"YES," said
Father Brown, "I always like a dog, so long as he isn’t spelt
backwards."
Those who are quick in
talking are not always quick in listening. Sometimes even their brilliancy
produces a sort of stupidity. Father Brown’s friend and companion was a young
man with a stream of ideas and stories, an enthusiastic young man named
Fiennes, with eager blue eyes and blond hair that seemed to be brushed back,
not merely with a hair-brush but with the wind of the world as he rushed
through it. But he stopped in the torrent of his talk in a momentary
bewilderment before he saw the priest’s very simple meaning.
"You mean that
people make too much of them?" he said. "Well, I don’t know. They’re
marvelous creatures. Sometimes I think they know a lot more than we do."
Father Brown said
nothing; but continued to stroke the head of the big retriever in a
half-abstracted but apparently soothing fashion.
"Why," said
Fiennes, warming again to his monologue, "there was a dog in the case I’ve
come to see you about; what they call the ’Invisible Murder Case,’ you know. It’s
a strange story, but from my point of view the dog is about the strangest thing
in it. Of course, there’s the mystery of the crime itself, and how old Druce
can have been killed by somebody else when he was all alone in the
summer-house---"
The hand stroking of
the dog stopped for a moment in its rhythmic movement; and Father Brown said
calmly, "Oh, it was a summer-house, was it? "
"I thought you’d
read all about it in the papers," answered Fiennes. " Stop a minute;
I believe I’ve got a cutting that will give you all the particulars." He
produced a strip of newspaper from his pocket and handed it to the priest, who
began to read it, holding it close to his blinking eyes with one hand while the
other continued its half-conscious caresses of the dog. It looked like the
parable of a man not letting his right hand know what his left hand did.
"Many mystery
stories, about men murdered behind locked doors and windows, and murderers
escaping without means of entrance and exit, have come true in the course of
the extraordinary events at Cranston on the coast of Yorkshire, where Colonel
Druce was found stabbed from behind by a dagger that has entirely disappeared
from the scene, and apparently even from the neighborhood.
"The summer-house
in which he died was indeed accessible at one entrance, the ordinary doorway
which looked down the central walk of the garden towards the house. But by a
combination of events almost to be called a coincidence, it appears that both
the path and the entrance were watched during the crucial time, and there is a
chain of witnesses who confirm each other. The summer-house stands at the
extreme end of the garden, where there is no exit or entrance of any kind. The
central garden path is a lane between two ranks of tall delphiniums, planted so
close that any stray step off the path would leave its traces; and both path
and plants run right up to the very mouth of the summer-house, so that no
straying from that straight path could fail to be observed, and no other mode
of entrance can be imagined.
"Patrick Floyd,
secretary of the murdered man, testified that he had been in a position to
overlook the whole garden from the time when Colonel Druce last appeared alive
in the doorway to the time when he was found dead; as he, Floyd, had been on
the top of a step-ladder clipping the garden hedge. Janet Druce, the dead man’s
daughter, confirmed this, saying that she had sat on the terrace of the house
throughout that time and had seen Floyd at his work. Touching some part of the
time, this is again supported by. Donald Druce, her brother, who overlooked the
garden standing at his bedroom window in his dressing-gown, for he had risen
late. Lastly the account is consistent with that given by Dr. Valentine, a
neighbor, who called for a time to talk with Miss Druce on the terrace, and by
the Colonel’s solicitor, Mr. Aubrey Traill, who was apparently the last to see
the murdered man alive--presumably with the exception of the murderer.
"All are agreed
that the course of events was as follows: about half-past three in the
afternoon, Miss Druce went down the path to ask her father when he would like
tea; but he said he did not want any and was waiting to see Traill, his lawyer,
who was to be sent to him in the summer-house. The girl then came away and met
Traill coming down the path; she directed to her father and he went in as
directed. About half an hour afterwards he came out again, the Colonel coming
with him to the door and showing himself to all appearance in health and even
high spirits. He had been somewhat annoyed earlier in the day by his son’s
irregular hours, but seemed to recover his temper in a perfectly normal
fashion, and had been rather markedly genial in receiving other visitors,
including two of his nephews who came over for the day. But as these were out
walking during the whole period of the tragedy, they had no evidence to give.
It is said, indeed, that the Colonel was not on very good terms with Dr.
Valentine, but that gentleman only had a brief interview with the daughter of
the house, to whom he ;s supposed to be paying serious attentions.
"Traill, the
solicitor, says he left the Colonel entirely alone in the summer-house, and
this is confirmed by Floyd’s bird’s- eye view of the garden, which showed
nobody else passing the only entrance. Ten minutes later Miss Druce again went
down the garden and had not reached the end of the path, when she saw her
father, who was conspicuous by his white linen coat, lying in a heap on the
floor. She uttered a scream which brought others to the spot, and on entering
the place they found the Colonel lying dead beside his basket-chair, which was
also upset. Dr. Valentine, who was still in the immediate neighborhood,
testified that the wound was made by some sort of stiletto, entering under the
shoulder-blade and piercing the heart. The police have searched the
neighborhood for such a weapon, but no trace of it can be found."
