Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (87 page)

The
athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed him like an
Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the
piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable heavily off the floor the
clown played “I arise from dreams of thee.” When he shuffled him across his back,
“With my bundle on my shoulder,” and when the harlequin finally let fall the
policeman with a most convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck
into a jingling measure with some words which are still believed to have been, “I
sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it.”

At
about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown’s view was obscured altogether;
for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full height and thrust his
hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down nervously, still
fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed seriously likely
that he would stride across the footlights; then he turned a glare at the clown
playing the piano; and then he burst in silence out of the room.

The
priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not inelegant
dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconscious foe. With real
though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwards out of the door into the
garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The vamped dress of silver
paper and paste, which had been too glaring in the footlights, looked more and
more magical and silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience
was closing in with a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly
touched, and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel’s study.

He
followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled by a
solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat Colonel Adams, still
unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed whalebone nodding above
his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered a Saturnalia.
Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against the mantelpiece and heaving with all
the importance of panic.

“This
is a very painful matter, Father Brown,” said Adams. “The truth is, those
diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished from my friend’s
tail-coat pocket. And as you—”

“As I,”
supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, “was sitting just behind him—”

“Nothing
of the sort shall be suggested,” said Colonel Adams, with a firm look at
Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing
had
been suggested. “I
only ask you to give me the assistance that any gentleman might give.”

“Which
is turning out his pockets,” said Father Brown, and proceeded to do so,
displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a
small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The
colonel looked at him long, and then said, “Do you know, I should like to see
the inside of your head more than the inside of your pockets. My daughter is
one of your people, I know: well, she has lately—” and he stopped.

“She
has lately,” cried out old Fischer, “opened her father’s house to a cut-throat
Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from a richer man. This is
the end of it. Here is the richer man—and none the richer.”

“If
you want the inside of my head you can have it,” said Brown rather wearily. “What
it’s worth you can say afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused
pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds don’t talk Socialism. They
are more likely,” he added demurely, “to denounce it.”

Both
the others shifted sharply and the priest went on:

“You
see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would no more steal a
diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one man we don’t know.
The fellow acting the policeman—Florian. Where is he exactly at this minute, I
wonder.”

The
pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during
which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary;
then the pantaloon returned and said, with
staccato
gravity, “The
policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six
times; he is still lying there.”

Father
Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very
slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely
obvious answer.

“Please
forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”

“Wife!”
replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James
arrived just a week too late to see her.”

The
little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual
excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”

They
rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and
clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the
prostrate comic policeman.

“Chloroform,”
he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

There
was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say
seriously what all this means.”

Father
Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it
for instants during the rest of his speech. “Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s
not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this great French
actor who played the policeman—this clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with
and dandled and threw about—he was—” His voice again failed him, and he turned
his back to run.

“He
was?” called Fischer inquiringly.

“A
real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There
were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the
laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon,
even in that mid-winter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the
waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous
crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top
branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so
much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten
million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch
of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in
this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there
because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably called up
to him.

“Well,
Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star; but that always
means a Falling Star at last.”

The
silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels and,
confident of escape, listens to the little figure below.

“You
never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from Canada (with a
Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in
a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to have marked down the Flying Stars
and the very day of Fischer’s coming. But there’s no cleverness, but mere
genius, in what followed. Stealing the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you.
You could have done it by sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that
pretence of putting a paper donkey’s tail to Fisher’s coat. But in the rest you
eclipsed yourself.”

The
silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if hypnotised, though
his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the man below.

“Oh,
yes,” says the man below, “I know all about it. I know you not only forced the
pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going to steal the stones
quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a
capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common
thief would have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet.
You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false
stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin’s the
appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started
from Putney police station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever
set in this world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to the
stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned and
drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most
respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything better. And now,
by the way, you might give me back those diamonds.”

The
green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in
astonishment; but the voice went on:

“I
want you to give them back. Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life.
There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last
in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been
able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man
drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I’ve
known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and
ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of
principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that
both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement
sincerely enough; now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless
brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry;
now he’s paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon
was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse,
screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed him and
hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know
that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will
be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at
heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.”

Everything
continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some
long invisible leash; and he went on:

“Your
downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are
doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a
good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves
and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three
flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick
them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of
its silver bird.

The
restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people)
ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good
humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could
respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this
world.

“God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay.