Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - A Bedtime Story for Adults - Father Brown and The Secret Garden

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

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Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast Every week we explore tales of this ancient culture The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt. Hello and welcome to Sleep Cove, the podcast and YouTube channel to get a great night's sleep. Please listen to this recording in a place where you can safely go to sleep. Hi everyone and hope everyone's having a fantastic week and a brilliant evening.

This recording is a bedtime story for grown-ups. It's taken from the short stories of the innocence of Father Brown and as a murder mystery, very similar in the vein of Agatha Christie and Miss Marple. So if you like those kind of British murder mysteries, I really hope you enjoy it. This story is definitely one you can listen to a few times because, once you know who the murderer is, it's great to listen out for the clues you missed the first time you heard the story. Obviously this is a murder mystery with some descriptions of murderous acts and dead bodies. So if you'd rather not listen to this, I recommend you listen to

another episode. And let's begin. The Innocence of Father Brown. a collection of short stories. The secret garden, Aristide Valentin, chief of the Paris police, was late for his dinner. And some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustache,

who always sat at a table in the entrance hall. A hall hung with weapons. Valentine's house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house with high walls and tall populars almost overhanging the sin. But the oddity and perhaps the police value of its architecture was this, that there was no ultimate exit at all except through the front door which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury

the garden was large and elaborate and there were many exits from the house into the garden but there was no exit from the garden into the world outside all round it ran a tall smooth and scalable wall with special spikes

at the top, no bad garden perhaps for a man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill. As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was in truth making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things. And though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he would always perform them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French and largely over European political minds, his great influence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers, and the

and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice. When Valentin arrived, he was already dressed in black clothes, and the red rosette, an elegant figure, his dark beard already street with grey. He went straight through his house to his study which opened on the grounds behind. The garden door of it was open. and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm,

and Valentine regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic provision. of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such a cult mood, at least he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late and that his guests had already began to arrive. A glance at his drawing room when he entered,

it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party. He saw Lord Galloway, the English, ambassador. An old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and thread-like, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior.

He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont Saint-Michael. black-eyed and opulent, and with her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr Simon, a typical French scientist with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and a forehead, barred with the parallel wrinkles, which are the penalty of superciliusus, since they come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw Father Brown of Coppel in Essex. whom he had recently met in England.

He saw, perhaps, with more interest than any of these a tall man in uniform, who would bow to the Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgement, and who now advanced alone to pay his respects to the host. This was Commandant O'Brien of the French Foreign Legion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure, clean-shaven, dark-haired and blue-eyed, and as seemed natural in an officer of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides. He had an heir at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways,

especially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after some crash of deaths and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by swinging about in a uniform sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the ambassador's family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly and Lady Margaret looked away.

But for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other their distinguished host was not specially interested in them. No, one of them at least was in his eyes, a guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of worldwide fame, whose friendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brain, that multi-millionaire, whose colossal and even crushing endowments of small religions

have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity for the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr. Brain was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian scientist, but he was ready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it was an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare, a hobby more patient than angling.

He admired Walt Whitman, who thought that Luke P. Tanner of Paris, PA, was more progressive than Whitman any day. He liked anything he thought progressive. He thought Valentin progressive. thereby doing him a grave injustice. The solid appearance of Julius K. Brain in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great quality which very few of his can claim, that his presence was as big as his absence.

He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, without so much relief as a watch chain or a ring. His hair was white and will brush back like a German's. His face was red, fierce and cherub-like, with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwise infantile visage, with an effect theatrical, even mestophelian. Not long, however, did that saloon merely stare

and the celebrated American. His lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with all speed into the dining room with a Lady Galloway on his arm. Except on one point, the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied, and she had not done so. She had decoriously gone in with Dr Simon.

Nevertheless, Old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men, Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and the detrimental O'Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform,

all melted away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, Then the English diplomat grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung every 60 seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien might be signaling to Margaret. Somehow he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brain, the honorary Yankee, who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman, who believed in none.

They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him. After a time, this progressive discussion had reached a crisis of tedium. Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes till he heard the high-pitched voice of the doctor.

And then the dull voice of the priest. followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about science and religion. But the instantly opened the saloon door, he saw only one thing. He saw what was not there. He saw that Comedont O'Brien was absent,

and that Lady Margaret was absent too. Rising impatiently from the drawing room, as he had from the dining room, He stamped along the passage once more. His notion of protecting his daughter from the Irish Algerian knew do well had become something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet his daughter,

who swept past with a white scornful face, which was a second enigma. If she had not been with O'Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile and passionate suspicion, he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion and eventually found a servant's entrance that opened onto the garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all the storm rack.

The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden A tall figure in blue Was striding across the lawn Towards the study door A glint of moonlit silver On his face Picked out Commandant O'Brien

He vanished through the French windows Into the house leaving Lord Galloway In an indescribable temper at once virulent and vague. The blue silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt him with all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authority was at war. The length and grace of the Irishman's stride

enraged him as if he was rival instead of a father. The moonlight madden him. He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a wotile fairyland, and willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities, by speech he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so, he tripped over some tree or stone in the grass. Looking down at first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity, The next instant, the moon and the tall populace looked at an unusual sight, an elderly English diplomat, running hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.

His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beaming glasses and worried brow of Dr Simon, who heard the nobleman's first clear words. Lord Galloway was crying, A corpse in the grass, a bloodstained corpse. O'Brien at last had gone utterly out of his mind. We must tell Valentine at once, said the doctor. When the other had brokenly described all that he had dared to examine,

it is fortunate that he is here. And even as he spoke, the great detective entered the study attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation. He had come with a common concern of a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. But when he was told the gory fact, he turned with all his gravity, instantly bright and business-like. For this, however, abrupt and awful was his business.

strange gentlemen he said as they hurried out into the garden that i should have hunted mysteries all over the earth and now one comes and settles in my own backyard but where is the place they crossed the lawn less easily as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river but under the guidance of the shaken galloway they found the body sunken in the deep grass the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man he lay face downwards so they could only see that his big shoulders were clad in black cloth

and that his big head was bald except for a wisp or two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed a scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face. At least, said Simon with a deep and singular intonation. He is none of our party. Examine him, Doctor, cried Valentin, rather sharply.

He may not be dead. The doctor bent down. He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough, he answered. Just help me to lift him up. They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground. and all doubts as to his being really dead were settled at once frightfully. The head fell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body.

Whoever had cut his throat and managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. He must have been as strong as a gorilla, he muttered. Not without a shiver, though he was used to the gory, details of medicine. Dr. Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw, but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous face at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids, a face of a wicked Roman emperor, with perhaps a distant touch of a Chinese emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the

coldest eye of ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man that, as they lifted his body, they had seen underneath if the white gleam of the shirt front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr Simon said, the man had never been seen in their party. But he might very well have been trying to join in, for he had come dressed for such an occasion. Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with the closest professional attention the grass and ground for some 20 yards round the body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor and quite vaguely by the English Lord. Nothing rewarded their grovelings except a few twigs snapped or chopped into very small lints, which Valentin lifted for an instance examination and then tossed away.

Twigs, he said gravely, twigs and a total stranger with his head cut off. This is all there on this lawn. There was an almost creepy stillness. And then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply. Who's that? Who's that over there by the garden wall? A small figure with a foolishly large head drew wavering near them in the moonlit haze.

He looked for an instant like a goblin. But he turned out to be the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing room. I say, he said meekly, there are no gates to this garden, do you know? Valentine's black brows had come together somewhat crossly as they did on principle at the sight of the Kazakh. But he was far too just a man to deny the relevance of the remark.

You are right, he said. Before we found out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen, it can be done without prejudice to my position and duty. We shall all agree that soon as soon as we, Certain distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies and gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador.

If we must mark it down as a crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then, I will use my own discretion. I am the head of the police. I am so public that I can afford to be private. Please heaven, I will clear everyone of my own guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, upon your honour, you will none of you leave this house

until tomorrow at noon. There are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find my man, Ivan, in the front hall. He is a confidential man. Tell him to leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway, you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened and to prevent a panic. They also must stay.

Father Brown and I will remain with the body. When Valentin spoke like a captain, he was obeyed like a bugle. Dr Simon went through to the armoury and rooted out Ivan, the public detective's private detective. Galloway went to the drawing room and told the terrible news, thankfully enough, so by the time the company assembled there, the ladies were already startled and already soothed. Meanwhile, the good priest and the good atheist stood at the head and the foot of the dead man, motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their two philosophies of death. Ivan, this confidential man with a scar and the moustache, came out of the house like a cannonball,

and came racing across the lawn to Valentin, like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively, with the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's permission to examine the remains. Yes, look if you like, Ivan. said Valentin, but don't be long, you must go in and thrash out this in the house. Ivan lifted the head

and then almost let it drop. Why, he gasped. It's, no, isn't it can't be. Do you know this man, sir? No, said Valentine indifferently. We had better go inside. Between them, they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study,

and then all made their way to the drawing room. The detective sat down at a desk quietly and even without hesitation, but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at a size. He made a few rapid notes upon paper in front of him and then said shortly, is everyone here? Not Mr Brain, said the Duchess of Mount St Michael looking round. No, said Lord Galilee.

away in a hoarse, harsh voice, and not to Mr. Neil O'Brien. I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when the courts was still warm. Ivan, said the detective, go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr. Brain, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining room. Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. I am not sure. The faithful attendant flashed from the room and before anyone could steer or speak, Valentin went on with the same soldiery swiftness of exposition. Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden. His head cut clean from his body.

Dr Simon, you have examined it. Do you think that to cut a man's throat like that would need grateful? or perhaps only a very sharp knife. I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all, said the pale doctor. Have you any thought, resumed Valentin, of a tool with which it could be done? Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't, said the doctor, arching his painful brows. It is not easy to hack a neck through even clumsily. and this was a very clean cut.

It could be done with a battle axe, or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword. But good heavens, cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics. There can't be any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here. Valentine was still super busy with the paper in front of him. Tell me, he said, still writing rapidly. could it have been done with the long French cavalry sabre? A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason,

curdled everyone's blood like the knocking in Matt Beth. Amid that frozen silence, Dr Simon managed to say, A saber, yes, I suppose it could. Thank you, said Valentin, come in, Ivan. The confidence, eventual Ivan opened the door and ushered in Commandant Neil O'Brien, whom he had found at last, pacing the garden again. The Irish officer stood up, disordered and defiant on the threshold.

What do you want from me? he cried. Please sit down, said Valentin, in pleasant level tones. Why you aren't wearing your sword? where is it? I left it on the library table, said O'Brien. His brogue had deepening in his disturbed mood. It was a nuisance. It was getting, Ivan, said Valentin,

please go and get the commandant sword from the library. Then, as the servant vanished, Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were you doing? in the garden. The commandant flung himself recklessly into a chair. Oh, he cried in poor Irish, admiring the moon, communing with nature, my boy. A heavy silence sank and endured, and at the end of it came the trivial and terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard.

This is all I can find, he said. Put it on the table, said Valentin. Without looking up, there was an inhuman silence in the room. Like that sea of inhuman silence round the dock of the condemned murderer. The Duchess's weak exclamations had long died away. Lord Galloway's swollen hatred was satisfied and even sobered. The voice that came was quite unexpected. I think I can tell you, cried Lady Margaret, in that clear, quivering voice with which a courageous woman speaks publicly.

I can tell you what Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused. I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that He did not seem to think Much of my respect, I wonder She added with rather a warm smile If you'll care at all for it now For I offer it him now

I will swear anywhere That he never did a thing like this Lord Galloway Had edged up to his daughter And was intimidating her in what he imagined to be an undertone. Hold your tongue, Maggie, he said in a thunderous whisper. Why should you shield the fellow?

Where's his sword? Where's his confounded cavalry? He stopped because of the singular stare with which his daughter was regarding him. A look that was indeed a lurid magnet for the whole group. You old fool, she said in a low voice, without pretence of piety. What do you suppose you were trying to prove?

I tell you this man was innocent while with me. But if he wasn't innocent, he was still with me. If he murdered a man in the garden, who was it who must have seen? Who must have least known? Do you hate Neil so much as to put your own daughter, Lady Galloway screamed and cut off what she was saying?

Everyone else sat tingling at the touch of those satanic tragedies that had been between lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the Scottish aristocrat and her lover, the Irish adventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of formless historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonous paramours. In the centre of this morbid silence, an innocent voice said, Was it a very long cigar? The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken.

I mean, said Little Father Brown from the corner of the room, I mean that cigar Mr. Brain is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking stick. Despite the irrelevance that was a sense, as well as irritation in Valentin's face as he lifted his head. Quite right, he remarked sharply. Ivan go and see about Mr. Brain again, and bring him here at once. As soon as Ivan had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.

