The Wisdom of Father Brown | Page 6

men have met here today and have quarrelled, using blows and a bare
weapon."
"Are you going to take those ropes off?" asked the girl stubbornly.
Dr Hood replaced the silk hat carefully on the side table, and went across to the captive.
He studied him intently, even moving him a little and half-turning him round by the
shoulders, but he only answered:
"No; I think these ropes will do very well till your friends the police bring the handcuffs."
Father Brown, who had been looking dully at the carpet, lifted his round face and said:
"What do you mean?"

The man of science had picked up the peculiar dagger-sword from the carpet and was
examining it intently as he answered:
"Because you find Mr Todhunter tied up," he said, "you all jump to the conclusion that
Mr Glass had tied him up; and then, I suppose, escaped. There are four objections to this:
First, why should a gentleman so dressy as our friend Glass leave his hat behind him, if
he left of his own free will? Second," he continued, moving towards the window, "this is
the only exit, and it is locked on the inside. Third, this blade here has a tiny touch of
blood at the point, but there is no wound on Mr Todhunter. Mr Glass took that wound
away with him, dead or alive. Add to all this primary probability. It is much more likely
that the blackmailed person would try to kill his incubus, rather than that the blackmailer
would try to kill the goose that lays his golden egg. There, I think, we have a pretty
complete story."
"But the ropes?" inquired the priest, whose eyes had remained open with a rather vacant
admiration.
"Ah, the ropes," said the expert with a singular intonation. "Miss MacNab very much
wanted to know why I did not set Mr Todhunter free from his ropes. Well, I will tell her.
I did not do it because Mr Todhunter can set himself free from them at any minute he
chooses."
"What?" cried the audience on quite different notes of astonishment.
"I have looked at all the knots on Mr Todhunter," reiterated Hood quietly. "I happen to
know something about knots; they are quite a branch of criminal science. Every one of
those knots he has made himself and could loosen himself; not one of them would have
been made by an enemy really trying to pinion him. The whole of this affair of the ropes
is a clever fake, to make us think him the victim of the struggle instead of the wretched
Glass, whose corpse may be hidden in the garden or stuffed up the chimney."
There was a rather depressed silence; the room was darkening, the sea-blighted boughs of
the garden trees looked leaner and blacker than ever, yet they seemed to have come
nearer to the window. One could almost fancy they were sea-monsters like krakens or
cuttlefish, writhing polypi who had crawled up from the sea to see the end of this tragedy,
even as he, the villain and victim of it, the terrible man in the tall hat, had once crawled
up from the sea. For the whole air was dense with the morbidity of blackmail, which is
the most morbid of human things, because it is a crime concealing a crime; a black
plaster on a blacker wound.
The face of the little Catholic priest, which was commonly complacent and even comic,
had suddenly become knotted with a curious frown. It was not the blank curiosity of his
first innocence. It was rather that creative curiosity which comes when a man has the
beginnings of an idea. "Say it again, please," he said in a simple, bothered manner; "do
you mean that Todhunter can tie himself up all alone and untie himself all alone?"
"That is what I mean," said the doctor.

"Jerusalem!" ejaculated Brown suddenly, "I wonder if it could possibly be that!"
He scuttled across the room rather like a rabbit, and peered with quite a new
impulsiveness into the partially-covered face of the captive. Then he turned his own
rather fatuous face to the company. "Yes, that's it!" he cried in a certain excitement.
"Can't you see it in the man's face? Why, look at his eyes!"
Both the Professor and the girl followed the direction of his glance. And though the broad
black scarf completely masked the lower half of Todhunter's visage, they did grow
conscious of something struggling and intense about the upper part of it.
"His eyes do look queer," cried the young woman, strongly moved. "You brutes; I believe
it's hurting him!"
"Not that, I think," said Dr Hood; "the eyes have certainly a singular expression. But I
should interpret those transverse wrinkles as expressing rather