Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - Mystery Bedtime Story - Father Brown and The Eye of Apollo

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Starting point is 00:00:46 please go to sleepcove.com slash support. That's sleepcove.com slash support. If you can't support the show right now, please subscribe with a bell to get alerts on all new free content thank you have you ever gazed in wonder at the great pyramid have you marvelled at the golden face of Tudankhamun

Starting point is 00:01:16 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. Hi everyone, here is an episode from our sister show, The Mysteries at Midnight Podcast. Search for Mysteries at Midnight in your podcast up of choice, and subscribe and follow to hear all new mystery stories that are not available on Sleep Cove.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Thank you. Welcome to Mysteries at midnight. Tonight, you'll hear a short story where Father Brown, the priest detective, investigates an apparent accident in his friends Flombeau's apartment building, where a new cult is beginning to gain popularity. I really enjoyed the twist ending on this one, and I think you will too. Please remember to subscribe to get access to all new stories.

Starting point is 00:02:44 So let's begin the story. The Eye of Apollo. That singular smoky sparkle. At once a confusion and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames was changing more and more from its grey to its glittering extreme, as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster,

Starting point is 00:03:16 and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall, and the other was very short. They might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant clock tower of Parliament, and the humbler humped shoulders of the abbey. For the short man was then clerical dress. The official description of the tall man was Hercul Flambeau, private detective, and he was going to his new offices

Starting point is 00:03:56 in a new pile of flats facing the abbey entrance. The official description of the short man was the Reverend J. Brown attached to St. Francis Xavier's Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a Camberwell deathbed to see the new officers of his friend. The building was American in its sky-scraping altitude, and American also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery. of telephones and lifts. It was barely finished and still

Starting point is 00:04:42 and distraved. Only three tenants had moved in. The office just above Flambeau was occupied as also was the office just below him. The two floors above that and the three floors below were entirely bare. For the first glance at the new Tower of Flats

Starting point is 00:05:09 caught something much more arresting save for a few relics of scaffolding The one glaring object Was erected outside the office Just above flambose It was an enormous guilt effigy Of the human eye Surrounded with rays of gold

Starting point is 00:05:34 and taking up much room as two or three of the office windows. What on earth is that? Asked Father Brown and stood still, New Religion, and Flombo laughing, one of those new religions that forgive your sins by saying you never had any, rather like Christian science, I should think, The fact is that a fellow calling himself Canaan,

Starting point is 00:06:11 I don't know what his name is, except that it can't be that, has taken the flat just above me. I have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old humbug on top. He calls himself the new priest of Apollo, and he worships the son. Let him look out, said Father Brown. The sun was the cruelest of all the gods.

Starting point is 00:06:45 But what does that monstrous eye mean? As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs, answered Flumbo, that a man can endure anything if his mind is quite steady. Their two great symbols are the sun and the abyssed. an eye, for they say that if a man were really healthy, he could stare at the sun. If a man were really healthy, said Father Brown, he would not bother to stare at it. Well, that's all, I can tell you about the new religion, went on Flombo carelessly. It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases.

Starting point is 00:07:33 Can it cure the one spiritual disease? Asked Father Brown with a serious curiosity. And what is the one spiritual disease? Asked Flombo smiling. Thinking one is quite well, said his friend. Flombo was more interested in the quiet little office below him than in the flamboyant temple above. He was a lucid southerner, incapable of conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist.

Starting point is 00:08:14 And new religions of a bright and pallid sort were not much in his line. But humanity was always in his line, especially when it was good-looking. Moreover, their ladies downstairs were characters. in their own way. The office was kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of them tall and striking. She had a dark, eager and aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one always thinks of in profile as of the clean-cut edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way through life. She had eyes of startling brilliancy,

Starting point is 00:09:07 but it was the brilliancy of steel rather of diamonds, and her straight, slim figure was a shade too stiff for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow, a little greyer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore a business-lawful, black, with little masculine cuffs and collars. There are thousands of such curt, strenuous ladies in the offices of London, but the interest of these lay rather in their real than their apparent position.

Starting point is 00:09:50 For Pauline Stacey the Elder was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth, she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness, peculiar to the modern woman. It had driven her to what she considered a harsher and higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money, in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon, quite alien to a high. masterful utilitarianism.

