The innocence of Father Brown
battle. Anyone might bet the papers would get hold of it, as they have.
On all these tombs and things it’s shown broken at the point. I hope you
haven’t dragged me through this Polar expedition merely because two men
with an eye for a picture saw St. Clare’s broken sword.”
“No,” cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; “but
who saw his unbroken sword?”
“What do you mean?” cried the other, and stood still under the stars.
They had come abruptly out of the grey gates of the wood.
“I say, who saw his unbroken sword?” repeated Father Brown obstinately.
“Not the writer of the diary, anyhow; the general sheathed it in time.”
Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind
might look in the sun; and his friend went on, for the first time with
eagerness:
“Flambeau,” he cried, “I cannot prove it, even after hunting through the
tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add just one more tiny fact that tips
the whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the
first struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to
close quarters. But he saw St. Clare’s sword broken. Why was it broken?
How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle.”
“Oh!” said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; “and pray
where is the other piece?”
“I can tell you,” said the priest promptly. “In the northeast corner of
the cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral at Belfast.”
“Indeed?” inquired the other. “Have you looked for it?”
“I couldn’t,” replied Brown, with frank regret. “There’s a great marble
monument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fell
fighting gloriously at the famous Battle of the Black River.”
Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. “You mean,” he cried
hoarsely, “that General St. Clare hated Murray, and murdered him on the
field of battle because--”
“You are still full of good and pure thoughts,” said the other. “It was
worse than that.”
“Well,” said the large man, “my stock of evil imagination is used up.”
The priest seemed really doubtful where to begin, and at last he said
again:
“Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”
The other did not answer.
“If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to
hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest.”
There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly and
quietly:
“And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead
bodies to hide it in.”
Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time
or space; but Father Brown went on as if he were continuing the last
sentence:
“Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read
his Bible. That was what was the matter with him. When will people
understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also
reads everybody else’s Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A
Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist
reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old
Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might
mean; and, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cant about it. It might mean a man
physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society,
and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of
course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he
found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted--lust, tyranny,
treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the
good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
“In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a
harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainly
he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the
Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord?
Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door after door
in hell, and always into smaller and smaller chambers. This is the real
case against crime, that a man does not become wilder and wilder, but
only meaner and meaner. St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties of
bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash. And by the time of
the Battle of the Black River he had fallen from world to world to that
place which Dante makes the lowest floor of the universe.”
“What do you mean?” asked his friend again.
“I mean that,” retorted the cleric, and suddenly pointed at a puddle
sealed with ice that shone in the moon. “Do you remember whom Dante put
in the last circle of ice?”
“The traitors,” said Flambeau, and shuddered. As he looked around at the
inhuman landscape of trees, with taunting and almost obscene outlines,
he could almost fancy he was Dante, and the priest with the rivulet of a
voice was, indeed, a Virgil leading him through a land of eternal sins.
The voice went on: “Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not
permit a secret service and spies. The thing, however, was done, like
many other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friend
Espado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the
Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt his
way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its one
corrupt man--please God!--and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foul
need of money, and mountains of it. The discredited family doctor was
threatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and
were broken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane;
things done by an English Evangelist that smelt like human sacrifice and
hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter’s dowry; for
to him the fame of wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snapped the
last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in from the
enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vulture as
well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster had guessed
the hideous truth; and when they walked slowly together down that road
towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he must resign
instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The general temporised with
him till they came to the fringe of tropic trees by the bridge; and
there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I can see the
picture) the general drew his sabre and plunged it through the body of
the major.”
The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel black
shapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond it
faintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight, but
some fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its
close.
“St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I’ll
swear, was he so lucid and so strong as when poor Murray lay a cold lump
at his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was
the great man so great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. He
looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw the point he
had planted between his victim’s shoulders had broken off in the body.
He saw quite calmly, as through a club windowpane, all that must follow.
He saw that men must find the unaccountable corpse; must extract
the unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable broken
sword--or absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But his
imperious intellect rose against the facer; there was one way yet. He
could make the corpse less unaccountable. He could create a hill of
corpses to cover this one. In twenty minutes eight hundred English
soldiers were marching down to their death.”
The warmer glow behind the black winter wood grew richer and brighter,
and Flambeau strode on to reach it. Father Brown also quickened his
stride; but he seemed merely absorbed in his tale.
“Such was the valour of that English thousand, and such the genius of
their commander, that if they had at once attacked the hill, even their
mad march might have met some luck. But the evil mind that played with
them like pawns had other aims and reasons. They must remain in the
marshes by the bridge at least till British corpses should be a
common sight there. Then for the last grand scene; the silver-haired
soldier-saint would give up his shattered sword to save further
slaughter. Oh, it was well organised for an impromptu. But I think (I
cannot prove), I think that it was while they stuck there in the bloody
mire that someone doubted--and someone guessed.”
He was mute a moment, and then said: “There is a voice from nowhere that
tells me the man who guessed was the lover... the man to wed the old
man’s child.”
“But what about Olivier and the hanging?” asked Flambeau.
“Olivier, partly from chivalry, partly from policy, seldom encumbered
his march with captives,” explained the narrator. “He released everybody
in most cases. He released everybody in this case.”
“Everybody but the general,” said the tall man.
“Everybody,” said the priest.
Flambeau knit his black brows. “I don’t grasp it all yet,” he said.
“There is another picture, Flambeau,” said Brown in his more mystical
undertone. “I can’t prove it; but I can do more--I can see it. There is
a camp breaking up on the bare, torrid hills at morning, and Brazilian
uniforms massed in blocks and columns to march. There is the red
shirt and long black beard of Olivier, which blows as he stands, his
broad-brimmed hat in his hand. He is saying farewell to the great enemy
he is setting free--the simple, snow-headed English veteran, who
thanks him in the name of his men. The English remnant stand behind
at attention; beside them are stores and vehicles for the retreat.
The drums roll; the Brazilians are moving; the English are still like
statues. So they abide till the last hum and flash of the enemy have
faded from the tropic horizon. Then they alter their postures all at
once, like dead men coming to life; they turn their fifty faces upon the
general--faces not to be forgotten.”
Flambeau gave a great jump. “Ah,” he cried, “you don’t mean--”
“Yes,” said Father Brown in a deep, moving voice. “It was an English
hand that put the rope round St. Clare’s neck; I believe the hand that
put the ring on his daughter’s finger. They were English hands that
dragged him up to the tree of shame; the hands of men that had adored
him and followed him to victory. And they were English souls (God pardon
and endure us all!) who stared at him swinging in that foreign sun on
the green gallows of palm, and prayed in their hatred that he might drop
off it into hell.”
As the two topped the ridge there burst on them the strong scarlet light
of a red-curtained English inn. It stood sideways in the road, as if
standing aside in the amplitude of hospitality. Its three doors stood
open with invitation; and even where they stood they could hear the hum
and laughter of humanity happy for a night.
“I need not tell you more,” said Father Brown. “They tried him in the
wilderness and destroyed him; and then, for the honour of England and
of his daughter, they took an oath to seal up for ever the story of the
traitor’s purse and the assassin’s sword blade. Perhaps--Heaven help
them--they tried to forget it. Let us try to forget it, anyhow; here is
our inn.”
“With all my heart,” said Flambeau, and was just striding into the
bright, noisy bar when he stepped back and almost fell on the road.
“Look there, in the devil’s name!” he cried, and pointed rigidly at the
square wooden sign that overhung the road. It showed dimly the crude
shape of a sabre hilt and a shortened blade; and was inscribed in false
archaic lettering, “The Sign of the Broken Sword.”