The secret of Father Brown
large chin. The wide brim cut off the upper part of his face with a
shadow that looked a little like a mask. In the background was a row of
sunny beehives, along which an elderly man, presumably Mr. Smith, was
moving accompanied by a short, commonplace-looking companion in black
clerical costume.
"I say," burst in the irrepressible John, before Devine could offer any
polite greeting, "I've brought her round to give you a little run. You
see if she isn't better than a 'Thunder-bolt.'"
Mr Carver's mouth set into a smile that may have been meant to be
gracious, but looked rather grim. "I'm afraid I shall be too busy for
pleasure this evening," he said.
"How doth the little busy bee," observed Devine, equally enigmatically.
"Your bees must be very busy if they keep you at it all night. I was
wondering if----"
"Well," demanded Carver, with a certain cool defiance.
"Well, they say we should make hay while the sun shines," said Devine.
"Perhaps you make honey while the moon shines."
There came a flash from the shadow of the broad-brimmed hat, as the
whites of the man's eyes shifted and shone.
"Perhaps there is a good deal of moonshine in the business," he said:
"but I warn you my bees do not only make honey. They sting."
"_Are_ you coming along in the car?" insisted the staring John. But
Carver, though he threw off the momentary air of sinister significance
with which he had been answering Devine, was still positive in his
polite refusal.
"I can't possibly go," he said. "Got a lot of writing to do. Perhaps
you'd be kind enough to give some of my friends a run, if you want a
companion. This is my friend, Mr. Smith, Father Brown."
"Of course," cried Bankes; "let 'em all come."
"Thank you very much," said Father Brown. "I'm afraid I shall have to
decline; I've got to go on to Benediction in a few minutes."
"Mr. Smith is your man, then," said Carver, with something almost like
impatience. "I'm sure Smith is longing for a motor ride."
Smith, who wore a broad grin, bore no appearance of longing for
anything. He was an active little old man with a very honest wig; one of
those wigs that look no more natural than a hat. Its tinge of yellow was
out of keeping with his colourless complexion. He shook his head and
answered with amiable obstinacy:
"I remember I went over this road ten years ago--in one of those
contraptions. Came over in it from my sister's place at Holmgate, and
never been over that road in a car since. It was rough going I can tell
you."
"Ten years ago!" scoffed John Bankes. "Two thousand years ago you went
in an ox wagon. Do you think cars haven't changed in ten years--and
roads, too, for that matter? In my little bus you don't know the wheels
are going round. You think you're just flying."
"I'm sure Smith wants to go flying," urged Carver. "It's the dream of
his life. Come, Smith, go over to Holmgate and see your sister. You know
you ought to go and see your sister. Go over and stay the night if you
like."
"Well, I generally walk over, so I generally do stay the night," said
old Smith. "No need to trouble the gentleman to-day, particularly."
"But think what fun it will be for your sister to see you arrive in a
car!" cried Carver. "You really ought to go. Don't be so selfish."
"That's it," assented Bankes, with buoyant benevolence. "Don't you be
selfish. It won't hurt you. You aren't afraid of it, are you?"
"Well," said Mr. Smith, blinking thoughtfully, "I don't want to be
selfish, and I don't think I'm afraid. I'll come with you if you put it
that way."
The pair drove off, amid waving salutations that seemed somehow to give
the little group the appearance of a cheering crowd. Yet Devine and the
priest only joined in out of courtesy, and they both felt it was the
dominating gesture of their host that gave it its final air of farewell.
The detail gave them a curious sense of the pervasive force of his
personality.
The moment the car was out of sight he turned to them with a sort of
boisterous apology and said: "Well!"
He said it with that curious heartiness which is the reverse of
hospitality. That extreme geniality is the same as a dismissal.
"I must be going," said Devine. "We must not interrupt the busy bee. I'm
afraid I know very little about bees; sometimes I can hardly tell a bee
from a wasp."
"I've kept wasps, too," answered the mysterious Mr. Carver. When his
guests were a few yards down the street, Devine said rather impulsively
to his companion: "Rather an odd scene that, don't you think?"
"Yes," replied Father Brown. "And what do you think about it?"
Devine looked at the little man in black, and something in the gaze of
his great, grey eyes seemed to renew his impulse.
"I think," he said, "that Carver was very anxious to have the house to
himself to-night. I don't know whether you had any such suspicions?"
"I may have my suspicions," replied the priest, "but I'm not sure
whether they're the same as yours."
That evening, when the last dusk was turning into dark in the gardens
round the family mansion, Opal Bankes was moving through some of the dim
and empty rooms with even more than her usual abstraction; and anyone
who had looked at her closely would have noted that her pale face had
more than its usual pallor. Despite its bourgeois luxury, the house as a
whole had a rather unique shade of melancholy. It was the sort of
immediate sadness that belongs to things that are old rather than
ancient. It was full of faded fashions, rather than historic customs; of
the order and ornament that is just recent enough to be recognized as
dead. Here and there, Early Victorian coloured glass tinted the
twilight; the high ceilings made the long rooms look narrow; and at the
end of the long room down which she was walking was one of those round
windows, to be found in the buildings of its period. As she came to
about the middle of the room, she stopped, and then suddenly swayed a
little, as if some invisible hand had struck her on the face.
