The wisdom of Father Brown
“Well,” said Flambeau, after an impatient silence, as they resumed their
more conventional tramp through the streets on the edge of the town,
where no outrage need be feared, “I don’t know what all this means, but
I take it I may trust my own eyes that you never met the man you have so
accurately described.”
“I did meet him in a way,” Brown said, biting his finger rather
nervously--“I did really. And it was too dark to see him properly,
because it was under that bandstand affair. But I’m afraid I didn’t
describe him so very accurately after all, for his pince-nez was broken
under him, and the long gold pin wasn’t stuck through his purple scarf
but through his heart.”
“And I suppose,” said the other in a lower voice, “that glass-eyed guy
had something to do with it.”
“I had hoped he had only a little,” answered Brown in a rather troubled
voice, “and I may have been wrong in what I did. I acted on impulse. But
I fear this business has deep roots and dark.”
They walked on through some streets in silence. The yellow lamps were
beginning to be lit in the cold blue twilight, and they were evidently
approaching the more central parts of the town. Highly coloured bills
announcing the glove-fight between Nigger Ned and Malvoli were slapped
about the walls.
“Well,” said Flambeau, “I never murdered anyone, even in my criminal
days, but I can almost sympathize with anyone doing it in such a
dreary place. Of all God-forsaken dustbins of Nature, I think the most
heart-breaking are places like that bandstand, that were meant to be
festive and are forlorn. I can fancy a morbid man feeling he must kill
his rival in the solitude and irony of such a scene. I remember once
taking a tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing but
gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast circle of land, and over
me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge
as a Roman amphitheatre and as empty as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed
in heaven over it. It was the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no
one would ever be happy there again.”
“It’s odd you should mention Epsom,” said the priest. “Do you remember
what was called the Sutton Mystery, because two suspected men--ice-cream
men, I think--happened to live at Sutton? They were eventually released.
A man was found strangled, it was said, on the Downs round that part. As
a fact, I know (from an Irish policeman who is a friend of mine) that he
was found close up to the Epsom Grand Stand--in fact, only hidden by one
of the lower doors being pushed back.”
“That is queer,” assented Flambeau. “But it rather confirms my view
that such pleasure places look awfully lonely out of season, or the man
wouldn’t have been murdered there.”
“I’m not so sure he--” began Brown, and stopped.
“Not so sure he was murdered?” queried his companion.
“Not so sure he was murdered out of the season,” answered the little
priest, with simplicity. “Don’t you think there’s something rather
tricky about this solitude, Flambeau? Do you feel sure a wise murderer
would always want the spot to be lonely? It’s very, very seldom a man is
quite alone. And, short of that, the more alone he is, the more certain
he is to be seen. No; I think there must be some other--Why, here we are
at the Pavilion or Palace, or whatever they call it.”
They had emerged on a small square, brilliantly lighted, of which the
principal building was gay with gilding, gaudy with posters, and flanked
with two giant photographs of Malvoli and Nigger Ned.
“Hallo!” cried Flambeau in great surprise, as his clerical friend
stumped straight up the broad steps. “I didn’t know pugilism was your
latest hobby. Are you going to see the fight?”
“I don’t think there will be any fight,” replied Father Brown.
They passed rapidly through ante-rooms and inner rooms; they passed
through the hall of combat itself, raised, roped, and padded with
innumerable seats and boxes, and still the cleric did not look round
or pause till he came to a clerk at a desk outside a door marked
“Committee”. There he stopped and asked to see Lord Pooley.
The attendant observed that his lordship was very busy, as the fight
was coming on soon, but Father Brown had a good-tempered tedium of
reiteration for which the official mind is generally not prepared. In a
few moments the rather baffled Flambeau found himself in the presence of
a man who was still shouting directions to another man going out of the
room. “Be careful, you know, about the ropes after the fourth--Well, and
what do you want, I wonder!”
Lord Pooley was a gentleman, and, like most of the few remaining to our
race, was worried--especially about money. He was half grey and half
flaxen, and he had the eyes of fever and a high-bridged, frost-bitten
nose.
“Only a word,” said Father Brown. “I have come to prevent a man being
killed.”
Lord Pooley bounded off his chair as if a spring had flung him from it.
“I’m damned if I’ll stand any more of this!” he cried. “You and your
committees and parsons and petitions! Weren’t there parsons in the old
days, when they fought without gloves? Now they’re fighting with the
regulation gloves, and there’s not the rag of a possibility of either of
the boxers being killed.”
“I didn’t mean either of the boxers,” said the little priest.
“Well, well, well!” said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour.
“Who’s going to be killed? The referee?”
“I don’t know who’s going to be killed,” replied Father Brown, with a
reflective stare. “If I did I shouldn’t have to spoil your pleasure. I
could simply get him to escape. I never could see anything wrong about
prize-fights. As it is, I must ask you to announce that the fight is off
for the present.”
“Anything else?” jeered the gentleman with feverish eyes. “And what do
you say to the two thousand people who have come to see it?”
“I say there will be one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them
left alive when they have seen it,” said Father Brown.
