The Man Who Knew Too Much

by G. K. Chesterton

  III. THE SOUL OF THE SCHOOLBOY

  A large map of London would be needed to display the wild and zigzagcourse of one day's journey undertaken by an uncle and his nephew;or, to speak more truly, of a nephew and his uncle. For the nephew,a schoolboy on a holiday, was in theory the god in the car, or inthe cab, tram, tube, and so on, while his uncle was at most a priestdancing before him and offering sacrifices. To put it more soberly,the schoolboy had something of the stolid air of a young duke doingthe grand tour, while his elderly relative was reduced to theposition of a courier, who nevertheless had to pay for everythinglike a patron. The schoolboy was officially known as Summers Minor,and in a more social manner as Stinks, the only public tribute tohis career as an amateur photographer and electrician. The uncle wasthe Rev. Thomas Twyford, a lean and lively old gentleman with a red,eager face and white hair. He was in the ordinary way a countryclergyman, but he was one of those who achieve the paradox of beingfamous in an obscure way, because they are famous in an obscureworld. In a small circle of ecclesiastical archaeologists, who werethe only people who could even understand one another's discoveries,he occupied a recognized and respectable place. And a critic mighthave found even in that day's journey at least as much of theuncle's hobby as of the nephew's holiday.

  His original purpose had been wholly paternal and festive. But,like many other intelligent people, he was not above the weakness ofplaying with a toy to amuse himself, on the theory that it wouldamuse a child. His toys were crowns and miters and croziers andswords of state; and he had lingered over them, telling himself thatthe boy ought to see all the sights of London. And at the end of theday, after a tremendous tea, he rather gave the game away by windingup with a visit in which hardly any human boy could be conceived astaking an interest--an underground chamber supposed to have been achapel, recently excavated on the north bank of the Thames, andcontaining literally nothing whatever but one old silver coin. Butthe coin, to those who knew, was more solitary and splendid than theKoh-i-noor. It was Roman, and was said to bear the head of St. Paul;and round it raged the most vital controversies about the ancientBritish Church. It could hardly be denied, however, that thecontroversies left Summers Minor comparatively cold.

  Indeed, the things that interested Summers Minor, and the thingsthat did not interest him, had mystified and amused his uncle forseveral hours. He exhibited the English schoolboy's startlingignorance and startling knowledge--knowledge of some specialclassification in which he can generally correct and confound hiselders. He considered himself entitled, at Hampton Court on aholiday, to forget the very names of Cardinal Wolsey or William ofOrange; but he could hardly be dragged from some details about thearrangement of the electric bells in the neighboring hotel. He wassolidly dazed by Westminster Abbey, which is not so unnatural sincethat church became the lumber room of the larger and less successfulstatuary of the eighteenth century. But he had a magic and minuteknowledge of the Westminster omnibuses, and indeed of the wholeomnibus system of London, the colors and numbers of which he knew asa herald knows heraldry. He would cry out against a momentaryconfusion between a light-green Paddington and a dark-greenBayswater vehicle, as his uncle would at the identification of aGreek ikon and a Roman image.

  "Do you collect omnibuses like stamps?" asked his uncle. "They mustneed a rather large album. Or do you keep them in your locker?"

  "I keep them in my head," replied the nephew, with legitimatefirmness.

  "It does you credit, I admit," replied the clergyman. "I suppose itwere vain to ask for what purpose you have learned that out of athousand things. There hardly seems to be a career in it, unless youcould be permanently on the pavement to prevent old ladies gettinginto the wrong bus. Well, we must get out of this one, for this isour place. I want to show you what they call St. Paul's Penny."

  "Is it like St. Paul's Cathedral?" asked the youth with resignation,as they alighted.

  At the entrance their eyes were arrested by a singular figureevidently hovering there with a similar anxiety to enter. It wasthat of a dark, thin man in a long black robe rather like a cassock;but the black cap on his head was of too strange a shape to be abiretta. It suggested, rather, some archaic headdress of Persia orBabylon. He had a curious black beard appearing only at the cornersof his chin, and his large eyes were oddly set in his face like theflat decorative eyes painted in old Egyptian profiles. Before theyhad gathered more than a general impression of him, he had divedinto the doorway that was their own destination.

