Speaker 1: The Eye of Apollo by G. K. Chesterton. That singular
smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency, which
is the strange secret of the Thames was changing more
and more from its gray to its glittering extreme. As
the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two
men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall and
the other very short. They might even have been fantastically
compared to the arrogant clock tower of Parliament and the
humbler humped shoulders of the abbey, for the short man
was in clerical dress. The official description of the tall
man was m Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was
going to his new offices in a new pile of
flats facing the abbey entrance. The official description of the
short man was the Reverend J. Brown, attached to Saint
Francis Xavior's Church, Camberwell, and he was coming from a
Camberwell deathbed to see the new offices of his friend.
The building was America in its skyscraping altitude, an American
also in the oiled elaboration of its machinery of telephones
and lifts, but it was barely finished. And still understaffed.
Only three tenants had moved in the office just above
Flambeau was occupied, as also was the office just below him.
The two floors above that and the three floors below
were entirely bare. But the first glance the new tower
of Flats caught something much more arresting. Save for a
few relics of scaffolding, the one glaring object was erected
outside the office just above Flambeau's. It was an enormous
guilt effigy of the human eye, surrounded with rays of gold,
and taking up as much room as two or three
of the office windows. What on earth is that? Asked
Father Brown, and stood still. Oh a new religion, said Flambeau, laughing,
one of those new religions that forgive your sins by
saying you never had any, rather like Christian science.
Speaker 2: I should think.
Speaker 1: The fact is that a fellow calling himself Ceylon. I
don't know what his name is, except that it can't
be that has taken the flat just to me. I
have two lady typewriters underneath me, and this enthusiastic old
humbug on top. He calls himself the new Priest of Apollo,
and he worships the Sun. Let him look out, said
father Brown. The son was the cruelest of all the gods.
But what does that monstrous?
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 1: As I understand it, it is a theory of theirs,
answered Flambeau. That a man can endure anything if his
mind is quite steady. The two great symbols are the
sun and the open eye. For they say that if
a man were really healthy, he could stare at the sun.
If a man were really healthy, said father Brown, you
would not bother to stare at it. Well, that's all
I can tell you about the new religion, went on
Flambeaux carelessly. It claims, of course, that it can cure
all physical diseases. Can a cure the one's spiritual disease?
Asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity. And what is
the one's spiritual disease? Asked Flambeaux, smiling, Oh, thinking one
is quite well, said his friend. Flambeau was more interested
in the quiet little office below him than in the
flatboyant temple above. He was a lucid Southerner, incapable of
conceiving himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist.
And new religions of a bright and pallid sort were
not much in his line, but humanity was always in
his line, especially when it was good looking. Moreover, the
ladies downstairs were characters in their way. The office was
kept by two sisters, both slight and dark, one of
them tall and striking. She had a dark, eager, and
aquiline profile, and was one of those women whom one
always thinks of a profile as of the clean cut
edge of some weapon. She seemed to cleave her way
through life. She had eyes of a startling brilliancy, but
it was the brilliancy of steel rather than of diamonds,
and her straight swim figure was a shade too stiff
for its grace. Her younger sister was like her shortened shadow,
a little grayer, paler, and more insignificant. They both wore
a business like black, with little masculine cuffs and collars.
There are thousands of such curt strenuous ladies in the
offices of London, but the interests of these lay rather
in their rear than their apparent position. For Pauline Stacy
the Elder was actually the heiress of a crest and
half a county, as well as great wealth. She had
been brought up in castles and gardens before a frigid,
fierceness peculiar to the modern woman, had driven her to
what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She
had not, indeed surrendered her money in that there would
have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to
her masterful utilitarianism. She held her wealth, she would say,
for use upon practical social objects. Part of it she
had put into her business the nucleus of a model typewriting.
