l difficulties," said the doctor quietly; "like
high walls within walls. Don't mistake me. I don't doubt that Brayne
did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it.
First difficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great hulking
sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back
in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry?
Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer
no remarks? Third difficulty: A servant watched the front door all the
evening; and a rat cannot get into Valentin's garden anywhere. How did
the dead man get into the garden? Fourth difficulty: Given the same
conditions, how did Brayne get out of the garden?"

"And the fifth," said Neil, with eyes fixed on the English priest who
was coming slowly up the path.

"Is a trifle, I suppose," said the doctor, "but I think an odd one. When
I first saw how the head had been slashed, I supposed the assassin had
struck more than once. But on examination I found many cuts across the
truncated section; in other words, they were struck after the head was
off. Did Brayne hate his foe so fiendishly that he stood sabring his
body in the moonlight?"

"Horrible!" said O'Brien, and shuddered.

The little priest, Brown, had arrived while they were talking, and had
waited, with characteristic shyness, till they had finished. Then he
said awkwardly:

"I say, I'm sorry to interrupt. But I was sent to tell you the news!"

"News?" repeated Simon, and stared at him rather painfully through his
glasses.

"Yes, I'm sorry," said Father Brown mildly. "There's been another
murder, you know."

Both men on the seat sprang up, leaving it rocking.

"And, what's stranger still," continued the priest, with his dull eye
on the rhododendrons, "it's the same disgusting sort; it's another
beheading. They found the second head actually bleeding into the river,
a few yards along Brayne's road to Paris; so they suppose that he--"

"Great Heaven!" cried O'Brien. "Is Brayne a monomaniac?"

"There are American vendettas," said the priest impassively. Then he
added: "They want you to come to the library and see it."

Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling
decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage;
where were these extravagant amputations going to stop? First one
head was hacked off, and then another; in this case (he told himself
bitterly) it