The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (117 page)

It
is fortunate that tragedy can never kill comedy and that the two can run side by
side; and that while the only acting partner of the business of Messrs Willis,
Hardman and Dyke blew his brains out when the Inspector entered the house to
arrest him, Olive and Roger were calling to each other across the sands at
evening, as they did when they were children together.

Along
a seaside parade on a sunny afternoon, a person with the depressing name of Muggleton
was moving with suitable gloom. There was a horseshoe of worry in his forehead,
and the numerous groups and strings of entertainers stretched along the beach
below looked up to him in vain for applause. Pierrots turned up their pale moon
faces, like the white bellies of dead fish, without improving his spirits;
niggers with faces entirely grey with a sort of grimy soot were equally
unsuccessful in filling his fancy with brighter things. He was a sad and
disappointed man. His other features, besides the bald brow with its furrow,
were retiring and almost sunken; and a certain dingy refinement about them made
more incongruous the one aggressive ornament of his face. It was an outstanding
and bristling military moustache; and it looked suspiciously like a false
moustache. It is possible, indeed, that it was a false moustache. It is possible,
on the other hand, that even if it was not false it was forced. He might almost
have grown it in a hurry, by a mere act of will; so much was it a part of his
job rather than his personality.

For
the truth is that Mr Muggleton was a private detective in a small way, and the cloud
on his brow was due to a big blunder in his professional career; anyhow it was
connected with something darker than the mere possession of such a surname. He
might almost, in an obscure sort of way, have been proud of his surname; for he
came of poor but decent Nonconformist people who claimed some connection with
the founder of the Muggletonians; the only man who had hitherto had the courage
to appear with that name in human history.

The
more legitimate cause of his annoyance (at least as he himself explained it) was
that he had just been present at the bloody murder of a world-famous millionaire,
and had failed to prevent it, though he had been engaged at a salary of five
pounds a week to do so. Thus we may explain the fact that even the languorous
singing of the song entitled, ‘Won’t You Be My Loodah Doodah Day?’ failed to
fill him with the joy of life.

For
that matter, there were others on the beach, who might have had more sympathy with
his murderous theme and Muggletonian tradition. Seaside resorts are the chosen
pitches, not only of pierrots appealing to the amorous emotions, but also of
preachers who often seem to specialize in a correspondingly sombre and sulphurous
style of preaching. There was one aged ranter whom he could hardly help
noticing, so piercing were the cries, not to say shrieks of religious prophecy
that rang above all the banjos and castanets. This was a long, loose, shambling
old man, dressed in something like a fisherman’s jersey; but inappropriately
equipped with a pair of those very long and drooping whiskers which have never
been seen since the disappearance of certain sportive Mid-Victorian dandies. As
it was the custom for all mountebanks on the beach to display something, as if
they were selling it, the old man displayed a rather rotten-looking fisherman’s
net, which he generally spread out invitingly on the sands, as if it were a
carpet for queens; but occasionally whirled wildly round his head with a
gesture almost as terrific as that of the Roman Retiarius, ready to impale
people on a trident. Indeed, he might really have impaled people, if he had had
a trident. His words were always pointed towards punishment; his hearers heard
nothing except threats to the body or the soul; he was so far in the same mood
as Mr. Muggleton, that he might almost have been a mad hangman addressing a
crowd of murderers. The boys called him Old Brimstone; but he had other
eccentricities besides the purely theological. One of his eccentricities was to
climb up into the nest of iron girders under the pier and trail his net in the
water, declaring that he got his living by fishing; though it is doubtful
whether anybody had ever seen him catching fish. Worldly trippers, however,
would sometimes start at a voice in their ear, threatening judgement as from a
thundercloud, but really coming from the perch under the iron roof where the
old monomaniac sat glaring, his fantastic whiskers hanging like grey seaweed.

