The Innocence of Father Brown Read online

  The Secret Garden

  Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner,and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however,reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar,and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a tablein the entrance hall--a hall hung with weapons. Valentin's house wasperhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house,with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but theoddity--and perhaps the police value--of its architecture was this: thatthere was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, whichwas guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate,and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there wasno exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall,smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden,perhaps, for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had swornto kill.

  As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that hewas detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some lastarrangements about executions and such ugly things; and though theseduties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them withprecision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild abouttheir punishment. Since he had been supreme over French--and largelyover European--policial methods, his great influence had been honourablyused for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons.He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the onlything wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.

  When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and thered rosette--an elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked withgrey. He went straight through his house to his study, which opened onthe grounds behind. The garden door of it was open, and after he hadcarefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a fewseconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moonwas fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentinregarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures ashis. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of themost tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood,at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that hisguests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when heentered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was notthere, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party;he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador--a choleric old man with arusset face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. Hesaw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a facesensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, apale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. Hesaw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and withher her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon,a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and aforehead barred with those parallel wrinkles which are the penaltyof superciliousness, since they come through constantly elevatingthe eyebrows. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole, in Essex, whom he hadrecently met in England. He saw--perhaps with more interest than anyof these--a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways withoutreceiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now advanced alone topay his respects to his host. This was Commandant O'Brien, of theFrench Foreign Legion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure,clean-shaven, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in anofficer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successfulsuicides, he had an air at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birthan Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways--especiallyMargaret Graham. He had left his country after some crash of debts, andnow expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swingingabout in uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador'sfamily, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret lookedaway.

  But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in eachother, their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. Noone of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentinwas expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whosefriendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours andtriumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, thatmulti-millionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of smallreligions have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity forthe American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr.Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he wasready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it wasan untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the AmericanShakespeare--a hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman,but thought that Luke P. Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more "progressive"than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought "progressive."He thought Valentin "progressive," thereby doing him a grave injustice.

  The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisiveas a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of uscan claim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a hugefellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, withoutso much relief as a watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and wellbrushed back like a German's; his face was red, fierce and cherubic,with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwiseinfantile visage with an effect theatrical and even Mephistophelean. Notlong, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American;his lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent withall speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.

  Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So longas Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien, herfather was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorouslygone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless andalmost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over thecigars, three of the younger men--Simon the doctor, Brown the priest,and the detrimental O'Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform--all meltedaway to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then theEnglish diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stungevery sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien might besignalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. Hewas left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believedin all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed innone. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal tohim. After a time this "progressive" logomachy had reached a crisis oftedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He losthis way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heardthe high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voiceof the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought witha curse, were probably arguing about "science and religion." But theinstant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing--he saw whatwas not there. He saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that LadyMargaret was absent too.

  Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from thedining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His notion ofprotecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian n'er-do-well had becomesomething central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the backof the house, where was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet hisdaughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a secondenigma. If she had been with O'Brien, where was O'Brien! If she hadnot been with O'Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile andpassionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of themansion, and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to thegarden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away allthe storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden.A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the studydoor; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out asCommandant O'Brien.

  He vanished through the French windows into the house, leaving LordGalloway in an indescribable temper, at once vi
rulent and vague. Theblue-and-silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt himwith all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authoritywas at war. The length and grace of the Irishman's stride enraged him asif he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him.He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteaufairyland; and, willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities byspeech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped oversome tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritationand then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and thetall poplars looked at an unusual sight--an elderly English diplomatistrunning hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.

  His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beamingglasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard the nobleman's firstclear words. Lord Galloway was crying: "A corpse in the grass--ablood-stained corpse." O'Brien at last had gone utterly out of his mind.

  "We must tell Valentin at once," said the doctor, when the other hadbrokenly described all that he had dared to examine. "It is fortunatethat he is here;" and even as he spoke the great detective entered thestudy, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typicaltransformation; he had come with the common concern of a host and agentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he wastold the gory fact, he turned with all his gravity instantly bright andbusinesslike; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his business.

  "Strange, gentlemen," he said as they hurried out into the garden, "thatI should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes andsettles in my own back-yard. But where is the place?" They crossed thelawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river; butunder the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body sunkenin deep grass--the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He layface downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were cladin black cloth, and that his big head was bald, except for a wisp ortwo of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed. A scarletserpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.

  "At least," said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, "he is noneof our party."

