The Innocence of Father Brown / Неведение отца Брауна

As soon as Ivan closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl.

“Lady Margaret,” he said, “we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your explaining the Commandant's conduct. But there is a gap still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and the Commandant still walking there.”

“You have to remember,” replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, “that I had just refused him, so we should hardly have come back arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he stayed behind – and so got charged with murder[47].”

“In those few moments,” said Valentin gravely, “he might really – ”

The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but Mr. Brayne has left the house.”

“Left!” cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.

“Gone. Scooted. Evaporated[48],” replied Ivan in humorous French. “His hat and coat are gone, too, and I'll tell you something more. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too.”

“What do you mean?” asked Valentin.

“I'll show you,” said his servant, and reappeared with a cavalry sabre, streaked with blood. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan went on quite quietly:

“I found this,” he said, “flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr. Brayne threw it when he ran away.”

There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, and then turned a respectful face to O'Brien. “Commandant,” he said, “we trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile,” he added, putting the steel back in the scabbard, “let me return you your sword.”

At the military symbolism of the action the audience applauded.

For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turningpoint of existence. By the time he was wandering in the garden again in the morning, he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret had perhaps given him something better than an apology, as they walked among the old flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole company was more lighthearted and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load of suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with the strange millionaire – a man they hardly knew.

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

“I can't say it interests me much,” said the Irishman frankly, “especially as it seems pretty clear now. Apparently Brayne hated this stranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him with my sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went. By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in his pocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne's, and that seems to explain it. I don't see any difficulties about the business.”

“There are five colossal difficulties,” said the doctor quietly; “Don't mistake me. I don't doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Does a man commonly see another come up waving a yataghan and offer no remarks? Third difficulty: a servant watched the front door all the evening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin's garden anywhere. How did the dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?”

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

“Is a trifle, I suppose,” said the doctor, “but I think an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin had struck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across the shortened section; in other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did Brayne hate his foe so much that he stood sabring his body in the moonlight?”

“Horrible!” said O'Brien, and shuddered.

The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and had waited, till they had finished. Then he said awkwardly:

“I say, I'm sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!”

“News?” repeated Simon.

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

Both men on the seat sprang up.

“And, what's stranger still,” continued the priest, with his eye on the rhododendrons, “it's the same disgusting sort; it's another beheading. They found the second head actually bleeding into the river, a few yards along Brayne's road to Paris; so they suppose that he – ”

“Great Heaven!” cried O'Brien. “Is Brayne a maniac?”

“There are American vendettas,” said the priest impassively. Then he added: “They want you to come to the library and see it.”

Commandant O'Brien followed the others, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he hated all this carnage; where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one head was cut off, and then another; in this case (he told himself bitterly) it was not true that two heads were better than one. As he crossed the study he almost stopped at a shocking coincidence. Upon Valentin's table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head; and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him it was only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every week showed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes just after execution; for Valentin was a notable anti-clerical.

The library was long, low, and dark. Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end of a long, slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, looking enormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of the man found in the garden looked unchanged. The second head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay dripping beside it; Valentin's men were still seeking to find the rest of this second corpse in the water. Father Brown went up to the second head and examined it with care. It was little more than a mop of wet white hair; the face, which seemed of an ugly and criminal type, had been much battered against trees or stones as it tossed in the water.

“Good morning, Commandant O'Brien,” said Valentin, with quiet cordiality. “You have heard of Brayne's last experiment in butchery, I suppose?”

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

“I suppose it is quite certain that Brayne cut off this head, too.”

“Well, it seems common sense,” said Valentin, with his hands in his pockets. “Killed in the same way as the other. Found within a few yards of the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carried away.”

“Yes, yes; I know,” replied Father Brown. “Yet, you know, I doubt whether Brayne could have cut off this head.”

“Why not?” inquired Dr. Simon, with a stare.

“Well, doctor,” said the priest, looking up blinking, “can a man cut off his own head? I don't know.”

O'Brien felt the universe crashing about his ears; but the doctor sprang forward and pushed back the wet white hair.

“Oh, there's no doubt it's Brayne,” said the priest quietly.

“He had exactly that chip in the left ear.”

The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply: “You seem to know a lot about him, Father Brown.”

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

The light of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. “And, perhaps,” he cried, with a sneer, “perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to your church.”

“Perhaps he was,” said Brown stolidly; “it is possible.”

“In that case,” cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile, “you may indeed know a great deal about him. About his life and about his – ”

Commandant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. “Drop that slanderous rubbish, Valentin,” he said, “or there may be more swords yet.”

