ELEVEN -- The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
MR CALHOUN KIDD was a very young gentleman with a very old face, a facedried up with its own eagerness, framed in blue-black hair and a blackbutterfly tie. He was the emissary in England of the colossal Americandaily called the Western Sun--also humorously described as the "RisingSunset". This was in allusion to a great journalistic declaration(attributed to Mr Kidd himself) that "he guessed the sun would risein the west yet, if American citizens did a bit more hustling." Those,however, who mock American journalism from the standpoint of somewhatmellower traditions forget a certain paradox which partly redeems it.For while the journalism of the States permits a pantomimic vulgaritylong past anything English, it also shows a real excitement about themost earnest mental problems, of which English papers are innocent, orrather incapable. The Sun was full of the most solemn matters treatedin the most farcical way. William James figured there as well as"Weary Willie," and pragmatists alternated with pugilists in the longprocession of its portraits.
Thus, when a very unobtrusive Oxford man named John Boulnois wrote in avery unreadable review called the Natural Philosophy Quarterly a seriesof articles on alleged weak points in Darwinian evolution, it flutteredno corner of the English papers; though Boulnois's theory (which wasthat of a comparatively stationary universe visited occasionally byconvulsions of change) had some rather faddy fashionableness at Oxford,and got so far as to be named "Catastrophism". But many American papersseized on the challenge as a great event; and the Sun threw the shadowof Mr Boulnois quite gigantically across its pages. By the paradoxalready noted, articles of valuable intelligence and enthusiasm werepresented with headlines apparently written by an illiterate maniac,headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; Critic Boulnois says He Jumps theShocks"--or "Keep Catastrophic, says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr CalhounKidd, of the Western Sun, was bidden to take his butterfly tie andlugubrious visage down to the little house outside Oxford where ThinkerBoulnois lived in happy ignorance of such a title.
That fated philosopher had consented, in a somewhat dazed manner, toreceive the interviewer, and had named the hour of nine that evening.The last of a summer sunset clung about Cumnor and the low wooded hills;the romantic Yankee was both doubtful of his road and inquisitive abouthis surroundings; and seeing the door of a genuine feudal old-countryinn, The Champion Arms, standing open, he went in to make inquiries.
In the bar parlour he rang the bell, and had to wait some little timefor a reply to it. The only other person present was a lean man withclose red hair and loose, horsey-looking clothes, who was drinking verybad whisky, but smoking a very good cigar. The whisky, of course, wasthe choice brand of The Champion Arms; the cigar he had probably broughtwith him from London. Nothing could be more different than his cynicalnegligence from the dapper dryness of the young American; but somethingin his pencil and open notebook, and perhaps in the expression of hisalert blue eye, caused Kidd to guess, correctly, that he was a brotherjournalist.
"Could you do me the favour," asked Kidd, with the courtesy of hisnation, "of directing me to the Grey Cottage, where Mr Boulnois lives,as I understand?"
"It's a few yards down the road," said the red-haired man, removing hiscigar; "I shall be passing it myself in a minute, but I'm going on toPendragon Park to try and see the fun."
"What is Pendragon Park?" asked Calhoun Kidd.
"Sir Claude Champion's place--haven't you come down for that, too?"asked the other pressman, looking up. "You're a journalist, aren't you?"
"I have come to see Mr Boulnois," said Kidd.
"I've come to see Mrs Boulnois," replied the other. "But I shan't catchher at home." And he laughed rather unpleasantly.
"Are you interested in Catastrophism?" asked the wondering Yankee.
"I'm interested in catastrophes; and there are going to be some,"replied his companion gloomily. "Mine's a filthy trade, and I neverpretend it isn't."
With that he spat on the floor; yet somehow in the very act and instantone could realize that the man had been brought up as a gentleman.
The American pressman considered him with more attention. His face waspale and dissipated, with the promise of formidable passions yet to beloosed; but it was a clever and sensitive face; his clothes were coarseand careless, but he had a good seal ring on one of his long, thinfingers. His name, which came out in the course of talk, was JamesDalroy; he was the son of a bankrupt Irish landlord, and attached toa pink paper which he heartily despised, called Smart Society, in thecapacity of reporter and of something painfully like a spy.
