she set

about her task. There was, perhaps, only one thing that Aurora Rome was clever about, and that was one half

of humanity the other half. The little priest watched, like a Napoleonic campaign, the swift precision of her

policy for expelling all while banishing none. Bruno, the big actor, was so babyish that it was easy to send

him off in brute sulks, banging the door. Cutler, the British officer, was pachydermatous to ideas, but

punctilious about behaviour. He would ignore all hints, but he would die rather than ignore a definite

commission from a lady. As to old Seymour, he had to be treated differently; he had to be left to the last. The

only way to move him was to appeal to him in confidence as an old friend, to let him into the secret of the

clearance. The priest did really admire Miss Rome as she achieved all these three objects in one selected

She went across to Captain Cutler and said in her sweetest manner: "I shall value all these flowers, because

they must be your favourite flowers. But they won't be complete, you know, without my favourite flower. Do

go over to that shop round the corner and get me some liliesofthevalley, and then it will be quite lovely."

The first object of her diplomacy, the exit of the enraged Bruno, was at once achieved. He had already

handed his spear in a lordly style, like a sceptre, to the piteous Parkinson, and was about to assume one of the

cushioned seats like a throne. But at this open appeal to his rival there glowed in his opal eyeballs all the

sensitive insolence of the slave; he knotted his enormous brown fists for an instant, and then, dashing open

the door, disappeared into his own apartments beyond. But meanwhile Miss Rome's experiment in mobilizing

the British Army had not succeeded so simply as seemed probable. Cutler had indeed risen stiffly and

suddenly, and walked towards the door, hatless, as if at a word of command. But perhaps there was

something ostentatiously elegant about the languid figure of Seymour leaning against one of the

lookingglasses that brought him up short at the entrance, turning his head this way and that like a

"I must show this stupid man where to go," said Aurora in a whisper to Seymour, and ran out to the threshold

Seymour seemed to be listening, elegant and unconscious as was his posture, and he seemed relieved when he

heard the lady call out some last instructions to the Captain, and then turn sharply and run laughing down the

passage towards the other end, the end on the terrace above the Thames. Yet a second or two after Seymour's

brow darkened again. A man in his position has so many rivals, and he remembered that at the other end of

the passage was the corresponding entrance to Bruno's private room. He did not lose his dignity; he said some

civil words to Father Brown about the revival of Byzantine architecture in the Westminster Cathedral, and

then, quite naturally, strolled out himself into the upper end of the passage. Father Brown and Parkinson were

left alone, and they were neither of them men with a taste for superfluous conversation. The dresser went

round the room, pulling out lookingglasses and pushing them in again, his dingy dark coat and trousers

looking all the more dismal since he was still holding the festive fairy spear of King Oberon. Every time he

pulled out the frame of a new glass, a new black figure of Father Brown appeared; the absurd glass chamber

was full of Father Browns, upside down in the air like angels, turning somersaults like acrobats, turning their

Father Brown seemed quite unconscious of this cloud of witnesses, but followed Parkinson with an idly

attentive eye till he took himself and his absurd spear into the farther room of Bruno. Then he abandoned

himself to such abstract meditations as always amused him calculating the angles of the mirrors, the angles

of each refraction, the angle at which each must fit into the wall...when he heard a strong but strangled cry.

He sprang to his feet and stood rigidly listening. At the same instant Sir Wilson Seymour burst back into the

room, white as ivory. "Who's that man in the passage?" he cried. "Where's that dagger of mine?"

Before Father Brown could turn in his heavy boots Seymour was plunging about the room looking for the

weapon. And before he could possibly find that weapon or any other, a brisk running of feet broke upon the

pavement outside, and the square face of Cutler was thrust into the same doorway. He was still grotesquely

grasping a bunch of liliesofthevalley. "What's this?" he cried. "What's that creature down the passage? Is

In the instant of time in which all this happened Father Brown stepped out into the top of the passage, looked

At this the other two men dropped their quarrel and darted after him, Cutler calling out: "What are you doing?

"My name is Brown," said the priest sadly, as he bent over something and straightened himself again. "Miss

The three men looked down, and in one of them at least the life died in that late light of afternoon. It ran

along the passage like a path of gold, and in the midst of it Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of green

and gold, with her dead face turned upwards. Her dress was torn away as in a struggle, leaving the right

shoulder bare, but the wound from which the blood was welling was on the other side. The brass dagger lay

There was a blank stillness for a measurable time, so that they could hear far off a flowergirl's laugh outside

Charing Cross, and someone whistling furiously for a taxicab in one of the streets off the Strand. Then the

Captain, with a movement so sudden that it might have been passion or playacting, took Sir Wilson

Seymour looked at him steadily without either fight or fear. "You need not kill me," he said in a voice quite

The Captain's hand hesitated and dropped; and the other added with the same icy candour: "If I find I haven't

"Drink isn't good enough for me," replied Cutler, "but I'll have blood for this before I die. Not yoursbut I

And before the others could appreciate his intention he snatched up the dagger, sprang at the other door at the

lower end of the passage, burst it open, bolt and all, and confronted Bruno in his dressingroom. As he did

so, old Parkinson tottered in his wavering way out of the door and caught sight of the corpse lying in the

passage. He moved shakily towards it; looked at it weakly with a working face; then moved shakily back into

the dressingroom again, and sat down suddenly on one of the richly cushioned chairs. Father Brown

instantly ran across to him, taking no notice of Cutler and the colossal actor, though the room already rang

with their blows and they began to struggle for the dagger. Seymour, who retained some practical sense, was

When the police arrived it was to tear the two men from an almost apelike grapple; and, after a few formal

inquiries, to arrest Isidore Bruno upon a charge of murder, brought against him by his furious opponent. The

idea that the great national hero of the hour had arrested a wrongdoer with his own hand doubtless had its

weight with the police, who are not without elements of the journalist. They treated Cutler with a certain

solemn attention, and pointed out that he had got a slight slash on the hand. Even as Cutler bore him back

across tilted chair and table, Bruno had twisted the dagger out of his grasp and disabled him just below the

wrist. The injury was really slight, but till he was removed from the room the halfsavage prisoner stared at

"Looks a cannibal sort of chap, don't he?" said the constable confidentially to Cutler.

Cutler made no answer, but said sharply a moment after: "We must attend to the...the death..." and his voice

"The two deaths," came in the voice of the priest from the farther side of the room. "This poor fellow was

gone when I got across to him." And he stood looking down at old Parkinson, who sat in a black huddle on

the gorgeous chair. He also had paid his tribute, not without eloquence, to the woman who had died.

The silence was first broken by Cutler, who seemed not untouched by a rough tenderness. "I wish I was him,"

he said huskily. "I remember he used to watch her wherever she walked more thananybody. She was his

They took leave of Father Brown at the corner of the road, with some random apologies for any rudeness they

The mind of the little priest was always a rabbitwarren of wild thoughts that jumped too quickly for him to

catch them. Like the white tail of a rabbit he had the vanishing thought that he was certain of their grief, but

"We had better all be going," said Seymour heavily; "we have done all we can to help."

"Will you understand my motives," asked Father Brown quietly, "if I say you have done all you can to hurt?"

"To hurt yourselves," answered the priest. "I would not add to your troubles if it weren't common justice to

warn you. You've done nearly everything you could do to hang yourselves, if this actor should be acquitted.

They'll be sure to subpoena me; I shall be bound to say that after the cry was heard each of you rushed into

the room in a wild state and began quarrelling about a dagger. As far as my words on oath can go, you might

either of you have done it. You hurt yourselves with that; and then Captain Cutler must have hurt himself

"Which drew blood," replied the priest, nodding. "We know there's blood on the brass now. And so we shall

There was a silence; and then Seymour said, with an emphasis quite alien to his daily accent: "But I saw a

"I know you did," answered the cleric Brown with a face of wood, "so did Captain Cutler. That's what seems

Before either could make sufficient sense of it even to answer, Father Brown had politely excused himself

As modern newspapers are conducted, the most honest and most important news is the police news. If it be

true that in the twentieth century more space is given to murder than to politics, it is for the excellent reason

that murder is a more serious subject. But even this would hardly explain the enormous omnipresence and

widely distributed detail of "The Bruno Case," or "The Passage Mystery," in the Press of London and the

provinces. So vast was the excitement that for some weeks the Press really told the truth; and the reports of

examination and crossexamination, if interminable, even if intolerable are at least reliable. The true reason,

of course, was the coincidence of persons. The victim was a popular actress; the accused was a popular actor;

and the accused had been caught redhanded, as it were, by the most popular soldier of the patriotic season.

In those extraordinary circumstances the Press was paralysed into probity and accuracy; and the rest of this

somewhat singular business can practically be recorded from reports of Bruno's trial.

The trial was presided over by Mr Justice Monkhouse, one of those who are jeered at as humorous judges, but

who are generally much more serious than the serious judges, for their levity comes from a living impatience

of professional solemnity; while the serious judge is really filled with frivolity, because he is filled with

vanity. All the chief actors being of a worldly importance, the barristers were well balanced; the prosecutor

for the Crown was Sir Walter Cowdray, a heavy, but weighty advocate of the sort that knows how to seem

English and trustworthy, and how to be rhetorical with reluctance. The prisoner was defended by Mr Patrick

Butler, K.C., who was mistaken for a mere flaneur by those who misunderstood the Irish character and

those who had not been examined by him. The medical evidence involved no contradictions, the doctor,

whom Seymour had summoned on the spot, agreeing with the eminent surgeon who had later examined the

body. Aurora Rome had been stabbed with some sharp instrument such as a knife or dagger; some

instrument, at least, of which the blade was short. The wound was just over the heart, and she had died

instantly. When the doctor first saw her she could hardly have been dead for twenty minutes. Therefore when

Some official detective evidence followed, chiefly concerned with the presence or absence of any proof of a

struggle; the only suggestion of this was the tearing of the dress at the shoulder, and this did not seem to fit in

particularly well with the direction and finality of the blow. When these details had been supplied, though not

Sir Wilson Seymour gave evidence as he did everything else that he did at allnot only well, but perfectly.

Though himself much more of a public man than the judge, he conveyed exactly the fine shade of

selfeffacement before the King's justice; and though everyone looked at him as they would at the Prime

Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury, they could have said nothing of his part in it but that it was that of

a private gentleman, with an accent on the noun. He was also refreshingly lucid, as he was on the committees.

He had been calling on Miss Rome at the theatre; he had met Captain Cutler there; they had been joined for a

short time by the accused, who had then returned to his own dressingroom; they had then been joined by a

Roman Catholic priest, who asked for the deceased lady and said his name was Brown. Miss Rome had then

gone just outside the theatre to the entrance of the passage, in order to point out to Captain Cutler a

flowershop at which he was to buy her some more flowers; and the witness had remained in the room,

exchanging a few words with the priest. He had then distinctly heard the deceased, having sent the Captain on

his errand, turn round laughing and run down the passage towards its other end, where was the prisoner's

dressingroom. In idle curiosity as to the rapid movement of his friends, he had strolled out to the head of the

passage himself and looked down it towards the prisoner's door. Did he see anything in the passage? Yes; he

Sir Walter Cowdray allowed an impressive interval, during which the witness looked down, and for all his

usual composure seemed to have more than his usual pallor. Then the barrister said in a lower voice, which

Sir Wilson Seymour, however moved, had his excellent brains in full workingorder. "Very distinctly as

regards its outline, but quite indistinctly, indeed not at all, as regards the details inside the outline. The

passage is of such length that anyone in the middle of it appears quite black against the light at the other end."

The witness lowered his steady eyes once more and added: "I had noticed the fact before, when Captain

Cutler first entered it." There was another silence, and the judge leaned forward and made a note.

"Well," said Sir Walter patiently, "what was the outline like? Was it, for instance, like the figure of the

Everyone in court kept his eyes riveted on his pen, or his umbrellahandle, or his book, or his boots or

whatever he happened to be looking at. They seemed to be holding their eyes away from the prisoner by main

force; but they felt his figure in the dock, and they felt it as gigantic. Tall as Bruno was to the eye, he seemed

Cowdray was resuming his seat with his solemn face, smoothing his black silk robes, and white silk whiskers.

Sir Wilson was leaving the witnessbox, after a few final particulars to which there were many other

"I shall only detain you a moment," said Mr Butler, who was a rusticlooking person with red eyebrows and

an expression of partial slumber. "Will you tell his lordship how you knew it was a man?"

A faint, refined smile seemed to pass over Seymour's features. "I'm afraid it is the vulgar test of trousers," he

said. "When I saw daylight between the long legs I was sure it was a man, after all."

Butler's sleepy eyes opened as suddenly as some silent explosion. "After all!" he repeated slowly. "So you did

Seymour looked troubled for the first time. "It is hardly a point of fact," he said, "but if his lordship would

like me to answer for my impression, of course I shall do so. There was something about the thing that was

not exactly a woman and yet was not quite a man; somehow the curves were different. And it had something

"Thank you," said Mr Butler, K.C., and sat down suddenly, as if he had got what he wanted.

Captain Cutler was a far less plausible and composed witness than Sir Wilson, but his account of the opening

incidents was solidly the same. He described the return of Bruno to his dressingroom, the dispatching of

himself to buy a bunch of liliesofthevalley, his return to the upper end of the passage, the thing he saw in

the passage, his suspicion of Seymour, and his struggle with Bruno. But he could give little artistic assistance

about the black figure that he and Seymour had seen. Asked about its outline, he said he was no art

criticwith a somewhat too obvious sneer at Seymour. Asked if it was a man or a woman, he said it looked

more like a beast with a too obvious snarl at the prisoner. But the man was plainly shaken with sorrow and

sincere anger, and Cowdray quickly excused him from confirming facts that were already fairly clear.

The defending counsel also was again brief in his crossexamination; although (as was his custom) even in

being brief, he seemed to take a long time about it. "You used a rather remarkable expression," he said,

looking at Cutler sleepily. "What do you mean by saying that it looked more like a beast than a man or a

Cutler seemed seriously agitated. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have said that," he said; "but when the brute has huge

humped shoulders like a chimpanzee, and bristles sticking out of its head like a pig"

Mr Butler cut short his curious impatience in the middle. "Never mind whether its hair was like a pig's," he

"The last witness said it was," commented the counsel, with unscrupulous swiftness. "And did the figure have

any of those serpentine and semifeminine curves to which eloquent allusion has been made? No? No

feminine curves? The figure, if I understand you, was rather heavy and square than otherwise?"

"He may have been bending forward," said Cutler, in a hoarse and rather faint voice.

"Or again, he may not," said Mr Butler, and sat down suddenly for the second time.

The third, witness called by Sir Walter Cowdray was the little Catholic clergyman, so little, compared with

the others, that his head seemed hardly to come above the box, so that it was like crossexamining a child.

But unfortunately Sir Walter had somehow got it into his head (mostly by some ramifications of his family's

religion) that Father Brown was on the side of the prisoner, because the prisoner was wicked and foreign and

even partly black. Therefore he took Father Brown up sharply whenever that proud pontiff tried to explain

anything; and told him to answer yes or no, and tell the plain facts without any jesuitry. When Father Brown

began, in his simplicity, to say who he thought the man in the passage was, the barrister told him that he did

"A black shape was seen in the passage. And you say you saw the black shape. Well, what shape was it?"

Father Brown blinked as under rebuke; but he had long known the literal nature of obedience. "The shape,"

he said, "was short and thick, but had two sharp, black projections curved upwards on each side of the head

"Oh! the devil with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the

Those in court had been wrought up to an irrational, but real sense of some monstrosity. They had forgotten

the figure in the dock and thought only of the figure in the passage. And the figure in the passage, described

by three capable and respectable men who had all seen it, was a shifting nightmare: one called it a woman,

The judge was looking at Father Brown with level and piercing eyes. "You are a most extraordinary witness,"

he said; "but there is something about you that makes me think you are trying to tell the truth. Well, who was

Butler, K.C., sprang to his feet in an extraordinary stillness, and said quite calmly: "Your lordship will allow

me to crossexamine?" And then, without stopping, he shot at Brown the apparently disconnected question:

"You have heard about this dagger; you know the experts say the crime was committed with a short blade?"

"A short blade," assented Brown, nodding solemnly like an owl, "but a very long hilt."

Before the audience could quite dismiss the idea that the priest had really seen himself doing murder with a

short dagger with a long hilt (which seemed somehow to make it more horrible), he had himself hurried on to

"I mean daggers aren't the only things with short blades. Spears have short blades. And spears catch at the

end of the steel just like daggers, if they're that sort of fancy spear they had in theatres; like the spear poor old

Parkinson killed his wife with, just when she'd sent for me to settle their family troubles and I came just

too late, God forgive me! But he died penitent he just died of being penitent. He couldn't bear what he'd

The general impression in court was that the little priest, who was gobbling away, had literally gone mad in

the box. But the judge still looked at him with bright and steady eyes of interest; and the counsel for the

"If Parkinson did it with that pantomime spear," said Butler, "he must have thrust from four yards away. How

do you account for signs of struggle, like the dress dragged off the shoulder?" He had slipped into treating his

"The poor lady's dress was torn," said the witness, "because it was caught in a panel that slid to just behind

her. She struggled to free herself, and as she did so Parkinson came out of the prisoner's room and lunged

"It was a lookingglass on the other side," explained Father Brown. "When I was in the dressingroom I

There was another vast and unnatural silence, and this time it was the judge who spoke. "So you really mean

that when you looked down that passage, the man you saw was yourselfin a mirror?"

"Yes, my lord; that was what I was trying to say," said Brown, "but they asked me for the shape; and our hats

The judge leaned forward, his old eyes yet more brilliant, and said in specially distinct tones: "Do you really

mean to say that when Sir Wilson Seymour saw that wild whatyoucallhim with curves and a woman's

"And you mean to say that when Captain Cutler saw that chimpanzee with humped shoulders and hog's

The judge leaned back in his chair with a luxuriance in which it was hard to separate the cynicism and the

admiration. "And can you tell us why," he asked, "you should know your own figure in a lookingglass,

Father Brown blinked even more painfully than before; then he stammered: "Really, my lord, I don't know

FLAMBEAU and his friend the priest were sitting in the Temple Gardens about sunset; and their

neighbourhood or some such accidental influence had turned their talk to matters of legal process. From the

problem of the licence in crossexamination, their talk strayed to Roman and mediaeval torture, to the

"I've been reading," said Flambeau, "of this new psychometric method they talk about so much, especially in

America. You know what I mean; they put a pulsometer on a man's wrist and judge by how his heart goes at

"I think it very interesting," replied Father Brown; "it reminds me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages

"Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think the two methods equally valuable?"

"I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so

many more million reasons than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; blood will have to

"The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed by some of the greatest American men of science."

"What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, "and how much more sentimental must

American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heartthrobs? Why,

they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes. That's a test

from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too."

"But surely," insisted Flambeau, "it might point pretty straight at something or other."

"There's a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight," answered the other. "What is it? Why, the other end of

the stick always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of the stick by the right end. I saw

the thing done once and I've never believed in it since." And he proceeded to tell the story of his

It happened nearly twenty years before, when he was chaplain to his coreligionists in a prison in

Chicagowhere the Irish population displayed a capacity both for crime and penitence which kept him

tolerably busy. The official secondincommand under the Governor was an exdetective named Greywood

Usher, a cadaverous, carefulspoken Yankee philosopher, occasionally varying a very rigid visage with an

odd apologetic grimace. He liked Father Brown in a slightly patronizing way; and Father Brown liked him,

though he heartily disliked his theories. His theories were extremely complicated and were held with extreme

One evening he had sent for the priest, who, according to his custom, took a seat in silence at a table piled

and littered with papers, and waited. The official selected from the papers a scrap of newspaper cutting,

which he handed across to the cleric, who read it gravely. It appeared to be an extract from one of the pinkest

"Society's brightest widower is once more on the Freak Dinner stunt. All our exclusive citizens will recall the

Perambulator Parade Dinner, in which LastTrick Todd, at his palatial home at Pilgrim's Pond, caused so

many of our prominent debutantes to look even younger than their years. Equally elegant and more

miscellaneous and largehearted in social outlook was LastTrick's show the year previous, the popular

Cannibal Crush Lunch, at which the confections handed round were sarcastically moulded in the forms of

human arms and legs, and during which more than one of our gayest mental gymnasts was heard offering to

eat his partner. The witticism which will inspire this evening is as yet in Mr Todd's pretty reticent intellect, or

locked in the jewelled bosoms of our city's gayest leaders; but there is talk of a pretty parody of the simple

manners and customs at the other end of Society's scale. This would be all the more telling, as hospitable

Todd is entertaining in Lord Falconroy, the famous traveller, a trueblooded aristocrat fresh from England's

oakgroves. Lord Falconroy's travels began before his ancient feudal title was resurrected, he was in the

Republic in his youth, and fashion murmurs a sly reason for his return. Miss Etta Todd is one of our

deepsouled New Yorkers, and comes into an income of nearly twelve hundred million dollars."

"Why, words rather fail me," answered Father Brown. "I cannot think at this moment of anything in this

world that would interest me less. And, unless the just anger of the Republic is at last going to electrocute

journalists for writing like that, I don't quite see why it should interest you either."

"Ah!" said Mr Usher dryly, and handing across another scrap of newspaper. "Well, does that interest you?"

The paragraph was headed "Savage Murder of a Warder. Convict Escapes," and ran: "Just before dawn this

morning a shout for help was heard in the Convict Settlement at Sequah in this State. The authorities,

hurrying in the direction of the cry, found the corpse of the warder who patrols the top of the north wall of the

prison, the steepest and most difficult exit, for which one man has always been found sufficient. The

unfortunate officer had, however, been hurled from the high wall, his brains beaten out as with a club, and his

gun was missing. Further inquiries showed that one of the cells was empty; it had been occupied by a rather

sullen ruffian giving his name as Oscar Rian. He was only temporarily detained for some comparatively

trivial assault; but he gave everyone the impression of a man with a black past and a dangerous future.

Finally, when daylight bad fully revealed the scene of murder, it was found that he had written on the wall

above the body a fragmentary sentence, apparently with a finger dipped in blood: `This was selfdefence and

he had the gun. I meant no harm to him or any man but one. I am keeping the bullet for Pilgrim's

PondO.R.' A man must have used most fiendish treachery or most savage and amazing bodily daring to

"Well, the literary style is somewhat improved," admitted the priest cheerfully, "but still I don't see what I can

do for you. I should cut a poor figure, with my short legs, running about this State after an athletic assassin of

that sort. I doubt whether anybody could find him. The convict settlement at Sequah is thirty miles from here;

the country between is wild and tangled enough, and the country beyond, where he will surely have the sense

to go, is a perfect noman's land tumbling away to the prairies. He may be in any hole or up any tree."

Father Brown opened his innocent eyes wide. "He is here?" he exclaimed. "Why, how did your men get hold

"I got hold of him myself," drawled the American, rising and lazily stretching his lanky legs before the fire. "I

got hold of him with the crooked end of a walkingstick. Don't look so surprised. I really did. You know I

sometimes take a turn in the country lanes outside this dismal place; well, I was walking early this evening up

a steep lane with dark hedges and greylooking ploughed fields on both sides; and a young moon was up and

silvering the road. By the light of it I saw a man running across the field towards the road; running with his

body bent and at a good milerace trot. He appeared to be much exhausted; but when he came to the thick

black hedge he went through it as if it were made of spiders' webs; or rather (for I heard the strong

branches breaking and snapping like bayonets) as if he himself were made of stone. In the instant in which he

appeared up against the moon, crossing the road, I slung my hooked cane at his legs, tripping him and

bringing him down. Then I blew my whistle long and loud, and our fellows came running up to secure him."

"It would have been rather awkward," remarked Brown, "if you had found he was a popular athlete practising

"He was not," said Usher grimly. "We soon found out who he was; but I had guessed it with the first glint of

"You thought it was the runaway convict," observed the priest simply, "because you had read in the

"I had somewhat better grounds," replied the governor coolly. "I pass over the first as too simple to be

emphasized I mean that fashionable athletes do not run across ploughed fields or scratch their eyes out in

bramble hedges. Nor do they run all doubled up like a crouching dog. There were more decisive details to a

fairly welltrained eye. The man was clad in coarse and ragged clothes, but they were something more than

merely coarse and ragged. They were so illfitting as to be quite grotesque; even as he appeared in black

outline against the moonrise, the coatcollar in which his head was buried made him look like a hunchback,

and the long loose sleeves looked as if he had no hands. It at once occurred to me that he had somehow

managed to change his convict clothes for some confederate's clothes which did not fit him. Second, there

was a pretty stiff wind against which he was running; so that I must have seen the streaky look of blowing

hair, if the hair had not been very short. Then I remembered that beyond these ploughed fields he was

crossing lay Pilgrim's Pond, for which (you will remember) the convict was keeping his bullet; and I sent my

"A brilliant piece of rapid deduction," said Father Brown; "but had he got a gun?"

As Usher stopped abruptly in his walk the priest added apologetically: "I've been told a bullet is not half so

"He had no gun," said the other gravely; "but that was doubtless due to some very natural mischance or

change of plans. Probably the same policy that made him change the clothes made him drop the gun; he

"And it's hardly worth speculating on," said Usher, turning to some other papers, "for we know it's the man

His clerical friend asked faintly: "But how?" And Greywood Usher threw down the newspapers and took up

"Well, since you are so obstinate," he said, "let's begin at the beginning. You will notice that these two

cuttings have only one thing in common, which is the mention of Pilgrim's Pond, the estate, as you know, of

the millionaire Ireton Todd. You also know that he is a remarkable character; one of those that rose on

"Of our dead selves to higher things," assented his companion. "Yes; I know that. Petroleum, I think."

