The secret of Father Brown
in such a position; and they ranged from large to small and from new to
old. It annoyed him to pass through the passages where the old pantomime
scenery was stacked; because he had successfully begun, his career at
that theatre with very popular pantomimes, and had since been induced to
gamble in more serious and classical drama over which he had dropped a
good deal of money. Hence, to see the sapphire Gates of Bluebeard's Blue
Palace, or portions of the Enchanted Grove of Golden Orange Trees,
leaning up against the wall to be festooned with cobwebs or nibbled by
mice, did not give him that soothing sense of a return to simplicity
which we all ought to have when given a glimpse of that wonderland of
our childhood. Nor had he any time to drop a tear where he had dropped
the money, or to dream of this Paradise of Peter Pan; for he had been
summoned hurriedly to settle a practical problem, not of the past but of
the moment. It was the sort of thing that does sometimes happen in that
strange world behind the scenes; but it was big enough to be serious.
Miss Maroni, the talented young actress of Italian parentage, who had
undertaken to act an important part in the play that was to be rehearsed
that afternoon and performed that evening, had abruptly and even
violently refused at the last moment to do anything of the kind. He had
not even seen the exasperating lady yet; and as she had locked herself
up in her dressing-room and defied the world through the door, it seemed
unlikely, for the present, that he would. Mr. Mundon Mandeville was
sufficiently British to explain it by murmuring that all foreigners were
mad; but the thought of his good fortune in inhabiting the only sane
island of the planet did not suffice to soothe him any more than the
memory of the Enchanted Grove. All these things, and many more, were
annoying; and yet a very intimate observer might have suspected that
something was wrong with Mr. Mandeville that went beyond annoyance.
If it be possible for a heavy and healthy man to look haggard, he looked
haggard. His face was full, but his eye-sockets were hollow; his mouth
twitched as if it were always trying to bite the black strip of
moustache that was just too short to be bitten. He might have been a man
who had begun to take drugs; but even on that assumption there was
something that suggested that he had a reason for doing it; that the
drug was not the cause of the tragedy, but the tragedy the cause of the
drug. Whatever was his deeper secret, it seemed to inhabit that dark end
of the long passage where was the entrance to his own little study; and
as he went along the empty corridor, he threw back a nervous glance now
and then.
However, business is business; and he made his way to the opposite end
of the passage where the blank green door of Miss Maroni defied the
world. A group of actors and other people involved were already standing
in front of it, conferring and considering, one might almost fancy, the
advisability of a battering-ram. The group contained one figure, at
least, who was already well enough known; whose photograph was on many
mantelpieces and his autograph in many albums. For though Norman Knight
was playing the hero in a theatre that was still a little provincial and
old-fashioned and capable of calling him the first walking gentleman, he,
at least, was certainly on the way to wider triumphs. He was a
good-looking man with a long cleft chin and fair hair low on his forehead,
giving him a rather Neronian look that did not altogether correspond to
his impulsive and plunging movements. The group also contained Ralph
Randall, who generally acted elderly character parts, and had a humorous
hatchet face, blue with shaving, and discoloured with grease paint. It
contained Mandeville's second walking gentleman, carrying on the not yet
wholly vanished tradition of Charles's Friend, a dark, curly-haired
youth of somewhat Semitic profile bearing the name of Aubrey Vernon.
It included Mr. Mundon Mandeville's wife's maid or dresser, a very
powerful-looking person with tight red hair and a hard wooden face. It
also, incidentally, included Mandeville's wife, a quiet woman in the
background, with a pale, patient face, the lines of which had not lost a
classical symmetry and severity, but which looked all the paler because
her very eyes were pale, and her pale yellow hair lay in two plain bands
like some very archaic Madonna. Not everybody knew that she had once
been a serious and successful actress in Ibsen and the intellectual
drama. But her husband did not think much of problem plays; and
certainly at the moment was more interested in the problem of getting a
foreign actress out of a locked room; a new version of the conjuring
trick of the Vanishing Lady.
"Hasn't she come out yet?" he demanded, speaking to his wife's
business-like attendant rather than to his wife.
"No, sir," answered the woman--who was known as Mrs. Sands--in a
sombre manner.
"We are beginning to get a little alarmed," said old Randall. "She
seemed quite unbalanced, and we're afraid she might even do herself some
mischief."
"Hell!" said Mandeville in his simple and artless way. "Advertisement's
very good, but we don't want that sort of advertisement. Hasn't she any
friends here? Has nobody any influence with her?"
"Jarvis thinks the only man who might manage her is her own priest round
the corner," said Randall; "and in case she does start hanging herself
on a hat peg, I really thought perhaps he'd better be here. Jarvis has
gone to fetch him ... and, as a matter of fact, here he comes."
Two more figures appeared in that subterranean passage under the stage:
the first was Ashton Jarvis, a jolly fellow who generally acted
villains, but who had surrendered that high vocation for the moment to
the curly-headed youth with the nose. The other figure was short and
square and clad all in black; it was Father Brown from the church round
the corner.