"So Colonel Druce
wore a white coat, did he?" said Father Brown as he put down the paper.
"Trick he learnt
in the tropics," replied Fiennes with some wonder. "He’d had some
queer adventures there, by his own account; and I fancy his dislike of
Valentine was connected with the doctor coming from the tropics, too. But it’s
all an infernal puzzle. The account there is pretty accurate; I didn’t see the
tragedy, in the sense of the discovery; I was out walking with the young
nephews and the dog--the dog I wanted to tell you about. But I saw the stage
set for it as described: the straight lane between the blue flowers right up to
the dark entrance, and the lawyer going down it in his blacks and his silk hat,
and the red head of the secretary showing high above the green hedge as he
worked on it with his shears. Nobody could have mistaken that red head at any
distance; and if people say they saw it there all the time, you may be sure
they did. This red-haired secretary Floyd is quite a character; a breathless,
bounding sort of fellow, always doing everybody’s work as he was doing the
gardener’s. I think he is an American; he’s certainly got the American view of
life; what they call the viewpoint, bless ’em."
"What about the
lawyer?" asked Father Brown.
There was a silence and
then Fiennes spoke quite slowly for him. "Traill struck me as a singular
man. In his fine black clothes he was almost foppish, yet you can hardly call
him fashionable. For he wore a pair of long, luxuriant black whiskers such as
haven’t been seen since Victorian times. He had rather a fine grave face and a
fine grave manner, but every now and then he seemed to remember to smile. And
when he showed his white teeth he seemed to lose a little of his dignity and
there was something faintly fawning about him. It may have been only
embarrassment, for he would also fidget with his cravat and his tie-pin, which
were at once handsome and unusual, like himself. If I could think of
anybody--but what’s the good, when the whole thing’s impossible? Nobody knows
who did it. Nobody knows how it could be done. At least there’s only one
exception I’d make, and that’s why I really mentioned the whole thing. The dog
knows."
Father Brown sighed and
then said absently: "You were there as a friend of young Donald, weren’t
you? He didn’t go on your walk with you?"
"No," replied
Fiennes smiling. "The young scoundrel had gone to bed that morning and got
up that afternoon. I went with his cousins, two young officers from India, and
our conversation was trivial enough. I remember the elder, whose name I think
is Herbert Druce and who is an authority on horse- breeding, talked about
nothing but a mare he had bought and the moral character of the man who sold
her- while his brother Harry seemed to be brooding on his bad luck at Monte Carlo.
I only mention it to show you, in the light of what happened on our walk, that
there was nothing psychic about us. The dog was the only mystic in our
company."
"What sort of a
dog was he?" asked the priest.
"Same breed as
that one," answered Fiennes. "That’s what started me off on the
story, your saying you didn’t believe in believing in a dog. He’s a big black
retriever named Nox, and a suggestive name too; for I think what he did a
darker mystery than the murder. You know Druce’s house and garden are by the
sea; we walked about a mile from it along the sands and then turned back, going
the other way. We passed a rather curious rock called the Rock of Fortune,
famous in the neighborhood because it’s one of those examples of one stone
barely balanced on another, so that a touch would knock it over. It is not
really very high, but the hanging outline of it makes it look a little wild and
sinister; at least it made it look so to me, for I don’t imagine my jolly young
companions were afflicted with the picturesque. But it may be that I was
beginning to feel an atmosphere; for just then the question arose of whether it
was time to go back to tea, and even then I think I had a premonition that time
counted for a good deal in the business. Neither Herbert Druce nor I had a
watch, so we called out to his brother, who was some paces behind, having
stopped to light his pipe under the hedge. Hence it happened that he shouted
out the hour, which was twenty past four, in his big voice through the growing
twilight; and somehow the loudness of it made it sound like the proclamation of
something tremendous. His unconsciousness seemed to make it all the more so;
but that was always the way with omens; and particular ticks of the clock were
really very ominous things that afternoon. According to Dr. Valentine’s
testimony, poor Druce had actually died just about half-past four.
"Well, they said
we needn’t go home for ten minutes, and we walked a little farther along the
sands, doing nothing in particular-- throwing stones for the dog and throwing
sticks into the sea for him to swim after. But to me the twilight seemed to
grow oddly oppressive and the very shadow of the top-heavy Rock of Fortune lay
on me like a load. And then the curious thing happened. Nox had just brought
back Herbert’s walking- stick out of the sea and his brother had thrown his in
also. The dog swam out again, but just about what must have been the stroke of
the half-hour, he stopped swimming. He came back again on to the shore ana
stood in front of us. Then he suddenly threw up his head and sent up a howl or
wail of woe, if ever I heard one in the world.
