A few days afterwards Father Brown received a very polite note signed Silas T. Vandam, and asking him if he would attend at a stated hour at the apartment which was the scene of the disappearance, in order to take steps for the establishment of that marvellous occurrence. The occurrence itself had already begun to break out in the newspapers, and was being taken up everywhere by the enthusiasts of occultism. Father Brown saw the flaring posters inscribed ‘Suicide of Vanishing Man’, and ‘Man’s Curse Hangs Philanthropist’, as he passed towards Moon Crescent and mounted the steps on the way to the elevator. He found the little group much as he left it, Vandam, Alboin, and the secretary; but there was an entirely new respectfulness and even reverence in their tone towards himself. They were standing by Wynd’s desk, on which lay a large paper and writing materials; they turned to greet him.
‘Father Brown,’ said the spokesman, who was the white-haired Westerner, somewhat sobered with his responsibility, ‘we asked you here in the first place to offer our apologies and our thanks. We recognize that it was you that spotted the spiritual manifestation from the first. We were hard-shell sceptics, all of us; but we realize now that a man must break that shell to get at the great things behind the world. You stand for those things; you stand for the super-normal explanation of things; and we have to hand it to you. And in the second place, we feel that this document would not be complete without your signature. We are notifying the exact facts to the Psychical Research Society, because the newspaper accounts are not what you might call exact. We’ve stated how the curse was spoken out in the street; how the man was sealed up here in a room like a box; how the curse dissolved him straight into thin air, and in some unthinkable way materialized him as a suicide hoisted on a gallows. That’s all we can say about it; but all that we know, and have seen with our own eyes. And as you were the first to believe in the miracle, we all feel that you ought to be the first to sign.’
‘No, really,’ said Father Brown, in embarrassment. ‘I don’t think I should like to do that.’
‘You mean you’d rather not sign first?’
‘I mean I’d rather not sign at all,’ said Father Brown, modestly. ‘You see, it doesn’t quite do for a man in my position to joke about miracles.’
‘But it was you who said it was a miracle,’ said Alboin, staring.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Father Brown; ‘I’m afraid there’s some mistake. I don’t think I ever said it was a miracle. All I said was that it might happen. What you said was that it couldn’t happen, because it would be a miracle if it did. And then it did. And so you said it was a miracle. But I never said a word about miracles or magic, or anything of the sort from beginning to end.’
‘But I thought you believed in miracles,’ broke out the secretary.
‘Yes,’ answered Father Brown, ‘I believe in miracles. I believe in man-eating tigers, but I don’t see them running about everywhere. If I want any miracles, I know where to get them.’
‘I can’t understand your taking this line, Father Brown,’ said Vandam, earnestly. ‘It seems so narrow; and you don’t look narrow to me, though you are a parson. Don’t you see, a miracle like this will knock all materialism endways? It will just tell the whole world in big print that spiritual powers can work and do work. You’ll be serving religion as no parson ever served it yet.’
The priest had stiffened a little and seemed in some strange way clothed with unconscious and impersonal dignity, for all his stumpy figure. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t suggest I should serve religion by what I know to be a lie? I don’t know precisely what you mean by the phrase; and, to be quite candid, I’m not sure you do. Lying may be serving religion; I’m sure it’s not serving God. And since you are harping so insistently on what I believe, wouldn’t it be as well if you had some sort of notion of what it is?’
‘I don’t think I quite understand,’ observed the millionaire, curiously.
