The wisdom of Father Brown
within half a hundred yards of me--, then she stood up for an instant on
the terrace of turf that looks towards the slimy lake, and holding her
flaming lantern above her head she deliberately swung it three times to
and fro as for a signal. As she swung it the second time a flicker of
its light fell for a moment on her own face, a face that I knew. She
was unnaturally pale, and her head was bundled in her borrowed plebeian
shawl; but I am certain it was Etta Todd, the millionaire’s daughter.
“She retraced her steps in equal secrecy and the door closed behind her
again. I was about to climb the fence and follow, when I realized that
the detective fever that had lured me into the adventure was rather
undignified; and that in a more authoritative capacity I already held
all the cards in my hand. I was just turning away when a new noise broke
on the night. A window was thrown up in one of the upper floors, but
just round the corner of the house so that I could not see it; and a
voice of terrible distinctness was heard shouting across the dark garden
to know where Lord Falconroy was, for he was missing from every room in
the house. There was no mistaking that voice. I have heard it on many a
political platform or meeting of directors; it was Ireton Todd himself.
Some of the others seemed to have gone to the lower windows or on to the
steps, and were calling up to him that Falconroy had gone for a stroll
down to the Pilgrim’s Pond an hour before, and could not be traced
since. Then Todd cried ‘Mighty Murder!’ and shut down the window
violently; and I could hear him plunging down the stairs inside.
Repossessing myself of my former and wiser purpose, I whipped out of the
way of the general search that must follow; and returned here not later
than eight o’clock.
“I now ask you to recall that little Society paragraph which seemed to
you so painfully lacking in interest. If the convict was not keeping
the shot for Todd, as he evidently wasn’t, it is most likely that he was
keeping it for Lord Falconroy; and it looks as if he had delivered the
goods. No more handy place to shoot a man than in the curious geological
surroundings of that pool, where a body thrown down would sink through
thick slime to a depth practically unknown. Let us suppose, then, that
our friend with the cropped hair came to kill Falconroy and not Todd.
But, as I have pointed out, there are many reasons why people in America
might want to kill Todd. There is no reason why anybody in America
should want to kill an English lord newly landed, except for the
one reason mentioned in the pink paper--that the lord is paying his
attentions to the millionaire’s daughter. Our crop-haired friend,
despite his ill-fitting clothes, must be an aspiring lover.
“I know the notion will seem to you jarring and even comic; but that’s
because you are English. It sounds to you like saying the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s daughter will be married in St George’s, Hanover Square,
to a crossing-sweeper on ticket-of-leave. You don’t do justice to the
climbing and aspiring power of our more remarkable citizens. You see a
good-looking grey-haired man in evening-dress with a sort of authority
about him, you know he is a pillar of the State, and you fancy he had
a father. You are in error. You do not realize that a comparatively few
years ago he may have been in a tenement or (quite likely) in a jail.
You don’t allow for our national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our
most influential citizens have not only risen recently, but risen
comparatively late in life. Todd’s daughter was fully eighteen when her
father first made his pile; so there isn’t really anything impossible in
her having a hanger-on in low life; or even in her hanging on to him, as
I think she must be doing, to judge by the lantern business. If so, the
hand that held the lantern may not be unconnected with the hand that
held the gun. This case, sir, will make a noise.”
“Well,” said the priest patiently, “and what did you do next?”
“I reckon you’ll be shocked,” replied Greywood Usher, “as I know you
don’t cotton to the march of science in these matters. I am given a good
deal of discretion here, and perhaps take a little more than I’m given;
and I thought it was an excellent opportunity to test that Psychometric
Machine I told you about. Now, in my opinion, that machine can’t lie.”
“No machine can lie,” said Father Brown; “nor can it tell the truth.”
“It did in this case, as I’ll show you,” went on Usher positively.
“I sat the man in the ill-fitting clothes in a comfortable chair, and
simply wrote words on a blackboard; and the machine simply recorded the
variations of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. The trick is
to introduce some word connected with the supposed crime in a list of
words connected with something quite different, yet a list in which it
occurs quite naturally. Thus I wrote ‘heron’ and ‘eagle’ and ‘owl’, and
when I wrote ‘falcon’ he was tremendously agitated; and when I began to
make an ‘r’ at the end of the word, that machine just bounded. Who else
in this republic has any reason to jump at the name of a newly-arrived
Englishman like Falconroy except the man who’s shot him? Isn’t that
better evidence than a lot of gabble from witnesses--if the evidence of
a reliable machine?”
“You always forget,” observed his companion, “that the reliable machine
always has to be worked by an unreliable machine.”
“Why, what do you mean?” asked the detective.
“I mean Man,” said Father Brown, “the most unreliable machine I know of.
I don’t want to be rude; and I don’t think you will consider Man to be
an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself. You say you observed
his manner; but how do you know you observed it right? You say the
words have to come in a natural way; but how do you know that you did it
naturally? How do you know, if you come to that, that he did not observe
your manner? Who is to prove that you were not tremendously agitated?