"’What the devil’s
the matter with the dog?’ asked Herbert; but none of us could answer. There was
a long silence after the brute’s wailing and whining died away on the desolate
shore; and then the silence was broken. As I live, it was broken by a faint and
far-off shriek, like the shriek of a woman from beyond the hedges inland. We
didn’t know what it was then; but we knew afterwards. It was the cry the girl
gave when she first saw the body of her father."
"You went back, I
suppose," said Father Brown patiently. "What happened then?"
"I’ll tell you
what happened then," said Fiennes with a grim emphasis. "When we got
back into that garden the first thing we saw was Traill the lawyer; I can see
him now with his black hat and black whiskers relieved against the perspective
of the blue flowers stretching down to the summer-house, with the sunset and
the strange outline of the Rock of Fortune in the distance. His face and figure
were in shadow against the sunset; but I swear the white teeth were showing in
his head and he was smiling.
"The moment Nox
saw that man, the dog dashed forward and stood in the middle of the path
barking at him madly, murderously, volleying out curses that were almost verbal
in their dreadful distinctness of hatred. And the man doubled up and fled along
the path between the flowers."
Father Brown sprang to
his feet with a startling impatience.
"So the dog
denounced him, did he?" he cried. "The oracle of the dog condemned
him. Did you see what birds were flying, and are you sure whether they were on
the right hand or the left? Did you consult the augurs about the sacrifices?
Surely you didn’t omit to cut open the dog and examine his entrails. That is
the sort of scientific test you heathen humanitarians seem to trust when you
are thinking of taking away the life and honor of a man."
Fiennes sat gaping for
an instant before he found breath to say, "Why, what’s the matter with
you? What have I done now?"
A sort of anxiety came
back into the priest’s eyes--the anxiety of a man who has run against a post in
the dark and wonders for a moment whether he has hurt it.
"I’m most awfully
sorry," he said with sincere distress. "I beg your pardon for being
so rude; pray forgive me."
Fiennes looked at him
curiously. "I sometimes think you are more of a mystery than any of the
mysteries," he said. "But anyhow, if you don’t believe in the mystery
of the dog, at least you can’t get over the mystery of the man. You can’t deny
that at the very moment when the beast came back from the sea and bellowed, his
master’s soul was driven out of his body by the blow of some unseen power that
no mortal man can trace or even imagine. And as for the lawyer, I don’t go only
by the dog; there are other curious details too. He struck me as a smooth,
smiling, equivocal sort of person; and one of his tricks seemed like a sort of
hint. You know the doctor and the police were on the spot very quickly; Valentine
was brought back when walking away from the house, and he telephoned instantly.
That, with the secluded house, small numbers, and enclosed space, made it
pretty possible to search everybody who could have been near; and everybody was
thoroughly searched--for a weapon. The whole house, garden, and shore were
combed for a weapon. The disappearance of the dagger is almost as crazy as the
disappearance of the man."
"The disappearance
of the dagger," said Father Brown, nodding. He seemed to have become suddenly
attentive.
"Well,"
continued Fiennes, "I told you that man Traill had a trick of fidgeting
with his tie and tie-pin--especially his tie- pin. His pin, like himself, was
at once showy and old-fashioned. It had one of those stones with concentric colored
rings that look like an eye; and his own concentration on it got on my nerves,
as if he had been a Cyclops with one eye in the middle of his body. But the pin
was not only large but long; and it occurred to me that his anxiety about its
adjustment was because it was even longer than it looked; as long as a stiletto
in fact."
Father Brown nodded
thoughtfully. "Was any other instrument ever suggested?" he asked.
"There was another
suggestion," answered Fiennes, "from one of the young Druces--the
cousins, I mean. Neither Herbert nor Harry Druce would have struck one at first
as likely to be of assistance in scientific detection; but while Herbert was
really the traditional type of heavy Dragoon, caring for nothing but horses and
being an ornament to the Horse Guards, his younger brother Harry had been in
the Indian Police and knew something about such things. Indeed in his own way
he was quite clever; and I rather fancy he had been too clever; I mean he had
left the police through breaking some red-tape regulations and taking some sort
of risk and responsibility of his own. Anyhow, he was in some sense a detective
out of work, and threw himself into this business with more than the ardor of
an amateur. And it was with him that I had an argument about the weapon-- an
argument that led to something new. It began by his countering my description
of the dog barking at Traill; and he said that a dog at his worst didn’t bark,
but growled."
"He was quite
right there," observed the priest.
"This young fellow
went on to say that, if it came to that, he’d heard Nox growling at other
people before then; and among others at Floyd the secretary. I retorted that
his own argument answered itself; for the crime couldn’t be brought home to two
or three people, and least of all to Floyd, who was as innocent as a
harum-scarum schoolboy, and had been seen by everybody all the time perched
above the garden hedge with his fan of red hair as conspicuous as a scarlet
cuckatoo. ’I know there’s difficulties anyhow,’ said my colleague, ’but I wish
you’d come with me down the garden a minute. I want to show you something I don’t
think anyone else has seen.’ This was on the very day of the discovery, and the
garden was just as it had been: the step-ladder was still standing by the
hedge, and just under the hedge my guide stooped and disentangled something
from the deep grass. It was the shears used for clipping the hedge, and on the
point of one of them was a smear of blood."
