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would flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it."
 "Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think
the two methods equally valuable?"
"I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows,
fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons
than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily;
blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it
as a sign that I am to shed it."
"The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed
by some of the greatest American men of science."
"What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown,
"and how much more sentimental must American men of science be!
Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs?
Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman
is in love with him if she blushes. That's a test from
the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey;
and a jolly rotten test, too."
"But surely," insisted Flambeau, "it might point pretty straight
at something or other."
"There's a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight,"
answered the other. "What is it? Why, the other end of the stick
always points the opposite way. It depends whether you
get hold of the stick by the right end. I saw the thing done once
and I've never believed in it since." And he proceeded to tell
the story of his disillusionment.
It happened nearly twenty years before, when he was chaplain
to his co-religionists in a prison in Chicago--where the Irish population
displayed a capacity both for crime and penitence which kept him
tolerably busy. The official second-in-command under the Governor
was an ex-detective named Greywood Usher, a cadaverous, careful-spoken
Yankee philosopher, occasionally varying a very rigid visage
with an odd apologetic grimace. He liked Father Brown in
a slightly patronizing way; and Father Brown liked him,
though he heartily disliked his theories. His theories were
extremely complicated and were held with extreme simplicity.
One evening he had sent for the priest, who, according to his custom,
took a seat in silence at a table piled and littered with papers,
and waited. The official selected from the papers a scrap of
newspaper cutting, which he handed across to the cleric,
who read it gravely. It appeared to be an extract from one of
the pinkest of American Society papers, and ran as follows:
"Society's brightest widower is once more on the Freak Dinner stunt.
All our exclusive citizens will recall the Perambulator Parade Dinner,
in which Last-Trick Todd, at his palatial home at Pilgrim's Pond,
caused so many of our prominent debutantes to look even younger
than their years. Equally elegant and more miscellaneous and
large-hearted in social outlook was Last-Trick's show the year previous,
the popular Cannibal Crush Lunch, at which the confections handed round
were sarcastically moulded in the forms of human arms and legs,
and during which more than one of our gayest mental gymnasts was heard
offering to eat his partner. The witticism which will inspire
this evening is as yet in Mr Todd's pretty reticent intellect,
or locked in the jewelled bosoms of our city's gayest leaders;
but there is talk of a pretty parody of the simple manners and customs
at the other end of Society's scale. This would be all the more telling,
as hospitable Todd is entertaining in Lord Falconroy, the famous traveller,
a true-blooded aristocrat fresh from England's oak-groves.
Lord Falconroy's travels began before his ancient feudal title
was resurrected, he was in the Republic in his youth, and fashion murmurs
a sly reason for his return. Miss Etta Todd is one of our
deep-souled New Yorkers, and comes into an income of nearly
twelve hundred million dollars."
"Well," asked Usher, "does that interest you?"
"Why, words rather fail me," answered Father Brown.
"I cannot think at this moment of anything in this world that would
interest me less. And, unless the just anger of the Republic is
at last going to electrocute journalists for writing like that,
I don't quite see why it should interest you either."
"Ah!" said Mr Usher dryly, and handing across another
scrap of newspaper. "Well, does that interest you?"
The paragraph was headed "Savage Murder of a Warder.
Convict Escapes," and ran: "Just before dawn this morning
a shout for help was heard in the Convict Settlement at Sequah
in this State. The authorities, hurrying in the direction of the cry,
found the corpse of the warder who patrols the top of the north wall
of the prison, the steepest and most difficult exit, for which one man
has always been found sufficient. The unfortunate officer had,
however, been hurled from the high wall, his brains beaten out
as with a club, and his gun was missing. Further inquiries showed that
one of the cells was empty; it had been occupied by a rather sullen ruffian
giving his name as Oscar Rian. He was only temporarily detained
for some comparatively trivial assault; but he gave everyone the impression
of a man with a black past and a dangerous future. Finally,
when daylight bad fully revealed the scene of murder, it was found
that he had written on the wall above the body a fragmentary sentence,
apparently with a finger dipped in blood: `This was self-defence and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]