 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton. Section 9. Part 1. The Enigmas of Innocence Smith. Chapter 5. The Allegorical Practical Joker. Part 1. The criminal specialist who had come with Dr. Warner was a somewhat more urbane and even dapper figure than he had appeared when clutching the railings and craning his neck into the garden. He even looked comparatively young when he took his head off, having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curled on each side and lively movements, especially of the hands. He had a dandified monocle slung round his neck by a broad black ribbon and a big bow tie as if a big American moth had alighted on him. His dress and gestures were bright enough for a boy's, yet was only when you looked at the fishbone face that you beheld something accurate and old. His manners were excellent, though hardly English, and he had two half-conscious tricks by which people who only met him once remembered him. One was a trick of closing his eyes when he wished to be particularly polite. The other was one of lifting his joint thumb and forefinger in the air as if holding a pinch of snuff when he was hesitating or hovering over a word. But those who were longer in his company tended to forget these oddities in the stream of his quaint and solemn conversation and really singular views. Miss Hunt said, Dr. Warner, this is Dr. Cyrus Pym. Dr. Cyrus Pym shut his eyes during the introduction rather as if he were playing fair in some child's game and gave a prompt little bow which somehow suddenly revealed him as a citizen of the United States. Dr. Cyrus Pym continued Warner, Dr. Pym shut his eyes again, is perhaps the first criminological expert of America. We are very fortunate to be able to consult with him in this extraordinary case. I can't make head or tail of anything, said Rosamond. How can poor Mr. Smith be so dreadful as he is by your account? Or by your telegram, said Herbert Warner, smiling. Oh, you don't understand, cried the girl impatiently, while he's done us all more good than going to church. I think I can explain to the young lady, said Dr. Cyrus Pym. This criminal, or maniac Smith, is a very genius of evil, and has a method of his own, a method of the most daring ingenuity. He is popular wherever he goes, for he invades every house as an uproarious child. People are getting suspicious of all the respectable disguises for a scoundrel. So he always uses the disguise of, what shall I say, the Bohemian? The blameless Bohemian? He always carries people off their feet. People are used to the mask of conventional good conduct. He goes in for eccentric good nature. You expect a Don Juan to dress up as a solemn and solid Spanish merchant. But you're not prepared when he dresses up as Don Quixote. You expect a humbug to behave like Sir Charles Grandesson. Because, with all respect, Miss Hunt, for the deep, tear-moving tenderness of Samuel Richardson, Sir Charles Grandesson so often behaved like a humbug. But no real, red-blooded citizen is quite ready for a humbug that models himself not on Sir Charles Grandesson, but on Sir Roger DeCoverly. Setting up to be a good man, a little cracked, is a new criminal in Cognito. Miss Hunt, it's been a great notion and uncommonly successful, but its success just makes it mighty cruel. I can forgive Dick Turpin if he impersonates Dr. Busby. I can't forgive him when he impersonates Dr. Johnson. The saint with a tile loose is a bit too sacred, I guess, to be parodied. But how do you know, cried Rosamond desperately, that Mr. Smith is a known criminal? I collated all the documents, said the American, when my friend Warner knocked me up on receipt of your cable. It is my professional affair to know these facts, Miss Hunt, and there's no more doubt about them than about the breadshaw down at the depot. This man has hitherto escaped the law through his admirable affectations of infancy or insanity. But I myself as a specialist have privately authenticated notes of some eighteen or twenty crimes attempted or achieved in this manner. He comes to houses, as he has to this, and gets a grand popularity. He makes things go. They do go, when he's gone, the things are gone. Gone, Miss Hunt, gone. A man's life, or a man's spoons, or more often a woman. I assure you I have all the memoranda. I have seen them, said Warner, solidly. I can assure you that all this is correct. The most unmanly aspect, according to my feelings, when on the American doctor, is this perpetual deception of innocent women by a wild stimulation of innocence. From almost every house where this great imaginative devil has been, he has taken some poor girl away with him. Some say he's got a hypnotic eye with his other queer features, and that they go like automata. What's become of all those poor girls nobody knows. Murdered, I dare say, for we've lots of instances, beside this one, of his turning his hand to murder, though none ever brought him under the law. Anyhow, our most modern methods of research can't find any trace of the wretched women. It's when I think of them that I am really moved, Miss Hunt, and I really nothing else to say just now, except what Dr. Warner has said. Quite so, said Warner, with a smile that seemed molded in marble. That we all have to thank you very much for that telegram. The little Yankee scientist had been speaking with such evidence and serity that one forgot the tricks of his voice and manner. The falling eyelids, the rising intonation, and the poised finger and thumb, which were, at other times, a little comic. It was not so much that he was cleverer than Warner. Perhaps he was not so clever, though he was more celebrated. But he had what Warner never had, a fresh and unaffected seriousness, the great American virtue of simplicity. Rosamund knitted her brows and looked gloomily toward the darkening house that contained the dark prodigy. Broad daylight still endured, but it had already changed from gold to silver and was changing from silver to gray. The long, plummy shadows of the one or two trees in the garden faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk. In the sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the house by the big French windows, Rosamund could watch a hurried consultation between Inglewood, who was still left in charge of the mysterious captive, and Diana, who had moved to his assistance from without. After a few minutes and gestures they went inside, shutting the glass doors upon the garden, and the garden seemed to grow grayer still. The American gentleman named him seemed to be turning and on the move in the same direction, but before he started he spoke to Rosamund with a flash of that guileless tact which redeemed much of his childish vanity, and with something of that spontaneous poetry, which made it difficult, pedantic as he was, to call him a pedant. I'm very sorry, Miss Hunt, he said, but Dr. Warner and I, as two qualified practitioners, had better take Mr. Smith away in that cab, and the less said about it the better. Don't you agitate yourself, Miss Hunt, you've just got to think that we're taking away a monstrosity, something that oughtn't to be at all, something like one of those gods in your botanic museum, all wings and beards and legs and eyes and no shape, that's what Smith is, and you shall soon be quit of him. He had already taken a step toward the house, and Warner was about to follow him when the glass doors were opened again, and Diana Duke came out with more than her usual quickness across the lawn. Her face was a quiver with worry and excitement, and her dark, earnest eyes fixed only on the other girl. Rosamund, she cried into spirit, what shall I do with her? With her, cried Miss Hunt, with a violent jump, oh Lord, he isn't a woman, too, is he? No, no, no, said Dr. Pym soothingly, as if in common fairness. A woman? No, really. He's not so bad as that. I mean your friend Mary Gray, retorted Diana, with equal tartness. What on earth am I to do with her? How can we tell her about Smith, you mean? said Rosamund, her face at once clouded and softening. Yes, it will be pretty painful. But I have told her, exploded Diana, with more than her congenital exasperation. I have told her, and she doesn't seem to mind. She still says she's going away with Smith in that cab. But it's impossible, ejaculated Rosamund. Why, Mary is really religious. She stopped in time to realize that Mary Gray was comparatively close to her on the lawn. Her quiet companion had come down very quietly into the garden, but dressed very decisively for travel. She had a neat but very ancient blue tamo shantar on her head, and was pulling some rather threadbare gray gloves onto her hands. Yet the two tins fitted excellently with her heavy copper-colored hair, the more excellently for the touch of shabbiness, for a woman's clothes never suit her so well as when they seemed to suit her by accident. But in this case the woman had a quality yet more unique and attractive. In such gray hours when the sun is sunk and the skies are already said, it will often happen that one reflection at some occasional angle will cause to linger the last of the light. A scrap of window, a scrap of water, a scrap of looking glass will be full of the fire that is lost to all the rest of the earth. The quaint almost triangular face of Mary Gray was like some triangular piece of mirror that could still repeat the splendor of the hours before. Mary, though she was always graceful, could never before have properly been called beautiful, and yet her happiness amid all that misery was so beautiful as to make a man catch his breath. Oh Diana cried Rosamond in a lower voice and altering her phrase, but how did you tell her? It is quite easy to tell her, answered Diana somberly. It makes no impression at all. I am afraid I kept everyone waiting, said Mary Gray apologetically, and now we must really say good-bye. Innocent is taking me to his aunt's over at Hampstead, and I am afraid she goes to bed early. Her words were quite casual and practical, but there was a sort of sleepy light in her eyes that was more baffling than darkness. She was like one speaking absently with her eyes on some very distant object. Mary, Mary cried Rosamond almost breaking down. I am so sorry about it, but the thing can't be at all. We have found out all about Mr. Smith. All? repeated Mary with a low and curious intonation. Why, that must be awfully exciting. There was no noise for an instant, and no motion except that the silent Michael Moon leaning on the gate lifted his head as it might be to listen. Then Rosamond remained speechless. Dr. Pym came to her rescue in a definite way. To begin with, he said, this man Smith is constantly attempting murder. The warden of Brake Spear College. I know, said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile. Innocent told me. I can't say what he told you, replied Pym quickly, but I am very much afraid it wasn't true. The plain truth is that the man stained with every known human crime. I assure you I have all the documents. I have evidence of his committing burglary signed by the most imminent English curate. I