  Nothing could be seen above ground of the sunken sanctuary except astrong wooden hut, of the sort recently run up for many military andofficial purposes, the wooden floor of which was indeed a mereplatform over the excavated cavity below. A soldier stood as asentry outside, and a superior soldier, an Anglo-Indian officer ofdistinction, sat writing at the desk inside. Indeed, the sightseerssoon found that this particular sight was surrounded with the mostextraordinary precautions. I have compared the silver coin to theKoh-i-noor, and in one sense it was even conventionally comparable,since by a historical accident it was at one time almost countedamong the Crown jewels, or at least the Crown relics, until one ofthe royal princes publicly restored it to the shrine to which it wassupposed to belong. Other causes combined to concentrate officialvigilance upon it; there had been a scare about spies carryingexplosives in small objects, and one of those experimental orderswhich pass like waves over bureaucracy had decreed first that allvisitors should change their clothes for a sort of officialsackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that theyshould at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officerin charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face,but a lively and humorous eye--a contradiction borne out by hisconduct, for he at once derided the safeguards and yet insisted onthem.

  "I don't care a button myself for Paul's Penny, or such things," headmitted in answer to some antiquarian openings from the clergymanwho was slightly acquainted with him, "but I wear the King's coat,you know, and it's a serious thing when the King's uncle leaves athing here with his own hands under my charge. But as for saints andrelics and things, I fear I'm a bit of a Voltairian; what you wouldcall a skeptic."

  "I'm not sure it's even skeptical to believe in the royal family andnot in the 'Holy' Family," replied Mr. Twyford. "But, of course, Ican easily empty my pockets, to show I don't carry a bomb."

  The little heap of the parson's possessions which he left on thetable consisted chiefly of papers, over and above a pipe and atobacco pouch and some Roman and Saxon coins. The rest werecatalogues of old books, and pamphlets, like one entitled "The Useof Sarum," one glance at which was sufficient both for the coloneland the schoolboy. They could not see the use of Sarum at all. Thecontents of the boy's pockets naturally made a larger heap, andincluded marbles, a ball of string, an electric torch, a magnet, asmall catapult, and, of course, a large pocketknife, almost to bedescribed as a small tool box, a complex apparatus on which heseemed disposed to linger, pointing out that it included a pair ofnippers, a tool for punching holes in wood, and, above all, aninstrument for taking stones out of a horse's hoof. The comparativeabsence of any horse he appeared to regard as irrelevant, as if itwere a mere appendage easily supplied. But when the turn came of thegentleman in the black gown, he did not turn out his pockets, butmerely spread out his hands.

  "I have no possessions," he said.

  "I'm afraid I must ask you to empty your pockets and make sure,"observed the colonel, gruffly.

  "I have no pockets," said the stranger.

  Mr. Twyford was looking at the long black gown with a learned eye.

  "Are you a monk?" he asked, in a puzzled fashion.

  "I am a magus," replied the stranger. "You have heard of the magi,perhaps? I am a magician."

  "Oh, I say!" exclaimed Summers Minor, with prominent eyes.

  "But I was once a monk," went on the other. "I am what you wouldcall an escaped monk. Yes, I have escaped into eternity. But themonks held one truth at least, that the highest life sh
ould bewithout possessions. I have no pocket money and no pockets, and allthe stars are my trinkets."

  "They are out of reach, anyhow," observed Colonel Morris, in a tonewhich suggested that it was well for them. "I've known a good manymagicians myself in India--mango plant and all. But the Indian onesare all frauds, I'll swear. In fact, I had a good deal of funshowing them up. More fun than I have over this dreary job, anyhow.But here comes Mr. Symon, who will show you over the old cellardownstairs."

  Mr. Symon, the official guardian and guide, was a young man,prematurely gray, with a grave mouth which contrasted curiously witha very small, dark mustache with waxed points, that seemed somehow,separate from it, as if a black fly had settled on his face. Hespoke with the accent of Oxford and the permanent official, but inas dead a fashion as the most indifferent hired guide. Theydescended a dark stone staircase, at the floor of which Symonpressed a button and a door opened on a dark room, or, rather, aroom which had an instant before been dark. For almost as the heavyiron door swung open an almost blinding blaze of electric lightsfilled the whole interior. The fitful enthusiasm of Stinks at oncecaught fire, and he eagerly asked if the lights and the door workedtogether.

