The Innocence of Father Brown / Неведение отца Брауна. Гилберт Кит Честертон
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that he was delayed for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements[41] about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were unpleasant to him, he always performed them with accuracy. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French police methods, his great influence had been used for making sentences milder. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers.
When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette – an elegant figure, his dark beard already with grey. He went straight through his house to his study. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was rising, and Valentin regarded it with wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. From such mood he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there. He saw all the other members of the little party; he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador. He saw Lady Galloway, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an oval face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, and a pointed brown beard. He saw Father Brown, whom he had recently met in England. He saw – perhaps with more interest than any of these – a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways, and who now advanced to pay his respects[42] to his host. This was Commandant O'Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He was slim, clean-shaven, darkhaired, and blue-eyed, and he had an air at once dynamic and melancholic. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways – especially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after making debts, and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by demonstrating his uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador's family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.
But no one of them was in the host's eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he had got during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that multi-millionaire whose colossal donations to small religions have been reported in the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr. Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was ready to invest money into any intellectual project. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare. He liked anything that he thought “progressive.” He thought Valentin “progressive,” which was totally wrong.
The appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us can have, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall, dressed in complete evening black. His hair was white and well brushed back like a German's; his face was red and fierce. Not long, however, the salon stared at the celebrated American; his lateness had already become a domestic problem[43], and he was sent into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.
Except on one point the Galloways were non-official. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied; she had decorously gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men – Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and O'Brien – all went away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. Every sixty seconds he thought that that scamp O'Brien might be making advances[44] to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him and it was tiresome. After a time Lord Galloway got up and went to the drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought, were probably arguing about “science and religion.” But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing – he saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was absent too.
From the drawing-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His duty of protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian had become something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet his daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face. If she had been with O'Brien, where was O'Brien! If she had not been with O'Brien, where had she been? With suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; it was Commandant O'Brien.
He came through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord Galloway furious and confused. The grace of the Irishman's stride maddened him as if he were a rival instead of a father. He stepped quickly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight – an elderly English diplomatist crying and running hard.
Lord Galloway was crying: “A corpse in the grass – a blood-stained corpse.” O'Brien at last had gone out of his mind.
“We must tell Valentin at once,” said the doctor. “It is fortunate that he is here;” and even as he spoke the great detective entered the study, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation; he had come as a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was told the gory fact, he turned instantly bright and businesslike; for this, however, was his business.
“Strange, gentlemen,” he said as they hurried out into the garden, “that I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes to my own back-yard. But where is the place?” They crossed the lawn, and under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body in deep grass – the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He lay face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were covered in black cloth, and that his big head was bald. A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.
“At least,” said Simon, “he is none of our party.”
“Examine him, doctor,” cried Valentin rather sharply. “He may not be dead.”
The doctor bent down. “He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough,” he answered. “Just help me to lift him up.”
They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts disappeared. The head fell away. It had been entirely cut off from the body. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. “He must have been as strong as a gorilla,” he muttered.
Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical dissections, Dr. Simon lifted the head. The face was substantially unhurt. It was a yellow face, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids. Nothing else could be noted about the man. As Dr. Simon said, the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have been trying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.
Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest professional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was assisted by the doctor, and the English lord. Valentin's attention was drawn by a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, which he lifted for an instant's examination and then tossed away.
“Twigs,” he said gravely; “twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn.”
There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply:
“Who's
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