Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: "Won"t you tell them about it, sir?"
The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the priest turned impatiently.
"Then I will," he said. "Private lives are more important than public reputations. I am going to save the living, and let the dead bury their dead."
He went to the fatal window, and blinked out of it as he went on talking.
"I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only one death. I tell you now that they were not weapons, and were not used to cause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the b.l.o.o.d.y knife, the exploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not used to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him."
"To save him!" repeated Gilder. "And from what?"
"From himself," said Father Brown. "He was a suicidal maniac."
"What?" cried Merton in an incredulous tone. "And the Religion of Cheerfulness--"
"It is a cruel religion," said the priest, looking out of the window.
"Why couldn"t they let him weep a little, like his fathers before him?
His plans stiffened, his views grew cold; behind that merry mask was the empty mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public level, he fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned long ago. But there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere teetotaler: that he pictures and expects that psychological inferno from which he has warned others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong prematurely, and by this morning he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in h.e.l.l, in so crazy a voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad for death, and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had scattered round him death in many shapes--a running noose and his friend"s revolver and a knife.
Royce entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife on the mat behind him, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the revolver, and having no time to unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. The suicide saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for the window. The rescuer did the only thing he could--ran after him with the rope and tried to tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father free. At first she only slashed poor Royce"s knuckles, from which has come all the little blood in this affair. But, of course, you noticed that he left blood, but no wound, on that servant"s face? Only before the poor woman swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through that window into eternity."
There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises of Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce, to whom he said: "I think I should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady are worth more than Armstrong"s obituary notices."
"Confound Armstrong"s notices," cried Royce roughly. "Don"t you see it was because she mustn"t know?"
"Mustn"t know what?" asked Merton.
"Why, that she killed her father, you fool!" roared the other. "He"d have been alive now but for her. It might craze her to know that."
"No, I don"t think it would," remarked Father Brown, as he picked up his hat. "I rather think I should tell her. Even the most murderous blunders don"t poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier now. I"ve got to go back to the Deaf School."
As he went out on to the gusty gra.s.s an acquaintance from Highgate stopped him and said:
"The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin."
"I"ve got to get back to the Deaf School," said Father Brown. "I"m sorry I can"t stop for the inquiry."