The Ghost of Gideon Wise
Father Brown always regarded the case as the queerest example of the theory of an alibi; the theory by which it is maintained, in defiance of the mythological Irish bird, that it is impossible for anybody to be in two places at once. To begin with, James Byrne, being an Irish journalist, was perhaps the nearest approximation to the Irish bird. He came as near as anybody could to being in two places at once; for he was in two places at the opposite extremes of the social and political world within the space of twenty minutes. The first was in the Babylonian halls of the big hotel, which was the meeting place of the three commercial magnates concerned with arranging for a coal lockout and denouncing it as a coal-strike; the second was in a curious tavern, having the façade of a grocery store, where met the more subterranean triumvirate of those who would have been very glad to turn the lockout into a strike—and the strike into a revolution. The reporter passed to and fro between the three millionaires and the three Bolshevist leaders with the immunity of the modern herald or the new ambassador.
He found the three mining magnates hidden in a jungle of flowering plants and a forest of fluted and florid columns of gilded plaster; gilded birdcages hung high under the painted domes amid the highest leaves of the palms; and in them were birds of motley colours and varied cries. No bird in the wilderness ever sang more unheeded and no flower ever wasted its sweetness on the desert air more completely than the blossoms of those tall plants wasted theirs upon the brisk and breathless business men, mostly American, who talked and ran to and fro in that place. And there, amid a riot of rococo ornament that nobody ever looked at, and a chatter of expensive foreign birds that nobody ever heard, and a mass of gorgeous upholstery and a labyrinth of luxurious architecture, the three men sat and talked of how success was founded on the thought and thrift and a vigilance of economy and self-control. One of them indeed did not talk so much as the others; but he watched with very bright and motionless eyes, which seemed to be pinched together by his pince-nez, and the permanent smile under his small black moustache was rather like a permanent sneer. This was the famous Jacob P. Stein, and he did not speak till he had something to say. But his companion, old Gallup the Pennsylvanian, a huge fat fellow with reverend grey hair but a face like a pugilist, talked a great deal. He was in a jovial mood and was half rallying, half bullying the third millionaire, Gideon Wise, a hard, dried, angular old bird of the type that his countrymen compare to hickory, with a stiff grey chin-beard and the manners and clothes of any old farmer from the central plains. There was an old argument between Wise and Gallup about combination and competition. For old Wise still retained, with the manners of the old backwoodsman, something of his opinions of the old individualist; he belonged, as we should say in England, to the Manchester School; and Gallup was always trying to persuade him to cut out competition and pool the resources of the world.
“You’ll have to come in, old fellow, sooner or later,” Gallup was saying genially as Byrne entered. “It’s the way the world is going, and we can’t go back to the one man business now. We’ve all got to stand together.”
“If I might say a word,” said Stein, in his tranquil way, “I would say there is something a little more urgent even than standing together commercially. Anyhow, we must stand together politically; and that’s why I’ve asked Mr. Byrne to meet us here today. On the political issue we must combine; for the simple reason that all our most dangerous enemies are already combined.”
“Oh, I quite agree about political combination,” grumbled Gideon Wise.
“See here,” said Stein to the journalist; “I know you have the run of these queer places, Mr. Byrne, and I want you to do something for us unofficially. You know where these men meet; there are only two or three of them that count, John Elias and Jake Halket, who does all the spouting, and perhaps that poet fellow, Horne.”
“Why Horne used to be a friend of Gideon,” said the jeering Mr. Gallup; “used to be in his Sunday School class or something.”
“He was a Christian, then,” said old Gideon solemnly; “but when a man takes up with atheists you never know. I still meet him now and then. I was quite ready to back him against war and conscription and all that, of course, but when it comes to all the goldarn bolshies in creation—”
“Excuse me,” interposed Stein, “the matter is rather urgent, so I hope you will excuse me putting it before Mr. Byrne at once. Mr. Byrne, I may tell you in confidence that I hold information, or rather evidence, that would land at least two of those
