DETECTIVE STORIES
In attempting to reach the genuine
psychological reason for the popularity of detective stories, it is necessary
to rid ourselves of many mere phrases. It is not true, for example, that the
populace prefer bad literature to good, and accept detective stories because
they are bad literature. The mere absence of artistic subtlety does not make a
book popular. Bradshaw's Railway Guide contains few gleams of psychological
comedy, yet it is not read aloud uproariously on winter evenings. If detective
stories are read with more exuberance than railway guides, it is certainly
because they are more artistic. Many good books have fortunately been popular;
many bad books, still more fortunately, have been unpopular. A good detective
story would probably be even more popular than a bad one. The trouble in this
matter is that many people do not realize that there is such a thing as a good
detective story; it is to them like speaking of a good devil. To write a story
about a burglary is, in their eyes, a sort of spiritual manner of committing
it. To persons of somewhat weak sensibility this is natural enough; it must be
confessed that many detective stories are as full of sensational crime as one
of Shakespeare's plays.
There is, however, between a good
detective story and a bad detective story as much, or, rather more, difference
than there is between a good epic and a bad one. Not only is a detective story
a perfectly legitimate form of art, but it has certain definite and real
advantages as an agent of the public weal.
The first essential value of the
detective story lies in this, that it is the earliest and only form of popular
literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life. Men
lived among mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized
that they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our
descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the mountain-peaks,
and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees. Of this realization of
a great city itself as something wild and obvious the detective story is
certainly the 'Iliad.' No one can have failed to notice that in these stories
the hero or the investigator crosses London with something of the loneliness
and liberty of a prince in a tale of elfland, that in the course of that
incalculable journey the casual omnibus assumes the primal colours of a fairy
ship. The lights of the city begin to glow like innumerable goblin eyes, since
they are the guardians of some secret, however crude, which the writer knows
and the reader does not. Every twist of the road is like a finger pointing to
it; every fantastic skyline of chimney-pots seems wildly and derisively
signalling the meaning of the mystery.
This realization of the poetry of
London is not a small thing. A city is, properly speaking, more poetic even
than a countryside, for while Nature is a chaos of unconscious forces, a city
is a chaos of conscious ones. The crest of the flower or the pattern of the
lichen may or may not be significant symbols. But there is no stone in the
street and no brick in the wall that is not actually a deliberate symbol - a
message from some man, as much as if it were a telegram or a post-card. The
narrowest street possesses, in every crook and twist of its intention, the soul
of the man who built it, perhaps long in his grave. Every brick has as human a
hieroglyph as if it were a graven brick of Babylon; every late on the roof is
as educational a document as if it were a slate covered with addition and
subtraction sums. Anything which tends, even under the fantastic form of the
minutiae of Sherlock Holmes, to assert this romance of detail in civilization,
to emphasize this unfathomably human character in flints and tiles, is a good
thing. It is good that the average man should fall into the habit of looking
imaginatively at ten men in the street even if it is only on the chance that
the eleventh might be a notorious thief. We may dream, perhaps, that it might be
possible to have another and higher romance of London, that men's souls have
stranger adventures than their bodies, and that it would be harder and more
exciting to hunt their virtues than to hunt their crimes. But since our great
authors (with the admirable exception of Stevenson) decline to write of that
thrilling mood and moment when the eyes of the great city, like the eyes of a
cat, begin to flame in the dark, we must give fair credit to the popular
literature which, amid a babble of pedantry and preciosity, declines to regard
the present as prosaic or the common as commonplace. Popular art in all ages
has been interested in contemporary manners and costume; it dressed the groups
around the Crucifixion in the garb of Florentine gentlefolk or Flemish burghers.
In the last century it was the custom for distinguished actors to present
Macbeth in a powdered wig and ruffles. How far we are ourselves in this age
from such conviction of the poetry of our own life and manners may easily be
conceived by anyone who chooses to imagine a picture of Alfred the Great
toasting the cakes dressed in tourist s knickerbockers, or a performance of
'Hamlet' in which the Prince appeared in a frock-coat, with a crepe band round
his hat. But this instinct of the age to look back, like Lot's wife, could not
go on for ever. A rude, popular literature of the romantic possibilities of the
modern city was bound to arise. It has arisen in the popular detective stories,
as rough and refreshing as the ballads of Robin Hood.
There is, however, another good
work that is done by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of
the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as
civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activity
keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the
most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing
with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to
remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and
that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within
our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat
fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, it does
certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who
is the original and poetic figure; while the burglars and footpads are merely
placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes
and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man.
It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of
conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police
management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful
knight-errantry.
FROM THE
AMERICAN CHESTERTON SOCIETY
It is a well-known fact that
people who have never succeeded in anything end by writing books about how to
succeed; and I do not see why the principle should not be applied to success in
the writing of detective tales as well as in lower and less glorious walks of
life.
Before offering any criticism in
the matter of mystery stories, I think it only fair to confess that I have
myself written some of the worst mystery stories in the world. But, if I have
achieved the lowest results, I might very well claim to have had the loftiest
motive, for I acted on the divine principle of the Golden Rule. I did unto
others as I would they would do unto me. I provided them with more stories
about crime, in the faint hope that they in turn might provide me with more
stories about crime. I cast my mystery on the waters, so to speak, hoping it
might return to me after many days, with a totally different title and a much
better tale. In the detective novel the division of labour is sharply drawn
between the reader and the novelist. Perhaps it may be pointedly answered that
the heavier part of the labour falls on the reader. Perhaps it is true,
especially in those melancholy examples to which I have darkly referred. But,
anyhow, such a division does exist in the very nature of the detective story.
