G. K. Chesterton

“ Lestrade might know the man was a foreigner merely because his department has to keep an eye on all foreigners. Some would say on all natives too. As a policeman I'm glad the police know so much: for every man wants to do his own job well. But as a citizen, I sometimes wonder whether they don't know too much.”
“You don't seriously mean to say,” cried Underhill incredulously, “that you know anything about strange people in a strange street. That if a man walked out of that house over there, you would know anything about him?”
“I should if he was the householder,” answered Bagshaw. ”

“ We do not know the exact reason why this honorable 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. ”

“ Well, that barrister doesn't know what a poet is. He doesn't understand that a poet's eccentricities wouldn't seem eccentric to other poets. He thinks it odd that Orm should walk about in a beautiful garden for two hours, with nothing to do. God bless my soul! a poet would think nothing of walking about in the same backyard for ten hours if he had a poem to do. Orm's own counsel was quite as stupid. ”

“ You talk about a man having a jury of his peers. Why don't you have a jury of poets?”
“You talk as if you were a poet yourself,” said Bagshaw.
“Thank your stars I'm not,” said Father Brown. “Thank your lucky stars a priest has to be more charitable than a poet. Lord have mercy on us, if you knew what a crushing, what a cruel contempt he feels for the lot of you, you'd feel as if you were under Niagara.”
[Illustration: SIR ARTHUR TRAVERS MADE CAPITAL OUT OF OSRIC ORM'S STUBBORN SILENCE ]
“You may know more about the artistic temperament than I do,” said Bagshaw after a pause ”

“ But I seem to be almost the only person who did. All the best people seem to get over garden walls nowadays.”
“What do you mean by a regular fashion?” asked the detective.
“Well,” said Father Brown, looking at him with limpid gravity, “I came in by the front door. I often come into houses that way.”
“Excuse me,” said Bagshaw, “but does it matter very much how you came in, unless you propose to confess to the murder?”
“Yes, I think it does,” said the priest mildly. “The truth is, that when I came in at the front door I saw something I don't think any of the rest of you have seen. ”

“ He's got a very stiff sense of his own professional position. He's one of those men who are ambitious even when they've satisfied their ambition. I know nobody who'd take more trouble to keep his position in the world. No; you've got hold of the wrong moral to his rather thundering sermon. If he lets himself go like that, it's because he thinks he can get a conviction, anyhow, and wants to put himself at the head of some political movement against the conspiracy he talks about. He must have some very good reason for wanting to convict Orm and some very good reason for thinking he can do it. ”

“ Suppose I told them that there is a man in my country who won't ask a question of life and death, until he has put an erection made of horsehair on the top of his head, with little tails behind, and gray corkscrew curls at the side, like an Early Victorian old woman. ”

“ A faint, gray light was beginning to outline its radiation upon the darkness like some dismal and discolored sunrise; but what light there was in the hall came from a single shaded lamp, also of an antiquated sort, that stood on a bracket in a corner. By the light of this Bagshaw could distinguish the debris of which Brown had spoken. A tall palm with long sweeping leaves had fallen full length, and its dark red pot was shattered into shards ”

“ Father Brown had resumed his monologue in an unruffled manner.
“You've been following the movements of a good many people in this business; you policemen were prodigiously interested in the movements of the poet and the servant and the Irishman. The man whose movements seem to have been rather forgotten is the dead man himself. His servant was quite honestly astonished at finding his master had returned. ”

“ If that was only Sir Arthur's eloquence, then he certainly took a heavy responsibility in putting so much passion into it.”
“He was a friend of poor Gwynne's, as a matter of fact,” said Underhill more gently. “A man I know saw them hobnobbing together after a great legal dinner lately. I dare say that's why he feels so strongly in this case. I suppose it's doubtful whether a man ought to act in such a case on mere personal feeling.”
“He wouldn't,” said Bagshaw. “I'll bet Sir Arthur Travers wouldn't act only on feeling, however strongly he felt. ”

“ Sir Matthew Blake, the very able counsel for the defense, 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. ”

“ Bagshaw turned abruptly to the man called Flood. “Is there anybody in this place,” he said, “who can testify to your identity?”
“Not many, even in this country,” growled Flood. “I've only just come from Ireland; the only man I know round here is the priest at St. Dominic's Church—Father Brown.”
“Neither of you must leave this place,” said Bagshaw, and then added to the servant: “But you can go into the house and ring up St. Dominic's Presbytery and ask Father Brown if he would mind coming round here at once. ”

“ A man reflected in it would look like a man coming from inside the house. It would look like the master of the house—if only the reflection were a little like him.”
“Stop a minute,” cried Bagshaw. “I believe I begin—”
“You begin to see,” said Father Brown. “You begin to see why all the suspects in this case must be innocent. Not one of them could possibly have mistaken his own reflection for old Gwynne. Orm would have known at once that his bush of yellow hair was not a bald head. Flood would have seen his own red head, and Green his own red waistcoat. Besides, they're all short and shabby ”

“ After all, people don't write stories in which hairdressers can't cut hair and have to be helped by a customer; or in which a cabman can't drive a cab until his fare explains to him the philosophy of cab driving. ”

“ No tricks, mind.”
[Illustration: UNDERHILL STOOD LOOKING DOWN AT THE MACABRE FIGURE]
While the energetic detective was securing the potential fugitives, his companion, at his direction, had hastened on to the actual scene of the tragedy. It was a strange enough scene; and, indeed, if the tragedy had not been tragic it would have been highly fantastic. The dead man (for the briefest examination proved him to be dead) lay with his head in the pond, where the glow of the artificial illumination encircled the head with something of the appearance of an unholy halo. ”

“ He's quite bald, for one thing.”
[Illustration: MR. OSRIC ORM, THE POET, STOOD MEDITATING ABOVE THE GARDEN]
“I'm afraid that won't prevent his being tremendous,” answered Bagshaw. “You don't propose to found the defense on the fact that the prosecuting counsel is bald, do you?”
“Not exactly,” said Father Brown good-humoredly. “To tell the truth, I was thinking how little some kinds of people know about other kinds of people. Suppose I went among some remote people who had never even heard of England. ”