The Hammer of God
The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steepthat the tall spire of its church seemed only like the peak of a smallmountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red withfires and always littered with hammers and scraps of iron; opposite tothis, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was "The Blue Boar," the onlyinn of the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leadenand silver daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke;though one was beginning the day and the other finishing it. The Rev.and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to someaustere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon.Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sittingin evening dress on the bench outside "The Blue Boar," drinking whatthe philosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass onTuesday or his first on Wednesday. The colonel was not particular.
The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really datingfrom the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine.But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand highin chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions.Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had beenMohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria. But like morethan one of the really ancient houses, they had rotted in the last twocenturies into mere drunkards and dandy degenerates, till there had evencome a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardlyhuman about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronicresolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideousclarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but withhair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde andleonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that theylooked black. They were a little too close together. He had very longyellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from nostril tojaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his face. Over his evening clotheshe wore a curious pale yellow coat that looked more like a very lightdressing gown than an overcoat, and on the back of his head was stuck anextraordinary broad-brimmed hat of a bright green colour, evidently someoriental curiosity caught up at random. He was proud of appearing insuch incongruous attires--proud of the fact that he always made themlook congruous.
His brother the curate had also the yellow hair and the elegance, buthe was buttoned up to the chin in black, and his face was clean-shaven,cultivated, and a little nervous. He seemed to live for nothing but hisreligion; but there were some who said (notably the blacksmith, who wasa Presbyterian) that it was a love of Gothic architecture rather than ofGod, and that his haunting of the church like a ghost was only anotherand purer turn of the almost morbid thirst for beauty which sent hisbrother raging after women and wine. This charge was doubtful, while theman's practical piety was indubitable. Indeed, the charge was mostly anignorant misunderstanding of the love of solitude and secret prayer, andwas founded on his being often found kneeling, not before the altar, butin peculiar places, in the crypts or gallery, or even in the belfry.He was at the moment about to enter the church through the yard ofthe smithy, but stopped and frowned a little as he saw his brother'scavernous eyes staring in the same direction. On the hypothesis that thecolonel was interested in the church he did not waste any speculations.There only remained the blacksmith's shop, and though the blacksmith wasa Puritan and none of his people, Wilfred Bohun had heard some scandalsabout a beautiful and rather celebrated wife. He flung a suspicious lookacross the shed, and the colonel stood up laughing to speak to him.
"Good morning, Wilfred," he said. "Like a good landlord I am watchingsleeplessly over my people. I am going to call on the blacksmith."
Wilfred looked at the ground, and said: "The blacksmith is out. He isover at Greenford."
"I know," answered the other with silent laughter; "that is why I amcalling on him."
"Norman," said the cleric, with his eye on a pebble in the road, "areyou ever afraid of thunderbolts?"
"What do you mean?" asked the colonel. "Is your hobby meteorology?"
"I mean," said Wilfred, without looking up, "do you ever think that Godmight strike you in the street?"
"I beg your pardon," said the colonel; "I see your hobby is folk-lore."
"I know your hobby is blasphemy," retorted the religious man, stung inthe one live place of his nature. "But if you do not fear God, you havegood reason to fear man."
The elder raised his eyebrows politely. "Fear man?" he said.
"Barnes the blacksmith is the biggest and strongest man for fortymiles round," said the clergyman sternly. "I know you are no coward orweakling, but he could throw you over the wall."
This struck home, being true, and the lowering line by mouth and nostrildarkened and deepened. For a moment he stood with the heavy sneer on hisface. But in an instant Colonel Bohun had recovered his own cruel goodhumour and laughed, showing two dog-like front teeth under his yellowmoustache. "In that case, my dear Wilfred," he said quite carelessly,"it was wise for the last of the Bohuns to come out partially inarmour."
And he took off the queer round hat covered with green, showing thatit was lined within with steel. Wilfred recognised it indeed as a lightJapanese or Chinese helmet torn down from a trophy that hung in the oldfamily hall.
"It was the first hat to hand," explained his brother airily; "alwaysthe nearest hat--and the nearest woman."
"The blacksmith is away at Greenford," said Wilfred quietly; "the timeof his return is unsettled."