  "Yes, it's all one system," replied Symon. "It was all fitted upfor the day His Royal Highness deposited the thing here. You see,it's locked up behind a glass case exactly as he left it."

  A glance showed that the arrangements for guarding the treasure wereindeed as strong as they were simple. A single pane of glass cut offone corner of the room, in an iron framework let into the rock wallsand the wooden roof above; there was now no possibility of reopeningthe case without elaborate labor, except by breaking the glass,which would probably arouse the night watchman who was always withina few feet of it, even if he had fallen asleep. A close examinationwould have showed many more ingenious safeguards; but the eye of theRev. Thomas Twyford, at least, was already riveted on whatinterested him much more--the dull silver disk which shone in thewhite light against a plain background of black velvet.

  "St. Paul's Penny, said to commemorate the visit of St. Paul toBritain, was probably preserved in this chapel until the eighthcentury," Symon was saying in his clear but colorless voice. "In theninth century it is supposed to have been carried away by thebarbarians, and it reappears, after the conversion of the northernGoths, in the possession of the royal family of Gothland. His RoyalHighness, the Duke of Gothland, retained it always in his ownprivate custody, and when he decided to exhibit it to the public,placed it here with his own hand. It was immediately sealed up insuch a manner--"

  Unluckily at this point Summers Minor, whose attention had somewhatstrayed from the religious wars of the ninth century, caught sightof a short length of wire appearing in a broken patch in the wall.He precipitated himself at it, calling out, "I say, does thatconnect?"

  It was evident that it did connect, for no sooner had the boy givenit a twitch than the whole room went black, as if they had all beenstruck blind, and an instant afterward they heard the dull crash ofthe closing door.

  "Well, you've done it now," said Symon, in his tranquil fashion.Then after a pause he added, "I suppose they'll miss us sooner orlater, and no doubt they can get it open; but it may take somelittle time."

  There was a silence, and then the unconquerable Stinks observed:

  "Rotten that I had to leave my electric torch."

  "I think," said his uncle, with restraint, "that we are sufficientlyconvinced of your interest in electricity."

  Then after a pause he remarked, more amiably: "I suppose if Iregretted any of my own impedimenta, it would be the pipe. Though,as a matter of fact, it's not much fun smoking in the dark.Everything seems different in the dark."

  "Everything is different in the dark," said a third voice, that ofthe man who called himself a magician. It was a very musical voice,and rather in contrast with his sinister and swarthy visage, whichwas now invisible. "Perhaps you don't know how terrible a truth thatis. All you see are pictures made by the sun, faces and furnitureand flowers and trees. The things themselves may be quite strange toyou. Something else may be standing now where you saw a table or achair. The face of your friend may be quite different in the dark."

  A short, indescribable noise broke the stillness. Twyford startedfor a second, and then said, sharply:

  "Really, I don't think it's a suitable occasion for trying tofrighten a child."

  "Who's a child?" cried the indignant Summers, with a voice that hada crow, but also something of a crack in it. "And who's a funk,either? Not me."

  "I will be silent, then," said the other voice out of the darkness."But silence also makes and unmakes."

  The required silence remained unbroken for a long time until at lastthe clergyman said to Symon in a low voice:

  "I suppose it's all right about air?"

  "Oh, yes," replied the other aloud; "there's a fireplace and achimney in the office just by the door."

  A bound and the noise of a falling chair told them that theirrepressible rising generation had once more thrown itself acrossthe room. They heard the ejaculation: "A chimney! Why, I'll be--"and the rest was lost in muffled, but exultant, cries.

  The uncle called repeatedly and vainly, groped his way at last tothe opening, and, peering up it, caught a glimpse of a disk ofdaylight, which seemed to suggest that the fugitive had vanished insafety. Making his way back to the group by the glass case, he fellover the fallen chair and took a moment to collect himself again. Hehad opened his mouth to speak to Symon, when he stopped, andsuddenly found himself blinking in the full shock of the whitelight, and looking over the other man's shoulder, he saw that thedoor was standing open.