"Anyhow," said Usher, "LastTrick Todd counts for a great deal in this rum affair."

He stretched himself once more before the fire and continued talking in his expansive, radiantly explanatory

"To begin with, on the face of it, there is no mystery here at all. It is not mysterious, it is not even odd, that a

jailbird should take his gun to Pilgrim's Pond. Our people aren't like the English, who will forgive a man for

being rich if he throws away money on hospitals or horses. LastTrick Todd has made himself big by his

own considerable abilities; and there's no doubt that many of those on whom he has shown his abilities would

like to show theirs on him with a shotgun. Todd might easily get dropped by some man he'd never even

heard of; some labourer he'd locked out, or some clerk in a business he'd busted. LastTrick is a man of

mental endowments and a high public character; but in this country the relations of employers and employed

"That's how the whole thing looks supposing this Rian made for Pilgrim's Pond to kill Todd. So it looked to

me, till another little discovery woke up what I have of the detective in me. When I had my prisoner safe, I

picked up my cane again and strolled down the two or three turns of country road that brought me to one of

the side entrances of Todd's grounds, the one nearest to the pool or lake after which the place is named. It was

some two hours ago, about seven by this time; the moonlight was more luminous, and I could see the long

white streaks of it lying on the mysterious mere with its grey, greasy, halfliquid shores in which they say

our fathers used to make witches walk until they sank. I'd forgotten the exact tale; but you know the place I

mean; it lies north of Todd's house towards the wilderness, and has two queer wrinkled trees, so dismal that

they look more like huge fungoids than decent foliage. As I stood peering at this misty pool, I fancied I saw

the faint figure of a man moving from the house towards it, but it was all too dim and distant for one to be

certain of the fact, and still less of the details. Besides, my attention was very sharply arrested by something

much closer. I crouched behind the fence which ran not more than two hundred yards from one wing of the

great mansion, and which was fortunately split in places, as if specially for the application of a cautious eye.

A door had opened in the dark bulk of the left wing, and a figure appeared black against the illuminated

interiora muffled figure bending forward, evidently peering out into the night. It closed the door behind it,

and I saw it was carrying a lantern, which threw a patch of imperfect light on the dress and figure of the

wearer. It seemed to be the figure of a woman, wrapped up in a ragged cloak and evidently disguised to avoid

notice; there was something very strange both about the rags and the furtiveness in a person coming out of

those rooms lined with gold. She took cautiously the curved garden path which brought her within half a

hundred yards of me, then she stood up for an instant on the terrace of turf that looks towards the slimy

lake, and holding her flaming lantern above her head she deliberately swung it three times to and fro as for a

signal. As she swung it the second time a flicker of its light fell for a moment on her own face, a face that I

knew. She was unnaturally pale, and her head was bundled in her borrowed plebeian shawl; but I am certain

"She retraced her steps in equal secrecy and the door closed behind her again. I was about to climb the fence

and follow, when I realized that the detective fever that had lured me into the adventure was rather

undignified; and that in a more authoritative capacity I already held all the cards in my hand. I was just

turning away when a new noise broke on the night. A window was thrown up in one of the upper floors, but

just round the corner of the house so that I could not see it; and a voice of terrible distinctness was heard

shouting across the dark garden to know where Lord Falconroy was, for he was missing from every room in

the house. There was no mistaking that voice. I have heard it on many a political platform or meeting of

directors; it was Ireton Todd himself. Some of the others seemed to have gone to the lower windows or on to

the steps, and were calling up to him that Falconroy had gone for a stroll down to the Pilgrim's Pond an hour

before, and could not be traced since. Then Todd cried `Mighty Murder!' and shut down the window

violently; and I could hear him plunging down the stairs inside. Repossessing myself of my former and wiser

purpose, I whipped out of the way of the general search that must follow; and returned here not later than

"I now ask you to recall that little Society paragraph which seemed to you so painfully lacking in interest. If

the convict was not keeping the shot for Todd, as he evidently wasn't, it is most likely that he was keeping it

for Lord Falconroy; and it looks as if he had delivered the goods. No more handy place to shoot a man than in

the curious geological surroundings of that pool, where a body thrown down would sink through thick slime

to a depth practically unknown. Let us suppose, then, that our friend with the cropped hair came to kill

Falconroy and not Todd. But, as I have pointed out, there are many reasons why people in America might

want to kill Todd. There is no reason why anybody in America should want to kill an English lord newly

landed, except for the one reason mentioned in the pink paperthat the lord is paying his attentions to the

millionaire's daughter. Our crophaired friend, despite his illfitting clothes, must be an aspiring lover.

"I know the notion will seem to you jarring and even comic; but that's because you are English. It sounds to

you like saying the Archbishop of Canterbury's daughter will be married in St George's, Hanover Square, to a

crossingsweeper on ticketofleave. You don't do justice to the climbing and aspiring power of our more

remarkable citizens. You see a goodlooking greyhaired man in eveningdress with a sort of authority

about him, you know he is a pillar of the State, and you fancy he had a father. You are in error. You do not

realize that a comparatively few years ago he may have been in a tenement or (quite likely) in a jail. You

don't allow for our national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our most influential citizens have not only risen

recently, but risen comparatively late in life. Todd's daughter was fully eighteen when her father first made

his pile; so there isn't really anything impossible in her having a hangeron in low life; or even in her hanging

on to him, as I think she must be doing, to judge by the lantern business. If so, the hand that held the lantern

may not be unconnected with the hand that held the gun. This case, sir, will make a noise."

"I reckon you'll be shocked," replied Greywood Usher, "as I know you don't cotton to the march of science in

these matters. I am given a good deal of discretion here, and perhaps take a little more than I'm given; and I

thought it was an excellent opportunity to test that Psychometric Machine I told you about. Now, in my

"It did in this case, as I'll show you," went on Usher positively. "I sat the man in the illfitting clothes in a

comfortable chair, and simply wrote words on a blackboard; and the machine simply recorded the variations

of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. The trick is to introduce some word connected with the

supposed crime in a list of words connected with something quite different, yet a list in which it occurs quite

naturally. Thus I wrote `heron' and `eagle' and `owl', and when I wrote `falcon' he was tremendously agitated;

and when I began to make an `r' at the end of the word, that machine just bounded. Who else in this republic

has any reason to jump at the name of a newlyarrived Englishman like Falconroy except the man who's shot

him? Isn't that better evidence than a lot of gabble from witnessesif the evidence of a reliable machine?"

"You always forget," observed his companion, "that the reliable machine always has to be worked by an

"I mean Man," said Father Brown, "the most unreliable machine I know of. I don't want to be rude; and I

don't think you will consider Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself. You say you

observed his manner; but how do you know you observed it right? You say the words have to come in a

natural way; but how do you know that you did it naturally? How do you know, if you come to that, that he

did not observe your manner? Who is to prove that you were not tremendously agitated? There was no

"I tell you," cried the American in the utmost excitement, "I was as cool as a cucumber."

"Criminals also can be as cool as cucumbers," said Brown with a smile. "And almost as cool as you."

"Well, this one wasn't," said Usher, throwing the papers about. "Oh, you make me tired!"

"I'm sorry," said the other. "I only point out what seems a reasonable possibility. If you could tell by his

manner when the word that might hang him had come, why shouldn't he tell from your manner that the word

that might hang him was coming? I should ask for more than words myself before I hanged anybody."

"And that," he cried, "is just what I'm going to give you. I tried the machine first just in order to test the thing

He paused a moment and resumed with less excitement. "I rather want to insist, if it comes to that, that so far

I had very little to go on except the scientific experiment. There was really nothing against the man at all. His

clothes were illfitting, as I've said, but they were rather better, if anything, than those of the submerged class

to which he evidently belonged. Moreover, under all the stains of his plunging through ploughed fields or

bursting through dusty hedges, the man was comparatively clean. This might mean, of course, that he had

only just broken prison; but it reminded me more of the desperate decency of the comparatively respectable

poor. His demeanour was, I am bound to confess, quite in accordance with theirs. He was silent and dignified

as they are; he seemed to have a big, but buried, grievance, as they do. He professed total ignorance of the

crime and the whole question; and showed nothing but a sullen impatience for something sensible that might

come to take him out of his meaningless scrape. He asked me more than once if he could telephone for a

lawyer who had helped him a long time ago in a trade dispute, and in every sense acted as you would expect

an innocent man to act. There was nothing against him in the world except that little finger on the dial that

"Then, sir, the machine was on its trial; and the machine was right. By the time I came with him out of the

private room into the vestibule where all sorts of other people were awaiting examination, I think he had

already more or less made up his mind to clear things up by something like a confession. He turned to me and

began to say in a low voice: `Oh, I can't stick this any more. If you must know all about me'

"At the same instant one of the poor women sitting on the long bench stood up, screaming aloud and pointing

at him with her finger. I have never in my life heard anything more demoniacally distinct. Her lean finger

seemed to pick him out as if it were a peashooter. Though the word was a mere howl, every syllable was as

"Among the wretched women, mostly thieves and streetwalkers, twenty faces were turned, gaping with glee

and hate. If I had never heard the words, I should have known by the very shock upon his features that the

socalled Oscar Rian had heard his real name. But I'm not quite so ignorant, you may be surprised to hear.

Drugger Davis was one of the most terrible and depraved criminals that ever baffled our police. It is certain

he had done murder more than once long before his last exploit with the warder. But he was never entirely

fixed for it, curiously enough because he did it in the same manner as those milderor meanercrimes for

which he was fixed pretty often. He was a handsome, wellbredlooking brute, as he still is, to some extent;

and he used mostly to go about with barmaids or shopgirls and do them out of their money. Very often,

though, he went a good deal farther; and they were found drugged with cigarettes or chocolates and their

whole property missing. Then came one case where the girl was found dead; but deliberation could not quite

be proved, and, what was more practical still, the criminal could not be found. I heard a rumour of his having

reappeared somewhere in the opposite character this time, lending money instead of borrowing it; but still to

such poor widows as he might personally fascinate, but still with the same bad result for them. Well, there is

your innocent man, and there is his innocent record. Even, since then, four criminals and three warders have

identified him and confirmed the story. Now what have you got to say to my poor little machine after that?

Hasn't the machine done for him? Or do you prefer to say that the woman and I have done for him?"

"As to what you've done for him," replied Father Brown, rising and shaking himself in a floppy way, "you've

saved him from the electrical chair. I don't think they can kill Drugger Davis on that old vague story of the

poison; and as for the convict who killed the warder, I suppose it's obvious that you haven't got him. Mr

"What do you mean?" demanded the other. "Why should he be innocent of that crime?"

"Why, bless us all!" cried the small man in one of his rare moments of animation, "why, because he's guilty

of the other crimes! I don't know what you people are made of. You seem to think that all sins are kept

together in a bag. You talk as if a miser on Monday were always a spendthrift on Tuesday. You tell me this

man you have here spent weeks and months wheedling needy women out of small sums of money; that he

used a drug at the best, and a poison at the worst; that he turned up afterwards as the lowest kind of

moneylender, and cheated most poor people in the same patient and pacific style. Let it be grantedlet us

admit, for the sake of argument, that he did all this. If that is so, I will tell you what he didn't do. He didn't

storm a spiked wall against a man with a loaded gun. He didn't write on the wall with his own hand, to say he

had done it. He didn't stop to state that his justification was selfdefence. He didn't explain that he had no

quarrel with the poor warder. He didn't name the house of the rich man to which he was going with the gun.

He didn't write his own, initials in a man's blood. Saints alive! Can't you see the whole character is different,

in good and evil? Why, you don't seem to be like I am a bit. One would think you'd never had any vices of

The amazed American had already parted his lips in protest when the door of his private and official room

was hammered and rattled in an unceremonious way to which he was totally unaccustomed.

The door flew open. The moment before Greywood Usher had been coming to the conclusion that Father

Brown might possibly be mad. The moment after he began to think he was mad himself. There burst and fell

into his private room a man in the filthiest rags, with a greasy squash hat still askew on his head, and a

shabby green shade shoved up from one of his eyes, both of which were glaring like a tiger's. The rest of his

face was almost undiscoverable, being masked with a matted beard and whiskers through which the nose

could barely thrust itself, and further buried in a squalid red scarf or handkerchief. Mr Usher prided himself

on having seen most of the roughest specimens in the State, but he thought he had never seen such a baboon

dressed as a scarecrow as this. But, above all, he had never in all his placid scientific existence heard a man

"See here, old man Usher," shouted the being in the red handkerchief, "I'm getting tired. Don't you try any of

your hideandseek on me; I don't get fooled any. Leave go of my guests, and I'll let up on the fancy

clockwork. Keep him here for a split instant and you'll feel pretty mean. I reckon I'm not a man with no pull."

The eminent Usher was regarding the bellowing monster with an amazement which had dried up all other

sentiments. The mere shock to his eyes had rendered his ears, almost useless. At last he rang a bell with a

hand of violence. While the bell was still strong and pealing, the voice of Father Brown fell soft but distinct.

"I have a suggestion to make," he said, "but it seems a little confusing. I don't know this gentlemanbut

but I think I know him. Now, you know himyou know him quite well but you don't know

"I reckon the Cosmos is cracked," said Usher, and fell asprawl in his round office chair.

"Now, see here," vociferated the stranger, striking the table, but speaking in a voice that was all the more

mysterious because it was comparatively mild and rational though still resounding. "I won't let you in. I

"I fear you don't read the Society papers properly," he said, and began to read out in a monotonous voice,

"`Or locked in the jewelled bosoms of our city's gayest leaders; but there is talk of a pretty parody of the

manners and customs of the other end of Society's scale.' There's been a big Slum Dinner up at Pilgrim's Pond

tonight; and a man, one of the guests, disappeared. Mr Ireton Todd is a good host, and has tracked him here,

"I mean the man with comically illfitting clothes you saw running across the ploughed field. Hadn't you

better go and investigate him? He will be rather impatient to get back to his champagne, from which he ran

"Why, look here, Mr Usher," said Father Brown quietly, "you said the machine couldn't make a mistake; and

in one sense it didn't. But the other machine did; the machine that worked it. You assumed that the man in

rags jumped at the name of Lord Falconroy, because he was Lord Falconroy's murderer. He jumped at the

"He felt his plight and recent panic were hardly patrician," replied the priest, "so he tried to keep the name

back at first. But he was just going to tell it you, when"and Father Brown looked down at his

"But you can't be so mad as to say," said Greywood Usher, very white, "that Lord Falconroy was Drugger

The priest looked at him very earnestly, but with a baffling and undecipherable face.

"I am not saying anything about it," he said. "I leave all the rest to you. Your pink paper says that the title was

recently revived for him; but those papers are very unreliable. It says he was in the States in youth; but the

whole story seems very strange. Davis and Falconroy are both pretty considerable cowards, but so are lots of

other men. I would not hang a dog on my own opinion about this. But I think," he went on softly and

reflectively, "I think you Americans are too modest. I think you idealize the English aristocracyeven in

assuming it to be so aristocratic. You see, a goodlooking Englishman in eveningdress; you know he's in

the House of Lords; and you fancy he has a father. You don't allow for our national buoyancy and uplift.

"Oh, stop it!" cried Greywood Usher, wringing one lean hand in impatience against a shade of irony in the

"Don't stay talking to this lunatic!" cried Todd brutally. "Take me to my friend."

Next morning Father Brown appeared with the same demure expression, carrying yet another piece of pink

"I'm afraid you neglect the fashionable press rather," he said, "but this cutting may interest you."

Usher read the headlines, "LastTrick's Strayed Revellers: Mirthful Incident near Pilgrim's Pond." The

paragraph went on: "A laughable occurrence took place outside Wilkinson's Motor Garage last night. A

policeman on duty had his attention drawn by larrikins to a man in prison dress who was stepping with

considerable coolness into the steeringseat of a pretty hightoned Panhard; he was accompanied by a girl

wrapped in a ragged shawl. On the police interfering, the young woman threw back the shawl, and all

recognized Millionaire Todd's daughter, who had just come from the Slum Freak Dinner at the Pond, where

all the choicest guests were in a similar deshabille. She and the gentleman who had donned prison uniform

Under the pink slip Mr Usher found a strip of a later paper, headed, "Astounding Escape of Millionaire's

THERE is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich but largely

empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as the side

of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more

depressing feature in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity. The pilgrim walking

down it begins to think he will never come to a break or a corner; but there is one exceptiona very small

one, but hailed by the pilgrim almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews between two of the tall mansions,

a mere slit like the crack of a door by comparison with the street, but just large enough to permit a pigmy

alehouse or eatinghouse, still allowed by the rich to their stableservants, to stand in the angle. There is

something cheery in its very dinginess, and something free and elfin in its very insignificance. At the feet of

Anyone passing the place during a certain autumn evening, itself almost fairylike, might have seen a hand

pull aside the red halfblind which (along with some large white lettering) half hid the interior from the

street, and a face peer out not unlike a rather innocent goblin's. It was, in fact, the face of one with the

harmless human name of Brown, formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, and now working in London. His

friend, Flambeau, a semiofficial investigator, was sitting opposite him, making his last notes of a case he

had cleared up in the neighbourhood. They were sitting at a small table, close up to the window, when the

priest pulled the curtain back and looked out. He waited till a stranger in the street had passed the window, to

let the curtain fall into its place again. Then his round eyes rolled to the large white lettering on the window

above his head, and then strayed to the next table, at which sat only a navvy with beer and cheese, and a

young girl with red hair and a glass of milk. Then (seeing his friend put away the pocketbook), he said

Flambeau looked up in surprise; but the girl with the red hair also looked up, and with something that was

stronger than astonishment. She was simply and even loosely dressed in light brown sacking stuff; but she

was a lady, and even, on a second glance, a rather needlessly haughty one. "The man with the false nose!"

"I haven't a notion," answered Father Brown. "I want you to find out; I ask it as a favour. He went down

there"and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in one of his undistinguished gestures "and can't have

Flambeau gazed at his friend for some time, with an expression between perplexity and amusement; and then,

rising from the table; squeezed his huge form out of the little door of the dwarf tavern, and melted into the

Father Brown took a small book out of his pocket and began to read steadily; he betrayed no consciousness of

the fact that the redhaired lady had left her own table and sat down opposite him. At last she leaned over and

He lifted his rather heavy eyelids, which fluttered in considerable embarrassment. Then his dubious eye

roamed again to the white lettering on the glass front of the publichouse. The young woman's eyes followed

"No," said Father Brown, answering her thoughts. "It doesn't say `Sela', like the thing in the Psalms; I read it

His ruminating eye roved to the girl's light canvas sleeve, round the wrist of which ran a very slight thread of

artistic pattern, just enough to distinguish it from a workingdress of a common woman and make it more

like the workingdress of a lady artstudent. He seemed to find much food for thought in this; but his reply

was very slow and hesitant. "You see, madam," he said, "from outside the place lookswell, it is a perfectly

decent placebut ladies like you don'tdon't generally think so. They never go into such places from

"You are a most singular person," said the young lady. "What is your object in all this?"

"Not to trouble you about it," he replied, very gently. "Only to arm myself with knowledge enough to help

He continued his dreamy monologue. "You couldn't have come in to see protegees, humble friends, that sort

of thing, or you'd have gone through into the parlour...and you couldn't have come in because you were ill, or

you'd have spoken to the woman of the place, who's obviously respectable...besides, you don't look ill in that

way, but only unhappy.... This street is the only original long lane that has no turning; and the houses on both

sides are shut up.... I could only suppose that you'd seen somebody coming whom you didn't want to meet;

and found the publichouse was the only shelter in this wilderness of stone.... I don't think I went beyond the

licence of a stranger in glancing at the only man who passed immediately after.... And as I thought he looked

like the wrong sort...and you looked like the right sort.... I held myself ready to help if he annoyed you; that is

all. As for my friend, he'll be back soon; and he certainly can't find out anything by stumping down a road

"Then why did you send him out?" she cried, leaning forward with yet warmer curiosity. She had the proud,

impetuous face that goes with reddish colouring, and a Roman nose, as it did in Marie Antoinette.

He looked at her steadily for the first time, and said: "Because I hoped you would speak to me."

She looked back at him for some time with a heated face, in which there hung a red shadow of anger; then,

despite her anxieties, humour broke out of her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and she answered almost

grimly: "Well, if you're so keen on my conversation, perhaps you'll answer my question." After a pause she

"The wax always spots like that just a little in this weather," answered Father Brown with entire simplicity,

The priest smiled in his turn. "I don't say it's the sort of nose one would wear out of mere foppery," he

"What is the nurseryrhyme?" observed Brown absentmindedly. "There was a crooked man and he went a

crooked mile.... That man, I fancy, has gone a very crooked roadby following his nose."

"I don't want to force your confidence by a hair," said Father Brown, very quietly. "But I think you could tell

The girl sprang to her feet and stood quite quietly, but with clenched hands, like one about to stride away;

then her hands loosened slowly, and she sat down again. "You are more of a mystery than all the others," she

"What we all dread most," said the priest in a low voice, "is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is

only a nightmare." "I will tell you everything," said the redhaired girl doggedly, "except why I am telling

She picked at the darned tablecloth and went on: "You look as if you knew what isn't snobbery as well as

what is; and when I say that ours is a good old family, you'll understand it is a necessary part of the story;

indeed, my chief danger is in my brother's highanddry notions, noblesse oblige and all that. Well, my name

is Christabel Carstairs; and my father was that Colonel Carstairs you've probably heard of, who made the

famous Carstairs Collection of Roman coins. I could never describe my father to you; the nearest I can say is

that he was very like a Roman coin himself. He was as handsome and as genuine and as valuable and as

metallic and as outofdate. He was prouder of his Collection than of his coatofarms nobody could say

more than that. His extraordinary character came out most in his will. He had two sons and one daughter. He

quarrelled with one son, my brother Giles, and sent him to Australia on a small allowance. He then made a

will leaving the Carstairs Collection, actually with a yet smaller allowance, to my brother Arthur. He meant it

as a reward, as the highest honour he could offer, in acknowledgement of Arthur's loyalty and rectitude and

the distinctions he had already gained in mathematics and economics at Cambridge. He left me practically all

"Arthur, you may say, might well complain of this; but Arthur is my father over again. Though he had some

differences with my father in early youth, no sooner had he taken over the Collection than he became like a

pagan priest dedicated to a temple. He mixed up these Roman halfpence with the honour of the Carstairs

family in the same stiff, idolatrous way as his father before him. He acted as if Roman money must be

guarded by all the Roman virtues. He took no pleasures; he spent nothing on himself; he lived for the

Collection. Often he would not trouble to dress for his simple meals; but pattered about among the corded

brownpaper parcels (which no one else was allowed to touch) in an old brown dressinggown. With its rope

and tassel and his pale, thin, refined face, it made him look like an old ascetic monk. Every now and then,

though, he would appear dressed like a decidedly fashionable gentleman; but that was only when he went up

"Now, if you've known any young people, you won't be shocked if I say that I got into rather a low frame of

mind with all this; the frame of mind in which one begins to say that the Ancient Romans were all very well

in their way. I'm not like my brother Arthur; I can't help enjoying enjoyment. I got a lot of romance and

rubbish where I got my red hair, from the other side of the family. Poor Giles was the same; and I think the

atmosphere of coins might count in excuse for him; though he really did wrong and nearly went to prison.

"I come now to the silly part of the story. I think a man as clever as you can guess the sort of thing that would

begin to relieve the monotony for an unruly girl of seventeen placed in such a position. But I am so rattled

with more dreadful things that I can hardly read my own feeling; and don't know whether I despise it now as

a flirtation or bear it as a broken heart. We lived then at a little seaside wateringplace in South Wales, and a

retired seacaptain living a few doors off had a son about five years older than myself, who had been a friend

of Giles before he went to the Colonies. His name does not affect my tale; but I tell you it was Philip Hawker,

because I am telling you everything. We used to go shrimping together, and said and thought we were in love

with each other; at least he certainly said he was, and I certainly thought I was. If I tell you he had bronzed

curly hair and a falconish sort of face, bronzed by the sea also, it's not for his sake, I assure you, but for the

"One summer afternoon, when I had promised to go shrimping along the sands with Philip, I was waiting

rather impatiently in the front drawingroom, watching Arthur handle some packets of coins he had just

purchased and slowly shunt them, one or two at a time, into his own dark study and museum which was at the

back of the house. As soon as I heard the heavy door close on him finally, I made a bolt for my

shrimpingnet and tamo'shanter and was just going to slip out, when I saw that my brother had left behind

him one coin that lay gleaming on the long bench by the window. It was a bronze coin, and the colour,

combined with the exact curve of the Roman nose and something in the very lift of the long, wiry neck, made

the head of Caesar on it the almost precise portrait of Philip Hawker. Then I suddenly remembered Giles

telling Philip of a coin that was like him, and Philip wishing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild,

foolish thoughts with which my head went round; I felt as if I had had a gift from the fairies. It seemed to me

that if I could only run away with this, and give it to Philip like a wild sort of weddingring, it would be a

bond between us for ever; I felt a thousand such things at once. Then there yawned under me, like the pit, the

enormous, awful notion of what I was doing; above all, the unbearable thought, which was like touching hot

iron, of what Arthur would think of it. A Carstairs a thief; and a thief of the Carstairs treasure! I believe my

brother could see me burned like a witch for such a thing, But then, the very thought of such fanatical cruelty

heightened my old hatred of his dingy old antiquarian fussiness and my longing for the youth and liberty that

called to me from the sea. Outside was strong sunlight with a wind; and a yellow head of some broom or

gorse in the garden rapped against the glass of the window. I thought of that living and growing gold calling

to me from all the heaths of the worldand then of that dead, dull gold and bronze and brass of my brother's

growing dustier and dustier as life went by. Nature and the Carstairs Collection had come to grips at last.

"Nature is older than the Carstairs Collection. As I ran down the streets to the sea, the coin clenched tight in

my fist, I felt all the Roman Empire on my back as well as the Carstairs pedigree. It was not only the old lion

argent that was roaring in my ear, but all the eagles of the Caesars seemed flapping and screaming in pursuit

of me. And yet my heart rose higher and higher like a child's kite, until I came over the loose, dry sandhills

and to the flat, wet sands, where Philip stood already up to his ankles in the shallow shining water, some

hundred yards out to sea. There was a great red sunset; and the long stretch of low water, hardly rising over

the ankle for half a mile, was like a lake of ruby flame. It was not till I had torn off my shoes and stockings

and waded to where he stood, which was well away from the dry land, that I turned and looked round. We

were quite alone in a circle of seawater and wet sand, and I gave him the head of Caesar.

"At the very instant I had a shock of fancy: that a man far away on the sandhills was looking at me intently.

I must have felt immediately after that it was a mere leap of unreasonable nerves; for the man was only a dark

dot in the distance, and I could only just see that he was standing quite still and gazing, with his head a little

on one side. There was no earthly logical evidence that he was looking at me; he might have been looking at

a ship, or the sunset, or the seagulls, or at any of the people who still strayed here and there on the shore

between us. Nevertheless, whatever my start sprang from was prophetic; for, as I gazed, he started walking

briskly in a beeline towards us across the wide wet sands. As he drew nearer and nearer I saw that he was

dark and bearded, and that his eyes were marked with dark spectacles. He was dressed poorly but respectably

in black, from the old black top hat on his head to the solid black boots on his feet. In spite of these he walked

straight into the sea without a flash of hesitation, and came on at me with the steadiness of a travelling bullet.

"I can't tell you the sense of monstrosity and miracle I had when he thus silently burst the barrier between

land and water. It was as if he had walked straight off a cliff and still marched steadily in midair. It was as if

a house had flown up into the sky or a man's head had fallen off. He was only wetting his boots; but he

seemed to be a demon disregarding a law of Nature. If he had hesitated an instant at the water's edge it would

have been nothing. As it was, he seemed to look so much at me alone as not to notice the ocean. Philip was

some yards away with his back to me, bending over his net. The stranger came on till he stood within two

yards of me, the water washing halfway up to his knees. Then he said, with a clearly modulated and rather

mincing articulation: `Would it discommode you to contribute elsewhere a coin with a somewhat different

"With one exception there was nothing definably abnormal about him. His tinted glasses were not really

opaque, but of a blue kind common enough, nor were the eyes behind them shifty, but regarded me steadily.

His dark beard was not really long or wild, but he looked rather hairy, because the beard began very high

up in his face, just under the cheekbones. His complexion was neither sallow nor livid, but on the contrary

rather clear and youthful; yet this gave a pinkandwhite wax look which somehow (I don't know why)

rather increased the horror. The only oddity one could fix was that his nose, which was otherwise of a good

shape, was just slightly turned sideways at the tip; as if, when it was soft, it had been tapped on one side with

a toy hammer. The thing was hardly a deformity; yet I cannot tell you what a living nightmare it was to me.

As he stood there in the sunsetstained water he affected me as some hellish seamonster just risen roaring

out of a sea like blood. I don't know why a touch on the nose should affect my imagination so much. I think it

seemed as if he could move his nose like a finger. And as if he had just that moment moved it.

"`Any little assistance,' he continued with the same queer, priggish accent, `that may obviate the necessity of

"Then it rushed over me that I was being blackmailed for the theft of the bronze piece; and all my merely

superstitious fears and doubts were swallowed up in one overpowering, practical question. How could he

have found out? I had stolen the thing suddenly and on impulse; I was certainly alone; for I always made sure

of being unobserved when I slipped out to see Philip in this way. I had not, to all appearance, been followed

in the street; and if I had, they could not `Xray' the coin in my closed hand. The man standing on the

sandhills could no more have seen what I gave Philip than shoot a fly in one eye, like the man in the

"When Philip lifted his head at last from mending his net he looked rather red, as if sulky or ashamed; but it

may have been only the exertion of stooping and the red evening light; I may have only had another of the

morbid fancies that seemed to be dancing about me. He merely said gruffly to the man: `You clear out of

this.' And, motioning me to follow, set off wading shoreward without paying further attention to him. He

stepped on to a stone breakwater that ran out from among the roots of the sandhills, and so struck

homeward, perhaps thinking our incubus would find it less easy to walk on such rough stones, green and

slippery with seaweed, than we, who were young and used to it. But my persecutor walked as daintily as he

talked; and he still followed me, picking his way and picking his phrases. I heard his delicate, detestable

voice appealing to me over my shoulder, until at last, when we had crested the sandhills, Philip's patience

(which was by no means so conspicuous on most occasions) seemed to snap. He turned suddenly, saying, `Go

back. I can't talk to you now.' And as the man hovered and opened his mouth, Philip struck him a buffet on it

that sent him flying from the top of the tallest sandhill to the bottom. I saw him crawling out below, covered

"This stroke comforted me somehow, though it might well increase my peril; but Philip showed none of his

usual elation at his own prowess. Though as affectionate as ever, he still seemed cast down; and before I

could ask him anything fully, he parted with me at his own gate, with two remarks that struck me as strange.

He said that, all things considered, I ought to put the coin back in the Collection; but that he himself would

keep it `for the present'. And then he added quite suddenly and irrelevantly:, `You know Giles is back from

The door of the tavern opened and the gigantic shadow of the investigator Flambeau fell across the table.

Father Brown presented him to the lady in his own slight, persuasive style of speech, mentioning his

knowledge and sympathy in such cases; and almost without knowing, the girl was soon reiterating her story

to two listeners. But Flambeau, as he bowed and sat down, handed the priest a small slip of paper. Brown

accepted it with some surprise and read on it: "Cab to Wagga Wagga, 379, Mafeking Avenue, Putney." The

"I went up the steep street to my own house with my head in a whirl; it bad not begun to clear when I came to

the doorstep, on which I found a milkcanand the man with the twisted nose. The milkcan told me the

servants were all out; for, of course, Arthur, browsing about in his brown dressinggown in a brown study,

would not hear or answer a bell. Thus there was no one to help me in the house, except my brother, whose

help must be my ruin. In desperation I thrust two shillings into the horrid thing's hand, and told him to call

again in a few days, when I had thought it out. He went off sulking, but more sheepishly than I had

expected perhaps he had been shaken by his falland I watched the star of sand splashed on his back

receding down the road with a horrid vindictive pleasure. He turned a corner some six houses down.

"Then I let myself in, made myself some tea, and tried to think it out. I sat at the drawingroom window

looking on to the garden, which still glowed with the last full evening light. But I was too distracted and

dreamy to look at the lawns and flowerpots and flowerbeds with any concentration. So I took the shock the

"The man or monster I'd sent away was standing quite still in the middle of the garden. Oh, we've all read a

lot about palefaced phantoms in the dark; but this was more dreadful than anything of that kind could ever

be. Because, though he cast a long evening shadow, he still stood in warm sunlight. And because his face was

not pale, but had that waxen bloom still upon it that belongs to a barber's dummy. He stood quite still, with

his face towards me; and I can't tell you how horrid he looked among the tulips and all those tall, gaudy,

almost hothouselooking flowers. It looked as if we'd stuck up a waxwork instead of a statue in the centre of

"Yet almost the instant he saw me move in the window he turned and ran out of the garden by the back gate,

which stood open and by which he had undoubtedly entered. This renewed timidity on his part was so

different from the impudence with which he had walked into the sea, that I felt vaguely comforted. I fancied,

perhaps, that he feared confronting Arthur more than I knew. Anyhow, I settled down at last, and had a quiet

dinner alone (for it was against the rules to disturb Arthur when he was rearranging the museum), and, my

thoughts, a little released, fled to Philip and lost themselves, I suppose. Anyhow, I was looking blankly, but

rather pleasantly than otherwise, at another window, uncurtained, but by this time black as a slate with the

final nightfall. It seemed to me that something like a snail was on the outside of the windowpane. But

when I stared harder, it was more like a man's thumb pressed on the pane; it had that curled look that a thumb

has. With my fear and courage reawakened together, I rushed at the window and then recoiled with a

"For it was not a thumb, any more than it was a snail. It was the tip of a crooked nose, crushed against the

glass; it looked white with the pressure; and the staring face and eyes behind it were at first invisible and

afterwards grey like a ghost. I slammed the shutters together somehow, rushed up to my room and locked

myself in. But, even as I passed, I could swear I saw a second black window with something on it that was

"It might be best to go to Arthur after all. If the thing was crawling close all around the house like a cat, it

might have purposes worse even than blackmail. My brother might cast me out and curse me for ever, but he

was a gentleman, and would defend me on the spot. After ten minutes' curious thinking, I went down,

"My brother's chair was empty, and he was obviously out. But the man with the crooked nose was sitting

waiting for his return, with his hat still insolently on his head, and actually reading one of my brother's books

under my brother's lamp. His face was composed and occupied, but his nosetip still had the air of being the

most mobile part of his face, as if it had just turned from left to right like an elephant's proboscis. I had

thought him poisonous enough while he was pursuing and watching me; but I think his unconsciousness of

"I think I screamed loud and long; but that doesn't matter. What I did next does matter: I gave him all the

money I had, including a good deal in paper which, though it was mine, I dare say I had no right to touch. He

went off at last, with hateful, tactful regrets all in long words; and I sat down, feeling ruined in every sense.

And yet I was saved that very night by a pure accident. Arthur had gone off suddenly to London, as he so

often did, for bargains; and returned, late but radiant, having nearly secured a treasure that was an added

splendour even to the family Collection. He was so resplendent that I was almost emboldened to confess the

abstraction of the lesser gem, but he bore down all other topics with his overpowering projects. Because

the bargain might still misfire any moment, he insisted on my packing at once and going up with him to

lodgings he had already taken in Fulham, to be near the curioshop in question. Thus in spite of myself, I fled

from my foe almost in the dead of nightbut from Philip also.... My brother was often at the South

Kensington Museum, and, in order to make some sort of secondary life for myself, I paid for a few lessons at

the Art Schools. I was coming back from them this evening, when I saw the abomination of desolation

walking alive down the long straight street and the rest is as this gentleman has said.

"I've got only one thing to say. I don't deserve to be helped; and I don't question or complain of my

punishment; it is just, it ought to have happened. But I still question, with bursting brains, how it can have

happened. Am I punished by miracle? or how can anyone but Philip and myself know I gave him a tiny coin

"Not so extraordinary as the answer," remarked Father Brown rather gloomily. "Miss Carstairs, will you be at

The girl looked at him, and then rose and put her gloves on. "Yes," she said, "I'll be there"; and almost

That night the detective and the priest were still talking of the matter as they drew near the Fulham house, a

"Of course the superficial, on reflection," said Flambeau, "would think first of this Australian brother who's

been in trouble before, who's come back so suddenly and who's just the man to have shabby confederates. But

Flambeau lowered his voice. "Unless the girl's lover comes in, too, and he would be the blacker villain. The

Australian chap did know that Hawker wanted the coin. But I can't see how on earth he could know that

Hawker had got it, unless Hawker signalled to him or his representative across the shore."

"Have you noted another thing?" went on Flambeau eagerly. "this Hawker hears his love insulted, but doesn't

strike till he's got to the soft sandhills, where he can be victor in a mere shamfight. If he'd struck amid

"And now, take it from the start. It lies between few people, but at least three. You want one person for

"Well, obviously," cried his friend, "there must be one to be exposed; one to threaten exposure; and one at

After a long ruminant pause, the priest said: "You miss a logical step. Three persons are needed as ideas.

"Why shouldn't a blackmailer," asked Brown, in a low voice, "threaten his victim with himself? Suppose a

wife became a rigid teetotaller in order to frighten her husband into concealing his pubfrequenting, and then

wrote him blackmailing letters in another hand, threatening to tell his wife! Why shouldn't it work? Suppose a

father forbade a son to gamble and then, following him in a good disguise, threatened the boy with his own

An active figure ran down the steps of the house and showed under the golden lamplight the unmistakable

head that resembled the Roman coin. "Miss Carstairs," said Hawker without ceremony, "wouldn't go in till

"Well," observed Brown confidently, "don't you think it's the best thing she can do to stop outsidewith you

"Yes," said the young man, in an undertone, "I guessed on the sands and now I know; that was why I let him

Taking a latchkey from the girl and the coin from Hawker, Flambeau let himself and his friend into the empty

house and passed into the outer parlour. It was empty of all occupants but one. The man whom Father Brown

had seen pass the tavern was standing against the wall as if at bay; unchanged, save that he had taken off his

"We have come," said Father Brown politely, "to give back this coin to its owner." And he handed it to the

"This man is Mr Arthur Carstairs," said the priest positively, "and he is a coincollector of a somewhat

The man changed colour so horribly that the crooked nose stood out on his face like a separate and comic

thing. He spoke, nevertheless, with a sort of despairing dignity. "You shall see, then," he said, "that I have not

lost all the family qualities." And he turned suddenly and strode into an inner room, slamming the door.

"Stop him!" shouted Father Brown, bounding and half falling over a chair; and, after a wrench or two,

Flambeau had the door open. But it was too late. In dead silence Flambeau strode across and telephoned for

An empty medicine bottle lay on the floor. Across the table the body of the man in the brown dressinggown

lay amid his burst and gaping brownpaper parcels; out of which poured and rolled, not Roman, but very

The priest held up the bronze head of Caesar. "This," he said, "was all that was left of the Carstairs

After a silence he went on, with more than common gentleness: "It was a cruel will his wicked father made,

and you see he did resent it a little. He hated the Roman money he had, and grew fonder of the real money

denied him. He not only sold the Collection bit by bit, but sank bit by bit to the basest ways of making

money even to blackmailing his own family in a disguise. He blackmailed his brother from Australia for

his little forgotten crime (that is why he took the cab to Wagga Wagga in Putney), he blackmailed his sister

for the theft he alone could have noticed. And that, by the way, is why she had that supernatural guess when

he was away on the sanddunes. Mere figure and gait, however distant, are more likely to remind us of

There was another silence. "Well," growled the detective, "and so this great numismatist and coincollector

"Is there so great a difference?" asked Father Brown, in the same strange, indulgent tone. "What is there

wrong about a miser that is not often as wrong about a collector? What is wrong, except... thou shalt not

make to thyself any graven image; thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them, for I...but we must go

"I think," said Flambeau, "that in spite of everything, they are probably getting on very well."

MR EDWARD NUTT, the industrious editor of the Daily Reformer, sat at his desk, opening letters and

marking proofs to the merry tune of a typewriter, worked by a vigorous young lady.

He was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirtsleeves; his movements were resolute, his mouth firm and his tones

final; but his round, rather babyish blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look that rather contradicted

all this. Nor indeed was the expression altogether misleading. It might truly be said of him, as for many

journalists in authority, that his most familiar emotion was one of continuous fear; fear of libel actions, fear

His life was a series of distracted compromises between the proprietor of the paper (and of him), who was a

senile soapboiler with three ineradicable mistakes in his mind, and the very able staff he had collected to run

the paper; some of whom were brilliant and experienced men and (what was even worse) sincere enthusiasts

A letter from one of these lay immediately before him, and rapid and resolute as he was, he seemed almost to

hesitate before opening it. He took up a strip of proof instead, ran down it with a blue eye, and a blue pencil,

altered the word "adultery" to the word "impropriety," and the word "Jew" to the word "Alien," rang a bell

Then, with a more thoughtful eye, he ripped open the letter from his more distinguished contributor, which

DEAR NUTT,As I see you're working Spooks and Dooks at the same time, what about an article on that

rum business of the Eyres of Exmoor; or as the old women call it down here, the Devil's Ear of Eyre? The

head of the family, you know, is the Duke of Exmoor; he is one of the few really stiff old Tory aristocrats

left, a sound old crusted tyrant it is quite in our line to make trouble about. And I think I'm on the track of a

Of course I don't believe in the old legend about James I; and as for you, you don't believe in anything, not

even in journalism. The legend, you'll probably remember, was about the blackest business in English

historythe poisoning of Overbury by that witch's cat Frances Howard, and the quite mysterious terror

which forced the King to pardon the murderers. There was a lot of alleged witchcraft mixed up with it; and

the story goes that a manservant listening at the keyhole heard the truth in a talk between the King and Carr;

and the bodily ear with which he heard grew large and monstrous as by magic, so awful was the secret. And

though he had to be loaded with lands and gold and made an ancestor of dukes, the elfshaped ear is still

recurrent in the family. Well, you don't believe in black magic; and if you did, you couldn't use it for copy. If

a miracle happened in your office, you'd have to hush it up, now so many bishops are agnostics. But that is

not the point The point is that there really is something queer about Exmoor and his family; something quite

natural, I dare say, but quite abnormal. And the Ear is in it somehow, I fancy; either a symbol or a delusion or

disease or something. Another tradition says that Cavaliers just after James I began to wear their hair long

The reason I point it out to you is this: It seems to me that we make a mistake in attacking aristocracy entirely

for its champagne and diamonds. Most men rather admire the nobs for having a good time, but I think we

surrender too much when we admit that aristocracy has made even the aristocrats happy. I suggest a series of

articles pointing out how dreary, how inhuman, how downright diabolist, is the very smell and atmosphere of

some of these great houses. There are plenty of instances; but you couldn't begin with a better one than the

Ear of the Eyres. By the end of the week I think I can get you the truth about it.Yours ever, FRANCIS

Mr Nutt reflected a moment, staring at his left boot; then he called out in a strong, loud and entirely lifeless

voice, in which every syllable sounded alike: "Miss Barlow, take down a letter to Mr Finn, please."

DEAR FINN,I think it would do; copy should reach us second post Saturday.Yours, E. NUTT.

This elaborate epistle he articulated as if it were all one word; and Miss Barlow rattled it down as if it were

all one word. Then he took up another strip of proof and a blue pencil, and altered the word "supernatural" to

the word "marvellous", and the expression "shoot down" to the expression "repress".

In such happy, healthful activities did Mr Nutt disport himself, until the ensuing Saturday found him at the

same desk, dictating to the same typist, and using the same blue pencil on the first instalment of Mr Finn's

revelations. The opening was a sound piece of slashing invective about the evil secrets of princes, and despair

in the high places of the earth. Though written violently, it was in excellent English; but the editor, as usual,

had given to somebody else the task of breaking it up into subheadings, which were of a spicier sort, as

"Peeress and Poisons", and "The Eerie Ear", "The Eyres in their Eyrie", and so on through a hundred happy

changes. Then followed the legend of the Ear, amplified from Finn's first letter, and then the substance of his

I know it is the practice of journalists to put the end of the story at the beginning and call it a headline. I know

that journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was

alive. Your present correspondent thinks that this, like many other journalistic customs, is bad journalism;

and that the Daily Reformer has to set a better example in such things. He proposes to tell his story as it

occurred, step by step. He will use the real names of the parties, who in most cases are ready to confirm his

testimony. As for the headlines, the sensational proclamationsthey will come at the end.

I was walking along a public path that threads through a private Devonshire orchard and seems to point

towards Devonshire cider, when I came suddenly upon just such a place as the path suggested. It was a long,

low inn, consisting really of a cottage and two barns; thatched all over with the thatch that looks like brown

and grey hair grown before history. But outside the door was a sign which called it the Blue Dragon; and

under the sign was one of those long rustic tables that used to stand outside most of the free English inns,

before teetotallers and brewers between them destroyed freedom. And at this table sat three gentlemen, who

Now that I know them all better, there is no difficulty about disentangling the impressions; but just then they

looked like three very solid ghosts. The dominant figure, both because he was bigger in all three dimensions,

and because he sat centrally in the length of the table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed completely in

black, with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, but a rather bald and rather bothered brow. Looking at him

again, more strictly, I could not exactly say what it was that gave me the sense of antiquity, except the antique

It was even less easy to fix the impression in the case of the man at the right end of the table, who, to say

truth, was as commonplace a person as could be seen anywhere, with a round, brownhaired head and a

round snub nose, but also clad in clerical black, of a stricter cut. It was only when I saw his broad curved hat

lying on the table beside him that I realized why I connected him with anything ancient. He was a Roman

Perhaps the third man, at the other end of the table, had really more to do with it than the rest, though he was

both slighter in physical presence and more inconsiderate in his dress. His lank limbs were clad, I might also

say clutched, in very tight grey sleeves and pantaloons; he had a long, sallow, aquiline face which seemed

somehow all the more saturnine because his lantern jaws were imprisoned in his collar and neckcloth more

in the style of the old stock; and his hair (which ought to have been dark brown) was of an odd dim, russet

colour which, in conjunction with his yellow face, looked rather purple than red. The unobtrusive yet unusual

colour was all the more notable because his hair was almost unnaturally healthy and curling, and he wore it

full. But, after all analysis, I incline to think that what gave me my first oldfashioned impression was simply

a set of tall, oldfashioned wineglasses, one or two lemons and two churchwarden pipes. And also, perhaps,

Being a hardened reporter, and it being apparently a public inn, I did not need to summon much of my

impudence to sit down at the long table and order some cider. The big man in black seemed very learned,

especially about local antiquities; the small man in black, though he talked much less, surprised me with a yet

wider culture. So we got on very well together; but the third man, the old gentleman in the tight pantaloons,

seemed rather distant and haughty, until I slid into the subject of the Duke of Exmoor and his ancestry.

I thought the subject seemed to embarrass the other two a little; but it broke the spell of the third man's

silence most successfully. Speaking with restraint and with the accent of a highly educated gentleman, and

puffing at intervals at his long churchwarden pipe, he proceeded to tell me some of the most horrible stories I

have ever heard in my life: how one of the Eyres in the former ages had hanged his own father; and another

had his wife scourged at the cart tail through the village; and another had set fire to a church full of children,

Some of the tales, indeed, are not fit for public print, such as the story of the Scarlet Nuns, the abominable

story of the Spotted Dog, or the thing that was done in the quarry. And all this red roll of impieties came from

his thin, genteel lips rather primly than otherwise, as he sat sipping the wine out of his tall, thin glass.

I could see that the big man opposite me was trying, if anything, to stop him; but he evidently held the old

gentleman in considerable respect, and could not venture to do so at all abruptly. And the little priest at the

other end of thetable, though free from any such air of embarrassment, looked steadily at the table, and

"You don't seem," I said to the narrator, "to be very fond of the Exmoor pedigree."

He looked at me a moment, his lips still prim, but whitening and tightening; then he deliberately broke his

long pipe and glass on the table and stood up, the very picture of a perfect gentleman with the framing temper

"These gentlemen," he said, "will tell you whether I have cause to like it. The curse of the Eyres of old has

lain heavy on this country, and many have suffered from it. They know there are none who have suffered

from it as I have." And with that he crushed a piece of the fallen glass under his heel, and strode away among

"That is an extraordinary old gentleman," I said to the other two; "do you happen to know what the Exmoor

The big man in black was staring at me with the wild air of a baffled bull; he did not at first seem to take it in.

I reaffirmed my ignorance, and there was another silence; then the little priest said, still looking at the table,

Then, before I could collect my scattered senses, he added equally quietly, but with an air of regularizing

things: "My friend here is Doctor Mull, the Duke's librarian. My name is Brown."

"But," I stammered, "if that is the Duke, why does he damn all the old dukes like that?"

"He seems really to believe," answered the priest called Brown, "that they have left a curse on him." Then he

It was a few moments before his meaning dawned on me. "You don't mean that fable about the fantastic ear?"

I demanded. "I've heard of it, of course, but surely it must be a superstitious yarn spun out of something much

simpler. I've sometimes thought it was a wild version of one of those mutilation stories. They used to crop

"I hardly think it was that," answered the little man thoughtfully, "but it is not outside ordinary science or

natural law for a family to have some deformity frequently reappearingsuch as one ear bigger than the

The big librarian had buried his big bald brow in his big red hands, like a man trying to think out his duty.

"No," he groaned. "You do the man a wrong after all. Understand, I've no reason to defend him, or even keep

faith with him. He has been a tyrant to me as to everybody else. Don't fancy because you see him sitting here

that he isn't a great lord in the worst sense of the word. He would fetch a man a mile to ring a bell a yard

offif it would summon another man three miles to fetch a matchbox three yards off. He must have a

"But not a valet to brush his clothes," cut in the priest, with a curious dryness, "for the valet would want to

The librarian turned to him and seemed to forget my presence; he was strongly moved and, I think, a little

heated with wine. "I don't know how you know it, Father Brown," he said, "but you are right. He lets the

whole world do everything for himexcept dress him. And that he insists on doing in a literal solitude like a

desert. Anybody is kicked out of the house without a character who is so much as found near his

"No," replied Dr Mull quite simply; "and yet that is just what I mean by saying you are unjust to him after all.