Starting point is 00:10:31 She held her wealth, she would say, for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she had put into her business the nucleus of a model typewriting emporium. Part of it was distributed in various leagues and causes for the advancement of such work among women. How far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightly prosaic idealism. No one could be very sure, but she followed her leader with a dog-like affection, which was somehow more attractive with its touch of tragedy than the hard high spirits of the elder. For Pauline Stacey, had nothing to say to tragedy. she was understood to deny its existence.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Her rigid, rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flumbo very much on the first occasion of his entering the flats. He had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall, waiting for the lift boy, who generally conducts strangers to the various floors but this. bright-eyed falcon of a girl had openly refused to endure such official delay

Starting point is 00:12:06 she said sharply that she knew all about the lift which was not dependent on boys or men either though her flirt was only three floors above she managed in the few seconds of assent to give flambeau a great many of her

Starting point is 00:12:27 fundamental views in an offhand manner. They were to the general effect that she was a modern working woman and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed with abstract anger against those who rebuke mechanic and ask for the return of romance. Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines. Just as she could manage the lift, she seemed almost to resent the fact of Flombo opening their lift door for her, and that gentleman went up to his own apartments,

Starting point is 00:13:18 smiling with somewhat mingled feelings, at the memory of such spitfire sight, self-dependence. She certainly had a temper of a snappy, practical sort. The gestures of her thin, elegant hands were abrupt or even destructive. Once Flombo entered her office on some typewriting business and found she had flung a pair of spectacles belonging to her sister into the middle of the floor and stamped on them. She was already in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the sickly medical notions and the morbid admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus.

Starting point is 00:14:11 She dared her sister to bring such artificial and healthy rubbish into the place. She asked if she asked if she was, was expected to wear wooden legs or false hair or glass eyes. And as she spoke, her eyes sparkled like the terrible crystal. Flombeau quite bewildered from this fanaticism, could not refrain from asking Miss Pauline with direct French logic. Why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sight of weakness than a lift.

Starting point is 00:14:52 And why, if science might help us in the one effort, it might not help us in the other. That is so different, said Pauline Stacey Loftily. Batteries and motors, and all those things, are marks of the force of man. Yes, Mr. Flombo, and the force of women too. We shall take our turn, are these great engines that devour distance and defy time.

Starting point is 00:15:25 That is high and splendid. That is really science. But these nasty props and plasters that doctors sell, well they are just badges of poultryry. Doctors stick on legs and arms, as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was free-born, Mr. Flutern. combo, people only think they need these things because they had been trained in fear

Starting point is 00:15:56 instead of being trained in power and courage. Just as the city nurses tell children not to stare at the sun and so they can't do it without blinking. But why among the stars should there be one star I may not see? The sun is not my master, and I will open my eyes. eyes and stare at him whenever I choose. Your eyes, said Flombo with a foreign bow, will dazzle the sun. He took pleasure in complimenting this strange stiff beauty, partly because it threw her

Starting point is 00:16:39 a little off her balance, but as he went upstairs to his floor, he drew a deep breath and whistled saying to himself, so she has got into the hands of that conjurer upstairs with his golden eye, ver little as he knew or cared about the new religion of Canon. He had heard of his special notion about some gazing. He soon discovered that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below him, were close and increasing. The man who called himself Cologne

Starting point is 00:17:22 was a magnificent creature in a physical sense to be the pontiff of Apollo. He was nearly as tall as flambeau and very much better looking with a golden beard, strong blue eyes and a mane flung back like a lion's

Starting point is 00:17:42 in structure he was the blonde beast of Nietzsche. But all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked like one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like one of the kings that were also saints, and this despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings. the fact that he had an office halfway up a building in Victoria Street, that the clerk, a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars, sat in the outer room between him and the corridor,

Starting point is 00:18:32 that his name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street, like the advertisement of an occultist. All this vulgarity could not take away from the man called Calon, the vivid oppression and inspiration that came from his soul and body. Minerva was said, a man in the presence of this quack did feel in the presence of a great man, Even in the loose jacket suit of linen that he wore as a workshop dress in his office, he was a fascinating and formidable figure. And when rode in the white vestments and crowned with the golden circlet,

Starting point is 00:19:27 in which he daily saluted the sun, he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day, the new sun worshipper went out on his little balcony in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord, once at daybreak, once at sunset,

Starting point is 00:20:00 and once at the shock of noon. It was while, The shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flombo, first looked up and saw the white priest of Apollo. Flombo had seen quite enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus and plunged into the porch of the tall building without even looking for his clerical friend.