Important part of it was distributed in various leagues and
causes for the advancement of such work among women. How
far Joan, her sister and partner, shared this slightly prosaic
idealism known could be very sure, But she followed her
leader with a doglike affection, which was somewhow more attractive
with its touch of tragedy than the hard high spirits
of the elder. For Pauline Stacey had nothing to say
to tragedy. She was understood to deny its existence. Her
rigid rapidity and cold impatience had amused Flambeaux very much
on the first occasion of his entering the flats. He
had lingered outside the lift in the entrance hall, waiting
for the lift boy, who generally conduct strangers to the
various floors. But this bright eyed falcon of a girl
had openly refused to endure such official delay. She said
sharply that she knew all about the lift and was
not dependent on boys or men either. Though her flat
was only three floors above, she managed in the few
seconds of ascent to give Flambeaux a great many of
her fundamental views in an offhand manner. They were to
the general effect that she was a modern working woman
and loved modern working machinery. Her bright black eyes blazed
with abstract anger against those who were buque mechanic science
and asked.
Speaker 2: For the return of romance.
Speaker 1: Everyone, she said, ought to be able to manage machines,
just as she could manage the lift. She seemed almost
to resent the fact of Flambeau opening the lift door
for her, and that gentleman went up to his own apartment,
smiling with somewhat mingled feelings at the memory of such
spitfire self dependence. She certainly had a temper of a snappy,
practical sort. The gestures of her thin, elegant hands were
abrupt or even destructive. Once Flambeau entered her office on
some typewriting business and found she had just flung a
pair of spectacles belonged to her sister into the middle
of the floor and stamped on them. She was already
in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the sickly
medical notions and the morbid admission of weakness implied in
such an apparatus. She dared her sister to bring such artificial,
unhealthy rubbish into the place again. She asked if she
was expected to wear wooden legs, or false hair or
glass eyes, and as she spoke, her eyes sparkled like
the terrible crystal. Flambeau, quite bewildered with this fanaticism, could
not refrain from asking Miss Pauline, with direct French logic,
why a pair of spectacles was a more morbid sign
of weakness than the lift, And why if science might
help us in one effort, it might not help us
in the other. That is so different, said Pauline stacy loftily.
Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of
the force of man. Yes, mister Flambeau, and the force
of woman too. We shall take our turn at these
great engines that devour distance intofy time. That is high
and splendid. That is really science. But these nasty props
and plasters the doctors sell, why they are just badges
of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if
we were born cripples and six slaves. But I was
free born, mister Flambeau. People only think they need these
things because they have been trained in fear instead of
being trained in power and courage. Just as the silly
nurses tell children not to stare at the sun, and
so they can't do it without blinking. But why among
the stars should there be one star that I may
not see. The Sun is not my master, and I
will open my eyes and stare at him whenever I
choose your eyes, said Flambeau, with a foreign bow, will
dazzle the sun. He took pleasure in complimenting this strange,
stiff beauty, partly because it threw her a little off
her balance. But as he went upstairs to his floor,
he drew a deep breath and whistled, saying to himself,
she has got into the hands of that conjuror upstairs
with his golden eye. For little as he knew or
cared about the new religion of Chelon, he had heard
of his special notion about sun gazing. He soon discovered
that the spiritual bond between the floors above and below
him was close and increasing. The man who called himself
Chelon was a magnificent creature, worthy in a physical sense
to be pontiff of Apollo. He was nearly as tall
even as Flambeaux, and very much better looking, with a
golden beard, strong blue eyes, and a mane flung back
like a lion's. In structure, he was the blonde beast
of Nietzsche. But all this animal beauty was heightened, brightened,
and softened by genuine intellect and spirituality. If he looked
like one of the great Saxon kings, he looked like
one of the kings that were also saints. And this
despite the cockney incongruity of his surroundings, the fact that
he had an office halfway up a building in Victoria Street,
that the clerk, a commonplace youth in cuffs and collars,
sat in the outer room between him and the corridor
that his name was on a brass plate, and the
gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street like
the advertisement of an oculist. All this vulgarity could not
take away from the man called Chelon, the vivid oppression
and inspiration that came from his soul and body. When
all was said, a man in the presence of this
quack did feel in the presence of a great man.