If you write it you cannot read it. If you want to read it you must not be so
ill-advised as to write it. It is obvious that I cannot be thunderstruck at the
end with a revelation which I have planned from the very beginning; nor can I
be bewildered and inquisitive about the concealment of something which I am
myself labouring to conceal. I cannot myself stagger with astonishment on
learning that the Bishop has been a brigand, if I have myself elaborately
disguised the brigand as a Bishop. The poet can sing his song, but the
sensational writer cannot be shocked at his shocker.
Nevertheless, I am moved to
dogmatise about detective stories, partly because I see everywhere the
advertisements of the dramatic version of one of the best of detective stories,
"The Yellow Room," and partly because I have just read again that
excellent French story in its original form. I have not seen the play itself,
but I hear it is a great success, though it by no means follows, from the
nature of the problem, that a good mystery story will make a good play. Indeed,
the two things in the abstract are almost antagonistic. The two methods of
concealment are exactly contrary, for the drama depends on what was called the
Greek irony - that is, on the knowledge of the audience, and not ignorance of
the audience. In the detective story it is the hero (or villain) who knows, and
the outsider who is deceived. In the drama it is the outsider (or spectator)
who knows, and the hero who is deceived. The one keeps a secret from the actors,
and the other from the audience. Nevertheless, the thing has been done
successfully in one or two cases, and very probably in this case also. But the
re-reading of the story itself, as well as of any amount of inferior stories of
the same kind, has moved me to throw out some general suggestions about the
true principles of this popular form of art. I do not mean to speak in any
superior fashion of the inferior stories. I am very fond of trash; I have read
a great deal of it - I have also written a great deal of it. But even in this
department there is trash and trash; and we might be more easily amused if our
idlest entertainers understood how to amuse us. And there are certain fallacies
about the nature of the true mystery story which I perceive to be common among
the writers as well as the readers of it. But I should like it to be understood
that it is in the comparatively proud and honourable character of a reader of
such stories, and not in the lower and more servile capacity of a writer of
them, that I venture to indicate such errors.
First of all, there is evidently a
very general idea that the object of the detective novelist is to baffle the
reader. Now, nothing is easier than baffling the reader, in the sense of
disappointing the reader. There are many successful and widely advertised
stories of which the principle simply Consists in thwarting information by
means of incident. The Bulgarian governess is just about to mention her real
reason for concealing herself with a loaded rifle inside the grand piano, when
a yellow Chinamall leaps through the window and cuts off her head with a
yataghan; [A yataghan is a Turkish scimitar with a double curved blade.] and
this trivial interruption is allowed to defer the elucidation of the whole
story. Now, it is quite a simple matter to fill several volumes with adventures
of this thrilling kind, without permitting the reader to advance a step in the
direction of discovery. This is illegitimate, on the fundamental principles of
this form of fiction. It is not merely that it is not artistic, or that it is
not logical. It is that it is not really exciting. People cannot be excited
except about something; and at this stage of ignorance the reader has nothing
to be excited about. People are thrilled by knowing something, and on this
principle they know nothing. The true object of an intelligent detective story
is not to baffle the reader, but to enlighten the reader; but to enlighten him
in such a manner that each successive portion of the truth comes as a surprise.
In this, as in much nobler types of mystery, the object of the true mystic is
not merely to mystify, but to illuminate. The object is not darkness, but
light; but light in the form of lightning.
Then there is the common error of
making all the human characters sticks, or stock figures - not so much because
the novelist is not intelligent enough to describe real characters as because
he really thinks real characterization wasted on an unreal type of literature.
In other words, he does the one thing which is destructive in every department
of existence - he despises the work he is doing. But the method is fatal to his
mechanical object, even considered as a mechanical object. We cannot even be
adequately thrilled by a whole secret society of assassins who have sworn to
effect the death of a bore who is obviously better dead. And even in order that
the novelist should kill people, it is first necessary that he should make them
live. As a matter of fact, we may very well add the general principle that the
most intense interest of a good mystery story does not consist in incident at
all. The Sherlock Holmes stories are very good working models of a workmanlike
type of popular mystery. And the point of such a story is very seldom the story
at all. The best part of it is the comedy of the conversations between Holmes
and Watson; and that for the sound psychological reason that they are
characters always, even when they are not actors at all.
But if I venture on this rebuke to
the popular novelist, I must balance it by a similar and yet more solemn rebuke
to the psychological novelist. The sensational story-teller does indeed create
uninteresting characters, and then try to make them interesting by killing
them. But the intellectual novelist yet more sadly wastes his talents, for he
creates interesting characters, and then does not kill them. What I complain of
in the advanced and analytical artist in fiction is that he describes some
subtle character, full of modern moods and doubts; that he expends all his
imagination on realising every fine shade of the sentiment and philosophy of
the sceptic or the free lover. And then, when the hero in question is at last
alive and ready to be murdered, when he is in every detail of his character
demanding and requiring, and, as it were, crying aloud to be murdered, the
novelist does not murder him after all. This is a serious waste of a fine
opportunity, and I hope in future to see the error rectified.
FROM THE AMERICAN CHESTERTON SOCIETY
Let it be understood that I write
this article as one wholly conscious that he has failed to write a detective
story. But I have failed a good many times. My authority is therefore practical
and scientific, like that of some great statesman or social thinker dealing
with Unemployment or the Housing Problem. I do not pretend that I have achieved
the ideal that I set up here for the young student; I am, if you will, rather
the awful example for him to avoid. None the less I believe that there are
ideals of detective writings, as of everything else worth doing; and I wonder
they are not more often set out in all that popular didactic literature which
teaches us how to do so many things so much less worth doing; as, for instance,
how to succeed. Indeed, I wonder very much that the title at the top of this
article does not stare at us from every bookstall. Pamphlets are published
teaching people all sorts of things that cannot possibly be learnt, such as
personality, popularity, poetry, and charm. Even those parts of literature and
journalism that most obviously cannot be learnt are assiduously taught. But
here is a piece of plain straightforward literary craftsmanship, constructive
rather than creative, which could to some limited extent be taught and even, in
very lucky instances, learnt. Sooner or later I suppose the want will be
supplied, in that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to
demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable
to get anything he wants. Sooner or later, I suppose, there will not only be
text-books teaching criminal investigators, but text-books teaching criminals.