Gentlemen, the Duke does really feel the bitterness about the curse that he uttered just now. He does, with

sincere shame and terror, hide under that purple wig something he thinks it would blast the sons of man to

see. I know it is so; and I know it is not a mere natural disfigurement, like a criminal mutilation, or a

hereditary disproportion in the features. I know it is worse than that; because a man told me who was present

at a scene that no man could invent, where a stronger man than any of us tried to defy the secret, and was

I opened my mouth to speak, but Mull went on in oblivion of me, speaking out of the cavern of his hands. "I

don't mind telling you, Father, because it's really more defending the poor Duke than giving him away. Didn't

The priest shook his head; and the librarian proceeded to tell the tale as he had heard it from his predecessor

in the same post, who had been his patron and instructor, and whom he seemed to trust implicitly. Up to a

certain point it was a common enough tale of the decline of a great family's fortunesthe tale of a family

lawyer. His lawyer, however, had the sense to cheat honestly, if the expression explains itself. Instead of

using funds he held in trust, he took advantage of the Duke's carelessness to put the family in a financial hole,

The lawyer's name was Isaac Green, but the Duke always called him Elisha; presumably in reference to the

fact that he was quite bald, though certainly not more than thirty. He had risen very rapidly, but from very

dirty beginnings; being first a "nark" or informer, and then a moneylender: but as solicitor to the Eyres he

had the sense, as I say, to keep technically straight until he was ready to deal the final blow. The blow fell at

dinner; and the old librarian said he should never forget the very look of the lampshades and the decanters, as

the little lawyer, with a steady smile, proposed to the great landlord that they should halve the estates between

them. The sequel certainly could not be overlooked; for the Duke, in dead silence, smashed a decanter on the

man's bald head as suddenly as I had seen him smash the glass that day in the orchard. It left a red triangular

He rose tottering to his feet, and struck back as such men do strike. "I am glad of that," he said, "for now I

Exmoor, it seems, was white as ashes, but his eyes still blazed. "The law will give it you," he said; "but you

will not take it.... Why not? Why? because it would mean the crack of doom for me, and if you take it I shall

take off my wig.... Why, you pitiful plucked fowl, anyone can see your bare head. But no man shall see mine

Well, you may say what you like and make it mean what you like. But Mull swears it is the solemn fact that

the lawyer, after shaking his knotted fists in the air for an instant, simply ran from the room and never

reappeared in the countryside; and since then Exmoor has been feared more for a warlock than even for a

Now Dr Mull told his story with rather wild theatrical gestures, and with a passion I think at least partisan. I

was quite conscious of the possibility that the whole was the extravagance of an old braggart and gossip. But

before I end this half of my discoveries, I think it due to Dr Mull to record that my two first inquiries have

confirmed his story. I learned from an old apothecary in the village that there was a bald man in evening

dress, giving the name of Green, who came to him one night to have a threecornered cut on his forehead

plastered. And I learnt from the legal records and old newspapers that there was a lawsuit threatened, and at

Mr Nutt, of the Daily Reformer, wrote some highly incongruous words across the top of the copy, made some

highly mysterious marks down the side of it, and called to Miss Barlow in the same loud, monotonous voice:

DEAR FINN,Your copy will do, but I have had to headline it a bit; and our public would never stand a

Romanist priest in the story you must keep your eye on the suburbs. I've altered him to Mr Brown, a

A day or two afterward found the active and judicious editor examining, with blue eyes that seemed to grow

rounder and rounder, the second instalment of Mr Finn's tale of mysteries in high life. It began with the

I have made an astounding discovery. I freely confess it is quite different from anything I expected to

discover, and will give a much more practical shock to the public. I venture to say, without any vanity, that

the words I now write will be read all over Europe, and certainly all over America and the Colonies. And yet

I heard all I have to tell before I left this same little wooden table in this same little wood of appletrees.

I owe it all to the small priest Brown; he is an extraordinary man. The big librarian had left the table, perhaps

ashamed of his long tongue, perhaps anxious about the storm in which his mysterious master had vanished:

anyway, he betook himself heavily in the Duke's tracks through the trees. Father Brown had picked up one of

"What a lovely colour a lemon is!" he said. "There's one thing I don't like about the Duke's wigthe colour."

"I dare say he's got good reason to cover his ears, like King Midas," went on the priest, with a cheerful

simplicity which somehow seemed rather flippant under the circumstances. "I can quite understand that it's

nicer to cover them with hair than with brass plates or leather flaps. But if he wants to use hair, why doesn't

he make it look like hair? There never was hair of that colour in this world. It looks more like a sunsetcloud

coming through the wood. Why doesn't he conceal the family curse better, if he's really so ashamed of it?

"Consider," replied this curious little man, "how you yourself really feel about such things. I don't suggest

you're either more snobbish or more morbid than the rest of us: but don't you feel in a vague way that a

genuine old family curse is rather a fine thing to have? Would you be ashamed, wouldn't you be a little proud,

if the heir of the Glamis horror called you his friend? or if Byron's family had confided, to you only, the evil

adventures of their race? Don't be too hard on the aristocrats themselves if their heads are as weak as ours

"By Jove!" I cried; "and that's true enough. My own mother's family had a banshee; and, now I come to think

"And think," he went on, "of that stream of blood and poison that spurted from his thin lips the instant you so

much as mentioned his ancestors. Why should he show every stranger over such a Chamber of Horrors unless

he is proud of it? He doesn't conceal his wig, he doesn't conceal his blood, he doesn't conceal his family

The little man's voice changed so suddenly, he shut his hand so sharply, and his eyes so rapidly grew rounder

and brighter like a waking owl's, that it had all the abruptness of a small explosion on the table.

It somehow completed the thrill of my fanciful nerves that at that instant the Duke appeared again silently

among the glimmering trees, with his soft foot and sunsethued hair, coming round the corner of the house in

company with his librarian. Before he came within earshot, Father Brown had added quite composedly, "Why

does he really hide the secret of what he does with the purple wig? Because it isn't the sort of secret we

The Duke came round the corner and resumed his seat at the head of the table with all his native dignity. The

embarrassment of the librarian left him hovering on his hind legs, like a huge bear. The Duke addressed the

priest with great seriousness. "Father Brown," he said, "Doctor Mull informs me that you have come here to

make a request. I no longer profess an observance of the religion of my fathers; but for their sakes, and for the

sake of the days when we met before, I am very willing to hear you. But I presume you would rather be heard

Whatever I retain of the gentleman made me stand up. Whatever I have attained of the journalist made me

stand still. Before this paralysis could pass, the priest had made a momentarily detaining motion. "If," he said,

"your Grace will permit me my real petition, or if I retain any right to advise you, I would urge that as many

people as possible should be present. All over this country I have found hundreds, even of my own faith and

flock, whose imaginations are poisoned by the spell which I implore you to break. I wish we could have all

The Duke's face did not move; but he looked at his petitioner with a glassy stare which was the most awful

expression I have ever seen on a human face. I could see the librarian's great legs wavering under him like the

shadows of stems in a pool; and I could not banish from my own brain the fancy that the trees all around us

"I spare you," said the Duke in a voice of inhuman pity. "I refuse. If I gave you the faintest hint of the load of

horror I have to bear alone, you would lie shrieking at these feet of mine and begging to know no more. I will

spare you the hint. You shall not spell the first letter of what is written on the altar of the Unknown God."

"I know the Unknown God," said the little priest, with an unconscious grandeur of certitude that stood up like

a granite tower. "I know his name; it is Satan. The true God was made flesh and dwelt among us. And I say to

you, wherever you find men ruled merely by mystery, it is the mystery of iniquity. If the devil tells you

something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think

some truth unbearable, bear it. I entreat your Grace to end this nightmare now and here at this table."

"If I did," said the Duke in a low voice, "you and all you believe, and all by which alone you live, would be

the first to shrivel and perish. You would have an instant to know the great Nothing before you died."

"The Cross of Christ be between me and harm," said Father Brown. "Take off your wig."

I was leaning over the table in ungovernable excitement; in listening to this extraordinary duel half a thought

had come into my head. "Your Grace," I cried, "I call your bluff. Take off that wig or I will knock it off."

I suppose I can be prosecuted for assault, but I am very glad I did it. When he said, in the same voice of

stone, "I refuse," I simply sprang on him. For three long instants he strained against me as if he had all hell to

help him; but I forced his head until the hairy cap fell off it. I admit that, whilst wrestling, I shut my eyes as it

I was awakened by a cry from Mull, who was also by this time at the Duke's side. His head and mine were

both bending over the bald head of the wigless Duke. Then the silence was snapped by the librarian

exclaiming: "What can it mean? Why, the man had nothing to hide. His ears are just like everybody else's."

The priest walked straight up to him, but strangely enough did not even glance at his ears. He stared with an

almost comical seriousness at his bald forehead, and pointed to a threecornered cicatrice, long healed, but

still discernible. "Mr Green, I think." he said politely, "and he did get the whole estate after all."

And now let me tell the readers of the Daily Reformer what I think the most remarkable thing in the whole

affair. This transformation scene, which will seem to you as wild and purple as a Persian fairytale, has been

(except for my technical assault) strictly legal and constitutional from its first beginnings. This man with the

odd scar and the ordinary ears is not an impostor. Though (in one sense) he wears another man's wig and

claims another man's ear, he has not stolen another man's coronet. He really is the one and only Duke of

Exmoor. What happened was this. The old Duke really had a slight malformation of the ear, which really was

more or less hereditary. He really was morbid about it; and it is likely enough that he did invoke it as a kind

of curse in the violent scene (which undoubtedly happened) in which he struck Green with the decanter. But

the contest ended very differently. Green pressed his claim and got the estates; the dispossessed nobleman

shot himself and died without issue. After a decent interval the beautiful English Government revived the

"extinct" peerage of Exmoor, and bestowed it, as is usual, on the most important person, the person who had

This man used the old feudal fablesproperly, in his snobbish soul, really envied and admired them. So that

thousands of poor English people trembled before a mysterious chieftain with an ancient destiny and a

diadem of evil starswhen they are really trembling before a guttersnipe who was a pettifogger and a

pawnbroker not twelve years ago. I think it very typical of the real case against our aristocracy as it is, and as

Mr Nutt put down the manuscript and called out with unusual sharpness: "Miss Barlow, please take down a

DEAR FINN,You must be mad; we can't touch this. I wanted vampires and the bad old days and

aristocracy handinhand with superstition. They like that But you must know the Exmoors would never

forgive this. And what would our people say then, I should like to know! Why, Sir Simon is one of Exmoor's

greatest pals; and it would ruin that cousin of the Eyres that's standing for us at Bradford. Besides, old

SoapSuds was sick enough at not getting his peerage last year; he'd sack me by wire if I lost him it with

such lunacy as this. And what about Duffey? He's doing us some rattling articles on "The Heel of the

Norman." And how can he write about Normans if the man's only a solicitor? Do be reasonable.Yours, E.

As Miss Barlow rattled away cheerfully, he crumpled up the copy and tossed it into the wastepaper basket;

but not before he had, automatically and by force of habit, altered the word "God" to the word

FATHER BROWN was in no mood for adventures. He had lately fallen ill with overwork, and when he

began to recover, his friend Flambeau had taken him on a cruise in a small yacht with Sir Cecil Fanshaw, a

young Cornish squire and an enthusiast for Cornish coast scenery. But Brown was still rather weak; he was

no very happy sailor; and though he was never of the sort that either grumbles or breaks down, his spirits did

not rise above patience and civility. When the other two men praised the ragged violet sunset or the ragged

volcanic crags, he agreed with them. When Flambeau pointed out a rock shaped like a dragon, he looked at it

and thought it very like a dragon. When Fanshaw more excitedly indicated a rock that was like Merlin, he

looked at it, and signified assent. When Flambeau asked whether this rocky gate of the twisted river was not

the gate of Fairyland, he said "Yes." He heard the most important things and the most trivial with the same

tasteless absorption. He heard that the coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship's

cat was asleep. He heard that Fanshaw couldn't find his cigarholder anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver

the oracle "Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye winks, down she sinks." He heard Flambeau say to

Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say

to Flambeau that, oddly enough, it didn't mean this: it meant that while they saw two of the coast lights, one

near and the other distant, exactly side by side, they were in the right riverchannel; but that if one light was

hidden behind the other, they were going on the rocks. He heard Fanshaw add that his country was full of

such quaint fables and idioms; it was the very home of romance; he even pitted this part of Cornwall against

Devonshire, as a claimant to the laurels of Elizabethan seamanship. According to him there had been captains

among these coves and islets compared with whom Drake was practically a landsman. He heard Flambeau

laugh, and ask if, perhaps, the adventurous title of "Westward Ho!" only meant that all Devonshire men

wished they were living in Cornwall. He heard Fanshaw say there was no need to be silly; that not only had

Cornish captains been heroes, but that they were heroes still: that near that very spot there was an old admiral,

now retired, who was scarred by thrilling voyages full of adventures; and who had in his youth found the last

group of eight Pacific Islands that was added to the chart of the world. This Cecil Fanshaw was, in person, of

the kind that commonly urges such crude but pleasing enthusiasms; a very young man, lighthaired,

highcoloured, with an eager profile; with a boyish bravado of spirits, but an almost girlish delicacy of tint

and type. The big shoulders, black brows and black mousquetaire swagger of Flambeau were a great contrast.

All these trivialities Brown heard and saw; but heard them as a tired man hears a tune in the railway wheels,

or saw them as a sick man sees the pattern of his wallpaper. No one can calculate the turns of mood in

convalescence: but Father Brown's depression must have had a great deal to do with his mere unfamiliarity

with the sea. For as the river mouth narrowed like the neck of a bottle, and the water grew calmer and the air

warmer and more earthly, he seemed to wake up and take notice like a baby. They had reached that phase just

after sunset when air and water both look bright, but earth and all its growing things look almost black by

comparison. About this particular evening, however, there was something exceptional. It was one of those

rare atmospheres in which a smokedglass slide seems to have been slid away from between us and Nature;

so that even dark colours on that day look more gorgeous than bright colours on cloudier days. The trampled

earth of the riverbanks and the peaty stain in the pools did not look drab but glowing umber, and the dark

woods astir in the breeze did not look, as usual, dim blue with mere depth of distance, but more like

windtumbled masses of some vivid violet blossom. This magic clearness and intensity in the colours was

further forced on Brown's slowly reviving senses by something romantic and even secret in the very form of

The river was still well wide and deep enough for a pleasure boat so small as theirs; but the curves of the

countryside suggested that it was closing in on either hand; the woods seemed to be making broken and

flying attempts at bridgebuildingas if the boat were passing from the romance of a valley to the romance

of a hollow and so to the supreme romance of a tunnel. Beyond this mere look of things there was little for

Brown's freshening fancy to feed on; he saw no human beings, except some gipsies trailing along the river

bank, with faggots and osiers cut in the forest; and one sight no longer unconventional, but in such remote

parts still uncommon: a darkhaired lady, bareheaded, and paddling her own canoe. If Father Brown ever

attached any importance to either of these, he certainly forgot them at the next turn of the river which brought

The water seemed to widen and split, being cloven by the dark wedge of a fishshaped and wooded islet.

With the rate at which they went, the islet seemed to swim towards them like a ship; a ship with a very high

prowor, to speak more strictly, a very high funnel. For at the extreme point nearest them stood up an

oddlooking building, unlike anything they could remember or connect with any purpose. It was not

specially high, but it was too high for its breadth to be called anything but a tower. Yet it appeared to be built

entirely of wood, and that in a most unequal and eccentric way. Some of the planks and beams were of good,

seasoned oak; some of such wood cut raw and recent; some again of white pinewood, and a great deal more

of the same sort of wood painted black with tar. These black beams were set crooked or crisscross at all kinds

of angles, giving the whole a most patchy and puzzling appearance. There were one or two windows, which

appeared to be coloured and leaded in an oldfashioned but more elaborate style. The travellers looked at it

with that paradoxical feeling we have when something reminds us of something, and yet we are certain it is

Father Brown, even when he was mystified, was clever in analysing his own mystification. And he found

himself reflecting that the oddity seemed to consist in a particular shape cut out in an incongruous material;

as if one saw a tophat made of tin, or a frockcoat cut out of tartan. He was sure he had seen timbers of

different tints arranged like that somewhere, but never in such architectural proportions. The next moment a

glimpse through the dark trees told him all he wanted to know and he laughed. Through a gap in the foliage

there appeared for a moment one of those old wooden houses, faced with black beams, which are still to be

found here and there in England, but which most of us see imitated in some show called "Old London" or

"Shakespeare's England'. It was in view only long enough for the priest to see that, however oldfashioned, it

was a comfortable and wellkept countryhouse, with flowerbeds in front of it. It had none of the piebald

Fanshaw's eyes were shining, and he spoke triumphantly. "Aha! you've not seen a place quite like this before,

I fancy; that's why I've brought you here, my friend. Now you shall see whether I exaggerate about the

mariners of Cornwall. This place belongs to Old Pendragon, whom we call the Admiral; though he retired

before getting the rank. The spirit of Raleigh and Hawkins is a memory with the Devon folk; it's a modern

fact with the Pendragons. If Queen Elizabeth were to rise from the grave and come up this river in a gilded

barge, she would be received by the Admiral in a house exactly such as she was accustomed to, in every

corner and casement, in every panel on the wall or plate on the table. And she would find an English Captain

still talking fiercely of fresh lands to be found in little ships, as much as if she had dined with Drake."

"She'd find a rum sort of thing in the garden," said Father Brown, "which would not please her Renaissance

eye. That Elizabethan domestic architecture is charming in its way; but it's against the very nature of it to

"And yet," answered Fanshaw, "that's the most romantic and Elizabethan part of the business. It was built by

the Pendragons in the very days of the Spanish wars; and though it's needed patching and even rebuilding for

another reason, it's always been rebuilt in the old way. The story goes that the lady of Sir Peter Pendragon

built it in this place and to this height, because from the top you can just see the corner where vessels turn

into the river mouth; and she wished to be the first to see her husband's ship, as he sailed home from the

"For what other reason," asked Father Brown, "do you mean that it has been rebuilt?"

"Oh, there's a strange story about that, too," said the young squire with relish. "You are really in a land of

strange stories. King Arthur was here and Merlin and the fairies before him. The story goes that Sir Peter

Pendragon, who (I fear) had some of the faults of the pirates as well as the virtues of the sailor, was bringing

home three Spanish gentlemen in honourable captivity, intending to escort them to Elizabeth's court. But he

was a man of flaming and tigerish temper, and coming to high words with one of them, he caught him by the

throat and flung him by accident or design, into the sea. A second Spaniard, who was the brother of the first,

instantly drew his sword and flew at Pendragon, and after a short but furious combat in which both got three

wounds in as many minutes, Pendragon drove his blade through the other's body and the second Spaniard was

accounted for. As it happened the ship had already turned into the river mouth and was close to

comparatively shallow water. The third Spaniard sprang over the side of the ship, struck out for the shore, and

was soon near enough to it to stand up to his waist in water. And turning again to face the ship, and holding

up both arms to Heavenlike a prophet calling plagues upon a wicked city he called out to Pendragon in

a piercing and terrible voice, that he at least was yet living, that he would go on living, that he would live for

ever; and that generation after generation the house of Pendragon should never see him or his, but should

know by very certain signs that he and his vengeance were alive. With that he dived under the wave, and was

either drowned or swam so long under water that no hair of his head was seen afterwards."

"There's that girl in the canoe again," said Flambeau irrelevantly, for goodlooking young women would call

Indeed, the blackhaired young lady was letting her canoe float slowly and silently past the strange islet; and

was looking intently up at the strange tower, with a strong glow of curiosity on her oval and olive face.

"Never mind girls," said Fanshaw impatiently, "there are plenty of them in the world, but not many things

like the Pendragon Tower. As you may easily suppose, plenty of superstitions and scandals have followed in

the track of the Spaniard's curse; and no doubt, as you would put it, any accident happening to this Cornish

family would be connected with it by rural credulity. But it is perfectly true that this tower has been burnt

down two or three times; and the family can't be called lucky, for more than two, I think, of the Admiral's

near kin have perished by shipwreck; and one at least, to my own knowledge, on practically the same spot

"When did your friend the Admiral tell you this family history?" asked Father Brown, as the girl in the canoe

paddled off, without showing the least intention of extending her interest from the tower to the yacht, which

"Many years ago," replied Fanshaw; "he hasn't been to sea for some time now, though he is as keen on it as

ever. I believe there's a family compact or something. Well, here's the landing stage; let's come ashore and

They followed him on to the island, just under the tower, and Father Brown, whether from the mere touch of

dry land, or the interest of something on the other bank of the river (which he stared at very hard for some

seconds), seemed singularly improved in briskness. They entered a wooded avenue between two fences of

thin greyish wood, such as often enclose parks or gardens, and over the top of which the dark trees tossed to

and fro like black and purple plumes upon the hearse of a giant. The tower, as they left it behind, looked all

the quainter, because such entrances are usually flanked by two towers; and this one looked lopsided. But for

this, the avenue had the usual appearance of the entrance to a gentleman's grounds; and, being so curved that

the house was now out of sight, somehow looked a much larger park than any plantation on such an island

could really be. Father Brown was, perhaps, a little fanciful in his fatigue, but he almost thought the whole

place must be growing larger, as things do in a nightmare. Anyhow, a mystical monotony was the only

character of their march, until Fanshaw suddenly stopped, and pointed to something sticking out through the

grey fence something that looked at first rather like the imprisoned horn of some beast. Closer observation

showed that it was a slightly curved blade of metal that shone faintly in the fading light.

Flambeau, who like all Frenchmen had been a soldier, bent over it and said in a startled voice: "Why, it's a

sabre! I believe I know the sort, heavy and curved, but shorter than the cavalry; they used to have them in

As he spoke the blade plucked itself out of the crack it had made and came down again with a more

ponderous slash, splitting the fissiparous fence to the bottom with a rending noise. Then it was pulled out

again, flashed above the fence some feet further along, and again split it halfway down with the first stroke;

and after waggling a little to extricate itself (accompanied with curses in the darkness) split it down to the

ground with a second. Then a kick of devilish energy sent the whole loosened square of thin wood flying into

Fanshaw peered into the dark opening and uttered an exclamation of astonishment. "My dear Admiral!" he

exclaimed, "do youer do you generally cut out a new front door whenever you want to go for a walk?"

The voice in the gloom swore again, and then broke into a jolly laugh. "No," it said; "I've really got to cut

down this fence somehow; it's spoiling all the plants, and no one else here can do it. But Ill only carve

And sure enough, he heaved up his weapon once more, and, hacking twice, brought down another and similar

strip of fence, making the opening about fourteen feet wide in all. Then through this larger forest gateway he

came out into the evening light, with a chip of grey wood sticking to his swordblade.

He momentarily fulfilled all Fanshaw's fable of an old piratical Admiral; though the details seemed

afterwards to decompose into accidents. For instance, he wore a broadbrimmed hat as protection against the

sun; but the front flap of it was turned up straight to the sky, and the two corners pulled down lower than the

ears, so that it stood across his forehead in a crescent like the old cocked hat worn by Nelson. He wore an

ordinary darkblue jacket, with nothing special about the buttons, but the combination of it with white linen

trousers somehow had a sailorish look. He was tall and loose, and walked with a sort of swagger, which was

not a sailor's roll, and yet somehow suggested it; and he held in his hand a short sabre which was like a navy

cutlass, but about twice as big. Under the bridge of the hat his eagle face looked eager, all the more because it

was not only cleanshaven, but without eyebrows. It seemed almost as if all the hair had come off his face

from his thrusting it through a throng of elements. His eyes were prominent and piercing. His colour was

curiously attractive, while partly tropical; it reminded one vaguely of a bloodorange. That is, that while it

was ruddy and sanguine, there was a yellow in it that was in no way sickly, but seemed rather to glow like

gold apples of the Hesperides Father Brown thought he had never seen a figure so expressive of all the

When Fanshaw had presented his two friends to their host he fell again into a tone of rallying the latter about

his wreckage of the fence and his apparent rage of profanity. The Admiral poohpoohed it at first as a piece

of necessary but annoying garden work; but at length the ring of real energy came back into his laughter, and

"Well, perhaps I do go at it a bit rabidly, and feel a kind of pleasure in smashing anything. So would you if

your only pleasure was in cruising about to find some new Cannibal Islands, and you had to stick on this

muddy little rockery in a sort of rustic pond. When I remember how I've cut down a mile and a half of green

poisonous jungle with an old cutlass half as sharp as this; and then remember I must stop here and chop this

matchwood, because of some confounded old bargain scribbled in a family Bible, why, I"

He swung up the heavy steel again; and this time sundered the wall of wood from top to bottom at one stroke.

"I feel like that," he said laughing, but furiously flinging the sword some yards down the path, "and now let's

The semicircle of lawn in front of the house was varied by three circular garden beds, one of red tulips, a

second of yellow tulips, and the third of some white, waxenlooking blossoms that the visitors did not know

and presumed to be exotic. A heavy, hairy and rather sullenlooking gardener was hanging up a heavy coil of

garden hose. The corners of the expiring sunset which seemed to cling about the corners of the house gave

glimpses here and there of the colours of remoter flowerbeds; and in a treeless space on one side of the house

opening upon the river stood a tall brass tripod on which was tilted a big brass telescope. Just outside the

steps of the porch stood a little painted green garden table, as if someone had just had tea there. The entrance

was flanked with two of those halffeatured lumps of stone with holes for eyes that are said to be South Sea

idols; and on the brown oak beam across the doorway were some confused carvings that looked almost as

As they passed indoors, the little cleric hopped suddenly on to the table, and standing on it peered

unaffectedly through his spectacles at the mouldings in the oak. Admiral Pendragon looked very much

astonished, though not particularly annoyed; while Fanshaw was so amused with what looked like a

performing pigmy on his little stand, that he could not control his laughter. But Father Brown was not likely

He was gazing at three carved symbols, which, though very worn and obscure, seemed still to convey some

sense to him. The first seemed to be the outline of some tower or other building, crowned with what looked

like curlypointed ribbons. The second was clearer: an old Elizabethan galley with decorative waves beneath

it, but interrupted in the middle by a curious jagged rock, which was either a fault in the wood or some

conventional representation of the water coming in. The third represented the upper half of a human figure,

ending in an escalloped line like the waves; the face was rubbed and featureless, and both arms were held

"Well," muttered Father Brown, blinking, "here is the legend of the Spaniard plain enough. Here he is

holding up his arms and cursing in the sea; and here are the two curses: the wrecked ship and the burning of

Pendragon shook his head with a kind of venerable amusement. "And how many other things might it not

be?" he said. "Don't you know that that sort of halfman, like a halflion or halfstag, is quite common in

heraldry? Might not that line through the ship be one of those partiperpale lines, indented, I think they call

it? And though the third thing isn't so very heraldic, it would be more heraldic to suppose it a tower crowned

"But it seems rather odd," said Flambeau, "that it should exactly confirm the old legend."