Starting point is 00:20:36 to follow. But Father Brown, whether from a professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest in Tom Fulery, stopped and stared at the balcony of the Sun Worship, just as he might have stopped and stared up at Punch and Judy, canon the prophet, was already up with argent garments and uplifted hands. the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be heard all the way down the busy street uttering his solar litany. He was already in the middle of it. His eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It was doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth.

Starting point is 00:21:32 It is substantially certain that he did not see a sun. stunted, round-faced priest, who in the crowd below looked up at him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most startling difference between even these two far-divided men. Father Brown could not look at anything without blinking, but the priest of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without a quiver of the eyelid. cried the prophet, O star, that art do great to be allowed among the stars. O fountain that flowed quietly in that secret spot that is called space. White father of all white flames and white flowers and white peaks.

Starting point is 00:22:34 Father, who art more innocent than all thy most innocent and quite, quiet children, primal purity, into the peace of which a rush. But the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of their mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other, the sense of the some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad news. Bad news, that was all the worse, because no one knew what it was. Two figures remained, still after the crash of commotion.

Starting point is 00:23:34 The fair priest of Apollo on the balcony above, and the ugly priest of Christ below him. At last, the tall figure and the titanic energy of Flambeau, the mansions, and dominated the little mob. Talking at the top of his voice, like a foghorn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon, and he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance, his friend, Father Brown, dipped in, insignificantly after him, even as he ducked and dived through the crowd, he could still hear the magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest, still calling on the happy God, who is the friend of fountains and flowers, and some six other people standing round the enclosed space into which the lift commonly descended.

Starting point is 00:24:48 but the lift had not descended, something else had descended, something that ought to have come by a lift. For the last four minutes, Flambeau had looked down on it, had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied the existence of tragedy.

Starting point is 00:25:12 He had never had the slightest doubt that it was pauling Stacy. And though, he had sent for a doctor. He had not the slightest doubt that she was dead. He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her. There was so much both to like and dislike, but she'd been a person to him and the unbearable pathos of detail and habit stabbed him with all the small daggers of bereavement, he remembered her pretty face and priggish speeches, with a sudden secret vividness, which is all the bitterness of death, in an instant, like a bolt from the blue,

Starting point is 00:26:05 like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defined body had been dashed down the open well or the lift to death at the bottom. Had she jumped on her own accord, with so insolent and optimist, it seemed impossible. Was it murder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder anybody?

Starting point is 00:26:33 In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked, where was that fellow, Cannon, habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Cannon, for the last 50 minutes, had been a way up on his balcony, worshipping his God, felt the hand of Father Brown. He turned his swarthy face and said abruptly, then, if he has been up there all the time, Who can have done it? Said the other,

Starting point is 00:27:24 we might go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before the police will move, leaving the body of the slain in charge of the surgeons flashed up the stairs to the typewriting office. He found it utterly empty. He abruptly returned with a new and white face. to his friend. Her sister, he said, with an unpleasant seriousness.

Starting point is 00:28:07 Her sister seems to have gone out for a walk. Father Brown nodded. Or she may have got a son-man, he said. If I were you, I should just verify that. Let us all talk it over, said suddenly, as if remembering something. Shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in that office downstairs, Flombo stared,

Starting point is 00:28:45 but he followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of the Stacey's, where that impenetrable pastor took a large red leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see the stairs, and landings and waited. He did not wait very long. In about four minutes, three figures descended the stairs, alike only in their solemnity.

Starting point is 00:29:20 The first was Joan Stacy, the sister of the dead woman. Evidently, she'd been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo. The second was the priest of Apollo himself. His litany finished, sweeping down the empty stairs, in utter magnificence. Something in his white robes, beard and parted hair, had the look of Dors Christ, leaving the Pretorium. The third was flambeau, black-browed and somewhat bewildered.

Starting point is 00:30:00 Miss Jones Stacey, dark with a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with grey, walked straight to her own desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacy was a criminal, she was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some time with an odd little smile without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else.

