CHESTERTON-THE INNOCENT OF FR BROWN
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering
ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of
folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means
conspicuous--nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about
him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his
clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes
included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a
silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark
by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish
and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette
with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to
indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver,
that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw
hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For
this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the
most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from
Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.
Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had
tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from
Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he
would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of
the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably
he would travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with
it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be
certain about Flambeau.
It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly
ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they
said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the
earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst)
Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the
Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he
had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by
committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and
bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of
athletic humour; how he turned the juge d'instruction upside down
and stood him on his head, "to clear his mind"; how he ran down
the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to
him to say that his fantastic physical strength was generally
employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real
crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But
each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by
itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in
London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some
thousand subscribers. These he served by the simple operation of
moving the little milk cans outside people's doors to the doors of
his own customers. It was he who had kept up an unaccountable and
close correspondence with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was
intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his
messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A
sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It
is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the
dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is
quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put
up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping
postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling
acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper
and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great
Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware
that his adventures would not end when he had found him.
But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin's
ideas were still in process of settlement.
There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of
disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height. If
Valentin's quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall
grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have
arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was
nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat
could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he had
already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or
on the journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There
was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three
fairly short market gardeners picked up two stations afterwards,
one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a
very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex
village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and
almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of
those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk
dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several
brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting.
The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local
stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles
disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of
France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have
pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody.
He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the
floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his
return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to
everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he
had something made of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his
brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with
saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the
priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and
came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even
had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by
telling everybody about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin
kept his eye open for someone else; he looked out steadily for
anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up to six feet;
for Flambeau was four inches above it.
He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously
secure that he had not missed the criminal so far. He then went
to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for help
in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and went for a long
stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets
and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was
a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an
accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once
prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the centre
looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four
sides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of
this side was broken by one of London's admirable accidents--a
restaurant that looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an
unreasonably attractive object, with dwarf plants in pots and
long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially
high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a
flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door
almost as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor window.
Valentin stood and smoked in front of the yellow-white blinds and
considered them long.
The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.
A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of
one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a
doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of
interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the
last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a
man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named
Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there
is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning
on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well
expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the
unforeseen.
Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French
intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was not "a
thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of modern
fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it
cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the
same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring,
had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French
thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any
paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a
truism so far--as in the French Revolution. But exactly because
Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason.
Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without
petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning
without strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no
strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and
if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp
on Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole.
In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a
method of his own.
In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases,
when he could not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly
and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of
going to the right places--banks, police stations, rendezvous--
he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty
house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked
with rubbish, went round every crescent that led him uselessly out
of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He
said that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had
no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance
that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the
same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must
begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop.
Something about that flight of steps up to the shop, something
about the quietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all
the detective's rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike
at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by
the window, asked for a cup of black coffee.
It was half-way through the morning, and he had not
breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood about on
the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to
his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar into
his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered
how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and
once by a house on fire; once by having to pay for an unstamped
letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at
a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective
brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully
realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist;
the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and
lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very
quickly. He had put salt in it.
He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had
come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for
sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they
should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more
orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full.
Perhaps there was some speciality in the condiment in the
salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he looked round
at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to see if
there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste which
puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin.
Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the
white-papered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and
ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.
When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat
blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was not without
an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste
the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation of the hotel.
The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.
"Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every
morning?" inquired Valentin. "Does changing the salt and sugar
never pall on you as a jest?"
The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured
him that the establishment had certainly no such intention; it
must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and
looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his
face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly
excused himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with
the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and
then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.
Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of
words.
"I zink," he stuttered eagerly, "I zink it is those two
clergy-men."
"What two clergymen?"
"The two clergymen," said the waiter, "that threw soup at the
wall."
"Threw soup at the wall?" repeated Valentin, feeling sure this
must be some singular Italian metaphor.
"Yes, yes," said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at the
dark splash on the white paper; "threw it over there on the wall."
Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his
rescue with fuller reports.
"Yes, sir," he said, "it's quite true, though I don't suppose
it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came
in and drank soup here very early, as soon as the shutters were
taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people; one of
them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower
coach altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things
together. But he went at last. Only, the instant before he
stepped into the street he deliberately picked up his cup, which
he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on the wall. I
was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could
only rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop
empty. It don't do any particular damage, but it was confounded
cheek; and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too
far off though; I only noticed they went round the next corner
into Carstairs Street."
