The wisdom of Father Brown
tolerably busy. The official second-in-command under the Governor was an
ex-detective named Greywood Usher, a cadaverous, careful-spoken Yankee
philosopher, occasionally varying a very rigid visage with an odd
apologetic grimace. He liked Father Brown in a slightly patronizing way;
and Father Brown liked him, though he heartily disliked his theories.
His theories were extremely complicated and were held with extreme
simplicity.
One evening he had sent for the priest, who, according to his custom,
took a seat in silence at a table piled and littered with papers, and
waited. The official selected from the papers a scrap of newspaper
cutting, which he handed across to the cleric, who read it gravely. It
appeared to be an extract from one of the pinkest of American Society
papers, and ran as follows:
“Society’s brightest widower is once more on the Freak Dinner stunt. All
our exclusive citizens will recall the Perambulator Parade Dinner, in
which Last-Trick Todd, at his palatial home at Pilgrim’s Pond, caused so
many of our prominent debutantes to look even younger than their years.
Equally elegant and more miscellaneous and large-hearted in social
outlook was Last-Trick’s show the year previous, the popular Cannibal
Crush Lunch, at which the confections handed round were sarcastically
moulded in the forms of human arms and legs, and during which more than
one of our gayest mental gymnasts was heard offering to eat his partner.
The witticism which will inspire this evening is as yet in Mr Todd’s
pretty reticent intellect, or locked in the jewelled bosoms of our
city’s gayest leaders; but there is talk of a pretty parody of the
simple manners and customs at the other end of Society’s scale. This
would be all the more telling, as hospitable Todd is entertaining in
Lord Falconroy, the famous traveller, a true-blooded aristocrat fresh
from England’s oak-groves. Lord Falconroy’s travels began before his
ancient feudal title was resurrected, he was in the Republic in his
youth, and fashion murmurs a sly reason for his return. Miss Etta Todd
is one of our deep-souled New Yorkers, and comes into an income of
nearly twelve hundred million dollars.”
“Well,” asked Usher, “does that interest you?”
“Why, words rather fail me,” answered Father Brown. “I cannot think at
this moment of anything in this world that would interest me less. And,
unless the just anger of the Republic is at last going to electrocute
journalists for writing like that, I don’t quite see why it should
interest you either.”
“Ah!” said Mr Usher dryly, and handing across another scrap of
newspaper. “Well, does that interest you?”
The paragraph was headed “Savage Murder of a Warder. Convict Escapes,”
and ran: “Just before dawn this morning a shout for help was heard
in the Convict Settlement at Sequah in this State. The authorities,
hurrying in the direction of the cry, found the corpse of the warder who
patrols the top of the north wall of the prison, the steepest and most
difficult exit, for which one man has always been found sufficient. The
unfortunate officer had, however, been hurled from the high wall, his
brains beaten out as with a club, and his gun was missing. Further
inquiries showed that one of the cells was empty; it had been occupied
by a rather sullen ruffian giving his name as Oscar Rian. He was only
temporarily detained for some comparatively trivial assault; but he
gave everyone the impression of a man with a black past and a dangerous
future. Finally, when daylight had fully revealed the scene of
murder, it was found that he had written on the wall above the body a
fragmentary sentence, apparently with a finger dipped in blood: ‘This
was self-defence and he had the gun. I meant no harm to him or any man
but one. I am keeping the bullet for Pilgrim’s Pond--O.R.’ A man must
have used most fiendish treachery or most savage and amazing bodily
daring to have stormed such a wall in spite of an armed man.”
“Well, the literary style is somewhat improved,” admitted the priest
cheerfully, “but still I don’t see what I can do for you. I should cut
a poor figure, with my short legs, running about this State after an
athletic assassin of that sort. I doubt whether anybody could find him.
The convict settlement at Sequah is thirty miles from here; the country
between is wild and tangled enough, and the country beyond, where he
will surely have the sense to go, is a perfect no-man’s land tumbling
away to the prairies. He may be in any hole or up any tree.”
“He isn’t in any hole,” said the governor; “he isn’t up any tree.”
“Why, how do you know?” asked Father Brown, blinking.
“Would you like to speak to him?” inquired Usher.
Father Brown opened his innocent eyes wide. “He is here?” he exclaimed.
“Why, how did your men get hold of him?”
“I got hold of him myself,” drawled the American, rising and lazily
stretching his lanky legs before the fire. “I got hold of him with the
crooked end of a walking-stick. Don’t look so surprised. I really did.
You know I sometimes take a turn in the country lanes outside this
dismal place; well, I was walking early this evening up a steep lane
with dark hedges and grey-looking ploughed fields on both sides; and a
young moon was up and silvering the road. By the light of it I saw a man
running across the field towards the road; running with his body bent
and at a good mile-race trot. He appeared to be much exhausted; but when
he came to the thick black hedge he went through it as if it were made
of spiders’ webs;--or rather (for I heard the strong branches breaking
and snapping like bayonets) as if he himself were made of stone. In the
instant in which he appeared up against the moon, crossing the road, I
slung my hooked cane at his legs, tripping him and bringing him down.
