The secret of Father Brown
Varney, who was reported to be an invalid, and certainly was never seen
to go abroad. At right angles to these stood two or three shops that
served the simpler needs of the hamlet, and at the corner the inn of the
Blue Dragon, at which Mr. Hartopp, the stranger from London, was
staying. On the opposite side were three houses, one rented by the Count
de Lara, one by Dr. Burdock, and the third still standing empty. On the
fourth side was the bank, with an adjoining house for the bank manager,
and a line offence enclosing some land that was let for building. It was
thus a very self-contained group, and the comparative emptiness of the
open ground for miles round it threw the members more and more on each
other's society. That afternoon, one stranger had indeed broken into the
magic circle: a hatchet-faced fellow with fierce tufts of eyebrows and
moustache, and so shabbily dressed that he must have been a millionaire
or a duke if he had really (as was alleged) come down to do business
with the old collector. But he was known, at the Blue Dragon at least,
as Mr. Harmer.
To him had been recounted anew the glories of the gilded fish and the
criticisms regarding their custody.
"People are always telling me I ought to lock them up more carefully,"
observed Mr. Smart, cocking an eyebrow over his shoulder at the
dependant who stood there holding some papers from the office. Smart was
a round-faced, round-bodied little old man rather like a bald parrot.
"Jameson and Harris and the rest are always at me to bar the doors as if
it were a mediæval fortress, though really these rotten old rusty bars
are too mediæval to keep anybody out, I should think. I prefer to trust
to luck and the local police."
"It is not always the best bars that keep people out," said the Count.
"It all depends on who's trying to get in. There was an ancient Hindu
hermit who lived naked in a cave and passed through the three armies
that encircled the Mogul and took the great ruby out of the tyrant's
turban, and went back unscathed like a shadow. For he wished to teach
the great how small are the laws of space and time."
"When we really study the small laws of space and time," said Dr.
Burdock dryly, "we generally find out how those tricks are done. Western
science has let in daylight on a good deal of Eastern magic. Doubtless a
great deal can be done with hypnotism and suggestion, to say nothing of
sleight-of-hand."
"The ruby was not in the royal tent," observed the Count in his dream
fashion; "but he found it among a hundred tents."
"Can't all that be explained by telepathy?" asked the doctor sharply.
The question sounded the sharper because it was followed by a heavy
silence, almost as if the distinguished Oriental traveller had, with
imperfect politeness, gone to sleep.
"I beg your pardon," he said rousing himself with a sudden smile. "I had
forgotten we were talking with words. In the east we talk with thoughts,
and so we never misunderstand each other. It is strange how you people
worship words and are satisfied with words. What difference does it make
to a thing that you now call it telepathy, as you once called it
tomfoolery? If a man climbs into the sky on a mango-tree, how is it
altered by saying it is only levitation, instead of saying it is only
lies. If a mediæval witch waved a wand and turned me into a blue baboon,
you would say it was only atavism."
The doctor looked for a moment as if he might say that it would not be
so great a change after all. But before his irritation could find that
or any other vent, the man called Harmer interrupted gruffly:
"It's true enough those Indian conjurers can do queer things, but I
notice they generally do them in India. Confederates, perhaps, or merely
mass psychology. I don't think those tricks have ever been played in an
English village, and I should say our friend's goldfish were quite
safe."
"I will tell you a story," said de Lara, in his motionless way, "which
happened not in India, but outside an English barrack in the most
modernized part of Cairo. A sentinel was standing inside the grating of
an iron gateway looking out between the bars on to the street. There
appeared outside the gate a beggar, barefoot and in native rags, who
asked him, in English that was startlingly distinct and refined, for a
certain official document kept in the building for safety. The soldier
told the man, of that he could not come inside; and the man answered,
smiling: course, 'What is inside and what is outside?' The soldier was
still staring scornfully through the iron grating when he gradually
realized that, though neither he nor the gate had moved, he was actually
standing in the street and looking in at the barrack yard, where the
beggar stood still and smiling and equally motionless. Then, when the
beggar turned towards the building, the sentry awoke to such sense as he
had left, and shouted a warning to all the soldiers within the gated
enclosure to hold the prisoner fast. 'You won't get out of there
anyhow,' he said vindictively. Then the beggar said in his silvery
voice: 'What is outside and what is inside?' And the soldier, still
glaring through the same bars, saw that they were once more between him
and the street, where the beggar stood free and smiling with a paper in
his hand."
Mr. Imlack Smith, the bank manager, was looking at the carpet with his
dark sleek head bowed, and he spoke for the first time.
"Did anything happen about the paper?" he asked.
"Your professional instincts are correct, sir," said the Count with grim
affability. "It was a paper of considerable financial importance. Its
consequences were international."
"I hope they don't occur often," said young Hartopp gloomily.