There was a short
silence, and then Father Brown said suddenly, "What was the lawyer there
for?"
"He told us the
Colonel sent for him to alter his will," answered Fiennes. "And, by
the way, there was another thing about the business of the will that I ought to
mention. You see, the will wasn’t actually signed in the summer-house that
afternoon."
"I suppose
not," said Father Brown; "there would have to be two witnesses."
"The lawyer
actually came down the day before and it was signed then; but he was sent for
again next day because the old man had a doubt about one of the witnesses and
had to be reassured."
"Who were the
witnesses?" asked Father Brown.
"That’s just the
point," replied his informant eagerly, "the witnesses were Floyd the
secretary and this Dr. Valentine, the foreign sort of surgeon or whatever he
is; and the two have a quarrel. Now I’m bound to say that the secretary is
something of a busybody. He’s one of those hot and headlong people whose warmth
of temperament has unfortunately turned mostly to pugnacity and bristling
suspicion; to distrusting people instead of to trusting them. That sort of
red-haired red-hot fellow is always either universally credulous or universally
incredulous; and sometimes both. He was not only a Jack of all trades, but he
knew better than all tradesmen. He not only knew everything, but he warned
everybody against everybody. All that must be taken into account in his
suspicions about Valentine; but in that particular case there seems to have
been something behind it. He said the name of Valentine was not really
Valentine. He said he had seen him elsewhere known by the name of De Villon. He
said it would invalidate the will; of course he was kind enough to explain to
the lawyer what the law was on that point. They were both in a frightful
wax."
Father Brown laughed.
"People often are when they are to witness a will," he said,
"for one thing, it means that they can’t have any legacy under it. But
what did Dr. Valentine say? No doubt the universal secretary knew more about
the doctor’s name than the doctor did. But even the doctor might have some
information about his own name."
Fiennes paused a moment
before he replied.
"Dr. Valentine
took it in a curious way. Dr. Valentine is a curious man. His appearance is
rather striking but very foreign. He is young but wears a beard cut square; and
his face is very pale, dreadfully pale and dreadfully serious. His eyes have a
sort of ache in them, as if he ought to wear glasses or had given himself a
headache with thinking; but he is quite handsome and always very formally
dressed, with a top hat and a dark coat and a little red rosette. His manner is
rather cold and haughty, and he has a way of staring at you which is very
disconcerting. When thus charged with having changed his name, he merely stared
like a sphinx and then said with a little laugh that he supposed Americans had
no names to change. At that I think the Colonel also got into a fuss and said
all sorts of angry things to the doctor; all the more angry because of the
doctor’s pretensions to a future place in his family. But I shouldn’t have
thought much of that but for a few words that I happened to hear later, early
in the afternoon of the tragedy. I don’t want to make a lot of them, for they
weren’t the sort of words on which one, would like, in the ordinary way, to
play the eavesdropper. As I was passing out towards the front gate with my two
companions and the dog, I heard voices which told me that Dr. Valentine and
Miss Druce had withdrawn for a moment into the shadow of the house, in an angle
behind a row of flowering plants, and were talking to each other in passionate
whisperings--sometimes almost like hissings; for it was something of a lovers’
quarrel as well as a lovers’ tryst. Nobody repeats the sort of things they said
for the most part; but in an unfortunate business like this I’m bound to say
that there was repeated more than once a phrase about killing somebody. In
fact, the girl seemed to be begging him not to kill somebody, or saying that no
provocation could justify killing anybody; which seems an unusual sort of talk
to address to a gentleman who has dropped in to tea."
"Do you
know," asked the priest, ’’whether Dr. Valentine seemed to be very angry
after the scene with the secretary and the Colonel--I mean about witnessing the
will?"
"By all
accounts," replied the other, "he wasn’t half so angry as the
secretary was. It was the secretary who went away raging after witnessing the
will."
"And now,"
said Father Brown, "what about the will itself?"
"The Colonel was a
very wealthy man, and his will was important. Traill wouldn’t tell us the
alteration at that stage, but I have since heard, only this morning in fact,
that most of the money was transferred from the son to the daughter. I told you
that Druce was wild with my friend Donald over his dissipated hours."
"The question of
motive, has been rather over-shadowed by the question of method," observed
Father Brown thoughtfully. "At that moment, apparently, Miss Druce was the
immediate gainer by the death."
"Good Cod! What a
cold-blooded way of talking," cried Fiennes, staring at him. "You don’t
really mean to hint that she "
"Is she going to
marry that Dr. Valentine?" asked the other.
"Some people are against
it," answered his friend. "But he is liked and respected in the place
and is a skilled and devoted surgeon."
