guessed it. I ought to have guessed it when I first went in and saw the
thing standing there."
"When you saw what?" asked Granby impatiently.
"When I saw there was only one suit of armour," answered Father Brown.
There was a silence during which the lawyer only stared at his friend,
and then the friend resumed.
"Only the other day I was just going to tell my niece that there are two
types of men who can laugh when they are alone. One might almost say the
man who does it is either very good or very bad. You see, he is either
confiding the joke to God or confiding it to the Devil. But anyhow he
has an inner life. Well, there really is a kind of man who confides the
joke to the Devil. He does not mind if nobody sees the joke; if nobody
can safely be allowed even to know the joke. The joke is enough in
itself, if it is sufficiently sinister and malignant."
"But what are you talking about?" demanded Granby. "_Whom_ are you talking
about? Which of them, I mean? _Who_ is this person who is having a
sinister joke with his Satanic Majesty?"
Father Brown looked across at him with a ghastly smile.
"Ah," he said, "that's the joke."
There was another silence, but this time the silence seemed to be rather
full and oppressive than merely empty; it seemed to settle down on them
like the twilight that was gradually turning from dusk to dark. Father
Brown went on speaking in a level voice, sitting stolidly with his
elbows on the table.
"I've been locking up the Musgrave family," he said. "They are vigorous
and long-lived stock, and even in the ordinary way I should think you
would wait a good time for your money."
"We're quite prepared for that," answered the solicitor; "but anyhow it
can't last indefinitely. The old man is nearly eighty, though he still
walks about, and the people at the inn here laugh and say they don't
believe he will ever die."
Father Brown jumped up with one of his rare but rapid movements, but
remained with his hands on the table, leaning forward and looking his
friend in the face.
"That's it," he cried in a low but excited voice. "That's the only
problem. That's the only real difficulty. How will he die? How on earth
is he to die?"
"What on earth do you mean?" asked Granby.
"I mean," came the voice of the priest out of the darkening room, "that
I know the crime that James Musgrave committed."
His tones had such a chill in them that Granby could hardly repress a
shiver; he murmured a further question.
"It was really the worst crime in the world," said Father Brown. "At
least, many communities and civilizations have accounted it so. It was
always from the earliest times marked out in tribe and village for
tremendous punishment. But anyhow, I know now what young Musgrave really
did and why he did it."
"And what did he do?" asked the lawyer.
"He killed his father," answered the priest.
The lawyer in his turn rose from his seat and gazed across the table
with wrinkled brows.
"But his father is at the castle," he cried in sharp tones.
"His father is in the moat," said the priest, "and I was a fool not to
have known it from the first when something bothered me about that suit
of armour. Don't you remember the look of that room? How very carefully
it was arranged and decorated? There were two crossed battle-axes hung
on one side of the fireplace, two crossed battle-axes on the other.
There was a round Scottish shield on one wall, a round Scottish shield
on the other. And there was a stand of armour guarding one side of the
hearth, and an empty space on the other. Nothing will make me believe
that a man who arranged all the rest of that room with that exaggerated
symmetry left that one feature of it lopsided. There was almost
certainly another man in armour. And what has become of him?"
He paused a moment, and then went on in a more matter-of-fact tone:
"When you come to think of it, it's a very good plan for a murder, and
meets the permanent problem of the disposal of the body. The body could
stand inside that complete tilting-armour for hours, or even days, while
servants came and went, until the murderer could simply drag it out in
the dead of night and lower it into the moat, without even crossing the
bridge. And then what a good chance he ran! As soon as the body was at
all decayed in the stagnant water there would sooner or later be nothing
but a skeleton in fourteenth-century armour, a thing very likely to be
found in the moat of an old Border castle. It was unlikely that anybody
would look for anything there, but if they did, that would soon be all
they would find. And I got some confirmation of that. That was when you
said I was looking for a rare plant; it was a plant in a good many
senses, if you'll excuse the jest. I saw the marks of two feet sunk so
deep into the solid bank I was sure that the man was either very heavy
or was carrying something very heavy. Also, by the way, there's another
moral from that little incident when I made my celebrated graceful and
cat-like leap."