have. End of Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton. Section 10. Part 1. The Enigmas of Innocent Smith. Chapter 5. The Allegorical Practical Joker. Part 2. Oh, but there were two curates, cried Mary, with a certain eagerness. That was what made it so much funnier. The darkened glass doors of the house opened once more, and Inglewood appeared for an instant, making a sort of signal. The American doctor bowed. The English doctor did not. But they both set out stolidly toward the house. No one else moved, not even Michael, hanging on the gate. But the back of his head and shoulders had still an indescribable indication that he was listening to every word. But don't you understand, Mary cried Rosamond in despair. Don't you know that awful things have happened even before our very eyes? I should have thought you would have heard the revolver shot upstairs. Yes, I heard the shot, said Mary, almost brightly. But I was busy packing just then. An innocent had told me he was going to shoot a Dr. Warner, so it wasn't worthwhile to come down. Oh, I don't understand what you mean, cried Rosamond Hunt's stamping. But you must and shall understand what I mean. I don't care how cruelly I put it. If only I can save you. I mean that your Innocent Smith is the most awfully wicked man in the world. He has sent bullets at lots of other men and gone off in cabs with lots of other women. And he seems to have killed the women, too, for nobody can find them. He is really rather naughty, sometimes, said Mary Gray, laughing softly as she buttoned her old gray gloves. Oh, this is really mesmerism or something, head Rosamond, and burst into tears. At the same moment the two black-clad doctors appeared out of the house with their great green-clad captive between them. He made no resistance, but was still laughing in a groggy and half-witted style. Arthur Englewood followed in the rear, a dark and red study in the last shades of distress and shame. In this black, funeral and painfully realistic style, the exit from Beacon House was made by a man whose entrance a day before had been affected by the happy leaping of a wall and the hilarious climbing of a tree. No one moved to the groups in the garden except Mary Gray, who stepped forward quite naturally calling out, Are you ready, Innocent? Our cab's been waiting for such a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, said Dr. Warner firmly, I must insist on asking this lady to stand aside. We shall have trouble enough, as it is, with the three of us in a cab. But it is our cab, persisted Mary, why there's an innocent yellow bag on the top of it. Stand aside, repeated Warner, roughly, and you, Mr. Moon, please be so obliging as to move a moment. Come, come, the sooner this ugly business is over, the better, and how can we open the gate if you will keep leaning on it? Michael Moon looked at his long, lean forefinger and seemed to consider and reconsider this argument. Yes, he said at last, but how can I lean on the gate if you keep opening it? Oh, get out of the way, cried Warner, almost good-humoredly. You can lean on the gate any time. No, said Moon, reflectively. Sell them the time and place and the blue gate altogether, and it all depends whether you come of an old country family. My ancestors leaned on gates before anyone had discovered how to open them. Michael cried Arthur Englewood in a kind of agony. Are you going to get out of that way? Why, no, I think not, said Michael, after some meditation, and swung himself slowly round so that he confronted the company, while still in a lounging attitude occupying the path. Hello, he called out suddenly. What are you going to, Mr. Smith? Taking him away, answered Warner shortly, to be examined. Matriculation, asked Moon brightly. By a magistrate, said the other curtly. And what other magistrate, cried Michael raising his voice, dares to try what befell on this free soil, save only the ancient and independent dukes of Beacon. What other court dares to try one of our company, save only the High Court of Beacon. Have you forgotten that only this afternoon we flew the flag of independence and severed ourselves from all the nations of the earth? Michael cried Rosamond, wringing her hands. How can you stand there talking nonsense? While you saw the dreadful thing yourself, you were there when he went mad. It was you that helped the doctor up when he fell over the flowerpot. And the High Court of Beacon, replied Moon with haughtier, has special powers in all cases concerning lunatics, flowerpots, and doctors who fall down in gardens. It is our very first charter from Edward I. See Medecus, Kwiskwam, in Horto Prostatus. Out of the way, cried Warner, with sudden fury, or we will force you out of it. What! cried Michael Moon, with a cry of hilarious fierceness, shall I die in defense of this sacred pale? Will you paint these blue railings red with my gore? And he laid hold of one of the blue spikes behind him. As Inglewood had noticed earlier in the evening, the railing was loose and crooked at this place, and the painted iron staff and spearhead came away in Michael's hand as he shook it. See! he cried brandishing this broken javelin in the air. The very lances round Beacon Tower leap up from their places to defend it. Ah! in such a place and hour it is a fine thing to die alone. And in a voice like a drum he rolled the noble lines of Ronsard. Sakes alive, said the American gentleman, almost in an odd tone. Then he added, are there two maniacs here? No, there are five, thundered Moon. Smith and I are the only sane people left. Michael, cried Rosamond. Michael, what does it mean? It means Bosch, roared Michael, and slung his painted spear, hurtling to the other end of the garden. It means that doctors are Bosch, and criminology is Bosch, and Americans are Bosch, much more Bosch than our court of Beacon. It means you fatheads, that Innocent Smith is no more mad or bad than the bird on that tree. But my dear Moon began Inglewood in his modest manner, these gentlemen, on the word of two doctors, exploded Moon again without listening to anybody else, shut up in a private hell on the word of two doctors, and such doctors. Oh my hat, look at them! Do just look at them! Would you read a book, or buy a dog, or go to a hotel on the advice of twenty such? My people came from Ireland, and were Catholics. What would you say, if I called the man wicked on the word of two priests? But it isn't only their word, Michael, reasoned Rosamond. They got evidence, too. Have you looked at it, has Moon? No, said Rosamond, with a sort of faint surprise. These gentlemen are in charge of it. And of everything else, it seems to me, said Michael. Why, you haven't even had the decency to consult Mrs. Duke. Oh, but that's no use, said Diana, in another tone to Rosamond, and he can't say boo to a goose. I'm glad to hear it answered, Michael, for with such a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy style. I appeal to Mrs. Duke. It's her house. Mrs. Duke, repeated Inglewood doubtfully. Yes, Mrs. Duke, said Michael firmly. Commonly called the iron Duke. If you ask Auntie, said Diana quietly, she'll only be for doing nothing at all. Her only idea is to hush things up, or let things slide. That just suits her. Yes, replied Michael Moon, and as it happens, it just suits all of us. You are impatient with your elders, Mrs. Duke, but when you are as old yourself, you will know what Napoleon knew, that half one's letters answer themselves if you can only refrain from the fleshly appetite of answering them. He was still lunging in the same absurd attitude with his elbow on the grate, but his voice had altered abruptly for the third time. Just as it had changed from the mock heroic to the humanly indignant, it now changed to the airy incisiveness of a lawyer giving good legal advice. It isn't only your aunt who wants to keep this quiet if she can, he said. We all want to keep it quiet if we can. Look at the large facts, the big bones of the case. I believe those scientific gentlemen have made a highly scientific mistake. I believe Smith is as blameless as a buttercup. I admit, buttercups don't often let off loaded pistols in private houses. I admit there is something demanding of explanation, but I am morally certain there is some blunder or some joke or some allegory or some accident behind all this. Well, suppose I am wrong. We have disarmed him. We are five men to hold him. He may as well go to a lock-up later on, as now. But suppose there is even a chance of my being right. Is it in anybody's interest to wash this linen in public? Come, I'll take each of you in order. Once take Smith outside that gate and you take him into the front page of the evening papers. I know. I've written the front page myself, Miss Duke. Do you or your aunt want to sort of notice stuck up over your boarding-house? Doctors shot here? No, no. Doctors are rubbish, as I said. But you don't want the rubbish shot here. Arthur, suppose I am right or suppose I am wrong. Smith has appeared as an old-school fellow of yours. Mark my words. If he's proved guilty, the organs of public opinion will say you introduced him. If he's proved innocent, they will say you helped to collar him. Rosamond, my dear, suppose I am right or wrong. If he is proved guilty, they'll say you engaged your companion to him. If he's proved innocent, they'll print that telegram. I know the organs, damn them. He stopped an instant for this rapid rationalism, left him more breathless than had either his theatrical or his real denunciation. But he was plainly unearnest, as well as positive and lucid, as was proved by his proceeding quickly the moment he had found his breath. It is just the same, he cried with our medical friends. He will say that Dr. Warner has a grievance, I agree. But does he want specially to be snapshotted by all the journalists, prostratus and horto? It was no fault of his, but the scene was not very dignified even for him. He must have justice. But does he want to ask for justice, not only on his knees but on his hands and knees? Does he want to enter the court of justice on all fours? Doctors are not allowed to advertise, and I'm sure no doctor wants to advertise himself as looking like that. And even for our American guest, the interest is the same. Let us suppose that he has conclusive documents. Let us assume that he has revelations really worth reading. Well, in a legal inquiry, or a medical inquiry for that matter, ten to one he won't be allowed to read them. He'll be tripped up every two or three minutes with some tangle of old rules. A man can't tell the truth in public nowadays, but he can still tell it in private, and he can tell it inside that house. It is quite true, said Dr. Cyrus Pym, who had listened throughout the speech for the seriousness which only an American could have retained through such a scene. It is true that I have been perceptibly less hampered in private inquiries. Dr. Pym cried water in a sort of sudden anger. Dr. Pym, you aren't really going to admit. End of Section X. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Allegorical Practical Joker Part III Smith may be mad when on the melancholy moon in a monologue that seemed as heavy as a hatchet, but there was something after all in what he said about home rule for every home. Yes, there is something, when all said and done, in the High Court of Beacon. It is really true that human beings might often get some sort of domestic justice where just now they can only get legal injustice. Oh, I'm a lawyer too, and I know that as well. It is true that there isn't too much official and indirect power. Often and often the thing a whole nation can't settle is just the thing a family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined and sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed. Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at Brighton. There is something in Smith's notion of domestic self-government, and I propose that we put it into practice. You have the prisoner, you have the documents, come. We are a company of free, wide Christian people, such as might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island. Let us do this thing ourselves. Let us go into that house there and sit down and find out with our own eyes and ears whether this thing is true or not, whether this Smith is a man or a monster. If we can't do a little thing like that, what right have we to put crosses on ballots? Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance, and Warner, who was no fool, saw in that glance that Moon was gaining ground. The motives that led Arthur to think of surrender were indeed very different from those which affected Dr. Cyrus Pym. All Arthur's instincts were on the side of privacy and polite settlement. He was very English and would often endure wrongs rather than write them by scenes and serious rhetoric. To play at once the buffoon and the nighterrant, like his Irish friend, would have been absolute torture to him. But even the semi-official part he had played that afternoon was very painful. He was not likely to be reluctant if anyone could convince him that his duty was to let sleeping dogs lie. On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in which things are possible that seemed crazy to the English. Regulations and authorities, exactly like one of Innocence Pranks or one of Michael Sattire's, really exist, propped by placid policemen and imposed on bustling businessmen. Pym knew whole states which are vast and yet secret and fanciful. Each is as big as a nation, yet as private as a lost village and as unexpected as apple pie bed. States where no man may have a cigarette. States where any man may have ten wives. Very stick prohibition states. Very lax divorce states. All these large local vagaries had prepared Cyrus Pym's mind for small local vagaries in a smaller country. Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or Italian, utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are, he could not see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It is firmly believed by those who shared the experiment that to the very end Pym believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it to be some Britannic institution. Towards the synod, thus somewhat at a standstill, there approached through the growing haze and gloaming a short dark figure with a walk apparently founded on the imperfect repression of a negro breakdown. Something at once in the familiarity and incongruity of this being moved Michael to even heartier outbursts of a healthy and humane flippancy. While here's little nosy ghoul, he exclaimed, isn't the mere sight of him enough to banish all your morbid reflections? Really, replied Dr. Warner, I really fail to see how Mr. Ghoul affects the question and I once more demand. Hello, what's the funeral, gents? Inquired the newcomer with the air of an uproarious umpire. Dr. demanding something? Always the way at a boarding house, you know. Always lots of demand, no supply. As delicately and impartially as he could, Michael restated his position and indicated generally that Smith had been guilty of certain dangerous and dubious acts and that there had even arisen an allegation that he was insane. Well, of course he is, said Moses Ghoul'd equally. He don't need old ohms to see that. The awk-like face of ohms, he added with abstract relish, showed a shade of disappointment, the sleuth-like ghoul having got there before him, if he is mad beginningle would. Well, said Moses, when a cove gets out on the tile the first night there's generally a tile loose. You never objected before, said Diana Duke, rather stiffly, and you're generally pretty free with your complaints. I don't complain of him, said Moses, magnanimously. The poor chap's armless enough. You might tie him up in the garden here and he'd make noises at the burglars. Moses said, moon, with solemn fervor, you are the incarnation of common sense. You think Mr. Innocent is mad. Let me introduce you to the incarnation of scientific theory. He also thinks Mr. Innocent Smith is mad. Doctor, this is my friend Mr. Ghoul'd. Moses, this is the celebrated Dr. Pym. The celebrated Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes and bowed. He also murmured his national war cry in a low voice which sounded like, pleased to meet you. So you two people, said Michael cheerfully, who both think our poor friend, Mad, shall jolly well go into that house over there and prove him mad. What could be more powerful than a combination of scientific theory with common sense? United you stand, divided you fall. I will not be so uncivil as to suggest that Dr. Pym has no common sense. I confine myself to recording the chronological accident that he has not shown us any so far. I take the freedom of an old friend in staking my shirt that Moses has no scientific theory. Yet against this strong coalition I am ready to appear armed with nothing but an intuition which is American for a guess. Distinguished by Mr. Ghoul's assistance, said Pym, opening his eyes suddenly, I gather that though he and I are identical in primary diagnosis, there is yet between us something that cannot be called a disagreement, something which we may perhaps call up. He put the points of a thumb and forefinger together, spreading the other fingers exquisitely in the air and seemed to be waiting for somebody else to tell him what to say. Catching flies, inquired the affable Moses. A divergence, said Dr. Pym, with a refined sigh of relief, a divergence. Granted that the man in question is deranged, he would not necessarily be all that science requires in a homicidal maniac. As it occurred to you, observed moon, who was leaning on the gate again and did not turn round, that if he were a homicidal maniac, he might have killed us all here while we were talking. Something exploded silently underneath all their minds, like sealed dynamite in some forgotten cellars. They all remembered for the first time for some hour or two that the monster of whom they were talking was standing quietly among them. They had left him in the garden, like a garden statue. There might have been a dolphin coiling round his legs or a fountain pouring out of his mouth. For all the notice they had taken of Innocent Smith. He stood with his crest of blonde-blown hair thrust somewhat forward, his fresh-colored, rather short-sighted face looking patiently downwards, at nothing in particular. His huge shoulders humped in his hands in his trousers' pockets. So far, as they could guess, he had not moved at all. His green coat might have been cut out of the green turf on which he stood. In his shadow, him had expounded and Rosamond expostulated. Michael had ranted and Moses had ragged. He had remained, like a thin graven, the god of the garden. A sparrow had perched on one of his heavy shoulders, and then, after correcting its costume of feathers, it had flown away. Oh, I cried Michael with a shot of laughter. The Court of Beacon has opened. And shut up again too. You all know now I am right. Your buried common sense has told you what my buried common sense has told me. Smith might have fired off a hundred cannons instead of a pistol, and you would still know he was harmless as I know he is harmless. Back we all go to the house and clear a room for discussion. For the High Court of Beacon, which has already arrived at its decision, is just about to begin its inquiry. Just going to begin, cried little Mr. Moses, in an extraordinary sort of disinterested excitement, like that of an animal during a music-core thunderstorm. Follow on to the High Court of Eggs and Bacon. Have a kipper from the old firm. Its lordship complimented Mr. Gould on the eye of professional delicacy shown which was worthy of the best traditions of the Saloon Bar and three of Scotch Hot, his Oh Chase Me Girls. The girls betrayed no temptation to chase him. He went away in a sort of waddling dance of pure excitement, and had made a circuit of the garden before he reappeared breathless, but still beaming. Moon had known his man when he realized that no people presented to Moses Gould could be quite serious, even if they were quite furious. There was no woman on the side nearest to Mr. Moses Gould, and as the feet of that festive idiot were evidently turned in the same direction everybody else went that way with the unanimity of some uproarious procession. Only Diana Duke retained enough rigidity to say the thing that had been boiling at her fierce feminine lips for the last few hours. Under the shadow of tragedy, she had kept it back as unsympathetic. In that case, she said sharply, these cabs can be sent away. Well, innocent must have his bag, you know, said Mary with a smile. I dare say the cab man would get it down for us. I'll get the bag, said Smith, speaking for the first time in hours. His voice sounded remote and rude, like the voice of a statue. Those who had so long danced and disputed round his immobility were left breathless by his precipitance. With a run in spring he was out of the garden into the street. With a spring and one quivering kick he was actually on the roof of the cab. The cab man happened to be standing by the horse's head having just removed its emptied nosebag. Smith seemed, for an instant, to be rolling about on the cab's back in the embraces of his clad stone bag. The next instant, however, he had rolled as if by a royal luck into the high seat behind and with a shriek of piercing and appalling suddenness he had sent the horse flying and scampering down the street. His evanescence was so violent and swift that this time it was all the other people who were turned into garden statues. Mr. Moses Gould, however, being ill-adapted both physically and morally for the purposes of permanent sculpture, came to life some time before the rest and turned into moon remark like a man standing chattily with a stranger on an omnibus. Huh? Cab blues, anyhow. There followed a fatal silence, and then Dr. Warner said with a sneer like a club of stone, This is what comes of the court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. You have let Lusameniac on the whole metropolis. Beacon house stood, as it has been said, at the end of a long crescent of continuous houses. The little garden that shut it in ran out into a sharp point like a green cape pushed into the sea of two streets. Smith and his cab shot up one side of the triangle, and certainly most of those standing inside of it, never expected to see him again. At the apex, however, he turned the horse sharply round and drove with equal violence up the other side of the garden, visible to all those in the group with a common impulse. The little crowd ran across the lawn as if to stop him. But they soon had reason to duck and recoil. Even as he vanished up the street for the second time, he let the big yellow bag fly from his hand, so that it fell in the center of the garden, scattering the company like a bomb, and nearly damaging Dr. Warner's hat for the third time. Long before they had collected themselves, the cab had shot away with a shriek that went into a whisper. Well, said Michael Moon, with a queer note in his voice, he may as well all go inside anyhow. We've got two relics of Mr. Smith, at least, his fiancee and his trunk. Why do you want us to go inside, asked Arthur Englewood, in whose red-brow and rough-brown hair by the ration seemed to have reached its limit? End of Section 11. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. I want the rest to go in, said Michael, in a clear voice, because I want the whole of this garden in which to talk to you. There was an atmosphere of irrational doubt. It was really getting colder, and a night wind had begun to wave one or two trees in the twilight. Dr. Warner, however, spoke in a voice devoid of indecision. I refused to listen to any such proposal, he said. You have lost this Ruffian, and I must find him. I don't ask you to listen to any proposal, answered Moon quietly. I only ask you to listen. He made a silencing movement with his hand, and immediately the whistling noise that had been lost in the dark streets on one side of the house could be heard from quite a new quarter on the other side. Through the night maze of streets the noise increased with incredible rapidity. And the next moment the flying hooves and flashing wheels had swept up to the blue rail gate at which they had originally stood. Mr. Smith got down from his perch with an air of absent-mindedness and, coming back into the garden, stood in the same elephantine attitude as before. Get inside, get inside, cried Moon hilariously, with the air of one shooing a company of cats. Come, come, be quick about it. Didn't I tell you I wanted to talk to Inglewood? How they were all really driven into that house again, it would have been difficult afterwards to say. They had reached the point of being exhausted within congruities as people at a farce were ill with laughing and the brisk growth of the storm among the trees seemed like a final gesture of things in general. Inglewood lingered behind them, saying with certain amicable exasperation, I say, do you really want to speak to me? I do, said Michael, very much. Night had come, as it generally does, quicker than the twilight had seemed to promise. While the human eye still felt the sky as light gray, a very large and lustrous moon appearing abruptly above a bulk of roofs and trees proved by contrast that the sky was already a very dark gray indeed. A drift of barren leaves across the lawn, a drifter of riven clouds across the sky seemed to be lifted on the same strong and yet laborious wind. Arthur, said Michael, I began with an intuition, but now I am sure. You and I are going to defend this friend of yours before the Blessed Court of Beacon. And to clear him too. Clear him of both crime and lunacy. Just listen to me while I preach to you for a bit. They walked up and down the darkening garden together, as Michael Moon went on. Can you, asked Michael Moon, shut your eyes and see some of those queer, old hieroglyphics? They stuck up on white walls in the old, hot countries. How stiff they were in shape and yet how gaudy in color. Think of some alphabet of arbitrary figures picked out in black and red and white and green with some old, semantic crowd of nosy ghouls' ancestors staring at it and tried to think why the people put it up at all. Inglewood's first instinct was to think that his perplexing friend had really gone off his head at last. There seemed so reckless a flight of irrelevancy from the tropic-pictured walls he was asking to imagine to the gray, windswept and somewhat chilly suburban garden in which he was actually kicking his heels. How he could be more happy in one by imagining the other he could not conceive, both in themselves, were unpleasant. Why does everybody repeat riddles, went on Moon abruptly, even if they've forgotten the answers? Riddles are easy to remember because they are hard to guess. So were those stifled symbols in black, red or green to remember because they had been hard to guess. Their colors were plain, their shapes were plain, everything was plain except the meaning. Inglewood was about to open his mouth in an amiable protest. But Moon went on, plunging quicker and quicker up and down the garden and smoking faster and faster. Dances, too, he said. Dances were not frivolous. Dances were harder to understand than inscriptions and texts. The old dances were stiff, ceremonial, nearly colored but silent. Have you noticed anything odd about Smith? Well, really, cried Inglewood, left behind in a collapse of humor. Have I noticed anything else? Have you noticed this about a masked Moon with unshaken persistency, that he has done so much and said so little? When first he came he talked, but in a gasping, irregular sort of way, as if he wasn't used to it. All he really did was actions, painting red flowers on black gowns or throwing yellow bags onto the grass. I tell you that big green figure is figurative, like any green figure capering on some white eastern wall. My dear Michael cried Inglewood in rising irritation which increased with the rising wind. You are getting absurdly fanciful. I think of what has just happened, said Michael steadily. The man has not spoken for hours and yet he has been speaking all the time. He fired three shots from a six-shooter and then gave it up to us when he might have shot us dead in our boots. How could he express his trust in us better than that? He wanted to be tried by us. How could he have shown it better than by standing quite still and letting us discuss it? He wanted to show that he stood there willingly and could escape if he liked. How could he have shown it better by escaping in the cab and coming back again? Innocent Smith is not a madman. He is a ritualist. He wants to express himself not with his tongue but with his arms and legs. With my body, I thee worship, as it says in the marriage service. I begin to understand the old plays and pageants. I see why the mutes at a funeral were mute. I see why the mummers were mum. They meant something and Smith means something too. All other jokes have to be noisy like little nosy ghouls jokes, for instance. The only silent jokes are the practical jokes. Poor Smith, properly considered, is an allegorical practical joker. What he has really done in this house has been as frantic as a war dance but as silent as a picture. I suppose you mean, said the other dubiously, that we have got to find out what all these crimes meant as if they were so many colored picture puzzles. But even supposing that they do mean something, why, Lord bless my soul. Taking the turn of the garden quite naturally, he had lifted his eyes to the moon. By this time risen big and luminous and had seen a huge half-human figure sitting on the garden wall. It was outlined so sharply against the moon that for the first flash it was hard to be certain even that it was human. The hunched shoulders and outstanding hair had rather the air of a colossal cat. It resembled a cat also in the fact that when first startled, it sprang up and ran with easy activity along the top of the wall. As it ran, however, its heavy shoulders and small, stooping head further suggested a baboon. The instant it came within reach of a tree it made an ape-like leap and was lost in the branches. The gale, which by this time was shaking every shrub in the garden, made the identification yet more difficult, since it melted the moving limbs of the fugitive in the multitudinous moving limbs of the tree. Who is there? shouted Arthur. Who are you? Are you innocent? Not quite answered an obscure voice among the leaves. I cheated you once about a penknife. The wind in the gardener gathered strength and was throwing the tree backwards and forwards with the man in the thick of it, just as it hid on the gay and golden afternoon when he had first arrived. But are you Smith, asked Uncle Wood, as in an agony? Very nearly said the voice out of the tossing tree. But you must have some real name, shrieked Uncle Wood, in dismayer. You must call yourself something. Call myself something, thundered the obscure voice, shaking the tree, so that all this ten thousand leaves seemed to be talking at once. I call myself Roland Oliver, Isaiah, Charlemagne, Arthur, Hildebrand, Homer, Denton, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Brakespear. But men alive cried Uncle Wood at exasperation. That's right, that's right. Came with a roar out of the rocking tree. That's my real name. And he broke a branch, and one or two autumn leaves flooded away across the moon. End of Chapter 5. End of Part 1. End of Section 12. This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton Section 13. Part 2. The Explanations of Innocent Smith Chapter 1. The Eye of Death or the Murder Charge Part 1. The dining-room of the Dukes had been set out for the Court of Beacon with a certain impromptu pomposity that seemed somehow to increase its coziness. The big room was, as it were, cut up into the small rooms with walls only waist-high, the sort of separation that children make when they are playing at shops. This had been done by Moses Gould and Michael Moon, the two most active members of this remarkable inquiry, with the ordinary furniture of the place. At one end of the long mahogany table was set to one enormous garden chair, which was surmounted by the old torn tent or umbrella which Smith himself had suggested as a coronation canopy. Inside this erection could be perceived the dumpy form of Mrs. Duke with cushions and a form of countenance that already threatened slumber. At the other end sat the accused Smith in a kind of dock for he was carefully fenced in with a quadrilateral of light bedroom chairs, any of which he could have tossed out the window with his big toe. He had been provided with pens and paper out of the letter of which he made paper boats, paper darts and paper dolls contentedly throughout the whole proceedings. He never spoke or even looked up but seemed as unconscious as a child on the floor of an empty nursery. On a row of chairs raised high on the top of a long settee sat the three young ladies with their backs up against the window and Mary Gray in the middle of it was something between a jury box and the stall of the Queen of Beauty tournament. Down the center of the long table Moon had