"So devoted a
surgeon," said Father Brown, "that he had surgical instruments with
him when he went to call on the young lady at tea-time. For he must have used a
lancet or something, and he never seems to have gone home."
Fiennes sprang to his
feet and looked at him in a heat of inquiry. "You suggest he might have
used the very same lancet--"
Father Brown shook his
head. "All these suggestions are fancies just now," he said.
"The problem is not who did it or what did it, but how it was done. We
might find many men and even many tools--pins and shears and lancets. But how
did a man get into the room? How did even a pin get into it?"
He was staring
reflectively at the ceiling as he, spoke, but as he said the last words his eye
cocked in an alert fashion as if he had suddenly seen a curious fly on the
ceiling.
"Well, what would
you do about it?" asked the young man. "You have a lot of experience,
what would you advise now?"
"I’m afraid I’m
not much use," said Father Brown with a sigh. "I can’t suggest very
much without having ever been near the place or the people. For the moment you
can only go on with local inquiries. I gather that your friend from the Indian
Police is more or less in charge of your inquiry down there. I should run down
and see how he is getting on. See what he’s been doing in the way of amateur
detection. There may be news already."
As his guests, the
biped and the quadruped, disappeared, Father Brown took up his pen and went
back to his interrupted occupation of planning a course of lectures on the
Encyclical Rerum Novarum. The subject was a large one and he had to re-cast it
more than once, so that he was somewhat similarly employed some two days later
when the big black dog again came bounding into the room and sprawled all over
him with enthusiasm and excitement. The master who followed the dog shared the
excitement if not the enthusiasm. He had been excited in a less pleasant
fashion, for his blue eyes seemed to start from his head and his eager face was
even a little pale.
"You told
me," he said abruptly and without preface, "to find out what Harry
Druce was doing. Do you know what he’s done?"
The priest did not
reply, and the young man went on in jerky tones:
"I’ll tell you
what he’s done. He’s killed himself."
Father Brown’s lips
moved only faintly, and there was nothing practical about what he was
saying--nothing that had anything to do with this story or this world.
"You give me the
creeps sometimes," said Fiennes. "Did you--did you expect this?"
"I thought it
possible," said Father Brown; "that was why I asked you to go and see
what he was doing. I hoped you might not be too late."
"It was I who
found him," said Fiennes rather huskily. "It was the ugliest and most
uncanny thing I ever knew. I went down that old garden again and I knew there
was something new and unnatural about it besides the murder. The flowers still
tossed about in blue masses on each side of the black entrance into the old
gray summer-house; but to me the blue flowers looked like blue devils dancing
before some dark cavern of the underworld. I looked all around; everything
seemed to be in its ordinary place. But the queer notion grew on me that there
was something wrong with the very shape of the sky. And then I saw what it was.
The Rock of Fortune always rose in the background beyond the garden hedge and
against the sea. And the Rock of Fortune was gone."
Father Brown had lifted
his head and was listening intently.
"It was as if a
mountain had walked away out of a landscape or a moon fallen from the sky;
though I knew, of course, that a touch at any time would have tipped the thing
over. Something possessed me and I rushed down that garden path like the wind
and went crashing through that hedge as if it were a spider’s web. It was a
thin hedge really, though its undisturbed trimness had made it serve all the
purposes of a wall. On the, shore I found the loose rock fallen from its
pedestal; and poor Harry Druce lay like a wreck underneath it. One arm was
thrown round it in a sort of embrace as if he had pulled it down on himself;
and on the broad brown sands beside it, in large crazy lettering, he had
scrawled the words, "The Rock of Fortune falls on the Fool."
"It was the
Colonel’s will that did that," observed Father Brown. "The young man
had staked everything on profiting himself by Donald’s disgrace, especially
when his uncle sent for him on the same day as the lawyer, and welcomed him
with so much warmth. Otherwise he was done; he’d lost his police job; he was
beggared at Monte Carlo. And he killed himself when he found he’d killed his
kinsman for nothing."
"Here, stop a
minute!" cried the staring Fiennes. "You’re going too fast for
me."
"Talking about the
will, by the way," continued Father Brown calmly, "before I forget
it, or we go on to bigger things, there was a simple explanation, I think, of
all that business about the doctor’s name. I rather fancy I have heard both
names before somewhere. The doctor is really a French nobleman with the title
of the Marquis de Villon. But he is also an ardent Republican and has abandoned
his title and fallen back on the forgotten family surname. ’With your Citizen
Riquetti you have puzzled Europe for ten days.’"
"What is
that?" asked the young man blankly.
"Never mind,"
said the priest. "Nine times out of ten it is a rascally thing to change
one’s name; but this was a piece of fine fanaticism. That’s the point of his
sarcasm about Americans having no names--that is, no titles. Now in England the
Marquis of Hartington is never called Mr. Hartington; but in France the Marquis
de Villon is called M. de Villon. So it might well look like a change of name.
As for the talk about killing, I fancy that also was a point of French
etiquette. The, doctor was talking about challenging Floyd to a duel, and the girl
was trying to dissuade him."
