The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (90 page)

“
Of
course,” cried Bankes; “let ’em all come.”

“
Thank
you very much,” said Father Brown. “I’m afraid I shall have to decline; I’ve got
to go on to Benediction in a few minutes.”

“
Mr.
Smith is your man, then,” said Carver, with something almost like impatience. “I’m
sure Smith is longing for a motor ride.”

Smith,
who wore a broad grin, bore no appearance of longing for anything. He was an active
little old man with a very honest wig; one of those wigs that look no more natural
than a hat. Its tinge of yellow was out of keeping with his colourless
complexion. He shook his head and answered with amiable obstinacy:

“
I
remember I went over this road ten years ago — in one of those contraptions. Came
over in it from my sister’s place at Holmgate, and never been over that road in
a car since. It was rough going I can tell you,”

“
Ten
years ago!” scoffed John Bankes. “Two thousand years ago you went in an ox wagon.
Do you think cars haven’t changed in ten years — and roads, too, for that
matter? In my little bus you don’t know the wheels are going round. You think
you’re just flying.”

“
I’m
sure Smith wants to go flying,” urged Carver. “It’s the dream of his life. Come,
Smith, go over to Holmgate and see your sister. You know you ought to go and
see your sister. Go over and stay the night if you like.”

“
Well,
I generally walk over, so I generally do stay the night,” said old Smith. “No need
to trouble the gentleman to-day, particularly.”

“
But
think what fun it will be for your sister to see you arrive in a car!” cried Carver.
“You really ought to go. Don’t be so selfish.”

“
That’s
it,” assented Bankes, with buoyant benevolence. “Don’t you be selfish. It won’t
hurt you. You aren’t afraid of it, are you?”

“
Well,”
said Mr. Smith, blinking thoughtfully, “I don’t want to be selfish, and I don’t
think I’m afraid — I’ll come with you if you put it that way.”

The
pair drove off, amid waving salutations that seemed somehow to give the little group
the appearance of a cheering crowd. Yet Devine and the priest only joined in
out of courtesy, and they both felt it was the dominating gesture of their host
that gave it its final air of farewell. The detail gave them a curious sense of
the pervasive force of his personality.

The
moment the car was out of sight he turned to them with a sort of boisterous apology
and said: “Well!”

He
said it with that curious heartiness which is the reverse of hospitality. That extreme
geniality is the same as a dismissal.

“
I
must be going,” said Devine. “We must not interrupt the busy bee. I’m afraid I know
very little about bees; sometimes I can hardly tell a bee from a wasp.”

“
I’ve
kept wasps, too,” answered the mysterious Mr. Carver. When his guests were a few
yards down the street, Devine said rather impulsively to his companion: “Rather
an odd scene that, don’t you think?”

“
Yes,”
replied Father Brown. “And what do you think about it?”

Devine
looked at the little man in black, and something in the gaze of his great, grey
eyes seemed to renew his impulse.

“
I
think,” he said, “that Carver was very anxious to have the house to himself tonight.
I don’t know whether you had any such suspicions?”

“
I
may have my suspicions,” replied the priest, “but I’m not sure whether they’re the
same as yours.”

That
evening, when the last dusk was turning into dark in the gardens round the family
mansion, Opal Bankes was moving through some of the dim and empty rooms with
even more than her usual abstraction; and anyone who had looked at her closely would
have noted that her pale face had more than its usual pallor. Despite its bourgeois
luxury, the house as a whole had a rather unique shade of melancholy. It was
the sort of immediate sadness that belongs to things that are old rather than
ancient. It was full of faded fashions, rather than historic customs; of the
order and ornament that is just recent enough to be recognized as dead. Here
and there, Early Victorian coloured glass tinted the twilight; the high ceilings
made the long rooms look narrow; and at the end of the long room down which she
was walking was one of those round windows, to be found in the buildings of its
period. As she came to about the middle of the room, she stopped, and then
suddenly swayed a little, as if some invisible hand had struck her on the face.

An
instant after there was the noise or knocking on the front door, dulled by the closed
doors between. She knew that the rest of the household were in the upper parts
of the house, but she could not have analysed the motive that made her go to
the front door herself. On the doorstep stood a dumpy and dingy figure in black,
which she recognized as the Roman Catholic priest, whose name was Brown. She
knew him only slightly; but she liked him. He did not encourage her psychic views;
quite the contrary; but he discouraged them as if they mattered and not as if
they did not matter. It was not so much that he did not sympathize with her
opinions, as that he did sympathize but did not agree. All this was in some sort
of chaos in her mind as she found herself saying, without greeting, or waiting
to hear his business:

“
I’m
so glad you’ve come. I’ve seen a ghost.”

“
There’s
no need to be distressed about that,” he said. “It often happens. Most of the ghosts
aren’t ghosts, and the few that may be won’t do you any harm. Was it any ghost
in particular?”

“
No,”
she admitted, with a vague feeling of relief, “it wasn’t so much the thing itself
as an atmosphere of awful decay, a sort of luminous ruin. It was a face. A face
at the window. But it was pale and goggling, and looked like the picture of
Judas.”

“
Well,
some people do look like that,” reflected the priest, “and I dare say they look
in at windows, sometimes. May I come in and see where it happened?”

When
she returned to the room with the visitor, however, other members of the family
had assembled, and those of a less psychic habit had thought it convenient to light
the lamps. In the presence of Mrs. Bankes, Father Brown assumed a more conventional
civility, and apologized for his intrusion.

