the great muscari, most original of the young tuscan poets, walked swiftly into his favourite restaurant, which overlooked the mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon and orange trees. waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. muscari had an eagle nose like dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of venetian melodrama. he acted as if a troubadour had still a definite social office, like a bishop. he went as near as his century permitted to walking the world literally like don juan, with rapier and guitar.
for he never travelled without a case of swords, with which he had fought many brilliant duels, or without a corresponding case for his mandolin, with which he had actually serenaded miss ethel harrogate, the highly conventional daughter of a yorkshire banker on a holiday. yet he was neither a charlatan nor a child; but a hot, logical latin who liked a certain thing and was it. his poetry was as straightforward as anyone else’s prose. he desired fame or wine or the beauty of women with a torrid directness inconceivable among the cloudy ideals or cloudy compromises of the north; to vaguer races his intensity smelt of danger or even crime. like fire or the sea, he was too simple to be trusted.
the banker and his beautiful english daughter were staying at the hotel attached to muscari’s restaurant; that was why it was his favourite restaurant. a glance flashed around the room told him at once, however, that the english party had not descended. the restaurant was glittering, but still comparatively empty. two priests were talking at a table in a corner, but muscari (an ardent catholic) took no more notice of them than of a couple of crows. but from a yet farther seat, partly concealed behind a dwarf tree golden with oranges, there rose and advanced towards the poet a person whose costume was the most aggressively opposite to his own.
this figure was clad in tweeds of a piebald check, with a pink tie, a sharp collar and protuberant yellow boots. he contrived, in the true tradition of ‘arry at margate, to look at once startling and commonplace. but as the cockney apparition drew nearer, muscari was astounded to observe that the head was distinctly different from the body. it was an italian head: fuzzy, swarthy and very vivacious, that rose abruptly out of the standing collar like cardboard and the comic pink tie. in fact it was a head he knew. he recognized it, above all the dire erection of english holiday array, as the face of an old but forgotten friend name ezza. this youth had been a prodigy at college, and european fame was promised him when he was barely fifteen; but when he appeared in the world he failed, first publicly as a dramatist and a demagogue, and then privately for years on end as an actor, a traveller, a commission agent or a journalist. muscari had known him last behind the footlights; he was but too well attuned to the excitements of that profession, and it was believed that some moral calamity had swallowed him up.
“ezza!” cried the poet, rising and shaking hands in a pleasant astonishment. “well, i’ve seen you in many costumes in the green room; but i never expected to see you dressed up as an englishman.”
“this,” answered ezza gravely, “is not the costume of an englishman, but of the italian of the future.”
“in that case,” remarked muscari, “i confess i prefer the italian of the past.”
“that is your old mistake, muscari,” said the man in tweeds, shaking his head; “and the mistake of italy. in the sixteenth century we tuscans made the morning: we had the newest steel, the newest carving, the newest chemistry. why should we not now have the newest factories, the newest motors, the newest finance—the newest clothes?”
“because they are not worth having,” answered muscari. “you cannot make italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads.”
“well, to me marconi, or d’annunzio, is the star of italy” said the other. “that is why i have become a futurist—and a courier.”
“a courier!” cried muscari, laughing. “is that the last of your list of trades? and whom are you conducting?”
“oh, a man of the name of harrogate, and his family, i believe.”
“not the banker in this hotel?” inquired the poet, with some eagerness.
“that’s the man,” answered the courier.
“does it pay well?” asked the troubadour innocently.
“it will pay me,” said ezza, with a very enigmatic smile. “but i am a rather curious sort of courier.” then, as if changing the subject, he said abruptly: “he has a daughter—and a son.”