Lady Margaret, he said, We all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity. and explaining the commandant's conduct. But there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing room, and it was only some minutes afterwards

that he found the garden and the commandant still walking there. You have to remember, replied Margaret, with a faint irony in a voice, that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have come back, arm in arm. He's a gentleman anyhow, and he loitered behind, and so got charged with murder. In those few moments, said Valentin gravely, he might really, the knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face. Beg pardon, sir, he said, but Mr. Brain has left the house.

Left, cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet. Gone, scooted, evaporated, replied Ivan in humorous French. His hat and coat are gone too, and I'll tell you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one and a big trace too. What do you mean? asked Valentin. I'll show you, said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked cavalry saber, straight with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt.

But the experience Devon went on quietly. I found this, he said. Flung him on the bushes, 50 yards of the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr. Brain threw it when he ran away. There was again a silence. But of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, and then turned a respectful face to O'Brien.

Commandant, he said, We trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile, he added, slapping the steel back in the ring of scabbard, Let me return you, your sword. At the military symbolism of the action, the audience could hardly refrain from applause. For Neil O'Brien, indeed that gesture, was the turning point of existence. At the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again, in the colours of the morning, the tragic futility of his ordinary mean had fallen from him.

He was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman. and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and perhaps given him something better than an apology. As they drifted among the old flower beds before breakfast, the whole company was more light-hearted and humane.

But though the riddle of the death remained, the load of suspicion was lifted off them all and sent flying off to Paris with the strange millionaire. A man they hardly knew, the devil was cast out of the house, he had cast himself out. Still, the riddle remained, and when O'Brien threw himself on a garden seat beside Dr Simon, the keenly scientific person at once resumed it, he did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were unpleasant to things. I can't say it interests me much, said the Irishman frankly.

especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brain hated this stranger for some reason, load him into the garden and killed him with my sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went. By the way, Yvonne tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in his pocket, so he was a countryman of brains.

And that seems to clinch it. I don't see any difficulties about the business. There are five colossal difficulties, said the doctor quietly, like high walls within walls. Don't mistake me. I don't doubt that Brain did it. His flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it, first difficulty, why should a man kill another with a great hulking sabre

when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty. Why was there no noise? or outcry, does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks? Third difficulty, a servant watched the door all evening and a rat cannot get into Valentine's garden anywhere. How did the dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty, given the same conditions, how did brain get out of the garden? And the fifth, said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest, who was coming slowly out the path.

It's a trifle, I suppose, to the doctor, but I think an odd one. When I first saw how the head had been slashed, I suppose the assassin had struck more than once. But on an examination, I found many cuts across the truncated section. In other words, they were struck after the head was off. Did Brain hate his foe so fiendishly That he stood sabring his body in the moonlight Horrible said O'Brien and shuddered The little priest Brown had arrived while they were talking

And he had waited With characteristic shyness To they had finished Then he said awkwardly I say I'm sorry to interrupt But I was sent to tell you the news News repeated Simon and stared at him rather painfully through his glasses Yes, I'm sorry, said Father Brown mildly

There's been another murder, you know Both man on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking And what stranger still, continued the priest With this dull eye on the rhododendrums It's the same disgusting sort It's another beheading They found the second head actually bleeding into the river, a few yards along Brains Road to Paris.

So they suppose that he, Great Heaven, cried O'Brien. Is Brain a monomaniac? There are American vendettors, said the priest impassively. Then he added, they want you to come to the library and see it. Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier he loved all this secret of carnage. Where were these extravagant amputations going to stop?

First one head was hacked off and then another. In this case he told himself bitterly. It was not true that two heads were better than one. As he crossed the study, he almost staggered at a shocking coincidence. Upon Valentine's table lay the coloured picture of yet a third bleeding head, and it was the head of Valentin himself. A second glance showed him

it was only a nationalist paper called the guillotine, which every week showed one of his political opponents with rolling eyes and writhing features just after execution. For Valentin, this was an anti-clerical of some note.

But O'Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity, even in his sins, and his gorge rose against the great brutality of the intellect which belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from the grotesques on the Gothic churches, to the gross caricatures in the newspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the revolution. He saw the whole city as one ugly energy, from the sanguinary sketch lying on Valentine's table up to where, above a mountain and forest of gargoyles, the great devil grins on Notre Dame. The library was long, low and dark.

