The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (63 page)

‘
I
have formed certain conclusions about it, but I do not think I will mention them
till I make my report.’

Whether
under the influence of the footsteps of the policeman or of the eyes of the priest,
old Hickory tucked his stick under his arm and put his hat on again, grunting.
The priest bade him a placid good morning, and passed in an unhurried fashion
out of the park, making his way to the lounge of the hotel where he knew that
young Wain was to be found. The young man sprang up with a greeting; he looked
even more haggard and harassed than before, as if some worry were eating him
away; and the priest had a suspicion that his young friend had recently been
engaged, with only too conspicuous success, in evading the last Amendment to
the American Constitution. But at the first word about his hobby or favourite
science he was vigilant and concentrated enough. For Father Brown had asked, in
an idle and conversational fashion, whether much flying was done in that
district, and had told how he had at first mistaken Mr Merton’s circular wall
for an aerodrome.

‘
It’s
a wonder you didn’t see any while we were there,’ answered Captain Wain. ‘Sometimes
they’re as thick as flies; that open plain is a great place for them, and I
shouldn’t wonder if it were the chief breeding-ground, so to speak, for my sort
of birds in the future. I’ve flown a good deal there myself, of course, and I
know most of the fellows about here who flew in the war; but there are a whole
lot of people taking to it out there now whom I never heard of in my life. I
suppose it will be like motoring soon, and every man in the States will have
one.’

‘
Being
endowed by his Creator,’ said Father Brown with a smile, ’with the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of motoring — not to mention aviation. So I suppose we
may take it that one strange aeroplane passing over that house, at certain
times, wouldn’t be noticed much.’

‘
No,’
replied the young man; ‘I don’t suppose it would.’

‘
Or
even if the man were known,’ went on the other, ‘I suppose he might get hold of
a machine that wouldn’t be recognized as his. If you, for instance, flew in the
ordinary way, Mr Merton and his friends might recognize the rig-out, perhaps; but
you might pass pretty near that window on a different pattern of plane, or whatever
you call it; near enough for practical purposes.’

‘
Well,
yes,’ began the young man, almost automatically, and then ceased, and remained staring
at the cleric with an open mouth and eyes standing out of his head.

‘
My
God!’ he said, in a low voice; ‘my God!’

Then
he rose from the lounge seat, pale and shaking from head to foot and still staring
at the priest.

‘
Are
you mad?’ he said; ‘are you raving mad?’

There
was a silence and then he spoke again in a swift hissing fashion. ‘You positively
come here to suggest — ’

‘
No;
only to collect suggestions,’ said Father Brown, rising. ‘I may have formed some
conclusions provisionally, but I had better reserve them for the present.’

And
then saluting the other with the same stiff civility, he passed out of the hotel
to continue his curious peregrinations.

By
the dusk of that day they had led him down the dingy streets and steps that straggled
and tumbled towards the river in the oldest and most irregular part of the
city. Immediately under the coloured lantern that marked the entrance to a
rather low Chinese restaurant he encountered a figure he had seen before, though
by no means presenting itself to the eye as he had seen it.

Mr
Norman Drage still confronted the world grimly behind his great goggles, which seemed
somehow to cover his face like a dark musk of glass. But except for the goggles,
his appearance had undergone a strange transformation in the month that had
elapsed since the murder. He had then, as Father Brown had noted, been dressed
up to the nines — up to that point, indeed, where there begins to be too fine a
distinction between the dandy and the dummy outside a tailor’s shop. But now
all those externals were mysteriously altered for the worse; as if the tailor’s
dummy had been turned into a scarecrow. His top hat still existed, but it was
battered and shabby; his clothes were dilapidated; his watch-chain and minor
ornaments were gone. Father Brown, however, addressed him as if they had met
yesterday, and made no demur to sitting down with him on a bench in the cheap
eating-house whither he was bound. It was not he, however, who began the conversation.