"My brain is rather reeling," said Granby, "but I begin to have some
notion of what all this nightmare is about. What about you and your
cat-like leap?"
"At the post office to-day," said Father Brown, "I casually confirmed
the statement the baronet made to me yesterday, that he had been there
just after closing-time on the day previous--that is, not only on the
very day we arrived, but at the very time we arrived. Don't you see what
that means? It means that he was actually out when we called, and came
back while we were waiting; and that was why we had to wait so long. And
when I saw that, I suddenly saw a picture that told the whole story.'
"Well," asked the other impatiently, "and what about it?"
"An old man of eighty can walk," said Father Brown. "An old man can even
walk a good deal, pottering about in country lanes. But an old man can't
_jump_. He would be an even less graceful jumper than I was. Yet, if the
baronet came back while we were waiting, he must have come in as we came
in--by jumping the moat--for the bridge wasn't lowered till later. I
rather guess he had hampered it himself to delay inconvenient visitors,
to judge by the rapidity with which it was repaired. But that doesn't
matter. When I saw that fancy picture of the black figure with the grey
hair taking a flying leap across the moat I knew instantly that it was a
young man dressed up as an old man. And there you have the whole story."
"You mean," said Granby slowly, "that this pleasing youth killed his
father, hid the corpse first in the armour and then in the moat,
disguised himself and so on?"
"They happened to be almost exactly alike," said the priest. "You could
see from the family portraits how strong the likeness ran. And then you
talk of his disguising himself. But in a sense everybody's dress is a
disguise. The old man disguised himself in a wig, and the young man in a
foreign beard. When he shaved and put the wig on his cropped head he was
exactly like his father, with a little make-up. Of course, you
understand now why he was so very polite about getting you to come up
next day here by car. It was because he himself was coming up that night
by train. He got in front of you, committed his crime, assumed his
disguise, and was ready for the legal negotiations."
"Ah," said Granby thoughtfully, "the legal negotiations! You mean, of
course, that the real old baronet would have negotiated very
differently.
"He would have told you plainly that the Captain would never get a
penny," said Father Brown. "The plot, queer as it sounds, was really the
only way of preventing his telling you so. But I want you to appreciate
the cunning of what the fellow did tell you. His plan answered several
purposes at once. He was being blackmailed by these Russians for some
villainy; I suspect for treason during the war. He escaped from them at
a stroke, and probably sent them chasing off to Riga after him. But the
most beautiful refinement of all was that theory he enunciated about
recognizing his son as an heir, but not as a human being. Don't you see
that while it secured the _post obit_, it also provided some sort of
answer to what would soon be the greatest difficulty of all?"
"I see several difficulties," said Granby; "which one do you mean?"
"I mean that if the son was not even disinherited, it would look rather
odd that the father and son never met. The theory of a private
repudiation answered that. So there only remained one difficulty, as I
say, which is probably perplexing the gentleman now. How on earth is the
old man to die?"
"I know how he ought to die," said Granby.
Father Brown seemed to be a little bemused, and went on in a more
abstracted fashion.
"And yet there is something more in it than that," he said. "There was
something about that theory that he liked in a way that is more--well,
more theoretical. It gave him an insane intellectual pleasure to tell
you in one character that he had committed a crime in another
character--when he really had. That is what I mean by the infernal
irony; by the joke shared with the Devil. Shall I tell you something
that sounds like what they call a paradox? Sometimes it is a joy in the
very heart of hell to tell the truth. And above all, to tell it so that
everybody misunderstands it. That is why he liked that antic of
pretending to be somebody else, and then painting himself as black--as
he was. And that was why my niece heard him laughing to himself all
alone in the picture gallery."
Granby gave a slight start, like a person brought back to common things
with a bump.
"Your niece," he cried. "Didn't her mother want her to marry Musgrave? A
question of wealth and position, I suppose."
"Yes," said Father Brown dryly; "her mother was all in favour of a
prudent marriage."