Starting point is 00:30:41 Prophet, he said, presumably addressing Canon. I wish you would tell me a lot about your religion. I should be proud to do it, said Canon inclining his still-crowned head.

Starting point is 00:31:00 But I am not sure that I understand. It's like this, said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way. We are taught that if a man has really bad first principles, that must be partly his fault. But for all that, we can make some differences between a man who insults his quite clear conscious, and a man with a conscious, more or less clouded with sophistries. Now, do you really think that murder is wrong at all? Is this an accusation? said Callon, very quietly, answered Brown, equally gently. It is the speech for the defence and started stillness

Starting point is 00:32:00 of the room, the prophet of Apollo, slowly rose. And really, it was like the rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light and life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily have filled Salisbury Plain. His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies. His epic gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion. Black blot upon some splendour of Hellas. We meet at last, Caiaphus, said the prophet, your church and mine are the only realities on this earth for the sun, and you the darkening of the sun. You are the priest of the dying, and I of the living God. Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy

Starting point is 00:33:20 of your coat and creed. All your churches, but are black police. You are only spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of guilt, whether by treachery or torture. You would convince them of sin, I would convince them of virtue, reader of the books of evil. One more word, before I blow away, you'll base this nightmares, forever, not even faintly. Could you understand how little I care, whether you can't conduct. convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child's toy book to a man once grown up. You said you were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this knife that I will offer you the speech for the prosecution.

Starting point is 00:34:29 There is, but one thing that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say it for myself, the woman that is dead, was my love and my bride, not after such manner as your tin chapels call awful, but by a law purer and sterner she and I from yours, and trod palaces of crystal, while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that where there has been love, there must soon be hatred.

Starting point is 00:35:21 So there, you have the first point made for the prosecution. But the second point is stronger. I do not grudge it you. Not only is it. true that Pauline loved me. But it is also true that this very morning, before she died, she wrote at that table, a will leaving me and my new church half a million on my handcuffs. Do you suppose I care what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be like waiting for her at a wayside station, the guys will only be going to her in a headlong car.

Starting point is 00:36:12 He spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flombeau and Joan Stacey stared at him in amazed admiration. Father Brown's face seemed to express nothing but extreme distress, He looked at the ground with one wrinkle of pain across his forehead. The prophet of the sun leaned easily against the mantelpiece and resumed. In a few words, I have put before you the whole case against me, the only possible case against me. In fewer words still, I will blow it to pieces. not that a trace of it remains As to whether I have committed the crime

Starting point is 00:37:06 The truth is in one sentence I could not have committed the crime Paul and Stacey fell from this floor to the ground At five minutes past twelve A hundred people Will go into the witness box And say that I was standing

Starting point is 00:37:25 Out upon the balcony Of my own ruse above from just before the stroke of noon to quarter past, the usual period of my public prayers. My clerk, a respectable youth from Clapton, with no sort of connection from me, will swear that he sat in my outer office all the morning, and that no communication passed through. He will swear that I arrived a full tent. minutes before the hour, 15 minutes before any whisper of the accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony, all that time. No one ever had so complete an alibi,

Starting point is 00:38:17 I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you had better put the handcuffs away again. This case is at an end, but last of all, there no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in the air. I will tell you all you want to know. I believe I did not know how my happy friend came to her death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my faith and philosophy at least. But you certainly cannot lock me up. It is well known to all students of the higher truths that certain adepts and Aluminati have in history attained the power of levitation, that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air.

Starting point is 00:39:17 It is but a part of that general conquest of matter, which is the main element in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was an impulsive and ambitious temper. I think to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was. And she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe. I solemnly believe. that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts, she attempted the miracle, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. It's the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous and wicked.

Starting point is 00:40:25 But certainly not criminal, or in any way connected with me. me. In the shorthand of the police calls, you better call it suicide. I shall always call it heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling of heaven. It was the first time Flombeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. He still sat looking at the ground with a painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was impossible to avoid the feeling which the Prophet's winged words had fanned, that here was a sullen, professional suspector of men, overwhelmed by a prouder and pure spirit of natural liberty and health.

