M. Armagnac looked at M. Brun. M. Brun borrowed the letter, read it, and
looked at M. Armagnac. Then both betook themselves briskly to one of the
little tables under the chestnuts opposite, where they procured two tall
glasses of horrible green absinthe, which they could drink apparently in
any weather and at any time. Otherwise the cafe seemed empty, except
for one soldier drinking coffee at one table, and at another a large man
drinking a small syrup and a priest drinking nothing.
Maurice Brun cleared his throat and said: “Of course we must help the
master in every way, but--”
There was an abrupt silence, and Armagnac said: “He may have excellent
reasons for not meeting the man himself, but--”
Before either could complete a sentence, it was evident that the invader
had been expelled from the house opposite. The shrubs under the archway
swayed and burst apart, as that unwelcome guest was shot out of them
like a cannon-ball.
He was a sturdy figure in a small and tilted Tyrolean felt hat, a
figure that had indeed something generally Tyrolean about it. The man’s
shoulders were big and broad, but his legs were neat and active in
knee-breeches and knitted stockings. His face was brown like a nut; he
had very bright and restless brown eyes; his dark hair was brushed
back stiffly in front and cropped close behind, outlining a square and
powerful skull; and he had a huge black moustache like the horns of a
bison. Such a substantial head is generally based on a bull neck; but
this was hidden by a big coloured scarf, swathed round up the man’s ears
and falling in front inside his jacket like a sort of fancy waistcoat.
It was a scarf of strong dead colours, dark red and old gold and purple,
probably of Oriental fabrication. Altogether the man had something a
shade barbaric about him; more like a Hungarian squire than an ordinary
French officer. His French, however, was obviously that of a native;
and his French patriotism was so impulsive as to be slightly absurd.
His first act when he burst out of the archway was to call in a clarion
voice down the street: “Are there any Frenchmen here?” as if he were
calling for Christians in Mecca.
Armagnac and Brun instantly stood up; but they were too late. Men
were already running from the street corners; there was a small but
ever-clustering crowd. With the prompt French instinct for the politics
of the street, the man with the black moustache had already run across
to a corner of the cafe, sprung on one of the tables, and seizing a
branch of chestnut to steady himself, shouted as Camille Desmoulins once
shouted when he scattered the oak-leaves among the populace.
“Frenchmen!” he volleyed; “I cannot speak! God help me, that is why I
am speaking! The fellows in their filthy parliaments who learn to
speak also learn to be silent--silent as that spy cowering in the house
opposite! Silent as he is when I beat on his bedroom door! Silent as he
is now, though he hears my voice across this street and shakes where he
sits! Oh, they can be silent eloquently--the politicians! But the time
has come when we that cannot speak must speak. You are betrayed to the
Prussians. Betrayed at this moment. Betrayed by that man. I am Jules
Dubosc, Colonel of Artillery, Belfort. We caught a German spy in the
Vosges yesterday, and a paper was found on him--a paper I hold in my
hand. Oh, they tried to hush it up; but I took it direct to the man who
wrote it--the man in that house! It is in his hand. It is signed with
his initials. It is a direction for finding the secret of this new
Noiseless Powder. Hirsch invented it; Hirsch wrote this note about it.
This note is in German, and was found in a German’s pocket. ‘Tell the
man the formula for powder is in grey envelope in first drawer to the
left of Secretary’s desk, War Office, in red ink. He must be careful.
P.H.’”
He rattled short sentences like a quick-firing gun, but he was plainly
the sort of man who is either mad or right. The mass of the crowd
was Nationalist, and already in threatening uproar; and a minority of
equally angry Intellectuals, led by Armagnac and Brun, only made the
majority more militant.
“If this is a military secret,” shouted Brun, “why do you yell about it
in the street?”
“I will tell you why I do!” roared Dubosc above the roaring crowd. “I
went to this man in straight and civil style. If he had any explanation
it could have been given in complete confidence. He refuses to explain.
He refers me to two strangers in a cafe as to two flunkeys. He has
thrown me out of the house, but I am going back into it, with the people
of Paris behind me!”
