The Flight of the Duke of the North Ridings

When the Duke’s car arrived outside the Rectory about twelve on the Monday, its driver saw at the gates another car, at the wheel of which sat a policeman whom he recognized.

“Hallo, Puttenham,” he said. “Is the Chief Constable here then?”

“Inside, your Grace,” Constable Puttenham answered, saluting. “Making inquiries about the outrage, I believe.”

The Duke, rather annoyed, looked at the Rectory. He disliked the Chief Constable, who had taken up the business of protecting people, developed it into a hobby, and was rapidly making it a mania and a nuisance — at least, so it appeared to the Duke. He remembered now that at a dinner at his own house some few days before the Chief Constable had held forth at great length on a lack of readiness in the public to assist the police, as exemplified by the failure of the Archdeacon of Fardles to report to them one case of sacrilege and one of personal assault. It had been objected that the Archdeacon had been confined to his bed for some time, but now that he had preached again the Chief Constable had obviously determined to see what his personal investigation and exhortation could do. The Duke hesitated for a moment, but it occurred to him that Mornington might welcome the opportunity of escaping, and he strolled slowly up to the door. Introduced into the study, he found the Chief Constable in a high state of argumentative irritation, Mornington irrationally scornful of everything, and the Archdeacon — for all he could see — much as usual.

“How do, Ridings,” the Chief Constable said, after the priest had greeted his visitor. “Perhaps you may help me to talk sense. The Archdeacon here says he’s lost a chalice, and won’t help the proper authorities to look for it.”

“But I don’t want them to look for it,” the Archdeacon said, “if you mean the police. You asked me if I knew what the hypothetical tramp or tramps were looking for, and I said yes — the old chalice that used to be here. You asked me if it had disappeared, and I said yes. But I don’t want you to look for it.”

The Duke began to feel that there might be something satisfying about even an Anglican priest. There were few things he himself would like less than to have the Chief Constable looking for anything he had lost. But robbery was robbery, and though, of course, a priest who wasn’t a priest could have no real use for a chalice, still, a chalice was a chalice, and, anyhow, the Chief Constable was sure to go on looking for it, so why not let him? But he didn’t say this; he merely nodded and glanced at Mornington.

“I suppose you want to find it?” the Chief Constable said laboriously.

“I don’t — you must excuse me, but you drive me to it,” the Archdeacon answered. “I don’t want the police to find it. First, because I don’t care for the Church to make use of the secular arm; secondly, because it would make the whole thing undesirably public; thirdly, because I know where it is; and fourthly, because they couldn’t prove it was there.”

“Well, sir,” Kenneth said sharply, “then, if it can’t be proved, we oughtn’t to throw accusations about.”

“Precisely what I am not doing,” the Archdeacon answered, crossing his legs. “I don’t accuse anyone. I only say I know where it is.”

“And where is it?” the Chief Constable asked. “And how do you know it is there?”

“First,” the Archdeacon said, “in the possession of Mr. Persimmons of Cully — probably on a bracket in his hall, but I’m not certain of that. Secondly, by a combination of directions arising out of the education of children, books of black magic, a cancelled paragraph in some proofs, an attempt to cheat me, the place where the Cup was kept, a motor-car, a reported threat, and a few other things.”

The Chief Constable was still blinking over the sudden introduction of Mr. Persimmons of Cully, and it was the Duke who asked, “But if you have all these clues, what’s the uncertainty — in your own mind?” he added suddenly, as he also became aware of the improbability of a country householder knocking an Archdeacon on the head in order to steal his chalice.

“There is no uncertainty in my own mind,” the priest answered. “But the police would not be able to find a motive.”

“We of course can,” Kenneth said scornfully.

“We — if you say we — can,” the Archdeacon said, “for we know what it was, and we know that many kinds of religion are possible to men.”

“You are sure now that it was — it?” Kenneth answered.

“No,” the priest answered, “but I have decided in my own mind that I will believe that. No-one can possibly do more than decide what to believe.”

“Do I understand, Mr. Archdeacon,” the Chief Constable asked, “that you accuse Mr. Persimmons of stealing this chalice? And why should he want to steal a chalice? And if he did, would he be likely to keep it in his hall?”

“There is always the Purloined Letter,” the Duke murmured thoughtfully. “But even there the letter wasn’t pinned up openly on a notice-board. Couldn’t we go and see?”

“That is what I was going to suggest,” said the Chief Constable. He stood up cheerfully. “I quite understand about your anxiety over the loss of this chalice”— Kenneth cackled suddenly and walked to the window. “Anyone would be anxious about a chalice of, I understand, great antiquarian interest. But I feel so certain you’re mistaken in this . . . idea about Mr. Persimmons that I can’t help feeling that a meeting perhaps, and a little study of his chalice, and so on . . . And then you must give us a free hand.” He looked almost hopefully at the priest. “If you could spare us half an hour now, say?”

“I can’t possibly move from here,” the Archdeacon said, “without a clear understanding that I don’t accuse Mr. Persimmons in any legal or official sense at all. I will come with you if you like, because I can’t refuse a not-immoral call from the Chief Magistrate”— the Chief Constable looked gratified “and, as I have no reason to consider Mr. Persimmons’s feelings — I really haven’t,” he added aside to Kenneth, who had turned to face the room again —“I should like, as a matter of curiosity, to see if it’s another chalice or if it’s mine. But that’s all.”

“I quite understand,” the Chief Constable said sunnily. “Ridings, are you coming? Mr. —?” He hesitated uncertainly. The Duke looked at Kenneth, who said: “I think I ought to go; it won’t take long. Would you mind waiting a few minutes?”