"I do not touch the political side," said the Count serenely, "but only
the philosophical. It illustrates how the wise man can get behind time
and space and turn the levers of them, so to speak, so that the whole
world turns round before our eyes. But is it so hard for you people to
believe that spiritual powers are really more powerful than material
ones."
"Well," said old Smart cheerfully, "I don't profess to be an authority
on spiritual powers. What do you say, Father Brown?"
"The only thing that strikes me," answered the little priest, "is that
all the supernatural acts we have yet heard of seem to be thefts. And
stealing by spiritual methods seem to me much the same as stealing by
material ones."
"Father Brown is a Philistine," said the smiling Smith.
"I have a sympathy with the tribe," said Father Brown. "A Philistine is
only a man who is right without knowing why."
"All this is too clever for me," said Hartopp heartily.
"Perhaps," said Father Brown with a smile, "you would like to speak
without words, as the Count suggests. He would begin by saying nothing
in a pointed fashion, and you would retort with a burst of taciturnity."
"Something might be done with music," murmured the Count dreamily. "It
would be better than all these words."
"Yes, I might understand that better," said the young man in a low
voice.
Boyle had followed the conversation with curious attention, for there
was something in the demeanour of more than one of the talkers that
seemed to him significant or even odd. As the talk drifted to music,
with an appeal to the dapper bank manager (who was an amateur musician
of some merit), the young secretary awoke with a start to his
secretarial duties, and reminded his employer that the head clerk was
still standing patiently with the papers in his hand.
"Oh, never mind about those just now, Jameson," said Smart rather
hurriedly. "Only something about my account; I'll see Mr. Smith about it
later. You were saying that the 'cello, Mr. Smith----"
But the cold breath of business had sufficed to disperse the fumes of
transcendental talk, and the guests began one after another to say
farewell. Only Mr. Imlack Smith, bank manager and musician, remained to
the last; and when the rest were gone he and his host went into the
inner room, where the goldfish were kept, and closed the door.
The house was long and narrow, with a covered balcony running along the
first floor, which consisted mostly of a sort of suite of rooms used by
the householder himself, his bedroom and dressing-room, and an inner
room in which his very valuable treasures were sometimes stored for the
night instead of being left in the rooms below. This balcony, like the
insufficiently barred door below it, was a matter of concern to the
housekeeper and the head clerk and the others who lamented the
carelessness of the collector; but, in truth, that cunning old gentleman
was more careful than he seemed. He professed no great belief in the
antiquated fastenings of the old house, which the housekeeper lamented
to see rusting in idleness, but he had an eye to the more important
point of strategy. He always put his favourite goldfish in the room at
the back of his bedroom for the night, and slept in front of it, as it
were, with a pistol under his pillow. And when Boyle and Jameson,
awaiting his return from the _tête-à-tête_, at length saw the door open
and their employer reappear, he was carrying the great glass bowl as
reverently as it if had been the relic of a saint.
Outside, the last edges of the sunset still clung to the corners of the
green square; but inside, a lamp had already been kindled; and in the
mingling of the two lights the coloured globe glowed like some monstrous
jewel, and the fantastic outlines of the fiery fishes seemed to give it,
indeed, something of the mystery of a talisman, like strange shapes seen
by a seer in the crystal of doom. Over the old man's shoulder the olive
face of Imlack Smith stared like a sphinx.
"I am going up to London to-night, Mr. Boyle," said old Smart, with more
gravity than he commonly showed. "Mr. Smith and I are catching the
six-forty-five. I should prefer you, Jameson, to sleep upstairs in my
room to-night; if you put the bowl in the back room as usual, it will be
quite safe then. Not that I suppose anything could possibly happen."
"Anything may happen anywhere," said the smiling Mr. Smith. "I think you
generally take a gun to bed with you. Perhaps you had better leave it
behind in this case."
Peregrine Smart did not reply, and they passed out of the house on to
the road round the village green.
The secretary and the head clerk slept that night as directed in their
employer's bedroom. To speak more strictly, Jameson, the head clerk,
slept in a bed in the dressing-room, but the door stood open between,
and the two rooms running along the front were practically one. Only the
bedroom had a long French window giving on the balcony, and an entrance
at the back into the inner apartment where the goldfish bowl had been
placed for safety. Boyle dragged his bed right across so as to bar this
entrance, put the revolver under his pillow, and then undressed and went
to bed, feeling that he had taken all possible precautions against an
impossible or improbable event. He did not see why there should be any
particular danger of normal burglary; and as for the spiritual burglary
that figured in the traveller's tales of the Count de Lara, if his
thoughts ran on them so near to sleep it was because they were such
stuff as dreams are made of. They soon turned into dreams with intervals
of dreamless slumber. The old clerk was a little more restless as usual;
but after fussing about a little longer and repeating some of his
favourite regrets and warnings, he also retired to his bed in the same
manner and slept. The moon brightened and grew dim again above the green
square and the grey blocks of houses in a solitude and silence that
seemed to have no human witness; and it was when the white cracks of