“This seems a queer thing,” said Hardcastle, frowning a little, “to set up in the middle of an old abbey cloister.”
“Now, don’t tell me you’re going to be silly,” said Lady Mounteagle. “That’s just what we meant; to link up the great religions of East and West; Buddha and Christ. Surely you must understand that all religions are really the same.”
“If they are,” said Father Brown mildly, “it seems rather unnecessary to go into the middle of Asia to get one.”
“Lady Mounteagle means that they are different aspects or facets, as there are of this stone,” began Hardcastle; and becoming interested in the new topic, laid the great ruby down on the stone sill or ledge under the Gothic arch. “But it does not follow that we can mix the aspects in one artistic style. You may mix Christianity and Islam, but you can’t mix Gothic and Saracenic, let alone real Indian.”
As he spoke the Master of the Mountain seemed to come to life like a cataleptic, and moved gravely round another quarter segment of the circle, and took up his position outside their own row of arches, standing with his back to them and looking now towards the idol’s back. It was obvious that he was moving by stages round the whole circle, like a hand round a clock; but pausing for prayer or contemplation.
“What is his religion?” asked Hardcastle, with a faint touch of impatience.
“He says,” replied Lord Mounteagle, reverently, “that it is older than Brahminism and purer than Buddhism.”
“Oh,” said Hardcastle, and continued to stare through his single-eyeglass, standing with both his hands in his pockets.
“They say,” observed the nobleman in his gentle but didactic voice, “that the deity called the God of Gods is carved in a colossal form in the cavern of Mount Meru—”
Even his lordship’s lecturing serenity was broken abruptly by the voice that came over his shoulder. It came out of the darkness of the museum they had just left, when they stepped out into the cloister. At the sound of it the two younger men looked first incredulous, then furious, and then almost collapsed into laughter.
“I hope I do not intrude,” said the urbane and seductive voice of Professor Phroso, that unconquerable wrestler of the truth, “but it occurred to me that some of you might spare a little time for that much despised science of Bumps, which—”
“Look here,” cried the impetuous Tommy Hunter, “I haven’t got any bumps; but you’ll jolly well have some soon, you—”
Hardcastle mildly restrained him as he plunged back through the door; and for the moment all the group had turned again and were looking back into the inner room.
It was at that moment that the thing happened. It was the impetuous Tommy, once more, who was the first to move, and this time to better effect. Before anyone else had seen anything, when Hardcastle had barely remembered with a jump that he had left the gem on the stone sill, Tommy was across the cloister with the leap of a cat and, leaning with his head and shoulders out of the aperture between two columns, had cried out in a voice that rang down all the arches: “I’ve got him!”
In that instant of time, just after they turned, and just before they heard his triumphant cry, they had all seen it happen. Round the corner of one of the two columns, there had darted in and out again a brown or rather bronze-coloured hand, the colour of dead gold; such as they had seen elsewhere. The hand had struck as straight as a striking snake; as instantaneous as the flick of the long tongue of an anteater. But it had licked up the jewel. The stone slab of the windowsill shone bare in the pale and fading light.
“I’ve got him,” gasped Tommy Hunter; “but he’s wriggling pretty hard. You fellows run round him in front—he can’t have got rid of it, anyhow.”
The others obeyed, some racing down the corridor and some leaping over the low wall, with the result that a little crowd, consisting of Hardcastle, Lord Mounteagle, Father Brown, and even the undetachable Mr. Phroso of the bumps, had soon surrounded the captive Master of the Mountain, whom Hunter was hanging on to desperately by the collar with one hand, and shaking every now and then in a manner highly insensible to the dignity of Prophets as a class.
“Now we’ve got him, anyhow,” said Hunter, letting go with a sigh. “We’ve only got to search him. The thing must be here.”
Three-quarters of an hour later, Hunter and Hardcastle, their top-hats, ties, gloves, slips and spats somewhat the worse for their recent activities, came face to face in the cloister and gazed at each other.
“Well,” asked Hardcastle with restraint, “have you any views on the mystery?”
“Hang it all,” replied Hunter; “you can’t call it a mystery. Why, we all saw him take it ourselves.”
“Yes,” replied the other, “but we didn’t all see him lose it ourselves. And the mystery is, where has he lost it so that we can’t find it?”
“It must be somewhere,” said Hunter. “Have you searched the fountain and all round that rotten old god there?”
“I haven’t dissected the little fishes,” said Hardcastle, lifting his eyeglass and surveying the other. “Are you thinking of the ring of Polycrates?”
Apparently the survey, through the eyeglass, of the round face before him, convinced him that it covered no such meditation on Greek legend.
“It’s not on him, I admit,” repeated Hunter, suddenly, “unless he’s swallowed it.”
“Are we to dissect the Prophet, too?” asked the other smiling. “But here comes our host.”
“This is a most distressing matter,” said Lord Mounteagle, twisting his white moustache with a nervous and even tremulous hand. “Horrible thing to have a theft in one’s house, let alone connecting it with a