Then I blew my whistle long and loud, and our fellows came running up to
secure him.”
“It would have been rather awkward,” remarked Brown, “if you had found
he was a popular athlete practising a mile race.”
“He was not,” said Usher grimly. “We soon found out who he was; but I
had guessed it with the first glint of the moon on him.”
“You thought it was the runaway convict,” observed the priest simply,
“because you had read in the newspaper cutting that morning that a
convict had run away.”
“I had somewhat better grounds,” replied the governor coolly. “I pass
over the first as too simple to be emphasized--I mean that fashionable
athletes do not run across ploughed fields or scratch their eyes out
in bramble hedges. Nor do they run all doubled up like a crouching dog.
There were more decisive details to a fairly well-trained eye. The man
was clad in coarse and ragged clothes, but they were something more
than merely coarse and ragged. They were so ill-fitting as to be quite
grotesque; even as he appeared in black outline against the moonrise,
the coat-collar in which his head was buried made him look like a
hunchback, and the long loose sleeves looked as if he had no hands. It
at once occurred to me that he had somehow managed to change his convict
clothes for some confederate’s clothes which did not fit him. Second,
there was a pretty stiff wind against which he was running; so that I
must have seen the streaky look of blowing hair, if the hair had not
been very short. Then I remembered that beyond these ploughed fields
he was crossing lay Pilgrim’s Pond, for which (you will remember) the
convict was keeping his bullet; and I sent my walking-stick flying.”
“A brilliant piece of rapid deduction,” said Father Brown; “but had he
got a gun?”
As Usher stopped abruptly in his walk the priest added apologetically:
“I’ve been told a bullet is not half so useful without it.”
“He had no gun,” said the other gravely; “but that was doubtless due to
some very natural mischance or change of plans. Probably the same policy
that made him change the clothes made him drop the gun; he began to
repent the coat he had left behind him in the blood of his victim.”
“Well, that is possible enough,” answered the priest.
“And it’s hardly worth speculating on,” said Usher, turning to some
other papers, “for we know it’s the man by this time.”
His clerical friend asked faintly: “But how?” And Greywood Usher threw
down the newspapers and took up the two press-cuttings again.
“Well, since you are so obstinate,” he said, “let’s begin at the
beginning. You will notice that these two cuttings have only one thing
in common, which is the mention of Pilgrim’s Pond, the estate, as
you know, of the millionaire Ireton Todd. You also know that he is a
remarkable character; one of those that rose on stepping-stones--”
“Of our dead selves to higher things,” assented his companion. “Yes; I
know that. Petroleum, I think.”
“Anyhow,” said Usher, “Last-Trick Todd counts for a great deal in this
rum affair.”
He stretched himself once more before the fire and continued talking in
his expansive, radiantly explanatory style.
“To begin with, on the face of it, there is no mystery here at all. It
is not mysterious, it is not even odd, that a jailbird should take his
gun to Pilgrim’s Pond. Our people aren’t like the English, who will
forgive a man for being rich if he throws away money on hospitals or
horses. Last-Trick Todd has made himself big by his own considerable
abilities; and there’s no doubt that many of those on whom he has shown
his abilities would like to show theirs on him with a shot-gun. Todd
might easily get dropped by some man he’d never even heard of; some
labourer he’d locked out, or some clerk in a business he’d busted.
Last-Trick is a man of mental endowments and a high public character;
but in this country the relations of employers and employed are
considerably strained.
“That’s how the whole thing looks supposing this Rian made for Pilgrim’s
Pond to kill Todd. So it looked to me, till another little discovery
woke up what I have of the detective in me. When I had my prisoner safe,
I picked up my cane again and strolled down the two or three turns of
country road that brought me to one of the side entrances of Todd’s
grounds, the one nearest to the pool or lake after which the place
is named. It was some two hours ago, about seven by this time; the
moonlight was more luminous, and I could see the long white streaks
of it lying on the mysterious mere with its grey, greasy, half-liquid
shores in which they say our fathers used to make witches walk until
they sank. I’d forgotten the exact tale; but you know the place I mean;
it lies north of Todd’s house towards the wilderness, and has two queer
wrinkled trees, so dismal that they look more like huge fungoids than
decent foliage. As I stood peering at this misty pool, I fancied I saw
the faint figure of a man moving from the house towards it, but it was
all too dim and distant for one to be certain of the fact, and still
less of the details. Besides, my attention was very sharply arrested by
something much closer. I crouched behind the fence which ran not more
than two hundred yards from one wing of the great mansion, and which was
fortunately split in places, as if specially for the application of a
cautious eye. A door had opened in the dark bulk of the left wing, and a
figure appeared black against the illuminated interior--a muffled figure
bending forward, evidently peering out into the night. It closed the
door behind it, and I saw it was carrying a lantern, which threw a patch
of imperfect light on the dress and figure of the wearer. It seemed to
be the figure of a woman, wrapped up in a ragged cloak and evidently
disguised to avoid notice; there was something very strange both about
the rags and the furtiveness in a person coming out of those rooms lined
with gold. She took cautiously the curved garden path which brought her