But Valentin (under the steady gaze of the priest) had already recovered himself. “Well,” he said shortly, “people's private opinions can wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise[49] to stay. Ivan here will tell you anything more you want to know; I must get to business and write to the authorities. We can't keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writing in my study if there is any more news.”

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

“Only one more thing, I think, sir,” said Ivan, wrinkling up his grey old face, “but that's important, too, in its way. There's that old man you found on the lawn,” and he pointed at the big black body with the yellow head. “We've found out who he is, anyhow.”

“Indeed!” cried the astonished doctor, “and who is he?”

“His name was Arnold Becker,” said the under-detective, “though he went by many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to have been in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. We didn't have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany. We've communicated, of course, with the German police.

But, oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker, whom we had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well, it's a strange thing, gentlemen, but when I saw that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn't seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes, I'd have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, of course, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and following up the clue – ”

Ivan stopped, for nobody was listening to him. The Commandant and the doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung to his feet, and was holding his temples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain.

“Stop, stop, stop!” he cried; “stop talking a minute. Will God give me strength? Will Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. Will my head split – or will it see? I see half – I only see half.”

He buried his head in his hands, while the other three could only go on staring at him.

When Father Brown's hands fell they showed a face quite fresh and serious, like a child's. He heaved a huge sigh[50], and said: “Let us get this said and done with as quickly as possible[51]. Look here, this will be the quickest way to convince you all of the truth.” He turned to the doctor. “Dr. Simon,” he said, “you have a strong head-piece, and I heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business. Well, if you will ask them again, I will answer them.”

Simon's pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. “Well, the first question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?”

“A man cannot behead with a bodkin,” said Brown calmly, “and for this murder beheading was absolutely necessary.”

“Why?” asked O'Brien, with interest.

“And the next question?” asked Father Brown.

“Well, why didn't the man cry out or anything?” asked the doctor; “sabres in gardens are certainly unusual.”

“ Twigs,” said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which looked on the scene of death. “No one saw the point of the twigs. Why should they lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were not snapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch in mid-air, or what-not[52]. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result, a silent slash, and the head fell.”

“Well,” said the doctor slowly, “that seems possible enough. But my next two questions will confuse anyone.”

The priest still stood looking critically out of the window and waited.

“You know how all the garden was sealed up like an airtight chamber,” went on the doctor. “Well, how did the strange man get into the garden?”

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

There was a silence, and then a sudden laughter diminished the strain. The absurdity of Brown's remark made Ivan tease him.

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

“Got into the garden?” repeated Brown reflectively. “No, not entirely.”

“Just tell us all,” cried Simon, “a man gets into a garden, or he doesn't.”

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

“I fancy you're ill,” exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; “but I'll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?”

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

“Didn't get out of the garden?” exploded Simon.

“Not completely,” said Father Brown.

“A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn't,” cried Simon.

“Not always,” said Father Brown.

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

“Doctor,” said the cleric very gently, “we have always got on very pleasantly together. For the sake of old friendship[53], stop and tell me your fifth question.”

The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: “The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death.”

“Yes,” said the motionless priest, “it was done to make you believe that the head belonged to the body.”

Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window, with his face in shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!” (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) “you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this man?”

He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the white-haired head beside it. And there, complete, unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.

“The murderer,” went on Brown quietly, “hacked off his enemy's head and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head to the corpse, and you all imagined a totally new man.”

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

“No,” said Father Brown, looking at his boots; “there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty[54]. But did you never see in that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad! He would do anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross[55]. He has fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Valentin heard a whisper that the millionaire Brayne was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne would give money to the impoverished Church of France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as the greatest of detectives would commit his own crime. He abstracted the severed head[56] of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, then led him out into the garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and – ”

Ivan of the Scar sprang up. “You lunatic,” he yelled; “you'll go to my master now, if I take you by – 1”

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

Pushing the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin's study.

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their noisy entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin's elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato[57][58].

The Queer Feet

If you meet a member of that select club, “ The Twelve True Fishermen,” entering the Vernon Hotel for the annual club dinner, you will observe, as he takes off his overcoat, that his evening coat is green and not black. If you ask him why, he will probably answer that he does it to avoid being mistaken for a waiter.

If you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the greatest luck of his life, he would probably reply that his best luck was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had prevented a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage. But since it is very unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find “ The Twelve True Fishermen,” or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown, I fear you will never hear the story at all unless you hear it from me.

