The Sins of Prince Saradine
When Flambeau took his month's holiday from his office in Westminsterhe took it in a small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of itstime as a rowing-boat. He took it, moreover, in little rivers in theEastern counties, rivers so small that the boat looked like a magicboat, sailing on land through meadows and cornfields. The vessel wasjust comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities,and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophyconsidered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to fouressentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers,if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case heshould faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die. With thislight luggage he crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending toreach the Broads at last, but meanwhile delighting in the overhanginggardens and meadows, the mirrored mansions or villages, lingering tofish in the pools and corners, and in some sense hugging the shore.
Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like atrue philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, whichhe took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, butjust so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when hehad been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he hadoften received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or evenlove; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply ofa visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back ofthe card was written in French and in green ink: "If you ever retire andbecome respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have metall the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting onedetective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in Frenchhistory." On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion,"Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk."
He had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining thathe had been a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In hisyouth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; theescapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung tomen's minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of theinsulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice inSicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recentyears seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. Butwhen Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrityand settled in England, it occurred to him that he might pay a surprisevisit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether he shouldfind the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently smalland forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than heexpected.
They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grassesand short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to themearly, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light.To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a largelemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above theirheads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright.Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfinand adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods. Standingup thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed tobe giant daisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow itreminded them of the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of theriver-bed sufficed to sink them under the roots of all shrubs andflowers and make them gaze upwards at the grass. "By Jove!" saidFlambeau, "it's like being in fairyland."
Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. Hismovement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare,what was the matter.
"The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads," answered the priest, "knewmore about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen infairyland."
"Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such aninnocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come.We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood."
"All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong toenter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."
They pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of thesky and the pale gold of the moon grew fainter and fainter, and fadedinto that vast colourless cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn.When the first faint stripes of red and gold and grey split the horizonfrom end to end they were broken by the black bulk of a town or villagewhich sat on the river just ahead of them. It was already an easytwilight, in which all things were visible, when they came under thehanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet. The houses, withtheir long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at theriver, like huge grey and red cattle. The broadening and whiteningdawn had already turned to working daylight before they saw any livingcreature on the wharves and bridges of that silent town. Eventually theysaw a very placid and prosperous man in his shirt sleeves, with a faceas round as the recently sunken moon, and rays of red whisker around thelow arc of it, who was leaning on a post above the sluggish tide. Byan impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full height in theswaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island orReed House. The prosperous man's smile grew slightly more expansive,and he simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeauwent ahead without further speech.
The boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy andsilent reaches of river; but before the search had become monotonousthey had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silenceof a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrestedthem. For in the middle of this wider piece of water, fringed on everyside with rushes, lay a long, low islet, along which ran a long, lowhouse or bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough tropic cane.The upstanding rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow, thesloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwisethe long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morningbreeze rustled the reeds round the island and sang in the strange ribbedhouse as in a giant pan-pipe.
"By George!" cried Flambeau; "here is the place, after all! Here is ReedIsland, if ever there was one. Here is Reed House, if it is anywhere. Ibelieve that fat man with whiskers was a fairy."
"Perhaps," remarked Father Brown impartially. "If he was, he was a badfairy."
But even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore inthe rattling reeds, and they stood in the long, quaint islet beside theodd and silent house.
The house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the onlylanding-stage; the main entrance was on the other side, and looked downthe long island garden. The visitors approached it, therefore, by asmall path running round nearly three sides of the house, close underthe low eaves. Through three different windows on three different sidesthey looked in on the same long, well-lit room, panelled in light wood,with a large number of looking-glasses, and laid out as for an elegantlunch. The front door, when they came round to it at last, was flankedby two turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler of thedrearier type--long, lean, grey and listless--who murmured that PrinceSaradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the housebeing kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card withthe scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face ofthe depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy thathe suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be hereany minute," he said, "and would be distressed to have just missed anygentleman he had invited. We have orders always to keep a little coldlunch for him and his friends, and I am sure he would wish it to beoffered."
Moved with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assentedgracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously intothe long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable aboutit, except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows withmany long, low oblongs of lo
oking-glass, which gave a singular airof lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow likelunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind hung in thecorners, one a large grey photograph of a very young man in uniform,another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeauwhether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortlyin the negative; it was the prince's younger brother, Captain StephenSaradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenlyand lose all taste for conversation.
After lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs,the guests were introduced to the garden, the library, and thehousekeeper--a dark, handsome lady, of no little majesty, and ratherlike a plutonic Madonna. It appeared that she and the butler werethe only survivors of the prince's original foreign menage the otherservants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by thehousekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, butshe spoke with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt thatAnthony was a Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul,the butler, also had a faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue andtraining English, as are many of the most polished men-servants of thecosmopolitan nobility.
Pretty and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminoussadness. Hours passed in it like days. The long, well-windowed roomswere full of daylight, but it seemed a dead daylight. And through allother incidental noises, the sound of talk, the clink of glasses, or thepassing feet of servants, they could hear on all sides of the house themelancholy noise of the river.
"We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place," said FatherBrown, looking out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silverflood. "Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right personin the wrong place."
Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic littleman, and in those few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeperinto the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had thatknack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and sayingscarcely a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances allthat in any case they would have told. The butler indeed was naturallyuncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost animal affectionfor his master; who, he said, had been very badly treated. The chiefoffender seemed to be his highness's brother, whose name alone wouldlengthen the old man's lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into asneer. Captain Stephen was a ne'er-do-well, apparently, and had drainedhis benevolent brother of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly fromfashionable life and live quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul,the butler, would say, and Paul was obviously a partisan.
The Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brownfancied, somewhat less content. Her tone about her master was faintlyacid; though not without a certain awe. Flambeau and his friend werestanding in the room of the looking-glasses examining the red sketchof the two boys, when the housekeeper swept in swiftly on some domesticerrand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering, glass-panelled placethat anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors at once; andFather Brown, without turning round, stopped in the middle of a sentenceof family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to thepicture, was already saying in a loud voice, "The brothers Saradine, Isuppose. They both look innocent enough. It would be hard to say whichis the good brother and which the bad." Then, realising the lady'spresence, he turned the conversation with some triviality, and strolledout into the garden. But Father Brown still gazed steadily at the redcrayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still gazed steadily at Father Brown.
She had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darklywith a curious and painful wonder--as of one doubtful of a stranger'sidentity or purpose. Whether the little priest's coat and creed touchedsome southern memories of confession, or whether she fancied he knewmore than he did, she said to him in a low voice as to a fellow plotter,"He is right enough in one way, your friend. He says it would be hardto pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be hard, it would bemighty hard, to pick out the good one."
"I don't understand you," said Father Brown, and began to move away.
The woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort ofsavage stoop, like a bull lowering his horns.
"There isn't a good one," she hissed. "There was badness enough in thecaptain taking all that money, but I don't think there was much goodnessin the prince giving it. The captain's not the only one with somethingagainst him."
A light dawned on the cleric's averted face, and his mouth formedsilently the word "blackmail." Even as he did so the woman turned anabrupt white face over her shoulder and almost fell. The door had openedsoundlessly and the pale Paul stood like a ghost in the doorway. Bythe weird trick of the reflecting walls, it seemed as if five Pauls hadentered by five doors simultaneously.
"His Highness," he said, "has just arrived."
In the same flash the figure of a man had passed outside the firstwindow, crossing the sunlit pane like a lighted stage. An instantlater he passed at the second window and the many mirrors repainted insuccessive frames the same eagle profile and marching figure. He waserect and alert, but his hair was white and his complexion of an oddivory yellow. He had that short, curved Roman nose which generallygoes with long, lean cheeks and chin, but these were partly masked bymoustache and imperial. The moustache was much darker than the beard,giving an effect slightly theatrical, and he was dressed up to the samedashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellowwaistcoat and yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked.When he came round to the front door they heard the stiff Paul open it,and heard the new arrival say cheerfully, "Well, you see I have come."The stiff Mr. Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for afew minutes their conversation could not be heard. Then the butler said,"Everything is at your disposal;" and the glove-flapping Prince Saradinecame gaily into the room to greet them. They beheld once more thatspectral scene--five princes entering a room with five doors.
The prince put the white hat and yellow gloves on the table and offeredhis hand quite cordially.
