of Apollo on the balcony
above, and the ugly priest of Christ below him.

At last the tall figure and titanic energy of Flambeau appeared in the
doorway of the mansions and dominated the little mob. Talking at the top
of his voice like a fog-horn, he told somebody or anybody to go for a
surgeon; and as he turned back into the dark and thronged entrance his
friend Father Brown dipped in insignificantly after him. Even as he
ducked and dived through the crowd he could still hear the magnificent
melody and monotony of the solar priest still calling on the happy god
who is the friend of fountains and flowers.

Father Brown found Flambeau and some six other people standing round the
enclosed space into which the lift commonly descended. But the lift had
not descended. Something else had descended; something that ought to
have come by a lift.

For the last four minutes Flambeau had looked down on it; had seen
the brained and bleeding figure of that beautiful woman who denied the
existence of tragedy. He had never had the slightest doubt that it was
Pauline Stacey; and, though he had sent for a doctor, he had not the
slightest doubt that she was dead.

He could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked
her; there was so much both to like and dislike. But she had been a
person to him, and the unbearable pathos of details and habit stabbed
him with all the small daggers of bereavement. He remembered her pretty
face and priggish speeches with a sudden secret vividness which is all
the bitterness of death. In an instant like a bolt from the blue, like
a thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant body had been
dashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was it
suicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it
murder? But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder
anybody? In a rush of raucous words, which he meant to be strong and
suddenly found weak, he asked where was that fellow Kalon. A voice,
habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured him that Kalon for the last
fifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony worshipping his god.
When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father Brown, he
turned his swarthy face and said abruptly:

"Then, if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?"

"Perhaps," said the other, "we might go upstairs and find out. We have
half an hour before the police will move."

Leaving the body of t