Detection by Gaslight (24 page)

“I feel dreadfully disappointed,” I said. “Still, I think we have done some good.”

Mr. Ball's three months in Banfield were now almost up, and he was returning to town quite recruited, notwithstanding all the work and worry of the last month.

I really felt sad when I saw his heavy luggage carted away to the station. As a fellow-lodger, he had been almost everything one could desire; and I felt certain that Miss Pinskill would never get any one to fill his place that in any way would compare with him.

We celebrated his last evening with us by a special little dinner; and in proposing his health I really think I excelled myself. Miss Eliza said it was the best after-dinner speech she had ever listened to, excepting the speech Mr. Ball made in reply. That speech I shall never forget, and for many reasons. He had a most winning manner with him, and once or twice while he was speaking quite a lump came into my throat. I have no gift of pathos myself; perhaps for that reason I appreciate it so much in others. Not that I like being made to cry, for in a man it looks weak.

Well, we all retired early that night, for the effort to appear cheerful when we did not feel it exhausted us somewhat.

I fell asleep quickly, notwithstanding the heaviness of my heart, and was in the depths of profound slumber, when I was startled by the violent ringing of the front-door bell. I waited for some time, leaning on my elbow, for some one to go down and open the door, but I heard no one stirring. So at length, as my window was directly over the front door, I went and raised it, and asked—

“Who is there?”

“Oh, is that you, Mr. Field?” came a female voice that I did not recognize. “Will you please come and baptize Mrs. Sandy's baby? They are afraid it is dying.”

“I will come at once,” I answered. “Go back, and say I am following as quickly as possible.”

And I closed the window, turned up my gas, and began to dress. I felt thankful now that no one else in the house had been disturbed.

In less than ten minutes I was out of my room, and in passing Mr. Ball's door I was surprised to see it standing ajar. For a moment I stood and listened, but there was no sound within.

“I hope you have not been alarmed, Mr. Ball?” I said, standing close to the door.

But I waited in vain for a reply.

Now, I knew that Mr. Ball was a very light sleeper, and was therefore not a little surprised that he was not the first to awake.

I was impatient to get to Mrs. Sandy's child, and yet something detained me. Perhaps it was mere curiosity. I put my mouth to the opening of the door and spoke again, but still no reply.

Then I pushed the door wide open, and walked into the room. It was unoccupied. The bed had evidently not been slept in.

I was more concerned than I knew. A thousand vague suspicions seemed to rush through my mind in a moment, but I could not afford to lose any more time. Creeping gently downstairs, I took my hat from the stand in the hall, and proceeded to unbolt the door. It was unbolted already.

Could it be possible that Miss Pinskill had gone to bed and left it merely on the latch? No, it could not be that. Mr. Ball had evidently gone out before me. But why? That question haunted me as I hurried through the silent and deserted streets and lanes in the direction of the Sandys'.

Suddenly I halted, and drew into the shadow of the thorn hedge. I was near a large house that stood alone. I knew the house well, and was slightly acquainted with the people who lived in it, though not so well acquainted by any means as I desired.

I had heard a window creak, then I saw it slowly and almost noiselessly open, then the form of a man appeared.

“Another burglary,” I reflected; “and, as usual, not a single policeman about.”

How it was I did not cry out or faint I do not know to this day, but I did neither. I crept under the verandah with the tread of a cat. I knew the robber would descend by one of the pillars, and I got close up to it. Some trellis-work was carried along the ground from pillar to pillar. The thief would get his foot on this trellis-work, and then step lightly to the ground. All this passed through my mind as in a flash. I was surprised at myself. I never knew my brain act so readily before; and, stranger still, I was not for the moment conscious of any fear.

The foot of the thief came into sight, close to my face. Quickly it descended and rested on the trellis-work, as I had expected; another moment, and he had let loose with his hands. I seized the foot and gave it a jerk, and he fell with his head in a bank of flowers.

With a muttered oath, he tried to struggle to his feet; but I held the foot on the top of the trellis-work, and he could not rise. He was quick to see what had happened, and, with an awful curse, he hissed—

“Let go, you fool, or I'll blow your brains out!”

I almost let go then, for I recognized the voice of Mr. Ball, and the discovery for the moment seemed to unman me, but only for a moment.

“Mr. Ball!” I exclaimed. “Can it be possible?”

“What, the curate?” he said, in mocking tones. “Come, let go, for I don't want to hurt you.”

“Never!” I replied.

