The Secret of Father Brown

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  'No, the more I thought of it the more I felt there was something funny about his having a completely new outfit. And then the truth began to dawn on me by reason, which I knew already by instinct. He never did go out with Bankes with any intention of putting on the disguise. He never did put on the disguise. Somebody else manufactured the disguise at leisure, and then put it on him.'

  'Put it on him!' repeated Devine. 'How the devil could they?'

  'Let us go back,' said Father Brown, 'and look at the thing through another window – the window through which the young lady saw the ghost.'

  'The ghost!' repeated the other, with a slight start.

  'She called it the ghost,' said the little man, with composure, 'and perhaps she was not so far wrong. It’s quite true that she is what they call psychic. Her only mistake is in thinking that being psychic is being spiritual. Some animals are psychic; anyhow, she is a sensitive, and she was right when she felt that the face at the window had a sort of horrible halo of deathly things.'

  'You mean – ' began Devine.

  'I mean it was a dead man who looked in at the window,' said Father Brown. 'It was a dead man who crawled round more than one house, looking in at more than one window. Creepy, wasn’t it? But in one way it was the reverse of a ghost; for it was not the antic of the soul freed from the body. It was the antic of the body freed from the soul.”

  He blinked again at the beehive and continued: “But, I suppose, the shortest explanation is to take it from the standpoint of the man who did it. You know the man who did it. John Bankes.”

  “The very last man I should have thought of,” said Devine.

  'The very first man I thought of,' said Father Brown; 'in so far as I had any right to think of anybody. My friend, there are no good or bad social types or trades. Any man can be a murderer like poor John; any man, even the same man, can be a saint like poor Michael. But if there is one type that tends at times to be more utterly godless than another, it is that rather brutal sort of business man. He has no social ideal, let alone religion; he has neither the gentleman’s traditions nor the trade unionist’s class loyalty. All his boasts about getting good bargains were practically boasts of having cheated people. His snubbing of his sister’s poor little attempts at mysticism was detestable. Her mysticism was all nonsense; but he only hated spiritualism because it was spirituality. Anyhow, there’s no doubt he was the villain of the piece; the only interest is in a rather original piece of villainy. It was really a new and unique motive for murder. It was the motive of using the corpse as a stage property – a sort of hideous doll or dummy. At the start he conceived a plan of killing Michael in the motor, merely to take him home and pretend to have killed him in the garden. But all sorts of fantastic finishing touches followed quite naturally from the primary fact; that he had at his disposal in a closed car at night the dead body of a recognized and recognizable burglar. He could leave his finger-prints and foot-prints; he could lean the familiar face against windows and take it away. You will notice that Moonshine ostensibly appeared and vanished while Bankes was ostensibly out of the room looking for the emerald necklace.

  'Finally, he had only to tumble the corpse on to the lawn, fire a shot from each pistol, and there he was. It might never have been found out but for a guess about the two beards.'

  “Why had your friend Michael kept the old beard?” Devine said thoughtfully. “That seems to me questionable.”

  'To me, who knew him, it seems quite inevitable,' replied Father Brown. 'His whole attitude was like that wig that he wore. There was no disguise about his disguises. He didn’t want the old disguise any more, but he wasn’t frightened of it; he would have felt it false to destroy the false beard. It would have been like hiding; and he was not hiding. He was not hiding from God; he was not hiding from himself. He was in the broad daylight. If they’d taken him back to prison, he’d still have been quite happy. He was not whitewashed, but washed white. There was something very strange about him; almost as strange as the grotesque dance of death through which he was dragged after he was dead. When he moved to and fro smiling among these beehives, even then, in a most radiant and shining sense, he was dead. He was out of the judgment of this world.'

  There was a short pause, and then Devine shrugged his shoulders and said: 'It all comes back to bees and wasps looking very much alike in this world, doesn’t it?'

  Chapter IV. The Song of the Flying Fish

  The soul of Mr. Peregrine Smart hovered like a fly round one possession and one joke. It might be considered a mild joke, for it consisted merely of asking people if they had seen his goldfish. It might also be considered an expensive joke; but it is doubtful whether he was not secretly more attached to the joke than to the evidence of expenditure. In talking to his neighbours in the little group of new houses that had grown up round the old village green, he lost no time in turning the conversation in the direction of his hobby. To Dr. Burdock, a rising biologist with a resolute chin and hair brushed back like a German’s, Mr. Smart made the easy transition. “You are interested in natural history; have you seen my goldfish?” To so orthodox an evolutionist as Dr. Burdock doubtless all nature was one; but at first sight the link was not close, as he was a specialist who had concentrated entirely upon the primitive ancestry of the giraffe. To Father Brown, from a church in the neighbouring provincial town, he traced a rapid train of thought which touched on the topics of “ Rome – St. Peter – fisherman – fish – goldfish.” In talking to Mr. Imlack Smith, the bank manager, a slim and sallow gentleman of dressy appearance but quiet demeanour, he violently wrenched the conversation to the subject of the gold standard, from which it was merely a step to goldfish. In talking to that brilliant Oriental traveller and scholar, Count Yvon de Lara (whose title was French and his face rather Russian, not to say Tartar), the versatile conversationalist showed an intense and intelligent interest in the Ganges and the Indian Ocean, leading naturally to the possible presence of goldfish in those waters.