"Oh, I see,"
cried Fiennes slowly. "Now I understand what she meant."
"And what is that
about?" asked his companion, smiling.
"Well," said
the young man, "it was something that happened to me just before I found
that poor fellow’s body; only the catastrophe drove it out of my head. I
suppose it’s hard to remember a little romantic idyll when you’ve just come on
top of a tragedy. But as I went down the lanes leading to the Colonel’s old
place, I met his daughter walking with Dr. Valentine. She was in mourning of
course, and he always wore black as if he were going to a funeral; but I can’t
say that their faces were very funereal. Never have I seen two people looking
in their own way more respectably radiant and cheerful. They stopped and
saluted me and then she told me they were married and living in a little house
on the outskirts of the town, where the doctor was continuing his practise.
This rather surprised me, because I knew that her old father’s will had left
her his property; and I hinted at it delicately by saying I was going along to
her father’s old place and had half expected to meet her there. But she only
laughed and said, "Oh, we’ve given up all that. My husband doesn’t like
heiresses." And I discovered with some astonishment they really had
insisted on restoring the property to poor Donald; so I hope he’s had a healthy
shock and will treat it sensibly. There was never much really the matter with
him; he was very young and his father was not very wise. But it was in
connection with that that she said something I didn’t understand at the time;
but now I’m sure it must be as you say. She said with a sort of sudden and
splendid arrogance that was entirely altruistic:
"’I hope it’ll
stop that red-haired fool from fussing any more about the will. Does he think
my husband, who has given up a crest and a coronet as old as the Crusades for
his principles, would kill an old man in a summer-house for a legacy like that?’
Then she laughed again and said, ’My husband isn’t killing anybody except in
the way of business. Why, he didn’t even ask his friends to call on the
secretary.’ Now, of course, I see what she meant."
"I see part of
what she meant, of course," said Father Brown. "What did she mean
exactly by the secretary fussing about the will?"
Fiennes smiled as he
answered. "I wish you knew the secretary, Father Brown. It would be a joy
to you to watch him make things hum, as he calls it. He made the house of
mourning hum. He filled the funeral with all the snap and zip of the brightest
sporting event. There was no holding him, after something had really happened.
I’ve told you how he used to oversee the gardener as he did the garden, and how
he instructed the lawyer in the law. Needless to say, he also instructed the
surgeon in the practise of surgery; and as the surgeon was Dr. Valentine, you
may be sure it ended in accusing him of something worse than bad surgery. The
secretary got it fixed in his red head that the doctor had committed the crime;
and when the police arrived he was perfectly sublime. Need I say that he became
on the spot the greatest of all amateur detectives? Sherlock Holmes never
towered over Scotland Yard with more Titanic intellectual pride and scorn than
Colonel Druce’s private secretary over the police investigating Colonel Druce’s
death. I tell you it was a joy to see him. He strode about with an abstracted
air, tossing his scarlet crest of hair and giving curt impatient replies. Of
course it was his demeanor during these days that made Druce’s daughter so wild
with him. Of course he had a theory. It’s just the sort of theory a man would
have in a book; and Floyd is the sort of man who ought to be in a book. He’d be
better fun and less bother in a book."
"What was his
theory?" asked the other.
"Oh, it was full
of pep," replied Fiennes gloomily. "It would have been glorious copy
if it could have held together for ten minutes longer. He said the Colonel was
still alive when they found him in the summer-house and the doctor killed him
with the surgical instrument on pretense of cutting the clothes."
"I see," said
the priest. "I suppose he was lying flat on his face on the mud floor as a
form of siesta."
"It’s wonderful
what hustle will do," continued his informant. "I believe Floyd would
have got his great theory into the papers at any rate, and perhaps had the
doctor arrested, when all these things were blown sky high as if by dynamite by
the discovery of that dead body lying under the Rock of Fortune. And that’s
what we come back to after all. I suppose the suicide is almost a confession.
But nobody will ever know the whole story."
There was a silence,
and then the priest said modestly, "I rather think I know the whole
story."
Fiennes stared.
"But look here," he cried, "how do you come to know the whole
story, or to be sure it’s the true story? You’ve been sitting here a hundred
miles away writing a sermon; do you mean to tell me you really know what
happened already? If you’ve really come to the end, where in the world do you
begin? What started you off with your own story?"
Father Brown jumped up
with a very unusual excitement and his first exclamation was like an explosion.
"The dog!" he
cried. "The dog, of course! You had the whole story in your hands in the
business of the dog on the beach, if you’d only noticed the dog properly."
Fiennes stared still
more. "But you told me before that my feelings about the dog were all
nonsense, and the dog had nothing to do with it."
"The dog had
everything to do with it," said Father Brown, "as you’d have found
out if you’d only treated the dog as a dog and not as God Almighty judging the
souls of men."