  "So they've got at us at last," he observed to Symon.

  The man in the black robe was leaning against the wall some yardsaway, with a smile carved on his face.

  "Here comes Colonel Morris," went on Twyford, still speaking toSymon. "One of us will have to tell him how the light went out. Willyou?"

  But Symon still said nothing. He was standing as still as a statue,and looking steadily at the black velvet behind the glass screen. Hewas looking at the black velvet because there was nothing else tolook at. St. Paul's Penny was gone.

  Colonel Morris entered the room with two new visitors; presumablytwo new sightseers delayed by the accident. The foremost was a tall,fair, rather languid-looking man with a bald brow and a high-bridgednose; his companion was a younger man with light, curly hair andfrank, and even innocent, eyes. Symon scarcely seemed to hear thenewcomers; it seemed almost as if he had not realized that thereturn of the light revealed his brooding attitude. Then he startedin a guilty fashion, and when he saw the elder of the two strangers,his pale face seemed to turn a shade paler.

  "Why it's Horne Fisher!" and then after a pause he said in a lowvoice, "I'm in the devil of a hole, Fisher."

  "There does seem a bit of a mystery to be cleared up," observed thegentleman so addressed.

  "It will never be cleared up," said the pale Symon. "If anybodycould clear it up, you could. But nobody could."

  "I rather think I could," said another voice from outside the group,and they turned in surprise to realize that the man in the blackrobe had spoken again.

  "You!" said the colonel, sharply. "And how do you propose to playthe detective?"

  "I do not propose to play the detective," answered the other, in aclear voice like a bell. "I propose to play the magician. One of themagicians you show up in India, Colonel."

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Horne Fisher surprised everybodyby saying, "Well, let's go upstairs, and this gentleman can have atry."

  He stopped Symon, who had an automatic finger on the button, saying:"No, leave all the lights on. It's a sort of safeguard."

  "The thing can't be taken away now," said Symon, bitterly.

  "It can be put back," replied Fisher.

  Twyford had already run upstairs for news of his vanishing nephew,and he received news of him in a way that at once puzzled andreassured him. On
the floor above lay one of those large paper dartswhich boys throw at each other when the schoolmaster is out of theroom. It had evidently been thrown in at the window, and on beingunfolded displayed a scrawl of bad handwriting which ran: "DearUncle; I am all right. Meet you at the hotel later on," and then thesignature.

  Insensibly comforted by this, the clergyman found his thoughtsreverting voluntarily to his favorite relic, which came a goodsecond in his sympathies to his favorite nephew, and before he knewwhere he was he found himself encircled by the group discussing itsloss, and more or less carried away on the current of theirexcitement. But an undercurrent of query continued to run in hismind, as to what had really happened to the boy, and what was theboy's exact definition of being all right.

  Meanwhile Horne Fisher had considerably puzzled everybody with hisnew tone and attitude. He had talked to the colonel about themilitary and mechanical arrangements, and displayed a remarkableknowledge both of the details of discipline and the technicalitiesof electricity. He had talked to the clergyman, and shown an equallysurprising knowledge of the religious and historical interestsinvolved in the relic. He had talked to the man who called himself amagician, and not only surprised but scandalized the company by anequally sympathetic familiarity with the most fantastic forms ofOriental occultism and psychic experiment. And in this last andleast respectable line of inquiry he was evidently prepared to gofarthest; he openly encouraged the magician, and was plainlyprepared to follow the wildest ways of investigation in which thatmagus might lead him.

  "How would you begin now?" he inquired, with an anxious politenessthat reduced the colonel to a congestion of rage.

  "It is all a question of a force; of establishing communications fora force," replied that adept, affably, ignoring some militarymutterings about the police force. "It is what you in the West usedto call animal magnetism, but it is much more than that. I hadbetter not say how much more. As to setting about it, the usualmethod is to throw some susceptible person into a trance, whichserves as a sort of bridge or cord of communication, by which theforce beyond can give him, as it were, an electric shock, and awakenhis higher senses. It opens the sleeping eye of the mind."