‘
Well?’
growled Drage, ‘and have you succeeded in avenging your holy and sainted millionaire?
We know all millionaires are holy and sainted; you can find it all in the
papers next day, about how they lived by the light of the Family Bible they
read at their mother’s knee. Gee! if they’d only read out some of the things
there are in the Family Bible, the mother might have been startled some. And
the millionaire, too, I reckon. The old Book’s full of a lot of grand fierce
old notions they don’t grow nowadays; sort of wisdom of the Stone Age and
buried under the Pyramids. Suppose somebody had flung old man Merton from the
top of that tower of his, and let him be eaten by dogs at the bottom, it would
be no worse than what happened to Jezebel. Wasn’t Agag hacked into little pieces,
for all he went walking delicately? Merton walked delicately all his life, damn
him — until he got too delicate to walk at all. But the shaft of the Lord found
him out, as it might have done in the old Book, and struck him dead on the top
of his tower to be a spectacle to the people.

‘
The
shaft was material, at least,’ said his companion.

‘
The
Pyramids are mighty material, and they hold down the dead kings all right,’ grinned
the man in the goggles. ‘I think there’s a lot to be said for these old material
religions. There’s old carvings that have lasted for thousands of years,
showing their gods and emperors with bended bows; with hands that look as if
they could really bend bows of stone. Material, perhaps — but what materials!
Don’t you sometimes stand staring at those old Eastern patterns and things,
till you have a hunch that old Lord God is still driving like a dark Apollo,
and shooting black rays of death?’

‘
If
he is,’ replied Father Brown, ‘I might call him by another name. But I doubt whether
Merton died by a dark ray or even a stone arrow.’

‘
I
guess you think he’s St Sebastian,’ sneered Drage, ‘killed with an arrow. A millionaire
must be a martyr. How do you know he didn’t deserve it? You don’t know much
about your millionaire, I fancy. Well, let me tell you he deserved it a hundred
times over.’

‘
Well,’
asked Father Brown gently, ‘why didn’t you murder him?’

‘
You
want to know why I didn’t?’ said the other, staring. ‘Well, you’re a nice sort of
clergyman.’

‘
Not
at all,’ said the other, as if waving away a compliment.

‘
I
suppose it’s your way of saying I did,’ snarled Drage. ‘Well, prove it, that’s all.
As for him, I reckon he was no loss.’

‘
Yes,
he was,’ said Father Brown, sharply. ‘He was a loss to you. That’s why you didn’t
kill him.’

And
he walked out of the room, leaving the man in goggles gaping after him.

It
was nearly a month later that Father Brown revisited the house where the third millionaire
had suffered from the vendetta of Daniel Doom. A sort of council was held of
the persons most interested. Old Crake sat at the head of the table with his
nephew at his right hand, the lawyer on his left; the big man with the African
features, whose name appeared to be Harris, was ponderously present, if only as
a material witness; a red-haired, sharp-nosed individual addressed as Dixon
seemed to be the representative of Pinkerton’s or some such private agency; and
Father Brown slipped unobtrusively into an empty seat beside him.

Every
newspaper in the world was full of the catastrophe of the colossus of finance, of
the great organizer of the Big Business that bestrides the modern world; but from
the tiny group that had been nearest to him at the very instant of his death
very little could be learned. The uncle, nephew, and attendant solicitor declared
they were well outside the outer wall before the alarm was raised; and inquiries
of the official guardians at both barriers brought answers that were rather
confused, but on the whole confirmatory. Only one other complication seemed to
call for consideration. It seemed that round about the time of the death,
before or after, a stranger had been found hanging mysteriously round the
entrance and asking to see Mr Merton. The servants had some difficulty in understanding
what he meant, for his language was very obscure; but it was afterwards
considered to be also very suspicious, since he had said something about a
wicked man being destroyed by a word out of the sky.