A shout seemed to shake the very facade of mansions and two stones flew,
one breaking a window above the balcony. The indignant Colonel plunged
once more under the archway and was heard crying and thundering inside.
Every instant the human sea grew wider and wider; it surged up against
the rails and steps of the traitor’s house; it was already certain that
the place would be burst into like the Bastille, when the broken french
window opened and Dr Hirsch came out on the balcony. For an instant
the fury half turned to laughter; for he was an absurd figure in such
a scene. His long bare neck and sloping shoulders were the shape of a
champagne bottle, but that was the only festive thing about him. His
coat hung on him as on a peg; he wore his carrot-coloured hair long
and weedy; his cheeks and chin were fully fringed with one of those
irritating beards that begin far from the mouth. He was very pale, and
he wore blue spectacles.
Livid as he was, he spoke with a sort of prim decision, so that the mob
fell silent in the middle of his third sentence.
“...only two things to say to you now. The first is to my foes, the
second to my friends. To my foes I say: It is true I will not meet M.
Dubosc, though he is storming outside this very room. It is true I have
asked two other men to confront him for me. And I will tell you why!
Because I will not and must not see him--because it would be against all
rules of dignity and honour to see him. Before I am triumphantly cleared
before a court, there is another arbitration this gentleman owes me as a
gentleman, and in referring him to my seconds I am strictly--”
Armagnac and Brun were waving their hats wildly, and even the Doctor’s
enemies roared applause at this unexpected defiance. Once more a few
sentences were inaudible, but they could hear him say: “To my friends--I
myself should always prefer weapons purely intellectual, and to these
an evolved humanity will certainly confine itself. But our own most
precious truth is the fundamental force of matter and heredity. My books
are successful; my theories are unrefuted; but I suffer in politics
from a prejudice almost physical in the French. I cannot speak like
Clemenceau and Deroulede, for their words are like echoes of their
pistols. The French ask for a duellist as the English ask for a
sportsman. Well, I give my proofs: I will pay this barbaric bribe, and
then go back to reason for the rest of my life.”
Two men were instantly found in the crowd itself to offer their services
to Colonel Dubosc, who came out presently, satisfied. One was the common
soldier with the coffee, who said simply: “I will act for you, sir. I
am the Duc de Valognes.” The other was the big man, whom his friend the
priest sought at first to dissuade; and then walked away alone.
In the early evening a light dinner was spread at the back of the Cafe
Charlemagne. Though unroofed by any glass or gilt plaster, the guests
were nearly all under a delicate and irregular roof of leaves; for the
ornamental trees stood so thick around and among the tables as to give
something of the dimness and the dazzle of a small orchard. At one of
the central tables a very stumpy little priest sat in complete solitude,
and applied himself to a pile of whitebait with the gravest sort of
enjoyment. His daily living being very plain, he had a peculiar taste
for sudden and isolated luxuries; he was an abstemious epicure. He did
not lift his eyes from his plate, round which red pepper, lemons, brown
bread and butter, etc., were rigidly ranked, until a tall shadow fell
across the table, and his friend Flambeau sat down opposite. Flambeau
was gloomy.
“I’m afraid I must chuck this business,” said he heavily. “I’m all on
the side of the French soldiers like Dubosc, and I’m all against the
French atheists like Hirsch; but it seems to me in this case we’ve made
a mistake. The Duke and I thought it as well to investigate the charge,
and I must say I’m glad we did.”
“Is the paper a forgery, then?” asked the priest
“That’s just the odd thing,” replied Flambeau. “It’s exactly like
Hirsch’s writing, and nobody can point out any mistake in it. But it
wasn’t written by Hirsch. If he’s a French patriot he didn’t write it,
because it gives information to Germany. And if he’s a German spy he
didn’t write it, well--because it doesn’t give information to Germany.”
“You mean the information is wrong?” asked Father Brown.
“Wrong,” replied the other, “and wrong exactly where Dr Hirsch would
have been right--about the hiding-place of his own secret formula in his
own official department. By favour of Hirsch and the authorities, the
Duke and I have actually been allowed to inspect the secret drawer at
the War Office where the Hirsch formula is kept. We are the only people
who have ever known it, except the inventor himself and the Minister for
War; but the Minister permitted it to save Hirsch from fighting. After
that we really can’t support Dubosc if his revelation is a mare’s nest.”
