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other.  Half modern politics consists of rich men blackmailing people. Your
notion that it s nonsense rests on two illusions which are both nonsensical.
One is, that rich men never want to be richer; the other is, that a man can
only be blackmailed for money. It s the last that is in question here. Sir
Arthur Vaudrey was acting not for avarice, but for vengeance. And he planned
the most hideous vengeance I ever heard of.
 But why should he plan vengeance on John Dalmon? inquired Smith.
 It wasn t on John Dalmon that he planned vengeance, replied the priest,
gravely.
There was a silence; and he resumed, almost as if changing the subject.  When
we found the body, you remember, we saw the face upside down; and you said it
looked like the face of a fiend. Has it occurred to you that the murderer also
saw the face upside down, coming behind the barber s chair?
 But that s all morbid extravagance, remonstrated his companion.  I was
quite used to the face when it was the right way up.
 Perhaps you have never seen it the right way up, said Father Brown.  I told
you that artists turn a picture the wrong way up when they want to see it the
right way up. Perhaps, over all those breakfasts and tea-tables, you had got
used to the face of a fiend.
 What on earth are you driving at? demanded Smith, impatiently.
 I speak in parables, replied the other in a rather somber tone.  Of course,
Sir Arthur was not actually a fiend; he was a man with a character which he
had made out of a temperament that might also have been turned to good. But
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those goggling, suspicious eyes; that tight, yet quivering mouth, might have
told you something if you had not been so used to them. You know, there are
physical bodies on which a wound will not heal. Sir Arthur had a mind of that
sort. It was as if it lacked a skin; he had a feverish vigilance of vanity;
those strained eyes were open with an insomnia of egoism. Sensibility need not
be selfishness. Sybil Rye, for instance, has the same thin skin and manages to
be a sort of saint. But Vaudrey had turned it all to poisonous pride; a pride
that was not even secure and self-satisfied. Every scratch on the surface of
his soul festered. And that is the meaning of that old story about throwing
the man into the pigsty. If he d thrown him then and there, after being called
a pig, it might have been a pardonable burst of passion. But there was no
pigsty; and that is just the point. Vaudrey remembered the silly insult for
years and years, till he could get the Oriental into the improbable
neighborhood of a pigsty; and then he took, what he considered the only
appropriate and artistic revenge& Oh, my God! he liked his revenges to be
appropriate and artistic.
Smith looked at him curiously.  You are not thinking of the pigsty story, he
said.
 No, said Father Brown;  of the other story. He controlled the shudder in
his voice, and went on:
 Remembering that story of a fantastic and yet patient plot to make the
vengeance fit the crime, consider the other story before us. Had anybody else,
to your knowledge, ever insulted Vaudrey, or offered him what he thought a
mortal insult? Yes; a woman insulted him.
A sort of vague horror began to dawn in Evan s eyes; he was listening
intently.
 A girl, little more than a child, refused to marry him, because he had once
been a sort of criminal; had, indeed, been in prison for a short time for the
outrage on the Egyptian. And that madman said, in the hell of his heart:  She
shall marry a murderer. 
They took the road towards the great house and went along by the river for
some time in silence, before he resumed:  Vaudrey was in a position to
blackmail Dalmon, who had committed a murder long ago; probably he knew of
several crimes among the wild comrades of his youth. Probably it was a wild
crime with some redeeming features; for the wildest murders are never the
worst. And Dalmon looks to me like a man who knows remorse, even for killing
Vaudrey. But he was in Vaudrey s power and, between them, they entrapped the
girl very cleverly into an engagement; letting the lover try his luck first,
for instance, and the other only encouraging magnificently. But Dalmon himself
did not know, nobody but the Devil himself did know, what was really in that
old man s mind.
 Then, a few days ago, Dalmon made a dreadful discovery. He had obeyed, not
altogether unwillingly; he had been a tool; and he suddenly found how the tool
was to be broken and thrown away. He came upon certain notes of Vaudrey s in
the library which, disguised as they were, told of preparations for giving
information to the police. He understood the whole plot and stood stunned as I
did when I first understood it. The moment the bride and bridegroom were
married, the bridegroom would be arrested and hanged. The fastidious lady, who
objected to a husband who had been in prison, should have no husband except a
husband on the gallows. That is what Sir Arthur Vaudrey considered an artistic
rounding off of the story.
Evan Smith, deadly pale, was silent; and, far away, down the perspective of
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the road, they saw the large figure and wide hat of Dr. Abbott advancing
towards them; even in the outline there was a certain agitation. But they were
still shaken with their own private apocalypse.
 As you say, hate is a hateful thing, said Evan at last;  and, do you know,
one thing gives me a sort of relief. All my hatred of poor Dalmon is gone out
of me now I know how he was twice a murderer.
It was in silence that they covered the rest of the distance and met the big
doctor coming towards them, with his large gloved hands thrown out in a sort
of despairing gesture and his grey beard tossing in the wind.
 There is dreadful news, he said.  Arthur s body has been found. He seems to
have died in his garden.
 Dear me, said Father Brown, rather mechanically.  How dreadful!
 And there is more, cried the doctor breathlessly.  John Dalmon went off to
see Vernon Vaudrey, the nephew; but Vernon Vaudrey hasn t heard of him and
Dalmon seems to have disappeared entirely.
 Dear me, said Father Brown.  How strange!
The Worst Crime in the World
FATHER BROWN was wandering through a picture gallery with an expression that
suggested that he had not come there to look at the pictures. Indeed, he did
not want to look at the pictures, though he liked pictures well enough. Not
that there was anything immoral or improper about those highly modern
pictorial designs. He would indeed be of an inflammable temperament who was
stirred to any of the more pagan passions by the display of interrupted
spirals, inverted cones and broken cylinders with which the art of the future
inspired or menaced mankind. The truth is that Father Brown was looking for a
young friend who had appointed that somewhat incongruous meeting-place, being [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]