He paused in an
embarrassed way for a moment, and then said, with a rather pathetic air of
apology:
"The truth is, I
happen to be awfully fond of dogs. And it seemed to me that in all this lurid
halo of dog superstitions nobody was really thinking about the poor dog at all.
To begin with a small point, about his barking at the lawyer or growling at the
secretary. You asked how I could guess things a hundred miles away; but
honestly it’s mostly to your credit, for you described people so well that I
know the types. A man like Traill who frowns usually and smiles suddenly, a man
who fiddles with things, especially at his throat, is a nervous, easily
embarrassed man. I shouldn’t wonder if Floyd, the efficient secretary, is nervy
and jumpy too; those Yankee hustlers often are. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cut
his fingers on the shears and dropped them when he heard Janet Druce scream.
"Now dogs hate
nervous people. I don’t know whether they make the dog nervous too; or whether,
being after all a brute, he is a bit of bully; or whether his canine vanity
(which is colossal) is simply offended at not being liked. But anyhow there was
nothing in poor Nox protesting against those people, except that he disliked
them for being afraid of him. Now I know you’re awfully clever, and nobody of
sense sneers at cleverness. But I sometimes fancy, for instance, that you are
too clever to understand animals. Sometimes you are too clever to understand
men, especially when they act almost as simply as animals. Animals are very
literal; they live in a world of truisms. Take this case; a dog barks at a man
and a man runs away from a dog. Now you do not seem to be quite simple enough
to see the fact; that the dog barked because he disliked the man and the man
fled because he was frightened of the dog. They had no other motives and they
needed none. But you must read psychological mysteries into it and suppose the
dog had super-normal vision, and was a mysterious mouthpiece of doom. You must
suppose the man was running away, not from the dog but from the hangman. And
yet, if you come to think of it, all this deeper psychology is exceedingly
improbable. If the dog really could completely and consciously realize the
murderer of his master, he wouldn’t stand yapping as he might at a curate at a
tea-party; he’s much more likely to fly at his throat. And on the other hand,
do you really think a man who had hardened his heart to murder an old friend
and then walk about smiling at the old friend’s family, under the eyes of his
old friend’s daughter and postmortem doctor--do you think a man like that would
be doubled up by mere remorse because a dog barked? He might feel the tragic
irony of it; it might shake his soul, like any other tragic trifle. But he
wouldn’t rush madly the length of a garden to escape from the only witness whom
he knew to be unable to talk. People have a panic like that when they are
frightened, not of tragic ironies, but of teeth. The whole thing is simpler
than you can understand.
"But when we come
to that business by the seashore, things are much more interesting. As you
stated then, they were much more puzzling. I didn’t understand that tale of the
dog going in and out of the water; it didn’t seem to me a doggy thing to do. If
Nox had been very much upset about something else, he might possibly have
refused to go after the stick at all. He’d probably go off nosing in whatever
direction he suspected the mischief. But when once a dog is actually chasing a
thing, a stone or a stick or a rabbit, my experience is that he won’t stop for
anything but the most peremptory command, and not always for that. That he
should turn around because his mood changed seems to me unthinkable."
"But he did turn
around," insisted Fiennes, "and came back without the stick."
"He came back
without the stick for the best reason in the world," replied the priest.
"He came back because he couldn’t find it. He whined because he couldn’t
find it. That’s the sort of thing a dog really does whine about. A dog is a
devil of a ritualist. He is as particular about the precise routine of a game
as a child about the precise repetition of a fairy-tale. In this case something
had gone wrong with the game. He came back to complain seriously of the conduct
of the stick. Never had such a thing happened before. Never had an eminent and
distinguished dog been so treated by a rotten old walking- stick."
"Why, what had the
walking-stick done?" inquired the young man.
"It had
sunk," said Father Brown.
Fiennes said nothing,
but continued to stare, and it was the priest who continued:
"It had sunk
because it was not really a stick, but a rod of steel with a very thin shell of
cane and a sharp point. In other words, it was a sword-stick. I suppose a
murderer never got rid of a bloody weapon so oddly and yet so naturally as by
throwing it into the sea for a retriever."
"I begin to see
what you mean," admitted Fiennes; "but even if a sword-stick was
used, I have no guess of how it was used."
"I had a sort of
guess," said Father Brown, "right at the beginning when you said the
word summer-house. And another when you said that Druce wore a white coat. As
long as everybody was looking for a short dagger, nobody thought of it; but if
we admit a rather long blade like a rapier, it’s not so impossible."
He was leaning back,
looking at the ceiling, and began like one going back to his own first thoughts
and fundamentals.
"All that
discussion about detective stories like the Yellow Room, about a man found dead
in sealed chambers which no one could enter, does not apply to the present
case, because it is a summer-house. When we talk of a Yellow Room, or any room,
we imply walls that are really homogeneous and impenetrable. But a summer-house
is not made like that; it is often made, as it was in this case, of closely
interlaced but still separate boughs and strips of wood, in which there are
chinks here and there. There was one of them just behind Druce’s back as he sat
in his chair up against the wall. But just as the room was a summer-house, so
the chair was a basket-chair. That also was a lattice of loopholes. Lastly, the
summer-house was close up under the hedge; and you have just told me that it
was really a thin hedge. A man standing outside it could easily see, amid a
network of twigs and branches and canes, one white spot of the Colonel’s coat
as plain as the white of a target.