“the daughter is divine,” affirmed muscari, “the father and son are, i suppose, human. but granted his harmless qualities doesn’t that banker strike you as a splendid instance of my argument? harrogate has millions in his safes, and i have—the hole in my pocket. but you daren’t say—you can’t say—that he’s cleverer than i, or bolder than i, or even more energetic. he’s not clever, he’s got eyes like blue buttons; he’s not energetic, he moves from chair to chair like a paralytic. he’s a conscientious, kindly old blockhead; but he’s got money simply because he collects money, as a boy collects stamps. you’re too strong-minded for business, ezza. you won’t get on. to be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”
“i’m stupid enough for that,” said ezza gloomily. “but i should suggest a suspension of your critique of the banker, for here he comes.”
mr harrogate, the great financier, did indeed enter the room, but nobody looked at him. he was a massive elderly man with a boiled blue eye and faded grey-sandy moustaches; but for his heavy stoop he might have been a colonel. he carried several unopened letters in his hand. his son frank was a really fine lad, curly-haired, sun-burnt and strenuous; but nobody looked at him either. all eyes, as usual, were riveted, for the moment at least, upon ethel harrogate, whose golden greek head and colour of the dawn seemed set purposely above that sapphire sea, like a goddess’s. the poet muscari drew a deep breath as if he were drinking something, as indeed he was. he was drinking the classic; which his fathers made. ezza studied her with a gaze equally intense and far more baffling.
miss harrogate was specially radiant and ready for conversation on this occasion; and her family had fallen into the easier continental habit, allowing the stranger muscari and even the courier ezza to share their table and their talk. in ethel harrogate conventionality crowned itself with a perfection and splendour of its own. proud of her father’s prosperity, fond of fashionable pleasures, a fond daughter but an arrant flirt, she was all these things with a sort of golden good-nature that made her very pride pleasing and her worldly respectability a fresh and hearty thing.
they were in an eddy of excitement about some alleged peril in the mountain path they were to attempt that week. the danger was not from rock and avalanche, but from something yet more romantic. ethel had been earnestly assured that brigands, the true cut-throats of the modern legend, still haunted that ridge and held that pass of the apennines.
“they say,” she cried, with the awful relish of a schoolgirl, “that all that country isn’t ruled by the king of italy, but by the king of thieves. who is the king of thieves?”
“a great man,” replied muscari, “worthy to rank with your own robin hood, signorina. montano, the king of thieves, was first heard of in the mountains some ten years ago, when people said brigands were extinct. but his wild authority spread with the swiftness of a silent revolution. men found his fierce proclamations nailed in every mountain village; his sentinels, gun in hand, in every mountain ravine. six times the italian government tried to dislodge him, and was defeated in six pitched battles as if by napoleon.”
“now that sort of thing,” observed the banker weightily, “would never be allowed in england; perhaps, after all, we had better choose another route. but the courier thought it perfectly safe.”
“it is perfectly safe,” said the courier contemptuously. “i have been over it twenty times. there may have been some old jailbird called a king in the time of our grandmothers; but he belongs to history if not to fable. brigandage is utterly stamped out.”
“it can never be utterly stamped out,” muscari answered; “because armed revolt is a recreation natural to southerners. our peasants are like their mountains, rich in grace and green gaiety, but with the fires beneath. there is a point of human despair where the northern poor take to drink—and our own poor take to daggers.”
“a poet is privileged,” replied ezza, with a sneer. “if signor muscari were english he would still be looking for highwaymen in wandsworth. believe me, there is no more danger of being captured in italy than of being scalped in boston.”
“then you propose to attempt it?” asked mr harrogate, frowning.
“oh, it sounds rather dreadful,” cried the girl, turning her glorious eyes on muscari. “do you really think the pass is dangerous?”
muscari threw back his black mane. “i know it is dangerous:” he said. “i am crossing it tomorrow.”
the young harrogate was left behind for a moment emptying a glass of white wine and lighting a cigarette, as the beauty retired with the banker, the courier and the poet, distributing peals of silvery satire. at about the same instant the two priests in the corner rose; the taller, a white-haired italian, taking his leave. the shorter priest turned and walked towards the banker’s son, and the latter was astonished to realize that though a roman priest the man was an englishman. he vaguely remembered meeting him at the social crushes of some of his catholic friends. but the man spoke before his memories could collect themselves.
“mr frank harrogate, i think,” he said. “i have had an introduction, but i do not mean to presume on it. the odd thing i have to say will come far better from a stranger. mr harrogate, i say one word and go: take care of your sister in her great sorrow.”
even for frank’s truly fraternal indifference the radiance and derision of his sister still seemed to sparkle and ring; he could hear her laughter still from the garden of the hotel, and he stared at his sombre adviser in puzzledom.
“do you mean the brigands?” he asked; and then, remembering a vague fear of his own, “or can you be thinking of muscari?”
