The Innocence of Father Brown Page 6

  The Honour of Israel Gow

  A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown,wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valleyand beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of theglen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of theworld. Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the mannerof the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of thesinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woodsthat rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as blackas numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepydevilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest onthe place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrowwhich lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any otherof the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poisoncalled heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense ofdoom in the Calvinist.

  The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to meet hisfriend Flambeau, the amateur detective, who was at Glengyle Castle withanother more formal officer investigating the life and death of the lateEarl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representativeof a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made themterrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in thesixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, inchamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up aroundMary Queen of Scots.

  The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the result oftheir machinations candidly:

  As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies.

  For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in GlengyleCastle; and with the Victorian era one would have thought that alleccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle, however, satisfied histribal tradition by doing the only thing that was left for him to do; hedisappeared. I do not mean that he went abroad; by all accounts he wasstill in the castle, if he was anywhere. But though his name was in thechurch register and the big red Peerage, nobody ever saw him under thesun.

  If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant, something between agroom and a gardener. He was so deaf that the more business-likeassumed him to be dumb; while the more penetrating declared him to behalf-witted. A gaunt, red-haired labourer, with a dogged jaw and chin,but quite blank blue eyes, he went by the name of Israel Gow, and wasthe one silent servant on that deserted estate. But the energy withwhich he dug potatoes, and the regularity with which he disappearedinto the kitchen gave people an impression that he was providing for themeals of a superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed inthe castle. If society needed any further proof that he was there, theservant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One morning theprovost and the minister (for the Glengyles were Presbyterian) weresummoned to the castle. There they found that the gardener, groom andcook had added to his many professions that of an undertaker, and hadnailed up his noble master in a coffin. With how much or how littlefurther inquiry this odd fact was passed, did not as yet very plainlyappear; for the thing had never been legally investigated till Flambeauhad gone north two or three days before. By then the body of LordGlengyle (if it was the body) had lain for some time in the littlechurchyard on the hill.

  As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under theshadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and the whole air dampand thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he sawa black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spadeover his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton;but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thoughtit natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew therespectability which might well feel it necessary to wear "blacks" foran official inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose anhour's digging for that. Even the man's start and suspicious stare asthe priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and jealousyof such a type.

  The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with him a leanman with iron-grey hair and papers in his hand: Inspector Craven fromScotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly stripped and empty; but thepale, sneering faces of one or two of the wicked Ogilvies looked downout of black periwigs and blackening canvas.

  Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the allieshad been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was covered withscribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole ofits remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged atintervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects could be. Onelooked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked likea high heap of brown dust. A third appeared to be a plain stick of wood.

  "You seem to have a sort of geological museum here," he said, as he satdown, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the brown dust andthe crystalline fragments.

  "Not a geological museum," replied Flambeau; "say a psychologicalmuseum."

  "Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective laughing, "don'tlet's begin with such long words."

  "Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau with friendlysurprise. "Psychology means being off your chump."

  "Still I hardly follow," replied the official.

  "Well," said Flambeau, with decision, "I mean that we've only found outone thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a maniac."

  The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed thewindow, dimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father Brown staredpassively at it and answered:

  "I can understand there must have been something odd about the man, orhe wouldn't have buried himself alive--nor been in such a hurry to buryhimself dead. But what makes you think it was lunacy?"

  "Well," said Flambeau, "you just listen to the list of things Mr. Cravenhas found in the house."

  "We must get a candle," said Craven, suddenly. "A storm is getting up,and it's too dark to read."

  "Have you found any candles," asked Brown smiling, "among youroddities?"

  Flambeau raised a grave face, and fixed his dark eyes on his friend.

  "That is curious, too," he said. "Twenty-five candles, and not a traceof a candlestick."

  In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown went alongthe table to where a bundle of wax candles lay among the other scrappyexhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally over the heap of red-browndust; and a sharp sneeze cracked the silence.

  "Hullo!" he said, "snuff!"

  He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it inthe neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night air, blowing throughthe crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every sideof the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine woodseething like a black sea around a rock.

  "I will read the inventory," began Craven gravely, picking up one ofthe papers, "the inventory of what we found loose and unexplained in thecastle. You are to understand that the place generally was dismantledand neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in asimple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who was not theservant Gow. The list is as follows:

  "First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearlyall diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Ofcourse, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; butthose are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particulararticles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loosein their pockets, like coppers.

  "Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, oreven a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on the sideboard,on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not takethe trouble to look in a pocket or lift a lid.

