The Uncollected Stories of Father Brown
Author: G. K. Chesterton
Date: 2025-04-21T07:24:04.313163+00:00

Also by G. K. Chesterton

The Father Brown Series

The Innocence of Father Brown

The Wisdom of Father Brown

The Secret of Father Brown

The Scandal of Father Brown

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Man Who Was Thursday

The Ball and the Cross

Manalive

The Flying Inn

The Return of Don Quixote

Basil Howe: A Story of Young Love

CONTENTS

Title Page

Also by G. K. Chesterton

The Uncollected Stories of Father Brown

The Donnington Affair.

Pemberton’s Challenge.

The Donnington Affair.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Father Brown’s Solution.

The Mask of Midas.

THE UNCOLLECTED
STORIES OF
FATHER BROWN

I.

THE DONNINGTON AFFAIR.

In the October 1914 issue of the British magazine The Premier, Sir Max Pemberton published the first part of this story, inviting a number of writers, including Chesterton, to use their talents to solve the mystery of the murder described. Chesterton’s solution followed in the form of a Father Brown story in the November issue.

PEMBERTON’S CHALLENGE.

The following statement of the Donnington affair has been written from the original notes by the Priest-in-charge of the Parish of Borrow-in-the-Vale.

John Barrington Cope came to Sussex from King’s College, Cambridge, at a time when the aged vicar could no longer undertake single-handed even the pleasant duties of that rural charge.

He had been nearly two years at Borrow when the tragedy occurred. A man of considerable scholastic attainment, he appears immediately to have realised the magnitude of the mystery and to have set down, without loss of time, an orderly statement of the facts as they presented themselves to him.

The accepted lover of Evelyn Donnington’s sister Harriet, he enjoyed the liberties of Borrow Close, and was almost daily at the house. It was at his suggestion that “another” was summoned from London to investigate a case which promised at an early moment to baffle alike the vigilance of the police and the curiosity of the public.

Mr. Cope’s notes were written primarily for Father Brown’s perusal. An amplification of them seems to be the swiftest method of putting the reading public in possession of the salient features of this amazing occurrence.

I.

My name is John Barrington Cope, and I had been priest-in-charge of the parish of Borrow-in-the-Vale for twenty-one months.

I last saw Evelyn Donnington alive on Sunday evening at a quarter past ten o’clock. I had supped at Borrow Close as it has been my privilege to do almost every Sunday evening since I came to the parish. The fact that my fiancée, Harriet Donnington, was and is at Bath made no difference.

Sir Borrow Donnington has few friends. He is not a man who loves the society of other men, nor, for that matter, of women. It may be that I understand him a little better than his fellows. I am welcome at Borrow Close, and there is no other house which has a prior claim upon me.

I saw Evelyn Donnington alive and well at a quarter past ten on the evening of Sunday last, the 24th day of July. She came to the porch with me to tell me of a letter she had received from Harriet on the previous day, and there I said “good-night” to her.

The rectory stands perhaps a third part of a mile across the park, and is best reached by a bridle-path through what is known as Adam’s Thicket. The way is dark and shut in by the magnificent beeches for which Borrow is famous. I saw no living thing as I returned to the rectory, nor heard any sound that was ominous.

Two hours later a footman from the Close awakened me to say that Evelyn was dead. “Murdered, sir!” he gasped, and without another word he ran on headlong towards the doctor’s house.

I had fallen into a light sleep when this man’s ring awakened me. There had been much trouble at Borrow Close since I came to the parish. The world is well acquainted with the nature of this, and knows much of the shame which has overtaken the Donnington family. Whatever sympathy it may have withheld from Sir Borrow Donnington himself, it has lavished freely upon his daughters.

To me Evelyn was already as a sister. I was to have married Harriet in September, though God knows what may be in store for us now.

Men deride omens, though often they are but the mind’s logic waging a war upon our optimism. Though the affair of Southby Donnington would appear to have been settled by his conviction and imprisonment, I dreaded from the first that such could not be the end of it; and it was of Southby Donnington, Sir Borrow’s only son, that I had been dreaming in my sleep when the footman awakened me.

What a sardonic chapter in the history of human nature! An only son—a wealthy father! Upon the one side a profligacy almost without parallel, upon the other side a parsimony stupendous in its ironic selfishness.

Southby Donnington was sent to Eton and to Trinity (Cambridge) as an Army candidate. A disgraceful affair at a gambling den in London, with a subsequent appearance at a police-court, finished his university career in his first term. He could not even pass the trivial examination now demanded for Sandhurst. He would suggest no other vocation. The man became a derelict in the dangerous seas of London’s underworld. In vain his sisters pleaded with Sir Borrow. The baronet had finished with his son. A man of iron resolution which nothing could bend, he swore that Southby should never enter his house again. There followed the cataclysm.

We heard of the boy’s arrest in London upon a charge of forgery. He was committed for trial, defended with what money his sisters could supply him, sent to the Old Bailey, convicted. The sentence was one of three years’ penal servitude. We learned that he had been taken to Wormwood Scrubs, and nine months later that he was at Parkhurst.

It is no place here to dwell upon the secrets of the stricken house or of the aftermath of this terrible downfall.

Borrow Close is an old mansion lying between Ashdown Forest and Crowborough. It has always been remote from men and affairs, and there is no domain in the south of England so wonderful in its solitudes.

All about it is the forest. The very park is primeval woodland; here abounding in undergrowth so thick that the foot of man might never have been set therein; there characterised by marshy pools and groves where noonday is but a shimmer of reluctant light. Few were admitted to the house even in the days when Lady Donnington was its mistress. Since her death it has become mediaeval in its isolation. The old baronet had nothing in common with his neighbours; his daughters were always afraid of him, and they go through life as it were on tiptoe, fearing that if they speak above a whisper they will awake the curiosity of the world beyond their gates.

It is true that Southby flouted the sanctities of this retreat, despite the baronet’s displeasure. Parties of wild undergraduates made the “welkin ring” during the vacations; the story of Evelyn and Harriet’s beauty was not unknown in the courts at Cambridge. Few of the boys, however, had the courage to persist, and I think that even Southby himself was astonished when Captain Willy Kennington appeared suddenly upon the scene as a suitor for Evelyn’s hand, and was not to be repulsed even by Sir Borrow’s savage discouragement.

Captain Kennington had met Evelyn at her aunt’s house in Kensington some three months before the downfall. Her womanly gifts should have made an appeal to any man who became well acquainted with them, and I do not wonder that the young soldier surrendered to the spell.

Very simple in all her ideas, not a little afraid of the world, yet gifted with an imagination which years of solitary reading had stimulated, she seemed to be at once the woman and the child; wise above her years, yet afflicted by those ideals for which woman often pays so dearly. Fear of her father forbade that immediate acceptance of the soldier’s advances which her heart dictated. She returned to Borrow Close, and was followed there shortly by the captain himself.

What was my astonishment to hear a few days later that Sir Borrow had refused all discussion of the matter, and in one of those violent paroxysms of temper, with which neither God nor man could reason, had ordered the captain from his house.

To give him his due, Southby played a man’s part in this affair. He interceded warmly for his sister, returning from South Africa for that purpose. The scene between father and son is remembered at the Close as the culminating episode of an estrangement as discreditable to one as to the other. Passion dominated it, and set finality upon it. No word was spoken between these two men until the end.

Three months later Southby was a convict, and I remained the one man who visited the baronet in the days of his shame.

II.

These are the events of sixteen months ago. I have already disclaimed any intention of dwelling upon the intimate days of sorrow which followed after. “The evil that men do lives after them,” and while for the world the tragedy was but a nine days’ wonder, it lay heavy upon the house of Borrow. No longer did the old baronet receive the visits of the few friends hitherto admitted to the Close. He shut the doors alike upon the old world and the new. His daughters saw no one but the servants and myself. In their turn, his neighbours shrank from him. Men had come to say that lust of gold drove Southby to the crime, and to believe that the boy was less guilty than the father.

The one man who stood by the stricken family was Captain Kennington, who owed so little to the baronet. Now, in the darkest hour, he came forward to demand Evelyn’s hand anew. It went without saying that she would not accept him. A rare type of womanhood, the very fact that she loved was the barrier between them. Nothing, she felt, could ever blot out the shame of this happening, or minimise its consequences. The harvest of sin was not gathered in Parkhurst Prison, but here in the ancient house, where women reaped with sickles of tears.

My own relations to Harriet were, God be praised, but superficially affected by Southby’s downfall. We had learned to know each other so well before the trouble came that it but set a seal upon our mutual sense of help and sacrifice, and although I knew that she would not marry me immediately, I left the future to lead us as it might. Sir Donnington himself now seemed to find in my society the sole consolation of his declining years. He did not go to church, but I visited them for worship early every Sunday morning, and was always at the Close to supper when in residence at the rectory.

So the months rolled on, and time, the healer, came to our aid. The bitterness of fear and doubt had passed down and given place to a brave attempt to face the future. We made many plans for Southby upon his release, and were determined to start him in a farm in South Africa if we could. Kennington went so far as to visit the prison and see the convict. His own father was one of the visiting inspectors, as it chanced, and so an advantage was permitted him.

He told us that he found Southby quite resigned to his fate, and he spoke of him as a man who was convinced that he had not committed a crime, but had been the victim of those who had betrayed him when they discovered that nothing was to be extorted from the baronet.

Parkhurst, it seems, is the gentleman’s prison, and Southby was in aristocratic company there. I confess that the intimation was not without its saving humour, and permitted some reflection upon the permanence of those social aspirations which could afflict men even in a prison. Better, it appeared, to pick oakum with a lord than to earn an honest living among plebeians.

Kennington spoke of cheerfulness and of content, but I remembered afterwards one phrase in his letter which should have struck me as significant. Prison makes strange bedfellows, and so far as man may have a confidant in captivity, Southby had found one in a man by the name of Mester.

