“Hallo, here we are again,” he said. “Had a long talk with old Gwynne, I suppose?”
“Sir Humphrey Gwynne is dead,” said Bagshaw. “I am investigating the case and I must ask you to explain.”
Buller stood as still as the lamppost beside him, possibly stiffened with surprise. The red end of his cigar brightened and darkened rhythmically, but his brown face was in shadow; when he spoke it was with quite a new voice.
“I only mean,” he said, “that when I passed two hours ago Mr. Orm was going in at this gate to see Sir Humphrey.”
“He says he hasn’t seen him yet,” observed Bagshaw, “or even been into the house.”
“It’s a long time to stand on the doorstep,” observed Buller.
“Yes,” said Father Brown, “it’s rather a long time to stand in the street.”
“I’ve been home since then,” said the cigar merchant. “Been writing letters and came out again to post them.”
“You’ll have to tell all that later,” said Bagshaw. “Good night—or good morning.”
The trial of Osric Orm for the murder of Sir Humphrey Gwynne, which filled the newspapers for so many weeks, really turned entirely on the same crux as that little talk under the lamppost, when the grey-green dawn was breaking about the dark streets and gardens. Everything came back to the enigma of those two empty hours between the time when Buller saw Orm going in at the garden gate, and the time when Father Brown found him apparently still lingering in the garden. He had certainly had the time to commit six murders; and might almost have committed them for want of something to do; for he could give no coherent account of what he was doing. It was argued by the prosecution that he had also the opportunity, as the front door was unlatched, and the side-door into the larger garden left standing open. The court followed, with considerable interest, Bagshaw’s clear reconstruction of the struggle in the passage, of which the traces were so evident; indeed, the police had since found the shot that had shattered the glass. Finally, the hole in the hedge to which he had been tracked, had very much the appearance of a hiding-place. On the other hand, Sir Matthew Blake, the very able counsel for the defence, turned this last argument the other way; asking why any man should entrap himself in a place without possible exit, when it would obviously be much more sensible to slip out into the street. Sir Matthew Blake also made effective use of the mystery that still rested upon the motive for the murder. Indeed, upon this point, the passages between Sir Matthew Blake and Sir Arthur Travers, the equally brilliant advocate for the prosecution, turned rather to the advantage of the prisoner. Sir Arthur could only throw out suggestions about a Bolshevist conspiracy which sounded a little thin. But when it came to investigating the facts of Orm’s mysterious behaviour that night, he was considerably more effective.
The prisoner went into the witness-box, chiefly because his astute counsel calculated that it would create a bad impression if he did not. But he was almost as uncommunicative to his own counsel as to the prosecuting counsel. Sir Arthur Travers made all possible capital out of his stubborn silence, but did not succeed in breaking it. Sir Arthur was a long, gaunt man, with a long, cadaverous face, in striking contrast to the sturdy figure and bright, birdlike eye of Sir Matthew Blake. But if Sir Matthew suggested a very cocksure sort of cock-sparrow, Sir Arthur might more truly have been compared to a crane or stork; as he leaned forward, prodding the poet with questions, his long nose might have been a long beak.
“Do you mean to tell the jury,” he asked, in tones of grating incredulity, “that you never went in to see the deceased gentleman at all?”
“No!” replied Orm shortly.
“You wanted to see him, I suppose. You must have been very anxious to see him. Didn’t you wait two whole hours in front of his front door?”
“Yes,” replied the other.
“And yet you never even noticed the door was open?”
“No,” said Orm.
“What in the world were you doing for two hours in somebody else’s front garden?” insisted the barrister. “You were doing something I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a secret?” asked Sir Arthur, with adamantine jocularity.
“It’s a secret from you,” answered the poet.
It was upon this suggestion of a secret that Sir Arthur seized in developing his line of accusation. With a boldness which some thought unscrupulous, he turned the very mystery of the motive, which was the strongest part of his opponent’s case, into an argument for his own. He gave it as the first fragmentary hint of some far-flung and elaborate conspiracy, in which a patriot had perished like one caught in the coils of an octopus.
“Yes,” he cried in a vibrating voice, “my learned friend is perfectly right! We do not know the exact reason why this honourable public servant was murdered. We shall not know the reason why the next public servant is murdered. If my learned friend himself falls a victim to his eminence, and the hatred which the hellish powers of destruction feel for the guardians of law, he will be murdered, and he will not know the reason. Half the decent people in this court will be butchered in their
