The Incredulity of Father Brown · The Miracle of Moon Crescent (4/4)

Vandam looked thoughtful. “I guess I should look out of the window,” he said.

“Yes,” said Father Brown, “you’d look out of the window. That’s the whole story. It’s a sad story, but it’s finished now; and there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Why should looking out of the window hurt him?” asked Alboin. “He didn’t fall out, or he’d have been found in the lane.”

“No,” said Father Brown, in a low voice. “He didn’t fall. He rose.”

There was something in his voice like the groan of a gong, a note of doom, but otherwise he went on steadily:

“He rose, but not on wings; not on the wings of any holy or unholy angels. He rose at the end of a rope, exactly as you saw him in the garden: a noose dropped over the head the moment it was poked out of the window. Don’t you remember Wilson, that big servant of his, a man of huge strength, while Wynd was the lightest of little shrimps? Didn’t Wilson go to the floor above to get a pamphlet, to a room full of luggage corded in coils and coils of rope? Has Wilson been seen since that day? I fancy not.”

“Do you mean,” asked the secretary, “that Wilson whisked him clean out of his own window like a trout on a line?”

“Yes,” said the other, “and let him down again out of the other window into the park, where the third accomplice hooked him on to a tree. Remember the lane was always empty; remember the wall opposite was quite blank; remember it was all over in five minutes after the Irishman gave the signal with the pistol. There were three of them in it, of course; and I wonder whether you can all guess who they were.”

They were all three staring at the plain, square window and the blank, white wall beyond; and nobody answered.

“By the way,” went on Father Brown, “don’t think I blame you for jumping to preternatural conclusions. The reason’s very simple, really. You all swore you were hard-shelled materialists; and as a matter of fact you were all balanced on the very edge of belief⁠—of belief in almost anything. There are thousands balanced on it today; but it’s a sharp, uncomfortable edge to sit on. You won’t rest till you believe something; that’s why Mr. Vandam went through new religions with a tooth-comb and Mr. Alboin quotes Scripture for his religion of breathing exercises, and Mr. Fenner grumbles at the very God he denies. That’s where you all split; it’s natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things. But though it wanted only a touch to tip you into preternaturalism about these things, these things really were only natural things. They were not only natural, they were almost unnaturally simple. I suppose there never was quite so simple a story as this.”

Fenner laughed and then looked puzzled. “I don’t understand one thing,” he said. “If it was Wilson, how did Wynd come to have a man like that on such intimate terms? How did he come to be killed by a man he’d seen every day for years? He was famous as being a judge of men.”

Father Brown thumped his umbrella on the ground with an emphasis he rarely showed.

“Yes,” he said, almost fiercely; “that was how he came to be killed. He was killed for just that. He was killed for being a judge of men.”

They all stared at him, but he went on, almost as if they were not there.

“What is any man that he should be a judge of men?” he demanded. “These three were the tramps that once stood before him and were dismissed rapidly right and left to one place or another; as if for them there were no cloak of courtesy, no stages of intimacy, no free will in friendship. And twenty years has not exhausted the indignation born of that unfathomable insult in that moment when he dared to know them at a glance.”

“Yes,” said the secretary; “I understand⁠ ⁠… and I understand how it is that you understand⁠—all sorts of things.”

“Well, I’m blamed if I understand,” cried the breezy Western gentleman boisterously. “Your Wilson and your Irishman seem to be just a couple of cutthroat murderers who killed their benefactor. I’ve no use for a black and bloody assassin of that sort in my morality, whether it’s religion or not.”

“He was a black and bloody assassin, no doubt,” said Fenner, quietly. “I’m not defending him; but I suppose it’s Father Brown’s business to pray for all men, even for a man like⁠—”

“Yes,” assented Father Brown, “it’s my business to pray for all men, even for a man like Warren Wynd.”