The wisdom of Father Brown
must understand that towards the end of his life he began to have
those tricks of the nerves not uncommon with tyrants. He multiplied the
ordinary daily and nightly guard round his castle till there seemed to
be more sentry-boxes than houses in the town, and doubtful characters
were shot without mercy. He lived almost entirely in a little room that
was in the very centre of the enormous labyrinth of all the other rooms,
and even in this he erected another sort of central cabin or cupboard,
lined with steel, like a safe or a battleship. Some say that under the
floor of this again was a secret hole in the earth, no more than large
enough to hold him, so that, in his anxiety to avoid the grave, he was
willing to go into a place pretty much like it. But he went further yet.
The populace had been supposed to be disarmed ever since the suppression
of the revolt, but Otto now insisted, as governments very seldom
insist, on an absolute and literal disarmament. It was carried out,
with extraordinary thoroughness and severity, by very well-organized
officials over a small and familiar area, and, so far as human strength
and science can be absolutely certain of anything, Prince Otto was
absolutely certain that nobody could introduce so much as a toy pistol
into Heiligwaldenstein.”
“Human science can never be quite certain of things like that,” said
Father Brown, still looking at the red budding of the branches over
his head, “if only because of the difficulty about definition and
connotation. What is a weapon? People have been murdered with the
mildest domestic comforts; certainly with tea-kettles, probably with
tea-cosies. On the other hand, if you showed an Ancient Briton a
revolver, I doubt if he would know it was a weapon--until it was fired
into him, of course. Perhaps somebody introduced a firearm so new that
it didn’t even look like a firearm. Perhaps it looked like a thimble or
something. Was the bullet at all peculiar?”
“Not that I ever heard of,” answered Flambeau; “but my information is
fragmentary, and only comes from my old friend Grimm. He was a very able
detective in the German service, and he tried to arrest me; I arrested
him instead, and we had many interesting chats. He was in charge here
of the inquiry about Prince Otto, but I forgot to ask him anything about
the bullet. According to Grimm, what happened was this.” He paused a
moment to drain the greater part of his dark lager at a draught, and
then resumed:
“On the evening in question, it seems, the Prince was expected to appear
in one of the outer rooms, because he had to receive certain visitors
whom he really wished to meet. They were geological experts sent to
investigate the old question of the alleged supply of gold from the
rocks round here, upon which (as it was said) the small city-state
had so long maintained its credit and been able to negotiate with
its neighbours even under the ceaseless bombardment of bigger armies.
Hitherto it had never been found by the most exacting inquiry which
could--”
“Which could be quite certain of discovering a toy pistol,” said Father
Brown with a smile. “But what about the brother who ratted? Hadn’t he
anything to tell the Prince?”
“He always asseverated that he did not know,” replied Flambeau; “that
this was the one secret his brothers had not told him. It is only right
to say that it received some support from fragmentary words--spoken by
the great Ludwig in the hour of death, when he looked at Heinrich but
pointed at Paul, and said, ‘You have not told him...’ and was soon
afterwards incapable of speech. Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished
geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the
most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men who like
wearing their decorations so much as the men of science--as anybody
knows who has ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society. It was a
brilliant gathering, but very late, and gradually the Chamberlain--you
saw his portrait, too: a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a
meaningless sort of smile underneath--the Chamberlain, I say, discovered
there was everything there except the Prince himself. He searched all
the outer salons; then, remembering the man’s mad fits of fear, hurried
to the inmost chamber. That also was empty, but the steel turret or
cabin erected in the middle of it took some time to open. When it did
open it was empty, too. He went and looked into the hole in the ground,
which seemed deeper and somehow all the more like a grave--that is his
account, of course. And even as he did so he heard a burst of cries and
tumult in the long rooms and corridors without.
“First it was a distant din and thrill of something unthinkable on the
horizon of the crowd, even beyond the castle. Next it was a wordless
clamour startlingly close, and loud enough to be distinct if each word
had not killed the other. Next came words of a terrible clearness,
coming nearer, and next one man, rushing into the room and telling the
news as briefly as such news is told.
“Otto, Prince of Heiligwaldenstein and Grossenmark, was lying in the
dews of the darkening twilight in the woods beyond the castle, with his
arms flung out and his face flung up to the moon. The blood still pulsed
from his shattered temple and jaw, but it was the only part of him that
moved like a living thing. He was clad in his full white and yellow
uniform, as to receive his guests within, except that the sash or scarf
had been unbound and lay rather crumpled by his side. Before he could
be lifted he was dead. But, dead or alive, he was a riddle--he who had
always hidden in the inmost chamber out there in the wet woods, unarmed
and alone.”
“Who found his body?” asked Father Brown.
“Some girl attached to the Court named Hedwig von something or other,”
replied his friend, “who had been out in the wood picking wild flowers.”
“Had she picked any?” asked the priest, staring rather vacantly at the
veil of the branches above him.