“one is never thinking of the real sorrow,” said the strange priest. “one can only be kind when it comes.”
and he passed promptly from the room, leaving the other almost with his mouth open.
a day or two afterwards a coach containing the company was really crawling and staggering up the spurs of the menacing mountain range. between ezza’s cheery denial of the danger and muscari’s boisterous defiance of it, the financial family were firm in their original purpose; and muscari made his mountain journey coincide with theirs. a more surprising feature was the appearance at the coast-town station of the little priest of the restaurant; he alleged merely that business led him also to cross the mountains of the midland. but young harrogate could not but connect his presence with the mystical fears and warnings of yesterday.
the coach was a kind of commodious wagonette, invented by the modernist talent of the courier, who dominated the expedition with his scientific activity and breezy wit. the theory of danger from thieves was banished from thought and speech; though so far conceded in formal act that some slight protection was employed. the courier and the young banker carried loaded revolvers, and muscari (with much boyish gratification) buckled on a kind of cutlass under his black cloak.
he had planted his person at a flying leap next to the lovely englishwoman; on the other side of her sat the priest, whose name was brown and who was fortunately a silent individual; the courier and the father and son were on the banc behind. muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the peril, and his talk to ethel might well have made her think him a maniac. but there was something in the crazy and gorgeous ascent, amid crags like peaks loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged her spirit up alone with his into purple preposterous heavens with wheeling suns. the white road climbed like a white cat; it spanned sunless chasms like a tight-rope; it was flung round far-off headlands like a lasso.
and yet, however high they went, the desert still blossomed like the rose. the fields were burnished in sun and wind with the colour of kingfisher and parrot and humming-bird, the hues of a hundred flowering flowers. there are no lovelier meadows and woodlands than the english, no nobler crests or chasms than those of snowdon and glencoe. but ethel harrogate had never before seen the southern parks tilted on the splintered northern peaks; the gorge of glencoe laden with the fruits of kent. there was nothing here of that chill and desolation that in britain one associates with high and wild scenery. it was rather like a mosaic palace, rent with earthquakes; or like a dutch tulip garden blown to the stars with dynamite.
“it’s like kew gardens on beachy head,” said ethel.
“it is our secret,” answered he, “the secret of the volcano; that is also the secret of the revolution—that a thing can be violent and yet fruitful.”
“you are rather violent yourself,” and she smiled at him.
“and yet rather fruitless,” he admitted; “if i die tonight i die unmarried and a fool.”
“it is not my fault if you have come,” she said after a difficult silence.
“it is never your fault,” answered muscari; “it was not your fault that troy fell.”
as they spoke they came under overwhelming cliffs that spread almost like wings above a corner of peculiar peril. shocked by the big shadow on the narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. the driver leapt to the earth to hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. one horse reared up to his full height—the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. it was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes over the cliff. muscari threw an arm round ethel, who clung to him, and shouted aloud. it was for such moments that he lived.
at the moment when the gorgeous mountain walls went round the poet’s head like a purple windmill a thing happened which was superficially even more startling. the elderly and lethargic banker sprang erect in the coach and leapt over the precipice before the tilted vehicle could take him there. in the first flash it looked as wild as suicide; but in the second it was as sensible as a safe investment. the yorkshireman had evidently more promptitude, as well as more sagacity, than muscari had given him credit for; for he landed in a lap of land which might have been specially padded with turf and clover to receive him. as it happened, indeed, the whole company were equally lucky, if less dignified in their form of ejection. immediately under this abrupt turn of the road was a grassy and flowery hollow like a sunken meadow; a sort of green velvet pocket in the long, green, trailing garments of the hills. into this they were all tipped or tumbled with little damage, save that their smallest baggage and even the contents of their pockets were scattered in the grass around them. the wrecked coach still hung above, entangled in the tough hedge, and the horses plunged painfully down the slope. the first to sit up was the little priest, who scratched his head with a face of foolish wonder. frank harrogate heard him say to himself: “now why on earth have we fallen just here?”
he blinked at the litter around him, and recovered his own very clumsy umbrella. beyond it lay the broad sombrero fallen from the head of muscari, and beside it a sealed business letter which, after a glance at the address, he returned to the elder harrogate. on the other side of him the grass partly hid miss ethel’s sunshade, and just beyond it lay a curious little glass bottle hardly two inches long. the priest picked it up; in a quick, unobtrusive manner he uncorked and sniffed it, and his heavy face turned the colour of clay.