built a low barrier out of eight bound volumes of good words to express the moral wall that divided the conflicting parties. On the right side sat the two advocates of the prosecution Dr. Pym and Mr. Gould behind a barricade of books and documents chiefly in the case of Dr. Pym solid volumes of criminology. On the other side Moon and Inglewood for the defense were also fortified with books and papers but as these included several old yellow volumes by Ouida and Wilkie Collins the hand of Mr. Moon seemed to have been somewhat careless and comprehensive. As for the victim and prosecutor Dr. Warner, Moon wanted at first to have him kept entirely behind a high screen in the corner urging the indelicacy of his appearance in court but privately assuring him of an unofficial permission to peep over the top now and then. Dr. Warner however failed to rise to the chivalry of such a course and after some little disturbance and discussion he was accommodated with a seat on the right side of the table in a line with his legal advisors. It was before this solidly established tribunal that Dr. Cyrus Pym after passing a hand through the honey-colored hair over each year was asked to open the case. His statement was clear and even restrained and such flights of imagery as occurred in it only attracted attention by a certain indescribable abruptness not uncommon in the flowers of American speech. He planted the points of his ten frail fingers on the mahogany closed his eyes and opened his mouth. The time has gone by he said when murder could be regarded as a moral individual act important perhaps to the murderer perhaps to the murdered science has profoundly here he paused poising his compressed finger and thumb in the air as if he were holding an elusive idea very tight by its tail then he screwed up his eyes and said modified and let it go has profoundly modified our view of death in superstitious ages it was regarded as the termination of life, catastrophic and even tragic and was often surrounded by salinity brighter days however have dawned and we now see death as universal and inevitable as part of that great soul-stirring and heart-upholding average which we call for convenience the order of nature in the same way we have come to consider murder socially rising above the mere private feelings of a man while being forcibly deprived of life we are privileged to behold a murder as a mighty whole to see the rich rotation of the cosmos bringing as it brings the golden harvests and the golden bearded harvesters the return forever of the slayers and the slain he looked down somewhat affected with his own eloquence coughed slightly putting up four of his pointed fingers with the excellent manners of Boston and continued there is but one result of this happier and humane outlook that concerns the wretched man before us it is that thoroughly elucidated by a Milwaukee doctor our great secret-guessing son of shine in his great work the destructive type we do not denounce Smith as a murderer but rather as a murderous man the type is such that it's very life I might say it's very health is in killing some hold that it is not properly an aberration but a newer and even higher creature my dear old friend Dr. Bulger who kept ferrets here moon suddenly ejaculated loud hurrah but so instantaneously resumed his tragic expression that Mrs. Duke looked everywhere else for the sound Dr. Pym continued somewhat sternly who in the interest of knowledge kept ferrets felt that the creature's veracity is not utilitarian but absolutely and end in itself however this may be with ferrets it is certainly so with the prisoner in his other iniquities you may find the cunning of the maniac but his acts of blood have almost the simplicity of sanity but it is the awful sanity of the sun and the elements accrual and evil sanity as soon stay the iris-lept cataracts of our virgin west by the natural force that sends him forth to slay no environment however scientific could have softened him placed that man in the silver silent purity of the palest cloister and there will be some deed of violence done with the crozier or the Elb beer him in a happy nursery amid our brave, browed, anglo-saxon infancy and he will find some way to strangle with the skipping rope or brain with the brick circumstances may be favourable training may be admirable hopes may be high but the huge elemental hunger of innocent smith for blood will in its appointed season burst like a well-timed bomb. Arthur Englewood glanced curiously for an instant at the huge creature at the foot of the table who was fitting a paper figure with a cocked hat and then look back at Dr. Pym who was concluding in a quieter tone it only remains for us, he said to bring forward actual evidence of his previous attempts by an agreement already made with the court and the leaders of the defense we are permitted to put in evidence authentic letters from witnesses to these scenes which the defense is free to examine out of several of such outrages we have decided to select one the clearest and most scandalous I will therefore without further delay call on my junior Mr. Gold to read two letters one sub-warden and the other from the porter of Bricksburg College in Cambridge University Gould jumped up with a jerk like a jack in the box an academic looking paper in his hand and a fever of importance on his face he began in a loud high cockney voice that was as abrupt as a cockroach Sir, hi I'm sub-warden of Bricksburg College, Cambridge Lord have mercy on us, Muddered Moon making a backward movement as men do when a gun goes off Hi, I'm the sub-warden of Bricksburg College, Cambridge proclaim the uncompromising Moses and I can endorse the description you gave of the unepi-Smith it was not alone my unfortunate duty to rebuke many of the lesser violences of his undergraduate period but I was actually a witness to the last iniquity which terminated that period I happened to passing under the house of my friend the warden of Bricksburg which is semi-detached from the college and connected with it by two or three very ancient arches or props like bridges across a small strip of water connected with the river to my grief astonishment I be-el'd my imminent friend suspended in mid-air and clinging to one of these pieces of masonry his appearance and attitude indicating that he suffered from the grievous abrasions after a short time I heard two very loud shots and distinctly the unfortunate undergraduate Smith leaning far out of the warden's window and aiming at the warden repeatedly with a revolver upon seeing me Smith burst into a loud laugh in which impertinence was mingled with insanity and appeared to desist I sent the college porter for a letter and he succeeded in detaching the warden from his painful position Smith was sent down the photograph I enclosed is from the university rifle club prisman and represents him as he was when at the college I am your obedient servant name is bootler the other letter continued gold in a glow of triumph is from the porter and it won't take long to read Dear sir it is quite true that I am porter of brickspear college and that I helped the warden down when the young man was shooting at him as Mr. Bolter has said in his letter the young man who was shooting at him with the same that is in the photograph Mr. Bolter sends yours respectfully Samuel Barker Gould handed the two letters across to moon who examined them but for the vocal divergences in a matter of H's and A's the sub warden's letter was exactly as Gould had rendered it and both that and the porter's lender were plainly genuine moon handed them to Inglewood who handed them back in silence to Moses Gould so far as this first charge of continual attempted murder is concerned said Dr. Pym standing up for the last time that is my case Michael moon rose for the defense with an air of depression which gave little hope at the outset to the sympathizers with the prisoner he did not he said proposed to follow the doctor into the abstract questions I do not know enough to be an agnostic he said rather wearily master the known and admitted elements in such controversies as for science and religion the known and admitted facts are plain enough all that the person say is unproved all that the doctor say is disproved that's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been or will be yet these new discoveries touched me somehow he said looking down sorrowfully at his boots they remind me of a dear old great ant of mine who used to enjoy them in her youth it brings tears to my eyes I can see the old bucket by his garden's fence and the line of shimmering poplars behind hi here stop the bus a bit cried Mr. Moses Gould riding in a sort of perspiration we want to give the defense a fair run like gents you know but any gent would draw the line at shimmering poplars well hang it all said moon in an injured manner if Dr. Pym may have an old friend with ferrets why me and I have an old ant with poplars why as to liking her began moon but perhaps as you say she is scarcely the core of the question I repeat that I do not mean to follow the abstract speculations for indeed my answer to Dr. Pym is simple and severely concrete Dr. Pym has only treated one side of the psychology of murder it is true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to murder is it not equally true here he lowered his voice and spoke with a crushing quietude and earnestness is it not equally true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to get murdered is it not at least a hypothesis holding the field that Dr. Warner is such a man I do not speak without the book any more than my learned friend the whole matter is expounded and moon shines monumental work the destructible doctor with diagrams showing the various ways in which such a person as Dr. Warner may be resolved into his elements in the light of these facts hi stop the bus stop the bus cried Moses jumping up and down gesticulating in great excitement my principal's got something to say my principal wants to do a bit of talking Dr. Pym was indeed on his feet looking pallid and rather vicious I have strictly confined myself he said nasally to books to which immediate reference can be made I have sonner shines destructive type here on the table if the defense wish to see it where is this wonderful work on the destructibility Mr. Moon is talking about does it exist can he produce it 13 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton Section 14 Part 2 The Allegorical Practical Joker Chapter 1 The Eye of Death or the Murder Charge Part 2 Produce it cried the Irishman with a rich scorn, I'll produce it in a week if you'll pay for the ink and paper would it have much authority asked Pym sitting down oh authority said Moon Lively that depends on a fellow's religion Dr. Pym jumped up again our authority is based on masses of accurate detail it deals with a region in which things can be handled and tested my opponent will at least admit that death is a fact of experience not of mine said Moon mournfully shaking his head I've never experienced such a thing in all my life well really said