Even in the loose jacket suit of linen that he
wore as a workshop dress in his office, he was
a fascinating.
Speaker 2: And formidable figure.
Speaker 1: And when robed in the white vestments and crowned with
a golden circulate in which he daily sluted the sun,
he really looked so splendid that the laughter of the
street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three
times in the day the new sun worshiper went out
on his little balcony in the face of all Westminster
to say some litany to his shining Lord, once at daybreak,
once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon.
And it was while the shock of noon still shook
faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish Church, that
Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau first looked up and
saw the white priest of Apollo. Flambeau had seen quite
enough of these daily salutations of Phoebus, and plunged into
the porch of the tall building without even looking for
his clerical friend to follow. But Father Brown, whether from
a professional interest in ritual or a strong individual interest
in tom foolery, stopped and stared up at the balcony
of the sun worshiper, just as he might have stopped
and stared up at a pung and judy calon. The
prophet was already erect with argent garments and uplifted hands,
and the sound of his strangely penetrating voice could be
heard all the way down the busy street, uttering his
solar litany. He was already in.
Speaker 2: The middle of it.
Speaker 1: His eyes were fixed upon the flaming disc. It is
doubtful if he saw anything or anyone on this earth.
It is substantially certain that he did not see a stunted,
round faced priest who in the crowd below clip at
him with blinking eyes. That was perhaps the most starling
difference between even these two far divided men. Father Brown
could not look at anything without blinking, but the Priest
of Apollo could look on the blaze at noon without
a quiver of the eyelid. Oh Son cried the prophet,
O star that are too great to be allowed among
the stars, O fountain that flowest quietly in that secret
spot that is called space. White, Father of all white,
unwearied things, white flames and white flowers and white peaks, Father,
who are more innocent than all thy most innocent and
quiet children, primal purity, into the peace of which a
rush and crash, like the reversed rush of a rocket,
was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people
rushed into the gate of the mansions, as three people
rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other,
the sense of some utterly abrupt horror seen for a
moment to fill half the street with bad news, bad
news that was all the worst, because no one knew
what it was. Two figures remained still after the crash
of commotion, the fair Priest of Apollo on the balcony above,
and the ugly Priest of Christ below him. At last,
the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in
the doorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob.
Looking at the top of his voice like a foghorn,
he told somebody or anybody to go for a surgeon.
And as he turned back into the dark and frogged entrance,
his friend, Father Brown, dipped in insignificantly after him. Even
as he ducked and dived through the crowd, he could
still hear the magnificent melody and monotony of the solar priest,
still calling on the happy God, who is the friend
of fountains and flowers. Father Brown found Flambeaux and some
six other people standing around the enclosed space into which
the lift commonly descended. But the lift had not descended.
Something else had descended, something that.
Speaker 2: Ought to have come by a lift.
Speaker 1: For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it,
had seen the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful
woman who denied the existence of tragedy. He had never
had the slightest doubt that it was Pauline Stacy, and
though he had sent for a doctor, he had not
the slightest doubt that she was dead. He could not
remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her.
There was so much both to like and dislike, but
she had been a person to him, and the unbearable
pathos of details and habits stabbed him with all the
small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty face and
the priggish speeches with a sudden, secret vividness, which is
all the bitterness of death. In an instant, like a
bolt from the blue, like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that
beautiful and defiant body had been dashed down the open
well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was
it suicide? With so insolent an optimist, it seemed impossible?
Speaker 2: Was it murder?
Speaker 1: But who was there in those hardily inhabited flats to
murder anybody? In a rush of raucous words which he
meant to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked,
where was that fellow Chelon? A voice, habitually heavy, quiet
and full assured him that Chelon, for the last fifteen
minutes had been away up on his balcony, worshiping his God.