And I began to shout, “Help! Murder! Police!” at the top of my voice.

“You fool!” he cried. “Another sound, and I shoot!”

“You think I'm a coward,” I replied; “but I'll show you!”

And I began to shout louder than before, though I was almost dying with fright.

All this time he was struggling might and main to get away from me; but I held on like grim death, and the more he struggled the more my strength seemed to increase.

Suddenly he ceased to struggle, and I heard the click of a revolver. I knew he was levelling it at me. I tried to get my head behind the pillar; but suddenly there was a blaze of light before my eyes, then a stinging sensation along the side of my head.

“I am not dead yet!” I cried; but I felt the warm blood running down my neck inside my collar.

The reply was another flash. I felt a hot spot burn suddenly in my right arm, my fingers relaxed their hold, a mist came up before my eyes, I heard a confused sound of voices and hurrying feet, then all the world grew dark and still.

When I recovered consciousness I found myself lying in bed in a strange room, with a doctor on one side of me, and a nurse on the other. They told me that I was at the “Cedars,” the house that had been broken into, that Ball had been captured on the spot, where he fired at me, and that all the valuables that he had taken out of the house had been recovered.

Later in the day Mabel Rutherford (by common consent the sweetest girl in Banfield) came and sat by my side, and told me that I was a brave man, and that she hoped I would not die. I felt myself an awful hypocrite; but I was too weak to protest. I knew I was but a coward at best. Howbeit, her words were very sweet to me, and more than compensated me for all I suffered.

Well, I lay there many weeks, and so had ample time to reflect on the strange perversity of human nature. I never realized so vividly before how the best gifts of God might be turned to evil account, and the greatest and noblest talents prostituted to the most wicked ends. Here was a man whose gifts almost amounted to genius, a man who could shine in any company, and whose talents would win him success in any department of life, deliberately choosing to do evil, and turning Heaven's benedictions into a snare. Surely God is very merciful and infinitely patient with the most sinful of His children.

But to return. The morning after the burglary Ball was brought before the mayor and a full bench of magistrates. Of his guilt, there could, of course, be no doubt, for he had been caught red-handed in the act, as it were, with stolen goods upon him. But as there was a strong presumption that he was also the author of the other burglaries, the mayor, after animadverting very strongly upon his conduct, remanded him for a week, and he was conducted back to the cells. He appeared to be very crestfallen, and scarcely once lifted his eyes during the whole time he was in the dock.

The court, I was told, was crowded to excess, for the news of his capture had spread far and wide, and people were curious to see a man who had been able to act the part of honest man and thief with such success. That he had accomplices was taken for granted, and the hope was freely expressed that the rascals who had made themselves such a terror to the neighbourhood would soon be keeping him company. That night, the mayor—who was a very wealthy man—was about to retire to rest with his family, when there came a violent ring at the doorbell. As the servants had already gone to bed, the mayor went himself and unbolted the door and opened it, and was not a little surprised to see a policeman standing in front of him.

“Well, constable, what's up now?” the mayor inquired.

“I'm sorry to trouble your worship,” was the answer, in a low voice; “but the truth is, Ball has confessed everything, and I think we are on the point of arresting the whole gang.”

“That's good news, indeed!” said the mayor, rubbing his hands. “But come inside, and let me hear the details.”

The policeman stepped inside, and the door was closed behind him.

“Please don't alarm the ladies,” he said, in the same low tone. “But the truth is, there is to be an attempt to burgle your house to-night. But we shall be ready for them. Already there are police in hiding all round the place. May I suggest to you to put out all the lights, as though you had retired for the night, and remain quietly downstairs?”

“I will do so, most certainly,” said the mayor, looking very white, and trembling visibly.

“They will seek an entrance at the back,” the constable went on; “and, of course, we must let them get in before we arrest them.”

“I suppose you could not arrest them before they got in?” the mayor asked nervously.

“If we did, I'm afraid we could prove nothing worse than trespass against them. No, no; we must bring the whole charge against them if possible.”

“Quite right, quite right!” said the mayor, briskly. “I'll leave the matter entirely in your hands.”

“Is your family in the drawing-room?”

“Yes; we were just about to retire for the night.”

“Well, ask them to keep as still as possible, and if they hear any noise overhead, don't let them get alarmed. I will station myself against the staircase-window on the first landing, so that I may be able to signal to our men, and direct their movements. I hope before the clock strikes one the whole gang will be safe in our hands.”

“I hope so, too. Let me get a chair for you to sit on while you wait; it will be better than standing all the time.”

