Inspector Pinner had arrived with several policemen, and done several things of a rapid and resolute sort, being conscious that the very absurdity of the costly trinkets might give the case considerable prominence in the newspapers. He had examined everything, measured everything, taken down everybody’s deposition, taken everybody’s fingerprints, put everybody’s back up, and found himself at the end left facing a fact which he could not believe. An Arab from the desert had walked up the public road and stopped in front of the house of Mr. Peregrine Smart, where a bowl of artificial goldfish was kept in an inner room; he had then sung or recited a little poem, and the bowl had exploded like a bomb and the fishes vanished into thin air. Nor did it soothe the inspector to be told by a foreign Count, in a soft, purring voice, that the bounds of experience were being enlarged.
Indeed, the attitude of each member of the little group was characteristic enough. Peregrine Smart himself had come back from London the next morning to hear the news of his loss. Naturally he admitted a shock; but it was typical of something sporting and spirited in the little old gentleman, something that always made his small strutting figure look like a cock-sparrow’s, that he showed more vivacity in the search than depression at the loss. The man named Harmer, who had come to the village on purpose to buy the goldfish, might be excused for being a little testy on learning they were not there to be bought. But in truth his rather aggressive moustache and eyebrows seemed to bristle with something more definite than disappointment, and the eyes that darted over the company were bright with a vigilance that might well be suspicion. The sallow face of the bank manager, who had also returned from London, though by a later train, seemed again and again to attract those shining and shifting eyes like a magnet. Of the two remaining figures of the original circle, Father Brown was generally silent when he was not spoken to, and the dazed Hartopp was often silent even when he was.
But the Count was not a man to let anything pass that gave an apparent advantage to his views. He smiled at his rationalistic rival, the doctor, in the manner of one who knows how it is possible to be irritating by being ingratiating.
“You will admit, doctor,” he said, “that at least some of the stories you thought so improbable look a little more realistic today than they did yesterday. When a man as ragged as those I described is able, by speaking a word, to dissolve a solid vessel inside the four walls of the house he stands outside, it might perhaps be called an example of what I said about spiritual powers and material barriers.”
“And it might be called an example of what I said,” said the doctor sharply, “about a little scientific knowledge being enough to show how the tricks are done.”
“Do you really mean, doctor,” asked Smart in some excitement, “that you can throw any scientific light on this mystery?”
“I can throw light on what the Count calls a mystery,” said the doctor, “because it is not a mystery at all. That part of it is plain enough. A sound is only a wave of vibration, and certain vibrations can break glass, if the sound is of a certain kind and the glass of a certain kind. The man did not stand in the road and think, which the Count tells us is the ideal method when Orientals want a little chat. He sang out what he wanted, quite loud, and struck a shrill note on an instrument. It is similar to many experiments by which glass of special composition has been cracked.”
“Such as the experiment,” said the Count lightly, “by which several lumps of solid gold have suddenly ceased to exist.”
“Here comes Inspector Pinner,” said Boyle. “Between ourselves, I think he would regard the doctor’s natural explanation as quite as much of a fairy tale as the Count’s preternatural one. A very sceptical intellect, Mr. Pinner’s, especially about me. I rather think I am under suspicion.”
“I think we are all under suspicion,” said the Count.
It was the presence of this suspicion in his own case that led Boyle to seek the personal advice of Father Brown. They were walking round the village green together, some hours later in the day, when the priest, who was frowning thoughtfully at the ground as he listened, suddenly stopped.
“Do you see that?” he asked. “Somebody’s been washing the pavement here—just this little strip of pavement outside Colonel Varney’s house. I wonder whether that was done yesterday.”
Father Brown looked rather earnestly at the house, which was high and narrow, and carried rows of striped sun-blinds of gay but already faded colours. The chinks or crannies that gave glimpses of the interior looked all the darker; indeed, they looked almost black in contrast with the façade thus golden in the morning light.
“That is Colonel Varney’s house, isn’t it?” he asked. “He comes from the East, too, I fancy. What sort of man is he?”
“I’ve never even seen him,” answered Boyle. “I don’t think anybody’s seen him, except Dr. Burdock, and I rather fancy the doctor doesn’t see him more than he need.”
“Well, I’m going to see him for a minute,” said Father Brown.
The big front door opened and swallowed the small priest, and his friend stood staring at him in a dazed and irrational manner, as if wondering whether it would ever open again. It opened in a few minutes, and Father Brown emerged, still smiling, and continued his slow and pottering progress round the square of roads. Sometimes he seemed to have forgotten