The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand.
He had already decided that in the universal darkness of his mind
he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this
finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass
doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other
street.
It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was
cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by him like a mere
flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular
greengrocer and fruiterer's, an array of goods set out in the open
air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the two
most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts
respectively. On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on
which was written in bold, blue chalk, "Best tangerine oranges,
two a penny." On the oranges was the equally clear and exact
description, "Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb." M. Valentin looked
at these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle
form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the
attention of the red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather
sullenly up and down the street, to this inaccuracy in his
advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each
card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on
his walking-cane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he
said, "Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I
should like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and
the association of ideas."
The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but
he continued gaily, swinging his cane, "Why," he pursued, "why are
two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer's shop like a shovel
hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not
make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects
the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen,
one tall and the other short?"
The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a
snail's; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling himself
upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: "I don't know
what you 'ave to do with it, but if you're one of their friends,
you can tell 'em from me that I'll knock their silly 'eads off,
parsons or no parsons, if they upset my apples again."
"Indeed?" asked the detective, with great sympathy. "Did they
upset your apples?"
"One of 'em did," said the heated shopman; "rolled 'em all
over the street. I'd 'ave caught the fool but for havin' to pick
'em up."
"Which way did these parsons go?" asked Valentin.
"Up that second road on the left-hand side, and then across
the square," said the other promptly.
"Thanks," replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the
other side of the second square he found a policeman, and said:
"This is urgent, constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel
hats?"
The policeman began to chuckle heavily. "I 'ave, sir; and if
you arst me, one of 'em was drunk. He stood in the middle of the
road that bewildered that--"
"Which way did they go?" snapped Valentin.
"They took one of them yellow buses over there," answered the
man; "them that go to Hampstead."
Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly:
"Call up two of your men to come with me in pursuit," and crossed
the road with such contagious energy that the ponderous policeman
was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half the
French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an
inspector and a man in plain clothes.
"Well, sir," began the former, with smiling importance, "and
what may--?"
Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. "I'll tell you on
the top of that omnibus," he said, and was darting and dodging
across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank panting on
the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: "We could
go four times as quick in a taxi."
"Quite true," replied their leader placidly, "if we only had
an idea of where we were going."
"Well, where are you going?" asked the other, staring.
Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing
his cigarette, he said: "If you know what a man's doing, get in
front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing, keep
behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as
slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he
acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer
thing."
"What sort of queer thing do you mean?" asked the inspector.
"Any sort of queer thing," answered Valentin, and relapsed
into obstinate silence.
The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what
seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not explain
further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt
of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing
desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon
hour, and the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to
shoot out into length after length like an infernal telescope. It
was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that
now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then
finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London
died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was
unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and blatant
hotels. It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar
cities all just touching each other. But though the winter
twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the
Parisian detective still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the
frontage of the streets that slid by on either side. By the time
they had left Camden Town behind, the policemen were nearly
asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as Valentin
leapt erect, struck a hand on each man's shoulder, and shouted to
the driver to stop.
They tumbled down the steps into the road without realising
why they had been dislodged; when they looked round for
enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger
towards a window on the left side of the road. It was a large
window, forming part of the long facade of a gilt and palatial
public-house; it was the part reserved for respectable dining, and
labelled "Restaurant." This window, like all the rest along the
frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass; but in
the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.
"Our cue at last," cried Valentin, waving his stick; "the
place with the broken window."
"What window? What cue?" asked his principal assistant.
"Why, what proof is there that this has anything to do with them?"
Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.
"Proof!" he cried. "Good God! the man is looking for proof!
Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing
to do with them. But what else can we do? Don't you see we must
either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?" He
banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions,
and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table,
and looked at the star of smashed glass from the inside. Not that
it was very informative to them even then.
"Got your window broken, I see," said Valentin to the waiter
as he paid the bill.
"Yes, sir," answered the attendant, bending busily over the
change, to which Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The
waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable animation.
"Ah, yes, sir," he said. "Very odd thing, that, sir."
"Indeed?" Tell us about it," said the detective with careless
curiosity.
"Well, two gents in black came in," said the waiter; "two of
those foreign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap
and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out.
The other was just going out to join him when I looked at my
change again and found he'd paid me more than three times too
much. `Here,' I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door,
`you've paid too much.' `Oh,' he says, very cool, `have we?'
'Yes,' I says, and picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was
a knock-out."
"What do you mean?" asked his interlocutor.