Smart Society, I regret to say, felt none of that interest in Boulnoison Darwin which was such a credit to the head and hearts of the WesternSun. Dalroy had come down, it seemed, to snuff up the scent of a scandalwhich might very well end in the Divorce Court, but which was at presenthovering between Grey Cottage and Pendragon Park.
Sir Claude Champion was known to the readers of the Western Sun as wellas Mr Boulnois. So were the Pope and the Derby Winner; but the ideaof their intimate acquaintanceship would have struck Kidd as equallyincongruous. He had heard of (and written about, nay, falsely pretendedto know) Sir Claude Champion, as "one of the brightest and wealthiest ofEngland's Upper Ten"; as the great sportsman who raced yachts round theworld; as the great traveller who wrote books about the Himalayas, asthe politician who swept constituencies with a startling sort of ToryDemocracy, and as the great dabbler in art, music, literature, and,above all, acting. Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in otherthan American eyes. There was something of the Renascence Prince abouthis omnivorous culture and restless publicity--, he was not only a greatamateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that antiquarianfrivolity that we convey by the word "dilettante".
That faultless falcon profile with purple-black Italian eye, which hadbeen snap-shotted so often both for Smart Society and the Western Sun,gave everyone the impression of a man eaten by ambition as by a fire,or even a disease. But though Kidd knew a great deal about Sir Claude--agreat deal more, in fact, than there was to know--it would never havecrossed his wildest dreams to connect so showy an aristocrat with thenewly-unearthed founder of Catastrophism, or to guess that Sir ClaudeChampion and John Boulnois could be intimate friends. Such, accordingto Dalroy's account, was nevertheless the fact. The two had hunted incouples at school and college, and, though their social destinies hadbeen very different (for Champion was a great landlord and almost amillionaire, while Boulnois was a poor scholar and, until just lately,an unknown one), they still kept in very close touch with each other.Indeed, Boulnois's cottage stood just outside the gates of PendragonPark.
But whether the two men could be friends much longer was becoming adark and ugly question. A year or two before, Boulnois had married abeautiful and not unsuccessful actress, to whom he was devoted in hisown shy and ponderous style; and the proximity of the household toChampion's had given that flighty celebrity opportunities for behavingin a way that could not but cause painful and rather base excitement.Sir Claude had carried the arts of publicity to perfection; and heseemed to take a crazy pleasure in being equally ostentatious in anintrigue that could do him no sort of honour. Footmen from Pendragonwere perpetually leaving bouquets for Mrs Boulnois; carriages andmotor-cars were perpetually calling at the cottage for Mrs Boulnois;balls and masquerades perpetually filled the grounds in which thebaronet paraded Mrs Boulnois, like the Queen of Love and Beauty at atournament. That very evening, marked by Mr Kidd for the exposition ofCatastrophism, had been marked by Sir Claude Champion for an open-airrendering of Romeo and Juliet, in which he was to play Romeo to a Julietit was needless to name.
"I don't think it can go on without a smash," said the young manwith red hair, getting up and shaking himself. "Old Boulnois may besquared--or he may be square. But if he's square he's thick--what youmight call cubic. But I don't believe it's possible."
"He is a man of grand intellectual powers," said Calhoun Kidd in a deepvoice.
"Yes," answered Dalroy; "but even a
man of grand intellectual powerscan't be such a blighted fool as all that. Must you be going on? I shallbe following myself in a minute or two."
But Calhoun Kidd, having finished a milk and soda, betook himselfsmartly up the road towards the Grey Cottage, leaving his cynicalinformant to his whisky and tobacco. The last of the daylight had faded;the skies were of a dark, green-grey, like slate, studded here and therewith a star, but lighter on the left side of the sky, with the promiseof a rising moon.