Lord Pooley looked at Flambeau. “Is your friend mad?” he asked.
“Far from it,” was the reply.
“And look here,” resumed Pooley in his restless way, “it’s worse than
that. A whole pack of Italians have turned up to back Malvoli--swarthy,
savage fellows of some country, anyhow. You know what these
Mediterranean races are like. If I send out word that it’s off we shall
have Malvoli storming in here at the head of a whole Corsican clan.”
“My lord, it is a matter of life and death,” said the priest. “Ring your
bell. Give your message. And see whether it is Malvoli who answers.”
The nobleman struck the bell on the table with an odd air of new
curiosity. He said to the clerk who appeared almost instantly in the
doorway: “I have a serious announcement to make to the audience shortly.
Meanwhile, would you kindly tell the two champions that the fight will
have to be put off.”
The clerk stared for some seconds as if at a demon and vanished.
“What authority have you for what you say?” asked Lord Pooley abruptly.
“Whom did you consult?”
“I consulted a bandstand,” said Father Brown, scratching his head. “But,
no, I’m wrong; I consulted a book, too. I picked it up on a bookstall in
London--very cheap, too.”
He had taken out of his pocket a small, stout, leather-bound volume, and
Flambeau, looking over his shoulder, could see that it was some book of
old travels, and had a leaf turned down for reference.
“‘The only form in which Voodoo--’” began Father Brown, reading aloud.
“In which what?” inquired his lordship.
“‘In which Voodoo,’” repeated the reader, almost with relish, “‘is
widely organized outside Jamaica itself is in the form known as the
Monkey, or the God of the Gongs, which is powerful in many parts of the
two American continents, especially among half-breeds, many of whom
look exactly like white men. It differs from most other forms of
devil-worship and human sacrifice in the fact that the blood is not shed
formally on the altar, but by a sort of assassination among the crowd.
The gongs beat with a deafening din as the doors of the shrine open and
the monkey-god is revealed; almost the whole congregation rivet ecstatic
eyes on him. But after--’”
The door of the room was flung open, and the fashionable negro stood
framed in it, his eyeballs rolling, his silk hat still insolently tilted
on his head. “Huh!” he cried, showing his apish teeth. “What this? Huh!
Huh! You steal a coloured gentleman’s prize--prize his already--yo’
think yo’ jes’ save that white ‘Talian trash--”
“The matter is only deferred,” said the nobleman quietly. “I will be
with you to explain in a minute or two.”
“Who you to--” shouted Nigger Ned, beginning to storm.
“My name is Pooley,” replied the other, with a creditable coolness.
“I am the organizing secretary, and I advise you just now to leave the
room.”
“Who this fellow?” demanded the dark champion, pointing to the priest
disdainfully.
“My name is Brown,” was the reply. “And I advise you just now to leave
the country.”
The prize-fighter stood glaring for a few seconds, and then, rather to
the surprise of Flambeau and the others, strode out, sending the door to
with a crash behind him.
“Well,” asked Father Brown rubbing his dusty hair up, “what do you think
of Leonardo da Vinci? A beautiful Italian head.”
“Look here,” said Lord Pooley, “I’ve taken a considerable
responsibility, on your bare word. I think you ought to tell me more
about this.”
“You are quite right, my lord,” answered Brown. “And it won’t take long
to tell.” He put the little leather book in his overcoat pocket. “I
think we know all that this can tell us, but you shall look at it to see
if I’m right. That negro who has just swaggered out is one of the most
dangerous men on earth, for he has the brains of a European, with the
instincts of a cannibal. He has turned what was clean, common-sense
butchery among his fellow-barbarians into a very modern and scientific
secret society of assassins. He doesn’t know I know it, nor, for the
matter of that, that I can’t prove it.”
There was a silence, and the little man went on.
“But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to
make sure I’m alone with him?”
Lord Pooley’s eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the
little clergyman. He only said: “If you want to murder somebody, I
should advise it.”
Father Brown shook his head, like a murderer of much riper experience.
“So Flambeau said,” he replied, with a sigh. “But consider. The more a
man feels lonely the less he can be sure he is alone. It must mean empty
spaces round him, and they are just what make him obvious. Have you
never seen one ploughman from the heights, or one shepherd from the
valleys? Have you never walked along a cliff, and seen one man walking
along the sands? Didn’t you know when he’s killed a crab, and wouldn’t
you have known if it had been a creditor? No! No! No! For an intelligent
murderer, such as you or I might be, it is an impossible plan to make
sure that nobody is looking at you.”
“But what other plan is there?”
“There is only one,” said the priest. “To make sure that everybody is
looking at something else. A man is throttled close by the big stand at
Epsom. Anybody might have seen it done while the stand stood empty--any
tramp under the hedges or motorist among the hills. But nobody would
have seen it when the stand was crowded and the whole ring roaring,
when the favourite was coming in first--or wasn’t. The twisting of a
neck-cloth, the thrusting of a body behind a door could be done in an
instant--so long as it was that instant. It was the same, of course,”
he continued turning to Flambeau, “with that poor fellow under the
bandstand. He was dropped through the hole (it wasn’t an accidental