close you hear a dull click; but that’s all. The only thing that makes any noise a man could hear upstairs, is this.”
And he lifted the bar out of its socket and let it fall with a clang at the side of the door.
“It does make a noise if you unbar the door,” said Father Brown gravely, “even if you do it pretty carefully.”
“You mean—”
“I mean,” said Father Brown, “that what you heard upstairs was Jameson opening the door and not shutting it. And now let’s open the door ourselves and go outside.”
When they stood outside in the street, under the balcony, the little priest resumed his previous explanation as coolly as if it had been a chemical lecture.
“I was saying that a man may be in the mood to look for something very distant, and not realize that it is something very close, something very close to himself, perhaps something very like himself. It was a strange and outlandish thing that you saw when you looked down at this road. I suppose it never occurred to you to consider what he saw when he looked up at that balcony?”
Boyle was staring at the balcony and did not answer, and the other added:
“You thought it very wild and wonderful that an Arab should come through civilized England with bare feet. You did not remember that at the same moment you had bare feet yourself.”
Boyle at last found words, and it was to repeat words already spoken.
“Jameson opened the door,” he said mechanically.
“Yes,” assented his friend. “Jameson opened the door and came out into the road in his nightclothes, just as you came out on the balcony. He caught up two things that you had seen a hundred times: the length of old blue curtain that he wrapped round his head, and the Oriental musical instrument you must have often seen in that heap of Oriental curiosities. The rest was atmosphere and acting, very fine acting, for he is a very fine artist in crime.”
“Jameson!” exclaimed Boyle incredulously. “He was such a dull old stick that I never even noticed him.”
“Precisely,” said the priest, “he was an artist. If he could act a wizard or a troubadour for six minutes, do you think he could not act a clerk for six weeks?”
“I am still not quite sure of his object,” said Boyle.
“His object has been achieved,” replied Father Brown, “or very nearly achieved. He had taken the goldfish already, of course, as he had twenty chances of doing. But if he had simply taken them, everybody would have realized that he had twenty chances of doing it. By creating a mysterious magician from the end of the earth, he set everybody’s thoughts wandering far afield to Arabia and India, so that you yourself can hardly believe that the whole thing was so near home. It was too close to you to be seen.”
“If this is true,” said Boyle, “it was an extraordinary risk to run, and he had to cut it very fine. It’s true I never heard the man in the street say anything while Jameson was talking from the balcony, so I suppose that was all a fake. And I suppose it’s true that there was time for him to get outside before I had fully woken up and got out on to the balcony.”
“Every crime depends on somebody not waking up too soon,” replied Father Brown; “and in every sense most of us wake up too late. I, for one, have woken up much too late. For I imagine he’s bolted long ago, just before or just after they took his fingerprints.”
“You woke up before anybody else, anyhow,” said Boyle, “and I should never have woken up in that sense. Jameson was so correct and colourless that I forgot all about him.”
“Beware of the man you forget,” replied his friend; “he is the one man who has you entirely at a disadvantage. But I did not suspect him, either, until you told me how you had heard him barring the door.”
“Anyhow, we owe it all to you,” said Boyle warmly.
“You owe it all to Mrs. Robinson,” said Father Brown with a smile.
“Mrs. Robinson?” questioned the wondering secretary. “You don’t mean the housekeeper?”
“Beware of the woman you forget, and even more,” answered the other. “This man was a very high-class criminal; he had been an excellent actor, and therefore he was a good psychologist. A man like the Count never hears any voice but his own; but this man could listen, when you had all forgotten he was there, and gather exactly the right materials for his romance and know exactly the right note to strike to lead you all astray. But he made one bad mistake in the psychology of Mrs. Robinson, the housekeeper.”
“I don’t understand,” answered Boyle, “what she can have to do with it.”
“Jameson did not expect the doors to be barred,” said Father Brown. “He knew that a lot of men, especially careless men like you and your employer, could go on saying for days that something ought to be done, or might as well be done. But if you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.”
The Actor and the Alibi
Mr. Mundon Mandeville, the theatrical manager, walked briskly through the passages behind the scenes, or rather below the scenes. His attire was smart and festive, perhaps a little too festive; the flower in his buttonhole was festive; the very varnish on his boots was festive; but his face was not at all festive. He was a big, bull-necked, black-browed man; and at the moment his brow was blacker than usual. He had in any case, of course, the hundred botherations that besiege a man in such a position; and they ranged from large to small and from new to old. It annoyed him to pass through the passages where the old pantomime scenery was stacked;
