by G. K. Datlow
“In the light of the other murders,” said Nares, “it is difficult to believe that the quarrel was quite so unpremeditated. Surely somebody sent you there?”
“I will say nothing against anybody I worked with,” said Home proudly. “I am a murderer, but I will not be a traitor.”
Nares stepped between the man and the door and called out in an official fashion to someone outside.
“We will all go to the place, anyhow,” he said in a low voice to the secretary; “but this man must go in custody.”
The company generally felt that to go spook-hunting on a seacliff was a very silly anti-climax after the confession of the murderer. But Nares, though the most sceptical and scornful of all, thought it his duty to leave no stone unturned; as one might say, no gravestone unturned. For, after all, that crumbling cliff was the only gravestone over the watery grave of poor Gideon Wise. Nares locked the door, being the last out of the house, and followed the rest across the moor to the cliff, when he was astonished to see young Potter, the secretary, coming back quickly towards them, his face in the moonlight looking white as a moon.
“By God, sir,” he said, speaking for the first time that night, “there really is something there. It—it’s just like him.”
“Why, you’re raving,” gasped the detective. “Everybody’s raving.”
“Do you think I don’t know him when I see him?” cried the secretary with singular bitterness. “I have reason to.”
“Perhaps,” said the detective sharply, “you are one of those who had reason to hate him, as Halket said.”
“Perhaps,” said the secretary; “anyhow, I know him, and I tell you I can see him standing there stark and staring under this hellish moon.”
And he pointed towards the crack in the cliffs, where they could already see something that might have been a moonbeam or a streak of foam, but which was already beginning to look a little more solid. They had crept a hundred yards nearer, and it was still motionless; but it looked like a statue in silver.
Nares himself looked a little pale and seemed to stand debating what to do. Potter was frankly as much frightened as Home himself; and even Byrne, who was a hardened reporter, was rather reluctant to go any nearer if he could help it. He could not help considering it a little quaint, therefore, that the only man who did not seem to be frightened of a ghost was the man who had said openly that he might be. For Father Brown was advancing as steadily, at his stumping pace, as if he were going to consult a notice-board.
“It don’t seem to bother you much,” said Byrne to the priest; “and yet I thought you were the only one who believed in spooks.”
“If it comes to that,” replied Father Brown, “I thought you were one who didn’t believe in them. But believing in ghosts is one thing, and believing in a ghost is quite another.”
Byrne looked rather ashamed of himself, and glanced almost covertly at the crumbling headlands in the cold moonlight which were the haunts of the vision or delusion. “I didn’t believe in it till I saw it,” he said.
“And I did believe in it till I saw it,” said Father Brown. The journalist stared after him as he went stumping across the great waste ground that rose towards the cloven headland like the sloping side of a hill cut in two. Under the discolouring moon the grass looked like long grey hair all combed one way by the wind, and seeming to point towards the place where the breaking cliff showed pale gleams of chalk in the grey-green turf, and where stood the pale figure or shining shade that none could yet understand. As yet that pale figure dominated a desolate landscape that was empty except for the black square back and business-like figure of the priest advancing alone towards it. Then the prisoner Home broke suddenly from his captors with a piercing cry and ran ahead of the priest, falling on his knees before the spectre.
“I have confessed,” they heard him crying. “Why have you come to tell them I killed you?”
“I have come to tell them you did not,” said the ghost, and stretched forth a hand to him. Then the kneeling man sprang up with quite a new kind of scream; and they knew it was the hand of flesh.
It was the most remarkable escape from death in recent records, said the experienced detective and the no less experienced journalist. Yet, in a sense, it had been very simple after all. Flakes and shards of the cliff were continually falling away, and some had caught in the gigantic crevice, so as to form what was really a ledge or pocket in what was supposed to be a sheer drop through darkness to the sea. The old man, who was a very tough and wiry old man, had fallen on this lower shoulder of rock and had passed a pretty terrible twenty-four hours in trying to climb back by crags that constantly collapsed under him, but at length formed by their very ruins a sort of stairway of escape. This might be the explanation of Home’s optical illusion about a white wave that appeared and disappeared, and finally came to stay. But anyhow there was Gideon Wise, solid in bone and sinew, with his white hair and white dusty country clothes and harsh country features, which were, however, a great deal less harsh than usual. Perhaps it is good for millionaires to spend twenty-four hours on a ledge of rock within a foot of eternity. Anyhow, he not only disclaimed all malice against the criminal, but gave an account of the matter which considerably modified the crime. He declared that Home had not thrown him over at all; that the continually breaking ground had given way under him, and that Home had even made some movement as of attempted rescue.
“On that providential bit of rock down there,” he said solemnly, “I promised the Lord to forgive my enemies; and the Lord would think it mighty mean if I didn’t forgive a little accident like that.”
Home had to depart under police supervision, of course, but the detective did not disguise from himself that the prisoner’s detention would probably be short, and his punishment, if any, trifling. It is not every murderer who can put the murdered man in the witness-box to give him a testimonial.
