The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (2 page)

Aristide
Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially
and solely. He was not “a thinking machine”; for that is a brainless phrase of
modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot
think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his
wonderful successes, which looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding
logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world
not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They
carry a truism so far — as in the French Revolution. But exactly because
Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who
knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows
nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles.
Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich;
and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on
Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked
state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

In
such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow
the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the
unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places — banks, police stations,
rendezvous — he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty
house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish,
went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended
this crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the
worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was
just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the
same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it
had better be just where another man might stop. Something about that flight of
steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the
restaurant, roused all the detective’s rare romantic fancy and made him resolve
to strike at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by the
window, asked for a cup of black coffee.

It
was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter
of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding
a poached egg to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar
into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau
had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once
by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look
through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his
detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true. But he fully realised
the disadvantage. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the
critic,” he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips
slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.

He
looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a
sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne.
He wondered why they should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any
more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps
there was some speciality in the condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it;
it was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of
interest, to see if there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste
which puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin.
Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls,
the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the
waiter.

When
that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed at that early hour,
the detective (who was not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of
humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation
of the hotel. The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.

“
Do
you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?” inquired Valentin.
“Does changing the salt and sugar never pall on you as a jest?”

The
waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment
had certainly no such intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked
up the sugar-basin and looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at
that, his face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused
himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The
proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and then the salt-cellar; the
proprietor also looked bewildered.

Suddenly
the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of words.

“
I
zink,” he stuttered eagerly, “I zink it is those two clergy-men.”

“
What
two clergymen?”

“
The
two clergymen,” said the waiter, “that threw soup at the wall.”

“
Threw
soup at the wall?” repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian
metaphor.

“
Yes,
yes,” said the attendant excitedly, and pointed at the dark splash on the white
paper; “threw it over there on the wall.”

Valentin
looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.

“
Yes,
sir,” he said, “it’s quite true, though I don’t suppose it has anything to do with
the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as
soon as the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people;
one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach
altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at
last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he deliberately
picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on
the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only
rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don’t do any
particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in
the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the
next corner into Carstairs Street.”

The
detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided
that in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd
finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and
clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other
street.

It
was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something
in a shop-front went by him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it.
The shop was a popular greengrocer and fruiterer’s, an array of goods set out
in the open air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the two
most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively.
On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold,
blue chalk, “Best tangerine oranges, two a penny.” On the oranges was the
equally clear and exact description, “Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb.” M.
Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle
form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the attention of the
red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to
this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply
put each card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his
walking-cane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, “Pray excuse
my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question
in experimental psychology and the association of ideas.”

The
red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging
his cane, “Why,” he pursued, “why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer’s
shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do
not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea
of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the
other short?”

The
eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail’s; he really seemed for
an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily:
“I don’t know what you ‘ave to do with it, but if you’re one of their friends,
you can tell ’em from me that I’ll knock their silly ‘eads off, parsons or no
parsons, if they upset my apples again.”

“
Indeed?”
asked the detective, with great sympathy. “Did they upset your apples?”

“
One
of ’em did,” said the heated shopman; “rolled ’em all over the street. I’d ‘ave
caught the fool but for havin’ to pick ’em up.”

“
Which
way did these parsons go?” asked Valentin.

“
Up
that second road on the left-hand side, and then across the square,” said the other
promptly.

“
Thanks,”
replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square
he found a policeman, and said: “This is urgent, constable; have you seen two
clergymen in shovel hats?”

The
policeman began to chuckle heavily. “I ‘ave, sir; and if you arst me, one of ’em
was drunk. He stood in the middle of the road that bewildered that —”

“
Which
way did they go?” snapped Valentin.

“
They
took one of them yellow buses over there,” answered the man; “them that go to Hampstead.”

Valentin
produced his official card and said very rapidly: “Call up two of your men to come
with me in pursuit,” and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the
ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half
the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a
man in plain clothes.

“
Well,
sir,” began the former, with smiling importance, “and what may —?”

Valentin
pointed suddenly with his cane. “I’ll tell you on the top of that omnibus,” he said,
and was darting and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three
sank panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: “We
could go four times as quick in a taxi.”

“
Quite
true,” replied their leader placidly, “if we only had an idea of where we were going.”

“
Well,
where are you going?” asked the other, staring.

Valentin
smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing his cigarette, he said: “If
you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what
he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as
slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can
do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing.”

“
What
sort of queer thing do you mean?” asked the inspector.

“
Any
sort of queer thing,” answered Valentin, and relapsed into obstinate silence.

The
yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed like hours on end;
the great detective would not explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a
silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing
desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour, and
the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length
after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which
a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the
universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London
died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably
born again in blazing high streets and blatant hotels. It was like passing
through thirteen separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But
though the winter twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the
Parisian detective still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the
streets that slid by on either side. By the time they had left Camden Town
behind, the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a
jump as Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man’s shoulder, and shouted
to the driver to stop.

They
tumbled down the steps into the road without realising why they had been dislodged;
when they looked round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly
pointing his finger towards a window on the left side of the road. It was a
large window, forming part of the long facade of a gilt and palatial public-house;
it was the part reserved for respectable dining, and labelled “Restaurant.” This
window, like all the rest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and
figured glass; but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in
the ice.

“
Our
cue at last,” cried Valentin, waving his stick; “the place with the broken window.”

“
What
window? What cue?” asked his principal assistant. “Why, what proof is there that
this has anything to do with them?”

Valentin
almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.

“
Proof!”
he cried. “Good God! The man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are
twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don’t
you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?” He
banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were
soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table, and looked at the star of
smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even
then.