The Wisdom of Father Brown | Page 4

sounded from without; someone with swishing skirts was marshalled hurriedly down the
corridor, and the door opened on a young girl, decently dressed but disordered and
red-hot with haste. She had sea-blown blonde hair, and would have been entirely
beautiful if her cheek-bones had not been, in the Scotch manner, a little high in relief as
well as in colour. Her apology was almost as abrupt as a command.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir," she said, "but I had to follow Father Brown at once; it's
nothing less than life or death."
Father Brown began to get to his feet in some disorder. "Why, what has happened,
Maggie?" he said.
"James has been murdered, for all I can make out," answered the girl, still breathing hard
from her rush. "That man Glass has been with him again; I heard them talking through
the door quite plain. Two separate voices: for James speaks low, with a burr, and the
other voice was high and quavery."
"That man Glass?" repeated the priest in some perplexity.
"I know his name is Glass," answered the girl, in great impatience. "I heard it through the
door. They were quarrelling--about money, I think--for I heard James say again and again,
`That's right, Mr Glass,' or `No, Mr Glass,' and then, `Two or three, Mr Glass.' But we're
talking too much; you must come at once, and there may be time yet."
"But time for what?" asked Dr Hood, who had been studying the young lady with marked
interest. "What is there about Mr Glass and his money troubles that should impel such
urgency?"
"I tried to break down the door and couldn't," answered the girl shortly, "Then I ran to the
back-yard, and managed to climb on to the window-sill that looks into the room. It was
an dim, and seemed to be empty, but I swear I saw James lying huddled up in a corner, as
if he were drugged or strangled."
"This is very serious," said Father Brown, gathering his errant hat and umbrella and
standing up; "in point of fact I was just putting your case before this gentleman, and his
view--"
"Has been largely altered," said the scientist gravely. "I do not think this young lady is so
Celtic as I had supposed. As I have nothing else to do, I will put on my hat and stroll
down town with you."
In a few minutes all three were approaching the dreary tail of the MacNabs' street: the
girl with the stern and breathless stride of the mountaineer, the criminologist with a
lounging grace (which was not without a certain leopard-like swiftness), and the priest at
an energetic trot entirely devoid of distinction. The aspect of this edge of the town was
not entirely without justification for the doctor's hints about desolate moods and
environments. The scattered houses stood farther and farther apart in a broken string

along the seashore; the afternoon was closing with a premature and partly lurid twilight;
the sea was of an inky purple and murmuring ominously. In the scrappy back garden of
the MacNabs which ran down towards the sand, two black, barren-looking trees stood up
like demon hands held up in astonishment, and as Mrs MacNab ran down the street to
meet them with lean hands similarly spread, and her fierce face in shadow, she was a
little like a demon herself. The doctor and the priest made scant reply to her shrill
reiterations of her daughter's story, with more disturbing details of her own, to the
divided vows of vengeance against Mr Glass for murdering, and against Mr Todhunter
for being murdered, or against the latter for having dared to want to marry her daughter,
and for not having lived to do it. They passed through the narrow passage in the front of
the house until they came to the lodger's door at the back, and there Dr Hood, with the
trick of an old detective, put his shoulder sharply to the panel and burst in the door.
It opened on a scene of silent catastrophe. No one seeing it, even for a flash, could doubt
that the room had been the theatre of some thrilling collision between two, or perhaps
more, persons. Playing-cards lay littered across the table or fluttered about the floor as if
a game had been interrupted. Two wine glasses stood ready for wine on a side-table, but a
third lay smashed in a star of crystal upon the carpet. A few feet from it lay what looked
like a long knife or short sword, straight, but with an ornamental and pictured handle, its
dull blade just caught a grey glint from the dreary window behind, which showed the
black trees against the leaden level of the sea. Towards the opposite