The Grey Cottage, which stood entrenched, as it were, in a square ofstiff, high thorn-hedges, was so close under the pines and palisades ofthe Park that Kidd at first mistook it for the Park Lodge. Finding thename on the narrow wooden gate, however, and seeing by his watch thatthe hour of the "Thinker's" appointment had just struck, he went in andknocked at the front door. Inside the garden hedge, he could see thatthe house, though unpretentious enough, was larger and more luxuriousthan it looked at first, and was quite a different kind of place from aporter's lodge. A dog-kennel and a beehive stood outside, like symbolsof old English country-life; the moon was rising behind a plantationof prosperous pear trees, the dog that came out of the kennel wasreverend-looking and reluctant to bark; and the plain, elderlyman-servant who opened the door was brief but dignified.
"Mr Boulnois asked me to offer his apologies, sir," he said, "but he hasbeen obliged to go out suddenly."
"But see here, I had an appointment," said the interviewer, with arising voice. "Do you know where he went to?"
"To Pendragon Park, sir," said the servant, rather sombrely, and beganto close the door.
Kidd started a little.
"Did he go with Mrs--with the rest of the party?" he asked rathervaguely.
"No, sir," said the man shortly; "he stayed behind, and then went outalone." And he shut the door, brutally, but with an air of duty notdone.
The American, that curious compound of impudence and sensitiveness,was annoyed. He felt a strong desire to hustle them all along a bitand teach them business habits; the hoary old dog and the grizzled,heavy-faced old butler with his prehistoric shirt-front, and the drowsyold moon, and above all the scatter-brained old philosopher who couldn'tkeep an appointment.
"If that's the way he goes on he deserves to lose his wife's purestdevotion," said Mr Calhoun Kidd. "But perhaps he's gone over to makea row. In that case I reckon a man from the Western Sun will be on thespot."
And turning the corner by the open lodge-gates, he set off, stumping upthe long avenue of black pine-woods that pointed in abrupt perspectivetowards the inner gardens of Pendragon Park. The trees were as black andorderly as plumes upon a hearse; there were still a few stars. He wasa man with more literary than direct natural associations; the word"Ravenswood" came into his head repeatedly. It was partly the ravencolour of the pine-woods; but partly also an indescribable atmospherealmost described in Scott's great tragedy; the smell of something thatdied in the eighteenth century; the smell of dank gardens and brokenurns, of wrongs that will never now be righted; of something that isnone the less incurably sad because it is strangely unreal.
More than once, as he went up that strange, black road of tragicartifice, he stopped, startled, thinking he heard steps in front of him.He could see nothing in front but the twin sombre walls of pine andthe wedge of starlit sky above them. At first he thought he must havefancied it or been mocked by a mere echo of his own tramp. But as hewent on he was more and more inclined to conclude, with the remains ofhis reason, that there really were other feet upon the road. He thoughthazily of ghosts; and was surprised how swiftly he could see theimage of an appropriate and local ghost, one with a face as white asPierrot's, but patched with black. The apex of the triangle of dark-bluesky was growing brighter and bluer, but he did not realize as yet thatthis was because he was coming nearer to the lights of the great houseand garden. He only felt that the atmosphere was growing more intense,there was in the sadness more violence and secrecy--more--he hesitatedfor the word, and then said it with a jerk of laughter--Catastrophism.
More pines, more pathway slid past him, and then he stood rooted as bya blast of magic. It is vain to say that he felt as if he had got into adream; but this time he felt quite certain that he had got into a book.For we human beings are used to inappropriate things; we are accustomedto the clatter of the incongruous; it is a tune to which we can go tosleep. If one appropriate thing happens, it wakes us up like the pang ofa perfect chord. Something happened such as would have happened in sucha place in a forgotten tale.
Over the black pine-wood came flying and flashing in the moon a nakedsword--such a slender and sparkling rapier as may have fought many anunjust duel in that ancient park. It fell on the pathway far in front ofhim and lay there glistening like a large needle. He ran like a hare andbent to look at it. Seen at close quarters it had rather a showy look:the big red jewels in the hilt and guard were a little dubious. Butthere were other red drops upon the blade which were not dubious.