When Flambeau heard the voice and felt the hand of
Father Brown, he turned his swarthy face and said, abruptly, then,
if he has been up there all the time, who
can have done it? Perhaps, said the other. We might
go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before.
Speaker 2: The police will move.
Speaker 1: Leaving the body of the slain heiress in charge of
the surgeons, Flambeaux dashed up the stairs to the typewriting office,
found it utterly empty, and then dashed up to his own.
Having entered that, he abruptly returned with a new and
white face to his friend her sister. He said, with
an unpleasant seriousness, Her sister seems to have gone out
for a walk.
Speaker 2: Father Brown nodded.
Speaker 1: Or she may have gone up to the office of
that sunman, he said. If I were you, I should
just verify that and then let us all talk it
over in your office. No, he added, suddenly, as if
remembering something. Shall I ever get over that stupidity of mine?
Of course, in their office downstairs. Flambeau stared, but he
followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of
the Staceys, where that impenetrable pasture took a large red
leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could
not see the stairs and landings, and waited. He did
not wait very long. In about four minutes, three figures
descended the stairs, alike only in their solemnity. The first
was Joan Stacey, the sister of the dead woman. Evidently
she had been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo.
The second was the Priest of Apollo himself, his whotny
finished sweeping down the empty stairs and utter magnificence. Something
in his white robes, beard and parted hair had the
look of doors Christ leaving the praetorium. The third was Flambeaux,
black browed and somewhat bewildered. Miss Joan Stacey, dark, with
a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with gray, walked
straight to her own desk and set out her papers
with a practical flap. The mere action rallied everyone else
to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacey was a criminal, she
was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some
time with an odd little smile, and then, without taking
his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody else. Prophet,
he said, presumably addressing Chelon. I wish you would tell
me a lot about your religion. I shall be proud
to do it, said Chelon, inclining his still crowned head
but I'm not sure that I understand why it's like this,
said father Brown in his frankly doubtful way. We are
taught that if a man has really bad first principles,
that must be partly his fault. But for all that,
we can make some difference between a man who insults
his quite clear conscience and a man with a conscience
more or less clouded with sophistries. Now do you really
think that murder is wrong at all? Is this an accusation?
Asked Chelon, very quietly. No, answered Brown equally gently.
Speaker 2: Is the speech for the defense?
Speaker 1: In the long and startled stillness of the room, the
profit of Apollo slowly rose, And really it was like
the rising of the sun. He filled that room with
his light and life, and such a manner that a
man felt he could as easily have filled Salisbury Plain.
His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with
classic draperies. His epic gesture seemed to extend it into
grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern
cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a
round black blot upon some splendor of Hellas we meet
at last, Caiaphas, said the prophet. Your church and mine
are the only realities on this earth. I adore the sun,
and you the darkening of the sun. You are the
priests of the dying and I of the living God.
Your present work of suspicion and slander is worthy of
your code and creed. All your church is but a
black police. You are only spies and detectives seeking to
tear from men confessions of guilt, whether by treachery or torture.
You would convict men of crime, I would convict them
of innocence. You would convince them of sin. I would
convince them of virtue. Reader of the Books of the Ease,
one more word before I blow away your baseless nightmares forever.
Not even faintly, could you understand how little I care
whether you could convict me or know The things you
call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more
than an ogre and a child's toy book to a
man once grown up. You said you were offering this
speech for the defense. I care so little for the
cloud land of this life that I will offer you
the speech for the prosecution. There is but one thing
that can be said against me in this matter, and
I will say it myself. The woman that is dead
was my love and my bride, not after such manner
as your tin chapels call lawful, but by a law
purer and sterner than you will ever understand. She and
I walked another world from yours, and trod palaces of crystal,
while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well,
I know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that
where there has been love, there must soon be hatred.
So there you have the first point made for the prosecution.
But the second point is stronger. I do not grudge
it you. Not only is it true that Pauline loved me,
but it is also true that this very morning before
she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving
me and my new church half a million.
Speaker 2: Come.