"Ah," replied the sceptical traveller, "but you don't know how much of the old legend may have been made

up from the old figures. Besides, it isn't the only old legend. Fanshaw, here, who is fond of such things, will

tell you there are other versions of the tale, and much more horrible ones. One story credits my unfortunate

ancestor with having had the Spaniard cut in two; and that will fit the pretty picture also. Another obligingly

credits our family with the possession of a tower full of snakes and explains those little, wriggly things in that

way. And a third theory supposes the crooked line on the ship to be a conventionalized thunderbolt; but that

alone, if seriously examined, would show what a very little way these unhappy coincidences really go."

"It so happens," replied his host coolly, "that there was no thunder and lightning at all in the two or three

There was another silence in which they heard the continuous murmur of the river; then Fanshaw said, in a

doubtful and perhaps disappointed tone: "Then you don't think there is anything in the tales of the tower in

"There are the tales, of course," said the Admiral, shrugging his shoulders; "and some of them, I don't deny,

on evidence as decent as one ever gets for such things. Someone saw a blaze hereabout, don't you know, as

he walked home through a wood; someone keeping sheep on the uplands inland thought he saw a flame

hovering over Pendragon Tower. Well, a damp dab of mud like this confounded island seems the last place

"What is that fire over there?" asked Father Brown with a gentle suddenness, pointing to the woods on the

left riverbank. They were all thrown a little off their balance, and the more fanciful Fanshaw had even some

difficulty in recovering his, as they saw a long, thin stream of blue smoke ascending silently into the end of

Then Pendragon broke into a scornful laugh again. "Gipsies!" he said; "they've been camping about here for

about a week. Gentlemen, you want your dinner," and he turned as if to enter the house.

But the antiquarian superstition in Fanshaw was still quivering, and he said hastily: "But, Admiral, what's that

"It's more like what it is," said the Admiral, laughing as he led the way; "it's only some canoe going by."

Almost as he spoke, the butler, a lean man in black, with very black hair and a very long, yellow face,

The diningroom was as nautical as the cabin of a ship; but its note was rather that of the modern than the

Elizabethan captain. There were, indeed, three antiquated cutlasses in a trophy over the fireplace, and one

brown sixteenthcentury map with Tritons and little ships dotted about a curly sea. But such things were less

prominent on the white panelling than some cases of quaintcoloured South American birds, very

scientifically stuffed, fantastic shells from the Pacific, and several instruments so rude and queer in shape that

savages might have used them either to kill their enemies or to cook them. But the alien colour culminated in

the fact that, besides the butler, the Admiral's only servants were two negroes, somewhat quaintly clad in

tight uniforms of yellow. The priest's instinctive trick of analysing his own impressions told him that the

colour and the little neat coattails of these bipeds had suggested the word "Canary," and so by a mere pun

connected them with southward travel. Towards the end of the dinner they took their yellow clothes and

black faces out of the room, leaving only the black clothes and yellow face of the butler.

"I'm rather sorry you take this so lightly," said Fanshaw to the host; "for the truth is, I've brought these friends

of mine with the idea of their helping you, as they know a good deal of these things. Don't you really believe

"I don't believe in anything," answered Pendragon very briskly, with a bright eye cocked at a red tropical

Rather to Flambeau's surprise, his clerical friend, who seemed to have entirely woken up, took up the

digression and talked natural history with his host with a flow of words and much unexpected information,

until the dessert and decanters were set down and the last of the servants vanished. Then he said, without

"Please don't think me impertinent, Admiral Pendragon. I don't ask for curiosity, but really for my guidance

and your convenience. Have I made a bad shot if I guess you don't want these old things talked of before your

The Admiral lifted the hairless arches over his eyes and exclaimed: "Well, I don't know where you got it, but

the truth is I can't stand the fellow, though I've no excuse for discharging a family servant. Fanshaw, with his

fairy tales, would say my blood moved against men with that black, Spanishlooking hair."

Flambeau struck the table with his heavy fist. "By Jove!" he cried; "and so had that girl!"

"I hope it'll all end tonight," continued the Admiral, "when my nephew comes back safe from his ship. You

looked surprised. You won't understand, I suppose, unless I tell you the story. You see, my father had two

sons; I remained a bachelor, but my elder brother married, and had a son who became a sailor like all the rest

of us, and will inherit the proper estate. Well, my father was a strange man; he somehow combined Fanshaw's

superstition with a good deal of my scepticismthey were always fighting in him; and after my first

voyages, he developed a notion which he thought somehow would settle finally whether the curse was truth

or trash. If all the Pendragons sailed about anyhow, he thought there would be too much chance of natural

catastrophes to prove anything. But if we went to sea one at a time in strict order of succession to the

property, he thought it might show whether any connected fate followed the family as a family. It was a silly

notion, I think, and I quarrelled with my father pretty heartily; for I was an ambitious man and was left to the

"And your father and brother," said the priest, very gently, "died at sea, I fear."

"Yes," groaned the Admiral; "by one of those brutal accidents on which are built all the lying mythologies of

mankind, they were both shipwrecked. My father, coming up this coast out of the Atlantic, was washed up on

these Cornish rocks. My brother's ship was sunk, no one knows where, on the voyage home from Tasmania.

His body was never found. I tell you it was from perfectly natural mishap; lots of other people besides

Pendragons were drowned; and both disasters are discussed in a normal way by navigators. But, of course, it

set this forest of superstition on fire; and men saw the flaming tower everywhere. That's why I say it will be

all right when Walter returns. The girl he's engaged to was coming today; but I was so afraid of some chance

delay frightening her that I wired her not to come till she heard from me. But he's practically sure to be here

some time tonight, and then it'll all end in smoke tobacco smoke. We'll crack that old lie when we crack a

"Very good wine," said Father Brown, gravely lifting his glass, "but, as you see, a very bad winebibber. I

most sincerely beg your pardon": for he had spilt a small spot of wine on the tablecloth. He drank and put

down the glass with a composed face; but his hand had started at the exact moment when he became

conscious of a face looking in through the garden window just behind the Admiral the face of a woman,

After a pause the priest spoke again in his mild manner. "Admiral," he said, "will you do me a favour? Let

me, and my friends if they like, stop in that tower of yours just for tonight? Do you know that in my business

Pendragon sprang to his feet and paced swiftly to and fro across the window, from which the face had

instantly vanished. "I tell you there is nothing in it," he cried, with ringing violence. "There is one thing I

know about this matter. You may call me an atheist. I am an atheist." Here he swung round and fixed Father

Brown with a face of frightful concentration. "This business is perfectly natural. There is no curse in it at all."

Father Brown smiled. "In that case," he said, "there can't be any objection to my sleeping in your delightful

"The idea is utterly ridiculous," replied the Admiral, beating a tattoo on the back of his chair.

"Please forgive me for everything," said Brown in his most sympathetic tone, "including spilling the wine.

But it seems to me you are not quite so easy about the flaming tower as you try to be."

Admiral Pendragon sat down again as abruptly as he had risen; but he sat quite still, and when he spoke again

it was in a lower voice. "You do it at your own peril," he said; "but wouldn't you be an atheist to keep sane in

Some three hours afterwards Fanshaw, Flambeau and the priest were still dawdling about the garden in the

dark; and it began to dawn on the other two that Father Brown had no intention of going to bed either in the

"I think the lawn wants weeding," said he dreamily. "If I could find a spud or something I'd do it myself."

They followed him, laughing and half remonstrating; but he replied with the utmost solemnity, explaining to

them, in a maddening little sermon, that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others.

He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, with which he began energetically to brush

"Always some little thing to be done," he said with idiotic cheerfulness; "as George Herbert says: `Who

sweeps an Admiral's garden in Cornwall as for Thy laws makes that and the action fine.' And now," he added,

With the same mixed emotions they watched him uncoil some considerable lengths of the large garden hose,

saying with an air of wistful discrimination: "The red tulips before the yellow, I think. Look a bit dry, don't

He turned the little tap on the instrument, and the water shot out straight and solid as a long rod of steel.

"Mine does seem to be a rather kill or cure sort of watering," he admitted, scratching his head. "I suppose it's

a pity I didn't find the spud. You should have seen me with the spud! Talking of tools, you've got that

swordstick, Flambeau, you always carry? That's right; and Sir Cecil could have that sword the Admiral threw

Almost as he spoke the huge figure of the hairy gardener appeared on a higher ridge of the trenched and

terraced lawn, hailing them with a brandished rake and a horribly bellowing voice. "Put down that hose," he

"I am fearfully clumsy," replied the reverend gentleman weakly; "do you know, I upset some wine at dinner."

He made a wavering halfturn of apology towards the gardener, with the hose still spouting in his hand. The

gardener caught the cold crash of the water full in his face like the crash of a cannonball; staggered, slipped

"How very dreadful!" said Father Brown, looking round in a sort of wonder. "Why, I've hit a man!"

He stood with his head forward for a moment as if looking or listening; and then set off at a trot towards the

tower, still trailing the hose behind him. The tower was quite close, but its outline was curiously dim.

"I mean," said Father Brown, "that one of the Admiral's scientific predictions is coming true tonight. This

As he spoke a most beautiful rosered light seemed to burst into blossom like a gigantic rose; but

accompanied with a crackling and rattling noise that was like the laughter of devils.

"The sign of the flaming tower," said Father Brown, and sent the driving water from his hose into the heart of

"Lucky we hadn't gone to bed!" ejaculated Fanshaw. "I suppose it can't spread to the house."

"You may remember," said the priest quietly, "that the wooden fence that might have carried it was cut

Flambeau turned electrified eyes upon his friend, but Fanshaw only said rather absently: "Well, nobody can

"This is rather a curious kind of tower," observed Father Brown, "when it takes to killing people, it always

At the same instant the monstrous figure of the gardener with the streaming beard stood again on the green

ridge against the sky, waving others to come on; but now waving not a rake but a cutlass. Behind him came

the two negroes, also with the old crooked cutlasses out of the trophy. But in the bloodred glare, with their

black faces and yellow figures, they looked like devils carrying instruments of torture. In the dim garden

behind them a distant voice was heard calling out brief directions. When the priest heard the voice, a terrible

But he remained composed; and never took his eye off the patch of flame which had begun by spreading, but

now seemed to shrink a little as it hissed under the torch of the long silver spear of water. He kept his finger

along the nozzle of the pipe to ensure the aim, and attended to no other business, knowing only by the noise

and that semiconscious corner of the eye, the exciting incidents that began to tumble themselves about the

island garden. He gave two brief directions to his friends. One was: "Knock these fellows down somehow

and tie them up, whoever they are; there's rope down by those faggots. They want to take away my nice

hose." The other was: "As soon as you get a chance, call out to that canoeing girl; she's over on the bank with

the gipsies. Ask her if they could get some buckets across and fill them from the river." Then he closed his

mouth and continued to water the new red flower as ruthlessly as he had watered the red tulip.

He never turned his head to look at the strange fight that followed between the foes and friends of the

mysterious fire. He almost felt the island shake when Flambeau collided with the huge gardener; he merely

imagined how it would whirl round them as they wrestled. He heard the crashing fall; and his friend's gasp of

triumph as he dashed on to the first negro; and the cries of both the blacks as Flambeau and Fanshaw bound

them. Flambeau's enormous strength more than redressed the odds in the fight, especially as the fourth man

still hovered near the house, only a shadow and a voice. He heard also the water broken by the paddles of a

canoe; the girl's voice giving orders, the voices of gipsies answering and coming nearer, the plumping and

sucking noise of empty buckets plunged into a full stream; and finally the sound of many feet around the fire.

But all this was less to him than the fact that the red rent, which had lately once more increased, had once

Then came a cry that very nearly made him turn his head. Flambeau and Fanshaw, now reinforced by some of

the gipsies, had rushed after the mysterious man by the house; and he heard from the other end of the garden

the Frenchman's cry of horror and astonishment. It was echoed by a howl not to be called human, as the being

broke from their hold and ran along the garden. Three times at least it raced round the whole island, in a way

that was as horrible as the chase of a lunatic, both in the cries of the pursued and the ropes carried by the

pursuers; but was more horrible still, because it somehow suggested one of the chasing games of children in a

garden. Then, finding them closing in on every side, the figure sprang upon one of the higher river banks and

"You can do no more, I fear," said Brown in a voice cold with pain. "He has been washed down to the rocks

"Oh, don't talk in these parables," cried Flambeau impatiently. "Can't you put it simply in words of one

"Yes," answered Brown, with his eye on the hose. "`Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye blinks, down she

The fire hissed and shrieked more and more, like a strangled thing, as it grew narrower and narrower under

the flood from the pipe and buckets, but Father Brown still kept his eye on it as he went on speaking:

"I thought of asking this young lady, if it were morning yet, to look through that telescope at the river mouth

and the river. She might have seen something to interest her: the sign of the ship, or Mr Walter Pendragon

coming home, and perhaps even the sign of the halfman, for though he is certainly safe by now, he may

very well have waded ashore. He has been within a shave of another shipwreck; and would never have

escaped it, if the lady hadn't had the sense to suspect the old Admiral's telegram and come down to watch

him. Don't let's talk about the old Admiral. Don't let's talk about anything. It's enough to say that whenever

this tower, with its pitch and resinwood, really caught fire, the spark on the horizon always looked like the

"And that," said Flambeau, "is how the father and brother died. The wicked uncle of the legends very nearly

Father Brown did not answer; indeed, he did not speak again, save for civilities, till they were all safe round a

cigarbox in the cabin of the yacht. He saw that the frustrated fire was extinguished; and then refused to

linger, though he actually heard young Pendragon, escorted by an enthusiastic crowd, come tramping up the

river bank; and might (had he been moved by romantic curiosities) have received the combined thanks of the

man from the ship and the girl from the canoe. But his fatigue had fallen on him once more, and he only

started once, when Flambeau abruptly told him he had dropped cigarash on his trousers.

"That's no cigarash," he said rather wearily. "That's from the fire, but you don't think so because you're all

smoking cigars. That's just the way I got my first faint suspicion about the chart."

"You thought it was a chart of the Pacific Islands," answered Brown. "Put a feather with a fossil and a bit of

coral and everyone will think it's a specimen. Put the same feather with a ribbon and an artificial flower and

everyone will think it's for a lady's hat. Put the same feather with an inkbottle, a book and a stack of

writingpaper, and most men will swear they've seen a quill pen. So you saw that map among tropic birds

and shells and thought it was a map of Pacific Islands. It was the map of this river."

"You seem to have noticed a lot as we came in," cried Fanshaw. "We thought you were rather abstracted."

"I was seasick," said Father Brown simply. "I felt simply horrible. But feeling horrible has nothing to do

"Do you think most men would have seen that?" asked Flambeau. He received no answer: Father Brown was

IT was one of those chilly and empty afternoons in early winter, when the daylight is silver rather than gold

and pewter rather than silver. If it was dreary in a hundred bleak offices and yawning drawingrooms, it was

drearier still along the edges of the flat Essex coast, where the monotony was the, more inhuman for being

broken at very long intervals by a lamppost that looked less civilized than a tree, or a tree that looked more

ugly than a lamppost. A light fall of snow had halfmelted into a few strips, also looking leaden rather than

silver, when it had been fixed again by the seal of frost, no fresh snow had fallen, but a ribbon of the old

snow ran along the very margin of the coast, so as to parallel the pale ribbon of the foam.

The line of the sea looked frozen in the very vividness of its violetblue, like the vein of a frozen finger. For

miles and miles, forward and back, there was no breathing soul, save two pedestrians, walking at a brisk pace,

It did not seem a very appropriate place or time for a holiday, but Father Brown had few holidays, and had to

take them when he could, and he always preferred, if possible, to take them in company with his old friend

Flambeau, excriminal and exdetective. The priest had had a fancy for visiting his old parish at Cobhole,

After walking a mile or two farther, they found that the shore was beginning to be formally embanked, so as

to form something like a parade; the ugly lampposts became less few and far between and more ornamental,

though quite equally ugly. Half a mile farther on Father Brown was puzzled first by little labyrinths of

flowerless flowerpots, covered with the low, flat, quietcoloured plants that look less like a garden than a

tessellated pavement, between weak curly paths studded with seats with curly backs. He faintly sniffed the

atmosphere of a certain sort of seaside town that be did not specially care about, and, looking ahead along the

parade by the sea, he saw something that put the matter beyond a doubt. In the grey distance the big

"I suppose," said Father Brown, turning up his coatcollar and drawing a woollen scarf rather closer round

"I fear," answered Flambeau, "a pleasure resort to which few people just now have the pleasure of resorting.

They try to revive these places in the winter, but it never succeeds except with Brighton and the old ones.

This must be Seawood, I think Lord Pooley's experiment; he had the Sicilian Singers down at Christmas,

and there's talk about holding one of the great glovefights here. But they'll have to chuck the rotten place

They had come under the big bandstand, and the priest was looking up at it with a curiosity that had

something rather odd about it, his head a little on one side, like a bird's. It was the conventional, rather tawdry

kind of erection for its purpose: a flattened dome or canopy, gilt here and there, and lifted on six slender

pillars of painted wood, the whole being raised about five feet above the parade on a round wooden platform

like a drum. But there was something fantastic about the snow combined with something artificial about the

gold that haunted Flambeau as well as his friend with some association he could not capture, but which he

"I've got it," he said at last. "It's Japanese. It's like those fanciful Japanese prints, where the snow on the

mountain looks like sugar, and the gilt on the pagodas is like gilt on gingerbread. It looks just like a little

"Yes," said Father Brown. "Let's have a look at the god." And with an agility hardly to be expected of him, he

"Oh, very well," said Flambeau, laughing; and the next instant his own towering figure was visible on that

Slight as was the difference of height, it gave in those level wastes a sense of seeing yet farther and farther

across land and sea. Inland the little wintry gardens faded into a confused grey copse; beyond that, in the

distance, were long low barns of a lonely farmhouse, and beyond that nothing but the long East Anglian

plains. Seawards there was no sail or sign of life save a few seagulls: and even they looked like the last

Flambeau turned abruptly at an exclamation behind him. It seemed to come from lower down than might

have been expected, and to be addressed to his heels rather than his head. He instantly held out his hand, but

he could hardly help laughing at what he saw. For some reason or other the platform had given way under

Father Brown, and the unfortunate little man had dropped through to the level of the parade. He was just tall

enough, or short enough, for his head alone to stick out of the hole in the broken wood, looking like St John

the Baptist's head on a charger. The face wore a disconcerted expression, as did, perhaps, that of St John the

In a moment he began to laugh a little. "This wood must be rotten," said Flambeau. "Though it seems odd it

But the little priest was looking rather curiously at the corners and edges of the wood alleged to be rotten, and

"Come along," cried Flambeau impatiently, still with his big brown hand extended. "Don't you want to get

The priest was holding a splinter of the broken wood between his finger and thumb, and did not immediately

reply. At last he said thoughtfully: "Want to get out? Why, no. I rather think I want to get in." And he dived

into the darkness under the wooden floor so abruptly as to knock off his big curved clerical hat and leave it

Flambeau looked once more inland and out to sea, and once more could see nothing but seas as wintry as the

There came a scurrying noise behind him, and the little priest came scrambling out of the hole faster than he

had fallen in. His face was no longer disconcerted, but rather resolute, and, perhaps only through the

"No," answered Father Brown. "I have found what was sometimes more important. The Sacrifice."

Father Brown did not answer. He was staring, with a knot in his forehead, at the landscape; and he suddenly

Following his finger, Flambeau saw for the first time the corners of a building nearer than the farmhouse, but

screened for the most part with a fringe of trees. It was not a large building, and stood well back from the

shore, but a glint of ornament on it suggested that it was part of the same wateringplace scheme of

Father Brown jumped off the bandstand, his friend following; and as they walked in the direction indicated

the trees fell away to right and left, and they saw a small, rather flashy hotel, such as is common in

resortsthe hotel of the Saloon Bar rather than the Bar Parlour. Almost the whole frontage was of gilt

plaster and figured glass, and between that grey seascape and the grey, witchlike trees, its gimcrack quality

had something spectral in its melancholy. They both felt vaguely that if any food or drink were offered at

In this, however, they were not altogether confirmed. As they drew nearer and nearer to the place they saw in

front of the buffet, which was apparently closed, one of the iron gardenseats with curly backs that had

adorned the gardens, but much longer, running almost the whole length of the frontage. Presumably, it was

placed so that visitors might sit there and look at the sea, but one hardly expected to find anyone doing it in

Nevertheless, just in front of the extreme end of the iron seat stood a small round restaurant table, and on this

stood a small bottle of Chablis and a plate of almonds and raisins. Behind the table and on the seat sat a

darkhaired young man, bareheaded, and gazing at the sea in a state of almost astonishing immobility.

But though he might have been a waxwork when they were within four yards of him, he jumped up like a

jackinthebox when they came within three, and said in a deferential, though not undignified, manner:

"Will you step inside, gentlemen? I have no staff at present, but I can get you anything simple myself."

"Yes," said the dark man, dropping back a little into his motionless manner. "My waiters are all Italians, you

see, and I thought it only fair they should see their countryman beat the black, if he really can do it. You

"I'm afraid we can't wait to trouble your hospitality seriously," said Father Brown. "But my friend would be

glad of a glass of sherry, I'm sure, to keep out the cold and drink success to the Latin champion."

Flambeau did not understand the sherry, but he did not object to it in the least. He could only say amiably:

"Sherry, sircertainly," said their host, turning to his hostel. "Excuse me if I detain you a few minutes. As I

told you, I have no staff" And he went towards the black windows of his shuttered and unlighted inn.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," began Flambeau, but the man turned to reassure him.

He was interrupted by a bellowing human voice that came out of the bowels of the uninhabited hotel. It

thundered some foreign name loudly but inaudibly, and the hotel proprietor moved more sharply towards it

than he had done for Flambeau's sherry. As instant evidence proved, the proprietor had told, then and after,

nothing but the literal truth. But both Flambeau and Father Brown have often confessed that, in all their

(often outrageous) adventures, nothing had so chilled their blood as that voice of an ogre, sounding suddenly

"My cook!" cried the proprietor hastily. "I had forgotten my cook. He will be starting presently. Sherry, sir?"

And, sure enough, there appeared in the doorway a big white bulk with white cap and white apron, as befits a

cook, but with the needless emphasis of a black face. Flambeau had often heard that negroes made good

cooks. But somehow something in the contrast of colour and caste increased his surprise that the hotel

proprietor should answer the call of the cook, and not the cook the call of the proprietor. But he reflected that

head cooks are proverbially arrogant; and, besides, the host had come back with the sherry, and that was the

"I rather wonder," said Father Brown, "that there are so few people about the beach, when this big fight is

The hotel proprietor shrugged his shoulders. "They come from the other end of the town, you seefrom the

station, three miles from here. They are only interested in the sport, and will stop in hotels for the night only.

"I have to keep a lookout," said the man with the motionless face. He was a quiet, wellfeatured fellow,

rather sallow; his dark clothes had nothing distinctive about them, except that his black necktie was worn

rather high, like a stock, and secured by a gold pin with some grotesque head to it. Nor was there anything

notable in the face, except something that was probably a mere nervous trick a habit of opening one eye

more narrowly than the other, giving the impression that the other was larger, or was, perhaps, artificial.

The silence that ensued was broken by their host saying quietly: "Whereabouts did you meet the one man on

"Curiously enough," answered the priest, "close by here just by that bandstand."

Flambeau, who had sat on the long iron seat to finish his sherry, put it down and rose to his feet, staring at his

As has been said, the hotelkeeper can be proved to have told the precise truth. His phrase that the cook was

starting presently was fulfilled to the letter, for the cook came out, pulling his gloves on, even as they spoke.

But he was a very different figure from the confused mass of white and black that had appeared for an instant

in the doorway. He was buttoned and buckled up to his bursting eyeballs in the most brilliant fashion. A tall

black hat was tilted on his broad black head a hat of the sort that the French wit has compared to eight

mirrors. But somehow the black man was like the black hat. He also was black, and yet his glossy skin flung

back the light at eight angles or more. It is needless to say that he wore white spats and a white slip inside his

waistcoat. The red flower stood up in his buttonhole aggressively, as if it had suddenly grown there. And in

the way he carried his cane in one hand and his cigar in the other there was a certain attitude an attitude we

must always remember when we talk of racial prejudices: something innocent and insolentthe cake walk.

"Sometimes," said Flambeau, looking after him, "I'm not surprised that they lynch them."

"I am never surprised," said Father Brown, "at any work of hell. But as I was saying," he resumed, as the

negro, still ostentatiously pulling on his yellow gloves, betook himself briskly towards the wateringplace, a

queer musichall figure against that grey and frosty scene"as I was saying, I couldn't describe the man

very minutely, but he had a flourish and oldfashioned whiskers and moustachios, dark or dyed, as in the

pictures of foreign financiers, round his neck was wrapped a long purple scarf that thrashed out in the wind as

he walked. It was fixed at the throat rather in the way that nurses fix children's comforters with a safetypin.

Only this," added the priest, gazing placidly out to sea, "was not a safetypin."

The man sitting on the long iron bench was also gazing placidly out to sea. Now he was once more in repose.

