The Eye of Apollo
That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency,which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and morefrom its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenithover Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One manwas very tall and the other very short; they might even have beenfantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of Parliament and thehumbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clericaldress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau,private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile offlats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the shortman was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier's Church,Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell deathbed to see the newoffices of his friend.
The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and Americanalso in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones and lifts.But it was barely finished and still understaffed; only three tenantshad moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as alsowas the office just below him; the two floors above that and the threefloors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new towerof flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a few relics ofscaffolding, the one glaring object was erected outside the officejust above Flambeau's. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye,surrounded with rays of gold, and taking up as much room as two or threeof the office windows.
"What on earth is that?" asked Father Brown, and stood still. "Oh, anew religion," said Flambeau, laughing; "one of those new religions thatforgive your sins by saying you never had any. Rather like ChristianScience, I should think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon(I don't know what his name is, except that it can't be that) has takenthe flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, andthis enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the New Priest ofApollo, and he worships the sun."
"Let him look out," said Father Brown. "The sun was the cruellest of allthe gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?"
"As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs," answered Flambeau, "thata man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two greatsymbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man werereally healthy he could stare at the sun."
"If a man were really healthy," said Father Brown, "he would not botherto stare at it."
"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion," went onFlambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that it can cure allphysical diseases."
"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father Brown, with aserious curiosity.
"And what is the one spiritual disease?" asked Flambeau, smiling.
"Oh, thinking one is quite well," said his friend.
Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below him thanin the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapableof conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and newreligions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. Buthumanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking;moreover, the ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The officewas kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall andstriking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one ofthose women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cutedge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She hadeyes of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel ratherthan of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stifffor its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow,a little greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore abusiness-like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There arethousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London,but the interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparentposition.
For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crestand half a county, as well as great wealth; she had been brought up incastles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modernwoman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higherexistence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that therewould have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to hermasterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for useupon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business,the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributedin various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work amongwomen. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightlyprosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leaderwith a dog-like affection which was somehow more attractive, with itstouch of tragedy, than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For PaulineStacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny itsexistence.
Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much onthe first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outsidethe lift in the entrance hall waiting for the lift-boy, who generallyconducts strangers to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falconof a girl had openly refused to endure such official delay. She saidsharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent onboys--or men either. Though her flat was only three floors above, shemanaged in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a great many ofher fundamental views in an off-hand manner; they were to the generaleffect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern workingmachinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger againstthose who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance.Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines, just as shecould manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeauopening the lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his ownapartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of suchspit-fire self-dependence.
She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures ofher thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive.
Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting business, and foundshe had just flung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into themiddle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapidsof an ethical tirade about the "sickly medical notions" and the morbidadmission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She dared her sisterto bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. Sheasked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glasseyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.
Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain fromasking Miss Pauline (with direct French logic) why a pair of spectacleswas a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if sciencemight help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other.
"That is so different," said Pauline Stacey, loftily. "Batteries andmotors and all those things are marks of the force of man--yes, Mr.Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at thesegreat engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high andsplendid--that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters thedoctors sell--why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stickon legs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But Iwas free-born, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these thingsbecause they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in powerand courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare at thesun, and so they can't do it without blinking. But why among the starsshould there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and Iwill open my eyes and stare at him whenever I choose."
"Your eyes," said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, "will dazzle the sun."He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partlybecause it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairsto his floor he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: "Soshe has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his goldeneye." For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon,he had heard of his special notion about sun-gazing.
He soon disco
vered that the spiritual bond between the floors above andbelow him was close and increasing. The man who called himself Kalon wasa magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiffof Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much betterlooking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung backlike a lion's. In structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche,but all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened bygenuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the greatSaxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. Andthis despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact thathe had an office half-way up a building in Victoria Street; that theclerk (a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room,between him and the corridor; that his name was on a brass plate,and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like theadvertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away fromthe man called Kalon the vivid oppression and inspiration that camefrom his soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence ofthis quack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loosejacket-suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office hewas a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the whitevestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily salutedthe sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the streetpeople sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the daythe new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the faceof all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once atdaybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And itwas while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers ofParliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau,first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo.
Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus,and plunged into the porch of the tall building without even lookingfor his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from aprofessional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest intomfoolery, stopped and stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper,just as he might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalonthe Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands,and the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all theway down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was alreadyin the middle of it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It isdoubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth; it is substantiallycertain that he did not see a stunted, round-faced priest who, in thecrowd below, looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps themost startling difference between even these two far divided men. FatherBrown could not look at anything without blinking; but the priest ofApollo could look on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid.
"O sun," cried the prophet, "O star that art too great to be allowedamong the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret spotthat is called space. White Father of all white unwearied things, whiteflames and white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocentthan all thy most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into thepeace of which--"
A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with astrident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate ofthe mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they alldeafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed fora moment to fill half the street with bad news--bad news that was allthe worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained stillafter the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balconyabove, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.
At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in thedoorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the topof his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for asurgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance hisfriend Father Brown dipped in insignificantly after him. Even as heducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificentmelody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy godwho is the friend of fountains and flowers.
Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round theenclosed space into which the lift commonly descended. But the lift hadnot descended. Something else had descended; something that ought tohave come by a lift.
For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seenthe brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied theexistence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it wasPauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not theslightest doubt that she was dead.
He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or dislikedher; there was so much both to like and dislike. But she had been aperson to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbedhim with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her prettyface and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness which is allthe bitterness of death. In an instant like a bolt from the blue, likea thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had beendashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was itsuicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was itmurder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murderanybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong andsuddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice,habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the lastfifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god.When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, heturned his swarthy face and said abruptly:
"Then, if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?"
"Perhaps," said the other, "we might go upstairs and find out. We havehalf an hour before the police will move."
Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons,Flambeau dashed up the stairs to the typewriting office, found itutterly empty, and then dashed up to his own. Having entered that, heabruptly returned with a new and white face to his friend.
"Her sister," he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, "her sister seemsto have gone out for a walk."
Father Brown nodded. "Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sunman," he said. "If I were you I should just verify that, and then letus all talk it over in your office. No," he added suddenly, as ifremembering something, "shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Ofcourse, in their office downstairs."
Flambeau stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to theempty flat of the Staceys, where that impenetrable pastor took a largered-leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see thestairs and landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In aboutfour minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only intheir solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the deadwoman--evidently she had been upstairs in the temporary temple ofApollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself, hislitany finished, sweeping down the empty stairs in uttermagnificence--something in his white robes, beard and parted hair hadthe look of Dore's Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third was Flambeau,black browed and somewhat bewildered.
Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touchedwith grey, walked straight to her own desk and set out her papers with apractical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If MissJoan Stacey was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regardedher for some time with an odd little smile, and then, without taking hiseyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else.
"Prophet," he said, presumably addressing Kalon, "I wish you would tellme a lot about your religion."
"I shall be proud to do it," said Kalon, inclining his still crownedhead, "but I am not sure that I understand."
"Why, it's like this," said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way:"We are taught that if a man has really bad first principles, that mustbe partly his fault. But, for all that, we can make some differencebetween a man who insults his quite clear conscience and a man with aconscience more or less clouded with sophistries. Now,
do you reallythink that murder is wrong at all?"
"Is this an accusation?" asked Kalon very quietly.
"No," answered Brown, equally gently, "it is the speech for thedefence."
In the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apolloslowly rose; and really it was like the rising of the sun. He filledthat room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt hecould as easily have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed tohang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture seemed toextend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of themodern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a round, black blotupon some splendour of Hellas.
"We meet at last, Caiaphas," said the prophet. "Your church and mine arethe only realities on this earth. I adore the sun, and you the darkeningof the sun; you are the priest of the dying and I of the living God.Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of your coat andcreed. All your church is but a black police; you are only spies anddetectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether bytreachery or torture. You would convict men of crime, I would convictthem of innocence. You would convince them of sin, I would convince themof virtue.
"Reader of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away yourbaseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly could you understandhow little I care whether you can convict me or no. The things youcall disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in achild's toy-book to a man once grown up. You said you were offering thespeech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this lifethat I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but onething that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say itmyself. The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after suchmanner as your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sternerthan you will ever understand. She and I walked another world fromyours, and trod palaces of crystal while you were plodding throughtunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I know that policemen, theologicaland otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love theremust soon be hatred; so there you have the first point made for theprosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not grudge it you.Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that thisvery morning, before she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving meand my new church half a million. Come, where are the handcuffs? Do yousuppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude willonly be like waiting for her at a wayside station. The gallows will onlybe going to her in a headlong car."
