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replied the priest. So have you, on the stage and off.
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Father Brown, said Devine, with a certain respect in his tones, will you
tell us why you can t believe your eyes?
Yes, I will try to tell you, answered the priest. Then he said gently:
You know what I am and what we are. We don t bother you much. We try to be
friends with all our neighbors. But you can t think we do nothing. You can t
think we know nothing. We mind our own business; but we know our own people. I
knew this dead man very well indeed; I was his confessor, and his friend. So
far as a man can, I knew his mind when he left that garden today; and his mind
was like a glass hive full of golden bees. It s an understatement to say his
reformation was sincere. He was one of those great penitents who manage to
make more out of penitence than others can make out of virtue. I say I was his
confessor; but, indeed, it was I who went to him for comfort. It did me good
to be near so good a man. And when I saw him lying there dead in the garden,
it seemed to me as if certain strange words that were said of old were spoken
over him aloud in my ear. They might well be; for if ever a man went straight
to heaven, it might be he.
Hang it all, said John Bankes restlessly, after all, he was a convicted
thief.
Yes, said Father Brown; and only a convicted thief has ever in this world
heard that assurance: This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise.
Nobody seemed to know what to do with the silence that followed, until Devine
said, abruptly, at last:
Then how in the world would you explain it all?
The priest shook his head. I can t explain it at all, just yet, he said,
simply. I can see one or two odd things, but I don t understand them. As yet
I ve nothing to go on to prove the man s innocence, except the man. But I m
quite sure I m right.
He sighed, and put out his hand for his big, black hat. As he removed it he
remained gazing at the table with rather a new expression, his round,
straight-haired head cocked at a new angle. It was rather as if some curious
animal had come out of his hat, as out of the hat of a conjurer. But the
others, looking at the table, could see nothing there but the detective s
documents and the tawdry old property beard and spectacles.
Lord bless us, muttered Father Brown, and he s lying outside dead, in a
beard and spectacles. He swung round suddenly upon Devine. Here s something
to follow up, if you want to know. Why did he have two beards?
With that he bustled in his undignified way out of the room; but Devine was
now devoured with curiosity, and pursued him into the front garden.
I can t tell you now, said Father Brown. I m not sure, and I m bothered
about what to do. Come round and see me tomorrow, and I may be able to tell
you the whole thing. It may already be settled for me, and did you hear that
noise?
A motorcar starting, remarked Devine.
Mr. John Bankes s motorcar, said the priest. I believe it goes very fast.
He certainly is of that opinion. said Devine, with a smile.
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It will go far, as well as fast, tonight, said Father Brown.
And what do you mean by that? demanded the other.
I mean it will not return, replied the priest. John Bankes suspected
something of what I knew from what I said. John Bankes has gone and the
emeralds and all the other jewels with him.
Next day, Devine found Father Brown moving to and fro in front of the row of
beehives, sadly, but with a certain serenity.
I ve been telling the bees, he said. You know one has to tell the bees!
Those singing masons building roofs of gold. What a line! Then more
abruptly. He would like the bees looked after.
I hope he doesn t want the human beings neglected, when the whole swarm is
buzzing with curiosity, observed the young man. You were quite right when
you said that Bankes was gone with the jewels; but I don t know how you knew,
or even what there was to be known.
Father Brown blinked benevolently at the beehives and said:
One sort of stumbles on things, and there was one stumbling block at the
start. I was puzzled by poor Barnard being shot up at Beechwood House. Now,
even when Michael was a master criminal, he made it a point of honor, even a
point of vanity, to succeed without any killing. It seemed extraordinary that
when he had become a sort of saint he should go out of his way to commit the
sin he had despised when he was a sinner. The rest of the business puzzled me
to the last; I could make nothing out of it, except that it wasn t true. Then
I had a belated gleam of sense when I saw the beard and goggles and remembered
the thief had come in another beard with other goggles. Now, of course, it was
just possible that he had duplicates; but it was at least a coincidence that
he used neither the old glasses nor the old beard, both in good repair. Again,
it was just possible that he went out without them and had to procure new
ones; but it was unlikely. There was nothing to make him go motoring with
Bankes at all; if he was really going burgling, he could have taken his outfit
easily in his pocket. Besides, beards don t grow on bushes. He would have
found it hard to get such things anywhere in the time.
No, the more I thought of it the more I felt there was something funny about
his having a completely new outfit. And then the truth began to dawn on me by
reason, which I knew already by instinct. He never did go out with Bankes with
any intention of putting on the disguise. He never did put on the disguise.
Somebody else manufactured the disguise at leisure, and then put it on him.
Put it on him! repeated Devine. How the devil could they?
Let us go back, said Father Brown, and look at the thing through another
window the window through which the young lady saw the ghost.
The ghost! repeated the other, with a slight start.
She called it the ghost, said the little man, with composure, and perhaps
she was not so far wrong. It s quite true that she is what they call psychic.
Her only mistake is in thinking that being psychic is being spiritual. Some
animals are psychic; anyhow, she is a sensitive, and she was right when she
felt that the face at the window had a sort of horrible halo of deathly
things.
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You mean began Devine.
I mean it was a dead man who looked in at the window, said Father Brown.
It was a dead man who crawled round more than one house, looking in at more
than one window. Creepy, wasn t it? But in one way it was the reverse of a
ghost; for it was not the antic of the soul freed from the body. It was the
antic of the body freed from the soul.
He blinked again at the beehive and continued: But, I suppose, the shortest
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