Flambeau felt quite certain that one of his eyes was naturally larger than the other. Both were now well

"It was a very long gold pin, and had the carved head of a monkey or some such thing," continued the cleric;

The motionless man continued to gaze at the sea, and the eyes in his head might have belonged to two

Father Brown had his back to him, and in that flash might have fallen dead on his face. Flambeau had no

weapon, but his large brown hands were resting on the end of the long iron seat. His shoulders abruptly

altered their shape, and he heaved the whole huge thing high over his head, like a headsman's axe about to

fall. The mere height of the thing, as he held it vertical, looked like a long iron ladder by which he was

inviting men to climb towards the stars. But the long shadow, in the level evening light, looked like a giant

brandishing the Eiffel Tower. It was the shock of that shadow, before the shock of the iron crash, that made

the stranger quail and dodge, and then dart into his inn, leaving the flat and shining dagger he had dropped

"We must get away from here instantly," cried Flambeau, flinging the huge seat away with furious

indifference on the beach. He caught the little priest by the elbow and ran him down a grey perspective of

barren back garden, at the end of which there was a closed back garden door. Flambeau bent over it an instant

As he spoke a black feather from one of the ornamental firs fell, brushing the brim of his hat. It startled him

more than the small and distant detonation that had come just before. Then came another distant detonation,

and the door he was trying to open shook under the bullet buried in it. Flambeau's shoulders again filled out

and altered suddenly. Three hinges and a lock burst at the same instant, and he went out into the empty path

behind, carrying the great garden door with him, as Samson carried the gates of Gaza.

Then he flung the garden door over the garden wall, just as a third shot picked up a spurt of snow and dust

behind his heel. Without ceremony he snatched up the little priest, slung him astraddle on his shoulders, and

went racing towards Seawood as fast as his long legs could carry him. It was not until nearly two miles

farther on that he set his small companion down. It had hardly been a dignified escape, in spite of the classic

"Well," said Flambeau, after an impatient silence, as they resumed their more conventional tramp through the

streets on the edge of the town, where no outrage need be feared, "I don't know what all this means, but I take

it I may trust my own eyes that you never met the man you have so accurately described."

"I did meet him in a way," Brown said, biting his finger rather nervously"I did really. And it was too dark

to see him properly, because it was under that bandstand affair. But I'm afraid I didn't describe him so very

accurately after all, for his pincenez was broken under him, and the long gold pin wasn't stuck through his

"And I suppose," said the other in a lower voice, "that glasseyed guy had something to do with it."

"I had hoped he had only a little," answered Brown in a rather troubled voice, "and I may have been wrong in

what I did. I acted on impulse. But I fear this business has deep roots and dark."

They walked on through some streets in silence. The yellow lamps were beginning to be lit in the cold blue

twilight, and they were evidently approaching the more central parts of the town. Highly coloured bills

announcing the glovefight between Nigger Ned and Malvoli were slapped about the walls.

"Well," said Flambeau, "I never murdered anyone, even in my criminal days, but I can almost sympathize

with anyone doing it in such a dreary place. Of all Godforsaken dustbins of Nature, I think the most

heartbreaking are places like that bandstand, that were meant to be festive and are forlorn. I can fancy a

morbid man feeling he must kill his rival in the solitude and irony of such a scene. I remember once taking a

tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast

circle of land, and over me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge as a Roman

amphitheatre and as empty as a new letterrack. A bird sailed in heaven over it. It was the Grand Stand at

"It's odd you should mention Epsom," said the priest. "Do you remember what was called the Sutton Mystery,

because two suspected menicecream men, I thinkhappened to live at Sutton? They were eventually

released. A man was found strangled, it was said, on the Downs round that part. As a fact, I know (from an

Irish policeman who is a friend of mine) that he was found close up to the Epsom Grand Standin fact, only

"That is queer," assented Flambeau. "But it rather confirms my view that such pleasure places look awfully

"Not so sure he was murdered out of the season," answered the little priest, with simplicity. "Don't you think

there's something rather tricky about this solitude, Flambeau? Do you feel sure a wise murderer would always

want the spot to be lonely? It's very, very seldom a man is quite alone. And, short of that, the more alone he

is, the more certain he is to be seen. No; I think there must be some otherWhy, here we are at the Pavilion

They had emerged on a small square, brilliantly lighted, of which the principal building was gay with gilding,

gaudy with posters, and flanked with two giant photographs of Malvoli and Nigger Ned.

"Hallo!" cried Flambeau in great surprise, as his clerical friend stumped straight up the broad steps. "I didn't

They passed rapidly through anterooms and inner rooms; they passed through the hall of combat itself,

raised, roped, and padded with innumerable seats and boxes, and still the cleric did not look round or pause

till he came to a clerk at a desk outside a door marked "Committee". There he stopped and asked to see Lord

The attendant observed that his lordship was very busy, as the fight was coming on soon, but Father Brown

had a goodtempered tedium of reiteration for which the official mind is generally not prepared. In a few

moments the rather baffled Flambeau found himself in the presence of a man who was still shouting

directions to another man going out of the room. "Be careful, you know, about the ropes after the fourth

Lord Pooley was a gentleman, and, like most of the few remaining to our race, was worriedespecially

about money. He was half grey and half flaxen, and he had the eyes of fever and a highbridged, frostbitten

Lord Pooley bounded off his chair as if a spring had flung him from it. "I'm damned if I'll stand any more of

this!" he cried. "You and your committees and parsons and petitions! Weren't there parsons in the old days,

when they fought without gloves? Now they're fighting with the regulation gloves, and there's not the rag of a

"Well, well, well!" said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour. "Who's going to be killed? The

"I don't know who's going to be killed," replied Father Brown, with a reflective stare. "If I did I shouldn't

have to spoil your pleasure. I could simply get him to escape. I never could see anything wrong about

prizefights. As it is, I must ask you to announce that the fight is off for the present."

"Anything else?" jeered the gentleman with feverish eyes. "And what do you say to the two thousand people

"I say there will be one thousand ninehundred and ninetynine of them left alive when they have seen it,"

"And took here," resumed Pooley in his restless way, "it's worse than that. A whole pack of Italians have

turned up to back Malvoliswarthy, savage fellows of some country, anyhow. You know what these

Mediterranean races are like. If I send out word that it's off we shall have Malvoli storming in here at the

"My lord, it is a matter of life and death," said the priest. "Ring your bell. Give your message. And see

The nobleman struck the bell on the table with an odd air of new curiosity. He said to the clerk who appeared

almost instantly in the doorway: "I have a serious announcement to make to the audience shortly. Meanwhile,

would you kindly tell the two champions that the fight will have to be put off."

"What authority have you for what you say?" asked Lord Pooley abruptly. "Whom did you consult?"

"I consulted a bandstand," said Father Brown, scratching his head. "But, no, I'm wrong; I consulted a book,

He had taken out of his pocket a small, stout, leatherbound volume, and Flambeau, looking over his

shoulder, could see that it was some book of old travels, and had a leaf turned down for reference.

"`In which Voodoo,'" repeated the reader, almost with relish, "`is widely organized outside Jamaica itself is in

the form known as the Monkey, or the God of the Gongs, which is powerful in many parts of the two

American continents, especially among halfbreeds, many of whom look exactly like white men. It differs

from most other forms of devilworship and human sacrifice in the fact that the blood is not shed formally on

the altar, but by a sort of assassination among the crowd. The gongs beat with a deafening din as the doors of

the shrine open and the monkeygod is revealed; almost the whole congregation rivet ecstatic eyes on him.

The door of the room was flung open, and the fashionable negro stood framed in it, his eyeballs rolling, his

silk hat still insolently tilted on his head. "Huh!" he cried, showing his apish teeth. "What this? Huh! Huh!

You steal a coloured gentleman's prize prize his alreadyyo' think yo' jes' save that white 'Talian trash"

"The matter is only deferred," said the nobleman quietly. "I will be with you to explain in a minute or two."

"My name is Pooley," replied the other, with a creditable coolness. "I am the organizing secretary, and I

"Who this fellow?" demanded the dark champion, pointing to the priest disdainfully.

"My name is Brown," was the reply. "And I advise you just now to leave the country."

The prizefighter stood glaring for a few seconds, and then, rather to the surprise of Flambeau and the others,

"Well," asked Father Brown rubbing his dusty hair up, "what do you think of Leonardo da Vinci? A beautiful

"Look here," said Lord Pooley, "I've taken a considerable responsibility, on your bare word. I think you ought

"You are quite right, my lord," answered Brown. "And it won't take long to tell." He put the little leather

book in his overcoat pocket. "I think we know all that this can tell us, but you shall look at it to see if I'm

right. That negro who has just swaggered out is one of the most dangerous men on earth, for he has the brains

of a European, with the instincts of a cannibal. He has turned what was clean, commonsense butchery

among his fellowbarbarians into a very modern and scientific secret society of assassins. He doesn't know I

"But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to make sure I'm alone with him?"

Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the little clergyman. He only said: "If you

Father Brown shook his head, like a murderer of much riper experience. "So Flambeau said," he replied, with

a sigh. "But consider. The more a man feels lonely the less he can be sure he is alone. It must mean empty

spaces round him, and they are just what make him obvious. Have you never seen one ploughman from the

heights, or one shepherd from the valleys? Have you never walked along a cliff, and seen one man walking

along the sands? Didn't you know when he's killed a crab, and wouldn't you have known if it had been a

creditor? No! No! No! For an intelligent murderer, such as you or I might be, it is an impossible plan to make

"There is only one," said the priest. "To make sure that everybody is looking at something else. A man is

throttled close by the big stand at Epsom. Anybody might have seen it done while the stand stood

emptyany tramp under the hedges or motorist among the hills. But nobody would have seen it when the

stand was crowded and the whole ring roaring, when the favourite was coming in firstor wasn't. The

twisting of a neckcloth, the thrusting of a body behind a door could be done in an instant so long as it was

that instant. It was the same, of course," he continued turning to Flambeau, "with that poor fellow under the

bandstand. He was dropped through the hole (it wasn't an accidental hole) just at some very dramatic moment

of the entertainment, when the bow of some great violinist or the voice of some great singer opened or came

to its climax. And here, of course, when the knockout blow cameit would not be the only one. That is the

"Malvoli," said the priest, "has nothing to do with it. I dare say he has some Italians with him, but our

amiable friends are not Italians. They are octoroons and African halfbloods of various shades, but I fear we

English think all foreigners are much the same so long as they are dark and dirty. Also," he added, with a

smile, "I fear the English decline to draw any fine distinction between the moral character produced by my

The blaze of the spring season had burst upon Seawood, littering its foreshore with famines and

bathingmachines, with nomadic preachers and nigger minstrels, before the two friends saw it again, and

long before the storm of pursuit after the strange secret society had died away. Almost on every hand the

secret of their purpose perished with them. The man of the hotel was found drifting dead on the sea like so

much seaweed; his right eye was closed in peace, but his left eye was wide open, and glistened like glass in

the moon. Nigger Ned had been overtaken a mile or two away, and murdered three policemen with his closed

left hand. The remaining officer was surprisednay, painedand the negro got away. But this was enough

to set all the English papers in a flame, and for a month or two the main purpose of the British Empire was to

prevent the buck nigger (who was so in both senses) escaping by any English port. Persons of a figure

remotely reconcilable with his were subjected to quite extraordinary inquisitions, made to scrub their faces

before going on board ship, as if each white complexion were made up like a mask, of greasepaint. Every

negro in England was put under special regulations and made to report himself; the outgoing ships would no

more have taken a nigger than a basilisk. For people had found out how fearful and vast and silent was the

force of the savage secret society, and by the time Flambeau and Father Brown were leaning on the parade

parapet in April, the Black Man meant in England almost what he once meant in Scotland.

"He must be still in England," observed Flambeau, "and horridly well hidden, too. They must have found him

"You see, he is really a clever man," said Father Brown apologetically. "And I'm sure he wouldn't whiten his

Flambeau, leaning motionless on the parapet, laughed and said: "My dear fellow!"

Father Brown, also leaning motionless on the parapet, moved one finger for an instant into the direction of

FATHER BROWN was walking home from Mass on a white weird morning when the mists were slowly

liftingone of those mornings when the very element of light appears as something mysterious and new.

The scattered trees outlined themselves more and more out of the vapour, as if they were first drawn in grey

chalk and then in charcoal. At yet more distant intervals appeared the houses upon the broken fringe of the

suburb; their outlines became clearer and clearer until he recognized many in which he had chance

acquaintances, and many more the names of whose owners he knew. But all the windows and doors were

sealed; none of the people were of the sort that would be up at such a time, or still less on such an errand. But

as he passed under the shadow of one handsome villa with verandas and wide ornate gardens, he heard a

noise that made him almost involuntarily stop. It was the unmistakable noise of a pistol or carbine or some

light firearm discharged; but it was not this that puzzled him most. The first full noise was immediately

followed by a series of fainter noises as he counted them, about six. He supposed it must be the echo; but

the odd thing was that the echo was not in the least like the original sound. It was not like anything else that

he could think of; the three things nearest to it seemed to be the noise made by siphons of sodawater, one of

the many noises made by an animal, and the noise made by a person attempting to conceal laughter. None of

Father Brown was made of two men. There was a man of action, who was as modest as a primrose and as

punctual as a clock; who went his small round of duties and never dreamed of altering it. There was also a

man of reflection, who was much simpler but much stronger, who could not easily be stopped; whose thought

was always (in the only intelligent sense of the words) free thought. He could not help, even unconsciously,

asking himself all the questions that there were to be asked, and answering as many of them as he could; all

that went on like his breathing or circulation. But he never consciously carried his actions outside the sphere

of his own duty; and in this case the two attitudes were aptly tested. He was just about to resume his trudge in

the twilight, telling himself it was no affair of his, but instinctively twisting and untwisting twenty theories

about what the odd noises might mean. Then the grey skyline brightened into silver, and in the broadening

light he realized that he had been to the house which belonged to an AngloIndian Major named Putnam; and

that the Major had a native cook from Malta who was of his communion. He also began to remember that

pistolshots are sometimes serious things; accompanied with consequences with which he was legitimately

concerned. He turned back and went in at the garden gate, making for the front door.

Halfway down one side of the house stood out a projection like a very low shed; it was, as he afterwards

discovered, a large dustbin. Round the corner of this came a figure, at first a mere shadow in the haze,

apparently bending and peering about. Then, coming nearer, it solidified into a figure that was, indeed, rather

unusually solid. Major Putnam was a baldheaded, bullnecked man, short and very broad, with one of those

rather apoplectic faces that are produced by a prolonged attempt to combine the oriental climate with the

occidental luxuries. But the face was a goodhumoured one, and even now, though evidently puzzled and

inquisitive, wore a kind of innocent grin. He had a large palmleaf hat on the back of his head (suggesting a

halo that was by no means appropriate to the face), but otherwise he was clad only in a very vivid suit of

striped scarlet and yellow pyjamas; which, though glowing enough to behold, must have been, on a fresh

morning, pretty chilly to wear. He had evidently come out of his house in a hurry, and the priest was not

surprised when he called out without further ceremony: "Did you hear that noise?"

"Yes," answered Father Brown; "I thought I had better look in, in case anything was the matter."

The Major looked at him rather queerly with his goodhumoured gooseberry eyes. "What do you think the

"It sounded like a gun or something," replied the other, with some hesitation; "but it seemed to have a

The Major was still looking at him quietly, but with protruding eyes, when the front door was flung open,

releasing a flood of gaslight on the face of the fading mist; and another figure in pyjamas sprang or tumbled

out into the garden. The figure was much longer, leaner, and more athletic; the pyjamas, though equally

tropical, were comparatively tasteful, being of white with a light lemonyellow stripe. The man was haggard,

but handsome, more sunburned than the other; he had an aquiline profile and rather deepsunken eyes, and a

slight air of oddity arising from the combination of coalblack hair with a much lighter moustache. All this

Father Brown absorbed in detail more at leisure. For the moment he only saw one thing about the man; which

"Yes, I did," retorted the blackhaired gentleman hotly; "and so would you in my place. If you were chased

The Major seemed to intervene rather hurriedly. "This is my friend Father Brown," he said. And then to

"I have heard of him, of course," said the priest innocently. "Did youdid you hit anything?"

"Did he" asked Major Putnam in a lowered voice, "did he fall or cry out, or anything?"

Colonel Cray was regarding his host with a strange and steady stare. "I'll tell you exactly what he did," he

Father Brown's hand went halfway to his head, with the gesture of a man remembering somebody's name.

"Well," ejaculated the staring Major, "I never heard before that a service revolver was a thing to be sneezed

"Nor I," said Father Brown faintly. "It's lucky you didn't turn your artillery on him or you might have given

him quite a bad cold." Then, after a bewildered pause, he said: "Was it a burglar?"

"Let us go inside," said Major Putnam, rather sharply, and led the way into his house.

The interior exhibited a paradox often to be marked in such morning hours: that the rooms seemed brighter

than the sky outside; even after the Major had turned out the one gaslight in the front hall. Father Brown was

surprised to see the whole diningtable set out as for a festive meal, with napkins in their rings, and

wineglasses of some six unnecessary shapes set beside every plate. It was common enough, at that time of

the morning, to find the remains of a banquet overnight; but to find it freshly spread so early was unusual.

While he stood wavering in the hall Major Putnam rushed past him and sent a raging eye over the whole

oblong of the tablecloth. At last he spoke, spluttering: "All the silver gone!" he gasped. "Fishknives and

forks gone. Old cruetstand gone. Even the old silver creamjug gone. And now, Father Brown, I am ready

"They're simply a blind," said Cray stubbornly. "I know better than you why people persecute this house; I

The Major patted him on the shoulder with a gesture almost peculiar to the soothing of a sick child, and said:

"A burglar with a bad cold," observed Father Brown, "that might assist you to trace him in the

The Major shook his head in a sombre manner. "He must be far beyond trace now, I fear," he said.

Then, as the restless man with the revolver turned again towards the door in the garden, he added in a husky,

confidential voice: "I doubt whether I should send for the police, for fear my friend here has been a little too

free with his bullets, and got on the wrong side of the law. He's lived in very wild places; and, to be frank

"I think you once told me," said Brown, "that he believes some Indian secret society is pursuing him."

Major Putnam nodded, but at the same time shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose we'd better follow him

They passed out into the morning light, which was now even tinged with sunshine, and saw Colonel Cray's

tall figure bent almost double, minutely examining the condition of gravel and grass. While the Major strolled

unobtrusively towards him, the priest took an equally indolent turn, which took him round the next corner of

He stood regarding this dismal object for some minute and a half, then he stepped towards it, lifted the lid

and put his head inside. Dust and other discolouring matter shook upwards as he did so; but Father Brown

never observed his own appearance, whatever else he observed. He remained thus for a measurable period, as

if engaged in some mysterious prayers. Then he came out again, with some ashes on his hair, and walked

By the time he came round to the garden door again he found a group there which seemed to roll away

morbidities as the sunlight had already rolled away the mists. It was in no way rationally reassuring; it was

simply broadly comic, like a cluster of Dickens's characters. Major Putnam had managed to slip inside and

plunge into a proper shirt and trousers, with a crimson cummerbund, and a light square jacket over all; thus

normally set off, his red festive face seemed bursting with a commonplace cordiality. He was indeed

emphatic, but then he was talking to his cookthe swarthy son of Malta, whose lean, yellow and rather

careworn face contrasted quaintly with his snowwhite cap and costume. The cook might well be careworn,

for cookery was the Major's hobby. He was one of those amateurs who always know more than the

professional. The only other person he even admitted to be a judge of an omelette was his friend Crayand

as Brown remembered this, he turned to look for the other officer. In the new presence of daylight and people

clothed and in their right mind, the sight of him was rather a shock. The taller and more elegant man was still

in his nightgarb, with tousled black hair, and now crawling about the garden on his hands and knees, still

looking for traces of the burglar; and now and again, to all appearance, striking the ground with his hand in

anger at not finding him. Seeing him thus quadrupedal in the grass, the priest raised his eyebrows rather

sadly; and for the first time guessed that "fancies things" might be an euphemism.

The third item in the group of the cook and the epicure was also known to Father Brown; it was Audrey

Watson, the Major's ward and housekeeper; and at this moment, to judge by her apron, tuckedup sleeves and

"It serves you right," she was saying: "I always told you not to have that oldfashioned cruetstand."

"I prefer it," said Putnam, placably. "I'm oldfashioned myself; and the things keep together."

"And vanish together, as you see," she retorted. "Well, if you are not going to bother about the burglar, I

shouldn't bother about the lunch. It's Sunday, and we can't send for vinegar and all that in the town; and you

Indian gentlemen can't enjoy what you call a dinner without a lot of hot things. I wish to goodness now you

hadn't asked Cousin Oliver to take me to the musical service. It isn't over till halfpast twelve, and the

"Oh yes, we can, my dear," said the Major, looking at her very amiably. "Marco has all the sauces, and we've

often done ourselves well in very rough places, as you might know by now. And it's time you had a treat,

Audrey; you mustn't be a housekeeper every hour of the day; and I know you want to hear the music."

She was one of those handsome women who will always be handsome, because the beauty is not in an air or

a tint, but in the very structure of the head and features. But though she was not yet middleaged and her

auburn hair was of a Titianesque fullness in form and colour, there was a look in her mouth and around her

eyes which suggested that some sorrows wasted her, as winds waste at last the edges of a Greek temple. For

indeed the little domestic difficulty of which she was now speaking so decisively was rather comic than

tragic. Father Brown gathered, from the course of the conversation, that Cray, the other gourmet, had to leave

before the usual lunchtime; but that Putnam, his host, not to be done out of a final feast with an old crony,

had arranged for a special dejeuner to be set out and consumed in the course of the morning, while Audrey

and other graver persons were at morning service. She was going there under the escort of a relative and old

friend of hers, Dr Oliver Oman, who, though a scientific man of a somewhat bitter type, was enthusiastic for

music, and would go even to church to get it. There was nothing in all this that could conceivably concern the

tragedy in Miss Watson's face; and by a half conscious instinct, Father Brown turned again to the seeming

When he strolled across to him, the black, unbrushed head was lifted abruptly, as if in some surprise at his

continued presence. And indeed, Father Brown, for reasons best known to himself, had lingered much longer

"Well!" cried Cray, with wild eyes. "I suppose you think I'm mad, like the rest?"

"I have considered the thesis," answered the little man, composedly. "And I incline to think you are not."

"Real madmen," explained Father Brown, "always encourage their own morbidity. They never strive against

it. But you are trying to find traces of the burglar; even when there aren't any. You are struggling against it.

During the last words Cray had sprung or staggered to his feet and was regarding the cleric with agitated

eyes. "By hell, but that is a true word!" he cried. "They are all at me here that the fellow was only after the

silveras if I shouldn't be only too pleased to think so! She's been at me," and he tossed his tousled black

head towards Audrey, but the other had no need of the direction, "she's been at me today about how cruel I

was to shoot a poor harmless housebreaker, and how I have the devil in me against poor harmless natives.

After a pause he said: "Look here, I've never seen you before; but you shall judge of the whole story. Old

Putnam and I were friends in the same mess; but, owing to some accidents on the Afghan border, I got my

command much sooner than most men; only we were both invalided home for a bit. I was engaged to Audrey

out there; and we all travelled back together. But on the journey back things happened. Curious things. The

result of them was that Putnam wants it broken off, and even Audrey keeps it hanging on and I know what

"Well, these are the facts. The last day we were in an Indian city I asked Putnam if I could get some

Trichinopoli cigars, he directed me to a little place opposite his lodgings. I have since found he was quite

right; but `opposite' is a dangerous word when one decent house stands opposite five or six squalid ones; and

I must have mistaken the door. It opened with difficulty, and then only on darkness; but as I turned back, the

door behind me sank back and settled into its place with a noise as of innumerable bolts. There was nothing

to do but to walk forward; which I did through passage after passage, pitchdark. Then I came to a flight of

steps, and then to a blind door, secured by a latch of elaborate Eastern ironwork, which I could only trace by

touch, but which I loosened at last. I came out again upon gloom, which was half turned into a greenish

twilight by a multitude of small but steady lamps below. They showed merely the feet or fringes of some

huge and empty architecture. Just in front of me was something that looked like a mountain. I confess I nearly

fell on the great stone platform on which I had emerged, to realize that it was an idol. And worst of all, an

"It was hardly half human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head, and still more by a thing like a tail or

extra limb turned up behind and pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the centre

of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, to guess at the hieroglyphic, not without horror, when a

more horrible thing happened. A door opened silently in the temple wall behind me and a man came out, with

a brown face and a black coat. He had a carved smile on his face, of copper flesh and ivory teeth; but I think

the most hateful thing about him was that he was in European dress. I was prepared, I think, for shrouded

priests or naked fakirs. But this seemed to say that the devilry was over all the earth. As indeed I found it to

"`If you had only seen the Monkey's Feet,' he said, smiling steadily, and without other preface, `we should

have been very gentle you would only be tortured and die. If you had seen the Monkey's Face, still we

should be very moderate, very tolerantyou would only be tortured and live. But as you have seen the

"When he said the words I heard the elaborate iron latch with which I had struggled, automatically unlock

itself: and then, far down the dark passages I had passed, I heard the heavy streetdoor shifting its own bolts

"`It is vain to ask for mercy; you must go free,' said the smiling man. `Henceforth a hair shall slay you like a

sword, and a breath shall bite you like an adder; weapons shall come against you out of nowhere; and you

shall die many times.' And with that he was swallowed once more in the wall behind; and I went out into the

Cray paused; and Father Brown unaffectedly sat down on the lawn and began to pick daisies.

