car!" cried Carver. "You really ought to go. Don't be so selfish."
"That's it," assented Bankes, with buoyant benevolence. "Don't you be
selfish. It won't hurt you. You aren't afraid of it, are you?"
"Well," said Mr. Smith, blinking thoughtfully, "I don't want to be
selfish, and I don't think I'm afraid. I'll come with you if you put it
that way."
The pair drove off, amid waving salutations that seemed somehow to give
the little group the appearance of a cheering crowd. Yet Devine and the
priest only joined in out of courtesy, and they both felt it was the
dominating gesture of their host that gave it its final air of farewell.
The detail gave them a curious sense of the pervasive force of his
personality.
The moment the car was out of sight he turned to them with a sort of
boisterous apology and said: "Well!"
He said it with that curious heartiness which is the reverse of
hospitality. That extreme geniality is the same as a dismissal.
"I must be going," said Devine. "We must not interrupt the busy bee. I'm
afraid I know very little about bees; sometimes I can hardly tell a bee
from a wasp."
"I've kept wasps, too," answered the mysterious Mr. Carver. When his
guests were a few yards down the street, Devine said rather impulsively
to his companion: "Rather an odd scene that, don't you think?"
"Yes," replied Father Brown. "And what do you think about it?"
Devine looked at the little man in black, and something in the gaze of
his great, grey eyes seemed to renew his impulse.
"I think," he said, "that Carver was very anxious to have the house to
himself to-night. I don't know whether you had any such suspicions?"
"I may have my suspicions," replied the priest, "but I'm not sure
whether they're the same as yours."
That evening, when the last dusk was turning into dark in the gardens
round the family mansion, Opal Bankes was moving through some of the dim
and empty rooms with even more than her usual abstraction; and anyone
who had looked at her closely would have noted that her pale face had
more than its usual pallor. Despite its bourgeois luxury, the house as a
whole had a rather unique shade of melancholy. It was the sort of
immediate sadness that belongs to things that are old rather than
ancient. It was full of faded fashions, rather than historic customs; of
the order and ornament that is just recent enough to be recognized as
dead. Here and there, Early Victorian coloured glass tinted the
twilight; the high ceilings made the long rooms look narrow; and at the
end of the long room down which she was walking was one of those round
windows, to be found in the buildings of its period. As she came to
about the middle of the room, she stopped, and then suddenly swayed a
little, as if some invisible hand had struck her on the face.
An instant after there was the noise or knocking on the front door,
dulled by the closed doors between. She knew that the rest of the
household were in the upper parts of the house, but she could not have
analysed the motive that made her go to the front door herself. On the
doorstep stood a dumpy and dingy figure in black, which she recognized
as the Roman Catholic priest, whose name was Brown. She knew him only
slightly; but she liked him. He did not encourage her psychic views;
quite the contrary; but he discouraged them as if they mattered and not
as if they did not matter. It was not so much that he did not sympathize
with her opinions, as that he did sympathize but did not agree. All this
was in some sort of chaos in her mind as she found herself saying,
without greeting, or waiting to hear his business:
"I'm so glad you've come. I've seen a ghost."
"There's no need to be distressed about that," he said. "It often
happens. Most of the ghosts aren't ghosts, and the few that may be won't
do you any harm. Was it any ghost in particular?"
"No," she admitted, with a vague feeling of relief, "it wasn't so much
the thing itself as an atmosphere of awful decay, a sort of luminous
ruin. It was a face. A face at the window. But it was pale and goggling,
and looked like the picture of Judas."
"Well, some people do look like that," reflected the priest, "and I dare
say they look in at windows, sometimes. May I come in and see where it
happened?"
When she returned to the room with the visitor, however, other members
of the family had assembled, and those of a less psychic habit had
thought it convenient to light the lamps. In the presence of Mrs.
Bankes, Father Brown assumed a more conventional civility, and
apologized for his intrusion.