He looked round wildly in the direction from which the dazzling missilehad come, and saw that at this point the sable facade of fir and pinewas interrupted by a smaller road at right angles; which, when he turnedit, brought him in full view of the long, lighted house, with a lake andfountains in front of it. Nevertheless, he did not look at this, havingsomething more interesting to look at.
Above him, at the angle of the steep green bank of the terraced garden,was one of those small picturesque surprises common in the old landscapegardening; a kind of small round hill or dome of grass, like a giantmole-hill, ringed and crowned with three concentric fences of roses, andhaving a sundial in the highest point in the centre. Kidd could see thefinger of the dial stand up dark against the sky like the dorsal fin ofa shark and the vain moonlight clinging to that idle clock. But he sawsomething else clinging to it also, for one wild moment--the figure of aman.
Though he saw it there only for a moment, though it was outlandish andincredible in costume, being clad from neck to heel in tight crimson,with glints of gold, yet he knew in one flash of moonlight who it was.That white face flung up to heaven, clean-shaven and so unnaturallyyoung, like Byron with a Roman nose, those black curls alreadygrizzled--he had seen the thousand public portraits of Sir ClaudeChampion. The wild red figure reeled an instant against the sundial; thenext it had rolled down the steep bank and lay at the American's feet,faintly moving one arm. A gaudy, unnatural gold ornament on the armsuddenly reminded Kidd of Romeo and Juliet; of course the tight crimsonsuit was part of the play. But there was a long red stain down the bankfrom which the man had rolled--that was no part of the play. He had beenrun through the body.
Mr Calhoun Kidd shouted and shouted again. Once more he seemed to hearphantasmal footsteps, and started to find another figure already nearhim. He knew the figure, and yet it terrified him. The dissipated youthwho had called himself Dalroy had a horribly quiet way with him; ifBoulnois failed to keep appointments that had been made, Dalroy hada sinister air of keeping appointments that hadn't. The moonlightdiscoloured everything, against Dalroy's red hair his wan face lookednot so much white as pale green.
All this morbid impressionism must be Kidd's excuse for having criedout, brutally and beyond all reason: "Did you do this, you devil?"
James Dalroy smiled his unpleasing smile; but before he could speak, thefallen figure made another movement of the arm, waving vaguely towardsthe place where the sword fell; then came a moan, and then it managed tospeak.
"Boulnois.... Boulnois, I say.... Boulnois did it... jealous of me...hewas jealous, he was, he was..."
Kidd bent his head down to hear more, and just managed to catch thewords:
"Boulnois...with my own sword...he threw it..."
Again the failing hand waved towards the sword, and then fell rigid witha thud. In Kidd rose from its depth all that acrid humour that is thestrange salt of the seriousness of his race.
"See here," he said sharply and with command, "you must fetch a doctor.This man's dead."
"And a priest, to
o, I suppose," said Dalroy in an undecipherable manner."All these Champions are papists."
The American knelt down by the body, felt the heart, propped up thehead and used some last efforts at restoration; but before the otherjournalist reappeared, followed by a doctor and a priest, he was alreadyprepared to assert they were too late.
"Were you too late also?" asked the doctor, a solid prosperous-lookingman, with conventional moustache and whiskers, but a lively eye, whichdarted over Kidd dubiously.
"In one sense," drawled the representative of the Sun. "I was toolate to save the man, but I guess I was in time to hear something ofimportance. I heard the dead man denounce his assassin."
"And who was the assassin?" asked the doctor, drawing his eyebrowstogether.
"Boulnois," said Calhoun Kidd, and whistled softly.
The doctor stared at him gloomily with a reddening brow--, but he didnot contradict. Then the priest, a shorter figure in the background,said mildly: "I understood that Mr Boulnois was not coming to PendragonPark this evening."
"There again," said the Yankee grimly, "I may be in a position to givethe old country a fact or two. Yes, sir, John Boulnois was going to stayin all this evening; he fixed up a real good appointment there with me.But John Boulnois changed his mind; John Boulnois left his home abruptlyand all alone, and came over to this darned Park an hour or so ago.His butler told me so. I think we hold what the all-wise police call aclue--have you sent for them?"