And with that he turned and went into the church with bowed head,crossing himself like one who wishes to be quit of an unclean spirit.He was anxious to forget such grossness in the cool twilight of his tallGothic cloisters; but on that morning it was fated that his still roundof religious exercises should be everywhere arrested by small shocks.As he entered the church, hitherto always empty at that hour, a kneelingfigure rose hastily to its feet and came towards the full daylight ofthe doorway. When the curate saw it he stood still with surprise. Forthe early worshipper was none other than the village idiot, a nephew ofthe blacksmith, one who neither would nor could care for the church orfor anything else. He was always called "Mad Joe," and seemed to haveno other name; he was a dark, strong, slouching lad, with a heavy whiteface, dark straight hair, and a mouth always open. As he passed thepriest, his moon-calf countenance gave no hint of what he had been doingor thinking of. He had never been known to pray before. What sort ofprayers was he saying now? Extraordinary prayers surely.
Wilfred Bohun stood rooted to the spot long enough to see the idiot goout into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail himwith a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was thecolonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the seriousappearance of trying to hit it.
This ugly sunlit picture of the stupidity and cruelty of the earth sentthe ascetic finally to his prayers for purification and new thoughts.He went up to a pew in the gallery, which brought him under a colouredwindow which he loved and always quieted his spirit; a blue windowwith an angel carrying lilies. There he began to think less about thehalf-wit, with his livid face and mouth like a fish. He began to thinkless of his evil brother, pacing like a lean lion in his horriblehunger. He sank deeper and deeper into those cold and sweet colours ofsilver blossoms and sapphire sky.
In this place half an hour afterwards he was found by Gibbs, the villagecobbler, who had been sent for him in some haste. He got to his feetwith promptitude, for he knew that no small matter would have broughtGibbs into such a place at all. The cobbler was, as in many villages,an atheist, and his appearance in church was a shade more extraordinarythan Mad Joe's. It was a morning of theological enigmas.
"What is it?" asked Wilfred Bohun rather stiffly, but putting out atrembling hand for his hat.
The atheist spoke in a tone that, coming from him, was quite startlinglyrespectful, and even, as it were, huskily sympathetic.
"You must excuse me, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper, "
but we didn'tthink it right not to let you know at once. I'm afraid a rather dreadfulthing has happened, sir. I'm afraid your brother--"
Wilfred clenched his frail hands. "What devilry has he done now?" hecried in voluntary passion.
"Why, sir," said the cobbler, coughing, "I'm afraid he's done nothing,and won't do anything. I'm afraid he's done for. You had really bettercome down, sir."
The curate followed the cobbler down a short winding stair which broughtthem out at an entrance rather higher than the street. Bohun saw thetragedy in one glance, flat underneath him like a plan. In the yardof the smithy were standing five or six men mostly in black, one inan inspector's uniform. They included the doctor, the Presbyterianminister, and the priest from the Roman Catholic chapel, to which theblacksmith's wife belonged. The latter was speaking to her, indeed,very rapidly, in an undertone, as she, a magnificent woman with red-goldhair, was sobbing blindly on a bench. Between these two groups, andjust clear of the main heap of hammers, lay a man in evening dress,spread-eagled and flat on his face. From the height above Wilfred couldhave sworn to every item of his costume and appearance, down to theBohun rings upon his fingers; but the skull was only a hideous splash,like a star of blackness and blood.
Wilfred Bohun gave but one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard.The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcelytook any notice. He could only stammer out: "My brother is dead. Whatdoes it mean? What is this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappysilence; and then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered:"Plenty of horror, sir," he said; "but not much mystery."
"What do you mean?" asked Wilfred, with a white face.
"It's plain enough," answered Gibbs. "There is only one man for fortymiles round that could have struck such a blow as that, and he's the manthat had most reason to."
"We must not prejudge anything," put in the doctor, a tall,black-bearded man, rather nervously; "but it is competent for me tocorroborate what Mr. Gibbs says about the nature of the blow, sir; itis an incredible blow. Mr. Gibbs says that only one man in this districtcould have done it. I should have said myself that nobody could havedone it."
A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate."I can hardly understand," he said.
"Mr. Bohun," said the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally failme. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like aneggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the groundlike bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of a giant."
He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then headded: "The thing has one advantage--that it clears most people ofsuspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in thecountry were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infantwould be acquitted of stealing the Nelson column."
"That's what I say," repeated the cobbler obstinately; "there's only oneman that could have done it, and he's the man that would have done it.Where's Simeon Barnes, the blacksmith?"
"He's over at Greenford," faltered the curate.
"More likely over in France," muttered the cobbler.
"No; he is in neither of those places," said a small and colourlessvoice, which came from the little Roman priest who had joined the group."As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment."
The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubblybrown hair and a round and stolid face. But if he had been as splendidas Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyoneturned round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plainbelow, along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and witha hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and giganticman, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He waswalking and talking quietly with two other men; and though he was neverspecially cheerful, he seemed quite at his ease.