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution which can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners[59]. It was that topsy-turvy product. That is, it was a thing which paid[60] not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. The Vernon Hotel stood, as if by accident, in the corner of a square in Belgravia[61]. It was a small hotel; and a very inconvenient one. But its inconveniences were considered as walls protecting a particular class. One inconvenience, in particular, was of vital importance: the fact that practically only twenty-four people could dine in the place at once. The only big dinner table was the celebrated terrace table, which stood on a sort of veranda overlooking one of the most exquisite old gardens in London, so even the twenty-four seats could only be enjoyed in warm weather. The existing owner of the hotel was a Jew named Lever; and he made nearly a million out of it, by making it difficult to get into. But this limitation of his enterprise in size matched the perfect performance. The wines and cooking were really as good as any in Europe, and the manners of the attendants exactly mirrored the fixed mood of the English upper class. The proprietor knew all his waiters like the fingers on his hand; there were only fifteen of them. It was much easier to become a Member of Parliament than to become a waiter in that hotel. Each waiter was trained in terrible silence and smoothness, as if he were a gentleman's servant. And, indeed, there was generally at least one waiter to every gentleman who dined.

The club of The Twelve True Fishermen would not have agreed to dine anywhere but in such a place; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of demonstrating all their treasures, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were[62], the symbol of the society, being made of silver in the form of a fish, and each decorated with one large pearl. These were always laid out for the fish course, and the fish course was always the most magnificent in that magnificent meal. The society had a lot of ceremonies, but it had no history and no object; it was just so very aristocratic. You did not have to be anything in order to be one of the Twelve Fishers. It had been in existence twelve years. Its president was Mr. Audley. Its vice-president was the Duke of Chester.

Therefore, the reader may wonder how I came to know anything about it, and how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown came to find himself in that institution. As far as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. As it happened, one of the waiters, an Italian, had been struck down with a paralytic stroke that afternoon; and his Jewish employer had agreed to send for the nearest Popish priest. With what the waiter confessed to Father Brown we are not concerned[63], for the reason that that cleric kept it to himself; but he was obliged to write out some note or statement. So Father Brown, with a meek impudence which he would have shown equally in Buckingham Palace, asked to be given a room and writing materials. Mr. Lever was torn in two. He was a kind man who disliked any difficulty or scene. At the same time the presence of one unusual stranger in his hotel that evening was like a speck of dirt on something just cleaned. There was never any anteroom in the Vernon Hotel, no people waiting in the hall, no customers coming in on chance. There were fifteen waiters. There were twelve guests. It would be as startling to find a new guest in the hotel that night as to find a new brother taking breakfast or tea in one's own family. Moreover, the priest's appearance was second-rate and his clothes muddy; a mere glimpse of him might speed up a crisis in the club. Mr. Lever at last hit on a smart plan[64]. When you enter (as you never will) the Vernon Hotel, you pass down a short passage, and come to the main vestibule and lounge which opens on your right into passages leading to the public rooms, and on your left to a similar passage pointing to the kitchens and offices of the hotel. Immediately on your left hand is the corner of a glass office, in which sat the representative of the proprietor, and just beyond the office, on the way to the servants' quarters, was the gentlemen's cloak room. But between the office and the cloak room was a small private room without other exit, sometimes used by the proprietor for delicate and important matters, such as lending a duke a thousand pounds or refusing to lend him sixpence. On that occasion, Mr. Lever permitted this holy place to be for about half an hour used by the priest. The story which Father Brown was writing down was very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known.

The time of darkness and dinner was drawing on; his little room was without a light. As Father Brown wrote the last and least essential part of his document, he caught himself writing to the rhythm of a regular noise outside. When he became conscious of the thing he found what it was: just the ordinary patter of feet passing the door, which in an hotel was no very unlikely matter. Nevertheless, he stared at the darkened ceiling, and listened to the sound. After he had listened for a few seconds, he got to his feet and listened intently, with his head a little on one side. Then he sat down again and buried his brow in his hands, now not merely listening, but listening and thinking also.

There was something very strange about the footsteps. There were no other steps. It was a very silent house, for the guests went at once to their own apartments, and the well-trained waiters were told to be invisible until they were wanted. Nothing irregular could happen there. But these footsteps were so odd that one could not decide to call them regular or irregular.

First, there came rapid little steps, such as a light man might make in winning a walking race. At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp. The moment the last stamp had died away, the run of light, hurrying feet would come again, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? The man was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in order to walk very slow down the other half; or he was walking very slow at one end to have the pleasure of walking fast at the other. Neither suggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker and darker, like his room.