“If it’s true, it would jolly well narrow it to that narrow-faced rascal Elias—and I shouldn’t wonder, for a more creepy, cold-blooded, sneering devil I never saw.”
Father Brown sighed. “He always reminded me of poor Stein,” he said, “in fact I think he was some relation.”
“Oh, I say,” began Nares, when his protest was cut short by the door being flung open, revealing once more the long loose figure and pale face of young Horne; but it seemed as if he had not merely his natural, but a new and unnatural pallor.
“Hullo,” cried Nares, putting up his single eyeglass, “why have you come back again?”
Horne crossed the room rather shakily without a word and sat down heavily in a chair. Then he said, as in a sort of daze: “I missed the others … I lost my way. I thought I’d better come back.”
The remains of evening refreshments were on the table, and Henry Horne, that lifelong Prohibitionist, poured himself out a wine-glassful of liqueur brandy and drank it at a gulp.
“You seem upset,” said Father Brown.
Horne had put his hands to his forehead and spoke as from under the shadow of it; he seemed to be speaking to the priest only, in a low voice.
“I may as well tell you. I have seen a ghost.”
“A ghost!” repeated Nares in astonishment. “Whose ghost?”
“The ghost of Gideon Wise, the master of this house,” answered Horne more firmly, “standing over the abyss into which he fell.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Nares; “no sensible person believes in ghosts.”
“That is hardly exact,” said Father Brown, smiling a little. “There is really quite as good evidence for many ghosts as there is for most crimes.”
“Well, it’s my business to run after the criminals,” said Nares rather roughly, “and I will leave other people to run away from the ghosts. If anybody at this time of day chooses to be frightened of ghosts, it’s his affair.”
“I didn’t say I was frightened of them, though I dare say I might be,” said Father Brown. “Nobody knows till he tries. I said I believed in them, at any rate, enough to want to hear more about this one. What, exactly, did you see, Mr. Horne?”
“It was over there on the brink of those crumbling cliffs; you know there is a sort of gap or crevice just about the spot where he was thrown over. The others had gone on ahead, and I was crossing the moor towards the path along the cliff. I often went that way, for I liked seeing the high seas dash up against the crags. I thought little of it tonight, beyond wondering that the sea should be so rough on this sort of clear moonlight night. I could see the pale crests of spray appear and disappear as the great waves leapt up at the headland. Thrice I saw the momentary flash of foam in the moonlight and then I saw something inscrutable. The fourth flash of the silver foam seemed to be fixed in the sky. It did not fall; I waited with insane intensity for it to fall. I fancied I was mad, and that time had been for me mysteriously arrested or prolonged. Then I drew nearer, and then I think I screamed aloud. For that suspended spray, like unfallen snowflakes, had fitted together into a face and a figure, white as the shining leper in a legend and terrible as the fixed lightning.”
“And it was Gideon Wise, you say?”
Horne nodded without speech; there was a silence broken abruptly by Nares rising to his feet; so abruptly indeed that he knocked a chair over.
“Oh, this is all nonsense,” he said, “but we’d better go out and see.”
“I won’t go,” said Horne with sudden violence. “I’ll never walk by that path again.”
“I think we must all walk by that path tonight,” said the priest gravely, “though I will never deny it has been a perilous path … to more people than one.”
“I will not … God, how you all goad me,” cried Horne, and his eyes began to roll in a strange fashion. He had risen with the rest, but he made no motion towards the door.
“Mr. Horne,” said Nares firmly, “I am a police officer, and this house, though you may not know it, is surrounded by the police. I have tried to investigate in a friendly fashion, but I must investigate everything, even anything so silly as a ghost. I must ask you to take me to the spot you speak of.”
There was another silence while Horne stood heaving and panting as with indescribable fears. Then he suddenly sat down on his chair again and said with an entirely new and much more composed voice:
“I can’t do it. You may just as well know why. You will know it sooner or later. I killed him.”
For an instant there was the stillness of a house struck by a thunderbolt and full of corpses. Then the voice of Father Brown sounded in that enormous silence strangely small like the squeak of a mouse.
“Did you kill him deliberately?” he asked.
“How can one answer such a question?” answered the man in the chair, moodily gnawing his finger. “I was mad, I suppose. He was intolerable and insolent, I know. I was on his land and I believe he struck me; anyhow, we came to a grapple and he went over the cliff. When I was well away from the scene it burst upon me that I had done a crime that cut me off from men; the brand of Cain throbbed on my brow and my very brain; I realized for the first time that I had indeed killed a man. I knew I should have to confess it sooner or later.” He sat suddenly erect in his chair. “But I will say nothing against anybody else. It is no use asking me about plots or accomplices—I will