Dr. Pym and sat down sharply amid a crackle of papers so we see resumed Moon in the same melancholy voice that a man like Dr. Warner is in the mysterious workings of evolution doomed to such attacks my client's onslaught even if it occurred was not unique I have in my hand letters some more than one acquaintance of Dr. Warner whom that remarkable man has affected in the same way following the example of my learned friends I will read only two of them the first is from an honest and laborious matron living off the Hyrule Road yes I did throw a saucepan at him what then? it was all I had to throw all the soft things being porned and if you Dr. Warner doesn't like having saucepans thrown at him don't let him wear his hat in a respectable woman's parlor and tell him to leave Orff smiling or tell us jokes yours respectfully Hannah Miles the other letter is from a physician of some note in Dublin with whom Dr. Warner was once engaged he writes as follows dear sir the incident to which you refer is one which I regret and which moreover I have never been able to explain my own branch of medicine is not mental and I should be glad to have the view of a mental specialist on my singular momentary and indeed almost automatic action to say that I pull Dr. Warner's nose is however inaccurate in a respect that strikes me as important that I punched his nose I must cheerfully admit I need not say with what regret but pulling seems to me to imply a precision of objective which I cannot reproach myself in comparison with this the act of punching was an outward instantaneous and even natural gesture believe me yours faithfully Burton less strange I have numberless other letters continued moon all bearing witness to this widespread feeling about my imminent friend and I therefore think that Dr. Pym should have admitted this side of the question in his survey we are in the presence as Dr. Pym so truly says of a natural force as soon stay the cataract of the London waterworks as stay the great tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated by somebody place that man in a Quaker's meeting among the most peaceful Christians and he will immediately be beaten to death with sticks of chocolate place him among the angels of the New Jerusalem and he will be stoned to death with precious stones circumstances may be beautiful and wonderful the average may be hard upholding the harvester may be golden bearded and the doctor may be secret guessing the cataract may be iris left the Anglo-Saxon infant may be brave browed but against and above all these prodigies the grand simple tendency of Dr. Warner to get murdered will still pursue its way until it happily and triumphantly succeeds at last he pronounced this peroration with an appearance of strong emotion but even stronger emotions were manifesting themselves on the other side of the table Dr. Warner had leaned his large body quite across the little figure of Moses Gould and was talking in excited whispers to Dr. Pym that expert nodded a great many times and finally started to his feet with a sincere expression of sternness ladies and gentlemen he cried indignantly as my colleague has said we should be delighted to give any latitude to the defense if there were a defense but Mr. Moon seems to think he is there to make jokes very good jokes I dare say but not at all adapted to assist his client he picks holes in science he picks holes in my client's social popularity he picks holes in my literary style which doesn't seem to suit his high-toned European taste but how does this picking of holes affect the issue this myth has picked two holes in my client's hat and with an inch better aim would have picked two holes in his head all the jokes in the world won't unpick those holes or be any use for the defense Inglewood looked down in some embarrassment as if shaken by the evident fairness of this but Moon still gazed at his opponent in a dreamy way the defense he said vaguely oh I haven't begun that yet you certainly have not said Pym warmly amid a murmur of applause on his side which the other side found it impossible to answer perhaps if you have any defense which has been doubtful from the beginning while you are standing up said Moon in the same almost sleepy style perhaps I might ask you a question a question certainly said Pym stiffly it was distinctly arranged between us that we could not cross examine the witnesses we might vicariously cross examine each other we are in a position to invite all such inquiry I think you said observed Moon absently that none of the prisoner's shots really hit the doctor for the cause of science cried the complacent Pym fortunately not yet they were fired from a few feet away yes about four feet and no shots hit the warden while they were fired quite close to him too as Moon that is so said the witness gravely I think said Moon suppressing a slight yawn that your sub-warden mentioned that Smith was one of the university's record men for shooting why as to that began Pym after an instant stillness a second question continued Moon comparatively curtly you said there were other cases of the accused trying to kill people and not got evidence of them the American planted the points of his fingers on the table again in those cases he said precisely there was no evidence from outsiders as in the Cambridge case but only the evidence of the actual victims why didn't you get their evidence in the case of the actual victims said Pym there was some difficulty and reluctance and do you mean ask Moon that none of the actual victims would appear against the prisoner that would be exaggerated began the other a third question said Moon so sharply that everyone jumped you've got the evidence of the sub-warden who heard some shots where's the evidence of the warden himself who was shot at the warden of Brakespear lives a prosperous gentleman we did ask for a statement from him and said Pym a little nervously but he was so eccentricly expressed that we had a lot of deference to an old gentleman whose past services to science have been great Moon leaned forward you mean I suppose that his statement was favorable to the prisoner it might be understood so replied the American doctor but really it was difficult to understand at all in fact we sent it back to him you have no longer than any statement signed by the warden of Brakespear no I only asked said Michael quietly because we have to conclude my case I will ask my junior Mr. Inglewood to read a statement of the true story a statement attested as true by the signature of the warden himself Arthur Inglewood rose with several papers in his hand and though he looked somewhat refined and self-effacing as he always did the spectators were surprised to feel that his presence was upon the whole more efficient and sufficing than his leaders he was in truth one of those modest men who cannot speak until they are told to speak and then can speak well Moon was entirely the opposite his own impudence amused him in private but they slightly embarrassed him in public he felt a fool while he was speaking whereas Inglewood felt a fool only because he could not speak the moment he had anything to say he could speak and the moment he could speak speaking seemed quite natural nothing in this universe seemed quite natural to Michael Moon as my colleague has just explained to Inglewood there are two enigmas or inconsistencies on which we base the defense the first is a plain physical fact by the admission of everybody by the very evidence adduced by the prosecution it is clear that the accused was celebrated as a specially good shot yet on both the occasions complained of he shot from a distance of four or five feet and shot at him four or five times and never hit him once that is the first startling circumstance on which we base our argument the second as my colleague has urged is the curious fact that we cannot find a single victim of these alleged outrages to speak for himself subordinates speak for him porters climb up letters to him but he himself is silent ladies and gentlemen I propose to explain on the spot both the riddle of the shots and the riddle of the silence I will first of all read the covering letter in which the true account of the Cambridge incident is contained and then that document itself when you have heard both there will be no doubt about your decision the covering letter runs as follows Dear sir the following is a very exact and even vivid account of the incident as it really happened at Shakespeare College we the undersigned do not see any particular reason why we should refer it to any isolated authorship the truth is it has been a composite production and we have even had some difference of opinion about the agitives but every word of it is true we are yours faithfully Wilfred Emerson Eames warden of Breaksbeer College Cambridge Innocent Smith a statement continued Inglewood runs as followed A celebrated English University backs so abruptly on the river that it has so to speak to be propped up and patched with all sorts of bridges and semi-detached buildings the river splits itself into several small streams and canals so that in one or two corners the place has almost the look of Venice it was so especially in the case with which we are concerned flying buttresses or airy ribs of stones sprang across the strip of water to connect Breaksbeer College with a house of the warden of Breaksbeer the country around these colleges is flat but it does not seem flat when one is thus in the midst of the colleges for in these flat fens there are always wandering lakes and lingering rivers of water and these always change what might have been a scheme of horizontal lines into a scheme of vertical lines wherever there is water the height of high buildings is doubled and a British brick house becomes a Babylonian tower in that shining unshaken surface the houses hang head downwards exactly to their highest or lowest chimney the coral colored cloud seen in that abyss is as far below the world as its origin appears above it every scrap of water is not only a window but a skylight earth splits under men's feet into precipitous aerial perspectives into which a bird could as easily wing its way as end of section 14 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton Section 15 Part 2 The Explanations of Innocent Smith Chapter 1 The Eye of Death or the Murder Charge Part 3 Dr. Cyrus Pym rose in protest the documents he had put in evidence had been confined to cold affirmation of fact the defense in a general way had an indubitable right to put their case in their own way but all this landscape gardening seemed to him Dr. Cyrus Pym to be not up to the business will the leader of the defense tell me he asked how it can possibly affect this case that a cloud was coral colored or that a bird could have winged itself anywhere oh I don't know said Michael lifting himself lazily you see you don't know yet what our defense is till you know that don't you see anything may be relevant why suppose he said suddenly as if an idea had struck him suppose we wanted to prove the old warden color blind suppose he was shot