“This fellow,” said Kennington, “is the cheeriest soul possible. He has been well educated in France, where he fell upon evil times. Then he became chauffeur to an Austrian baron, entered a motor-car factory at Suresnes, turned his attention to flying at Issy, and finally was accused of a savage assault and an attempt to rob an old lady at Dover who was about to establish him in a motor-car business there.”

Mester declared to the end that the crime was the work of others. He protested that he was the victim of circumstances, and that the clues upon which the police convicted him were false. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to four years’ penal servitude upon the day following Southby’s conviction.

Between these men a strange friendship took root. Each believed himself wrongfully convicted; each could sympathise with the other. And just as Mester declared that he would bring the old baronet to his senses when he got out, so could Southby interest himself in Mester’s story, and implore certain old colleagues on the Press to investigate it.

As we know, one great novelist has already busied himself with the affair, and is convinced of the man’s innocence. Admittedly a person of no stable character and unquestionably the associate of thieves, there would yet seem to be a doubt whether the graver crime were committed, and quite a reasonable supposition that the police may have been in error.

Mester himself did not hesitate to affirm that if he were free for a month he would establish his innocence beyond all question. So convinced was he of this that he appears to have told Southby quite plainly that he would escape from Parkhurst if the opportunity presented itself.

I thought nothing of the matter at the time, and, indeed, the threat must be one often made by prisoners to whom crime has not become a habit and the cell a refuge. But I confess that astonishment was no word for it when, a few weeks later, upon opening my morning paper, I read that two men had escaped from Parkhurst, and, despite the efforts of the police, were still at large.
“Southby and Mester,” I said to myself. I was not wrong, as you shall presently hear.

III.

Here was an upset if you will, and one to send me running to the Close with the tidings. Sir Borrow himself I would not tell, dreading the effect of the news upon a mind so deranged; but Evelyn and Harriet heard me eagerly, and the former I began to suspect was already in possession of the story. This fact did not in the beginning impress me as it should have done. Some letter, I thought, must have come from Southby himself, and yet had I reflected upon it I would have perceived that such a thing was hardly possible under the circumstances.

The man had escaped but yesterday, and even had a letter been posted from the Isle of Wight or the mainland on the previous evening, it would not have reached Borrow Close at nine o’clock. Later on I discovered, quite accidentally, that Captain Kennington hinted at some such possibility in a letter received on the previous day, and whatever thoughts the discovery suggested, I kept them strictly to myself. The immediate thing was the excitement the news occasioned at the Close, and the momentous events which must follow upon it.

For my own part, I was early of the opinion that the fugitives would swiftly be overtaken, and that that would be the end of the matter. Their escape, briefly narrated in the newspapers, had been admirably contrived. It appears that they scaled a high wall at a moment when a heavy mist drifted across the island from the mainland, that they then crossed an enclosure in which other prisoners were at work, climbed a second wall by the aid of a silk ladder, which they left behind them, and so made their way to the sea.

Authority believed that their flight was there cut short, and that they had not succeeded in reaching the mainland; but another account spoke of a mysterious motor boat which had been seen recently off St. Catherine’s Point, and, remembering Mester’s acquaintance with the motor fraternity and its less desirable characters, the writer of the report seemed to be of the opinion that this might have some connection with the matter. The latter, I must confess, occurred to me as a plausible deduction. These flying people are unusually clever. They possess a daring which is proved, and their resources are many. I detected now the meaning of Southby’s friendship for this undesirable mechanic, and I saw that the men were pledged to make the attempt together. For the moment it looked as though they had succeeded.

It was a little before nine o’clock when I arrived at the Close, and not until after lunch that I left. As usual, Sir Borrow spent the morning about his gardens, and kept me some while with him speaking of this plant or that with which I was always familiar, but never naming the son who would succeed to this splendid inheritance. When he retired to his study at twelve o’clock, I took the girls aside and resumed a conversation so full of meaning for us all. Naturally, we asked each other many questions which we were unable to answer. Where would Southby go if he reached the mainland? Could he get money? Would he return to Borrow?

“If he comes here,” said I, “he is lost! It will be the first place the police will watch!”

Harriet agreed with me in this. Yet where else could he go with any prospect of getting money, by which alone ultimate success could be assured?

We thought of many places, but of one with conviction. Sir Borrow’s sister, the aged Lady Rosmar, then lived at Bath. She had been staunch to the boy as far as her means permitted, and might be still a friend to him in such an emergency as this. We decided that Harriet should go to Bath without loss of time, in case she could be of any assistance there. Evelyn and I, meanwhile, would watch and wait at Borrow. God knows what we hoped to do if the boy came there, yet I think we both prayed for his coming.

It seemed such an impossible thing that he could evade the hue and cry which must attend this flight. Yet if he did evade it, might not we take up his burden and start him in that new life wherein so much might be achieved if the lesson had been truly learned? Foolish the hope may have been, yet it came natural to those who had suffered so much, and over whom the prison gate was ever the emblem of a terrible sorrow. We believed that Southby would come, and in ten days’ time our faith was justified. He was there at Borrow Close, the police upon his heels, his own father ignorant that the house harboured him. Of such dire things have I now to tell in the story that comes after.

IV.

I have said that we supposed the house would be watched by the police, and in this we were not mistaken.

Frequently, in the few days immediately prior to Southby’s return, I had seen strange men in the park, and more than once I had been stopped upon an idle pretence and questioned concerning Sir Borrow and his affairs. Such a subterfuge would have deceived no one, and, fortunately, I was able to deal with the men quite frankly.

“You are a police-officer,” I said to one of them.

And he did not deny it.

“The lad’s sure to come here, sir,” was his answer, “and, if he does, we shall take him. There isn’t a road within ten miles we are not watching.”

We fell to other talk, and chiefly of the escape. Officially the police thought there had been some connivance on the part of the warders, but of this I naturally knew nothing.

“The young men had a lot of friends between them,” the detective said, “and as for Lionel Mester, he knows half the crooks in Europe!”

I replied that in such a case the friends in question might be expected to shelter their comrades.

“And,” said I, “it is idle to look for your men here. Surely you know of the relations between Sir Borrow and his son?”

He was much interested in this, and questioned me closely—a proceeding I did not resent under the circumstances. A few days later I was stopped in the park by an American lady and her daughter, who pretended to be much interested in the old place, and asked me if it were not possible to get permission to visit it. In these I recognised also the agents of the police, and I put them off with what excuses I could; not that it would have mattered at such a time, for Southby had not then returned. He was to come three days afterwards, at dead of night, and the two who were to know of his coming would have stood at nothing for his sake. They were his sister Evelyn and Wellman, the butler, who had loved Southby as his own son.

It was from Wellman himself that I had the news at nine o’clock on the following morning. He came carrying a pretended letter from Sir Borrow, and not until we were alone in my study, and the door shut behind us, did he dare to speak freely.

“Mr. Southby’s home, sir,” he said in a whisper. “He’s in the priest’s room.”

I feared to speak for a moment. Instantly I had visions of the hunted lad, fleeing from thicket to thicket of the forest he knew so well, and finally gaining that deep glen wherein is the subterranean entrance to the Close. That he had thought of it when none of us remembered! Of course, the police would know nothing of that. The very servants, save Wellman alone, are in ignorance of the existence of the passage, and locally it is believed that it perished long ago. Sir Borrow let them think so.

It was one of his humours to have the place opened up by the engineers who came from London to sink his artesian well. He liked to go to and fro as he pleased, to catch his servants when they least expected him. And so he used the priest’s room for the purpose, or did use it until the tragedy happened. Nothing afterwards interested him. The secret chamber remained unopened after Southby was convicted. The rest of us, I think, had almost forgotten its existence.

The chamber lies at the western end of the long gallery. There is an octagon tower there, with an ancient stone staircase cunningly built within its walls. To this you gain access from the gallery by opening a panel upon the right-hand side of the smaller chimney. The room lies at the foot of one flight of stairs, and is lighted from two narrow windows giving upon the battlements. These are filled by stained glass of the fourteenth century, and show former abbots of Borrow in alb and chasuble. The room itself is large and commodious, and has a fireplace and an alcove for the bed. Those who desire to go from it to the forest descend the staircase until they find themselves in the old crypt which dates from Saxon times. The subterranean passage leads from that to Adam’s Thicket, where it enters an ancient well, long dried up, and now but a pit of grass and bramble. I did not doubt that Southby had gained the forest by a devious route and had made his way by one of those paths which no stranger would discover. And so he had gone straight to the priest’s chamber, and thence to Evelyn’s bedroom.

“He waked her about one this morning,” said Wellman, who still appeared to be trembling with the excitement of the news. “They wouldn’t let you know sooner, sir, for fear of the police. Miss Evelyn is dreadfully afraid that the squire will find out, and so I came to you at once. Lucky for us, it was only yesterday afternoon that Superintendent Matthews searched the Close from garret to cellar. He must have had wind that Mr. Southby was on the road.”

I was astonished to hear this.

“Superintendent Matthews—yesterday!” I exclaimed. “Is it really possible, and Miss Evelyn told me nothing of it? But, of course, it may have been difficult to send. Does he know anything of the priest’s hole, Wellman? Surely you don’t fear that?”

He shook his head, being a man of uncommon caution.

“They know a great deal too much nowadays, sir—more’s the pity. The question is, what are we to do with the young master, since Miss Evelyn is at her wits’ end? She would be pleased to see you at the Close, indeed and she would. It’s a hard task for a young lady, as you can well imagine, sir.”

I agreed, and, putting on my hat, went over with him immediately. Our way lay through Adam’s Thicket, and I confess that I suffered some alarm when a stranger appeared upon our path not a hundred paces from the ancient basin by which the passage is reached. He was a short, thick-set man, wearing a serge suit with black leather leggings and a peaked cap, and when he saw us he stopped abruptly for a moment, then turned his back upon us and pretended to light a cigarette while we passed.

