The secret of Father Brown
for some reason, until he reached the point of feeling that the
appearance of anybody would be an agreeable contrast. It was therefore
with a certain relief, though with a slight start as of awakening, that
he turned at the sound of his name and saw another face that he knew.
It was the sharp but not unfriendly face of a lawyer named Granby, whose
patches of grey hair might almost have been the powder from a wig, so
incongruous were they with his youthful energy of movement. He was one
of those men in the City who run about like schoolboys in and out of
their offices. He could not run round the fashionable picture gallery
quite in that fashion; but he looked as if he wanted to, and fretted as
he glanced to left and right, seeking somebody he knew.
"I didn't know," said Father Brown, smiling, "that you were a patron of
the New Art."
"I didn't know that you were," retorted the other. "I came here to catch
a man."
"I hope you will have good sport," answered the priest. "I'm doing much
the same."
"Said he was passing through to the Continent," snorted the solicitor,
"and could I meet him in this cranky place." He ruminated a moment, and
said abruptly: "Look here, I know you can keep a secret. Do you know Sir
John Musgrave?"
"No," answered the priest; "but I should hardly have thought he was a
secret, though they say he does hide himself in a castle. Isn't he the
old man they tell all those tales about--how he lives in a tower with a
real portcullis and drawbridge, and generally refuses to emerge from the
Dark Ages? Is he one of your clients?"
"No," replied Granby shortly: "it's his son, Captain Musgrave, who has
come to us. But the old man counts for a good deal in the affair, and I
don't know him; that's the point. Look here, this is confidential, as I
say, but I can confide in you." He dropped his voice and drew his friend
apart into a side gallery containing representations of various real
objects, which was comparatively empty.
"This young Musgrave," he said, "wants to raise a big sum from us on a
_post obit_ on his old father in Northumberland. The old man's long past
seventy and presumably will _obit_ some time or other; but what about the
_post_, so to speak? What will happen afterwards to his cash and castles
and portcullises and all the rest? It's a very fine old estate, and
still worth a lot, but strangely enough it isn't entailed. So you see
how we stand. The question is, as the man said in Dickens, is the old
man friendly?"
"If he's friendly to his son you'll feel all the friendlier," observed
Father Brown. "No, I'm afraid I can't help you. I never met Sir John
Musgrave, and I understand very few people do meet him nowadays. But it
seems obvious you have a right to an answer on that point before you
lend the young gentleman your firm's money. Is he the sort that people
cut off with a shilling?"
"Well, I'm doubtful," answered the other. "He's very popular and
brilliant and a great figure in society; but he's a great deal abroad,
and he's been a journalist."
"Well," said Father Brown, "that's not a crime. At least not always."
"Nonsense!" said Granby curtly. "You know what I mean--he's rather a
rolling stone, who's been a journalist and a lecturer and an actor, and
all sorts of things. I've got to know where I stand.... Why, there he
is."
And the solicitor, who had been stamping impatiently about the emptier
gallery, turned suddenly and darted into the more crowded room at a run.
He was running towards the tall and well-dressed young man with the
short hair and the foreign-looking beard.
The two walked away together talking, and for some moments afterwards
Father Brown followed them with his screwed, short-sighted eyes. His
gaze was shifted and recalled, however, by the breathless and even
boisterous arrival of his niece, Betty. Rather to the surprise of her
uncle, she led him back into the emptier room and planted him on a seat
that was like an island in that sea of floor.
"I've got something I must tell you," she said. "It's so silly that
nobody else will understand it."
"You overwhelm me," said Father Brown. "Is it about this business your
mother started telling me about? Engagements and all that; not what the
military historians call a general engagement."
"You know," she said, "that she wants me to be engaged to Captain
Musgrave."
"I didn't," said Father Brown with resignation; "but Captain Musgrave
seems to be quite a fashionable topic."
"Of course we're very poor," she said, "and it's no good saying it makes
no difference."
"Do you want to marry him?" asked Father Brown, looking at her through
his half-closed eyes.
She frowned at the floor, and answered in a lower tone:
"I thought I did. At least I think I thought I did. But I've just had
rather a shock."
"Then tell us all about it."
"I heard him laugh," she said.
"It is an excellent social accomplishment," he replied.
"You don't understand," said the girl. "It wasn't social at all. That
was just the point of it--that it wasn't social."
She paused a moment, and then went on firmly:
"I came here quite early, and saw him sitting quite alone in the middle
of that gallery with the new pictures, that was quite empty then. He had
no idea I or anybody was near; he was sitting quite alone, and he
laughed."
"Well, no wonder," said Father Brown. "I'm not an art critic myself, but
as a general view of the pictures taken as a whole----"
"Oh, you _won't_ understand," she said almost angrily. "It wasn't a bit
like that. He wasn't looking at the pictures. He was staring right up at
the ceiling; but his eyes seemed to be turned inwards, and he laughed so
that my blood ran cold."
The priest had risen and was pacing the room with his hands behind him.