“And it is?” asked Father Brown.
“It is,” said his friend gloomily. “It is a clumsy forgery by somebody
who knew nothing of the real hiding-place. It says the paper is in the
cupboard on the right of the Secretary’s desk. As a fact the cupboard
with the secret drawer is some way to the left of the desk. It says
the grey envelope contains a long document written in red ink. It isn’t
written in red ink, but in ordinary black ink. It’s manifestly absurd to
say that Hirsch can have made a mistake about a paper that nobody knew
of but himself; or can have tried to help a foreign thief by telling him
to fumble in the wrong drawer. I think we must chuck it up and apologize
to old Carrots.”
Father Brown seemed to cogitate; he lifted a little whitebait on his
fork. “You are sure the grey envelope was in the left cupboard?” he
asked.
“Positive,” replied Flambeau. “The grey envelope--it was a white
envelope really--was--”
Father Brown put down the small silver fish and the fork and stared
across at his companion. “What?” he asked, in an altered voice.
“Well, what?” repeated Flambeau, eating heartily.
“It was not grey,” said the priest. “Flambeau, you frighten me.”
“What the deuce are you frightened of?”
“I’m frightened of a white envelope,” said the other seriously, “If it
had only just been grey! Hang it all, it might as well have been grey.
But if it was white, the whole business is black. The Doctor has been
dabbling in some of the old brimstone after all.”
“But I tell you he couldn’t have written such a note!” cried Flambeau.
“The note is utterly wrong about the facts. And innocent or guilty, Dr
Hirsch knew all about the facts.”
“The man who wrote that note knew all about the facts,” said his
clerical companion soberly. “He could never have got ‘em so wrong
without knowing about ‘em. You have to know an awful lot to be wrong on
every subject--like the devil.”
“Do you mean--?”
“I mean a man telling lies on chance would have told some of the truth,”
said his friend firmly. “Suppose someone sent you to find a house with
a green door and a blue blind, with a front garden but no back garden,
with a dog but no cat, and where they drank coffee but not tea. You
would say if you found no such house that it was all made up. But I say
no. I say if you found a house where the door was blue and the blind
green, where there was a back garden and no front garden, where cats
were common and dogs instantly shot, where tea was drunk in quarts and
coffee forbidden--then you would know you had found the house. The man
must have known that particular house to be so accurately inaccurate.”
“But what could it mean?” demanded the diner opposite.
“I can’t conceive,” said Brown; “I don’t understand this Hirsch affair
at all. As long as it was only the left drawer instead of the right, and
red ink instead of black, I thought it must be the chance blunders of a
forger, as you say. But three is a mystical number; it finishes things.
It finishes this. That the direction about the drawer, the colour of
ink, the colour of envelope, should none of them be right by accident,
that can’t be a coincidence. It wasn’t.”
“What was it, then? Treason?” asked Flambeau, resuming his dinner.
“I don’t know that either,” answered Brown, with a face of blank
bewilderment. “The only thing I can think of.... Well, I never
understood that Dreyfus case. I can always grasp moral evidence easier
than the other sorts. I go by a man’s eyes and voice, don’t you know,
and whether his family seems happy, and by what subjects he chooses--and
avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. Not by the horrible
things imputed both ways; I know (though it’s not modern to say so) that
human nature in the highest places is still capable of being Cenci or
Borgia. No--, what puzzled me was the sincerity of both parties. I don’t
mean the political parties; the rank and file are always roughly
honest, and often duped. I mean the persons of the play. I mean the
conspirators, if they were conspirators. I mean the traitor, if he was a
traitor. I mean the men who must have known the truth. Now Dreyfus
went on like a man who knew he was a wronged man. And yet the French
statesmen and soldiers went on as if they knew he wasn’t a wronged man
but simply a wrong ‘un. I don’t mean they behaved well; I mean they
behaved as if they were sure. I can’t describe these things; I know what
I mean.”