  "Examine him, doctor," cried Valentin rather sharply. "He may not bedead."

  The doctor bent down. "He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is deadenough," he answered. "Just help me to lift him up."

  They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts asto his being really dead were settled at once and frightfully. The headfell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever hadcut his throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentinwas slightly shocked. "He must have been as strong as a gorilla," hemuttered.

  Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr.Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw,but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face,at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids--a faceof a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a distant touch of a Chineseemperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eye ofignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, asthey had lifted his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam ofa shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said,the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have beentrying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.

  Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closestprofessional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards roundthe body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor, andquite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellingsexcept a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, whichValentin lifted for an instant's examination and then tossed away.

  "Twigs," he said gravely; "twigs, and a total stranger with his head cutoff; that is all there is on this lawn."

  There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Gallowaycalled out sharply:

  "Who's that! Who's that over there by the garden wall!"

  A small figure with a foolishly large head drew waveringly near them inthe moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out tobe the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.

  "I say," he said meekly, "there are no gates to this garden, do youknow."

  Valentin's black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they didon principle at the sight of the cassock. But he was far too just a manto deny the relevance of the remark. "You are right," he said. "Beforewe find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how hecame to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be done withoutprejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certaindistinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies,gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down asa crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can usemy own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that Ican afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear everyone of my ownguests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, uponyour honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon;there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find myman, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him toleave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway,you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened,and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remainwith the body."

  When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like abugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and routed out Ivan, thepublic detective's private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-roomand told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time thecompany assembled there the ladies were already startled and alreadysoothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at thehead and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolicstatues of their two philosophies of death.

  Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came outof the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn toValentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite livelywith the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almostunpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's permission to examinethe remains.

  "Yes; look, if you like, Ivan," said Valentin, "but don't be long. Wemust go in and thrash this out in the house."

  Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.

  "Why," he gasped, "it's--no, it isn't; it can't be. Do you know thisman, sir?"

  "No," said Valentin indifferently; "we had better go inside."

  Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and thenall made their way to the drawing-room.

  The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even without hesitation;but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at assize. He made a few rapidnotes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: "Is everybodyhere?"

  "Not Mr. Brayne," said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.

  "No," said Lord Galloway in a hoarse, harsh voice. "And not Mr. NeilO'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when thecorpse was still warm."

  "Ivan," said the detective, "go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr.Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room;Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. Iam not sure."

  The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone couldstir or speak Valentin went on with the same soldierly swiftness ofexposition.

  "Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, hishead cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do youthink that to cut a man's throat like that would need great force? Or,perhaps, only a very sharp knife?"

  "I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all," said thepale doctor.

  "Have you any thought," resumed Valentin, "of a tool with which it couldbe
done?"

  "Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't," said thedoctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not easy to hack a neck througheven clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with abattle-axe or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword."

  "But, good heavens!" cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, "therearen't any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here."

  Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. "Tell me," hesaid, still writing rapidly, "could it have been done with a long Frenchcavalry sabre?"

  A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason,curdled everyone's blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozensilence Dr. Simon managed to say: "A sabre--yes, I suppose it could."

  "Thank you," said Valentin. "Come in, Ivan."

  The confidential Ivan opened the door and ushered in Commandant NeilO'Brien, whom he had found at last pacing the garden again.

  The Irish officer stood up disordered and defiant on the threshold."What do you want with me?" he cried.

  "Please sit down," said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. "Why, youaren't wearing your sword. Where is it?"

  "I left it on the library table," said O'Brien, his brogue deepening inhis disturbed mood. "It was a nuisance, it was getting--"

  "Ivan," said Valentin, "please go and get the Commandant's sword fromthe library." Then, as the servant vanished, "Lord Galloway says he sawyou leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were youdoing in the garden?"

  The Commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. "Oh," he cried inpure Irish, "admirin' the moon. Communing with Nature, me bhoy."

  A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came again thattrivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steelscabbard. "This is all I can find," he said.

  "Put it on the table," said Valentin, without looking up.

  There was an inhuman silence in the room, like that sea of inhumansilence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess's weakexclamations had long ago died away. Lord Galloway's swollen hatred wassatisfied and even sobered. The voice that came was quite unexpected.

  "I think I can tell you," cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quiveringvoice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly. "I can tell youwhat Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound tosilence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my familycircumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a littleangry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder,"she added, with rather a wan smile, "if he will care at all for it now.For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did a thinglike this."