"My God!" cried the atheistic cobbler, "and there's the hammer he did itwith."
"No," said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a sandy moustache,speaking for the first time. "There's the hammer he did it with overthere by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as theyare."
All glanced round and the short priest went across and looked down insilence at the tool where it lay. It was one of the smallest and thelightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among therest; but on the iron edge of it were blood and yellow hair.
After a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there wasa new note in his dull voice. "Mr. Gibbs was hardly right," he said, "insaying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why sobig a man should attempt so big a blow with so little a hammer."
"Oh, never mind that," cried Gibbs, in a fever. "What are we to do withSimeon Barnes?"
"Leave him alone," said the priest quietly. "He is coming here ofhimself. I know those two men with him. They are very good fellows fromGreenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel."
Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church,and strode into his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and thehammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrablepropriety, immediately went up to him.
"I won't ask you, Mr. Barnes," he said, "whether you know anything aboutwhat has happened here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don't know,and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the formof arresting you in the King's name for the murder of Colonel NormanBohun."
"You are not bound to say anything," said the cobbler in officiousexcitement. "They've got to prove everything. They haven't proved yetthat it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that."
"That won't wash," said the doctor aside to the priest. "That's out ofthe detective stories. I was the colonel's medical man, and I knew hisbody better than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiarones. The second and third fingers were the same length. Oh, that's thecolonel right enough."
As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of themotionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.
"Is Colonel Bohun dead?" said the smith quite calmly. "Then he'sdamned."
"Don't say anything! Oh, don't say anything," cried the atheist cobbler,dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system.For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.
The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of afanatic.
"It's well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world's lawfavours you," he said; "but God guards His own in His pocket, as youshall see this day."
Then he pointed to the colonel and said: "When did this dog die in hissins?"
"Moderate your language," said the doctor.
"Moderate the Bible's language, and I'll moderate mine. When did hedie?"
"I saw him alive at six o'clock this morning," stammered Wilfred Bohun.
"God is good," said the smith. "Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightestobjection to being arrested. It is you who may object to arresting me.I don't mind leaving the court without a stain on my character. You domind perhaps leaving the court with a bad set-back in your career."
The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with alively eye; as did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, whowas still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadfulblow.
"There are two men standing outside this shop," went on the blacksmithwith ponderous lucidity, "good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know,who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till daybreak andlong after in the committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits allnight, we save souls so fast. In Greenford itself twenty people couldswear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector, Iwould let you walk on to your downfall. But as a Christian man I feelbound to give you your chance, and ask you whether you will hear myalibi now or in court."
The inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and s
aid, "Of courseI should be glad to clear you altogether now."
The smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, andreturned to his two friends from Greenford, who were indeed friends ofnearly everyone present. Each of them said a few words which no one everthought of disbelieving. When they had spoken, the innocence of Simeonstood up as solid as the great church above them.
One of those silences struck the group which are more strange andinsufferable than any speech. Madly, in order to make conversation, thecurate said to the Catholic priest:
"You seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown."
"Yes, I am," said Father Brown; "why is it such a small hammer?"
The doctor swung round on him.
"By George, that's true," he cried; "who would use a little hammer withten larger hammers lying about?"
Then he lowered his voice in the curate's ear and said: "Only the kindof person that can't lift a large hammer. It is not a question of forceor courage between the sexes. It's a question of lifting power in theshoulders. A bold woman could commit ten murders with a light hammer andnever turn a hair. She could not kill a beetle with a heavy one."
Wilfred Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotised horror,while Father Brown listened with his head a little on one side, reallyinterested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:
"Why do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates thewife's lover is the wife's husband? Nine times out of ten the personwho most hates the wife's lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence ortreachery he had shown her--look there!"
He made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench.She had lifted her head at last and the tears were drying on hersplendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electricglare that had in it something of idiocy.
The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desireto know; but Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown fromthe furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.
"You are like so many doctors," he said; "your mental science is reallysuggestive. It is your physical science that is utterly impossible. Iagree that the woman wants to kill the co-respondent much more than thepetitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a smallhammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physicalimpossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man's skullout flat like that." Then he added reflectively, after a pause: "Thesepeople haven't grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing aniron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at thatwoman. Look at her arms."
Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily:"Well, I may be wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stickto the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammerif he could use a big hammer."
With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to hishead and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant theydropped, and he cried: "That was the word I wanted; you have said theword."
Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: "The words you said were,'No man but an idiot would pick up the small hammer.'"
"Yes," said the doctor. "Well?"