“He is no policeman,” I said to Wellman, when the stranger was out of hearing. The old servant agreed with me.

“But he might be an inquiry agent, sir. I’ve heard tell in London of the tricks they play with their clothes. Don’t trust him too far.”

“I am not going to trust him at all,” said I. “The fellow looked to me as though he were a chauffeur.”

“A bad lot, believe me, sir. There’s been few honest men upon wheels since they robbed us of our horses. A man wants the nose of a setter to keep track of such as him. I wouldn’t trust one of them with a silver-plated soup-ladle, upon my word I wouldn’t.”

I told him he was a laudator temporis acti, but as that conveyed nothing to him we pushed on, and found Evelyn in the boudoir.

She was dreadfully agitated, but Sir Borrow being there, no word of the affair might pass between us. The baronet plainly thought that his daughter had become hysterical, and when I was alone with him he hinted that she must have had some news from that d—d scoundrel.

“Whatever it is,” he added, “I don’t want to hear of it or of him. It would be a great day for me if the fellow were six feet underground, and I hope to God he soon will be. That’s the truth, Cope, and none of your philosophy can change it. I have no longer a son; I am trying to forget that I ever had one.”

I shrank from his anger, knowing well how little such a man would suffer a rebuke. Happily, he set out to drive into the town almost immediately, and Evelyn and I went at once to the priest’s hole and interviewed Southby. He was in a sorry plight, I must say, his face and hands torn by the brambles of the thickets, his clothes splashed with mud, his beard unshaved, and his eyes bloodshot. I thought also a little delirious from want of food and exposure, and he talked incoherently of ships and the sea, of men who had betrayed him, and of others who were his friends. By-and-by, when he became calmer, he told me that the ignominy of prison affected him to such an extent that he would have gone mad if he had remained at Parkhurst.

“I couldn’t have done it, Cope, by God I couldn’t,” he said. “You don’t know what it means to a man who has lived as I have. I had to go or it would have been all up with me. If they take me I will shoot myself. That’s an oath and I’ll keep it.”

“But,” cried I, “whatever will you do, Southby? You must know that we cannot long protect you here.”

He laughed defiantly, pushing the black hair from his forehead quite in the old way.

“Lionel will do it,” he said. “I trust Lionel. He got me out; he’ll see I don’t get in again. You must know Lionel. He’s a white man all through, and the prison that can hold him has got to be made. Why, it was his idea about the motor-boat—who else would have thought of it?—he and his friend at Hendon. They picked us up in the cove at high tide, and we were landed at Hayling Island before morning. I knew we should get through when Lionel undertook it.”

“Then,” exclaimed I, quite at hazard, “Captain Kennington knew nothing of it?”

His brow darkened at this. He looked at Evelyn curiously, and appeared afraid to speak out.

“No, I don’t trust Kennington—not much. Mind what you’re doing in that quarter, Evelyn. Kennington isn’t thirty cents—you remember it.”

She flashed out at this, a girl of spirit and a good heart.

“Do not say a word against Captain Kennington!” she cried. “He is the only friend you ever had who remained staunch to you. You should be grateful to him.”

He still persisted, though with a weakening resolution.

“That may or may not be. It’s my opinion he tried to give us away, and I shall stick to it. Now, get me a drink for heaven’s sake. I am as dry as a camel.”

She fetched him a brandy-and-soda, and he drank it eagerly. It was already a danger to pass to and from the long gallery, and I began to perceive the peril of the situation. Let the servants know and sooner or later the news would go to the village, and thence to the police. When we discussed it frankly between ourselves there seemed but one solution. Evelyn must be ill, and Harriet must be recalled from Bath to wait upon her. Meanwhile, Wellman must have a confidant, and none seemed better suited to the purpose than Turner, the head housemaid. Sooner or later this woman would discover us. We determined that it should be sooner, and, calling her to the conference, we put our fortunes into her hands. Good woman, she had a brother of her own, and Evelyn was beloved by them all.

We made our plans, and for the moment they were successful. Harriet, unfortunately, could not return from Bath, her aunt being taken seriously ill and really requiring her assistance. Evelyn, however, feigned an indisposition very cleverly, and although it put me to some conscientious difficulty, I suffered myself to think of the greater good of that unhappy family and to acquiesce. Nevertheless, I understood that it was but a brief respite. The perils of the situation were manifest. Any day, any hour might discover us, and we began to go as those who feared their own shadows.

Perhaps my fears may have been responsible for a delusion, but there were moments when I thought that Sir Borrow suspected us. His manner became suddenly aggressive, and he questioned me more closely than he had done for a long time. Had I heard from that “d—d” son of his? Was Evelyn worrying about “the worthless scoundrel”? To all of which I responded with what wit I could, though God knows my position was difficult. Later on I discovered him in Evelyn’s bedroom, and that very night, after dinner, he spoke of Kennington. Oddly enough, his opinion of that gallant soldier was exactly that of his son. He did not trust him, doubted his record, and stigmatised him most unjustly as a penniless adventurer. As to my knowledge the captain is in possession of an income of eight hundred pounds a year, I resented the slander, and did not fear to speak my mind. The result was a sharp quarrel, and the expression upon his part of a shabby apology, with which in any other circumstances I would have been far from satisfied. As it was, I had to bear with him, and to listen while he told me that, whatever happened, he would not have Kennington in the house again. Then he went off to his study, I to the priest’s room to tell them of my suspicions.

Southby had always been afraid of his father. My news alarmed him, and he did not hesitate to affirm that the old man would deliver him up to the police should he be discovered at the close. Evelyn herself appeared to be of the same opinion, and when we were alone she confessed the terror of her situation.

“Captain Kennington is coming here at the week-end,” she said.

I told her what Sir Borrow had said, and it did but alarm her the more.

“Sometimes I wish I were dead,” she declared.

And I, who knew how much that gentle soul had suffered, prayed to God that strength might be granted her.

The following night I was to meet Lionel Mester in the thicket, and to experience an apprehension more acute than any I had yet suffered in this woeful affair.

It was the Sabbath eve, and I was returning from the Close to the choir practice in our beautiful old parish church. A hundred yards from the well’s head, where the secret entrance lies, I met again the short, thick-set man whom Wellman had declared to be a detective. This time he stopped, and begging me to step aside into the thicket, he introduced himself immediately.

“You’ll have heard of me, sir—Lionel Mester, Mr. Southby’s pal.”

“Yes,” I said, “I have heard of you. Why do you come to this dangerous place?”

“Because there’s something Southby must know, and it can’t come any other way. You see him every day, and can take this letter to him. I’ve been hanging about nearly a week trying to get it delivered. Usually I don’t trust devil dodgers—not much. But you’ve got a decent mug on you, and I’m going to trust you. Take him this letter, and tell him, if he acts on it, it’s all right and the wheels go round. Otherwise I do a double watch, and be d—d to it! Lord, I’ve been sleeping on stinging nettles for a week, and that’s about enough of it! Tell Southby so, and you’ll see no more of me.”

He thrust a bulky letter into my hand, and was about to say more when we heard a sound of footsteps, and instantly he plunged into the undergrowth with the agility of a wild-cat. He was shod, I saw, in rubber-soled shoes, and carried a formidable stick; but the quickness of his movements was the surprising thing, and uttering but one word “police,” he disappeared from my view. For my part, I thrust the letter into the inner pocket of my coat and at once regained the path. Fifty paces further on I passed Superintendent Matthews, and exchanged a good-night with him. He appeared to be in a hurry, and was going towards the Hall. But he did not stop to gossip with me, as he usually does, and for that I was grateful.

It will be understood that this unexpected turn perplexed me very much. I had expected that Lionel Mester would come to Borrow sooner or later, but now that he had come I perceived how considerable a danger he must be to us all. It was not to be hidden from me that I myself might be the victim of this unhappy family, and must answer to the law for the part that I had played. So much I was willing to do for a woman’s sake, but now that discovery trod upon our heels, and all the shame and suffering of exposure hovered in the shadows about that ancient house, I confess that my courage almost failed me. The letter seemed a damning document which would convict me in any court. Yet I determined to deliver it, and that very night, about ten o’clock, I went up to the Hall and put it into Evelyn’s hands. Upon my return an unknown man followed me through the thicket, and watched me enter the rectory. I believe that he was a police officer, though whether he were so or not mattered little since the letter was delivered.

That night I slept but ill, fearing so many things, dreading the peril of a situation which had become almost intolerable. The next day was the Sabbath, given almost entirely to the schools and the church, and it was not until we sat down to supper at the Close that I got the news of Evelyn. She had given out that she was a little better, and would sit down with us. The few words we exchanged in the porch when I said “Good night” to her were of some moment, though not unexpected.

“Southby is going to-night,” she said.

I answered, “Thank God,” for I knew that none of us could stand the strain of it much longer.

And so we parted, and I was never to see her alive again. So brave, so gentle she was, blessed among women truly, an offering to man’s sin, a martyr for whom men’s tears should fall. They heard a loud cry in the house a little before midnight. Sir Borrow was awake, and first upon the scene. They found her lying at the foot of the circular staircase which leads down from the long gallery to the secret room. Evidently there had been a struggle. A jagged bar of iron lay upon the stairs at her feet. The lamp she had carried was shattered; the very window in the angle of the octagon was broken, and the glass littered about. What was not a little remarkable was the discovery of nine pounds in gold wrapped in a yellow kid glove, the very shape and colour of the gloves always worn by Captain Kennington.

She was dressed in a long bedgown, I should tell you, and wore a dressing gown over it. The door of the secret chamber stood open, but no one was to be discerned within. Southby had fled the house. Sir Borrow and Wellman alone stooped to the assistance of the stricken woman.