“Thank you; I shall be very much obliged if you will.”

Five minutes later all the lights were put out. The mayor retired to the drawing-room with his family, and bolted the door, while the constable stationed himself at the staircase-window with his dark-lantern, and his truncheon ready to hand.

The time passed with painful slowness. Twelve o'clock came and went. Every one sat mute, intent, alert, listening for any sound that might break the oppressive stillness. Half-past twelve struck, then one, and still there was no movement in any part of the house.

“We may expect them at any moment now,” whispered the mayor, his teeth chattering; but no one replied to him.

Half-past one struck, and finally two. What an age it had seemed! and still there was not the faintest sound in any part of the house.

The mayor got uneasy, and went to the keyhole and listened. Then he opened the door and looked into the dark hall. Everything was as still as the grave. He walked to the foot of the stairs, and looked up. He could see the chair outlined against the window, but no one sat in it. What could have become of the constable?

Five minutes later lights were got, and a search instituted, and then the whole truth was revealed. Every bedroom in the house, except those occupied by the servants, had been ransacked, and all the valuables taken clean away.

“Good heavens!” cried the mayor; “what does it all mean?”

Then a horrible suspicion darted through his mind, and he rushed off in his slippers to the police-station.

But everything appeared to be quiet and in order—too quiet, in fact, for no one seemed to be about. It was lively enough, however, five minutes later.

In the cell that Ball was supposed to occupy a constable was found, minus his coat and helmet, lying on the hard bed, and apparently fast asleep. Indeed, it was a long time before he could be aroused to anything like a comprehension of the situation.

Next day he told an incoherent story of how the prisoner Ball complained that he had something in his eye which gave him great pain, and he asked his warder to bring his lantern and look into his eye through the bars of the door. The warder did so, and then—well, he never knew exactly what happened then. He believed he was mesmerized or hypnotized. He seemed to lose control of himself, and had an indistinct recollection of doing whatever the prisoner told him.

One thing, however, was clear: that Ball attired himself in the policeman's coat and helmet, and, taking his truncheon and lantern, went direct to the mayor's house, with such results as I have described.

There were those who believed that Ball simply bribed the constable; but that was never proved. In any case, he got clear away, and that was the last ever seen of him in Banfield.

G. K. CHESTERTON was one of the greatest men of letters of his age—poet, essayist, novelist, editor, and creator of the immortal Father Brown. He was a huge man, wearing a flapping hat, carrying a sword-stick, and of prodigious absent-mindedness; he once telegraphed his wife, “Am in Market Harborough; where ought I to be?” He saw the world as a place of wonder—the signs of God's creation were to be found everywhere. It was a fairy world, full of paradoxes, each of which ultimately showed the unity of God's plan.

Father Brown was perhaps the greatest paradox of all—a humble priest, clumsy and described by his creator as “innocent,” and yet a person who finds solutions to mysteries much more clearly than professional detectives like his friend Flambeau. To Chesterton, the Father Brown stories were essays in theology, and Father Brown sees detection as a moral issue, an attempt to work out salvation—of both the victims and the criminals. Father Brown was based on Chesterton's friend Father O‘Connor, but having been brought up in the Church of England, Chesterton waited more than ten years before he allowed Father Brown to convert him. In 1922, Father O'Connor received
Chesterton
into the Catholic church.

“The Eye of Apollo” is one of the stories in the first Father Brown book,
The Innocence of Father Brown
(1910).

 

 

The Eye of Apollo

 

 

THAT SINGULAR SMOKY SPARKLE, at once a confusion and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and more from its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall and the other very short; they might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant clocktower of Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clerical dress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official description of the short man was the Rev. J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier's Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell death-bed to see the new offices of his friend.

The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and American also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones and lifts. But it was barely finished and still understaffed; only three tenants had moved in; the office just above Flambeau was occupied, as also was the office just below him; the two floors above that and the three floors below were entirely bare. But the first glance at the new tower of flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a few relics of scaffolding, the one glaring object was erected outside the office just above Flambeau's. It was an enormous gilt effigy of the human eye, surrounded with rays of gold, and taking up as much room as two or three of the office windows.

“What on earth is that?” asked Father Brown, and stood still.

“Oh, a new religion,” said Flambeau, laughing; “one of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any. Rather like Christian Science, I should think. The fact is that a fellow calling himself Kalon (I don't know what his name is, except that it can't be that) has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the New Priest of Apollo, and he worships the sun.”

