“And now,” said Father Brown almost grimly, “I can begin to think.”
“I shouldn’t think too hard just yet,” said the American. “You must be wanting a rest. Besides, what are you going to think about?”
“I have pretty often had the task of investigating murders, as it happens,” said Father Brown. “Now I have got to investigate my own murder.”
“If I were you,” said Race, “I should take a little wine first.”
Father Brown stood up and filled himself another glass, lifted it, looked thoughtfully into vacancy and put it down again. Then he sat down once more and said:
“Do you know what I felt like when I died? You may not believe it, but my feeling was one of overwhelming astonishment.”
“Well,” answered Race, “I suppose you were astonished at being knocked on the head.”
Father Brown leaned over to him and said in a low voice:
“I was astonished at not being knocked on the head.”
Race looked at him for a moment as if he thought the knock on the head had been only too effective; but he only said: “What do you mean?”
“I mean that when that man brought his bludgeon down with a great swipe, it stopped at my head and did not even touch it. In the same way, the other fellow made as if to strike me with a knife, but he never gave me a scratch. It was just like playacting. I think it was. But then followed the extraordinary thing.”
He looked thoughtfully at the papers on the table for a moment and then went on:
“Though I had not even been touched with knife or stick, I began to feel my legs doubling up under me and my very life failing. I knew I was being struck down by something, but it was not by those weapons. Do you know what I think it was?”
And he pointed to the wine on the table.
Race picked up the wineglass and looked at it and smelt it.
“I think you are right,” he said. “I began as a druggist and studied chemistry. I couldn’t say for certain without an analysis, but I think there’s something very unusual in this stuff. There are drugs by which the Asiatics produce a temporary sleep that looks like death.”
“Quite so,” said the priest calmly. “The whole of this miracle was faked, for some reason or other. That funeral scene was staged—and timed. I think it is part of that raving madness of publicity that has got hold of Snaith; but I can hardly believe he would go quite so far, merely for that. After all, it’s one thing to make copy out of me and run me as a sort of sham Sherlock Holmes, and—”
Even as the priest spoke his face altered. His blinking eyelids shut suddenly and he stood up as if he were choking. Then he put one wavering hand as if groping his way towards the door.
“Where are you going?” asked the other in some wonder.
“If you ask me,” said Father Brown, who was quite white, “I was going to pray. Or rather, to praise.”
“I’m not sure I understand. What is the matter with you?”
“I was going to praise God for having so strangely and so incredibly saved me—saved me by an inch.”
“Of course,” said Race, “I am not of your religion; but believe me, I have religion enough to understand that. Of course, you would thank God for saving you from death.”
“No,” said the priest “Not from death. From disgrace.”
The other sat staring; and the priest’s next words broke out of him with a sort of cry.
“And if it had only been my disgrace! But it was the disgrace of all I stand for; the disgrace of the Faith that they went about to encompass. What it might have been! The most huge and horrible scandal ever launched against us since the last lie was choked in the throat of Titus Oates.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” demanded his companion.
“Well, I had better tell you at once,” said the priest; and sitting down, he went on more composedly: “It came to me in a flash when I happened to mention Snaith and Sherlock Holmes. Now I happen to remember what I wrote about his absurd scheme; it was the natural thing to write, and yet I think they had ingeniously manoeuvred me into writing just those words. They were something like ‘I am ready to die and come to life again like Sherlock Holmes, if that is the best way.’ And the moment I thought of that, I realized that I had been made to write all sorts of things of that kind, all pointing to the same idea. I wrote, as if to an accomplice, saying that I would drink the drugged wine at a particular time. Now, don’t you see?”
Race sprang to his feet still staring: “Yes,” he said, “I think I began to see.”
“They would have boomed the miracle. Then they would have bust up the miracle. And what is the worst, they would have proved that I was in the conspiracy. It would have been our sham miracle. That’s all there is to it; and about as near hell as you and I will ever be, I hope.”
Then he said, after a pause, in quite a mild voice:
“They certainly would have got quite a lot of good copy out of me.”
Race looked at the table and said darkly: “How many of these brutes were in it?”
Father Brown shook his head. “More than I like to think of,” he said; “but I hope some of them were only tools. Alvarez might think that all’s fair in war, perhaps; he has a queer mind. I’m very much afraid that Mendoza is an old hypocrite; I never trusted him and he hated my action in an industrial matter. But all that will wait; I have only got to thank God for the escape. And especially that I wired at once to the Bishop.”
John Race appeared to be very thoughtful.
“You’ve told