What light entered it, shot from under low blinds, and had still some of the ready tinge of mourning. Valentin and his servant, Ivan, were waiting for them at the upper end of a long, slightly sloping desk on which lay the mortal remains, looking enormous in the twilight. The big black figure and yellow face of the man found in the garden,

confronted them essentially unchanged. The second head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay streaming and dripping beside it. Valentin's men were still seeking to recover the rest of the second corpse, which was supposed to be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O'Brien's sensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined it with his blinking care. It was little more than a mop of white hair Fringed with silver fire In the red and level morning light The face which seemed of an ugly

Empirpled and perhaps criminal type Had been much battered against trees or stones As it tossed in the water Good morning Commandant O'Brien said Valentin With quiet cordiality You have heard of Brain's last experiment in butchery, I suppose. Father Brown was still burning over the head with the white hair,

and he said without looking up, I suppose it is quite certain that Brain cut off this head too? Well, it seems common sense, said Valentin, with his hands in his pockets, killed in the same way as the other, found within a few yards of the other, and sliced by the same weapon, which you know he carried away. Yes, yes I know, replied Father Brown submissively.

Yet you know, I doubt where the brain could have cut off his head. Why not? inquired Dr Simon with rational stare. Well, doctor, said the priest, looking up blinking. Can a man cut off his own head? I don't know. O'Brien felt an insane universe crush. about his ears, but the doctor sprang forward with an impetuous practicality and pushed back the white, wet hair. Oh, there's no doubt its brain, said the priest quietly. He had exactly that

chip in the left ear. The detective who had been regarding the priest with steady and glittering eyes, opened his clenched mouth and said sharply. You seem to know a lot about him, Father Brown. I do, said the little man simply. I've been about with him for some weeks. He was thinking about joining our church. The star of the fanatic sprang into Valentine's eyes. He strode towards the priest with clenched hands, and perhaps he cried with a blasting sneer. Perhaps he was thinking of leaving all his money to your church? Perhaps he was, said Brown stowedly. It is possible.

In that case, cried Valentin, with a dreadful smile. You may indeed know a great deal about him, about his life and his. Commodant O'Brien laid a hand on Valentin's arm. Drop that slanderless rubbish Valentin, he said, or there may be some more swords yet. But Valentin, under the steady, humble gaze of the priest, had already recovered himself. Well, he said shortly, people's private opinions can wait.

You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay. You must enforce it on yourselves and on each other. Ivan here will tell you anything more you want to know. I must get to business, and write to the authorities. We can't keep this quiet any longer. I shall be writing in my study, if there is any more news. If there is any more news, Yvonne?

Asked Dr Simon, as the chief of police strode out of the room. There's the old buffer he found on the lawn, and he pointed without pretence of reverence to the big black body with yellow head. We found out who he is anyhow Indeed, cried the astonished doctor And who is it? His name was Arnold Becker Said the under-detective

Though he went by many aliases He was a wondering sort of scamp And is known to have been in America So that was where Brain got his knife into him We didn't have much to do with him ourselves, for he worked mostly in Germany. We've communicated, of course, with the German police. But oddly enough, there was a twin brother.

His name was Louis Becker, whom he had a great deal to do with. In fact, we found it necessary to guillotine him only yesterday. Well, it's a rum thing, gentlemen. For when I saw that fellow flat on the lawn, I had the greatest jump of my life. If I hadn't seen Louis Becker gelatined with my own eyes, I'd have sworn it was Louis Becker lying there in the grass. Then of course I remembered his twin brother in Germany and following up on the clue.

The explanatory Yvonne stopped for the excellent reason that nobody was listening to him. The commandant and the doctor were both staring at Father Brown, who had sprung stiffly to his feet, and was holding his temples tight like a man in sudden and violent pain. Stop, stop, stop, stop, he cried. Stop talking for a minute, for I see half. Will God give me strength?

Will my brain make me jump and see all? Heaven help me. I used to be fairly good at thinking. Will my head split or will it see? I see half, I see only half. He buried his head in his hands and stood in a sort of rigid torture of thought or prayer, while the other three could only go on and staring at this last prodigy of their wild 12 hours. When Father Brown's hands fell, they showed a face quite fresh and serious, like a child's.

He heaved a huge sigh and said, let us get this said and done with as quickly as possible. Look here, this will be the quickest way to convince you all of the truth. He turned to the doctor. Dr Simon, he said, You have a strong headpiece, and I heard you this morning asking the five hardest questions about the business. Well, if you will ask them again, I will answer them.