“I’ll take you to the gate,” the Duke said, “and wait for you there — then we’ll go straight on.”

Between the Archdeacon and the Chief Constable in their car the only conversation was a brief one upon the weather; in that which preceded them, Mornington, in answer to the Duke’s inquiries, sketched the situation as he understood it.

“And what do you think yourself?” the Duke asked.

Mornington grimaced. “Certum quia impossibile,” he said. “If I must come down on one side or the other, I fall on the Archdeacon’s. Especially since yesterday,” he said resentfully. “But it’s all insane. Persimmons’s explanation is perfectly satisfactory — and yet it just isn’t. The paragraph and the Cup were both there — and now they both aren’t.”

“Well,” the Duke said, “if I can help annoy the Chief Constable, tell me. He once told me that poetry wasn’t practical.”

At the gates of Cully the cars stopped. “Will you come in, Ridings?” the Chief Constable asked.

“No,” the Duke said; “what have I to do with these things? Don’t be longer than you can help catechizing and analysing and the rest of it.” He watched them out of sight, took a writing-pad from his pocket, and settled down to work on a drama in the Greek style upon the Great War and the fall of the German Empire. The classic form appeared to him capable at once of squeezing the last drop of intensity out of the action and of presenting at once the broadest and most minute effects. The scene was an open space behind the German lines in France; the time was in March 1918; the chorus consisted of French women from the occupied territory; and the deus ex machina was represented by a highly formalized St. Denis, whom the Duke was engaged in making as much like Phoebus Apollo as he could. He turned to the god’s opening monologue.

Out of those habitable, fields which are

Nor swept by fire nor venomous with war,

But, being disposed by . . .

He brooded over whether to say Zeus or God.

Meanwhile, Gregory received his guests with cold politeness, to which a much warmer courtesy was opposed by the Archdeacon. “It isn’t my fault that we’re here,” the priest said, when he had introduced the Chief Constable. “Colonel Conyers insisted on coming. He’s looking for the chalice that was stolen.”

“It certainly isn’t my wish,” the irritated Colonel said, finding himself already in a false position. “The Archdeacon gave me to understand that he believed the chalice had somehow got into Cully, and I thought if that was cleared up we should all know better where we were.”

“I suppose,” Gregory said, “that it was Mr. Mornington who told you I had a chalice here.”

“You remember I saw it myself,” the Archdeacon said. “It was the position then that made me feel sure it was the . . . it was an important one. You people are so humorous.” He shook his head, and hummed under his breath: “Oh, give thanks to the God of all gods . . . ”

Colonel Conyers looked from one to the other. “I don’t quite follow all this,” he said a trifle impatiently.

“‘For his’— it doesn’t at all matter —‘mercy endureth for ever,’” the Archdeacon concluded, with a genial smile. He seemed to be rising moment by moment into a kind of delirious delight. His eyes moved from one to the other, changing from mere laughter as he looked at the Colonel into an impish and teasing mischief for Persimmons, and showing a feeling of real affection as they rested on Kenneth, between whom and himself there had appeared the beginnings of a definite attraction and friendship. Gregory looked at him with a certain perplexity. He understood Sir Giles’s insolent rudeness, though he despised it as Giles despised his own affectation of smoothness. But he saw no reason in the Archdeacon’s amusement, and began to wonder seriously whether Ludding’s blow had affected his mind. He glanced over at Mornington — there at least he had power, and understood his power. Then he looked at the Chief Constable and waited. So for a minute or two they all stood in silence, which the Colonel at last broke.

“I thought,” he began, rather pointedly addressing himself to Persimmons, “that if you would show us this chalice of yours it would convince the Archdeacon that it wasn’t his.”

“With pleasure,” Gregory answered, going towards the bracket and followed by the others. “Here it is. Do you want to know the full history? I had it —” he began, repeating what Kenneth had heard the previous day.

Colonel Conyers looked at the priest. “Well?” he said.

The Archdeacon looked, and grew serious. His spirit felt its own unreasonable gaiety opening into a wider joy; its dance became a more vital but therefore a vaster thing. Faintly again he heard the sound of music, but now not from without, or indeed from within, from some non-spatial, non-temporal, non-personal existence. It was music, but not yet music, or if music, then the music of movement itself — sound produced, not by things, but in the nature of things. He looked, and looked again, and felt himself part of a moving river flowing towards some narrow channel on a ripple of which the Graal was as a gleam of supernatural light. “Yes,” he said softly, “it is the Cup.”

Gregory shrugged, and looked at the Chief Constable. “I will give you the address of the man from whom I bought it,” he said, “and you can make what inquiries you like — if you think it necessary.”

The Colonel pursed his lips, and said in a lowered voice, “I will tell you if it’s necessary. But I’m not sure the identification is sufficiently valuable. I understand the Archdeacon had an accident to his head some time ago.”

“Unfortunately, it was I who found him lying in the road and brought him home, and I think that’s confused the idea of robbery with me,” Gregory continued, also in a subdued voice. “It’s very unfortunate, and rather embarrassing for me. I don’t want to appear unneighbourly, and if it goes on I shall have to think about selling the house. He’s an old resident, and I’m a new one, and, of course, people would rather believe him. If I gave him this chalice — but I should be sorry to part with it. I like old things, but I don’t like them enough to half kill a clergyman to get them. I’m in your hands, Colonel. What do you advise?”

The Colonel considered. Kenneth had walked a little distance away, so as not to appear to overhear their talk; the Archdeacon was st............