  From Mr. Harry Hartopp, the very rich but very shy and silent young gentleman who had recently come down from London, he had at last extorted the information that the embarrassed youth in question was not interested in fishing, and had then added: “Talking about fishing, have you seen my goldfish?”

  The peculiar thing about the goldfish was that they were made of gold. They were part of an eccentric but expensive toy, said to have been made by the freak of some rich Eastern prince, and Mr. Smart had picked it up at some sale or in some curiosity shop, such as he frequented for the purpose of lumbering up his house with unique and useless things. From the other end of the room it looked like a rather unusually large bowl containing rather unusually large living fish; a closer inspection showed it to be a huge bubble of beautifully blown Venetian glass, very thin and delicately clouded with faintly iridescent colour, in the tinted twilight of which hung grotesque golden fishes with great rubies for eyes. The whole thing was undoubtedly worth a great deal in solid material; how much more would depend upon the waves of lunacy passing over the world of collectors. Mr. Smart’s new secretary, a young man named Francis Boyle, though an Irishman and not credited with caution, was mildly surprised at his talking so freely of the gems of his collection to the group of comparative strangers who happened to have alighted in a rather nomadic fashion in the neighbourhood; for collectors are commonly vigilant and sometimes secretive. In the course of settling down to his new duties, Mr. Boyle found he was not alone in this sentiment, and that in others, it passed from a mild wonder to a grave disapproval.

  “It’s a wonder his throat isn’t cut,” said Mr. Smart’s valet, Harris, not without a hypothetical relish, almost as if he had said, in a purely artistic sense: “It’s a pity.”

  “It’s extraordinary how he leaves things about,” said Mr. Smart’s head clerk, Jameson, who had come up from the office to assist the new secretary, “and he won’t even put up those ramshackle old bars across his ramshackle old door.”

  “It’s al
l very well with Father Brown and the doctor,” said Mr. Smart’s housekeeper, with a certain vigorous vagueness that marked her opinions, “but when it comes to foreigners, I call it tempting providence. It isn’t only the Count, either; that man at the bank looks to me much too yellow to be English.”

  “Well, that young Hartopp is English enough,” said Boyle good-humouredly, “to the extent of not having a word to say for himself.”

  “He thinks the more,” said the housekeeper. “He may not be exactly a foreigner, but he is not such a fool as he looks. Foreign is as foreign does, I say,” she added darkly.

  Her disapproval would probably have deepened if she had heard the conversation, in her master’s drawing-room that afternoon, a conversation of which the goldfish were the text, though the offensive foreigner tended more and more to be the central figure. It was not that he spoke so very much; but even his silences had something positive about them. He looked the more massive for sitting in a sort of heap on a heap of cushions, and in the deepening twilight his wide Mongolian face seemed faintly luminous, like a moon. Perhaps his background brought out something atmospherically Asiatic about his face and figure, for the room was a chaos of more or less costly curiosities, amid which could be seen the crooked curves and burning colours of countless Eastern weapons, Eastern pipes and vessels, Eastern musical instruments and illuminated manuscripts. Anyhow, as the conversation proceeded, Boyle felt more and more that the figure seated on the cushions and dark against the twilight had the exact outline of a huge image of Buddha.

  The conversation was general enough, for all the little local group were present. They were, indeed, often in the habit of dropping in at each other’s houses, and by this time constituted a sort of club, of people coming from the four or five houses standing round the green. Of these houses Peregrine Smart’s was the oldest, largest, and most picturesque; it straggled down almost the whole of one side of the square, leaving only room for a small villa, inhabited by a retired colonel named Varney, who was reported to be an invalid, and certainly was never seen to go abroad. At right angles to these stood two or three shops that served the simpler needs of the hamlet, and at the corner the inn of the Blue Dragon, at which Mr. Hartopp, the stranger from London, was staying. On the opposite side were three houses, one rented by the Count de Lara, one by Dr. Burdock, and the third still standing empty. On the fourth side was the bank, with an adjoining house for the bank manager, and a line of fence enclosing some land that was let for building. It was thus a very self-contained group, and the comparative emptiness of the open ground for miles round it threw the members more and more on each other’s society. That afternoon, one stranger had indeed broken into the magic circle: a hatchet-faced fellow with fierce tufts of eyebrows and moustache, and so shabbily dressed that he must have been a millionaire or a duke if he had really (as was alleged) come down to do business with the old collector. But he was known, at the Blue Dragon at least, as Mr. Harmer.

  To him had been recounted anew the glories of the gilded fish and the criticisms regarding their custody.

