“Common land. I suppose people ought to feed their pigs and geese on it, if they had any pigs or geese; as it is, it seems to feed nothing but nettles and thistles. What a pity that what was supposed to be a sort of large meadow has been turned into a small and petty wilderness. That’s Dr. Burdock’s house opposite, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” answered Boyle, almost jumping at this abrupt postscript.
“Very well,” answered Father Brown, “then I think we’ll go indoors again.”
As they opened the front door of Smart’s house and mounted the stairs, Boyle repeated to his companion many details of the drama enacted there at daybreak.
“I suppose you didn’t doze off again?” asked Father Brown, “giving time for somebody to scale the balcony while Jameson ran down to secure the door.”
“No,” answered Boyle; “I am sure of that. I woke up to hear Jameson challenging the stranger from the balcony; then I heard him running downstairs and putting up the bars, and then in two strides I was on the balcony myself.”
“Or could he have slipped in between you from another angle? Are there any other entrances besides the front entrance?”
“Apparently there are not,” said Boyle gravely.
“I had better make sure, don’t you think?” asked Father Brown apologetically, and scuttled softly downstairs again. Boyle remained in the front bedroom gazing rather doubtfully after him. After a comparatively brief interval the round and rather rustic visage appeared again at the head of the stairs, looking rather like a turnip ghost with a broad grin.
“No. I think that settles the matter of entrances,” said the turnip ghost, cheerfully. “And now, I think, having got everything in a tight box, so to speak, we can take stock of what we’ve got. It’s rather a curious business.”
“Do you think,” asked Boyle, “that the Count or the colonel, or any of these Eastern travellers have anything to do with it? Do you think it is—preternatural?”
“I will grant you this,” said the priest gravely, “if the Count, or the colonel, or any of your neighbours did dress up in Arab masquerade and creep up to this house in the dark—then it was preternatural.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“Because the Arab left no footprints,” answered Father Brown. “The colonel on the one side and the banker on the other are the nearest of your neighbours. That loose red soil is between you and the bank, it would print off bare feet like a plaster cast and probably leave red marks everywhere. I braved the colonel’s curry-seasoned temper to verify the fact that the front pavement was washed yesterday and not today; it was wet enough to make wet footprints all along the road. Now, if the visitor were the Count or the doctor in the houses opposite, he might possibly, of course, have come across the common. But he must have found it exceedingly uncomfortable with bare feet, for it is, as I remarked, one mass of thorns and thistles and stinging nettles. He would surely have pricked himself and probably left traces of it. Unless, as you say, he was a preternatural being.”
Boyle looked steadily at the grave and indecipherable face of his clerical friend.
“Do you mean that he was?” he asked, at length.
“There is one general truth to remember,” said Father Brown, after a pause. “A thing can sometimes be too close to be seen, as, for instance, a man cannot see himself. There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope, and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon. And I am told that if a man hears the exact reproduction of his own voice it sounds like the voice of a stranger. In the same way, if anything is right in the foreground of our life we hardly see it, and if we did we might think it quite odd. If the thing in the foreground got into the middle distance, we should probably think it had come from the remote distance. Just come outside the house again for a moment. I want to show you how it looks from another standpoint.”
He had already risen, and as they descended the stairs he continued his remarks in a rather groping fashion as if he were thinking aloud.
“The Count and the Asiatic atmosphere all come in, because, in a case like this, everything depends on the preparation of the mind. A man can reach a condition in which a brick, falling on his head, will seem to be a Babylonian brick carved with cuneiform, and dropped from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, so that he will never even look at the brick and see it is of one pattern with the bricks of his own house. So in your case—”
“What does this mean?” interrupted Boyle, staring and pointing at the entrance. “What in the name of wonder does it mean? The door is barred again.”
He was staring at the front door by which they had entered but a little while before, and across which stood, once more, the great dark bands of rusty iron which had once, as he had said, locked the stable door too late. There was something darkly and dumbly ironic in those old fastenings closing behind them and imprisoning them as if of their own motion.
“Oh those!” said Father Brown casually. “I put up those bars myself, just now. Didn’t you hear me?”
“No,” answered Boyle, staring. “I heard nothing.”
“Well, I rather thought you wouldn’t,” said the other equably. “There’s really no reason why anybody upstairs should hear those bars being put up. A sort of hook fits easily into a sort of hole. When you’re quite
