The Innocence of Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton [ebook reader online .txt] 📗

a corner, spilling one half and leaving the other. That is the very last thing a dipsomaniac would do.”

He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the self-accused murderer in tones of limpid penitence: “I’m awfully sorry, my dear sir, but your tale is really rubbish.”

“Sir,” said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, “can I speak to you alone for a moment?”

This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, and before he could speak in the next room, the girl was talking with strange incisiveness.

“You are a clever man,” she said, “and you are trying to save Patrick, I know. But it’s no use. The core of all this is black, and the more things you find out the more there will be against the miserable man I love.”

“Why?” asked Brown, looking at her steadily.

“Because,” she answered equally steadily, “I saw him commit the crime myself.”

“Ah!” said the unmoved Brown, “and what did he do?”

“I was in this room next to them,” she explained; “both doors were closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard on earth, roaring `Hell, hell, hell,’ again and again, and then the two doors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the thing banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full of smoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick’s hand; and I saw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapt on my father, who was clinging in terror to the windowsill, and, grappling, tried to strangle him with the rope, which he threw over his head, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then it tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac. I snatched a knife from the mat, and, rushing between them, managed to cut the rope before I fainted.”

“I see,” said Father Brown, with the same wooden civility. “Thank you.”

As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly into the next room, where he found Gilder and Merton alone with Patrick Royce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector submissively:

“Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he take off those funny cuffs for a minute?”

“He is a very powerful man,” said Merton in an undertone. “Why do you want them taken off?”

“Why, I thought,” replied the priest humbly, “that perhaps I might have the very great honour of shaking hands with him.”

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 bloody 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 hell, 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, snatched 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 grass 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.”