Fiennes sat gaping for an instant before he found breath to say: “Why, what’s the matter with you? What have I done now?”
A sort of anxiety came back into the priest’s eyes—the anxiety of a man who has run against a post in the dark and wonders for a moment whether he has hurt it.
“I’m most awfully sorry,” he said with sincere distress. “I beg your pardon for being so rude; pray forgive me.”
Fiennes looked at him curiously. “I sometimes think you are more of a mystery than any of the mysteries,” he said. “But anyhow, if you don’t believe in the mystery of the dog, at least you can’t get over the mystery of the man. You can’t deny that at the very moment when the beast came back from the sea and bellowed, his master’s soul was driven out of his body by the blow of some unseen power that no mortal man can trace or even imagine. And as for the lawyer, I don’t go only by the dog; there are other curious details, too. He struck me as a smooth, smiling, equivocal sort of person; and one of his tricks seemed like a sort of hint. You know the doctor and the police were on the spot very quickly; Valentine was brought back when walking away from the house, and he telephoned instantly. That, with the secluded house, small numbers, and enclosed space, made it pretty possible to search everybody who could have been near; and everybody was thoroughly searched—for a weapon. The whole house, garden, and shore were combed for a weapon. The disappearance of the dagger is almost as crazy as the disappearance of the man.”
“The disappearance of the dagger,” said Father Brown, nodding. He seemed to have become suddenly attentive.
“Well,” continued Fiennes, “I told you that man Traill had a trick of fidgeting with his tie and tiepin—especially his tiepin. His pin, like himself, was at once showy and old-fashioned. It had one of those stones with concentric coloured rings that look like an eye; and his own concentration on it got on my nerves, as if he had been a Cyclops with one eye in the middle of his body. But the pin was not only large but long; and it occurred to me that his anxiety about its adjustment was because it was even longer than it looked; as long as a stiletto in fact.”
Father Brown nodded thoughtfully. “Was any other instrument ever suggested?” he asked.
“There was another suggestion,” answered Fiennes, “from one of the young Druces—the cousins, I mean. Neither Herbert nor Harry Druce would have struck one at first as likely to be of assistance in scientific detection; but while Herbert was really the traditional type of heavy Dragoon, caring for nothing but horses and being an ornament to the Horse Guards, his younger brother Harry had been in the Indian Police and knew something about such things. Indeed, in his own way he was quite clever; and I rather fancy he had been too clever; I mean he had left the police through breaking some red-tape regulations and taking some sort of risk and responsibility of his own. Anyhow, he was in some sense a detective out of work, and threw himself into this business with more than the ardour of an amateur. And it was with him that I had an argument about the weapon—an argument that led to something new. It began by his countering my description of the dog barking at Traill; and he said that a dog at his worst didn’t bark, but growled.”
“He was quite right there,” observed the priest.
“This young fellow went on to say that, if it came to that, he’d heard Nox growling at other people before then; and among others at Floyd, the secretary. I retorted that his own argument answered itself; for the crime couldn’t be brought home to two or three people, and least of all to Floyd, who was as innocent as a harum-scarum schoolboy, and had been seen by everybody all the time perched above the garden hedge with his fan of red hair as conspicuous as a scarlet cockatoo. ‘I know there’s difficulties anyhow,’ said my colleague; ‘but I wish you’d come with me down the garden a minute. I want to show you something I don’t think anyone else has seen.’ This was on the very day of the discovery, and the garden was just as it had been: the stepladder was still standing by the hedge, and just under the hedge my guide stopped and disentangled something from the deep grass. It was the shears used for clipping the hedge, and on the point of one of them was a smear of blood.”
There was a short silence, and then Father Brown said suddenly, “What was the lawyer there for?”
“He told us the Colonel sent for him to alter his will,” answered Fiennes. “And, by the way, there was another thing about the business of the will that I ought to mention. You see, the will wasn’t actually signed in the summerhouse that afternoon.”
“I suppose not,” said Father Brown; “there would have to be two witnesses.”
“The lawyer actually came down the day before and it was signed then; but he was sent for again next day because the old man had a doubt about one of the witnesses and had to be reassured.”
“Who were the witnesses?” asked Father Brown.
“That’s just the point,” replied his informant eagerly, “the witnesses were Floyd the secretary and this Dr. Valentine, the foreign sort of surgeon or whatever he is;