  Lord Galloway had edged up to his daughter, and was intimidating her inwhat he imagined to be an undertone. "Hold your tongue, Maggie," he saidin a thunderous whisper. "Why should you shield the fellow? Where's hissword? Where's his confounded cavalry--"

  He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter wasregarding him, a look that was indeed a lurid magnet for the wholegroup.

  "You old fool!" she said in a low voice without pretence of piety, "whatdo you suppose you are trying to prove? I tell you this man was innocentwhile with me. But if he wasn't innocent, he was still with me. If hemurdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seen--who mustat least have known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your owndaughter--"

  Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of thosesatanic tragedies that have been between lovers before now. They sawthe proud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irishadventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence wasfull of formless historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonousparamours.

  In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: "Was it avery long cigar?"

  The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to seewho had spoken.

  "I mean," said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, "Imean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as awalking-stick."

  Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation inValentin's face as he lifted his head.

  "Quite right," he remarked sharply. "Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayneagain, and bring him here at once."

  The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed thegirl with an entirely new earnestness.

  "Lady Margaret," he said, "we all feel, I am sure, both gratitudeand admiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity andexplaining the Commandant's conduct. But there is a hiatus still.Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to thedrawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found thegarden and the Commandant still walking there."

  "You have to remember," replied Margaret, with a faint irony in hervoice, "that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have comeback arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind--andso got charged with murder."

  "In those few moments," said Valentin gravely, "he might really--"

  The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.

  "Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but Mr. Brayne has left the house."

  "Left!" cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.

  "Gone. Scooted. Evaporated," replied Ivan in humorous French. "His hatand coat are gone, too, and I'll tell you something to cap it all. I ranoutside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a bigtrace, too."

  "What do you mean?" asked Valentin.

  "I'll show you," said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing nakedcavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone inthe room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivanwent on quite quietly:

  "I found this," he said, "flung among the bushes fifty yards up the roadto Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr.Brayne threw it when he ran away."

  There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre,examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, andthen turned a respectful face to O'Brien. "Commandant," he said, "wetrust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for policeexamination. Meanwhile," he added, slapping the steel back in theringing scabbard, "let me return you your sword."

  At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardlyrefrain from applause.

  For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turning-point ofexistence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden againin the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mienhad fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. LordGalloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaretwas something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhapsgiven him something better than an apology, as they drifted among theold flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole company was more lightheartedand humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load ofsuspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with thestrange millionaire--a man they hardly knew. The devil was cast out ofthe house--he had cast himself out.

  Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw himself on a gardenseat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumedit. He did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were onpleasanter things.

  "I can't say it interests me much," said the Irishman frankly,"especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brayne hated thisstranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him withmy sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went.By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in hispocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne's, and that seems to clinch it.I don't see any difficulties about the business."

  "There are five colossal difficulties," said the doctor quietly; "likehigh walls within walls. Don't mistake me. I don't doubt that Braynedid it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it.First difficulty:
Why should a man kill another man with a great hulkingsabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it backin his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry?Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offerno remarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front door all theevening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin's garden anywhere. How didthe dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the sameconditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?"

  "And the fifth," said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest whowas coming slowly up the path.

  "Is a trifle, I suppose," said the doctor, "but I think an odd one. WhenI first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin hadstruck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across thetruncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head wasoff. Did Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring hisbody in the moonlight?"

  "Horrible!" said O'Brien, and shuddered.

  The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and hadwaited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then hesaid awkwardly:

  "I say, I'm sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!"

  "News?" repeated Simon, and stared at him rather painfully through hisglasses.

  "Yes, I'm sorry," said Father Brown mildly. "There's been anothermurder, you know."

  Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.

  "And, what's stranger still," continued the priest, with his dull eyeon the rhododendrons, "it's the same disgusting sort; it's anotherbeheading. They found the second head actually bleeding into the river,a few yards along Brayne's road to Paris; so they suppose that he--"

  "Great Heaven!" cried O'Brien. "Is Brayne a monomaniac?"

  "There are American vendettas," said the priest impassively. Then headded: "They want you to come to the library and see it."

  Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feelingdecidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage;where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First onehead was hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himselfbitterly) it was not true that two heads were better than one. As hecrossed the study he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. UponValentin's table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head;and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him itwas only a Nationalist paper, called The Guillotine, which every weekshowed one of its political opponents with rolling eyes and writhingfeatures just after execution; for Valentin was an anti-clerical of somenote. But O'Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in hissins; and his gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellectwhich belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from thegrotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in thenewspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the Revolution. He sawthe whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying onValentin's table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles,the great devil grins on Notre Dame.