"I'm afraid it is taking a liberty with your house, Mrs. Bankes," he
said. "But I think I can explain how the business happens to concern
you. I was up at the Pulmans' place just now, when I was rung up and
asked to come round here to meet a man who is coming to communicate
something that may be of some moment to you. I should not have added
myself to the party, only I am wanted, apparently, because I am a
witness to what has happened up at Beechwood. In fact, it was I who had
to give the alarm."
"What has happened?" repeated the lady.
"There has been a robbery up, at Beechwood House," said Father Brown,
gravely; "a robbery, and what I fear is worse, Lady Pulman's jewels have
gone; and her unfortunate secretary, Mr. Barnard, was picked up in the
garden, having evidently been shot by the escaping burglar."
"That man," ejaculated the lady of the house. "I believe he was----"
She encountered the grave gaze of the priest, and her words suddenly
went from her; she never knew why.
"I communicated with the police," he went on, "and with another
authority interested in this case; and they say that even a superficial
examination has revealed foot-prints and finger-prints and other
indications of a well-known criminal."
At this point, the conference was for a moment disturbed, by the return
of John Bankes, from what appeared to be an abortive expedition in the
car. Old Smith seemed to have been a disappointing passenger, after all.
"Funked it, after all, at the last minute," he announced with noisy
disgust. "Bolted off while I was looking at what I thought was a
puncture. Last time I'll take one of these yokels----"
But his complaints received small attention in the general excitement
that gathered round Father Brown and his news.
"Somebody will arrive in a moment," went on the priest, with the same
air of weighty reserve, "who will relieve me of this responsibility.
When I have confronted, you with him I shall have done my duty as a
witness in a serious business. It only remains for me to say that a
servant up at Beechwood House told me that she had seen a face at one of
the windows----"
"I saw a face," said Opal, "at one of our windows."
"Oh, you are always seeing faces," said her brother John roughly.
"It is as well to see facts even if they are faces," said Father Brown
equably, "and I think the face you saw----"
Another knock at the front door sounded through the house, and a minute
afterwards the door of the room opened and another figure appeared.
Devine half-rose from his chair at the sight of it.
It was a tall, erect figure, with a long, rather cadaverous face, ending
in a formidable chin. The brow was rather bald, and the eyes bright and
blue, which Devine had last seen obscured with a broad straw hat.
"Pray don't let anybody move," said the man called Carver, in clear and
courteous tones. But to Devine's disturbed mind the courtesy had an
ominous resemblance to that of a brigand who holds a company motionless
with a pistol.
"Please sit down, Mr. Devine," said Carver; "and, with Mrs. Bankes's
permission, I will follow your example. My presence here necessitates an
explanation. I rather fancy you suspected me of being an eminent and
distinguished burglar."
"I did," said Devine grimly.
"As you remarked," said Carver, "it is not always easy to know a wasp
from a bee."
After a pause, he continued: "I can claim to be one of the more useful,
though equally annoying, insects. I am a detective, and I have come down
to investigate an alleged renewal of the activities of the criminal
calling himself Michael Moonshine. Jewel robberies were his speciality;
and there has just been one of them at Beechwood House, which, by all
the technical tests, is obviously his work. Not only do the prints
correspond, but you may possibly know that when he was last arrested,
and it is believed on other occasions also, he wore a simple but
effective disguise of a red beard and a pair of large horn-rimmed
spectacles."
Opal Bankes leaned forward fiercely.
"That was it," she cried in excitement, "that was the face I saw, with
great goggles and a red, ragged beard like Judas. I thought it was a
ghost."
"That was also the ghost the servant at Beechwood saw," said Carver
dryly.
He laid some papers and packages on the table, and began carefully to
unfold them. "As I say," he continued, "I was sent down here to make
inquiries about the criminal plans of this man, Moonshine. That is why I
interested myself in bee-keeping and went to stay with Mr. Smith."