Speaker 1: Where are the handcuffs? Do you suppose I care what
foolish things you do with me? Penal Sertude will only
be like waiting for her at a wayside station. The
gallows will only be going to her in a headlong car.
He spoke with the brain shaking authority of an orator
and Flambeau and Joan Stacy stared at him in amazed admiration.
Father Brown's face seemed to express nothing but extreme distress.
He looked at the ground with one wrinkle of pinon
across his forehead. The Prophet of the Sun leaned easily
against the mantelpiece and resumed in a few words, I
have put before you the whole case against me, the
only possible case against me. In fewer words still, I
will blow it to pieces so that not a trace
of it remains as to whether I have committed this crime.
The truth is in one sentence. I could not have
committed this crime. Pauline Stacy fell from this floor to
the ground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people
will go into the witness box and say that I
was standing out upon the balcony of my own rooms
above from just before the stroke of noon to a
quarter past the usual period of my public prayers. My clerk,
our respectable youth from Clapham, with no sort of connection
with me, will swear that he sat in my outer
office all the morning, and that no communication passed through.
He will swear that I arrived a full ten minutes
before the hour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the accident,
and that I did not leave the office or the
balcony all that time. No one ever had so complete
an alibi I could subpoena half Westminster. I think you
had better put the handcuffs away again. The case is
at an end. But last of all, that no breath
of this idiotic suspicion remained in the air. I will
tell you all you want to know. I believe I
do know how my unhappy friend came by her death.
You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or
my faith and philosophy at least, but you certainly cannot
lock me up. It is well known to all students
of the Higher Truths that certain adepts and illuminati have
in history attained the power of levitation, that is, of
being self sustained upon the empty air. It is but
a part of that general conquest of matter, which is
the main element in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was
of an impulsive and ambitious temper, I think, to tell
the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries
than she was, and she has often said to me
as we went down in the lift together, that if
one's will were strong enough, one could float down as
harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that, in some
ecstasy of noble thoughts, she attempted the miracle. Her will
or faith must have failed her at the crucial instant,
and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge.
There is the whole story, gentlemen, very sad, and as
you think, very presumptuous and wicked, but certainly not criminal
or in any way connected with me. In the shorthand
of the police courts. You had better call it suicide.
I shall always call it heroic failure for the advance
of science and the slow scaling of heaven. It was
the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished.
He still sat looking at the ground with a painful
and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was impossible
to avoid the feeling which the prophet's winged words had fanned,
that here was a sullen, professional suspecter of men, overwhelmed
by a prouder and pure spirit of natural liberty and help.
At last, he said, blinking as if in bodily distress. Well,
If that is so, sir, you need to do no
more than take the testamentary paper you spoke of and go.
I wonder where the poor lady left it. It will
be over there on her desk by the door, I think,
said Caelon, with that massive innocence of manner that seemed
to acquit him wholly. She told me specially she would
write it this morning, and I actually saw her writing
as I went up in the lift to my own room.
Was her door open, then, asked the priest, with his
eye on the corner of the matting.
Speaker 2: Yes, said Chevon, calmly.
Speaker 1: Ah, it has been open ever since, said the other,
and resumed his silent study of the map. There is
a paper over here, said the grim miss Jane, in
a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to her
sister's desk by the doorway and was holding a sheet
of blue fool's.
Speaker 2: Cap in her hand.
Speaker 1: There was a sour smile on her face that seemed
unfit for such a scene or occasion, and Flambaud looked
at her with a darkening brow. Cheyvon the prophet stood
away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had
carried him through, but Flambaud took it out of the
lady's hand and read it with the utmost amazement. It
did indeed begin in the formal manner of a will,
but after the words I give and bequeath all of
which I die possessed, the writing abruptly stopped with a
set of scratches, and there is no trace of the
name of any legatee. Flambeau in wonder handed this truncated
testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at it and
silently gave it to the priests of the Sun. An
instant afterwards, that Pontiff and his splendid sweeping draperies had
crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering
over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.