  “People are always telling me I ought to lock them up more carefully,” observed Mr. Smart, cocking an eyebrow over his shoulder at the dependant who stood there holding some papers from the office. Smart was a round-faced, round-bodied little old man rather like a bald parrot. “Jameson and Harris and the rest are always at me to bar the doors as if it were a mediaeval fortress, though really these rotten old rusty bars are too mediaeval to keep anybody out, I should think. I prefer to trust to luck and the local police.”

  “It is not always the best bars that keep people out,” said the Count. “It all depends on who’s trying to get in. There was an ancient Hindu hermit who lived naked in a cave and passed through the three armies that encircled the Mogul and took the great ruby out of the tyrant’s turban, and went back unscathed like a shadow. For he wished to teach the great how small are the laws of space and time.”

  “When we really study the small laws of space and time,” said Dr. Burdock dryly, “we generally find out how those tricks are done. Western science has let in daylight on a good deal of Eastern magic. Doubtless a great deal can be done with hypnotism and suggestion, to say nothing of sleight-of-hand.”

  “The ruby was not in the royal tent,” observed the Count in his dream fashion; “but he found it among a hundred tents.”

  “Can’t all that be explained by telepathy?” asked the doctor sharply. The question sounded the sharper because it was followed by a heavy silence, almost as if the distinguished Oriental traveller had, with imperfect politeness, gone to sleep.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said rousing himself with a sudden smile. “I had forgotten we were talking with words. In the east we talk with thoughts, and so we never misunderstand each other. It is strange how you people worship words and are satisfied with words. What difference does it make to a thing that you now call it telepathy, as you once called it tomfoolery? If a man climbs into the sky on a mango-tree, how is it altered by saying it is only levitation, instead of saying it is only lies. If a medieval witch waved a wand and turned me into a blue baboon, you would say it was only atavism.”

  The doctor looked for a moment as if he might say that it would not be so great a change after all. But before his irritation could find that or any other vent, the man called Harmer interrupted gruffly:

  “It’s true enough those Indian conjurers can do queer things, but I notice they generally do them in India. Confederates, perhaps, or merely mass psychology. I don’t think those tricks have ever been played in an English village, and I should say our friend’s goldfish were quite safe.”

  “I will tell you a story,” said de Lara, in his motionless way, “which happened not in India, but outside an English barrack in the most modernized part of Cairo. A sentinel was standing inside the grating of an iron gateway looking out between the bars on to the street. There appeared outside the gate a beggar, barefoot and in native rags, who asked him, in English that was startlingly distinct and refined, for a certain official document kept in the building for safety. The soldier told the man, of course, that he could not come inside; and the man answered, smiling: ‘What is inside and what is outside?’ The soldier was still staring scornfully through the iron grating when he gradually realized that, though neither he nor the gate had moved, he was actually standing in the street and looking in at the barrack yard, where the beggar stood still and smiling and equally motionless. Then, when the beggar turned towards the building, the sentry awoke to such sense as he had left, and shouted a warning to all the soldiers within the gated enclosure to hold the prisoner fast. ‘You won’t get out of there anyhow,’ he said vindictively. Then the beggar said in his silvery voice: ‘What is outside and what is inside?’ And the soldier, still glaring through the same bars, saw that they were once more between him and the street, where the beggar stood free and smiling with a paper in his hand.”

  Mr. Imlack Smith, the bank manager, was looking at the carpet with his dark sleek head bowed, and he spoke for the first time.

  “Did anything happen about the paper?” he asked.

  “Your professional instincts are correct, sir,” said the Count with grim affability. “It was a paper of considerable financial importance. Its consequences were international.”

  “I hope they don’t occur often,” said young Hartopp gloomily.

  “I do not touch the political side,” said the Count serenely, “but only the philosophical. It illustrates how the wise man can get behind time and space and turn the levers of them, so to speak, so that the whole world turns round before our eyes. But is it so hard for you people to believe that spiritual powers are really more powerful than material ones.”

  “Well,” said old Smart cheerfully, “I don’t profess to be an authority on spiritual powers. What do you say, Father Brown?”

  “The only thing that strikes me,” answered the little priest, “is that all the supernatural acts we have yet heard of seem
to be thefts. And stealing by spiritual methods seem to me much the same as stealing by material ones.”

  “Father Brown is a Philistine,” said the smiling Smith.

  “I have a sympathy with the tribe,” said Father Brown. “A Philistine is only a man who is right without knowing why.”

  “All this is too clever for me,” said Hartopp heartily.

  “Perhaps,” said Father Brown with a smile, “you would like to speak without words, as the Count suggests. He would begin by saying nothing in a pointed fashion, and you would retort with a burst of taciturnity.”

  “Something might be done with music,” murmured the Count dreamily. “It would be better than all these words.”

  “Yes, I might understand that better,” said the young man in a low voice.

  Boyle had followed the conversation with curious attention, for there was something in the demeanour of more than one of the talkers that seemed to him significant or even odd. As the talk drifted to music, with an appeal to the dapper bank manager (who was an amateur musician of some merit), the young secretary awoke with a start to his secretarial duties, and reminded his employer that the head clerk was still standing patiently with the papers in his hand.