Starting point is 00:41:22 At last he said blinking, as if in, bodily distress. Well, if that is so-so, you need to know more than take the testamentary paper you spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left it. It will be over there, on her desk by the door, I think, said Carol, with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him holy. She told me specially she would write it this morning. I actually saw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room. Was her door open then? So the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting, yes, said Canon calmly. Ah, it has been open ever since, said the other, and resumed his silence study of the mat.

Starting point is 00:42:26 There is a paper over here, said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to her sister's desk by the doorway, and she was holding a sheet of blue fowlscap in her hand. There was a sour smile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion. and Flombeau looked at her with a darkening brow. Calon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through.

Starting point is 00:43:07 But Flombo took it out of the lady's hand and read it with the utmost amazement. It did indeed begin in the formal manner of a will. But after the words, I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed. The writing abruptly stalled with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any legatee. Flombo in wonder handed this truncated testament to his clerical friend,

Starting point is 00:43:45 who glanced at it, and silently gave it to the priest of the saint. A instant afterwards, that pontiff in his splendid sweeping draperies had crossed the room in two great strides and was towering over Joan Stacy, his blue eyes standing from his head. What monkey tricks have been playing here? he cried. That's not all Pauline wrote? They were startled to hear him Speak in a new voice With the Yankee shrillness in it All his grunger and good English Had fallen from him

Starting point is 00:44:31 Like her cloak That is the only thing on her desk Said Joan And confronted him Steadily with the same smile of evil favour Of a sudden The man broke out in blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words.

Starting point is 00:44:52 There was something shocking about the dropping of his mask. It was like a man's real face falling off. See here, he cried in broad American when he was breathless with cursing. I may be an adventurer, but I guess you're a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here's your death explained without any levitation.

Starting point is 00:45:20 The poor girl is writing a will in my favour. Her cursed sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to the well, and throws her down before she can finish it. Sakes, I reckon we want the handcuffs after all. You have truly remarked, replied Joan, with ugly, calm. Your clerk is a very respectable young man who knows the nature of an oath, and he will swear in any court that I was up in your office arranging some typewriting work for five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell. Mr. Flumbo will tell you that he found me there. There was

Starting point is 00:46:19 silence, cried Flombeau. Pauline was alone when she fell. It was not suicide. She was alone when she fell, said Father Brown. But it was not suicide. Then how did she die? said Flombo impatiently. She was murdered, said Father Brown. But she was alone, objected the detective. She was murdered when she was all alone, answered the priest, all the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same old dejected attitude with a wrinkle in his round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow. His voice was colourless and sad.

Starting point is 00:47:18 What I want to know, cried Callon with an oath. is when the police are coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She's killed her flesh and blood. She's robbed me of half a million. That was just as sacredly mine as... Come, come, prophet, interrupted Flambeau with a kind of sneer. Remember that all this world is a cloudland, hero font of the sun god, made an effort

Starting point is 00:47:53 to climb back on his pedestal. It is not the mere money, he cried, though that would equip the case throughout the world. It is also my beloved one's wishes. To Pauline all this was holy. In Pauline's eyes suddenly sprang upright so that his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale,

Starting point is 00:48:24 yet he seemed fired with a hope his eyes shone that's it he cried with a clear voice that's the way to begin in paulie's eyes the tall prophet retreated before the tiny priest in an almost mad disorder what do you mean how dare you he cried repeatedly in pauling's eyes repeated the priest repeated the priest's priest's almost mad disorder what do you mean how dare you he cried repeatedly In Pauline's eyes Repeated the priest His own shining more and more Go on In God's name Go on

Starting point is 00:49:00 The foulest crime The fiends ever prompted Feels lighter after confession I implore you to confess Go on Go on In Pauline's eyes Let me go you devil

Starting point is 00:49:15 Thundered Cannon Struggling like a giant in bond Who are you, you cursed spy to weave your spider's web round me, and peep and peer, let me go. Shall I stop him? asked Fombo, bounding towards the exit. Facallon had already thrown the door wide open. Let him pass, said Father Brown, with a strange deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the universe. Let Cain pass by, for he belongs to God. There was a long, drawn silence in the room, when he had left it,

Starting point is 00:50:03 which to Flombo's fierce wits, one long agony of interrogation. Miss Joan Stacy, very coolly, tidied up the papers on her desk. Father, said Flambeau at last, It is my duty, not my curiosity only. It is my duty to find out, if I can, who committed the crime? Which crime? asked Father Brown. The one we are dealing with, of course, replied his impatient friend. We are dealing with two crimes, said Brown.