“It’s a strange case,” said Byrne, as the detective and the others hastened along the cliff path towards the town.
“It is,” said Father Brown. “It’s no business of ours; but I wish you’d stop with me and talk it over.”
There was a silence and then Byrne complied by saying suddenly: “I suppose you were thinking of Home already, when you said somebody wasn’t telling all he knew.”
“When I said that,” replied his friend, “I was thinking of the exceedingly silent Mr Potter, the secretary of the no longer late or (shall we say) lamented Mr Gideon Wise.”
“Well, the only time Potter ever spoke to me I thought he was a lunatic,” said Byrne, staring, “but I never thought of his being a criminal. He said something about it all having to do with an icebox.”
“Yes, I thought he knew something about it,” said Father Brown reflectively. “I never said he had anything to do with it… I suppose old Wise really is strong enough to have climbed out of that chasm.”
“What do you mean?” asked the astonished reporter. “Why, of course he got out of that chasm; for there he is.”
The priest did not answer the question but asked abruptly: “What do you think of Home?”
“Well, one can’t call him a criminal exactly,” answered Byrne. “He never was at all like any criminal I ever knew, and I’ve had some experience; and, of course, Nares has had much more. I don’t think we ever quite believed him a criminal.”
“And I never believed in him in another capacity,” said the priest quietly. “You may know more about criminals. But there’s one class of people I probably do know more about than you do, or even Nares for that matter. I’ve known quite a lot of them, and I know their little ways.”
“Another class of people,” repeated Byrne, mystified. “Why, what class do you know about?”
“Penitents,” said Father Brown.
“I don’t quite understand,” objected Byrne. “Do you mean you don’t believe in his crime?”
“I don’t believe in his confession,” said Father Brown. “I’ve heard a good many confessions, an
d there was never a genuine one like that. It was romantic; it was all out of books. Look how he talked about having the brand of Cain. That’s out of books. It’s not what anyone would feel who had in his own person done a thing hitherto horrible to him. Suppose you were an honest clerk or shop-boy shocked to feel that for the first time you’d stolen money. Would you immediately reflect that your action was the same as that of Barabbas? Suppose you’d killed a child in some ghastly anger. Would you go back through history, till you could identify your action with that of an Idumean potentate named Herod? Believe me, our own crimes are far too hideously private and prosaic to make our first thoughts turn towards historical parallels, however apt. And why did he go out of his way to say he would not give his colleagues away? Even in saying so, he was giving them away. Nobody had asked him so far to give away anything or anybody. No; I don’t think he was genuine, and I wouldn’t give him absolution. A nice state of things, if people started getting absolved for what they hadn’t done.” And Father Brown, his head turned away, looked steadily out to sea.
“But I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” cried Byrne. “What’s the good of buzzing round him with suspicions when he’s pardoned? He’s out of it anyhow. He’s quite safe.”
Father Brown spun round like a teetotum and caught his friend by the coat with unexpected and inexplicable excitement.
“That’s it,” he cried emphatically. “Freeze on to that! He’s quite safe. He’s out of it. That’s why he’s the key of the whole puzzle.”
“Oh, help,” said Byrne feebly.
“I mean,” persisted the little priest, “he’s in it because he’s out of it. That’s the whole explanation.”
“And a very lucid explanation too,” said the journalist with feeling.
They stood looking out to sea for a time in silence, and then Father Brown said cheerfully: “And so we come back to the ice-box. Where you have all gone wrong from the first in this business is where a good many of the papers and the public men do go wrong. It’s because you assumed that there is nothing whatever in the modern world to fight about except Bolshevism. This story has nothing whatever to do with Bolshevism; except perhaps as a blind.”
“I don’t see how that can be,” remonstrated Byrne. “Here you have the three millionaires in that one business murdered—”
“No!” said the priest in a sharp ringing voice. “You do not. That is just the point. You do not have three millionaires murdered. You have two millionaires murdered; and you have the third millionaire very much alive and kicking and quite ready to kick. And you have that third millionaire freed for ever from the threat that was thrown at his head before your very face, in playfully polite terms, and in that conversation you described as taking place in the hotel. Gallup and Stein threatened the more old-fashioned and independent old huckster that if he would not come into their combine they would freeze him out. Hence the ice-box, of course.”
After a pause he went on. “There is undoubtedly a Bolshevist movement in the modern world, and it must undoubtedly be resisted, though I do not believe very much in your way of resisting it. But what nobody notices is that there is another movement equally modern and equally moving: the great movement towards monopoly or the turning of all trades into trusts. That also is a revolution. That also produces what all revolutions produce. Men will kill for that and against that, as they do for and against Bolshevism. It has its ultimatums and its invasions and its executions. These trust magnates have their courts like kings; they have their bodyguard and bravos; they have their spies in the enemy camp. Home was one of old Gideon’s spies in one of the enemy camps; but he was used here against another enemy: the rivals who were ruining him for standing out.”