What monkey tricks have you been playing here? He cried,
That's not all, Pauline wrote. They were startled to hear
him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee
shrillness in it. All his grandeur and good English had
fallen from him like a cloak. That is the only
thing on her desk, said Joan, and confronted him steadily
with the same smile of ill favor. Of a sudden
the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words.
There was something shocking about the dropping of his man.
It was like a man's real face falling off. See here,
he cried and broad American when he was breathless with cursing.
I may be an adventurer, but I guess you're a murderess. Yes, gentlemen,
here's your death explained, and without any levitation. The poor
girl was writing a will in my favor. Her cursed
sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to
the well, and throws her down before she could finish it. Sakes,
I reckon, we want the handcuffs after all, as you
have truly remarked, replied Joan, with ugly calm.
Speaker 2: Your clerk is.
Speaker 1: A very respectable young man who knows the nature of
an oath, and he will swear in any court that
I was up in your office arranging some typewriting work
for five minutes before and five minutes after my sister fell.
Mister Flambeau will tell you that he found me there.
There was a silence, Why then, cried Flambeau, Pauline was
alone when she fell, and it was suicide. She wasn't
alone when she fell, said father Brown. But it was
not suicide. Then how did she die, asked Flambeau impatiently.
She was murdered, but she was alone, objected to the detective.
She was murdered when she was all alone, answered the priest.
All the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting
in the same old, dejected attitude, with a wrinkle in
his round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and sorrow.
His voice was colorless and sad. What I want to know,
cried Caelon with an oath, is when the police are
coming for this bloody and wicked sister. She's killed her
flesh and blood. She drobbed me of half a million.
That was just as sacredly mine as come, come, Prophet,
interrupted Flambeaud with a kind of sneer. Remember that all
this world is a cloud of land, the hiro font
of the sun. God made an effort to climb back
on his pedestal. It is not the mere money, he cried,
though that would equip the cause throughout the world. It
is also my beloved one's wishes to Pauline.
Speaker 2: All this was holy.
Speaker 1: In Pauline's eyes, Father Brown suddenly sprang erect, so that
his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale.
If he seen fired with a hope, his eyes shone.
That's it, he cried, in a clear voice. That's the
way to begin. In Pauline's eyes, the tall prophet retreated
before the tiny priest in an almost mad disorder.
Speaker 2: What do you mean? How dare you? He cried repeatedly.
Speaker 1: In Pauline's eyes, repeated the priest, his own shining more
and more, go on, in God's name, go on, the
foulest crime the fiends ever prompted. Feels lighter after confession,
and I implore you to confess.
Speaker 2: Go on, go on.
Speaker 1: In Pauline's eyes, let me go, you devil, thundered Kaelon,
struggling like a giant in bonds. Who are you, you
cursed spy to weave your spider's webs round me and
peep and peer, let me go? Shall I stop him,
asked Flambeaux, bounding towards the exit, for Kaelon had already
thrown the door wide open. No let him pass, said
Father Brown with a strange, deep sigh that seemed to
come from the depths of the universe. But Caine passed by,
for he belongs to God. There was a long drawn
silence in the room when he had left it, which
was to Flambeau's fierce wits, one long agony of interrogation.
Miss Joan Stacy very coolly tidied up the papers on
her desk, Father said Flambou. At last, it is my duty,
not my curiosity. Only it is my duty to find out,
if I can, who committed the crime. Which crime, asked
Father Brown. The one we are dealing with, of course,
replied his impatient friend. We are dealing with two crimes,
said Brown, crimes of very different weight and by very
different criminals. Miss Joan Stacy, having collected and put away
her papers, proceeded to lock up her drawer. Father Brown
went on, noticing her as little as she noticed him.
The two crimes, he observed were committed against the same
weakness of the same person. In a struggle for her money.
The author of the larger crime found himself thwarted by
the smaller crime. The author of the smaller crime got
the money.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't go on like a.