“Yes,” replied Flambeau. “I particularly remember that the Chamberlain,
or old Grimm or somebody, said how horrible it was, when they came up
at her call, to see a girl holding spring flowers and bending over
that--that bloody collapse. However, the main point is that before help
arrived he was dead, and the news, of course, had to be carried back to
the castle. The consternation it created was something beyond even that
natural in a Court at the fall of a potentate. The foreign visitors,
especially the mining experts, were in the wildest doubt and excitement,
as well as many important Prussian officials, and it soon began to be
clear that the scheme for finding the treasure bulked much bigger in
the business than people had supposed. Experts and officials had been
promised great prizes or international advantages, and some even said
that the Prince’s secret apartments and strong military protection were
due less to fear of the populace than to the pursuit of some private
investigation of--”
“Had the flowers got long stalks?” asked Father Brown.
Flambeau stared at him. “What an odd person you are!” he said. “That’s
exactly what old Grimm said. He said the ugliest part of it, he
thought--uglier than the blood and bullet--was that the flowers were
quite short, plucked close under the head.”
“Of course,” said the priest, “when a grown up girl is really picking
flowers, she picks them with plenty of stalk. If she just pulled their
heads off, as a child does, it looks as if--” And he hesitated.
“Well?” inquired the other.
“Well, it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, to make an
excuse for being there after--well, after she was there.”
“I know what you’re driving at,” said Flambeau rather gloomily. “But
that and every other suspicion breaks down on the one point--the want
of a weapon. He could have been killed, as you say, with lots of other
things--even with his own military sash; but we have to explain not how
he was killed, but how he was shot. And the fact is we can’t. They had
the girl most ruthlessly searched; for, to tell the truth, she was a
little suspect, though the niece and ward of the wicked old Chamberlain,
Paul Arnhold. But she was very romantic, and was suspected of sympathy
with the old revolutionary enthusiasm in her family. All the same,
however romantic you are, you can’t imagine a big bullet into a man’s
jaw or brain without using a gun or pistol. And there was no pistol,
though there were two pistol shots. I leave it to you, my friend.”
“How do you know there were two shots?” asked the little priest.
“There was only one in his head,” said his companion, “but there was
another bullet-hole in the sash.”
Father Brown’s smooth brow became suddenly constricted. “Was the other
bullet found?” he demanded.
Flambeau started a little. “I don’t think I remember,” he said.
“Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!” cried Brown, frowning more and more, with
a quite unusual concentration of curiosity. “Don’t think me rude. Let me
think this out for a moment.”
“All right,” said Flambeau, laughing, and finished his beer. A slight
breeze stirred the budding trees and blew up into the sky cloudlets of
white and pink that seemed to make the sky bluer and the whole coloured
scene more quaint. They might have been cherubs flying home to the
casements of a sort of celestial nursery. The oldest tower of the
castle, the Dragon Tower, stood up as grotesque as the ale-mug, but as
homely. Only beyond the tower glimmered the wood in which the man had
lain dead.
“What became of this Hedwig eventually?” asked the priest at last.
“She is married to General Schwartz,” said Flambeau. “No doubt you’ve
heard of his career, which was rather romantic. He had distinguished
himself even, before his exploits at Sadowa and Gravelotte; in fact, he
rose from the ranks, which is very unusual even in the smallest of the
German...”
Father Brown sat up suddenly.
“Rose from the ranks!” he cried, and made a mouth as if to whistle.
“Well, well, what a queer story! What a queer way of killing a man;
but I suppose it was the only one possible. But to think of hate so
patient--”
“What do you mean?” demanded the other. “In what way did they kill the
man?”
“They killed him with the sash,” said Brown carefully; and then, as
Flambeau protested: “Yes, yes, I know about the bullet. Perhaps I ought
to say he died of having a sash. I know it doesn’t sound like having a
disease.”
“I suppose,” said Flambeau, “that you’ve got some notion in your head,
but it won’t easily get the bullet out of his. As I explained before, he
might easily have been strangled. But he was shot. By whom? By what?”
“He was shot by his own orders,” said the priest.
“You mean he committed suicide?”
“I didn’t say by his own wish,” replied Father Brown. “I said by his own
orders.”
“Well, anyhow, what is your theory?”
Father Brown laughed. “I am only on my holiday,” he said. “I haven’t got
any theories. Only this place reminds me of fairy stories, and, if you
like, I’ll tell you a story.”
The little pink clouds, that looked rather like sweet-stuff, had floated
up to crown the turrets of the gilt gingerbread castle, and the pink
baby fingers of the budding trees seemed spreading and stretching to
reach them; the blue sky began to take a bright violet of evening, when
Father Brown suddenly spoke again:
“It was on a dismal night, with rain still dropping from the trees
and dew already clustering, that Prince Otto of Grossenmark stepped
hurriedly out of a side door of the castle and walked swiftly into the
wood. One of the innumerable sentries saluted him, but he did not notice
it. He had no wish to be specially noticed himself. He was glad when the
great trees, grey and already greasy with rain, swallowed him up like