  "Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps ofminute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some in the form ofmicroscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.

  "Fourth it
em. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottle necksbecause there is nothing else to stick them in. Now I wish you to notehow very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For thecentral riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that therewas something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find outwhether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether thatred-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with hisdying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramaticsolution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, orsuppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressedup as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master;invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have notexplained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman ofgood family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core ofthe tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By nostretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamondsand wax and loose clockwork."

  "I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This Glengyle wasmad against the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancienregime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of the lastBourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century luxury;wax candles, because they were the eighteenth century lighting; themechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; thediamonds are for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette."

  Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. "What aperfectly extraordinary notion!" cried Flambeau. "Do you really thinkthat is the truth?"

  "I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown, "only you saidthat nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork and candles.I give you that connection off-hand. The real truth, I am very sure,lies deeper."

  He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in theturrets. Then he said, "The late Earl of Glengyle was a thief. He liveda second and darker life as a desperate housebreaker. He did not haveany candlesticks because he only used these candles cut short in thelittle lantern he carried. The snuff he employed as the fiercest Frenchcriminals have used pepper: to fling it suddenly in dense masses inthe face of a captor or pursuer. But the final proof is in the curiouscoincidence of the diamonds and the small steel wheels. Surely thatmakes everything plain to you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are theonly two instruments with which you can cut out a pane of glass."

  The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast against thewindowpane behind them, as if in parody of a burglar, but they did notturn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father Brown.

  "Diamonds and small wheels," repeated Craven ruminating. "Is that allthat makes you think it the true explanation?"

  "I don't think it the true explanation," replied the priest placidly;"but you said that nobody could connect the four things. The truetale, of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle had found,or thought he had found, precious stones on his estate. Somebody hadbamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying they were found inthe castle caverns. The little wheels are some diamond-cutting affair.He had to do the thing very roughly and in a small way, with the help ofa few shepherds or rude fellows on these hills. Snuff is the one greatluxury of such Scotch shepherds; it's the one thing with which you canbribe them. They didn't have candlesticks because they didn't want them;they held the candles in their hands when they explored the caves."

  "Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we got to thedull truth at last?"

  "Oh, no," said Father Brown.

  As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as ofmockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, went on:

  "I only suggested that because you said one could not plausiblyconnect snuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten falsephilosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit GlengyleCastle. But we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe.But are there no other exhibits?"

  Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled downthe long table.

  "Items five, six, seven, etc.," he said, "and certainly more varied thaninstructive. A curious collection, not of lead pencils, but of the leadout of lead pencils. A senseless stick of bamboo, with the top rathersplintered. It might be the instrument of the crime. Only, there isn'tany crime. The only other things are a few old missals and littleCatholic pictures, which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the MiddleAges--their family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. Weonly put them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about anddefaced."

  The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds acrossGlengyle and threw the long room into darkness as Father Brown picked upthe little illuminated pages to examine them. He spoke before the driftof darkness had passed; but it was the voice of an utterly new man.

  "Mr. Craven," said he, talking like a man ten years younger, "you havegot a legal warrant, haven't you, to go up and examine that grave?The sooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom of this horribleaffair. If I were you I should start now."

  "Now," repeated the astonished detective, "and why now?"

  "Because this is serious," answered Brown; "this is not spilt snuff orloose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons. There is onlyone reason I know of for this being done; and the reason goes down tothe roots of the world. These religious pictures are not just dirtiedor torn or scrawled over, which might be done in idleness or bigotry, bychildren or by Protestants. These have been treated very carefully--andvery queerly. In every place where the great ornamented name of Godcomes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out. Theonly other thing that has been removed is the halo round the head of theChild Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant and our spade andour hatchet, and go up and break open that coffin."

  "What do you mean?" demanded the London officer.

  "I mean," answered the little priest, and his voice seemed to riseslightly in the roar of the gale. "I mean that the great devil of theuniverse may be sitting on the top tower of this castle at this moment,as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring like the Apocalypse. There isblack magic somewhere at the bottom of this."

  "Black magic," repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was tooenlightened a man not to know of such things; "but what can these otherthings mean?"

  "Oh, something damnable, I suppose," replied Brown impatiently. "Howshould I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below? Perhaps youcan make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust afterwax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of leadpencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to the grave."

  His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him till ablast of the night wind nearly flung them on their faces in the garden.Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for Craven founda hatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket; Flambeau wascarrying the heavy spade of the strange gardener; Father Brown wascarrying the little gilt book from which had been torn the name of God.