"Delighted to see you here, Mr. Flambeau," he said. "Knowing you verywell by reputation, if that's not an indiscreet remark."
"Not at all," answered Flambeau, laughing. "I am not sensitive. Very fewreputations are gained by unsullied virtue."
The prince flashed a sharp look at him to see if the retort had anypersonal point; then he laughed also and offered chairs to everyone,including himself.
"Pleasant little place, this, I think," he said with a detached air."Not much to do, I fear; but the fishing is really good."
The priest, who was staring at him with the grave stare of a baby, washaunted by some fancy that escaped definition. He looked at the grey,carefully curled hair, yellow white visage, and slim, somewhat foppishfigure. These were not unnatural, though perhaps a shade prononce, likethe outfit of a figure behind the footlights. The nameless interestlay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown wastormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. Theman looked like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he suddenlyremembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychologicaleffect of that multiplication of human masks.
Prince Saradine distributed his social attentions between his guestswith great gaiety and tact. Finding the detective of a sporting turn andeager to employ his holiday, he guided Flambeau and Flambeau's boat downto the best fishing spot in the stream, and was back in his own canoein twenty minutes to join Father Brown in the library and plunge equallypolitely into the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to knowa great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these notthe most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly theslang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motleysocieties, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gamblinghells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. FatherBrown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had sp
ent his last fewyears in almost ceaseless travel, but he had not guessed that thetravels were so disreputable or so amusing.
Indeed, with all his dignity of a man of the world, Prince Saradineradiated to such sensitive observers as the priest, a certain atmosphereof the restless and even the unreliable. His face was fastidious, buthis eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken bydrink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to have, his handon the helm of household affairs. All these were left to the two oldservants, especially to the butler, who was plainly the central pillarof the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not so much a butler as a sort ofsteward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almostas much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and heconsulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly--ratheras if he were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mereshadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait onlyon the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers whichhad half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder.Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain,he could not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretiveabout Saradine that made the tale by no means incredible.
When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and themirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowybanks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon hisdwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evilfairyland crossed the priest's mind again like a little grey cloud. "Iwish Flambeau were back," he muttered.
"Do you believe in doom?" asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.
"No," answered his guest. "I believe in Doomsday."
The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singularmanner, his face in shadow against the sunset. "What do you mean?" heasked.
"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," answeredFather Brown. "The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything;they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will comeon the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."
The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowedface the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought explodedsilently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine'sblend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince--Was he perfectlysane? He was repeating, "The wrong person--the wrong person," many moretimes than was natural in a social exclamation.
Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors beforehim he could see the silent door standing open, and the silent Mr. Paulstanding in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.
"I thought it better to announce at once," he said, with the same stiffrespectfulness as of an old family lawyer, "a boat rowed by six menhas come to the landing-stage, and there's a gentleman sitting in thestern."
"A boat!" repeated the prince; "a gentleman?" and he rose to his feet.
There was a startled silence punctuated only by the odd noise of thebird in the sedge; and then, before anyone could speak again, a newface and figure passed in profile round the three sunlit windows, asthe prince had passed an hour or two before. But except for the accidentthat both outlines were aquiline, they had little in common. Insteadof the new white topper of Saradine, was a black one of antiquated orforeign shape; under it was a young and very solemn face, clean shaven,blue about its resolute chin, and carrying a faint suggestion of theyoung Napoleon. The association was assisted by something old and oddabout the whole get-up, as of a man who had never troubled to changethe fashions of his fathers. He had a shabby blue frock coat, a red,soldierly looking waistcoat, and a kind of coarse white trousers commonamong the early Victorians, but strangely incongruous today. From allthis old clothes-shop his olive face stood out strangely young andmonstrously sincere.
"The deuce!" said Prince Saradine, and clapping on his white hat he wentto the front door himself, flinging it open on the sunset garden.
By that time the new-comer and his followers were drawn up on the lawnlike a small stage army. The six boatmen had pulled the boat well up onshore, and were guarding it almost menacingly, holding their oars erectlike spears. They were swarthy men, and some of them wore earrings. Butone of them stood forward beside the olive-faced young man in the redwaistcoat, and carried a large black case of unfamiliar form.
"Your name," said the young man, "is Saradine?"
Saradine assented rather negligently.