There was a silence, and then Devine started and spoke: "You don't
seriously mean to say that nice old man----"
"Come, Mr. Devine," said Carver, with a smile, "you believed a beehive
was only a hiding-place for me. Why shouldn't it be a hiding-place for
him?"
Devine nodded gloomily, and the detective turned back to his papers.
"Suspecting Smith, I wanted to get him out of the way and go through his
belongings; so I took advantage of Mr. Bankes's kindness in giving him a
joy ride. Searching his house, I found some curious things to be owned
by an innocent old rustic interested only in bees. This is one of them."
From the unfolded paper he lifted a long, hairy object almost scarlet in
colour--the sort of sham beard that is worn in theatricals.
Beside it lay an old pair of heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.
"But I also found something," continued Carver, "that more directly
concerns this house, and must be my excuse for intruding to-night. I
found a memorandum, with notes of the names and conjectural value of
various pieces of jewellery in the neighbourhood. Immediately after the
note of Lady Pulman's tiara was the mention of an emerald necklace
belonging to Mrs. Bankes."
Mrs. Bankes, who had hitherto regarded the invasion of her house with an
air of supercilious bewilderment, suddenly grew attentive. Her face
suddenly looked ten years older and much more intelligent. But before
she could speak the impetuous John had risen to his full height like a
trumpeting elephant.
"And the tiara's gone already," he roared; "and the necklace--I'm going
to see about that necklace!"
"Not a bad idea," said Carver, as the young man rushed from the room;
"though, of course, we've been keeping our eyes open since we've been
here. Well, it took me a little time to make out the memorandum, which
was in cipher, and Father Brown's telephone message from the House came
as I was near the end. I asked him to run round here first with the
news, and I would follow; and so----"
His speech was sundered by a scream. Opal was standing up and pointing
rigidly at the round window.
"There it is again!" she cried.
For a moment they all saw something--something that cleared the lady of
the charges of lying and hysteria not uncommonly brought against her.
Thrust out of the slate-blue darkness without, the face was pale, or,
perhaps, blanched by pressure against the glass; and the great, glaring
eyes, encircled as with rings, gave it rather the look of a great fish
out of the dark-blue sea nosing at the port-hole of a ship. But the
gills or fins of the fish were a coppery red; they were, in truth,
fierce red whiskers and the upper part of a red beard. The next moment
it had vanished.
Devine had taken a single stride towards the window when a shout
resounded through the house, a shout that seemed to shake it. It seemed
almost too deafening to be distinguishable as words; yet it was enough
to stop Devine in his stride, and he knew what had happened.
"Necklace gone!" shouted John Bankes, appearing huge and heaving in the
doorway, and almost instantly vanishing again with the plunge of a
pursuing hound.
"Thief was at the window just now!" cried the detective, who had already
darted to the door, following the headlong John, who was already in the
garden.
"Be careful," wailed the lady, "they have pistols and things."
"So have I," boomed the distant voice of the dauntless John out of the
dark garden.
Devine had, indeed, noticed as the young man plunged past him that he
was defiantly brandishing a revolver, and hoped there would be no need
for him to so defend himself. But even as he had the thought, came the
shock of two shots, as if one answered the other, and awakened a wild
flock of echoes in that still suburban garden. They flapped into
silence.
"Is John dead?" asked Opal in a low, shuddering voice.
Father Brown had already advanced deeper into the darkness, and stood
with his back to them, looking down at something. It was he who answered
her.
"No," he said; "it is the other."
Carver had joined him, and for a moment the two figures, the tall and
the short, blocked out what view the fitful and stormy moonlight would
allow. Then they moved to one side and, the others saw the small, wiry
figure lying slightly twisted, as if with its last struggle. The false
red beard was thrust upwards, as if scornfully at the sky, and the moon
shone on the great sham spectacles of the man who had been called
Moonshine.
"What an end," muttered the detective, Carver. "After all his
adventures, to be shot almost by accident by a stockbroker in a suburban
garden."
