THE BLUE CROSS
THE BLUE CROSS
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.