"Well, I'd have sworn on seven Bibles that I'd put 4s. on that
bill. But now I saw I'd put 14s., as plain as paint."
"Well?" cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes,
"and then?"
"The parson at the door he says all serene, `Sorry to confuse
your accounts, but it'll pay for the window.' `What window?' I
says. `The one I'm going to break,' he says, and smashed that
blessed pane with his umbrella."
All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector
said under his breath, "Are we after escaped lunatics?" The waiter
went on with some relish for the ridiculous story:
"I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn't do anything.
The man marched out of the place and joined his friend just round
the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I
couldn't catch them, though I ran round the bars to do it."
"Bullock Street," said the detective, and shot up that
thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple he pursued.
Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like
tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few windows;
streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and
everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was not easy even for the
London policemen to guess in what exact direction they were
treading. The inspector, however, was pretty certain that they
would eventually strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly
one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a
bull's-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little
garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in;
he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire
gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care.
He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not need one.
An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his
elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she
saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the
inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.
"Oh," she said, "if you've come about that parcel, I've sent
it off already."
"Parcel?" repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look
inquiring.
"I mean the parcel the gentleman left--the clergyman
gentleman."
"For goodness' sake," said Valentin, leaning forward with his
first real confession of eagerness, "for Heaven's sake tell us
what happened exactly."
"Well," said the woman a little doubtfully, "the clergymen
came in about half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and
talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath. But a second
after, one of them runs back into the shop and says, `Have I left
a parcel!' Well, I looked everywhere and couldn't see one; so he
says, `Never mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to
this address,' and he left me the address and a shilling for my
trouble. And sure enough, though I thought I'd looked everywhere,
I found he'd left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it to the
place he said. I can't remember the address now; it was somewhere
in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought
perhaps the police had come about it."
"So they have," said Valentin shortly. "Is Hampstead Heath
near here?"
"Straight on for fifteen minutes," said the woman, "and you'll
come right out on the open." Valentin sprang out of the shop and
began to run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant
trot.
The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows
that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast
sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and
clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the
blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green
tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or
two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden
glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which
is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this
region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on
benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one
of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around
the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking
across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.
Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one
especially black which did not break--a group of two figures
clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin
could see that one of them was much smaller than the other.
Though the other had a student's stoop and an inconspicuous manner,
he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut
his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By
the time he had substantially diminished the distance and
magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had
perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet
which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there
could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his
friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom
he had warned about his brown paper parcels.
Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and
rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that
morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver
cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some
of the foreign priests at the congress. This undoubtedly was the
"silver with blue stones"; and Father Brown undoubtedly was the
little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing wonderful
about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also
found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing
wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire cross
he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all
natural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful
about the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with
such a silly sheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels.
He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on a string to the
North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau,
dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So
far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied
the priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for
condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought
of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to
his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason
in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a
priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What
had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows
first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his
chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed
(which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but
nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the
criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.
The two figures that they followed were crawling like black
flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently
sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were
going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent
heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the
latter had to use the undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker,
to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in
deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came
close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion,
but no word could be distinguished except the word "reason"
recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once
over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the
detectives actually lost the two figures they were following.
They did not find the trail again for an agonising ten minutes,
and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill overlooking
an amphitheatre of rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree
in this commanding yet neglected spot was an old ramshackle wooden
seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in serious speech
together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the darkening
horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacock-green
to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more and more
like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin
contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing
there in deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests
for the first time.
After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped
by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English
policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner
than seeking figs on its thistles. For the two priests were
talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure,
about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex
priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the
strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if
he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more innocently
clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian
cloister or black Spanish cathedral.
The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown's
sentences, which ended: "... what they really meant in the Middle
Ages by the heavens being incorruptible."
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
"Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but
who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there
may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly
unreasonable?"
"No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable,
even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know
that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just
the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really
supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is
bound by reason."
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky
and said:
"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe--?"
"Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning
sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from
the laws of truth."
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with
silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English
detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to
listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his
impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric,
and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was
speaking:
"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star.
Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single
diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or
geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of
brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine
sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would
make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct.
On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still
find a notice-board, `Thou shalt not steal.'"
Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and
crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled
by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very
silence of the tall priest made him stop until the latter spoke.
When at last he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his
hands on his knees:
"Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than
our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one
can only bow my head."
Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest
shade his attitude or voice, he added:
"Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We're
all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll."