  "I'm suspectible," said Fisher, either with simplicity or with abaffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend HaroldMarch here will tell you I sometimes see things, even in the dark."

  "Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician.

  Heavy clouds of sunset were closing round the wooden hut, enormousclouds, of which only the corners could be seen in the littlewindow, like purple horns and tails, almost as if some huge monsterswere prowling round the place. But the purple was already deepeningto dark gray; it would soon be night.

  "Do not light the lamp," said the magus with quiet authority,arresting a movement in that direction. "I told you before thatthings happen only in the dark."

  How such a topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in thecolonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle in thememory of many, including the colonel. They recalled it like a sortof nightmare, like something they could not control. Perhaps therewas really a magnetism about the mesmerist; perhaps there was evenmore magnetism about the man mesmerized. Anyhow, the man was beingmesmerized, for Horne Fisher had collapsed into a chair with hislong limbs loose and sprawling and his eyes staring at vacancy; andthe other man was mesmerizing him, making sweeping movements withhis darkly draped arms as if with black wings. The colonel hadpassed the point of explosion, and he dimly realized that eccentricaristocrats are allowed their fling. He comforted himself with theknowledge that he had already sent for the police, who would breakup any such masquerade, and with lighting a cigar, the red end ofwhich, in the gathering darkness, glowed with protest.

  "Yes, I see pockets," the man in the trance was saying. "I see manypockets, but they are all empty. No; I see one pocket that is notempty."

  There was a faint stir in the stillness, and the magician said, "Canyou see what is in the pocket?"

  "Yes," answered the other; "there are two bright things. I thinkthey are two bits of steel. One of the pieces of steel is bent orcrooked."

  "Have they been used in the removal of the relic from downstairs?"

  "Yes."

  There was another pause and the inquirer added, "Do you see anythingof the relic itself?"

  "I see something shining on the floor, like the shadow or the ghostof it. It is over there in the corner beyond the desk."

  There was a movement of men turning and then a sudden stillness, asof their stiffening, for over in the corner on the wooden floorthere was really a round spot of pale light. It was the only spot oflight in the room. The cigar had gone out.

  "It points the way," came the voice of the oracle. "The spirits arepointing the way to penitence, and urging the thief to restitution.I can see nothing more." His voice trailed off into a silence thatlasted solidly for many minutes, like the long silence below whenthe theft had been committed. Then it was broken by the ring ofmetal on the floor, and the sound of something spinning and fallinglike a tossed halfpenny.

  "Light the lamp!" cried Fisher in a loud and even jovial voice,leaping to his feet with far less languor than usual. "I must begoing now, but I should like to see it before I go. Why, I came onpurpose to see it."

  The lamp was lit, and he did see it, for St. Paul's Penny was lyingon the floor at his feet.

  "Oh, as for that," explained Fisher, when he was entertaining Marchand Twyford at lunch about a month later, "I merely wanted to playwith the magician at his own game."

  "I thought you meant to catch him in his own trap," said Twyford."I can't make head or tail of anything yet, but to my mind he wasalways the suspect. I don't think he was necessarily a thief in thevulgar sense. The police always seem to think that silver is stolenfor the sake of silver, but a thing like that might well be stolenout of some religious mania. A runaway monk turned mystic might wellwant it for some mystical purpose."

  "No," replied Fisher, "the runaway monk is not a thief. At any ratehe is not the thief. And he's not altogether a liar, either. He saidone true thing at least that night."

  "And what was that?" inquired March.

  "He said it was all magnetism. As a matter of fact, it was done bymeans of a magnet." Then, seeing they still looked puzzled, headded, "It was that toy magnet belonging to your nephew, Mr.Twyford."

  "But I don't understand," objected March. "If it was done with theschoolboy's magnet, I suppose it was done by the schoolboy."

  "Well," replied Fisher, reflectively, "it rather depends whichschoolboy."

  "What on earth do you mean?"