It will be but a slight change from the present tone of financial ethics, and
when the shrewd and vigorous business mind has broken away from the last
lingering influence of dogmas invented by priests, journalism and advertisement
will show the same indifference to the taboos of today as does today to the
taboos of the Middle Ages. Burglary will be explained like usury, and there
will be no more disguise about cutting throats than there is about cornering
markets. The bookstalls will be brightened with titles like 'Forgery in Fifteen
Lessons,' and 'Why Endure Married Misery?' with a popularization of poisoning
fully as scientific as the popularization of Divorce and Birth-Control.
But, as we are so often reminded,
we must not be in a hurry for the arrival of a happy humanity; and meanwhile,
we seem to be quite as likely to get good advice about committing crimes as
good advice about detecting them, or about describing how they could be
detected. I imagine the explanation is that the crime, the detection, the
description, and the description of the description, do all demand a certain
slight element of thought, while succeeding and writing a book on success in no
way necessitate this tiresome experience. Anyhow, I find in my own case that
when I begin to think of the theory of detective stories, I do become what some
would call theoretical. That is, I begin at the beginning, without any pep,
snap, zip or other essential of the art of arresting the attention, without in
any way disturbing or awakening the mind.
The first and fundamental
principle is that the aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every
other mystery, is not darkness but light. The story is written for the moment
when the reader does understand, not merely for the many preliminary moments
when he does not understand. The misunderstanding is only meant as a dark
outline of cloud to bring out the brightness of that instant of
intelligibility; and most bad detective stories are bad because they fail upon
this point. The writers have a strange notion that it is their business to
baffle the reader; and that so long as they baffle him it does not matter if
they disappoint him. But it is not only necessary to hide a secret, it is also
necessary to have a secret; and to have a secret worth hiding. The climax must
not be an anti-climax; it must not merely consist of leading the reader a dance
and leaving him in a ditch. The climax must not be only the bursting of a
bubble but rather the breaking of a dawn; only that the daybreak is accentuated
by the dark. Any form of art, however trivial, refers back to some serious
truths; and though we are dealing with nothing more momentous than a mob of
Watsons, all watching with round eyes like owls, it is still permissible to
insist that it Is the people who sat in darkness who have seen a great light;
and that the darkness is only valuable in making vivid a great light in the
mind. It always struck me as an amusing coincidence that the best of the
Sherlock Holmes stories bore, with a totally different application and significance,
a title that might have been invented to express this primal illumination; the
title of "Silver Blaze"
The second great principle is that
the soul of detective fiction is not complexity but simplicity. The secret may
appear complex, but it must be simple; and in this also it is a symbol of
higher mysteries. The writer is there to explain the mystery; but he ought not
to be needed to explain the explanation. The explanation should explain itself;
it should be something that can be hissed (by the villain, of course) in a few
whispered words or shrieked preferably by the heroine before she swoons under
the shock of the belated realization that two and two make four. Now some
literary detectives make the solution more complicated than the mystery, and the
crime more complicated than the solution.
Thirdly, it follows that so far as
possible the fact or figure explaining everything should be a familiar fact or
figure. The criminal should be in the foreground, not in the capacity of
criminal, but in some other capacity which nevertheless gives him a natural
right to be in the foreground. I will take as a convenient case the one I have
already quoted; the story of Silver Blaze. Sherlock Holmes is as familiar as
Shakespeare; so there is no injustice by this time in letting out the secret of
one of the first of these famous tales. News is brought to Sherlock Holmes that
a valuable race-horse has been stolen, and the trainer guarding him murdered by
the thief. Various people, of course, are plausibly suspected of the theft and
murder; and everybody concentrates on the serious police problem of who can
have killed the trainer. The simple truth is that the horse killed him. Now I
take that as a model because the truth is so very simple. The truth really is
so very obvious.
At any rate, the point is that the
horse is very obvious. The story is named after the horse; it is all about the
horse; the horse is in the foreground all the time, but always in another
capacity. As a thing of great value he remains for the reader the Favourite; it
is only as a criminal that he is a dark horse. It is a story of theft in which
the horse plays the part of the jewel until we forget that the jewel can also
play the part of the weapon. That is one of the first rules I would suggest, if
I had to make rules for this form of composition. Generally speaking, the agent
should be a familiar figure in an unfamiliar function. The thing that we
realize must be a thing that we recognize; that is it must be something
previously known, and it ought to be something prominently displayed. Otherwise
there is no surprise in mere novelty. It is useless for a thing to be
unexpected if it was not worth expecting. But it should be prominent for one
reason and responsible for another. A great part of the craft or trick of
writing mystery stories consists in finding a convincing but misleading reason
for the prominence of the criminal, over and above his legitimate business of
committing the crime. Many mysteries fail merely by leaving him at loose ends
in the story, with apparently nothing to do except to commit the crime. He is
generally well off, or our just and equal law would probably have him arrested
as a vagrant long before he was arrested as a murderer. We reach the stage of
suspecting such
a character by a very rapid if
unconscious process of elimination. Generally we suspect him merely because he
has not been suspected. The art of narrative consists in convincing the reader
for a time, not only that the character might have come on the premises with no
intention to commit a felony, but that the author has put him there with some
intention that is not felonious. For the detective story is only a game; and in
that game the reader is not really wrestling with the criminal but with the
author.