Then the soldier continued: "Putnam, of course, with his jolly common sense, poohpoohed all my fears; and

from that time dates his doubt of my mental balance. Well, I'll simply tell you, in the fewest words, the three

"The first happened in an Indian village on the edge of the jungle, but hundreds of miles from the temple, or

town, or type of tribes and customs where the curse had been put on me. I woke in black midnight, and lay

thinking of nothing in particular, when I felt a faint tickling thing, like a thread or a hair, trailed across my

throat. I shrank back out of its way, and could not help thinking of the words in the temple. But when I got up

"The second happened in a lodging in Port Said, later, on our journey home together. It was a jumble of

tavern and curiosityshop; and though there was nothing there remotely suggesting the cult of the Monkey, it

is, of course, possible that some of its images or talismans were in such a place. Its curse was there, anyhow. I

woke again in the dark with a sensation that could not be put in colder or more literal words than that a breath

bit like an adder. Existence was an agony of extinction; I dashed my head against walls until I dashed it

against a window; and fell rather than jumped into the garden below. Putnam, poor fellow, who had called the

other thing a chance scratch, was bound to take seriously the fact of finding me half insensible on the grass at

"The third happened in Malta. We were in a fortress there; and as it happened our bedrooms overlooked the

open sea, which almost came up to our windowsills, save for a flat white outer wall as bare as the sea. I

woke up again; but it was not dark. There was a full moon, as I walked to the window; I could have seen a

bird on the bare battlement, or a sail on the horizon. What I did see was a sort of stick or branch circling,

selfsupported, in the empty sky. It flew straight in at my window and smashed the lamp beside the pillow I

had just quitted. It was one of those queershaped warclubs some Eastern tribes use. But it had come from

Father Brown threw away a daisychain he was making, and rose with a wistful look. "Has Major Putnam,"

he asked, "got any Eastern curios, idols, weapons and so on, from which one might get a hint?"

"Plenty of those, though not much use, I fear," replied Cray; "but by all means come into his study."

As they entered they passed Miss Watson buttoning her gloves for church, and heard the voice of Putnam

downstairs still giving a lecture on cookery to the cook. In the Major's study and den of curios they came

suddenly on a third party, silkhatted and dressed for the street, who was poring over an open book on the

Cray introduced him civilly enough, as Dr Oman, but he showed such disfavour in his very face that Brown

guessed the two men, whether Audrey knew it or not, were rivals. Nor was the priest wholly unsympathetic

with the prejudice. Dr Oman was a very welldressed gentleman indeed; wellfeatured, though almost dark

enough for an Asiatic. But Father Brown had to tell himself sharply that one should be in charity even with

those who wax their pointed beards, who have small gloved hands, and who speak with perfectly modulated

Cray seemed to find something specially irritating in the small prayerbook in Oman's darkgloved hand. "I

Oman laughed mildly, but without offence. "This is more so, I know," he said, laying his hand on the big

book he had dropped, "a dictionary of drugs and such things. But it's rather too large to take to church." Then

he closed the larger book, and there seemed again the faintest touch of hurry and embarrassment.

"I suppose," said the priest, who seemed anxious to change the subject, "all these spears and things are from

"From everywhere," answered the doctor. "Putnam is an old soldier, and has been in Mexico and Australia,

"I hope it was not in the Cannibal Islands," said Brown, "that he learnt the art of cookery." And he ran his

At this moment the jolly subject of their conversation thrust his laughing, lobsterish face into the room.

"Come along, Cray," he cried. "Your lunch is just coming in. And the bells are ringing for those who want to

Cray slipped upstairs to change; Dr Oman and Miss Watson betook themselves solemnly down the street,

with a string of other churchgoers; but Father Brown noticed that the doctor twice looked back and

scrutinized the house; and even came back to the corner of the street to look at it again.

The priest looked puzzled. "He can't have been at the dustbin," he muttered. "Not in those clothes. Or was he

Father Brown, touching other people, was as sensitive as a barometer; but today he seemed about as sensitive

as a rhinoceros. By no social law, rigid or implied, could he be supposed to linger round the lunch of the

AngloIndian friends; but he lingered, covering his position with torrents of amusing but quite needless

conversation. He was the more puzzling because he did not seem to want any lunch. As one after another of

the most exquisitely balanced kedgerees of curries, accompanied with their appropriate vintages, were laid

before the other two, he only repeated that it was one of his fastdays, and munched a piece of bread and

sipped and then left untasted a tumbler of cold water. His talk, however, was exuberant.

"I'll tell you what I'll do for you," he cried, "I'll mix you a salad! I can't eat it, but I'll mix it like an angel!

"Unfortunately it's the only thing we have got," answered the goodhumoured Major. "You must remember

"I know," replied Brown, rather vaguely. "That's what I've always been afraid would happen. That's why I

And to the amazement of the two men he took a pepperpot out of his waistcoat pocket and put it on the

"I wonder why the burglar wanted mustard, too," he went on, taking a mustardpot from another pocket. "A

mustard plaster, I suppose. And vinegar"and producing that condiment "haven't I heard something about

His garrulity was an instant arrested; for lifting his eyes, he saw what no one else sawthe black figure of

Dr Oman standing on the sunlit lawn and looking steadily into the room. Before he could quite recover

"You're an astounding card," he said, staring. "I shall come and hear your sermons, if they're as amusing as

"Oh, there are sermons in a cruetstand, too," said Father Brown, quite gravely. "Have you heard of faith like

a grain of mustardseed; or charity that anoints with oil? And as for vinegar, can any soldiers forget that

Father Brown, who was making the salad, tipped two spoonfuls of the mustard into the tumbler of water

At the same moment the motionless doctor in the garden came running, and bursting open a window cried:

"Pretty near," said Brown, with the shadow of a smile; for the emetic had very suddenly taken effect. And

Major Putnam had sprung up, his purple face mottled. "A crime!" he cried hoarsely. "I will go for the police!"

The priest could hear him dragging down his palmleaf hat from the peg and tumbling out of the front door;

he heard the garden gate slam. But he only stood looking at Cray; and after a silence said quietly:

"I shall not talk to you much; but I will tell you what you want to know. There is no curse on you. The

Temple of the Monkey was either a coincidence or a part of the trick; the trick was the trick of a white man.

There is only one weapon that will bring blood with that mere feathery touch: a razor held by a white man.

There is one way of making a common room full of invisible, overpowering poison: turning on the gasthe

crime of a white man. And there is only one kind of club that can be thrown out of a window, turn in midair

and come back to the window next to it: the Australian boomerang. You'll see some of them in the Major's

With that he went outside and spoke for a moment to the doctor. The moment after, Audrey Watson came

rushing into the house and fell on her knees beside Cray's chair. He could not hear what they said to each

other; but their faces moved with amazement, not unhappiness. The doctor and the priest walked slowly

"I suppose the Major was in love with her, too," he said with a sigh; and when the other nodded, observed:

"You were very generous, doctor. You did a fine thing. But what made you suspect?"

"A very small thing," said Oman; "but it kept me restless in church till I came back to see that all was well.

That book on his table was a work on poisons; and was put down open at the place where it stated that a

certain Indian poison, though deadly and difficult to trace, was particularly easily reversible by the use of the

"And remembered that there were emetics in the cruetstand," said Father Brown. "Exactly. He threw the

cruet in the dustbin where I found it, along with other silverfor the sake of a burglary blind. But if you

look at that pepperpot I put on the table, you'll see a small hole. That's where Cray's bullet struck, shaking

There was a silence. Then Dr Oman said grimly: "The Major is a long time looking for the police."

MR CALHOUN KIDD was a very young gentleman with a very old face, a face dried up with its own

eagerness, framed in blueblack hair and a black butterfly tie. He was the emissary in England of the colossal

American daily called the Western Sun also humorously described as the "Rising Sunset". This was in

allusion to a great journalistic declaration (attributed to Mr Kidd himself) that "he guessed the sun would rise

in the west yet, if American citizens did a bit more hustling." Those, however, who mock American

journalism from the standpoint of somewhat mellower traditions forget a certain paradox which partly

redeems it. For while the journalism of the States permits a pantomimic vulgarity long past anything English,

it also shows a real excitement about the most earnest mental problems, of which English papers are innocent,

or rather incapable. The Sun was full of the most solemn matters treated in the most farcical way. William

James figured there as well as "Weary Willie," and pragmatists alternated with pugilists in the long

Thus, when a very unobtrusive Oxford man named John Boulnois wrote in a very unreadable review called

the Natural Philosophy Quarterly a series of articles on alleged weak points in Darwinian evolution, it

fluttered no corner of the English papers; though Boulnois's theory (which was that of a comparatively

stationary universe visited occasionally by convulsions of change) had some rather faddy fashionableness at

Oxford, and got so far as to be named "Catastrophism". But many American papers seized on the challenge

as a great event; and the Sun threw the shadow of Mr Boulnois quite gigantically across its pages. By the

paradox already noted, articles of valuable intelligence and enthusiasm were presented with headlines

apparently written by an illiterate maniac, headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; Critic Boulnois says He

Jumps the Shocks"or "Keep Catastrophic, says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr Calhoun Kidd, of the Western

Sun, was bidden to take his butterfly tie and lugubrious visage down to the little house outside Oxford where

That fated philosopher had consented, in a somewhat dazed manner, to receive the interviewer, and had

named the hour of nine that evening. The last of a summer sunset clung about Cumnor and the low wooded

hills; the romantic Yankee was both doubtful of his road and inquisitive about his surroundings; and seeing

the door of a genuine feudal oldcountry inn, The Champion Arms, standing open, he went in to make

In the bar parlour he rang the bell, and had to wait some little time for a reply to it. The only other person

present was a lean man with close red hair and loose, horseylooking clothes, who was drinking very bad

whisky, but smoking a very good cigar. The whisky, of course, was the choice brand of The Champion Arms;

the cigar he had probably brought with him from London. Nothing could be more different than his cynical

negligence from the dapper dryness of the young American; but something in his pencil and open notebook,

and perhaps in the expression of his alert blue eye, caused Kidd to guess, correctly, that he was a brother

"Could you do me the favour," asked Kidd, with the courtesy of his nation, "of directing me to the Grey

"It's a few yards down the road," said the redhaired man, removing his cigar; "I shall be passing it myself in

"Sir Claude Champion's placehaven't you come down for that, too?" asked the other pressman, looking up.

"I've come to see Mrs Boulnois," replied the other. "But I shan't catch her at home." And he laughed rather

"I'm interested in catastrophes; and there are going to be some," replied his companion gloomily. "Mine's a

With that he spat on the floor; yet somehow in the very act and instant one could realize that the man had

The American pressman considered him with more attention. His face was pale and dissipated, with the

promise of formidable passions yet to be loosed; but it was a clever and sensitive face; his clothes were

coarse and careless, but he had a good seal ring on one of his long, thin fingers. His name, which came out in

the course of talk, was James Dalroy; he was the son of a bankrupt Irish landlord, and attached to a pink

paper which he heartily despised, called Smart Society, in the capacity of reporter and of something painfully

Smart Society, I regret to say, felt none of that interest in Boulnois on Darwin which was such a credit to the

head and hearts of the Western Sun. Dalroy had come down, it seemed, to snuff up the scent of a scandal

which might very well end in the Divorce Court, but which was at present hovering between Grey Cottage

Sir Claude Champion was known to the readers of the Western Sun as well as Mr Boulnois. So were the Pope

and the Derby Winner; but the idea of their intimate acquaintanceship would have struck Kidd as equally

incongruous. He had heard of (and written about, nay, falsely pretended to know) Sir Claude Champion, as

"one of the brightest and wealthiest of England's Upper Ten"; as the great sportsman who raced yachts round

the world; as the great traveller who wrote books about the Himalayas, as the politician who swept

constituencies with a startling sort of Tory Democracy, and as the great dabbler in art, music, literature, and,

above all, acting. Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in other than American eyes. There was something

of the Renascence Prince about his omnivorous culture and restless publicity, he was not only a great

amateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that antiquarian frivolity that we convey by the word

That faultless falcon profile with purpleblack Italian eye, which had been snapshotted so often both for

Smart Society and the Western Sun, gave everyone the impression of a man eaten by ambition as by a fire, or

even a disease. But though Kidd knew a great deal about Sir Claudea great deal more, in fact, than there

was to know it would never have crossed his wildest dreams to connect so showy an aristocrat with the

newlyunearthed founder of Catastrophism, or to guess that Sir Claude Champion and John Boulnois could

be intimate friends. Such, according to Dalroy's account, was nevertheless the fact. The two had hunted in

couples at school and college, and, though their social destinies had been very different (for Champion was a

great landlord and almost a millionaire, while Boulnois was a poor scholar and, until just lately, an unknown

one), they still kept in very close touch with each other. Indeed, Boulnois's cottage stood just outside the

But whether the two men could be friends much longer was becoming a dark and ugly question. A year or

two before, Boulnois had married a beautiful and not unsuccessful actress, to whom he was devoted in his

own shy and ponderous style; and the proximity of the household to Champion's had given that flighty

celebrity opportunities for behaving in a way that could not but cause painful and rather base excitement. Sir

Claude had carried the arts of publicity to perfection; and he seemed to take a crazy pleasure in being equally

ostentatious in an intrigue that could do him no sort of honour. Footmen from Pendragon were perpetually

leaving bouquets for Mrs Boulnois; carriages and motorcars were perpetually calling at the cottage for Mrs

Boulnois; balls and masquerades perpetually filled the grounds in which the baronet paraded Mrs Boulnois,

like the Queen of Love and Beauty at a tournament. That very evening, marked by Mr Kidd for the exposition

of Catastrophism, had been marked by Sir Claude Champion for an openair rendering of Romeo and Juliet,

"I don't think it can go on without a smash," said the young man with red hair, getting up and shaking

himself. "Old Boulnois may be squaredor he may be square. But if he's square he's thick what you

"Yes," answered Dalroy; "but even a man of grand intellectual powers can't be such a blighted fool as all that.

But Calhoun Kidd, having finished a milk and soda, betook himself smartly up the road towards the Grey

Cottage, leaving his cynical informant to his whisky and tobacco. The last of the daylight had faded; the skies

were of a dark, greengrey, like slate, studded here and there with a star, but lighter on the left side of the

The Grey Cottage, which stood entrenched, as it were, in a square of stiff, high thornhedges, was so close

under the pines and palisades of the Park that Kidd at first mistook it for the Park Lodge. Finding the name on

the narrow wooden gate, however, and seeing by his watch that the hour of the "Thinker's" appointment had

just struck, he went in and knocked at the front door. Inside the garden hedge, he could see that the house,

though unpretentious enough, was larger and more luxurious than it looked at first, and was quite a different

kind of place from a porter's lodge. A dogkennel and a beehive stood outside, like symbols of old English

countrylife; the moon was rising behind a plantation of prosperous pear trees, the dog that came out of the

kennel was reverendlooking and reluctant to bark; and the plain, elderly manservant who opened the door

"Mr Boulnois asked me to offer his apologies, sir," he said, "but he has been obliged to go out suddenly."

"But see here, I had an appointment," said the interviewer, with a rising voice. "Do you know where he went

"To Pendragon Park, sir," said the servant, rather sombrely, and began to close the door.

"No, sir," said the man shortly; "he stayed behind, and then went out alone." And he shut the door, brutally,

The American, that curious compound of impudence and sensitiveness, was annoyed. He felt a strong desire

to hustle them all along a bit and teach them business habits; the hoary old dog and the grizzled, heavyfaced

old butler with his prehistoric shirtfront, and the drowsy old moon, and above all the scatterbrained old

"If that's the way he goes on he deserves to lose his wife's purest devotion," said Mr Calhoun Kidd. "But

perhaps he's gone over to make a row. In that case I reckon a man from the Western Sun will be on the spot."

And turning the corner by the open lodgegates, he set off, stumping up the long avenue of black

pinewoods that pointed in abrupt perspective towards the inner gardens of Pendragon Park. The trees were

as black and orderly as plumes upon a hearse; there were still a few stars. He was a man with more literary

than direct natural associations; the word "Ravenswood" came into his head repeatedly. It was partly the

raven colour of the pinewoods; but partly also an indescribable atmosphere almost described in Scott's great

tragedy; the smell of something that died in the eighteenth century; the smell of dank gardens and broken

urns, of wrongs that will never now be righted; of something that is none the less incurably sad because it is

More than once, as he went up that strange, black road of tragic artifice, he stopped, startled, thinking he

heard steps in front of him. He could see nothing in front but the twin sombre walls of pine and the wedge of

starlit sky above them. At first he thought he must have fancied it or been mocked by a mere echo of his own

tramp. But as he went on he was more and more inclined to conclude, with the remains of his reason, that

there really were other feet upon the road. He thought hazily of ghosts; and was surprised how swiftly he

could see the image of an appropriate and local ghost, one with a face as white as Pierrot's, but patched with

black. The apex of the triangle of darkblue sky was growing brighter and bluer, but he did not realize as yet

that this was because he was coming nearer to the lights of the great house and garden. He only felt that the

atmosphere was growing more intense, there was in the sadness more violence and secrecymorehe

More pines, more pathway slid past him, and then he stood rooted as by a blast of magic. It is vain to say that

he felt as if he had got into a dream; but this time he felt quite certain that he had got into a book. For we

human beings are used to inappropriate things; we are accustomed to the clatter of the incongruous; it is a

tune to which we can go to sleep. If one appropriate thing happens, it wakes us up like the pang of a perfect

chord. Something happened such as would have happened in such a place in a forgotten tale.

Over the black pinewood came flying and flashing in the moon a naked swordsuch a slender and

sparkling rapier as may have fought many an unjust duel in that ancient park. It fell on the pathway far in

front of him and lay there glistening like a large needle. He ran like a hare and bent to look at it. Seen at close

quarters it had rather a showy look: the big red jewels in the hilt and guard were a little dubious. But there

He looked round wildly in the direction from which the dazzling missile had come, and saw that at this point

the sable facade of fir and pine was interrupted by a smaller road at right angles; which, when he turned it,

brought him in full view of the long, lighted house, with a lake and fountains in front of it. Nevertheless, he

Above him, at the angle of the steep green bank of the terraced garden, was one of those small picturesque

surprises common in the old landscape gardening; a kind of small round hill or dome of grass, like a giant

molehill, ringed and crowned with three concentric fences of roses, and having a sundial in the highest point

in the centre. Kidd could see the finger of the dial stand up dark against the sky like the dorsal fin of a shark

and the vain moonlight clinging to that idle clock. But he saw something else clinging to it also, for one wild

Though he saw it there only for a moment, though it was outlandish and incredible in costume, being clad

from neck to heel in tight crimson, with glints of gold, yet he knew in one flash of moonlight who it was.

That white face flung up to heaven, cleanshaven and so unnaturally young, like Byron with a Roman nose,

those black curls already grizzled he had seen the thousand public portraits of Sir Claude Champion. The

wild red figure reeled an instant against the sundial; the next it had rolled down the steep bank and lay at the

American's feet, faintly moving one arm. A gaudy, unnatural gold ornament on the arm suddenly reminded

Kidd of Romeo and Juliet; of course the tight crimson suit was part of the play. But there was a long red stain

down the bank from which the man had rolledthat was no part of the play. He had been run through the

Mr Calhoun Kidd shouted and shouted again. Once more he seemed to hear phantasmal footsteps, and started

to find another figure already near him. He knew the figure, and yet it terrified him. The dissipated youth who

had called himself Dalroy had a horribly quiet way with him; if Boulnois failed to keep appointments that had

been made, Dalroy had a sinister air of keeping appointments that hadn't. The moonlight discoloured

everything, against Dalroy's red hair his wan face looked not so much white as pale green.

All this morbid impressionism must be Kidd's excuse for having cried out, brutally and beyond all reason:

James Dalroy smiled his unpleasing smile; but before he could speak, the fallen figure made another

movement of the arm, waving vaguely towards the place where the sword fell; then came a moan, and then it

"Boulnois.... Boulnois, I say.... Boulnois did it... jealous of me...he was jealous, he was, he was..."

Again the failing hand waved towards the sword, and then fell rigid with a thud. In Kidd rose from its depth

"See here," he said sharply and with command, "you must fetch a doctor. This man's dead."

"And a priest, too, I suppose," said Dalroy in an undecipherable manner. "All these Champions are papists."

The American knelt down by the body, felt the heart, propped up the head and used some last efforts at

restoration; but before the other journalist reappeared, followed by a doctor and a priest, he was already

"Were you too late also?" asked the doctor, a solid prosperouslooking man, with conventional moustache

"In one sense," drawled the representative of the Sun. "I was too late to save the man, but I guess I was in

time to hear something of importance. I heard the dead man denounce his assassin."

The doctor stared at him gloomily with a reddening brow, but he did not contradict. Then the priest, a

shorter figure in the background, said mildly: "I understood that Mr Boulnois was not coming to Pendragon

"There again," said the Yankee grimly, "I may be in a position to give the old country a fact or two. Yes, sir,

John Boulnois was going to stay in all this evening; he fixed up a real good appointment there with me. But

John Boulnois changed his mind; John Boulnois left his home abruptly and all alone, and came over to this

darned Park an hour or so ago. His butler told me so. I think we hold what the allwise police call a

"Does Mrs Boulnois know?" asked James Dalroy, and again Kidd was conscious of an irrational desire to hit

The little priest had stepped out into the main avenue, and now returned with the fallen sword, which looked

ludicrously large and theatrical when attached to his dumpy figure, at once clerical and commonplace. "Just

The Yankee journalist took an electric torch from his pocket, and the priest held it close to the middle part of

the blade, which he examined with blinking care. Then, without glancing at the point or pommel, he handed

"I fear I'm no use here," he said, with a brief sigh. "I'll say good night to you, gentlemen." And he walked

away up the dark avenue towards the house, his hands clasped behind him and his big head bent in cogitation.

The rest of the group made increased haste towards the lodgegates, where an inspector and two constables

could already be seen in consultation with the lodgekeeper. But the little priest only walked slower and

slower in the dim cloister of pine, and at last stopped dead, on the steps of the house. It was his silent way of

acknowledging an equally silent approach; for there came towards him a presence that might have satisfied

even Calhoun Kidd's demands for a lovely and aristocratic ghost. It was a young woman in silvery satins of a

Renascence design; she had golden hair in two long shining ropes, and a face so startingly pale between them

that she might have been chryselephantinemade, that is, like some old Greek statues, out of ivory and gold.

"Mrs Boulnois?" he replied gravely. Then he looked at her and immediately said: "I see you know about Sir

He did not answer the question, but asked another: "Have you seen your husband?"

Again he did not answer; and the woman drew nearer to him, with a curiously intense expression on her face.

"Shall I tell you something more?" she said, with a rather fearful smile. "I don't think he did it, and you don't

either." Father Brown returned her gaze with a long, grave stare, and then nodded, yet more gravely.

"Father Brown," said the lady, "I am going to tell you all I know, but I want you to do me a favour first. Will

you tell me why you haven't jumped to the conclusion of poor John's guilt, as all the rest have done? Don't

mind what you say: II know about the gossip and the appearances that are against me."

Father Brown looked honestly embarrassed, and passed his hand across his forehead. "Two very little things,"

he said. "At least, one's very trivial and the other very vague. But such as they are, they don't fit in with Mr

He turned his blank, round face up to the stars and continued absentmindedly: "To take the vague idea first. I

attach a good deal of importance to vague ideas. All those things that `aren't evidence' are what convince me.

I think a moral impossibility the biggest of all impossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, but I think

this crime of his, as generally conceived, something very like a moral impossibility. Please do not think I

mean that Boulnois could not be so wicked. Anybody can be wickedas wicked as he chooses. We can

direct our moral wills; but we can't generally change our instinctive tastes and ways of doing things. Boulnois

might commit a murder, but not this murder. He would not snatch Romeo's sword from its romantic

scabbard; or slay his foe on the sundial as on a kind of altar; or leave his body among the roses, or fling the

sword away among the pines. If Boulnois killed anyone he'd do it quietly and heavily, as he'd do any other

doubtful thing take a tenth glass of port, or read a loose Greek poet. No, the romantic setting is not like

"And the trivial thing was this," said Brown. "There were fingerprints on that sword; fingerprints can be

detected quite a time after they are made if they're on some polished surface like glass or steel. These were on

a polished surface. They were halfway down the blade of the sword. Whose prints they were I have no

earthly clue; but why should anybody hold a sword halfway down? It was a long sword, but length is an

advantage in lunging at an enemy. At least, at most enemies. At all enemies except one."

"There is only one enemy," said Father Brown, "whom it is easier to kill with a dagger than a sword."

There was a long silence, and then the priest said quietly but abruptly: "Am I right, then? Did Sir Claude kill

An extraordinary expression flashed across her face, very different from pity, modesty, remorse, or anything

her companion had expected: her voice became suddenly strong and full. "I don't believe," she said, "he ever

"He hated my husband because...it is so strange I hardly know how to say it...because..."

Father Brown only nodded, and seemed still to be listening; he differed from most detectives in fact and

fiction in a small point he never pretended not to understand when he understood perfectly well.

Mrs Boulnois drew near once more with the same contained glow of certainty. "My husband," she said, "is a

great man. Sir Claude Champion was not a great man: he was a celebrated and successful man. My husband

has never been celebrated or successful; and it is the solemn truth that he has never dreamed of being so. He

no more expects to be famous for thinking than for smoking cigars. On all that side he has a sort of splendid

stupidity. He has never grown up. He still liked Champion exactly as he liked him at school; he admired him

as he would admire a conjuring trick done at the dinnertable. But he couldn't be got to conceive the notion

of envying Champion. And Champion wanted to be envied. He went mad and killed himself for that."