‘I don’t think you do,’ said Father Brown, with simplicity. ‘You say this thing was done by spiritual powers. What spiritual powers? You don’t think the holy angels took him and hung him on a garden tree, do you? And as for the unholy angels — no, no, no. The men who did this did a wicked thing, but they went no further than their own wickedness; they weren’t wicked enough to be dealing with spiritual powers. I know something about Satanism, for my sins; I’ve been forced to know. I know what it is, what it practically always is. It’s proud and it’s sly. It likes to be superior; it loves to horrify the innocent with things half understood, to make children’s flesh creep. That’s why it’s so fond of mysteries and initiations and secret societies and all the rest of it. Its eyes are turned inwards, and however grand and grave it may look, it’s always hiding a small, mad smile.’ He shuddered suddenly, as if caught in an icy draught of air. ‘Never mind about them; they’ve got nothing to do with this, believe me. Do you think that poor, wild Irishman of mine, who ran raving down the street, who blurted out half of it when he first saw my face, and ran away for fear he should blurt out more, do you think Satan confides any secrets to him? I admit he joined in a plot, probably in a plot with two other men worse than himself; but for all that, he was just in an everlasting rage when he rushed down the lane and let off his pistol and his curse.’
‘But what on earth does all this mean?’ demanded Vandam. ‘Letting off a toy pistol and a twopenny curse wouldn’t do what was done, except by a miracle. It wouldn’t make Wynd disappear like a fairy. It wouldn’t make him reappear a quarter of a mile away with a rope round his neck.’
‘No,’ said Father Brown sharply; ‘but what would it do?’
‘And still I don’t follow you,’ said the millionaire gravely.
‘I say, what would it do?’ repeated the priest; showing, for the first time, a sort of animation verging on annoyance. ‘You keep on repeating that a blank pistol-shot wouldn’t do this and wouldn’t do that; that if that was all, the murder wouldn’t happen or the miracle wouldn’t happen. It doesn’t seem to occur to you to ask what would happen. What would happen to you if a lunatic let off a firearm without rhyme or reason right under your window? What’s the very first thing that would happen?’
Vandam looked thoughtful. ‘I guess I should look out of the window,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Father Brown, ‘you’d look out of the window. That’s the whole story. It’s a sad story, but it’s finished now; and there were extenuating circumstances.’
‘Why should looking out of the window hurt him?’ asked Alboin. ‘He didn’t fall out, or he’d have been found in the lane.’
‘No,’ said Father Brown, in a low voice. ‘He didn’t fall. He rose.’
There was something in his voice like the groan of a gong, a note of doom, but otherwise he went on steadily: ‘He rose, but not on wings; not on the wings of any holy or unholy angels. He rose at the end of a rope, exactly as you saw him in the garden; a noose dropped over his head the moment it was poked out of the window. Don’t you remember Wilson, that big servant of his, a man of huge strength, while Wynd was the lightest of little shrimps? Didn’t Wilson go to the floor above to get a pamphlet, to a room full of luggage corded in coils and coils of rope? Has Wilson been seen since that day? I fancy not.’
‘Do you mean,’ asked the secretary, ‘that Wilson whisked him clean out of his own window like a trout on a line?’
‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘and let him down again out of the other window into the park, where the third accomplice hooked him on to a tree. Remember the lane was always empty; remember the wall opposite was quite blank; remember it was all over in five minutes after the Irishman gave the signal with the pistol. There were three of them in it of course; and I wonder whether you can all guess who they were.’
They were all three staring at the plain, square window and the blank, white wall beyond; and nobody answered.
‘By the way,’ went on Father Brown, ‘don’t think I blame you for jumping to preternatural conclusions. The reason’s very simp
le, really. You all swore you were hard-shelled materialists; and as a matter of fact you were all balanced on the very edge of belief — of belief in almost anything. There are thousands balanced on it today; but it’s a sharp, uncomfortable edge to sit on. You won’t rest till you believe something; that’s why Mr Vandam went through new religions with a tooth-comb, and Mr Alboin quotes Scripture for his religion of breathing exercises, and Mr Fenner grumbles at the very God he denies. That’s where you all split; it’s natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things. But though it wanted only a touch to tip you into preternaturalism about these things, these things really were only natural things. They were not only natural, they were almost unnaturally simple. I suppose there never was quite so simple a story as this.’
Fenner laughed and then looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand one thing,’ he said. ‘If it was Wilson, how did Wynd come to have a man like that on such intimate terms? How did he come to be killed by a man he’d seen every day for years? He was famous as being a judge of men.’