"Yes," said the doctor, "but we haven't alarmed anyone else yet."
"Does Mrs Boulnois know?" asked James Dalroy, and again Kidd wasconscious of an irrational desire to hit him on his curling mouth.
"I have not told her," said the doctor gruffly--, "but here come thepolice."
The little priest had stepped out into the main avenue, and now returnedwith the fallen sword, which looked ludicrously large and theatricalwhen attached to his dumpy figure, at once clerical and commonplace."Just before the police come," he said apologetically, "has anyone got alight?"
The Yankee journalist took an electric torch from his pocket, and thepriest held it close to the middle part of the blade, which he examinedwith blinking care. Then, without glancing at the point or pommel, hehanded the long weapon to the doctor.
"I fear I'm no use here," he said, with a brief sigh. "I'll say goodnight to you, gentlemen." And he walked away up the dark avenue towardsthe house, his hands clasped behind him and his big head bent incogitation.
The rest of the group made increased haste towards the lodge-gates,where an inspector and two constables could already be seen inconsultation with the lodge-keeper. But the little priest only walkedslower and slower in the dim cloister of pine, and at last stopped dead,on the steps of the house. It was his silent way of acknowledging anequally silent approach; for there came towards him a presence thatmight have satisfied even Calhoun Kidd's demands for a lovely andaristocratic ghost. It was a young woman in silvery satins of aRenascence design; she had golden hair in two long shining ropes, anda face so startingly pale between them that she might have beenchryselephantine--made, that is, like some old Greek statues, out ofivory and gold. But her eyes were very bright, and her voice, thoughlow, was confident.
"Father Brown?" she said.
"Mrs Boulnois?" he replied gravely. Then he looked at her andimmediately said: "I see you know about Sir Claude."
"How do you know I know?" she asked steadily.
He did not answer the question, but asked another: "Have you seen yourhusband?"
"My husband is at home," she said. "He has nothing to do with this."
Again he did not answer; and the woman drew nearer to him, with acuriously intense expression on her face.
"Shall I tell you something more?" she said, with a rather fearfulsmile. "I don't think he did it, and you don't either." Father Brownreturned her gaze with a long, grave stare, and then nodded, yet moregravely.
"Father Brown," said the lady, "I am going to tell you all I know, butI want you to do me a favour first. Will you tell me why you haven'tjumped to the conclusion of poor John's guilt, as all the rest havedone? Don't mind what you say: I--I know about the gossip and theappearances that are against me."
Father Brown looked honestly embarrassed, and passed his hand acrosshis forehead. "Two very little things," he said. "At least, one's verytrivial and the other very vague. But such as they are, they don't fitin with Mr Boulnois being the murderer."
He turned his blank, round face up to the stars and continuedabsentmindedly: "To take the vague idea first. I attach a good deal ofimportance to vague ideas. All those things that 'aren't evidence'are what convince me. I think a moral impossibility the biggest of allimpossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, but I think thiscrime of his, as generally conceived, something very like a moralimpossibility. Please do not think I mean that Boulnois could not be sowicked. Anybody can be wicked--as wicked as he chooses. We can directour moral wills; but we can't generally change our instinctive tastesand ways of doing things. Boulnois might commit a murder, but not thismurder. He would not snatch Romeo's sword from its romantic scabbard;or slay his foe on the sundial as on a kind of altar; or leave his bodyamong the roses, or fling the sword away among the pines. If Boulnoiskilled anyone he'd do it quietly and heavily, as he'd do any otherdoubtful thing--take a tenth glass of port, or read a loose Greek poet.No, the romantic setting is not like Boulnois. It's more like Champion."
"Ah!" she said, and looked at him with eyes like diamonds.
"And the trivial thing was this," said Brown. "There were finger-printson that sword; finger-prints can be detected quite a time after they aremade if they're on some polished surface like glass or steel. These wereon a polished surface. They were half-way down the blade of the sword.Whose prints they were I have no earthly clue; but why should anybodyhold a sword half-way down? It was a long sword, but length is anadvantage in lunging at an enemy. At least, at most enemies. At allenemies except one."
