"I did meet him in a way," Brown said, biting his finger rather nervously--"I did really. And it was too dark to see him properly, because it was under that bandstand affair. But I'm afraid I didn't describe him so very accurately after all, for his pince-nez was broken under him, and the long gold pin wasn't stuck through his purple scarf but through his heart."
"And I suppose," said the other in a lower voice, "that glass-eyed guy had something to do with it."
"I had hoped he had only a little," answered Brown in a rather troubled voice, "and I may have been wrong in what I did.
I acted on impulse. But I fear this business has deep roots and dark."
They walked on through some streets in silence. The yellow lamps were beginning to be lit in the cold blue twilight, and they were evidently approaching the more central parts of the town.
Highly coloured bills announcing the glove-fight between Nigger Ned and Malvoli were slapped about the walls.
"Well," said Flambeau, "I never murdered anyone, even in my criminal days, but I can almost sympathize with anyone doing it in such a dreary place. Of all God-forsaken dustbins of Nature, I think the most heart-breaking are places like that bandstand, that were meant to be festive and are forlorn. I can fancy a morbid man feeling he must kill his rival in the solitude and irony of such a scene.
I remember once taking a tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast circle of land, and over me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge as a Roman amphitheatre and as empty as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed in heaven over it. It was the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no one would ever be happy there again."
"It's odd you should mention Epsom," said the priest.
"Do you remember what was called the Sutton Mystery, because two suspected men--ice-cream men, I think--happened to live at Sutton?
They were eventually released. A man was found strangled, it was said, on the Downs round that part. As a fact, I know (from an Irish policeman who is a friend of mine) that he was found close up to the Epsom Grand Stand--in fact, only hidden by one of the lower doors being pushed back."
"That is queer," assented Flambeau. "But it rather confirms my view that such pleasure places look awfully lonely out of season, or the man wouldn't have been murdered there."
"I'm not so sure he--" began Brown, and stopped.
"Not so sure he was murdered?" queried his companion.
"Not so sure he was murdered out of the season," answered the little priest, with simplicity. "Don't you think there's something rather tricky about this solitude, Flambeau? Do you feel sure a wise murderer would always want the spot to be lonely?
It's very, very seldom a man is quite alone. And, short of that, the more alone he is, the more certain he is to be seen.
No; I think there must be some other--Why, here we are at the Pavilion or Palace, or whatever they call it."
They had emerged on a small square, brilliantly lighted, of which the principal building was gay with gilding, gaudy with posters, and flanked with two giant photographs of Malvoli and Nigger Ned.
"Hallo!" cried Flambeau in great surprise, as his clerical friend stumped straight up the broad steps. "I didn't know pugili** was your latest hobby. Are you going to see the fight?"
"I don't think there will be any fight," replied Father Brown.
They passed rapidly through ante-rooms and inner rooms; they passed through the hall of combat itself, raised, roped, and padded with innumerable seats and boxes, and still the cleric did not look round or pause till he came to a clerk at a desk outside a door marked "Committee". There he stopped and asked to see Lord Pooley.
The attendant observed that his lordship was very busy, as the fight was coming on soon, but Father Brown had a good-tempered tedium of reiteration for which the official mind is generally not prepared.
In a few moments the rather baffled Flambeau found himself in the presence of a man who was still shouting directions to another man going out of the room. "Be careful, you know, about the ropes after the fourth--Well, and what do you want, I wonder!"
Lord Pooley was a gentleman, and, like most of the few remaining to our race, was worried--especially about money. He was half grey and half flaxen, and he had the eyes of fever and a high-bridged, frost-bitten nose.
"Only a word," said Father Brown. "I have come to prevent a man being killed."
Lord Pooley bounded off his chair as if a spring had flung him from it. "I'm damned if I'll stand any more of this!" he cried. "You and your committees and parsons and petitions!
Weren't there parsons in the old days, when they fought without gloves?
Now they're fighting with the regulation gloves, and there's not the rag of a possibility of either of the boxers being killed."
"I didn't mean either of the boxers," said the little priest.
"Well, well, well!" said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour.
"Who's going to be killed? The referee?"
"I don't know who's going to be killed," replied Father Brown, with a reflective stare. "If I did I shouldn't have to spoil your pleasure. I could simply get him to escape.
I never could see anything wrong about prize-fights. As it is, I must ask you to announce that the fight is off for the present."
"Anything else?" jeered the gentleman with feverish eyes.
"And what do you say to the two thousand people who have come to see it?"
"I say there will be one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them left alive when they have seen it," said Father Brown.
Lord Pooley looked at Flambeau. "Is your friend mad?" he asked.
"Far from it," was the reply.
"And took here," resumed Pooley in his restless way, "it's worse than that. A whole pack of Italians have turned up to back Malvoli--swarthy, savage fellows of some country, anyhow.
You know what these Mediterranean races are like. If I send out word that it's off we shall have Malvoli storming in here at the head of a whole Corsican clan."
