The Innocence of Father Brown [59]
he opened his eyes wide with a startling stare, said, "I want nothing," and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening garden. "The Christian is more modest," muttered Father Brown; "he wants something." "What on earth was he doing?" asked Flambeau, knitting his black brows and lowering his voice. "I should like to talk to you later," said Father Brown. The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it. They turned round the end of the conservatory, and walked in silence down the other side to get round to the front door. As they went they seemed to wake something, as one startles a bird, in the deeper corner between the study and the main building; and again they saw the white-robed fakir slide out of the shadow, and slip round towards the front door. To their surprise, however, he had not been alone. They found themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish their bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy golden hair and square pale face, advancing on them out of the twilight. She looked a little stern, but was entirely courteous. "Good evening, Dr. Harris," was all she said. "Good evening, Mrs. Quinton," said the little doctor heartily. "I am just going to give your husband his sleeping draught." "Yes," she said in a clear voice. "I think it is quite time." And she smiled at them, and went sweeping into the house. "That woman's over-driven," said Father Brown; "that's the kind of woman that does her duty for twenty years, and then does something dreadful." The little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye of interest. "Did you ever study medicine?" he asked. "You have to know something of the mind as well as the body," answered the priest; "we have to know something of the body as well as the mind." "Well," said the doctor, "I think I'll go and give Quinton his stuff." They had turned the corner of the front facade, and were approaching the front doorway. As they turned into it they saw the man in the white robe for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that it seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study opposite to it. Yet they knew that the study door was locked. Father Brown and Flambeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to themselves, and Dr. Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on the impossible. He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had already forgotten. The inane Atkinson was still hanging about, humming and poking things with his knobby cane. The doctor's face had a spasm of disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion: "I must lock the door again, or this rat will get in. But I shall be out again in two minutes." He rapidly unlocked the door and locked it again behind him, just balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door open for an instant, and called out: "Oh, I say, Quinton, I want--" From the other end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in something between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter. "Oh, I know what you want. Take it, and leave me in peace. I'm writing a song about peacocks." Before the door closed half a sovereign came flying through the aperture; and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singular dexterity. "So that's settled," said the doctor, and, locking the door savagely, he led the way out into the garden. "Poor Leonard can get a little peace now," he added to Father Brown; "he's locked in all by himself for an hour or two." "Yes," answered the priest; "and his voice