Simon's Ponce-Nay dropped from his nose. in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. Well, the first question you know is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all, when a man can kill with a bodkin. A man cannot behead with a bodkin, said Brown calmly, and for this murder, beheading was absolutely necessary. Why? asked O'Brien with interest. And the next question, asked Father Brown.

Well, why didn't the man cry out or anything? Asked the doctor. Sabres and gardens are certainly unusual. Twigs, said the priest gloomily, and turned to the window, which looked on the scene of the death. No one saw the point of the twigs. Why should they lie on the lawn? Look at it so far from the tree.

They were not snapped off, they were chopped off. The murderer occupied his enemy with some tricks with a sabre, showing how he could cut a branch in mid-air or whatnot. Then, while his enemy bent down to see the result, a silent slash, and the head fell off. Well, said the doctor slowly, that seems plausible enough, but my next two questions will stump anyone. The priest still stood looking critically out the window and waited.

You know how all the garden was sealed up like an airtight chamber, went on the doctor. Well, how did the strange man get into the garden? Without turning round, the little priest answered. There was never any strange man in the garden. There was a silence and then a sudden cackle of almost childish laughter relieving the strain. The absurdity of Brown's remark moved Ivan to open taunts.

Oh, he cried, then we didn't lug a great fat corpse onto a sofa last night. He hadn't got into the garden, I suppose. Got into the garden, repeated Brown reflectively. No, not entirely. Hang it all. cried Simon, a man gets into a garden, or he doesn't.

Not necessarily, said the priest, with a faint smile. What is the next question, Doctor? I fancy you're ill, exclaimed Dr Simon sharply. But I'll ask the next question if you like. How did Brain get out of the garden? He didn't get out of the garden, said the priest, still looking out of the window. didn't get out of the garden exploded simon not completely said father brown simon simon shook his fists in a frenzy of french logic a man gets out of the garden or he doesn't he cried

not always said father brown dr simon sprang to his feet impatiently i have no time to spare on such senseless talk He cried angrily. If you haven't understood a man being on one side of a wall or the other, I won't trouble you further. Doctor, said the cleric very gently. We've always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question.

The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly, The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death. Yes, said the motionless priest. It was done so it to make you assume exactly that one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body. The borderland of the brain where all the monsters are made.

moved horribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horsemen and fishwomen that man's unnatural fancy had begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear, Keep out of the monstrous garden, where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden, where died the man with two heads.

Yet while these shameful, symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert and was watching the old priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest. Father Brown had turned round at last and stood against the window with his face in dense shadow

but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly as if there were no Gaelic souls on earth. Gentlemen, he said, you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In the face of Dr. Simon's racialism,

I still affirm that Becker was only part, hardly present. Look here, pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse. You never saw the man in your lives. Did you ever see this man? He rapidly rolled away the bald yellow head of the unknown and put in its place the white-mained head beside it, and there, complete, unified, unmistakably lay Julius K. Brain. The murderer. went on Brown quietly, hacked off his enemy's head, and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he only had to clap on another head to the corpse. And, as he insisted on a private inquest,

you all imagined a totally new man. Clap on another head, said O'Brien, staring. What are the head? Heads don't grow on garden bushes, do they? No, said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots. There is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, besides which the chief of police, Aristide Valentin,

was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me to pieces. Valentin is an honest man if being mad for an arguable case is honesty. But did you ever see in that cold grey eye of his that he is mad? He would do anything, anything to break what he calls the superstition of the cross. He fought for it and starved for it, and now he is murdered for it. Brains crazy millions had hitherto been scattered among so many sacks, that they did little to alter the balance of things.

But Valentin heard a whisper from Brain. Like so many scatterbrain skeptics was drifting to us, and that was quite a different thing. Brain would pour supplies into the unproverished and pugnacious Church of France, and he would destroy six nationalist newspapers like the Gillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire,

and he did it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and then took it home in his official box. He had the last argument with Brain that Lord Galloway did not hear the end of. That failing, he led him out onto the sealed garden, talked about swordmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and... Ivan of the scar sprang up. You lunatic, he yelled. You'll go to my master now if I take you by.

Why I was going there already, said Brown heavily. I must ask him to confess and all that. driving the unhappy brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentine's study the great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear the turbulent entrance they paused for a moment and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back

may the doctor run forward suddenly A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin's elbow And that Valentin was dead in his chair And on the blind face of the suicide was more than the price of Cato