“Can I feel your bumps?” asked the expert, in his mildly sarcastic tone.
“I don’t think you want to feel any more, do you?” said the priest good-humouredly. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” replied the other. “Lady Mounteagle asked me to keep an eye on the Master, being no fool, for all her mysticism; and when he left his tent, I could only follow by behaving like a nuisance and a monomaniac. If anybody had come into my tent, I’d have had to look up Bumps in an encyclopaedia.”
“Bumps, What Ho She; see Folklore,” observed Father Brown, dreamily. “Well, you were quite in the part in pestering people—at a bazaar.”
“Rum case, wasn’t it?” remarked the fallacious Phrenologist. “Queer to think the thing was there all the time.”
“Very queer,” said the priest.
Something in his voice made the other man stop and stare.
“Look here!” he cried; “what’s the matter with you? What are you looking like that for! Don’t you believe that it was there all the time?”
Father Brown blinked rather as if he had received a buffet; then he said slowly and with hesitation: “No … the fact is … I can’t—I can’t quite bring myself to believe it.”
“You’re not the sort of chap,” said the other shrewdly, “who’d say that without reason. Why don’t you think the ruby had been there all the time?”
“Only because I put it back myself,” said Father Brown.
The other man stood rooted to the spot, like one whose hair was standing on end. He opened his mouth without speech.
“Or rather,” went on the priest, “I persuaded the thief to let me put it back. I told him what I’d guessed and showed him there was still time for repentance. I don’t mind telling you in professional confidence; besides, I don’t think the Mounteagles would prosecute, now they’ve got the thing back, especially considering who stole it.”
“Do you mean the Master?” asked the late Phroso.
“No,” said Father Brown, “the Master didn’t steal it.”
“But I don’t understand,” objected the other. “Nobody was outside the window except the Master; and a hand certainly came from outside.”
“The hand came from outside, but the thief came from the inside,” said Father Brown.
“We seem to be back among the mystics again. Look here, I’m a practical man; I only wanted to know if it is all right with the ruby—”
“I knew it was all wrong,” said Father Brown, “before I even knew there was a ruby.”
After a pause he went on thoughtfully. “Right away back in that argument of theirs, by the tents, I knew things were going wrong. People will tell you that theories don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical. Don’t you believe them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter. Now, that quite abstract argument ended with something funny. Consider what the theories were. Hardcastle was a trifle superior and said that all things were perfectly possible; but they were mostly done merely by mesmerism, or clairvoyance; scientific names for philosophical puzzles, in the usual style. But Hunter thought it all sheer fraud and wanted to show it up. By Lady Mounteagle’s testimony, he not only went about showing up fortune-tellers and suchlike, but he had actually come down specially to confront this one. He didn’t often come; he didn’t get on with Mounteagle, from whom, being a spendthrift, he always tried to borrow; but when he heard the Master was coming, he came hurrying down. Very well. In spite of that, it was Hardcastle who went to consult the wizard and Hunter who refused. He said he’d waste no time on such nonsense; having apparently wasted a lot of his life on proving it to be nonsense. That seems inconsistent. He thought in this case it was crystal-gazing; but he found it was palmistry.”
“Do you mean he made that an excuse?” asked his companion, puzzled.
“I thought so at first,” replied the priest; “but I know now it was not an excuse, but a reason. He really was put off by finding it was a palmist, because—”
“Well,” demanded the other impatiently.
“Because he didn’t want to take his glove off,” said Father Brown.
“Take his glove off?” repeated the inquirer.
“If he had,” said Father Brown mildly, “we should all have seen that his hand was painted pale brown already. … Oh, yes, he did come down specially because the Master was here. He came down very fully prepared.”
“You mean,” cried Phroso, “that it was Hunter’s hand, painted brown, that came in at the window? Why, he was with us all the time!”
“Go and try it on the spot and you’ll find it’s quite possible,” said the priest. “Hunter leapt forward and leaned out of the window; in a flash he could tear off his glove, tuck up his sleeve, and thrust his hand back round the other side of the pillar, while he gripped the Indian with the other hand and halloed out that he’d caught the thief. I remarked at the time that he held the thief with one hand, where any sane man would have used two. But the other hand was slipping the jewel into his trouser pocket.”
There was a long pause and then the ex-Phrenologist said slowly, “Well, that’s a staggerer. But the thing stumps me still. For one thing, it doesn’t explain the queer behaviour of the old magician himself. If he was entirely innocent, why the devil didn’t he say so? Why wasn’t he indignant at being accused and searched? Why did he only sit smiling and hinting in a sly way what wild and wonderful things he could do?”
“Ah!” cried Father Brown, with a sharp note in his voice: “there you come up against it! Against everything these people don’t and won’t understand. All religions are the same, says Lady Mounteagle. Are they, by George! I tell you some of them are so different that the best man of one creed will be callous, where
