At the same instant
Sir Wilson Seymour burst back into the room, white as ivory. "Who's that
man in the passage?" he cried. "Where's that dagger of mine?"

Before Father Brown could turn in his heavy boots Seymour was plunging
about the room looking for the weapon. And before he could possibly
find that weapon or any other, a brisk running of feet broke upon the
pavement outside, and the square face of Cutler was thrust into the
same doorway. He was still grotesquely grasping a bunch of
lilies-of-the-valley. "What's this?" he cried. "What's that creature
down the passage? Is this some of your tricks?"

"My tricks!" hissed his pale rival, and made a stride towards him.

In the instant of time in which all this happened Father Brown stepped
out into the top of the passage, looked down it, and at once walked
briskly towards what he saw.

At this the other two men dropped their quarrel and darted after him,
Cutler calling out: "What are you doing? Who are you?"

"My name is Brown," said the priest sadly, as he bent over something
and straightened himself again. "Miss Rome sent for me, and I came as
quickly as I could. I have come too late."

The three men looked down, and in one of them at least the life died in
that late light of afternoon. It ran along the passage like a path of
gold, and in the midst of it Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of
green and gold, with her dead face turned upwards. Her dress was torn
away as in a struggle, leaving the right shoulder bare, but the wound
from which the blood was welling was on the other side. The brass dagger
lay flat and gleaming a yard or so away.

There was a blank stillness for a measurable time, so that they could
hear far off a flower-girl's laugh outside Charing Cross, and someone
whistling furiously for a taxicab in one of the streets off the Strand.
Then the Captain, with a movement so sudden that it might have been
passion or play-acting, took Sir Wilson Seymour by the throat.

Seymour looked at him steadily without either fight or fear. "You need
not kill me," he said in a voice quite cold; "I shall do that on my own
account."

The Captain's hand hesitated and dropped; and the other added with the
same icy candour: "If I find I haven't the nerve to do it with that
dagger I can do it in a month with drink."

"Drink isn't good enough for me," replied Cutler, "but I'll have blood
for this before I die. Not yours--but I think I know whose."

And before t