  "The soul of a schoolboy is a curious thing," Fisher continued, in ameditative manner. "It can survive a great many things besidesclimbing out of a chimney. A man can grow gray in great campaigns,and still have the soul of a schoolboy. A man can return with agreat reputation from India and be put in charge of a great publictreasure, and still have the soul of a schoolboy, waiting to beawakened by an accident. And it is ten times more so when to theschoolboy you add the skeptic, who is generally a sort of stuntedschoolboy. You said just now that things might be done by religiousmania. Have you ever heard of irreligious mania? I assure you itexists very violently, especially in men who like showing upmagicians in India. But here the skeptic had the temptation ofshowing up a much more tremendous sham nearer home."

  A light came into Harold March's eyes as he suddenly saw, as if afaroff, the wider implication of the suggestion. But Twyford was stillwrestling with one problem at a time.

  "Do you really mean," he said, "that Colonel Morris took the relic?"

  "He was the only person who could use the magnet," replied Fisher."In fact, your obliging nephew left him a number of things he coulduse. He had a ball of string, and an instrument for making a hole inthe wooden floor--I made a little play with that hole in the floorin my trance, by the way; with the lights left on below, it shonelike a new shilling." Twyford suddenly bounded on his chair. "But intha
t case," he cried, in a new and altered voice, "why then ofcourse-- You said a piece of steel--?"

  "I said there were two pieces of steel," said Fisher. "The bentpiece of steel was the boy's magnet. The other was the relic in theglass case."

  "But that is silver," answered the archaeologist, in a voice nowalmost unrecognizable.

  "Oh," replied Fisher, soothingly, "I dare say it was painted withsilver a little."

  There was a heavy silence, and at last Harold March said, "But whereis the real relic?"

  "Where it has been for five years," replied Horne Fisher, "in thepossession of a mad millionaire named Vandam, in Nebraska. There wasa playful little photograph about him in a society paper the otherday, mentioning his delusion, and saying he was always being takenin about relics."

  Harold March frowned at the tablecloth; then, after an interval, hesaid: "I think I understand your notion of how the thing wasactually done; according to that, Morris just made a hole and fishedit up with a magnet at the end of a string. Such a monkey tricklooks like mere madness, but I suppose he was mad, partly with theboredom of watching over what he felt was a fraud, though hecouldn't prove it. Then came a chance to prove it, to himself atleast, and he had what he called 'fun' with it. Yes, I think I see alot of details now. But it's just the whole thing that knocks me.How did it all come to be like that?"

  Fisher was looking at him with level lids and an immovable manner.

  "Every precaution was taken," he said. "The Duke carried the relicon his own person, and locked it up in the case with his own hands."

  March was silent; but Twyford stammered. "I don't understand you.You give me the creeps. Why don't you speak plainer?"

  "If I spoke plainer you would understand me less," said HorneFisher.

  "All the same I should try," said March, still without lifting hishead.

  "Oh, very well," replied Fisher, with a sigh; "the plain truth is,of course, that it's a bad business. Everybody knows it's a badbusiness who knows anything about it. But it's always happening, andin one way one can hardly blame them. They get stuck on to a foreignprincess that's as stiff as a Dutch doll, and they have their fling.In this case it was a pretty big fling."

  The face of the Rev. Thomas Twyford certainly suggested that he wasa little out of his depth in the seas of truth, but as the otherwent on speaking vaguely the old gentleman's features sharpened andset.

  "If it were some decent morganatic affair I wouldn't say; but hemust have been a fool to throw away thousands on a woman like that.At the end it was sheer blackmail; but it's something that the oldass didn't get it out of the taxpayers. He could only get it out ofthe Yank, and there you are."

  The Rev. Thomas Twyford had risen to his feet.

  "Well, I'm glad my nephew had nothing to do with it," he said. "Andif that's what the world is like, I hope he will never have anythingto do with it."

  "I hope not," answered Horne Fisher. "No one knows so well as I dothat one can have far too much to do with it."

  For Summers Minor had indeed nothing to do with it; and it is partof his higher significance that he has really nothing to do with thestory, or with any such stories. The boy went like a bullet throughthe tangle of this tale of crooked politics and crazy mockery andcame out on the other side, pursuing his own unspoiled purposes.From the top of the chimney he climbed he had caught sight of a newomnibus, whose color and name he had never known, as a naturalistmight see a new bird or a botanist a new flower. And he had beensufficiently enraptured in rushing after it, and riding away uponthat fairy ship.