by a black man with white hair when he thought he was being shot by a white man with yellow hair to ascertain if that cloud was really and truly coral colored might be of the most massive importance he paused with a seriousness which was hardly generally shared and continued with the same fluency or suppose we wanted to maintain that the warden committed suicide that he just got Smith to hold the pistol as Brutus Slave held the sword why it would make all the difference whether the warden could see himself playing in still water still water has made hundreds of suicides one sees oneself so well so very plain do you perhaps inquired Pym with austere irony maintain that your client was a bird of some sort say a flamingo in the matter of his being a flamingo said moon with sudden severity my client reserves his defense no one quite knowing what to make of this Mr. Moon resumed his seat and Inglewood resumed the reading of his document there is something pleasing to a mystic and such a land of mirrors for a mystic is one who holds that two worlds are better than one in the highest sense indeed all thought is reflection this is the real truth in the saying that second thoughts are best animals have no second thoughts man alone is able to see his own thought double as a drunkard sees a lamp post man alone is able to see his own thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle this duplication of mentality as in a mirror is we repeat that the inmost thing of human philosophy there is a mystical even a monstrous truth in the statement that two heads are better than one but they ought both to grow on the same body I know it's a little transcendental at first interposed Inglewood beaming round with broad apology but you see this document was written in collaboration by a Don and a drunkard suggested Moses Gould beginning to enjoy himself I rather think preceded Inglewood with unruffled and critical error that this part was written by the Don I merely warn the court that the statement though indubitably accurate bears here and there the trace of coming from two authors in that case said Dr. Pym leaning back and sniffing I cannot agree with him that two heads are better than one the undersigned persons think it needless to touch on a kindred problem so often discussed at committees for university reform the question of whether Don's see double because they are drunk or get drunk because they see double it is enough for them the undersigned persons if they are able to pursue their own peculiar and profitable theme which is puddles what the undersigned persons a puddle repeats infinity and is full of light nevertheless if analyzed objectively a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud the two great historic universities of England have all this large and level and reflective brilliance nevertheless or rather on the other hand they are puddles puddles puddles puddles the undersigned persons ask you to use an emphasis inseparable from strong conviction Englewood ignored a somewhat wild expression on the faces of some present and continued with imminent cheerfulness such were the thoughts that failed to cross the mind of the undergraduate Smith as he picked his way among the stripes of canals and oblitering rainy gutters into which the waters broke up round the back of Brakes beer college had these thoughts crossed his mind he would have been much happier than he was unfortunately he did not know that his puzzles were puddles he did not know that the academic mind reflects infinity and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still in his case therefore there was something solemn and even evil about the infinity implied it was halfway through a starry night of bewildering brilliancy stars were both above and below to young smith sullen fancy the skies below seemed even hollower than the skies above he had a horrible idea that if he counted the stars he would find one too many in the pool in crossing the little paths and bridges he felt like one stepping on the black and slender ribs of some cosmic eiffel tower put to him and nearly all the educated youth of that epic the stars were cruel things though they glowed in the great dome every night they were an enormous and ugly secret they uncovered the nakedness of nature they were a glimpse of the iron wheels and pulleys behind the scenes for the young man of that sad time thought that the god always comes from the machine they did not know that in reality the machine only comes from the god in short they were all pessimists and starlight was atrocious to them atrocious because it was true all their universe was black with white spots Smith looked up with relief from the glittering pools below to the glittering skies and the great black bulk of the college the only light other than stars glowed through one peacock green curtain in the upper part of the building marking where Dr. Emerson Eames always worked till morning and received his friends and favored pupils at any hour of the night indeed it was to his rooms that the melancholy Smith was bound Smith had been at Dr. Eames lecture for the first half of the morning and at pistol practice and fencing in a saloon for the second half he had been sculling madly for the first half of the afternoon and thinking idly and still more madly for the second half he had gone to a supper where he was uproarious and on to a debating club where he was perfectly insufferable and the melancholy Smith was melancholy still then as he was going home to his diggings he remembered the eccentricity of his friend and master dewarden a breakspear and resolved desperately to turn into that gentleman's private house Emerson Eames was an eccentric in many ways but his thrown in philosophy and metaphysics was of international eminence the university could hardly have afforded to lose him and moreover Adon has only to continue any of his bad habits long enough to make them a part of the British Constitution the bad habits of Emerson Eames were to sit up all night and to be a student of Schopenhauer personally he was a lean lounging sort of man with a blonde pointed beard not so very much older than his pupil Smith in the matter of mere years but older by centuries in two essential respects of having a European reputation and a bald head who rules at this unearthly hour said Smith who was nothing to the eye except a very big man trying to make himself small because I am coming to the conclusion that existence is really too rotten I know all the arguments of the thinkers that think otherwise bishops and agnostics and those sort of people and knowing you were the greatest living authority on the pessimist thinkers all thinkers said Eames are pessimist thinkers after a patch of pause not the first for this depressing conversation had gone on for some hours with alternations of cynicism and silence the warden continued with his air of weary brilliancy it's all a question of wrong calculation the moth flies into the candle because he does not happen to know that the game is not worth the candle the wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him in the same way that they want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big a price for it that they never find happiness that they don't even know how to look for it is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do their discordant colors are cries of pain look at the brick villas beyond the college on this side of the river there's one with spotted blinds look at it of course he went on dreamily one or two men see the sober fact on the long way off they go mad do you notice that maniacs mostly try either to destroy other things or if they are thoughtful to destroy themselves the madman is the man behind the scenes like the man that wanders about the coulis of the theater he has only opened the wrong door and come to the right place he sees things at the right angle but the common world oh hang the common world said the sullen smith letting his fist fall on the table in an idle despair let's give it a bad name first said the professor calmly and then hang it a puppy with hydrophobia would probably struggle for life while we killed it but if we were kind we should kill it so an omniscient god would put us out of our pain he would strike us dead why doesn't he strike us dead as the undergraduate abstractly plunging his hands into his pockets he is dead himself said the philosopher that is where he is really enviable to anyone to anyone who thinks proceeded aims the pleasures of life, trivial and soon tasteless are bribes to bring us into a torture chamber we all see that for any thinking man, mere extinction is the are you mad? put that thing down Dr. Eames had turned his tired but still talkative head over his shoulder and had found himself looking into a small round black hole rimmed by a six-sided circlet of steel with a sort of spike sanding on the top it fixed him like an iron eye through those eternal instance during which the reason is stunned he did not even know what it was then he saw behind it the chambered barrel and cocked hammer of a revolver and behind that the flushed and rather heavy face of Smith apparently quite unchanged or even more mild than before I'll help you out of your whole old man said Smith with rough tenderness I'll put the puppy out of his pain Emerson Eames retreated toward the window do you mean to kill me he cried? it's not a thing I do for everyone said Smith with emotion but you and I seem to have got so intimate tonight somehow I know all your troubles now and the only cure old chap put that thing down, shouted the warden it'll soon be over you know said Smith with the air of a sympathetic dentist and as the warden made a run for the window in balcony his benefactor followed him with a firm step and a compassionate expression both men were perhaps surprised to see that the gray and white of early daybreak had come already some of them however had emotions calculated to swallow up surprise Brakespear College was one of the few that retained real traces of gothic ornament and just beneath Dr. Emes balcony there ran out what had perhaps been a flying buttress still shapelessly shaped into a gray beasts and devils but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains with an ungainly and most courageous leap Emes sprang out onto this antique bridge as the only possible motive escape from the maniac he's satisfied of it still in his academic gown dangling his long thin legs and considering further chances of flight the whitening daylight opened under as well as over him that impression of vertical infinity already remarked about the little lakes round Brakespear looking down and seeing the spires and chimneys pendant in the pools they felt alone in space they felt as if they were looking over the edge from the north pole and seeing only the south pole below end of section 15 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Man Alive by G. K. Chesterton Section 16 Part 2 The Explanations of Innocence Smith Chapter 1 The Eye of Death or the Murder Charge Part 4 Hang the World, we said, observed Smith, and