She was quite dead, a terrible wound in the throat having deprived her of life almost instantaneously. Naturally the police were called upon the instant, and not a moment was lost by them. Beaters began to search every thicket of the forest round about; there were motors abroad upon every road. Yet nothing was discovered, not a shadow of a clue to be found. Even Captain Kennington could offer no suggestion. I discovered to my surprise that he had come to Borrow on Saturday evening as he promised, but hearing Evelyn’s story had gone to the town to sleep. The hue and cry waked him—to such a morn as few men are called upon to live.

♦

And so here is this terrible crime committed, and no man to be brought to justice for it. God send us enlightenment that the guilty may be punished!

Proofs of the above mystery story have been sent to Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON, the creator of that famous detective of fiction, “FATHER BROWN.”

This is quite a new idea of story-telling, and Mr. Chesterton has entered into the spirit of the scheme with characteristic enthusiasm. His, or, rather, “Father Brown’s,” solution of ‘The Donnington Affair’ will be embodied in a complete story which will appear in next month’s PREMIER.

I am now in negotiation with other famous fiction detectives, and for the present I will merely mention that the next pair of stories in this series are in the capable hands of SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH and BARONESS ORCZY.

Max Pemberton

FATHER BROWN’S SOLUTION.

Mr. Chesterton has carefully weighed the evidence in Mr. Pemberton’s story, and his deductions constitute a remarkable structure of criminal detection.

It was natural, of course, that we should think of calling in expert opinion on the tragedy; or, at least, something subtler than the passing policeman. But I could think of few people or none whom it would be useful to consult thus privately. I remembered an investigator who had taken some interest in Southby’s original trouble; merely because I remembered the curious surname of Shrike; but report told me that he had since grown rich and retired, and was now yachting inaccessibly among the Pacific Islands.

My old friend Brown, the Roman priest at Cobhole, who had often given me good advice in small problems, had wired that he feared he could not come down, even for an hour. He merely added—what, I confess, I thought inconsequent—that the key might be found in the sentence that “Mester was the cheeriest soul possible.”

Superintendent Matthews still carries weight with any considering person who has actually talked to him; but he is naturally in most cases officially reticent, and in some cases officially slow.

Sir Borrow seemed stricken rigid by this final tragedy; a thing pardonable enough in a very old man who, whatever his faults, had never had anything but tragedy upon tragedy out of his own blood and name.

Wellman can be trusted with anything up to the Crown jewels; but not with an idea. Harriet is far too good a woman to be a good detective. So I was left with my unsatisfied appetite for expert advice. I think the others shared it to some extent; I think we wished a man different from all of us would walk into the room, a man of the world outside us, a man of wider experience, a man of experience so wide—if it were possible—that he should know even one case that was like our own. Certainly none of us had the wildest suspicion of who the man would be.

I have explained that when poor Evelyn’s body was found it was clad in a dressing-gown, as if she had been suddenly summoned from her room, and the door of the Priest’s Room stood open. Acting on I know not what impulse, I had closed it to; and, so far as I know, it was not opened again till it was opened from within. I confess that for me that opening was terrible.

Sir Borrow, Wellman, and I were alone in the chamber of slaughter. At least we were alone till a total stranger strolled into the room, without even pulling the peaked cap off his head. He was a sturdy man, stained with travel, especially as regards his leggings, which were loaded with clay and slime of innumerable ditches. But he was entirely unconcerned, which is more than I was. For, despite his extra dirt and his extra impudence, I recognised him as the fugitive convict, Mester, whose letter I had so foolishly passed on to his fellow convict. He entered the room with his hands in his pockets, and whistling. Then the whistling ceased, and he said:

“You seem to have shut the door again. I suppose you know it’s not easy to open again on this side.”

Through the broken window which gave upon the garden I could see Superintendent Matthews standing passively among the shrubs, with his broad back to the house. I walked to the window, and also whistled, but in a far more practical spirit. And yet, I know not why I should call it practical, for the superintendent, who must have heard me, did not turn his head, nor so much as shift a shoulder.

“I shouldn’t worry poor old Matthews,” said the man in the peaked cap in a friendly tone, “he is one of the best men in the service, and he must be awfully tired. I expect I can answer nearly all the questions that he could.” And he relighted a cigarette.

“Mr. Mester,” I replied with some heat, “I was sending for the superintendent to arrest you!”

“Quite so,” he answered, throwing his wax match out of the window. “Well, he won’t!”

He was gazing at me with a grave stolidity. And yet I fancy that the gravity of his full face had less effect on me than the large, indifferent back of the policeman.

The man called Mester resumed.

“I mean that my position here may not be quite what you suppose. It’s true enough I assisted the young fellow to escape; but I don’t imagine you know why I did it. It is an old rule in our profession—”

Before he could finish I had uttered a cry.

“Stop!” I cried out. “Who is that behind the door?”

I could see, by the very movement of Mester’s mouth, that he was just about to answer, “What door?” But before the lips could move he also was answered. And from behind the sealed door of the secret chamber came the noise of something that was alive, if it were not human, or was moving, if it were not alive.

“What is in the Priest’s Room?” I cried, and looked round for something with which to break down the door. I had half lifted the piece of jagged iron bar for the purpose. And then the horrid part it had played in that night overwhelmed me, and I fell against the door and beat on it with feeble hands, only repeating, “What is in the Priest’s Room?” It was the awful fact that a voice, obscure but human, answered from behind the closed door, “The Priest!”

The heavy door was opened very slowly, apparently pushed by a hand no stronger than my own. The same voice which had said “The Priest,” said in rather simpler tones, “Whom else did you expect?” The door swung out slowly to the full compass of its hinges, and revealed the black silhouette of a stumpy, apologetic person, with a big hat and a bad umbrella. He was in every way a very unromantic and inappropriate person to be in the Priest’s Room, save in the accidental detail of being a priest.

He walked straight up to me before I could cry: “You have come, after all!”

He shook my hand, and, before he dropped it, looked at me with a steady and singular expression, sad, and yet rather serious than sad. I can only say it was the face we wear at the funeral of one dear as a friend, not that we wear by the deathbed of any directly dear to us.

“I can at least congratulate you,” said Father Brown.

I think I put my hand wildly through my hair. I am sure I answered:

“And what is there in this nightmare on which I can be congratulated?”

He answered me with the same solid face:

“On the innocence of the woman who will be your wife.”

“No one,” I cried indignantly, “has attempted to connect her with the matter.”

He nodded gravely, as if in assent.

“That was the danger, doubtless,” he said with a slight sigh, “but she’s all right now, thank God. Isn’t she?” And as if to give the last touch to the topsyturvydom, he turned to ask his question of the man in the peaked cap.

“Oh, she’s safe enough!” said the man called Mester.

I cannot deny that there was suddenly lifted off my heart a load of doubt, which I had never known was there. But I was bound to pursue the problem.

“Do you mean, Father Brown,” I asked, “that you know who was the guilty person?”

“In a sense, yes,” he answered. “But you must remember that in a murder case the guiltiest person is not always the murderer.”

“Well, the guiltiest person, then,” I cried impatiently. “How are we to bring the guiltiest person to punishment?”

“The guiltiest person is punished,” said Father Brown.

There was a long silence in the twilight turret, and my mind laboured with doubts that were too large for it. At last Mester said gruffly, but not without a kind of good-nature:

“I think you two reverend gentlemen had better go and have a talk somewhere. About Hades, say, or hassocks, or whatever you do talk about. I shall have to look into this by myself. My name is Stephen Shrike; you may have heard of me.”

Even before such fancies had been swallowed up in my sudden fear at the movements in the secret room, I had faced the startling possibility that this escaped convict was really a detective. But I had not dreamed of his being so famous a one. The man who had been concerned for Southby, and since gained colossal prestige, had some claim in the case; and I followed Brown, who had already strolled down towards the entrance of the garden.

“The distinction between Hades and hassocks—” began Father Brown.

“Don’t play the fool!” I said, roughly enough.

“Was not without some philosophical value,” continued the little priest, with unruffled good temper. “Human troubles are mostly of two kinds. There is an accidental kind, that you can’t see because they are so close you fall over as you do over a hassock. And there is the other kind of evil, the real kind. And that a man will go to seek however far off it is—down, down, into the lost abyss.” And he unconsciously pointed his stumpy finger downward towards the grass, which was sprinkled with daisies.

“It was good of you to come, after all,” I said; “but I wish I could make more sense of the things you say.”

“Well,” he replied patiently, “have you made sense of the one thing I did say before I came down?”

“Why, you made some wild statement,” I replied, “that the key of the story was in Mester’s being cheerful, but—why, bless my soul, and so it is the key, in a way!”

“Only the key, so far,” said my companion, “but my first guess seems to have been right. It is not very common to find such sparkling gaiety in people undergoing penal servitude, especially when ruined on a false charge. And it seemed to me that Mester’s optimism was a little overdone. I also suspected that his aviation, and all the rest of it, true or false, were simply meant to make Southby think the escape feasible. But if Mester was such a demon for escaping, why didn’t he escape by himself? Why was he so anxious to lug along a young gentleman who does not seem to have been much use to him? As I was wondering, my eye fell on another sentence in your manuscript.”

“What was that?” I asked.

He took out a scrap of paper on which there were some scribbles in pencil, and read out:

“‘They then crossed an enclosure in which other prisoners were at work.’”

After another pause, he resumed:

“That, of course, was plain enough. What kind of convict prison is it where prisoners work without any warders overseeing or walking about? What sort of warders are they to allow two convicts to climb two walls and go off as if for a picnic? All that is plain. And the conclusion is plainer from many other sentences. ‘It seemed such an impossible thing that he could evade the hue and cry that must attend this flight.’ It would have been impossible if there had been any hue and cry. ‘Evelyn and Harriet heard me eagerly, and the former, I began to suspect, was already in possession of the story.’ How could she be in possession of it so early as that, unless the police cars and telephones helped to send word from Southby? Could the convicts catch a camel or an ostrich? And look at the motor-boat. Do motor-boats grow on trees? No, that’s all simple. Not only was the companion in the escape a police detective, but the whole scheme of the escape was a police scheme, engineered by the highest authorities of the prison.”