"Except one," she repeated.
"There is only one enemy," said Father Brown, "whom it is easier to killwith a dagger than a sword."
"I know," said the woman. "Oneself."
There was a long silence, and then the priest said quietly but abruptly:"Am I right, then? Did Sir Claude kill himself?"
"Yes" she said, with a face like marble. "I saw him do it."
"He died," said Father Brown, "for love of you?"
An extraordinary expression flashed across her face, very differentfrom pity, modesty, remorse, or anything her companion had expected: hervoice became suddenly strong and full. "I don't believe," she said, "heever cared about me a rap. He hated my husband."
"Why?" asked the other, and turned his round face from the sky to thelady.
"He hated my husband because...it is so strange I hardly know how to sayit...because..."
"Yes?" said Brown patiently.
"Because my husband wouldn't hate him."
Father Brown only nodded, and seemed still to be listening; he differedfrom most detectives in fact and fiction in a small point--he neverpretended not to understand when he understood perfectly well.
Mrs Boulnois drew near once more with the same contained glow ofcertainty. "My husband," she said, "is a great man. Sir Claude Championwas not a great man: he was a celebrated and successful man. My husbandhas never been celebrated or successful; and it is the solemn truth thathe has never dreamed of being so. He no more expects to be famous forthinking than for smoking cigars. On all that side he has a sort ofsplendid stupidity. He has never grown up. He still liked Championexactly as he liked him at school; he admired him as he would admirea conjuring trick done at the dinner-table. But he couldn't be gotto conceive the notion of envying Champion. And Champion wanted to beenvied. He went mad and killed himself for that."
"Yes," said Father Brown; "I think I begin to understand."
"Oh, don't you see?" she cried; "the whole picture is made for that--theplace is planned for it. Champion put John in a l
ittle house at his verydoor, like a dependant--to make him feel a failure. He never felt it.He thinks no more about such things than--than an absent-minded lion.Champion would burst in on John's shabbiest hours or homeliest mealswith some dazzling present or announcement or expedition that made itlike the visit of Haroun Alraschid, and John would accept or refuseamiably with one eye off, so to speak, like one lazy schoolboy agreeingor disagreeing with another. After five years of it John had not turneda hair; and Sir Claude Champion was a monomaniac."
"And Haman began to tell them," said Father Brown, "of all the thingswherein the king had honoured him; and he said: 'All these things profitme nothing while I see Mordecai the Jew sitting in the gate.'"
"The crisis came," Mrs Boulnois continued, "when I persuaded John to letme take down some of his speculations and send them to a magazine. Theybegan to attract attention, especially in America, and one paper wantedto interview him. When Champion (who was interviewed nearly every day)heard of this late little crumb of success falling to his unconsciousrival, the last link snapped that held back his devilish hatred. Then hebegan to lay that insane siege to my own love and honour which has beenthe talk of the shire. You will ask me why I allowed such atrociousattentions. I answer that I could not have declined them except byexplaining to my husband, and there are some things the soul cannotdo, as the body cannot fly. Nobody could have explained to my husband.Nobody could do it now. If you said to him in so many words, 'Championis stealing your wife,' he would think the joke a little vulgar: thatit could be anything but a joke--that notion could find no crack in hisgreat skull to get in by. Well, John was to come and see us act thisevening, but just as we were starting he said he wouldn't; he had got aninteresting book and a cigar. I told this to Sir Claude, and it was hisdeath-blow. The monomaniac suddenly saw despair. He stabbed himself,crying out like a devil that Boulnois was slaying him; he lies therein the garden dead of his own jealousy to produce jealousy, and John issitting in the dining-room reading a book."
There was another silence, and then the little priest said: "There isonly one weak point, Mrs Boulnois, in all your very vivid account. Yourhusband is not sitting in the dining-room reading a book. That Americanreporter told me he had been to your house, and your butler told him MrBoulnois had gone to Pendragon Park after all."