"Well," said the curate, "no man but an idiot did." The rest staredat him with eyes arrested and riveted, and he went on in a febrile andfeminine agitation.
"I am a priest," he cried unsteadily, "and a priest should be no shedderof blood. I--I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. And Ithank God that I see the criminal clearly now--because he is a criminalwho cannot be brought to the gallows."
"You will not denounce him?" inquired the doctor.
"He would not be hanged if I did denounce him," answered Wilfred witha wild but curiously happy smile. "When I went into the church thismorning I found a madman praying there--that poor Joe, who has beenwrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with such strange folkit is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down.Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a man. When I last sawpoor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking him."
"By Jove!" cried the doctor, "this is talking at last. But how do youexplain--"
The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of hisown glimpse of the truth. "Don't you see; don't you see," he criedfeverishly; "that is the only theory that covers both the queer things,that answers both the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer andthe big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow, but would nothave chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the littlehammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman mighthave done both. As for the little hammer--why, he was mad and might havepicked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor,that a maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?"
The doctor drew a deep breath and then said, "By golly, I believe you'vegot it."
Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadilyas to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite soinsignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he saidwith marked respect: "Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propoundedwhich holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think,therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, thatit is not the true one." And with that the old little man walked awayand stared again at the hammer.
"That fellow seems to know more than he ought to," whispered the doctorpeevishly to Wilfred. "Those popish priests are deucedly sly."
"No, no," said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. "It was the lunatic.It was the lunatic."
The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away fromthe more official group containing the inspector and the man he hadarrested. Now, however, that their own party had broken up, they heardvoices from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then lookeddown again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud voice:
"I hope I've convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I'm a strong man, as you say,but I couldn't have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammerhasn't got wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges andfields."
The inspector laughed amicably and said: "No, I think you can beconsidered out of it, though it's one of the rummiest coincidences Iever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can infinding a man as big and strong as yourself. By George! you might beuseful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at theman?"
"I may have a guess," said the pale smith, "but it is not at a man."Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he puthis huge hand on her shoulder and said: "Nor a woman either."
"What do you mean?" asked the inspector jocularly. "You don't think cowsuse hammers, do you?"
"I think no thing of flesh held that hammer," said the blacksmith in astifled voice; "mortally speaking, I think the man died alone."
Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burningeyes.
"Do you mean to say, Barnes," came the sharp voice of the cobbler, "thatthe hammer jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?"
"Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger," cried Simeon; "you clergymenwho tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. Ibelieve that One who walks invisible in every house defended the honourof mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe theforce in that blow was just the force there is in earthquakes, and noforce less."
Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: "I told Norman myselfto beware of the thunderbolt."
"That agent is outside my jurisdiction," said the inspector with aslight smile.
"You are not outside His," answered the smith; "see you to it," and,turning his broad back, he went into the house.
The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy andfriendly way with him. "Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,"he said. "May I look inside your church? I hear it's one of th
e oldestin England. We take some interest, you know," he added with a comicalgrimace, "in old English churches."
Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. Buthe nodded rather eagerly, being only too ready to explain theGothic splendours to someone more likely to be sympathetic than thePresbyterian blacksmith or the atheist cobbler.
"By all means," he said; "let us go in at this side." And he led the wayinto the high side entrance at the top of the flight of steps. FatherBrown was mounting the first step to follow him when he felt a hand onhis shoulder, and turned to behold the dark, thin figure of the doctor,his face darker yet with suspicion.
"Sir," said the physician harshly, "you appear to know some secretsin this black business. May I ask if you are going to keep them toyourself?"
"Why, doctor," answered the priest, smiling quite pleasantly, "there isone very good reason why a man of my trade should keep things to himselfwhen he is not sure of them, and that is that it is so constantly hisduty to keep them to himself when he is sure of them. But if you thinkI have been discourteously reticent with you or anyone, I will go to theextreme limit of my custom. I will give you two very large hints."
"Well, sir?" said the doctor gloomily.
"First," said Father Brown quietly, "the thing is quite in yourown province. It is a matter of physical science. The blacksmith ismistaken, not perhaps in saying that the blow was divine, but certainlyin saying that it came by a miracle. It was no miracle, doctor, exceptin so far as man is himself a miracle, with his strange and wicked andyet half-heroic heart. The force that smashed that skull was a forcewell known to scientists--one of the most frequently debated of the lawsof nature."
The doctor, who was looking at him with frowning intentness, only said:"And the other hint?"