What the writer has to remember,
in this sort of game, is that the reader will not say, as he sometimes might of
a serious or realistic study: "Why <did> the surveyor in green
spectacles climb the tree to look into the lady doctor's back garden?" He
will insensibly and inevitably say, "Why did the author <make> the
surveyor climb a tree, or introduce any surveyor at all?" The reader may
admit that the town would in any case need a surveyor, without admitting that
the tale would in any case need one. It is necessary to explain his presence in
the tale (and the tree) not only by suggesting why the town council put him
there, but why the author put him there. Over and above any little crimes he
may intend to indulge in, in the inner chamber of the story, he must have already
some other justification as a character in a story and not only as a mere
miserable material person in real life. The instinct of the reader, playing
hide-and-seek with the writer, who is his real enemy, is always to say with
suspicion, Yes, I know a surveyor might climb a tree; I am quite aware that
there are trees and that there are surveyors, but what are you doing with them?
Why did you make this particular surveyor climb this particular tree in this
particular tale, you cunning and evil-minded man?"
This I should call the fourth
principle to be remembered, as in the other cases, people probably will not
realize that it is practical, because the principles on which it rests sound
theoretical. It rests on the fact that in the classification of the arts, mysterious
murders belong to the grand and joyful company of the things called jokes. The
story is a fancy; an avowedly fictitious fiction. We may say if we like that it
is a very artificial form of art. I should prefer to say that it is professedly
a toy, a thing that children 'pretend' wish. From this it follows that the
reader, who is a simple child and therefore very wide awake, is conscious not
only of the toy but of the invisible playmate who is the maker of the toy, and
the author of the trick. The innocent child is very sharp and not a little
suspicious. And one of the first rules I repeat, for the maker of a tale that
shall be a trick, is to remember that the masked murderer must have an artistic
right to be on the scene and not merely a realistic right to be in the world.
He must not only come to the house on business, but on the business of the
story; it is not only a question of the motive of the visitor but of the motive
of the author. The ideal mystery story is one in which he is such a character
as the author would have created for his own sake, or for the sake of making
the story move in other necessary matters, and then be found to be present
there, not for the obvious and sufficient reason, but for a second and a secret
one. I will add that for this reason, despite the sneers at 'love-interest'
there is a good deal to be said for the tradition of sentiment and slower or
more Victorian narration. Some may call it a bore, but it may succeed as a
blind.
Lastly the principle that the
detective story like every literary form starts with an idea, and does not
merely start out to find one, applies also to its more material mechanical
detail. Where the story turns upon detection, it is still necessary that the
writer should begin from the inside, though the detective approaches from the
outside. Every good problem of this type originates in a positive notion, which
is in itself a simple notion; some fact of daily life that the writer can
remember and the reader can forget. But anyhow, a tale has to be founded on a
truth; and though opium may be added to it, it must not merely be an opium
dream.
FROM THE AMERICAN CHESTERTON SOCIETY
Between the silver ribbon of
morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and
let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by
no means conspicuous - nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except
a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official
gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white
waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was
dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and
suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness
of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey
jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police
card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in
Europe. For this was Valentin
himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the
world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of
the century.
Flambeau was in England. The
police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to
Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he
would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic
Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some minor
clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be
certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.
It is many years now since this
colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he
ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon
the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a
figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the
daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary
crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily
daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of athletic humour;
how he turned the <juge
d'instruction> upside down and
stood him on his head, "to clear his mind"; how he ran down the Rue
de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his
fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though
undignified scenes; his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and
wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make
a story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in
London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some thousand
subscribers. These he served by the simple operation of
moving the little milk cans
outside people's doors to the doors of his own customers. It was he who had
kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose whole
letter-bag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his
messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping
simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said that he once
repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one
traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box,
which he put up at corners in quiet
suburbs on the chance of strangers
dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat;
despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the
tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find
Flambeau, was perfectly aware that
his adventures would not end when he had found him.
But how was he to find him? On
this the great Valentin's ideas were still in process of settlement.
There was one thing which
Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his
singular height. If Valentin's quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall
grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the
spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised
Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on
the boat he had already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich
or on the journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There was a short
railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market
gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up
from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a
small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and
almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern
flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty
as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite
incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of
their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles
disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France, and could
have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might
have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which
constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end
of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in
the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real
silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels. His
quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused
the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his
parcels, and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even
had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling
everybody about it. But to
whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone else; he looked out
steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up to six feet;
for Flambeau was four inches above it.
He alighted at Liverpool Street,
however, quite conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal so
far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for
help in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and went for a long stroll
in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond
Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very
typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round
looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the
centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was
much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this side was broken by
one of London's admirable accidents - a restaurant that looked as if it had
strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object, with dwarf plants
in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially
high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight of
steps from the street ran up to meet the front door almost as a fire-escape
might run up to a first-floor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the
yellow-white blinds and considered them long.
The most incredible thing about
miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the
staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the andscape of a
doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I
have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in
the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder
a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there
is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the
prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of
Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
Aristide Valentin was unfathomably
French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He
was not "a thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of
modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only <is> a machine because it
cannot
think. But he was a thinking man,
and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like
conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French
thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they
electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far - as in
the French Revolution. But exactly
because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a
man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man
who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first
principles. Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at
Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp
on Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a
naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.
In such cases he reckoned on the
unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow the train of the
reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable.