Speaker 1: Lecturer groaned, Flambeaux put it in a few words. I
can put it in one word, answered his friend, Miss Joe.
And Stacey skewered her business like black hat on to
her head with a business like black frown before a
little mirror, and as the conversation proceeded, took her handbag
an umbrella in an unhurried style, and.
Speaker 2: Left the room.
Speaker 1: The truth is one word, and a short one, said
father Brown. Pauline Stacy was blind, blind, repeated Flambeau, and
rose slowly to his whole huge stature. She was subject
to it by blood. Brown proceeded. Her sister would have
started eyeglasses if Pauline would have let her, But it
was her special philosophy or fad, that one must not
encourage such diseases by yielding to them. She would not
admit the cloud, or she tried to dispel it by will.
So her eyes got worse and worse with straining. But
the worst strain was to come. It came with this
precious prophet or whatever he calls himself, who taught her
to stare at the hot sun with the naked eye.
It was called accepting a poddle. Oh, if these new
pagans would only be old pagan They would be a
little wiser. The old pagans knew that mere naked nature
worship must have a cruel side. They knew that the
eye of Apollo can blast and blind. There was a pause,
and the priest went on in a gentle and even
broken voice, whether or no that devil deliberately made her blind,
there is no doubt that he deliberately killed her through
her blindness. The very simplicity of the crime is sickening.
You know, he and she went up and down in
those lifts without official help. You know also how smoothly
and silently the lift slide. Caelon brought the lift of
the girl's landing and saw her through the open door,
writing in her slow, slightless way the will she had
promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he
had to lift ready for her, and she was to
come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a
button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked
through his own office, owed on to his own balcony,
and was safely praying before the crowded street.
Speaker 2: When the poor girl.
Speaker 1: Having finished her work, gran gaily out to where lover
and lift were to receive her and stepped.
Speaker 2: Don't, cried Flambeau.
Speaker 1: He ought to have got half a million by pressing
that button, continued the little Father, in the colorless voice
in which she talked of such horrors. But that went smash.
It went smash because there happened to be another person
who also wanted the money, and who also knew the
secret about poor Pauline's sight. There was one thing about
that will which I think nobody noticed. Although it was
unfinished and without signature, the other Miss Stacy and some
servant of hers had already signed it as witnesses. Joan
had signed first, saying Pauline could finish it later, with
a typical feminine contempt for legal forms. Therefore, Joan wanted
her sister to sign the will without real witnesses.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 1: I thought of the blindness and felt sure she had
wanted Pauline to sign in solitude, because she had not
wanted her to sign at all. People like the Staces
always use fountain pens, but this was specially natural to Pauline.
By habit and her strong will and memory. She could
still write almost as well as if she saw, but
she could not tell when her pen needed dipping. Therefore,
her fountain pens were carefully filled by her sister, all
except this fountain pen. This was carefully not filled by
her sister. The remains of the ink held out for
a few lines and then failed altogether, and the prophet
lost five hundred thousand pounds and committed one of the
most brutal and brilliant murders in human history for nothing.
Flambeau went to the open door and heard the official
police ascending the stairs. He turned and said, you must
have followed everything devilish close to have traced the crime
to Kaelon in ten minutes. Father Brown gave a sort
of start oh to him.
Speaker 2: He said, no, I had.
Speaker 1: To follow rather close to find out about miss Joan
and the fountain pen. But I knew Aylon was the
criminal before I came into the front door. You must
be joking, cried Flambeaud. I'm quite serious, answered the priest.
Speaker 2: I tell you, I knew he.
Speaker 1: Had done it, even before I knew what he had done.
But why these pagan stoics, said Father Brown reflectively.
Speaker 2: Always fail by their strength.
Speaker 1: There came a crash and a screamed down the street,
and the Priest of Apollo did not start or look around.
I did not know what it was, but I knew
that he was expecting it. And of the eye of
Apollo by G. K.
Speaker 2: Chesterton