“I wish I did,” said his friend. “And what has it to do with old
Hirsch?”
“Suppose a person in a position of trust,” went on the priest, “began to
give the enemy information because it was false information. Suppose
he even thought he was saving his country by misleading the foreigner.
Suppose this brought him into spy circles, and little loans were made
to him, and little ties tied on to him. Suppose he kept up his
contradictory position in a confused way by never telling the foreign
spies the truth, but letting it more and more be guessed. The better
part of him (what was left of it) would still say: ‘I have not helped
the enemy; I said it was the left drawer.’ The meaner part of him would
already be saying: ‘But they may have the sense to see that means the
right.’ I think it is psychologically possible--in an enlightened age,
you know.”
“It may be psychologically possible,” answered Flambeau, “and it
certainly would explain Dreyfus being certain he was wronged and his
judges being sure he was guilty. But it won’t wash historically, because
Dreyfus’s document (if it was his document) was literally correct.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Dreyfus,” said Father Brown.
Silence had sunk around them with the emptying of the tables; it was
already late, though the sunlight still clung to everything, as if
accidentally entangled in the trees. In the stillness Flambeau shifted
his seat sharply--making an isolated and echoing noise--and threw his
elbow over the angle of it. “Well,” he said, rather harshly, “if Hirsch
is not better than a timid treason-monger...”
“You mustn’t be too hard on them,” said Father Brown gently. “It’s not
entirely their fault; but they have no instincts. I mean those things
that make a woman refuse to dance with a man or a man to touch an
investment. They’ve been taught that it’s all a matter of degree.”
“Anyhow,” cried Flambeau impatiently, “he’s not a patch on my principal;
and I shall go through with it. Old Dubosc may be a bit mad, but he’s a
sort of patriot after all.”
Father Brown continued to consume whitebait.
Something in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau’s fierce black
eyes to ramble over his companion afresh. “What’s the matter with you?”
Flambeau demanded. “Dubosc’s all right in that way. You don’t doubt
him?”
“My friend,” said the small priest, laying down his knife and fork in a
kind of cold despair, “I doubt everything. Everything, I mean, that has
happened today. I doubt the whole story, though it has been acted before
my face. I doubt every sight that my eyes have seen since morning. There
is something in this business quite different from the ordinary police
mystery where one man is more or less lying and the other man more or
less telling the truth. Here both men.... Well! I’ve told you the only
theory I can think of that could satisfy anybody. It doesn’t satisfy
me.”
“Nor me either,” replied Flambeau frowning, while the other went on
eating fish with an air of entire resignation. “If all you can suggest
is that notion of a message conveyed by contraries, I call it uncommonly
clever, but...well, what would you call it?”
“I should call it thin,” said the priest promptly. “I should call it
uncommonly thin. But that’s the queer thing about the whole business.
The lie is like a schoolboy’s. There are only three versions, Dubosc’s
and Hirsch’s and that fancy of mine. Either that note was written by
a French officer to ruin a French official; or it was written by the
French official to help German officers; or it was written by the French
official to mislead German officers. Very well. You’d expect a secret
paper passing between such people, officials or officers, to look
quite different from that. You’d expect, probably a cipher, certainly
abbreviations; most certainly scientific and strictly professional
terms. But this thing’s elaborately simple, like a penny dreadful: ‘In
the purple grotto you will find the golden casket.’ It looks as if... as
if it were meant to be seen through at once.”
Almost before they could take it in a short figure in French uniform
had walked up to their table like the wind, and sat down with a sort of
thump.
“I have extraordinary news,” said the Duc de Valognes. “I have just come
from this Colonel of ours. He is packing up to leave the country, and he
asks us to make his excuses sur le terrain.”
“What?” cried Flambeau, with an incredulity quite
frightful--“apologize?”
“Yes,” said the Duke gruffly; “then and there--before everybody--when
the swords are drawn. And you and I have to do it while he is leaving
the country.”
“But what can this mean?” cried Flambeau. “He can’t be afraid of that
little Hirsch! Confound it!” he cried, in a kind of rational rage;
“nobody could be afraid of Hirsch!”