“heaven deliver us!” he muttered; “it can’t be hers! has her sorrow come on her already?” he slipped it into his own waistcoat pocket. “i think i’m justified,” he said, “till i know a little more.”
he gazed painfully at the girl, at that moment being raised out of the flowers by muscari, who was saying: “we have fallen into heaven; it is a sign. mortals climb up and they fall down; but it is only gods and goddesses who can fall upwards.”
and indeed she rose out of the sea of colours so beautiful and happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted. “after all,” he thought, “perhaps the poison isn’t hers; perhaps it’s one of muscari’s melodramatic tricks.”
muscari set the lady lightly on her feet, made her an absurdly theatrical bow, and then, drawing his cutlass, hacked hard at the taut reins of the horses, so that they scrambled to their feet and stood in the grass trembling. when he had done so, a most remarkable thing occurred. a very quiet man, very poorly dressed and extremely sunburnt, came out of the bushes and took hold of the horses’ heads. he had a queer-shaped knife, very broad and crooked, buckled on his belt; there was nothing else remarkable about him, except his sudden and silent appearance. the poet asked him who he was, and he did not answer.
looking around him at the confused and startled group in the hollow, muscari then perceived that another tanned and tattered man, with a short gun under his arm, was looking at them from the ledge just below, leaning his elbows on the edge of the turf. then he looked up at the road from which they had fallen and saw, looking down on them, the muzzles of four other carbines and four other brown faces with bright but quite motionless eyes.
“the brigands!” cried muscari, with a kind of monstrous gaiety. “this was a trap. ezza, if you will oblige me by shooting the coachman first, we can cut our way out yet. there are only six of them.”
“the coachman,” said ezza, who was standing grimly with his hands in his pockets, “happens to be a servant of mr harrogate’s.”
“then shoot him all the more,” cried the poet impatiently; “he was bribed to upset his master. then put the lady in the middle, and we will break the line up there—with a rush.”
and, wading in wild grass and flowers, he advanced fearlessly on the four carbines; but finding that no one followed except young harrogate, he turned, brandishing his cutlass to wave the others on. he beheld the courier still standing slightly astride in the centre of the grassy ring, his hands in his pockets; and his lean, ironical italian face seemed to grow longer and longer in the evening light.
“you thought, muscari, i was the failure among our schoolfellows,” he said, “and you thought you were the success. but i have succeeded more than you and fill a bigger place in history. i have been acting epics while you have been writing them.”
“come on, i tell you!” thundered muscari from above. “will you stand there talking nonsense about yourself with a woman to save and three strong men to help you? what do you call yourself?”
“i call myself montano,” cried the strange courier in a voice equally loud and full. “i am the king of thieves, and i welcome you all to my summer palace.”
and even as he spoke five more silent men with weapons ready came out of the bushes, and looked towards him for their orders. one of them held a large paper in his hand.
“this pretty little nest where we are all picnicking,” went on the courier-brigand, with the same easy yet sinister smile, “is, together with some caves underneath it, known by the name of the paradise of thieves. it is my principal stronghold on these hills; for (as you have doubtless noticed) the eyrie is invisible both from the road above and from the valley below. it is something better than impregnable; it is unnoticeable. here i mostly live, and here i shall certainly die, if the gendarmes ever track me here. i am not the kind of criminal that ‘reserves his defence,’ but the better kind that reserves his last bullet.”
all were staring at him thunderstruck and still, except father brown, who heaved a huge sigh as of relief and fingered the little phial in his pocket. “thank god!” he muttered; “that’s much more probable. the poison belongs to this robber-chief, of course. he carries it so that he may never be captured, like cato.”
the king of thieves was, however, continuing his address with the same kind of dangerous politeness. “it only remains for me,” he said, “to explain to my guests the social conditions upon which i have the pleasure of entertaining them. i need not expound the quaint old ritual of ransom, which it is incumbent upon me to keep up; and even this only applies to a part of the company. the reverend father brown and the celebrated signor muscari i shall release tomorrow at dawn and escort to my outposts. poets and priests, if you will pardon my simplicity of speech, never have any money. and so (since it is impossible to get anything out of them), let us, seize the opportunity to show our admiration for classic literature and our reverence for holy church.”