“But why?” I asked, staring. “And what has Southby to do with it?”

“Southby had nothing to do with it,” he answered. “I believe he is now hiding in some ditch or wood in the sincere belief that he is a hunted fugitive. But they won’t trouble him any more. He has done their work for them. He is innocent. It was essential that he should be innocent.”

“Oh, I don’t understand all this!” I cried impatiently.

“I don’t understand half of this,” said Father Brown. “There are all sorts of difficulties I will ask you about later. You knew the family. I only say that the sentence about cheerfulness did turn out to be a key-sentence, after all. Now, I want you to concentrate your attention on another key-sentence. ‘We decided that Harriet should go to Bath without loss of time, in case she should be of any assistance there.’ Note that this comes soon after your expression of surprise that someone should have communicated with Evelyn so early. Well, I suppose we none of us think the governor of the prison wired to her: ‘Have connived at escape of your brother, Convict 99.’ The message must have come in Southby’s name, at any rate.”

I ruminated, looking at the roll of the downs as it rose and repeated itself through every gap in the garden trees; then I said, “Kennington?”

My old friend looked at me for a moment with a look which, this time, I could not analyse.

“Captain Kennigton’s part in the business is unique in my experience,” he said, “and I think we had better return to him later. It is enough that, by your own account, Southby did not give him his confidence.”

I looked again at the glimpses of the downs, and they looked grander but greyer, as my companion went on, like one who can only put things in their proper order.

“I mean the argument here is close, but clear. If she had any secret message from her brother about his escaping, why shouldn’t she have a message about where he was escaping to? Why should she send off her sister to Bath, when she might just as well have been told that her brother wasn’t going there? Surely a young gentleman might more safely say, in a private letter, that he was going to Bath than that he was escaping from prison? Somebody or something must have influenced Southby to leave his destination uncertain. And who could influence Southby except the companion of his flight?”

“Who was acting for the police, on your theory.”

“No. On his confession.” After a sort of snorting silence, Brown said, with an emphasis I have never seen in him, throwing himself on a garden-seat: “I tell you this whole business of the two cities of refuge—this whole business of Harriet Donnington going to Bath—was a suggestion that came through Southby, but from Mester, or Shrike, or whatever his name is, and is the key of the police plot.”

He had settled himself on a seat facing me, clasping his hands over the huge head of his umbrella in a more truculent manner than was typical of him. But an evening moon was brightening above the little plantation under which he sat, and when I saw his plain face again, I saw it was as mild as the moon.

“But why,” I asked, “should they want such a plot?”

“To separate the sisters,” he said. “That is the key.”

I answered quickly: “The sisters could not really be separated.”

“Yes, they could,” said Father Brown, “quite simply, and that is why—” Here his simplicity failed, and he hesitated.

“That is why?” I insisted.

“That is why I can congratulate you,” he said at last.

Silence sank again for a little, and I could not define the irritation with which I answered:

“Oh, I suppose you know all about it?”

“No, no really!” he said, leaning forward as if to deny an accusation of injustice. “I am puzzled about the whole business. Why didn’t the warders find it sooner? Why did they find it at all? Was it slipped in the lining? Or is the handwriting so bad as that? I know about the thing being gentlemanly; but surely they took his clothes! How could the message come? It must be the lining.”

His face was turned up as honestly as a flat and floating fish, and I could say with corresponding mildness:

“I really do not know what you are talking about, you and your linings. But if you mean how could Southby get his message safely to his sister without the risks of interception, I should say there were no people more likely to do it successfully. The boy and girl were always great friends from childhood, and had, to my knowledge, one of those secret languages that children often have, which may easily have been turned afterwards into some sort of cypher. And now I come to think of it—”

The heavy-knobbed umbrella slipped from the seat and slammed on the gravel, and the priest stood upright.

“What an idiot I am!” he said. “Why, anybody might have thought of a cypher! That was a score for you, my friend. I suppose you know all about it now?”

I am certain he did not realise that he was repeating in sincerity what I had said in irony.

“No,” I answered, with real seriousness; “I do not know all about it, but I think it quite possible that you do. Tell me the story.”

“It is not a good story,” he said, in a rather stony way—“at least, the good thing about it is that it is over. But first let me say what I least like saying—that you must be prepared for a different view of a character that you knew well. I have thought a good deal about a certain kind of intellectual English lady, especially when she is at once aristocratic and provincial. I think she is judged much too easily. Or, perhaps, I should say, judged much too hardly; since she is supposed to be incapable of mortal passions and temptations. Let her decline champagne at dinner, let her be beautiful and know what is meant by dignity in dress, let her read a great many books and talk about high ideals, and you all assume that she alone of her kind cannot covet or lie; that her ideas are always simple, and her ideals always fulfilled. But, really and truly, my friend, by your account of it, the character was more mixed than that. Evelyn feigned an indisposition very cleverly. Assuming her to be blameless, I cannot see why she needed to feign anything. But, anyhow, it is scarcely one of the powers given to the saints. You ‘began to suspect’ that Evelyn already knew about the escape. Why didn’t she tell you she already knew about it? You were astonished that Superintendent Matthews had called, and she had been silent about it; but you supposed it was difficult to send. Why should it be difficult to send? You seem to have been sent for whenever you were really wanted. No; I will try to speak of this woman as of one for whose soul I will pray, and whose true defence I shall never hear. But while there are living people whose honour is in cruel danger undeservedly, I simply refuse to start with the assumption that Evelyn Donnington could do no wrong.”

The noble hills of Sussex looked as dreary as Yorkshire moors as he went on heavily, prodding the earth with his umbrella.

“The first facts in her defence, if she needed one, are that her father is a miser, that he has a violent temper combined with a rather Puritanic sort of family pride; and, above all, that she was afraid of him. Now, suppose she really wanted money, perhaps for a good purpose; or, again, perhaps not. She and her brother, you told me, had always had secret languages and plots; they are common among cowed and terrorised children. I firmly believe myself that she went a step further in some desperate strait, and that she was really and criminally responsible for the false document with which her brother seemed to be seeking financial help. We know there is often a family resemblance in handwritings almost amounting to facsimile. I cannot see, therefore, why there should not be a similar family resemblance in the flaws by which experts detect a forgery. Anyhow, the brother had a bad record, which goes for a great deal more than it ought with the police; and he was sent to gaol. I think you will agree that he has a very good record now.”

“You mean,” I said, curiously thrilled by the very restraint of his expression, “that Southby suffered all that time rather than speak?”

“Rejoice not against me, Satan, mine enemy,” said Father Brown, “for when I fall I shall arise. This part of the story really is good.”

After a silence he continued:

“When he was arrested, I am now almost certain, he had on him some letter or message from his sister. I hope and believe that it was some sort of penitent message. But whatever it was, it must have contained two things—some admission or allusion that made her own guilt clear, and some urgent request that her brother should come straight to her as soon as he was free to do so. Most important of all, it was not signed with a Christian name, but only ‘Your unhappy sister.’”

“But, my good man,” I cried, “you talk as if you had seen the letter!”

“I see it in its consequences,” he answered. “The friendship with Mester, the quarrel with Kennington, the sister in Bath and the brother in the Priest’s Room, came from that letter, and no other letter.”

“The letter, however, was in cypher; and one very hard to follow, having been invented by children. Does that strike you as paradoxical? Don’t you know that the hardest signs to read are arbitrary ones? And if two children agree that ‘grunk’ means bedtime and ‘splosh’ means Uncle William, it would take an expert much longer to learn this than to expose any system of substituted letters or numbers. Consequently, though the police found the paper, of course, it took them half-way through Southby’s term to make head or tail of it. Then they knew that one of Southby’s sisters was guilty, that he was innocent; and by this time they had the sense to see that he would never betray the truth. The rest, as I said, was simple and logical. The only other thing they could do was to take advantage of Southby being asked to go straight to his guilty correspondent. He was given every facility for escaping and communicating as quickly as possible, so long as the police could secure the separation of the sisters, by Mester getting the other one to Bath. Given that, the sister Southby went for must be the guilty one. And when, through those awful nights, the police gathered round you thick as wolves and still as ghosts—it was not for Southby they were waiting.”

“But why did they wait for anyone?” I asked suddenly, after a silence. “If they were sure, why didn’t they arrest?”

He nodded and sighed:

“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s best to take the Kennington case here. Well, of course, he knew all about it from the inside. You yourself noticed that he had privileges in that prison. It will grieve you, as a law-abiding person, to learn that he used his power to intercept what had been decided. A good deal can be done by missing appointments. A good deal more can be done by not missing people—vulgarly known as hitting them. He used every chance, right or wrong, to delay the arrest. One of the thousand small, desperate delays was ‘feigning illness.’”

“Why did Southby call him a traitor?” I said suspiciously.

“On exceedingly good grounds,” said my friend. “Suppose you had broken prison in all innocence, and your friend sent his car for you and it took you back there? Suppose your friend offered to get you away in his yacht, and it took the wrong course, till overtaken by a motor-boat? Suppose Southby was trying to get to Sussex, and Kennington always headed him off towards Cornwall or Ireland or Normandy, what would you expect Southby to call him?”

“Well,” I said, “what would you call him?”

“Oh,” said Father Brown, “I call him a hero.”

I peered at his rather featureless face through the moony twilight; and then he suddenly rose and paced the path with the impatience of a schoolboy.