The new-comer had dull, dog-like brown eyes, as different as possiblefrom the restless and glittering grey eyes of the prince. But onceagain Father Brown was tortured with a sense of having seen somewhere areplica of the face; and once again he remembered the repetitions ofthe glass-panelled room, and put down the coincidence to that. "Confoundthis crystal palace!" he muttered. "One sees everything too many times.It's like a dream."
"If you are Prince Saradine," said the young man, "I may tell you thatmy name is Antonelli."
"Antonelli," repeated the prince languidly. "Somehow I remember thename."
"Permit me to present myself," said the young Italian.
With his left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned top-hat; withhis right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across theface that the white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blueflower-pots rocked upon its pedestal.
The prince, whatever he was, was evidently not a coward; he sprang athis enemy's throat and almost bore him backwards to the grass. But hisenemy extricated himself with a singularly inappropriate air of hurriedpoliteness.
"That is all right," he said, panting and in halting English. "I haveinsulted. I will give satisfaction. Marco, open the case."
The man beside him with the earrings and the big black case proceededto unlock it. He took out of it two long Italian rapiers, with splendidsteel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn.The strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow andvindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like two crossesin a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers behind, gave it all anodd appearance of being some barbaric court of justice. But everythingelse was unchanged, so sudden had been the interruption. The sunset goldstill glowed on the lawn, and the bittern still boomed as announcingsome small but dreadful destiny.
"Prince Saradine," said the man called Antonelli, "when I was an infantin the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father wasthe more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to killyou. You and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass inSicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could imitateyou if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you allover the world, and you have always fled from me. But this is the endof the world--and of you. I have you now, and I give you the chance younever gave my father. Choose one of those swords."
Prince Saradine, with contracted brows, seemed to hesitate a moment,but his ears were still singing with the blow, and he sprang forwardand snatched at one of the hilts. Father Brown had also sprung forward,striving to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presencemade matters worse. Saradine was a French freemason and a fierceatheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for theother man neither priest nor layman moved him at all. This young manwith the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was something far sternerthan a puritan--a pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of theearth; a man of the stone age--a man of stone.
One hope remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ranback into the house. He found, however, that all the under servantshad been given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only thesombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the momentshe turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the riddles ofthe house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the heavybrown eyes of Mrs. Anthony; and in a flash he saw half the story.
"Your son is outside," he said withou
t wasting words; "either he or theprince will be killed. Where is Mr. Paul?"
"He is at the landing-stage," said the woman faintly. "He is--heis--signalling for help."
"Mrs. Anthony," said Father Brown seriously, "there is no time fornonsense. My friend has his boat down the river fishing. Your son's boatis guarded by your son's men. There is only this one canoe; what is Mr.Paul doing with it?"
"Santa Maria! I do not know," she said; and swooned all her length onthe matted floor.
Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her,shouted for help, and then rushed down to the landing-stage of thelittle island. But the canoe was already in mid-stream, and old Paulwas pulling and pushing it up the river with an energy incredible at hisyears.
"I will save my master," he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally. "I willsave him yet!"
Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggledup-stream and pray that the old man might waken the little town in time.
"A duel is bad enough," he muttered, rubbing up his rough dust-colouredhair, "but there's something wrong about this duel, even as a duel. Ifeel it in my bones. But what can it be?"
As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, heheard from the other end of the island garden a small but unmistakablesound--the cold concussion of steel. He turned his head.
Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip ofturf beyond the last rank of roses, the duellists had already crossedswords. Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant asthey were, every detail was picked out. They had cast off their coats,but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red waistcoatand white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like thecolours of the dancing clockwork dolls. The two swords sparkled frompoint to pommel like two diamond pins. There was something frightfulin the two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like twobutterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.
Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like awheel. But when he came to the field of combat he found he was born toolate and too early--too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of thegrim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate anydisastrous issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched,the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, theSicilian using his with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches canever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled andsparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fightwas balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest;by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police. Itwould be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, forFlambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there wasno sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or thepolice. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lostisland in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in thePacific.
Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to arattle, the prince's arms flew up, and the point shot out behind betweenhis shoulder-blades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almostlike one throwing the half of a boy's cart-wheel. The sword flew fromhis hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant river. Andhe himself sank with so earth-shaking a subsidence that he broke abig rose-tree with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of redearth--like the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had madeblood-offering to the ghost of his father.
