The secret of Father Brown
When they had penetrated into the castle, they were received courteously
enough by an old servant, the only one in sight, and after indicating
their business were shown into a long oak-panelled room with latticed
windows of antiquated pattern. Weapons of many different centuries hung
in balanced patterns on the dark walls, and a complete suit of
fourteenth-century armour stood like a sentinel beside the large
fireplace. In another long room beyond could be seen, through the
half-open door, the dark colours of the rows of family portraits.
"I feel as if I'd got into a novel instead of a house," said the lawyer.
"I'd no idea anybody did really keep up the 'Mysteries of Udolpho' in
this fashion."
"Yes; the old gentleman certainly carries out his historical craze
consistently," answered the priest; "and these things are not fakes,
either. It's not done by somebody who thinks all mediæval people lived
at the same time. Sometimes they make up suits of armour out of
different bits; but that suit all covered one man, and covered him very
completely. You, see it's the late sort of tilting-armour."
"I think he's a late sort of host, if it comes to chat," grumbled
Granby. "He's keeping us waiting the devil of a time."
"You must expect everything to go slowly in a place like this," said
Father Brown. "I think it's very decent of him to see us at all: two
total strangers come to ask him highly personal questions."
And, indeed, when the master of the house appeared they had no reason to
complain of their reception; but rather became conscious of something
genuine in the traditions of breeding and behaviour that could retain
their native dignity without difficulty in that barbarous solitude, and
after those long years of rustication and moping. The baronet did not
seem either surprised or embarrassed at the rare visitation; though they
suspected that he had not had a stranger in his house for a quarter of a
lifetime, he behaved as if he had been bowing out duchesses a moment
before. He showed neither shyness nor impatience when they touched on
the very private matter of their errand; after a little leisurely
reflection he seemed to recognize their curiosity as justified under the
circumstances. He was a thin, keen-looking old gentleman, with black
eyebrows and a long chin, and though the carefully-curled hair he wore
was undoubtedly a wig, he had the wisdom to wear the grey wig of an
elderly man.
"As regards the question that immediately concerns you," he said, "the
answer is very simple indeed. I do most certainly propose to hand on the
whole of my property to my son, as my father handed it on to me; and
nothing--I say advisedly, nothing--would induce me to take any other
course."
"I am most profoundly grateful for the information," answered the
lawyer. "But your kindness encourages me to say that you are putting it
very strongly. I would not suggest that it is in the least likely that
your son would do anything to make you doubt his fitness for the charge.
Still, he might----"
"Exactly," said Sir John Musgrave dryly, "he might. It is rather an
under-statement to say that he might. Will you be good enough to step
into the next room with me for a moment."
He led them into the further gallery, of which they had already caught a
glimpse, and gravely paused before a row of the blackened and lowering
portraits.
"This is Sir Roger Musgrave," he said, pointing to a long-faced person
in a black periwig. "He was one of the lowest liars and rascals in the
rascally time of William of Orange, a traitor to two kings and something
like the murderer of two wives. That is his father, Sir Robert, a
perfectly honest old cavalier. That is his son, Sir James, one of the
noblest of the Jacobite martyrs and one of the first men to attempt some
reparation to the Church and the poor. Does it matter that the House of
Musgrave, the power, the honour, the authority, descended from one good
man to another good man through the interval of a bad one? Edward I
governed England well. Edward III covered England with glory. And yet
the second glory came from the first glory through the infamy and
imbecility of Edward II, who fawned upon Gaveston and ran away from
Bruce. Believe me, Mr. Granby, the greatness of a great house and
history is something more than these accidental individuals who carry it
on, even though they do not grace it. From father to son our heritage
has come down, and from father to son it shall continue. You may assure
yourselves, gentlemen, and you may assure my son, that I shall not leave
my money to a home for lost cats. Musgrave shall leave it to Musgrave
till the heavens fall."
"Yes," said Father Brown thoughtfully; "I see what you mean."
"And we shall be only too glad," said the solicitor, "to convey such a
happy assurance to your son."
"You may convey the assurance," said their host gravely, "He is secure
in any event of having the castle, the title, the land and the money.
There is only a small and merely private addition to that arrangement.
Under no circumstances whatever will I ever speak to him as long as I
live."
The lawyer remained in the same respectful attitude, but he was now
respectfully staring.
"Why, what on earth has he----"
"I am a private gentleman," said Musgrave, "as well as the custodian of
a great inheritance. And my son did something so horrible that he has
ceased to be--I will not say a gentleman--but even a human being. It
is the worst crime in the world. Do you remember what Douglas said when
Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?"
"Yes," said Father Brown.
"'My castles are my king's alone, from turret to foundation stone,'"
said Musgrave. "'The hand of Douglas is his own.'"
He turned towards the other room and showed his rather dazed visitors
back into it.