The
detective, however, could have put up with Old Brimstone much better than with the
other parson he was destined to meet. To explain this second and more momentous
meeting, it must be pointed out that Muggleton, after his remarkable experience
in the matter of the murder, had very properly put all his cards on the table.
He told his story to the police and to the only available representative of
Braham Bruce, the dead millionaire; that is, to his very dapper secretary, a Mr
Anthony Taylor. The Inspector was more sympathetic than the secretary; but the
sequel of his sympathy was the last thing Muggleton would normally have
associated with police advice. The Inspector, after some reflection, very much
surprised Mr Muggleton by advising him to consult an able amateur whom he knew
to be staying in the town. Mr Muggleton had read reports and romances about the
Great Criminologist, who sits in his library like an intellectual spider, and
throws out theoretical filaments of a web as large as the world. He was
prepared to be led to the lonely chateau where the expert wore a purple
dressing-gown, to the attic where he lived on opium and acrostics, to the vast
laboratory or the lonely tower. To his astonishment he was led to the very edge
of the crowded beach by the pier to meet a dumpy little clergyman, with a broad
hat and a broad grin, who was at that moment hopping about on the sands with a
crowd of poor children; and excitedly waving a very little wooden spade.

When
the criminologist clergyman, whose name appeared to be Brown, had at last been detached
from the children, though not from the spade, he seemed to Muggleton to grow
more and more unsatisfactory. He hung about helplessly among the idiotic
side-shows of the seashore, talking about random topics and particularly
attaching himself to those rows of automatic machines which are set up in such
places; solemnly spending penny after penny in order to play vicarious games of
golf, football, cricket, conducted by clockwork figures; and finally contenting
himself with the miniature exhibition of a race, in which one metal doll
appeared merely to run and jump after the other. And yet all the time he was
listening very carefully to the story which the defeated detective poured out
to him. Only his way of not letting his right hand know what his left hand was
doing, with pennies, got very much on the detective’s nerves.

‘
Can’t
we go and sit down somewhere,’ said Muggleton impatiently. ‘I’ve got a letter you
ought to see, if you’re to know anything at all of this business.’

Father
Brown turned away with a sigh from the jumping dolls, and went and sat down with
his companion on an iron seat on the shore; his companion had already unfolded
the letter and handed it silently to him.

It
was an abrupt and queer sort of letter, Father Brown thought. He knew that millionaires
did not always specialize in manners, especially in dealing with dependants
like detectives; but there seemed to be something more in the letter than mere
brusquerie.

DEAR
MUGGLETON,

I
never thought I should come down to wanting help of this sort; but I’m about through
with things. It’s been getting more and more intolerable for the last two
years. I guess all you need to know about the story is this. There is a dirty
rascal who is a cousin of mine, I’m ashamed to say. He’s been a tout, a tramp,
a quack doctor, an actor, and all that; even has the brass to act under our
name and call himself Bertrand Bruce. I believe he’s either got some potty job
at the theatre here, or is looking for one. But you may take it from me that
the job isn’t his real job. His real job is running me down and knocking me out
for good, if he can. It’s an old story and no business of anybody’s; there was
a time when we started neck and neck and ran a race of ambition — and what they
call love as well. Was it my fault that he was a rotter and I was a man who
succeeds in things? But the dirty devil swears he’ll succeed yet; shoot me and
run off with my — never mind. I suppose he’s a sort of madman, but he’ll jolly
soon try to be some sort of murderer. I’ll give you £5 a week if you’ll meet me
at the lodge at the end of the pier, just after the pier closes tonight — and
take on my job. It’s the only safe place to meet — if anything is safe by this
time.

J.
BRAHAM BRUCE

‘
Dear
me,’ said Father Brown mildly. ‘Dear me. A rather hurried letter.’

Muggleton
nodded; and after a pause began his own story; in an oddly refined voice contrasting
with his clumsy appearance. The priest knew well the hobbies of concealed
culture hidden in many dingy lower and middle class men; but even he was
startled by the excellent choice of words only a shade too pedantic; the man
talked like a book.