The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but only to maketoo sure that it was a corpse. As he was still trying some last hopelesstests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, andsaw a police boat shoot up to the landing-stage, with constables andother important people, including the excited Paul. The little priestrose with a distinctly dubious grimace.
"Now, why on earth," he muttered, "why on earth couldn't he have comebefore?"
Some seven minutes later the island was occupied by an invasionof townsfolk and police, and the latter had put their hands on thevictorious duellist, ritually reminding him that anything he said mightbe used against him.
"I shall not say anything," said the monomaniac, with a wonderful andpeaceful face. "I shall never say anything more. I am very happy, and Ionly want to be hanged."
Then he shut his mouth as they led him away, and it is the strange butcertain truth that he never opened it again in this world, except to say"Guilty" at his trial.
Father Brown had stared at the suddenly crowded garden, the arrest ofthe man of blood, the carrying away of the corpse after its examinationby the doctor, rather as one watches the break-up of some ugly dream; hewas motionless, like a man in a nightmare. He gave his name and addressas a witness, but declined their offer of a boat to the shore, andremained alone in the island garden, gazing at the broken rose bushand the whole green theatre of that swift and inexplicable tragedy. Thelight died along the river; mist rose in the marshy banks; a few belatedbirds flitted fitfully across.
Stuck stubbornly in his sub-consciousness (which was an unusuallylively one) was an unspeakable certainty that there was something stillunexplained. This sense that had clung to him all day could not be fullyexplained by his fancy about "looking-glass land." Somehow he had notseen the real story, but some game or masque. And yet people do not gethanged or run through the body for the sake of a charade.
As he sat on the steps of the landing-stage ruminating he grew consciousof the tall, dark streak of a sail coming silently down the shiningriver, and sprang to his feet with such a backrush of feeling that healmost wept.
"Flambeau!" he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again andagain, much to the astonishment of that sportsman, as he came on shorewith his fishing tackle. "Flambeau," he said, "so you're not killed?"
"Killed!" repeated the angler in great astonishment. "And why should Ibe killed?"
"Oh, because nearly everybody else is," said his companion ratherwildly. "Saradine got murdered, and Antonelli wants to be hanged, andhis mother's fainted, and I, for one, don't know whether I'm in thisworld or the next. But, thank God, you're in the same one." And he tookthe bewildered Flambeau's arm.
As they turned from the landing-stage they came under the eaves of thelow bamboo house, and looked in through one of the windows, as theyhad done on their first arrival. They beheld a lamp-lit interior wellcalculated to arrest their eyes. The table in the long dining-roomhad been laid for dinner when Saradine's destroyer had fallen like astormbolt on the island. And the dinner was now in placid progress, forMrs. Anthony sat somewhat sullenly at the foot of the table, while atthe head of it was Mr. Paul, the major domo, eating and drinking of thebest, his bleared, bluish eyes standing queerly out of his face, hisgaunt countenance inscrutable, but by no means devoid of satisfaction.
With a gesture of powerful impatience, Flambeau rattled at the window,wrenched it open, and put an indignant head into the lamp-lit room.
"Well," he cried. "I can understand you may need some refreshment,but really to steal your master's dinner while he lies murdered in thegarden--"
"I have stolen a great many things in a long and pleasant life," repliedthe strange old gentleman placidly; "this dinner is one of the fewthings I have not stolen. This dinner and this house and garden happento belong to me."
A thought flashed across Flambeau's face. "You mean to say," he began,"that the will of Prince Saradine--"
"I am Prince Saradine," said the old man, munching a salted almond.
Father Brown, who was looking at the birds outside, jumped as if he wereshot, and put in at the window a pale face like a turnip.
"You are what?" he repeated in a shrill voice.
"Paul, Prince Saradine, A vos ordres," said the venerable personpolitely, lifting a glass of sherry. "I live here very quietly, beinga domestic kind of fellow; and for the sake of modesty I am called Mr.Paul, to distinguish me from my unfortunate brother Mr. Stephen. Hedied
, I hear, recently--in the garden. Of course, it is not my faultif enemies pursue him to this place. It is owing to the regrettableirregularity of his life. He was not a domestic character."