VII
THE RED MOON OF MERU
EVERYONE agreed that the bazaar at Mallowood Abbey (by kind
permission of Lady Mounteagle) was a great success; there were
roundabouts and swings and side-shows, which the people greatly enjoyed;
I would also mention the Charity, which was the excellent object of the
proceedings, if any of them could tell me what it was.
However, it is only with a few of them that we are here concerned; and
especially with three of them, a lady and two gentlemen, who passed
between two of the principal tents or pavilions, their voices high in
argument. On their right was the tent of the Master of the Mountain,
that world-famous fortune-teller by crystals and chiromancy; a rich
purple tent, all over which were traced, in black and gold, the
sprawling outlines of Asiatic gods waving any number of arms like
octopods. Perhaps they symbolized the readiness of divine help to be had
within; perhaps they merely implied that the ideal being of a pious
palmist would have as many hands as possible. On the other side stood
the plainer tent of Phroso the Phrenologist; more austerely decorated
with diagrams of the heads of Socrates and Shakespeare, which were
apparently of a lumpy sort. But these were presented merely in black and
white, with numbers and notes, as became the rigid dignity of a purely
rationalistic science. The purple tent had an opening like a black
cavern, and all was fittingly silent within. But Phroso the
Phrenologist, a lean, shabby, sunburnt person, with an almost improbably
fierce black moustache and whiskers, was standing outside his own
temple, and talking, at the top of his voice, to nobody in particular,
explaining that the head of any passer-by would doubtless prove, on
examination, to be every bit as knobbly as Shakespeare's. Indeed, the
moment the lady appeared between the tents, the vigilant Phroso leapt on
her and offered, with a pantomime of old-world courtesy, to feel her
bumps.
She refused with civility that was rather like rudeness; but she must be
excused, because she was in the middle of an argument. She also had to
be excused, or at any rate was excused, because she was Lady Mounteagle.
She was not a nonentity, however, in any sense; she was at once handsome
and haggard, with a hungry look in her deep, dark eyes and something
eager and almost fierce about her smile. Her dress was bizarre for the
period; for it was before the Great War had left us in our present mood
of gravity and recollection. Indeed, the dress was rather like the
purple tent; being of a semi-oriental sort, covered with exotic and
esoteric emblems. But everyone knew that the Mounteagles were mad; which
was the popular way of saying that she and her husband were interested
in the creeds and culture of the East.
The eccentricity of the lady was a great contrast to the conventionality
of the two gentlemen, who were braced and buttoned up in all the stiffer
fashion of that far-off day, from the tips of their gloves to their
bright top hats. Yet even here there was a difference; for James
Hardcastle managed at once to look correct and distinguished, while
Tommy Hunter only looked correct and commonplace. Hardcastle was a
promising politician; who seemed in society to be interested in
everything except politics. It may be answered gloomily that every
politician is emphatically a promising politician. But to do him
justice, he had often exhibited himself as a performing politician. No
purple tent in the bazaar, however, had been provided for him to perform
in.
"For my part," he said, screwing in the monocle that was the only gleam
in his hard, legal face, "I think we must exhaust the possibilities of
mesmerism before we talk about magic. Remarkable psychological powers
undoubtedly exist, even in apparently backward peoples. Marvellous
things have been done by fakirs."
"Did you say done by fakers?" asked the other young man, with doubtful
innocence.
"Tommy, you are simply silly," said the lady. "Why will you keep barging
in on things you don't understand? You're like a schoolboy screaming out
that he knows how a conjuring trick is done. It's all so Early
Victorian--that schoolboy scepticism. As for mesmerism, I doubt whether
you can stretch it to----"
At this point Lady Mounteagle seemed to catch sight of somebody she
wanted; a black stumpy figure standing at a booth where children were
throwing hoops at hideous table ornaments. She darted across and cried:
"Father Brown, I've been looking for you. I want to ask you something,
Do you believe in fortune-telling?"
The person addressed looked rather helplessly at the little hoop in his
hand and said at last:
"I wonder in which sense you're using the word 'believe.' Of course, if
it's all a fraud----"
"Oh, but the Master of the Mountain isn't a bit of a fraud," she cried.