“If I could put pen to paper, I would write the best adventure story ever written about this. Was there ever such a situation? Southby was kicked backwards and forwards, as unconscious as a football, between two very able and vigorous men, one of whom wanted to make the footprints point towards the guilty sister, while the other wanted to twist the feet away at every turn. And Southby thought the friend of his house was his enemy, and the destroyer of his house his friend. The two that knew must fight in silence, for Mester could not speak without warning Southby, and Kennington could not speak without denouncing Evelyn. It is clear from Southby’s words, about false friends and the sea, that Kennington eventually kidnapped Southby in a yacht, but lord knows in how many tangled woods, or river islands, or lanes leading nowhere, the same fight was fought; the fugitive and detective trying to keep the trail, the traitor and true lover trying to confuse it. When Mester won, and his men gathered round this house, the captain could do no more than come here and offer his help, but Evelyn would not open the door to him.”

“But why not?”

“Because she had the fine side of fear as well as the bad side,” said Father Brown. “‘Not a little afraid of life,’ you said, with great penetration. She was afraid to go to prison; but, to her honour, she was afraid to get married, too. It is a type produced by all this refinement. My friend, I want to tell you and all your modern world a secret. You will never get to the good in people till you have been through the bad in them.”

After a moment he added that we ought to be returning to the house, and walked yet more briskly in that direction.

“Of course,” he remarked, as he did so, “the packet of banknotes you took through to Southby was only to help him away and spare him Evelyn’s arrest. Mester’s not a bad fellow for a ’tec. But she realised her danger, and was trying to get into the Priest’s Room.”

I was still brooding on the queer case of Kennington.

“Was not the glove found?” I asked.

“Was not the window broken?” he asked in return. “A man’s glove twisted properly and loaded with nine pounds in gold, and probably a letter as well, will break most windows if it is slung by a man who has been a bowler. Of course, there was a note. And, of course, the note was imprudent. It left money for escape, and left the proofs of what she was escaping from.”

“And then what happened to her?” I asked dully.

“Something of what happened to you,” he said. “You also found the secret door difficult to open from outside. You also caught up that crooked curtain-rod or window bar to beat on it. You also saw the door opening slowly from within. But you did not see what she saw.”

“And what did she see?” I said at last.

“She saw the man she had wronged most,” said Father Brown.

“Do you mean Southby?”

“No,” he said, “Southby has shown heroic virtue, and he is happy. The man she wronged most was a man who had never had, or tried to have, more than one virtue—a kind of acrid justice. And she had made him unjust all his life—made him pamper the wicked woman and ruin the righteous man. You told me in your notes that he often hid in the Priest’s Room, to discover who was faithful or unfaithful. This time he came out holding a sword left in that room in the days when men hunted my religion. He found the letter, but, of course, he destroyed it after he had done—what he did. Yes, old friend, I can feel the horror on your face without seeing it. But, indeed, you modern people do not know how many kinds of men there are in the world. I am not talking of approval, but of sympathy—the sort of sympathy I give to Evelyn Donnington. Have you no sympathy with cold, barbaric justice, or with the awful appeasements of such an intellectual appetite? Have you no sympathy with the Brutus who killed his friend? Have you no sympathy with the monarch who killed his son? Have you no sympathy with Virginius, who killed—. But I think we must go in now.”

We mounted the stairs in silence, but my surging soul expected some scene surpassing all the scenes of that tower. And in a sense I had it. The room was empty, save for Wellman, who stood behind an empty chair as impassively as if there had been a thousand guests.

“They have sent for Dr. Browning, sir,” he said in colourless tones.

“What do you mean?” I cried. “There was no question about the death?”

“No, sir,” he said, with a slight cough; “Dr. Browning required another doctor to be sent from Chichester, and they took Sir Borrow away.”

†

II.

THE MASK OF MIDAS.

A man was standing outside a small shop, as rigidly as a wooden Highlander outside an old-fashioned tobacconist’s. It was hard to believe that anyone would stand so steadily outside the shop unless he were the shopkeeper; but there was an almost grotesque incongruity between the shopkeeper and the shop. For the shop was one of those delightful dens of rubbish which children and the very wise explore with their eyes like a fairyland; but which many of a tidier and tamer taste are unable to distinguish from a dustbin. In short, it called itself in its prouder moments a curiosity shop; but was more generally called a junk shop; especially by the hard-headed and hustling commercial population of the industrial seaport in one of whose meaner streets it stood. Those who have a taste for such things will not need to have unrolled the tale of its treasures, of which the most precious were difficult to connect with any purpose whatever. Tiny models of fully-rigged ships sealed in bubbles of glass or glue or some queer Oriental gum; crystal balls in which snowstorms descended on very stolid human figures; enormous eggs that might have been laid by prehistoric birds; misshapen gourds that might have been swollen with poison rather than wine; queer weapons; queer musical instruments, and all the rest; and all sinking deeper and deeper in dust and disorder. The guardian standing outside such a shop might well be some decrepit Jew, with something of the dignity and long dress of the Arab; or some gypsy of a brazen and tropical beauty, hung with hoops of gold or brass. But the sentinel was something quite startlingly different. He was a lean, alert young man, in neat clothes of American cut, with the long, rather hard face so often seen in the Irish-American. He had a Stetson cocked over one eye and a stinking Pittsburgh cigar sticking out at a sharp angle from one corner of his mouth. If he had also had an automatic in his hip-pocket, those then gazing at him would not have been very much surprised. The name dimly printed above his shop was “Denis Hara.”

Those thus gazing at him happened to be persons of some importance; and even perhaps of some importance to him. But nobody could have guessed it from his flinty features and his angular repose. The most prominent of these was Colonel Grimes, the Chief Constable of that county. A loose-built man with long legs and a long head; trusted by those who knew him well, but not very popular even with his own class, because he showed distinct signs of wanting to be a policeman rather than a country gentleman. In short, the Constable had committed the subtle sin of preferring the Constabulary to the County. This eccentricity had encouraged his natural taciturnity; and he was, even for a capable detective, unusually silent and secretive about his plans and discoveries. His two companions, who knew him well, were all the more surprised when he stopped in front of the man with the cigar and spoke in a loud clear voice, very seldom heard from him in public.

“It is only fair to tell you, Mr. Hara, that my men have received information which justifies my obtaining a search-warrant to examine your premises. It may turn out, as I hope, that it will be unnecessary to incommode you further. But I must warn you that a watch is being kept on any movements of departure from this place.”

“Are you all out to get one of my nice little toy ships done up in gum?” enquired Mr. Hara with calm. “Well, Colonel, I wouldn’t like to set any limits to your free and glorious British Constitution; or I would rather doubt whether you can burgle my little grey home like that.”

“You will find I am right,” replied the Colonel; “in fact I am going straight to two of the magistrates, whose signatures are needed for the search-warrant.”

The two men standing behind the Chief Constable exhibited fine though different shades of a faint mystification. Inspector Beltane, a big dark heavy man, reliable in his work if not very rapid in it, looked a little dazed as his superior turned sharply away. The third man was stumpy and sturdy, with a round black clerical hat and a round black clerical figure, as well as a round face which had looked up to that moment a little sleepy; but a sharper gleam shone between his screwed eyelids; and he also was looking at the Chief Constable; but with something a little more than mere bewilderment; rather as if a new notion had suddenly come into his head.

“Look here,” said Colonel Grimes, “you fellows will be wanting your lunch; it’s a shame to trail you about like this after three o’clock. Fortunately, the first man I want to see is in the bank we are just passing; and there’s quite a decent restaurant next door. I’ll dash round to the other man who is only in the next street, when I’ve settled you down to some grub. They are the only two J.P.s in this part of the town; and it’s lucky they live so near together. The banker will do what I want straight away; so we’ll just go in and settle that first.”

An array of doors decorated with glass and gilding led them through a labyrinth of passages in the Casterville and County Bank; and the Chief Constable went straight to the inner sanctum, with which he seemed to be fairly familiar. There he found Sir Archer Anderson, the famous financial writer and organiser, and the head of this and many other highly respectable banking enterprises; a grave and graceful old gentleman with grey curly hair and a grey pointed beard of a rather old-fashioned cut; but dressed otherwise in a sober but exact version of the current fashion. A glance at him would suggest that he was quite at home with the County as well as the Constable; but he seemed to share something of the Constable’s preference for work rather than play. He pushed a formidable block of documents on one side; and said a word of welcome, pointing to a chair and suggesting a readiness to do banking business at any moment.

“I’m afraid this isn’t banking business,” said Grimes, “but anyhow, my business won’t interrupt yours for more than a minute or two. You’re a magistrate, aren’t you; well, the law requires me to have the signatures of two magistrates, for a search-warrant on premises I have reason to believe are very suspicious.”

“Indeed,” said Sir Archer politely. “What sort of suspicion?”

“Well,” said Grimes, “it’s rather a queer case, and quite new, I should say, in these parts. Of course we have our own little criminal population, you may say; and, what is quite different and much more natural, the ordinary disposition of down-and-outs to hang together, even a little outside the law. But it looks to me as if that man Hara, who’s certainly an American, is also an American gangster. A gangster on a large scale and with a whole machinery of crime practically unknown in this country. To begin with, I don’t know whether you know the very latest news of this neighbourhood?”

“Very possibly not,” replied the banker, with a rather frosty smile. “I am not very well instructed in the police news; and I only came here recently to look over the affairs of the branch. Till then I was in London.”

“A convict escaped yesterday,” said the Colonel gravely. “You know there is a large penal settlement on the moors, a mile or two from this town. There are a good many men doing time there; but there is one less than there was the day before yesterday.”

“Surely that is not so very unheard of,” said the other. “Prisoners do sometimes break prison, don’t they?”

