Devine had taken a single stride towards the window when a shout resounded through the house, a shout that seemed to shake it. It seemed almost too deafening to be distinguishable as words; yet it was enough to stop Devine in his stride, and he knew what had happened.
"Necklace gone!" shouted John Bankes, appearing huge and heaving in the doorway, and almost instantly vanishing again with the plunge of a pursuing hound.
"Thief was at the window just now!" cried the detective, who had already darted to the door, following the headlong John, who was already in the garden.
"Be careful," wailed the lady, "they have pistols and things."
"So have I," boomed the distant voice of the dauntless John out of the dark garden.
Devine had, indeed, noticed as the young man plunged past him that he was defiantly brandishing a revolver, and hoped there would be no need for him to so defend himself. But even as he had the thought, came the shock of two shots, as if one answered the other, and awakened a wild flock of echoes in that still suburban garden. They flapped into silence.
"Is John dead?" asked Opal in a low, shuddering voice.
Father Brown had already advanced deeper into the darkness, and stood with his back to them, looking down at something. It was he who answered her.
"No," he said; "it is the other."
Carver had joined him, and for a moment the two figures, the tall and the short, blocked out what view the fitful and stormy moonlight would allow. Then they moved to one side and, the others saw the small, wiry figure lying slightly twisted, as if with its last struggle. The false red beard was thrust upwards, as if scornfully at the sky, and the moon shone on the great sham spectacles of the man who had been called Moonshine.