Instead of going to the right places - banks, police stations, rendezvous - he
systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned
down every <cul de sac>, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went
round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this
crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst
way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the
chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same
that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had
better be just where another man might stop. Something about that flight of
steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the
restaurant, roused all the detective's rare romantic fancy and made him resolve
to strike at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by the
window, asked for a cup of black coffee.
It was half-way through the
morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts
stood about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg
to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee,
thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped,
once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to
pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a
telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective
brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the
disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the
critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips
slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.
He looked at the vessel from which
the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably
meant for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they
should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox
vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some
speciality in the condiment in the
saltcellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant
with a refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other traces of that
singular artistic taste which puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt
in the
sugar-basin. Except for an odd
splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls, the whole place
appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.
When that official hurried up,
fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was
not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste
the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result
was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.
"Do you play this delicate
joke on your customers every morning?" inquired Valentin. "Does
changing the salt and sugar never pall on you as a jest?"
The waiter, when this irony grew
clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment had certainly no such
intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and
looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing
more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and
hurrying away, returned in a few
seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and
then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.
Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow
inarticulate with a rush of words.
"I rink," he stuttered
eagerly, "I zink it is those two clergymen."'
"What two clergymen? "
"The two clergymen,"
said the waiter, "that threw soup at the wall."
"Threw soup at the wall?"
repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian metaphor.
"Yes, yes," said the
attendant excitedly, and pointed at the dark splash on the white paper;
"threw it over there on the wall."
Valentin looked his query at the
proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.
"Yes, sir," he said,
"it's quite true, though I don't suppose it has anything to do with the
sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon
as the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people;
one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach
altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at
last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he deliberately
picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on
the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only
rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don't do any
particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in
the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the
next
corner into Carstairs
Street."
The detective was on his feet, hat
settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal
darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed;
and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors
behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other street.
It was fortunate that even in such
fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by
him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular
greengrocer and fruiterer's, an array of goods set out in the open air and
plainly ticketed with their names and prices. the two most prominent
compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On the heap
of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold, blue chalk,
"Best tangerine oranges, two a penny." On the oranges was the equally
clear and exact description, "Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb." M.
Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied
he had met this highly subtle form
of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the attention of the
red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to
this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply
put each card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his walking-cane,
continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, "Pray excuse my
apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in
experimental psychology and the association of ideas."
The red-faced shopman regarded him
with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane,
"Why," he pursued, "why are two tickets wrongly placed in a
greengrocer's shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or,
in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which
connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one
tall and the other short?"
The eyes of the tradesman stood
out of his head like a snail's; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling
himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: "I don't know
what you 'ave to do with it, but if you're one of their friends, you can tell
'em from me that I'll knock their silly 'cads off, parsons or no parsons, if
they upset my apples again."
"Indeed? " asked the detective,
with great sympathy. "Did they upset your apples?"
"One of 'em did," said
the heated shopman; "rolled 'em all over the street. I'd 'ave caught the
fool but for havin' to pick 'em up."
"Which way did these parsons
go?" asked Valentin.
"Up that second road on the
left-hand side, and then across the square," said the other promptly.
"Thanks," replied
Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square he
found a policeman, and said: Thus is urgent, constable; have you seen two
clergymen in shovel."
The policeman began to chuckle
heavily. "I 'ave. sir; and if you arst me, one of 'em was drunk. He stood
in the middle of the road that bewildered that - "
"Which way did they go?"
snapped Valentin.
"They took one of them yellow
buses over there," answered the man; "them that go to
Hampstead."
Valentin produced his official
card and said very rapidly: Call up two of your men to come with me in
pursuit," and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the
ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half
the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a
man in
plain clothes.
"Well, sir," began the
former, with smiling importance, "and what may - ?"
Valentin pointed suddenly with his
cane. "I'll tell you on the top of that omnibus," he said, and was
darting and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank
panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: "We
could go four times as quick in a taxi."
"Quite true," replied
their leader placidly, "if we only had an idea of where we were
going."
"Well, where <are> you
going?" asked the other, staring.
Valentin smoked frowningly for a
few seconds; then, removing his cigarette, he said: "If you <know>
what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's
doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as
slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can
do is to
keep our eyes skinned for a queer
thing."
"What sort of queer thing do
you mean? " asked the inspector.
"Any sort of queer
thing," answered Valentin, and relapsed into obstinate silence.
The yellow omnibus crawled up the
northern roads for what seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not
explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of
his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for
the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of the
North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an
infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually
feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds
he has only come to the beginning of
Tufnell Park. London died away in
draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably born again in
blazing high streets and blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen
separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But though the winter
twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective
still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by
on either side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind, the policemen
were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as Valentin leapt
erect, struck a hand on each man's shoulder,
and shouted to the driver to stop.
They tumbled down the steps into
the road without realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked round
for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards
a window on the left side of the road. It was a large window, forming part of
the long facade of a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part reserved
for respectable dining, and labelled "Restaurant." This window, like
all the rest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass;
but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.
"Our cue at last," cried
Valentin, waving his stick; "the place with the broken window."
"What window? What cue?"
asked his principal assistant. "Why, what proof is there that this has
anything to do with - "
Valentin almost broke his bamboo
stick with rage.
"Proof!" he cried.
"Good God! the man is looking for proof' Why, of course, the chances are
twenty to one that it has <nothing> to do with them. But what else can we
do? Don't you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to
bed?" He banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions,
and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table, and looked at
the star of smashed glass from the inside Not that it was very informative to
them even then.
"Got your window broken, I
see," said Valentin to the waiter as he paid the bill.