‘
I
arrived at the little round-house at the end of the pier before there was any sign
of my distinguished client. I opened the door and went inside, feeling that he
might prefer me, as well as himself, to be as inconspicuous as possible. Not
that it mattered very much; for the pier was too long for anybody to have seen
us from the beach or the parade, and, on glancing at my watch, I saw by the
time that the pier entrance must have already closed. It was flattering, after
a fashion, that he should thus ensure that we should be alone together at the
rendezvous, as showing that he did really rely on my assistance or protection.
Anyhow, it was his idea that we should meet on the pier after closing time, so
I fell in with it readily enough. There were two chairs inside the little round
pavilion, or whatever you call it; so I simply took one of them and waited. I
did not have to wait long. He was famous for his punctuality, and sure enough,
as I looked up at the one little round window opposite me I saw him pass
slowly, as if making a preliminary circuit of the place.

‘
I
had only seen portraits of him, and that was a long time ago; and naturally he was
rather older than the portraits, but there was no mistaking the likeness. The
profile that passed the window was of the sort called aquiline, after the beak
of the eagle; but he rather suggested a grey and venerable eagle; an eagle in
repose; an eagle that has long folded its wings. There was no mistaking, however,
that look of authority, or silent pride in the habit of command, that has
always marked men who, like him, have organized great systems and been obeyed.
He was quietly dressed, what I could see of him; especially as compared with
the crowd of seaside trippers which had filled so much of my day; but I fancied
his overcoat was of that extra elegant sort that is cut to follow the line of
the figure, and it had a strip of astrakhan lining showing on the lapels. All
this, of course, I took in at a glance, for I had already got to my feet and
gone to the door. I put out my hand and received the first shock of that
terrible evening. The door was locked. Somebody had locked me in.

‘
For
a moment I stood stunned, and still staring at the round window, from which, of
course, the moving profile had already passed; and then I suddenly saw the explanation.
Another profile, pointed like that of a pursuing hound, flashed into the circle
of vision, as into a round mirror. The moment I saw it, I knew who it was. It
was the Avenger; the murderer or would-be murderer, who had trailed the old
millionaire for so long across land and sea, and had now tracked him to this
blind-alley of an iron pier that hung between sea and land. And I knew, of
course, that it was the murderer who had locked the door.

‘
The
man I saw first had been tall, but his pursuer was even taller; an effect that was
only lessened by his carrying his shoulders hunched very high and his neck and
head thrust forward like a true beast of the chase. The effect of the combination
gave him rather the look of a gigantic hunchback. But something of the blood
relationship that connected this ruffian with his famous kinsman showed in the
two profiles as they passed across the circle of glass. The pursuer also had a
nose rather like the beak of a bird; though his general air of ragged
degradation suggested the vulture rather than the eagle. He was unshaven to the
point of being bearded, and the humped look of his shoulders was increased by
the coils of a coarse woollen scarf. All these are trivialities, and can give
no impression of the ugly energy of that outline, or the sense of avenging doom
in that stooping and striding figure. Have you ever seen William Blake’s
design, sometimes called with some levity, “The Ghost of a Flea,” but also
called, with somewhat greater lucidity, “A Vision of Blood Guilt,” or something
of that kind? That is just such a nightmare of a stealthy giant, with high
shoulders, carrying a knife and bowl. This man carried neither, but as he
passed the window the second time, I saw with my own eyes that he loosened a
revolver from the folds of the scarf and held it gripped and poised in his
hand. The eyes in his head shifted and shone in the moonlight, and that in a
very creepy way; they shot forward and back with lightning leaps; almost as if
he could shoot them out like luminous horns, as do certain reptiles.

‘
Three
times the pursued and the pursuer passed in succession outside the window, treading
their narrow circle, before I fully awoke to the need of some action, however
desperate. I shook the door with rattling violence; when next I saw the face of
the unconscious victim I beat furiously on the window; then I tried to break
the window. But it was a double window of exceptionally thick glass, and so
deep was the embrasure that I doubted if I could properly reach the outer window
at all. Anyhow, my dignified client took no notice of my noise or signals; and
the revolving shadow-pantomime of those two masks of doom continued to turn
round and round me, till I felt almost dizzy as well as sick. Then they
suddenly ceased to reappear. I waited; and I knew that they would not come
again. I knew that the crisis had come.