He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flambeauand Joan Stacey stared at him in amazed admiration. Father Brown's faceseemed to express nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the groundwith one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sunleaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed:
"In a few words I have put before you the whole case against me--theonly possible case against me. In fewer words still I will blow itto pieces, so that not a trace of it remains. As to whether I havecommitted this crime, the truth is in one sentence: I could not havecommitted this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this floor to theground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into thewitness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony of my ownrooms above from just before the stroke of noon to a quarter-past--theusual period of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth fromClapham, with no sort of connection with me) will swear that he satin my outer office all the morning, and that no communication passedthrough. He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes before thehour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I didnot leave the office or the balcony all that time. No one ever had socomplete an alibi; I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you hadbetter put the handcuffs away again. The case is at an end.
"But last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in theair, I will tell you all you want to know. I believe I do know how myunhappy friend came by her death. You can, if you choose, blame me forit, or my faith and philosophy at least; but you certainly cannotlock me up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths thatcertain adepts and illuminati have in history attained the power oflevitation--that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air. It isbut a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main elementin our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitioustemper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeperin the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we wentdown in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, onecould float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that insome ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, orfaith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower lawof matter had its horrible revenge. There is the whole story, gentlemen,very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainlynot criminal or in any way connected with me. In the short-hand of thepolice-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall always callit heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling ofheaven."
It was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. Hestill sat looking at the ground, with a painful and corrugated brow, asif in shame. It was impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet'swinged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspecterof men overwhelmed by a prouder and purer spirit of natural liberty andhealth. At last he said, blinking as if in bodily distress: "Well, ifthat is so, sir, you need do no more than take the testamentary paperyou spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left it."
"It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think," said Kalon,with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly."She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actuallysaw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room."
"Was her door open then?" asked the priest, with his eye on the cornerof the matting.
"Yes," said Kalon calmly.
"Ah! it has been open ever since," said the other, and resumed hissilent study of the mat.
"There is a paper over here," said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhatsingular voice. She had passed over to her sister's desk by the doorway,and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a soursmile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, andFlambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.
Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyalunconsciousness that had carried him through. But Flambeau took itout of the lady's hand, and read it with the utmost amazement. It did,indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after the words "Igive and bequeath all of which I die possessed" the writing abruptlystopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name ofany legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated testament to hisclerical friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the priest ofthe sun.
An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies,had crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering over JoanStacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.
"What monkey tricks have you been playing here?" he cried. "That's notall Pauline wrote."
They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankeeshrillness in it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from himlike a cloak.
"That is the only thing on her desk," said Joan, and confronted himsteadily with the same smile of evil favour.
Of a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts ofincredulous words. There was something shocking about the dropping ofhis mask; it was like a man's real face falling off.
"See here!" he cried in broad American, when he was breathless withcursing, "I may be an adventurer, but I guess you're a murderess. Yes,gentlemen, here's your death explained, and without any levitation. Thepoor girl is writing a will in my favour; her cursed sister comes in,struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and throws her down beforeshe can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs
after all."
"As you have truly remarked," replied Joan, with ugly calm, "your clerkis a very respectable young man, who knows the nature of an oath; andhe will swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging sometypewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after mysister fell. Mr. Flambeau will tell you that he found me there."
There was a silence.
"Why, then," cried Flambeau, "Pauline was alone when she fell, and itwas suicide!"
"She was alone when she fell," said Father Brown, "but it was notsuicide."
"Then how did she die?" asked Flambeau impatiently.
"She was murdered."
"But she was alone," objected the detective.
"She was murdered when she was all alone," answered the priest.
All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the sameold dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in his round forehead and anappearance of impersonal shame and sorrow; his voice was colourless andsad.
"What I want to know," cried Kalon, with an oath, "is when the policeare coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She's killed her flesh andblood; she's robbed me of half a million that was just as sacredly mineas--"
"Come, come, prophet," interrupted Flambeau, with a kind of sneer;"remember that all this world is a cloudland."
The hierophant of the sun-god made an effort to climb back on hispedestal. "It is not the mere money," he cried, "though that would equipthe cause throughout the world. It is also my beloved one's wishes. ToPauline all this was holy. In Pauline's eyes--"
Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flatbehind him. He was deathly pale, yet he seemed fired with a hope; hiseyes shone.