the world is hanged He has hanged the world upon nothing says the Bible Do you like being hanged upon nothing? I'm going to be hanged upon something myself I'm going to swing for you Dear tender old phrase, he murmured, never true till this moment I'm going to swing for you For you, dear friend, for your sake at your express desire Help! cried the warden of Brakespear College Help! The puppy struggles, said the undergraduate with an eye of pity, the poor puppy struggles How fortunate it is that I am wiser and kinder than he And he sighted his weapons so as exactly to cover part of Eames' bald head Smith said the philosopher with a sudden change to a sort of ghastly lucidity I shall go mad And so look at things from the right angle, observed Smith sighing gently Ah, but madness is only a palliative at best a drug The only cure is an operation an operation that is always successful death As he spoke, the sun rose It seemed to put color into everything with the rapidity of a lightning artist A fleet of little clouds sailing across the sky changed from pigeon gray to pink All over the little academic town the tops of different buildings took on different tints Here the sun would pick out the green enamel on a pinnacle there the scarlet tiles of a villa Here the copper ornament on some artistic shop and there the sea blue slates of some old and steep church roof All these colored crests seemed to have something oddly individual and significant about them like crests of famous knights pointed out in a pageant or a battlefield They each arrested the eye especially the rolling eye of Eames as he looked round in the morning and accepted it as his last Through a narrow chink between a black timber tavern and a big gray college he could see a clock with gilt hands which the sunshine set on fire He stared at it as though hypnotized and suddenly the clock began to strike as if in personal reply As if at a signal clock after clock took up the cry all the churches awoke like chickens at a cock crow The birds were already noisy in the trees behind the college The sun rose gathering glory that seemed too full for the deep skies to hold and the shallow waters beneath them and then brimming and deep enough for the thirst of the gods Just round the corner of the college and visible from his crazy perch were the brightest specks on that bright landscape The villa with the spotted blinds which he had made his text that night He wondered for the first time what people lived in them Suddenly he called out with more queerless authority as he might have called to a student to shut a door Come off this place he cried I can't bear it I rather doubt if it will bear you said Smith critically but before you break your neck or I blow out your brains or let you back into this room on which complex points I am undecided I want the metaphysical point cleared up Do I understand that you want to get back to life? I'd give anything to get back replied the unhappy professor I'd Smith and blast your impudence give us a song What song do you mean demanded the exasperated Ames What song? I him I think would be most appropriate answer the other gravely I'll let you off if you repeat after me the words I thank the goodness and the grace that on my birth have smiled and perched me on this curious place a happy English child Dr. Emerson Ames having briefly complied his persecutor abruptly told him to hold his hands up in the air vaguely connecting this proceeding with the usual conduct of brigands and bush rangers Mr. Ames held them up very stiffly but without Mark's surprise a bird alighting on his stone seat took no more notice of him than of a comic statue you are now engaged in public worship remark Smith severely and before I have done with you thank God for the very ducks on the pond the celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed his perfect readiness to thank God for the ducks on the pond not forgetting the drake said Smith sternly Ames weakly conceded the drakes not forgetting anything please you shall thank heaven for the churches and chapels and villas and vulgar people and puddles and pots and pans and sticks and rags and bones all right all right repeat the victim in despair sticks and rags and bones and blinds spotted blinds I think we said remark Smith with a roguish ruthlessness and wagging the pistol barrel at him like a long metallic finger spotted blinds said Ames and Ames faintly you can't say fairer than that admitted the younger man and now I'll just tell you this to wind up with if you really were what you professed to be I don't see that it would matter to snail or seraph if you broke your impious stiff neck and dashed out all your driveling devil worshiping brains but in strict biographical fact you are a very nice fellow addicted to talking putrid nonsense and I love you like a brother I shall therefore fire off all my cartridges round your head so as not to hit you I am a good shot I'd be glad to hear and then we will go in and have some breakfast he then let off two barrels in the air which the professor endured with singular firmness and then said but don't fire them all off why not ask the other buoyantly keep them asked his companion for the next man you meet who talks as we were talking it was at this moment that Smith looking down perceived a poplactic terror upon the face of the subordinate and heard the refined shriek with which he summoned the porter and the ladder it took Dr. Eames some little time to disentangle himself from the ladder and some little time longer to disentangle himself from the subordinate but as soon as he could do so unobtrusively he rejoined his companion in the late extraordinary scene he was astonished to find the gigantic Smith heavily shaken and sitting with his shaggy head on his hands when addressed he lifted a very pale face why what is the matter asked Eames whose own nerves had by this time twitted themselves quiet like the morning birds I must ask your indulgence at Smith rather brokenly I must ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from death you have had an escape from death repeated the professor in not unpardonable irritation well of all the cheek oh don't you understand don't you understand cried the pale young man I had to do it Eames I had to prove you wrong or die when a man's young he nearly always has someone whom he thinks the top water mark of the mind of man someone who knows all about it if anybody knows well you were that to me you spoke with authority and not as the scribes nobody could comfort me if you said there was no comfort if you really thought there was nothing anywhere it was because you had been there to see don't you see I had to prove you didn't really mean it or else drown myself in the canal well said Eames hesitatingly I think perhaps you confuse oh don't tell me that cried Smith with a sudden clairvoyance of mental pain don't tell me I confuse enjoyment of existence with the will to live that's German and German is high Dutch and high Dutch is double Dutch the thing I saw shining in your eyes when you dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life and not the will to live what you knew when you sat on that damn gargoyle was that the world when all is said and done is a wonderful and beautiful place I know it because I knew it at the same minute I saw the grey clouds turn pink and the little guilt clock in the crack between the houses it was those things you hated leaving not life whatever that is Eames we've been on the brink of death together don't you admit I'm right yes said Eames very slowly I think you are right you shall have a first right cried Smith springing up reanimated I've passed with honors and now let me go and see about being sent down you needn't be sent down said Eames with the quiet confidence of 12 years of intrigue everything with us comes from the man on top do the people just round him I am the man on top and I shall tell the people round me the truth the massive Mr. Smith rose and went firmly to the window but he spoke with equal firmness I must be sent down he said and the people must not be told the truth and why not ask the other because I mean to follow your advice answered the massive youth I mean to keep the remaining shots for people in the shameful state you and I were last night we could even plead drunkenness I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists pills for pale people and in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful surprise to float as idly as the thistle down and come as silently as the sunrise not to be expected any more than the thunderbolt not to be recalled any more than the dying breeze I don't want people to anticipate me as a well known practical joke I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent the death and the life after death I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the modern man but I shall not use it to kill him only to bring him to life I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the feast you can scarcely be called a skeleton said dr. Eames smiling that comes of being so much at the feast answered the massive youth no skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out but that is not quite what I meant what I mean is that I caught a kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that the skull and crossbones the memento mori it isn't only meant to remind us of future life but to remind us of a present life too with our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were not kept young by death providence has to cut reality into lengths for us as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers then he added suddenly in a voice of unnatural actuality but I know something now Eames I knew it when I saw the clouds turn pink what do you mean asked Eames what do you know I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong he gripped dr. Eames hands and groped his way and brought unsteady to the door before he had vanished through it he had added it's very dangerous though when a man thinks for a split second that he understands death knocker Eames remained in repose and rumination some hours after his late assailant had left then he rose took his hat on umbrella and went for a brisk if rotatory walk several times however he stood outside the villa with the spotted blinds studying them intently slightly on one side some took him for a lunatic and some for an intending purchaser he is not yet sure that the two characters would be widely different the above narrative has been constructed on a principle which is in the opinion of the undersigned persons new in the art of letters each of the two actors is described as he appeared to the other but the undersigned persons absolutely guarantee the exactitude of the story and if their version of the thing be questioned they, the undersigned persons, would ducidly well like to know who does know about it if they don't the undersigned persons will now adjourn to the spotted dog for beer farewell sign James Emerson Eames warden of Brakesbury College, Cambridge Innocent Smith End of Section 16 End of Chapter 1