"Yes, sir," answered the
attendant, bending busily over the change, to wretch vaientm silently added an
enormous tip. The waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable
animation.
"Ah, yes, sir," he said.
"Very odd thing, that, sir."
"Indeed? Tell us about
it," said the detective with careless curiosity.
"Well, two gents in black
came in," said the waiter, "two of those foreign parsons that are
running about. They had a cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid
for it and went out The other was just going out to join him when I looked at
my change again and
found he'd paid me more than three
times too much. 'Here,' I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door,
'you've paid too much.' 'Oh,' he says, very cool, 'have we?' 'Yes,' I says, and
picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was a knock-out."
"What do you mean?"
asked his interlocutor.
"Well, I'd have sworn on
seven Bibles that I'd put 4s. on that bill. But now I saw I'd put 14s., as
plain as paint."
"Well?" cried Valentin,
moving slowly, but with burning eyes, "and then?"
"The parson at the door he
says all serene, 'Sorry to confuse your accounts, but it'll pay for the
window.' 'What window?' I says. 'The one I'm going to break,' he says, and
smashed that blessed pane with his umbrella."
All three inquirers made an
exclamation; and the inspector said under his breath, "Are we after
escaped lunatics?" The waiter went on with some relish for the ridiculous
story:
"I was so knocked silly for a
second, I couldn't do anything. The man marched out of the place and joined his
friend just round the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I
couldn't catch them, though I ran round the bars to do it."
"Bullock Street," said
the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple
he pursued.
Their journey now took them
through bare brick ways like tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few
windows; streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and
everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was not easy even for the London
policemen to guess in what exact direction they were treading. The inspector,
however, was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of
Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight
like a bull's-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little
garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant's hesitation he went in; he stood amid
the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen
chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but
he did not need one.
An angular, elderly young woman in
the shop had regarded his elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry;
but when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the
inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.
"Oh," she said, "if
you've come about that parcel, I've sent it off already."
"Parcel!" repeated
Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.
"I mean the parcel the
gentleman left - the clergyman gentleman.
"For goodness' sake,"
said Valentin, leaning forward with his first real confession of eagerness,
"for Heaven's sake tell us what happened exactly."
"Well," said the woman a
little doubtfully, "the clergymen came in about half an hour ago and
bought some peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath.
But a second after, one of them runs back into the shop and says, 'Have I left
a parcel?' Well, I looked everywhere and couldn't see one; so he says, 'Never
mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,' and he left me
the address and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought
I'd looked everywhere, I found he'd left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it
to the place he said. I can't remember the address now; it was somewhere in
Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought perhaps the police
had come about it."
"So they have," said
Valentin shortly. "Is Hampstead Heath near here? "
"Straight on for fifteen
minutes," said the woman, "and you'll come right out on the
open." Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to run. The other
detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.
The street they threaded was so narrow
and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void
common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and
clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees
and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to
pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the
daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular
hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this
region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches; and
here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings. The glory of
heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing
on the slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he
sought.
Among the black and breaking
groups in that distance was one especially black which did not break - a group
of two figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects,
Valentin could see that one of them was much smaller than the other. Though the
other had a student's stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the
man was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling
his stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the distance
and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had perceived
something else; something which startled him, and yet which he had somehow
expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could be no doubt about the
identity of the short one. It was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy
little <curé> of Essex whom he had warned about his brown paper parcels.
Now, so far as this went,
everything fitted in finally and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his
inquiries that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver
cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some of the
foreign
priests at the congress. This
undoubtedly was the "silver with blue stones"; and Father Brown
undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing
wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also
found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing wonderful in
the fact that
when Flambeau heard of a sapphire
cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all natural
history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful about the fact that
Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the man with
the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on
a string to the North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau,
dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime
seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his
helplessness, he almost despised
Flambeau for condescending to so
gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between,
of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest
rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a
priest from Essex to do with
chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or
with paying for windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the
end of his chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed
(which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed
the
criminal. Here he had grasped the
criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.
The two figures that they followed
were crawling like black flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They
were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were
going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of
the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the
undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and
even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the
hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the
discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word
"reason" recurring frequently in a high and almost
childish voice. Once over an
abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives actually lost
the two figures they were following. They did not find the trail again for an
agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill
overlooking an amphitheatre of
rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected
spot was an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still
in serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the
darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacock-green to
peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more and more like solid
jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin contrived to creep up
behind the big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence, heard
the words of the strange priests for the first time.
After he had listened for a minute
and a half, he was gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two
English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than
seeking figs on its thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like
priests, piously, with learning
and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest
spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars;
the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at
them.
But no more innocently clerical
conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black
Spanish cathedral.
The first he heard was the tail of
one of Father Brown's sentences, which ended: ". . . what they really
meant in the Middle Ages by the heavens being incorruptible."
The taller priest nodded his bowed
head and said:
"Ah, yes, these modern infidels
appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not
feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is
utterly unreasonable? "
"No," said the other
priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost
borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering
reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason
really supreme Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by
reason."
The other priest raised his
austere face to the spangled sky and said: "Yet who knows if in that
infinite universe - ?"
"Only infinite
physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat,
"not Infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."
Valentin behind his tree was
tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers
of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only
to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience
he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened
again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
"Reason and justice grip the
remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if
they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany
or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants.
Think
the moon is a blue moon, a single
elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would
make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of
opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou
shalt not steal."'
Valentin was just in the act of
rising from his rigid and crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as
might be, felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very
silence of the tall priest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last
he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:
"Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason.
The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my
head."
Then, with brow yet bent and
without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:
"Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We're all alone
here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll."