he paused with an unpleasing smile; and father brown blinked repeatedly at him, and seemed suddenly to be listening with great attention. the brigand captain took the large paper from the attendant brigand and, glancing over it, continued: “my other intentions are clearly set forth in this public document, which i will hand round in a moment; and which after that will be posted on a tree by every village in the valley, and every cross-road in the hills. i will not weary you with the verbalism, since you will be able to check it; the substance of my proclamation is this: i announce first that i have captured the english millionaire, the colossus of finance, mr samuel harrogate. i next announce that i have found on his person notes and bonds for two thousand pounds, which he has given up to me. now since it would be really immoral to announce such a thing to a credulous public if it had not occurred, i suggest it should occur without further delay. i suggest that mr harrogate senior should now give me the two thousand pounds in his pocket.”
the banker looked at him under lowering brows, red-faced and sulky, but seemingly cowed. that leap from the failing carriage seemed to have used up his last virility. he had held back in a hang-dog style when his son and muscari had made a bold movement to break out of the brigand trap. and now his red and trembling hand went reluctantly to his breast-pocket, and passed a bundle of papers and envelopes to the brigand.
“excellent!” cried that outlaw gaily; “so far we are all cosy. i resume the points of my proclamation, so soon to be published to all italy. the third item is that of ransom. i am asking from the friends of the harrogate family a ransom of three thousand pounds, which i am sure is almost insulting to that family in its moderate estimate of their importance. who would not pay triple this sum for another day’s association with such a domestic circle? i will not conceal from you that the document ends with certain legal phrases about the unpleasant things that may happen if the money is not paid; but meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you that i am comfortably off here for accommodation, wine and cigars, and bid you for the present a sportsman-like welcome to the luxuries of the paradise of thieves.”
all the time that he had been speaking, the dubious-looking men with carbines and dirty slouch hats had been gathering silently in such preponderating numbers that even muscari was compelled to recognize his sally with the sword as hopeless. he glanced around him; but the girl had already gone over to soothe and comfort her father, for her natural affection for his person was as strong or stronger than her somewhat snobbish pride in his success. muscari, with the illogicality of a lover, admired this filial devotion, and yet was irritated by it. he slapped his sword back in the scabbard and went and flung himself somewhat sulkily on one of the green banks. the priest sat down within a yard or two, and muscari turned his aquiline nose on him in an instantaneous irritation.
“well,” said the poet tartly, “do people still think me too romantic? are there, i wonder, any brigands left in the mountains?”
“there may be,” said father brown agnostically.
“what do you mean?” asked the other sharply.
“i mean i am puzzled,” replied the priest. “i am puzzled about ezza or montano, or whatever his name is. he seems to me much more inexplicable as a brigand even than he was as a courier.”
“but in what way?” persisted his companion. “santa maria! i should have thought the brigand was plain enough.”
“i find three curious difficulties,” said the priest in a quiet voice. “i should like to have your opinion on them. first of all i must tell you i was lunching in that restaurant at the seaside. as four of you left the room, you and miss harrogate went ahead, talking and laughing; the banker and the courier came behind, speaking sparely and rather low. but i could not help hearing ezza say these words—‘well, let her have a little fun; you know the blow may smash her any minute.’ mr harrogate answered nothing; so the words must have had some meaning. on the impulse of the moment i warned her brother that she might be in peril; i said nothing of its nature, for i did not know. but if it meant this capture in the hills, the thing is nonsense. why should the brigand-courier warn his patron, even by a hint, when it was his whole purpose to lure him into the mountain-mousetrap? it could not have meant that. but if not, what is this disaster, known both to courier and banker, which hangs over miss harrogate’s head?”
“disaster to miss harrogate!” ejaculated the poet, sitting up with some ferocity. “explain yourself; go on.”
“all my riddles, however, revolve round our bandit chief,” resumed the priest reflectively. “and here is the second of them. why did he put so prominently in his demand for ransom the fact that he had taken two thousand pounds from his victim on the spot? it had no faintest tendency to evoke the ransom. quite the other way, in fact. harrogate’s friends would be far likelier to fear for his fate if they thought the thieves were poor and desperate. yet the spoliation on the spot was emphasized and even put first in the demand. why should ezza montano want so specially to tell all europe that he had picked the pocket before he levied the blackmail?”
“i cannot imagine,” said muscari, rubbing up his black hair for once with an unaffected gesture. “you may think you enlighten me, but you are leading me deeper in the dark. what may be the third objection to the king of the thieves?” “the third objection,” said father brown, still in meditation, “is this bank we are sitting on. why does our brigand-courier call this his chief fortress and the paradise of thieves? it is certainly a soft spot to fall on and a sweet spot to look at. it is also quite true, as he says, that it is invisible from valley and peak, and is therefore a hiding-place. but it is not a fortress. it never could be a fortress. i think it would be the worst fortress in the world. for it is actually commanded from above by the common high-road across the mountains—the very place where the police would most probably pass. why, five shabby short guns held us helpless here about half an hour ago. the quarter of a company of any kind of soldiers could have blown us over the precipice. whatever is the meaning of this odd little nook of grass and flowers, it is not an entrenched position. it is something else; it has some other strange sort of importance; some value that i do not understand. it is more like an accidental theatre or a natural green-room; it is like the scene for some romantic comedy; it is like....”
as the little priest’s words lengthened and lost themselves in a dull and dreamy sincerity, muscari, whose animal senses were alert and impatient, heard a new noise in the mountains. even for him the sound was as yet very small and faint; but he could have sworn the evening breeze bore with it something like the pulsation of horses’ hoofs and a distant hallooing.
at the same moment, and long before the vibration had touched the less-experienced english ears, montano the brigand ran up the bank above them and stood in the broken hedge, steadying himself against a tree and peering down the road. he was a strange figure as he stood there, for he had assumed a flapped fantastic hat and swinging baldric and cutlass in his capacity of bandit king, but the bright prosaic tweed of the courier showed through in patches all over him.
the next moment he turned his olive, sneering face and made a movement with his hand. the brigands scattered at the signal, not in confusion, but in what was evidently a kind of guerrilla discipline. instead of occupying the road along the ridge, they sprinkled themselves along the side of it behind the trees and the hedge, as if watching unseen for an enemy. the noise beyond grew stronger, beginning to shake the mountain road, and a voice could be clearly heard calling out orders. the brigands swayed and huddled, cursing and whispering, and the evening air was full of little metallic noises as they cocked their pistols, or loosened their knives, or trailed their scabbards over the stones. then the noises from both quarters seemed to meet on the road above; branches broke, horses neighed, men cried out.
“a rescue!” cried muscari, springing to his feet and waving his hat; “the gendarmes are on them! now for freedom and a blow for it! now to be rebels against robbers! come, don’t let us leave everything to the police; that is so dreadfully modern. fall on the rear of these ruffians. the gendarmes are rescuing us; come, friends, let us rescue the gendarmes!”
and throwing his hat over the trees, he drew his cutlass once more and began to escalade the slope up to the road. frank harrogate jumped up and ran across to help him, revolver in hand, but was astounded to hear himself imperatively recalled by the raucous voice of his father, who seemed to be in great agitation.
“i won’t have it,” said the banker in a choking voice; “i command you not to interfere.”
“but, father,” said frank very warmly, “an italian gentleman has led the way. you wouldn’t have it said that the english hung back.”
“it is useless,” said the older man, who was trembling violently, “it is useless. we must submit to our lot.”
father brown looked at the banker; then he put his hand instinctively as if on his heart, but really on the little bottle of poison; and a great light came into his face like the light of the revelation of death.
muscari meanwhile, without waiting for support, had crested the bank up to the road, and struck the brigand king heavily on the shoulder, causing him to stagger and swing round. montano also had his cutlass unsheathed, and muscari, without further speech, sent a slash at his head which he was compelled to catch and parry. but even as the two short blades crossed and clashed the king of thieves deliberately dropped his point and laughed.
“what’s the good, old man?” he said in spirited italian slang; “this damned farce will soon be over.”
“what do you mean, you shuffler?” panted the fire-eating poet. “is your courage a sham as well as your honesty?”