An instant after there was the noise or knocking on the front door,
dulled by the closed doors between. She knew that the rest of the
household were in the upper parts of the house, but she could not have
analysed the motive that made her go to the front door herself. On the
doorstep stood a dumpy and dingy figure in black, which she recognized
as the Roman Catholic priest, whose name was Brown. She knew him only
slightly; but she liked him. He did not encourage her psychic views;
quite the contrary; but he discouraged them as if they mattered and not
as if they did not matter. It was not so much that he did not sympathize
with her opinions, as that he did sympathize but did not agree. All this
was in some sort of chaos in her mind as she found herself saying,
without greeting, or waiting to hear his business:
"I'm so glad you've come. I've seen a ghost."
"There's no need to be distressed about that," he said. "It often
happens. Most of the ghosts aren't ghosts, and the few that may be won't
do you any harm. Was it any ghost in particular?"
"No," she admitted, with a vague feeling of relief, "it wasn't so much
the thing itself as an atmosphere of awful decay, a sort of luminous
ruin. It was a face. A face at the window. But it was pale and goggling,
and looked like the picture of Judas."
"Well, some people do look like that," reflected the priest, "and I dare
say they look in at windows, sometimes. May I come in and see where it
happened?"
When she returned to the room with the visitor, however, other members
of the family had assembled, and those of a less psychic habit had
thought it convenient to light the lamps. In the presence of Mrs.
Bankes, Father Brown assumed a more conventional civility, and
apologized for his intrusion.
"I'm afraid it is taking a liberty with your house, Mrs. Bankes," he
said. "But I think I can explain how the business happens to concern
you. I was up at the Pulmans' place just now, when I was rung up and
asked to come round here to meet a man who is coming to communicate
something that may be of some moment to you. I should not have added
myself to the party, only I am wanted, apparently, because I am a
witness to what has happened up at Beechwood. In fact, it was I who had
to give the alarm."
"What has happened?" repeated the lady.
"There has been a robbery up, at Beechwood House," said Father Brown,
gravely; "a robbery, and what I fear is worse, Lady Pulman's jewels have
gone; and her unfortunate secretary, Mr. Barnard, was picked up in the
garden, having evidently been shot by the escaping burglar."
"That man," ejaculated the lady of the house. "I believe he was----"
She encountered the grave gaze of the priest, and her words suddenly
went from her; she never knew why.
"I communicated with the police," he went on, "and with another
authority interested in this case; and they say that even a superficial
examination has revealed foot-prints and finger-prints and other
indications of a well-known criminal."
At this point, the conference was for a moment disturbed, by the return
of John Bankes, from what appeared to be an abortive expedition in the
car. Old Smith seemed to have been a disappointing passenger, after all.
"Funked it, after all, at the last minute," he announced with noisy
disgust. "Bolted off while I was looking at what I thought was a
puncture. Last time I'll take one of these yokels----"
But his complaints received small attention in the general excitement
that gathered round Father Brown and his news.
"Somebody will arrive in a moment," went on the priest, with the same
air of weighty reserve, "who will relieve me of this responsibility.
When I have confronted, you with him I shall have done my duty as a
witness in a serious business. It only remains for me to say that a
servant up at Beechwood House told me that she had seen a face at one of
the windows----"
"I saw a face," said Opal, "at one of our windows."
"Oh, you are always seeing faces," said her brother John roughly.
"It is as well to see facts even if they are faces," said Father Brown
equably, "and I think the face you saw----"
Another knock at the front door sounded through the house, and a minute
afterwards the door of the room opened and another figure appeared.
Devine half-rose from his chair at the sight of it.
It was a tall, erect figure, with a long, rather cadaverous face, ending
in a formidable chin. The brow was rather bald, and the eyes bright and
blue, which Devine had last seen obscured with a broad straw hat.
"Pray don't let anybody move," said the man called Carver, in clear and
courteous tones. But to Devine's disturbed mind the courtesy had an
ominous resemblance to that of a brigand who holds a company motionless
with a pistol.
"Please sit down, Mr. Devine," said Carver; "and, with Mrs. Bankes's
permission, I will follow your example. My presence here necessitates an
explanation. I rather fancy you suspected me of being an eminent and
distinguished burglar."
"I did," said Devine grimly.
"As you remarked," said Carver, "it is not always easy to know a wasp
from a bee."
After a pause, he continued: "I can claim to be one of the more useful,
though equally annoying, insects. I am a detective, and I have come down
to investigate an alleged renewal of the activities of the criminal
calling himself Michael Moonshine. Jewel robberies were his speciality;
and there has just been one of them at Beechwood House, which, by all
the technical tests, is obviously his work. Not only do the prints
correspond, but you may possibly know that when he was last arrested,
and it is believed on other occasions also, he wore a simple but
effective disguise of a red beard and a pair of large horn-rimmed
spectacles."