The innocence of Father Brown
in the quite inimitable, not to say illegible, handwriting of Leonard
Quinton.
Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, strode towards
the conservatory, only to meet his medical friend coming back with a
face of assurance and collapse. “He’s done it,” said Harris.
They went together through the gorgeous unnatural beauty of cactus
and azalea and found Leonard Quinton, poet and romancer, with his head
hanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground.
Into his left side was thrust the queer dagger that they had picked up
in the garden, and his limp hand still rested on the hilt.
Outside the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge,
and garden and glass roof were darkened with driving rain. Father Brown
seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse; he held it close
to his eyes; and seemed trying to read it in the twilight. Then he held
it up against the faint light, and, as he did so, lightning stared at
them for an instant so white that the paper looked black against it.
Darkness full of thunder followed, and after the thunder Father Brown’s
voice said out of the dark: “Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape.”
“What do you mean?” asked Doctor Harris, with a frowning stare.
“It isn’t square,” answered Brown. “It has a sort of edge snipped off at
the corner. What does it mean?”
“How the deuce should I know?” growled the doctor. “Shall we move this
poor chap, do you think? He’s quite dead.”
“No,” answered the priest; “we must leave him as he lies and send for
the police.” But he was still scrutinising the paper.
As they went back through the study he stopped by the table and picked
up a small pair of nail scissors. “Ah,” he said, with a sort of relief,
“this is what he did it with. But yet--” And he knitted his brows.
“Oh, stop fooling with that scrap of paper,” said the doctor
emphatically. “It was a fad of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut all
his paper like that,” as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper still
unused on another and smaller table. Father Brown went up to it and held
up a sheet. It was the same irregular shape.
“Quite so,” he said. “And here I see the corners that were snipped off.”
And to the indignation of his colleague he began to count them.
“That’s all right,” he said, with an apologetic smile. “Twenty-three
sheets cut and twenty-two corners cut off them. And as I see you are
impatient we will rejoin the others.”
“Who is to tell his wife?” asked Dr. Harris. “Will you go and tell her
now, while I send a servant for the police?”
“As you will,” said Father Brown indifferently. And he went out to the
hall door.
Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed
nothing less than his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he
had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of the
steps was sprawling with his boots in the air the amiable Atkinson, his
billycock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite directions along
the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau’s almost paternal
custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a
smooth game to play with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch’s
abdication.
Flambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, when
the priest patted him easily on the shoulder.
“Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend,” he said. “Beg a mutual pardon
and say ‘Good night.’ We need not detain him any longer.” Then, as
Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick and
went towards the garden gate, Father Brown said in a more serious voice:
“Where is that Indian?”
They all three (for the doctor had joined them) turned involuntarily
towards the dim grassy bank amid the tossing trees purple with twilight,
where they had last seen the brown man swaying in his strange prayers.
The Indian was gone.
“Confound him,” cried the doctor, stamping furiously. “Now I know that
it was that nigger that did it.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in magic,” said Father Brown quietly.
“No more I did,” said the doctor, rolling his eyes. “I only know that
I loathed that yellow devil when I thought he was a sham wizard. And I
shall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one.”
“Well, his having escaped is nothing,” said Flambeau. “For we could
have proved nothing and done nothing against him. One hardly goes to
the parish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft or
auto-suggestion.”
Meanwhile Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went to
break the news to the wife of the dead man.
When he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic, but what
passed between them in that interview was never known, even when all was
known.
Flambeau, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see
his friend reappear so soon at his elbow; but Brown took no notice, and
merely drew the doctor apart. “You have sent for the police, haven’t
you?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Harris. “They ought to be here in ten minutes.”
“Will you do me a favour?” said the priest quietly. “The truth is, I
make a collection of these curious stories, which often contain, as in
the case of our Hindoo friend, elements which can hardly be put into a
police report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for
my private use. Yours is a clever trade,” he said, looking the doctor
gravely and steadily in the face. “I sometimes think that you know some
details of this matter which you have not thought fit to mention. Mine
is a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat anything you write
for me in strict confidence. But write the whole.”
The doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little
on one side, looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said:
“All right,” and went into the study, closing the door behind him.
“Flambeau,” said Father Brown, “there is a long seat there under the
veranda, where we can smoke out of the rain. You are my only friend in
the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”
They established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; Father
Brown, against his common habit, accepted a good cigar and smoked it
steadily in silence, while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of
the veranda.
“My friend,” he said at length, “this is a very queer case. A very queer
case.”
“I should think it was,” said Flambeau, with something like a shudder.
“You call it queer, and I call it queer,” said the other, “and yet
we mean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up two
different ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvellous, and mystery
in the sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about
miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because
it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil)
instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now, you mean that
this business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it is
witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that
it was not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what
surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of men. But for
the present my point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think,
then it is marvellous; but it is not mysterious--that is, it is not
complicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner
is simple. Now, the manner of this business has been the reverse of
simple.”
The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again,
and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder. Father Brown let
fall the ash of his cigar and went on:
“There has been in this incident,” he said, “a twisted, ugly, complex
quality that does not belong to the straight bolts either of heaven
or hell. As one knows the crooked track of a snail, I know the crooked
track of a man.”
The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut up
again, and the priest went on:
“Of all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that piece
of paper. It was crookeder than the dagger that killed him.”
“You mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his suicide,” said
Flambeau.
“I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’”
answered Father Brown. “The shape of that paper, my friend, was the
wrong shape; the wrong shape, if ever I have seen it in this wicked
world.”
“It only had a corner snipped off,” said Flambeau, “and I understand
that all Quinton’s paper was cut that way.”
“It was a very odd way,” said the other, “and a very bad way, to my
taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton--God receive his
soul!--was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an
artist, with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard
to read, was bold and beautiful. I can’t prove what I say; I can’t prove
anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he could
never have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he had
wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or binding
up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the
scissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong
shape. Like this. Don’t you remember?”
And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making
irregular squares so rapidly that Flambeau really seemed to see them as
fiery hieroglyphics upon the darkness--hieroglyphics such as his friend
had spoken of, which are undecipherable, yet can have no good meaning.
“But,” said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again
and leaned back, staring at the roof, “suppose somebody else did use the
scissors. Why should somebody else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper,
make Quinton commit suicide?”
Father Brown was still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took
his cigar out of his mouth and said: “Quinton never did commit suicide.”
Flambeau stared at him. “Why, confound it all,” he cried, “then why did
he confess to suicide?”
The priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, looked
at the ground, and said, in a low, distinct voice: “He never did confess
to suicide.”
Flambeau laid his cigar down. “You mean,” he said, “that the writing was
forged?”
“No,” said Father Brown. “Quinton wrote it all right.”
“Well, there you are,” said the aggravated Flambeau; “Quinton wrote, ‘I
die by my own hand,’ with his own hand on a plain piece of paper.”
“Of the wrong shape,” said the priest calmly.
“Oh, the shape be damned!” cried Flambeau. “What has the shape to do
with it?”
“There were twenty-three snipped papers,” resumed Brown unmoved, “and
only twenty-two pieces snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had
been destroyed, probably that from the written paper. Does that suggest
anything to you?”
A light dawned on Flambeau’s face, and he said: “There was something
else written by Quinton, some other words. ‘They will tell you I die by
my own hand,’ or ‘Do not believe that--’”
“Hotter, as the children say,” said his friend. “But the piece was
hardly half an inch across; there was no room for one word, let alone
five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man
with hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him?”
“I can think of nothing,” said Flambeau at last.
“What about quotation marks?” said the priest, and flung his cigar far
into the darkness like a shooting star.
All words had left the other man’s mouth, and Father Brown said, like
one going back to fundamentals:
“Leonard Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance
about wizardry and hypnotism. He--”