Father Brown thumped his umbrella on the ground with an emphasis he rarely showed.
‘Yes,’ he said, almost fiercely; ‘that was how he came to be killed. He was killed for just that. He was killed for being a judge of men.’
They all stared at him, but he went on, almost as if they were not there.
‘What is any man that he should be a judge of men?’ he demanded. ‘These three were the tramps that once stood before him and were dismissed rapidly right and left to one place or another; as if for them there were no cloak of courtesy, no stages of intimacy, no free-will in friendship. And twenty years has not exhausted the indignation born of that unfathomable insult in that moment when he dared to know them at a glance.’
‘Yes,’ said the secretary; ‘I understand ... and I understand how it is that you understand — all sorts of things.’
‘Well, I’m blamed if I understand,’ cried the breezy Western gentleman boisterously. ‘Your Wilson and your Irishman seem to be just a couple of cut-throat murderers who killed their benefactor. I’ve no use for a black and bloody assassin of that sort, in my morality, whether it’s religion or not.’
‘He was a black and bloody assassin, no doubt,’ said Fenner quietly. ‘I’m not defending him; but I suppose it’s Father Brown’s business to pray for all men, even for a man like — ’
‘Yes,’ assented Father Brown, ‘it’s my business to pray for all men, even for a man like Warren Wynd.’
The Curse of the Golden Cross
Six people sat around a small table, seeming almost as incongruous and accidental as if they had been shipwrecked separately on the same small desert island. At least the sea surrounded them; for in one sense their island was enclosed in another island, a large and flying island like Laputa. For the little table was one of many little tables dotted about in the dining saloon of that monstrous ship the Moravia, speeding through the night and the everlasting emptiness of the Atlantic. The little company had nothing in common except that all were travelling from America to England. Two of them at least might be called celebrities; others might be called obscure, and in one or two cases even dubious.
The first was the famous Professor Smaill, an authority on certain archaeological studies touching the later Byzantine Empire. His lectures, delivered in an American University, were accepted as of the first authority even in the most authoritative seats of learning in Europe. His literary works were so steeped in a mellow and imaginative sympathy with the European past, that it often gave strangers a start to hear him speak with an American accent. Yet he was, in his way, very American; he had long fair hair brushed back from a big square forehead, long straight features and a curious mixture of preoccupation with a poise of potential swiftness, like a lion pondering absent-mindedly on his next leap.
There was only one lady in the group; and she was (as the journalists often said of her) a host in herself; being quite prepared to play hostess, not to say empress, at that or any other table. She was Lady Diana Wales, the celebrated lady traveller in tropical and other countries; but there was nothing rugged or masculine about her appearance at dinner. She was herself handsome in an almost tropical fashion, with a mass of hot and heavy red hair; she was dressed in what the journalists call a daring fashion, but her face was intelligent and her eyes had that bright and rather prominent appearance which belongs to the eyes of ladies who ask questions at political meetings.
The other four figures seemed at first like shadows in this shining presence; but they showed differences on a close view. One of them was a young man entered on the ship’s register as Paul T. Tarrant. He was an American type which might be more truly called an American antitype. Every nation probably has an antitype; a sort of extreme exception that proves the national rule. Americans really respect work, rather as Europeans respect war. There is a halo of heroism about it; and he who shrinks from it is less than a man. The antitype is evident through being exceedingly rare. He is the dandy or dude: the wealthy waster who makes a weak villain for so many American novels. Paul Tarrant seemed to have nothing whatever to do but change his clothes, which he did about six times a day; passing into paler or richer shades of his suit of exquisite light grey, like the delicate silver changes of the twilight. Unlike most Americans, he cultivated very carefully a short, curly beard; and unlike most dandies, even of his own type, he seemed rather sulky than showy. Perhaps there was something almost Byronic about his silence and his gloom.