The utterly unaltered voice and
attitude added a strange violence to that shocking change of speech. But the
guarder of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of
the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat foolish face turned to the
stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and
sat rigid with terror.
"Yes," said the tall
priest, in the same low voice and in the same still posture, "yes, I am
Flambeau."
Then, after a pause, he
said:"Come, will you give me that cross? "
"No," said the other,
and the monosyllable had an odd sound.
Flambeau suddenly flung off all
his pontifical pretensions. The great robber leaned back in his seat and
laughed low but long. "No," he cried, "you won't give it me, you
proud prelate. You won't give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I
tell you why you
won't give it me? Because I've got
it already in my own breast-pocket."
The small man from Essex turned
what seemed to be a dazed face in the dusk, and said, with the timid eagerness
of "The Private Secretary": "Are - are you sure? "
Flambeau yelled with delight.
"Really, you're as good as a three-act farce," he cried. "Yes,
you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of the right
parcel, and now, my friend, you've got the duplicate and I've got the jewels.
An old dodge, Father Brown - a very old dodge."
"Yes," said Father
Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with the same strange vagueness of
manner. "Yes, I've heard of it before."
The colossus of crime leaned over
to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.
"<You> have heard of
it?" he asked. "Where have you heard of it?"
"Well, I mustn't tell you his
name, of course," said the little man simply. "He was a penitent, you
know. He had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate
brown paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of
this poor chap's way of doing it at once."
Began to suspect me?"
repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. "Did you really have the
gumption to suspect me just because I brought you up to this bare part of the
heath?"
"No, no," said Brown
with an air of apology. "You see, I suspected you when we first met. It's
that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked
bracelet."
"How in Tartarus," cried
Flambeau, "did you ever hear of the spiked bracelet?"
"Oh, one's little flock, you
know!" said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. "When
I was a curate in Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets.
So, as I suspected you from the first, don't you see, I made sure that the
cross should go safe, anyhow. I'm afraid I watched you, you know. So at last I
saw you change the parcels. Then, don't you see, I changed them back again. And
then I left the right one behind."
"Left it behind?"
repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there was another note in his voice
beside his triumph.
"Well, it was like
this," said the little priest, speaking in the same unaffected way.
"I went back to that sweet-shop and asked if I'd left a parcel, and gave
them a particular address if it turned up Well, I knew I hadn't; but when I
went away again I did. So, in stead of running after me with that valuable
parcel, they have sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster." Then
he added rather sadly: "I learnt that, too, from a poor fellow in
Hartlepool He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but
he's in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to know, you know," he added,
rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology. "We can't
help being priests. People come and tell us these things."
Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel
out of his inner pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper and
sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and
cried: "I don't believe you. I don't believe a bumpkin like you could
manage
all that. I believe you've still
got the stuff on you, and if you don't give it up - why, we're all alone, and
I'll take it by force!"
"No," said Father Brown
simply, and stood up also, "you won't take it by force. First, because I
really haven't still got it. And, second, because we are not alone."
Flambeau stopped in his stride
forward.
"Behind that tree," said
Father Brown, pointing, "are two strong policemen and the greatest
detective alive. How did they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of
course! How did I do it? Why, I'll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we
have to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes! Well,
I wasn't sure
you were a thief, and it would
never do to make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested you
to see if anything would make you show yourself. A man generally makes a small
scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn't, he has some reason for
keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and <you> kept quiet. A man
generally
objects if his bill is three times
too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing unnoticed. I altered
your bill, and <you> paid it."
The world seemed waiting for
Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was
stunned with the utmost curiosity.
"Well," went on Father
Brown, with lumbering lucidity, "as you wouldn't leave any tracks for the
police, of course somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to do
something that would get us talked about for the rest of the day. I didn't do
much harm - a splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I saved the
cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather
wonder you didn't stop it with the Donkey's Whistle."
"With the what? " asked
Flambeau.
"I'm glad you've never heard
of it," said the priest, making a face. "It's a foul thing. I'm sure
you're too good a man for a Whistler. I couldn't have countered it even with
the Spots myself; I'm not strong enough in the legs."
"What on earth are you
talking about? " asked the other.
"Well, I did think you'd know
the Spots," said Father Brown, agreeably surprised. "Oh, you can't
have gone so very wrong yet! "
"How in blazes do you know
all these horrors?" cried Flambeau.
The shadow of a smile crossed the
round, simple face of his clerical opponent.
"Oh, by being a celibate
simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has it never struck you that a man
who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly
unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too,
made me sure you weren't a priest."
"What?" asked the thief,
almost gaping.
"You attacked reason,"
said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."
And even as he turned away to
collect his property, the three policemen came out from under the twilight
trees. Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept
Valentin a great bow.
"Do not bow to me, <mon
ami>," said Valentin with silver clearness. "Let us both bow to
our master."
And they both stood an instant
uncovered while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.
FROM THE AMERICAN
CHESTERTON SOCIETY
There has been some renewal of
debate on the problem of the problem story; sometimes called the police novel,
because it now consists chiefly of rather unjust depreciation of the police. I
see that Father Ronald Knox has written a most interesting introduction to a
collection of tales of the kind; and Mrs. Carolyn Wells, the author of an
admirable mystery called "Vicky Van, " has reissued a study on the
subject. There is one aspect of the detective story which is almost inevitably
left out in considering the detective stories. That tales of this type are
generally slight, sensational, and in some ways superficial, I know better than
most people, for I have written them myself. If I say there is in the abstract
something quite different, which may be called the Ideal Detective Story, I do
not mean that I can write it. I call it the Ideal Detective Story because I
cannot write it. Anyhow, I do think that such a story, while it must be
sensational, need not be superficial. In theory, though not commonly in
practice, it is possible to write a subtle and creative novel, of deep
philosophy and delicate psychology, and yet cast it in the form of a sensational
shocker.