“True,” assented the Chief Constable. “Perhaps that would not be so extraordinary in itself. What is extraordinary is that he has not only escaped but disappeared. Prisoners break prison; but they almost always go back to prison; or at least we get some notion of how they managed to get away. This man seems to have simply and suddenly vanished, like a ghost or a fairy, a few hundred yards from the prison gates. Now as I have sceptical doubts myself about whether he really is a ghost or a fairy, I must fall back on the only possible natural explanation. And that is that he was spirited away instantly in a car, almost certainly part of a whole organisation of cars, to say nothing of spies and conspirators working out a completed plan. Now I take it as certain that his own friends and neighbours, however much they might sympathise, could not possibly organise anything like that. He is quite a poor man, accused of being a poacher; all his friends are poor and probably most of them poachers; and there is no doubt that he killed a game keeper. It’s only fair to say that some thought it ought to have been called manslaughter and not murder; indeed they had to commute the sentence to a long imprisonment; and since then, perhaps on a fairer reconsideration, they have reduced it to a comparatively short sentence. But somebody has shortened it very much more than that. And in a way which means money and petrol and practical experience in such raids; he certainly could not have done it for himself and none of his companions in the common way could have done it for him. Now I won’t bother you with the details of our discoveries; but I’m quite certain that the headquarters of the organisation is in that little junk-shop round the corner; and our best chance is to get a warrant to search it at once. You will understand, Sir Archer, that this does not commit you to anything beyond the preliminary search; if the man in the shop is innocent, we are all quite free to testify to it; but I’m certain a preliminary search ought to be made, and for that I must have the signatures of two magistrates. That is why I am wasting your time with the police news; when it is so valuable in the financial news. If you feel you can sign such a document, I have it here ready for you; and there will be no excuse for my interrupting your own financial duties any further.”

He laid a paper in front of Sir Archer Anderson; and, after reading it rapidly, but with a frown of habitual responsibility, the banker picked up his pen and signed it.

The Chief Constable rose with rapid but warm expressions of obligation, and passed towards the door, merely remarking at random, as a man might talk about the weather, “I don’t suppose a business of your standing is affected by slumps or modern complications. But I’m told these are anxious days, sometimes, even for the most solid of the smaller corporations.”

Sir Archer Anderson rose at once swiftly and stiffly, with a certain air of indignation at being even momentarily associated with small corporations.

“If you know anything of the Casterville and County Bank,” he said, not without a faint touch of fire, “you will know it is not likely to be affected by anything or anybody.”

Colonel Grimes shepherded his friends out of the Bank and, with a certain benevolent despotism, deposited them in the restaurant next door; while he himself darted on to complete his task by pouncing on the other local magistrate; an old lawyer who was also an old friend, one Wicks by name, who had sometimes assisted him in details of legal theory. Inspector Beltane and Father Brown were left facing each other somewhat solemnly in the restaurant, to await his return.

“Am I wrong,” asked Father Brown with a friendly smile, “if I suspect that you are a little puzzled by something?”

“I wouldn’t say puzzled,” said the Inspector. “All that business with the banker was simple enough; but when you know a man very well, there is always a funny feeling when he doesn’t act quite like himself. Now the Colonel is the most silent and secret worker I’ve ever known in the police. Often he never tells the colleagues nearest to him what’s in his mind at the moment. Why did he stand talking at the top of his voice in a public street to a public enemy: to tell him he was going to raid his shop? Other people, let alone ourselves, were beginning to gather and listen. Why the devil should he tell this godforsaken gunman that he was going to raid his shop? Why didn’t he simply raid it?”

“The answer is,” said Father Brown, “that he wasn’t going to raid his shop.”

“Then why did he shout to the whole town that he was going to?”

“Well, I think,” said Father Brown, “so that the whole town might talk about his visit to the gangster and not notice his visit to the banker. The only words he really wanted to say were those last few words he said to the banker; watching for the reaction. But if there are any rumours about the bank, the town would have been all up in the air about his going straight to the bank. He had to have a good ordinary reason for going there; and he could hardly have had a better one than asking two ordinary magistrates to sign an ordinary document. Quite a flight of imagination.”

Inspector Beltane was gaping at him across the table.

“What on earth do you mean?” he demanded at last.

“I mean,” replied the priest, “that perhaps Colonel Grimes was not so far out in talking of the poacher as a fairy. Or shall we say a ghost?”

“You can’t possibly mean,” said the Inspector incredulously, “that Grimes invented the murdered gamekeeper and the escaped convict out of his own head? Why, he told me about them himself beforehand, as a bit of ordinary police-business.”

“I wouldn’t go quite so far as that,” said Father Brown indifferently. “There may be some such local story; but it’s got nothing to do with the story Grimes is after just now. I wish it had.”

“Why do you say that?” asked the other.

Father Brown looked him full in the face with grey eyes of unmistakable gravity and candour.

“Because I am out of my depth,” he said. “Oh, I know well enough when I’m out of my depth; and I knew I should be, when I found we were hunting a fraudulent financier instead of an ordinary human murderer. You see, I don’t quite know how I came to take a hand originally in this sort of detective business; but almost all my experience was with ordinary human murderers. Now murder’s almost always human and personal; but modern theft has been allowed to become quite impersonal. It isn’t only secret; it’s anonymous; almost avowedly anonymous. Even if you die, you may catch a glimpse of the face of the man who stabbed you. But however long you live, you may never get even a glimpse of the name of the man who robbed you. My first case was just a small private affair about a man’s head being cut off and another head put on instead; I wish I were back among quiet homely little idylls like that. I wasn’t out of my depth with them.”

“A very idyllic incident indeed,” said the Inspector.

“A very individual incident, anyhow,” replied the priest. “Not like all this irresponsible officialism in finance. They can’t cut off heads as they cut off hot water, by the decision of a Board or a Committee; but they can cut off dues or dividends in that way. Or again, although two heads could be put on one man, we all know that one man hasn’t really got two heads. But one firm can have two heads; or two faces, or half-a hundred faces. No, I wish you could lead me back to my murderous poacher and my murdered gamekeeper. I should understand all about them; but for the unfortunate fact that they possibly never existed.”

“Oh this is all nonsense,” cried the Inspector, trying to throw off an atmosphere. “I tell you Grimes did talk about it before. I rather fancy the poacher would have been released soon anyhow, though he did kill the other man pretty savagely, bashing him again and again with the butt of his gun. But he’d found the gamekeeper pretty indefensibly occupied on his own premises. In fact, the gamekeeper was poaching this time. He hadn’t a good character in the neighbourhood; and there was certainly what’s called provocation. Sort of Unwritten Law business.”

“That’s just what I mean,” said Father Brown. “Modern murder still, very often, has some remote and perverted connection with an unwritten law. But modern robbery takes the form of littering the world with paper and parchment, covered merely with written lawlessness.”

“Well, I can’t make head or tail of all this,” said the Inspector. “There is the poacher who is a prisoner, or an escaped prisoner; there is, or was the gamekeeper; and there is, to all mortal appearance, the gangster. What you mean by starting all this wild stuff about the bank next door is more than I can imagine.”

“That’s what troubles me,” said Father Brown in a sobered and humbled tone. “The Bank next door is beyond my imagination.”

At this moment, the restaurant door swung open and the Colonel returned with a swing of triumph; trailing behind him a little lively figure with white hair and a face wrinkled with smiles. It was the other magistrate, whose signature was so essential to the required document.

“Mr. Wicks,” said the Colonel, with an introductory gesture, “is the best modern expert in all matters of financial fraud. It is sheer luck that he happens to be a J.P. in this district.”

Inspector Beltane gave a gulp and then gasped. “You don’t mean to say Father Brown was right.”

“I have known it happen,” said Colonel Grimes, with moderation.

“If Father Brown said that Sir Archer Anderson is a colossal swindler, he was most certainly right,” said Mr. Wicks. “I needn’t give you all the steps of the proof here; in fact it will be wiser to give only the earlier stages of it even to the police and the swindler. We must watch him carefully; and see that he takes no advantage of any mistake of ours. But I think we’d better go round and have a rather more candid interview with him than you seem to have had; an interview in which the poacher and the junk-shop will not perhaps be so exclusively prominent. I think I can let him know enough of what we know to wake him up, without running any risk of libel or damages. And there is always the chance he will let something out, in the very attempt to keep it in. Come, we have heard very disquieting rumours about the business, and want this or that explained on the spot. That is our official position at present.” And he sprang up, as if with the mere alertness or restlessness of youth.

The second interview with Sir Archer Anderson was certainly very different in its tone, and especially in its termination. They had gone there without any final determination to challenge the great banker; but they soon found that it was he who was already determined to challenge them. His white moustaches were curled like silver sabres; his white pointed beard was thrust forward like a spike of steel. Before any of them had said more than a few sentences, he stood up and struck the table.

“This is the first time that the Casterville and County Bank has been referred to in this fashion; and I promise you it shall be the last. If my own reputation did not already stand too high for such grotesque calumnies, the credit of the institution itself would alone have made them ludicrous. Leave this place, gentlemen, and go away and amuse yourselves with exposing the High Court of Chancery or inventing naughty stories about the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“That is all very well,” said Wicks, with his head at an angle of pertinacity and pugnacity like a bulldog, “but I have a few facts here, Sir Archer, which you will be bound sooner or later to explain.”

“To say the least of it,” said the Colonel in a milder tone, “there are a good many things that we want to know rather more about.”

The voice of Father Brown came in like something curiously cool and distant, as if it came from another room, or from the street outside, or at least from a long way off.

“Don’t you think, Colonel, that we know now all that we want to know?”

“No,” said the Colonel shortly, “I am a policeman. I may think a great deal and think I am right. But I don’t know it.”

“Oh,” said Father Brown, opening his eyes wide for a moment. “I don’t mean what you think you know.”

“Well, I suppose it’s the same as what you think you know,” said Grimes rather gruffly.

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Father Brown penitently, “but what I know is quite different.”

The air of doubt and difference, in which the small group moved off, leaving the haughty financier apparently master of the field after all, led them to drift once more to the restaurant, for an early tea, a smoke and some attempt at an explanation all round.

“I always knew you were an exasperating person,” said the policeman to the priest, “but I have generally had some sort of wild guess about what you meant. My impression at this moment is that you have gone mad.”