There was no machine tied on to your pulse.”
“I tell you,” cried the American in the utmost excitement, “I was as
cool as a cucumber.”
“Criminals also can be as cool as cucumbers,” said Brown with a smile.
“And almost as cool as you.”
“Well, this one wasn’t,” said Usher, throwing the papers about. “Oh, you
make me tired!”
“I’m sorry,” said the other. “I only point out what seems a reasonable
possibility. If you could tell by his manner when the word that might
hang him had come, why shouldn’t he tell from your manner that the word
that might hang him was coming? I should ask for more than words myself
before I hanged anybody.”
Usher smote the table and rose in a sort of angry triumph.
“And that,” he cried, “is just what I’m going to give you. I tried the
machine first just in order to test the thing in other ways afterwards
and the machine, sir, is right.”
He paused a moment and resumed with less excitement. “I rather want
to insist, if it comes to that, that so far I had very little to go on
except the scientific experiment. There was really nothing against the
man at all. His clothes were ill-fitting, as I’ve said, but they were
rather better, if anything, than those of the submerged class to which
he evidently belonged. Moreover, under all the stains of his plunging
through ploughed fields or bursting through dusty hedges, the man was
comparatively clean. This might mean, of course, that he had only just
broken prison; but it reminded me more of the desperate decency of
the comparatively respectable poor. His demeanour was, I am bound to
confess, quite in accordance with theirs. He was silent and dignified as
they are; he seemed to have a big, but buried, grievance, as they do.
He professed total ignorance of the crime and the whole question; and
showed nothing but a sullen impatience for something sensible that might
come to take him out of his meaningless scrape. He asked me more than
once if he could telephone for a lawyer who had helped him a long time
ago in a trade dispute, and in every sense acted as you would expect an
innocent man to act. There was nothing against him in the world except
that little finger on the dial that pointed to the change of his pulse.
“Then, sir, the machine was on its trial; and the machine was right.
By the time I came with him out of the private room into the vestibule
where all sorts of other people were awaiting examination, I think
he had already more or less made up his mind to clear things up by
something like a confession. He turned to me and began to say in a low
voice: ‘Oh, I can’t stick this any more. If you must know all about
me--’
“At the same instant one of the poor women sitting on the long bench
stood up, screaming aloud and pointing at him with her finger. I have
never in my life heard anything more demoniacally distinct. Her lean
finger seemed to pick him out as if it were a pea-shooter. Though the
word was a mere howl, every syllable was as clear as a separate stroke
on the clock.
“‘Drugger Davis!’ she shouted. ‘They’ve got Drugger Davis!’
“Among the wretched women, mostly thieves and streetwalkers, twenty
faces were turned, gaping with glee and hate. If I had never heard the
words, I should have known by the very shock upon his features that
the so-called Oscar Rian had heard his real name. But I’m not quite so
ignorant, you may be surprised to hear. Drugger Davis was one of the
most terrible and depraved criminals that ever baffled our police. It is
certain he had done murder more than once long before his last exploit
with the warder. But he was never entirely fixed for it, curiously
enough because he did it in the same manner as those milder--or
meaner--crimes for which he was fixed pretty often. He was a handsome,
well-bred-looking brute, as he still is, to some extent; and he used
mostly to go about with barmaids or shop-girls and do them out of their
money. Very often, though, he went a good deal farther; and they were
found drugged with cigarettes or chocolates and their whole property
missing. Then came one case where the girl was found dead; but
deliberation could not quite be proved, and, what was more practical
still, the criminal could not be found. I heard a rumour of his having
reappeared somewhere in the opposite character this time, lending money
instead of borrowing it; but still to such poor widows as he might
personally fascinate, but still with the same bad result for them. Well,
there is your innocent man, and there is his innocent record. Even,
since then, four criminals and three warders have identified him and
confirmed the story. Now what have you got to say to my poor little
machine after that? Hasn’t the machine done for him? Or do you prefer to
say that the woman and I have done for him?”
“As to what you’ve done for him,” replied Father Brown, rising and
shaking himself in a floppy way, “you’ve saved him from the electrical
chair. I don’t think they can kill Drugger Davis on that old vague story
of the poison; and as for the convict who killed the warder, I suppose
it’s obvious that you haven’t got him. Mr Davis is innocent of that
crime, at any rate.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the other. “Why should he be innocent of
that crime?”
“Why, bless us all!” cried the small man in one of his rare moments of
animation, “why, because he’s guilty of the other crimes! I don’t know
what you people are made of. You seem to think that all sins are kept
together in a bag. You talk as if a miser on Monday were always a
spendthrift on Tuesday. You tell me this man you have here spent weeks
and months wheedling needy women out of small sums of money; that he
used a drug at the best, and a poison at the worst; that he turned up
afterwards as the lowest kind of moneylender, and cheated most poor