"That's it!" he cried in a clear voice. "That's the way to begin. InPauline's eyes--"
The tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost maddisorder. "What do you mean? How dare you?" he cried repeatedly.
"In Pauline's eyes," repeated the priest, his own shining more and more."Go on--in God's name, go on. The foulest crime the fiends ever promptedfeels lighter after confession; and I implore you to confess. Go on, goon--in Pauline's eyes--"
"Let me go, you devil!" thundered Kalon, struggling like a giant inbonds. "Who are you, you cursed spy, to weave your spiders' webs roundme, and peep and peer? Let me go."
"Shall I stop him?" asked Flambeau, bounding towards the exit, for Kalonhad already thrown the door wide open.
"No; let him pass," said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh thatseemed to come from the depths of the universe. "Let Cain pass by, forhe belongs to God."
There was a long-drawn silence in the room when he had left it, whichwas to Flambeau's fierce wits one long agony of interrogation. Miss JoanStacey very coolly tidied up the papers on her desk.
"Father," said Flambeau at last, "it is my duty, not my curiosityonly--it is my duty to find out, if I can, who committed the crime."
"Which crime?" asked Father Brown.
"The one we are dealing with, of course," replied his impatient friend.
"We are dealing with two crimes," said Brown, "crimes of very differentweight--and by very different criminals."
Miss Joan Stacey, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded tolock up her drawer. Father Brown went on, noticing her as little as shenoticed him.
"The two crimes," he observed, "were committed against the same weaknessof the same person, in a struggle for her money. The author of thelarger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime; the author ofthe smaller crime got the money."
"Oh, don't go on like a lecturer," groaned Flambeau; "put it in a fewwords."
"I can put it in one word," answered his friend.
Miss Joan Stacey skewered her business-like black hat on to her headwith a business-like black frown before a little mirror, and, as theconversation proceeded, took her handbag and umbrella in an unhurriedstyle, and left the room.
"The truth is one word, and a short one," said Father Brown. "PaulineStacey was blind."
"Blind!" repeated Flambeau, and rose slowly to his whole huge stature.
"She was subject to it by blood," Brown proceeded. "Her sister wouldhave started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her; but it was herspecial philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases byyielding to them. She would not admit the cloud; or she tried to dispelit by will. So her eyes got worse and worse with straining; but theworst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet, orwhatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun withthe naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new paganswould only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser! The old pagansknew that mere naked Nature-worship must have a cruel side. They knewthat the eye of Apollo can blast and blind."
There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even brokenvoice. "Whether or no that devil deliberately made her blind, there isno doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The verysimplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up anddown in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothlyand silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl'slanding, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow,sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to hercheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come outwhen she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up tohis own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony,and was safely praying before the crowded street when the poor girl,having finished her work, ran gaily out to where lover and lift were toreceive her, and stepped--"
"Don't!" cried Flambeau.
"He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button," continuedthe little father, in the colourless voice in which he talked of suchhorrors. "But that went smash. It went smash because there happenedto be another person who also wanted the money, and who also knew thesecret about poor Pauline's sight. There was one thing about that willthat I think nobody noticed: although it was unfinished and withoutsignature, the other Miss Stacey and some servant of hers had alreadysigned it as witnesses. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline couldfinish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms.Therefore, Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without realwitnesses. Why? I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she had wantedPauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign atall.
"People like the Staceys always use fountain pens; but this wasspecially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and memoryshe could still write almost as well as if she saw; but she could nottell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore, her fountain pens werecarefully filled by her sister--all except this fountain pen. This wascarefully not filled by her sister; the remains of the ink held outfor a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lostfive hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the most brutal andbrilliant murders in human history for nothing."
Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official police ascendingthe stairs. He turned and said: "You must have followed everythingdevilish close to have traced the crime to Kalon in ten minutes."
Father Brown gave a sort of start.
"Oh! to him," he said. "No; I had to follow rather close to find outabout Miss Joan and the fountain pen. But I knew Kalon was the criminalbefore I came into the front door."
"You must be joking!" cried Flambeau.
"I'm quite serious," answered the priest. "I tell you I knew he had doneit, even before I knew what he had done."
"But why?"
"These pagan stoics," said Brown reflectively, "always fail by theirstrength. There came a crash and a scream down the street, and thepriest of Apollo did not start or look round. I did not know what itwas. But I knew that he was expecting it."
The Innocence of Father Brown Page 11