"Now, you left the
geography a little vague; but it was possible to put two and two together. You
said the Rock of Fortune was not really high; but you also said it could be
seen dominating the garden like a mountain-peak. In other words, it was very
near the end of the garden, though your walk had taken you a long way round to
it. Also, it isn’t likely the young lady really howled so as to be heard half a
mile. She gave an ordinary involuntary cry, and yet you heard it on the shore.
And among other interesting things that you told me, may I remind you that you
said Harry Druce had fallen behind to light his pipe under a hedge."
Fiennes shuddered
slightly. "You mean he drew his blade there and sent it through the hedge
at the white spot. But surely it was a very odd chance and a very sudden choice.
Besides, he couldn’t be certain the old man’s money had passed to him, and as a
fact it hadn’t."
Father Brown’s face
became animated.
"You misunderstand
the man’s character," he said, as if he himself had known the man all his
life. "A curious but not unknown type of character. If he had really known
the money would come to him, I seriously believe he wouldn’t have done it. He
would have seen it as the dirty thing it was."
"Isn’t that rather
paradoxical?" asked the other.
"This man was a
gambler," said the priest, "and a man in disgrace for having taken
risks and anticipated orders. It was probably for something pretty
unscrupulous, for every imperial police is more like a Russian secret police
than we like to think. But he had gone beyond the line and failed. Now, the
temptation of that type of man is to do a mad thing precisely because the risk
will be wonderful in retrospect. He wants to say, ’Nobody but I could have
seized that chance or seen that it was then or never. What a wild and wonderful
guess it was, when I put all those things together; Donald in disgrace; and the
lawyer being sent for; and Herbert and I sent for at the same time--and then
nothing more but the way the old man grinned at me and shook hands. Anybody
would say I was mad to risk it; but that is how fortunes are made, by the man
mad enough to have a little foresight.’ In short, it is the vanity of guessing.
It is the megalomania of the gambler. The more incongruous the coincidence, the
more instantaneous the decision, the more likely he is to snatch the chance.
The accident, the very triviality, of the white speck and the hole in the hedge
intoxicated him like a vision of the world’s desire. Nobody clever enough to
see such a combination of accidents could be cowardly enough not to use them!
That is how the devil talks to the gambler. But the devil himself would hardly
have induced that unhappy man to go down in a dull, deliberate way and kill an
old uncle from whom he’d always had expectations. It would be too
respectable."
He paused a moment; and
then went on with a certain quiet emphasis.
"And now try to
call up the scene, even as you saw it yourself. As he stood there, dizzy with
his diabolical opportunity, he looked up and saw that strange outline that
might have been the image of his own tottering soul; the one great crag poised
perilously on the other like a pyramid on its point and remembered that it was
called the Rock of Fortune. Can you guess how such a man at such a moment would
read such a signal? I think it strung him up to action and even to vigilance.
He who would be a tower must not fear to be a toppling tower. Anyhow, he acted;
his next difficulty was to cover his tracks. To be found with a sword-stick,
let alone a blood- stained sword-stick, would be fatal in the search that was
certain to follow. If he left it anywhere, it would be found and probably
traced. Even if he threw it into the sea the action might be noticed, and
thought noticeable--unless indeed he could think of some more natural way of
covering the action. As you know, he did think of one, and a very good one.
Being the only one of you with a watch, he told you it was not yet time to
return, strolled a little farther and started the game of throwing in sticks
for the retriever. But how his eyes must have rolled darkly over all that
desolate seashore before they alighted on the dog!"
Fiennes nodded, gazing
thoughtfully into space. His mind seemed to have drifted back to a less
practical part of the narrative.
"It’s queer,"
he said, "that the dog really was in the story after all."
"The dog could
almost have told you the story, if he could talk," said the priest.
"All I complain of is that because he couldn’t talk, you made up his story
for him, and made him talk with the tongues of men and angels. It’s part of
something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all
sorts of newspaper rumors and conversational catch- words; something that’s
arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested
claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and
scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is
superstition." He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown,
and went on talking almost as if he were alone. "It’s the first effect of
not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can’t see things as
they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in
it, extends itself indefinitely like a, vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an
omen and a cat is a mystery and a pig is a mascot and a beetle is a scarab,
calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis
and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling
back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes
and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: ’He was made
Man."’
The young man got up
with a little embarrassment, almost as if he had overheard a soliloquy. He
called to the dog and left the room with vague but breezy farewells. But he had
to call the dog twice, for the dog had remained behind quite motionless for a
moment, looking up steadily at Father Brown as the wolf looked at St. Francis.