"Oh, don't you see?" she cried; "the whole picture is made for that the place is planned for it. Champion

put John in a little house at his very door, like a dependantto make him feel a failure. He never felt it. He

thinks no more about such things than than an absentminded lion. Champion would burst in on John's

shabbiest hours or homeliest meals with some dazzling present or announcement or expedition that made it

like the visit of Haroun Alraschid, and John would accept or refuse amiably with one eye off, so to speak, like

one lazy schoolboy agreeing or disagreeing with another. After five years of it John had not turned a hair; and

"And Haman began to tell them," said Father Brown, "of all the things wherein the king had honoured him;

and he said: `All these things profit me nothing while I see Mordecai the Jew sitting in the gate.'"

"The crisis came," Mrs Boulnois continued, "when I persuaded John to let me take down some of his

speculations and send them to a magazine. They began to attract attention, especially in America, and one

paper wanted to interview him. When Champion (who was interviewed nearly every day) heard of this late

little crumb of success falling to his unconscious rival, the last link snapped that held back his devilish hatred.

Then he began to lay that insane siege to my own love and honour which has been the talk of the shire. You

will ask me why I allowed such atrocious attentions. I answer that I could not have declined them except by

explaining to my husband, and there are some things the soul cannot do, as the body cannot fly. Nobody

could have explained to my husband. Nobody could do it now. If you said to him in so many words,

`Champion is stealing your wife,' he would think the joke a little vulgar: that it could be anything but a

jokethat notion could find no crack in his great skull to get in by. Well, John was to come and see us act

this evening, but just as we were starting he said he wouldn't; he had got an interesting book and a cigar. I

told this to Sir Claude, and it was his deathblow. The monomaniac suddenly saw despair. He stabbed

himself, crying out like a devil that Boulnois was slaying him; he lies there in the garden dead of his own

jealousy to produce jealousy, and John is sitting in the diningroom reading a book."

There was another silence, and then the little priest said: "There is only one weak point, Mrs Boulnois, in all

your very vivid account. Your husband is not sitting in the diningroom reading a book. That American

reporter told me he had been to your house, and your butler told him Mr Boulnois had gone to Pendragon

Her bright eyes widened to an almost electric glare; and yet it seemed rather bewilderment than confusion or

fear. "Why, what can you mean?" she cried. "All the servants were out of the house, seeing the theatricals.

Father Brown started and spun half round like an absurd teetotum. "What, what?" he cried seeming

galvanized into sudden life. "Look hereI saycan I make your husband hear if I go to the house?"

"Right, right!" rejoined the cleric energetically, and set off scuttling up the path towards the Park gates. He

turned once to say: "Better get hold of that Yankee, or `Crime of John Boulnois' will be all over the Republic

"You don't understand," said Mrs Boulnois. "He wouldn't mind. I don't think he imagines that America really

When Father Brown reached the house with the beehive and the drowsy dog, a small and neat maidservant

showed him into the diningroom, where Boulnois sat reading by a shaded lamp, exactly as his wife

described him. A decanter of port and a wineglass were at his elbow; and the instant the priest entered he

"He has been here for half an hour at least," thought Father Brown. In fact, he had the air of sitting where he

"Don't get up, Mr Boulnois," said the priest in his pleasant, prosaic way. "I shan't interrupt you a moment. I

"No," said Boulnois; "I was reading `The Bloody Thumb.'" He said it with neither frown nor smile, and his

visitor was conscious of a certain deep and virile indifference in the man which his wife had called greatness.

He laid down a gory yellow "shocker" without even feeling its incongruity enough to comment on it

humorously. John Boulnois was a big, slowmoving man with a massive head, partly grey and partly bald,

and blunt, burly features. He was in shabby and very oldfashioned eveningdress, with a narrow triangular

opening of shirtfront: he had assumed it that evening in his original purpose of going to see his wife act

"I won't keep you long from `The Bloody Thumb' or any other catastrophic affairs," said Father Brown,

Boulnois looked at him steadily, but a red bar began to show across his broad brow; and he seemed like one

"I know it was a strange crime," assented Brown in a low voice. "Stranger than murder perhapsto you. The

little sins are sometimes harder to confess than the big onesbut that's why it's so important to confess them.

Your crime is committed by every fashionable hostess six times a week: and yet you find it sticks to your

"I know," assented the other, "but one often has to choose between feeling a damned fool and being one."

"I can't analyse myself well," went on Boulnois; "but sitting in that chair with that story I was as happy as a

schoolboy on a halfholiday. It was security, eternityI can't convey it... the cigars were within reach...the

matches were within reach... the Thumb had four more appearances to...it was not only a peace, but a

plenitude. Then that bell rang, and I thought for one long, mortal minute that I couldn't get out of that

chairliterally, physically, muscularly couldn't. Then I did it like a man lifting the world, because I knew all

the servants were out. I opened the front door, and there was a little man with his mouth open to speak and

his notebook open to write in. I remembered the Yankee interviewer I had forgotten. His hair was parted in

"I didn't commit murder," continued the Catastrophist mildly, "but only perjury. I said I had gone across to

Pendragon Park and shut the door in his face. That is my crime, Father Brown, and I don't know what

"I shan't inflict any penance," said the clerical gentleman, collecting his heavy hat and umbrella with an air of

some amusement; "quite the contrary. I came here specially to let you off the little penance which would

"And what," asked Boulnois, smiling, "is the little penance I have so luckily been let off?"

THE picturesque city and state of Heiligwaldenstein was one of those toy kingdoms of which certain parts of

the German Empire still consist. It had come under the Prussian hegemony quite late in history hardly fifty

years before the fine summer day when Flambeau and Father Brown found themselves sitting in its gardens

and drinking its beer. There had been not a little of war and wild justice there within living memory, as soon

will be shown. But in merely looking at it one could not dismiss that impression of childishness which is the

most charming side of Germanythose little pantomime, paternal monarchies in which a king seems as

domestic as a cook. The German soldiers by the innumerable sentryboxes looked strangely like German

toys, and the cleancut battlements of the castle, gilded by the sunshine, looked the more like the gilt

gingerbread. For it was brilliant weather. The sky was as Prussian a blue as Potsdam itself could require, but

it was yet more like that lavish and glowing use of the colour which a child extracts from a shilling

paintbox. Even the greyribbed trees looked young, for the pointed buds on them were still pink, and in a

Despite his prosaic appearance and generally practical walk of life, Father Brown was not without a certain

streak of romance in his composition, though he generally kept his daydreams to himself, as many children

do. Amid the brisk, bright colours of such a day, and in the heraldic framework of such a town, he did feel

rather as if he had entered a fairy tale. He took a childish pleasure, as a younger brother might, in the

formidable swordstick which Flambeau always flung as he walked, and which now stood upright beside his

tall mug of Munich. Nay, in his sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the knobbed and

clumsy head of his own shabby umbrella, with some faint memories of the ogre's club in a coloured

toybook. But he never composed anything in the form of fiction, unless it be the tale that follows:

"I wonder," he said, "whether one would have real adventures in a place like this, if one put oneself in the

way? It's a splendid backscene for them, but I always have a kind of feeling that they would fight you with

"You are mistaken," said his friend. "In this place they not only fight with swords, but kill without swords.

"Why," replied the other, "I should say this was the only place in Europe where a man was ever shot without

"I mean a bullet in the brain," replied Flambeau. "Don't you know the story of the late Prince of this place? It

was one of the great police mysteries about twenty years ago. You remember, of course, that this place was

forcibly annexed at the time of Bismarck's very earliest schemes of consolidation forcibly, that is, but not

at all easily. The empire (or what wanted to be one) sent Prince Otto of Grossenmark to rule the place in the

Imperial interests. We saw his portrait in the gallery there a handsome old gentleman if he'd had any hair

or eyebrows, and hadn't been wrinkled all over like a vulture; but he had things to harass him, as I'll explain

in a minute. He was a soldier of distinguished skill and success, but he didn't have altogether an easy job with

this little place. He was defeated in several battles by the celebrated Arnhold brothersthe three guerrilla

Or something of that kind. Indeed, it is by no means certain that the occupation would ever have been

successful had not one of the three brothers, Paul, despicably, but very decisively declined to abide these

things any longer, and, by surrendering all the secrets of the insurrection, ensured its overthrow and his own

ultimate promotion to the post of chamberlain to Prince Otto. After this, Ludwig, the one genuine hero among

Mr Swinburne's heroes, was killed, sword in hand, in the capture of the city; and the third, Heinrich, who,

though not a traitor, had always been tame and even timid compared with his active brothers, retired into

something like a hermitage, became converted to a Christian quietism which was almost Quakerish, and

never mixed with men except to give nearly all he had to the poor. They tell me that not long ago he could

still be seen about the neighbourhood occasionally, a man in a black cloak, nearly blind, with very wild,

His friend looked at him in some surprise. "I didn't know you'd been here before," he said. "Perhaps you

know as much about it as I do. Anyhow, that's the story of the Arnholds, and he was the last survivor of them.

"Died," repeated Flambeau, "and that's about as much as we can say. You must understand that towards the

end of his life he began to have those tricks of the nerves not uncommon with tyrants. He multiplied the

ordinary daily and nightly guard round his castle till there seemed to be more sentryboxes than houses in the

town, and doubtful characters were shot without mercy. He lived almost entirely in a little room that was in

the very centre of the enormous labyrinth of all the other rooms, and even in this he erected another sort of

central cabin or cupboard, lined with steel, like a safe or a battleship. Some say that under the floor of this

again was a secret hole in the earth, no more than large enough to hold him, so that, in his anxiety to avoid

the grave, he was willing to go into a place pretty much like it. But he went further yet. The populace had

been supposed to be disarmed ever since the suppression of the revolt, but Otto now insisted, as governments

very seldom insist, on an absolute and literal disarmament. It was carried out, with extraordinary

thoroughness and severity, by very wellorganized officials over a small and familiar area, and, so far as

human strength and science can be absolutely certain of anything, Prince Otto was absolutely certain that

"Human science can never be quite certain of things like that," said Father Brown, still looking at the red

budding of the branches over his head, "if only because of the difficulty about definition and connotation.

What is a weapon? People have been murdered with the mildest domestic comforts; certainly with

teakettles, probably with teacosies. On the other hand, if you showed an Ancient Briton a revolver, I doubt

if he would know it was a weapon until it was fired into him, of course. Perhaps somebody introduced a

firearm so new that it didn't even look like a firearm. Perhaps it looked like a thimble or something. Was the

"Not that I ever heard of," answered Flambeau; "but my information is fragmentary, and only comes from my

old friend Grimm. He was a very able detective in the German service, and he tried to arrest me; I arrested

him instead, and we had many interesting chats. He was in charge here of the inquiry about Prince Otto, but I

forgot to ask him anything about the bullet. According to Grimm, what happened was this." He paused a

moment to drain the greater part of his dark lager at a draught, and then resumed:

"On the evening in question, it seems, the Prince was expected to appear in one of the outer rooms, because

he had to receive certain visitors whom he really wished to meet. They were geological experts sent to

investigate the old question of the alleged supply of gold from the rocks round here, upon which (as it was

said) the small citystate had so long maintained its credit and been able to negotiate with its neighbours even

under the ceaseless bombardment of bigger armies. Hitherto it had never been found by the most exacting

"Which could be quite certain of discovering a toy pistol," said Father Brown with a smile. "But what about

"He always asseverated that he did not know," replied Flambeau; "that this was the one secret his brothers

had not told him. It is only right to say that it received some support from fragmentary wordsspoken by the

great Ludwig in the hour of death, when he looked at Heinrich but pointed at Paul, and said, `You have not

told him...' and was soon afterwards incapable of speech. Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished geologists

and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there

are no men who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of scienceas anybody knows who has

ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society. It was a brilliant gathering, but very late, and gradually the

Chamberlainyou saw his portrait, too: a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a meaningless sort of

smile underneaththe Chamberlain, I say, discovered there was everything there except the Prince himself.

He searched all the outer salons; then, remembering the man's mad fits of fear, hurried to the inmost chamber.

That also was empty, but the steel turret or cabin erected in the middle of it took some time to open. When it

did open it was empty, too. He went and looked into the hole in the ground, which seemed deeper and

somehow all the more like a gravethat is his account, of course. And even as he did so he heard a burst of

"First it was a distant din and thrill of something unthinkable on the horizon of the crowd, even beyond the

castle. Next it was a wordless clamour startlingly close, and loud enough to be distinct if each word had not

killed the other. Next came words of a terrible clearness, coming nearer, and next one man, rushing into the

"Otto, Prince of Heiligwaldenstein and Grossenmark, was lying in the dews of the darkening twilight in the

woods beyond the castle, with his arms flung out and his face flung up to the moon. The blood still pulsed

from his shattered temple and jaw, but it was the only part of him that moved like a living thing. He was clad

in his full white and yellow uniform, as to receive his guests within, except that the sash or scarf had been

unbound and lay rather crumpled by his side. Before he could be lifted he was dead. But, dead or alive, he

was a riddlehe who had always hidden in the inmost chamber out there in the wet woods, unarmed and

"Some girl attached to the Court named Hedwig von something or other," replied his friend, "who had been

"Had she picked any?" asked the priest, staring rather vacantly at the veil of the branches above him.

"Yes," replied Flambeau. "I particularly remember that the Chamberlain, or old Grimm or somebody, said

how horrible it was, when they came up at her call, to see a girl holding spring flowers and bending over

thatthat bloody collapse. However, the main point is that before help arrived he was dead, and the news, of

course, had to be carried back to the castle. The consternation it created was something beyond even that

natural in a Court at the fall of a potentate. The foreign visitors, especially the mining experts, were in the

wildest doubt and excitement, as well as many important Prussian officials, and it soon began to be clear that

the scheme for finding the treasure bulked much bigger in the business than people had supposed. Experts

and officials had been promised great prizes or international advantages, and some even said that the Prince's

secret apartments and strong military protection were due less to fear of the populace than to the pursuit of

Flambeau stared at him. "What an odd person you are!" he said. "That's exactly what old Grimm said. He said

the ugliest part of it, he thoughtuglier than the blood and bulletwas that the flowers were quite short,

"Of course," said the priest, "when a grown up girl is really picking flowers, she picks them with plenty of

stalk. If she just pulled their heads off, as a child does, it looks as if" And he hesitated.

"Well, it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, to make an excuse for being there afterwell,

"I know what you're driving at," said Flambeau rather gloomily. "But that and every other suspicion breaks

down on the one point the want of a weapon. He could have been killed, as you say, with lots of other

thingseven with his own military sash; but we have to explain not bow he was killed, but how he was shot.

And the fact is we can't. They had the girl most ruthlessly searched; for, to tell the truth, she was a little

suspect, though the niece and ward of the wicked old Chamberlain, Paul Arnhold. But she was very romantic,

and was suspected of sympathy with the old revolutionary enthusiasm in her family. All the same, however

romantic you are, you can't imagine a big bullet into a man's jaw or brain without using a gun or pistol. And

there was no pistol, though there were two pistol shots. I leave it to you, my friend."

"There was only one in his head," said his companion, "but there was another bullethole in the sash."

Father Brown's smooth brow became suddenly constricted. "Was the other bullet found?" he demanded.

"Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" cried Brown, frowning more and more, with a quite unusual concentration of

"All right," said Flambeau, laughing, and finished his beer. A slight breeze stirred the budding trees and blew

up into the sky cloudlets of white and pink that seemed to make the sky bluer and the whole coloured scene

more quaint. They might have been cherubs flying home to the casements of a sort of celestial nursery. The

oldest tower of the castle, the Dragon Tower, stood up as grotesque as the alemug, but as homely. Only

"She is married to General Schwartz," said Flambeau. "No doubt you've heard of his career, which was rather

romantic. He had distinguished himself even, before his exploits at Sadowa and Gravelotte; in fact, he rose

"Rose from the ranks!" he cried, and made a mouth as if to whistle. "Well, well, what a queer story! What a

queer way of killing a man; but I suppose it was the only one possible. But to think of hate so patient"

"They killed him with the sash," said Brown carefully; and then, as Flambeau protested: "Yes, yes, I know

about the bullet. Perhaps I ought to say he died of having a sash. I know it doesn't sound like having a

"I suppose," said Flambeau, "that you've got some notion in your head, but it won't easily get the bullet out of

his. As I explained before, he might easily have been strangled. But he was shot. By whom? By what?"

"I didn't say by his own wish," replied Father Brown. "I said by his own orders."

Father Brown laughed. "I am only on my holiday," he said. "I haven't got any theories. Only this place

The little pink clouds, that looked rather like sweetstuff, had floated up to crown the turrets of the gilt

gingerbread castle, and the pink baby fingers of the budding trees seemed spreading and stretching to reach

them; the blue sky began to take a bright violet of evening, when Father Brown suddenly spoke again:

"It was on a dismal night, with rain still dropping from the trees and dew already clustering, that Prince Otto

of Grossenmark stepped hurriedly out of a side door of the castle and walked swiftly into the wood. One of

the innumerable sentries saluted him, but he did not notice it. He had no wish to be specially noticed himself.

He was glad when the great trees, grey and already greasy with rain, swallowed him up like a swamp. He had

deliberately chosen the least frequented side of his palace, but even that was more frequented than he liked.

But there was no particular chance of officious or diplomatic pursuit, for his exit had been a sudden impulse.

All the fulldressed diplomatists he left behind were unimportant. He had realized suddenly that he could do

"His great passion was not the much nobler dread of death, but the strange desire of gold. For this legend of

the gold he had left Grossenmark and invaded Heiligwaldenstein. For this and only this he had bought the

traitor and butchered the hero, for this he had long questioned and crossquestioned the false Chamberlain,

until he had come to the conclusion that, touching his ignorance, the renegade really told the truth. For this he

had, somewhat reluctantly, paid and promised money on the chance of gaining the larger amount; and for this

he had stolen out of his palace like a thief in the rain, for he had thought of another way to get the desire of

"Away at the upper end of a rambling mountain path to which he was making his way, among the pillared

rocks along the ridge that hangs above the town, stood the hermitage, hardly more than a cavern fenced with

thorn, in which the third of the great brethren had long hidden himself from the world. He, thought Prince

Otto, could have no real reason for refusing to give up the gold. He had known its place for years, and made

no effort to find it, even before his new ascetic creed had cut him off from property or pleasures. True, he had

been an enemy, but he now professed a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his cause, some

appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere money secret out of him. Otto was no coward, in spite

of his network of military precautions, and, in any case, his avarice was stronger than his fears. Nor was there

much cause for fear. Since he was certain there were no private arms in the whole principality, he was a

hundred times more certain there were none in the Quaker's little hermitage on the hill, where he lived on

herbs, with two old rustic servants, and with no other voice of man for year after year. Prince Otto looked

down with something of a grim smile at the bright, square labyrinths of the lamplit city below him. For as

far as the eye could see there ran the rifles of his friends, and not one pinch of powder for his enemies. Rifles

ranked so close even to that mountain path that a cry from him would bring the soldiers rushing up the hill, to

say nothing of the fact that the wood and ridge were patrolled at regular intervals; rifles so far away, in the

dim woods, dwarfed by distance, beyond the river, that an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour.

And round the palace rifles at the west door and the east door, at the north door and the south, and all along

"It was all the more clear when he had crested the ridge and found how naked was the nest of his old enemy.

He found himself on a small platform of rock, broken abruptly by the three corners of precipice. Behind was

the black cave, masked with green thorn, so low that it was hard to believe that a man could enter it. In front

was the fall of the cliffs and the vast but cloudy vision of the valley. On the small rock platform stood an old

bronze lectern or readingstand, groaning under a great German Bible. The bronze or copper of it had grown

green with the eating airs of that exalted place, and Otto had instantly the thought, "Even if they had arms,

they must be rusted by now." Moonrise had already made a deathly dawn behind the crests and crags, and the

"Behind the lectern, and looking across the valley, stood a very old man in a black robe that fell as straight as

the cliffs around him, but whose white hair and weak voice seemed alike to waver in the wind. He was

evidently reading some daily lesson as part of his religious exercises. "They trust in their horses..."

"`Sir,' said the Prince of Heiligwaldenstein, with quite unusual courtesy, `I should like only one word with

"`...and in their chariots,' went on the old man weakly, `but we will trust in the name of the Lord of Hosts....'

His last words were inaudible, but he closed the book reverently and, being nearly blind, made a groping

movement and gripped the readingstand. Instantly his two servants slipped out of the lowbrowed cavern

and supported him. They wore dullblack gowns like his own, but they had not the frosty silver on the hair,

nor the frostbitten refinement of the features. They were peasants, Croat or Magyar, with broad, blunt

visages and blinking eyes. For the first time something troubled the Prince, but his courage and diplomatic

"`I fear we have not met,' he said, `since that awful cannonade in which your poor brother died.'

"`All my brothers died,' said the old man, still looking across the valley. Then, for one instant turning on Otto

his drooping, delicate features, and the wintry hair that seemed to drip over his eyebrows like icicles, he

"`I hope you'll understand,' said the Prince, controlling himself almost to a point of conciliation, `that I do not

come here to haunt you, as a mere ghost of those great quarrels. We will not talk about who was right or

wrong in that, but at least there was one point on which we were never wrong, because you were always

right. Whatever is to be said of the policy of your family, no one for one moment imagines that you were

"The old man in the black gown had hitherto continued to gaze at him with watery blue eyes and a sort of

weak wisdom in his face. But when the word `gold' was said he held out his hand as if in arrest of something,

"`He has spoken of gold,' he said. `He has spoken of things not lawful. Let him cease to speak.'

"Otto had the vice of his Prussian type and tradition, which is to regard success not as an incident but as a

quality. He conceived himself and his like as perpetually conquering peoples who were perpetually being

conquered. Consequently, he was ill acquainted with the emotion of surprise, and ill prepared for the next

movement, which startled and stiffened him. He had opened his mouth to answer the hermit, when the mouth

was stopped and the voice strangled by a strong, soft gag suddenly twisted round his head like a tourniquet. It

was fully forty seconds before he even realized that the two Hungarian servants had done it, and that they had

"The old man went again weakly to his great brazensupported Bible, turned over the leaves, with a patience

that had something horrible about it, till he came to the Epistle of St James, and then began to read: `The

"Something in the very voice made the Prince turn suddenly and plunge down the mountainpath he had

climbed. He was halfway towards the gardens of the palace before he even tried to tear the strangling scarf

from his neck and jaws. He tried again and again, and it was impossible; the men who had knotted that gag

knew the difference between what a man can do with his hands in front of him and what he can do with his

hands behind his head. His legs were free to leap like an antelope on the mountains, his arms were free to use

any gesture or wave any signal, but he could not speak. A dumb devil was in him.

"He had come close to the woods that walled in the castle before he had quite realized what his wordless state

meant and was meant to mean. Once more he looked down grimly at the bright, square labyrinths of the

lamplit city below him, and he smiled no more. He felt himself repeating the phrases of his former mood

with a murderous irony. Far as the eye could see ran the rifles of his friends, every one of whom would shoot

him dead if he could not answer the challenge. Rifles were so near that the wood and ridge could be patrolled

at regular intervals; therefore it was useless to hide in the wood till morning. Rifles were ranked so far away

that an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour; therefore it was vain to return to the city by any

remote course. A cry from him would bring his soldiers rushing up the hill. But from him no cry would come.

"The moon had risen in strengthening silver, and the sky showed in stripes of bright, nocturnal blue between

the black stripes of the pines about the castle. Flowers of some wide and feathery sort for he had never

noticed such things beforewere at once luminous and discoloured by the moonshine, and seemed

indescribably fantastic as they clustered, as if crawling about the roots of the trees. Perhaps his reason had

been suddenly unseated by the unnatural captivity he carried with him, but in that wood he felt something

unfathomably Germanthe fairy tale. He knew with half his mind that he was drawing near to the castle of

an ogrehe had forgotten that he was the ogre. He remembered asking his mother if bears lived in the old

park at home. He stooped to pick a flower, as if it were a charm against enchantment. The stalk was stronger

than he expected, and broke with a slight snap. Carefully trying to place it in his scarf, he heard the halloo,

"He tried to scream and was silent. The second challenge came; and then a shot that shrieked as it came and

then was stilled suddenly by impact. Otto of Grossenmark lay very peacefully among the fairy trees, and

would do no more harm either with gold or steel; only the silver pencil of the moon would pick out and trace

here and there the intricate ornament of his uniform, or the old wrinkles on his brow. May God have mercy

"The sentry who had fired, according to the strict orders of the garrison, naturally ran forward to find some

trace of his quarry. He was a private named Schwartz, since not unknown in his profession, and what he

found was a bald man in uniform, but with his face so bandaged by a kind of mask made of his own military

scarf that nothing but open, dead eyes could be seen, glittering stonily in the moonlight. The bullet had gone

through the gag into the jaw; that is why there was a shothole in the scarf, but only one shot. Naturally, if

not correctly, young Schwartz tore off the mysterious silken mask and cast it on the grass; and then he saw

"We cannot be certain of the next phase. But I incline to believe that there was a fairy tale, after all, in that

little wood, horrible as was its occasion. Whether the young lady named Hedwig had any previous knowledge

of the soldier she saved and eventually married, or whether she came accidentally upon the accident and their

intimacy began that night, we shall probably never know. But we can know, I fancy, that this Hedwig was a

heroine, and deserved to marry a man who became something of a hero. She did the bold and the wise thing.

She persuaded the sentry to go back to his post, in which place there was nothing to connect him with the

disaster; he was but one of the most loyal and orderly of fifty such sentries within call. She remained by the

body and gave the alarm; and there was nothing to connect her with the disaster either, since she had not got,

"I'm going to have another look at that portrait of the Chamberlain, the Arnhold who betrayed his brethren,"

answered the priest. "I wonder what partI wonder if a man is less a traitor when he is twice a traitor?"

And he ruminated long before the portrait of a whitehaired man with black eyebrows and a pink, painted