Peter
Wain leaned forward, the eyes bright in his haggard face, and said:

‘
I’ll
bet on that, anyhow. Norman Drage.’

‘
And
who in the world is Norman Drage?’ asked his uncle.

‘
That’s
what I want to know,’ replied the young man. ‘I practically asked him, but he has
got a wonderful trick of twisting every straight question crooked; it’s like
lunging at a fencer. He hooked on to me with hints about the flying-ship of the
future; but I never trusted him much.’

‘
But
what sort of a man is he?’ asked Crake.

‘
He’s
a mystagogue,’ said Father Brown, with innocent promptitude. ‘There are quite a
lot of them about; the sort of men about town who hint to you in Paris cafes and
cabarets that they’ve lifted the veil of Isis or know the secret of Stonehenge.
In a case like this they’re sure to have some sort of mystical explanations.’

The
smooth, dark head of Mr Barnard Blake, the lawyer, was inclined politely towards
the speaker, but his smile was faintly hostile.

‘
I
should hardly have thought, sir,’ he said, ‘that you had any quarrel with mystical
explanations.’

‘
On
the contrary,’ replied Father Brown, blinking amiably at him. ‘That’s just why I
can quarrel with ’em. Any sham lawyer could bamboozle me, but he couldn’t bamboozle
you; because you’re a lawyer yourself. Any fool could dress up as a Red Indian
and I’d swallow him whole as the only original Hiawatha; but Mr Crake would see
through him at once. A swindler could pretend to me that he knew all about
aeroplanes, but not to Captain Wain. And it’s just the same with the other,
don’t you see? It’s just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I
have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal
them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it it’s still
a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when
you find it, it’s a platitude. But in the case of Drage, I admit he had also
another and more practical notion in talking about fire from heaven or bolts
from the blue.’

‘
And
what was his notion?’ asked Wain. ‘I think it wants watching whatever it is.’

‘
Well,’
replied the priest, slowly, ‘he wanted us to think the murders were miracles because
. . . well, because he knew they weren’t.’

‘
Ah,’
said Wain, with a sort of hiss, ‘I was waiting for that. In plain words, he is the
criminal.’

‘
In
plain words, he is the criminal who didn’t commit the crime,’ answered Father Brown
calmly.

‘
Is
that your conception of plain words?’ inquired Blake politely.

‘
You’ll
be saying I’m the mystagogue now,’ said Father Brown somewhat abashed, but with
a broad smile, ‘but it was really quite accidental. Drage didn’t commit the crime
— I mean this crime. His only crime was blackmailing somebody, and he hung
about here to do it; but he wasn’t likely to want the secret to be public property
or the whole business to be cut short by death. We can talk about him afterwards.
Just at the moment, I only want him cleared out of the way.’

‘
Out
of the way of what?’ asked the other.

‘
Out
of the way of the truth,’ replied the priest, looking at him tranquilly, with level
eyelids.

‘
Do
you mean,’ faltered the other, ‘that you know the truth?’

‘
I
rather think so,’ said Father Brown modestly.

There
was an abrupt silence, after which Crake cried out suddenly and irrelevantly in
a rasping voice:

‘
Why,
where is that secretary fellow? Wilton! He ought to be here.’

‘
I
am in communication with Mr Wilton,’ said Father Brown gravely; ‘in fact, I asked
him to ring me up here in a few minutes from now. I may say that we’ve worked
the thing out together, in a manner of speaking.’

‘
If
you’re working together, I suppose it’s all right,’ grumbled Crake. ‘I know he was
always a sort of bloodhound on the trail of his vanishing crook, so perhaps it
was well to hunt in couples with him. But if you know the truth about this, where
the devil did you get it from?’

‘
I
got it from you,’ answered the priest, quietly, and continued to gaze mildly at
the glaring veteran.’ I mean I made the first guess from a hint in a story of yours
about an Indian who threw a knife and hit a man on the top of a fortress.’