"The other hint is this," said the priest. "Do you remember theblacksmith, though he believes in miracles, talking scornfully of theimpossible fairy tale that his hammer had wings and flew half a mileacross country?"
"Yes," said the doctor, "I remember that."
"Well," added Father Brown, with a broad smile, "that fairy tale was thenearest thing to the real truth that has been said today." And with thathe turned his back and stumped up the steps after the curate.
The Reverend Wilfred, who had been waiting for him, pale and impatient,as if this little delay were the last straw for his nerves, led himimmediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of thegallery closest to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful windowwith the angel. The little Latin priest explored and admired everythingexhaustively, talking cheerfully but in a low voice all the time.When in the course of his investigation he found the side exit and thewinding stair down which Wilfred had rushed to find his brother dead,Father Brown ran not down but up, with the agility of a monkey, and hisclear voice came from an outer platform above.
"Come up here, Mr. Bohun," he called. "The air will do you good."
Bohun followed him, and came out on a kind of stone gallery or balconyoutside the building, from which one could see the illimitable plainin which their small hill stood, wooded away to the purple horizonand dotted with villages and farms. Clear and square, but quite smallbeneath them, was the blacksmith's yard, where the inspector still stoodtaking notes and the corpse still lay like a smashed fly.
"Might be the map of the world, mightn't it?" said Father Brown.
"Yes," said Bohun very gravely, and nodded his head.
Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the Gothic buildingplunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin tosuicide. There is that element of Titan energy in the architecture ofthe Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seemsto be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. Thischurch was hewn out of ancient and silent stone, bearded with oldfungoids and stained with the nests of birds. And yet, when they saw itfrom below, it sprang like a fountain at the stars; and when they sawit, as now, from above, it poured like a cataract into a voiceless pit.For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terribleaspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion, thedizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great things small and small thingsgreat; a topsy-turvydom of stone in the mid-air. Details of stone,enormous by their proximity, were relieved against a pattern of fieldsand farms, pygmy in their distance. A carved bird or beast at a cornerseemed like some vast walking or flying dragon wasting the pastures andvillages below. The whole atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if menwere upheld in air amid the gyrating wings of colossal genii; and thewhole of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed to situpon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.
"I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on thesehigh places even to pray," said Father Brown. "Heights were made to belooked at, not to be looked from."
"Do you mean that one may fall over," asked Wilfred.
"I mean that one's soul may fall if one's body doesn't," said the otherpriest.
"I scarcely understand you," remarked Bohun indistinctly.
"Look at that blacksmith, for instance," went on Father Brown calmly; "agood man, but not a Christian--hard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, hisScotch religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags,and learnt to look down on the world more than to look up at heaven.Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley;only small things from the peak."
"But he--he didn't do it," said Bohun tremulously.
"No," said the other in an odd voice; "we know he didn't do it."
After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain withhis pale grey eyes. "I knew a man," he said, "who began by worshippingwith others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonelyplaces to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. Andonce in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turnunder him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he wasGod. So that, though he was a good man, he committed a great crime."
Wilfred's face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and whiteas they tightened on the parapet of stone.
"He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down thesinner. He would never have had such a thought if he had been kneelingwith other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about likeinsects. He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent andevident by a bright green hat--a poisonous insect."
Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no othersound till Father Brown went on.
"This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awfulengines of nature; I mean gravitation, that mad and quickening rush bywhich all earth's creatures fly back to her heart when released. See,the inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were totoss a pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bulletby the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer--even a smallhammer--"
Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had himin a minute by the collar.
"Not by that door," he said quite gently; "that door leads to hell."
Bohun staggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightfuleyes.
"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have alldevils in my heart. Listen to me," he said after a short pause. "I knowwhat you did--at least, I can guess the great part of it. When you leftyour brother you were racked with no unrighteous rage, to the extenteven that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill him withhis foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttonedcoat instead, and rushed into the church. You pray wildly in manyplaces, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and a higherplatform still, from which you could see the colonel's Eastern hat likethe back of a green beetle crawling about. Then something snapped inyour soul, and you let God's thunderbolt fall."
Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voic
e: "How didyou know that his hat looked like a green beetle?"
"Oh, that," said the other with the shadow of a smile, "that was commonsense. But hear me further. I say I know all this; but no one else shallknow it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I willseal this with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are manyreasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to you becauseyou have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not helpto fix the crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, whenthat was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile because you knew thathe could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my businessto find in assassins. And now come down into the village, and go yourown way as free as the wind; for I have said my last word."
They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out intothe sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun carefully unlatched the woodengate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: "I wish to givemyself up; I have killed my brother."