“I believe it’s some plot!” snapped Valognes--“some plot of the Jews and
Freemasons. It’s meant to work up glory for Hirsch...”
The face of Father Brown was commonplace, but curiously contented; it
could shine with ignorance as well as with knowledge. But there was
always one flash when the foolish mask fell, and the wise mask fitted
itself in its place; and Flambeau, who knew his friend, knew that his
friend had suddenly understood. Brown said nothing, but finished his
plate of fish.
“Where did you last see our precious Colonel?” asked Flambeau,
irritably.
“He’s round at the Hotel Saint Louis by the Elysee, where we drove with
him. He’s packing up, I tell you.”
“Will he be there still, do you think?” asked Flambeau, frowning at the
table.
“I don’t think he can get away yet,” replied the Duke; “he’s packing to
go a long journey...”
“No,” said Father Brown, quite simply, but suddenly standing up, “for a
very short journey. For one of the shortest, in fact. But we may still
be in time to catch him if we go there in a motor-cab.”
Nothing more could be got out of him until the cab swept round the
corner by the Hotel Saint Louis, where they got out, and he led the
party up a side lane already in deep shadow with the growing dusk. Once,
when the Duke impatiently asked whether Hirsch was guilty of treason or
not, he answered rather absently: “No; only of ambition--like Caesar.”
Then he somewhat inconsequently added: “He lives a very lonely life; he
has had to do everything for himself.”
“Well, if he’s ambitious, he ought to be satisfied now,” said Flambeau
rather bitterly. “All Paris will cheer him now our cursed Colonel has
turned tail.”
“Don’t talk so loud,” said Father Brown, lowering his voice, “your
cursed Colonel is just in front.”
The other two started and shrank farther back into the shadow of the
wall, for the sturdy figure of their runaway principal could indeed be
seen shuffling along in the twilight in front, a bag in each hand. He
looked much the same as when they first saw him, except that he had
changed his picturesque mountaineering knickers for a conventional pair
of trousers. It was clear he was already escaping from the hotel.
The lane down which they followed him was one of those that seem to
be at the back of things, and look like the wrong side of the stage
scenery. A colourless, continuous wall ran down one flank of it,
interrupted at intervals by dull-hued and dirt-stained doors, all shut
fast and featureless save for the chalk scribbles of some passing
gamin. The tops of trees, mostly rather depressing evergreens, showed
at intervals over the top of the wall, and beyond them in the grey and
purple gloaming could be seen the back of some long terrace of tall
Parisian houses, really comparatively close, but somehow looking as
inaccessible as a range of marble mountains. On the other side of the
lane ran the high gilt railings of a gloomy park.
Flambeau was looking round him in rather a weird way. “Do you know,” he
said, “there is something about this place that--”
“Hullo!” called out the Duke sharply; “that fellow’s disappeared.
Vanished, like a blasted fairy!”
“He has a key,” explained their clerical friend. “He’s only gone into
one of these garden doors,” and as he spoke they heard one of the dull
wooden doors close again with a click in front of them.
Flambeau strode up to the door thus shut almost in his face, and stood
in front of it for a moment, biting his black moustache in a fury of
curiosity. Then he threw up his long arms and swung himself aloft like
a monkey and stood on the top of the wall, his enormous figure dark
against the purple sky, like the dark tree-tops.
The Duke looked at the priest. “Dubosc’s escape is more elaborate than
we thought,” he said; “but I suppose he is escaping from France.”
“He is escaping from everywhere,” answered Father Brown.
Valognes’s eyes brightened, but his voice sank. “Do you mean suicide?”
he asked.
“You will not find his body,” replied the other.
A kind of cry came from Flambeau on the wall above. “My God,” he
exclaimed in French, “I know what this place is now! Why, it’s the back
of the street where old Hirsch lives. I thought I could recognize the
back of a house as well as the back of a man.”
“And Dubosc’s gone in there!” cried the Duke, smiting his hip. “Why,
they’ll meet after all!” And with sudden Gallic vivacity he hopped up on
the wall beside Flambeau and sat there positively kicking his legs with
excitement. The priest alone remained below, leaning against the wall,
with his back to the whole theatre of events, and looking wistfully
across to the park palings and the twinkling, twilit trees.
