“And the tiara’s gone already,” he roared; “and the necklace—I’m going to see about that necklace!”
“Not a bad idea,” said Carver, as the young man rushed from the room; “though, of course, we’ve been keeping our eyes open since we’ve been here. Well, it took me a little time to make out the memorandum, which was in cipher, and Father Brown’s telephone message from the House came as I was near the end. I asked him to run round here first with the news, and I would follow; and so—”
His speech was sundered by a scream. Opal was standing up and pointing rigidly at the round window.
“There it is again!” she cried.
For a moment they all saw something—something that cleared the lady of the charges of lying and hysteria not uncommonly brought against her. Thrust out of the slate-blue darkness without, the face was pale, or, perhaps, blanched by pressure against the glass; and the great, glaring eyes, encircled as with rings, gave it rather the look of a great fish out of the dark-blue sea nosing at the porthole of a ship. But the gills or fins of the fish were a coppery red; they were, in truth, fierce red whiskers and the upper part of a red beard. The next moment it had vanished.
Devine had taken a single stride towards the window when a shout resounded through the house, a shout that seemed to shake it. It seemed almost too deafening to be distinguishable as words; yet it was enough to stop Devine in his stride, and he knew what had happened.
“Necklace gone!” shouted John Bankes, appearing huge and heaving in the doorway, and almost instantly vanishing again with the plunge of a pursuing hound.
“Thief was at the window just now!” cried the detective, who had already darted to the door, following the headlong John, who was already in the garden.
“Be careful,” wailed the lady, “they have pistols and things.”
“So have I,” boomed the distant voice of the dauntless John out of the dark garden.
Devine had, indeed, noticed as the young man plunged past him that he was defiantly brandishing a revolver, and hoped there would be no need for him to so defend himself. But even as he had the thought came the shock of two shots, as if one answered the other, and awakened a wild flock of echoes in that still suburban garden. They flapped into silence.
“Is John dead?” asked Opal in a low, shuddering voice.
Father Brown had already advanced deeper into the darkness, and stood with his back to them, looking down at something. It was he who answered her.
“No,” he said; “it is the other.”
Carver had joined him, and for a moment the two figures, the tall and the short, blocked out what view the fitful and stormy moonlight would allow. Then they moved to one side, and the others saw the small, wiry figure lying slightly twisted, as if with its last struggle. The false red beard was thrust upwards, as if scornfully, at the sky, and the moon shone on the great sham spectacles of the man who had been called Moonshine.
“What an end,” muttered the detective, Carver. “After all his adventures, to be shot almost by accident by a stockbroker in a suburban garden.”
The stockbroker himself naturally regarded his own triumph with more solemnity, though not without nervousness.
“I had to do it,” he gasped, still panting with exertion. “I’m sorry; he fired at me.”
“There will have to be an inquest, of course,” said Carver, gravely. “But I think there will be nothing for you to worry about. There’s a revolver fallen from his hand with one shot discharged; and he certainly didn’t fire after he’d got yours.”
By this time they had assembled again in the room, and the detective was getting his papers together for departure. Father Brown was standing opposite to him, looking down at the table, as if in a brown study. Then he spoke abruptly:
“Mr. Carver, you have certainly worked out a very complete case in a very masterly way. I rather suspected your professional business; but I never guessed you would link everything up together so quickly—the bees and the beard and the spectacles and the cipher and the necklace and everything.”
“Always satisfactory to get a case really rounded off,” said Carver.
“Yes,” said Father Brown, still looking at the table. “I admire it very much.” Then he added with a modesty verging on nervousness: “It’s only fair to you to say that I don’t believe a word of it.”
Devine leaned forward with sudden interest. “Do you mean you don’t believe he is Moonshine, the burglar?”
“I know he is the burglar, but he didn’t burgle,” answered Father Brown. “I know he didn’t come here, or to the great house, to steal jewels, or get shot getting away with them. Where are the jewels?”
“Where they generally are in such cases,” said Carver. “He’s either hidden them or passed them on to a confederate. This was not a one-man job. Of course, my people are searching the garden and warning the district.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Bankes, “the confederate stole the necklace while Moonshine was looking in at the window.”
“Why was Moonshine looking in at the window?” asked Father Brown quietly. “Why should he want to look in at the window?”
“Well, what do you think?” cried the cheery John.
“I think,” said Father Brown, “that he never did want to look in at the window.”
“Then why did he do it?” demanded Carver. “What’s the good of talking in the air like that? We’ve seen the whole thing acted before our very eyes.”
“I’ve seen a good many things acted before my eyes that I didn’t believe in,” replied the priest. “So have you, on the stage and off.”
“Father Brown,” said Devine, with a certain respect in his tones, “will you tell us why you can’t believe your eyes?”
“Yes, I will try to tell you,” answered the priest. Then he said gently: “You know what I am and what we are. We don’t bother