“Let him look out,” said Father Brown. “The sun was the cruellest of all the gods. But what does that monstrous eye mean?”

“As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs,” answered Flambeau, “that a man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the open eye; for they say that if a man were really healthy he could stare at the sun.”

“If a man were really healthy,” said Father Brown, “he would not bother to stare at it.”

“Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion,” went on Flambeau carelessly. “It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases.”

“Can it cure the one spiritual disease?” asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity.

“And what is the one spiritual disease?” asked Flambeau, smiling.

“Oh, thinking one is quite well,” said his friend.

Flambeau was more interested in the quiet little office below him than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist; and new religions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. But humanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking; moreover, the ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The office was kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall and striking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She had eyes of startling brilliancy, but it was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds; and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stiff for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore a business-like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There are thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparent position.

For Pauline Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth; she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her masterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business, the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium; part of it was distributed in various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work among women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightly prosaic idealism no one could be very sure. But she followed her leader with a dog-like affection which was somehow more attractive, with its touch of tragedy, than the hard, high spirits of the elder. For Pauline Stacey had nothing to say to tragedy; she was understood to deny its existence.

Her rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeau very much on the first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall waiting for the lift-boy, who generally conducts strangers to the various floors. But this bright-eyed falcon of a girl had openly refused to endure such official delay. She said sharply that she knew all about the lift, and was not dependent on boys—or on men either. Though her flat was only three floors above, she managed in the few seconds of ascent to give Flambeau a great many of her fundamental views in an off-hand manner; they were to the general effect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger against those who rebuke mechanic science and ask for the return of romance. Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines, just as she could manage the lift. She seemed almost to resent the fact of Flambeau opening the lift-door for her; and that gentleman went up to his own apartments smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of such spit-fire self-dependence.

She certainly had a temper, of a snappy, practical sort; the gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive. Once Flambeau entered her office on some typewriting business, and found she had just flung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the “sickly medical notions” and the morbid admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus. She dared her sister to bring such artificial, unhealthy rubbish into the place again. She asked if she was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes; and as she spoke her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal.

Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could not refrain from asking Miss Pauline (with direct French logic) why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign of weakness than a lift, and why, if science might help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other.

“That is so different,” said Pauline Stacey, loftily. “Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the force of man—yes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at these great engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high and splendid—that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters the doctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was freeborn, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these things because they have been trained in fear instead of being trained in power and courage, just as the silly nurses tell children not to stare at the sun, and so they can't do it without blinking. But why among the stars should there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and I will open my eyes and stare at him whenever I choose.”

“Your eyes,” said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, “will dazzle the sun.” He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partly because it threw her a little off her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself: “So she has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his golden eye.” For, little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Kalon, he had heard of his special notion about sun-gazing.

He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below him was close and increasing. The man who called himself Kalon was a magnificent creature, worthy, in a physical sense, to be the pontiff of Apollo. He was nearly as tall even as Flambeau, and very much better looking, with a golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung back like a lion's. In structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche, but all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints. And this despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings; the fact that he had an office half-way up a building in Victoria Street; that the clerk (a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars) sat in the outer room, between him and the corridor; that his name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like the advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not take away from the man called Kalon the vivid oppression and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When all was said, a man in the presence of this quack did feel in the presence of a great man. Even in the loose jacket-suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office he was a fascinating and formidable figure; and when robed in the white vestments and crowned with the golden circlet, in which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau, first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo.

Flambeau had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus, and plunged into the porch of the tall building without even looking for his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest in tomfoolery, stopped and stared up at the balcony of the sun-worshipper, just as he might have stopped and stared up at a Punch and Judy. Kalon the Prophet was already erect, with argent garments and uplifted hands, and the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all the way down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middle of it; his eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth; it is substantially certain that he did not see a stunted, round-faced priest who, in the crowd below, looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startling difference between even these two far divided men. Father Brown could not look at anything without blinking; but the priest of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid.

“O sun,” cried the prophet, “O star that art too great to be allowed among the stars! O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret spot that is called space. White father of all white unwearied things, white flames and white flowers and white peaks. Father, who art more innocent than all thy most innocent and quiet children; primal purity, into the peace of which——”

A rush and crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad news—bad news that was all the worse because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained still after the crash of commotion: the fair priest of Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.

At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in the doorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the top of his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his friend Father Brown slipped in insignificantly after him. Even as he ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy god who is the friend of fountains and flowers.