“
I’m
afraid it is taking a liberty with your house, Mrs. Bankes,” he said. “But I think
I can explain how the business happens to concern you. I was up at the Pulmans’
place just now, when I was rung up and asked to come round here to meet a man
who is coming to communicate something that may be of some moment to you. I
should not have added myself to the party, only I am wanted, apparently, because
I am a witness to what has happened up at Beechwood. In fact, it was I who had
to give the alarm.”

“
What
has happened?” repeated the lady.

“
There
has been a robbery up, at Beechwood House,” said Father Brown, gravely; “a robbery,
and what I fear is worse, Lady Pulman’s jewels have gone; and her unfortunate
secretary, Mr. Barnard, was picked up in the garden, having evidently been shot
by the escaping burglar.”

“
That
man,” ejaculated the lady of the house. “I believe he was — —”

She
encountered the grave gaze of the priest, and her words suddenly went from her;
she never knew why.

“
I
communicated with the police,” he went on, “and with another authority interested
in this case; and they say that even a superficial examination has revealed
foot-prints and finger-prints and other indications of a well-known criminal.”

At
this point, the conference was for a moment disturbed, by the return of John Bankes,
from what appeared to be an abortive expedition in the car. Old Smith seemed to
have been a disappointing passenger, after all.

“
Funked
it, after all, at the last minute,” he announced with noisy disgust. “Bolted off
while I was looking at what I thought was a puncture. Last time I’ll take one
of these yokels — —”

But
his complaints received small attention in the general excitement that gathered
round Father Brown and his news.

“
Somebody
will arrive in a moment,” went on the priest, with the same air of weighty reserve,
“who will relieve me of this responsibility. When I have confronted you with
him I shall have done my duty as a witness in a serious business. It only
remains for me to say that a servant up at Beechwood House told me that she had
seen a face at one of the windows — —”

“
I
saw a face,” said Opal, “at one of our windows.”

“
Oh,
you are always seeing faces,” said her brother John roughly.

“
It
is as well to see facts even if they are faces,” said Father Brown equably, “and
I think the face you saw — —”

Another
knock at the front door sounded through the house, and a minute afterwards the door
of the room opened and another figure appeared. Devine half-rose from his chair
at the sight of it.

It
was a tall, erect figure, with a long, rather cadaverous face, ending in a formidable
chin. The brow was rather bald, and the eyes bright and blue, which Devine had
last seen obscured with a broad straw hat.

“
Pray
don’t let anybody move,” said the man called Carver, in clear and courteous tones.
But to Devine’s disturbed mind the courtesy had an ominous resemblance to that
of a brigand who holds a company motionless with a pistol.

“
Please
sit down, Mr. Devine,” said Carver; “and, with Mrs. Bankes’s permission, I will
follow your example. My presence here necessitates an explanation. I rather fancy
you suspected me of being an eminent and distinguished burglar.”

“
I
did,” said Devine grimly.

“
As
you remarked,” said Carver, “it is not always easy to know a wasp from a bee.”

After
a pause, he continued: “I can claim to be one of the more useful, though equally
annoying, insects. I am a detective, and I have come down to investigate an
alleged renewal of the activities of the criminal calling himself Michael
Moonshine. Jewel robberies were his speciality; and there has just been one of
them at Beechwood House, which, by all the technical tests, is obviously his
work. Not only do the prints correspond, but you may possibly know that when he
was last arrested, and it is believed on other occasions also, he wore a simple
but effective disguise of a red beard and a pair of large horn-rimmed
spectacles.”

Opal
Bankes leaned forward fiercely.

“
That
was it,” she cried in excitement, “that was the face I saw, with great goggles and
a red, ragged beard like Judas. I thought it was a ghost.”

“
That
was also the ghost the servant at Beechwood saw,” said Carver dryly.

He
laid some papers and packages on the table, and began carefully to unfold them.
“As I say,” he continued, “I was sent down here to make inquiries about the criminal
plans of this man, Moonshine. That is why I interested myself in bee-keeping
and went to stay with Mr. Smith.”

There
was a silence, and then Devine started and spoke: “You don’t seriously mean to say
that nice old man — —”

“
Come,
Mr. Devine,” said Carver, with a smile, “you believed a beehive was only a hiding-place
for me. Why shouldn’t it be a hiding-place for him?”

Devine
nodded gloomily, and the detective turned back to his papers. “Suspecting Smith,
I wanted to get him out of the way and go through his belongings; so I took
advantage of Mr. Bankes’s kindness in giving him a joy ride. Searching his house,
I found some curious things to be owned by an innocent old rustic interested
only in bees. This is one of them.”

From
the unfolded paper he lifted a long, hairy object almost scarlet in colour — the
sort of sham beard that is worn in theatricals.

Beside
it lay an old pair of heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.

“
But
I also found something,” continued Carver, “that more directly concerns this house,
and must be my excuse for intruding to-night. I found a memorandum, with notes
of the names and conjectural value of various pieces of jewellery in the neighbourhood.
Immediately after the note of Lady Pulman’s tiara was the mention of an emerald
necklace belonging to Mrs. Bankes.”

Mrs.
Bankes, who had hitherto regarded the invasion of her house with an air of supercilious
bewilderment, suddenly grew attentive. Her face suddenly looked ten years older
and much more intelligent. But before she could speak the impetuous John had
risen to his full height like a trumpeting elephant.

“
And
the tiara’s gone already,” he roared; “and the necklace — I’m going to see about
that necklace!”

“
Not
a bad idea,” said Carver, as the young man rushed from the room; “though, of course,
we’ve been keeping our eyes open since we’ve been here. Well, it took me a
little time to make out the memorandum, which was in cipher, and Father Brown’s
telephone message from the House came as I was near the end. I asked him to run
round here first with the news, and I would follow; and so — —”

His
speech was sundered by a scream. Opal was standing up and pointing rigidly at the
round window.