"You mustn't be hasty in a case of this sort," he began. "There are two
kinds of men--but we can hardly discuss him just now, for here he is."
Captain Musgrave entered the room swiftly and swept it with a smile.
Granby, the lawyer, was just behind him, and his legal face bore a new
expression of relief and satisfaction.
"I must apologize for everything I said about the Captain," he said to
the priest as they drifted together towards the door. "He's a thoroughly
sensible fellow and quite sees my point. He asked me himself why I
didn't go north and see his old father; I could hear from the old man's
own lips how it stood about the inheritance. Well, he couldn't say
fairer than that, could he? But he's so anxious to get the thing settled
that he offered to take me up in his own car to Musgrave Moss. That's
the name of the estate. I suggested that, if he was so kind, we might go
together; and we're starting to-morrow morning."
As they spoke Betty and the Captain came through the doorway together,
making in that framework at least a sort of picture that some would be
sentimental enough to prefer to cones and cylinders. Whatever their
other affinities, they were both very good-looking; and the lawyer was
moved to a remark on the fact, when the picture abruptly altered.
Captain James Musgrave looked out into the main gallery, and his
laughing and triumphant eyes were riveted on something that seemed to
change him from head to foot. Father Brown looked round as under an
advancing shadow of premonition; and he saw the lowering, almost livid
face of the large woman in scarlet under its leonine yellow hair. She
always stood with a slight stoop, like a bull lowering its horns, and
the expression of her pale pasty face was so oppressive and hypnotic
that they hardly saw the little man with the large beard standing beside
her.
Musgrave advanced into the centre of the room towards her, almost like a
beautifully dressed waxwork wound up to walk. He said a few words to
her that could not be heard. She did not answer; but they turned away
together, walking down the long gallery as if in debate, the short,
bull-necked man with the beard bringing up the rear like some grotesque
goblin page.
"Heaven help us!" muttered Father Brown, frowning after them. "Who in
the world is that woman?"
"No pal of mine, I'm happy to say," replied Granby with grim flippancy.
"Looks as if a little flirtation with her might end fatally, doesn't
it?"
"I don't think he's flirting with her," said Father Brown.
Even as he spoke the group in question turned at the end of the gallery
and broke up, and Captain Musgrave came back to them in hasty strides.
"Look here," he cried, speaking naturally enough, though they fancied
his colour was changed. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Granby, but I find I
can't come north with you to-morrow. Of course, you will take the car
all the same. Please do; I shan't want it. I--I have to be in London
for some days. Take a friend with you if you like."
"My friend, Father Brown----" began the lawyer.
"If Captain Musgrave is really so kind," said Father Brown gravely. "I
may explain that I have some status in Mr. Granby's inquiry, and it
would be a great relief to my mind if I could go."
Which was how it came about that a very elegant car, with an equally
elegant chauffeur, shot north the next day over the Yorkshire moors,
bearing the incongruous burden of a priest who looked rather like a
black bundle, and a lawyer who had the habit of running about on his
feet instead of racing on somebody else's wheels.
They broke their journey very agreeably in one of the great dales of the
West Riding, dining and sleeping at a comfortable inn, and starting
early next day, began to run along the Northumbrian coast till they
reached a country that was a maze of sand dunes and rank sea meadows,
somewhere in the heart of which lay the old Border castle which had
remained so unique and yet so secretive a monument of the old Border
wars. They found it at last, by following a path running beside a long
arm of the sea that ran inland, and turned eventually into a sort of
rude canal ending in the moat of the castle. The castle really was a
castle, of the square, embattled plan that the Normans built everywhere
from Galilee to the Grampians. It did really and truly have a portcullis
and a drawbridge, and they were very realistically reminded of the fact
by an accident that delayed their entrance.
They waded amid long coarse grass and thistle to the bank of the moat
which ran in a ribbon of black with dead leaves and scum upon it, like
ebony inlaid with a pattern of gold. Barely a yard or two beyond the
black ribbon was the other green bank and the big stone pillars of the
gateway. But so little, it would seem, had this lonely fastness been
approached from outside that when the impatient Granby halloed across to
the dim figures behind the portcullis, they seemed, to have considerable
difficulty even in lowering the great rusty drawbridge. It started on
its way, turning over like a great falling tower above them, and then
stuck, sticking out in mid-air at a threatening angle.
The impatient Granby, dancing upon the bank, called out to his
companion:
"Oh, I can't stand these stick-in-the-mud ways! Why, it'd be less
trouble to jump."
And with characteristic impetuosity he did jump, landing with a slight
stagger in safety on the inner shore. Father Brown's short legs were not
adapted to jumping. But his temper was more adapted than most people's
to falling with a splash into very muddy water. By the promptitude of
his companion he escaped falling in very far. But as he was being hauled
up the green, slimy bank, he stopped with bent head, peering at a
particular point upon the grassy slope.
"Are you botanizing?" asked Granby irritably. "We've got no time for you
to collect rare plants after your last attempt as a diver among the
wonders of the deep. Come on, muddy or no, we've got to present
ourselves before the baronet."