Her bright eyes widened to an almost electric glare; and yet it seemedrather bewilderment than confusion or fear. "Why, what can youmean?" she cried. "All the servants were out of the house, seeing thetheatricals. And we don't keep a butler, thank goodness!"
Father Brown started and spun half round like an absurd teetotum. "What,what?" he cried seeming galvanized into sudden life. "Look here--Isay--can I make your husband hear if I go to the house?"
"Oh, the servants will be back by now," she said, wondering.
"Right, right!" rejoined the cleric energetically, and set off scuttlingup the path towards the Park gates. He turned once to say: "Better gethold of that Yankee, or 'Crime of John Boulnois' will be all over theRepublic in large letters."
"You don't understand," said Mrs Boulnois. "He wouldn't mind. I don'tthink he imagines that America really is a place."
When Father Brown reached the house with the beehive and the drowsy dog,a small and neat maid-servant showed him into the dining-room, whereBoulnois sat reading by a shaded lamp, exactly as his wife describedhim. A decanter of port and a wineglass were at his elbow; and theinstant the priest entered he noted the long ash stand out unbroken onhis cigar.
"He has been here for half an hour at least," thought Father Brown. Infact, he had the air of sitting where he had sat when his dinner wascleared away.
"Don't get up, Mr Boulnois," said the priest in his pleasant, prosaicway. "I shan't interrupt you a moment. I fear I break in on some of yourscientific studies."
"No," said Boulnois; "I was reading 'The Bloody Thumb.'" He said it withneither frown nor smile, and his visitor was conscious of a certain deepand virile indifference in the man which his wife had called greatness.He laid down a gory yellow "shocker" without even feeling itsincongruity enough to comment on it humorously. John Boulnois was a big,slow-moving man with a massive head, partly grey and partly bald,and blunt, burly features. He was in shabby and very old-fashionedevening-dress, with a narrow triangular opening of shirt-front: he hadassumed it that evening in his original purpose of going to see his wifeact Juliet.
"I won't keep you long from 'The Bloody Thumb' or any other catastrophicaffairs," said Father Brown, smiling. "I only came to ask you about thecrime you committed this evening."
Boulnois looked at him steadily, but a red bar began to show across hisbroad brow; and he seemed like one discovering embarrassment for thefirst time.
"I know it was a strange crime," assented Brown in a low voice."Stranger than murder perhaps--to you. The little sins are sometimesharder to confess than the big ones--but that's why it's so important toconfess them. Your crime is committed by every fashionable hostess sixtimes a week: and yet you find it sticks to your tongue like a namelessatrocity."
"It makes one feel," said the philosopher slowly, "such a damned fool."
"I know," assented the other, "but one often has to choose betweenfeeling a damned fool and being one."
"I can't analyse myself well," went on Boulnois; "but sitting in thatchair with that story I was as happy as a schoolboy on a half-holiday.It was security, eternity--I can't convey it... the cigars were withinreach...the matches were within reach... the Thumb had four moreappearances to...it was not only a peace, but a plenitude. Then thatbell rang, and I thought for one long, mortal minute that I couldn't getout of that chair--literally, physically, muscularly couldn't. Then Idid it like a man lifting the world, because I knew all the servantswere out. I opened the front door, and there was a little man with hismouth open to speak and his notebook open to write in. I remembered theYankee interviewer I had forgotten. His hair was parted in the middle,and I tell you that murder--"
"I understand," said Father Brown. "I've seen him."
"I didn't commit murder," continued the Catastrophist mildly, "but onlyperjury. I said I had gone across to Pendragon Park and shut the door inhis face. That is my crime, Father Brown, and I don't know what penanceyou would inflict for it."
"I shan't inflict any penance," said the clerical gentleman, collectinghis heavy hat and umbrella with an air of some amusement; "quite thecontrary. I came here specially to let you off the little penance whichwould otherwise have followed your little offence."
"And what," asked Boulnois, smiling, "is the little penance I have soluckily been let off?"
"Being hanged," said Father Brown.