“I still don’t quite see how he was used,” said Byrne, “or what was the good of it.”
“Don’t you see,” cried Father Brown sharply, “that they gave each other an alibi?”
Byrne still looked at him a little doubtfully, though understanding was dawning on his face.
“That’s what I mean,” continued the other, “when I say they were in it because they were out of it. Most people would say they must be out of the other two crimes, because they were in this one. As a fact, they were in the other two because they were out of this one; because this one never happened at all. A very queer, improbable sort of alibi, of course; improbable and therefore impenetrable. Most people would say a man who confesses a murder must be sincere; a man who forgives his murderer must be sincere. Nobody would think of the notion that the thing never happened, so that one man had nothing to forgive and the other nothing to fear. They were fixed here for that night by a story against themselves. But they were not here that night; for Home was murdering old Gallup in the Wood, while Wise was strangling that little Jew in his Roman bath. That’s why I ask whether Wise was really strong enough for the climbing adventure.”
“It was quite a good adventure,” said Byrne regretfully. “It fitted into the landscape, and was really very convincing.”
“Too convincing to convince,” said Father Brown, shaking his head. “How very vivid was that moonlit foam flung up and turning to a ghost. And how very literary! Home is a sneak and a skunk, but do not forget that, like many other sneaks and skunks in history, he is also a poet.”
The Secret of Father Brown
Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address: in a castle in Spain. The castle, however, was solid though relatively small; and the black vineyard and green stripes of kitchen garden covered a respectable square on the brown hillside. For Flambeau, after all his violent adventures, still possessed what is possessed by so many Latins, what is absent (for instance) in so many Americans, the energy to retire. It can be seen in many a large hotel-proprietor whose one ambition is to be a small peasant. It can be seen in many a French provincial shopkeeper, who pauses at the moment when he might develop into a detestable millionaire and buy a street of shops, to fall back quietly and comfortably on domesticity and dominoes. Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish Lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders. But on one particular morning he was observed by his family to be unusually restless and excited; and he outran the little boys and descended the greater part of the long mountain slope to meet the visitor who was coming across the valley; even when the visitor was still a black dot in the distance.
The black dot gradually increased in size without very much altering in the shape; for it continued, roughly speaking, to be both round and black. The black clothes of clerics were not unknown upon those hills; but these clothes, however clerical, had about them something at once commonplace and yet almost jaunty in comparison with the cassock or soutane, and marked the wearer as a man from the northwestern islands, as clearly as if he had been labelled Clapham Junction. He carried a short thick umbrella with a knob like a club, at the sight of which his Latin friend almost shed tears of sentiment; for it had figured in many adventures that they shared long ago. For this was the Frenchman’s English friend, Father Brown, paying a long-desired but long-delayed visit. They had corresponded constantly, but they had not met for years.
Father Brown was soon established in the family circle, which was quite large enough to give the general sense of company or a community. He was introduced to the big wooden images of the Three Kings, of painted and gilded wood, who bring the gifts to the children at Christmas; for Spain is a country where the affairs of the children bulk large in the life of the home. He was introduced to the dog and the cat and the live-stock on the farm. But he was also, as it happened, introduced to one neighbour who, like himself, had brought into that v
alley the garb and manners of distant lands.
It was on the third night of the priest’s stay at the little chateau that he beheld a stately stranger who paid his respects to the Spanish household with bows that no Spanish grandee could emulate. He was a tall, thin grey-haired and very handsome gentleman, and his hands, cuffs and cuff-links had something overpowering in their polish. But his long face had nothing of that languor which is associated with long cuffs and manicuring in the caricatures of our own country. It was rather arrestingly alert and keen; and the eyes had an innocent intensity of inquiry that does not go often with grey hairs. That alone might have marked the man’s nationality, as well the nasal note in his refined voice and his rather too ready assumption of the vast antiquity of all the European things around him. This was, indeed, no less a person than Mr. Grandison Chace, of Boston, an American traveller who had halted for a time in his American travels by taking a lease of the adjoining estate; a somewhat similar castle on a somewhat similar hill. He delighted in his old castle, and he regarded his friendly neighbour as a local antiquity of the same type. For Flambeau managed, as we have said, really to look retired in the sense of rooted. He might have grown there with his own vine and fig-tree for ages. He had resumed his real family name of Duroc; for the other title of “The Torch” had only been a title de guerre, like that under which such a man will often wage war on society. He was fond of his wife and family; he never went farther afield than was needed for a little shooting; and he seemed, to the American globe-trotter, the embodiment of that cult of a sunny respectability and a temperate luxury, which the American was wise enough to see and admire in the Mediterranean peoples. The rolling stone from the West was glad to rest for a moment on this rock in the South that had gathered so very much moss. But Mr. Chace had heard of Father Brown, and his tone faintly changed, as towards a celebrity. The interviewing instinct awoke, tactful but tense. If he did try to draw Father Brown, as if he were a tooth, it was done with the most dexterous and painless American dentistry.