He relapsed into silence, and continued to gaze at the opposite walljust above the bowed and sombre head of the woman. They saw plainlythe family likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his oldshoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, buthis face did not alter.
"My God!" cried Flambeau after a pause, "he's laughing!"
"Come away," said Father Brown, who was quite white. "Come away fromthis house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again."
Night had sunk on rushes and river by the time they had pushed off fromthe island, and they went down-stream in the dark, warming themselveswith two big cigars that glowed like crimson ships' lanterns. FatherBrown took his cigar out of his mouth and said:
"I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's aprimitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so hediscovered that two enemies are better than one."
"I do not follow that," answered Flambeau.
"Oh, it's really simple," rejoined his friend. "Simple, though anythingbut innocent. Both the Saradines were scamps, but the prince, theelder, was the sort of scamp that gets to the top, and the younger, thecaptain, was the sort that sinks to the bottom. This squalid officerfell from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold uponhis brother, the prince. Obviously it was for no light matter, forPrince Paul Saradine was frankly 'fast,' and had no reputation to loseas to the mere sins of society. In plain fact, it was a hanging matter,and Stephen literally had a rope round his brother's neck. He hadsomehow discovered the truth about the Sicilian affair, and could provethat Paul murdered old Antonelli in the mountains. The captain raked inthe hush money heavily for ten years, until even the prince's splendidfortune began to look a little foolish.
"But Prince Saradine bore another burden besides his blood-suckingbrother. He knew that the son of Antonelli, a mere child at the time ofthe murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived onlyto avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen's legalproof), but with the old weapons of vendetta. The boy had practised armswith a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough touse them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel.The fact is that he began to flee for his life, passing from placeto place like a hunted criminal; but with one relentless man upon histrail. That was Prince Paul's position, and by no means a pretty one.The more money he spent on eluding Antonelli the less he had to silenceStephen. The more he gave to silence Stephen the less chance there wasof finally escaping Antonelli. Then it was that he showed himself agreat man--a genius like Napoleon.
"Instead of resisting his two antagonists, he surrendered suddenly toboth of them. He gave way like a Japanese wrestler, and his foes fellprostrate before him. He gave up the race round the world, and he gaveup his address to young Antonelli; then he gave up everything to hisbrother. He sent Stephen money enough for smart clothes and easy travel,with a letter saying roughly: 'This is all I have left. You have cleanedme out. I still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and acellar, and if you want more from me you must take that. Come and takepossession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friendor agent or anything.' He knew that the Sicilian had never seen theSaradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were somewhatalike, both having grey, pointed beards. Then he shaved his own faceand waited. The trap worked. The unhappy captain, in his new clothes,entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian'ssword.
"There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evilspirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues ofmankind. He took it for granted that the Italian's blow, when it came,would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that thevictim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and sodie without speech. It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli'schivalry proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations. Itwas then that I found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes. He wasfleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn whohe was.
"But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer andhe knew the fanatic. It was quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer,would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing apart, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal'strust in luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli, thefanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling talesof his family. Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fightwas over. Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw his twovanquished enemies taken away forever, and sat down smiling to hisdinner."
"Laughing, God help us!" said Flambeau with a strong shudder. "Do theyget such ideas from Satan?"
"He got that idea from you," answered the priest.
"God forbid!" ejaculated Flambeau. "From me! What do you mean!"
The priest pulled a visiting-card from his pocket and held it up in thefaint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled with green ink.
"Don't you remember his original invitation to you?" he asked, "and thecompliment to your criminal exploit? 'That trick of yours,' he says,'of getting one detective to arrest the other'? He has just copied yourtrick. With an enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of theway and let them collide and kill each other."
Flambeau tore Prince Saradine's card from the priest's hands and rent itsavagely in small pieces.
"There's the last of that old skull and crossbones," he said as hescattered the pieces upon the dark and disappearing waves of the stream;"but I should think it would poison the fishes."
The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened;a faint and vibrant colour as of morning changed the sky, and the moonbehind the grasses grew paler. They drifted in silence.
"Father," said Flambeau suddenly, "do you think it was all a dream?"
The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, butremained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of orchards came to them throughthe darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment itswayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onwarddown the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.
The Innocence of Father Brown Page 9