  The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short; only underthat stress of wind it seemed laborious and long. Far as the eye couldsee, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyondseas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universalgesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that wind werewhistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all thatinfinite growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancientsorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy thatthe voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were cries ofthe lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in thatirrational forest, and who will never find their way back to heaven.

  "You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch people beforeScotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they're a curious lotstill. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshippeddemons.
That," he added genially, "is why they jumped at the Puritantheology."

  "My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, "what does allthat snuff mean?"

  "My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is one markof all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectlygenuine religion."

  They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the few baldspots that stood clear of the crashing and roaring pine forest. A meanenclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled in the tempest to tellthem the border of the graveyard. But by the time Inspector Craven hadcome to the corner of the grave, and Flambeau had planted his spadepoint downwards and leaned on it, they were both almost as shaken as theshaky wood and wire. At the foot of the grave grew great tallthistles, grey and silver in their decay. Once or twice, when a ballof thistledown broke under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumpedslightly as if it had been an arrow.

  Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling grass intothe wet clay below. Then he seemed to stop and lean on it as on a staff.

  "Go on," said the priest very gently. "We are only trying to find thetruth. What are you afraid of?"

  "I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau.

  The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice that wasmeant to be conversational and cheery. "I wonder why he really did hidehimself like that. Something nasty, I suppose; was he a leper?"

  "Something worse than that," said Flambeau.

  "And what do you imagine," asked the other, "would be worse than aleper?"

  "I don't imagine it," said Flambeau.

  He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in a chokedvoice, "I'm afraid of his not being the right shape."

  "Nor was that piece of paper, you know," said Father Brown quietly, "andwe survived even that piece of paper."

  Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had shouldered awaythe choking grey clouds that clung to the hills like smoke and revealedgrey fields of faint starlight before he cleared the shape of a rudetimber coffin, and somehow tipped it up upon the turf. Craven steppedforward with his axe; a thistle-top touched him, and he flinched. Thenhe took a firmer stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy likeFlambeau's till the lid was torn off, and all that was there layglimmering in the grey starlight.

  "Bones," said Craven; and then he added, "but it is a man," as if thatwere something unexpected.

  "Is he," asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and down, "is heall right?"

  "Seems so," said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure anddecaying skeleton in the box. "Wait a minute."

  A vast heave went over Flambeau's huge figure. "And now I come to thinkof it," he cried, "why in the name of madness shouldn't he be all right?What is it gets hold of a man on these cursed cold mountains? I thinkit's the black, brainless repetition; all these forests, and over allan ancient horror of unconsciousness. It's like the dream of an atheist.Pine-trees and more pine-trees and millions more pine-trees--"

  "God!" cried the man by the coffin, "but he hasn't got a head."

  While the others stood rigid the priest, for the first time, showed aleap of startled concern.

  "No head!" he repeated. "No head?" as if he had almost expected someother deficiency.

  Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a headlessyouth hiding himself in the castle, of a headless man pacing thoseancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in panorama through theirminds. But even in that stiffened instant the tale took no root in themand seemed to have no reason in it. They stood listening to the loudwoods and the shrieking sky quite foolishly, like exhausted animals.Thought seemed to be something enormous that had suddenly slipped out oftheir grasp.

  "There are three headless men," said Father Brown, "standing round thisopen grave."

  The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and left itopen like a yokel, while a long scream of wind tore the sky; then helooked at the axe in his hands as if it did not belong to him, anddropped it.

  "Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he used veryseldom, "what are we to do?"

  His friend's reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun going off.

  "Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end of theways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleepsbelieves in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it isa food. And we need a sacrament, if only a natural one. Something hasfallen on us that falls very seldom on men; perhaps the worst thing thatcan fall on them."

  Craven's parted lips came together to say, "What do you mean?"

  The priest had turned his face to the castle as he answered: "We havefound the truth; and the truth makes no sense."

  He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and recklessstep very rare with him, and when they reached the castle again he threwhimself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.

  Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier thananyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a bigpipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchengarden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains,and the day came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed evento have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he plantedhis spade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast,shifted along the lines of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen."He's a valuable man, that," said Father Brown. "He does the potatoesamazingly. Still," he added, with a dispassionate charity, "he has hisfaults; which of us hasn't? He doesn't dig this bank quite regularly.There, for instance," and he stamped suddenly on one spot. "I'm reallyvery doubtful about that potato."

  "And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's hobby.

