G. K. Chesterton

“ Boyle looked steadily at the grave and indecipherable face of his clerical friend.
“Do you mean that he was?” he asked, at length.
“There is one general truth to remember,” said Father Brown, after a pause. “A thing can sometimes be too close to be seen, as, for instance, a man cannot see himself. There was a man who had a fly in his eye when he looked through the telescope, and he discovered that there was a most incredible dragon in the moon. And I am told that if a man hears the exact reproduction of his own voice it sounds like the voice of a stranger. ”

“ Perhaps his background brought out something atmospherically Asiatic about his face and figure, for the room was a chaos of more or less costly curiosities, amid which could be seen the crooked curves and burning colors of countless eastern weapons, eastern pipes and vessels, eastern musical instruments and illuminated manuscripts. Anyhow, as the conversation proceeded, Boyle felt more and more that the figure seated on the cushions and dark against the twilight had the exact outline of a huge image of Buddha. ”

“ For I imagine he's bolted long ago, just before or just after they took his fingerprints.”
“You woke up before anybody else, anyhow,” said Boyle, “and I should never have woken up in that sense. Jameson was so correct and colorless that I forgot all about him.”
“Beware of the man you forget,” replied his friend: “he is the one man who has you entirely at a disadvantage. But I did not suspect him, either, until you told me how you had heard him barring the door.”
“Anyhow, we owe it all to you,” said Boyle warmly.
“You owe it all to Mrs. Robinson,” said Father Brown with a smile. ”

“ Robinson, the housekeeper.”
“I don't understand,” answered Boyle, “what she can have to do with it.”
“Jameson did not expect the doors to be barred,” said Father Brown. “He knew that a lot of men, especially careless men like you and your employer, could go on saying for days that something ought to be done, or might as well be done. But if you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.” ”

“ Smart, cocking an eyebrow over his shoulder at the dependent who stood there holding some papers from the office. Smart was a round-faced, round-bodied little old man rather like a bald parrot. “Jameson and Harris and the rest are always at me to bar the doors as if it were a medieval fortress, though really these rotten old rusty bars are too medieval to keep anybody out, I should think. I prefer to trust to luck and the local police.”
“It is not always the best bars that keep people out,” said the Count. “It all depends on who's trying to get in. ”

“ Imlack Smith, the bank manager, a slim and sallow gentleman of dressy appearance but quiet demeanor, he violently wrenched the conversation to the subject of the gold standard, from which it was merely a step to goldfish. In talking to that brilliant Oriental traveler and scholar, Count Yvon de Lara (whose title was French and his face rather Russian, not to say Tartar) , the versatile conversationalist showed an intense and intelligent interest in the Ganges and the Indian Ocean, leading naturally to the possible presence of goldfish in those waters. ”

“ Over the old man's shoulder the olive face of Imlack Smith stared like a sphinx.
“I am going up to London to-night, Mr. Boyle,” said old Smart, with more gravity than he commonly showed. “Mr. Smith and I are catching the six-forty-five. I should prefer you, Jameson, to sleep upstairs in my room to-night; if you put the bowl in the back room as usual, it will be quite safe then. Not that I suppose anything could possibly happen.”
[Illustration: “I AM GOING UP TO LONDON”]
“Anything may happen anywhere,” said the smiling Mr. Smith. “I think you generally take a gun to bed with you. ”

“ Its consequences were international.”
“I hope they don't occur often,” said young Hartopp gloomily.
“I do not touch the political side,” said the Count serenely, “but only the philosophical. It illustrates how the wise man can get behind time and space and turn the levers of them, so to speak, so that the whole world turns round before our eyes. But is it so hard for you people to believe that spiritual powers are really more powerful than material ones.”
“Well,” said old Smart cheerfully, “I don't profess to be an authority on spiritual powers. What do you say, Father Brown?” ”

“ I was saying that a man may be in the mood to look for something very distant, and not realize that it is something very close—something very close to himself—perhaps something very like himself. It was a strange and outlandish thing that you saw when you looked down at this road. ”

“ Smart's head clerk, Jameson, who had come up from the office to assist the new secretary, “and he won't even put up those ramshackle old bars across his ramshackle old door.”
“It's all very well with Father Brown and the doctor,” said Mr. Smart's housekeeper, with a certain vigorous vagueness that marked her opinions, “but when it comes to foreigners, I call it tempting Providence. It isn't only the Count, either; that man at the bank looks to me much too yellow to be English.” ”

“ In the east we talk with thoughts, and so we never misunderstand each other. It is strange how you people worship words and are satisfied with words. What difference does it make to a thing that you now call it telepathy, as you once called it tomfoolery? If a man climbs into the sky on a mango tree, how is it altered by saying it is only levitation, instead of saying it is only lies. ”

“ There was an ancient Hindu hermit who lived naked in a cave and passed through the three armies that encircled the Mogul and took the great ruby out of the tyrant's turban, and went back unscathed like a shadow. ”

“ Smart's new secretary, a young man named Francis Boyle, though an Irishman and not credited with caution, was mildly surprised at his talking so freely of the gems of his collection to the group of comparative strangers who happened to have alighted in a rather nomadic fashion in the neighborhood; for collectors are commonly vigilant and sometimes secretive. ”

“ It was too close to you to be seen.”
“If this is true,” said Boyle, “it was an extraordinary risk to run, and he had to cut it very fine. It's true I never heard the man in the street say anything while Jameson was talking from the balcony; so I suppose that was all a fake. And I suppose it's true that there was time for him to get outside before I had fully woken up and got out on to the balcony. But suppose I had woken up too soon.”
“Every crime depends on somebody not waking up too soon,” replied Father Brown, “and in every sense most of us wake up too late. ”

“ The peculiar thing about the goldfish was that they were made of gold. They were part of an eccentric but expensive toy, said to have been made by the freak of some rich Eastern prince, and Mr. Smart had picked it up at some sale or in some curiosity shop such as he frequented for the purpose of lumbering up his house with unique and useless things. From the other end of the room it looked like a rather unusually large bowl containing rather unusually large living fish ”

“ By creating a mysterious magician from the end of the earth, he set everybody's thoughts wandering far afield to Arabia and India, so that you yourself can hardly believe that the whole thing was so near home. ”

“ There was something darkly and dumbly ironic in those old fastenings closing behind them and imprisoning them as if of their own motion.
“Oh those!” said Father Brown casually. “I put up those bars myself, just now. Didn't you hear me?”
“No,” answered Boyle, staring. “I heard nothing.”
“Well, I rather thought you wouldn't,” said the other equably. “There's really no reason why anybody upstairs should hear those bars being put up. A sort of hook fits easily into a sort of hole. When you're quite close you hear a dull click ”

“ It's rather a curious business.”
“Do you think,” asked Boyle, "that the Count or the Colonel, or any of these Eastern travelers have anything to do with it? Do you think it is—preternatural?”
“I will grant you this,” said the priest gravely: “If the Count, or the Colonel, or any of your neighbors did dress up in Arab masquerade and creep up to this house in the dark—then it was preternatural.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“Because the Arab left no footprints,” answered Father Brown. “The Colonel on the one side and the banker on the other are the nearest of your neighbors. ”

“ A sound is only a wave of vibration, and certain vibrations can break glass, if the sound is of a certain kind and the glass of a certain kind. The man did not stand in the road and think—which the Count tells us is the ideal method when Orientals want a little chat. ”