The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange
violence to that shocking change of speech. But the guarder of
the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of
the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat foolish face
turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps,
he had understood and sat rigid with terror.
"Yes," said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the
same still posture, "yes, I am Flambeau."
Then, after a pause, he said:
"Come, will you give me that cross?"
"No," said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound.
Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions.
The great robber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but long.
"No," he cried, "you won't give it me, you proud prelate. You
won't give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I tell you
why you won't give it me? Because I've got it already in my own
breast-pocket."
The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face
in the dusk, and said, with the timid eagerness of "The Private
Secretary":
"Are--are you sure?"
Flambeau yelled with delight.
"Really, you're as good as a three-act farce," he cried.
"Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a
duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you've got the
duplicate and I've got the jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown--
a very old dodge."
"Yes," said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair
with the same strange vagueness of manner. "Yes, I've heard of it
before."
The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest
with a sort of sudden interest.
"You have heard of it?" he asked. "Where have you heard of
it?"
"Well, I mustn't tell you his name, of course," said the
little man simply. "He was a penitent, you know. He had lived
prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown
paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I
thought of this poor chap's way of doing it at once."
"Began to suspect me?" repeated the outlaw with increased
intensity. "Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just
because I brought you up to this bare part of the heath?"
"No, no," said Brown with an air of apology. "You see, I
suspected you when we first met. It's that little bulge up the
sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet."
"How in Tartarus," cried Flambeau, "did you ever hear of the
spiked bracelet?"
"Oh, one's little flock, you know!" said Father Brown, arching
his eyebrows rather blankly. "When I was a curate in Hartlepool,
there were three of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I
suspected you from the first, don't you see, I made sure that the
cross should go safe, anyhow. I'm afraid I watched you, you know.
So at last I saw you change the parcels. Then, don't you see, I
changed them back again. And then I left the right one behind."
"Left it behind?" repeated Flambeau, and for the first time
there was another note in his voice beside his triumph.
"Well, it was like this," said the little priest, speaking in
the same unaffected way. "I went back to that sweet-shop and
asked if I'd left a parcel, and gave them a particular address if
it turned up. Well, I knew I hadn't; but when I went away again I
did. So, instead of running after me with that valuable parcel,
they have sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster."
Then he added rather sadly: "I learnt that, too, from a poor
fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at
railway stations, but he's in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to
know, you know," he added, rubbing his head again with the same
sort of desperate apology. "We can't help being priests. People
come and tell us these things."
Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner pocket and
rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper and sticks of lead
inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and
cried:
"I don't believe you. I don't believe a bumpkin like you
could manage all that. I believe you've still got the stuff on
you, and if you don't give it up--why, we're all alone, and I'll
take it by force!"
"No," said Father Brown simply, and stood up also, "you won't
take it by force. First, because I really haven't still got it.
And, second, because we are not alone."
Flambeau stopped in his stride forward.
"Behind that tree," said Father Brown, pointing, "are two
strong policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they
come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of course! How did I
do it? Why, I'll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we have
to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes!
Well, I wasn't sure you were a thief, and it would never do to
make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested
you to see if anything would make you show yourself. A man
generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if
he doesn't, he has some reason for keeping quiet. I changed the
salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if
his bill is three times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive
for passing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it."
The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger.
But he was held back as by a spell; he was stunned with the utmost
curiosity.
"Well," went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, "as you
wouldn't leave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had
to. At every place we went to, I took care to do something that
would get us talked about for the rest of the day. I didn't do
much harm--a splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I
saved the cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at
Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn't stop it with the
Donkey's Whistle."
"With the what?" asked Flambeau.
"I'm glad you've never heard of it," said the priest, making a
face. "It's a foul thing. I'm sure you're too good a man for a
Whistler. I couldn't have countered it even with the Spots myself;
I'm not strong enough in the legs."
"What on earth are you talking about?" asked the other.
"Well, I did think you'd know the Spots," said Father Brown,
agreeably surprised. "Oh, you can't have gone so very wrong yet!"
"How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau.
The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his
clerical opponent.
"Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has
it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear
men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me
sure you weren't a priest."
"What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.
"You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."
And even as he turned away to collect his property, the three
policemen came out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an
artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great
bow.
"Do not bow to me, mon ami," said Valentin with silver
clearness. "Let us both bow to our master."
And they both stood an instant uncovered while the little Essex
priest blinked about for his umbrella.
CHESTERTON-THE INNOCENT OF FR BROWN