"He isn't a common conjurer or a fortune-teller at all. It's really a
great honour for him to condescend to tell fortunes at my parties; he's
a great religious leader in his own country; a Prophet and a Seer. And
even his fortune-telling isn't vulgar stuff about coming into a fortune.
He tells you great spiritual truths about yourself, about your ideals."
"Quite so," said Father Brown. "That's what I object to. I was just
going to say that if it's all a fraud, I don't mind it so much. It can't
be much more of a fraud than most things at fancy bazaars; and there, in
a way, it's a sort of practical joke. But if it's a religion and reveals
spiritual truths--then it's all as false as hell and I wouldn't touch
it with a barge-pole."
"That is something of a paradox," said Hardcastle, with a smile.
"I wonder what a paradox is," remarked the priest in a ruminant manner.
"It seems to me obvious enough. I suppose it wouldn't do very much harm
if somebody dressed up as a German spy and pretended to have told all
sorts of lies to the Germans. But if a man is trading in the _truth_ with
the Germans--well! So I think if a fortune-teller is trading in _truth_
like that----"
"You really think," began Hardcastle grimly.
"Yes," said the other; "I think he is trading with the enemy."
Tommy Hunter broke into a chuckle. "Well," he said, "if Father Brown
thinks they're good so long as they're frauds, I should think he'd
consider this copper-coloured prophet a sort of saint."
"My cousin Tom is incorrigible," said Lady Mounteagle. "He's always
going about showing up adepts, as he calls it. He only came down here in
a hurry when he heard the Master was to be here, I believe. He'd have
tried to show up Buddha or Moses."
"Thought you wanted looking after a bit," said the young man, with a
grin on his round face. "So I toddled down. Don't like this brown monkey
crawling about."
"There you go again!" said Lady Mounteagle. "Years ago, when I was in
India, I suppose we all had that sort of prejudice against brown people.
But now I know something about their wonderful spiritual powers, I'm
glad to say I know better."
"Our prejudices seem to cut opposite ways," said Father Brown. "You
excuse his being brown because he is brahminical; and I excuse his being
brahminical because he is brown. Frankly, I don't care for spiritual
powers much myself. I've got much more sympathy with spiritual
weaknesses. But I can't see why anybody should dislike him merely
because he is the same beautiful colour as copper, or coffee, or nut-brown
ale, or those jolly peat-streams in the North. But then," he
added, looking across at the lady and screwing up his eyes, "I suppose
I'm prejudiced in favour of anything that's called brown."
"There now!" cried Lady Mounteagle with a sort of triumph. "I knew you
were only talking nonsense!"
"Well," grumbled the aggrieved youth with the round face. "When anybody
talks sense you call it schoolboy scepticism. When's the crystal-gazing
going to begin?"
"Any time you like, I believe," replied the lady. "It isn't crystal-gazing,
as a matter of fact, but palmistry; I suppose you would say it
was all the same sort of nonsense."
"I think there is a _via media_ between sense and nonsense," said
Hardcastle, smiling. "There are explanations that are natural and not at
all nonsensical; and yet the results are very amazing. Are you coming in
to be operated on? I confess I am full of curiosity."
"Oh, I've no patience with such nonsense," spluttered the sceptic, whose
round face had become rather a red face with the heat of his contempt
and incredulity. "I'll let you waste your time on your mahogany
mountebank; I'd rather go and throw at coconuts."
The Phrenologist, still hovering near, darted at the opening.
"Heads, my dear sir," he said, "human skulls are of a contour far more
subtle than that of coco-nuts. No coconut can compare with your own
most----"
Hardcastle had already dived into the dark entry of the purple tent; and
they heard a low murmur of voices within. As Tom Hunter turned on the
Phrenologist with an impatient answer, in which he showed a regrettable
indifference to the line between natural and preternatural sciences, the
lady was just about to continue her little argument with the little
priest, when she stopped in some surprise.
James Hardcastle had come out of the tent again, and in his grim face
and glaring monocle, surprise was even more vividly depicted.
"He's not there," remarked the politician abruptly. "He's gone. Some
aged nigger, who seems to constitute his _suite_, jabbered something I
to me to the effect that the Master had gone forth rather than sell
sacred secrets for gold."