  "I'm doubtful about it," said the other, "because old Gow was doubtfulabout it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place butjust this. There must be a mighty fine potato just here."

  Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place.He turned up, under a load of soil, something that did not look like apotato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struckthe spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned upat them.

  "The Earl of Glengyle," said Brown sadly, and looked down heavily at theskull.

  Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau,and, saying "We must hide it again," clamped the skull down in theearth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handleof the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes wereempty and his forehead full of wrinkles. "If one could only conceive,"he muttered, "the meaning of this last monstrosity." And leaning onthe large spade handle, he buried his brows in his hands, as men do inchurch.

  All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; thebirds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so loud it seemed as ifthe trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.

  "Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last boisterously. "My brainand this world don't fit each other; and there's an end of it. Snuff,spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical boxes--what--"

  Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade handle with anintolerance quite unusual with him. "Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!" hecried. "All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I understood the snuffand clockwork, and so on, when I first opened my eyes this morning. Andsince then I've had it out with old Gow, the gardener, who is neither sodeaf nor so stupid as he pretends. There's nothing amiss about the looseitems. I was wrong about the torn mass-book, too; there's no harm inthat. But it's this last business. Desecrating graves and stealing deadmen's heads--surely there's harm in that? Surely there's black magicstill in that? That doesn't fit in to the quite simple story of thesnuff and the candles." And, striding about again, he smoked moodily.

  "My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must be carefulwith me
and remember I was once a criminal. The great advantage of thatestate was that I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quickas I chose. This detective business of waiting about is too much for myFrench impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things atthe instant; I always fought duels the next morning; I always paid billson the nail; I never even put off a visit to the dentist--"

  Father Brown's pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three pieceson the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact picture ofan idiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!" he kept saying. "Lord, what aturnip!" Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he began to laugh.

  "The dentist!" he repeated. "Six hours in the spiritual abyss, and allbecause I never thought of the dentist! Such a simple, such a beautifuland peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but nowthe sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of thedentist consoles the world."

  "I will get some sense out of this," cried Flambeau, striding forward,"if I use the tortures of the Inquisition."

  Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition todance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite piteously, like a child,"Oh, let me be silly a little. You don't know how unhappy I have been.And now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all.Only a little lunacy, perhaps--and who minds that?"

  He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity.

  "This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is the story of astrange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth,perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savageliving logic that has been the religion of this race.

  "That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle--

  As green sap to the simmer trees Is red gold to the Ogilvies--

  was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that theGlengyles sought for wealth; it was also true that they literallygathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments and utensils inthat metal. They were, in fact, misers whose mania took that turn.In the light of that fact, run through all the things we found in thecastle. Diamonds without their gold rings; candles without their goldcandlesticks; snuff without the gold snuff-boxes; pencil-leads withoutthe gold pencil-cases; a walking stick without its gold top; clockworkwithout the gold clocks--or rather watches. And, mad as it sounds,because the halos and the name of God in the old missals were of realgold; these also were taken away."

  The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in thestrengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau lit a cigaretteas his friend went on.

  "Were taken away," continued Father Brown; "were taken away--but notstolen. Thieves would never have left this mystery. Thieves would havetaken the gold snuff-boxes, snuff and all; the gold pencil-cases, leadand all. We have to deal with a man with a peculiar conscience, butcertainly a conscience. I found that mad moralist this morning in thekitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.

  "The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good manever born at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took the turn of themisanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which,somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More especially hedistrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he couldfind one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold ofGlengyle. Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himselfup, without the smallest expectation of its being answered. One day,however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant villagebrought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry,gave him a new farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but whenhe turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and asovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation.Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species. Eitherhe would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back withit virtuously, a snob seeking a reward. In the middle of that night LordGlengyle was knocked up out of his bed--for he lived alone--and forcedto open the door to the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, notthe sovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pencethree-farthings in change.

  "Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad lord'sbrain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that had long sought anhonest man, and at last had found one. He made a new will, which I haveseen. He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, andtrained him up as his solitary servant and--after an odd manner--hisheir. And whatever that queer creature understands, he understoodabsolutely his lord's two fixed ideas: first, that the letter of rightis everything; and second, that he himself was to have the gold ofGlengyle. So far, that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped thehouse of gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much asa grain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fullysatisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I understood; but Icould not understand this skull business. I was really uneasy about thathuman head buried among the potatoes. It distressed me--till Flambeausaid the word.

  "It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the grave, when hehas taken the gold out of the tooth."

  And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw thatstrange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated grave, theplaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober tophat on his head.