The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (71 page)

‘
I
quite agree,’ said the millionaire. ‘It may be the beginning of mighty big things
in the spiritual line; but anyhow, the man who’s in the spiritual line himself,
Father Brown, has certainly scored over this business.’

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 simple, 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.’

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.’

His
long grave face seemed to grow even longer and graver as he frowned down at the
tablecloth. His long finger seemed to be tracing patterns on it like the plans of
dead cities and their temples and tombs.

‘
So
I’m going to tell you, and nobody else, why it is I have to be careful about mentioning
that matter in mixed company; and why, the more eager they are to talk about
it, the more cautious I have to be. It is also stated that in the coffin is a
chain with a cross, common enough to look at, but with a certain secret symbol
on the back found on only one other cross in the world. It is from the arcana
of the very earliest Church, and is supposed to indicate St Peter setting up
his See at Antioch before he came to Rome. Anyhow, I believe there is but one
other like it, and it belongs to me. I hear there is some story about a curse
on it; but I take no notice of that. But whether or no there is a curse, there
really is, in one sense, a conspiracy; though the conspiracy should only
consist of one man.’

‘
Of
one man?’ repeated Father Brown almost mechanically.

‘
Of
one madman, for all I know,’ said Professor Smaill. ‘It’s a long story and in some
ways a silly one.’

He
paused again, tracing plans like architectural drawings with his finger on the cloth,
and then resumed: ‘Perhaps I had better tell you about it from the beginning,
in case you see some little point in the story that is meaningless to me. It
began years and years ago, when I was conducting some investigations on my own
account in the antiquities of Crete and the Greek islands. I did a great deal
of it practically single-handed; sometimes with the most rude and temporary
help from the inhabitants of the place, and sometimes literally alone. It was
under the latter circumstances that I found a maze of subterranean passages
which led at last to a heap of rich refuse, broken ornaments and scattered gems
which I took to be the ruins of some sunken altar, and in which I found the
curious gold cross. I turned it over, and on the back of it I saw the Ichthus
or fish, which was an early Christian symbol, but of a shape and pattern rather
different from that commonly found; and, as it seemed to me, more realistic —
more as if the archaic designer had meant it to be not merely a conventional
enclosure or nimbus, but to look a little more like a real fish. It seemed to
me that there was a flattening towards one end of it that was not like mere
mathematical decoration, but rather like a sort of rude or even savage zoology.

‘
In
order to explain very briefly why I thought this find important, I must tell you
the point of the excavation. For one thing, it had something of the nature of
an excavation of an excavation. We were on the track not only of antiquities,
but of the antiquarians of antiquity. We had reason to believe, or some of us
thought we had reason to believe, that these underground passages, mostly of
the Minoan period, like that famous one which is actually identified with the
labyrinth of the Minotaur, had not really been lost and left undisturbed for
all the ages between the Minotaur and the modern explorer. We believed that
these underground places, I might almost say these underground towns and
villages, had already been penetrated during the intervening period by some
persons prompted by some motive. About the motive there were different schools
of thought: some holding that the Emperors had ordered an official exploration
out of mere scientific curiosity; others that the furious fashion in the later
Roman Empire for all sorts of lurid Asiatic superstitions had started some
nameless Manichaean sect or other rioting in the caverns in orgies that had to
be hidden from the face of the sun. I belong to the group which believed that
these caverns had been used in the same way as the catacombs. That is, we
believed that, during some of the persecutions which spread like a fire over
the whole Empire, the Christians had concealed themselves in these ancient
pagan labyrinths of stone. It was therefore with a thrill as sharp as a thunderclap
that I found and picked up the fallen golden cross and saw the design upon it;
and it was with still more of a shock of felicity that, on turning to make my
way once more outwards and upwards into the light of day, I looked up at the
walls of bare rock that extended endlessly along the low passages, and saw
scratched in yet ruder outline, but if possible more unmistakable, the shape of
the Fish.

‘
Something
about it made it seem as if it might be a fossil fish or some rudimentary organism
fixed for ever in a frozen sea. I could not analyse this analogy, otherwise
unconnected with a mere drawing scratched upon the stone, till I realized that
I was saying in my sub-conscious mind that the first Christians must have
seemed something like fish, dumb and dwelling in a fallen world of twilight and
silence, dropped far below the feet of men and moving in dark and twilight and
a soundless world.

‘
Everyone
walking along stone passages knows what it is to be followed by phantom feet. The
echo follows flapping or clapping behind or in front, so that it is almost impossible
for the man who is really lonely to believe in his loneliness. I had got used
to the effects of this echo and had not noticed it much for some time past,
when I caught sight of the symbolical shape scrawled on the wall of rock. I
stopped, and at the same instant it seemed as if my heart stopped, too; for my
own feet had halted, but the echo went marching on.