The stockbroker himself naturally regarded his own triumph with more
solemnity, though not without nervousness.
"I had to do it," he gasped, still panting with exertion. "I'm sorry, he
fired at me."
"There will have to be an inquest, of course," said Carver, gravely.
"But I think there will be nothing for you to worry about. There's a
revolver fallen from his hand with one shot discharged; and he certainly
didn't fire after he'd got yours."
By this time they had assembled again in the room, and the detective was
getting his papers together for departure. Father Brown was standing
opposite to him, looking down at the table, as if in a brown study. Then
he spoke abruptly:
"Mr. Carver, you have certainly worked out a very complete case in a
very masterly way. I rather suspected your professional business; but I
never guessed you would link everything up together so quickly--the
bees and the beard and the spectacles and the cipher and the necklace
and everything."
"Always satisfactory to get a case really rounded off." said Carver.
"Yes," said Father Brown, still looking at the table. "I admire it very
much." Then he added with a modesty verging on nervousness: "It's only
fair to you to say that I don't believe a word of it."
Devine leaned forward with sudden interest. "Do you mean you don't
believe he is Moonshine, the burglar?"
"I know he is the burglar, but he didn't burgle," answered Father Brown.
"I know he didn't come here, or to the great house, to steal jewels, or
get shot getting away with them. Where are the jewels?"
"Where they generally are in such cases," said Carver. "He's either
hidden them or passed them on to a confederate. This was not a one-man
job. Of course, my people are searching the garden and warning the
district."
"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Bankes, "the confederate stole the necklace
while Moonshine was looking in at the window."
"Why was Moonshine looking in at the window?" asked Father Brown
quietly. "Why should he want to look in at the window?"
"Well, what do you think?" cried the cheery John.
"I think," said Father Brown, "that he never did want to look in at the
window."
"Then why did he do it?" demanded Carver. "What's the good of talking in
the air like that? We've seen the whole thing acted before our very
eyes."
"I've seen a good many things acted before my eyes that I didn't believe
in," replied the priest. "So have you, on the stage and off."
"Father Brown," said Devine, with a certain respect in his tones, "will
you tell us why you can't believe your eyes?"
"Yes, I will try to tell you," answered the priest. Then he said gently:
"You know what I am and what we are. We don't bother you much. We try to
be friends with all our neighbours. But you can't think we do nothing.
You can't think we know nothing. We mind our own business; but we know
our own people. I knew this dead man very well indeed; I was his
confessor, and his friend. So far as a man can, I knew his mind when he
left that garden to-day; and his mind was like a glass hive full of
golden bees. It's an under-statement to say his reformation was sincere.
He was one of those great penitents who manage to make more out of
penitence than others can make out of virtue. I say I was his confessor;
but, indeed, it was I who went to him for comfort. It did me good to be
near so good a man. And when I saw him lying there dead in the garden,
it seemed to me as if certain strange words that were said of old were
spoken over him aloud in my ear. They might well be; for if ever a man
went straight to heaven, it might be he."
"Hang it all," said John Bankes restlessly, "after all, he was a
convicted thief."
"Yes," said Father Brown; "and only a convicted thief has ever in this
world heard that assurance: 'This night shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise.'"
Nobody seemed to know what to do with the silence that followed, until
Devine said, abruptly, at last:
"Then how in the world would you explain it all?"
The priest shook his head. "I can't explain it at all, just yet," he
said, simply. "I can see one or two odd things, but I don't understand
them. As yet I've nothing to go on to prove the man's innocence, except
the man. But I'm quite sure I'm right."
He sighed, and put out his hand for his big, black hat. As he removed it
he remained gazing at the table with rather a new expression, his round,
straight-haired head cocked at a new angle. It was rather as if some
curious animal had come out of his hat, as out of the hat of a conjurer.
But the others, looking at the table, could see nothing there but the
detective's documents and the tawdry old property beard and spectacles.