  The library was long, low, and dark; what light entered it shot fromunder low blinds and had still some of the ruddy tinge of morning.Valentin and his servant Ivan were waiting for them at the upper end ofa long, slightly-sloping desk, on which lay the mortal remains, lookingenormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of theman found in the garden confronted them essentially unchanged. Thesecond head, which had been fished from among the river reeds thatmorning, lay streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin's men were stillseeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposedto be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O'Brien'ssensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined itwith his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of wet white hair,fringed with silver fire in the red and level morning light; the face,which seemed of an ugly, empurpled and perhaps criminal type, had beenmuch battered against trees or stones as it tossed in the water.

  "Good morning, Commandant O'Brien," said Valentin, with quietcordiality. "You have heard of Brayne's last experiment in butchery, Isuppose?"

  Father Brown was still bending over the head with white hair, and hesaid, without looking up:

  "I suppose it is quite certain that Brayne cut off this head, too."

  "Well, it seems common sense," said Valentin, with his hands in hispockets. "Killed in the same way as the other. Found within a few yardsof the other. And sliced by the same weapon which we know he carriedaway."

  "Yes, yes; I know," replied Father Brown submissively. "Yet, you know, Idoubt whether Brayne could have cut off this head."

  "Why not?" inquired Dr. Simon, with a rational stare.

  "Well, doctor," said the priest, looking up blinking, "can a man cut offhis own head? I don't know."

  O'Brien felt an insane universe crashing about his ears; but the doctorsprang forward with impetuous practicality and pushed back the wet whitehair.

  "Oh, there's no doubt it's Brayne," said the priest quietly. "He hadexactly that chip in the left ear."

  The detective, who had been regarding the priest with steady andglittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply: "You seemto know a lot about him, Father Brown."

  "I do," said the little man simply. "I've been about with him for someweeks. He was thinking of joining our church."

  The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towardsthe priest with clenched hands. "And, perhaps," he cried, with ablasting sneer, "perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his moneyto your church."

  "Perhaps he was," said Brown stolidly; "it is possible."

  "In that case," cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile, "you may indeedknow a great deal about him. About his life and about his--"

  Commandant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. "Drop that slanderousrubbish, Valentin," he said, "or there may be more swords yet."

  But Valentin (under the steady, humble gaze of the priest) had alreadyrecovered himself. "Well," he said shortly, "people's private opinionscan wait. You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; youmust enforce it on yourselves--and on each other. Ivan here will tellyou anything more you want to know; I must get to business and write tothe authorities. We can't keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writingin my study if there is any more news."

  "Is there any more news, Ivan?" asked Dr. Simon, as the chief of policestrode out of the room.

  "Only one more thing, I think, sir," said Ivan, wrinkling up his greyold face, "but that's important, too, in its way. There's that oldbuffer you found on the lawn," and he pointed without pretence ofreverence at the big black body with the yellow head. "We've found outwho he is, anyhow."

  "Indeed!" cried the astonished doctor, "and who is he?"

  "His name was Arnold Becker," said the under-detective, "though he wentby many aliases. He was a wandering sort of scamp, and is known to havebeen in America; so that was where Brayne got his knife into him. Wedidn't have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly inGermany. We've communicated, of course, with the German police. But,oddly enough, there was a twin brother of his, named Louis Becker,whom we had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary toguillotine him only yesterday. Well, it's a rum thing, gentlemen, butwhen I saw that fellow flat on the lawn I had the greatest jump of mylife. If I hadn't seen Louis Becker guillotined with my own eyes,I'd have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then, ofcourse, I remembered his twin brother in Germany, and following up theclue--"

  The explanatory Ivan stopped, for the excellent reason that nobody waslistening to him. The Commandant and the doctor were both staring atFather Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding histemples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain.

  "Stop, stop, stop!" he cried; "stop talking a minute, for I see half.Will God give me strength? Will my brain make the one jump and see all?Heaven help me! I used to be fairly good at thinking. I could paraphraseany page in Aquinas o
nce. Will my head split--or will it see? I seehalf--I only see half."

  He buried his head in his hands, and stood in a sort of rigid tortureof thought or prayer, while the other three could only go on staring atthis last prodigy of their wild twelve hours.