The next two travellers were naturally classed together; merely because they were both English lecturers returning from an American tour. One of them was described as Leonard Smyth, apparently a minor poet, but something of a major journalist; long-headed, light-haired, perfectly dressed, and perfectly capable of looking after himself. The other was a rather comic contrast, being short and broad, with a black, walrus moustache, and as taciturn as the other was talkative. But as he had been both charged with robbing and praised for rescuing a Roumanian Princess threatened by a jaguar in his travelling menagerie, and had thus figured in a fashionable case, it was naturally felt that his views on God, progress, his own early life, and the future of Anglo-American relations would be of great interest and value to the inhabitants of Minneapolis and Omaha. The sixth and most insignificant figure was that of a little English priest going by the name of Brown. He listened to the conversation with respectful attention, and he was at that moment forming the impression that there was one rather curious thing about it.
‘I suppose those Byzantine studies of yours, Professor,’ Leonard Smyth was saying, ‘would throw some light on this story of a tomb found somewhere on the south coast; near Brighton, isn’t it? Brighton’s a long way from Byzantium, of course. But I read something about the style of burying or embalming or something being supposed to be Byzantine.’
‘Byzantine studies certainly have to reach a long way,’ replied the Professor dryly. ‘They talk about specialists; but I think the hardest thing on earth is to specialize. In this case, for instance: how can a man know anything about Byzantium till he knows everything about Rome before it and about Islam after it? Most Arab arts were old Byzantine arts. Why, take algebra — ’
‘But I won’t take algebra,’ cried the lady decisively. ‘I never did, and I never do. But I’m awfully interested in embalming. I was with Gatton, you know, when he opened the Babylonian tombs. Ever since then I found mummies and preserved bodies and all that perfectly thrilling. Do tell us about this one.’
‘Gatton was an interesting man,’ said the Professor. ‘They were an interesting family. That brother of his who went into Parliament was much more than an ordinary politician. I never understood the Fascisti till he made that speech about Italy.’
‘Well, we’re not going to Italy on this trip,’ said Lady Diana persistently, ‘and I believe you’re going to that little place where they’ve found the tomb. In Sussex, isn’t it?’
‘Sussex is pretty
large, as these little English sections go,’ replied the Professor. ‘One might wander about in it for a goodish time; and it’s a good place to wander in. It’s wonderful how large those low hills seem when you’re on them.’
There was an abrupt accidental silence; and then the lady said, ‘Oh, I’m going on deck,’ and rose, the men rising with her. But the Professor lingered and the little priest was the last to leave the table, carefully folding up his napkin. And as they were thus left alone together the Professor said suddenly to his companion:
‘What would you say was the point of that little talk?’
‘Well,’ said Father Brown, smiling, ‘since you ask me, there was something that amused me a little. I may be wrong; but it seemed to me that the company made three attempts to get you to talk about an embalmed body said to be found in Sussex. And you, on your side, very courteously offered to talk — first about algebra, and then about the Fascisti, and then about the landscape of the Downs.’
‘In short,’ replied the Professor, ‘you thought I was ready to talk about any subject but that one. You were quite right.’
The Professor was silent for a little time, looking down at the tablecloth; then he looked up and spoke with that swift impulsiveness that suggested the lion’s leap.
‘See here. Father Brown,’ he said, ‘I consider you about the wisest and whitest man I ever met.’
Father Brown was very English. He had all the normal national helplessness about what to do with a serious and sincere compliment suddenly handed to him to his face in the American manner. His reply was a meaningless murmur; and it was the Professor who proceeded, with the same staccato earnestness: ‘You see, up to a point it’s all simple enough. A Christian tomb of the Dark Ages, apparently that of a bishop, has been found under a little church at Dulham on the Sussex coast. The Vicar happens to be a good bit of an archaeologist himself and has been able to find a good deal more than I know yet. There was a rumour of the corpse being embalmed in a way peculiar to Greeks and Egyptians but unknown in the West, especially at that date. So Mr Walters (that is the Vicar) naturally wonders about Byzantine influences. But he also mentions something else, that is of even more personal interest to me.’
The Complete Father Brown Mysteries Collection Page 59