Starting point is 00:50:44 Crimes are very different weight, and by very different, different criminals. Miss Joan Stacy, having collected and put away her papers, proceeded to lock up her drawl. Father Brown went on, noticing her as little as she noticed him. The two crimes, he observed, were committed against the same weakness of the same person in a struggle for her money. the author of the larger crime found himself thwarted by the smaller crime. The author of the smaller crime got the money. Oh, don't go on like a lecturer, groaned Flombo. Put it in a few words.

Starting point is 00:51:32 I can put it in one word, answered his friend. Miss Joan Stacy skewered her business-like black hat onto her head, with a business like black frown before a little mirror, and as the conversation proceeded, took her handbag and umbrella in her unhurried style, and a short one, said Father Brown. Pauline Stacey was blind. Blind, repeated flumbo,

Starting point is 00:52:14 and arose slowly to his whole huge stature, She was subject to it by blood. Brown proceeded. Her sister would have started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her. But it was her special philosophy or fad that one must not encourage such diseases by yielding to them. She would not admit the cloud or tried to the spell it by will. So her eyes got worse. and worse with straining.

Starting point is 00:52:52 But the worst strain was to come. It came with this precious prophet or whatever he calls himself, who taught her to stare at the hot sun with a naked eye. It was called accepting Apollo. Oh, if these new pagans

Starting point is 00:53:11 could only be old pagans, they would be a little wiser, the old pagans knew. That may be. mere naked nature worship must have a cruel side. They knew that the eye of Apollo can blast and blind. There was a pause, and the priest went on in a gentle and even broken voice. Whether or no, that devil deliberately meet her blind,

Starting point is 00:53:44 there is no doubt that he deliberately killed her through her blindness. The very simplicity of the crime is sickening. You know he and she went up and down in those lifts without a visual help. You know also how smoothly and silently their lifts slide. Callum brought their lift to the girls' landing and saw her through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way. the will she had promised him. He called out to her cheerily,

Starting point is 00:54:26 that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walking through his own office, out on to his own balcony, and was safely praying before the crowded street, when the poor girl, having finished her work, ran Gainty out to her lover and lift,

Starting point is 00:54:57 were to receive her, and stepped. Don't, cried Fumbo. He ought to have got half a million by pressing that button, continued the little father, in the colourless voice in which he taught of such horrors. But that went smash. It went smash because there happened to be another person who also wanted their money and who also knew the secret about Paul Pauline's sight.

Starting point is 00:55:34 There was one thing about that will that I think nobody noticed. Although it was unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacy and some servant of hers, had already signed it as a witness. Joan had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later, with a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore Joan wanted her sister to sign the will without real witnesses.

Starting point is 00:56:11 Why, I thought of the blindness, and felt sure she wanted Pauline to sign in solitude because she had wanted her not to sign at all. People like the Stacey's always use fountain pens, but this was specially natural to Pauline. By habit and her strong will and memory, she could still write almost as well as if she saw, but she could not tell when her pen needed dipping.

Starting point is 00:56:49 Therefore her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sister. This was carefully not filled by her sister. The remains of the ink held out for a few lines and then failed altogether. And the prophet lost 500,000 and committed one of the most brutal and brilliant murders in human history for nothing. Flumbo went to the open door and heard the official police ascending the stairs He turned and said You must have followed everything

Starting point is 00:57:33 Devilishly close To have traced the crime To Calon in ten minutes Father Brown gave a sort of start Oh to him, he said No I had to follow rather close To find out about Miss Joan

Starting point is 00:57:50 and the fountain pen, but I knew Canon was the criminal before I came into the front door. You must be joking, cried Flombo. I'm quite serious, answered the priest. I can tell you I knew he had done it, even before I knew what he had done. But why? These pagan stoics, said Brown reflectively, always fail. by their strength. There came a crash and a scream down the street and the priest of Apollo did not start or look round. I do not know what it was, but I knew that he was expecting it.

Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - Mystery Bedtime Story - Father Brown and The Eye of Apollo

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