Father Brown seemed to take it quite naturally and even casually, that
he should be called in to consider the queer conduct of one of his
flock, whether she was to be regarded as a black sheep or only as a lost
lamb. But he did not seem to think much of the suggestion of suicide.
"I suppose there was some reason for her flying off the handle like
that," he said. "Does anybody know what it was?"
"Dissatisfied with her part, I believe," said the older actor.
"They always are," growled Mr. Mundon Mandeville. "And I thought my wife
would look after those arrangements."
"I can only say," said Mrs. Mundon Mandeville rather wearily, "that I gave
her what ought to be the best part. It's supposed to be what stage-struck
young women want, isn't it--to act the beautiful young heroine
and marry the beautiful young hero in a shower of bouquets and cheers
from the gallery? Women of my age naturally have to fall back on acting
respectable matrons, and I was careful to confine myself to that."
"It would be devilish awkward to alter the parts now, anyhow," said
Randall.
"It's not to be thought of," declared Norman Knight firmly. "Why, I
could hardly act--but anyhow it's much too late."
Father Brown had slipped forward and was standing outside the locked
door listening.
"Is there no sound?" asked the manager anxiously; and then added in a
lower voice: "Do you think she can have done herself in?"
"There is a certain sound," replied Father Brown calmly. "I should be
inclined to deduce from the sound that she is engaged in breaking
windows or looking-glasses, probably with her feet. No; I do not think
there is much danger of her going on to destroy herself. Breaking
looking-glasses with your feet is a very unusual prelude to suicide. If
she had been a German, gone away to think quietly about metaphysics and
_weltschmerz_, I should be all for breaking the door down. These Italians
don't really die so easily; and are not liable to kill themselves in a
rage. Somebody else, perhaps ... yes, possibly ... it might be well to take
ordinary precautions if she comes out with a leap."
"So you're not in favour of forcing the door?" asked Mandeville.
"Not if you want her to act in your play," replied Father Brown. "If you
do that, she'll raise the roof and refuse to stay in the place; if you
leave her alone she'll probably come out from mere curiosity. If I were
you, I should just leave somebody to guard the door, more or less, and
trust to time for an hour or two."
"In that case," said Mandeville, "we can only get on with rehearsing the
scenes where she doesn't appear. My wife will arrange all that is
necessary for scenery just now. After all, the fourth act is the main
business. You had better get on with that."
"Not a dress rehearsal," said Mandeville's wife to the others.
"Very well," said Knight, "not a dress rehearsal, of course. I wish the
dresses of the infernal period weren't so elaborate."
"What is the play?" asked the priest with a touch of curiosity.
"_The School for Scandal_," said Mandeville. "It may be literature, but I
want plays. My wife likes what she calls classical comedies. A long
sight more classic than comic."
At this moment, the old doorkeeper known as Sam, and the solitary
inhabitant of the theatre during off-hours, came waddling up to the
manager with a card, to say that Lady Miriam Marden wished to see him.
He turned away, but Father Brown continued to blink steadily for a few
seconds in the direction of the manager's wife, and saw that her wan
face wore a faint smile; not altogether a cheerful smile.
Father Brown moved off in company with the man who had brought him in,
who happened, indeed, to be a friend and person of a similar persuasion,
which is not uncommon among actors. As he moved off, however, he heard
Mrs. Mandeville give quiet directions to Mrs. Sands that she should take
up the post of watcher beside the closed door.
"Mrs. Mandeville seems to be an intelligent woman," said the priest to
his companion, "though she keeps so much in the background."
"She was once a highly intellectual woman," said Jarvis sadly; "rather
washed out and wasted, some would say, by marrying a bounder like
Mandeville. She has the very highest ideals of the drama, you know; but,
of course, it isn't often she can get her lord and master to look at
anything in that light. Do you know, he actually wanted a woman like
that to act as a pantomime boy? Admitted that she was a fine actress,
but said pantomimes paid better. That will give you about a measure of
his psychological insight and sensibility. But she never complained. As
she said to me once: 'Complaint always comes back in an echo from the
ends of the world; but silence strengthens us.' If only she were married
to somebody who understood her ideas she might have been one of the
great actresses of the age; indeed, the highbrow critics still think a
lot of her. As it is, she is married to that."
And he pointed to where the big black bulk of Mandeville stood with his
back to them, talking to the ladies who had summoned him forth into the
vestibule. Lady Miriam was a very long and languid and elegant lady,
handsome in a recent fashion largely modelled on Egyptian mummies; her
dark hair cut low and square, like a sort of helmet, and her lips very
painted and prominent and giving her a permanent expression of contempt.
Her companion was a very vivacious lady with an ugly attractive face and
hair powdered with grey. She was a Miss Theresa Talbot and she talked a
great deal, while her companion seemed too tired to talk at all. Only,
just as the two men passed. Lady Miriam summoned up the energy to say:
"Plays are a bore; but I've never seen a rehearsal in ordinary clothes.
Might be a bit funny. Somehow, nowadays, one can never find a thing
one's never seen."