The Duke, however stimulated, had the instincts of an aristocrat, and
desired rather to stare at the house than to spy on it; but Flambeau,
who had the instincts of a burglar (and a detective), had already swung
himself from the wall into the fork of a straggling tree from which he
could crawl quite close to the only illuminated window in the back of
the high dark house. A red blind had been pulled down over the light,
but pulled crookedly, so that it gaped on one side, and by risking his
neck along a branch that looked as treacherous as a twig, Flambeau
could just see Colonel Dubosc walking about in a brilliantly-lighted and
luxurious bedroom. But close as Flambeau was to the house, he heard the
words of his colleagues by the wall, and repeated them in a low voice.
“Yes, they will meet now after all!”
“They will never meet,” said Father Brown. “Hirsch was right when he
said that in such an affair the principals must not meet. Have you
read a queer psychological story by Henry James, of two persons who so
perpetually missed meeting each other by accident that they began to
feel quite frightened of each other, and to think it was fate? This is
something of the kind, but more curious.”
“There are people in Paris who will cure them of such morbid fancies,”
said Valognes vindictively. “They will jolly well have to meet if we
capture them and force them to fight.”
“They will not meet on the Day of Judgement,” said the priest. “If God
Almighty held the truncheon of the lists, if St Michael blew the trumpet
for the swords to cross--even then, if one of them stood ready, the
other would not come.”
“Oh, what does all this mysticism mean?” cried the Duc de Valognes,
impatiently; “why on earth shouldn’t they meet like other people?”
“They are the opposite of each other,” said Father Brown, with a queer
kind of smile. “They contradict each other. They cancel out, so to
speak.”
He continued to gaze at the darkening trees opposite, but Valognes
turned his head sharply at a suppressed exclamation from Flambeau. That
investigator, peering into the lighted room, had just seen the Colonel,
after a pace or two, proceed to take his coat off. Flambeau’s first
thought was that this really looked like a fight; but he soon dropped
the thought for another. The solidity and squareness of Dubosc’s chest
and shoulders was all a powerful piece of padding and came off with his
coat. In his shirt and trousers he was a comparatively slim gentleman,
who walked across the bedroom to the bathroom with no more pugnacious
purpose than that of washing himself. He bent over a basin, dried his
dripping hands and face on a towel, and turned again so that the strong
light fell on his face. His brown complexion had gone, his big black
moustache had gone; he--was clean-shaven and very pate. Nothing remained
of the Colonel but his bright, hawk-like, brown eyes. Under the wall
Father Brown was going on in heavy meditation, as if to himself.
“It is all just like what I was saying to Flambeau. These opposites
won’t do. They don’t work. They don’t fight. If it’s white instead of
black, and solid instead of liquid, and so on all along the line--then
there’s something wrong, Monsieur, there’s something wrong. One of these
men is fair and the other dark, one stout and the other slim, one strong
and the other weak. One has a moustache and no beard, so you can’t see
his mouth; the other has a beard and no moustache, so you can’t see his
chin. One has hair cropped to his skull, but a scarf to hide his neck;
the other has low shirt-collars, but long hair to bide his skull. It’s
all too neat and correct, Monsieur, and there’s something wrong. Things
made so opposite are things that cannot quarrel. Wherever the one
sticks out the other sinks in. Like a face and a mask, like a lock and a
key...”
Flambeau was peering into the house with a visage as white as a sheet.
The occupant of the room was standing with his back to him, but in front
of a looking-glass, and had already fitted round his face a sort
of framework of rank red hair, hanging disordered from the head and
clinging round the jaws and chin while leaving the mocking mouth
uncovered. Seen thus in the glass the white face looked like the face of
Judas laughing horribly and surrounded by capering flames of hell. For
a spasm Flambeau saw the fierce, red-brown eyes dancing, then they were
covered with a pair of blue spectacles. Slipping on a loose black coat,
the figure vanished towards the front of the house. A few moments later
a roar of popular applause from the street beyond announced that Dr
Hirsch had once more appeared upon the balcony.