"I hope you will take some refreshment," he said, in the same equable
fashion. "If you have any doubt about your movements, I should be
delighted to offer you the hospitality of the castle for the night."
"Thank you, Sir John," said the priest in a dull voice, "but I think we
had better go."
"I will have the bridge lowered at once," said their host; and in a few
moments the creaking of that huge and absurdly antiquated apparatus
filled the castle like the grinding of a mill. Rusty as it was, however,
it worked successfully this time, and they found themselves standing
once more on the grassy bank beyond the moat.
Granby was suddenly shaken by a shudder.
"What in hell was it that his son did?" he cried.
Father Brown made no answer. But when they had driven off again in their
car and pursued their journey to a village not far off, called
Graystones, where they alighted at the inn of the Seven Stars, the
lawyer learned with a little mild surprise that the priest did not
propose to travel much farther; in other words, that he had apparently
every intention of remaining in the neighbourhood.
"I cannot bring myself to leave it like this," he said gravely. "I will
send back the car, and you, of course, may very naturally want to go
with it. Your question is answered; it is simply whether your firm can
afford to lend money on young Musgrave's prospects. But my question
isn't answered; it is whether he is a fit husband for Betty. I must try
to discover whether he's really done something dreadful, or whether it's
the delusion of an old lunatic."
"But," objected the lawyer, "if you want to find out about him, why
don't you go after him? Why should you hang about in this desolate hole
where he hardly ever comes?"
"What would be the use of my going after him?" asked the other. "There's
no sense in going up to a fashionable young man in Bond Street and
saying: 'Excuse me, but have you committed a crime too horrible for a
human being?' If he's bad enough to do it, he's certainly bad enough to
deny it. And we don't even know what it is. No, there's only one man
that knows, and _may_ tell, in some further outburst of dignified
eccentricity. I'm going to keep near him for the present."
And in truth Father Brown did keep near the eccentric baronet, and did
actually meet him on more than one occasion, with the utmost politeness
on both sides. For the baronet, in spite of his years, was very vigorous
and a great walker, and could often be seen stumping through the
village, and along the country lanes. Only the day after their arrival,
Father Brown, coming out of the inn on to the cobbled market-place, saw
the dark and distinguished figure stride past in the direction of the
post office. He was very quietly dressed in black, but his strong face
was even more arresting in the strong sunlight; with his silvery hair,
swarthy eyebrows and long chin, he had something of a reminiscence of
Henry Irving, or some other famous actor. In spite of his hoary hair,
his figure as well as his face suggested strength, and he carried his
stick more like a cudgel than a crutch. He saluted the priest, and spoke
with the same air of coming fearlessly to the point which had marked his
revelations of yesterday.
"If you are still interested in my son," he said, using the term with an
icy indifference, "you will not see very much of him. He has just left
the country. Between ourselves, I might say fled the country."
"Indeed," said Father Brown with a grave stare.
"Some people I never heard of, called Grunov, have been pestering me, of
all people, about his whereabouts," said Sir John; "and I've just come
in to send off a wire to tell them that, so far as I know, he's living
in the Poste Restante, Riga. Even that has been a nuisance. I came in
yesterday to do it, but was five minutes too late for the post office.
Are you staying long? I hope you will pay me another visit."
When the priest recounted to the lawyer his little interview with old
Musgrave in the village, the lawyer was both puzzled and interested.
"Why has the Captain bolted?" he asked. "Who are the other people who
want him? Who on earth are the Grunovs?"
"For the first, I don't know," replied Father Brown. "Possibly his
mysterious sin has come to light. I should rather guess that the other
people are blackmailing him about it. For the third, I think I do know.
That horrible fat woman with yellow hair is called Madame Grunov, and
that little man passes as her husband."
The next day Father Brown came in rather wearily, and threw down his
black bundle of an umbrella with the air of a pilgrim laying down his
staff. He had an air of some depression. But it was as it was so often
in his criminal investigations. It was not the depression of failure,
but the depression of success.
"It's rather a shock," he said in a dull voice; "but I ought to have
guessed it. I ought to have guessed it when I first went in and saw the
thing standing there."
"When you saw what?" asked Granby impatiently.
"When I saw there was only one suit of armour," answered Father Brown.
There was a silence during which the lawyer only stared at his friend,
and then the friend resumed.
"Only the other day I was just going to tell my niece that there are two
types of men who can laugh when they are alone. One might almost say the
man who does it is either very good or very bad. You see, he is either
confiding the joke to God or confiding it to the Devil. But anyhow he
has an inner life. Well, there really is a kind of man who confides the
joke to the Devil. He does not mind if nobody sees the joke; if nobody
can safely be allowed even to know the joke. The joke is enough in
itself, if it is sufficiently sinister and malignant."
"But what are you talking about?" demanded Granby. "_Whom_ are you talking
about? Which of them, I mean? _Who_ is this person who is having a
sinister joke with his Satanic Majesty?"