hand.
Allow me to hand that also to the proper authorities." He took from his
tail-pocket a long horn-hilted knife with a red smear on it, and handed
it politely to the sergeant. Then he stood back again, and his slits of
eyes almost faded from his face in one fat Chinese sneer.

Merton felt an almost bodily sickness at the sight of him; and he
muttered to Gilder: "Surely you would take Miss Armstrong's word against
his?"

Father Brown suddenly lifted a face so absurdly fresh that it looked
somehow as if he had just washed it. "Yes," he said, radiating
innocence, "but is Miss Armstrong's word against his?"

The girl uttered a startled, singular little cry; everyone looked at
her. Her figure was rigid as if paralysed; only her face within its
frame of faint brown hair was alive with an appalling surprise. She
stood like one of a sudden lassooed and throttled.

"This man," said Mr. Gilder gravely, "actually says that you were found
grasping a knife, insensible, after the murder."

"He says the truth," answered Alice.

The next fact of which they were conscious was that Patrick Royce strode
with his great stooping head into their ring and uttered the singular
words: "Well, if I've got to go, I'll have a bit of pleasure first."

His huge shoulder heaved and he sent an iron fist smash into Magnus's
bland Mongolian visage, laying him on the lawn as flat as a starfish.
Two or three of the police instantly put their hands on Royce; but to
the rest it seemed as if all reason had broken up and the universe were
turning into a brainless harlequinade.

"None of that, Mr. Royce," Gilder had called out authoritatively. "I
shall arrest you for assault."

"No, you won't," answered the secretary in a voice like an iron gong,
"you will arrest me for murder."

Gilder threw an alarmed glance at the man knocked down; but since that
outraged person was already sitting up and wiping a little blood off a
substantially uninjured face, he only said shortly: "What do you mean?"

"It is quite true, as this fellow says," explained Royce, "that Miss
Armstrong fainted with a knife in her hand. But she had not snatched the
knife to attack her father, but to defend him."

"To defend him," repeated Gilder gravely. "Against whom?"

"Against me," answered the secretary.

Alice looked at him with a complex and baffling face; then she said in a
low voice: "After it all, I am still glad you are brave."

"Come upstairs," said Patrick Royce