  When Father Brown's hands fell they showed a face quite fresh andserious, like a child's. He heaved a huge sigh, and said: "Let us getthis said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this willbe the quickest way to convince you all of the truth." He turned to thedoctor. "Dr. Simon," he said, "you have a strong head-piece, and I heardyou this morning asking the five hardest questions about this business.Well, if you will ask them again, I will answer them."

  Simon's pince-nez dropped from his nose in his doubt and wonder, buthe answered at once. "Well, the first question, you know, is why a manshould kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill witha bodkin?"

  "A man cannot behead with a bodkin," said Brown calmly, "and for thismurder beheading was absolutely necessary."

  "Why?" asked O'Brien, with interest.

  "And the next question?" asked Father Brown.

  "Well, why didn't the man cry out or anything?" asked the doctor;"sabres in gardens are certainly unusual."

  "Twigs," said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window which lookedon the scene of death. "No one saw the point of the twigs. Why shouldthey lie on that lawn (look at it) so far from any tree? They were notsnapped off; they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemywith some tricks with the sabre, showing how he could cut a branch inmid-air, or what-not. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result,a silent slash, and the head fell."

  "Well," said the doctor slowly, "that seems plausible enough. But mynext two questions will stump anyone."

  The priest still stood looking critically out of the window and waited.

  "You know how all the garden was sealed up like an air-tight chamber,"went on the doctor. "Well, how did the strange man get into the garden?"

  Without turning round, the little priest answered: "There never was anystrange man in the garden."

  There was a silence, and then a sudden cackle of almost childishlaughter relieved the strain. The absurdity of Brown's remark moved Ivanto open taunts.

  "Oh!" he cried; "then we didn't lug a great fat corpse on to a sofa lastnight? He hadn't got into the garden, I suppose?"

  "Got into the garden?" repeated Brown reflectively. "No, not entirely."

  "Hang it all," cried Simon, "a man gets into a garden, or he doesn't."

  "Not necessarily," said the priest, with a faint smile. "What is thenest question, doctor?"

  "I fancy you're ill," exclaimed Dr. Simon sharply; "but I'll ask thenext question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?"

  "He didn't get out of the garden," said the priest, still looking out ofthe window.

  "Didn't get out of the garden?" exploded Simon.

  "Not completely," said Father Brown.

  Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. "A man gets out of agarden, or he doesn't," he cried.

  "Not always," said Father Brown.

  Dr. Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. "I have no time to spare onsuch senseless talk," he cried angrily. "If you can't understand a manbeing on one side of a wall or the other, I won't trouble you further."

  "Doctor," said the cleric very gently, "we have always got on verypleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop andtell me your fifth question."

  The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: "Thehead and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be doneafter death."

  "Yes," said the motionless priest, "it was done so as to make you assumeexactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done tomake you take for granted that the head belonged to the body."

  The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, movedhorribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of allthe horse-men and fish-women that man's unnatural fancy has begotten. Avoice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: "Keep outof the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoidthe evil garden where died the man with two heads." Yet, while theseshameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irishsoul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching theodd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.

  Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window,with his face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could seeit was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if therewere no Gaelic souls on earth.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "you did not find the strange body of Becker inthe garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In faceof Dr. Simon's rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partlypresent. Look here!" (pointing to the black bulk of the mysteriouscorpse) "you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see thisman?"

  He rapidly rolled away the bald, yellow head of the unknown, and put inits place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified,unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.

  "The murderer," went on Brown quietly, "hacked off his enemy's head andflung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling thesword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only toclap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a privateinquest) you all imagined a totally new man."

  "Clap on another head!" said O'Brien staring. "What other head? Headsdon't grow on garden bushes, do they?"

  "No," said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; "thereis only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of theguillotine, beside which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin, wasstanding not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minutemore before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if beingmad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you never see in thatcold, grey eye of his that he is mad! He would do anything, anything, tobreak what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought forit and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne's crazymillions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they didlittle to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper thatBrayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; andthat was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into theimpoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support sixNationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was alreadybalanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolvedto destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect thegreatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted thesevered head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it homein his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that LordGalloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into thesealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre forillustration, and--"

  Ivan of the Scar sprang up. "You lunatic," he yelled; "you'll go to mymaster now, if I take you by--"

  "Why, I was going there," said Brown heavily; "I must ask him toconfess, and all that."

  Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, theyrushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin's study.

  The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to heartheir turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something inthe look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forwardsuddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box ofpills at Valentin's elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; andon the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.