The detective story differs from
every other story in this: that the reader is only happy if he feels a fool. At
the end of more philosophic works he may wish to feel a philosopher. But the
former view of himself may be more wholesome - and more correct. The sharp
transition from ignorance may be
good for humility. It is very largely a matter of the order in which things are
mentioned, rather than of the nature of the things themselves. The essence of a
mystery tale is that we are suddenly confronted with a truth which we have
never suspected and yet can see to be true. There is no reason, in logic, why
this truth should not be a
profound and convincing one as much as a shallow and conventional one. There is
no reason why the hero who turns out to be a villain, or the villain who turns
out to be a hero, should not be a study in the living subtleties and
complexities of human character, on a level with the first figures in human
fiction. It
is only an accident of the actual
origin of these police novels that the interest of the inconsistency commonly
goes no further than that of a demure governess being a poisoner, or a dull and
colourless clerk painting the town red by cutting throats. There are
inconsistencies in human nature of a much higher and more mysterious order, and
there
is really no reason why they
should not be presented in the particular way that causes the shock of a
detective tale. There is electric light as well as electric shocks, and even
the shock may be the bolt of Jove. It is, as I have said, very largely a matter
of the mere order of events. The side of the character that cannot be connected
with the crime has
to be presented first; the crime
has to be presented next as something in complete contrast with it; and the
psychological reconciliation of the two must come after that, in the place
where the common or garden detective explains that he was led to the truth by
the stump of a cigar left on the lawn or the spot of red ink on the
blotting-pad in the boudoir. But there is nothing in the nature of things to
prevent the explanation, when it does come, being as convincing to a
psychologist as the other is to a policeman.
For instance, there are several
very great novels in which characters behave with what might well be called a
monstrous and terrible inconsistency. I will merely take two of them at random.
By the end of the book we are successfully convinced that so very sympathetic a
woman as Tess of the D'Urbervilles has committed a murder. By the end of the
book we are (more or less) convinced that so very sympathetic a woman as Diana
of the Crossways has betrayed a political secret. I say more or less, because
in this latter case I confess to finding it, so far as I am concerned, an
example of less. I do not understand what Diana Merion was doing in the
<Times> office; I do not understand what Meredith meant her to be doing;
but I suppose Meredith understood. Anyhow, we may be certain that his reason
was, if anything, too subtle, and not, as in the common
sensational story, too simple. In
any case, broadly speaking, we follow the careers of Tess of the D'Urbervilles
and Diana of the Crossways until we admit that those characters have committed
those crimes. There is no sort of reason why the story should not be told in
the reverse order; in an order in which those crimes should first appear
utterly inconsistent with those characters, and be made consistent by a
description that should come at the end like a revelation. Somebody else might
first be suspected of betraying the
secret or slaying the man. I
suppose nothing would have turned Hardy aside from hounding Tess to the
gallows, though it might have been some gloomy comfort to him to have hanged
somebody who had not murdered anybody. But many of Meredith's characters might
have betrayed a secret. Only it seems possible that they might have told the
secret in such an ingenious style of wit that it remained a secret after all. I
know that there has been of late a rather mysterious neglect of Meredith, to
balance what seems to me (I dare to confess) the rather exaggerated cult of
Hardy. But, anyhow, there are older and more obvious examples than either of
these two novelists.
There is Shakespeare, for
instance: he has created two or three extremely amiable and sympathetic
murderers. Only we can watch their amiability slowly and gently merging into
murder. Othello is an affectionate husband who assassinates his wife out of
sheer affection, so to speak. But as we know the story from the first, we can
see the connection and accept the contradiction. But suppose the story opened
with Desdemona found dead, Iago or Cassio suspected, and Othello the very last
person likely to be suspected. In that case, "Othello" would be a
detective story. But it might be a true detective story; that is, one
consistent with the true character of the hero when he finally tells the truth.
Hamlet, again, is a most lovable and even peaceable person as a rule, and we
pardon the nervous and slightly irritable gesture which happens to have the
result of sticking an old fool like a pig behind a curtain. But suppose the
curtain rises on the corpse of Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
discuss the suspicion that has immediately fallen on the First Player, an
immoral actor accustomed to killing people on the stage; while Horatio or some
shrewd character suspects another crime of Claudius or the reckless and
unscrupulous Laertes. Then "Hamlet" would be a shocker, and the guilt
of Hamlet would be a shock. But it might be a shock of truth, and it is not
only sex novels that are shocking. These Shakespearean characters would be none
the less coherent and all of a
piece because we brought the
opposite ends of the character together and tied them into a knot. The story of
Othello might be published with a lurid wrapper as "The Pillow Murder
Case." But it might still be the same case; a serious case and a
convincing case. The death of Polonius might appear on the bookstalls as
"The Vanishing Rat Mystery," and be in form like an ordinary
detective story. Yet it might be The Ideal Detective Story.
Nor need there be anything vulgar
in the violent and abrupt transition that is the essential of such a tale. The
inconsistencies of human nature are indeed terrible and heart-shaking things,
to be named with the same note of crisis as the hour of death and the Day of
Judgment. They are not all fine shades, but some of them very fearful shadows,
made by the primal contrast of darkness and light. Both the crimes and the
confessions can be as catastrophic as lightning. Indeed, The Ideal Detective
Story might do some good if it brought men back to understand that the world is
not all curves, but that there are some things that are as jagged as the
lightning-flash or as straight as the sword.
FROM THE AMERICAN
CHESTERTON SOCIETY
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Rafael Gil-Nogués
ragilno@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press
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