第 四 章 · The Flying Stars

. The Flying Stars

“The most beautiful crime I ever committed,” Flambeau would say in his

highly moral old age, “was also, by a singular coincidence, my last.

It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to

provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I

found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe,

as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long

rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather

find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of

the Café Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his

riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame

him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some

cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich

and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get

his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars,

and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of

Millet.

“Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English

middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old

middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage

drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name

on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the

species. I really think my imitation of Dickens’s style was dexterous

and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.”

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and

even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly

incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must

study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when

the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with

the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds

on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown

eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in

brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But

for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby

light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with

the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable,

on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden

behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for

the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed

unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation

of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or

ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it

fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.

“Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much

too high.”

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall,

angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush,

intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost

alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an

aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to

take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s

alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside

her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no

doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice

house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”

“How can you say such things!” she remonstrated.

“Well,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the

wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”

“I never know what you will say or do next,” she said.

“I don’t often know myself,” replied Mr. Crook; “but then I am on the

right side of the wall now.”

“And which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady,

smiling.

“Whichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden

a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of

splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the

front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

“Hullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie, “here’s somebody

born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your

Santa Claus was so modern as this.”

“Oh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing

Day.”

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of

enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:

“He is very kind.”

John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and

it was not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in

certain articles in _The Clarion_ or _The New Age_ Sir Leopold had been

dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the

unloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large,

neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat

manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them they

deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like some

very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs

of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of

the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something

resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking

old gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, who

rubbed his big fur gloves together.

Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch

had opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry young

lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a

tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a

fez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt.

With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big and

rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by name

James Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of the

priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife

had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had

been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about

the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had

always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him

to such family gatherings.

In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for

Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed,

were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a

big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase

at the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung the

colonel’s sword, the process was completed and the company, including

the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable

financier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of his

well-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat

pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his

Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vain-glory

that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them

all; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a

crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet

lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set

the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently

and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim

admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole

group.

“I’ll put ’em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to

the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ’em coming down. They’re

the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because

they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track;

but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have

kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It

was quite possible.”

“Quite natural, I should say,” growled the man in the red tie. “I

shouldn’t blame ’em if they had taken ’em. When they ask for bread, and

you don’t even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for

themselves.”

“I won’t have you talking like that,” cried the girl, who was in a

curious glow. “You’ve only talked like that since you became a horrid

what’s-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants

to embrace the chimney-sweep?”

“A saint,” said Father Brown.

“I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means

a Socialist.”

“A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes,” remarked Crook,

with some impatience; “and a Conservative does not mean a man who

preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who

desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a

man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for

it.”

“But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own

your own soot.”

Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. “Does one

want to own soot?” he asked.

“One might,” answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. “I’ve heard

that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas

when the conjuror didn’t come, entirely with soot--applied externally.”

“Oh, splendid,” cried Ruby. “Oh, I wish you’d do it to this company.”

The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in

applause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerable

deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest

opened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens,

monkey-tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet

sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back

scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure

standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat,

evidently a common messenger. “Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?” he

asked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and

stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident

astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared,

and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.

“I’m sick at being such a nuisance, colonel,” he said, with the cheery

colonial conventions; “but would it upset you if an old acquaintance

called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it’s Florian,

that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out

West (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have business

for me, though I hardly guess what.”

“Of course, of course,” replied the colonel carelessly--“My dear chap,

any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition.”

“He’ll black his face, if that’s what you mean,” cried Blount, laughing.

“I don’t doubt he’d black everyone else’s eyes. I don’t care; I’m not

refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top

hat.”

“Not on mine, please,” said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.

“Well, well,” observed Crook, airily, “don’t let’s quarrel. There are

lower jokes than sitting on a top hat.”

Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory opinions and

evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led Fischer to say, in his

most sarcastic, magisterial manner: “No doubt you have found something

much lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?”

“Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance,” said the Socialist.

“Now, now, now,” cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian

benevolence, “don’t let’s spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let’s

do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on

hats, if you don’t like those--but something of the sort. Why couldn’t

we have a proper old English pantomime--clown, columbine, and so on. I

saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it’s blazed in my

brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country

only last year, and I find the thing’s extinct. Nothing but a lot of

snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into

sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue

Birds, or something. Blue Beard’s more in my line, and him I like best

when he turned into the pantaloon.”

“I’m all for making a policeman into sausages,” said John Crook. “It’s a

better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the

get-up would be too big a business.”

“Not a scrap,” cried Blount, quite carried away. “A harlequinade’s the

quickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to any

degree; and, second, all the objects are household things--tables and

towel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that.”

“That’s true,” admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about.

“But I’m afraid I can’t have my policeman’s uniform? Haven’t killed a

policeman lately.”

Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. “Yes,

we can!” he cried. “I’ve got Florian’s address here, and he knows every

costumier in London. I’ll phone him to bring a police dress when he

comes.” And he went bounding away to the telephone.

“Oh, it’s glorious, godfather,” cried Ruby, almost dancing. “I’ll be

columbine and you shall be pantaloon.”

The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. “I

think, my dear,” he said, “you must get someone else for pantaloon.”

“I will be pantaloon, if you like,” said Colonel Adams, taking his cigar

out of his mouth, and speaking for the first and last time.

“You ought to have a statue,” cried the Canadian, as he came back,

radiant, from the telephone. “There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall

be clown; he’s a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can

be harlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend

Florian ’phones he’s bringing the police costume; he’s changing on the

way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those

broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors can be

the back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English interior.

Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic.” And snatching a chance

piece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall

floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the

line of the footlights.

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained

a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and

industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that

house that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and

hearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grew

wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions

from which it had to create. The columbine looked charming in an

outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade in the

drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour

from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained

(like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin, already

clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented

from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover

himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have done

so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn

at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle,

James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in his excitement; he was

like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey’s head unexpectedly on Father

Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of

moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paper donkey’s tail to the

coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down.

“Uncle is too absurd,” cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she

had seriously placed a string of sausages. “Why is he so wild?”

“He is harlequin to your columbine,” said Crook. “I am only the clown

who makes the old jokes.”

“I wish you were the harlequin,” she said, and left the string of

sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes,

and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a

pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience

with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee. The

spectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and the

servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still

fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little cleric

behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities

whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not

contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came

chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was

inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world,

that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular

expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but

he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an

author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above

all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance

he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some

popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front

doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit

garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the

great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played

the constabulary chorus in the “Pirates of Penzance,” but it was drowned

in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor

was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner

of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet;

the pianist playing “Where did you get that hat?” he faced about in

admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him

again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of “Then we had another one”).

Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell

on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange

actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the fame

still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a

living person could appear so limp.

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed

him like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous

tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable

heavily off the floor the clown played “I arise from dreams of thee.”

When he shuffled him across his back, “With my bundle on my shoulder,”

and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most

convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling

measure with some words which are still believed to have been, “I sent a

letter to my love and on the way I dropped it.”

At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown’s view was obscured

altogether; for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full height

and thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down

nervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it

seemed seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights; then

he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst in

silence out of the room.

The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not

inelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconscious

foe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwards

out of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight and

stillness. The vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had been

too glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and silvery

as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing in

with a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched,

and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel’s study.

He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled

by a solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat Colonel

Adams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed

whalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough

to have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against

the mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.

“This is a very painful matter, Father Brown,” said Adams. “The truth

is, those diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished from

my friend’s tail-coat pocket. And as you--”

“As I,” supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, “was sitting just

behind him--”

“Nothing of the sort shall be suggested,” said Colonel Adams, with a

firm look at Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing had been

suggested. “I only ask you to give me the assistance that any gentleman

might give.”

“Which is turning out his pockets,” said Father Brown, and proceeded to

do so, displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver

crucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The colonel looked at him long, and then said, “Do you know, I should

like to see the inside of your head more than the inside of your

pockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she has

lately--” and he stopped.

“She has lately,” cried out old Fischer, “opened her father’s house to

a cut-throat Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from a

richer man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer man--and none the

richer.”

“If you want the inside of my head you can have it,” said Brown rather

wearily. “What it’s worth you can say afterwards. But the first thing I

find in that disused pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds

don’t talk Socialism. They are more likely,” he added demurely, “to

denounce it.”

Both the others shifted sharply and the priest went on:

“You see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would no

more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one

man we don’t know. The fellow acting the policeman--Florian. Where is he

exactly at this minute, I wonder.”

The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude

ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the

priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with

staccato gravity, “The policeman is still lying on the stage. The

curtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there.”

Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank

mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and

then he made the scarcely obvious answer.

“Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”

“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her

brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in

quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that

policeman!”

They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the

columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and

Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.

“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly,

“Please say seriously what all this means.”

Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and

only struggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech.

“Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s not much time to talk. I must run after

the criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman--this

clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about--he

was--” His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.

“He was?” called Fischer inquiringly.

“A real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden,

in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire

sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the

south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo

of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost

irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden

trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as

impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million

moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch

of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short

tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only

stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has

unmistakably called up to him.

“Well, Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star;

but that always means a Falling Star at last.”

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels

and, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below.

“You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from

Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams

died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to

have marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer’s coming.

But there’s no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing

the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by

sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting

a paper donkey’s tail to Fischer’s coat. But in the rest you eclipsed

yourself.”

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if

hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the

man below.

“Oh, yes,” says the man below, “I know all about it. I know you not

only forced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going

to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were

already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you

up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the

warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion

of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw

that if the dress were a harlequin’s the appearance of a policeman

would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police

station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this

world. When the front door opened he walked straight on to the stage of

a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned and

drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all

the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything

better. And now, by the way, you might give me back those diamonds.”

The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in

astonishment; but the voice went on:

“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this

life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy

they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but

no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes

down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills

and lies about it. Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an

honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime.

Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the

poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and

despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough;

now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and

sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he’s

paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon

was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse,

screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed

him and hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you,

Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey.

But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up

in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops

will be very bare.”

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in

the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:

“Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing

mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving

suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are

separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will

do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man

stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of

the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of

all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in

his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself

had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to

be cloistered and ignorant of this world.