“As regards the question that immediately concerns you,” he said, “the answer is very simple indeed. I do most certainly propose to hand on the whole of my property to my son, as my father handed it on to me; and nothing—I say advisedly, nothing—would induce me to take any other course.”
“I am most profoundly grateful for the information,” answered the lawyer. “But your kindness encourages me to say that you are putting it very strongly. I would not suggest that it is in the least likely that your son would do anything to make you doubt his fitness for the charge. Still he might—”
“Exactly,” said Sir John Musgrave dryly, “he might. It is rather an understatement to say that he might. Will you be good enough to step into the next room with me for a moment.”
He led them into the further gallery, of which they had already caught a glimpse, and gravely paused before a row of the blackened and lowering portraits.
“This is Sir Roger Musgrave,” he said, pointing to a long-faced person in a black periwig. “He was one of the lowest liars and rascals in the rascally time of William of Orange, a traitor to two kings, and something like the murderer of two wives. That is his father, Sir Robert, a perfectly honest old cavalier. That is his son, Sir James, one of the noblest of the Jacobite martyrs and one of the first men to attempt some reparation to the Church and the poor. Does it matter that the House of Musgrave, the power, the honour, the authority, descended from one good man to another good man through the interval of a bad one? Edward I governed England well. Edward III covered England with glory. And yet the second glory came from the first glory through the infamy and imbecility of Edward II, who fawned upon Gaveston and ran away from Bruce. Believe me, Mr. Granby, the greatness of a great house and history is something more than these accidental individuals who carry it on, even though they do not grace it. From father to son our heritage has come down, and from father to son it shall continue. You may assure yourselves, gentlemen, and you may assure my son, that I shall not leave my money to a home for lost cats. Musgrave shall leave it to Musgrave till the heavens fall.”
“Yes,” said Father Brown thoughtfully; “I see what you mean.”
“And we shall be only too glad,” said the solicitor, “to convey such a happy assurance to your son.”
“You may convey the assurance,” said their host gravely. “He is secure in any event of having the castle, the title, the land and the money. There is only a small and merely private addition to that arrangement. Under no circumstances whatever will I ever speak to him as long as I live.”
The lawyer remained in the same respectful attitude, but he was now respectfully staring.
“Why, what on earth has he—”
“I am a private gentleman,” said Musgrave, “as well as the custodian of a great inheritance. And my son did something so horrible that he has ceased to be—I will not say a gentleman—but even a human being. It is the worst crime in the world. Do you remember what Douglas said when Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?”
“Yes,” said Father Brown.
“ ‘My castles are my king’s alone, from turret to foundation stone,’ ” said Musgrave. “ ‘The hand of Douglas is his own.’ ”
He turned towards the other room and showed his rather dazed visitors back into it.
“I hope you will take some refreshment,” he said, in the same equable fashion. “If you have any doubt about your movements, I should be delighted to offer you the hospitality of the castle for the night.”
“Thank you, Sir John,” said the priest in a dull voice, “but I think we had better go.”
“I will have the bridge lowered at once,” said their host; and in a few moments the creaking of that huge and absurdly antiquated apparatus filled the castle like the grinding of a mill. Rusty as it was, however, it worked successfully this time, and they found themselves standing once more on the grassy bank beyond the moat.
Granby was suddenly shaken by a shudder.
“What in hell was it that his son did?” he cried.
Father Brown made no answer. But when they had driven off again in their car and pursued their journey to a village not far off called Graystones, where they alighted at the inn of the Seven Stars, the lawyer learned with a little mild surprise that the priest did not propose to travel much farther; in other words, that he had apparently every intention of remaining in the neighbourhood.
“I cannot bring myself to leave it like this,” he said gravely. “I will send back the car, and you, of course, may very naturally want to go with it. Your question is answered; it is simply whether your firm can afford to lend money on young Musgrave’s prospects. But my question isn’t answered; it is whether he is a fit husband for Betty. I must try to discover whether he’s really done something dreadful, or whether it’s the delusion of an old lunatic.”
“But,” objected the lawyer, “if you want to find out about him, why don’t you go after him? Why should you hang about in this desolate hole where he hardly ever comes?”
“What would be the use of my going after him?” asked the other. “There’s no sense in going up to a fashionable young man in Bond Street and saying: ‘Excuse me, but have you committed a crime too horrible for a human being?’ If he’s bad enough to do it, he’s certainly bad enough to deny it. And we