“everything about me is a sham,” responded the ex-courier in complete good humour. “i am an actor; and if i ever had a private character, i have forgotten it. i am no more a genuine brigand than i am a genuine courier. i am only a bundle of masks, and you can’t fight a duel with that.” and he laughed with boyish pleasure and fell into his old straddling attitude, with his back to the skirmish up the road.
darkness was deepening under the mountain walls, and it was not easy to discern much of the progress of the struggle, save that tall men were pushing their horses’ muzzles through a clinging crowd of brigands, who seemed more inclined to harass and hustle the invaders than to kill them. it was more like a town crowd preventing the passage of the police than anything the poet had ever pictured as the last stand of doomed and outlawed men of blood. just as he was rolling his eyes in bewilderment he felt a touch on his elbow, and found the odd little priest standing there like a small noah with a large hat, and requesting the favour of a word or two.
“signor muscari,” said the cleric, “in this queer crisis personalities may be pardoned. i may tell you without offence of a way in which you will do more good than by helping the gendarmes, who are bound to break through in any case. you will permit me the impertinent intimacy, but do you care about that girl? care enough to marry her and make her a good husband, i mean?”
“yes,” said the poet quite simply.
“does she care about you?”
“i think so,” was the equally grave reply.
“then go over there and offer yourself,” said the priest: “offer her everything you can; offer her heaven and earth if you’ve got them. the time is short.”
“why?” asked the astonished man of letters.
“because,” said father brown, “her doom is coming up the road.”
“nothing is coming up the road,” argued muscari, “except the rescue.”
“well, you go over there,” said his adviser, “and be ready to rescue her from the rescue.”
almost as he spoke the hedges were broken all along the ridge by a rush of the escaping brigands. they dived into bushes and thick grass like defeated men pursued; and the great cocked hats of the mounted gendarmerie were seen passing along above the broken hedge. another order was given; there was a noise of dismounting, and a tall officer with cocked hat, a grey imperial, and a paper in his hand appeared in the gap that was the gate of the paradise of thieves. there was a momentary silence, broken in an extraordinary way by the banker, who cried out in a hoarse and strangled voice: “robbed! i’ve been robbed!”
“why, that was hours ago,” cried his son in astonishment: “when you were robbed of two thousand pounds.”
“not of two thousand pounds,” said the financier, with an abrupt and terrible composure, “only of a small bottle.”
the policeman with the grey imperial was striding across the green hollow. encountering the king of the thieves in his path, he clapped him on the shoulder with something between a caress and a buffet and gave him a push that sent him staggering away. “you’ll get into trouble, too,” he said, “if you play these tricks.”
again to muscari’s artistic eye it seemed scarcely like the capture of a great outlaw at bay. passing on, the policeman halted before the harrogate group and said: “samuel harrogate, i arrest you in the name of the law for embezzlement of the funds of the hull and huddersfield bank.”
the great banker nodded with an odd air of business assent, seemed to reflect a moment, and before they could interpose took a half turn and a step that brought him to the edge of the outer mountain wall. then, flinging up his hands, he leapt exactly as he leapt out of the coach. but this time he did not fall into a little meadow just beneath; he fell a thousand feet below, to become a wreck of bones in the valley.
the anger of the italian policeman, which he expressed volubly to father brown, was largely mixed with admiration. “it was like him to escape us at last,” he said. “he was a great brigand if you like. this last trick of his i believe to be absolutely unprecedented. he fled with the company’s money to italy, and actually got himself captured by sham brigands in his own pay, so as to explain both the disappearance of the money and the disappearance of himself. that demand for ransom was really taken seriously by most of the police. but for years he’s been doing things as good as that, quite as good as that. he will be a serious loss to his family.”
muscari was leading away the unhappy daughter, who held hard to him, as she did for many a year after. but even in that tragic wreck he could not help having a smile and a hand of half-mocking friendship for the indefensible ezza montano. “and where are you going next?” he asked him over his shoulder.
“birmingham,” answered the actor, puffing a cigarette. “didn’t i tell you i was a futurist? i really do believe in those things if i believe in anything. change, bustle and new things every morning. i am going to manchester, liverpool, leeds, hull, huddersfield, glasgow, chicago—in short, to enlightened, energetic, civilized society!”
“in short,” said muscari, “to the real paradise of thieves.”