"Lord bless us," muttered Father Brown, "and he's lying outside dead, in
a beard and spectacles." He swung round suddenly upon Devine. "Here's
something to follow up, if you want to know. _Why did he have two
beards_?"
With that he bustled in his undignified way out of the room; but Devine
was now devoured with curiosity, and pursued him into the front garden.
"I can't tell you now," said Father Brown. "I'm not sure, and I'm
bothered about what to do. Come round and see me to-morrow, and I may be
able to tell you the whole thing. It may already be settled for me,
and--did you hear that noise?"
"A motor-car starting," remarked Devine.
"Mr. John Bankes's motor-car," said the priest. "I believe it goes very
fast."
"He certainly is of that opinion." said Devine, with a smile.
"It will go far, as well as fast, to-night," said Father Brown.
"And what do you mean by that?" demanded the other.
"I mean it will not return," replied the priest. "John Bankes suspected
something of what I knew from what I said. John Bankes has gone and the
emeralds and all the other jewels with him."
Next day, Devine found. Father Brown moving to and fro in front of the
row of beehives, sadly, but with a certain serenity.
"I've been telling the bees," he said. "You know one has to tell the
bees! 'Those singing masons building roofs of gold.' What a line!" Then
more abruptly. "He would like the bees looked after."
"I hope he doesn't want the human beings neglected, when the whole swarm
is buzzing with curiosity," observed the young man. "You were quite
right when you said that Bankes was gone with the jewels; but I don't
know how you knew, or even what there was to be known."
Father Brown blinked benevolently at the beehives and said:
"One sort of stumbles on things, and there was one stumbling-block at
the start. I was puzzled by poor Barnard being shot up at Beechwood
House. Now, even when Michael was a master criminal, he made it a point
of honour, even a point of vanity, to succeed without any killing. It
seemed extraordinary that when he had become a sort of saint he should
go out of his way to commit the sin he had despised when he was a
sinner. The rest of the business puzzled me to the last; I could make
nothing out of it, except that it wasn't true. Then I had a belated
gleam of sense when I saw the beard and goggles and remembered the thief
had come in another beard with other goggles. Now, of course, it was
just possible that he had duplicates; but it was at least a coincidence
that he used neither the old glasses nor the old beard, both in good
repair. Again, it was just possible that he went out without them and
had to procure new ones; but it was unlikely. There was nothing to make
him go motoring with Bankes at all; if he was really going burgling, he
could have taken his outfit easily in his pocket. Besides, beards don't
grow on bushes. He would have found it hard to get such things anywhere
in the time.
"No, the more I thought of it the more I felt there was something funny
about his having a completely new outfit. And then the truth began to
dawn on me by reason, which I knew already by instinct. He never did go
out with Bankes with any intention of putting on the disguise. He never
did put on the disguise. Somebody else manufactured the disguise at
leisure, and then put it on him."
"Put it on him!" repeated Devine. "How the devil could they?"
"Let us go back," said Father Brown, "and look at the thing through
another window--the window through which the young lady saw the ghost."
"The ghost!" repeated the other, with a slight start.
"She called it the ghost," said the little man, with composure, "and
perhaps she was not so far wrong. It's quite true that she is what they
call psychic. Her only mistake is in thinking that being psychic is
being spiritual. Some animals are psychic; anyhow, she is a sensitive,
and she was right when she felt that the face at the window had a sort of
horrible halo of deathly things."
"You mean----" began Devine.
"I mean it was a dead man who looked in at the window," said Father
Brown. "It was a dead man who crawled round more than one house, looking
in at more than one window. Creepy, wasn't it? But in one way it was the
reverse of a ghost; for it was not the antic of the soul freed from the
body. It was the antic of the body freed from the soul."
He blinked again at the beehive and continued: "But, I suppose, the
shortest explanation is to take it from the standpoint of the man who
did it. You know the man who did it. John Bankes."
"The very last man I should have thought of," said Devine.