Lady Mounteagle turned radiantly to the rest. "There now," she cried. "I
told you he was a cut above anything you fancied! He hates being here in
a crowd; he's gone back to his solitude."
"I am sorry," said Father Brown gravely. "I may have done him an
injustice. Do you know where he has gone?"
"I think so," said his hostess equally gravely. "When he wants to be
alone, he always goes to the cloisters, just at the end of the left
wing, beyond my husband's study and private museum, you know. Perhaps
you know this house was once an abbey."
"I have heard something about it," answered the priest, with a faint
smile.
"We'll go there, if you like," said the lady, briskly. "You really ought
to see my husband's collection; or the Red Moon at any rate. Haven't you
ever heard of the Red Moon of Meru? Yes, it's a ruby."
"I should be delighted to see the collection," said Hardcastle quietly,
"including the Master of the Mountain, if that prophet is one exhibit
in the museum." And they all turned towards the path leading to the
house.
"All the same," muttered the sceptical Thomas, as he brought up the
rear, "I should very much like to know what the brown beast _did_ come
here for, if he didn't come to tell fortunes."
As he disappeared, the indomitable Phroso made one more dart after him,
almost snatching at his coat-tails.
"The bump----" he began.
"No bump," said the youth, "only a hump. Hump I always have when I come
down to see Mounteagle." And he took to his heels to escape the embrace
of the man of science.
On their way to the cloisters the visitors had to pass through the long
room that was devoted by Lord Mounteagle to his remarkable private
museum of Asiatic charms and mascots. Through one open door, in the
length of the wall opposite, they could see the Gothic arches and the
glimmer of daylight between them, marking the square open space, round
the roofed border of which the monks had walked in older days. But they
had to pass something that seemed at first sight rather more
extraordinary than the ghost of a monk.
It was an elderly gentleman, robed from head to foot in white, with a
pale green turban, but a very pink and white English complexion and the
smooth white moustaches of some amiable Anglo-Indian colonel. This was
Lord Mounteagle, who had taken his Oriental pleasures more sadly, or at
least more seriously than his wife. He could talk of nothing whatever,
except Oriental religion and philosophy; and had thought it necessary
even to dress in the manner of an Oriental hermit. While he was
delighted to show his treasures, he seemed to treasure them much more
for the truths supposed to be symbolized in them than for their value in
collections, let alone cash. Even when he brought out the great ruby,
perhaps the only thing of great value in the museum, in a merely
monetary sense, he seemed to be much more interested in its name than in
its size, let alone its price.
The others were all staring at what seemed a stupendously large red
stone, burning like a bonfire seen through a rain of blood. But Lord
Mounteagle rolled it loosely in his palm without looking at it; and
staring at the ceiling, told them a long tale about the legendary
character of Mount Meru, and how, in the Gnostic mythology, it had been
the place of the wrestling of nameless primeval powers.
Towards the end of the lecture on the Demiurge of the Gnostics (not
forgetting its connexion with the parallel concept of Manichæus), even
the tactful Mr. Hardcastle thought it time to create a diversion. He
asked to be allowed to look at the stone; and as evening was closing in,
and the long room with its single door was steadily darkening, he
stepped out in the cloister beyond, to examine the jewel by a better
light. It was then that they first became conscious, slowly and almost
creepily conscious, of the living presence of the Master of the
Mountain.
The cloister was on the usual plan, as regards its original structure;
but the line of Gothic pillars and pointed arches that formed the inner
square was linked together all along by a low wall, about waist high,
turning the Gothic doors into Gothic windows and giving each a sort of
flat window-sill of stone. This alteration was probably of ancient date;
but there were other alterations of a quainter sort, which witnessed to
the rather unusual individual ideas of Lord and Lady Mounteagle. Between
the pillars hung thin curtains, or rather veils, made of beads or light
canes, in a continental or southern manner; and on these again could be
traced the lines and colours of Asiatic dragons or idols, that
contrasted with the grey Gothic framework in which they were suspended.
But this, while it further troubled the dying light of the place, was
the least of the incongruities of which the company, with very varying
feelings, became aware.