“It’s odd you should say that,” said Father Brown; “because I’ve tried to discover my own deficiencies in a good many directions, and the only thing I think I really know about myself is that I am not mad. I pay the penalty, of course, in being dull. But I have never to my knowledge lost touch with reality; and it seems queer to me that men so brilliant as you are can lose it so quickly.”

“What do you mean—reality?” demanded Grimes after a bristling silence.

“I mean common sense,” said Father Brown, with one of the explosions so rare in him that it sounded like a gun. “I’ve said already that I’m out of my depth, about all this financial complexity and corruption. But, hang it all, there is a way of testing things by human beings. I don’t know anything about finance; but I have known financiers. In a general way, I’ve known fraudulent financiers. But you must know much more about them than I do. And yet you can swallow an impossibility like that.”

“An impossibility like what?” enquired the staring Colonel.

Father Brown had suddenly leaned across the table, with piercing eyes fixed on Wicks, with an intensity he rarely showed.

“Mr. Wicks, you ought to know better. I’m only a poor parson, and of course I know no better. After all, our friends the police do not often meet bankers; except when a casual cashier cuts his throat. But you must have been perpetually interviewing bankers; and especially bankrupt bankers. Haven’t you been in this precise position twenty times before? Haven’t you again and again had the pluck to throw the first suspicions on very solid persons, as you did this afternoon? Haven’t you talked to twenty or thirty financiers who were crashing, just about a month or two before they crashed?”

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Wicks slowly and carefully, “I suppose I have.”

“Well,” asked Father Brown, “did any single one of the others ever talk like that?”

The little figure of the lawyer gave the faintest imperceptible start; so that one could say no more than that he was sitting up a shade straighter than before.

“Did you ever in your born days,” asked the priest with all his new thrusting emphasis, “know a handler of hanky-panky finance who got on the high horse at the first flash of suspicion; and told the police not to dare to meddle with the secrets of his sacred bank? Why, it was like asking the Chief Constable to raid his bank and arrest him on the spot. Well, you know about these things and I don’t. But I’d risk a long bet that every single dubious financier you have ever known has done exactly the opposite. Your first queries would have been received not with anger but amusement; if it ever went so far, it would have ended in a bland and complete answer to every one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine questions you had to ask. Explanations! They swim in explanations! Do you suppose a slippery financier has never been asked questions before?”

“But hang it all, you generalise too much,” said Grimes. “You seem to be quite captivated with your vision of the perfect swindler. But after all even swindlers are not perfect. It doesn’t prove much that one bankrupt banker broke down and lost his nerve.”

“Father Brown is right,” said Wicks, interceding suddenly after a period of digestive silence. “It’s quite true that all that swagger and flamboyant defiance couldn’t be the very first line of defence for a swindle. But what else could it be? Respectable bankers don’t throw out the banner and blow the trumpet and draw the sword, at a moment’s notice, any more than disreputable bankers.”

“Besides,” said Grimes, “why should he get on the high horse at all? Why should he order us all out of the bank, if he has nothing to hide?”

“Well,” said Father Brown very slowly, “I never said he had nothing to hide.”

The meeting broke up in a silent, dazed disorder, in which the pertinacious Beltane hooked the priest by the arm for an instant and held him.

“Do you or do you not mean,” he asked harshly, “that the banker is not a suspect?”

“No,” said Father Brown, “I mean that the suspect is not a banker.”

As they filed out of the restaurant, with movements much more vague and groping than were normal to any of them, they were brought up short by a shock and noise in the street outside. It first gave the impression of people breaking windows all along the street; but an instant of nervous recovery enabled them to localise it. It was the gilt glass-doors and windows of the pompous building they had entered that morning; the sacred enclosure of the Casterville and County Bank, that was shaken from within by a din like a dynamite explosion, but proving to be in fact only the direct dynamic destructiveness of man. The Chief Constable and the Inspector darted through the shattered glass-doorways to the dark interior, and returned with faces fixed in astonishment; even more assured and stolid for being astonished.

“There’s no doubt about it now,” said the Inspector, “he’s clubbed the man we left to watch to the ground with a poker; and hurled a cash-box so as to catch in the waistcoat the first man who came in to find out the trouble. He must be a wild beast.”

Amid all the grotesque bewilderment, Mr. Wicks the lawyer turned with a gesture of apology and compliment and said to Father Brown, “Well, Sir, you have completely convinced me. He is certainly an entirely new rendering of the absconding banker.”

“Well, you must send our men in to hold him at once,” said the Constable to the Inspector; “or he’ll break up the whole town.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown, “he’s a pretty violent fellow; it’s his great temptation. Think how he used his gun blindly as a club on the game-keeper, bringing it down again and again; but never having even the sense to fire. Of course, that is the sort of man who mismanages most things, even murders. But he does generally manage to break prison.”

His companions gazed on him with faces that seemed to grow rounder and rounder with wonder; but they got no enlightenment out of his own round and commonplace countenance, before he turned away and went slowly down the street.

“And so,” said Father Brown, beaming round at the company over a very mild lager in the restaurant, and looking rather like Mr. Pickwick in a village club; “and so we come back again to our dear old rustic tale of the poacher and the gamekeeper after all. It does so inexpressibly raise my spirits dealing with a cosy fireside crime instead of all this blank bewildering fog of finance; a fog really full of ghosts and shadows. Well, of course you all know the old, old story. At your mothers’ knees you have heard it; but it is so important, my friends, to keep those old stories clear in our minds as they were told to us. This little rural tale has been told often enough. A man is imprisoned for a crime of passion, shows a similar violence in captivity, knocks down a warder and escapes in a mist on the moor. He has a stroke of luck; for he meets a gentleman who is well-dressed and presentable, and he forces him to change clothes.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that story often,” said Grimes frowning. “You say it is important to remember the story?”

“It is important to remember the story,” said Father Brown, “because it is a very clear and correct account of what did not happen.”

“And what did happen?” demanded the Inspector.

“Only the flat contrary,” said Father Brown. “A small but neat emendation. It was not the convict who set out looking for a well-dressed gentleman, that he might disguise himself in his clothes. It was the gentleman who set out on the moor looking for a convict; that he might enjoy the ecstasy of wearing a convict’s clothes. He knew there was a convict loose on the moor; and he ardently wanted his clothes. He probably knew also that there was a well-organised scheme for picking up the convict and rushing him rapidly off the moor. It is not quite certain what part Denis Hara and his gang played in this business; or whether they were cognisant only of the first plot or of the second. But I think it probable they were working for the poacher’s friends, and merely in the interest of the poacher, who had very wide public sympathy among the poorer population. I prefer to think that our friend the well-dressed gentleman effected his own little transformation scene by his own native talents. He was a very well-dressed gentleman, being clad in very fashionable gents’ suitings, as the tailors say; also with beautiful white hair and moustaches etc. which he owed rather to the barber than the tailor. He had found this very complete costume useful at many times of his life; and you must remember he had only appeared for a very short time as yet, in this particular town and bank. On hailing at last the figure of the convict whose clothes he coveted, he verified his information that he was a man of much the same general figure as himself; and the rest consisted merely of covering the convict with the hat, the wig, the whiskers, the splendid raiment, until the warder he knocked on the head would hardly have known him. Then our brilliant financier put on the convict’s clothes; and felt, for the first time for months and perhaps years, that he had escaped and was free.

“For he had no band of poor sympathisers who would help or hide him if they knew the truth. He had no movement in his favour, among the more decent lawyers and governors, suggesting that he had suffered enough or that his liberation might soon be allowable. He had no friends even in the underworld; for he had always been an ornament of the upper world; the world of our conquerors and our masters, whom we allow so easily to have the upper hand. He was one of the modern magicians; he had a genius for finance; and his thefts were thefts from thousands of the poor. When he did cross a line (a pretty faint line, in modern law), when the world did find him out, then the whole world would be against him. I fancy he did subconsciously look towards the prison as a home. We don’t know exactly what his plans were; even if the prison authorities captured him and took the trouble to prove by prints and so on that he was not the escaped convict, it’s not easy to see what else they could prove against him, at this stage. But I think it more likely that he knew Hara’s organisation would help him, and hurry him out of the country without a moment’s delay. He may have had dealings with Hara, neither perhaps telling the whole truth; such compromises are common in America between the big business man and the racketeer; because they are both really in the same business.

“Nor was there much trouble in persuading the convict, I imagine. It would seem to him at sight a scheme very hopeful for himself; perhaps he thought it was part of Hara’s scheme. Anyhow, the convict got rid of the clothes of conviction, and stepped in first class clothes into a first class position where he might be socially acceptable and at least consider his next move in peace. But, heavens, what an irony! What a trap; what a trick of inverted doom! A man breaking jail nearly at the end of his sentence, for an obscure half-forgiven crime, delighting to dress himself up like a dandy in the costume of the world’s greatest criminal, to be hunted tomorrow by searchlights round the whole earth. Sir Archer Anderson has entrapped a good many people in his time; but he never entrapped a man in such a tragedy as the man he benevolently clothed with his best clothes on the moor.”

“Well,” said Grimes good-humouredly, “now you have given us the tip, we can probably prove it all right; because the convict anyhow will have had his finger-prints taken.”

Father Brown bowed his head with a vague gesture as of awe and reverence. “Of course,” he said, “Sir Archer Anderson has never had his prints taken. My dear Sir! A man in that position.”

“The truth is,” said Wicks, “that nobody seems to know very much about him; prints or anything else. When I started studying his ways, I had to start with a blank map that only afterwards turned into a labyrinth. I do happen to know something about such labyrinths; but this was more labyrinthine than the others.”

“It’s all a labyrinth to me,” said the priest with a sigh. “I said I was out of my depth in all this financial business. The one and only thing I was quite sure of was the sort of man who sat opposite me. And I was certain he was much too jumpy and nervy to be a swindler.”

†

ABOUT G. K. CHESTERTON

Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the “prince of paradox.” Time magazine observed of his writing style: “Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.”

Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an “orthodox” Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.